3rd World Products, Inc., Book 5

by Ed Howdershelt

  Rhonda gave me a wry smile and her gaze swept the others as she picked up her target box and said, "Thank you. And thank all of you for a very entertaining afternoon, but now it's getting kind of deep in here, so I'll be on my way."

  She shook hands and said goodbyes with the others, then with me, then hopped off the deck to the ground, and walked toward Detective Calvin.

  When Rhonda emerged from the flitter's perimeter field, the guy's mouth fell open as she appeared to walk through a stainless steel hull. Rhonda's step faltered slightly at his surprise, then she swung into a march toward him.

  I watched her hips roll with her strides for a moment, then turned to Sue, who'd been watching me watch Rhonda. Sue's eyebrow went up again.

  Keying my implant, I said softly, "You do it better," then turned to the others and asked, "Well, what now?"

  Straightening, Joan asked somewhat sharply, "What do you mean 'what now'? Are you telling us you want us to leave?"

  Shrugging, I answered, "No, not necessarily. If you know a good place to grab a steak dinner, I'll listen. If you don't, let me go so I can go find some food."

  She glanced at Wexler and replied, "At this hour? Around here?"

  "Here, there, anywhere. Doesn't really matter. If you don't come up with something, I can be in Florida in half an hour or so. I won't starve."

  Joan looked and sounded openly skeptical. "Half an hour?"

  Giving her a droll look, I reiterated, "Or so."

  Wexler stared at me for a moment, then said, "That's about... uh, three thousand..."

  "Yeah, it's real fast," I interrupted. "Somebody pick out a restaurant or I'm gonna toss you both overboard and split."

  "Uhm... well, there's..."

  This time Joan interrupted him.

  "Nick's," she said in a rather challenging tone, "In Dallas."

  "Any particular reason?"

  She slightly grinned as she stated in that same tone, "I read about it the other day. It got good reviews."

  Did she think I was bullshitting her?

  Sue said, "That restaurant is in the West End area. I've given the flitter the coordinates."

  Nodding, I said, "Thanks, milady. It's in Texas, so they can probably cough up a decent steak. Flitter, take us to Nick's. Max warp, please. I'm kind of hungry."

  The flitter launched us into the sky at just under the speed of sound. Joan screamed and locked onto the back of a seat. Wexler went to his knees clutching the back of another seat.

  When we reached forty thousand feet, the flitter instantly bolted southward at full speed. Sue sighed at me in a meaningful fashion, shook her head slightly, and faced front.

  In the ensuing silence I heard Joan's harsh, rapid breathing and turned to see her easing her way around the seat to sit down. Wexler hadn't moved at all, as far as I could tell.

  "Well, damn, people," I said, taking a seat, "You knew this thing could haul ass. Do you see me freaking out? Is Tiger upset about anything? Get your shit together, okay? We'll be there in a few minutes."

  Joan screamed, "You bastard! You could have warned us!"

  "Yeah, well, check the glove box again. See if there are any of those miscellaneous apologies left."

  Tiger's ears were sharply forward as he watched Joan and Dick. His tail twitched and switched in a way that indicated he was highly amused.

  I grinned at him and said, "I'll save some steak for you."

  He looked at me long enough to say, "Thank you," then returned his attention to Joan and Dick.

  Calling up a datapad screen, I located Nick's. Right on the river, such as it was. The "Trinity Ditch", most people there called it.

  A trickle of water a few yards wide lay between two man-made embankments ninety-five percent of any year, but now and then that mile-wide channel filled and even overflowed.

  When I'd been about fourteen, it had been the wettest year in recent history. Not only had the Trinity Ditch overflowed, so had nearby Mountain Creek lake.

  The lake had flooded some of the countryside and what had then been the Twin Drive-In theater along US-80. A few friends and I had gone to help fill and place sandbags at the mobile home park nearby, but there was already two feet of water everywhere, so we ended up milling around a snack wagon waiting for rides home.

  That's when Billy Chalmers had muttered, "Well, Gawd-dayum!" and pointed at the water in the drive-in.

  A catfish with a mouth the size of a car tire was swimming aimlessly around the drive-in parking lot, his dorsal fin standing tall as he explored his new accommodations.

  Steve Holden spotted one by the drive-in's snack building, then another one swam into view by the white board fence, apparently trying to find a way past the barrier.

  Families in that area were mostly poor and there wasn't much anyone could do about their homes, so some bright soul wired a piece of chain link fencing across the theater's entrance and probably a dozen people went fishing with ropes.

  I punched up old Dallas Morning News records for 1964 and ran a search for articles mentioning the Twin Drive-In, and sure enough, there was the picture I remembered; Steve Holden up to his knees in water, throwing a lasso at a four-foot catfish.

  Pointing at the guy on the other side of the catfish from the rope-thrower, Joan glanced at my face rather peeringly and asked, "Is that you? That kid looks like you."

  "It's me. I used to live near Dallas. It rained a bit that year. The guy with the rope is Steve Holden."

  Dick Wexler leaned in close behind her.

  "That's a catfish, isn't it?!"

  "Yup. The other two were bigger, but this one was faster. It got Billy Chalmers with a fin. Nearly drove it through his leg. Or so he said, anyway. I never actually saw the wound, and he was known to exaggerate now and then."

  We talked about events of that time until we reached the sky above Dallas. Sue said, "We're about to descend," and received "Thanks for the warning," from Joan as she and Dick hurriedly took their seats.

  It was just starting to get dark as they saw the Trinity Ditch, displayed the usual tourist's reaction to seeing the tiny dribble in the center of it, and marveled at the amount of water it would take to fill it, much less keep it full for days and cause flooding.

  Sometime during our descent, Sue changed into her little black dress. I glanced up and noticed with my usual appreciation. That caused Wexler to also look at Sue.

  His eyes went wide, his mouth fell open, and he muttered, "Uh...", which made Joan look. Her reaction was much like his.

  Sue smilingly lowered us to the street between a fairly modern glass-and-steel building and an old brick building that appeared to have once been some kind of warehouse.

  As if to say, 'Despite the big-assed, garishly-multicolored neon sign we stuck on the roof, we have loads of class,' a smallish brass plaque by the main doors was the only sign at street level that the brick building housed the restaurant.

  More in keeping with the garish neon sign than the brass plaque, Nick's turned out to have a very 1950's Texas-themed decor that sprawlingly occupied the entire second floor.

  Some of the tracks and fittings that had once handled heavy loads on pushcarts had been polished to a high gleam and one of the refurbished antique carts sat behind a rope barrier in the center of the lobby area.

  The other most noticeable thing about the place was that -- except for Sue -- we were all underdressed. Everyone else looked as if he or she had just walked out of an office.

  Such things don't bother me much. I just assume that if they'll let me in at all, they'll take my money and avoid offending me. Usually that's how it goes; sometimes not.

  Two tall, good-looking blondes in matching, low-cut black sheath dresses with hemlines only slightly lower than Sue's stood by the reception podium.

  Both eyed our group with apparent doubt, although I noticed that the one on the left -- Loren, the manager, according to the nametag on her left breast -- seemed to have a strongly positive reaction to seeing Sue.

&nbs
p; She bit her lip and let her eyes rove from Sue's ankles to her hair before she looked at me. Her gaze then narrowed and swept the rest of us as if she were having to make a decision.

  Joan muttered, "I didn't know there'd be a dress code."

  "You read about it way the hell up in North Dakota," I said, "A local fast-food place it isn't, even though it kind of looks like an old small town diner on steroids."

  Fixing me with a sharp look, Joan said, "Well, it didn't occur to you, either, smart guy."

  "Oh, yes, it did," I chuckled, "But I don't worry about things like that. They have empty tables tonight. If they want to fill one, they'll let us in. If not, we'll find a Wendy's or something."

  To Loren, I said, "We're tourists. Do we get in?"

  The two blondes conferred very briefly, then Loren nodded and led us into the dining room and to a table by a window. On each table was a small Texas flag at half-mast on a pole.

  Pulling the cord, Loren raised the flag and told us to use it to signal our waitress if we needed anything between her visits to our table.

  When the waitress arrived -- a truly fine-bodied brunette woman who looked like a '50's calendar pinup in a short-skirted cowgirl outfit with white boots -- she handed us menus and asked if we'd like anything while we made our selections.

  We ordered drinks and she strode away from our table like a Rockette, her A-line skirt slapping her thighs with every step. I looked at Joan and asked if all women practiced that walk.

  Joan laughed, "We don't really have to. It just happens."

  Some minutes later, the waitress returned to take our orders with Sue's explanation that she was on a special diet. Our food arrived within fifteen minutes, which I thought was fairly quick in comparison to many restaurants I'd visited.

  The only things truly exceptional about the place were the prices, which were astronomically high. On the other hand, the food was very good, there was more than enough of it, and the service was almost too good, even without using the flag.

  Then there was the waitress, Brittany. I might otherwise have waved her off a few times, but the fact was that she was just too deliciously good-looking.

  Dick was also having trouble keeping his eyes off her. He asked, "She kind of looks like Carmen Electra, doesn't she?"

  I nodded. "Damned sure does."

  Giving us both a wry look, Joan said, "Pull your eyeballs back in and eat, boys."

  Sue grinningly asked, "Should I file a copy of her for later?"

  Taking my eyes off the waitress, I met Sue's eyes and replied, "No, milady, you needn't bother. She's only damned good-looking. You're perfect."

  Joan groaned softly, then snickered as Dick grinned at me.

  "Good comeback," he said.

  Looking at Sue again, I said, "They seem to think I'm being less than honest with you, ma'am. Care to show them?"

  A small field screen appeared on the table. On one side of it were both numeric and symbolic representations of my pulse rate and on the other side were twelve scrolling lines that displayed peaks and valleys.

  As I reached to turn the screen slightly for a better view, two of the lines jumped and remained very active. My pulse rate increased a tenth of a percent with the motion.

  I looked above and beyond the field screen at Sue and several lines became considerably more active as my pulse jumped over four percent.

  Looking at the others, I said, "Bullshitting Sue is difficult."

  Poking his finger through the screen, Dick muttered, "Well, damn. I guess it would be, at that."

  Joan seemed either puzzled or thoughtful as her eyes met mine for a moment, then seemed to lock with Sue's. She reached to put her fingertips on the back of Sue's hand, then pulled her hand back and picked up her fork to resume eating.

  "Problem, Joan?" I asked.

  She briskly shook her head without looking up from cutting her steak, then stopped cutting, sighed, and quietly said, "I'm sorry. It's none of my business."

  Shrugging, I said, "You're right, it isn't. It also isn't the first time anyone's wondered about that, so don't sweat it."

  The matter caused a somewhat prolonged silence until Dick asked a question about flitters, and from then on table chat had mostly to do with with fields and the flitter, which we knew to be hovering just above the street beyond the window, even though we couldn't see it.

  I deferred almost all questions to Sue as I ate, but toward the end of the meal, Wexler aimed his fork at me and swallowed a bit of steak before asking, "What is it you actually do, Ed? For 3rd World, I mean?"

  Looking up from the last of my steak, I said, "Nothing."

  He gave me an odd look and a small grin as he asked, "They pay you, don't they?"

  Nodding, I said, "Yup. That they do."

  With a grinning glance at Joan, he said, "Then I'd say you work for them."

  Shaking my head, I said, "Nope. I work for Linda Baines."

  Joan chuckled and forked up a bit of steak, pausing before putting it in her mouth to say, "So split hairs if you want. You still work for 3rd World. If Ms. Baines retired..."

  "I'd probably retire, too," I finished for her.

  She met my gaze for a moment, then looked at Sue, whose expression didn't change a whit.

  Looking back at me, she asked, "You're serious?"

  Shrugging, I ate the last of my steak, then said, "Well, I'd wait to see who replaced her, but it probably wouldn't matter a helluva lot. We were the first team. Anybody new usually thinks they have to make a bunch of changes."

  Wexler asked, "The first team?"

  "Back when the big ship came. Before there were hard and fast rules about anything but keeping Amarans alive long enough to get deals done and factories established. Linda was running the show, so I accepted an invitation to sign on."

  Joan opened her mouth to say something, but was interrupted by a woman's scream from another table. Following the scream, the man at that table slumped and toppled out of his chair to lie unconscious on the floor.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Sue materialized beside the guy before anyone at our table realized she'd disappeared, including me. Getting to my feet, I said to the others, "Let's go. Get over there and keep people away while she works on him."

  We placed ourselves around Sue and the man on the floor. He was straightened out on his back by invisible forces, his chest began moving up and down rhythmically, and his color improved quickly after a pulse became visible in his throat.

  Our waitress and the two blonde hostesses arrived. Sue calmly told them that she'd called 911 and that things were under control.

  Loren peered at the guy and whisperingly, incredulously asked, "Under control?!" She sent the other woman to call for help and turned to Sue, exclaiming, "You've just been standing there! You didn't call anyone!"

  "Yes, she did," I said, taking her arm and the other woman's arm to turn them around, then gesturing at the rest of the people in the restaurant, some of whom were on their feet and moving our way. "Help us keep everybody at a distance until the medics get here, okay?"

  Attempting to look back, Loren managed, "But..."

  "Later!" I snapped, "Crowd control first. Keep everybody cool, quiet, and out of the way. Put someone at the door. Keep it clear for the cops and medics."

  Some guy came up to us and said he was a doctor as he tried to step past me.

  "Great," I said, taking his arm to halt him for a moment, "Watch what she's doing, but don't interfere."

  In moderate shock that someone would say such a thing to him, he rather incredulously asked, "What?!"

  Lightly feeding him theta waves, I quietly reiterated, "Don't interfere, doc. The guy's breathing again and he has a pulse. She's doing fine."

  "What the hell are you talking about? She's not doing a damned thing!"

  "She's using Amaran technology. The guy has a pulse and respiration and help's on the way, so relax."

  The theta waves kept him cool, but didn't erase his incredulousness
. I let him go and he hurried to kneel by the guy on the floor and begin checking him over.

  Rocking back on his heels, the doc regarded Sue peeringly for a moment, then turned his attention to the man on the floor. Sue looked at me and I shrugged.

  Keying my implant, I whispered, "Can't hurt to have a qualified witness, and if the guy dies, the doc can sign for it."

  "He won't die," Sue replied. "I removed the ventricular blockage."

  "Okay, but he already died once, so don't trust him."

  Within a few minutes, the medics from a local fire station arrived. As I saw them coming up the stairs, Sue moved to stand by the guy's feet.

  The guy on the floor continued breathing on his own, but the doc looked ready to administer resuscitation if necessary and directed the medics after identifying himself.

  When Sue stepped back from the activity, so did I. Joan and Dick saw us moving away and joined us back at the table as the medics lifted the guy onto a gurney.

  "Unless you want publicity," I said to Sue, "This would be the time to disappear. It's your choice, milady."

  "My choice?" she echoed, one eyebrow raised.

  "Yup." I thumbed at the gurney they were rolling toward the stairs. "You might even want to field that gurney to the street for them and tell them what you did up here if you think it'll help gain the medical-use fields some good press."

  Looking appropriately enlightened, Sue nodded. "Steph agrees. Thanks, I'll join you later."

  She disappeared and reappeared by the stairs, to the consternation of all in the vicinity. The gurney left the floor, its legs folded, and it began to descend the staircase all by itself in a perfectly level manner. Cops and medics grabbed at it, couldn't stop it, and finally allowed it to proceed as Sue spoke to them. I keyed my implant.

  "Flitter, make yourself visible, please."

  Shouts of surprise came from the street outside and people gathered at the windows. Loren stood nearby. I grinningly waved at her and she stepped over to the table.

  "Hi, there," I said, "You may remember that we came here with the lady who kept that guy alive and went downstairs with the medics. That's our ride you've been staring at."