Book 2: 3rd World Products, Inc.

by Ed Howdershelt

  As I pushed forward through the bush, dodging the stuff that I couldn't shove aside, I said, “Probably more of that plastique shit. He seems real fond of it. Why the hell isn't he moving?"

  As if to answer my question, there was a ripple as Brinks moved again. His warping of vegetation approached the barrier and stopped again, then I heard his laugh as he stepped through the barrier.

  By the appearance of surrounding vegetation, the barrier stretched in an effort to hold him, then slipped around him and snapped back into place. The barrier instantly disappeared and reappeared in front of Brinks, but he pushed through it again. It had barely slowed him down.

  "Steph, directly ahead of me is a tree. I want three chunks of wood about the size of baseballs waiting for me when I get there."

  They were. I saw the branch she chose fall to the ground and three chunks almost instantly separate themselves from it. I grabbed them as they floated toward me and continued moving toward Brinks. When I was maybe eighty feet from him, I threw one of the wooden ‘baseballs’ at him.

  The chunk of wood missed, but it got his attention. He stopped. He probably turned around, too, but I couldn't tell. I threw the second piece. It headed right for him in a perfect arc, but it stopped dead in the air about seven feet off the ground.

  The upper half or so of Brinks abruptly became visible. He was holding the bit of branch in his right hand, examining it as if amused. His left hand was below the periphery of his visibility as he turned to look for me.

  With a grin, he said, “That was a very good throw. Did you ever think of turning pro?"

  "If you could catch it, it wasn't good enough, Brinks. I won't call an agent yet. Why are you blowing up the woods? Why are you killing people?"

  He oriented his gaze in the direction of my voice as he said, “If you have to ask, you wouldn't understand. I'm sure you saw my website. What did you think of it?"

  I muttered, “Stephie, can you do anything to him now?"

  "No, Ed. I just tried another stun. His adjustments completely grounded it."

  Brinks just stood there grinning at me and hefting the wood he'd caught.

  I said, “To hell with your sophomoric website, Brinks. You're only talking to me in order to buy some time to figure out how the hell to get out of here."

  He held the block of wood at arm's length and contemptuously let it drop to the ground.

  "Oh, no, not at all. I have that well covered."

  He smiled as he raised his left hand and showed me a brick-sized block of plastic with a small box on one side of it. His thumb rested on the box.

  "I'm holding down a button,” he said. “If I let the button up, we both disappear for real, so why don't you just stay right where you are and let me see you?"

  Hell, yes, I stayed right where I was. There was a good-sized tree near me, so I leaned against it and crossed my arms in a pose of nonchalance before I turned off option three.

  "Sure,” I said, “At least it would be quick, right? Why, Brinks? Why are you doing all these things?"

  His gaze shifted quickly to me as I became visible and he said, “Like I told you..."

  "Yeah, yeah, 'I wouldn't understand'. Bullshit. I used to say the same thing about Vietnam. 'You weren't there. You can't understand.' But guess what? Some did. So try me, Brinks. Tell me what I wouldn't understand and maybe I will."

  He smiled again and said, “There isn't one of you drones on this station who could possibly understand, and I don't have the time to waste on you.” In a cutesy tone of voice, he added, “Goodbye!"

  He cautiously half-turned to continue toward the gate. I looked at the remaining block of wood in my hand and tossed it at him, but it flew over him and fell well behind him. His staring eyes left the chunk of wood and locked on me again as the wood rolled through the vegetation beyond him, so he didn't see the block rise from where it had stopped tumbling and floatingly approach him from behind.

  Brinks said, “Aww, that was terrible, man. I take back what I said about you turning pro. Was that your last one?"

  "I can get more."

  "It was a rather feeble effort, really. They can't hurt me. I had to reach outside my field to catch the other one."

  "What now, Brinks? If I try to grab you, do you really have the guts to blow us up and leave your little errand unfinished?"

  His gaze narrowed and he held the block of plastique toward me.

  "Little errand? What the hell would you know about what I'm trying to accomplish? You want to try me? Do you really want to see if I'll do it?"

  The floating block of wood neared the back of his head. I sent a cold spot into it and saw it frost over, then turn glossy with ice rime. Brinks thought I was trying to decide what to say and gloated over what he perceived to be my confusion.

  "I didn't think so,” he said, lowering the plastique. “Being a hero is so hard sometimes, isn't it? Especially when there's thinking involved."

  "Fuck you, you pseudointellectual bozo. You aren't the first guy to think he's smarter than everyone else. The graveyards are full of them and their followers."

  Brinks glared for a moment, but his irritating smirk returned.

  "Pseudointellectual? Where did you, of all people, pick up a word like that?"

  "I know lots of big words, Brinks. Tell you what, smartass; four syllables: Hitler was one. So was Stalin. Guess the word I'm thinking of and win a prize."

  He straightened and seemed momentarily confused, then he said, “I told you I don't have time to spare on you."

  "Can't come up with the word, huh? Boy, that really must wrinkle your pseudointellectual little ass. Bet you suck at Scrabble, too."

  He was opening his mouth to reply when I sent a bolt of intense heat into the ice-bound chunk of wood that was floating just behind his head and ducked for the cover of a tree. The explosion of the wood sounded almost like that of a grenade and Brinks was knocked forward and down.

  Brinks hadn't been lying. The plastique exploded like nothing I'd ever experienced. I'd almost made it completely behind the tree. Not quite. The explosion grabbed my left leg and threw me some distance into the woods as it blasted past me and slammed me into the trunk of another tree.

  Stunned. To people who haven't been stunned, it's just a word. In fact, though, it's a state of disorientation so complete that all of your senses short circuit and your brain ceases to function for a while. You simply lie where you fall until some of it passes.

  When the world started to make sense again and I could actually correlate the concept of 'up' with the dim light above, I tried to sit up—as I rather tenuously perceived 'up' to be—and looked shakily around.

  A brownish-black cloud hung thickly in the air around me and visibility was near zero. I could vaguely see maybe ten feet, at best. The branches above me were naked of leaves and some of the branches were hanging by shreds of bark. I heard Stephie calling, but for some moments, I couldn't organize myself well enough to reply.

  "Ed? Ed, can you hear me?"

  "Uh. Yeah, sort of. Hi, Stephie."

  "Ed, I'm trying to clear the air around you. Stay in your five suit or you won't be able to breathe. Do you understand?"

  I managed to get to my hands and knees and said, “Yeah. Five suit. Okay. I can do that."

  In an encouraging tone, she said, “Sure, you can. Just a few minutes, okay?"

  "Yeah. Okay. No hurry."

  I tried a few times to stand up and finally made it with the help of a tree, but there seemed to be something wrong with the tree. It was slippery. A closer look showed me there was no bark where I'd put my hand. The crap in the air had settled on and concealed the damp surface where the bark had been.

  "Uh, Steph? Am I hurt? I can't really tell at the moment."

  "You appear to be uninjured, except for your eardrums and some internal bruising. I'm sorry my field wasn't more effective, Ed, but the explosion was too powerful."

  "You had a field up?"

  "Yes. I put a field between
you and Brinks, but as I said, the explosion was far too much for it."

  "Uh, huh. Probably helped, though. How did my briefcase manage to stay in place through something like that, Steph?"

  "It didn't, Ed. It was thrown more than a hundred feet up and away from you, but it returned and resumed operation. You were unshielded just after the blast passed you, but only for a few seconds."

  I nodded as I stumblingly set out toward the center of the explosion. It wasn't likely that Brinks had survived something like that, no matter what kind of field-genius he'd been or thought he'd been.

  The eighty feet or so felt like eighty yards on a hard uphill grade on my shaky legs. I had to stop and rest about halfway to the crater that was finally becoming visible as the air cleared a bit. Finally I made it to the edge of the crater.

  I've seen plastique explosions before. No single small block of it had made the hole I was looking into. Maybe fifteen feet below, several square yards of the bare metal of the deck gleamed back at me.

  Looking back along my path, I could see that the damage to the area where I'd been was far less than to the surrounding forest.

  "Musta been one helluva field you put between us, Steph."

  "It was the best I could manage, Ed. It used about half the power for this segment of the station."

  "Thank you. Damn, that sounds so feeble, but thank you anyway."

  I sat down near the edge of the crater to wait for a wave of dizziness to pass and woke up sometime later to the sound of Caitlin swearing softly.

  "Stephie, I order you to turn off his field."

  "Ed is in no danger. I will not contradict his orders unless he's in danger."

  "Goddamn it! He's bleeding from his ears! The medic ‘bots need to treat him!"

  "His injuries are slight and they're already being repaired."

  Caitlin's voice rose to almost a shriek. “If I have to call Linda, I will!"

  "I'll put you through to her, then, but I'm not dropping his field."

  When I reached to tap on her leg, Caitlin screeched and slapped at my hand. I removed the hand from her leg and rolled onto an elbow to face her.

  "Sorry. Just wanted to stop the argument, Caitlin. Stephie, how am I?"

  "Your microbots are adequate to repair you, Ed."

  "Thank you, Stephie. Caitlin, she says I'm okay."

  "I think the medbots should look you over, sir."

  "Later. Stephie says I'm okay. Option five off."

  I should have stood up first. The dusty crap from the explosion that had collected on my five suit fell the inch or so to my clothes and skin as soon as the field collapsed. I sat up, spitting out dust and wiping my eyes, then stood up and looked around. Williams was nearby. I didn't see Price.

  My legs weren't so shaky anymore. I walked to the edge of the crater and took another look into the hole.

  "There's no sign of Brinks,” said Caitlin. “We think he was at ground zero."

  "He was. All that plastique he was carrying must have been wired together. I think that was his mission. He was going to blow something up and probably go up with it."

  "Mission?"

  "Play it all back for them, Stephie. From when I started chasing him."

  Stephie's view of things was adjustable, from in close to somewhat distant. After taking us through the encounter and explosion from something near my own viewpoint, she displayed on the viewfield an overhead version of the explosion, reduced in size to afford a view of the entire blast radius.

  It was then that I truly began to understand the immensity of Stephie's effort to shield me. While her field couldn't stand firm before the blast, it had given way gradually enough to have greatly reduced the amount of energy that reached me.

  We watched in amazement that lingered after the image of the aftermath froze and Stephie asked, “Should I replay it for you?"

  The answer, of course, was 'yes'. We watched the overhead replay twice more before Caitlin said, “That's enough."

  She stepped away and stood alone for some moments, then told Williams to see if there was anything left to do for the others of their group. When she turned and walked back toward me, her gaze was unsettling.

  "Caitlin,” I said, “The medbots are there. Those who can be helped are being helped. What's this about?"

  "Turn off your computer for a minute, sir."

  "Can't. She's with me all the time."

  Caitlin looked at me oddly for a moment, then asked, “How did you make the wood ice up and then explode?"

  "New tech stuff. I can't talk about it."

  "Didn't it occur to you to keep Brinks talking until we could get there? To try to talk him into surrendering?"

  "No. It didn't seem to me as if things would go that way, and I especially didn't want you and your people near us."

  "So you killed him deliberately?"

  "I deliberately acted to keep him from leaving the arboretum. The dumb shit blew himself up, just as I believe he'd planned to do somewhere else."

  "You believe ... Ed, what I saw was you causing him to set off the blast."

  "Well, you tell me how you'd have stopped him, Caitlin. Stephie's stuns didn't work. Tell me where you'd have stopped him, too. Here, all he blew up were some trees."

  "That wasn't your decision to make."

  "If it wasn't mine, whose was it? Yours? Is that what this is about?"

  "This is about right and wrong and responsibility. The responsibility for dealing with Brinks was mine, as head of Security."

  "The responsibility for a lot more would have been yours, too, if I hadn't..."

  She interrupted me with, “Records of this event will go up the ladder, sir. They'll decide what to do about your actions. About you."

  "About me, huh? Tell you what, Caitlin ... I think my reason for being here died with Brinks, so I'm taking the rest of the day off. If I'm allowed to do so, I'll leave the station on the Wednesday transport to Earth and turn myself over to Linda Baines. Would that make you happy?"

  After a moment, she said, “It would."

  "Good enough. End of discussion. Set it up with Baines and get back to me about it if you need to. I'm going to my room, now."

  As I walked away from Caitlin and the crater, Stephanie asked, “Why is she acting this way, Ed? Surely she knows that Brinks would have escaped into the station."

  "You'd think so, wouldn't you? I think this is a matter of propriety to her, Steph. She got tossed back into the ranks when Merritt left. She was denied the position she'd been groomed for and had worked for. That position is suddenly hers again, and I think she's trying to make sure that she makes no mistakes. I saw the sense of satisfaction in her face when Brinks blew up during playback. I don't think it's really about whether I caused it to happen, but whether she can be held accountable for any of it. An investigation of Brinks’ death would cover her butt pretty well."

  "But you put her in her present position, Ed. Shouldn't she be grateful? Shouldn't she want you not to have further difficulty from this incident?"

  I laughed as I approached the gate.

  "Further difficulty, huh? You class what caused that crater as a 'difficulty', Stephie?"

  "At the very least, Ed. Shouldn't Caitlin be on your side in this?"

  I stopped and moved aside as several floating stretchers and a Security officer I hadn't met moved past us on their way to the morgue.

  "Caitlin is a career officer, Steph. Her career was derailed for a while, but now it's back on track and she's going to work to keep it there. At times like this, people look for someone to blame, mostly so that none of the blame can fall on them."

  "What will happen now? To you in particular?"

  "No idea. I made a 'best guess' decision and that's all I can tell anyone."

  I was drafting a report to Linda in my head when I ran into Leslie in the corridor. After a long look at me, she asked how I was.

  I ignored her question and asked, “Did you take that temp job Caitlin offered?"
r />   "I'm still thinking about it."

  "Well, think fast. By tomorrow, you may be out of luck. I expect to be gone by Wednesday, and you just know they'll get someone they know for it."

  "I'm not sure I care, Ed. I asked you how you were."

  "I were fine. I think I'm still fine. Yup. It's definite, ma'am. I'm fine."

  "How can you joke after what's happened?"

  "What's happened to me? Or were you referring to Caitlin's people?” I shrugged. “You have to be more specific, and you'll have to ask someone who will want to take the time to debate matters with you. See you later, Leslie."

  I started walking again, but didn't get far before she raised her voice and said, “You're a real goddamned clown, Ed, but you're just avoiding the inevitable. Someday you'll have to get serious with someone about something."

  "Things were serious enough today, Leslie. You've been too damned serious about inconsequential shit for almost two days, and I've already told you that I don't want to go into it with you. Not now and not ever. Good times only or let me alone."

  I stepped into the elevator and felt relief when the door shut.

  What is it about a woman? Well, some women, anyway? An overnight romp and suddenly they think they own a piece of your life that you didn't offer to share.

  Back in my room I kicked off my boots and sat at the table to prepare a message for Linda. After several false starts, I stood up.

  "Steph, this is a message to Linda: 'Yes, thank you, I'm fine. See attachment.' Include a record of our search for Brinks and the results, as well as Caitlin's comments. Tell her I plan to stay only until Wednesday unless otherwise advised."

  "Message sent. You seem unsettled, Ed. Would it help to sleep?"

  "Doubtful that I could sleep. I'm still too keyed up."

  "I could feed theta signals through your implants, if you'd like."

  "Maybe another time, Steph. Something's on my mind. I'm going to read a bit and let it work itself out."

  I pulled down my briefcase and took out my pad, then stretched out on the bed with my coffee to ease some minor aches and pains and picked up where I'd left off in one of the ebooks I was reading.