"Yes, Ed, and I can program it to absorb oxygen from any available atmosphere, but what if there's no atmosphere?"
"Then I'll have to get where there is one in a hurry. Waitaminnit... The briefcase, Elkor. Just... no, even better! A separate field that stays near the briefcase. It could hold a few hours of air, maybe more."
"Indeed. I'm testing your idea now."
"Where? Here, or wherever you are?"
"About two feet in front of you, Ed. My test sphere is a foot in diameter."
I reached out. My hand bumped against the solid-feeling sphere, pushing it away slightly, but it returned to its former position.
After a moment, Elkor said, "A one-foot field will contain approximately half a day's supply of oxygen under pressure. Will that be sufficient?"
"As far as I know, I guess so, Elkor. We can make it larger if needed and hang it up next to the briefcase. Are you sure you don't run on plain old magic? Does it ever occur to you just how special a creature you are?"
"I hadn't really considered myself a creature, as people would define them, but since I was created, the term would apply to me, as well."
"Damned right it does. Wish I could have you drop by for a beer or something, Elkor. That's about all that's missing, I think."
"Missing?"
"Yeah, missing. Like when Linda dropped in and I offered her a drink and we sat there chatting. Someday we have to make you a human suit. Then I'll introduce you to some of the ladies and all that. You'd be a big hit."
"A big hit? You mean popular?"
"Yup. Some women like things a little unusual."
"I'll give this some consideration, Ed. It may be a worthwhile project if it helps me improve interactions with people."
"Sure. Give it a go sometime. Could be a lot of fun. Back to planning; what else could go wrong on an asteroid, Elkor? Especially for someone suspected of being there to prevent sabotage? Tell you what; have a look at the accident logs and see what has happened to people since this project started. Chances are that anything someone might try to do would be made to look like an accident of some kind. Send the results to my pad and I'll look them over later, okay?"
"The results are in your pad now. If you don't mind my asking, will you be looking for another cat, Ed?"
"Not right away, Elkor. Maybe not at all. I've never had to, anyway. Cats always seem to find me whether I'm looking for them or not. Guess they know an easy mark when they see one. How's progress on the implant coming along?"
"The implant is finished. I'm now working on a surgical drone."
"Damn, you're good. Is it too late to add something to the implant?"
"Such as..?"
"An override. If someone's gotten to the computer up there, I want to be able to force it to contact you for an overhaul or shut it down myself."
"That would require an implant about one inch wide and two inches long. Maybe I should add that particular ability into your briefcase, instead of your head?"
"You say you don't really have a sense of humor yet, but I don't believe it, Elkor. Yes, by all means, put the override in the briefcase. Will I be able to control the briefcase implant with my own implant?"
"That won't be a problem. What keyword or words would you like to use to invoke the control factors?"
"Bruno for the routine stuff like the briefcase and our field generator. Stachel for the override systems. If I need all controls in a hurry, the master keyword will be Fulda."
"As you wish. Will there be anything else, Ed?"
"Not at the moment, Elkor. Can the computer up there manufacture things the way you can, and can you tell it what to make?"
"It has limitations, but if you mean field-using devices, there should be no problems. It can manufacture unique drones just as I would."
"Good deal. Hey, Elkor... Were you asking about a new cat because you'd like me to get one? They aren't all alike, you know. Very individualistic critters. A new one may not be much like Bear."
There was an uncharacteristic delay before Elkor responded.
"I... Enjoyed Bear's company, Ed. He was... My friend, also. Perhaps when you return we could discuss this more?"
"Okay. How would you like to help choose the new cat? Or rather, how would you like to be on hand when the cat does the choosing?"
"I don't think I understand what you mean, but believe I'd like to be there."
"Elkor, it just means that we'll let the cat or kitten have a choice in matters. Better a volunteer than a conscript. Remember how reluctant Bear was at first? Interviewees can watch the briefcase morph into a cat carrier and listen to you. The ones we'd be looking for would be interested. The others would be reluctant to go near a talking box. No offense, but that's about how you'd be first perceived by a young cat."
"I see. Yes. Better an interested volunteer. No offense taken."
"Um... Elkor, you hesitated. About the 'talking box' thing, I think. Have you considered making a golem? It might make things easier for both you and the cat."
"I could do that. What sort of simulacrum would you suggest?"
"Something with a lap would work well enough, I think. Or even just a safe-feeling place for a cat to nap or play, like one of the multi-level playpens. It isn't as if you'd have to get up to go to the bathroom or the kitchen, after all."
The surgical drone arrived and I stretched out on the couch so it could install the implant Elkor had devised into my skull behind my right ear. When Elkor announced the procedure finished, I tested it.
"Testing, one, two, three. Elkor, how does it sound to you?"
"All functions test positive, Ed. How does it feel to you?"
"Almost unnoticeable already. Stephie, how about you? Sounds good?"
My flitter answered, "It sounds fine to me, Ed."
"Good enough, then. Nobody needs to know about my implant, y'all. Not even Linda. What people don't know they can't tell, even by accident. Agreed?"
"Agreed," said Elkor. "I think I understand your motivation for secrecy."
Stephanie said, "Agreed, Ed."
Elkor and I discussed the possibilities concerning getting a cat at some length as I packed and notified some people that I'd be out of town for a while longer than the four days of DragonCon, which seemed to me an ideal test of the briefcase-suspension system. If there were any problems about keeping the briefcase close in crowds, elevators, or anywhere else, they'd likely make themselves apparent at some point.
At some of the previous DragonCons I'd been a bunny liaison, guarding and shepherding the women who had at some time appeared in magazines and may also have been in some science-fiction-themed movie or television show. My job had been to help set up their tables in the dealer's room and get the ladies from place to place without too much difficulty enroute.
This time, however, I was on the guest roster only. I had a flitter and was willing to display it in the middle of the main display floor while I was attending, so the usual convention registration fees were waived.
Chapter Two
At eight o'clock I walked outside to the driveway with my cooler and spoke to the sky. "Stephanie," I said, "You got a minute?"
Her husky voice replied through my watch.
"I'm doing my toenails, Ed. Bright red, with silver shooting stars."
"Well, that will go great with your metal-flake emerald, won't it?"
A gust of wind splayed itself on the ground around me as Stephie arrived. She had seemed to plummet, growing quickly larger as she neared, then halted herself about twenty feet above me as abruptly as if she'd hit a wall. The gusting wind was simply the hellacious downdraft of her speedy descent from twenty miles up.
As she gently lowered herself to within a foot of the ground, I said, "Hi, Stephie. You've got that descent thing down to an art form, ma'am."
Her voice was petulant. "If you'd call me more often, I'd get more practice."
I stepped aboard her and set the cooler between the seats.
"You know I call
you as often as I can think of even the most trivial of reasons, Stephie. Where would you like to go this evening?"
"How about dinner and drinks? Dancing?"
"Now you're teasing me," I said. "You don't dance worth a damn, and you know it."
"Well, since I don't eat or drink, either, we could... How long can we stay out, Ed? When is your bedtime tonight?"
"I should probably try to get some sleep tonight, Steph. I'll be on my feet all day tomorrow at the con. Make it about two hours and you pick the destination."
Stephanie seemed to take a moment to think, then said, "Linda says she wouldn't mind taking a ride."
"You called her? Please don't do that without checking with me first, Steph."
I waited, but she made no response.
"Okay, what the hell. We'll pick up Linda for this trip. Where is she?"
As we lifted and headed north, Stephanie said, "She has a room at the Motor Inn on route 50."
"Think about it, Steph. She got herself a room. She didn't ask to stay at my place. That's because we broke up last year. I hope you aren't trying to play matchmaker."
"Oh, heaven forbid. I just thought you might like some company."
"Uh, huh. Stephie, this isn't an official parameter adjustment; you know I won't do those unless I absolutely have to. But this is a suggestion I'd like you to consider: Don't invite people unless you, personally, want them aboard for some reason, and even then, don't invite people without checking with me first."
We were already descending into the Motor Inn parking lot. Linda was standing near her rented Ford, waving and smiling at us. As we landed she approached.
Stephie said, "Gee, Ed, that sounded pretty official to me. It kind of sounded like an order, not a suggestion. Are you sure that wasn't a parameter adjustment?"
"Maybe it was, sort of. It just slipped out that way."
"Understood. Hi, Linda."
Linda stepped up and ran her hand over Stephanie's hull.
"Hi, Stephie. Wow! That's a wonderful shade of green. I've often wondered if he'd really have you painted. Did he give you a hard time about me?"
"He did. He said it just slipped out, though."
"Oh, sure it did. Hi, Ed. Where are we going?"
"I don't know yet. Stephie's deciding. I take it you ladies set this up?"
"We did. You know I won't miss a ride on a flitter, and Stephie isn't just any old flitter. Where are we going, Stephie?"
"Well, my slavedriver's only allowing us two hours, so it won't be far. I thought maybe Cuba. My more intricate charts of Cuba are incomplete. A flyover would allow me to update them."
Linda looked at me and said, "Uh, Stephie, we're U.S. citizens. We aren't allowed to visit Cuba without special permissions."
I handed Linda a beer and said, "So we won't land. We'll just wave at the shore batteries and the tourists from everydamnwhere else who can visit Cuba. Just to keep this on the up-and-up, we'll even turn off stealth mode so they can see us coming."
Linda glanced at me as she opened her beer. "So they can panic, you mean. You know they'll shoot at us. Do you have a problem with our foreign policy, Ed?"
"Yup. It bugs me that going someplace could land me in jail because of politics that haven't changed in fifty years. Cuba's on the ropes, financially and politically, and Castro's an aging has-been revolutionary. He never led Cuba into anything but hardship and deprivation, and he terrorized the people into submission. The best thing we could do would be to reintroduce them to the dollar and bring them back into the economically-functional world. Besides; if they try to shoot us down they'll just find out how far behind they are."
Linda grinned. "I suppose they would, at that."
Stephie asked, "So? Cuba? Okay?"
Linda said, "Cuba. Okay. No landing, though. Gotta stay legal."
Stephie said, "Roger that, Fearless Leader. No landing."
Stephanie moved us twenty miles off shore and went to half power without lifting above fifty feet. The ocean skimmed past so quickly we couldn't make out individual waves unless we looked quite a distance ahead, and a rooster tail of water nearly as tall as our own elevation followed our progress.
"Stephie," I said, "What's with the rooster tail back there?"
"It's fun," said Stephie. "I don't get to run like this very often, and I'm kind of making up for it. My last job was a real bore, you know."
Linda chuckled and tried to give me a straight, innocent face when I glanced at her. I looked back at the rooster tail and shrugged.
"Maybe I should try to make more time for you, Stephie."
"Oh, gee, don't go to any trouble on my account, Ed. I'll be just fine. I'll get by."
The sound of a P-51 howling past at low altitude and full throttle filled the flitter. I recognized it as the intro from my 'Warbirds' art program.
Stephanie used her sexiest voice to say, "Just tell me if I'm going too fast for you, sweetie."
This time Linda laughed outright and said, "You gave her an identity. You told her who to try to emulate in the beginning. Now she's a self-created vamp."
"Not a problem, Linda. Know any other machines like her? Just one, and he's more the English professor type. My Stephie's fine and gets finer every day."
Stephie said, "Ed, they're painting us from the shoreline. Now the weather station has us, too. I'm reading eleven individual radar sources. Make that nineteen... Now twenty-three. All gun or missile sites except the weather station."
Linda said, "In five minutes we can expect to see MiGs in the air, too, and Cuba's not one of the participating countries, so they've probably never seen a flitter before. This is going to wake a lot of people up down there."
"Last chance," I said. "Give me a reason not to do this if you've got one."
Linda grinned at me and said, "Can't think of one just now."
I nodded. "Shake 'em up, Steph. Take us in at nine hundred so we make a bit of noise, but don't look like an impossible target. Let them send up anything short of a nuke. Let's make a circuit of the island a mile off shore before you go in to update your charts. Follow the coastline fairly precisely. That will give them something special to think about. Destroy only incoming armament; leave 'em their guns and other toys to stare at later."
"Aye, Captain. Nine hundred. One circuit or two?"
"One should do it. We do have a schedule of sorts, but feel free to improvise."
Linda gave me a sidelong look and mouthed at me, "Captain?"
"Her idea. She watches TV behind my back. Let her play, now."
Linda shook her head in disbelief and turned back to face front. Two fishing boats dead ahead, maybe three hundred yards apart. Stephie took us between them. We couldn't make out much in the darkness, but both boats were rocking in our wake.
"Stephie, have you changed your field again?"
"Aye, Captain, that I did. I gave it little edges that scream in the wind and widened the stern so it creates a rolling backdraft. You gave me the impression that you wanted to create an effective entrance."
"Well, yes, I did, but will they hear the screaming over the sonic boom?"
"No, but I will, okay? Geez."
"I see. Well, go for it, then."
"Going for it, Captain."
"Um, do you have to keep calling me Captain, Stephie?"
"How about 'party pooper', instead?"
I sighed and muttered, "Jesus."
Stephie said, "I heard that. By the way, they're launching missiles."
Three trails of light and smoke were rising to meet us from the shore. A couple of seconds or so later Stephie turned hard right and began running parallel to the shoreline. The missiles arced to follow us.
"Stephie, how are those missiles tracking us? Heat or radar?"
"Both, Ed, and I'm giving them all they need to stay with us."
"Uh... Why, Stephie? Why not just let them go by?"
"If I let them past me, their next acquired targets would be those fishing boats."
&
nbsp; I looked at Linda and lightly bumped my palm on my forehead.
"Well, duh for me and score one for you, lady. Sorry to be so dense this evening. Is anyone trying to contact us?"
"Bygones, Captain, but you can't get by on your looks forever. More launches just ahead, and nobody has tried to talk to us."
Linda said, "We're coming in low and fast. They're probably assuming the worst and thinking up cover stories while they shoot, just in case."
Three more missiles ranged upward from the shoreline, searching for us and finding us. They also gave pursuit, changing course to line up behind the first three.
Stephie said, "I'm sending the missiles instructions to explode."
One after another, the missiles detonated. Three more rose toward us as we neared the mouth of a cove. Stephie let them travel a safe distance from shore and blew them, too. More missiles were fired from the other side of the cove. Same treatment.
Linda said, "They don't seem to learn very quickly."
"All the brass at each site knows is that something is coming into their zone without an invitation, so they holler 'fuego' or something like that. Not much thought goes into that sort of thing."
Stephie said, "Four jets are inbound from southeast. They're going to have trouble catching up. Should I slow down for them?"
"No, don't slow down. Take us to twelve hundred and do a roll or two to give them time to get within range. Hey, Stephie, think; what would Kathleen Turner do right now? What would she say if she could speak Spanish and talk to the guys in those jets?"
As Stephanie took us into a high barrel roll, she said, "You'll hear English and they'll hear Spanish. You want me to improvise communications, too?"
"Sure. Why not? They're already shooting at us."
In her come-hither voice, Stephanie asked, "Cuban military aircraft, do you read me? This is not a hostile flight. Repeat, we are not hostile."
Their reply was a command to identify ourselves.
"We probably shouldn't do that," I said.
"Oh, I'm afraid we just couldn't possibly do that," said Stephie, her husky voice oozing warmth as we reached the summit of the roll and started back down.
3rd World Products, Inc., Book 2 Page 2