An Opening in the Air (Applied Topology Book 2)

by Margaret Ball

  “Here you are,” he said when he shouldered his way back to our table. “I got both of us tuna salad and Fritos.”

  “Tuna salad? Ick. You can eat mine! I’ll subsist on the Fritos.”

  “Aha!” he said with annoying triumph. “It breathes, it talks, it complains. I was lying.” With a flourish he produced a ham sandwich for me.

  I started to unwrap it. “No, no,” he said, wagging a finger. “We’re eating at the office, remember? Public side,” he added, making it even worse. “We are going to show them that we don’t give a damn what anybody thinks.”

  “We?”

  “I’m not exactly Annelise’s favorite person right now,” he reminded me. “Astonishing, how long that girl can hold a grudge. Do you want me to keep facing her with no moral support?”

  When he put it that way, I was ashamed to chicken out. We took our sandwiches to the break room, where Ben reached into his bulging pockets and removed two cans of soda. Root beer for him, Coke for me.

  “I don’t know…” Chewing and swallowing the sandwich seemed like enough effort.

  “Drink,” he said. “I nearly froze some vital parts transporting these nice cold sodas. The least you can do is drink one.” He opened both cans and set one in front of me.

  The root beer. Another test? I shoved it back at him and took the Coke.

  The break room door was open, and he’d sat us at the end of the table, where we were visible to everybody else as they straggled back from lunch. The one concession he made was allowing me to sit with my back to the stairs.

  Each bite of the sandwich required more chewing than usual, and I was grateful for the soda after all; it helped wash the food down. I didn’t have the nerve to tackle the Fritos. Chances of choking on a fragment seemed much too high. Ben finished off both bags while greeting our colleagues cheerily.

  “Hi there, Colton. Hi, Ingrid, did you notice you’re wearing the same clothes as yesterday? Jimmy, you look tired.” He managed to invest the last word with unsubtle innuendo. “Afternoon, Annelise. Good day, Dr. Myers.”

  I noticed one omission. “You don’t say hello to Lensky?” I asked, very quietly.

  “His office door is still closed,” Ben replied, equally quietly. “Don’t assume you’re the only one hurting.”

  That didn’t actually cheer me up any. I was hurting enough for both of us.

  When we finished our tasteless lunch and returned to the private side, Colton’s door was open. So was Ingrid’s.

  “Afternoon, Lia,” Colton said. “Good to see you back.”

  Maybe Ben and I weren’t as alone as I’d thought.

  I was even more encouraged when Jimmy DiGrazio used the new door in the wall to visit my office.

  “Got some new dirt on Myers,” he announced, “and you two look like you need some cheering up. I’ll let you tell Ingrid and Colton.”

  So much for our pretense of indifference.

  “If it’s about the alien abduction scandal,” Ben said, “we’ve already given it our best shot.”

  Jimmy grinned. “I said new stuff. You remember that house that blew up?”

  “Vividly,” I said. Though I hadn’t had a chance to share that story with Jimmy, had I? Oh, Ben must have told him.

  “The news this morning had the address,” he said. “It looked familiar, so I did a little digging. Well, a lot of digging, actually. Had to hack into the APD, for one thing.”

  “It’s not much of a surprise that they’d be interested in an explosion.”

  “Ah. But did you know that house was one of our esteemed director’s flippers? One of the two that he hasn’t been able to sell? The other one is the historically listed mansion that he can’t afford to renovate properly.”

  Now that was interesting.

  “And,” said Jimmy, “the fire department has decided it was arson, not accident. How long do you think it’ll take them to get around to Myers?”

  Ben smiled a beatific smile as Jimmy left.

  The stack of unfinished paperwork was still on my desk. I opened a drawer and dropped it in. “You know what?” I said to Ben. “We really have to get rid of Myers. And get Dr. Verrick back. He can’t hide forever either.”

  Ben shook his head. “If that little show Saturday night didn’t embarrass Myers into quitting, or at least hiding, I don’t know what will.”

  “Clearly the bastard has no shame,” I said. “We have to do more than embarrass him.”

  “Like what? We really can’t count on the arson charge. If he did it, even he is bright enough to have arranged an alibi.” He slumped in his chair.

  There was an idea somewhere in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t pin it down. I stared at the next page of Vector Topology, but without Ben’s prodding I couldn’t focus enough to make sense of it. How dare Lensky dump me based on compromising circumstances? How dare he refuse even to give me a chance to explain?

  Wait a minute.

  Compromising circumstances?

  Maybe I couldn’t hurt Lensky back, but I was beginning to get the faint flickers of an idea that might get rid of Myers.

  “Getting back to vectors,” Ben said, “I believe we were discussing Banach spaces.”

  I waved at him. “Shut up. I’m thinking.”

  A few minutes later, “And close the door.”

  “Chickening out?”

  “Hell, no. I don’t want to be overheard before we work out the details of this idea. There might be some flaw I don’t see.”

  Ben closed the door.

  “Compromising circumstances,” I said, and was disappointed to see no light in his eyes.

  “Isn’t that our problem, not Myers’s?”

  “Maybe we can make it his problem. Now hush up and listen.”

  Ben’s eyes did light up when I outlined my idea, which made reference to what Jimmy had told us about Myers’s real estate problems; in particular the historically listed building that had him trapped between regulation and bankruptcy. There were a lot of details to flesh out; they kept us busy for most of the afternoon.

  “We’ll need Ingrid’s or Colton’s help.”

  “Ingrid. She’s better at this, and I have a different role planned for Colton.” I explained that part of my plan, and Ben began looking positively cheerful.

  “We will need to procure a gasoline can.”

  “And wipe it for fingerprints, and Ingrid needs to wear gloves. Do you really think we can talk her into this?”

  “In a good cause? Sure. Besides, she’s one of the few people who’s not mad at us.”

  “A burner phone,” Ben said. “I’ll pick that up.”

  “How will you make sure the vendor doesn’t recognize you afterwards? It’s not like you can wear your silver alien mask. Not for that part, anyway. We’d better ask one of my brothers. I bet Stevie will do it.”

  “And visit the site beforehand, so we can teleport to it.”

  “And get Jimmy to persuade Annelise and Lensky to cooperate. Nobody’s mad at him.”

  The more we thought about it, the more beautiful the plan seemed.

  The resident djinn

  Chapter 25

  It took a couple of days to work out the details and gather our supplies, and another day to figure out how to get Myers alone. He left at exactly five o’clock every day, so there was no point in waiting for him to work late. Besides, certain elements of our plan required precise timing. We had to let Ingrid and Colton in on it, of course. They were all for it. And Jimmy was equally enthusiastic.

  It was Ingrid who came up with the solution, and it was obvious once she proposed it.

  “He leaves at five every day? That day, we all – except, of course, you two – leave at four-thirty.”

  “That gives us a longish wait until dark.”

  “Daylight is better anyway,” Ingrid said. “That way, we can be sure he sees everything.”

  We had assumed Mr. M.’s cooperation, and we weren’t wrong. After all, Myers had classified him
as vermin.

  “All I require,” he said, “is a little coffee to stimulate my creativity.”

  I remembered some of our previous experiences with Mr. M. and coffee. “Um, I’m not sure…”

  Mr. M. dropped his head on his coiled scales and began snoring. Loudly.

  “Mr. M. You don’t snore.”

  He raised his head. “I was merely trying to make a point. This is Arah-samna, the time of sowing flax and a month of ill omen for me, being presided over by my old enemy Marutuk. I should be hibernating.”

  “All right.” I knew when to cave. “Coffee, but only after we get there. I’ll bring a travel cup.” A small one.

  On our chosen day, Jimmy was up first. He reported that both Lensky and Annelise had agreed to his request. Of course, he hadn’t described it as a way to demonstrate their errors about Ben and me. He had said only that it was a plan to get rid of Myers, but that their presence as witnesses was a vital part of that plan.

  At four-fifteen, Ben and I put on our silver choir robes and the rest of our “alien” costumes. “I don’t remember your bringing those back after we took them off in the bathroom?”

  “Went back for them. There was, if you recall, a certain amount of confusion.”

  Good enough. I concentrated on restoring my silver spikes.

  At four twenty-five Annelise, Ingrid, and Colton went into Lensky’s office and closed the door.

  At four thirty-five, Ben and I teleported into Myers’s office. He squawked in surprise but recovered quickly. “I know this is a hoax… but how did you get here?”

  “Unit 1, the specimen is uncooperative,” I squeaked.

  “Then we shall take it without its cooperation, Unit 2.” Ben took one of Myers’s arms and I took the other.

  “Brouwer,” Ben said, just to make sure we were coordinated, and a heartbeat later we were standing on the roof of the tacky garage somebody had built next to Myers’s historic property.

  He rolled up his eyes and fainted, and I had to sacrifice some of Mr. M.’s coffee to revive him. Incidentally, should you ever need to bring someone out of a faint, hot coffee works just as well as cold water. If you don’t mind scalding them slightly.

  Mr. M. sucked up the remaining coffee and slithered down my leg. Myers pointed at him and screamed.

  Colton and Ingrid were doing an excellent job of camouflaging Annelise and Lensky. I wouldn’t even have known they were there if it hadn’t been for the slight wavy disturbance of the air at the back of the garage roof.

  Now Ingrid opened the air but stayed within the camouflaged space, only holding the gasoline can out where it was visible.

  Myers screamed again.

  This was the touchy part of the plan. We needed Colton to make a call from the burner phone while he and Ingrid were holding the camouflage over all four of them. He wavered slightly; their forms almost appeared, then disappeared again when, I assumed, he’d finished reporting a fire and giving the address. The phone appeared out of the air and fell over the side of the garage. Actually, it hit the roof over the front porch; a kind of sighting shot.

  “What’s happening?” Myers’s voice was almost as high and squeaky as Ben’s. Only, I assumed, he wasn’t putting it on.

  “Oh, we just called the fire department,” Ingrid’s voice said cheerfully, apparently from thin air.

  “But – there’s no fire!”

  “There will be,” she assured him. Lifting the gasoline can in her gloved hands, she floated it at him – hard and fast. In automatic self-protection, Myers caught it. Ingrid pulled it back towards her and sent it down and sideways. We heard the crash as it went through the rotten roof of the front porch. The cap had been as loose as we dared leave it; the smell of gasoline reassured us that it had fallen off. Eyes closed in concentration, Ingrid gave the can a tiny nudge, just to make sure the gas was spilling out properly. Shortly after that, we heard sirens in the distance. A commendably fast response.

  At that point, possibly inspired by the caffeine, Mr. M. decided to improvise. He slithered towards Myers and went up inside one leg of his trousers. Myers began jumping down and shrieking, “Get it off me! Get it off me!”

  Ben closed his own eyes now and began, I trusted, thinking of Riemann surfaces. A tongue of flame blazed through the front porch roof. By the time the firemen arrived, the house was burning merrily. To guess from the way Myers was grabbing at his crotch now, Mr. M. had reached his nearest and dearest. He frantically shed his trousers; Mr. M. retreated and extended his cobra hood – I mean, the ultrasonic beam augmenter. Myers clutched his head with both hands and started vomiting .

  A ladder hooked over the edge of the garage roof. “Get over here!” I whispered frantically at Mr. M. When there was no response from him, I grabbed his tail and dragged him bodily into the space where I’d projected camouflage over Ben and me. For the plan to work, we had to be invisible to the firemen. We probably should have teleported well away, but I desperately wanted to watch, and it seemed everybody else felt the same way.

  “Sir? Sir, could you please come down from there?”

  Myers complied with surprising alacrity. Well, I wasn’t surprised. I expected the firemen were, though.

  Most of the firemen were spraying water on the house. The two who’d been sent to get Myers down were snickering. Carefully moving the camouflaged space with me, I crept to the edge of the roof for a better view.

  “Oh, my god,” I whispered to Mr. M. “He’s wearing SpongeBob boxers.”

  “Is this an unpopular style?”

  “The only thing tackier would be underwear covered with little pink hearts.” I thought this over. “He’s probably got those too.”

  By now Myers was trying to explain the loss of his trousers. From the expressions on the faces of the firemen, they weren’t buying his story about being attacked by a silver snake slithering up his leg.

  “I should have gotten inside his underwear,” Mr. M. murmured with regret. “Then… “

  “I’m just as glad you didn’t. I have no desire to see his itty-bitty penis.”

  Beneath us, Myers had given up the attempt to explain why he’d yanked off his trousers and had moved on to the subsequent attack. “And then it attacked me with a death ray!”

  “Uhhuh,” one of the firemen said skeptically. “You getting all this, Dawson?”

  The one called Dawson held up his phone. I wondered briefly why a fireman would take a smartphone to a place where it would probably be melted. Oh well, Dawson was kind of short and skinny for a fireman. Maybe he was used to being shunted off to act as an amateur record keeper.

  “Be sure to get the boxers too,” the other one advised, and Dawson tilted his phone down.

  Ok,” said the other man, “moving on from the silver snake and its death ray, you want to tell us what you were doing on the garage roof?”

  “Aliens brought me there!”

  “Uhhuh. Little green men, was it?”

  “No. They were all silver – like the snake.”

  “And scaled – like the snake – I suppose.”

  Myers nodded vigorously. Great! He was already forgetting what he’d seen and turning it into what he thought he should have seen.

  The fire was now reduced to a pile of ashes. The second story appeared to have collapsed over the floor on the first story. One of the men who’d been holding a fire hose came over to our little group.

  “Have to wait for the arson squad,” he said, “but sure looks like it started with an accelerant.”

  “It did,” Myers said eagerly, “I saw it myself.”

  He tilted his head. “You’re confessing?”

  “No! They put it there!”

  “The aliens?”

  Myers nodded.

  “And what did this alien look like? More silver scales, I guess?”

  “I didn’t see it. This gasoline can came shooting out of nowhere and I caught it. Just an automatic reaction!”

  “Uhhuh. And what happened then
?”

  “The alien dragged it back with some kind of force field.”

  “The invisible alien. And let me guess, the force field was invisible too?”

  “Yes! And then the gas can floated down to the front porch and fell through the roof. And I think the aliens spilled it, because I could smell gasoline.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “They set it on fire!”

  “Uhhuh. Dawson, remember that fire we were called to the other night?”

  Dawson nodded. “I’m not likely to forget. That blast could have killed a dozen people. It was just lucky there was only one girl in the way of it. Remember her? The one the EMTs picked out of the bushes?”

  “And,” the first guy said, “ she mysteriously disappeared from St. David’s North in the middle of the night. Arson squad finished with that job yet?”

  “Definitely arson, definitely an accelerator,” Dawson said, “and the blast was probably caused by the paint cans stacked in the hall.”

  “So… the girl was probably a collaborator. And the arsonist didn’t care whether she survived or not. Maybe that’s why she disappeared; he killed her and hid the body. Nobody to testify against him. Wonder if there’s any link between the two fires? We don’t often get called out for two major fires so close together.”

  “That’s for the arson squad and the cops to decide. It’ll be interesting if the same person owns both places, won’t it? Let’s not lose track of this guy.” He took a firm hold of one arm and Dawson took the other one.

  I backed up to where I’d be out of sight from anyone on the ground and draped Mr. M. over my shoulders.

  “Our work here is done,” Ben said. He and I joined Ingrid and Colton. Ingrid and I took Annelise’s arms, Colton and Ben took Lensky’s, and we all teleported back to Allandale House.

  “Did it work?” Jimmy demanded.

  “Beautifully,” I assured him.

  Mr. M. was crooning Gilbert and Sullivan again, and being creative with the lyrics.

  “If you want to check up on your spouse,” he sang, “Or just to get rid of the louse, You’ve but to look in on the resident djinn, On the third floor of Allandale House.”