by Laer Carroll
A smile slowly spread across the Colonel's homely face. "I can hear their screams now." He sobered. "Give me some time. We need to get you through the rest of the air car publicity before we spring any new developments on the public.
"I'll talk to the boss, too. It was her idea to get you to be the 'face of the air car'. I'll bet she'll go for this idea too."
Sasha blinked as an idea occurred to her. "I just thought of something. The airmobile— I hate that term—is a lot like jet skis. Maybe make a water version that will land and take off from the water. Or do some of the testing over water. You can get hurt pretty bad if you fall into water from a height. But from a short distance you're more likely to survive than if you fall onto concrete. Or dirt."
"I can just see it now. Sasha falls into the water, splash, hey look I'm fine, and the airmobile falls on you, glug glug you drown."
Sasha grinned. "Yeah, well, maybe the idea needs some work."
"I'll get back to you on this. Meanwhile, Katie wants to see you and that family of yours. What do you say if you have a barbecue at my place this weekend? Or the next?"
In the discussion which followed the Colonel agreed that he'd be happy to share chef duties with her father after being assured that her father had all an Argentine's appreciation of good meat and much skill at an asado , the Argentine word for barbecue. A phone call on Storm Cloud's cell to her father found him interested in the idea but unsure about another cook sharing the Colonel's outdoor kitchen.
"Frankly," the Colonel told her father on the cell, "I'll be happy to let you take over all of it. My wife says I always cook the meat too well-done."
He then got his wife Katie on a three-way hookup with Sasha's father and Sasha watched a perfect storm of planning take over. She leaned back and listened.
Shortly her stomach began to demand attention. So did a Bluebird lieutenant, though he wanted the attention from Storm Cloud. This cut the conversation short. Sasha waved Goodbye to the Colonel as he was being dragged off by the lieutenant, and left Katie and her father making plans via the Colonel's cell phone while she left in her air car for the Orange County Airport. There a half hour later Silvana, returning home from Pasadena, swung by and took Sasha home.
The asado (as her father insisted on calling it), on a Sunday afternoon at her mother's insistence, was a great success. The two families got on well. The Twins and Silvana were quite popular with the several younger Bluebird security specialists invited to the barbecue. Gia liked Katie and hung out with her and her mother, while the two men of the families collaborated on being chefs. The Colonel's native Altiplano Spanish, with Comanche and Apache and English loan words, was understandable by her father, and her father's Argentine Spanish was understandable by the Colonel.
Sasha was left to chat with the Marine major from the General's entourage, who had heard about the barbecue and asked the Colonel if he could come and "debrief" Sasha on her air car experience. He was attractive, genuinely interested in Sasha as a person, and said he was unattached. (A probe of his physiology confirmed he was being truthful.)
She accepted a date invitation from him, even though she guessed he was thinking of her as much a gateway into Bluebird's air-car development effort as a woman. That was fine with her. The relationship would work the other way too, into the Marine air-car plans.
The next two weeks were busy for Sasha. She modeled high-couture fashions twice, swimsuits once, chic variable-transparency sun shades once. She was asked to give a talk on gun technique (but only if she arrived at the gun show in her air car). She was asked to show up at a dojo for young teens and at a high school for the performing arts— but both times only if she arrived in her air car!
The third weekend she was invited to an action-adventure movie premiere in Beverly Hills. She would, not surprisingly, park on the open-air top of a parking structure across the street from the theatre where a trio of private security guards would attend it under a glare of flood lights.
Mid-morning the dress which the Bluebird Security PR department provided for her arrived. Silvana loved it. Sasha liked it fine, but it made it appear that she was clad in silver scarves hung from a diamond necklace. This gave the illusion that any motion or breeze might expose her nakedness. This was not the case; the fall of material was all one piece. But a bra and panties also accompanied the dress which was the exact color of her only faintly "tanned" skin.
Sasha modeled it for her mother and sisters and father. He admired the engineering and esthetics greatly, pronouncing it an artistic triumph. The women admired it for its beauty. They highly approved of the silver shoes which accompanied the dress. The PR firm had ensured it only had modest heels. Sasha disapproved of very high heels for health reasons, and especially such heels for a woman as tall as she.
The landing of the air car and the stroll on the red carpet to the premiere was well photographed. Inside the theatre more photo ops were provided against a wall with the logos and icons of several commercial enterprises. Sasha posed alone and with the director and several actors of both sexes.
In the theatre she was seated in the middle row with the actor hero of the film and with his leading lady. The film was fun, not too outrageously unrealistic, but the gun-handling was silly .
She twice refused comment on that last by the actor, who had been interested to find that she was a gun expert. Finally she gave it. He was delighted, said he would try to get her advice taken in his next movie, but doubted if it would be.
There was a party afterward and Sasha met more people. Several of them asked if she had ever thought of playing an action hero. She laughed.
"No, never. I'd want to make it realistic, and the aftermath of a battle is too depressing. You know, guts and blood all over everything. And the people you kill screaming as they lie dying."
At that several people listening idly nearby suddenly remembered that she knew what she was talking about. That she had killed people. Some left. Some drew closer.
As usual she left at midnight. She could take only so much empty socializing and dancing—though the leading man was a quite good dancer and she did have fun with him. But his girl-friend pouted if left alone for long.
Chapter 2 - High Dive
Sasha's suggestion that she become a part of the AirMobile design effort bore fruit more rapidly and completely than she could have guessed. Friday a week later she got a call at mid-day from New York.
"Ms. Canaro, this is Crispin Twissel." The voice was English, a smooth modulated baritone seemingly confident of charming its hearers. "I am from Prince Enterprises contracts department in New York. I trust I am not calling at an awkward time?"
"Not at all. How can I help you?"
"I was asked this morning to put together a tentative consulting contract for you. It concerns the continuing development of a Prince Enterprises aerial vehicle called the AirMobile. I believe you have been in discussion with Colonel Adrian Storm Cloud of Bluebird Security about this endeavor?"
"Yes, I have."
"Good, good. Ms. Anna Prince believes you would be an exemplary addition to the team. Could I email you the contract? You may want to consult the legal department at Felice Agency about this. I understand this was what you did with your first contract with us, for public relations having to do with the luxury air car line which we are introducing."
"Yes, that's true. When should I receive the contract? And when do you want a response?"
"I just pushed the email Send button. You and Felice will likely receive the contract as soon as you log on to your email account. It's not terribly large. And of course you should take as long as you like studying it. Ms. Prince did say she wanted this effort expedited, but don't feel pressured to sign it. We want you to be perfectly happy in your relations with us."
"I promise I will get on this right away."
"Good. Then I'll bid you a good day. And a good weekend. Goodbye."
"Goodbye." But the phone connection was already dead. A sprightly man, Tw
issel.
Sasha put away her cell phone and went into her bedroom to turn on her laptop. She had heard that Anna Prince was alert to whatever was going on in all her dozens of businesses and lightning fast at putting together deals. This certainly seemed to be the case here. But then it was a simple enough contract, she saw as she read it. Not like those huge corporate mergers in which Prince Enterprises sometimes was involved.
"Sasha, this contract looks good," said the Felice L.A. attorney when she called him. He was on retention to Felice from a large corporate legal company. "I made some minor amendments."
"Send it to me now if you can—Albert, isn't it? I'd like to get it in the works ASAP."
"Give me a half hour to get everything just right."
It looked right enough to Sasha when she got the contract. She zapped the red text in the contract to turn it into black and unified with the whole, then clicked on the signature button. Her handwritten signature, recorded from her signing with Felice three years or so ago, appeared in the signature block, along with a time stamp. She sent one copy to Felice, one to Prince, and one to her encrypted online personal database.
At a little after 3:00 she got a call from Crispin Twissel to tell her the amended contract had been approved.
"Mr. Twissel, what are you doing in the office at 6:00 your time, on a Friday? Don't you have a life?" She put laughter into her voice.
"I live to serve and all that rot. Besides, Anna Prince said to expedite."
"Such dedication."
"Such nice money they pay me. "
"Well, you go have a good time, you hear me?"
"At a big do the boss is putting on tonight. Don't worry about me, dearie. I've such a gorgeous outfit here at the office and in three hours I'll be showered and shaved and telling dear Anna to her face that her command was my wish."
Sasha hung up and turned to her laptop to view the information she had studied about the AirMobile development effort and developers. As she did so she wondered anew how Anna Prince did it. Over 200,000 employees in the various fully-owned Prince enterprises and every one seemed to believe they had a personal relationship with Prince.
Of course, Prince hired the best, paid them extravagantly, and trusted them to deliver. But how in the Hell did she find the time to do all she did in her business and still seem to find time to regularly appear at celebrity and charitable events?
That Monday was the first day of the three-day Thanksgiving week. She got a ride from Silvana to her air car, kissed her cheek, and waved Goodbye as her sister left for her first class of the day in Pasadena. Then she turned to view the new developments at her hangar.
The hangar doors were open and several service people were busy inside, all in the light blue work coveralls used by Prince Enterprises. A stocky older Latino was walking toward her. He introduced himself and they shook hands and walked together to stop just inside.
"We've just finished making some minor modifications to your vehicle. A new fast-charge battery is the biggest. Also the motors have been tweaked to be more efficient. And we've added to your airport database."
Sasha saw on the map he handed her that several landing and service points in the area had been added. Perhaps the most immediately important was a place near her parents home where she could land her car and drive on the streets to her home. The other was a dedicated spot at the Long Beach Airport for her car.
"We're claiming this space for an air limo service Prince is setting up here at the airport. You'll be based at LBA from now on. Are you on your way there now?"
"You work fast," she said, switching to Spanish and nodding. She had noticed just enough of an accent to his English to guess his birth tongue was Spanish.
He switched languages smoothly and smiled. "Yes we do. You'll find an updated owner's manual on your front seat. There's an executive summary folded into the front. Take your time vacating your spot."
He excused himself and went outside. A trio of aerial limousines, long and shining black were coming in for landings.
Sasha drove outside and parked out of the way in an open parking slot. The executive summary was brief and clear and she saw no need to delve into details just now. She got permission from Traffic Control to fly to Long Beach and lifted off.
At 7000 feet and 200 miles per hour Long Beach was about five minutes away to the northwest. Most of the way she was over or nearly over the 405 freeway, very busy with early morning traffic.
Near LBA she saw off to her right the flat concrete expanse of the Los Alamitos army air field, nearly abandoned nowadays. Across the freeway to her left and south was the Seal Beach naval air station. In one isolated area of it were rows of artificial hills covered in sod and brown grass.
Those sheltered naval ordinance stores, enough to blow up entire countries. Nestled on the Naval station nearby was several square miles of some crop, possibly cotton, with dozens of migrant workers tending the crop. The contrast between the two left her shaking her head at the strangeness of the world.
LBA, just to the north of the 405, was an old regional airport with two small east-west landing strips near its "top" and "bottom" edges and a long northwest-southeast strip diagonally across the two. It was wide and long enough for jet airliners, several of which she saw taking off or landing or in ground queues. Smaller aircraft were over and on the smaller strips.
Sasha, however, was directed to land atop a three-story tall office building close to the east entrance to the air port.
As she shut down the car she saw a couple of men standing near a boxy elevator shed with a projecting cover for those waiting for an elevator.
They both wore dark slacks and light-colored short-sleeved shirts. One work black loafers and the other light-blue running shoes. The older was Oriental, the younger a cafe-au-lait black man.
They shook her hand and insincerely welcomed her to the AirMobile development group. Both felt some annoyance, the younger man much stronger. As Storm Cloud had predicted, the developers were not truly welcoming of strangers poking their noses into their efficient and competent operation.
Sasha smiled at them and set about winning them over. She injected into their hands mild euphoric and "friendliness" messengers.
The elevator took them down one floor. The AirMobile development effort took up half the top floor, which they shared with an air-limousine development team.
All around the building were big plate-glass windows, very slightly darkened to cut the usual bright Southern-California sunshine. The interior was divided up into cubicles perhaps ten by ten feet square and five feet high. At a few of them she saw people standing near a side wall and talking with someone in an adjoining cubicle. The outsides of each cubicle were bright green, blue, red, yellow, or orange. The inside walls were a light grey.
Sasha was shown to a cubicle which would be hers. It had a filing cabinet, a whiteboard with several colored pencils resting on the pencil tray at the bottom, and a flip-file cabinet over the C-shaped desk mounted flush into the far corner of the room. An ergonomic chair was positioned in front of a large computer screen in the center of the C. Working she would have her back to the slot opening into her office.
"Here," said the older man, Vincent Wang, her boss, pointing at a sheet of paper lying beside the keyboard, "are instructions on how to log on and set your personal passwords. We all share a secure local network. You have to log in to the wide-world net separately. You can access both nets from the same computer, but not share information between them. Except that you can import data from the wide net, but not export it.
"Why don't you sit and settle in a bit? At 10:00 we have a group meeting. Come to that so we can introduce you to everyone."
He extended his hand and welcomed her again to the group. So did his cafe-au-lait assistant. Both had warmed up to her a bit.
At the doorway/slot a pretty redhead waylaid the older man for a signature on something. That done Sasha was left alone with the woman.
She was mid-to-
late thirties, had freckled white skin, and a nice body in a dark-green dress and green moderate heels. She smiled at Sasha and extended her hand. The usual inflow of data about her told Sasha that she was very bright, worked out, and was as sensual as she was intellectual. Instinctively Sasha corrected a couple of minor health problems.
"Hi. Welcome also. I'm Selena. I'm two doors down across the way. If you need anything just pop in any time."
With that—planned—welcome she was gone and Sasha settled down to acquaint herself with her computer.
A few minutes before 10:00 Selena showed up at her cubicle and the two walked down one aisle and then a cross-aisle and turned into a conference room. Selena led her to the side of the conference table opposite the door and the two took seats in the middle of the table. This way they could see who came in the door.
By 10:00 some two dozen people of both sexes and several races had come in and sat. They were dressed semi-formally for the most part, only one in jeans and tees and one in a dark suit and white shirt with a tie pulled loose at the throat. One man wore a beret and another wore a bowler hat.
All but three or four glanced at her, the exceptions either deep in a sheaf of papers or chatting. A few nodded to her. Two scowled slightly. Most were immersed in personal concerns.
At a few minutes after the hour Vincent Wang, the Oriental who was the boss of the group, came in and went to the head of the conference table. He lit a large wall-mounted flat screen at his end of the room. A few key strokes on a small computer in the corner and an agenda appeared on the screen.
Vincent waited for a few last-minute arrivals to scurry in and sit.
"The first item of business is to introduce you to a new member of the group. She'll be with us for a few months. This is Sasha Canaro."
A middle-aged man with very curly blond hair looked up from a sheaf of papers. "It says here she's going to help with testing flight characteristics. That could get her killed." He sounded hostile.
Sasha leaned forward and fixed her eyes on him. She gave a toothy smile any herbivore would recognize as predatory.