Book 1: 3rd World Products, Inc. Page 18

  Linda had said she had something to show us and had asked us to visit. She kept us on hold as she completed a mile of walking, then told us to come with her and led off at a decent pace for someone who hadn't walked for seven years.

  At first I thought she was taking us back to the shuttle bay for some reason, but she walked a bit further down the hallway and halted by another door. With a fatuous grin she slapped the door panel and the door slid back to reveal another bay, one with a much smaller flitter within it.

  "The same basic design, but only about half the payload,” said Linda. “Six seats and a bit of deck space for cargo. Seats fold flat. Same top speed. Same safety and other features. The only real differences are the size and cost."

  As we walked around the flitter Ellen asked where it had come from, since no such designs were part of the company package for Earth.

  Linda said, “Elkor came up with the design because of Ed's complaint that regular flitters are like trucks. He studied the Earth auto markets, realized the biggest market here was for smaller vehicles, and put three of these together. He's sent the other two prototypes to the factory and copies of the design to all concerned for further review."

  Ellen said, “But we already have smaller flitters available from a number of sources. Elkor knows that."

  "These are for Earth-sale only. They won't be exported immediately, if at all. The idea is to give the general populace more reason to support the factory effort. The training factory is producing almost four hundred flitters a day, but only about ten percent of them remain on Earth. The asteroid facility will produce five times that, but almost all of them will be exported, too."

  Linda leaned against the front of the flitter and patted it.

  "Elkor is scaling down factory fittings to suit a production line for these. Most people here have only ever seen flitters on TV, but tax money is still being spent on the project. The whole deal seems like fantasy or seems too remote to be meaningful to a lot of Earth's people, just like our old space program. Giving them a chance to own a version of what they're exporting is a way to keep them interested and involved. It may divert a trickle of potential production, but it will also divert people from criticizing too harshly while we're building this business and help pay for further training without using tax money."

  I said, “No riots, no carping or foot-dragging, and there's a profit potential that will augment the tax money. Okay, all good. But even a cut-down version of this gadget will cost as much as a moderately fancy house. Have the big three automakers gotten wind of this thing yet?"

  "They're already on board. Each will make them in redesigned factories all over the world. They balked at first, but our beloved Prez already had it in the bag with a pack of new environmental regulations and the blackmail to make them stick that will effectively kill production of any other kind of cars. All the nations involved in the factory project signed on with him, so the old ways and days are over. There will be no more new cars made within three years. Just flitters."

  "How did he get that past the oil companies?"

  "I don't know exactly, but it has to do with recharging stations. These flitters won't have long-term power units. They'll have to be recharged every hundred hours or so, as I understand things. Only Elkor's three demonstrators have the usual engines and his blueprints call for the other type of engine."

  Linda started for the bay door. We turned to follow her, but she waved us back.

  "No. Stay and play with it, Ed. Elkor said that this one was made for you. I still have to get an Amaran honcho to okay this freebie, but once the paperwork is done you can try to find a way to register it with the State of Florida and get them to issue it some kind of a title. Have fun, chillun."

  With that she slapped the door panel and walked out of the bay.

  I walked up to the flitter and ran my hands over it.

  "Hey, Elkor,” I said.

  From somewhere in the bay's ceiling came, “Yes, Ed."

  "I just wanted to say thanks, man. This is cooler than penguin shit."

  There was a moment's hesitation in his response. “Is that good?"

  "Better than good, Elkor. The best. Thanks again."

  "I think I've found a reference to your expression, Ed. Was it part of a marching song when you were in the military?"

  "It was. It may even still be, but I haven't been back to check lately."

  "Did the song also contain the lines; 'We're cooler than the frost on a champagne glass; cooler than the hair on a polar bear's ass'?"

  "You got it, Elkor. That's the one. Could I ask another favor of you?"

  "Certainly, Ed."

  "Would you make me some kind of receipt for this flitter that calls it an automobile? There's nothing in that word that seems to require wheels, is there?"

  "I can do that, Ed. The formal definition of the word requires no wheels."

  "Thanks again, Elkor. Let me know if I can do you a favor sometime."

  "I have something in mind, Ed. I want to go ashore with you interactively. I'm working on a suitable method of doing so."

  "Just let me know what you come up with and we'll try to do it."

  "Thank you, Ed."

  Ellen said, “He'll come up with some kind of robotic device. I don't know what he means by 'interactive', though."

  "I guess we'll find out. Hope it isn't too extreme. I don't hang out in strip joints. Wanna check out my new ride, lady?"

  Ellen grinned and said, “Not as a passenger."

  "Sorry lady, but I'm driving it first. You can drive it back, though."

  As we seated ourselves in the flitter, Ellen asked, “Where are we going?"

  "Nowhere in particular yet. Not back to the house, certainly. I'm going to have to give some thought to where to keep this fine new toy. It can't show up in my driveway until they're available to the public."

  "Keep it here. Elkor can send it to you when you want to use it. You can meet it at the trailer in the woods."

  "Guess so,” I said, maneuvering the egg to back us out of the bay. “Nothing else comes to mind, anyway. Flitter computer, please display a map of the Gulf of Mexico and surrounding states and countries. Also, I will henceforth address you as ... lemme see ... How do you like the name 'Stephanie'?"

  A voice like Elkor's said, “I have no preference of names, sir."

  I headed the flitter in the general direction of Texas at three hundred miles per hour and one thousand feet altitude.

  "Well, then, computer, your name is now Stephanie. Now I'd like to have you do something about your voice. It doesn't sound like a Stephanie voice. Standby for more on that as it comes to me."

  Ellen laughed and said, “You aren't going to use my voice? I'm hurt."

  "Sorry, but no. Yours is too familiar and I really prefer to hear your voice when I'm near enough to touch you, ma'am. My flitter's voice will be one that will cut through whatever I'm thinking or doing to let me know if there's a problem."

  "Not shrill, I hope?"

  "Nope. There's an actress who could recite the phone book and hold my attention. There used to be a singer who could do that, too, even when she sang about muskrats. I'm trying to decide which to use."

  Ellen laughed again and said, “She sang about muskrats? You do have eclectic taste in music, Ed."

  I sat up huffily and said, “I didn't say it was my favorite of her works, but I'll have you know that song was top of the charts for a while. I've kind of settled on the other voice for now, though. Stephanie?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Get with Elkor for samples of Jessica Rabbit's voice. She was a character in a movie a few years back. If you need more data, look up the actress and pull it from her other movies. You are going to sound like her. Let me know when you're ready to use that voice."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Abbreviations of your name will be 'Stephie' and 'Steph', and you will call me 'Ed', not 'sir', okay?"

  The voice that answered me was still Elkor's. “Yes, Ed.
"

  Ellen was cracking up. “I've seen that movie! Jessica Rabbit? You're going to make your flitter computer sound like Jessica Rabbit?"

  "Yup. And sometime before I try to register Stephanie, what little there is of her that isn't field-generated canopy will be painted a deep, emerald-like, metal-flake green. I don't buy Gary's comment on how long paint would last on a flitter. The fields deflect air and grit around the flitter."

  Ellen looked surprised. “They do, don't they? I wonder why he said that?"

  "Brain fart,” I said. “Everybody has one now and then. Could be he's never seen one painted and the first ones didn't have field-shaping. Could be he was reciting somebody else's manufacturing dogma. Could be they just don't want to add the extra step and cost of painting them."

  Ellen nodded. “I'll have to ask him about that. Why are we going so slowly?"

  I gave her a grin. “We're tourists. Tourists are supposed to drive slowly. If we had turn signals I could put the left one on and hog the fast lane, too. Then we'd be able to fake being retired tourists."

  Ellen gave me one of those 'oh, please' looks and asked, “Why, really?"

  "I'm just messing around, talking to you and Stephanie. How fast do we have to go for that? Are you in a hurry, lady?"

  It was getting to her already. Sometimes the quickest way to learn how to do something well was to have someone else show you, but if you really want an extreme demonstration of capabilities, make that somebody slightly impatient.

  I put the egg on the console. The flitter slowed to nothing and dropped to twenty feet from the surface of the water. I got up as I turned to Ellen and asked, “Would you like to show off a bit, ma'am?"

  She grinned at me as she took the pilot's seat and picked up the egg.

  "Show off? Me?"

  "Well, I suppose I could rephrase that..."

  "No need. It was accurate enough."

  With that, the flitter leaped almost straight up. At what must have been two miles or so of altitude she tilted the egg for forward flight and we were almost instantly flashing past one thousand miles per hour, according to the console.

  Ellen was grinning. “Same engine, less weight, greater acceleration.” She turned to me and said, “I need one of these, too."

  She took us through a series of maneuvers that would have splattered us around the cabin if it hadn't been for the inertia-nullifying fields that held us in our seats. At well above Mach 2 she whipped the flitter around and stopped it in midair in less than two seconds, then launched us back the way we'd come.

  A turn wasn't a gradual bank, as with an aircraft. If you egged the flitter hard left or right, the turn was virtually instantaneous. I found that to be somewhat disconcerting, but decided that I could get used to it eventually.

  Ellen again halted the flitter. The console display said we were at three thousand feet and zero speed. Ellen looked over the side of the craft for some seconds before straightening up in her seat and looking at me, then she smiled and faced forward again.

  She pointed our nose at the water below and calmly said, “Computer, display the terrain below the surface and take us to minus fifty feet."

  I figured she was actually going to level us off at wave-height or pull us into another fancy maneuver and made every effort to appear unruffled as the water rose to meet us at about a hundred miles per hour.

  "The flitter won't let us go below three thousand feet,” said Ellen, pointing at the console, “I already checked the specifications on the console screen. That's what it considers maximum safe depth."

  I muttered a quick, “Yeah, fine,” through clenched teeth before her words actually sank in, then glanced sharply across at her to see if she was serious. She grinningly nodded.

  We didn't splash or—as I half-expected—crash into the water. It seemed to part before us into a funnel shaped depression well before the body of the flitter reached sea level and I realized the exterior field had shaped itself for entry.

  When the flitter had leveled itself Ellen twitched the egg to head us back toward the ship, which was displayed on the screen's proximity monitor.

  I looked out through the canopy and saw nothing but the water, dimly lit by the faint sunlight from the surface.

  I said, “Elkor, you got a copy?"

  "A copy of what, Ed?"

  "Never mind that for now. Monitor radio traffic to pick up the jargon. Did you happen to design an operator's manual for this flitter, too?"

  "Of course. You can view it on the flitter's console or on your PDA. Is there something wrong, Ed?"

  "Oh, no. Not really. It's just that nobody mentioned that these things could double as submarines and Ellen just nose-dived us into the water."

  "You sound disconcerted, Ed."

  "I'm getting over it. Okay, Elkor. Thanks for the info."

  Ellen thought my reaction was hilarious.

  "You could have told me before you aimed us at the water, ma'am."

  "I knew there was something I forgot to do."

  "I can forget things, too, you know. I've already got something in mind to forget, ma'am. Just to even the score a bit, you know."

  Ellen laughed and said, “I can hardly wait, sir. Computer, hold this course at minus fifty feet, speed thirty mph."

  "Thirty?” I asked, “Weren't you the one who was fidgeting because we were going too slow at three hundred?"

  Ellen stood up and pulled her t-shirt off.

  "Thirty gives us time. I thought I might try to make up for startling you."

  I started undressing and said, “Hah. Tell it like it is, lady. You just worked yourself up playing with the flitter and now you want to use me to cap it off."

  Ellen grinned, tossed her shorts at my face and said, “That's right. Hurry up."

  Once I was as naked as she was Ellen pushed me into the pilot's seat and straddled me, then tilted the seat back about halfway. She positioned me and then kissed me as she pretty much dropped herself onto my dick, then sat upright with a grin.

  "Are you feeling better yet, sir?"

  "Oh, much better, ma'am. I think this will probably cure my anxieties."

  Ellen slowly posted on me a bit and smiled as she said, “I thought it might."

  She used me to find her special inner spot and worked it until the dampness within her became a small flood. Her soft groaning of release seemed to have a musical quality, as always, and she abruptly slammed herself all the way onto me and managed to jar another one loose.

  Ellen rested a moment as her breathing quieted, kissed me firmly, then sat back upright to begin the process again.

  I marveled at the look of her as she rode me and the feel of her solid body on mine and under my hands and the scent of her lust. She was a picture of controlled abandon as she took her lower lip between her teeth and moved herself to work me against her inner spot again, then her mouth flew open and she drove herself downward on me as before with a soft, breathy shriek.

  Ellen let herself fall forward to embrace me and quickly whispered, "Now, now, now! It's time, Ed! Now! Now, now, now!"

  I put my hands on her hips to guide her through the few more strokes I needed to meet her and kissed her deeply as I let myself surge into her. Ellen's embrace became almost painfully tight as she went rigid from head to toe and groaned into our kiss. When my dick stopped bucking she wriggled a bit to encourage a few more throbbings from me and she got them.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was lovely to have Ellen drowsily plastered against me in the seat, but at some point I could no longer feel my legs very well and I had to ask her to move enough to allow circulation.

  "It's not down yet,” she mumbled. “I get to keep it until it's down."

  "Yes, miLady, absolutely. But could you maybe raise up a bit? Just a little?"

  "No. It's mine. All of it."

  I was about to say more to bolster my plea for blood flow, but she pushed upright and said, “Oh, all right. Be that way,” and lifted herself an inch or
so. The sharp tingling in my legs told me that inch was going to save them.

  "Remember, Miz Alien Lady, you don't want to damage me until you've soaked all you can out of me, right?"

  She smiled sweetly and said, “Poor thing, I just got carried away. You get to live another day, Earthie. Unless I get horny again, that is."

  "Of course. You know I'll give my all for my planet, ma'am."

  Ellen had been fascinated and vastly amused by some of the movies and books Earth had produced about possible first contacts, but her favorites—the ones at which she laughed the hardest and of which there was no shortage—seemed to be the ones in which some evil alien captured Earth people for nefarious purposes.

  One movie in particular had practically incapacitated Ellen with laughter on the couch one night. It was a low-budget porn flick she'd found in which an alien woman—from a world on which men had all died in some vast disaster—had gone on a sexual rampage when she'd discovered men on Earth, a planet they'd tagged for conquering and subjugating.

  That movie became the source of the 'I've got you now, Earthie' and 'You'll live to serve my needs and love it' lines that Ellen gigglingly used on me.

  The movie's alien woman had faked her crushing defeat in combat against Earth forces and her subsequent gory death in a live broadcast to her sisters with the help of half a dozen young studs in a Hollywood porn studio. They'd then turned her spaceship into a prop for future porn films in which she'd be the star.

  The movie's closing scene had her lying on a bed in her ship surrounded by naked, ready men, reciting some of the corniest 'Today, Hollywood; Tomorrow the world' dialogue any hack scriptwriter had ever produced.

  A low-toned, sultry, sexy voice interrupted us by saying, “As you requested earlier, Ed, I believe I have managed to acquire the essence of the voice of Jessica Rabbit. Do you agree?"

  I said, “Uhm ... Jeez ... Wow ... Well done, Stephanie. Very well done. Maybe you could adjust it to a more conversational tone, though? You're not supposed to be trying to seduce me."