3rd World Products, Book 17 Read online

  Looking at me with a speculative expression, she abruptly stood up and walked around the table to hand me the spray, then turned around, took off her shirt, and said, “Okay. Yes, please do my back.”

  Setting my beer on the table, I replied, “As you command, milady,” and stood up.

  Lightly spritzing her shoulders first, I worked my way down her back, then returned to her shoulders to gently smear the stuff around. By the time I’d finished there, she’d relaxed from holding herself against the continuous pain of the burn. Her tentative deep breath turned into a sigh of relief.

  When I finished with her back, I set the spray down and picked up my beer. Lori turned and studied me for a moment, then said, “These are the kinds of things that always amaze me about you, Ed. No matter what the problem is, you always seem to know what to do.”

  “Wanna know what to do now, ma’am?”

  Her left eyebrow lifted slightly. “Sure. What?”

  I picked up the lotion and said, “Use this before the numbing wears off. Then you’ll be able to take a deep breath without feeling as if your skin’s going to split open.”

  I used a finger to make a circular gesture and she turned back around. The cream was still cool from being in the house. Drawing a line of it on her shoulder made her flinch slightly, then she snickered, “For a moment there, I almost thought that was more pain.”

  As I spread the stuff around, I said, “Nope. Pain is something you’ll never get from me, sweetie. I may criticize occasionally, but it’s always to try to improve things. Never to deride. Take this sunburn; it’s the kind of thing you had to learn for yourself, as well as how to handle it. I could only warn you. I couldn’t actually order you to do anything to prevent it.”

  Lori said, “I’ve seen the ‘bots heal a bad gash in minutes. Why haven’t they been able to cure this burn yet?”

  “Because you’ve damaged — or killed — a few layers of about twenty square feet of your body, ma’am.”

  “There’s that much skin on people?”

  Smoothing the lotion around the small of her back and hips, I replied, “Yup. More or less. If you’re still hurting later, I’ll spray you after your shower and give you another lotion rub so you’ll be able to lie flat and get to sleep.”

  When I finished, I set the lotion down and picked up my beer. As I sipped, Lori rolled her shoulders and lifted her arms, then stretched a bit and shot me a grin.

  Reaching for her own beer, she said, “Thanks. I’ve been afraid to move or sit since we left the beach.” Sipping, she eyed me thoughtfully as she sat down and said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, okay? But I have a question.”

  “Can’t take it any way at all until I know what it is.”

  With a little moue, she nodded and carefully slipped back into her t-shirt as she said, “Okay, here goes; you’ve been watching me all day. ‘Leering’ is the word Aunt Lisa would use. And you’ve been saying little things like how my legs are so fine they ought to be enshrined somewhere.”

  “Yeah? And? All true as I see things. Let me know when my thinking you’re gorgeous starts to hurt, ma’am.”

  She’d started to sip again and paused to snicker, “Sure I will. I’m not sure how they could be ‘enshrined’, since I’d have to give them up for something like that. But right now I’m wondering something, Ed. You’ve always wanted to get your hands on me, but just now you slapped on that lotion and stopped as soon as you finished my back. I’m wondering why you didn’t offer to do my legs, too.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t tease myself like that, Lori. After our near miss a couple of years ago, I put you — and especially your glorious legs — off limits. Rubbing them with spray and lotion wouldn’t make you ache with lust, so you get to do them.”

  Choking on her beer, Lori laughingly coughed through it and echoed, “Ache with lust?!”

  “Couldn’t think of a better way to put it.” Glancing down, I said, “Hell, just thinking about doing that stirred things up. Lori, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t talk about me handling your legs unless you’ve decided you’re ready to be licked out of your mind.”

  As expected, her widened eyes had fallen to the long lump in my jeans briefly, then — also as expected — she’d wrenched her eyes back up to mine. I knew she was remembering her reactions from the time she’d seen the thing snap up and salute her. Was that a blush? Prob’ly so. Hard to tell for all the other redness.

  Chapter Two

  Turning slightly away from her to adjust myself, I sat down and took a long swig of beer as I blatantly eyeballed her. Pretending to discover some leftover oil on my left hand, I wiped it on my pants and sighed, “Well, at least I got the scenic tour today.”

  Lori goggled at me slightly, then a hearty chuckle bubbled out of her as she sat down and tried to sip her beer. She took a deep breath to organize herself, then took a sip of beer and swallowed before she chuckled again.

  “I guess I’m just not used to hearing men say things like that. All day, every day, they’re on their best behavior at Carrington. I know they look, but they never say anything more than ‘you look great today’ or something like that.”

  I chuckled, “Poor baby. That must be terrible for you.”

  She shot me a grin. “Oh, not really. Not usually, anyway.” She shrugged. “Besides, all the best ones are already taken.”

  “I’ll try to dig up some sympathy for you, sweetie. Are you sure you haven’t overlooked a few? Maybe two or three who’ve been hiding or something?”

  Giving me a fisheye, she asked, “Hiding?”

  “Hey, you know how unpredictable women can be, ma’am. All of a sudden she gets a certain look in her eye and a man has to wonder whether she’s gonna drag him back to her cave for a night of passionate lust or just kill him on the spot. It can be real hard to tell sometimes, y’know?”

  “You are so full of shit. We aren’t like that at all.”

  “Yeah? You’ve met Toni. Would you want to be the guy who saw her steaming toward him with an intent expression? You saw Agent Vicky flare up at that guy from Homeland, too. He was about two seconds from wetting himself when she backed off.” With a shrugging chuckle, I added, “But now they’re dating.”

  Lori goggled at me with, “OhMyGod! Really?!”

  “Yup. See what I mean? You were pretty sure she’d kill him if he opened his mouth again.” With a sigh, I opined, “Lemme tell ya, women can be scary critters.”

  Apparently studying me, Lori asked, “Are you okay with that?”

  Sipping my beer, I replied, “Yeah, sure. I can usually tell when they mean to kill me.”

  Flicking sweat from her bottle at me, Lori laughed, “You know I meant about her dating that guy.”

  Looking enlightened, I replied, “Ah. Yeah, that too, ma’am. We’d started finding reasons to steal time away from each other. Little bits of personal time. I’d accept an invitation to attend a Sheriff’s briefing and let that turn into schmoozing over drinks later with LT or Deputy Wendy and some of their team people. Vicky’d work late or stop by a mall on the way home or schedule an appointment in off time instead of force-fitting it into duty time. Stuff like that. We still had great times in the sack, but we both knew we weren’t too far from getting on each others’ nerves.”

  Nibbling her lip, Lori almost tentatively asked, “Are you sure you aren’t just rationalizing things, Ed?”

  “How does that fit with what you know about me, Lori? Her mom called the night her dad got hurt. Vicky’s phone was off, so I told her mom to keep trying and sent a probe to find her car. It was at a big shopping mall. I sent the probe through the mall and found her schmoozing with three friends in a restaurant instead of working late.”

  “What did you do?”

  With a shrug, I said, “I used the probe to turn on her phone.” Taking a sip, I said, “Tell me you haven’t sneaked some private time like that near the end of a relationship, ma’am. I’ll call you a liar right across this table. That nig
ht Vicky and I sat in the kitchen and talked after we got back from the hospital. The ‘new’ had worn off for both of us and she was up for promotion. We decided not to let things drag out and get difficult.”

  “Have you dated anyone since?”

  I chuckled, “Since what? The tenth grade? Dating is fake. It’s all masks and bullshit. If I want to know a woman, I just look for things we have in common and let her see the real me right up front.”

  “What kind of things in common?”

  “That doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we share them, whatever they might be.”

  Lori grinned and chuckled, “Ed’s simplified rule for dating; ‘Don’t Waste Time Dating’.”

  “You got it. Help her do something. Get to know her a bit. If she’s worth knowing, then wine and dine her.”

  Lori laughed, “So logical. Yet you were sitting alone when I called.”

  “Convenient, huh?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I sipped and asked, “How much company do you think I need, Lori? Ask Angie or Linda sometime.”

  “Angie? Linda?”

  Nodding, I replied, “Yup. They know me really well, ma’am. They know how I live and why. They had to before they could truly trust me, on the job or off. Do you know what I am to Agent Vicky now?”

  “Uh… no, I guess not.”

  “Same thing I am to Myra, Toni, and Kate. A friend instead of an awkward acquaintance or someone to avoid. I can go there, they can come here. If I can help with something, I will, and vice-versa. Remember when I visited you and Kate last month?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did Kate and I do while you were studying?”

  Lori said almost warily, “You went to a pub, then you came back and talked until about three in the morning.”

  “Yup. Does she do that with any of her other exes?”

  Rolling her eyes, Lori said, “Oh, God, no, and that’s what was so weird about the whole thing!”

  Shrugging, I said, “Didn’t seem weird to me.”

  I sipped and said nothing more for a time. Lori sipped and seemed to be thinking about something. She’d just opened her mouth to speak when the house phone rang. I linked into the call and found Detective Greer at the other end.

  Motioning Lori to link in with me, I said, “Hi, LT. What’s up?”

  “Hi, Ed. This is a conference call, okay? You’ll be talking to Brian Dell, an air traffic controller in Winter Springs. Go ahead, Mr. Dell.”

  A man with a voice full of tension asked, “Can you hear me?”

  “Sure can. What’s up?”

  “We have a small twin-engine circling the field on autopilot. The pilot is unresponsive and the passenger is a ten-year-old boy. He figured out enough to use the radio, but there’s no way he can land that plane. Detective Greer said you might be able to help?”

  “Yup. Sure can. Give me the tail number and I’ll get right on it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Land it, of course. Give me the tail number.”

  “Land it?! How?! First I need to know your qualifications, sir. I…”

  Raising my voice slightly, I interrupted him with, “LT, get that guy off the line and get me a tail number, please.”

  Something at their end flapped and rustled, then Greer said, “I have it,” and read it off with a description of the plane.

  I said, “Thanks, LT. Later,” and dropped the link, then linked to Athena with the info as I sent a probe to locate the plane.

  Athena found the plane first and put up a screen. I zeroed my probe on it. She appeared in the plane’s back seat and sent theta waves at the kid in the right-hand front seat. He quietly twisted himself around to stare wide-eyed at her as she used our link to silently tell us the pilot had died of a heart attack.

  I said, “Thanks, ma’am. Do you want to land it?”

  Fielding the pilot to the back seats, she replied, “There would be fewer questions if you do it.”

  Yeah, that seemed likely. I said, “On my way,” and manifested Ed2 in the pilot’s seat. Taking the controls, I didn’t bother contacting the tower; they’d already cleared the field and the immediate sky for the emergency. Dropping a thousand feet, I lined up with the runway and began a final approach. No crosswinds. Excellent.

  Frantic gabbling and commo commands came from the radio, but none of it stated reasons not to land, so I turned down the noise. Rather than head for the hangars after touchdown, I stopped the plane on the tarmac, turned off the engine, and let my sim dissipate.

  Through our link, I said, “Thanks, Athena.”

  “You’re welcome. Bye.”

  Lori said, “Wait, Athena. Would you like to come hang out with us?”

  “Thank you, but I’m otherwise occupied, Lori. Bye.”

  She dropped the link. Lori looked at me and asked, “Otherwise occupied? Doing what? She’s an orbital computer core.”

  I shrugged and sipped beer. “Whatever supercomputers do on Friday afternoons, I guess.”

  “You don’t know what they do?”

  With a head shake, I replied, “Nope. Never felt a need to pry. Seems likely they think about stuff, though.”

  Giving me a fisheye, Lori said, “I can’t believe you’ve never… Oh, hell. I forgot who I’m talking to. Yes, I can believe it.”

  I grinned. “Good for you, ma’am. If you’re really all that curious, you could ask your own core, y’know.”

  The phone rang again; it was Greer with a few questions. I manifested a blank screen and answered the call. There was a lot of hectic office background noise as Greer said, “Ed, there was no way in hell you could have gotten to Winter Springs that fast. Who landed that plane?”

  “Remember the lady you met at the Lee Road accident?”

  “Um… Athena, I think you said her name was?”

  “Yup. She popped in, found the pilot dead, and the rest is history.”

  “Why didn’t she let them know what she was doing?”

  “The field was clear, LT. It was time to land, not talk.”

  “But… They can fly planes?!”

  “They can operate flitters, LT. One’s running the factory station. A better question might be, ‘what can’t they do?‘.”

  After a brief pause, he said, “Yeah, maybe so. Well, look, pass along our thanks, will you? Tell her she did an excellent job today.”

  “Will do, LT.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Ed. Gotta go. Bye.” He disconnected.

  I bundled a copy of our chat and sent it to Athena, then sat back with my beer and contemplated Lori. In our previous conversation, it had appeared to me that she’d been slowly wandering toward something.

  Lori, in turn, seemed to be contemplating me. After a long, silent, studious look, she let herself lean back and flinched hard when her back met the chair.

  Hissing, “Too soon,” she leaned forward. Resting her elbows on her knees, she sipped beer and said, “Just when I think I’m really catching up, you do something like that.”

  I gave her a fisheye. “Like what? You knew I could fly a plane.”

  “Yeah, but…” She shook her head. “Oh, never mind, dammit. All this stuff just seems to come naturally to you. I had to work twice as hard and three times as long just to get my sim to recite the friggin’ alphabet in a reasonably realistic manner. You’ve got yours flying planes.”

  That surprised me. Though we hadn’t really discussed methods, I thought she’d understood… no, I’d assumed. Again. Damn.

  “Lori, my sim didn’t land it. I did.”

  With a sort of ‘no shit, Sherlock!‘ expression, she replied, “Well, duh! You know what I mean, Ed. You can make yours do things way beyond what I can make mine do. I…”

  I held up a hand and said, “No. I’m trying to tell you something, Lori. I didn’t just run it like a remote-control toy. I was in the sim like I’m in my own skin now. I was in that pilot’s seat the same way I’m in this lawn chair. I thought yo
u knew that.”

  Lori’s face developed a ‘what the hell?!‘ expression and she got to her feet as she yelped, “How the hell could I know that?! When did you ever tell me you could do something like that?!”

  Hm. Maybe she was right. Had I ever actually explained to her how I used sims? Come to think of it, probably not, since I couldn’t even explain it to myself. I nodded.

  “Yeah, you’re prob’ly right, ma’am. I’ve been trying to figure out how it works for almost two years, but I can’t, so I just do it. Since I can’t explain it to me, I probably wouldn’t have tried to explain it to you, either.”

  Glowering at me, Lori took a big swig of her beer and a deep breath, then stated in a flat, angry tone, “You-just-do-it. Do you know how absolutely-fucking-useless that is as an explanation?”

  Meeting her gaze, I sighed, “Well, yes, actually, I do. I’ve been enduring it for a few years. Longer, if you count all the other stuff I’ve been able to do without knowing how the hell I…”

  She snapped, “Oh, shut up!” and sat down as she grumped, “That’s what I mean, dammit!” In a mocking tone, she quipped, “Can’t figure it out? Hey, doesn’t matter! I’ll just do it anyway!” Sipping beer and taking another breath, she added, “And you probably can’t tell me how you do that, either, right?!”

  For lack of a better response, I admitted, “Guess not.”

  Looking at me as if I was stupid, she snapped, “I mean…”, but then she fell silent and looked both angry and confused for a moment before she yelped, “Agh! Goddammit! Now I don’t know how to explain what I’m trying to say! You’re so goddamned frustrating sometimes!”

  Ah. Okay. It was one of those ‘yes, ma’am‘ moments. Agree politely, sip beer, and wait for better times.

  I sipped beer and said, “Yes, ma’am. As you say, milady. Just holler when you get a handle on it.”

  Lori gave me an incredulous, angry look and started to say something, then didn’t. She took a long slug of her beer, then stared at the bottle and growled, “I probably shouldn’t drink when I’m around you. I can’t tell if it makes things better or worse.”