3rd World Products, Book 17 Read online

“A suggestion, ma’am.”

  Turning her downward facing head to look at me, she gave me a fisheye and, “Well?”

  “Link with me while I work with a sim. See what I see, feel what I feel. All that. I know you’ve been averse to mind-melding ever since our dream-walking incident, but I think it could be a fairly useful thing sometimes.”

  She eyed me for a time, then shook her head tightly. “No. It would be too much like being in your body.”

  I shrugged. “So? See if you can get the hang of shifting yourself into a sim.” Then something occurred to me and I asked, “Have you asked Xenia to help you with it? You could link up with her sim if you can’t stand the idea of linking with me like that.”

  Sipping beer as I restored the yard’s refractive field, I called up my Ed2 sim and said, “And you’re wrong, Lori. With Ed2, what you see is all there is. There’s no body form under the clothes; they’re the actual surface of the sim. Ed2 is just an energy golem with a fancy shell. Three blended probes.”

  “No body? But it has arms and legs. Fingers. Everything.”

  “Well, sort of. Pants and shirt sleeves. Shoes. Sometimes a hat. But his only emulation of body parts are forearms and hands and what’s visible above the shirt.”

  She gave me an odd glance, then got up to go to Ed2 and tried to put a finger inside his shirt above the top button. Her finger stubbed against his chest. She tried lifting the shirt away from his chest and failed at that, as well. Taking his left hand, she tried to slide his rolled-up sleeve further up his arm. It wouldn’t move.

  Turning to me, she asked, “Why no body?”

  “Why bother? He can do stuff well enough as-is and I can zap him into being without having to use my core.”

  That made her give me a peering look. Her tone was almost cautious as she asked, “You mean you can operate him without Amaran protocols?”

  Hm. Awkward? Sort of. “You wanna tell me why that was the first thing that popped into your head just now?”

  With a glance at Ed2, Lori returned to her seat, sat down, and said somewhat defensively, “It just did, that’s all.”

  “Uh, huh. PFMs are subject to the protocols. That makes a PFM-generated sim just another tool in the box.” Shrugging, I added, “He’s also a convenient way to operate the controls of a vehicle, for instance. With Ed2, I just popped into the left seat and flew the plane. Otherwise I’d have needed separate probes for each of the controls.” Holding up an index finger, I stated, “Simple solutions, ma’am.”

  Chapter Three

  Lori pulled a foot up on her seat and rested her chin on her knee as she studied Ed2. I studied Lori’s lovely upraised leg, of course. She started to say something, saw me eyeing her thigh, and sighed, “Would you please stick with the program?”

  “There’s a program?”

  In a flat tone, she replied, “We were discussing how to use sims.”

  I chuckled, “Do you really not understand how biology works yet? When you blatantly display some wonderfully constructed part of yourself, I have to look. That’s what men have evolved to do at such times.”

  “You’d like me to believe you can’t help leering at my legs?”

  “You got it. Hey, we’re all products of evolution, ma’am. Mama Nature made the rules.”

  “Uh, huh. Well, then, if you’re such a total slave to evolution, how did your vasectomy happen? Wouldn’t it violate Mother Nature’s rules?”

  Grinning, I held up my finger again as I sipped beer, then said, “I knew you’d try to snag me on that. Think about it. All I had to do to beat the house rules was spend seventy bucks and an hour out of my life in a doc’s office. From then on I was playing for free. No chance of urchins bugging me for cars, clothes, college tuition, or bail money. I could satisfy Mama Nature’s built-in urges without reproductive consequences.”

  Giving me a fisheye, Lori asked, “You really consider children to be nothing more than ‘consequences’? That’s pretty harsh, Ed.”

  “Those who feel otherwise should do all the breeding.”

  Sipping her beer, Lori said, “I still say it’s pretty harsh.”

  “Well, so’s being trapped in parenthood when there are still places to see and things to do. And I was married to a gorgeous drunk at the time, Lori. As much as I loved her, I’m glad beyond words that we never had kids.”

  “What about the other women you’ve known?”

  “What about them? I let them know I’d been fixed. Eventually most of them believed me.”

  As expected, that made Lori grin. She asked, “And the ones who didn’t believe you? What happened with them?”

  Sipping some beer, I said, “One told me she thought she was preggers after a few months and asked what we were going to do about it. I took her to see my hospital records the next day and closed the door on that problem.”

  “What does that mean? You threw her out? Was she pregnant?”

  “Nope. Not pregnant and I didn’t throw her out. She just wanted something more permanent. A few months later she left on her own.”

  “Was that one Ellen?”

  “Nope.”

  Lori sipped her beer and studied the sky for a time. I let my sim and the refractive field vanish and continued studying the gorgeous leg she’d never lowered, even though she’d bitched about me eyeballing her. I wasn’t surprised when she giggled softly.

  With a grin, she asked, “You really like my legs, huh?”

  Sipping, I replied solemnly, “Yes’m, I really do.”

  “What about the rest of me?”

  “Damned near perfect, as far as I can tell. Remember when I said you sort of looked like Sandra Bullock?”

  Was that a slight blush? She nodded. “Yes.”

  “It’s still true and I still consider that a damned fine thing.”

  She became a little fidgety. Her next sip was quick and she finally put her leg down as she turned to face me squarely across the table. For a time, Lori seemed almost about to say something, then she sort of slumped a bit, relaxed, and took another, slower sip.

  I asked, “What do you want to know, Lori?”

  Glancing up, she asked, “Huh? What made you ask that?”

  “You did. Just now. What’s on your mind?”

  She sat back and regarded me for a moment, then said, “I’m just trying to figure out how to handle something.”

  “Yeah, I could see that. Want a suggestion?”

  “Without knowing what it was, you have a suggestion?”

  “Yup.”

  She grinned and shrugged. “Okay. Sure. Go ahead.”

  “Ask yourself, ‘What would I advise my best friend to do?’ Women usually question and second-guess their own motives, but they can very often advise others fairly objectively.”

  Lori simply eyed me for a couple of moments, then said, “Sometimes you surprise me.” Canting her head with a small grin, she added, “But not this time. Well, not much, anyway. Not really.”

  I shruggingly chuckled, “Oh, well. Better luck next time.”

  Taking a sip of beer, I set the bottle down and stood up, then stepped away from the table to stretch.

  Lori asked, “You’re going to do that kata again?”

  Letting the yard’s blurring field vanish, I replied, “Yup.”

  “How come you don’t wear a… a whatever it’s called?”

  “The uniform is called a ‘dobak’, ma’am.”

  “Okay. Why don’t you wear one when you practice?”

  “No point. History’s taught me that I’ll be wearing clothes like these when I have to use my training.”

  I called up a screen to look over a list of tunes. Tommie Sunshine’s Megamix of six Katy Perry songs seemed about right. I fired it up and listened for a bit, then turned to Lori, who wore a big grin and bounced to the beat.

  I started slow, using every other beat. After a series of four moves three times at that speed, I moved up to full speed. Lori grinningly mimicked — or tried to mimic — som
e of my moves, but mostly just stood dancing by the table.

  The music ended eight beats after I finished the third set. Lori grinned and sipped her beer. She was breathing somewhat hard, but not panting. Only a slight sheen of perspiration. Good. That meant her skin was recovering quickly.

  She noticed my interest and asked, “What are you looking at?”

  “I’m looking for signs of cracking skin, but you don’t look as if you’re suffering. Ready for more?”

  Grinning, she nodded. “Ready!”

  This time I used Oceanlab’s ‘Satellite‘ to set the pace for a short set. After running through the kata, I stopped and pointed at a couple of men watching us from a white sedan parked in front of a vacant house half a block west.

  Lori asked, “You know those guys?”

  “Nope. They’ve been there about an hour. I’ve been using refractive fields when the sim was around. Think you can hold a cinder block steady?”

  Glancing at me with a fisheye, Lori asked, “What? Why?”

  “Let’s give ‘em a show.”

  Fielding a cinder block from the stack beside the shed, I told her to turn her p-field on, make fists, and hold her arms out at waist height, then I placed the cinder block across them. Something shiny appeared above the car’s dashboard as I stepped back. A camera?

  Lori asked rather tensely, “Are you really going to do what I think you’re going to do?”

  “Sure hope so.”

  “For God’s sake, why?!”

  “Well, duh, ma’am. Cuz it’ll hurt like hell if I screw up.”

  She almost yelled, “You know what I mean, dammit!”

  “Just hold it steady there.”

  Leaping upward, I drove the heel of my right palm down through the block’s left cell with my weight and momentum behind it. The cell shattered and we stepped away quickly to avoid falling chunks.

  Lori grabbed my hand and studied it as she sharply asked, “Did you have your p-field on?!”

  I looked past her at the car and said, “Nope. Don’t need it for things like this.”

  The guys in the car seemed fairly well impressed, chattering excitedly. One messed with something below the dash — likely the camera — and the other mimicked the strike, waving his hand downward on the car’s dash.

  Reaching to turn my face to hers, Lori met my gaze and said, “Now tell me why the hell you felt a need to do that.” As I started to speak, she interrupted with, “And make it the real reason, Ed.”

  A number of responses occurred to me, but I chose the simplest of them all. I stated, “Because I can.”

  I felt her link to Xenia; she was likely watching my bios for traces of bullshit. Her gaze narrowed slightly. “That’s it? That’s the only reason?”

  “Isn’t it enough?”

  I headed back to the table. Hell, no, it wasn’t the only reason. Those watchers would share the story and the footage. They and their friends would listen if I ever had anything to say to them. But the primary reason followed me to the table and stood eyeing me as I sipped beer and cooled my hand on the bottle.

  Lori asked archly, “So you were just showing off?” as she turned to intently study the car again.

  Shrugging, I said, “You know how men are when there’s a gorgeous woman around. That’s a hint, by the way.”

  She asked distractedly, “A hint?”

  As if she just wasn’t getting it, I sighed, “You, lady! Who else around here is a gorgeous woman?”

  Lori gave me a roll of her eyes and glanced back at the car, then asked, “Why are those men watching us, Ed?”

  I sipped and said, “Prob’ly ‘cuz they can’t use flitter probes or don’t expect them to work in my vicinity. Unless, of course…” I peered at her and asked, “Have you done anything questionable lately?”

  With a slight fisheye, she replied, “No. Have you?”

  “Can’t think of anything.”

  Sending probes to the car, I checked the mens’ IDs. Both had concealed sidearms and Homeland IDs. The car was registered to a federal motor pool in Tampa.

  The object the man had been holding above the dash was, indeed, a camera. I had a probe retrieve its contents and put up a display screen. Fast-forwarding, I saw only my last twenty-nine minutes, according to the date-time on the bottom of the screen.

  On general principles, I set a probe to follow each man until further notice. Might as well try to find out what they were about.

  Lori said, “We could just go ask why they’re watching us.”

  “They’ll say they can’t say if they say anything. More likely, they’ll just drive away.”

  “Maybe not.”

  Sipping my beer, I chuckled, “Feel free, ma’am. I’ll wait here.”

  Giving me a narrow look, she called up her board and zipped toward the car. I sent a probe with her and sat down. As she neared the car, the driver started the engine and took off.

  When Lori returned, I said, “Now we’ll see who gets a call.”

  Heading east on Chase Street, the passenger used his cell phone to tell someone they’d been made. I used that probe to trace the call to a cell phone in a room in a top-flight hotel in downtown Tampa.

  After the guy in the room said, “Okay, Deever’s up next,” I rather loudly said through the phone, “Hey! How many tax dollars did you guys piss away on this place? Shouldn’t you be running this surveillance op from a motel a helluva lot closer to the target?”

  The late-forties guy holding the phone stared at it in shock, then thumbed the ‘off’ button and tossed it on the bed. I checked his ID and found he also had one of the ‘Homeland’ cards. Manifesting a copy of my Ed2 sim in the room behind him, I looked around and saw two other people in the room.

  The twenty-something man yelled, “Holy shit!” and launched himself at Ed2 as a rather attractive late-twenties blonde woman drew her pistol and covered his action. I turned Ed2 intangible and the man dove through him, nearly colliding with the first man before plunging across a bed and off the other side.

  The man who’d answered the phone also had a gun out. He lunged to grab my sim and encountered nothing. Apparently thinking I’d ducked somehow, he grabbed again at the sim’s arm and freaked a little when his hands passed through the image.

  By this time the would-be tackler was on his feet and coming around the bed. He also tried to grab the sim a couple of times, then subsided a bit and looked at the first man. I turned Ed2 to look at the woman, who was still pointing her pistol at my sim.

  She advanced cautiously, then quickly swept a toe through the sim’s left leg. After another moment of meeting my gaze through the sim’s eyes, she holstered her gun and looked at guy #1.

  He snapped, “I didn’t tell you to put your gun away.”

  She rather tightly replied, “You haven’t said anything else, either, and I was assigned to work with you, not for you.” Looking at Ed2, she asked, “What are you, some kind of a hologram?”

  “Close enough, ma’am.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Trade you. Why are you people watching Lori and me?”

  She almost instantly replied, “It’s our job. Today, you. Tomorrow, somebody else. We’re told to watch, so we watch.”

  Making Ed2 look her up and down once, I said, “You have guts and brains, lady. How’d you end up on this tag team?”

  Glancing briefly past Ed2 at the guys, she snapped, “Why aren’t you asking them the same question?”

  “No need.” Thumbing at guy #1, I said, “He’s just filling time before retirement.” Thumbing at guy #2, I said, “He’s an eager-beaver trainee who couldn’t get into the FBI or the NSA for some reason. He isn’t qualified to do much else.”

  The young guy bristled and looked ready to hit my sim. The older guy simply stood glaring. I said, “No offense intended. That’s just how I see things.”

  Looking back at the woman, I said, “But you? Women have to be twice as sharp and work twice as hard for every little thing
in a boy’s club like Homeland. Why aren’t you in charge of something? Or better yet, with a better outfit?”

  She glowered and snapped, “Why don’t we focus on you?! What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Watching our watchers. Trying to find out why we’re being watched. Wondering if maybe dumb questions like that mean you really are in the right job, ma’am.”

  With catlike speed, the woman stepped forward and swung an open-hand slap at Ed2’s face. As she stepped back, she glared daggers at Ed2 and growled, “I just had to try that.”

  “Yes’m. Believe it or not, I completely understand. But do you?”

  Stepping to my left, guy #2 asked, “Understand what, Ava?”

  I asked, “He calls you Ava? What do you call him?”

  “What?”

  “In front of other people. First name or last name?”

  She glanced at guy #2 and replied, “Agent Purcell.”

  “Yet you very likely outrank him, if only slightly.”

  Guy #1 stepped forward and said, “I’ve had enough of this ‘divide and conquer’ bullshit. If you’re going to talk, you talk to me.”

  “Are you going to tell me why we’re being watched?”

  “Hell, no. You can put it through channels.”

  “Then why the hell would I talk to you?” Turning back to Ava, I said, “The NSA is always looking for good people, ma’am.”

  With that, I let Ed2 vanish, leaving the probe to monitor the room. Lori started to speak and I held up a stalling hand, then pointed at the screen. The three Homelanders seemed at a loss for a few moments, then Ava went to a work table set up at the other end of the room and sat down. She sipped coffee and stared into the cup.

  Apparently for lack of anything better to do, Purcell joined her there, poured himself a cup, and started to speak. Ava held up her hand, shook her head, and growled, “Not now, Purcell.”

  Guy #1 picked up his phone and took a seat at the small desk by the bed. He started to sip his coffee, realized the cup was empty, and set it back down. After a moment, he quietly asked, “Was anything running while that… that thing… was in here?”

  Ava shook her head. “Nothing of mine.” She looked at Purcell. He shook his head. “None of mine, either.”