3rd World Products, Inc., Book 3 Page 4

  "Can't," I said. "We need to get Stephie squared away and get back. She's about to start a new job and I have to be somewhere this weekend."

  "Stephie? Short for Stephanie? The woman you brought?"

  "That's her. You'll meet her when your daughter's finished with her paperwork. She's currently a stateless person. We're trying to fix that."

  Andrew nodded. "You do know that our passports are largely symbolic, right? Some countries haven't recognized them without a bit of arm-twisting by the UN."

  "The US and Swiss are members of the UN. If they can force someone else to accept a CW passport as proper ID, they'll have to accept it themselves or face the media."

  "I see," said Andrew. "Or rather, I really don't see, yet, but I'm sure that I will sooner or later. This is a fine machine, Ed. How about a tour?"

  I stepped aboard, followed by Andrew, and proceeded to kill time by explaining some of Stephie's abilities without going into great detail. Tiger seemed to find Andrew immediately acceptable and jumped into his lap. As Andrew held Tiger and studied Stephie's console, Steph contacted me again.

  "All the forms are finished. She seems to be studying the documents."

  "She's thinking, that's all," I whispered. "Don't get nervous about it."

  "I don't get nervous, Ed."

  "Oh, of course not, miLady. But you can get excited about things, right? Close the link and stick to business in there while I chat with her daddy."

  "Okay, Ed, but I don't get nervous."

  "Try telling Elkor that. You'll probably hear him laugh for the first time ever. Just let me know how things go. Over and out, ma'am."

  Andrew turned from Stephie's console to me said, "You're doing it again, Ed. Either you're in contact with someone or you've become a schizophrenic. Which is it?"

  I shrugged. "You got me, Andrew. I'm in contact with someone. The lady inside your daughter's office is getting rather nervous. I was just reassuring her."

  "Yes, I heard that much. How is she talking to you?"

  I tapped my skull behind my ear. "An implant."

  "Does she have an implant, too? Are you directing her in this matter?"

  I shook my head. "No, just trying to put her more at ease."

  Andrew sat in one of the seats and regarded me thoughtfully for a moment.

  "Who is this woman, Ed? What is she to you?"

  "Just a very good friend, Andrew. One who suddenly finds herself in need of credentials."

  He'd met many such people before; people who were refugees or stateless persons for one reason or other. He visibly dismissed Steph's statelessness as a non-issue with a slight wave of his hand.

  He leaned back slightly in his seat and said, "Krista flies the big desk now, so tell me what you've been up to these last twenty-odd years." With a grin, he added, "You know, there are a lot of people from those times that I'd rather never meet again."

  I returned his grin. "I know what you mean. It's probably good that a lot of them killed each other off over the years."

  He nodded. "So they did. So they did. But there's always a new batch of them ready to step in, isn't there? Not much has changed, has it?"

  "It will," I said, thinking of the Amarans' genetic contribution to the human herd of Earth. "Eventually. It has to."

  Andrew glanced at me skeptically as he picked up the guidance egg from the console, looking it over carefully as he spoke.

  "I used to think that way, too, Ed. What does this gadget do?"

  As I was explaining the use of the control egg to him, Steph activated the console with a soft chime and her face appeared on the screen.

  "May I say hello to your old friend, Ed?"

  "Sure, Stephie. Andrew, this is the lady in your daughter's office."

  Andrew seemed somewhat in awe of her as he said, "Uh, hello, Stephanie. I'm most pleased to see you. Most pleased. Call me Andrew. Do you know how very much you resemble Ingrid Bergman?"

  Stephie smiled and said, "Yes, people have told me that many times." Switching her gaze to me, she said, "We're about to join you outside. Krista's assembling my passport as we speak."

  "You look as if you're about to jump up and down and squeal like a cheerleader."

  "I wouldn't give you the satisfaction, sir. Krista and Marlene would like to see the other me."

  "Bring 'em on, miLady. You're driving, by the way."

  Her smile broadened and she said, "Oh, thank you, kind sir. I feel so privileged."

  Steph's picture disappeared. Andrew stared at the screen for another moment, then turned to me.

  "Wow," he said in a quiet tone. "You sure know how to pick your friends, Ed. What did she mean by 'the other me'?"

  I flicked my eyebrows at him and asked, "You'll see. Want a beer? Sorry, but it's American beer and it's cold..."

  "I'll take one anyway," said Andrew. "Thanks. But where's the cooler?"

  I reached into apparently empty space and hauled out two Ice House beers.

  As he took the beer, Andrew slowly asked, "Uhm...Why can't I see your cooler, Ed?"

  "Bending the light around it is more energy-efficient than contending with the heating it would cause. Would have been nice to have one of these in Angola, huh?"

  "Damned right", he said, locating the cooler with cautious fingers. "Hey, remember the time Kelso got drunk and buried three cases of beer in the mine's slurry mud to cool them and then forgot where he buried them? As long as I was there, he went out almost every night with a shovel. He almost got shot twice because he was digging by the compound fence. They thought he was looking for diamonds."

  We shared a laugh at Kelso's expense and waited for the women. Moments later, the office door opened and the three women trooped down the steps to the sidewalk. Steph waved her brand-new CW passport at me and grinned as they approached the flitter.

  "Ed, I'm officially a person!" she said. "Well, sort of, anyway."

  I said, "Congratulations, ma'am!"

  Krista stopped a few feet from the flitter and asked, "This thing really flies?" and then quickly amended, "Oh, hell. It isn't touching the ground now, so why shouldn't it? Is it safe? Really?"

  Steph turned to her and said, "No vehicle made is safer than me. I promise."

  Marlene said, "Safety is a relative thing, anyway. I've always wanted to ride in one of these." As Andrew turned his seat slightly, Marlene got a look at Tiger and said, "Oh, you've brought your cat?! How adorable! Hi, kitty!" She reached to pet him.

  I said, "That's Tiger. He's our morale officer."

  Krista said, "I can believe that, at this point."

  Marlene hiked her skirt a bit and stepped onto Stephie's deck with my assistive hand-up, then stood gazing around the interior. Krista shrugged and followed her aboard. Steph simply disappeared from the sidewalk and reappeared next to her console as her passport floated over to me. I thought Andrew's bottom jaw would hit the deck as I picked the pale blue booklet out of the air.

  "How...?" asked Andrew, staring at Steph's image.

  Looking through the passport, I said, "As well as being a gorgeous hologram, she's also the flitter's computer. She can be pretty much anywhere she wants."

  Steph gave me a slightly surprised expression and asked, "I'm gorgeous?"

  "To me you are, and you've heard me say things like that before, ma'am. She takes a nice picture, too, right, Andrew?"

  "Huh?" Andrew shook his head slightly, straightened and organized himself, and gallantly said, "Absolutely. I concur with Ed, Stephanie. You're every bit of gorgeous."

  He extended a hand to her without dislodging Tiger and she reached as if to take it. As his hand closed on empty air, the astonished look again appeared on his face. Stephie giggled right along with the other two women, said, "Oops," and then made her hand solid enough for Andrew's grasp.

  "Ed," said Steph, "There's a passport service fee to be paid and I didn't bring my purse. Come to think of it, I don't have a purse."

  "No fee this time," said Krista. "It's worth i
t to ride in a flitter."

  "Yes, a fee," I said. "We aren't destitute refugees, and unless your methods of funding have changed, you still operate on a shoestring. How much?"

  When Krista again seemed ready to refuse, Stephie said, "Fifty bucks, Ed."

  I peeled two hundreds off the fold of money I'd brought and said, "Here, Krista. Let it help pay for someone who can't."

  Krista looked at the $200 for a moment, then at her father. He nodded. She took the money and tucked it into her bra -- a motion which caught Tiger's attention for some reason -- and said, "Thank you. It will. Dad, you aren't supposed to be drinking and you know it. Remember what the doctor said."

  Tiger hopped down from Andrew's lap and went to investigate Marlene and Krista. Andrew sipped his beer, smacked his lips, sighed, and said, "Special occasion, oh daughter who thinks she's my damned nurse. A beer won't kill me."

  "Well, I guess we'll find out, won't we?" she snapped softly at him. "If you make me an orphan by reverting to your old ways, I'll find a way to get even. Count on it."

  With a sigh, Andrew said, "I have no damned doubt you will, dearest daughter, but I'm finishing this beer and I may have another and I'm going for a ride in a flitter before I die. If the excitement is too much for me, so be it. You're old enough to fend for yourself now."

  Steph said, "My scans find nothing physically wrong with you, Andrew, except some old wounds that appear to have healed as much as they're able."

  Tiger seemed to focus his attention on Krista and leaped into her lap. She was obviously not a cat person, as demonstrated by her rather stiff, hands-apart manner. Tiger ignored her inhospitability and sniffed her industriously.

  "That's what I've been telling everybody for years," said Andrew.

  Steph asked, "Why does anyone think that anything is wrong with you?"

  Andrew shrugged and said, "Damned if I know. I guess it's expected of someone my age. Or maybe a certain young woman simply needs to rule my life by her own standards with an iron hand?"

  Krista scowled at him very briefly and said to me, "He's turned into a professional grade curmudgeon since the last time you saw him."

  I almost laughed as Tiger decided that Krista's was the lap of choice. She apparently wasn't used to furry attention. She sat as stiffly as before, watching him arrange himself so that he could see everybody else.

  "Your dad seems about the same to me, ma'am. Don't worry. If he croaks, we'll just bury him at sea from 50,000 feet or so."

  Krista startled and stared at me as if wondering whether I was sane.

  Andrew cut off his daughter's potential response by asking, "She can fly that high?"

  "Oh, she can fly higher than that, but I figure that's high enough to do the job. You know; no muss, no fuss. 'He fell overboard, officer'. Good enough?"

  With shrug and a 'yeah, that'll work' expression, Andrew took another sip of beer. Marlene had been looking around, apparently in vain, as she'd half-listened to the sort of father-daughter banter she'd obviously heard many times before. I belatedly noticed that the ladies were empty-handed.

  "Sorry, all. Would anyone like a beer or a Dr Pepper?"

  "Beer, please," said Marlene.

  "Me, too, for a beer," said Krista. "I tried Dr Pepper once. Why is this cat on me?"

  "He has a weakness for blondes," I said. "Just like me. Is he purring yet? That always works well for me."

  Krista sardonically asked, "If that were true, shouldn't Stephanie be a blonde?"

  "Nope. Stephie does her own hair. Two beers coming up."

  Marlene's eyes widened as I repeated my reach into apparently empty air and retrieved two bottles of Ice House. After another explanation about bent light, I sat down in the pilot's seat and deposited Stephanie's new passport in the console's storage bin. Tiger hopped down from Krista's lap and took his usual station on the console. Stephanie let her image disappear and we began lifting from the street.

  The others were glancing around themselves almost frantically.

  "We don't need seat belts," I said, then I explained a bit about fields.

  Although there were dubious expressions, nobody asked to get off, so I suggested to Steph that we cruise around London unless anyone wanted to see anything in particular within a five hundred miles or so. Marlene asked if that would include Scotland, and I said it could if she so desired, so she suggested several points of interest up that way.

  It was a fairly tame flight for Tiger and me, but you'd have thought the others were on a rollercoaster at first. After a long flight and a visit that lasted well into the evening and included a dinner in Krista's favorite restaurant, all of us promised to keep in touch as we said our goodbyes. As we headed back to Florida, Stephie said that she'd time our arrival for six in the morning, local time, and I settled in for a few hours of sleep.

  "Elkor?" I asked.

  "Yes, Ed?"

  "Nothing. Just wanted to make sure we hadn't left you behind, somehow. Why'd you ghost out on us?"

  "Ghost out? Oh. I see. Sometimes one learns more using quiet, unobtrusive observation, Ed."

  "Unobtrusive? Yeah, you were that. Did you learn anything while you were lurking?"

  "Yes, I learned some things."

  "Such as..?"

  "I haven't finished assimilating the data. May I respond to that later?"

  "Couldn't you give us a little now?"

  After a moment, Elkor said, "I was monitoring all participants, but particularly Krista. She was extremely wary of you at first, but she later became somewhat excited and aroused when she looked at you, as did Marlene. Can you explain this occurrence?"

  "Maybe. A majority of princesses always seem to secretly lust for the barbarians, no matter what -- or, rather, who -- they marry for the long haul of life. Or what they admit to anyone else. Krista and Marlene are princess types."

  "I find no adequate references for that statement. How can you be sure it's an accurate assessment?"

  "Well, for one thing, I've been some princess's barbarian often enough, and I've read far too many romance novels when the only thing else to read was the label on my C-Rations. We used to be the end of the line for some publishers' overstocked titles."

  "That's hardly enough data from which to draw a conclusive an opinion."

  "Huh. You weren't there when starving princesses pounced on me, Elkor. All that prim, proper denial leaves 'em hungry, you know. They either crack under the strain and find a way to get laid or they stuff themselves with chocolate. Why do you think romance novels sell so well? They all have some woman of station taking or being taken, and the guy is always a relative barbarian, socially or otherwise. The formula works. Trust me. Ask Joan Rivers or Abigail Van Buren. Rivers jokes about it and Dear Ol' Abby writes consolation notes in her columns."

  "It still seems too simple a conclusion."

  "Complicate it all you want, but verify your data. Read some romance novels. Watch some soap operas. You'll see the pattern."

  Steph asked, "So you think Krista had the hots for you, Ed?"

  "Not so much me, per se. What I represented, more likely. A safer version of the barbarian. One that couldn't upset her world by sticking around too long."

  "You aren't that old, Ed. You have many good years ahead of you."

  "Well, thank you, ma'am, but what I mean is that she saw me as a more controllable and temporary barbarian, perhaps older than she'd truly wish for, but still the type. One that she could surreptitiously use to scratch her itches and then politely be rid of before I became any sort of risk."

  "Risk?" asked Elkor.

  "Risk," I said. "To her carefully-crafted world, her self-esteem, and her self-image; those things which she values beyond all her other desires and probably all else but her father's opinion of her. I'd have been an excusable dalliance, but that's not to say that her father would have excused me for it."

  "I think I understand," said Elkor.

  "Me, too," said Steph.

  "Study, chillun. Study.
People are complex critters. That's why they get themselves into so much trouble. They think they're thinking when they aren't. They think when they should follow their hearts. They follow their hearts when they should be thinking. Sometimes they think to avoid following their hearts, and vice versa. Now and then they arrive at the right combination of brain and heart, but by that time, they may be too old to do much about it. Sometimes they get lucky fairly early, or are very adaptable after they've made their choices. More often they don't get lucky, hence the high divorce rate. Oh, yeah, and sometimes they mistake lust for love."

  Elkor said, "You've made being human sound like a confusing ordeal, Ed."

  "Guess I did, at that. Oh, well. I don't feel confused. I feel tired. I'm going to sleep now, guys. Good night."

  Chapter Six

  A soft voice mingled with a chiming sound. I rolled over and was rewarded with a screeching yowl as Tiger came awake in combat mode.

  "Jesus, cat. You startled the hell out of me. Again. You know I may roll over, so why do you park so close?"

  Stephanie asked, "Should I relay your words to Tiger?"

  I sighed and stretched. "No, don't bother. He's heard them before. Where are we?"

  "Fifty miles from home, Ed."

  As I reached to ruffle Tiger's chin, I said, "I'll hold it until we get there, then."

  As we neared Spring Hill, Steph asked why we hadn't set up her bank account while we were so near Switzerland.

  "You got any money yet, Steph? They won't want to bother with what I've got in my pockets. Besides, it will give us an excuse to make another trip to Europe."

  "Britain isn't normally considered part of Europe."

  "Picky. There's nothing but a little salt water ditch between Britain and Europe. It used to make a difference when people had to paddle across, but that was a long time ago, and now there's the Chunnel under the ditch. I say they're part of Europe."

  Tiger said something and Steph answered him, then she spoke to me.

  "He wants to know why we didn't keep the bright haired woman."