Book 2: 3rd World Products, Inc. Read online

  "Your flitter? Your flitter is Stephanie? Look, I don't have time for this..."

  "You have time for it if you want her to be one of the con's exhibits, Chuck. Say no and we'll find another way to kill a long weekend."

  There were a couple of moments of silence before he keyed on again.

  "Ah, hell, lemme check with some people. There may be a parking problem, an insurance problem, and the hotel may have something to say about parking vehicles on the sidewalk. Also, the deal was that she'd be inside, as part of the convention..."

  I sighed heavily, mostly for Chuck's benefit. He was the convention's official staff bureaucrat. Rules, regs, and policy ruled his world.

  "Just call people and fix it, Chuck. Nobody's gonna think she isn't here as part of the convention, and flitters are still unique enough that the hotel won't mind if she parks by their drive-up doors. She won't block traffic and she can get out of the way if she does. If anyone objects, I'll just head on back home; how's that?"

  I could imagine Chuck going through his frustration routine; squeezing the walkie-talkie with both hands, glaring at it as he clenched his teeth, and taking a deep breath before trying to make a reply.

  "This could take a while, Ed."

  "Then I guess we'll stick around a while, Chuck. Thanks."

  I hated to throw him a curve so close to opening time on the first day of the convention, but at least it was a relatively simple one.

  "Stephie, can you ... Excuse me ... Will you get me the manager of the hotel on the phone, please?"

  "One moment plee-uzz,” said Stephie.

  Who used to do that ‘telephone operator’ shtick? Some woman on a comedy show in the late sixties ... Yup. She was watching TV. Old reruns, at that.

  The manager's office answered and the woman asked how I had gotten the number. I told her it was in my machine and asked to speak to management. She said she was management enough for me until she knew what the call was about. I told her to have a look out her window if she was over the carport. She was, but she was unenthusiastic about having an unattended vehicle sitting in the reception driveway area.

  I told her the vehicle would never be unattended and told her she could meet the driver if she came down to have a look at the flitter. She agreed to that.

  Some minutes later, a tall, nice-looking, mid-thirties brunette with a moderately officious air strode past the hotel security people with a small wave and stopped next to Stephanie.

  I couldn't help noticing her walk and the way her eyes seemed to take in everything at once as she approached. She met my gaze some distance away and strode up to me. I introduced myself. The brunette looked me over, taking in my green, ex-Army fatigue shirt, jeans, and backpack, then she looked around.

  "So where's the driver?” she asked.

  Stephanie said, “I'm the driver. I'm Stephanie. Hello."

  The brunette looked at me and said, “Look, I know this is a sci-fi convention, but don't waste my time with talking props, okay?"

  Stephanie said, “Excuse me, but if you think I'm some kind of a prop, please explain why I'm not touching the ground while I talk to you."

  The woman glanced at the flitter, then looked hard at me.

  "I'm not a ventriloquist,” I said. “And the flitter is Stephanie."

  After a moment, the woman said, “And I'm Anne Carson, Assistant Manager. You're telling me that this—flitter—can run itself?"

  "Yup."

  "This is a high traffic area. Not to be impolite, but prove it or move it."

  "Talk to her. She'll tell you what she can do."

  After grilling Stephanie about several 'what if?' scenarios, she tentatively agreed that there should be no problem, but asked that I wear a hotel beeper so that I could be reached at all times. Stephie suggested an alternative.

  "I'll scan the beeper and link the signal to your watch, Ed. You can call her back through me without having to hunt for a telephone."

  "Good enough?” I asked Carson.

  She nodded. “I guess I can allow it,” she said, “For now. But rest assured that I'll have her towed in a heartbeat if this doesn't work out."

  I said nothing about how difficult towing Stephie might be. Carson said the same thing to Chuck when Stephie called him. He said he was still trying to find his boss about the indoor-outdoor thing. I told him that if someone didn't okay Stephie staying outside by opening time, we'd be heading back to Florida.

  "Basically, Chuck, I'm talking about you. If you say it's no problem, your boss will go along with it. He knows you aren't an idiot or you wouldn't be in that job."

  "I'll get back to you as quickly as possible, Ed."

  "How about by opening time, Chuck?"

  "Yeah, yeah. Just sit tight."

  I knew he'd try to find someone else to sign off on the matter right up until the last possible minute, so I grabbed my backpack and hopped down to the sidewalk. The manager seemed confused.

  "You aren't going to wait here for a callback?"

  "Nope. Steph can reach me anywhere on Earth when Chuck calls back. I'm gonna go sign in, get a coffee, and leave Stephie to entertain herself with all these adoring flitter fans. Stephie, think you can manage without me for a while?"

  "Indefinitely, Ed. No sweat. Slippery fields. Nobody gets in or climbs onto me."

  "Good enough, ma'am. See you later."

  I said to the manager, “Indefinitely, she says. Could you please describe to me how it feels to be needed?"

  The manager snickered as we walked into the hotel lobby.

  "I'm probably not the best person to ask. Sometimes I wonder about that, too. They tell me my managerial expertise has things running so smoothly that I could leave for a month or two without being missed too much."

  "That's tragic, ma'am,” I said. “Want a coffee and some commiseration?"

  "Just the coffee,” she said. “But I thought you were in a hurry to sign in?"

  I shook my head. “Nope. The first-day lines are too long to bother hurrying. There'll be hundreds of people upstairs and maybe a dozen registration windows, and nothing that I care about is scheduled to happen before noon. I'd much rather sit and drink coffee with you."

  Anne Carson looked slightly skeptical. “Are you sure?"

  I smiled at her and said, “Sure I'm sure. I've been preregistered since February. My badge is waiting for me at one of the booths. I'll get it later."

  Her cell phone rang as we neared the elevators. She answered it and conversed with someone for a moment, then offered me a rain check on the coffee.

  "Duty calls,” she said, handing me a business card. “I guess they need me around here, after all. This extension reaches my office directly. Will you be staying here during the convention?"

  "Ah, no, ‘fraid not. I have a friend in the Atlanta area. I'll be commuting."

  She studied me for a moment, then asked, “Will she be attending the convention, too?"

  "No, and why do you assume my friend is a woman?"

  Carson grinned at me. “Quantifying people is a big part of my job. You don't hang out with a group, but you do have a few close friends, and I'd bet ninety percent of them are female. You're not a willing leader or a follower, so you probably don't have much use for the company of other men or dependent women."

  Okay, I was surprised, and I didn't bother concealing it. I just nodded.

  "Close enough."

  "Are you wondering how I figured that out?"

  I shrugged. “You have some training and experience."

  "This is mostly experience talking. Don't get the wrong idea, here. I'm just thinking of offering you a lunch."

  "Well, I'll accept, of course, but may I ask why?"

  Carson grinned again. “Sure, over lunch. Gotta go, now."

  She stepped into the elevator and was still grinning at me as the doors closed.

  The registration area was in one of the hotel's ballrooms and was packed to overflowing, so I went to the Con Suite. When Chuck called to
okay the parking matter, he asked how I got into the Con Suite without a badge. I said that since I was there to wait for him, I had official business, and—oh, by the way—why couldn't he just bring my badge up to the Con Suite on his next circuit of the proceedings?

  "Why the hell do you think you rate such special service, Ed?"

  "Because I thought of it? Why not do it, Chuck? You'll be bringing stuff to the Con Suite from Registration every hour or so, just like last year and every other year. Just pick up one more little card—mine—and bring that, too. It's no big deal, is it?"

  "Don't you think I have enough to do already?"

  "I don't doubt that for a moment, Chuck, but it's on your way, it won't take a whole minute to pick my badge up from the other side of the booth, and it takes longer to quibble over it than to do it. Besides, I agreed to chair one of your writing panels, didn't I? That's one less thing you have to do tomorrow afternoon, isn't it? Oh, but wait! I can't do that if I don't have a badge, can I?"

  "Oh, all right, damn it. We're low on change already. Tell Marc to send someone down with some ones and fives. No, wait. I'll call him about it myself."

  "I'll tell him, Chuck. He's right here in the room. You gotta learn to delegate more, dude."

  "Ed?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Please don't tell me how to do my job."

  "Wouldn't even think of it. How many ones and fives do you need?"

  "A thousand in each, delivered to Phillip."

  Marc had been watching me talk to my watch. I waved him over and told him Chuck's instructions.

  "You're talking to Chuck through a wristwatch?"

  "Yup. Say hi to Marc, Chuck."

  "Marc, I need ones and fives. A thousand dollars of each."

  Marc leaned over and almost shouted at the watch, “That's what Ed said. Okay, I'll be right down. You copy that?"

  "Hell, yes, I copy that. You don't have to yell, man."

  Marc looked up at me and silently mimicked Chuck's 'you don't have to yell, man' before leaving to take care of it.

  "He's on the way, Chuck. See you when you get here."

  "Yeah. Right. Bye."

  The Con Suite's windows were on a side of the building facing away from the vehicle reception area, so I took a coffee and walked to the end of the hall in order to get a glimpse of what was going on below.

  Stephie was literally surrounded by make-believe aliens and relatively normal-looking people. There must have been over a hundred of them, taking pictures and trying to touch her. They couldn't, of course. Her foot-deep fields were flexible, but they kept fingers from making contact with her hull.

  One kid, maybe nine or ten, seemed vastly frustrated that he couldn't climb aboard Stephie. He pushed experimentally against the field a few times, then decided to try a running start. As he backed away to gain some running room, I called Stephie.

  "Stephie, there's kid to your right..."

  "I know, Ed. He won't get hurt, but he won't want to try that again. Watch. I'll leave the comm link open for you."

  The kid started his run and pounded furiously across the cobbles. At the last instant, he launched himself at Stephie's deck. Stephie's extended field intercepted him a good four feet from her hull and held him suspended like a fly in a spiderweb.

  I couldn't hear what he was yelling, but I could see what Stephie was doing. She held him in his diving position. That's absolutely all she did. The kid thrashed helplessly in her grip for some moments, then subsided, still suspended.

  A couple of watchers reached for him and couldn't so much as touch him because he was inside a field that was a bubble-like extension of Stephie's barrier. The kid began thrashing again. Stephie extended her field a bit farther and set the kid down about two feet from one of the hotel security people who had arrived.

  "This young man attempted to forcibly board me,” said Stephie.

  The hotel cop apparently had no idea how to respond to a talking flitter. He took one of the kid's arms and simply stood there.

  Stephie said, “I'd appreciate it if you'd tell him not to try that again, sir."

  "Uh, yeah, I can do that,” said the cop. He turned to the kid and said, “Don't do that again. Stay off that thing."

  "I'm a flitter, sir."

  "Uh, yeah. Okay. Sure. Stay off that flitter, kid."

  "Thank you,” said Stephanie.

  The hotel cop simply stared at her for a time, then at the kid, and then he returned to the building's doorway. The kid looked at Stephie for a long time, then walked up to her and tried to give her a hard kick in her side. His foot stuck to her field as if the field were flypaper.

  "Officer!” called Stephie.

  The cop came back over to her and watched the kid's one-legged struggles to free his foot. I think, mostly from his hands-behind-the-back posture, that the cop was enjoying the show.

  "This little monster just tried to kick me,” said Stephie.

  "Yeah, I saw that,” said the hotel cop. “Uh, how long are you going to hold him like that?"

  "Would it be all right if I held him until one of his parents comes for him?"

  "Well, probably not, legally speaking, but it might do him some good, and I certainly can't order you not to."

  The kid froze, stared at the cop for a moment, then frantically increased his struggle for freedom.

  The cop sauntered around the kid and said, “Could be he's finally figured out that he can't get on you, though. What do you think?"

  "I know very little about children, especially nasty ones. What do you think?"

  The cop looked every bit as speculative as Sherlock Holmes for a time.

  "I think you could let him go. At least we'd see if he's finally got the message."

  The kid was getting tired. He almost slipped and managed to avoid a fall, then let himself down to the pavement, one foot still stuck to Stephie's field about a yard above the ground. When Stephie's field released him, his foot plummeted instantly to the pavement. The kid stared for a moment, then began backing away from her. When he realized she wasn't going to grab him again, he got up and ran into the hotel's revolving doorway.

  "Officer, do you think he'll be back?"

  "It's hard to say with kids like that, but I'll be by the door if you need me."

  "Thank you."

  I turned to look down into the lobby. The kid was running toward the bar. He sought out a guy and seemed to be telling him what happened. Someone else started laughing and the kid got pissed. He grabbed the guy's beer bottle and ran back through the lobby.

  I said, “Heads up, Stephie. The little shit's coming back with a beer bottle."

  "Not a problem, Ed."

  As the kid neared the driveway doors, I moved to the window to see outside. He ran about halfway to Stephie and heaved the bottle at her. She field-caught it not far from his hand and turned it upside down, drenching the kid with beer. The kid ran screaming around the entranceway like a crazed animal, but the beer bottle stayed precisely over his head until it was empty.

  As the kid neared the doors again, the hotel cop grabbed him. The beer bottle floated over toward them and Stephie held it for the cop. After a moment of hesitation, he took it and thanked her, then took the bottle and the kid inside the hotel.

  The crowd had enjoyed the spectacle immensely. People were applauding and laughing and talking about what had just happened.

  "Stephie, that was an excellent response to the situation."

  When she replied, I could hear the applause in the background.

  "Thank you, Ed. It seemed the most reasonable course of action."

  "Now, if I can avoid a lawsuit, things will be fine."

  "A lawsuit?"

  "Too late to worry about it, so don't. Shield your license plate, though. No point in making it easy for them if they get shitty about things. For that matter, shield your plate at all times unless we're actually on a road for some reason."

  "Yes, Ed. I'm sorry if I've caused you a problem."
/>   "Don't be. It was a good show. The kid deserved every drop."

  Chuck showed up with my badge a few minutes after ten, told me he was still working on permissions, and left. Not long after that, Anne Carson called the con suite and asked for me.

  "Hello, Anne. It isn't noon yet, ma'am. I can't be late."

  "Ed, I have a wet, smelly child and an irate father in my office. We'd all like to see you for a few minutes, if you don't mind."

  "Sure. Be right there."

  A few minutes later I was ushered into Anne's office. Yup. The kid was still damp and stinking of beer and his daddy was pissed. Anne introduced me as Ed and the daddy as Mr. Williams.

  Anne suggested that everybody take a seat and cringed a bit when the kid put his wet self in one of the fabric-covered chairs. She spoke first.

  "Ed, Mr. Williams says he's considering a lawsuit."

  Williams blurted, “I'm not just considering it...” but Anne gestured him to quiet.

  I asked, “He knows what his kid tried to do?"

  "He says that children make mistakes."

  "That argument doesn't impress me one damned bit. I saw the whole thing and so did an applauding crowd of witnesses."

  Williams stood up and glared at me. “Your machine attacked my child like a vicious dog.” He turned to face Anne. “And your security man just stood there and watched."

  I said, “As I see it, that machine only defended herself against a child who was acting like a vicious dog."

  Williams took a step toward me, his fists clenched at his sides. I stood up, too.

  "Mr. Williams,” I said, “If you choose to try to sue me or anyone else concerning the defensive actions of that flitter, be advised that you may instantly be subject to an IRS audit and probably much worse."

  Williams goggled at me for a moment. “What? Are you threatening me?"

  "Do you really believe that I own that flitter? They've only been available to the public for two months, and only half a dozen or so have been delivered to non-government owners, all of whom are rich and famous. Do I look rich or famous?"

  When Williams just stared at me, I continued, “Your darling boy, there, tripped a defensive response by trying to harm the flitter. Everything was recorded from the moment of his first assault on the vehicle to his last assault with a thrown bottle. Does your boy have a history of obnoxious, violent behavior? I can assure you that if he does, that will come out. You could reasonably expect that the HRS people will become involved, as well."