by G M Eppers
“Back up.”
“Dinny’s my back up.”
“I’m Dinny’s back up.”
“Fair enough. I don’t trust her.”
He was kidding, of course. His arms were moving the whole time he talked, checking dials, flicking switches back and forth, some of them overhead, and adjusting the yoke and sidestick. I watched him and noticed that he was doing the same sequence at least three times. He just kept going until Dinny finally came in. She took her co-pilot seat and strapped in. “Okay, Billings. Listen up.”
Fifteen minutes later we were in the air and climbing. The number of things you have to pay attention to is staggering, but Dinny was patient and explained the operation of each control. The only button I touched at all was the seatbelt sign, but it was interesting to learn what some of the controls were for. “You won’t be flying a plane anywhere near this big, of course. It’ll probably only have two engines, not four.”
“As long as it’s automatic and not manual transmission,” I joked. “I know. Unlike the other sections of the course, flying is too detailed to do in two weeks. I was told it was mainly to make sure I could keep my head in an emergency and understand the instructions from the control tower.”
“Right.” The plane leveled off. “Okay, turn off the seatbelt sign, and you can go back to the cabin. Cruising is kind of boring.”
I reached above my head and flicked the switch, hearing the ding. “Shall I release the hounds?” I asked Dinny.
“If you want to. Fair warning, though. There’s some shifting about during takeoff and I always take the time to clean it up while they’re roaming.”
I elected to go to the cabin and let Dinny do it. The cats were used to her, anyway, I reasoned. They might not take too well to me invading their space like that.
I got to the cabin as everyone was unbuckling. McGrone took his messenger bag and headed to the showers. Some of the others looked like they wanted to clean up as well, but Nitro insisted on checking out their wounds first. The slash on Badger’s arm was the most worrisome and had required four stitches, which had been taken care of on the Duckworth. “Wash around it,” Nitro told him. “I’ll replace the bandage when you come out.” Sir Haughty had one stitch in his temple, and Avis had her ring finger and pinky taped together, but nearly everyone was also developing nasty looking purple bruises somewhere on their heads. I could feel one of my cheekbones getting tender as well.
Avis saw me come into the plane and the twins came forward to meet me. The three of us hugged. “How did the lesson go?”
“Not bad. Flying should be a piece of cake.”
“Don’t let Dinny hear you say that.”
I checked behind me guiltily. Dinny was hidden behind the partition that housed the cat alcove, and T.B., Backwash, and Harelip were sauntering out. Her head peeked out and she gave me a pointed look before ducking back in to her cleaning job. “That would be fruitcake,” I explained. “Tough and hard to swallow –” I got interrupted when I literally walked through my mother who appeared suddenly, facing me, in the middle of the aisle, appearing to be dressed all in pastels.
“Everyone make it through okay?” She asked, turning as I passed through her. Her voice, as well, seemed just a little softer than usual. I felt a pang of guilt and squeezed the pack with my arm.
I turned, a shiver going up my spine. There was no sensation of having passed through anything other than air, but the idea made the hair on my arms stand on end. “Minor injuries,” I told her. “Better than the Vikings. They lost six, I think, one lost a few fingers. And one lost an eye, but I’m not sure that counts since it wasn’t his original eye. Should you be here right now? What if McGrone comes out?”
She looked mildly uncomfortable. “I checked.” I remembered her ability to shrink down to the size of a fly for easier surveillance. She was probably watching us the same way. “He won’t be coming out any time soon. He has reading material.”
Mom glided over to the twins. “I’m glad you didn’t drown.”
Avis blinked. “We kind of did. Nitro and Sylvia did CPR.”
Agnes, as usual, finished their thought. “We thought we were going to die. We thought you were there to welcome us to the other side.”
“Welcome you?” Her eyes shifted as she took herself back to the underwater adventure. “No. I was trying to pull you up.” Her arms made the motion again, not even pulling air up with them. The panic she must have felt then started to overwhelm her again. I don’t think ghosts can cry, but they sure can sound like it. “I was trying to save you, but I got frustrated when I couldn’t. Frustration makes it hard to stay. I kind of have to go to my Happy Place for a while.”
“Happy Place?” asked Sylvia.
Mom turned to face Sylvia, putting her right leg into an empty seat. “Just a metaphor. It’s not like it makes me happy, really. Just calmer. Recharged. The truth is …” she hesitated.
“What is it, Mom?”
She was noticeably upset. “I’m not happy here, Billings. It’s awful, not being able to help you. Watching and seeing the danger, and I can’t do anything! I keep thinking I must have done something wrong. I’m being punished. This is my personal hell.” She stopped herself and the expression on her face made me think she felt she had overreacted, she had blurted out private thoughts she hadn’t meant to share. She collected herself a bit, clearly wanting to downplay her distress. “Oh, it’s amazing being able to see the places where you’ve distributed me.” Pausing, she focused somewhere else, growing almost serene. “There’s a humpback whale swimming near me. It’s huge, but it’s just a baby. The mother is up above. I can’t see her quite as well. Things get foggy not far away.” Her brow creased, then straightened as she came back to us. “But all I can do is watch.”
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
Roxy said, “Distributed you? Is that why you’re … faded?”
Mom wasn’t surprised by this revelation. She knew. “I think so. Like I’m being spread thin. But it’s like…like that’s how it’s supposed to be.”
I clutched the under shoulder pack protectively. “I can’t do it.”
She looked at me with sad, sympathetic eyes. “I can deal, Billings.” She reached out like she wanted to touch my arm, but of course it didn’t work. She bit her bottom lip. “When you’re ready, it’ll happen. Don’t push. Really.” She spun in place, taking in everybody. “I still get to see you and even if I can’t touch, I can talk to you. It just goes to show this is no different than before. There’s good and bad no matter which dimension you’re in.” She shrugged. “Maybe this is more about you guys than it is about me. Maybe my job is to help you appreciate what you have.”
At those words, Avis reached out and took my hand, giving me a squeeze. Mom noticed. “Oh look at me. I’m so bad I forgot to ask. How’s the wedding thing going? Are you guys married yet?”
Badger, discreetly scratching the edge of the bandage on his arm, said, “not even close. The twins have been planning quite the shindig, though.”
“Well, they should,” Mom agreed. Avis looked at me in vindication. “It should be the biggest party you guys have ever had.”
“We don’t have time,” I explained. “Waiting for all that to come together, we won’t get married until we’re old and gray.” Avis slapped my upper arm because she couldn’t reach my shoulder or head from where she was sitting.
Agnes said, “It’s all planned, Billings. All we need is a 48-hour window where we are in D.C. It’s happened before.”
“But we didn’t know it would be 48 hours. It could have been interrupted at any time. We just got lucky. How can we have all those people flying in from all over the country if we have to go on a mission as soon as they get there?”
Mom crossed her arms over her chest. “Miss Chiff won’t allow you a couple days? I might have to haunt her.”
Sylvia said, “Team C is back to full duty, but it’s been even busier now that all cheese is banned. It seems a lot of peopl
e didn’t get the memo. As it is, once we drop Billings off at the Space Center, we have to check out the Havarti Hoarders in Sacramento.”
Roxy groaned. “Oh, I used to love Havarti!”
The mention of food, even if it was taboo, reminded me how long it had been since we had eaten anything other than a few mixed nuts. The sandwiches and juice on the Duckworth were barely worth mentioning. I’d gotten more food after giving blood. I was famished, and I was sure most of the others had to be as well. I looked at Dinny standing behind everyone else with a big grin on her face, enjoying seeing my mother and hearing conversation just like the old days. “Dinny, what’s on the menu today? We’re starving.”
Inside the restroom area, a toilet flushed. “I better go,” Mom said. “Enjoy your meal. I’ll be around.” For fun, apparently, she shrunk herself down to housefly size before she disappeared.
McGrone came out of the bathroom with his messenger bag under his arm. “Did I hear a mention of food? Ms. Rosensglet, that would be an excellent idea.”
“Right away, sir,” Dinny said, leaving the cabin for parts culinary.
The cats followed us upstairs and we took our seats around the conference table to await the food. Backwash, as usual, jumped up onto the table to make the rounds and accept his overdue attentions. If someone wasn’t paying attention when he got to them, he would nudge the person’s hand with his head, inserting himself underneath and purring. T.B. wandered the floor, and Harelip sat on Sylvia’s lap, playing nosies with Backwash as he went by. McGrone took a seat to my right. As he sat down, he lowered his voice and said, “I trust we are copacetic?”
“Your secret is safe with us,” I said, matching his volume level. “For now, you can resume your authority, but if you abuse it again I’ll make you sorry you were ever born.” I smiled sweetly at him. He seemed to take my words under advisement and turned away. It seemed only fair. His idea of creating dynamite had helped even the numbers long enough for us to get a foothold in the battle with VAVAVA. He wasn’t entirely ignorant, and becoming self-aware of his own deathwish seemed to have been to his benefit. At the same time, I was unsure I could follow through on my threat. We both knew that my ability in that regard was limited. If I asserted myself, I could end up disrupting the wedding plans. Avis might never forgive me. She was rock solid set on the D.C. ceremony.
A few moments later, Dinny wheeled out her cart of covered trays, tendrils of steam escaping out of the edges of most of them. We had thick hamburgers with bacon and lettuce, crinkle cut French fries, and diet sodas, considerably less gourmet than our usual fare, but certainly more than welcome. There’s no beating a good old American burger. Except for Nitro, of course. Being a vegetarian, he usually got a salad of some kind. When Dinny removed the cover to his tray, we all stared. He looked at it with a different expression, one of wonder and gratitude. “Dinny! You remembered!”
“What is that?” I asked.
There was a variety of vegetables, but every single one was a shade of green. There were radishes and cherry tomatoes, niblets of corn, and something sliced that crunched when he bit into it that was probably raw potato. I also saw some things that were supposed to be green, like cucumber slices and wedges of lime, but the green carrots and green mushrooms just looked wrong. He was digging in quickly, hungrier than he realized, and had to swallow before he spoke. “A selection from K-Ratio.”
“I’ve never heard of them.” I took a bite out of my hamburger and waited for an explanation.
Dinny interrupted before gathering all the metal lids. “Let me know what your favorites are, Nitro, and I’ll get more. This is kind of a sampler platter.”
“Got it. Thanks, Dinny.”
“My pleasure.” The lids clinked and nested together and she took them away.
Nitro wrapped a green baby carrot in a lettuce leaf and took a bite. “Not bad. It’s from a website I found. K-Ratio specializes in hybrid vegetables. They tried all kinds of combinations, but most were just not edible. Broccoli failed every taste test, for example. Even people who loved it by itself couldn’t stand it in a hybrid. Spinach was mediocre at best. But there was one vegetable, however that seemed to blend well with almost everything. That’s where the K comes from.” He paused, waiting for us to guess.
Sylvia shared a tiny bit of French fry with Harelip and ate the rest. “Kohlrabi?” she guessed.
Nitro shook his head.
“Kelp?” suggested McGrone with no confidence at all.
“Nope.”
“Kidney beans!” Sir Haughty called out with absolute British certainty.
Nitro shook his head again. I racked my brain but couldn’t think of any other foods that started with K. “Just tell us, before I stick cat poo in your field kit.”
“Kale.”
Badger and Sir Haughty both did a spit take, spraying diet soda onto the middle of the table. Backwash sniffed at the small puddles, then began to swat them with his paw, trying, I’m guessing, to knock them off the table. They were, after all, invading his territory. Noticing that his paws were now soiled, he sat to lick them clean and seemed to forget about the puddles. Roxy reached for a paper towel and dropped one on the table, soaking up the soda before Backwash could discover it again.
“Turns out Kale combines with almost anything. It’s the poodle of the vegetable kingdom.”
Roxy made a wry face. “But it’s nasty by itself.”
“Like I said. The poodle of the vegetable kingdom.”
I expected someone to come to the defense of poodles, but no one did. We were cat people, anyway. I doubt any of us knew anything about poodles except they were easier to rhyme with than dachshunds.
I chewed for a while, but something about this conversation was tickling my brain. Hybrid vegetables. Two things that blend together to make something new. I must have zoned out, though I did have the presence of mind to put down the burger and not let anything drop out of my mouth. Suddenly, Avis was nudging me. “Billings, you okay?”
“The counterfeiters,” I said under my breath.
“What?”
I was more sure of myself by then. “The counterfeiters! I need to see all the information from the counterfeit cases. Badger –“
He interrupted me. “Sorry, Dude. It was on my phone, which is at the bottom of the Caribbean.” In a day or so, anyone who lost their phones would be issued new ones, already loaded with the proper contact information, ready to restore any data the person had stored on the CURDS Cloud Server. Guns and the other contents of the HEP belts that had fallen out would also be replaced by the time we got back to D.C. But that didn’t really help right now.
My heart was pounding a little faster. I knew there was something there. We’d found the suppliers, but not the counterfeiters. It didn’t feel like someone goofing around anymore, or even someone experimenting. Instead, it felt like someone was sending us a message. “Did you report to Miss Chiff?”
“Yes, but...,” Badger started to say.
Sylvia, who had made good time on her burger and was mopping up ketchup with a French fry, pulled her phone out of her pocket. “I’ve still got mine.” She handed it over to Badger who regularly communicated with Miss Chiff. He took the phone, found the contact list, and placed the call.
“Hello, Ms. Pendragon,” It seemed Miss Chiff had the advantage of Caller ID. “Is there a problem? Have you arrived at the Space Center already?” she asked. “I understand Mr. Collins lost his phone. I have a list of equipment to be replaced right here. Is there something to add?”
“No, Ma’am. This is Bad—“ he started to use his nickname, but Miss Chiff preferred given names. “Mr. Collins. We’re doing some in-flight research on the counterfeit cases and my phone was lost at sea. Could you forward the records to this number?”
“All of them?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“It will take a few minutes to compile them. Expect them in about ten minutes.”
“Thank you, Miss Chiff.” He disco
nnected and handed the phone back to Sylvia. “Watch for it.” She nodded, keeping the phone in her hand as she grabbed another French fry.
I didn’t want to wait ten minutes. “Let’s see what we can pull from memory. We need some place to write it down.” I remembered the last time I was on the CURDS1, when Agnes and Avis were working on their wedding plans. “Avis, is that white board still on the plane?”
“I think so. Aggie, where did we put that?” They got up to look around. After a quick spin around the upper deck they went down the stairs. I followed them. “We were done with it, but too lazy to take it back to HQ. Let’s see…there it is!” She spotted it, tucked between the inner wall and their special double seat. On the board was a list of flowers in purple ink and song titles in red ink. The lists were numbered, but had arrows indicating movement between some of the items, and a couple of them had been crossed out. On the floor was a white cloth that had been used as an eraser. Agnes picked it up and while they both held the board up in front of them Agnes used the cloth to erase the lists entirely. “Where did the pens go?”
“I’ll use Sylvia’s knife to carve it in if I have to,” I suggested.
After a little more scrounging, the purple pen was found near the back wall. “Oh, that’s right. Harelip was using it as a cat toy,” said Agnes. In fact, Harelip had nearly beaten her to it. The cat swatted playfully to try to knock it out of her hand and she raised it defensively out of Harelip’s reach. Before, the twins had sat in their double seat with the board on their laps, but with everyone wanting to see, we took it upstairs, cleared the table of the dinner trash, and laid it flat.
I took the pen, and in the top left corner I put the number one and a period. “Okay, it started at the Museum of Natural History in D.C.,” I said, writing the name of the location after the number.
Sir Haughty said, “It was fake moon rocks. Made of Sage Derby, also known as Green Cheese.” He pronounced it as if was spelled DARBY.
I marked that down underneath the name of the museum, and the city.
