by Laer Carroll
After the last she lounged, watching the lake waters and its boats and sipping a soft drink. The breeze off the water was pleasant, the growing crowd of beach goers mildly interesting as the afternoon turned toward evening.
She felt mildly let-down. Adrift. For years she had dreamed of revenge. Now it was behind her. How should she now pilot her life into the future? She had a few weeks of rescue still to do, but then what?
At nearly 6:00 her two friends showed up.
"Little Candy! We thought you were gone!" said Luz.
The monster stood and was engulfed in a three-way hug.
"I am almost gone. I wanted to say Goodbye first. Want something to eat?"
Genie said, "Starving! Where do you want to go?"
"I'd prefer take-out. I have something to discuss."
"Certainly. This place has good take-out."
Each of them ordered, waited for the brown bags of food and drink, and walked back to the women's motel room. They eyed the briefcase she carried but asked no questions. Instead they caught her up on what they were doing at Calderon. They had little to say about their jobs but much to say about their co-workers, much of it humorous.
Inside the room they placed their purses and such on the small round dining room table but took their food in trays to the couch and two easy chairs placed cater-cornered to the couch. Sylvia/Candy took an easy chair.
When they were well begun eating Sylvia got up and walked to the small office desk along one wall. She tore a sheet of paper off a notepad and wrote on it with a motel pen.
She walked back to her easy chair, sat, leaned over to give the note to Luz, who was nearest her on the couch. Then she returned to eating.
Luz read the note, looked up at Sylvia, raised her eyebrows, and passed the note to Genie. Who copied her friend's reading-and-eyebrow-raising.
The note had read Have you swept your room for bugs?
Genie tore up the note and shoved the remnants into one of the paper bags from which she had taken food.
Luz got up meanwhile and took her cell phone from her purse. She punched in a command and walked around the room looking at the face of the phone. She also went into the bathroom and the closets.
Back at the couch she sat and said, "Explain."
"I'm part of an organization that fights sexual slavery. Originally I came here to investigate Calderon. That turned out to be a bust. They're sleazy but they're legal—pretty much. Too low-level for what we fight: kidnapping, torture to create whores, and selling them to the highest bidder."
She was quiet while she ate some food, drank her soft drink, and watched their reactions.
The two women seemed to be taking her story calmly but the monster could tell they were not calm. More—determined, focused.
Luz said, "You sure as Hell fooled us. We bought your story."
Genie said, a bit of heat under her voice, "We were worried about you, even after you led us to believe you were older and more mercenary."
Sylvia grinned. "Two hardened and experience police officers, risking your covers by letting someone get close to you?"
Their gazes intensified. Luz said, "What makes you think we're cops?"
"Things no one else but me would notice. Don't worry, no one else could tell. But I have abilities ordinary humans don't."
She lifted a hand and extended her claws. Time to trust these women. Else they would not trust her.
Almost anyone else would have been jolted. Neither women reacted beyond going into even higher alert.
Sylvia retracted her claws and said, "And that is one of many things that made me guess. Most people would shrink away. Maybe scream. Or pull a gun."
Genie said, "We're InterPolicia SudAmerica . We're investigating Calderon."
Sylvia leaned over and touched the hand Luz was using to hold her drink. The woman gazed steadily back at the monster.
"Are you and Genie telling me the truth?"
"Yes."
"Very well."
Luz said, "That's it? You're taking our word?"
"No. I can tell the truth from—reading—your body." She'd almost said tasting . Not a good choice of words, that would have been.
"What do you want from us?"
Sylvia swapped the tray of food on her lap for the briefcase. She took out of it the two copies of her report, handed them to the women.
"I've found what I was looking for. We went in and cleaned out the place this weekend. We healed the women they had and sent them home, a good deal richer than before. It will help them to recover. Other agents will check on them from time to time. But there are some loose ends we need help with. That's where you come in."
She swapped the briefcase for her food tray and continued eating. The two women began reading the copies, Genie going from the front toward the back, Luz skipping through it to the end.
Sylvia finished her food and took the remnants into the mini-kitchen. She dumped the non-edible trash into the trash can, including the cardboard take-out tray. There was no edible trash. The monster always finished the tiniest scraps of her meals, even those ordinary people would discard.
Back in her chair she waited comfortably for the women to finish reading, her legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles, hands interlaced across her belly.
Luz the skip-reader finished first, sat the report aside, continued eating, gazing interestedly at Sylvia. She looked blandly back.
Genie skipped to the last page, read a bit, sat the report aside, and returned to eating.
Done with her food Genie combined her remnants with Luz's, then stood and went to dispose of the trash.
"So, what next?"
"Next we go to the mansion they used and I turn it over to you. I'll stick around a while, but I'm leaving before anyone else shows up. I have a plane to catch."
They wanted to know where the mansion was. She told them.
"Damn! That's close."
The two women used the rest-room and changed clothes, after locking the two copies the women had been reading into the room's small safe in the closet.
Then all three left the motel room and walked to a battered old brown sedan in the parking lot just outside the room. Sylvia took the back seat .
On the way to the mansion Luz, who was in the front passenger seat, asked Sylvia about her "organization."
"I'll not tell you much. Just this. We're international, have some very special talents on call, like me. Some of us are fighters, some spies, some expert in computers, and so on. I belong to the group which brings sex slavers to justice."
"I have a hard time believing all that."
Sylvia shrugged. She'd say no more. The less said the harder to get tripped up.
At the front gate Sylvia gave them the four-digit security code. The gates swung aside and the three got out of the car when Genie parked it in front of the big house. The same security code disengaged the building alarm.
Luz said, "Not very imaginative: 4321."
Sylvia laughed.
She took them on a brief tour of the first floor of the house, beginning with the security center. She pointed out the key which activated the control console. Then she took them to the basement, on the way describing the use to which the slavers had put it. Despite their professional demeanor neither women could, or would, hide their anger and disgust.
Downstairs in the basement Sylvia let them look at the dozen men.
"They're in a coma. They'll never wake up. IV feeding won't save them. They're programmed to die."
"Pretty harsh," said Genie.
"No better than they deserved," said Luz. "But that means we can't question them. Or put them on trial."
"And they can't dispute Candy's story."
Sylvia grinned. "Don't worry. Their computers will give you plenty of ammunition. Those reports are just backup. Speaking of which, I have other copies which I'll release to the media after giving you suitable time to begin rescuing victims and prosecuting accessories to the slavers. "
The shapechanger just grinned.
Upstairs in the computer room Sylvia gave them passwords to the machines. Then, as both women got on two of the computers the monster phoned a cab company and gave them the address. She also told the company to call her when the cab got to the mansion so she could let the driver through the front gate.
Both women glanced up at the call but went back to the computers.
It was about fifteen minutes or so when she got a call on the mansion land-line phone. She said she'd be right out.
The two women stood.
Luz said, "So, you're leaving now. Will we ever see you again?"
"I doubt it. But there's no way to know. Give me a hug?"
The two policewomen hugged her hard. She hugged back just as hard.
"One last thing," Sylvia said. "I've infected you two with perfect health. You'll never get sick, of anything. You'll heal much faster, think better, be stronger and faster.
"And try not to lose any of your extremities. They'll grow back, very slowly. And cause all sorts of questions."
She grinned at their incredulity and trotted from the room.
At the airport Sylvia retired to the restroom with a brown paper bag. In a stall she dressed in the contents, a dress and low-cut sandals, and placed her tee-shirt, shorts, and bag into a trash can. She changed to her own persona and left the airport in a different taxi which took her to the Victoria hotel.
Chapter 39 - Homecoming
The extravagant but tasteful comfort of her hotel room was like a soothing lotion to her soul. Sylvia walked to the sliding glass door which let her out onto the balcony.
She stood, leaning on the railing, looking at the part of the Falls which she could see from her room. At this distance only a white mist could be seen and a slight hiss could be heard.
She breathed in a deep breath of the night air. It smelled of the forest this high up more than anything else. She identified the odors of vegetation and birds and small forest animals and a dozen other natural scents.
She had done it. She had avenged herself, perhaps not on the same gang which years ago had caused her to be kidnapped and accidentally killed, but close enough. A weight she had not known she had borne was finally gone.
She missed it, a bit. It had given her life a goal, a forward momentum. The rescues still to be done didn't give her that.
Idly she wondered how the dolphins back at SpaceIsland were doing. It would be good to get back to them. The fresh-water lakes and rivers were nice, but the deep, rough, salt sea was more her home.
Home. To her non-human self. As much home as the land was to her airform. And that she thought airform , not Sylvia Connelly , was telling. At her core she was no longer Sylvia, but shapechanger.
What about her warform? It brought to mind moist jungles or deserts with desiccated air, no temperate in-between. From what planet, and from what depths of time, did that come from? Would she ever find out?
Well, she could come up with a project which would let her go into space. She worked for ArgenSpace, and so was half-way there already. Further, she was potentially immortal. She could simply wait a few centuries and she might find out without any effort on her part.
The thought of ArgenSpace called up memories of her friends, of Prinny and Prinny's brother and family, her own brothers and mother and her mother's long-time "boyfriend" Meyer, her niece long cured of her debilitating disease. She should check her emails to see what was happening with them.
As she'd been doing periodically since arriving in the tri-state area she logged into her email account using her slate computer. Most messages were routine. Except for the latest. A voice mail marked Urgent, it was from the Australian-Argentine space pilot Leoni. It was a day old.
Sylvia opened the message. It was in English .
"Hey, girl. I see your latest location update shows you in Iguazú. I hope that means your family visit went off OK and you're finishing up your two weeks vacay sight-seeing. Do you suppose you could end it by coming down here to Mar del Plata? I'd like you to see the Center, meet some of the HQ people. There is also a new project opening up we'd like you to sign up for. Call me!"
The Manufacturing and Launch Center of ArgenSpace was located a couple of hundred miles south of Buenos Aires and a dozen miles north of the large Argentine sea-side city of Mar del Plata. It was on the shores of the lake Laguna mar Chiquita, inland but near the ocean. It had a canal connecting it to the ocean. Completed space ships floated down the canal into the ocean, where they completed final tests and were loaded and launched from a facility just off-shore.
She sent back an email.
I'd love to. I was going to sight-see in BsAs and maybe catch a tango show but I'd be happy to do that some other time. But I can only give you a few days, then I have to leave for a few weeks sabbatical. Best way to get to Center?
A text message came back a quarter hour later.
Hot dog! Bzy now. Dtls later.
Hmm. She was not especially hungry but she could always eat. And a large and expensive late-night dinner could be ordered up till midnight. That was still more than an hour away.
She ordered a dinner for two, then turned on the TV. It came on to the 24-hour Argentine channel "Vida Tango." It was in the middle of a short bio of one of the famous tango composers. When her dinner arrived it was in the middle of a program on the recent winners of the annual Argentine tango championships. One award was for professional show dancing, the other for simpler amateur social dancing. The dancing was quite spectacular, even the social dancing.
Her slate chimed. It was an itinerary with details, sent by the ArgenSpace travel center. It gave her two best choices, one for early tomorrow, the other for the afternoon. She chose the later itinerary and finalized it.
A good night's sleep was followed by a very early swim in the hotel's pool. At this hour she had it all to herself and could put in several laps at a speed at the very edge of what was humanly possible.
An early breakfast at the lavish buffet came next. She could have extra portions and not raise any eyebrows except those of the few attendants. Sylvia left a very generous tip on her table. It would be more memorable than the quantity of food she ate.
The shops inside the hotel opened mid-morning. Sylvia was there shortly thereafter. She needed more than what she carried in her back pack to pull off her Dr. Sylvia Connelly identity. She bought just enough for daily and travel wear and a small pull-along suitcase which would fit into an overhead compartment. She also bought some basic cosmetics and toiletries.
She hung out for a short time at the shop which rented SCUBA gear for those who wanted to spend time in the water at the bottom of las Cataratas , the Falls. That was enough to supply a few authentic details for her story that she had swam there. She could also add details about exploring Lago Eva Perón.
She had a leisurely brunch of well-flavored coffee and Argentine pastries, idly watching the women she had rescued as they came down stairs. Most of them were quite gay and loud, except for the ones hung over, who suffered a good deal of joking from their companions.
Just before noon she packed, checked out via her room computer, and arrived back in the lobby along with other guests who were leaving that day. That included all the women she had rescued except for the two who had left earlier with their six dogs.
Some of the women were burdened with more than just a couple of suitcases. These unlucky spenders gave their more provident companions a lot of laughs. Even the three most emotionally damaged women smiled.
Three buses took everyone the few miles to the airport. "Her" women left on two flights which would connect to several parts of the world. Sylvia watched them board with a pang.
Finally her own flight boarded a little before 2:00.
Goodbye , Iguazú , she thought as she looked out the window during take-off.
Two hours later she was landing at Aeroparque Jorge Newberry near the cen
ter of the huge port city of Buenos Aires where a third of all Argentines lived. A half hour later she boarded an ArgenSpace shuttle aircraft which would take her directly to the ArgenSpace Manufacturing and LaunchCenter.
Coming into ASMLC from the air Sylvia got a good look at the sprawling complex, full of huge buildings with many smaller ones scattered around them. In the middle was a tall modern building which was a combination administrative building and air-traffic control tower.
Off to the side she could see the large lake of Laguna mar Chiquita. Just on the horizon was the Atlantic Ocean. They landed at a short runway which intersected with a long runway in a slanted-L shape .
She retrieved her small pull-along suitcase from a red-jacketed ArgenSpace employee who was taking it from the side of the shuttle aircraft. As she was doing so a space pilot in a blue coverall approached her. A slim dapper young man with olive skin and dark hair and eyes, he held out a hand.
"Dr. Connelly. I'm Joss Biagi. Welcome to the Center."
"Hello, Joss." She shook his hand, read his biology. He was superbly fit, of course. And she read the genetic tag she had placed in him when she boosted his health some time back. "Didn't we meet, hmm, about a year ago on Space Island?"
His dark Italian skin could not visibly flush with pleasure but she read it through his hand. He nodded and smiled.
"I'm to escort you to the Visiting VIP Dormitory, then pick you up at 18:00. Commander Leoni and some of the rest of us are having a little get-together in your honor."
"Sounds like fun."
He led her to a near-by vehicle like a six-seat golf cart but without wheels. Instead four short legs lifted it above two long skis which let it float on paramagnetic fields. He placed her pull-along suitcase in the small rear bin and she placed her cherry-red slate-computer case beside it.
The seats all had seat belts which told her something about the cart's capabilities. Her guesses were soon confirmed when it lifted up about six inches and zoomed off over concrete and grass fast enough to ruffle her hair. Like all the pilots she'd ever known, Joss pushed its envelope.
