“You planning on grilling us some steaks to make up for the ones we didn’t get tonight?”
“No,” I said, “this isn’t for cooking. It’s a safety net.”
“Do tell?”
“There are times when I’m working up in the plenum—the ceiling in a two-story office building lobby, for example, where falling would be particularly painful.”
“I can appreciate that,” said Poly. “Falling, for you, would be dangerous.”
“Use of commas noted,” I said, smiling and admiring Poly’s clever flirting. “This stuff is instant Peter Parker web fluid. I just spray it back and forth from wall to wall about six feet up and it makes a temporary net to catch me if I fall. It completely dissolves in 3-4 hours or sooner if you hit it with a special solvent.” I squirted a tiny sample of webbing on the dining room table. Poly ran her fingers over the threads, then over the second sample.
“They’re the same.”
“It figures,” I said. “The Orishen pupa was planted.”
“But who would… ?”
Then the doorbell rang. Mike must be here.
“Open,” I said. My cell phone heard me and instructed the front door to obey. Mike was standing there with a canvas bag in one hand and a Zesto’s milkshake in the other.
“Welcome.” I pointed at the milkshake. “That explains your delay.”
“Great minds think alike,” said Poly, giving Mike a quick hug. “We just had chocolate dipped cones.”
“You missed a spot,” I said to Poly, indicating a place high on her left cheekbone. I must have overlooked it earlier in all the excitement. She rubbed the edge of her palm in the general direction. I reached over with a finger, detached the errant bit of chocolate and licked it off. “Got it.” I said. If this was flirting I could grow to like it.
She smiled and looked at Mike’s bag. “Is that the rabbot?”
Mike reached into the canvas bag and pulled a deactivated rabbot out by the ears like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. “Yep,” he said, “I had plenty to choose from.”
“Thanks for coming over and bringing one,” I said.
“Seconded,” said Poly. “We want to know what happens to what they eat.”
“It doesn’t turn into rabbot pellets and get recycled to feed the grass in the eternal circle of life?” said Mike.
“Not that we can tell,” I said. “Organic matter goes in, but nothing comes out.”
“No shit?” said Mike.
“Exactly,” said Poly. We both gave Mike the honor of a disgusted-face pun salute.
I moved the pupa case off the dining room table and put it gently on the dining room floor out of the way. Mike put the rabbot in the middle of the table where the light was best. I went to the front door, snagged my backpack tool bag and put it in a convenient location on one of the dining room set’s matching chairs.
“Mike, do you have the plans for fabbing the rabbots handy?” I said.
He pulled his tablet from his pocket and unfolded it to full size. “Sure,” he said. The plans appeared on his tablet’s screen.
“Cute,” said Poly.
“What’s cute?” I asked.
“You pull the rabbot’s tail to disengage the outer fur covering from the chassis,” she said. There’s something special about a woman who can read Dauushan.
“Want to do the honors?” I said.
“Don’t mind if I do,” said Poly. She tugged on the rabbot’s pink powder-puff tail until we all heard a “pop” sound then turned the unit on its back and “skinned” it along a line in its fur that had opened from butt to chin. She put the fur covering off to the side out of the way and all three of us stared at the rabbot’s metallic skeleton and cybernetic musculature.
“Check it out,” said Mike, pointing to the rabbot’s midsection. “It’s got another pair of legs.”
I looked and sure enough a small pair of almost vestigial legs were in the middle of its torso. “Whoever sold this design to Jean-Jacques really cut corners,” I said. “It didn’t eliminate the original design’s six legs, it just hid the middle pair.”
“Wouldn’t the middle pair be more like arms?” said Poly. She sounded up to something.
“I guess so,” I said, “I don’t expect it walked on them.”
“So to hide them in the revised plans the designer just executed a disarming comment in the code?” she said.
“Comments aren’t executed, by definition,” said Mike.
“I’ll execute you both.”
“Threats,” said Poly.
“But no follow through,” said Mike.
Now they were ganging up on me.
I pulled a screwdriver from my tool kit. “Time to take this little buddy apart,” I said.
“He’ll dissemble, then disassemble,” said Poly.
“Enough,” I said. I had to concentrate. I looked at the plans again then used my screwdriver to rotate a screw in the rabbot’s steel breastbone a half a turn to the left. There was a click and the rabbot fell neatly apart down its nose-to-butt line, separating into two clean halves.
“Come take a look at this,” I said. Poly and Mike stood on either side of me and leaned. I used the tip of the screwdriver as a pointer.
“Here are the teeth and there’s the start of the ‘digestive’ system,” I noted, indicating the mouth and throat. “But instead of a stomach there are these sharpened fan blades.” I’d moved the screwdriver’s tip a bit lower. “And below them is…” I began.
“A centimeter-sized congruent gateway,” said Mike.
“So whatever a rabbot eats gets chopped up and goes down a wormhole?” said Poly.
“Looks like it,” I said.
“I feel like we’ve just gone down the rabbot hole,” said Mike.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” said Poly.
“Reddy Bunnies don’t work that way,” said Mike.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Their commercials say they produce fertilizer pellets for greener lawns,” said Mike. Maybe I needed to watch more television. Or not.
“There’s someone I need to show this to right way,” I said. “We’ll see what he has to say.”
“Who is it?” asked Poly.
“One of my security specialist friends,” I said, avoiding being specific. I was thinking about Tomáso Kauuson. I suspected he was more than just the local Dauushan consul from hints he’d given me during our security design work. It was just past eleven—there was a chance he might still be up. I really wanted to talk to him about what we’d found.
“Would you forgive me if I said ‘good night’ and sent you home with Mike?” I asked Poly. “If that’s okay with you, Mike?”
Mike said “Sure, fine, no problem.”
Poly thought for a minute and said, “I’ll forgive you, Jack, if you’ll come to the First Contact Day parade with me on Saturday.”
Wait. Was First Contact Day this Saturday? April 1st? The day after tomorrow? My brain had made tempus fugit fudge. But I had a great answer and phrased it in the form of a question.
“Would you like to have breakfast with me on Saturday morning?” Wait wait wait. That didn’t come out right. Was my face getting red?
“Are you implying something about where you want me to spend Friday night?” said Poly. She didn’t look angry—her eyes danced.
“No, I just meant that you could come over here early for bagels and we could watch the parade from the sixth floor terrace of the Ad Astra residents’ restaurant and have a great view,” I said. “The parade passes right in front of the complex.”
“I’d be glad to come over for bagels,” said Poly. “I’ll even check and see if Pierre and Françoise managed to save what was left of our caviar for me when I stop in to translate menus tomorrow. But I don’t want to watch from an upper floor. I want to be at street level where I can hear all the little kids shouting, smell the popcorn and catch some beads.”
I was glad the First Contact Day p
arade float riders had different attitudes toward throwing beads than the Mardi Gras’ krewes in New Orleans—or maybe not, given Poly’s comment about getting to know me better by seeing the tape of my debacle in the shower before our date. I’d heard from Arragu, my Nicósn friend, that at least the Nicósn corporate floats threw beads because the Dutch bought Manhattan with beads, buttons and other trinkets, but he was a master of making up bull. Still, the Nicósns were up front about their species being exploitive.
“Street level it is,” I said. “I’ve got folding chairs here and we can stake out our spots on Peachtree Street early. The parade starts at ten—could you be here by eight?”
“It’s a date,” she said.
“Ummm,” said Mike. I could see that this conversation was making Mike feel like a third wheel but Poly misinterpreted his intention in a generous attempt to be inclusive.
“Would you like to join us, Mike?” said Poly.
“No, that’s okay,” said Mike. “But thanks. I like to watch the parade on TV in my jammies.”
“In that case,” said Poly. She looked at Mike and sent some sort of telepathic message his way. The message seemed to transfer just fine in that direction.
“I’m going to step out to get some air while you say good night to Jack,” said Mike to Poly. “You can hang on to the canvas bag,” he told me as he closed the front door behind him.
“Alone at last,” said Poly.
“Before you leave,” I said, “could I take some pictures of you?”
“What?”
“I just want to take some pictures of you with my phone.” I said. “It’s for a surprise.”
“O-kaaay,” said Poly, reluctantly. “This isn’t for anything kinky, is it? The pictures won’t end up on Spacebook or Galnet?”
“No, no and no,” I said. “You can trust me.”
“I think I can,” she said. “Go ahead and shoot me.”
I walked around her twice and took a series of still pictures and a 360-degree video of Poly in her lovely green chiton dress. I hoped she’d like my surprise. She stood still, at my request, and was gracious about it.
“Thanks,” I said.
“No problem. Now there’s something I’d like.”
“Anything.”
“A goodnight kiss, to complete a very memorable day.”
“My pleasure.”
“Mine, too.”
And it was.
Chapter 12
“The grass is always greener over the septic tank.” — Irma Bombeck
I’d meant to call Tomáso as soon as Poly had left but it took me a few minutes to pull myself together after we’d said good night and shared a kiss. It was only 11:30, though, so Tomáso might still be up. I called.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hi!” said Terrhi. “How did your date go? Did you have a good time? Did she like the flowers? How did she look?”
In the background I heard Tomáso shout, “Terrhi, give me that phone!”
“But I want to talk to Mr. Jack,” she said.
“What are you doing up so late?” I asked Terrhi.
“There’s no school tomorrow for the extended First Contact Day weekend,” she said.
“Great, yes, very much so, and gorgeous,” I said in answer to Terrhi’s questions.
“Terrhi!” said Tomáso’s basso. I could sense the vibrational change when he must have grabbed his cell phone from Terrhi’s trunks.
I could hear Terrhi say “Spike says ‘hi!’” in the background.
“Jack?” said Tomáso.
“Sorry to interrupt your family time,” I said, “but there’s something I need to show you right away. Do you have a few minutes to see me?”
“The movie we’re watching will be over at midnight,” said Tomáso.
I could hear Terrhi’s high voice saying “It’s Star War’s Episode 8, the best movie ever,” underneath Tomáso’s rumble.
“Would it be okay if I came to see you then?”
“Of course,” said Tomáso. “You can say hello to Terrhi—and Spike—and then she can go to bed.”
I heard Terrhi say, “Yes, Dad!”
I said, “See you at midnight,” and hung up.
That timing gave me half an hour to attend to a few other important details and work on my surprise for Poly. I dug into a cabinet in my projects alcove where I’d kept equipment I’d bought on Orish when I was there for grad school. I found the two devices I needed. One was a machine the size of a personal laser printer that had several large metal needles sticking out of its top. I put it on one end of the dining room table and uploaded the photos and videos I’d taken of Poly into its memory. It already had the relevant numbers it needed for me. The other device was a simple spindle. I expanded it from its collapsed three foot form to its full seven foot length and put it on the floor beneath the first machine. I retrieved the empty Orishen pupa case from nearby and inserted the spindle into it so the case would spin freely. The case was still mostly cylindrical with a jagged opening along one side where the nymph had carved its way out through the seam of weaker, stretchable silk. It took a bit of poking, but I finally found a free end of the stronger silk used to spin the main pupa case and inserted it into the needle-topped machine which would automatically take it from there. It would probably need to run all night, but I’d have what I wanted for Poly, and for me, by late the next morning.
I printed off a full-sized color copy of the best photo I had of Poly wearing her flowers to give to Terrhi, put the rabbot halves and pseudo-fur covering into Mike’s canvas bag and checked the time. I still had a few minutes and knew there was something else I needed to do. Then I remembered—my tub was full of green goo. There were three empty five-gallon containers for my water cooler inside the kitchen door waiting to be picked up and replaced. I filled all three bottles with the green restorative solution in my tub using a siphon pump I’d taken from a Nicósn portable swamp drainer. I’d kept the pump around because I’d heard that garden apartments were prone to flooding. I’d been lucky in that regard so far. Reluctantly, I let the rest of the goo go down the drain. I made a mental note to get the stuff checked out by one of my pharmaceutical clients next week. Then I checked the time. It was almost midnight.
The condominium shared by Tomáso and Terrhi wasn’t far—it was less than a block away and was connected to the offices of the Atlanta Dauushan consulate so that Tomáso didn’t have to go outside to walk from his home to his office. The Dauushans’ first floor condo and consulate complex together took up half a block of frontage on Peachtree Street while the Tōdons’ equivalent spaces took up the other half. Large species need a lot of room. Even so, it took me less than five minutes to walk to the entrance to the condo. After confirming my identity with a retinal scan and receiving Tomáso’s verbal permission, the security A.I. that I’d helped select and install opened the outer door and allowed me to enter. Before I could walk two steps I had to brace myself to fend off a charging Shetland pony-sized Dauushan.
“Mister Jaaaaaack!” said Terrhi, her high pitched voice set at full volume. The collision with the Dauushan girl knocked me back against the door and I had to hold the canvas bag with the dissected rabbot above my head so it didn’t get crushed by her enthusiastic greeting. I saw Spike nonchalantly leaning against the wall at the far end of the entry hall, smirking at me. Tomáso stood next to him and managed to make a space more than half the size of my apartment seem small.
“Hi, Terrhi,” I said, rubbing the spot just above where the three main branches of her trunks came together. Terrhi liked that and pushed back against my hand. “How was the movie?”
“Still amazing,” she said, “and Daddy says I can watch Game of Thrones when I’m older.”
“Much older,” added Tomáso.
Longevity treatments had helped George R. R. Martin continue to write novels in the series and fans were still waiting for the ninth book to be finished. Martin’s literary death toll kept mounting even as vie
wership for the HBO series grew astronomically after Earth joined the Galactic Free Trade Association. The show was a galaxy-wide hit.
“I expect watching will be good training for the daughter of a Galactic diplomat,” I said. Terri’s trunks tugged on my arm in excitement.
“I have presents for you,” she said. The pony-sized girl was bouncing up and down enthusiastically. I stayed a foot or three out of range so I wouldn’t be inadvertently injured.
“I have a present for you, too,” I said.
“Me first, me first,” she said. She reached three of her trunks into a pouch strapped to one of her front legs and removed a package the size of a shoe box, but thinner. It was wrapped in silver foil paper and tied with a pink bow. I graciously accepted the package and unwrapped its contents. Inside were a pair of foot-long razor sharp and menacingly pointy Dauushan tri-sabertooth incisors. They’d make wickedly effective knives.
“Those are two of Spike’s baby teeth,” she said. “You were my knight in shining armor to rescue Spike for me today so I wanted you to have them.”
I was deeply honored. I looked at Tomáso—he was beaming. Spike even nodded his head in approval. I smiled and nodded back acknowledging this gift was also from him. It was clear this gift was really important to Terrhi, her cat and her father.
“Thank you so much,” I said. I was blown away.
“I kept one but gave you two. There’s one for you and maybe one for your new girlfriend,” said Terrhi. “We’ll match.” Her voice made a girlish giggle. She was really looking out for my love life.
“Speaking of Poly,” I said.
“What a nice name,” said Terrhi.
“Here’s a picture of her wearing the flowers you gave her,” I said. I removed the picture I’d printed from the canvas bag and gave it to the Dauushan girl. Sometimes a printed photo is better than sharing a picture on a phone’s screen. Terrhi oooo’d and aaaahh’d and made assorted “how pretty” sounds that I assumed were about both Poly and the flowers. I agreed with both her assessments.
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