Her hair was shoulder-length and blond. Her eyes were an enticingly lovely shade of blue-gray. She picked up her glass of wine, sipped it, and put it down.
“I hope your advice is better.”
“Can’t be much worse,” I said. “People don’t come here for the wine.”
She nodded and looked me over with sultry, half-lidded eyes.
“I was told you’re a brilliant engineer, Mr. Buckston,” she said. “Especially with Orishen technology.”
I turned my head left and right to take in the entire casino—I’d programmed it all.
“I know my way around mutable technology.”
She put her hand on top of mine, which was resting on the bar next to a cleaning rag.
“Clearly,” she said, taking in the casino’s details. “I need your help, Mr. Buckston.”
Her words were soft and breathy. She had a little-girl-lost sort of voice that pushed all my knight in shining armor buttons. They had the honeyed promise of a woman who knows what she wants from a man and how to get it. I leaned closer, ostensibly to hear her better, but really because I was drawn to her like an iron bar to a neodymium magnet. Parts of my anatomy were starting to behave like an iron bar, too. I didn’t know how to react.
“H-h-how can I help you, Miss?”
It was funny—I wasn’t sure why I used Miss instead of Ms. but suspected it was because of my exotic and exciting visitor’s 1940’s style outfit. The more modern term of address would have been an anachronism, given the music playing on the jukebox. Besides, I liked playing Humphrey Bogart playing Rick Blaine, or maybe Sam Spade. I hadn’t decided yet whether this was Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon. She’d let me know if this was a mystery or an adventure story soon. I just had to be patient.
“You can call me Rosalind,” she said.
I played the syllables of her name over and over in my brain, savoring them, enjoying the sensuous way they sounded as my tongue traced them.
“Hello, Rosalind,” I said, stretching out her name. “Call me Jack.”
“Jack,” she said.
That single word from her lips had my heart pounding like a thousand thundering hooves in an ubercow stampede.
* * * * *
“She had you wrapped around her little finger,” said Poly.
I shook my head ruefully.
“Yep,” I said. “She had me when she picked that song on the jukebox.”
“You were young and innocent.”
“And stupid for falling in love at first sight.”
Poly laughed. “So true.”
“Don’t rub it in,” I said. “Now where was I?”
“She was going to tell you what you could do for her.”
“Right.”
* * * * *
“Jack,” said Rosalind, “I’m a damsel in distress.”
“How can I help?”
Little puddles of metaphorical drool were pooling on the bar.
“I came to Orish with my brother,” said the woman. “He was taking me on the Grand Tour, visiting Orish and Dauush and Nicós and Tigram and Pyr.”
I moved my chin up and down in response.
“Orish was our first stop. I didn’t realize that my brother had an ulterior motive for the trip. He was smuggling milkweed pods and Monarch butterfly eggs to a drug dealer in Mulbiri City.”
Ouch. This was as bad as smuggling raw opium into New York. Monarch butterfly larvae—the black, white and yellow worms that change into Earth’s best known butterflies—are not just a delicacy on Orish, where the Orishens love their bitter flavor. When roasted, they’re also highly addictive and induce euphoria, lassitude, and in high doses, coma and death. Viable eggs and milkweed pods were worth millions of galcreds on Orish.
“Are you in trouble with the law, Rosalind?”
“No, no, nothing like that,” she said. “I need to rescue my brother from the dealer’s headquarters.”
“You want me to help you break into a drug dealer’s headquarters and get your brother out?”
“No.” She paused. “I want you to make me a tool that will help me break in.”
“Huh?”
My mystery woman leaned close, her lips just inches from my ear.
“Jack,” she said, her voice a husky whisper. “Can you make me a mutakey?”
Chapter 11
“Who is going to believe a con artist? Everyone, if she is good.”
— Andy Griffith
“What did you say?” asked Poly.
“What’s a mutakey?”
Poly whapped my shoulder with the heel of her hand.
“No, really. That’s what I said.”
“You were falling hard,” said Poly. “How old was she?”
I shrugged, not knowing for sure and not understanding why it mattered.
“Around our age, I guess.”
“Hmmmm…”
Poly looked thoughtful, then smiled a mischievous, schadenfreude-inspired smile. I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about her glee at my discomfort.
* * * * *
“A mutakey,” said Rosalind, “is a key that adapts to open any lock.”
“Like a skeleton key?”
“Only more so. It opens any lock, not just ones of a given size or style. I don’t know what I’m going to encounter when I try to rescue my brother, so I need something that will open anything.”
“What about combination locks?” I said. “Or locks with biometric components?”
“Those, too,” said Rosalind. “The drug dealer’s security could be basic or highly sophisticated.”
“You don’t want much, do you?”
Rosalind pulled away from me and started to get up from her seat.
“I was told you were brilliant, Mr. Buckston,” she said, “but if you can’t help me…”
“Sit down,” I said, catching her arm. “I didn’t say I couldn’t do it. I’m just trying to understand what you need.”
“Thank you, Jack,” she said, reducing our interpersonal distance from feet back to inches.
“How long do I have to build this mutakey?”
“Three days,” said Rosalind. “After that, the drug dealer said he’d start releasing my brother to me one body part at a time.”
“Three days? I was afraid you’d want it fabricated overnight.”
“Do you think you could make it overnight?” she said, batting her eyes at me. “I don’t want my brother held captive any longer than necessary.”
My brain was already racing, trying to figure out what it would take to design and build what she wanted. I still noticed what she was doing with her eyes, though, and sensed my rational brain retreating and my lizard brain responding.
“Ummm,” I said. “Probably not. Difficult I could do overnight. Impossible takes a minimum of three days.”
“I knew I could count on you, Jack.”
I could hear the unspoken phrase “You’re my hero!” in my head, even if she didn’t actually say it. Then I saw her glance shift to notice a bowl of salted borsum nuts near the end of the bar. I slid it down to her. She took a generous handful.
“You hungry?”
She nodded, her mouth half full of nuts.
“Be right back.”
I stepped into the small kitchen I’d configured behind the casino’s bar and whipped up one of my impoverished grad student specials for her. It was a cone made from the local equivalent of ramen noodles standing up like a wizard’s hat on top of a mound of marble-sized golden protein balls milked from an aphid-like Orishen life form, garnished with green, yellow and red crunchy Orishen vegetables and finished off with a dollop of spicy dark gravy.
Rosalind’s face lit up when I brought
the dish out and put it in front of her. She leaned down and inhaled the steam coming off the concoction while I got her a napkin, a spoon and a pair of tongs with integrated cutting blades. I watched her eat like she hadn’t had a meal in days. Perhaps she hadn’t. I love it when people enjoy my cooking. When the plate was clean, I indicated that Rosalind had a bit of gravy left on the side of her mouth. She licked it off with a sensuous flick of her tongue and sighed, contentedly.
“Thanks, Jack. That was delicious.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I lost all my luggage and money when the drug dealer captured my brother, so it’s been a challenge getting by.”
“Wait. Does that mean you don’t have a place to sleep tonight?”
“Yes. I was going to sleep in the university library. I expect they have padded benches.”
I looked at Rosalind, shocked at the prospect.
“Or, if you don’t mind, I could sleep in your back room or on one of the craps tables.”
“You can’t sleep here,” I said.
That didn’t come out right.
“Sorry. I’ll be on my way.”
She got up from her barstool again.
“No, I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that this place changes back into a classroom in a few hours.”
“Oh,” said Rosalind.
She sat down again and leaned close.
“If you don’t mind a hard futon,” I said, “you can stay with me.”
She patted my hand and whispered in a husky voice, “That would be wonderful. I promise I won’t be any trouble.”
* * * * *
I had to stop my story for a minute to deal with Poly. She was laughing, and I was pretty sure it was at me, not with me.
I loaded the heavy ammunition and glared at her. She kept laughing and looked like she was going to completely lose it. I tried to keep my dignity and maintain my glare, but couldn’t manage it. My frown inverted and I started laughing, too.
“Lord, what fools these mortals be!” said Poly.
“This fool, anyway,” I said.
Poly got more control over herself and squelched her laughter, though whenever I looked at her sideways I could see more giggles ready to escape out of the upturned corners of her mouth. I kissed her to distract her, and it helped.
“I have an excuse,” I said. “I didn’t date much when I was younger.”
“Much?” said Poly.
“Okay. At all,” I admitted.
“Rosalind was your first girlfriend?”
“Uh huh.”
“And first lover?”
I didn’t answer. I was too embarrassed.
“I’ll take your non-response as confirmation.”
It didn’t matter what I said—my red face gave me away.
“She broke my heart.”
“You only knew her for three days.”
“Yes, but for me it felt like three years. I threw myself into being in love with her.”
“No defenses?”
“None. I haven’t allowed myself to love anyone else since—until now.”
Poly hugged me. I needed that hug. I kept talking.
“Whatever I do, I tend to go all in.”
“I noticed,” said Poly, gently.
“Rosalind hurt me—really hurt me. I’d never felt pain like that before.”
Poly’s words were like another hug.
“I’m so sorry.”
I could feel an old familiar anger returning to my voice.
“She didn’t just destroy me emotionally—she hit me where I was most vulnerable.”
“In your invincible self-confidence.”
“Uh huh,” I said. I lowered my eyes.
“So you weren’t just hurt—you were ashamed.”
“I still am,” I said. “I hate to think about it, let alone talk about it.”
“When did your mojo come back?”
“It didn’t,” I said. “I’m a lot less self-confident now than I was five years ago.”
Poly tilted her head and looked at me thoughtfully.
“If you were more self-confident when you met her, maybe Rosalind did you a favor.”
“If you say so,” I said, feeling like my ego had just been punctured and reassured.
“How did the rest of it go down? As if I didn’t know.”
“We went back to my place.”
“Were you a gentleman?”
“Of course. I made up my futon bed for Rosalind, gave her one of my sweat suits for pajamas, and inflated a double air mattress on the floor for me.”
“I bet you didn’t sleep alone that night.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “I couldn’t get to sleep, and Rosalind couldn’t either. She crawled in next to me, told me she was scared, and asked me to hold her.”
“And she wasn’t wearing the lower half of her sweat suit when she joined you, right?”
“Uh huh.”
My face felt warm.
“And did you?” asked Poly. More giggles looked ready to leak out.
“Did I what?”
“Hold her.”
“Ummm…”
“Asked and answered. I hope you had a good time?”
“Oh, yeah! It was…”
In mid-sentence I realized that it wasn’t appropriate to show so much enthusiasm in front of Poly and closed my mouth. Her expression told me she respected the fact that I was a gentleman and didn’t kiss and tell. She gave me a hug.
“Then the moon went behind a cloud?” suggested Poly.
“Well,” I said, “it was Orish, and it has three moons, so at least one of them was probably behind a cloud. I didn’t notice.”
Poly gave my shoulder a soft punch.
“Did you get any sleep that night?”
“I don’t think so. And I missed the next three days of classes and didn’t open my casino at night, either.”
“Because you’d hit the jackpot?”
“Something like that.”
“Maybe Rosalind was hitting the jackpot,” grinned Poly, “and hitting it and hitting it and…”
“Enough already. It was hard enough concentrating on making the mutakey with her around.”
“I’ll bet it was hard enough,” said Poly. She ran her hand along my leg.
“Stop that,” I said. Poly was delightfully distracting. “Do you want to hear the rest of this story or not?”
“Okay, sorry. Moons kept going behind clouds and you kept working on the design with lots of incentives provided by Rosalind, right?”
“That’s accurate. I finished it in two and a half days.”
“The fabrication or the incentives?”
“Both, unfortunately,” I said.
“Poor baby. Then what happened.”
“She took the mutakey, kissed me goodbye, and started out the door.”
“And then,” said Poly, pausing for effect, “you volunteered to help her rescue her brother.”
“Uh huh,” I said.
“Did you get any scars in the process?”
“None that show.”
“How bad was it?”
“Bad. I got suckered, but good.”
“I’ll bet you got…”
“Hey! Let me get through this without any more snide remarks, please.”
“No promises,” said Poly.
I gave her two seconds of insincere glare, kissed the tip of her nose, and continued.
* * * * *
“It was late,” I said, “and Rosalind had me rent a large, black Orishen transport van downtown. We drove to one of the hypermarts with a Terran section and picked up a
couple of black sweat suits, black athletic shoes, a pair of thick black tights, and some scissors. I went out to the van to change and Rosalind joined me a few minutes later, carrying two large, opaque shopping bags. She put on her sweat suit and used the scissors to cut the feet off the tights so we could use them as masks.”
“What do we have to do?” I asked. “Rob a bank?”
“Something like that,” she said.
Rosalind reached into the bag and handed me a squeeze bottle of dishwashing liquid.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked, tucking the bottle into a large pocket in the sweat suit’s jacket.
“If we run into any guards, squirt it on their spiracles,” she said. “It screws up their breathing.”
“That might work for nymphs, but what about adults?”
Orishen nymphs stood upright and looked like praying mantises with razor-sharp forearms. Their spiracles were easy to reach. Adults were like giant, armored centipedes. Their breathing mechanisms were low to the ground and well-protected.
“Squirt it at their feet,” said Rosalind. “They’ll lose any sense of coordination.”
I nodded. It might work. I hoped I wouldn’t have to test it empirically.
My personal femme fatale directed me to the warehouse district near the spaceport and I guided the rented van past row after row of ziggurat-shaped buildings that looked something like melted Mayan temples. Orishens went in for ramps, not stairs, and the buildings’ exteriors formed square spiral ramps on the outside that were likely matched by an equivalent set of ramps on the inside. When Rosalind gave me a signal I had the van park at a sheltered loading dock for a warehouse that seemed to be abandoned. We got out.
“It doesn’t look like this place has been occupied in a decade,” I said, looking around.
Rosalind focused her attention further along the street.
“This isn’t where we’re going,” she said. “This is just where we’re parking. The drug dealer’s warehouse is the jade green one, two buildings down.” She motioned with her hand, indicating the building in question.
Xenotech What Happens: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 3) Page 9
