Sanders’ voice grew hard. “Harebungler, you have no idea what’s really going on in the Universe. Nothing is as it seems. Nobody can be trusted. What you think is merely random chance has actually been a carefully orchestrated plot initiated by—wait, are you alone?”
Ian looked around. John was still inside, making a token effort to clean the apartment. The balcony, which was screened in by a thick chain-link fence with “HIGH VOLTAGE” signs, had only an impressively-sized barbecue grill. All the nearby balconies appeared to be deserted. It was just Ian and the Twiller.
“Yes, Colonel, it’s just me.”
“Good, I had almost forgotten security protocols and ruined the entire mission. That was careless of me. I’ll have to self-administer another round of electroshock therapy.”
“Wait,” said Ian. “Get back to the part where I get to come home.”
Ian had the distinct sense that Sanders was looking to either side to ensure no one was listening before he continued. “Right. I like your focus, son.”
“Why do you keep calling me ‘son’?”
“Um, it’s your code name,” Sanders said after only the shortest of pauses. “Yeah, code name. Now, do you want to get back to Earth or don’t you?”
“I do, Colonel.”
“That’s better. Now, I will be piloting the shuttle to come pick you up at the safe zone closest to your current location. The pickup will be—”
“Wait, you have a shuttle? Where did you get a shuttle?”
“I’m afraid that information is classified, Harebungler. Let’s just say that, in a $3.8-trillion-dollar budget, it’s easy for some funding for the NETSA to slip through the cracks. Nobody knows where it’s all going. A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” He cleared his throat. “Now, as I was saying, the pickup will be at nineteen hundred hours tomorrow.”
“That’s seven o’clock, right? Seven at night?”
Sanders sighed, and muttered something about missing working with “professionals.” “Yes, Harebungler. That’s correct. But before I can pick you up, I’m afraid there is one final task you need to complete, one final piece of cargo we will need in order to succeed in our mission.”
“What?” asked Ian. “What is it?”
“Near the extraction point, you will see a single-story building with a white-and-red striped awning. From this building you must obtain …” Sanders paused, as if nervous to continue, “… a large bucket combo meal with extra biscuits.”
“Wait, you want me to pick up dinner?”
“It’s a long flight home,” Sanders almost whined. “And it will be dinnertime.”
“Fine,” sighed Ian.
“Great!” replied the colonel enthusiastically. “Then I will see you at the extraction point at nineteen hundred.”
“Wait!” cried Ian, “Where’s the extraction point?”
Sanders scoffed. “The extraction point is … far too highly classified for me to reveal. I thought I had explained to you, Harebungler, that the level of secrecy required for this mission is so complete, I had to kill my own cat yesterday after she overheard which toppings I ordered on a pizza I intended to eat while I worked on the mission.”
“What? That doesn’t even make any sense.”
“I know it, son, Mrs. Buttons shouldn’t have even been in the kitchen at seventeen hundred hours, she doesn’t get fed until eighteen hundred, on the dot.” Sanders’s voice cracked a bit. “She was a fine feline solider. But I couldn’t risk the possible leak.”
Ian resolved to ignore the crazy story and the twelve million questions he wanted to ask. Focus, Harebungler, he thought furiously to himself. And stop calling yourself by your last name like the crazy colonel does.
“Colonel,” said Ian, trying to wrest the conversation back under some semblance of control, “I need to know the extraction point. So I can, you know, be there to get extracted.”
“If only it were that simple, son. But it’s too dangerous. The consequences if the information were to fall into the wrong hands would simply be too—”
“Dammit, Colonel,” Ian snapped, causing the Twiller to recoil from him, “now you listen to me. I’m the only one with the information you need, and you’re gonna tell me the exact spot that shuttle is touching down tomorrow or I’ll blow the whole operation.” There was a sharp intake of breath from the other end of the line. “That’s right, Sanders, I’ll go public. I’ll tell the press, I’ll tell the tabloids, I’ll tell so many people the only person in the galaxy who won’t know is you. So ‘classify’ that!”
“Tw–will,” agreed the Twiller emphatically, just out of range for Sanders to hear.
Sanders didn’t speak for several seconds. “Very well, Harebungler, you leave me no choice. As of this moment, you are officially working for the NETSA. You’re not a civilian anymore. You are Private Harebungler. Your call sign will be Extra Crispy.”
“The extraction point, Colonel?”
“Right. The extraction point will be at the center of a small island at the southernmost end of a long string of islands. It is called Westerly Key.”
“Westerly Key,” Ian repeated, thinking back to the bar at Flanny Gan’s. The top of the bar had been decorated with nautical maps, and he vaguely remembered seeing that name on one of them. “I think I can find that.”
“Good,” said the colonel. “Don’t let me down, Private, the fate of the planet is at stake. The whole planet,” he added unnecessarily.
“Wait, Colonel, there’s just one more thing that’s been bothering me.”
“Yes, Private?”
“What does NETSA stand for?”
There was a sudden intake of breath from the other end of the line, and the colonel paused for a half-second too long. “Y–you know that’s classified,” he said quickly, trying to recover.
“Wait, you don’t actually know what it stands for, do you, Colonel?”
The Colonel grumbled into the phone. “Just be at the extraction point at nineteen hundred.”
“Fine.”
“And don’t forget dinner,” Sanders said, and hung up.
. . . . .
Ian had wanted to head out immediately, but John had reminded him that it was unsafe to travel at night due to the “slight mosquito problem,” as he had phrased it. So Ian had reluctantly settled in for the night, waking at first light in order to get on his way. He finally had a way to get home, and he didn’t intend to miss it.
He left the apartment without waking John, headed down to the lobby, and nervously opened the door to find no trace of mosquitoes, but even the early morning sun beat down on him mercilessly. He enjoyed one last moment of air-conditioning, then hurried outside to look for some way to get to Westerly Key.
After walking about two blocks, Ian slumped against a wall underneath a metal overhang that provided shade, although it appeared to be slowly melting. He looked to the Twiller, gasping for breath. “Any ideas?” he asked.
“Twill,” his friend replied affirmatively, and it motioned its body back toward the sidewalk.
“I think I just need a few more minutes before I can head out there again,” Ian complained.
“Twill twill,” came the agitated response. It tried tilting its head, bobbing back and forth, and anything else it could think of to get its message across to Ian. Sighing, it took a deep breath and shot out into the scorching sunlight, zipped over to a nearby bus stop advertisement and bobbed about excitedly, then flew back under the shade as quickly as it could. Small wisps of smoke rose from its fragile yellow body, which appeared to be charred black in places.
“I got it!” shouted Ian. “Look at that ad by the bus stop you were trying to get to—it’s for a car rental company. Forget the bus, that could take forever. I’ll rent a car and drive us down there!”
The Twiller briefly considered subjecting Ian to all manners of violence. But instead, it took a deep, steadying breath, and just said, “Twill.”
> “Hey, don’t worry, your idea was pretty good too,” Ian said in an effort to console it. “Come on, we can probably make it to that phone booth a few doors down.”
Ian picked up a newspaper that lay at his feet, opening it above his head to protect himself from the sun. He held out his elbow to help shield the Twiller from further roasting, and rushed toward the phone booth.
Halfway there, the newspaper burst into flames in Ian’s hands, and he threw it aside and dove into the phone booth, singeing his arm where it struck the superheated metal on the outside. He stifled a curse and picked up the phone, dialing the toll-free number from the bus stop ad.
“Tropical Car Rentals,” answered an absurdly pleasant voice from the other end of the phone, “Can I help you?”
“Yes, please,” Ian replied. “I’m in need of a car rental for the day. A compact car,” he added.
“Very good, sir,” replied the melodious voice, in a tone so airy and soothing Ian felt instantly at ease with the lovely creature on the other end of the line. “One compact car for today,” it repeated. “Would you like us to pick you up?”
“Yes, yes, I think that would be best,” Ian agreed. He checked his credit chit, which showed ten thousand bucks, hopefully enough to rent a car for a single day. “Um, how much will that cost?” he asked, wincing in preparation of the answer.
“That will be twenty-four bucks for unlimited mileage,” the lovely voice replied, and Ian let out a long breath. “Plus another three bucks if you would like a GPS unit included.”
“Twenty-seven bucks, that’s great. Yes, let’s do that please. Can you come pick me up here?”
“Of course, sir, we have the location of the phone you’re calling from and your car should be there shortly.”
“Oh, one other thing,” Ian added, glancing at the pair of suns visible in the sky, “I’ll need a car with air conditioning.”
“A wise choice, sir,” replied the voice reassuringly. “Adding in the air conditioning option, that will come to … nine thousand, eight hundred and fifty bucks.”
“Wait, what?” Ian asked. “What happened to twenty-seven?”
“Air conditioning up-charge. It’s a popular feature,” the sing-song voice replied, pleasantly enough to make Ian see how reasonable it all was.
“Great,” said Ian. As long as he could get the car, he shouldn’t need any more money anyway. “Air conditioning it is.”
“Very good, sir,” replied the silken voice.
A sudden thought stuck Ian. “Wait, will it come with a full tank of gas?”
The receptionist laughed a laugh so heavenly it sent tingles of joy up and down Ian’s spine. “Cars here haven’t used gasoline for centuries. With all the sunlight here, all they require is a battery and a tiny solar cell fitted to the roof. You won’t have to worry about it,” she reassured him.
“Great, that’s great,” said Ian.
“Enjoy your trip, Mr. Harebungler, and thank you for choosing Tropical Car Rentals.”
“Thank you, and you have a lovely day,” Ian replied cheerfully.
“Certainly, sir,” the wonderful voice replied, and Ian hung up with a smile.
. . . . .
The hideous, vile, troll-like creature on the other end of the line hung up the phone and cast its single, slime-encrusted eye about the dark confines of its cavern. Countless creatures like itself jabbered away on phones, chained solidly to the rocky ground by laser-welded shackles that could never be removed. It sensed more than saw a movement in the dark, and a long, pus-infected tongue lashed out and scraped a maggot off the floor. It rubbed its misshapen, glistening belly with a scaly claw, and let out a gentle sigh so gloriously melodious, any listener would have mistaken it for the song of an angel.
The phone rang, and the creature picked it up and rested it against a festering boil on its shoulder. “Tropical Car Rentals,” it cooed with a voice of pure ambrosia and honey. “Can I help you?”
. . . . .
The rental car arrived promptly, and Ian gratefully dashed inside and turned the air conditioning to maximum. So happy was Ian to feel the cool air on his sunburned skin, that he hardly even noticed that the car had mysteriously arrived with no driver. He wasn’t even bothered by the tiny size of the car, which was “compact” indeed. But there was just enough room for one person, and fortunately the Twiller took up hardly any room at all.
Ian checked the GPS and plugged in his destination on the small island of Westerly Key. The GPS informed him that it was a four-hour drive, and Ian checked the clock to see that it was barely seven o’clock in the morning, which should leave him plenty of time to spare.
Ian quickly familiarized himself with the controls, which consisted of a joystick and throttle lever almost exactly like those on his favorite race-car game at the arcade. He pulled out into the sparse early-morning traffic and headed for the freeway.
“I can hardly believe it, Twill,” he said cheerfully. “Finally, I’ll be able to go home. Not that I wasn’t glad to have met you, of course,” he added hastily. “But, I just want to get back to my own planet. You understand, don’t you?”
“Twill,” replied the tiny creature in a voice full of conviction. For a brief moment, Ian wondered where the Twiller was from, or if it would be able to get back there. But the moment quickly passed. Ian resolved to just concentrate on getting to the rendezvous and getting home first, and he could figure out what to do with the Twiller later. He could always keep it as a pet, back on Earth.
Ian merged onto the freeway and headed south. The traffic was still light, but began to pick up as the morning got later. A sporty, bright orange hovercycle sped past, weaving between cars, bringing back memories of the driver on WMD. Ian hoped the crazy driver was just an aberration.
Almost as if on cue, the car to Ian’s left drifted into Ian’s lane, forcing Ian to slam on the brakes to avoid an accident. He angrily pulled into the left lane and sped up alongside the weaving driver, and looked inside the other vehicle to see the driver predictably gabbing away on its cell phone, gesticulating wildly with several sets of tentacles, none of which appeared to be holding the steering joystick. Ian sighed and sped up to get away from the distracted driver.
Now more aware of the other drivers, Ian looked at several of the creatures that he passed. One casually read a newspaper that was fully stretched across its field of vision. Another had a computer monitor set up on its dashboard, and was busily typing emails or text messages with both hands on a full keyboard jutting out from just above the joystick. A third driver had somehow turned its entire windshield into a large video screen, and was eating popcorn and laughing with the other aliens in its car. The driver directly behind Ian leaned its head back against the headrest, some form of virtual reality goggles completely covering its eyes. A final driver waved at Ian as it applied its makeup in the overhead mirror, and then began inserting contact lenses into its eyes. Ian’s mouth gaped open in horror, and he focused intently on the road.
A loud crash startled Ian, and he turned just in time to see a cloud of smoke above a pair of cars that had slammed together and skidded into the guardrail by the rightmost lane. He hit his brakes as most of the cars nearby slowed almost to a stop, and a head attached to a long, flexible neck emerged from the window of the car in front of him, stretching over the car and swiveling back to look at the accident.
Ian blinked twice at the sight, and the alien head briefly locked eyes with Ian, flashing him a friendly wink before it retreated back inside its car and it slowly sped up again.
Ian gripped the wheel more tightly, terrified of the horrendous drivers and fearful that it was only a matter of time before one of them crashed into him and caused him to be late for his scheduled pickup. He looked to the other cars that surrounded him, no longer fellow travelers, but instead adversaries to be avoided. Because if one of them hit him, it was game over as far as Ian was concerned.
An unexpected thought struck Ian and a slow smile creased his
lips as he made a sudden decision. While Ian was short, and mostly bald, not very attractive, one of the weakest men he knew, terrible at any sport he had ever tried, slow in a race, ungraceful, and generally not very physically fit, he was quite good at one thing. One thing he had perfected through years of practice, long hours spent indoors out of necessity when the neighborhood kids had not only picked everyone else for their sports teams before Ian, but had also started picking inanimate objects like rocks and blades of grass until Ian had given up and retreated home.
So, instead of playing football or baseball or running around outside, Ian had focused his energy on becoming very, very good at one thing: video games.
Ian curled his fingers around the joystick, memories of racing games and car rally games and demolition derby games and stunt driving games playing in his head. With his other hand, he gripped the throttle lever and inhaled deeply.
“You may want to hold on to something, Twill,” he said calmly.
With a practiced grace borne of years of muscle memory, Ian slid the handle forward as far as it could go. The car rocketed ahead, and Ian weaved between the other cars, nothing but slow-moving obstacles in a video game now. He caught up to and flashed past the weaving orange hovercycle so fast it hardly saw the blur.
“Twill,” whistled the Twiller as it cowered in the ashtray, its eyes wide. It watched the landscape speed past the windows for a few moments, then shut its eyes tight and wedged itself further into its little foxhole, terrified, yet impressed with Ian for the first time.
* * * * *
Part XIV
An hour or so later, the car slowed and the Twiller cautiously emerged from the ashtray, blinking its eyes against the sunlight. Ian was breathing heavily, but the car had slowed to a modest pace, and Ian gently released his grip on the joystick and rubbed his hands. He flashed the Twiller a nervous smile.
“Not bad, eh?” he asked.
“Twill,” replied the Twiller enthusiastically. The GPS showed them over halfway to their destination already; in fact, they had just entered the string of narrow islands that jutted south from the main peninsula. Here, the road was reduced to one lane in either direction, and the small islands were linked by a series of bridges. There was some traffic, so Ian had been forced to slow down to a much more plodding speed—there was only so much weaving he could do in a single lane. Ian craned his neck to see that the oncoming lane was dotted with a fair number of cars for as far as he could see.
The Twiller Page 17
