For a change, Cornell wasn’t wearing one of his signature suits. He was dressed as casually as Rosalind in jeans and a black Astaire-Way to Heaven t-shirt. Sally was beside him wearing a similar outfit, though it looked better on her.
When he saw us, Cornell reached for a weapon but came up empty. He must keep them in his suits. Sally did a similar double-take, but was also unarmed. Poly held a mini-sweetener, pointing it in a non-threatening direction.
“Put that away,” said Rosalind. “You won’t need it.” She turned to her brother and Sally. “Come in and sit down. They won’t hurt us and there’s something you’ve got to hear.”
Cornell and Sally kept a wary eye on Poly and me, but Rosalind’s tone of voice and her obvious distress made them unwilling to question her instructions. They sat close to Rosalind on a long, brown, ubercow-leather sofa.
“He knows?” said Cornell to Rosalind.
“He does now,” she replied. “Once he saw Max it was hard to hide the relationship.”
“Can we play hide and seek, Daddy?” asked Max.
Cornell gave me a look of disgust and started to protest.
“I told you we shouldn’t…”
“Stop,” said Sally in a She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed tone.
Cornell stopped.
“Soon,” I told my son.
“Jack’s phone,” said Rosalind peremptorily. “Tell them what you told us.”
My phone obeyed without asking my permission to respond.
“A Chapultepec & Castle executive jet carrying Scott Winfield and Josephine Johnson crash-landed at Hartsfield Port less than an hour ago. There were no survivors.”
Cornell and Sally turned the same color as Rosalind. All the blood had drained from their faces.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” said Sally.
“Off-planet would be good,” said Cornell.
“Another dimension would be better,” said Rosalind.
“Video of the crash confirms your assessment,” said my phone.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You can spot the track of a surface-to-air missile hitting the plane as it started its approach,” said my phone.
“Oh,” said Poly.
The Atlanta branches of Homeland Security and the NTSB must be going nuts. I pulled my attention away from Max again and applied my full brainpower to the situation. Winfield and Johnson had likely been flying to Atlanta to be disciplined by The General after screwing up the plan to capture and brainwash corporate leaders attending the Galactic Technology Expo in Las Vegas. Sally, Cornell and Rosalind were realizing that The General’s approach to discipline was draconian—and they were next in line to face the dragon. I nodded slowly and saw Poly mirror my motion.
Max thought it was a game and began to nod, too.
“What?” asked Rosalind. “Have all three of you turned into bobbleheads?”
“No,” I said. “It just took me a while to figure things out and ask.”
“Ask what?” said Sally.
“Ask if you wanted our help,” said Poly.
“And protection,” I added.
“No way,” Cornell blurted. “He’ll terminate us for sure.”
“He’s going to do that anyway,” said Sally. “This way, we have a chance.”
“Like the Daleks?” asked Max.
“That’s exterminate, sweetie.”
Max nodded again, accepting the correction. He went back to staring at my phone, mentally disassembling it.
“Why should we throw in with them?” asked Cornell, waving a hand toward Poly and me.
“Because,” said Sally, shaking her head, “despite our best efforts, they’ve managed to screw up The General’s plans every time so far.”
“How do we know it wasn’t just dumb luck?” posed Cornell.
“How many times have they captured you, brother?” asked Rosalind. “Zwilniki’s plot? The Compliant Plague? Under Hoover Dam?”
“Look who’s talking,” Cornell shot back. “I wasn’t the one tied up with duct tape and left in the Mulbiri Precious Gem and Bullion Repository.”
“I was careless,” Rosalind shot back.
“In more ways than one,” said Sally, glancing at Max and smiling.
Rosalind’s cheeks turned red and she looked away from me.
Sally kept needling. “It’s only because you were sweet on Jack…”
Poly and I had been following their exchange as it went back and forth like the moving bundle of pixels shifting sides in a game of Classic Pong. Finally, my partner had enough.
“A-hem,” she said, loud enough to distract Max from chasing my phone around the perimeter of the living room.
Everyone stopped talking and looked at Poly.
“First,” she said, “The General has eliminated a pair of non-performing assets.”
Heads nodded around the room. I was glad she wasn’t being more blunt in front of Max.
Sally looked at Cornell, then interrupted Poly’s summation.
“They could have staged the whole production to make a clean getaway…”
“Doubtful,” said Cornell. “They were too self-confident to think they’d ever need an escape plan.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” said Sally. She shrugged her shoulders, but I could sense wheels turning in her head.
“As I was saying,” Poly continued, staring pointedly at Sally. “Second, the three of you are likely next in line.”
The pained expressions on Cornell, Sally and Rosalind’s faces confirmed Poly’s assessment.
“Third,” said Poly, “Running doesn’t have a high probability of success—especially if you have to bring along…”
“We get it,” said Rosalind. She looked at Max and moved her head slowly from left and right, as if she was in pain. Sally and Cornell offered Rosalind sympathetic glances.
“Fourth and last,” said my partner, “if we join forces, we may be able to take down The General permanently and get on with our lives.”
Cornell, Sally and Rosalind didn’t look completely convinced, but they didn’t have a better alternative. The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that. I think having it out in the open that I was Max’s father might have made it easier, now that they saw how well my son and I got along. In a strange way, we were all family.
I stood up and held out my hand. Poly joined me and put her hand on top of mine. Slowly, Rosalind, Sally and Cornell added their hands to the grip. Max scooted in underneath and put his hand below mine.
It felt like the comic book origin story of the Fantastic Four after their spaceship crashed.
“We accept your offer of help,” said Rosalind.
“And protection,” said Sally.
“For all the good it will do us,” inserted Cornell.
“Let’s put an end to The General,” I said, hoping to finish our ritual bonding on an optimistic note.
Poly tried to do the same.
“Confusion to the enemy!” she shouted.
“Fusion!” said Max. “H-bomb. Boom!”
It was going to be general mayhem.
Chapter 4
“Meanwhile, back at the ranch…”
— Silent Movie Transition
“Hey, Jack,” said Gus from the butte-edge above. “Is it safe to come down?”
“Sure!” I shouted. I’d forgotten all about my new friend.
“Who’s that?” asked Poly.
“Gus. He saved my life. He’ll be here in a second.”
I was very surprised when Gus didn’t promptly appear, but Chit did. My oldest friend buzzed through the space where the fortress villa’s windows used to be and landed on my shoulder.
“Where’s Gus?” I asked.
Then I turned my head and saw where he was. The Gojon had gotten even smaller than a praying mantis. He was flea-sized and riding in a narrow space between Chit’s head and thorax. If Chit’s wing cases hadn’t been painted the dusky red color of sandstone and Gus a contrasting green, I nev
er would have spotted him.
My size-changing saurian friend jumped off Chit and grew to human size before he could hit the floor.
“Gustávish,” he said, bowing to Poly and Rosalind. “Pleased to meet you.”
His tail lifted as a counterbalance when his upper torso bent forward.
The two women bowed back, respectfully, and Cornell waved one hand in greeting from his self-appointed station near the bar. Max looked up from his anachronistic toys, spotted Gus, and ran toward us. As he passed me, he glanced at me and gave me a perfunctory, “Hi, Daddy,” before standing in front of Gus, gazing in awe.
“Are you a dinosaur?” he asked.
Gus looked at me, then looked at Poly and Rosalind. We all nodded.
“Close enough,” said Gus.
Max hugged his leg and started asking Gus about life in the Cretaceous and begging for piggyback rides. Gus looked overwhelmed, so I stepped in to help him out, unwrapping Max’s arms and putting my son on my shoulders for the first time. I began to regret I’d never had a chance to do that when he was younger, and lighter, because I didn’t think I could support him up there for very long without needing chiropractic care.
“Gus needs to leave soon,” I told Max. “He’s an actor and has to be back in the city to make his big entrance.”
“An actor?” he asked. “Are you on television? Or the movies?”
Gus smiled at Max, showing lots of sharp teeth. They didn’t seem nearly as threatening when they weren’t twelve feet long.
“My client hopes I’ll be on the TV news tonight,” said Gus. “I can send you a clip if I get any air time. And as for the movies, I have a screen test with Tohokaiju Productions in Atlanta next week for a really big role.”
“Wow!” said my son.
He was getting too heavy, so I put Max down, but held on to his shoulders so he wouldn’t attach himself to Gus’s legs again.
“Why Atlanta?” asked Poly.
“Hollywood of the South,” I commented.
Gus traded contact information with my phone, made polite goodbyes, and then jumped out of the space where the windows used to be. As he fell, he increased his size until he was almost as tall as the butte and began striding off toward Las Vegas, making great time. I hoped his gig with Kingsworth Electronics would go well. Max was beside himself over giant Gus and couldn’t stop telling Rosalind, Cornell and Poly what he’d seen. He was so excited he ran deeper into the fortress villa to tell Sally, too.
I turned my head so I could see Chit out of the corner of my eye and quietly mouthed, “Thanks!”
“Don’t mention it,” said my little friend. “I was glad to give ’im a ride. It’s not the big guy’s fault his species has three internal congruencies. It’s just a bit of a shock t’ find out Murms aren’t the only ones that have ’em.”
“Droopy the disembodied brain-in-a-bottle has one,” I said, just to tease her.
“Yeah, but his is an implant,” responded Chit. “That don’t count.”
“Right,” I replied. “Nice work disarming the mine, by the way.”
“Don’t rub it in. How was I to know there was a timer?”
I would have come up with a snappy comeback, but Poly provided a pleasant interruption with a hug.
“Sounds like you had some adventures,” she said.
“You, too,” I said.
I extricated an arm from our hug and waved it to take in the frozen thugs and henchmen against the wall, illustrating my words.
“You first,” said Poly.
I explained what had happened from the time I’d stepped out of the powder room back at Cornell, Sally, Rosalind and Max’s home until I’d made my grand entrance. Poly and Rosalind were particularly fascinated by Gus’s timely intervention when I’d fallen off the cliff. I wondered if Poly would ask her mother to help Gus with his acting career as a way of expressing her gratitude for saving my hide.
“Now your turn,” I said, looking at both Poly and Rosalind. Cornell might have had a role in the rescue, but I wasn’t betting on it.
“We were in the living room—mostly staring at each other…” said Rosalind.
“Awkwardly,” added Poly.
“Then the front door opened and five goons rushed in,” said Rosalind.
“They sweetened us before we could react,” said Cornell, looking disgusted. He frowned at Poly.
“I know, I know,” said Poly. “I had a sweetener and should have used it, but I’d put it in my jacket pocket and was too distracted to pull it out and zap them.”
“Aunt Sally says I’m a big distraction sometimes,” said Max.
I’d have to remember that Max would always be listening when he was within earshot.
“Aunt Sally is right,” said Rosalind, throwing Poly a conversational lifeline.
I could just imagine Poly and Rosalind looking at each other, then looking at Max, then looking at each other. I knew I would be distracted.
“We were carried aboard an airship like so many sacks of flour,” said Poly.
“I like flowers,” said Max.
“I know,” said Rosalind. “So do I.”
“Then we were transported here,” said my partner. “Where is here, by the way? It looks like we’re pretty high up and I can see the Las Vegas skyline in the distance.”
“You are in Nicky Stone’s fortress villa built into a butte nineteen kilometers north-northwest of Sally and Cornell’s home,” said my phone authoritatively. “Our present height above sea level, according to internal barometric sensors, is seven hundred and sixty meters and the distance to the desert floor is nearly one hundred and fifty meters.”
“That’s a five-hundred-foot drop, Daddy,” said Max. “I’m glad Mr. Gus was there to save you.”
I got another hug from Max and was even more impressed by my son. He could do math and metric to English measurement conversions in his head. I couldn’t do that until I was five. I felt another pang of regret for not being around for the first years of his life.
“How old is Max?” I asked Rosalind.
“I thought you were good at math,” she replied. “Just add two hundred and eighty days to…”
“I’m nearly five,” said Max.
“And the most amazing nearly five-year-old I know,” I replied, earning me another hug.
I looked back at Rosalind. “Then what happened?”
“We were unloaded and unceremoniously plopped on the furniture,” said Rosalind.
She waved her hands to take in the pieces in the room where we were standing.
“At least the sofas and chairs were well-padded,” said Cornell.
“A dozen thugs stayed here to watch us and the funny-looking C&C airship with the wings flew off,” said Poly.
“Were you all okay?” I asked.
Poly, Rosalind and Cornell nodded.
“It didn’t hurt except for the tingling when the chill wore off,” said Max. “That felt like the pins and needles you get when your foot goes to sleep. Have you ever been sweetened, Daddy?”
“Too many times, Max. It’s not much fun.”
“Once was enough for me, Daddy. I came out of it first,” he announced proudly.
That was odd. Usually, sweeteners—mini-sweeteners in particular—have a longer and more intense effect on smaller body masses. Rosalind must have read my mind.
“Max was sitting on the floor behind the ottoman,” she said. “It must have absorbed some of the blast.”
Now it made sense.
“He was great,” said Poly. “We were on the corner sofa facing out so we could see each other. Max waited until all the pins and needles had faded. He pretended he was still frozen until he saw me twitch a finger and his mom nod at him slightly. The guards were keeping a close eye on us, ready to tie us up once we’d thawed.”
As I’d learned with Martin at the K Street Bar in the SLN Capital hotel, it wasn’t easy to reposition people who’d been frozen.
“What did Max do?” I aske
d.
“He screamed,” said Rosalind.
“Want me to show you how it sounded, Daddy?”
“That’s okay,” I said.
“He sounded like a banshee trying to overpower the decibels at a heavy metal concert,” said Poly. “All the goon guards rushed over to him. I pulled my mini-sweetener out of my jacket and zapped three of them from behind.”
“Then Mom pried a mini-sweetener from one of the frozen guard’s fingers and chilled two more. Mom and Ms. Poly used the guards they’d already zapped as shields and took out the rest of them before they knew what was happening. Aunt Sally took out two guards with karate chops like Miss Piggy.”
“Good work,” I said, “and smart thinking, Max.”
“Mom says I’m precocious,” said my son.
“Your mother’s right,” said Poly.
Max beamed an angelic smile, with just a hint of a little devil hiding inside. He looked a lot like pictures of me at that age.
“Then what?”
“Then my uncle handled the heavy lifting,” said Max.
“I carried the frozen thugs and stacked them by the left-hand wall,” said Cornell. “It was the least I could do.”
“I’ll say,” Chit whispered in my ear.
“You said Sally was holding more prisoners in the back?” I asked.
“Uh huh,” said Max. “They’re special.”
“Special prisoners?”
“Uh huh,” said Poly. “A few minutes later, we saw the C&C airship returning, so the five of us pretended to still be frozen on the sofa.”
“Smart move,” I said. “You gave your opponents a false sense of security.”
“The ’ship dropped off more people and headed back to Vegas,” said Rosalind. “When the newcomers entered the room…”
“Mom and my aunt and uncle and Ms. Poly zapped them!” shouted Max.
He ran around in a circle doing some sort of happy dance.
“What made the newcomers special?” I asked.
“They weren’t all special,” said Rosalind. “Only two of them were.”
The look on my face was an unmistakable request to tell me more. Poly grinned and filled me in.
“The new arrivals were Scott Winfield and Josephine Johnson.”
Chapter 5
Xenotech General Mayhem: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 4) Page 3
