“Point taken,” I said. “Any other suggestions?”
“You could contact Mike or one of the other Xenotech Support Corporation team members and have them rent a helicopter or mini-dirigible to rescue you,” said my phone.
“How long would that take?” I asked.
“At least an hour,” said my phone.
“Put that idea in the parking lot for now,” I said.
“The Atlantic Station parking structure is approximately twelve-hundred feet below this vessel and an equal distance to the northwest,” said my phone.
“You’re kidding me, right?” I said. “Your idiom interpretation subroutines are better than that.”
“Correct,” said my phone.
I laughed. It only made sense that my phone would have an odd sense of humor and use it to tease me.
“Any other suggestions?”
“There are parachutes located at the nose and tail of this dirigible’s dorsal surface,” my phone offered.
“Great,” I said, feeling relieved. “Why didn’t you mention them earlier?”
“Because the parachutes are designed for Dauushans,” said my phone. “There would be no guarantee they would work as required for someone the size of a human.”
“Gus could probably use them safely,” I grumbled, hoping the easy-going Gojon was having a good audition downtown.
“Possibly,” said my phone, “though the configuration of a harness meant for a hexapod would be difficult to adapt to a biped, no matter what his size.”
“Duly noted,” I said.
I considered trying to use one of the Dauushan parachutes to fashion a hang glider, but realized that would take a lot longer than an hour and would have a much higher chance of disastrous consequences. I was about to resign myself to calling Mike for help when I heard the sounds of a Vulcan lute. It was punctuated seconds later by a beeping horn that must have been lifted from one of the sixty-year-old Love Bug movies.
I turned my head in the direction of the beeping and smiled as I saw my favorite white car rising up around the curve of the Matriarch. In the late May light its lustrous paint job glimmered with waves of red and orange and gold from the slowly setting sun. Like Lola, Agent Coulson’s beloved car from Agents of Shield, the white car’s wheels had rotated down and were shooting out high-pressure congruency-powered jets of air to support its mass. Additional congruencies projected below minimized the backwash.
I spotted Chilly behind the wheel. His mask screen had changed from David Tennant to Harrison Ford.
“Anybody call a cab?” Chilly asked as he made the white car hover next to me.
I just grinned and stuck my thumb out like I was hitchhiking the galaxy. The gull wing door nearest me folded up and Chit, my phone and I got in.
“Thanks,” I said, enjoying the car’s incredibly comfortable seats again.
“Glad to help,” said Chilly.
“Could you take me back to Ad Astra?” I asked.
“I could,” said Chilly, “but I wouldn’t advise it.”
“Why not?” asked Chit.
“Well, you see…” began Chilly.
My phone hopped up on the dashboard and began streaming video from outside the Dauushan consulate. If one picture is worth a thousand words, one video is worth at least a million. There were fire trucks and ambulances everywhere. Multicolored light bars were strobing on scores of official vehicles from the Atlanta Police Department, the FBI, and Homeplanet Security.
My phone zoomed in on someone familiar. Clarisse Beatty, the Atlanta Fire Department officer I’d met when WT&F and Factor-E-Flor’s buildings had been damaged, was in middle of everything. She was on her phone and giving orders simultaneously, ensuring her team was efficiently investigating the scene.
Reporters from the local, national, planetary and galactic press were there as well, milling about in large-scale Brownian motion. Cameras and blazing banks of LEDs were pointed in the faces of any being who looked like he, she or it had a clue.
Tomáso was near the entrance to the consulate with a forest of microphones stuck in his face. There were Tigrammaths, Pyrs, Pâkk, Nicósns, and a veritable plethora of other species looking on. Down the courtyard, I saw a pair of giant turtle-beetle Tōdons making their deliberate way up a wide path to see what was causing all the fuss.
In the branches of nearby trees, juvenile Quirinx fliers were gawking. Two of them looked stunned and another two looked like they’d soon be asking me for money. I was glad all four of the teens who’d helped me chase The General had made it safely home—and I always paid my debts.
Chilly cleared his throat to get my attention. “That’s why I wouldn’t advise returning to the Dauushan consulate.”
“Thanks for the warning,” I said. “I’d rather take a busload of sugared-up third graders to Disney World for a week. Did Poly, Emma Ann and Spike get away before the circus arrived?”
“Yes,” said Chilly. “My remotes spotted them. They caught one of the scheduled sightseeing blimps that was headed for Stone Mountain to watch the sunset. It showed up just after you jumped.”
Spike must have had an interesting effect on the blimp’s other passengers.
“Can we pick them up, too?”
“Already on our way there,” Chilly answered.
I looked down. We were passing over I-285, the circular interstate around Atlanta also known as the Perimeter, and were tracking the route of US-78, the Stone Mountain Expressway. Traffic was heavy, but moving at speed. Thank you self-driving vehicle technology! A few minutes later we reached the nine-hundred-foot, egg-shaped granite mountain. A garishly-painted blimp labeled Monadnock Tours was moored at one of the masts on top.
“What’s a monadnock?” asked Chit.
“It’s a mountain without any other mountains nearby,” I replied. “Sometimes they’re called inselbergs, meaning island mountains.”
“Thanks, but that’s too much information,” said Chit. “You’re starting to sound like your phone.”
I didn’t think that was such a bad thing.
“Poly reports they’re on the east side,” said my phone. “She says it’s near where the main trail from the bottom comes out.”
“Great,” I said.
I knew where she meant and guided Chilly toward them with imprecise hand gestures.
“Hey,” I said, reminded of a question I’d had when Chilly first appeared. “How do you get this incredible car around the state and federal restrictions on flying vehicles?”
Chilly grinned, or rather, Harrison Ford did.
“The finish on Baby is special,” he said. “It doesn’t show up on radar and is hard to pin down visually.”
Baby, I mused. It certainly was a beautiful child. My van was just my van, though now I thought I might name it As You Wish. I promised myself I’d ask Chilly for his help creating a similar car for me someday, with all the same bells and whistles.
Chilly banked and I could see our prospective passengers standing alone on a dimly lit expanse of bare rock. The vehicle hovered a foot above the granite and Poly, Emma Ann and Spike climbed into the back. I kissed Poly over the top of my seat.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” she said when the kiss was over. “My heart nearly jumped off the side of the building when you took that flying leap.”
“You’d have joined me if those adolescent fliers had known English,” I replied, squeezing her hand.
“That’s just it,” Poly said. “They did. The rest of them were too full of pizza to fly safely.”
“Must have been good pizza,” noted Chit, who seemed to have recovered from her concern about the arthropod toppings.
“You’re making me hungry,” said Emma Ann, snuggling against Spike in the backseat.
My Dauushan feline friend had a new admirer.
“Who’s a big boy? You’re a big boy,” said Emma Ann, rubbing the big cat’s fur.
“You could tell he didn’t want to leave Terrhi,” said Poly, “but when we he
ard all the sirens from ground level we dragged him with us.”
I’d been surprised Spike had left Terrhi’s side, but perhaps the chance of chomping on The General was irresistible.
“I’ll return you to the research facility expeditiously,” said Chilly. “If you order dinner now, it should be ready by the time you get there.”
“Wait,” I said, “before we worry about ordering food—who are you?”
“Now is not the time to answer that question, kid,” said Chilly. “Let’s survive Sunday first.”
There was something to that perspective.
“Will you be hanging around this time?” I asked.
“Maybe later,” said Chilly. “Duty calls.”
What sort of duty? And to whom, I wondered?
I realized I wouldn’t get more information out of Chilly tonight, and turned to more practical matters.
“Okay,” I said, “What do the rest of you all want for dinner?”
The answer, as I’d expected, was unanimous.
Chapter 39
“There is no magic substitute for soft caring and hard work…”
— The Outer Limits
It was just us humans—plus Chit and Spike—at the research facility for dinner, so we could get all our pies delivered from Fellini’s instead of splitting the order with Galactic Pizza. Poly and I agreed that it would be smart to get several salads, too—and a tray of brownies. It was important to set a good example for Max and eat a balanced diet. At least we didn’t have to worry about special toppings for Chit—she’d eat anything that didn’t eat her first. I suspected she’d chew away on the innards of any creature who did eat her, for that matter.
Poly, Emma Ann, Spike and I had reconnected with Cornell and Rosalind at the facility’s entrance. They had left the General’s suite at Ad Astra soon after we did and made their escape through the underground parking garage before the place turned into a madhouse. Rosalind had been thoughtful enough to tell my phone they were coming so we knew how many pizzas, salads and sweets we needed for everyone at the table.
Spike wasn’t technically at the dinner table—he was under it, happily gnawing on a nine-pound ham. Fellini’s was kind enough to include it in our order instead of chopping the ham into small pieces to put alongside chunks of pineapple on Hawaiian-style pizzas. We were much happier having Spike’s company than enduring the dour faces of Winfield and Johnson. Which reminded me…
“What happened to Winfield and Johnson?” I asked.
“I sweetened them and left them in the suite,” said Cornell.
Max stopped tossing slices of pepperoni down to Spike and laughed. I don’t think Cornell realized quite what he’d said. Sally either didn’t hear the unplanned homophones or chose to ignore them.
“Don’t give the cat spicy food,” she said to Max. “We don’t know how it affects his digestion.”
Now Poly laughed.
“Are you kidding? A Dauushan trisabertooth like Spike can eat a peck of pickled Pâkk peppers without any problem,” my partner exaggerated. “Though I wouldn’t want to stand too close to him afterward.”
“Will pepperoni make him toot?” asked Max.
Poly held her nose and shook her head from side to side. She used the pizza slice in her other hand for emphasis.
“No,” she said. “But it will give him really bad breath.”
“Sorry,” said Max, moving both his arms to the top of the table so we’d know he’d stopped feeding Spike.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “A few slices of pepperoni won’t hurt.”
“Thanks, Daddy. I won’t do it again.”
I reached over, plucked the only remaining round of spicy sausage off Max’s current slice, and popped it in my mouth.
“Your punishment is having to give up your last pepperoni,” I said with a mock-serious frown.
“That’s okay,” said Max. “I don’t like it that much anyway.”
“Neither do I,” said Poly, giving me an arch look that took me a few seconds to interpret. Once I worked it out, I was glad I had toothpaste, mouthwash, breath mints, and chlorophyll gum back in our room.
“Got any more of those Parmesan packets?” asked Chit from her usual perch on an upturned tumbler.
“Here you go,” I said, ripping open a foil pouch and sprinkling a few milligrams of finely grated topping on Chit’s square inch of pizza.
“Hey! Watch it, ya big lummox,” said my little friend. “You’re gettin’ Parmesan in my spiracles.”
“Sorry,” I said.
I hadn’t meant to cheese her off.
Everybody looked at me—Max and I had used exactly the same intonation when we’d said that word. Our pitches were an octave or more apart, but the way we’d both said it identically was cool, and a bit eerie. Sahr-rhee! I liked having a son.
“Did you go back to bed after lunch?” Poly asked her sister.
“Uh huh,” said Pomy, who was working on her third slice. Creamy dressing—the remains of a Caesar salad—coated a paper plate in front of her. A rich chocolate brownie was resting on a thick napkin a few inches away. I was glad to see Pomy’s appetite returning. It was a good sign she was feeling better and rebuilding her reserves after her ordeal.
By unspoken agreement, none of us told Pomy about Winfield and Johnson’s escape earlier in the day. She was asleep and didn’t realize Sally was the only person watching the slippery pair. Pomy shared her sister’s sense of responsibility and would have protested that she could have helped if she’d only known she was needed.
I didn’t mind the two executives showing their true spots and running back to The General. I hadn’t trusted them farther than I could throw them—unless I was throwing them off the roof of a sixty-story building without benefit of adolescent Quirinx assistants. I hoped I wasn’t being overly optimistic, naive or stupid to trust Cornell, Rosalind and Sally.
I tried to remember which circle of Dante’s hell was reserved for traitors, but couldn’t summon up the answer. It was high, I knew that. I reminded myself to ask Pomy when she fully recovered. In the back of my head an obscure Beatles’ song was trying to turn into an earworm. It kept repeating its lyric monotonously: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9.
Cornell had finished his salad and pizza and was eying his brownie.
“What’s on the schedule for tomorrow?” he asked.
“I’m not sure, without hearing from Martin, Shepherd, Tomáso and Queen Sherrhi,” I answered.
“The G70 activities start at nine o’clock at the Georgia capitol building,” said Poly. “They’ll be there and we should be, too.”
“Is Shepherd part of the G70 dignitaries’ tour?” asked Pomy.
“Who knows,” said Poly, “but can you imagine him being anywhere else?”
Pomy removed a few crumbs of brownie from her napkin and pondered the question.
“Not really,” she answered. “I picture him running a network of stealth surveillance drones from a gondola at the top of the SkyView ferris wheel.”
Poly had a perspicacious sister. That was exactly how I pictured Shepherd.
“Let’s all meet for breakfast at seven,” I said. “I’ll bring the donuts.”
“Sounds good,” said Rosalind. “Who’s got Max duty tomorrow?”
“I’m not a duty, I’m an effin’ pleasure to be around,” said Max brightly.
His right hand was back under the table where I suspected Spike was licking it. Max’s hand probably tasted like pepperoni.
“Where did you hear that wash-your-mouth-out-with-soap phrase?” asked Rosalind.
She glared at me but I didn’t have to play innocent—on that count I was innocent.
After several beats and more glaring, Cornell reluctantly raised his hand and confessed.
“I may have said something like that in his hearing,” Cornell admitted.
“Don’t let it happen again,” said Rosalind in protective mommy mode. “Little pitchers have big ears.”
“Uh
huh,” said Max. “And good hearing, too!”
We all laughed. It felt good to release some tension.
“I’ll watch Max tomorrow,” said Sally. “If you’re all going down to Centennial Olympic Park, maybe I’ll take him to the Georgia Aquarium.”
The aquarium was at the north end of the park. It was a huge structure, made even larger by a new addition housing a pair of jumbo tanks. The new tanks were orders of magnitude larger than the aquarium’s original whale shark habitat. One of them housed ichthyosaurs and megalodons, while the other held a rotating collection of alien aquatic species, depending on what planetary ocean was connected to the tank’s congruency this quarter.
If I remembered correctly, the latest exhibit of alien sea life came from Tōdos, the home of the giant turtle-beetle Tōdons. Until the end of June, part of that world’s Great Western Ocean—and representative samples of its gigantic ferocious fauna—extended into Atlanta.
The most impressive monster of the Tōdos’ deep was the star of the Georgia Aquarium’s latest marketing campaign. All the posters I’d seen around town featured depictions of a frightening creature the size of a supertanker with the front end of a Terran killer whale, the back end of a giant squid, and the charming disposition of a hungry piranha. Max would love it.
“Great,” said Rosalind. “If things don’t get too chaotic, maybe Jack, Cornell and I can join you for lunch.”
“I’m not holding my breath about things not getting too chaotic tomorrow,” Sally remarked.
I nodded in agreement. There were several wise women at the table tonight—and the cafeteria at the Aquarium wasn’t five-star dining, so it wouldn’t be much of a loss if I had to take a rain check. Max could catch me up on his aquatic adventures later, if there was a later.
“The General is sure to try something to disrupt the tour,” said Poly. “Any thoughts on what?”
She was looking at Cornell, Sally and Rosalind, but Max answered first.
“Blow stuff up?” he suggested in his high-pitched almost-five voice. “Like at Terrhi’s place? I saw that on television.”
“I’m not sure what that would accomplish,” I said.
Poly had an answer in the form of a question that put one of our friends in jeopardy.
Xenotech General Mayhem: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 4) Page 32
