As Donna caught up with me, she yelled, “Hey! I was just kidding, dammit!"
"Yeah, I could tell. Are you going to answer the question?"
"They'll release her tomorrow. They want to study her."
"If she's smart, she'll charge them for her time. When they took her to surgery last night, did they actually find anything to fix, or did they just stand around and gawk at her?"
Donna eyed me rather sharply for a few moments, then asked, “Why ask? You already know, don't you?"
"Yup. Stephanie dosed her with repair nanobots the minute she found her. Jenny was taken to the hospital because the authorities would expect it, not because it was necessary."
With a narrow look, Donna asked, “What the hell are nanobots?"
Chapter Thirty-four
I stopped my board and called up a field screen as Donna shot past me. By the time she'd swung around and rejoined me, I'd tapped up a picture of a medical nanobot.
Donna somewhat distastefully remarked, “Is that one of them? It kind of looks like a spider."
"It kind of works like one, too, the way it knits stuff together to patch tissue damage. The ‘bots also kill germs. Anything that shouldn't be in you is zapped. I haven't had a sick day since the big ship was here."
She studied the screen info, then gave me an enlightened, if somewhat accusing look. “So that's why you got pissed about having to use a rubber?"
I sighed, “You still don't get it, do you? I wasn't pissed about the rubber. You started running your face and kept at it until your libido stopped working and my dick went down."
Donna bridled and her narrow gaze became a glare and she yelled, “So you prefer women who just ‘shut up and spread ‘em'?! Well, let me tell you something, mister..."
Raising a hand, I interrupted with, “No. Don't. Just go do whatever you were on your way to do. Call me if you need any help with the board."
She snapped, “And don't call you for any other reason?"
"I didn't say that and you're not only interpreting, you're putting words in my mouth. I really hate that. Bye."
"Bye?!” she screeched, “Bye?! You think you're going to..."
Sometimes the only way to end a conversation is to get the hell away from it. Nosing my board upward, I headed for the sky at about half max speed.
Within moments, the nose of Donna's board slid into view beside mine and she mimed going back downstairs with sharp, tiny motions of her hands. I shook my head.
She became livid with anger and reached to point firmly at the ground. Bad move. Extending an arm is flatly the wrong thing to do at close to two hundred miles an hour.
The wind caught her arm and dragged it back and her board nosed up and left sharply. Donna flipped over into a twisting tumble as she shrieked, flailed briefly, and plummeted.
Heh. If she got a handle on things, she'd straighten out. If not, her board wouldn't let her crash. I followed her down and caught up with her descent, watching her from a distance of perhaps twenty feet as she tumbled out of the sky.
She didn't make a sound as she struggled to regain control of her body and her board and failed. After some moments, she simply hugged the board and wrapped her legs around it, then mentally flogged its flanks to make it shoot forward and straighten out to kill her tumbling.
I followed along, catching up to her again as her board slowed to a crawl and leveled out. She seemed plastered to it, panting hard and staring. Her eyes found me and widened—in rage, I suppose—and she started to push herself upright.
Yeah, she was okay, or enough so. As she levered herself up to a sitting position and started to say something that seemed likely to be rather caustic and loud, I looped my board to head for the house at a leisurely speed.
Unhooking my mug's handle from my pants pocket, I sipped the last of my coffee and wondered how long it would be before Donna'd be able to stand upright on her board again.
The shopping centers at the intersection of Northcliffe and Mariner were maybe a mile below me. I nudged the board to a more westerly heading and had started to speed up when motion below caught my attention.
North and south traffic were slowing to stop, but one car heading south showed no signs of slowing down as it neared the intersection. It wasn't going too fast—maybe even less than the speed limit—and it was in the far right lane.
I headed downward, and before any of the east-west traffic could begin moving, I turned on my three suit, conjured a field tendril that ended in a blindingly bright spot, and quickly extended the tendril the remaining quarter-mile or so to the center of the intersection.
When the spot hit the pavement and bounced, I expanded it to what looked like about the width of a car and made it dash back and forth and around in circles.
The east-west cars that had begun to move stopped, and less than two seconds later the southbound car breezed through the intersection and slammed into the concrete base of a utility pole on the southwest corner.
By that time I was only a hundred feet or so above the intersection. I canceled the light tendril and angled toward the wreck as the driver's door opened and a guy in his twenties got out of the car.
He seemed confused, but he was on his feet. As I watched him stagger around his car, Donna swooped to a landing beside the wreck, much to the total shock of the dazed driver.
Heh. Good. Let her try to explain the light ball while she tried to explain her board to everybody. I steered away from the scene on a course toward my house.
A block away from the eastern shopping plaza, the fire station's crossing lights and warning horns cranked up. A fire truck nosed out of one of the building's bays and turned south, followed by an ambulance.
Hm. It seemed possible that Donna might tell someone where she'd gotten the flying board, and whether she did or not, a lot of people had seen mine when I'd left the county offices.
When I reached the house, I went inside before I turned off my three suit, swapped greetings with Tiger, and took my phone off the hook while I looked in the kitchen junk drawer for my ‘no calls’ plug. It's just the end of an old phone cord; the red and green wires are crimped together so anyone calling gets a busy signal.
That would take care of calls, but there might be drop-ins, as well. I decided to find somewhere else to be for the weekend. Sitting down at the kitchen table, I called up a field screen and tapped Toni's icon.
When she answered, Tiger instantly yelled, “Hello, Toni!” and she grinningly returned his greeting.
Looking at me, she asked, “What's up, Ed?"
"Oh, not much. Want some company?"
She laughed, “What's the matter? Didn't your new little friend work out?"
"Well, something like that. Her friend Jenny was attacked last night down in Pasco. The cops want to talk to her and Jenny's going to need some help for a few days. But that's not really why I want to get away for the weekend. Too many people saw my board last night and this morning. I've already taken the phone off the hook."
Laughing again, she said, “The price of fame. We have a little problem, though. Remember Tina Lee?"
"Brunette, five-five, very butch, hates men?"
"Yeah, that one. You wouldn't get any here this weekend, either, but you can use the room if you want."
"Nah, never mind. It would put a crimp in your game and I can't use fields in the house when there's company."
We chatted a bit more, then Tina called Toni from somewhere else in the house and we rang off.
Hm. Maybe Carrington? Nah. Some of the people there would want to talk shop of one sort or other. I realized that I really didn't want company, or at least not the company of the usual people. To hell with it. I'd get to work on my latest book and wouldn't answer the door unless I felt like doing so.
At eleven-thirty I shut down the computer and called Marie Michaelson to let her know I was on my way, took a leak, made a fresh coffee, and said goodbye to Tiger.
"Where do you go?” he asked.
"Computer shopping w
ith Marie."
He considered the collar's translation of my words, then looked at the computer I'd just turned off. Electronics held no particular interest for him.
"I will stay here, Ed."
"Okay. Later."
On the porch, I almost called up my board, then decided to walk the four blocks to Marie's house. It would be entirely too convenient to become dependent on the board for even short hops, and a bit of standing around on the board didn't quite equate to walking as exercise.
As I walked, I considered a few things, such as; I didn't really want to be in the flying board business. Between jobs for Linda, I enjoyed peace and quiet as I wrote my books or took little trips for the hell of it. Running a business isn't fun; I'd done it a few times and hated the detail work involved.
Also: for all my bitching about constant companionship, I missed having Sue around. I resolved to discuss with Steph the possibility of taking on another AI “trainee", even though I honestly couldn't see why Steph and Elkor didn't just clone their own minds and pop them into spare computer cores.
With a bit of exposure to the world, the newbies would become different people—individuals of their own devisings—soon enough.
About halfway to Marie's, a woman and two kids emerged from a house and the kids scampered to their white car ahead of her. I was still two houses away when she tried to start the car, but I could easily hear the ‘tick-tick-tick’ that indicated her battery was too weak to turn the starter.
She tried again, but the ticking slowed and stopped. I walked halfway up her driveway and—to avoid startling her—said, “If you'll pop the hood, I'll take a look."
Somewhat angry about the car, she eyed me and asked, “What can you do about a dead battery?"
I shrugged. “Maybe it isn't dead. Buildup on the terminals can keep a car from starting, too. It can't hurt to take a look and we might save you a tow call."
After another moment, she pulled the hood release. I opened the hood and studied the battery terminals—which looked clean enough—then asked her if she had a pair of pliers or an adjustable wrench.
The woman got out and opened the car's trunk, but didn't find any tools there. She ordered her kids out of the car and took them into the house with her, telling them to wait inside while we worked on the car.
Keying my implant, I extended invisible field tendrils to the engine block and the positive pole on the battery and started sending twelve volts at about two amps as I checked the battery's warranty tag. It was only about a year old. Short in the system? Bad alternator? Or had someone left the lights on?
When the woman came back out with a small toolbox a few minutes later, I asked her to get in, close the door to kill the dome light, and turn off the air-conditioning and anything else that might be on “...to let the battery rest a while."
She leaned out and asked, “Do you live around here?"
Loosening the terminals with a wrench from the toolbox, I said, “Yup. On Commodore."
The terminals weren't unusually dirty. I scraped them with a screwdriver anyway, put them back on, and tightened them down, then said, “Try it now."
When she turned the key, the engine turned rather slowly, but it turned and started. I canceled the tendrils, put the tools away, closed the hood, and handed the toolbox to her through the open car window.
As she leaned to set the tool box on the passenger side floor, I headed down the driveway to the sidewalk. When she shouted, “Thanks!” I waved and kept walking.
Chapter Thirty-five
Marie met me at her door in a white sleeveless half t-shirt with embroidered designs all over it and one of those little pleated skirts that only goes about halfway down the thigh.
She only stood about five-four, but made up for her lack of height with a finely-structured little body and a generally cheery attitude.
"Where's your car?” she asked.
Eyeing her from her brunette hair to her sandals, I said, “I walked. It's always a real treat to see you, milady."
Laughing, she said, “I can tell, but I'll have to disappoint you. I was about to change before we go."
"Oh, damn. I mean, well ... damn, that's all. I kinda wish you wouldn't, ma'am. You're fun to look at."
She laughed again and closed the door behind me saying, “Thanks. You always know just what to say."
As she headed for the bedroom, I asked, “Where's Bill? I didn't see his car."
Answering at the bedroom door, she said, “He had to go in early today. He said it was all up to you, anyway,” then she ducked inside and closed the door.
Hm. Bill's true interest in computing extended only as far as playing games and checking email. He'd probably elected to collect a couple of hours overtime.
Marie's TV was on. I used the remote to flip channels until I found a local channel's news show. Same old stuff plus pre-election trivia about the candidates and their doings.
One guy tried to pass himself off as ‘one of the people', just a good ol’ boy from Texas. The other had a rich French wife and long financial strings attached to the hooks in his back.
Both of them craved power, which made them unlikely to truly concern themselves with the problems of the middle class or lower. Both would rule according to whims, political winds, inescapable pressures, and damned little else.
The bedroom door opened and Marie came out in jeans and a blouse. She carried one of those denim, string-top purses that I always associated with the sixties and hippies.
"Ready,” she said, reaching for the remote. I gave it to her and she tapped off the TV, then grabbed her keys from the table by the front door.
We went out and got in her ‘97 Ford and headed for the computer shop on Spring Hill Drive. Marie had once referred to the Ford as her graduation present and said that she'd worked so hard for it, she'd drive it until it died.
The guy at Mega-Comp brightened as Marie walked in, then promptly un-brightened when he saw me. I pulled a list of specifications from my shirt pocket and handed it to him.
"Hi, Chip,” I said, “How much for one of these?"
He studied the list and hemmed and hawed for a time, then coughed up, “I could probably do it for six."
I looked at Marie and asked, “Can you swing that much?"
We'd discussed various signals. She bit her lip and looked slightly distressed as she shook her head, pulled a wad of cash out of her purse, and handed it to Chip.
Marie sounded a lot like Shari Lewis's puppet Lamb Chop as she said, “I only have four hundred and ninety dollars. But I could trade in my old computer."
Seeming to consider matters for a moment, Chip looked at me and sighed, “What kind of monitor does she have?"
After some negotiations, it was decided that Marie would keep her monitor and speakers and trade in everything else.
Chip put the new computer together as we went back to the house for her old computer. I helped Marie back up her personal data and Internet bookmarks, then wiped and reformatted her hard drive. Chip was testing the various components in the new box when we returned.
Marie was dazzled by the CPU speed of her new box, but wasn't too thrilled with the operating system. She asked if she could use her old operating system and Chip shook his head.
"Sorry. The new hardware needs special drivers. Your old OS won't have them and the hardware people don't write for that version anymore."
We talked a bit more, then hauled Marie's new computer home and used the backup CD's to restore her private files. Once everything had been tested to Marie's satisfaction, she shut down her new computer and scooted her chair back.
"Lunch,” she said, “I can play with this later.” She got up and headed down the hallway saying, “I'll be back in a minute."
She took more than a minute, but less than five. When Marie reappeared, she was again wearing the half-tee and tiny skirt.
Grinning at me, she made a pirouette and said, “Just my way of saying thanks, Ed.” Holding up a ten-dollar bill
, she added, “I may have to borrow a few bucks until Friday. That really was all my cash."
"I could even spring for lunch, you know. All you'd have to do is tell every living soul we meet that you're my girlfriend."
She snickered, “Wouldn't work. Too many people know me."
Laughing as I eyed her fine little form, I replied, “Oh, well. Give me a minute in the bathroom before we go."
While I was in the bathroom, I pulled a twenty out of my money clip and stuck it in my shirt pocket. When I came back out, Marie was studying several ads from the Sunday paper, all of which were for fast food places.
"I vote for Checkers,” I said, “I'll pay the difference."
She nodded and put two of the flyers on the computer desk as she led the way to the door. Watching her little skirt flip deliciously, I was perfectly happy to follow her.
Instead of using the drive-through, I suggested we sit at one of the outside tables and she agreed. On our way to the order window—again, slightly behind her as she marched—I fielded the twenty out of my pocket and guided it to a fluttering landing about ten feet ahead of her.
Marie saw it and yelled, “Catch!” as she tossed her denim purse in my general direction and dashed toward the bill. The wind caught it twice and she chased it across the parking lot. It was a wonderful show, but I was afraid she'd lose the bill, so I pinned it to the pavement with a field tendril.
She leaped to plant a foot on it and quickly bent at the waist to reach down and grab it. Another wonderful show, as far as I was concerned.
"Got it!” she shouted happily, then she yelled, “My God! It's a twenty!” and waved the bill as she marched back toward me. “Want to eat in a real restaurant, instead?"
Shrugging, I answered, “Your choice, ma'am, but this'll do me fine. Got enough gas to make it to Friday?"
Glancing at her car, Marie sighed, “No, not really."
"Then let's eat here and put the change in your tank."
We got our food, picked a table, and chatted as we ate. After she seemed to run out of questions about her new computer, Marie asked, “Where do you disappear to, Ed?"
3rd World Products, Inc. Book 7 Page 20
