Book 2: 3rd World Products, Inc.

by Ed Howdershelt

While some guy sang about 'an angel in the centerfold', Leslie tried to spot the speakers in the featureless cabin. There weren't any speakers, per se, but I let her look for them until she looked questioningly at me.

  "It's a field effect,” I said. “The field pulses, the air vibrates, and there's music. We do everything else with smoke and mirrors, though."

  "Forty thousand feet,” said Steph. “Ready for acceleration?"

  She was informing Leslie, not me. Leslie sat forward quickly and gripped the edges of her seat to brace herself, then looked at me and wondered rather obviously why I was still in a reclining position with my feet on the console.

  "Yeah, she's ready, Steph. Tally ho, ma'am. Try to leave your saddle on the starting line."

  Stephie took us to max in about four seconds. Leslie was waiting for the sensation of severe acceleration and muttered something I didn't catch.

  Stephie said, “Thirty-four hundred. You can relax, now, Leslie."

  Leslie didn't unclench immediately. She looked at me with blatant skepticism, then over the side at the ground, then back at me.

  "That's it?” she asked.

  "That's it. Carrington in about fifteen, now that we're moving forward."

  "My God..."

  Leslie numbly accepted a can of tea when I offered it, but her attention must have been elsewhere, because when I opened my DP, the sound made her jump. She stared at my bottle for a moment, then truly noticed the can in her hands and opened it.

  She looked over the side again, but the view below us was nothing more than the tops of clouds. After a few moments, she sat upright again and sipped her tea.

  "I need one of these,” she said. “I really need one of these."

  "I've heard that before,” I said. “Maybe I should ask about a sales commission?"

  Leslie looked at me absolutely seriously. “Yes, maybe you should. Jesus..."

  Chapter Eight

  Leslie had a few questions during the flight. Once she got over her shock, she rattled off questions just about non-stop. At first she directed them all at me, but since most of them had to do with Stephanie, I kept quiet and let Stephie answer them.

  Something seemed out of place, and it didn't take long to figure out what that was. A number of Leslie's questions were fairly technical, and it became clear quickly that she had at least a passing knowledge of rudimentary field dynamics.

  "Do you read Popular Science, or something? Where are you getting these questions, Leslie?"

  "My dad. He always figured we'd have flying cars and jump belts by 1975 or so and he felt cheated when they didn't show up on schedule. When the mag-lev trains appeared, he was in heaven for a while, but that technology didn't filter down to personal uses during his lifetime, so I guess he died feeling shortchanged. I was one of those kids who had to be reading something pretty much all the time, and that included any magazines and books around the house."

  "Why do you think you're able to see Stephie's fields?"

  "I fell out of a shopping cart when I was small. Not long after that, I started complaining that the radio and television and some other appliances in the house looked fuzzy. My parents took me to an optometrist, but he said I had perfect vision, so a number of people began to think I was nuts, or just trying to get attention."

  "I can sympathize. Before the transformers in televisions were better shielded, I couldn't go into the TV departments in stores because of the noise; a high-pitched whine that everybody tried to tell me came from my imagination. Later on, I found out that only about eight percent of the population can naturally hear in that range."

  "Lucky you,” she said.

  "Oh, yeah. Headaches and irritability for no apparent reason for years. When I went in the Army, there were no TV's in the barracks. The headaches went away overnight."

  Leslie laughed. “That was a hell of a way to cure your headaches."

  Linda and two others met us when we landed, and after brief introductions, Linda asked Leslie to go with the doctors while she and I had a talk.

  Once we were in her office, she said, “You'll need a backup. You don't have to like it, but if you go, you'll have one."

  "Why the change?"

  She handed me her pad. The article mentioned four dead and three injured from a blowout on the asteroid. An explosion in one of the oxygen storage chambers, presumed to be sabotage of oxygen reserves. Ongoing investigation.

  Well, duh ... Since they hadn't caught the saboteur, what the hell else would they be doing but investigating?

  "Any other changes, Linda?"

  "One. We had plenty of room, but now we need the space for replacement supplies, so Stephanie isn't going with you."

  I know she expected an argument about that, but I didn't give her one.

  "No problem. I'll work something out with the flitter they issue me."

  "The what?"

  "The flitter they issue me, Linda. For my own use. Mine only. Just like Steph, not one of the commercial versions. Say they can't issue me one on those terms and you can find someone else for the mission. This is a deal-breaker and I won't discuss it."

  Linda heard me clearly. She said, “Elkor, I need a link to the factory."

  "Linking now. Stand by."

  She spoke to the guy at the other end of things only long enough to arrange a data burst each way and tell him that one flitter was to be set aside for my use only, making it sound as if she'd been shoehorned into going along with the idea. He said there'd be one waiting for me.

  After she disconnected, she asked, “Good enough?"

  "Excellent, ma'am, and thank you. Now, about the backup?"

  "Working on it. I'll let you know."

  I remembered what Leslie had said about her teaching job.

  "You're sending me up as some vague sort of power figure. Even vague power figures don't draw from the secretarial pool, Linda. They have their own. Mine should be able to handle herself, think for herself, cover my ass, if necessary, and still manage to look and act like a mild-mannered secretary. She should also be someone that nobody knows. A totally fresh face. Maybe a tall redhead?"

  As my meaning dawned on her, Linda said, “Aw, Jesus, Ed. Think about it. We don't know anything about her."

  "Neither does anyone else. Can you vet her without involving anyone else? Can you quietly put her on the payroll if she'll go for it?"

  Linda stood up and walked around her desk as she said, “I have one or two other choices for the job, Ed."

  "Are they now—or have they ever been—in any way involved with the Amaran project? Are they on the books anywhere at all? Can you be absolutely sure that neither of them would be recognized by anyone up there?"

  "Some of them will know you, Ed. They'll know you used to be connected to me. They'll figure you're still connected with me. It wouldn't surprise anyone who knew you to find another of my people working with you."

  I nodded. “Yup. But I'm going as a 3WP honcho, so having one of your people on board would compromise the effort. We need a fresh face, a recent hire with no history of agency or 3WP employment. Someone who got fed up with teaching and grabbed a good-paying job that took her to space would do just fine. Someone with Leslie's looks would look like a boss's pet, too, and that assumption would cover a lot of questions."

  "Hell, you don't even know if she has any secretarial skills on record, Ed!"

  "Fuck skills, Linda. We have pads for that stuff. She's going to be more of a handler, a personal manager of my time and resources. When to be where and what the event is about, who is next in line at the receptions, and all that stuff."

  "Well, you don't know if she can do any of that, either, do you?"

  "No, but if she can handle thirty or so high school students, I think she can probably handle one me."

  We batted the idea around for an hour, crossing off details and checking Leslie's background as the docs questioned and prodded her about her visual acumen. At the end of the hour we knew that she had black belts in two mar
tial arts styles, degrees in English, History, Business Administration, that both her parents were dead, and that she had been an only child.

  She'd been arrested once at a demonstration by mistake, had an unpaid speeding ticket coming due, and had stopped a robbery in Norcross one night by putting two armed robbers on the floor when one had said that they couldn't leave witnesses. One of them had lived. The one who had fired at her had not.

  At length, Linda said, “Well, she's a bit more than I expected."

  "No shit. In a previous life she was probably called Minerva."

  Linda grinned and set the pad down.

  "But you like them like that, don't you, Ed?"

  "Damned right I do. Especially if I may have to depend on her in a pinch."

  "Do you think she'll just drop her current job and take this one?"

  "She didn't sound happy with her current job. When do we ask her?"

  "I have a few more things to check. Why don't you go see how she's doing with the lab people?"

  "Will do. One thing first, though. She happened to be at DragonCon and she happened to run into me and she happened to be able to see fields. Is that too many happenings at once or just another case of whimsical fate?"

  "My, aren't we just a tad paranoid?"

  "I caught it from you. Back in Germany, I think. I was just an innocent among wolves back then, you know."

  Linda laughed and said, “Aww, poor little thing. We corrupted you, huh?"

  "Exactly. Linda, if Leslie is what she appears to be, that's great. If not, I'd rather have a devil I know than one I don't, and I'd like her where I can reach her."

  Linda nodded, waved me toward the door, and said, “I'll keep fishing."

  At the medlab, one of the docs who'd taken Leslie was fussing over some details at a desk. Leslie and the other doc were nowhere in sight. When I asked about Leslie, the doc gave me a disgruntled look and handed me a folder, then stood up.

  "I disapprove of sharing medical information with non-medical personnel."

  "You have my sympathies. Find anything?"

  "An old pinpoint skull fracture would seem to validate her shopping cart injury. Other than that, she seems normal in all respects."

  "What are you guys doing to her now?"

  The doc didn't like the way I'd phrased the question, but he answered, “EEG and ECG and then a few other scans using Amaran diagnostic equipment. We're in the final phase of tests."

  "Did you just have her lie down and stare at the ceiling, like you did when I was tested?"

  "What?"

  "This is about finding out how she can see fields, isn't it? Is she still hooked up to anything?"

  "Uhm, she should be, but she'll be finished soon."

  "You're missing the point altogether, aren't you? I'm not in a hurry, doc. I'm proposing that we show her a field while she's hooked to the machines. Where is she?"

  He hadn't intended to tell me, but his eyes flicked to a set of doors and I headed toward them. The doc followed, protesting that testing shouldn't be disturbed.

  "Not disturbed. Augmented. Think augmented, doc. You're looking to see how she's normal. I want to know how she isn't."

  I stopped about ten feet from the door and noted the half-inch crack at the bottom.

  "Elkor,” I said quietly, “Are you hooked into Leslie's diagnostics? Can you set up a small field on the other side of the door in front of me?"

  The doc looked around, then realized I was talking to my watch about the same time that I realized I wasn't using the implant I'd asked for. I let my arm fall.

  "I'm connected with her diagnostics, Ed. What kind of field would you like?"

  "Oh, well now, I hadn't given that much thought. How about something that looks like a sheet of bubbles rising up the other side of the door and maybe floating around the room near the ceiling? That should get her attention."

  "Should the bubbles grow in size as they rise, as they would in water?"

  "Oh, hey, Elkor, you're a true artist. Yeah. Make ‘em bigger as they rise."

  From the other side of the door came Leslie's, “What the hell..?"

  She didn't yell, or even raise her voice above conversational tone, but the doctor in the room with her did.

  "What's happening to her readings, Elkor?"

  "Leslie is experiencing some unusual brain activity that seems to be emanating mostly from the interpretive region nearest to her childhood injury."

  "Would you say her field-spotting talent is completely natural?"

  "It would seem so, Ed. The only artificial elements I've detected are her fillings."

  "Well, check those, too, just in case."

  A moment later, Elkor said, “They're simply amalgam fillings."

  "Thanks, Elkor. Pass a copy of the last few minutes to Linda, please. Helluva trick with the bubbles. Good job."

  "Thank you, Ed."

  I turned to the doc and said, “Have someone bring her to the cafeteria when you're through with her. I found out what I needed to know."

  The doc was staring at me, but his attention was wavering between the door and me. He wanted badly to go in there, but was restricted by his own non-interference policy. I left him to work it out.

  In the cafeteria I managed to down most of a tall iced tea while waiting for Leslie's release from the lab's clutches. I poked the 'expand' icon on my pad's screen and did my internetting on a pop-up field about a foot wide.

  "Elkor, this pop-up display is great. Thanks."

  "Why are you thanking me? It was your idea, Ed."

  "Yeah, but an idea is just an idea if you can't make it happen. You made it happen. Now I have something else that I need to make happen. How can I take a copy of Stephanie with me to the factory?"

  "Her data core may be copied for transit. It's a device that will fit in your briefcase."

  "Will I need a few extra college degrees to install her up there?"

  "No. You would simply replace the existing data core with Stephanie's."

  "Would you show me the device and the installation procedure on the pop-up, please? Simple for you and simple for me may have different definitions."

  "I doubt that,” said Elkor. “For instance, I can make fields, but I don't really have much imagination about using them."

  "Think so? Who thought to ask about bubble sizes?"

  My display changed to a split-screen. There was a box-like item on the left and a flitter console on the right.

  "On the right, see the center of the console. Four touch panels release the cover."

  Little pulsing dots showed me the touch panels, then the cover vanished and I was looking at the inside of the console.

  "Four more touch panels release the data core."

  The pulsing dots showed me where to touch and the data core levitated out of and away from the console.

  "Replace the old core with the new, listen for four soft clicks, and replace the console cover. At that point, Stephanie should greet you."

  "Okay, it looks easy enough. One more question about data cores, Elkor; will the core for the computer that runs the asteroid be the same size and type as a flitter core? Would the Stephanie core be interchangeable with it?"

  "No. May I ask why you wish to know about the main computer core?"

  "What if the sabotage hasn't been caused by humans, Elkor? Computers going insane have always been a staple in science fiction stories."

  "That computer reports to me several times a day, Ed. I'm sure I'd have noticed any discrepancies."

  "Maybe someone up there is controlling it."

  "Changes to programming are a board decision. No one person may authorize any changes except within emergency parameters."

  "People find ways around rules and regulations. Assume for a moment that the factory computer has somehow been compromised or subverted. To avoid discovery, reports to you would probably continue to appear routine, wouldn't they?"

  After a moment, Elkor said, “It would seem likely. But there
has been only the barest delay in manufacturing. Human services have been unaffected. If someone had gained control of that computer for purposes of sabotage, why wouldn't they have simply erased its programming and shut down the facility?"

  "What would happen if that computer shut down, Elkor?"

  "It has a backup that would start running the moment that it failed to receive a continuity signal. The station would be back on line within six minutes."

  "And if the backup system failed to engage or start?"

  "A number of people have been trained to deal with such an emergency. They would, if necessary, manually control life support systems, but the factory would be off line until repairs had been made."

  "Elkor, was the first dead guy one of those people? Were any of them killed in the explosion today?"

  "I see. Yes, the first man killed was one of them, and another of them was killed in the oxygen explosion, but those could have been coincidences, Ed. Three others were also killed in the explosion."

  "Until we know differently, assume it was not a coincidence. Send a copy of our conversation to Linda and see what she thinks, Elkor. By the way, how many of the emergency team are left?"

  "Eighteen, Ed. The station is divided into ten sections, each with its own life support system. In the event of a collision, an affected area would be sealed off from the others and emergency personnel would take appropriate measures."

  "So each section has two E-team members. Why not more? Why isn't everyone familiar with how to run their section's life support system in an emergency?"

  "The board of directors thought that two such people per section would be enough. Training extra people as backups would have been quite expensive."

  "Figures. Good thing they weren't in charge of buying lifeboats or we'd have another Titanic. Ask for volunteers and have one of the current E-team people train the volunteers in his or her sector."

  "Such a program was considered and rejected due to the amount of time involved. I can't override the board of directors, Ed."

  "I can. When I get there I'll ask the same damned questions and ask them publicly. There'll be a volunteer program by the end of that week. Hey, Elkor, do you know how to calculate the average IQ of a mob or a board of directors?"