The Orphan in Near-Space (The Space Orphan Book 2)

by Laer Carroll

  "Holy shit!" said Whitey. "She's some kind of kung fu cunt."

  The cyborg spoke, raising HER voice a bit but otherwise almost conversationally.

  "If either of you pulls a gun I will blow you away." Still standing very still.

  Café-Au-Lait bent to take the downed man's nearest arm. "Come on, 'Tonio. Let's get you out of here."

  Whitey bent to help, looking at JANE all the while, so much so that he was not much help getting the Latino onto his feet and stumbling away from HER.

  Phil's breath left him in a rush. "I never--"

  "Quiet, please. I'm not done with them."

  "You're not going to shoot them, are...."

  JANE stood looking steadily at the three men as they walked to a street that T'd into the bayshore street, then turned into it.

  As soon as they were out of sight the super-being turned all their clothing and possessions to grey-white ash. Robot's senses could see through walls and JANE could see all the details. The ash fell away from them as they yelled and frantically brushed the stuff off them.

  JANE was satisfied with the result. She became Jane once again.

  "Let's call a Lyft car and go back to the hotel. I'm done for the night."

  Phil flipped the clear faceplate of his vear down and called a car. It arrived within minutes. While they waited they spoke not at all.

  They took an elevator on the side of their hotel which climbed up toward their room. Out the clear sides of the elevator they could see night-time San Francisco falling down below them. As the door of the elevator opened at their floor Jane spoke at last.

  "I feel like having an early night. I'm sorry. Encounters like this take a lot out of me."

  Phil nodded and held the elevator door and the hotel room door open for her, a gesture rather than a necessity. Jane nodded at him both times. Maybe their relationship would survive tonight's violent encounter.

  In their room Jane went immediately to one of the twin beds in the suite's bedroom. Phil stayed behind in the living room area, getting a drink from the refrigerator. Falling onto the couch, he turned on the room's TV set with the sound turned low.

  Jane was not exhausted by the encounter. Suggesting she was let her disengage from Phil when he was obviously shook up and needed some time away from her.

  She dressed for bed, got into it, and closed her eyes. She used Robot's connection to the Internet to roam the universe of the Web, watching mostly music videos. They lulled her to sleep.

  <>

  Jane woke at sunup, the brightening sky outside visible only through a sliver of space between the heavy blinds hiding the windows. Phil was still asleep in his bed, his face turned toward her. Jane took this as a hopeful sign.

  She made a quiet toilette and dressed for the day in tan jeans and running shoes and a blue sleeveless sweater. Downstairs she found the large breakfast buffet open and a few other early risers enjoying it. She heaped plates on a tray with bright yellow scrambled eggs, crisp bacon, butter-basted toast, and orange juice.

  Phil joined her while she was drinking a dessert coffee flavored with cream and sugar. He smiled at her on the way to the buffet. Sitting down with a laden tray he spoke to her.

  "Sleep OK? Feel like doing any of the plans we made on our way here?"

  "Yes to both." Jane smiled at him.

  "Good! I was looking forward to it."

  He said little as he ate and drank. Nearing the end of his breakfast he said, "Sorry if I went on too long on my early career last night."

  "I started you on the topic and I would have stopped you if I lost interest. I've told you before and I tell you again: I'm spending time with you because I enjoy your company and want to know more about you." Mock severely she said, "So spare me future apologies for what you say."

  "Aye, aye, Captain. Sorry. It's just that I take silly amusement that you really are a captain."

  She maintained her frown as she said, "I just may punish you tonight for your lapse in judgment."

  "Oh, goody!"

  <>

  They took turns in their large bright bathroom freshening up and left for the day wearing jackets against the coolness of the early Saturday morning. The clothing was welcome against the sea spray as they set out on their first activity: a tour of the bay on a double-decker boat. Early on this chill morning most of the tourists watched out the windows of the first deck. Jane and Phil watched from the open second deck.

  The sea was choppy as the boat moved in a northwest path that took them by the grim pile of Alcatraz Island toward the city of Marin on the Marin peninsula. Off to their left the busy Golden State Bridge shone red in the mid-morning sun. There were numerous boats on the water, some of them speed boats leaving rooster tails of water, many of them sail boats.

  They had an early lunch of sea food on the Marin City harbor then visited the many small shops which lined Bridgeway Street. By now the wind off North Bay had moderated and the heat of the day picked up. They took off their jackets and made impromptu butt-capes of them.

  They bought a number of trinkets and curios for their families and friends back home, carrying them in several shopping bags. An hour of this was enough and they gratefully deposited the bags in the trunk of a rented car. Phil drove it on the first leg of their trip up the coast on Highway 101.

  It took them some 45 minutes to go the ten miles to San Quentin Point. There they went east over the six-mile stretch of the Richmond Bridge to Richmond. At Richmond Point Phil stopped at a filling station to top off the battery of the car. It still had 96% of its charge so the stop was really to stretch their legs and visit the restrooms, also pretty much an excuse to move around a bit.

  Jane took the wheel now for the ten-mile trip east and south to Berkeley City. At the Berkeley Marina they parked to check into a luxury suite on the top floor of the multistory Marriott Marina Berkeley. Jane checked their closet. A concierge service Phil often used had taken all their luggage from the San Francisco North Shore Marriott and brought it here. The hotel staff had unpacked and hung up the clothing in the closets and put their toiletries into the bright spacious bathroom.

  They took a golf-cart-like automated runabout inland to the University of California, Berkeley. They wandered the campus and the nearby neighborhoods. Most of the shops and eating places were inexpensive and trendy as usual when so many of their customers were students on modest budgets.

  Near 5:00 they returned to their room to dress for a night out, he in dark suit with a white shirt and purple-and-blue silk tie, she in a lime-green silky A-line dress with modestly high matching heels.

  Over a light dinner, a small steak for Phil and salmon for Jane, they chatted. Eventually, after the tables near theirs had emptied out, Phil brought up the attack of the night before.

  "I'll understand if you don't want to talk about it."

  "I'll answer a few questions. I may not answer them all, or to your satisfaction."

  "Where did you learn to fight like that?"

  "The Air Force Academy teaches self-defense. I was also a member of the karate club for most of my time there. Plus, I've always been an athlete; our bodies learn to move efficiently and economically over time. Then too I've been a dancer ever since I can remember. So lots more body skills."

  Plus, Jane thought but could not say, I was gene modified to be a fighter. A killer.

  He frowned slightly, thinking.

  "OK. I can see that. Another question: Weren't you afraid at all? You seemed very calm."

  "I don't show my emotions in situations like that. But I am very angry. I HATE the idea that someone would harm the people I care about. But it's a cool anger. Best I can describe it, I'm totally focused on the fight. Part of me is calculating all the possibilities of the other's actions and how to counter and use them."

  "But weren't you afraid of yourself getting hurt?"

  "No. I have absolutely no fear. Honey, I'm a killing machine. That's my job, what I've been trained for. Maybe born or made for. Then dis
carded." He knew that she'd been found naked and asleep in a park when she was, apparently, 14.

  Her thoughts turned inward. She'd said to Natalie and others more than once that maybe she was a discarded experiment. Before she'd confessed to Natalie that she was an extraterrestrial, as Natalie had guessed, all the people she'd said that to thought she meant some mysterious Earthly group. But that might be true of some off-Earth group too.

  Phil mistook her inward focus as distress. He took her nearest hand in both of his and said, "Honey, I thank God or whoever you were 'discarded.' I would have not met you otherwise and that was one of the best things that ever happened to me."

  She smiled at him. Then, after a few moments, she freed her hand and picked up her wine glass and sipped from it. The chill white wine, as with every alcoholic drink, affected her not at all since her body burned it so quickly. But she was slowly learning to appreciate different wines.

  "One last question," he said, glancing at his smart watch. "You said you'd 'blow them away' if anyone pulled a gun. But you didn't have a gun yourself. Was that a bluff? What if they'd ignored it?"

  "It wasn't a bluff. You can't see my weapons but I have some far more dangerous than a gun. My 'Great Inventor' label isn't just pop exaggeration, Phil. And that's all I'm prepared to say. Come on. I don't want us to be late."

  He groaned as they stood. "Not only am I in love with the most dangerous woman on the planet, she's going to force me to learn tango. When I've barely got a handle on salsa."

  Jane thought her heart actually skipped a beat when he'd said he was "in love." She scowled at him mock-ferociously to cover up what her face might have shown.

  Chapter 10 - Tango

  The San Francisco area had a big Argentine tango fan base, even bigger than the L.A. area did. Jane had occasionally visited the city to dance there when she was in high school and could convince her parents to visit the city. The dance had been growing in popularity since it was re-introduced to people outside Argentina in the early '80s. It was still a runner-up to salsa but was steadily closing the gap.

  Berkeley had several regular tango dance venues. The biggest was on the University campus where Jane and Phil were headed.

  Their automated runabout dropped them off near Seacrest Hall where a big conference room had been converted into an imitation Buenos Aires milonga, the Argentine word for tango dance parties. They took an elevator with several other party-dressed people to the top of four floors of the huge Student Affairs building.

  Directly across from the elevator doors across a long hall were two opened double doors. Inside they bought tickets from what appeared to be UCB students at a table just inside the doors. They had their wrists stamped, moved away from the line of people waiting to get in, and looked around.

  The room was easily 100 feet square with a cleared floor of pale wood. Around its edges were round or square tables with chairs for four to six people. Each was covered with paper or cloth with red and white checks. Maybe a third of the tables were occupied by at least one person, often two people who appeared to be couples.

  "There," Jane said, nodding to some tables along the long wall to their left. She grabbed one of his hands and led him to a vacant six-seater table midway along the wall's length. They sat on the two chairs nearest the wall so they could look out at the dance floor. To the sides to their left and right were two empty chairs. There were no chairs on the dance-floor side.

  "See," she said. "We're close to the restrooms. We'll need them to freshen up when we get too hot."

  "Smart," Phil said, looking around. "I see we'll have a band."

  Against the wall opposite the doors was a dais about half a foot high and a dozen feet wide. Atop it were several chairs and supports for six musical instruments. One was a large electronic keyboard and one a small double-bass. On two chairs lay violins. On two other chairs lay small accordions with button controls instead of piano-like keys. At the front of the dais was a microphone atop a chin-high stand.

  "The two accordions are called 'bandoneons.' They give tango music its distinctive sound. Some have called that sound mournful. I think of it as 'grave.'"

  The room was slowly filling up but still held only a few dozen people. A couple came out into the center of the room. The woman was holding a microphone. She was dressed in a roses-over-black floral-print A-line dress with a slit up each side and quite high black heels. The man had on a dark suit with a silk shirt open to his mid chest where bronze flesh showed as he moved. Both had a Mediterranean Spanish look and were gorgeous.

  "Mujeres y mujers," said the woman into her microphone. "Welcome to the UC Berkeley weekly milonga put on by the UCB Argentine Tango Club. Flyers on the tables will show you the Club event schedule. This includes a weekly class usually by my partner and me. We are Sofia and Fernando Sosa."

  She had no accent. Her husband or brother had a barely detectable one when he lifted his own microphone and spoke into it.

  "Everyone is welcome to our pre-dance class. I see we have several newcomers. We hope you'll come back often. To begin with we'll start with very basic material for those of you who might be new to tango. Then we'll introduce an advanced figure and practice it."

  Sofia spoke into her microphone. "In Argentina and Uruguay you'll see two types of tango. These are show tango and social tango. Both have an identical sensibility.

  "But show tango is danced in shows by professional dancers who've been dancing since they were almost babies in many cases. It's usually choreographed to look spectacular. Layered on top of social tango figures are often very acrobatic movements."

  Fernando took over. "Later we'll teach you one of those movements suitably tamed for the crowded dance floor. But first let's have everyone up here and we'll introduce the most basic of movements. Even if you know it very well it's always good to sharpen your skills, so don't be standoffish."

  Jane removed her dark green wrap, totally unneeded in midsummer but a nice accent to her lime-green dress, and placed it on the back of her chair to show that the seat was taken. Phil left his suit coat on the back of his chair but moved his wallet from his coat to his pants.

  Everyone was paired up and arranged in several rows by the sister/brother team (Jane had finally remembered them from years past in San Francisco). The students were re/introduced to the tango embrace. It was pretty much a ballroom dance frame but closer (Sofia explained) to accommodate the sometimes very crowded milongas in Argentina.

  The first figure was just shifting from one foot to the other, left-right for the men, right-left for the women. Called la cadencia, the Cadence-counting step in English, Fernando said he preferred to call it The Cuddle. It let a couple get to know and adjust to each other's body, to merge together into one.

  Phil smiled down at her from his six foot two height and said, "I'm a fan of this dance already."

  The next figure was just two steps along the line of dance, counterclockwise around the room, left-right for the men, right-left for the women. This could be repeated over and over.

  "Step smoothly," said Sofia, "legs bent slightly, onto the ball of your foot rather than the heel. Yes! Like that! Good everybody. Very good! Now you look like TANGO DANCERS!"

  "I can do this," said Phil. "Yippee."

  For a half hour that's all they did, to music, around the dance floor. Sofia and Fernando would stop couples and adjust their embrace or murmur advice on how to walk.

  Then the teachers taught "an advanced step." It involved a couple stopping when the dance traffic flow allowed. The woman (from a cue by the man) raised her right leg high and slid it down the outside of the man's left leg. This apparently needed LOTS of practice, as it took up the entire second half hour of the introductory tango class.

  Finally Sofia clapped her hands twice very loudly to get everyone's attention. When she had succeeded she said, "Very good, everyone! Now have a good time. And be sure to come to the milonga next week when we'll introduce a sexy new dance step."

  Fe
rnando thanked them too.

  As everyone retired to their seats Sofia came over to Jane's table before Jane had sat down.

  "Jane! Is that you?"

  She kissed Jane on both cheeks then offered her own. They embraced and sat, Sofia in an empty seat to Jane's side.

  "You've grown so much I hardly recognized you. And who is this gorgeous man?"

  "Phil Newman," said that worthy, leaning over Jane's lap to shake Sofia's hand. "Pleased to meet you. I enjoyed your class."

  "I hope you'll come back."

  "We'd love to. But Jane and I are L.A. based. Do you have friends in L.A. who teach?"

  "We do. Jane will know them." She mentioned the names of a couple who taught, smiled brightly, and stood and left them to go schmooze with someone else.

  "DO you know those teachers?"

  "Yes. You think you might want to learn tango? Even though you've already 'gotten a handle' on salsa?"

  "I take it tango is your favorite dance? So sure. Besides, it looks easier than salsa. And has a slower pace. I'm in good shape but a full night of salsa would tire me out."

  Jane leaned over against him put an arm around him. "Well, I don't want you tired out after a dance. I want you for other activities at that time."

  He put a hand on her nearest thigh and slid it gently up and down, sending tingling waves up into her middle. She grabbed his hand and pulled it away from her.

  "Stop that! Or I won't be held responsible for the consequences."

  Phil looked up at two women who approached the table. "Hello," he said.

  "These seats are not taken, are they?" said the fifty-something woman. She wore a blue A-line dress and matching shoes. She was young looking and slender and had long black hair with strands of silver in it.

  "No," said Jane. As the woman and (they soon found out) her daughter sat she introduced herself and Phil to them. They were Rachel and Tova. The latter was a younger version of her mother but dressed in silky red.

  The women began swapping their street shoes for dance shoes, continuing talking as they did so. The dance shoes had high and slightly chunky heels with suede-leather soles. Jane followed suit. Phil did not yet have tango dance shoes so he looked on with interest as Jane explained the reason for the suede soles.