3rd World Products, Book 16 (25 page)

Elgin’s gaze moved to Tanya as she said softly, “But she’s still young enough to do that, and she’d do it for her mother, wouldn’t she? Is that what all the flying has been about? You’ve been training her to do what you won’t?”
 

I chuckled, “You can’t honestly believe I’d admit something like that to you, ma’am. I just finished accusing you of having extreme competence.”
 

“Yes, you did, and thank you, of course, but… You must realize you’ll be charged as an accessory if she tries it.”
 

Munching one of my fries, I said, “Once upon a time I sold cars in Germany. If someone had used one as a getaway car in a bank robbery, would the cops have called me an accessory? Nowadays I sometimes sell a board to someone. Same thing, ma’am. Like if I’d sold her my old hang glider, you couldn’t expect me to let her fly it without some training. You also can’t expect me to govern her use of her board once she’s paid for it and driven it off the lot.”
 

Meeting my gaze, Elgin said, “I see. And I guess we’ll see if a court agrees with you later.”
 

“Only if she tries to bust her mom out of that place, and I’m not really convinced she will.” Turning to Tanya as if to shut her up, I held up a hand and said, “Not one word, ma’am. They can’t bust us or they would have by now, so don’t say anything that might give them a reason. They need an absolutely bulletproof bust to make a good political case.”
 

Elgin sat up straight again and stood up, likely thinking my last few words had sealed our intent and our fate. She stepped back from the table and said, “I need to get moving, so I’ll be on my way.”
 

Looking at Tanya, she added, “If you need to talk, you have my card.”
 

Looking at me, she said, “I do understand and appreciate that you want to help Marie Connor. You seem to be a truly honorable man. In my world, that’s the highest compliment I can offer.”
 

With that, she turned and walked away. I noted that she really did have pretty fine legs before
she walked outside. When I turned back to Tanya, she rolled her eyes and looked outside to watch Elgin leave.
 

Casting a field over the entire table, I had it descend to the floor. It found the bug Elgin had placed near the center strut and pulsed red around it. I pointed down at it through the table and Tanya gave a slight nod of understanding.
 

We ate in silence for a time, then I said, “I hope she doesn’t have to get in your way. I think she sympathizes with us.”
 

Tanya goggled at me briefly, collected herself, and ad-libbed, “Uh… I don’t know. She might say something like that anyway, just to throw us off-balance. Wouldn’t she?”
 

“It’s possible, I guess. She let us believe she didn’t know anything about me and let me rant about being prepared.” With a sigh, I said, “And she might think I’m just an old retired spook who’s trying to play the game again in order to get some sack time with a gorgeous young goddess like you.”
 

Tanya gave me one of those shocked, ‘
Holy shit, I can’t believe you said that!
‘ expressions, then shook her head and almost viciously stabbed her fork into some fries.
 

Munching some fries, I snorted, “Could also be they think I’ve gone soft and forgotten too much. Doesn’t matter and it would work to our advantage, but it’s nothing to count on. You’ll be ready to make a run to Guyana by yourself as soon as next Friday if we have good training weather all week.”
 

Giving me a sidelong glance over the remains of her burger, Tanya swallowed, then said, “Ed, I really don’t want to talk about things here. She was in that seat long enough to plant something somewhere.”
 

Deliberately leaning down on the side away from the bug, I said, “I don’t see anything under here, but you’re right. Lemme look under her chair.” I did so and said, “Nope. Nothing here.”
 

With a grin, Tanya said, “Good. Let’s finish eating and get out of here anyway.”
 

I gave her a little salute and, “Oh, yes, milady. By your command, my lady.”
 

She snickered, “Stop that.”
 

“Of course, milady, as you say, ma’am.”
 

Tanya chuckled, “I’m gonna smack you, boy. Eat up. I want to go see my mom.”
 

We finished and flew to the nursing home, dismounting our boards about ten feet from the big glass doors of the front entrance. The procedure for entering the place was only slightly less invasive than going through a TSA airport checkpoint. We were then escorted to Marie’s room.
 

When Marie saw me, her mildly questioning look quickly morphed into shocked, lopsided recognition and then into a ‘
what the hell are you doing here?!
‘ expression. I ignored that and sent probes to examine her for open wounds. There were none, but two incipient bed sores marked her hips.
 

When she moved to try to sit up, my probe sliced her left sore open and captured some of the good flesh from below it. The probe then formed a tiny stasis field around the sample, put a stealth field around that, and stashed itself near my board matrix
 

Tanya said, “Mom, Ed is trying to find a way to help you. He retired from 3rd World Products and knows some people.”
 

That didn’t seem to cause Marie much ease and comfort. She glared at me and said something I didn’t completely understand, but the last part of it was fairly obviously, “…anything from you then or now.”
 

Tanya said, “She…”
 

I interrupted with, “No need. I got the gist of it. Told you we didn’t get along very well.”
 

Stepping close to the bed, I took Marie’s good hand in both of mine. She feebly tried to pull away as I said, “I’ll do what I can whether you like it or not, Marie. We never liked each other, but we covered each other when it counted.”
 

With that, I backed away and said to Tanya, “I’m not here to upset her. I’ll wait outside. Have a good visit.”
 

Tanya nodded. “Okay.”
 

When I returned to the corridor, I went looking for a coffee pot and found one in an area marked ‘visitors’. As I pumped coffee from an urn through the sipping hole of my mug, a man came to watch.
 

He asked, “Sir, why not take the lid off?”
 

“Too messy.”
 

He reached for my mug and said, “Sir, I’m going to have to see that mug.”
 

With a shrug, I handed it to him. He took the lid off, looked inside, and poured my coffee into a nearby fountain. He carefully observed what came out of my mug, checked the lid and bottom again, and handed it back to me.
 

“Sorry for the imposition.”
 

“No problem if there’s coffee left in the pot. Did you really have to do that?”
 

“Yes, sir. Any time anyone does anything unusual, it’s my job to check things out.”
 

As he walked away, I used the drinking fountain to rinse the lid and mug, shook residual water out of the lid’s cover over a potted plant, and put my mug back together. Filling it again with coffee, I sent a cooling tendril into it and sipped some. The place might be the next best thing to a medical prison, but the coffee was damned good.
 

Nearly twenty minutes later, Tanya emerged from her mother’s room looking more than a little stressed. I got up as she approached, but she rather angrily grabbed a foam cup and a cardboard sleeve, filled the cup with coffee, slammed a lid on it, and dug a little flip-top flange open. Pressing the flange back to lock it open, she sipped and flinched hard, then went to the fountain and tried to find a way to get some cold water into the cup. I took a new cup to the fountain and let it fill a bit, then poured the cold water into her coffee.
 

Tanya’s hands were shaking. She started to say something, then didn’t, and simply sat down with her coffee. After a few sips, she sat back and sighed, “I tried to calm her down. No luck. I tried to tell her you just want to help. All she did was rage about things that happened way back in… whenever.”
 

“1972 and 1973.”
 

She looked up at me with irritation. I raised a hand and said, “Sorry. Go ahead.”
 

After a moment, she said, “Forget it. Let’s just go.”
 

She looked for a place to put her cup, sipped it down some, and left the cup by the urn. We walked out past watchful eyes and mounted our boards where we’d dismounted them.
 

As we lifted toward the hospital, Tanya sent me a ping.
 

“Here! Present! Yo! Take your pick!”
 

“Did you get a sample?”
 

“Of course I did. And before you ask, yes, it’s some of the good stuff.”
 

“Where’d you get it?”
 

“Off her butt. Fresh flesh from deep inside a bed sore.”
 

Wobbling hard in flight, Tanya sent, “
Eeeewwww!
”
 

“Hey, no sweat. Untouched by human hands.”
 

“
But we’re talking about putting it in candy to get it back inside her, dammit!
”
 

“It’s all we’ve got, lady. We’ll wash it before we give it back, okay? Besides, now that there’s an open bed sore, I won’t have to put it in her candy. I’ll just put it back where I got it.”
 

A moment passed before she sent, “Still…
Eeewww
.”
 

Heh. I saw the hospital below and sent, “There’s the hospital. Any reason for me to go in?”
 

Tanya shook her head. “I don’t think so, but… Ed, what do you think of the idea of sampling Jessica, too?”
 

“No. By now they know about her drug problem and her injuries will make her check in periodically with a doctor. She has a chance to clean herself out with supervision. Just send a ping when you’re done here and I’ll meet you in the sky.”
 

“Okay. Later, I guess.”
 

She landed and headed for the front doors. I called up a screen to surf the net, check email, and edit a few chapters of my latest book. About thirty minutes passed before Tanya sent her ping.
 

I sent, “I’m right above the building.”
 

“I’ll be right up. Do we need to take anything with us?”
 

“I have my instant coffee. What do you need?”
 

“How long will be be gone?”
 

“A couple of hours, max.”
 

“A juice pack, I guess. Let’s find a store.”
 

We met in the sky and I followed her to a nearby grocery store. A few minutes later, Tanya followed me back to Lake George, where we did some fancy flying before I descended into a clearing. When Tanya joined me there, I took us to stealth mode and called Galatea.
 

Tea manifested around us in stealth mode using a non-standard frequency, but she appeared in the standard flitter configuration, which let us step off our boards to the deck. As soon as we were in seats, I launched Tea toward Guyana and opened a Dr. Pepper.
 

Tanya marveled at the flitter, of course. I explained the console and reclining seats, then explained why we weren’t blown off the deck by having Tea turn the inside of her elongated hull field gray.
 

As Tanya went through another round of marveling, I had Tea morph to her two-seat configuration. Tanya screeched as the hull seemed to contract around us and turned a deep emerald green.
 

I said, “And this is how Galatea usually looks, milady. Her outer stealth field is still stretched to suit our speed.”
 

Contacting the Guyana clinic, I again asked for Milla and told her we’d be there shortly. Once that was done, I turned to Tanya and asked, “Now, how can I keep you entertained for half an hour or so?”
 

Staring around at the receding world and the blackening sky above, she seemed not to hear my question. Because I knew she’d start asking more questions shortly, I put a plot of our flight on a two-foot screen and shoved it toward her. Tanya pawed it twice in a distracted manner before she rather blindly found the corner and pulled it into her lap.
 

I leaned my seat back, put my feet on the console, and gave some thought to inventing a reason for visiting Marie twice in one day.
 

Some time passed before Tanya asked in a tense voice, “Are we really going this fast?”
 

“Yup. And we’re really that high, wherever we are along the path at this very moment. I think I thought of a reason to visit Marie again today.”
 

“You did? What?”
 

“All those old pictures I put on your laptop. Think she’d like to see them, or would the memories be too painful?”
 

“I can’t think why they’d be painful. After all, our memories of other times are sort of like snapshots we’ve kept.”
 

“Yeah, but… Have you ever seen any of those pictures before? The ones of your father, maybe?”
 

She looked at me oddly. “No. I haven’t.”
 

“Have you wondered why yet?”
 

“No, but now that you’ve mentioned it I’m wondering that.”
 

“If they’re still using those areas for training, she likely wouldn’t have mentioned them. Otherwise, her silence might involve things about the people in the pictures. Can’t think what, though. Except for Mike, the others managed pretty well with her.”