Habitats (an Ell Donsaii story #7) (10 page)

“Naw,
” the woman said, “I have to buy them somewhere else, just like you do. I wouldn’t even be able to make off with the parts to assemble one myself, they’re all microtagged.”

“You’d be able to build
a port if you had the parts?” the bartender asked, impressed or doubtful, Basir wasn’t sure which.

“Sure, no problem. What do you want one for?”

“Scuba diving.”

She frowned, “Scuba?”

He shrugged, “Yeah, install one end of a port on a cut off snorkel, leave the other end up on shore. Then I could go on an endless dive without carrying tanks or worrying about running out of air.”

Basir saw a way to join their conversation. “But it wouldn’t work very deep. The pressure of the water would push the air in your lungs out the port and you wouldn’t be able to pull any air back down to you
against the pressure.”

They
both looked at him like he was crazy. Benny said, “You’re nuts man, they send divers using air hoses down to do work deep underwater all the time.”

Basir resisted the temptation to laugh at the man’s stupidity. Instead he said, “They pump air
under pressure down through those hoses though.”

The
bartender shrugged uncertainly and said, “Well, then I’d have to get myself a pump.” He turned back to the blond woman, “Anyway, I’d like to get myself a port.”

She winked at him, “Well
, buy me a beer on the house and maybe next time I see one lyin’ around, I’ll snag it for you.”

Basir said, “
I’ll
buy you a beer if you’ll just tell me how they work.”

She eyed him a moment, then tapped the bar and said, “Let’s see that beer.”

Basir noticed with surprise that her first one was nearly empty. Turning to Benny, he said, “Bring the lady another beer on me.” He turned back to her and extended his hand, “I’m Bart.”

“Stacy,” she replied,
tossing back the last of her beer. “Are you gonna get around that beer of yours?” she asked, eyeing it.

Basir picked up
his beer, saluted her with it and took his first sip of alcohol. To his surprise it tasted bitter and unpleasant. Somehow he had always pictured beer as having a smoky, smooth taste. He managed to avoid raising his eyebrows in startlement, instead smacking his lips as he set it down, “Ahh, that hit the spot.”

Benny gave Stacy another beer. She turned to Basir, “What do you want to know about ports?”

He shrugged, “How do they work?”

She widened her eyes, “
I
sure as hell don’t know. The theory on that is complex, man. Most of the big domes have a hard time understanding how they work.” With a sense of pride in her voice she said, “That Donsaii girl is
smart
.”

Basir, raised his glass at the woman again. “You can say that again.” He took another sip. “I was wondering more what the parts are like and how you putont how yo them together?”

She shrugged. “My part of the line gets the disks already wired to a little package of electronics…” she tilted her head as if seeing something far away, “Well the big disks have a big set of electronics. The little ones can run on a battery and the big ones need a
lot
of power. The electronics are pretty complex and I don’t know circuits, but even if I did, most of it is on chips so I can’t even see what kind of circuits are in the chips. Then the whole thing gets buried in Dexin. You know, that epoxy that makes them impossible to take apart to figure the circuits out after they’re sold.”

“What do
you
do? Assemble the chips to the electronic boards?”

She laughed, “Oh Gods no. Robots and
other machines do almost all the assembly. Us mere humans just make sure the robots are supplied, fix them when they jam and test the finished product. I like doing the testing. It’s pretty cool to power a new port up and see the disk disappear so you can see through the port to whatever’s behind the other end.”

Basir felt disappointment
at her lack of understanding, but tried not to show it. Even if she couldn’t build him a port, she might know how to use them and what their limitations were. “So do they all work the same or do you have to have different ones for different tasks. For instance, could I use the same one to power my car, water my lawn and then let Benny borrow it for his snorkel?”

Stacy snorted, “No way. There are special ones
made just to jack electrical power conductors through, certain kinds for flammables like gas, special ones for airplanes and even different ones for rockets.”

Aha!
Basir thought to himself,
if you have to have different ones to send flammables through, that might have been the issue with the one Farshid tried to send to the White House! If they tried to send propane through one made to transport water, then the propane would have wound up in the house with them and could be the reason there was an explosion.
To Stacy he said, “Why do they have different ones for airplanes and rockets?”

She shrugged, “The ones for airplanes won’t go fast enough for a rocket. When they get over a certain speed they shut down and the rocket runs out of gas.”

“So, if I wanted to build a rocket, I’d have to get one of the special ones for rockets?”

“Yeah, and you’d better
belong to a certified organization that’s going into space too. They don’t want you crashing rockets into things down here on earth.”

Basir nodded. He hadn’t thought of trying to make rockets to bombard the White House
until just now, but it sounded like that would have been an unrewarding task anyway. He wondered if it was actually
possible
to use this technology against the Americans. If there was, he couldn’t see it right now.

Oh well, Stacy had given him the best information he’d gotten so far.
He boughr r+0">He t her several more beers and managed to have his AI get her contact information before she headed a little unsteadily out to her car to go home. He needed to call his superiors and tell them what he’d found out.

***

Emma and Ell stepped through the door of Slade’s Bar and Grill for a D5R after-hours get together. Ben Stavos saw them and waved. “‘Bout time you ladies got here!” he called. As they approached he said, “Donsaii, I’m buyin’ you a beer
and
beatin’ your butt at 8 ball.”

Ell
grinned, raising an eyebrow and saying, “You and what army?”

“Hah! You may be the world’s greatest gymnast,” he raised an eyebrow, “but that don’t mean squat at the
pool table.”

Vivian asked, “
Can I bet on Donsaii?”

Ben
gave Vivian his best look of astonishment as he said, “Sure you can. You sure you’ve got the money to waste?”

After
greeting everyone and having a few nachos, Ell wandered over to the pool table Ben had purchased time on. To her surprise a number of the group got up and straggled over to watch as if pool was some kind of spectator sport.

Ben broke, putting in the 15 ball. Then he put in the 10 and missed
the next one.

Ell purposefully missed her shot, but to give herself a challenge left the 1 ball centered in between the cushions in front of the corner pocket. She put some back spin on the cue ball to leave it well aligned on Ben’s 11 ball.

Ben put in the 11 and the 13 but then to Ell’s surprise missed again. She’d heard he was very good and wondered if he was going easy on her.

Vivian leaned over and said, “Hey, I’m counting on you. Don’t let him make off with
all my money!”

Ell snorted. “
You bet on the wrong horse tonight. I’m no pool player.” Nonetheless she decided she should put in a few balls to make it more interesting. She put in the 7 and the 3, then missed the 5 but left it in front of another corner pocket.

Ben ran the rest of his balls
except for the 8 ball which was down at the end where Ell had blocked the corner pockets. He missed a long bank shot at a corner pocket on the other end.

As Ell stepped back up to the table she noticed a large man coming into the bar carrying a pool cue
in a case. A big man with his own pool cue reminded her of Bill and “Silent” Joe from her games at 87 West in Raleigh a while back. She watched him out of the corner of her eye. Something seemed off about the man. As if he was already drunk. As she thought this, he staggered a little. She eyed the man curiously as she leaned down to line up a shot. He looked around the room, then his eyes focused on Shelly, the tall brunette from purchasing at D5R.

Ell focused on Shelly too and saw she was talking en was talto Manuel
Garcia from the Quantum Research team.

The man with the pool cue
looked as if he thought Shelly and Manuel were too friendly. His face flushed with rage and he started that way. Ell found herself dropping into the zone. With her left hand, Ell picked up the cue ball she’d been lining up on.

The man set his case down on a table. The people sitting
at that table looked up at him in surprise.

He popped the case open and pulled out
, not a cue stick, but a sawed off shotgun.

Ell
flipped the cue ball to her right hand, and cocked it back to throw.

People watching the pool game looked around in confusion, wondering why she’d picked up the ball.

The man stepped up across the table from Shelly and began extending the shotgun to point it at her.

Shelly
frantically shoved back away from the table, scrabbling her feet and shrieking. The people on either side of her leaned desperately away. Manuel started to stand up and reach toward the man…

Ell desperately wondered
, would the man really shoot?
Could
she stop him by throwing the cue ball or might hitting him cause him to fire? Hitting the shotgun might make it fire. It might make him miss Shelly, but hit someone else instead. Deep in the zone, it seemed like Ell had
forever
to ponder the horrific consequences of
any
action she might take, including doing nothing and watching him fire the gun into Shelly’s face.

Agonizing over it,
Ell swung the cue ball forward. Unable to think of anything else to do, she let it go…

The ball rocketed toward
the man’s extended arm.

The man’s forearm crumpled
as the cue ball struck it just behind the wrist. As the bones broke, they bent palmarly, which loosened the tendons to his trigger finger and made his hand release the pistol grip of the gun…

The shotgun flipped into the air tumbling end
for end…

Ell leaped up over the pool table, stepped once on a bar table and dove out
flat, trying desperately to catch the shotgun before it landed…

B
efore her hand arrived, the shotgun came down hard on the corner of the table. Trigger guard first…

I
t fired…

Ell grabbed the gun as she landed, sliding through the glasses, baskets
, pitchers, plates and napkin holders to skid off the end of the row of tables D5R had appropriated. She landed on the floor and leapt back to her feet. For a fleeting moment she scanned everyone’s shocked but intact faces and she thought no one had been hurt.