Xenotech Queen's Gambit: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 2) (11 page)

“You’re usually smart enough to do what I mean, not what I say,” I said.

A faint, plaintive R2-D2 “nobody understands me” set of chirps came from my phone’s speaker. I’d hurt its feelings, but at least now I could see what Chit had spotted.

“Is that what I think it is?” I said.

“Looks that way to me,” said Chit.

“Hrrrmph,” said my phone. “What’s the big deal about an octovac?”

“It’s a very big deal,” I said. “What’s got your circuits in a knot?”

“Nothing,” said my phone.

It was Chit’s turn to sniff and use her version of “Hrrrmph.”

“Nothing?” I said. “You’ve been acting weird for the last two days. What’s going on?”

Words flowed out of my phone like water from a busted dam.

“You have lots of exciting adventures, but you just lug me along like so much dead weight.”

“You’re on all my adventures,” I said, trying to figure out what was going on. “I depend on you.”

“That’s right,” said my phone. “Saving you from certain death when you fell off the giant robot should count for something. You expect so much, but if your faithful phone wants one little thing, you ignore it like it doesn’t exist except when you need it for research or…”

Now I understood—my phone wanted something, and rather than ask me outright it was playing passive-aggressive verbal games to get me to notice. It had pulled this sort of stunt once before when it had wanted an extra petabyte of memory. I knew how to make it stop wheedling.

“What one little thing do you want?” I said. “Just tell me and if it’s not ridiculously expensive, I’ll get it for you. I owe you for saving my life, several times over.”

“A new case,” said my phone, almost shyly.

“What kind of new case?” I asked.

Chit was watching this exchange with obvious interest. I was grateful she kept her mouth shut, since I expected anything she said would only upset my phone.

“An Orishen mutacase—”

Chit laughed, but a regular laugh, not a belly laugh this time.

“I’ve seen ’em back on Orish,” said my little friend. “If you think your phone’s a challenge now, just wait!”

“That’s not fair,” said my phone. “You’ve got six legs and wings.”

“I thought you were a
mobile
phone,” said Chit.

“Jack!” said my phone.

“Give it a rest, Chit,” I said. “How do these mutacases work?”

“I’ll show you,” said my phone.

The O’Sullivan Fabrication promotional video was replaced by another one demonstrating the capabilities of an Orishen mutacase. A phone similar to mine, enclosed in the case and sitting on a table top, was able to extrude tiny arms and legs and move across the table’s surface, then stretch out a hook and a thin cable that it used to lower itself to the floor. Once it was down, the arms transformed into dozens of legs on each of its long sides and it scuttled along at high speed like a broad, flat centipede. When it was six feet from the table, it tilted to a forty-five degree angle, bent back, and somehow sprang up and forward in a graceful arc, landing at its original starting point. It was really cool and just a little bit creepy.

“The case can also integrate with your mutakey,” said my phone, eagerly.

I’m sure it had been trying to work up the courage to ask me for the mutacase for weeks and I’d been too dense to notice.

“How much?” I asked.

My phone quoted a number that was larger than the price of dinner for two at the Teleport Inn, but less than the cost of a block of a hundred hours of Remote Hands sessions. I had the money, and my phone
had
saved my life yesterday.

“Make it so,” I said.

“Recorded,” said my phone. “A drone will home in on our location and drop it off in a few minutes.”

It was making happy chirps and beeps. Images of fireworks exploding flashed on its screen.

“Of course,” I said. I’m glad my team members know how to take initiative.

Chit was looking at me and making a sound like a donkey braying. I guess I deserved it.

I bowed, at least as much as I was able to while wearing a seat belt. Then I rolled down the driver’s side window, accepted delivery from the drone hovering just outside, and unwrapped the package. Out of its box, the case looked like a black, phone-sized second skin.

“Wear it in good health,” I said, putting the Orishen mutacase under my phone. The new case artfully removed the old one and flowed around my electronic associate. I heard chirps of delight and saw appendages appear and disappear rapidly as my phone put its new case through its paces.

“Cool,” said my phone. “Where’s your mutakey?”

I put the mutakey—one of my graduate-level workshop projects on Orish—on the passenger seat. My phone crawled over to it and seemed to absorb it into its new case. Then it started opening and closing my van’s door locks and popping the glove compartment.

“Can we get this reconnaissance in gear, please?” I said.

“And now I can help,” said my phone, waving three of its currently extruded arms. “I think this thing has a stealth mode.”

My phone shimmered, then blended in with the upholstery fabric on the passenger seat and neatly disappeared.

“Isn’t this cool?” said my phone.

“I don’t see it,” said Chit.

I played a rimshot in my head, then issued a command to my van’s A.I.

“O’Sullivan Fabrication, and step on it.”

Chapter 12

“Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted.”
— John Marsden

I didn’t think I’d get more details about O’Sullivan Fabrication from my phone for a few hours, so I talked over possible ways to learn additional information with Chit. We agreed the place looked like a prison fortress more than a 3D printing company.

“The satellite photos didn’t show any obvious entry points, like at the grajja factory,” said Chit.

“And if they’re investing so much money in physical security, I expect their electronic countermeasures are top of the line, too.”

“Yeah, we can confirm that when we get closer,” she said. “You got binoculars?”

“Under the passenger seat,” I said, pointing down and to the right.

“Let’s figure out if there are any good spots for takin’ a discreet look-see,” said Chit. “We can use my phone.”

“You have a phone?” I said. “I thought you communicated through your built-in congruent link.”

“That’s how I keep up wit’ the rest o’ the hive mind,” said my little buddy. “I need my phone for my shows.”

“Who knew?” I said.

“Try to keep up.”

A satellite view of the O’Sullivan Fabrication facility appeared on the windshield screen. It was located in the middle of a loop of private road off the nearest county thoroughfare, nearly a mile away from any other structure. We could approach from either direction, but only the private road ran near the place, and that clearly didn’t get a lot of traffic.

“Switch to topographic,” I said.

Chit pressed a foreleg into a thick spot on her thorax and the view changed to show contour marks. There was a hill about three hundred feet high in the center of the land enclosed by the private and county roads. It was on a heavily wooded parcel of land a quarter mile from the O’Sullivan Fabrication building and looked like it would have an excellent view of the surrounding area, tailor-made for detailed observation.

The sun was starting to go down as my van drove along the county road. I’d disabled its bassoon background tone, so our progress was noiseless except for the sound of tires on asphalt. We passed one end of the O’Sullivan private road and slowed half a mile further along. My van stopped and I got out.

Chit was on one shoulder, my backpack tool bag was slung over the other, and my phone was hanging on my belt, reading the mutacase manual and trying out new features. My binoculars were on a leather strap around my neck and I had a congruency-powered flashlight in an outside pocket of my pack to help find my way back to the van after dark.

I told the van to cruise the county road and stay close, then walked into the woods in the direction of the observation hill, ignoring the private property signs tacked to the trees. After a bit of stumbling around in the fading light, I found a path or animal trail that took me in the right direction without having to push my way through too much undergrowth.

“Are there bears around here?” said Chit. I couldn’t tell if she wanted the answer to be “Yes” or “No.”

“Not many in metro Atlanta,” I said. “Though there are a lot in north Georgia. They’re not a problem except when the sows are protecting their cubs in the spring.”

“Is May spring?” asked Chit.

“Technically, yes,” said my phone.

“Welcome back,” I said to the device, but it didn’t answer. It had just turned itself into something the shape of a batarang.

I should have spent more time on the treadmill at the gym, since I was getting winded from the climb. I could see a dim glow around the hill from the high intensity congruent lights positioned along the fences and on the guard towers of the O’Sullivan fortress. The slope was steep over the last two hundred yards and the pines changed to maples and birch trees before the trees stopped at the edge of the meadow that crowned the hill.

There were a few man-high boulders on the side near the fabrication facility and I leaned against one of the larger ones and lifted my binoculars. It was disconcerting to see beefy security guards wearing black O’Sullivan Fabrication uniforms standing in the two nearest towers. They were using their binoculars to stare back at me. It was even more disconcerting when the face of the rock next to me slid to one side with a pneumatic whoosh and metallic clank, revealing another thick-necked uniformed guard standing at the top of a flight of metal stairs. He had a shotgun pointed at my center of mass.

“Did you happen to see any private property notices on your way up here?” he said. A small nameplate above his breast pocket said he was Larry Villarica from Orlando, Florida. I made a mental note
not
to include that sort of detail when I implemented name badges for XSC.

“Olen turisti. Olen vaelluksella.”

I’d just said, “I am a tourist. I am hiking,” in Finnish.

Mike’s not the only one who wanted to get a better handle on Quenya.

“Bein’ smart, are you?” said Larry. “Let’s see some identification.”

“I. do. not. speak. English,” I said, trying to bluff it out.

Larry pulled a badge wallet from his hip pocket and showed it to me, pointing to the laminated card with his name and photo below his tin-plated O’Sullivan Fabrication Security badge. Then he pointed at me, pointed at his laminated card, and spoke very slowly.

“I. den. ti. fi. ca. tion.”

I kept a puzzled expression plastered on my face, but it looked like I’d have to come clean and admit who I was. Larry was holding the shotgun one-handed, but it was still pointed in my direction. I wasn’t wearing anything that said Xenotech Support Corporation, but I had business cards in my backpack tool bag and my wallet clearly identified me as Ajax Pryce Buckston, not Eero Saarinen, or whatever famous Finnish name I could come up with. I was wearing my Orishen pupa silk shirt, which had stopped bullets and saved my life earlier, but shotgun pellets tended to disperse and Poly had told me she liked my face the way it was.

Larry put his badge wallet away and returned to a two-handed grip on his weapon.

“Show me some identification.”

It was an order, not a request.

I reached for my wallet, but it wasn’t there. Where
was
my wallet? Come to think of it, where was my phone?

Larry saw that I was puzzled by the loss of my wallet and seemed to come to a decision. I was above his pay grade. He pulled me into the hidden observation post at the top of the hill and closed the door behind me. Then he herded me down four flights of metal stairs until we reached a corridor leading toward the main building. Once there, he spread my feet wide, pressed me face first against a wall, and fastened my wrists together with zip ties. Chit hid under my hair and stayed out of sight.

I was marched downhill a quarter mile along the corridor until we entered the lower level of some larger structure, presumably the O’Sullivan Fabrication fortress. Larry led me along a wide hallway, then grabbed my upper arm none too gently and took me into some sort of interrogation room. He told me to sit down in a chair next to a rectangular metal table, pointed to a surveillance camera in the ceiling, and left. The door closed behind him and I heard the sound of an electronic lock engaging. I started to sweat, even though the air conditioning was up high enough that I had goosebumps.

After a few minutes, an older guard wearing a black uniform with more scrambled eggs—that’s fancy braid, not breakfast—entered. His nameplate said he was Hiram McWhorter, from Valdosta, Georgia and he tried to interrogate me in Italian, French and German, without success. I kept up my tourist disguise, complaining in my limited Finnish vocabulary and reciting the two poems I’d memorized from the
Kalevala.

Then I had an idea and mentioned the Silver Comet Trail in halting English. Once Hiram heard “Silver Comet Trail” he decided to buy my “lost hiker” routine. The heavily used trail ran a few miles north of here and was popular with European tourists, so that detail made the difference. He gave interrogating me one last try, using grade school Dutch, but when I shrugged my shoulders Hiram finally got disgusted and gave up.

“He started, but he couldn’t Finnish,” said the voice inside my head.

I suppressed a laugh.

“What’s funny?” tapped Chit in modern Pyr pulse code.

I clicked my teeth in reply.

“Later.”

“Take him to the Sheriff’s office in Austell,” said Hiram. “Tell them he was trespassing, and we want to prosecute.”

“Okay,” said Larry. “Want anything while I’m closer to civilization?”

“A Quarter Pounder with Cheese, small fries and a Coke.”

Hiram handed the first guard a ten dollar bill.

“Get something for yourself, too. Good job apprehending this character, even if he’s lost, not a spy.”

“Thanks,” said Larry. “Eternal vigilance is the price of security.”

“Liberty,” said Hiram.

“Whatever,” said Larry.

I was pushed along more underground corridors then led up a flight of stairs that emptied into the main lobby of the building. I saw three signs painted on the walls, like back in Zwilniki’s VIGorish Labs complex. They read Warehouse, Fabrication and Offices, and weren’t much help. We stood next to the reception desk and waited for Larry’s car to drive up.

The guard at the reception desk, Annette Winston, from Anniston, Alabama, was bored. She was flipping through a copy of
Galaxy
magazine—the GaFTA tabloid, not the revived SF mag—and I was able to read a few lines of the visitor’s sign-in log. The only entry for today was someone named Agnes Spelman from Factor-E-Flor. Agnes Scott and Spelman were two highly regarded women’s colleges in Atlanta, which meant I may have just learned the current alias of the woman I knew as Columbia Brown. I’d have to pass that news on to Lieutenant Lee.

When Larry’s car arrived he was polite and not too rough about getting me into the back seat. On the five mile drive I was worried about the impact an arrest for trespassing would have on my business
and
on the place where I’d be spending the night. My apartment was highly preferable to the hospitality of the Douglas County Jail. I also wondered what had happened to my wallet and my phone. When we pulled up to the Douglas County Sheriff’s Lithia Springs Precinct Office in Austell, a surprise was waiting for me.

Lieutenant Lee’s Capitol Police cruiser was parked outside and my friend was standing beside it. He was wearing his Smokey the Bear hat, which made him extra-intimidating. When Larry arrived and got me out of the back of his car, Martin came over and introduced himself, then cut to the chase.

“I’ll take him,” said Martin. “He’s an escaped mental patient and we’ve been looking for him.”

I gave Martin a “thanks a lot” look. He kept his poker face.

Larry replied. “I don’t know. My boss said I had to turn him in for trespassing.”

“Did you hear him, man?” said the lieutenant. “He talks like a crazy person.”

Martin looked at me. I looked at Larry and recited half a poem at him in Elvish.

“I guess you’re right about that,” said Larry. “And what my boss don’t know won’t hurt him. He’s your problem now.”

Larry shook Martin’s hand, got into his car, and headed for the Golden Arches.

“Thanks,” I said, turning around and extending my zip-tied hands.

Martin cut my bonds with a Swiss Army Knife. I rubbed my wrists. I didn’t like being arrested, even if it was by private security and didn’t really count.

“No problem,” said Martin. “But you owe me.”

“Another breakfast?” I said.

“Maybe some other time. Information.”

“Glad to share,” I said, “but I don’t know much.”

“I figured that,” said Martin, “but I expect they know more.”

Chit had moved back to my free shoulder and the two of us stared as my van pulled around a corner and parked next to Martin’s cruiser.

“Holy sh…” said my little buddy, her compound eyes spinning.

“Hop in,” said my phone, using my van’s larger speakers. It popped both doors open. “I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

Martin and Chit and I got into my van. It made sense for us all to get a briefing on the way back to Atlanta, so Martin sent his cruiser ahead of us to wait for him near my apartment. Once we’d buckled up and started back to the city, my phone explained what it had been up to.

“When you were surprised by the man with the shotgun,” said my phone, “I held on to your belt and moved behind you. I wanted to stay out sight.”

“Smart,” I said.

“I heard you pretend to be Finnish, so I pulled your wallet out of your back pocket and held on to it. I knew it could be used to prove your real identity and screw things up.”

My phone flipped my wallet into my hands and I returned it to its usual location. I trust my phone enough that I didn’t check the balance on my credit cards first. It wouldn’t have been polite. Besides, my phone
was
my credit cards, for most transactions. I nodded my thanks and encouraged the resourceful device to continue.

“I rappelled down the back of your pants, walked around behind Larry, and flipped up to attach myself to the back of his belt. I looked like any other piece of his equipment.”

“And while you were doing that, you were also calling me and letting me know Jack had been captured,” said Lieutenant Lee. “Good job multitasking.”

My phone looked proud and happy. A big yellow smiley face covered its screen.

“Way to go!” I said, and meant it. That was the second day in a row my electronic friend had saved me.

“Thanks,” said my phone. “While you were being interrogated, I dropped off Larry’s belt when he walked through the lobby on the way to the restroom.”

“Okay,” I said, with a tone that meant, “Tell me more.”

“Then I crawled around under the reception desk and tapped all the security camera feeds in the building.”

“You what?” I said. A grin spread across my face. I picked up my phone and kissed it right on its smiley.

“Um. Um. Um,” said my phone, not sure how to deal with this atypical public display of affection.

Martin broke in to give the disconcerted unit time to recover.

“I headed this way as soon as I heard you were captured,” he said. “Then I got a text directing me to the Sheriff’s office, not the O’Sullivan Fabrication building. I got there just in time, apparently.”

“Thanks for keeping me out of jail.”

“The night is still young,” said my friend.

“Now about those security camera videos…” I said to my phone.

“Yeah,” said Chit, waving her antennae wildly. “What did ya see?”

“What’s in the warehouse?” said Martin.

“You know, don’t you, Jack,” stated my phone.

“Robots?” I said, tentatively.

“Robots,” said my phone. “Four more heavily armed giant robots, just like the one from WT&F.”