Fiction

Jeez …

Dian and I had appointments at the hospital on Friday, so we rented a car (my old pick-up isn’t really up to the trip anymore), made a reservation at the big Air Force Inn on base to stay overnight, and drove into the city today.

So, of course, the Airman we gave our reservation to got the date wrong and made it for September 19th.  The sergeant on duty when we got here tsk’d and, by way of apology,  put us up in the VIP housing.

An astonishing room, shipmates.  A full suite, with fully stocked bar and fridge, fancy stemware and linens, and a bathroom to die for!  Decorated tastefully, laid out carefully, and cleaned meticulously; simply the most astonishing military inn room I’ve ever stayed in.

It made the entire trip worthwhile, in all honesty.  Dian has appointments with the podiatrist and dermatologist, and I have an echo-cardiogram scheduled.  She just needs new insoles and an adjustment to some meds that are causing her to break-out, and I need to have an arrhythmic heartbeat checked before I kick my work-outs into high gear.

Oh, regarding our lifestyle changes … I’ve dropped twenty pounds in a month on our new diet and walking regiment, and feel good enough to want to start hitting the gym a couple times a week during the day.

Our diet is odd, granted, but it works:

Breakfast – two eggs (alternating between real eggs and Eggbeaters), half a can of sardines, and half an avocado;

Lunch – a tuna fish sandwich (one teaspoon of mayo, one teaspoon of mustard, one half teaspoon of Tabasco, three grinds of fresh pepper, and a squirt of lemon, two cans of packed in water tunafish, mix and leave for at least an hour; sliced ripe tomato and sweet onion, baby spinach instead of lettuce, and thin whole wheat buns) with sugar free bread and butter chunks on the side, and sliced ripe plum and orange wedges for desert;

Dinner – smoothies made with four ounces each of soy milk, pomegranate juice, frozen blue berries, black berries, strawberries, and mango [if available], with one fresh banana tossed in for the heck of it.

In-between snacks – Unsalted roasted almonds (raw almonds that I roast myself and repackage), a handful for mid-morning, mid-afternoon, and during the evening.

Like I said, odd.  We break diet once a week by having lunch at a buffet we like, but – other than that (well, and during this trip … hard to stay on diet while traveling) – we’ve been faithful to our new lifestyle and it’s been working.  With luck, I’ll be back down at my military weight by this time next year.

Sightseeing, Psyches, and Surprises – Parts Two, Three, and Four

I stopped and turned around. Jules stopped running, smoothed her clothing, and walked the remaining twenty feet or so. “I got your note, Nick, and even caught the last of your little show back there. Was that Reginald Darrius?”

“In the damp flesh, doll,” I agreed, walking on.

She fell in beside me, long legs easily matching my stride. “I thought so … what did he want?”

“A bathroom,” I quipped, smiling to myself.

“Nick …”

“Okay, dollface, okay; he wanted me to put pressure on Helen to appoint him her personal manager, empowered to deal with the Department of Energy for her. Apparently, she’s a bit of a genius.”

“Really?” Jules scoffed, adding, “and she still dates you?”

“Hardy-har-har,” I riposted with dignity. “Some would say her attraction to me was proof of her genius.”

“Some would say that they’re being followed by a seven foot rabbit, too, boss,” she volleyed.

“Harvey-har-har!” I countered … then stopped and threw my hands up in the air, stepping out of character. “For God’s sake … was this written by a twelve year old or what?!”

“Cut! What’s the matter, Nick?” the director asked, slumping into his chair. “We ain’t doing William Shakespeare, y’know.” Behind him, the crew turned off the lights and started doing routine work on the various camera and booms. The street noise playback faded and the projected background turned off, leaving Jules and I in front of a blank screen.

I stepped off the treadmill sidewalk and yelled back, “Hell, we’re not even doing William Bendix, Tony! ‘Harvey-har-har?’ Are you friggin’ kidding me? I’m supposed to be playing a hard-nosed private detective, right? Circa 1940, give or take; a real Sam Spade type guy … so what’s with the yucks? Do you ever recall Bogart making like a stand-up?”

“Aw, for pity sake, Nick,” he moaned, waving for another coffee. “What do you want? We’re doing this on a shoestring; else the studio woulda hired a real actor for the lead.”

“And a real director for the shooting,” I countered. “I realize we’re just making a cheap-ass, straight to dvd kinda flick here, but what’s wrong with at least getting the genre right? This is supposed to be cops and robbers, not Keystone Kops. Let’s keep the character in character, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah … so what does Mister Ooo-I’m-a-film-student want to say, huh? W.W.B.D.?”

“What?”

“’What Would Bogie Do?’” he grinned and I groaned.

“Fine, lemme think about it for a minute.” I walked away to cool off. Okay, what would he do? More to the point, what would he say?

Fifteen minutes later, Jules and I were “walking” down the “San Francisco sidewalk” again. She caught up to me, long legs easily matching my stride. She picked up the scene at, “I thought so … what did he want?”

“A bathroom,” I quipped, smiling to myself.

“Nick …”

“Okay, dollface, okay; he wanted me to put pressure on Helen to appoint him her personal manager, empowered to deal with the Department of Energy for her. Apparently, she’s a bit of a genius.”

“Really?” Jules scoffed, adding, “And she still dates you?”

“Hey! Some would say her attraction to me was proof of her genius.” I riposted with dignity.

“Some would say that they’re being followed by a seven foot rabbit, too, boss,” she volleyed.

“Am I paying you to crack wise or to be my secretary, dollface? Now spill with what you found out about Harris and his bunch.” We stopped at the corner to let traffic go by before crossing and Jules took the time to dig some notes out of her purse.

“Well, everything points back to The Council, Nick, so you were right about that. Harris is in their pocket and the rest of the board follows Harris like well trained dogs. I can’t prove it, but I heard gossip that Harris is even being considered for a place on The Council, to replace you-know-who.”

“Good work, doll! Now here’s what you do: Head back to the office and work the blower a little more. Get me anything on Darrius that’s new and see if he’s cuddling up to The Council.” I paused to flag down one of those lethal taxis before adding, “But call my lawyer first, okay? I get the feeling that there’s a federal angle to this other than the Department of Energy and I need to know just how far I can push it before I get run in.” I popped the rear door of the cab open and handed Jules in. “Scat, kitten.”

“You wanna watch yourself, Nick,” she said through the rolled up window. “You still owe me two months pay and I’d hate to lose you before you paid up.”

I tapped the roof of the cab and it roared away into traffic, which sensibly parted to let it in. I glanced at my watch and waved down another cab. I had time for a quick brush up before my date and something told me that Mama Grunion’s favorite son better be on his best tonight. Helen was a tough sell when all I was looking for was a little nooky … trying to get her to open up about her work would call for heroic measures.

The cab let me off in-front of my apartment house and I sprinted up to my third floor spread, a nice two bedroom that permitted me to be a little more creative with my clutter than most bachelors. I paused on the staircase … then quickly took three steps back down so only the top of my head was above hallway floor level.

I waited to see if what I though I’d … a shadow drifted across the crack beneath the door. I studied the door carefully and decided that I wasn’t seeing things. The number nine was now a six (the number was only on one nail and I rotated it up every time I left the apartment) and the small dust ball I’d balanced on the doorknob was nowhere to be seen.

I quietly made my way down to the super’s place and, slipping him a tener, got his key to my neighbor’s joint. Frank and Lily were out of town at the moment and I knew they’d hate to lose a good neighbor like me and wouldn’t mind if I borrowed their place for a couple of minutes.

I made my way back up the stairs, being none too quiet this time, and – bold as brass – walked up to Frank’s door, unlocked it, and walked into their place. Once inside, I went into their kitchen to make a pot of coffee and to listen at the thin wall that separated their home from mine.

I heard a little movement, and then my couch complained as someone at least as big as me sat down on it. After a bit, a rough voice asked quietly just how long they were supposed to hang around?

“Until this Grunion guy shows, dummy,” a gravelly voice replied in disgust. “Geez, of all the stupid … dey paid us to put da hurt on dis guy, so you figure we should just leave a note or sumptin’? Make an apenrtment, maybe?”

“Hey, I was just askin’, okay?” The first voice whined back, slightly louder. “Nuttin’ wrong with askin’, is there?”

“Yeah, dere is when youse the one doing the askin’ and I’m the one havin’ to talk to ya! Now shut it and keep it shut, damn it! Look at Mahoney dere … he’s a pro. He’s just gonna wait for da guy as long as it takes, nice and quiet.”

There was a long pause. “I tink he’s asleep.”

“What?”

“I think Mahoney’s asleep,” the whiner repeated. “His eyes are closed and everything. He’s asleep on da job … how come he gets to sleep and I gotta stay awake?!”

“Aw fer pity … Mahoney!”

“What?”

“Are you asleep?”

“Do I sound asleep?”

“Y’see! Mahoney’s not asleep, you idiot! He’s just being a pro and waiting for the mark to show, now shut the hell up!”

“But his eyes are closed!”

“So his eyes are closed, so what? You want I should close your eyes, because youse is really getting close to the point where dat would be a pleasure. I mean it!”

I leaned on the walk and sighed. Not only were thugs waiting for me in my place, but somebody decided to hire the Three Stooges. Those guys didn’t sound smart enough for me to con and they sounded too damn tough for me to take.

I thought about it until the coffee was done, then poured myself a cup and took it into the bathroom. I used my neighbors shower and toiletries to get ready for my date, then borrowed one of Frank’s sport coats, leaving mine on the back of their couch.

Before leaving, I wrote out a note and, tiptoeing, taped it to the door of my apartment. It read, “Remember: Three dumb goons inside! Do not open! Check first!” Okay, I know this makes me seem a little stupid myself, but I didn’t want to come home half-drunk and forget, accidentally walking into a roomful of huge morons.

I tiptoed back next door, reclaimed my shoes, and left. I didn’t bother giving the key back to the super, since I was no doubt going to need to get back into Frank and Lily’s place again (if only to return the sports coat and pick up my own jacket). I waved down a cab and told the driver to take me to the university.

As the cab roared off, I positioned myself to use the rear view to check out the back trail, see if we had picked up any tail. After a couple of minutes, I leaned back and relaxed. Apparently, the Marx Brothers were working alone. Sloppy; I would have added at least one more layer and had somebody watching to see if I walked out of the building unbroken.

This meant that they weren’t from the mysterious Council, since nothing I’d seen or heard indicated that they tolerated sloppiness. Brutality and viciousness, yeah sure, but sloppiness? Never.

The taxi let me out on the corner of Fulton and Parker, which wasn’t all that close to the physics department, but the walk across campus would give me time to think. Plus, if Darrius was so hot to become the official sponsor of the 1943 Helen D’Heria games, I was willing to be he’d have her under observation.

Ten minutes later, standing behind a tree and getting bitched at by one of the semi-tame squirrels that infest the campus, I was sorta wishing that I’d been wrong. Either freshmen were getting older (and uglier) or those three sitting by the front door were Darrius’ goons. Moreover, there was a police car parked behind the building, right next to the back door, and I recognized a couple of San Francisco’s dirtiest in the front seat, no doubt on either Darrius’ or The Council’s payroll.

After watching the three men lounging around the entrance talk to each other, I decided they were the better choice, so I pulled up my big boy pants, lit a cigarette, and stepped out onto the path. They noticed me within a few seconds and rose to block the door to the labs.

“I don’t believe it,” the head ugly said when I was close enough. “I bet da boss a fin that youse were too damn smart to come here, but look at youse.”

“Hur-hur-hur,” one of his friends obligingly laughed.

“Afternoon, boys … fire at the zoo, perhaps?” I stopped in front of the leader, discovering that my head only came up to his shoulder. I tilted my head back and pushed my fedora to the back. “Geez, you musta been the biggest monkey in the whole jungle, Kong. How the hell did they get you past customs, anyway?”

“Hur-hur-hur,” I guess the guy just liked to laugh.

“Dat’s King Kong, to youse, peeper,” he replied with a small grin. “Now dat you had yer little joke, howabout youse walk yer scrawny self oudda here. Dis building here is close to un-save-orry types like youse.”

“Hur-hur-hur.”

Before anyone else could speak, the third thug stepped forward and called, “Excuse me, but I have a problem with my character!”

“Aw, for pity … cut!” I bellowed. “Take five, everyone, while I deal with this.” I got out of my chair and walked over to the actors. “Yes, Ronald? You have a problem with your character?”

“Well, Frankie is obviously the leader of our little troop, right?” He stood with one hand on his hip, waving the other in time to his words. “And Bruce is his moral support, sort of a brainless Greek chorus, if you will …”

“Well, I like that! Thank you very much!” Bruce snapped back in a snit.

Ignoring him, Ronald continued, “… but I’m just this sort of looming hulk back here. I don’t have any lines to say, I don’t have any business to do, I don’t have any directions – no offense and I think you’re doing a marvelous job, dear – to follow! So what am I? Just a piece of mobile scenery? A prop that breathes?”

“About your speed, darling,” Frank quipped, checking his phone for message.

“Oh, fuck you, you old queer! You only got your role because you can do the Brooklyn gangster accent, y’know!”

“It’s called ‘acting,’ my dear … you might want to look into it sometime,” Frank calmly replied.

“Hey, c’mon! No more of that, okay! You’re all in this movie and no one part is less important than any other, got that?” I craned my neck to get the stress out and addressed Ronald. “Listen, Ron, what’s the quote? ‘There are no small …’” I remembered how it ended and added, “Forget quotes; this is what I want to say here: You are an important asset to this scene, a key character, and don’t you lose track of that!”

“Really?” he replied, doubtfully. “How?”

“Frank here is the leader of your group. His job is to be verbally threatening and, yes, he was specially hired for this part due to his unique talent with dialects. He gets that old time timber to his voice that is very hard to master. Bruce was hired to portray a very difficult role, one that most actors would shy away from, that of the idiot savant. He is the power behind the throne, so to speak. Frank gets the message across, but depends on the simply minded Bruce to excel at the violence aspect.”

“So what does that make me?”

“Redundant, I’d say,” Bruce interjected, getting a little of his own back.

“No, you are the strong and silent one of the trio. You radiate menace and intimidate simply by existing in the same area as your victim. I specifically picked you out of all the rest of the applicants for that quality. You walked into your audition, scowled once, and I immediately knew I had my Rocco! You don’t talk, you don’t laugh … you don’t need to do either to scare the crap out of anyone! You glower, you loom; you are the human equivalent of a natural disaster just waiting to happen!”

“Really!” He visibly preened, standing straighter. Then he frowned and said, “But … well, I guess I’m not really sure of my … well, what is my internal state?”

“You? You encapsulate all the classic villains of movies! You are Edgar G. Robinson and Jimmy Cagney and George Raft … hell, you are Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff and Bela Lagosi! You are every bad guy who every graced the silver screen and gave children nightmares simply by staring! You are a eclectic celebration of all that’s horrifying and scary … but inside. Keep it all inside and project mentally, emotionally. You are the one he’s really worried about, y’know. Frank is the guy he’s talking to, so he’s not all that scary, and Bruce’s character is a bit of an idiot, so he’s not really worried about him, either.

“But you, Ronny … you are the unknown! You are the wild card. What will you do? Which way will you go? He doesn’t even know what hand you might draw with, much less if you have a gun or a knife! Hell, for all he knows, you have a cannon under that magnificent trench coat … my God, that thing fits you to a tee, doesn’t it?”

“Do you really think so?”

“Wardrobe did a hell of a job on you three! Tell you what; I’d like you guys hanging around me next time I have to negotiate a new contract! Seriously,” I added over their pleased laughter. “You’d scare the crap out of those studio sharks! You’d be better than a CAA rep in the room and I’m not kidding!”

Crisis averted, I sealed the deal by calling over the makeup girl. “Sweety? How hard would it be to give my man Ron here a scar?” I pulled his head down a bit. “Right here, just under this eye. Doable in less than fifteen minutes?”

I turned and said to Ron, “Originally, I wanted your face to be an untouched canvas, proof that nobody had ever gotten close enough to even muss you, but I’m rethinking that, now; One small scar, around an inch or two long, running right from here to here.” I traced a line with my finger, starting just at the outside of his left eye and angling down towards his upper lip. “Something that you easily could have had removed, but left because you don’t even care if anyone sees it!”

“OOOOOoooohhh! YES! Yes! I get it! A badge of office!”

“Exactly!” I turned to the others and said, “Let’s take a half hour break while Mitsy does her magic and be back on set by … JENNY!”

“Yes, sir?”

“What time is it?”

“Um … one-fourteen, sir.”

“Fine! Let’s call it lunch, then! EVERYONE! LUNCH! BE BACK ON SET BY TWO! Jen; run and get Ron a sandwich platter, and bring it to Mitsy’s office, okay? Ron? Tell Jenny what you want and it’ll be waiting for you as soon as Mitsy is done with you … that okay with you?”

“Yeah, you bet!”

“Off with you all, then, and let me get a little thinking in before I grab a bite, myself.” I waved the delighted actor off and walked back to my little chair. Why in God’s name had I given up acting, anyway?! Being the guy who directs the scenes, who decides how the story would be told, was certainly more satisfying, but having to deal with those delicate egos and … well, with actors.

“Nice job, Nicky.”

I looked over my shoulder and smiled. “Thanks, Thomas. Are you here to tell me that the studio wants the movie faster and for less money?”

“Nope, I just wanted to wander in and see how you were spending my boss’s money. So … explain it to me, Nick.” I arched an eyebrow and he added, “You just halted a very expensive production to give a two-bit extra a pep talk and an extra bit of makeup. Why?”

I sighed and offered my immediate boss a wan smile. “Well, I could give you a very heartfelt and heart warming speech about how every actor in a production is essential or a slightly less heartfelt one about having been in his shoes not so long ago … but the truth is that Ronald, the actor I was dealing with, happens to be the current boyfriend of the studio head and his wife.”

“Ah!”

“No business like show business, huh, Thomas,” I added, wiping a hand over my face.

“No business I know, at any rate, Nick,” he replied, grinning. “Hey, you want to have lunch, kid? My car is waiting for me outside and I was just going over to the Derby for a salad. What do you say … my treat?”

“I say, ‘Why thank you, Mr. Peterson; I’d love to dine with my boss!’ Just give me a minute to hit the john and I’ll be right out.”

Lunch was excellent and we spent the time doing what producers and directors have done since time began: we trashed other movies and bitched about the studio. Ten after two found me back on the set and, even if it was just a tossed bone, I had to admit that the scar on Ron was an excellent touch. Amazing how the subconscious works, isn’t it?

“Okay, people; let’s pick it up with Frank’s opening lines. Quiet on the set, please … aaaaaaand action!”

“I don’t believe it. I bet da boss a fin that youse were too damn smart to come here, but look at youse.”

“Hur-hur-hur,” one of his friends obligingly laughed.

“Afternoon, boys … fire at the zoo, perhaps?” I stopped in front of the leader, slightly appalled to discover that my head only came up to his shoulder. I tilted my head back and pushed my fedora back. “Geez, you musta been the biggest monkey in the whole jungle, Kong. How the hell did they get you past customs, anyway?”

“Hur-hur-hur,” I guess the guy just liked to laugh.

“Dat’s King Kong, to youse, peeper,” he replied with a small grin. “Now dat you had yer little joke, howabout youse walk yer scrawny self oudda here. Dis building here is close to un-save-orry types like youse.”

“Hur-hur-hur.”

My eye kept straying to the quiet one of the bunch. He worried me. Kong was the talker, so I’d catch him by surprise if I struck while he was saying something, and his laughing buddy was obviously a mental, which meant that I could out finesse him all week … but the quiet guy wasn’t giving anything away. That could mean trouble.

Plus, he had this scar running down his face from near his eye … creepy.

I found myself winking at him with a small smile. To my astonishment, he winked back and blew me a kiss! What the hell!?

Okay, plan b …

“Listen, Kong, hasn’t Darrius told you yet? We already talked it over and I’m suppose to convince the lady to let your boss ‘manage’ her invention. I’m just on my way up to lay the groundwork.”

“‘Lay!’ Hur-hur-hur.”

He regarded me for a couple of seconds while sucking on his teeth. “Yeah,” he finally replied. “Yeah, I ‘member da boss saying that he was going ta make youse a deal.” He thought it over a bit more, no doubt causing minor vascular damage, before adding, “Okay, den; youse can enter and talk ta da lady, sport. And don’t worry if she gives you any trubble … we’ll be right here ta help youse deal wit her.”

“Imagine my relief,” I muttered, walking past them … and suddenly jumping when the quiet guy goosed me. I stared at him, hard, a maneuver that has been known to make lesser men wet themselves.

He blew me another kiss, sniffing the fingers he pinched me with.

I’d never been so scared of a thug in my life! I quickly turned and walked up the stairs to the main entrance. I didn’t look back for fear that he’d still be standing there, sniffing and grinning.

What was the world coming to, anyway? Sadistic thugs, sure; stupid thugs, I depended it; monstrous thugs, if necessary … aggressively gay thugs?! I’d heard rumors about prison, but …

I stopped outside of Helen’s lab to calm down and make myself presentable. The glass in her door was frosted, with her name carefully painted on it, but there was a thin sliver of plain glass near the wood on the right and I used it, as I always did, to check out her lab before entering. Paranoid, yeah; the real question is was I paranoid enough?

She was at her main bench, alone and staring intently at something crackling with electricity. I opened the door and called out in a high voice, “Excuse me, Miss, but is this Biology 101?”

“Nope, you want Anderson Hall, room 215; Doctor Hines’ room,” she replied, absently.

“Gee, thanks, Lady! Does she have as nice a caboose as you?” I closed the door behind me as she spun around.

“Damn it, Nick!” She put down the screwdriver grabbed. “That is not funny! We had some teenage football Neanderthals grab one of the tenured professors last week, convinced that his scholarship included ‘privileges.’”

“’Students with privileges,’ eh? Sounds like the university just found its new recruiting motto, doll.” I tossed my coat and fedora onto an empty stool and walked over to where she was working. “So what that?”

“Nick; you know that anything I try to explain simply goes over your adorable pinhead,” she laughed, turning back to it. I pressed myself against that delightful back and rested my hands on her hips. “Hmmm … well, if this is your way of asking nicely, I might be tempted to give it a try,” she purred.

“Is this the dingus the Department of Energy and Reginald Darrius are so interested in?” I asked conversationally, peering at it over her shoulder. Her entire body tensed up, all her muscles clenching … which, considering where my peter was nestled, was almost a tragedy.

“What are you talking about, lover?” Her voice was light, but her body was still knotted.

“Cut it out, doll. Darrius already approached me about it, wanting me to convince you to make him your ‘manager.’ He’s got muscle watching the front and crooked cops watching the back. As a matter of fact,” I turned her around and grinned into her bright eyes, “the only reason they let me in is because they think I’m doing just that, convincing you to share your invention, whatever it is, with Darrius … and whomever is backing him.”

She turned a worried face up to mine. “Are you?”

“You know me better than that, doll,” I growled, kissing her lightly on the nose. “I told the dummies outside that I was, though, so we better start thinking of a way out of here. Is there any exit other than the front and back?”

“Yeeeeees,” she drawled, sounding unsure.

“Give; is there or isn’t there?”

“Well, there is an entrance that students use when they’re late for classes and want to avoid Miss Kendrick.” I shrugged. “Miss Kendrick is sort of our unofficial hall monitor, Nick. She’s really the Dean’s secretary, but she used to work at a high school and some habits die hard. As a result, the students found a secret way in … I just don’t know if it also works as a way out.”

“Well, this is a good time to find out, isn’t it?” I helped her out of her lab coat and into her coat. She pinned a hat on while I gathered up my coat and hat, and we left the lab at a jog.

We walked to the rear of the building and, bypassing the exit, walked to a janitor’s closet. She tried the knob and it was unlocked. An instant later, we were inside the closet, the door locked from the inside, and she was moving empty boxes.

A small trap door appeared underneath them. “That’s it, lover. The door leads down to the basement furnace and there’s an old coal chute down there that isn’t used anymore, not since we switched over to gas. The students cleaned it out, rigged a concealed outside entrance, and come in this way … or so Herbert says.”

“Herbert?” I echoed.

“One of the grad students who dearly wants me to tutor him horizontally,” she replied with a wicked grin. “He knows of half a dozen girls who are passing their toughest classes that way and just can’t imagine why it won’t work for him. He claims it is pure sexual discrimination.”

“He may be right, doll.” Just then, heavy footsteps thundered through the hallway and the building practically shook with the impact on what sounded like Helen’s locked lab door.

She turned round eyes up to me and said, “They sound like they really want you ass, Nick.”

I thought about the sniffer and quavered, “At least one of them does, yeah … c’mon, let’s see if this thing works!”

I took the time to balance some of the empty boxes on top of the open hatch, so – when I closed it behind us – they’d end up sitting on the trapdoor. We shimmied down the metal latter and, guided by the faint light filtering through the filthy high windows, found our way to the old furnace at the other end of the room.

Sure enough, there was a coal slide behind it. I mentally reviewed my map of the campus and decided that we’d come up a goodly distance from the cop car. I went first, bracing my shoes against the high sides of the slide and using the purchase to push myself upward. The slide disappeared into the wall and I found small hand holds on the other side.

“Doll! Grab hold of my belt and use it to pull yourself up!” I hissed back to Helen, managing to get my leather belt off with one hand. I let the length of it down the slide and waited. After a few seconds, she caught the buckle end and, quietly cussing all the way, climbed up to where I’d wedged myself.

“My, my, but don’t the gophers in this place have nice racks?” I muttered as she used my body as a ladder to move past me in the tunnel.

She snorted, but kept climbing. After a few more seconds, she hissed, “Nick! I found the top and I’m going to try to push it open! Can you push against my feet or something?”

I crawled upward, braced my feet in the handholds I’d found, and shoved myself upward until I could feel her feet on my shoulders. “Say when, dool,” I quietly called, straightening more and moving her higher.

“Whoa. Whoa! Damn it, Nick; WHOA!!” I heard the creak of a lid and bright sunlight flooded into the tunnel. I straightened completely and she used the extra inches to scramble out of the hole.

I reached up, trying for the edge and discovering that it was still about a foot distant. With a clunk, my belt buckle smacked me in the face. I grabbed it, warned her to brace herself, and hauled myself up to the edge, where I grabbed hold and lifted myself clear.

I closed the lid, disguised to look like some sort of shrub, and took a moment to enjoy watching Helen brush grass off of her fanny. She’d held the other end of my belt and braced herself by putting her feet against the slight edge of the tunnel and laying back on the grass.

She caught me watching and grinned. I grinned back and turned to see if anyone was around. So far so good and I said as much.

She looked at me in a funny way and reminded me that that’s what the guy who jumped off the Empire State Building said as he passed the fiftieth floor … but the ground was waiting, all the same.

I led her to a randomly chosen campus building, where I called Jules at the office and told her to send a cab to the corner of Turk and Masonic. “Why didn’t you call them yourself?” Helen asked as we quickly legged it north.

“Because I wanted the call to come from a woman, doll. Dispatchers can be bought as easily as cops, y’know.” I waited for a break in traffic on Golden Gate and jay-walked us across the street. One more block up and two down, and there was a Yellow Cab just waiting for us, cabby leaning against the hood.

“Waiting for Jules Newmar?” I politely inquired, opening the door for Helen. He frowned, but answered in the positive. “This is her and we’re heading for the Cellar on Geary.”

“Cellar don’t open until eight, pal,” he replied.

“That’s okay, buddy; we’re auditioning for the owners. Miss Newmar is a fan dancer.”

“Yeah? So what are you to the act?”

“I’m the fan. How about getting us there before I start to molt, huh?”

He snorted and pulled into traffic. Twenty minutes later, we were standing in-front of the Cellar and I was handing the driver a sincere thank you and an even more sincere sawbuck, telling him to keep the change. He drove off a happy man and, once he’d turned the corner, we walked across the street and slid into the back seat of Jules’ little runabout.

“Howdy, boss; Miss D’Heria,” Jules smiled into the rearview. “Where to?”

“Get us to my hidey hole, Jules, and take your time. Now is not the time to be picked up for speeding, baby.”

“Gotcha, boss; one gentle trip into the hills coming up!”

We pulled out smoothing and soon were heading across town to 19th, which would lead us to Daly City and my little hole in the wall hacienda. Jules was paying attention to the road and we were simply sitting there, so I moved closer to Helen and clamed a slow kiss. She kissed back, with interest, and we necked our way across the city. I sat up at one point to see where we were.

Then I sat back in my seat and considered it for a minute, tapping my fist lightly on the desk. Would the detective and his girl neck while both crooked cops and organized crime were searching for them?

“Did Jules crash again, honey?” I looked up and Helen smiled back at me.

I patted my beloved ancient Mac laptop and replied, “Naw, as steady as a metronome, sweetheart.”

“I still wish you’d let me buy you a more modern computer, love. You lost fifteen pages of script the other day and I though you were going to throw it right out the window.” She walked back to her chair and picked her book back up.

“Yeah, well, we all have our little faults. Take this script, for instance: I have a Sam Spade wannabe racing out of the city, barely a step ahead of the mysterious Council and some other shady types, and he’s sitting in the back seat of his secretary’s car, necking with his girlfriend. I mean, hell, is this what Dashiell Hammett would do?”

“I dunno,” she replied, looking over the page of her novel. “I’ve never read any of his work, dear.”

“Well, then does it make sense to you? I have a private eye who still hasn’t figured out what’s really happening to him, running around old San Francisco and occasionally having these out of body experiences. I’ve got gay hoods, sexy girlfriends, and sleazy bad guys, but is it enough? Is it too much? Would he really relax enough to enjoy necking with his girlfriend and what is his secretary thinking about all this?”

“Depends; how much does he pay her?”

“1940- level wages, I suppose, and he’s two weeks overdue on her latest paycheck.”

“Hmmm … well, I guess she’d be wondering if her boss was serious about what was going on. If he was losing his hard-boiled edge over some woman and becoming a sort of sissy-boy private eye, the kind that cared more about getting a little smooching than solving the case.”

I frowned and thought it over. Was he turning soft? Was he Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe? I shook my head and looked, as usual, at my college diploma. A Bachelors of Arts (Hons) in Drama from Manchester, with additional studies in writing and film, and still I couldn’t figure out if the private eye and his girlfriend would neck on their way to a safe house.

Maybe I should have gone into acting, or even directing. Writing sure as hell wasn’t working. I closed Jules and joined Helen on the couch, picking up my drink on the way. I gently removed her novel, put it on the coffee table, and pulled her into my lap.

“And what, might I ask, do you think you are doing, sir?” She asked, snuggling into my arms.

“Research,” I replied, pilling her closer.

The kiss picked up steam and I was considering taking it to the next level when Jules called out, “We’re here, boss! It’s the heart of suburbia, so break it up before they report you to the local preacher.”

I disentangled myself from Helen and we all walked into the living room. Helen looked around and said, “Charming; will Micky Rooney and Judy Garland be doing a play in the back yard? And what’s to keep Darrius or his goons from simply showing up?”

“The fact that they don’t know about it, doll; this cottage was bought by Jules mother, deeded to her sister and I bought it off of her, but under the table. The name on the deed and mailbox is still Francis Newmar, so – unless Darrius happens to know Francis – we should be all but invisible here.”

I assume the guy who sapped me wasn’t impressed with my logic, either.

I came too tied to a chair, sitting in a pool of light, surrounded by shadows. If I squinted against the raging headache, I could make out the men seated behind the high benches that ran around me.

“Oh, great … the friggin’ Council, right?” I moaned, testing my bounds.

“Why do you say that?” a echoing voice replied from the darkness.

“Oh, I dunno,” I answered, trying to find a comfortable position for my head. “I just thought to myself, ‘What morons would tie an unconscious guy to a chair, put that chair in the brightest light they could find, sit in total darkness around him … AND wear hoods over their heads.’” The temperature in the room dropped several degrees. “It’s funny how ‘The Council’ just popped into my head afterward.”

“How very droll, Mr. Grunion. How very much like a stereotypical private investigator. Tell me, is it true that there is a secret code in your field that demands that you ‘crack wise?’”

“Yup, and wear a fedora, don’t forget the fedora. Is there some sort of society of melodramatic villains that demands you talk like pompous asses or was that your own idea?”

Sightseeing, Psyches, and Surprises – Part One

We put off leaving until the following morning, which still gave us four days before the July 31st deadline. After talking it through (a much more intelligent conversation, indicating that the Calming Agent might be wearing off), I elected to leave my car sitting in the garage.

According to Dheria, the gate we’d depart the Cavern of Stars with would deposit us very close to the main gate at Stonehenge, within easy walking distance, so we really wouldn’t need the car at that end. On the other hand, once Dheria was safely away, Jules and I would be stranded in England without transportation.

Oh, Stonehenge is near Larkhill to the north, where it would be easy to get transportation to London, only around a hundred miles away, but still … if anyone wanted to get pissy about it, we wouldn’t be able to prove how we gotten into England, meaning a lot of tiresome silliness with Immigration and so forth. Then there would be the question of Jules, since robots were globally illegal and, although technically she wasn’t a robot, I wasn’t sure the technical distinction would appease the local constabulary.

I asked Dheria if Jules and I might be able to use the gates to return to San Francisco and avoid even the possibility of difficulty, but she shook her head, explaining that they would only work for Atlantans, sorry.

I briefly considered letting Dheria head for the Cavern of Stars by herself. After all, now that Darrius and his thugs were returned to the Atlantis of the future, she really didn’t need a bodyguard. However, we had an agreement, a verbal contract, and one that I was honor bound to see through.

(Plus, I really wanted to do it. Travel through magical gates to a mystical Cavern of Stars? Oh, hell, yes!)

Besides, I had plenty of friends in England. I’m sure at least one of them would know somebody who might be able to expedite our return to America with few questions. If nothing else, I could always pretend that we’d been mugged and lost our passports … no, Jules didn’t have one and wouldn’t be listed.

Oh well, burn that bridge when we got to it, right?

A taxi took us to the corner of Buena Vista Avenue West, and Haight Street, the closest there was to an official entrance to Puzzle Park, but let us off across the street from the park. Several street people took notice of us and tried to sell us either the latest in herbal relaxation, the oldest in physical relaxation, or on the idea that giving them our combined wealth would result in nobody getting hurt.

We waved off the pushers and the hookers, but Jules had to disarm one of the muggers and bite the end off of his gun before we were left alone. We finally were able to walk across the street in relative peace and enter the park.

According to Dheria, the gate was only about a hundred yards or so into the park from that corner, so we kept to the path and were soon surrounded by the park people, who were very much like the street people, only more insistent. Dheria stood back while Jules and I dissuaded them from bothering us, being careful to inflict no permanent damage to their persons, their various wares or weapons, or the park itself.

As we left, a voice called out to us from the shrubs. “You people are leaving, aren’t you? Leaving via the portal, right?”

We stopped and I called back, “We’re leaving, alright, but on foot. We don’t want anymore trouble, whoever you are.”

Out of the bushes, stepping carefully over a fallen rapist, emerged a perfect example of why the entire world still considers San Francisco to be the ultimate in craziness. He was naked except for dozens of magic marker tattoos and a beard, one long enough to almost make his nudity meaningless. His beard and hair were gray, shot with streaks of black, and surprisingly clean.

“I am the keeper of the portal on this side, man, so don’t dick with me, ‘kay?” He explained mildly. “I was chosen by the aliens to guard the portal and maintain the area around it … sorta a celestial yard man, right? So which of you is the traveler?”

I started to walk away, but Dheria stepped forward, her dress shimmering away to its composite tattoos. A glow surrounded her as she approached the lunatic.

“I am the traveler, Gatekeeper. Is the area prepared for my departure?”

I stared at her in astonishment as the old man dropped to his knees. “You bet, O Traveler to the Stars. I picked up this morning and mowed yesterday.”

“You have done well, Gatekeeper,” she replied, smiling gently. “Pray escort us to the portal so that we might return to the heavens.”

He leapt to his feet and scrambled up the path, gesturing for us to follow. I fell in beside the still glowing Dheria and muttered, “Gatekeeper?”

She shrugged and quietly explained, keeping her serene expression, “Yes, Mr. Grunion. In many of the places we have gates, several of the local population has seen us come and go, requiring us to either put on a little act or mind wipe them. Mr. Delvechio caught one of us using the gate some fifty years ago. Loath to tamper with a mind already weakened by drugs, we elected to hire him to keep the area around the gate tidy. He’s happy with his lot in life; we pay him enough to keep him fed and sheltered, and – in return – we have a well kept gate, which is pleasant.”

“Terrific … how about the nudity and fake tattoos?”

“Over the years, unfortunately, he’s come to identify himself with us, so he mimics our appearance. It’s harmless and permits him an ego pleasing identity, so why not?”

“Doesn’t anyone report him? I mean, he’s a naked gardener in a public park, for pity sake!”

“Oddly enough, no,” she shrugged. “Apparently, having a naked man garden in a public park isn’t enough to worry the locals. As I understand it, he’s more or less accepted as just a harmless distraction. Much like the man we first did business with here, a Mr. Norton. History records that he was a delightful representative of you people and beloved of all.”

“Norton?” I replied, my jaw dropping. “Do you happen to mean … Jules? What was Emperor Norton’s full name?”

“Joshua Abraham Norton, Nick.”

“That’s him! Guy came here back in the 1800’s with a fortune, lost it all, went a little nuts and proclaimed himself Emperor of America. Most everyone in the city went along with the gag and even accepted his official currency. He was San Francisco’s most famous loon, which is saying a lot. Is that the guy?”

“I believe so. Did he used to dress up in a quasi-military outfit?”

“All the time.”

“Definitely him, then,” she nodded. “Very nice man, according to everything I’ve read. I believe one of our scientists even took him through the various gates at times, as a personal favor. He was really quite well regarded in Atlantis.”

I shook my head and walked on, basking in the radiant glow that was Dheria, Queen of the Atlantian Aliens. I watched the old burnout scamper in front of us for a moment and wondered if but for the grace of God …

We reached a practically manicured area in a few minutes. It was as if somebody had carefully … I saw the scissors and ruler sitting next to a large bong and withdrew the thought. A fairy circle of polished stones sat in the geometric center of the glen and the ‘gatekeeper’ stood to the side of them, bowing Dheria forward.

Dheria solemnly produced a banded stack of moola from somewhere and, with a regal air, presented it to the old man. He accepted it, eyes averted, and bowed deeply. Dheria then did something to a thin bracelet I hadn’t noticed before and an arch didn’t appear in the center of the stones.

That really doesn’t make much sense, does it? An elephant also didn’t appear. Many other things didn’t appear. However, an arch specifically didn’t appear; a section of reality that was astonishingly arch shaped disappeared instead.

Dheria motioned us through. Jules walked through the absence as if she did it a couple of times a day and I followed, trying not to flinch. The world blurred and turned both white and dark, while my sinuses instantly swelled as the air pressure changed. I gasped like a fish out of water and, no matter how hard I inhaled; I couldn’t get a decent breath.

I looked up through watering eyes and, in the fading light, saw Jules standing with Dheria, looking over a cliff. I staggered over, careful not to lose my balance, and ended up looking the sun setting on the edge of the world.

Dheria turned to me and casually said, “I love Mount Kilimanjaro, don’t you? Between the view and the air, it’s easily one of the most beautiful places on your planet.”

Jules finally noticed my rapidly bluing face and produced an air cartridge and mask. I sucked in oxygen gratefully for a few minutes before I could appreciate the location properly. Jules asked about the next gate and Dheria mentioned that the gate we’d just stepped through was the same gate we’d use to travel to the next destination.

“I thought … wheeze … I thought that each gate was a sort of one way thing,” I gasped.

“A few are,” she admitted, “but the majority are general purpose gates that can be programmed to take you to the next closest in line. Coming from San Francisco, this is the next closest. The next closest in the series we need is outside Kerry, which will lead us …”

“Excuse me, is that Kerry in Ireland?”

She frowned at the interruption. “Yes, I believe it is.”

“Fine! That’s sea level!”

In seconds, we were standing in a bright green field, surrounded by lovely moist air, so thick and rich that a good knife could slice pieces of it for storage. It felt like evening. Dheria gave me a couple of minutes to enjoy the air before adjusting her bracelet and waving us through and into a filthy alley.

It was lit from street lights at the end of the alley. The air was rank, the smell more so, and several people were lying on the ground around us. One face was turned towards us and I could see that it was an oriental man, asleep. “Where are we, doll?” I whispered to Dheria.

“Yokohama,” she replied, her delicate face scrunched up in disgust. “My least favorite gate; let’s get out of here.”

Another transit and we were again in the sunlight, but a pale and weak sunlight. We were standing on a small hill, overlooking what appeared to be a fishing village. “It’s called Kimmirut and we’re on Baffin Island,” Dheria explained, diddling with her bracelet again. “Actually, I’d love to stop and visit. The Inuit are some of the friendliest people I’ve met in my travels. However, we have two more stops before we’ll be at the cavern, so …” She motioned us forward again.

The world exploded in cold and I immediately crouched against the wind, squeezing my eyes shut. My body temperature dropped fast and I screamed in pain as I felt my bare skin start to freeze. Suddenly, everything was warm. I slowly stood up, opening my eyes, expecting to see that we’d transited again and totally unprepared for the Emperor Penguin looking at me.

I could see perfectly, despite the gloom, and laughed to see a whole flock of black and white birds regarding us without any fear. I turned and discovered that Dheria was standing directly behind me.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Grunion,” she apologized. “I’d forgotten that you were dressed for the cavern. I hope it wasn’t too painful.”

“Why aren’t I freezing?” I asked, suspecting what the answer would be.

“I extended my survival suit to cover you, also,” she explained absently while she spun her bracelet. “However, I cannot maintain the energy needed much longer, so, if you wouldn’t mind?”

Jules had already stepped through and we followed in a quick lockstep. Two steps forward and I was standing in warm water. It was dark again, with no handy sunset or streetlight to offer weak illumination. I could feel the instant Dheria retracted her field because the smell of sea water became overwhelming.

Jules reached into her bag and pulled out my flood light. She snapped it on and thousands of little fish scattered around my ankles. She slowly panned around us and we discovered land around a hundred feet to the right. The water came up to my calves, but the gate was obviously right there, so I stayed put.

Jules staring into the water, suddenly said, “This is the Pacific Ocean.”

“Really?” I replied, trying to look at the water as if I was considering it. “How can you tell?”

“The shark that just swam by is only found in the Pacific Ocean, Nick,” she replied with a casual air.

“Ah. Really? Interesting. Are we about ready to go, doll?” My knees felt rubbery and my bladder badly wanted to add to the water level. “Sometime before the shark gets me would be good.”

The not-a-arch turned golden. “Why, Mr. Grunion! Don’t you like Johnston Atoll?”

I stepped through and into pitch blackness. Dry and warm and shark free pitch blackness, but still …

Jules followed, the flood light still on, and we were in a cave of sorts. The opening was over to the left and … I suddenly remembered where we were and moved quickly deeper into the cave. Microwaves are nobody’s friend. Dheria walked past me and did something to the wall, which opened up into a well lit chamber.

We walked in and the wall closed behind us. Dheria stepped quickly to a door and disappeared inside it. After a few minutes, I tried the handle and, discovering it was locked, called out, “Hey, doll! What’s going on! Is this part of the maze or what?!”

A moment later, the door opened back up and Dheria, face slightly flushed, stepped back into the room, saying, “Do you mind, Mr. Grunion? I believe privacy inside toilets is an American custom, isn’t it?”

“Oh. Sorry, doll.” My bladder quickly picked up on the clue. “As a matter of fact …” I stepped through the door, locking it behind me. After lightening the load a bit, I walked back into the room to find Jules and Dheria sitting at a table that hadn’t been there a moment before. Really. Trust me, I’m a detective; we notice that sort of thing.

I sat down with them and Dheria poured me a glass of amber fluid. I sipped and it was a very sweet wine. I didn’t recognize it and said so.

“It’s Atlantian, Mr. Grunion, created with a grape that doesn’t grow anywhere else.”

“Not bad. It’s a little on the sweet side for me, but a nice color and taste. Maybe you folks should consider exporting it some day.”

She ignored my suggestion and explained that, as soon as we’d caught our breath, we were going to attempt to pass through the Deadly Maze. I took the opportunity to ask what, exactly, made it so damn Deadly?

“I was expecting pitfalls or some sort of booby traps, doll, but the fact that it’s different for each person makes me wonder.”

“It’s deadly, Mr. Grunion, because … well, actually, I can’t tell you why it’s called the Deadly Maze. Suffice it to say that, if you cannot pass through it, the reason will become very apparent.”

I looked around the room. “So where is it, anyway? There are only two doors in the room: the one we walked through to come in, which sealed behind us, and the one to the bathroom, which was hardly a maze.”

She pointed at the door to the bathroom. “I thought you’d understand by now, Mr. Grunion. What good is a doorway that only leads to one destination?”

I stood and walked over to the door. “So the maze is on the other side of this door now, is it? So do I simply walk through the door or what?”

“You might as well go first, Mr. Grunion. Jules and I will give you a couple of minutes before following.”

“Right.” I stood there for a three count before turning back and asking, “Any final words of advice, doll? Anything you can tell me about this thing?”

“Only ‘good luck, Mr. Grunion,’ I’m afraid.”

“Right. Jules? If I can’t get through and you can, protect Dheria as best you can and I’ll meet you back in … um, doll? If I can’t get through, how the hell do I get out of here? The only other way out is behind a sealed wall and through a microwave death trap.”

“If you cannot pass the maze, Mr. Grunion, your exit will be arranged. You will end up at the San Francisco gate with no memory of how you got there. Wait with Mr. Delvechio and I’ll make sure that Jules joins you as soon as possible.”

“Good enough, thanks, doll.” I squared my shoulders and grasped the handle firmly. “See you broads on the other side, then.”

I opened the door and stepped into the blackness beyond it.

Instantly, I was standing back in Puzzle Park with no Delvechio to be seen. Damn! I reminded myself to ask Jules about the maze, see if I could figure out exactly why I couldn’t pass it, then sat down on a convenient rock to wait for her.

After a few minutes, I reached into my trench coat for a smoke, forgetting that I’d left the coat back in my office. Instead, I pulled out a notebook and pen, wrote Jules a quick note, explaining that I’d walked back to where the cab had let us out to buy a cigar.

Nobody bothered me on the trail out of Puzzle Park, which was a minor miracle in itself. The sun was directly overhead and it was going to be another beautiful San Francisco day. I could hear traffic beyond the trees and catch the occasional glimpse of a taxi cruising for fares. Somewhere in the Haight, a man with a very good taste in music started playing a tenor sax, the favorite instrument of private eyes the world over.

So what if I couldn’t get through some stupid maze, right? It’s not like Dheria was going to be in trouble or anything. The bad guys had left the building early and Jules could take care of anything that might come up … hey! I bet she even records what the Cavern of Stars looks like, so I won’t miss out on anything! It wouldn’t be like being there, but still …

I made it to the sidewalk without any problem, but was almost nailed by a Checker Cab when I stepped off the curb. I leapt back and cussed it out of sight before venturing back into the street. The drug store on the corner had my brand and I walked back into the sunshine puffing on a nice Cuban.

I enjoyed the sax and the cigar for a couple of minutes, seeing no reason to hurry back to the park. If Jules came out before I came back, she’d see the note and wait. One thing that secretaries were good for is waiting … it’s practically their stock in trade.

The sunshine made me feel good and relaxed, the sax made me a little horny, and the cigar put ideas into my head. I wondered if my favorite redhead was free that night? There was a blower in the drug store, so I spent a nickel and asked for the university exchange.

After a few seconds, the campus operator came on and I asked for Dr. Helen D’heria in the Physics building. She answered on the third ring and we made a date for seven at the Cellar on Geary. I walked back into the sunshine, rolling my cigar to the other side of my grin, and leaned back against the wall.

A private op’s life is never terribly easy, but – occasionally – it’s sweet as wine.

The limo screeched to a halt practically in front of me and a man with ‘cheap muscle’ written all over him jumped out. He walked up to me and said, “Mister Darrius wants to talk to ya, Grunion.”

I took the cigar out of my mouth and blew a smoke ring into his face, replying, “Yeah? Well, it’s such a nice day, why don’t you have Mister Darrius join me in the sunlight, sweetheart?” I stuck the cigar back in my mouth and grinned at him.

The punch couldn’t have been more telegraphed if he’d been Don Ameche and all I had to do was lean to the side to let his massive fist slam into the brick wall. I studied the dent in the wall with some interest while he did his dummy dance, gripping his right wrist with his left hand and jumping around, screaming.

After a bit, the rear door of the limo opened and Reginald Darrius, in his Italian suited glory, stepped out.

“Whadiya say, Darrius?” I called politely.

He ignored me and walked over to his still whimpering henchman. He slapped him hard across the face and told him to get to the hospital. Only then did he turn back to me, all grins and oily personality, like I was a voter in the next election. I’d heard that he was going to run for mayor, but dismissed it as being beneath him.

For Reginald Darrius, it was the governor’s mansion or nothing. Better still, it was blackmailing the governor; same results and less work.

“Nicky!” he exclaimed, walking up with his hand out. “Let’s enjoy this marvelous day together, what do you say? A couple of drinks, a couple of willing broads, maybe a laugh or two …”

I stared at his hand like it was a particularly nasty kind of fish until he put it back in his pocket. “I’d say that I was enjoying this marvelous day before you showed up, Darrius. Cut the hokum and get to the point; what do you want?”

Like a shark surfacing, a vicious expression flashed across his face and was instantly replaced with his usual persona. “You wound me, Nicky!”

“Really?” I grinned. “Hey! No problem, amigo … I can do that!”

“Always the smart ass, huh?” he replied with a twinkle in his eyes. “Okay, then let’s get down to brass tacks. I understand you’re currently involved with a certain female scientist from over at the university, one Helen D’heria by name?”

“That’s Doctor Helen D’heria, Darrius, and what’s it to you?”

“Well, I understand that Doctor D’heria is working on something that the Energy Department is very interested in, and anything the power players in Washington are interested in, I’m interested in!” He leaned back on one hip and smiled a big happy smile. “After all, they’re the guys who actually make money … I like that! I like that a lot!”

“Yeah?” I rolled the cigar to the other side of my mouth and screwed up my face in concentration. “I seem to recall that you tried that angle once yourself, didn’t you? Ended up making license plates for a while because of it, right?”

He spread his hands in an innocent gesture. “So you see where my admiration comes from, then. So if the people who make the money, and do such a good job of it, are interested in what your girl is doing, I’d like a taste myself. Perhaps manage her, act as her official agent, something like that.”

I studied him for a minute before replying, “Yeah … I can see that. I can understand that desire. However, what I can’t see or understand would be her wanting anything to do with a cheap shyster like you. No offense, you understand? I, personally, love you like diaper rash.”

His true nature broke through again, just for an instant, but then it was all smiles and twinkles again. “Yeah, that’s where you come in, gumshoe. You’re in tight with her, so you can put in a good word for me. Maybe even nine words, like ‘she works with me, or she stops working for good.’”

“That’s ten words, dummy,” I sneered. “What’s the matter? Can’t count or something?”

The sharks broke surface again. It was turning out to be a really good day; I’d managed to get under his skin three times in one conversation! “Nine, ten; it doesn’t matter, Grunion. You either get her the message or you’ll find out I employ lots of guys who can count you out!”

“What? Like the one-handed wonder you just sent to the showers? Listen, Darrius, you even frown in my direction, and I’ll turn that profile of yours into a new Dick Tracy villain, Flatface.” I blew smoke into his suddenly enraged expression. “Now scram before I growl and make you wet those silk undies of yours.”

His right hand shot into his jacket armpit, but my piece was sitting between his eyes, barrel gently pressed into the flesh of his forehead. “Ah, ah, aah, Darrius; Too slow by half. Now how about you bring it out with two fingers and I refrain from showing the world how little brains you actually have.”

He slowly brought out a revolver, using only his thumb and index finger. “Good boy! Now drop it on the ground over to the side.” Without taking his eyes off of my rod, he did so.

And I pulled the trigger.

“Aw, now … would you look at that?” I muttered as he collapsed. “I forgot to load the damn thing! For pity sake and me a private eye and all. Tsk.” I looked at were he laid, gasping for air and making a puddle, and stepped over him to where his piece landed. “Good thing there’s a loaded gun right here, or else I could get hurt! Ta-ta, Darrius. Give my best to your laundry lady.”

I was halfway down the block before I head the limo door slam and roar off. A beat later, a pair of heels tattooed the sidewalk behind me and a breathless voice called, “Damn it, boss; slow down!”

I stopped and turned around. Jules stopped running, smoothed her clothing, and walked the remaining twenty feet or so. “I got your note, Nick, and even caught the last of your little show back there. Was that Reginald Darrius?”

“In the damp flesh, doll,” I agreed, walking on.

She fell in beside me, long legs easily matching my stride. “I thought so … what did he want?”

“A bathroom,” I quipped, smiling to myself.

“Nick …”

“Okay, dollface, okay; he wanted me to put pressure on Helen to appoint him her personal manager, empowered to deal with the Department of Energy for her. Apparently, she’s a bit of a genius.”

“Really?” Jules scoffed, adding, “and she still dates you?”

“Hardy-har-har,” I riposted with dignity. “Some would say her attraction to me was proof of her genius.”

“Some would say that they’re being followed by a seven foot rabbit, too, boss,” she volleyed.

Consternation, Confusion, and Calming – Second Part of a total rewrite of that last chaper

“Okay, so what would be the likely response to an eleven foot long metal object screaming out of the sky towards Madagascar?”

Jules looked stubborn and kept quiet for a few seconds before answering, flatly, “Best likelihood, it would be met with a missile on a collision course.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figure … chances we could duck the missile?”

“Slim,” she replied with another realistic sigh. “Damn it, Nick; it was your idea to go semi-ballistic!”

“Which should be all the explanation you need as to why it sucks as a plan, okay?” The realization that there would be no perceived difference between us and a nuclear missile came to me at the last instant … when it should have been obvious. Several people, drawn by the screech of our sudden stop, had come out of their houses to stare at us. I smiled big, waved in a friendly fashion, and mimed that we were lost, while muttering out of the side of my mouth, “So why don’t you drive us back to the barn and we’ll think of something a little less terminal, huh?”

Dheria leaned over the seat as Jules backed us up and asked, “What is a missile?”

I’d managed to get the idea of a flying bomb through to her, which required I explain the reason for wanting one in the first place (which, incidentally, was a great deal harder), by the time we were back safely locked up in my garage. Jules took orders for drinks, while Dheria and I studied the map of Madagascar again.

I enlarged the map until I could see both San Francisco and Madagascar. “Well, I hate to say it, but there is always the straight forward approach. Fly to New York, refuel, then fly to … oh, say, Gianna,” I tapped the map, “refuel again, and then fly as close to Madagascar as possible, Mozambique or maybe Mtwara in Tanzania. It would leave only a short hop to the cavern opening and we wouldn’t get blown out of the sky getting there.”

Jules walked back in during my speech and gave us our drinks, taking a second to glance at my proposed route and snorting, “Feh … why break it into steps when we can do it in one shot?”

I looked at Jules in surprise. “Well, because in the first place, the car doesn’t hold enough fuel to fly directly from here to there and, in the second place, it would be one hell of a long flight and I’d be in no shape to run a maze when we got there, would I?”

“Don’t be silly, Nick; with full cells and reserves, she’d make the run with power to spare. Heck, ever since you rigged those solar panels, she even recharges en-route on the long runs. And you’d be in plenty good shape if you’d stop being such a baby about it and let me drive, wouldn’t you?”

“Now, Jules, you know that’s not it! My car is my pride and joy. I’ve put endless hours and dollars into making her perfect for what we do and I just feel better being the one driving.” I’d had my car even longer than I’d had Jules. I’d bought her in college, back when I thought I was going to set the world on fire as a director, and had been improving her ever since.

“Really?” Jules replied, puzzled. “So why are you planning to abandon her on Madagascar?”

“What! Who said I was planning on … oh.” I sat down. Thankfully, there was a chair underneath me. “Doll? Is the gate you planned on using for leaving the island big enough for a car to pass though it?”

“Hardly,” she replied, still studying the map and totally ignoring the rest of us. “Too wide and too heavy; it wouldn’t fit and there’s a weight limit for successful transference.”

I sat down, discovered I was already sitting down, so I sat down harder. “So, no matter how we approach the cavern opening, falling from the sky or coming in stealthy under the radar, my car ends up sitting there after we’re gone. Huh.” Damn … was I ready to abandon my car? Could I sneak in and then formally request my car be returned to me? Who in their right minds would risk both AIDS and the hot zone just to retrieve my … “Waitaminute! Doll! How the heck did you people visit the cavern before this? Come by boat and then walk through the jungle?”

“Of course not, Mr. Grunion,” she replied scornfully. “We simply used the gates. One sits outside of the maze and the other is located on the other side of the chamber. The former is keyed for entrances, the latter for exits. Come by boat, indeed.”

I stared at her back, glanced at Jules and discovered she was also staring at Dheria’s back in astonishment. After a few seconds, perhaps feeling the combined weight of our gazes, Dheria turned around and said, slowly, “Mr. Grunion … you’ve made a mistake!”

“Have I really?” I asked, flatly.

“Yes, indeed, Mr. Grunion! We could simply use the gates to reach the antechamber! There’s no need to take your vehicle to the island whatsoever!”

I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then, conversationally, said, “The reason we no longer have gender violence issues or crimes anymore is that, ironically, the human population finally embraced sexual equality. They did this, mostly, because women came to outnumber men by around sixty/forty and, before anyone knew it, had taken over the existing power structures.”

Dheria frowned, but gamely said, “Sounds like the male population underwent some enforced enlightenment.”

“Perhaps; I’d like to think that they came to their senses once faced with an overwhelming reality, but – however it was achieved – women were finally accepted as the equal of men … which stopped gender related violent crimes since they all became just violent crime, no gender involved.”

“And the reason you bring this up, Mr. Grunion?”

“Because, doll, I want you to know that my beating the arrogant crap out of you, which I’m very likely to do in the next few seconds, has absolutely NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FACT THAT YOU’RE A WOMAN!” I ended up bellowed at her, my fists balling up at my sides. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE CAN SIMPLY USE THE GATES TO GET THERE AND WHY THE SMEGGING HELL DIDN’T YOU MENTION THIS BEFORE!?”

She took a step back and raised her arms against my volume. “What? Why … I don’t know!” A puzzled look flashed across her face.

I looked at my fists and my rage drained out of me. “I’ve been making mistakes since we started this little escapade,” I said, softly puzzled. “Jules? Did you every consider using one of her gates to get to the cavern?”

“No, Nick … but I don’t ‘consider,’ as a rule,” she replied with a little shrug. “I am, when all is said and done, a computer; computers don’t ‘consider.’ We process existing data along preset logic pathways. I remember Dheria talking about there being at least one gate at the island, but we were talking about departing the island. We’d already agreed on a plan to get there.”

“Okay, so that excuses you … or does it? Jules, perform a quick diagnostic, please. Report any oddities.” I waited as her face went blank and she closed her eyes.

In less than a minute, she opened them back up and reported, “Diagnostic completed. I am performing optimally, Nick.”

“Then it’s only me and the doll here, then.” I thought about it. “Maybe it’s only us. Darrius seemed awful easy to fool the last time we went up against him; perhaps it affected him as well.”
“Perhaps what is affecting him as well, Mr. Grunion?” Dheria asked, perplexed.

“Whatever is affecting me, doll,” I replied, crossing the room to dig out my tool kits from storage. “Jules? How long did it take me to solve the Davis case?”

“As I recall, only around five minutes, Nick; Mrs. Davis walked in, told you what had happened, and you called the police to pick up the student before she left. It took you longer to explain it to the Captain than it took you to reason it out.”

“So what is the possibility that I would overlook something as obvious as the faults in that semi-ballistic plan, then?”

She didn’t even hesitate. “I’d estimate the odds of that happening at somewhere around bullshit to one … so something is affecting your judgment, Nick?”

“How many mistakes have I made since I first came home with Dheria, either obvious or eventual?” I pressed further. “And have the mistakes been increasing in frequency?”

“In my judgment,” she replied, after considering for a moment, “I’d say that you’ve made several minor mistakes (mostly little things, like putting too much sugar in your coffee), and at least three fairly large errors since yesterday afternoon. Less before that, but I was curious when you showed up with Dheria that first time.”

“Why?” I was digging through my electronics gear for a little toy that could measure radiation and electrical energy, even the background stuff that surrounds us all. A grateful client knocked it together for me years ago and it was calibrated for both the house’s and my office’s routine background interference. “What was so odd about me bringing a client to the house? I’ve done it before.”

“Yes, but you didn’t call ahead to have me do any of the routine security checks to ensure that it was clear for you to bring her here, you stopped at a bar on the way home with a miniature alien and set the box you were using to transport her in plain sight, and you never tried to verify her story. You simply accepted it at face value.”

“Not quite; I originally called smeg on her and waited her out. On the other hand, it did take me quite a while before I even asked her name, I accepted quite a few ridiculous statements out of hand, and, ultimately, accepted a case that I never should have.” I stood up, gizmo in hand and regarded Dheria solemnly, trying to read her. “Everything points to something fritzing up my head, specifically anything that would lead me to disagree with Ms. Dheria, here. So something was done to me in the office, something to make me more agreeable.”

I raised the gizmo and stepped toward Dheria. “The only question is: Was it intentional or accidental. Did you infect me with something, some sort of Atlantis voo-doo smeg, or am I having some sort of allergic reaction or something.”

I snapped the whatis on and handed it to Jules. “First, scan me for any thing unusual. I’m thinking radiation of some sort or, perhaps, nanobots. Look for minute energy signatures and radiation that’s almost off the scale.”

Jules took it and slowly walked around me, scanning me from head to foot. After a few minutes, she replied, “Nothing, Nick.”

“Huh. Okay, so it’s not a weird radiation thing from being exposed to your survival suit and there are no mini-robots messing with me. That leaves chemical or hypnotic.” I took the gizmo and returned it to the tool box. “I can pretty much rule out hypnotic adjustment, since I know that I’m almost impossible to deal with, hypnotically, so that leaves a possible chemical agent.”

I stowed the tools back away and thought it through while Dheria tried to explain that she had no idea what I was talking about. We’d eaten together over the last few days and she’d had plenty of chances to doctor the food or beverages, but the only stuff I imbibed at the office was some bourbon, first a gulp to steady myself when she popped up on my desk and, later, a couple of fingers in one of my own glasses. My closed bottle and my own glass.

On the other hand, she’d popped up in a locked office rather easily. Was it possible that she’d actually come in earlier than that and doctored my bottle in advance? Or did that body art display actually work to hypnotize me? I remembered reading something about low frequency flicker effects … perhaps?

“Jules,” I said, loud enough to override Dheria’s continued self-defense. “How could I tell if I’ve been hypnotized?”

Jules shrugged. “I suppose a psychologist could tell after enough testing, Nick. Other than that, there’s nothing anywhere on the system that helps.”

“Okay, so we won’t even bother worrying about that,” I decided, sitting down in my favorite chair. “That just leaves chemical. Please fetch your medical bag, Jules. I’d like you to do a quick blood sample.”

She left the room and Dheria asked, “Jules can do blood work?”

“I have the proper gear for a basic blood work-up, doll, and Jules is wired into it. It’s not sufficient for DNA work, but it’ll identify any foreign stuff in my blood pretty quickly. You’d be surprised how often I’ve needed it.”

“No, I don’t suspect I would be,” she replied. “So you’re blaming you lapses in judgment on some mysterious infection, one that I must have passed along to you, Mr. Grunion?” She poured herself a glass of wine from my sideboard and added, grinning, “We have a saying in Atlantis: It is a poor artist who blames the marble.”

I snorted and watched her calmly sip from her glass of wine. “I thought your survival suit was suppose to prevent any nasties from getting to you, doll.”

“It is a complete filtration unit, in addition to it’s other charms, yes,” she answered over the top of her glass.

“So how is it you can drink?” I asked.

She looked at me, then at the glass in her hand, but was spared answering when Jules walked in, saying, “Semi-permeable electronic membrane, Nick.”

“And social-aggravated suggestible aardvarks to you, Jules,” I immediately replied. “How about explaining your gobbledygook first?”

“Dheria’s suit creates a semi-permeable electronic membrane around her, Nick,” she explained, calmly. “It’s a sort of force field that she can penetrate as needed. Notice the rings on both hands?” I hadn’t, but nodded anyway. “They are wired into the unit so that she can touch herself as needed. She holds the glass in her hand and the field permits the glass to pass, thus she can eat and drink.”

“Huh,” I grunted, walking around the smug Atlantisian. “What about all the routine debris humans shed? Dead skin cells and the like; how do they pass through or do they sort of just collect in her boots?”

Jules grinned. “No, she has a disposal routine I’ve helped her with each morning. I wait with a vacuum and she has her suit release all the collected this and that, which I vacuum up promptly. We do it in the morning as part of her getting ready for the day.”

“Okay, how about her perfume?”

“Excuse me, Mr. Grunion, but what about my perfume?”

“You wear a rather interesting scent, doll. One quite unlike anything I’ve ever smelled, so I just naturally assumed it was something you brought with you. Am I right?”

“Well, yes,” she replied, a little embarrassed. “I was warned in advance about your people’s … um … lax hygiene and your world’s natural odor, so I brought my own perfume as a sort of defense. No offense intended.”

“No problem, doll; I imagine that I’d think you people and city stink, too,” I shrugged. “The point is that I can smell your perfume.”

“Which means that her suit isn’t as perfect as she believes, Nick,” Jules exclaimed, catching on. “If you can smell her, then at least monomolecular chemical compounds are passing through it!”

“Yup, that means that her perfume could be doped with something that’s messing with my head.” I sat down in my favorite chair and presented my arm to Jules.

“That is preposterous, Mr. Grunion!” Dheria sputtered, scornfully. “There is no way my perfume could possible be the cause of your bad judgments. Why not blame the moon or the position of the stars, instead? It’s just as unlikely an excuse.”

I ignored her and waited patiently while Jules drew a few cc’s of blood and transferred it to the small coagulation analyzer concealed behind a panel. A stand alone unit, it would perform clotting, chromogenic and immunological assays almost instantly and relay the information to Jules.

Jules blinked and turned to me with a strange expression. “Nick, you have an unknown substance in your bloodstream. Something that the analyzer cannot identify, but is reporting is in strong quantities.”

I nodded, relieved. “Okay, now run a sample of doll’s blood and see if anything in hers matches up with whatever’s in mine.”

Dheria quickly backed away, holding out her hands to ward off Jules. “Are you insane? I forbid this! Puncturing my skin and infecting me with your savage medical procedures is out of the question!”

Jules opened her bag and took out an eye dropper. “Would you consent to giving me a small sample of your saliva, instead? This model analyzer can work on spit as easily as it does blood.”

She looked wary, but took the small tube and, carefully, used it to provide a sample. Jules inserted the sample into the machine and waited. After a few seconds, she announced, “We have a match. The same unknown substance that’s infected Nick has also infected you.”

Dheria sank into a chair, pale and trembling. Before she could say anything, I asked her for a sample of her perfume. She stared at me, blankly, but produced a small vial from one of the pouches on her belt.

Jules accepted the vial and removed a few cc’s of fluid from it. After placing it into the unit, she announced, “And that’s an affirmative! The substance that’s infecting both of you is from this perfume.”

Jules handed the vial back to Dheria, who numbly accepted it and seemed to collapse into herself. After a long quiet moment, she asked, “Might I inquire as to the chemical formula of the substance?”

Jules rattled off a long series of letters and numbers, none of which made the slightest bit of sense to me. (Hey, I’m the result of a public school system … I’m lucky if I can remember H2O, okay?)

Dheria, however, jolted upright in her chair, face drained of all color. “That’s impossible! You must have been mistaken!”

Jules shrugged and offered to run the tests again. Dheria, without a word, crossed the room and, using a fresh hypo, took a blood sample for Jules. Jules ran it through the analyzer and nodded.

“Same as before,” she announced. “You and Nick are both infected with that compound from your perfume.” She hesitated and added, “You said you mix your own perfume? What is it comprised of?”

More scientific mumbo-jumbo followed, the two of them talking chemical shorthand like they worked at a drug lab, and it ended with Jules shaking her head. “All present and accounted for, Dheria, with the addition of that unknown compound.”

I studied Dheria’s face for a moment and asked, “Is it unknown, doll?”

She sat back down, composing herself, before saying, “It was a period that nobody is particularly proud of, a time of desperate need and repugnant answers.

“You know about our occasionally welcoming outsiders into our society for the purpose of keeping our gene pool diverse, but what you don’t know is the price we had to pay for that salvation. It was bad enough that several men and women had to volunteer to mate with those … those savages. To endure their brutal assaults for the good of the whole and every volunteer was rewarded both financially and with higher standings in our society. Both needed if they were to attract a spouse after having …” She trailed off, helplessly gesturing.

“But that was needed to save our species from falling into the terror of excessive in-breeding. The men and women who were willing to be defiled to do so were honored. The savages, however, were not. Oh, we welcomed them into our world, into our society, as we were honor-bound to do, but they were brutal, insensitive, louts; people who seemed to think that they were not only our equals, but our betters.

“Moreover, their brutalities appealed to the lesser of our society, those who – while equal to everyone else in all other ways – did not have the intelligence or skill to attain higher social status. They saw in the savages a hope of social advancement, of making rude and brutal living a virtue, rather than a disgrace. ‘A more natural life,’ they called it and labeled themselves, ‘Naturalists.’

“So the Science Council was forced to either deal with the beginnings of a social uprising the likes of which had never been seen … or to take steps to prevent it.” She stopped talking and poured herself another glass of wine. After she’d taken a healthy gulp, she added, “They chose to prevent it.”

“Their best … I suppose ‘chemists’ would fit them best … their best chemists addressed the problem and came up with a compound that would act as a calming agent. In proper doses, it attacked the aggression center of the brain and soothed the savages. A nice side effect was that it made them more agreeable and more trainable, so there were able to step into the service industries with little problem.”

She took another sip of her drink and sat back down. “Of course, that left those who were willing to use those poor barbarians to further their own selfish desires. They had adopted all the barbaric traits and habits, lauding themselves as ‘honest’ and ‘open.’ Courtesy and polite behavior was considered contemptible. So what was there to do?” She took a small sip and turned sad eyes on us. “The Counsel was forced to ensure that they would reintegrate into society as proper and decent citizens.

“So the Calming Agent, as it had been dubbed, was – in a lesser concentration and a slightly altered form – released into the drinking water.” She stopped speaking for several seconds, and then shook her head. “It was a necessary action, but one done in complete secret. Within months, even the most disruptive of the Naturalists had returned to their prior existence, once again productive members of our society.

“And our society started to become less intelligent, as a whole. Our average IQ, as you would call it, was better than two hundred before the Calming Agent was introduced. We were a society of geniuses,” she stated, frankly. “After the Calming Agent, however, our average intelligence lessened.

“That was two thousand years ago, give or take, and our average IQ today is closer to one hundred than two hundred. We are still an intelligent people, but nothing compared to our ancestors. Except …”

“Wait, let me guess,” I interrupted. “Except for the Science Council?”

She frowned at me and then shrugged. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Yes, the Science Council, being aware of the Calming Agent and its effects, first stopped drinking from the main reservoir and, later, developed an antidote. The antidote does not immediately remove the Calming Agent, but – over time – continued treatment with it completely erases it from a person.”

“And, oddly enough, only members of the Science Council and those they dub worthy are given the antidote, I suppose?”

“Yes. Once a man or woman shows themselves to be gifted in either science or leadership, they are started on the antidotes in the guise of routine inoculations. By the time they are ready to become junior members of the Science Council, they are all but purged of the Calming Agent.

“However, knowledge of the Calming Agent and its history is reserved for those who finally become full members of the Science Counsel. It is, perhaps, our most terrible secret … that our society, our ‘perfect equality,’ is only maintained through this … this … disgraceful bastardization of our intellect.” She burst into tears and Jules quickly sat down next to her on the couch and gathered Dheria into her arms.

I don’t know if it was the Calming Agent or my own niceness, but I let her have a few minutes to collect herself before asking her about the antidote. Why was I so – ahem – calm about it? Hell, didn’t you hear her?

There is an antidote! Jules speaks both basic and advanced science, and I have the Jumbo-sized Junior Mister Wizard Chemistry Set. If there was an antidote, and there was, then Dheria could tell Jules the chemical composition, Jules could whip it up like Julia Childs on speed, and I’d be back to my brilliantly paranoid self before morning!

Well … unless, of course, it contained chemicals that were only available in Atlantis or something. Or if … aw, smeg.

“Excuse me, doll, but didn’t you tell me earlier that you were only a junior member of the Science Council?” Oh, please be wrong, memory.

She nodded, still sniffling.

“Okay,” I smiled as brightly as possible and bit the bullet. “How is it possible to be a junior member and a full member, simultaneously? “

Jules stiffened and Dheria frowned, perplexed. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you said you were a junior member, right? And you said that only full members were told about the Calming Agent, right? Okay, so you know about the Calming Agent and are a junior member, so that means you’re both a full member and a junior member, right?”

“Oh! Oh, no! No!” She waved a damp tissue in denial. “I’m not a full member, I’m just the junior member in charge of the records and I like to read. The council often forgets that everything is in the records, a fact that I’ve taken advantage of to learn as much as possible.”

“Okay.” Hope still existed, so sneak up on it carefully and don’t scare it away. “And reading all the old records means you learned all about the Calming Agent, right?”

“Essentially, yes,” she agreed. “I know the chemical composition of the agent, how and why it was developed, and so forth.”

“Okay.” My face hurt from smiling. “And part of that knowledge is, of course, knowing the chemical composition of the antidote, right?”

“Um …”

“Okay.” Wave bye-bye to the nice hope, Nickie. Bye-bye, Hope! Bye-bye! “I assume that ‘um’ is not Atlantian for ‘why, yes, Mr. Grunion; I know it quite well,’ right?”

“No,” she replied, small and quiet. “The records stated there was an antidote and that I’d been started on the antidote when I was still in my teens (I looked that up the instant I learned of the agent), but the records didn’t mention the exact formula for the antidote, sorry.”

Brain to lips, brain to lips: Stop smiling, damn it! You look ridiculous and the cheeks are beginning to complain about muscle cramps! “Okay. So … we’re screwed, right?”

“Not really, Nick,” Jules interjected. “Given what we know, I think it’s safe to assume that the Calming Agent isn’t very powerful or complicated.”

“Why not? I mean, it’s reduced me to a … a … oh smeg! I’m beginning to forget how to talk, aren’t I? The damn stuff is going to turn me into this … this … thing! I’m going to become a thing that can’t thing for thing!! Aaaaarrrrrggghhhhh!!”

“Stop panicking, Nick! You are not becoming dumber by the second; you’re simply having an anxiety attack! Just concentrate on breathing and I’ll explain.” She waited until I snatched a random bottle of the shelf and took a healthy slug. “The Calming Agent cannot be very complicated or terribly lasting, or else it wouldn’t require constant replenishment via the water supply. Dheria stops using her perfume and we’ll stop being infected with it. A shot of antibiotic should help your system flush out the remaining traces within a day or two.”

This meant that Jules had to explain antibiotics to Dheria, who still refused the injection on the not-unreasonable grounds that her physiology was an unknown, which made introducing anything a risk. Instead, she elected to allow the agent to pass out of her system naturally, with time. On the other hand, she did agree to take a nice hot shower to wash off any perfume still clinging to her.

Jules gave me my shot and left with Dheria, to help her with her bath, leaving me to come up with a new plan. Wait … no, we had a plan, didn’t we?

Yes! We were going to head for the nearest gate and simply walk through it to the antechamber of the Deadly Maze. Dheria would guide us through the maze and into the Chamber … no, the Cavern of Stars, there to do whatever it was that she needed to do. Then out a different gate at the rear, circle back to pick up the car, and get her to the main gate that would permit her to return to Atlantis.

I sighed and took another pull at the bottle in my hand. Since the gate back to Atlantis was embedded in Stonehenge, why not take a long holiday in London before heading back? Visit some of the old haunts, see if any of my college schoolmates still lived there, maybe make a whole European holiday out of it. Why the smeg not?

I reached across the table and keyed the intercom. “Hey, doll? Where is the nearest gate that can get us to the Deadly Maze?”

I heard running water, sputtering, and Jules repeating the question to Dheria. A bubbling muttering was followed with Jules saying, “She says there isn’t one, Nick. We’ll have to use a series of gates, starting with one located in Straight-Hashberry.”

Huh … of course, that made perfect sense; if there was a magical gate that lead to another dimension anywhere in San Francisco, it had to be located in Haight-Ashbury. “Where in the Haight?”

Another sodden exchange later revealed that it was situated in Puzzle Park, formally called Buena Vista Park, which also made sorta made sense. Kinda.

It’s the oldest park in the city, dating back to the 1800’s and a lot of people had wondered over the years why it had never been converted to either residential or commercial use. To the best of my knowledge, no contractor had ever even made an offer to the city.

Which was beyond odd, even for San Francisco.

I mean, almost every other hill in San Francisco was developed, often with a bloody huge antenna stuck on the top. Yet Puzzle Park, with an incredible view of the bay and city from the top of it, was still mostly pristine. If you wanted to see that view, you all but had to pack a machete to get to the apex.

Between the view and the fact that the much more famous Golden Gate Park was only a couple of blocks to the west (which meant that the smaller Puzzle Park would never be missed), it was a puzzle to almost everyone in the city why Buena Vista Park had been permitted to remain practically untouched.

Well, maybe the answer was some Atlantis voo-doo working to keep developers away from places they had installed gates, right? I mean, nobody ever tore down Stonehenge and damn few people had even felt compelled to vandalize the old stones. What are the odds of that?

So we’d step through a gate in the middle of Puzzle Park and end up … well, somewhere else. She’d said a series of gates, so assume at least three (series cannot imply only two, no matter who’s doing the counting) and perhaps more, which would lead us, eventually, to the Deadly Maze. A sudden thought gripped me and I tapped the intercom again.

“Doll? Two more questions: One, have you actually gone through the Deadly Maze before and, two, roughly how long does it take to get through it? I assume you’ll either be able to lead us through or …”

“Or what, Mr. Grunion?” Dheria, still slightly damp, stood in the doorway, Jules right behind her.

“Or will know the trick of getting through, doll.” I finished. Dheria was only dressed in her odd tattoos again, several of which were involved in drying themselves. The cat on her thigh looked particularly disgusted as it licked itself.

“One, I’ve been through the maze several times, Mr. Grunion, and, two, the maze takes as long as it takes,” she replied, toweling off her bald head. I only half heard her; my attention was drawn to Jules, who was playing with Dheria’s tattooed butterfly.

“Even with an experienced guide to lead us?” I asked, still fascinated by the byplay.

Dheria didn’t reply. She walked out of the room and called back in, “Where am I, Mr. Grunion?”

I moved to see through the doorway, but she wasn’t in the hallway. “I don’t know, doll. In one of the rooms, I suppose.”

“So tell me how to get back to the living room, please. Be precise, if you can.”

“Okay, what you’re saying is that, despite having been through the maze before, you won’t be able to tell me how long it’ll take to get through it, right?”

“No, Mr. Grunion,” she replied from directly in front of me, materializing out of thin air. “I’m telling you that I can’t even tell you if you’ll be able to get through the maze.” She smiled and walked over to the couch, her dress reforming as she did so. “If I attempted to lead you through the maze, neither of us would get through. The maze will not permit it.”

“’The maze will not permit it?!?’” I echoed. “I thought you said that anyone with a little intelligence and bravery could navigate it.”

“Yes?” She sat down, reclaiming her glass and taking a sip.

“Well? How do we get through, then? Do we take a ball of yarn or keep our hand on the left wall or what?”

“Mr. Grunion, I wish I could help you, I really do, but I can’t. If I tell you anything about the maze, outside of the barest generalities, the maze would know and would not permit you through. It was designed that way so that, even if one of us were tortured for the information of its location and design, those with the information still couldn’t use it.”

She took another sip before adding, “The maze is different for everyone, Mr. Grunion. Take all the yarn you wish, place your hand wherever you like … neither will help.”

Which moves us right along to the next chapter, Thank God!

Consternation, Confusion, and Calming – First Part of a total rewrite of that last chaper

This chapter was known as Microwaves, Mazes, and Mind Games … but we never get as far as the maze and there are very little mind games involved, so I rewrote it, renamed it, and – with luck – it works a lot better this way.

“Nick? I know you can hear me, Nick, so open the door and let us in.”

Call me paranoid, but I’d managed to stay alive in a time where homicide actually beats cancer on the death tolls. I practice a profession that has always been, even in the days of the mythical Sam Spade, considered to be extremely dangerous – just ask Miles Archer – and not only have managed to survive, but even to excel in my chosen field.

So it should come as no surprise that my bedroom was armored, air tight, and impervious to the best lock crackers and second story men exalt. I should know … I hired the best to do their worse, then listened to their suggestions and beefed it up from there. One of my ex-wives referred to my bedroom as the panic room. (Take that any way you like.)

So neither Jules, with her hidden strength, nor Dheria, with her scientific magic, were about to enter my bedroom if I didn’t want them to … so there.

“Nick? C’mon, Nick … you know it must work out okay! I mean, Darrius said it was history when he came from, so it worked. That mean Dheria survives going to Madagascar, so – QED – we’ll survive it!” On the other hand, although I could isolate my bedroom from the master computer controls, I never thought to install a disconnect button to the speakers. Jules and Dheria could talk to me.

With a sigh, I tapped the send key and replied, “A doesn’t equal B, Jules, and you know it! Dheria manages to complete her tests and get that information back to Atlantis … that doesn’t mean that she survives and certainly doesn’t mean that a couple of locals – locals without her magic force field containment suit, by the way – accompanying her survive at all.”

I slapped the key and went into my private bath to throw up again.

Okay, shoot me … AIDS terrifies me. I was only a kid when it went airborne and the country mobilized into armed camps “for safety.” I knew a man, a friend of my fathers, who was shot and burned simply because he had sores on his legs. It didn’t matter that his own doctor told the crowd that the sores were due to poor circulation, it didn’t matter that the guy was a lay minister with a wife and two kids; they found him, shot him, and burned his body.

I watched on television as entire subway cars and commercial airplanes were destroyed, with everyone within them, simply because somebody onboard was HIV positive. Within three years, over five million men, women, and children were killed worldwide because people were terrified of breathing air that had once been in their lungs.

Not that it made much of a dent in the total numbers; by then, over fifty million had AIDS.

In school, in the enclave my family settled in, we were taught that to even be in the same time zone as somebody with AIDS was an automatic death sentence. Then they showed us pictures of what it looked like, dying from any of the myriad opportunistic infections and tumors.

Okay, I know better now. I know that I can’t be harmed if I just wear a standard civilian OBA or a grade 3 filtration mask. I know that everyone suffering from either AIDS or HIV deserve our pity and assistance, not our hatred and fear. I know that the chances, now, of coming down with either of those two ancient horrors makes leaping from an airplane and living seem reasonable.

I know that I’m not going to contract either condition because everyone, and I mean every single person, with either AIDS or HIV is thousands of miles away, cut off from humanity and protected, on Madagascar.

Where Dheria and Jules wanted me to go, where they wanted me to sneak into, bypassing a military blockade that had never been breached. They wanted me to, willingly and of my own volition, go to the one place on the planet where one could die simply by breathing.

Madagascar had surpassed the Bogey Man as the ultimate childhood threat. “Eat all your soy or they’ll end up shipping you to Madagascar!” Hell, there was a harmless cartoon made with that name, a cartoon about talking animals, which still shocked people whenever they saw it on a shelf. It had to be redubbed and renamed before they could re-release it.

And I can top that! The Madagascar Maniac series of horror movies is on its twenty-fifth installment and still going strong! Mummies? Pfah. Vampires? Psst. Flesh eating zombies from hell? Bleh.

Madagascar breakout? Movie gold!

It was rather like they’d asked my great-great-grandfather if he wanted to weekend in Transylvania, or asked my great-grandfather if he wanted to visit a Nazi POW camp, or asked my grandfather if he wanted to spend the week at the Republican convention. It was the ultimate horror for my generation, one that, no matter how well educated we were, still affected each and every one of us so much that we still made tons of Madagascar and AIDS jokes, watched horror and comedy movies centered around Madagascar and AIDS, and even listened to sad songs about those interred there.

And we still had nightmares that we didn’t even tell our shrinks.

I threw up again.

The absolute stupidest death in the world is going to Madagascar. Hang gliding into a volcano is more sensible. French kissing an arc reactor is far wiser. Attempting anal intercourse with an annoyed liger is a far better plan than willingly traveling to Madagascar!

I washed up and exited the bathroom … walking right into a color display of the island of Madagascar. Jules had taken advantage of the fact that my bedroom walls were all mega-screens and had the latest satellite map of Madagascar blown up to cover one entire wall. The AIDS colony was highlighted in pulsating red and a smaller area on the other side of the island, almost the exact opposite side from the colony, was highlighted in green.

I toggled the send key and said, “Lemme guess, Jules … the green area is where our graves will be?”

“No, Mr. Grunion,” Dheria replied. “The green area is the opening of the cavern. Please note that it is nowhere near the AIDS colony and, as such, highly unlikely to result in any contamination.”

I sat down on my bed and studied the map. “Jules? Increase magnification enough so I can see the actual opening to the cavern.” The picture zoomed several times and I was looking at a hole in the ground. “Size of opening, Jules?”

“It’s a rough oblong measuring close to twenty feet across on the long side and ten feet across on the narrow, Nick.”

“Switch to thermal imaging, Jules.” The area changed and the hole was outlined in faintly red colors. “Decrease magnification so I can see the entire island, Jules.”

Huh. It wasn’t a con job, then. There was a … “Jules?” I drawled slowly. “Please switch to microwave imaging.” The colony faded to black and the far side of the island blazed like a star.

I unlocked the door and walked into the dining room, where the two of them were sitting. “So the good news is that we’re too far away from the colony to have any worries about AIDS, but the bad news is that the opening to the cavern is smack dab in the center of the hottest microwave zone on the entire island? So I don’t have to worry about a horrible and disfiguring slow death because I not only won’t get AIDS, but because I’m going to fry like a tick on a hot stove. Shiny.”

“We’ve been talking about that, Nick, and Dheria feels that she can get us through the microwave hot zone without any problem.”

I sat down and cupped my chin in my hand, staring at Dheria in mock fascination. “Go on, doll! I’m simply agog!”

She ignored my sarcasm with aplomb … or maybe she didn’t even notice it. Maybe they didn’t do sarcasm in Atlantis anymore. Actually, considering that theirs was a society that ducked being totally wiped off the face of the Earth by moving into a side dimension, thus effectively wiping themselves off the face of the Earth, I wouldn’t be the least surprised to discover that sarcasm was a capital offense there, with irony constituting at least a major misdemeanor.

In the preamble to her plan, we discovered that she really didn’t understand microwave radiation, so I explained it. She didn’t understand my explanation, so Jules explained it with smaller words. She still didn’t get it, so I led her into the kitchen.

“See this? This is a device that generates microwave radiation. We use it to pop popcorn and to occasionally destroy other foodstuffs so they’re totally inedible. Watch.” I fished a frozen soy dog out of the freezer and put it on the dish inside the microwave. I cranked it to nuke and set the timer for one minute.

Twenty seconds later, the soy dog exploded in a spray of badly cooked meat substitute. “That’s what microwaves do to stuff. They heat them from within, causing many items to boil from within and pop. These items, of course, include humans.”

I led her back into the main room and tapped the map of Madagascar. “Now, way back in a war that made only slightly more sense than most, one side managed to miss a target the size of a large city (which was, in actuality, a large city) with a missile containing a unique warhead. This was due, mostly, to the fact that the army which was using said missile was only slightly smarter than the surrounding landscape. Said missile then flew several hundred miles off course before striking land and exploding.”

I drew a large circle with my finger. “This area, give or take a few kilometers, was irradiated by the warhead, making everything denser than sand into a microwave emitter and effectively rendering the area uninhabited and uninhabitable for the next thousand years or so. Pray note the location of the entrance to your cave and how it’s within the irradiated area.” I made a larger circle, this one encompassing the island and added, “Now, can you think of a way that the three of us can get past the military blockade, here, and through the world’s largest microwave oven, there, without either being arrested, blown up, shot full of holes, or internally boiled?”

Of course she could.

In that the microwave problem was, in her own words, “the most bothersome,” she addressed it first in a brilliant off the cuff fashion leading to what I immediately dubbed “Operation Jiffy-Pop.” After laying out all the details of her plan, we gently led her back to my microwave oven and demonstrated what would happen if the soy dogs were wrapped in aluminum foil.

This led to the not-too astonishing fact that she still didn’t really grasp the notion of microwave radiation. Jules sat her down and, using a pad, sketches, and really, really small words, got the basic concept across to her.

“Well … won’t your vehicle block the vast majority of that?” she finally asked.

“Of course,” I replied, adding, “but so what? We still have to get from the car into the cavern and you’ve seen how fast we could get cooked.”

“But isn’t the cavern opening more than large enough for your vehicle to pass through? Why not simply stay in the vehicle until we are well within the cavern and well blocked from the radiation?”

“Um …” I looked at Jules in shock. “Would that be possible?”

Jules pursed her lips judiciously and slowly nodded. “Yes, Nick. Provided the opening is far enough away from the blast site that only the surface rocks are irradiated and that the opening, itself, is either level with the ground or canted away from the blast site … yes, quite possibly.”

“Huh,” I grunted, thinking about it. “So we could simply come in fast as possible, brake hard over the opening, and drop in. Then it would simply be a matter of driving the car into the cavern far enough that the microwaves are blocked by earth, right?”

“Theoretically, yes.”

“Huh,” I repeated, staring at the map. “So all we really have to deal with is getting past a military blockade that’s been in place for decades, has repelled all attempts at breakout, and surrounds the island with various weapons of both mass and individual destruction? Sounds like a piece of piss, doesn’t it?”

Dheria again ignored the sarcastic overtones (must be an extreme Atlantisian social faux pas, at the very least) and asked, “If the majority of the world reacts as you, I can see why they’d want as strong a force, as dedicated a force, on duty to prevent breakouts, Mr. Grunion. However,” she darted a glance at me while leaning over the map to study the island more closely, “it escapes me exactly why anyone would wish to break-in.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, if the island is horrible death at this end and explosive death at the other, why would anyone want to go there? I mean, other than doctors and priests and the occasional suicide, that is.”

Within my field, my powers of observation and logical deduction are spoken of in tones ranging from reverent to poorly-disguised jealousy. Given a pristine crime scene, I can generally make deductions and posit theories that would make S. Holmes, himself, say, “Oh, bullshit! You’re just making that up, Grunion!” I generally have the easier ones cracked before leaving the office and the hard ones solved after a day or so.

So why didn’t I see this, first? Any of this? Why on Earth did a woman (who wasn’t even from Earth, technically) have to point out the obvious to me? Of course my car repels microwave radiation (it has to since we often fly between com towers or between com towers and their satellites); of course the cavern opening is big enough for my car (I even checked on the size earlier); of course the military is only truly expert at keeping people on the island from getting off (hell, I’d be willing to bet that none of their equipment was even set up to notice anyone sneaking onto the island).

Of course … so why didn’t I see any of that before Dheria?

I wiped my hands across my face in frustration. “Yeah, I see where you’re going with this, doll. They built a safe and, as Houdini taught the world, safes are meant to keep out one-way traffic. Chances are that we could fly in out in the open and they wouldn’t do a thing except bitch at us over the com waves.” I sighed and looked at Dheria from under my brows. “I suppose it would be silly for me to ask about an exit strategy, President Bush?”

“Who?”

“A guy who proved that ignoring your father’s experience makes you an idiot. Never mind, doll; is there a secret way off of the island?”

“That would depend what you mean by secret, Mr. Grunion,” she replied with a little asperity. “There is only one way in and one way out. However, the way in is not the way out. The way out is only known to those who know how to get in, so by that light, it is secret.”

“Does it involve us trying to get by the blockade?”

“No it does not, or at least not visibly. It is a gate, much like the gate I used to enter your dimension. We will be able to choose from three exits, one of which can also be used as a gateway back to Atlantis.” She stood up and walked across the room to my living room com controls. “How do I make this thing display maps?”

“Like this,” Jules pulled an Barbara Eden and the screen flared to life. “Madagascar, I assume?”

“No, a map of … of …,” she stopped, looking nonplused. “What do you now call the area that encompasses the greater land masses to the northeast from where Atlantis once stood?”

“Well, the African continent is directly to the east, so I suppose the northeast would be Europe,” Jules replied, bringing up a map with Cape Town at the bottom and the upper most tip of Russia on top. Europe and Africa highlighted. “Can you be any more specific?”

Dheria studied the map and tapped Ireland. “Hibernia has, I believe, two gates, either of which will serve, while the main gate for transfers to and from both Atlantis and the Chamber is located roughly here, in Cassiterides.”

Jules nodded, “Ireland and England, Nick. Looks to be around County Wexford and …” She paused and turned to face me, grinning, “… and Wiltshire! Stonehenge, Nick! She’s talking about Stonehenge!”

I found myself returning the grin. “Really? Seriously? Stonehenge?”

Dheria, who had sat back down at the table, simply shrugged. “Perhaps, perhaps not; it is not the name we gave the site, nor do our histories record any of those names. However, the histories were – ahem – neglected after the first thousand years, so there is a good chance that those are the current place names.”

I shook my head and tried to focus on my original question. “So what you’re saying is that you can transport us from the Cavern of Stars to one of these gates, directly? We won’t have to even deal with the blockade?”

“Yes, Mr. Grunion; that is exactly what I am saying.”

“Okay then,” I stood and asked Dheria to bring up the pertinent map of Madagascar again, with the entrance to the Deadly Maze, the microwave hot zone, the AIDS colony, and the blockade all highlighted. “To recap, all we have to do is fly my car to Madagascar, where a military blockade will probably ignore us, and drop into an cave opening that might be deep enough to permit us to leave the car without boiling internally, then negotiate ‘the Deadly Maze,’ do some sort of observation at ‘the Cavern of Stars,’ and then step through a magic gate and we’re done? That about it?”

Dheria pursed her lips and nodded. Jules simply said, “Just about, Nick.”

I nodded back at them and turned to the door. “Fine, then; we leave first thing in the morning. Get some sleep, doll, so you can guide us through the maze and, Jules? Do me a favor and make sure that the car is ready for this little hop. Full charge, water topped off, plenty of sandwiches in the cooler, and that the shielding isn’t damaged, okay?” I closed the door to the living room behind me, calling out, “”Night, all.”

Dawn came in like … well, like pretty much every dawn ever dawned, actually. Nothing particularly unique about it, except that it found us seated in my car, calmly going over a check list of supplies and such, readying ourselves for a quick jaunt to Madagascar. Jules had done the basic course last night while I slept and was rather excited about it.

“It turns out that Madagascar is pretty much exactly on the other side of the globe from us!” She bubbled over breakfast, Dheria and I only sleepily nodding while she served up crepes. “The ballistics of the trajectory I chose for us, therefore, could take into account the rotation of the Earth to ensure a faster trip! Isn’t that keen!”
In that I hadn’t the slightest idea of semi-ballistic flight, nor did I have the reflexes required to react to any possible problem, Jules was both seated in the driver’s seat and manually linked to the flight computer on-board. (Oh, here’s a giggle … the interface port was located in her bellybutton. She swore it tickled, too.) She would be in complete control from blastoff to touchdown.

Yeah, blastoff … that’s the thing about semi-ballistic flight, you see; you pretty much take off like a rocket. The seats in my car are designed to withstand high-gee maneuvers (paranoid, remember?) and were purchased and installed so far under the table that even the cockroaches didn’t know what was happening, along with the highly illegal booster drive concealed under my false back bumper (the exhaust nozzle is directly under the “Support your Local Police” bumper sticker), but my car was still, for all other intents and purposes, just a car. It wasn’t built to withstand the high-gees that a routine “point-‘er- nose-at-the-sun-and-hit-the-button” sort of blastoff would require.

So, in an economy of effort, Jules had located a hill in the city that was pointed in the direction we wanted to go. The hill was the proper degree for an excellent take off … provided, of course, that traffic gave us a straight shot up the hill.

Y’see, I figure about halfway up the hill, we were going to have to use that highly illegal booster to achieve the necessary speed to reach the altitude necessary for a semi-ballistic flight, so any traffic that was sitting in front of us … well, I don’t suppose I have to paint you a picture.

As we drove down from the suburbs and into the city proper, Jules explained that it was simply a matter of her overriding the traffic system to the extent of rerouting all controlled traffic to alternative routes, altering – slightly – the pattern of traffic lights for any official traffic (ie, the cops), and freezing off that one street for two minutes.

So … no problem, right?

Er, no … not quite right. Y’see, San Francisco, in accordance with its long standing “Barbary Coast” reputation, still housed a goodly number of men and women who lived outside of the system. Professional and amateur law breakers, all of whom did their level best to spite the system whenever, and however, possible … including driving off the grid as a matter of choice.

So all it would take is one kid joyriding in a hacked car, one crook fleeing pursuit, or any scofflaw who just happened to have their cars set to manual within the city limit, and our spectacular exit from the City by the Bay would turn into quite possibly the most spectacular accident seen within city limits since the Big Shake of 2012.

In short, we were about to play Russian roulette without knowing exactly how many bullets were chambered. However, the topographical layout of the city was going to lower the risk considerably, as Jules explained as she drove.

“We won’t be heading downtown, since none of the hills in the city proper are much taller than five hundred feet and we’ll need every foot we can get,” she commented, turning off of Southern Freeway at the Monterey Blvd/Bosworth Street clusterfuck and then maneuvering onto O’Shaughnessy Blvd. “Now, Mount Davidson, over that way, would have been perfect, since it’s the tallest hill in San Francisco at nine hundred and twenty-seven feet, but there aren’t many long east/west streets there, which made it useless for our purposes.” She turned right on Portola and I realized where she was heading.

“Jules? Are we heading for Clarendon Heights?” I asked, looking ahead.

“Exactly! Its eight hundred and fifty feet tall with a lovely stretch of road heading southwest on the way up, which means I’ll have to make a slight course correction on the way into the stratosphere, but only a small one. Other than that, it’s perfect!”

“Perfect, except for that one little item? Really, Jules?” I pointed through the windshield. “And the Sutro Tower isn’t going to give you any problems, is it?”

“Nope … well, at least I don’t think it will. We should miss it easily.” She took a left on Corbett and headed up the winding road.

“How much is easily, Jules?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the tower.

“Oh, feet, at least, Nick. A couple of feet, maybe as much as three.” She turned to grin at me. “Plenty of distance, Nick. Besides,” she swerved to miss a dog, “at the speeds we’ll be going, you’ll never notice it if I’m wrong!”

“Great,” I sat back and sighed.

Within minutes we were pointed almost exactly at the tower on a street identified as Glenbrook Avenue. The street was only around a thousand feet long and I said as much.

Jules simply shrugged and did a little back and filling to aim us a little more precisely. We were now sitting at the far right side of the street, aimed at the far left side at the top and a bunch of trees. The tower loomed behind them.

Dheria said something in a foreign language that sounded scared and sincere, and then added, “Are there no other acceptable roads in this city? For that matter, why couldn’t we use a road located somewhere else … perhaps one, preferably, without that steel monster at the end of it!?”

Jules grinned and turned back towards the road. I quickly laid my hand on hers and said, “Not that I don’t have total and absolute faith in you, Jules, but …” I swallowed hard, glancing at the tower, “… perhaps you might answer a few questions before we depart? Pretty please?”

She sighed quite realistically and killed the engine. “Okay, Nick; shoot.”

“Sweetheart, I have just two questions I’d like answered before we leave; One, am I going to end up in jail for destroying this street, as well as these nice people’s homes, and, two, how the hell do you intend to make a thousand foot road serve the purpose of a launching ramp? Last I heard, the absolute minimum distance for an orbital launch ramp was about a thousand times longer.”

Jules sat back and put on her best blank look, the look she’d been using whenever I missed the obvious and she had to save my face. “Okay, second question first; this is not an orbital launch ramp, boss. Don’t think satellite or moon shot, think motorcycle ramp! This street has the proper angle of ascent and is almost perfectly aligned to aim us. As for the first question, we are not going to fire off that silly booster – and it isn’t a ‘booster rocket,’ no matter how much you love the term; it’s a concealed ram jet – and we’re not going to fire it off half way up the hill, as you suggested originally. We’d waste all our thrust while still anchored to the Earth, yes? Wheels on road equal friction, friction equals drag, drag steals from thrust.

“No, we’re going to use the wheels to put us on the right level and to aim us correctly, but the initial trust will come from our flight drive! We will go weightless within seconds of moving, push everything we have into forward thrust, and – once we’ve reached a couple hundred feet up – then we’ll punch the booster. It will multiply our thrust by at least a power, giving us more than enough to reach low Earth orbit. As a matter of fact, I suspect we’ll be able to kill it early and coast into orbit.

“Now,” she draped one arm over the steering wheel and the other on the back of her seat, “if you’re quite satisfied that I can do basic math, would it be okay if I proceeded? Huh?”

“Um …” I looked back at our resident other-dimensional scientist, who shrugged helplessly. What the hell was wrong with me, damn it! It was my idea in the first place and I should have been able to come up with all that myself! “I guess so. Just,” I added hurriedly as she restarted the engine, “you are sure we’ll miss the tower, right?”

Jules shot me a happy grin and hit the gas. The car surged ahead, the speedometer steadily growing higher … and I suddenly screamed, “STOP!!”

Jules slammed on the brakes and we skidded to a halt. Both Jules and Dheria were looking in all directions, Jules demanding to know why we had to stop.

“Jules, sweetie, I have one more question you have to answer before I feel safe with this.”

“What?! Oh for pity sake, Nick! What could possibly …”

“WHAT,” I interrupted loudly, “would be the chances of anyone noticing our departure?”

Jules looked puzzled for a moment, and then replied, “It would set off alarms all over the coast, Nick, but I took that into account! They couldn’t possibly scramble anything fast enough to catch us and, after we hit the lower atmosphere, they couldn’t follow, anyway!”

“Could their computers track our flight and extrapolate, based on speed and direction, where we were likely to come down?”

“Yes, but …”

“Okay, so what would be the likely response to an eleven foot long metal object screaming out of the sky towards Madagascar?”

Jules looked stubborn and kept quiet for a few seconds before answering, flatly, “Best likelihood, it would be met with a missile on a collision course.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figure … chances we could duck the missile?”

“Slim,” she replied with another realistic sigh. “Damn it, Nick; it was your idea to go semi-ballistic!”

“Which should be all the explanation you need as to why it sucks as a plan, okay?” The realization that there would be no perceived difference between us and a nuclear missile came to me at the last instant … when it should have been obvious. Several people, drawn by the screech of our sudden stop, had come out of their houses to stare at us. I smiled big, waved in a friendly fashion, and mimed that we were lost, while muttering out of the side of my mouth, “So why don’t you drive us back to the barn and we’ll think of something a little less terminal, huh?”

It’s an Ill Wind …

Scientists have finally invented a car that runs on water!

Of course, the water in question has to come from the Gulf of Mexico …

(Just heard that one.)

Fins, Fishing, and Finagling – End of chapter

“Dinosaurs, perhaps?” I asked, curious.

“Nick! Don’t be ridiculous; the last dinosaur died off close to sixty-five million years before Dheria’s people ever existed.”

I regarded her for a moment, left eyebrow raised, before replying, “I’m discussing a island that contains a secret Cavern of Stars with a self-proclaimed dimension-hopping, size-changing fairy from Atlantis and you think that asking about the possibility of dinosaurs is ridiculous? Seriously?”

Jules shrugged, immune to irony, and Dheria continued, “No, but the predators who did live on Dahamatia were nearly as ferocious as the legendary thunder lizards. Those that could not overwhelm and rend were remarkably poisonous, down to the smallest insects. There is a colony of ants, Mr. Grunion, which lives on that island that even the largest of the beasts run from. I have seen recording of them stripping a carcass to bone in literally minutes.”

“Army ants, maybe,” I thought about it for a few minutes. “So there were fierce critters on the island, at least back when your people first mapped it, right? Well, how about now?”

Dheria shrugged with her eyebrows, only, a rather nifty trick I’d only seen in the vids up to that point. “Actually, your guess is as good as mine. The last report filed on Dahamatia was close to an eon ago. As I recall, there were still extremely dangerous animals on the island … including man.”

“Ah, I’d wondered about that,” I said. “I couldn’t imagine an island as large as your Dahamatia going unnoticed and unsettled. Well, that makes it both easier and harder; easier, in that wherever people are, there will be ports and hotels, and harder, in that wherever people are, there will be government of some sort to deal with.”

Local control picked that minute to alert me to my exit, so I shifted back to manual and dropped us into the San Francisco traffic patterns. Within fifteen minutes, we were rolling into my Daly City hideout’s garage. We trooped into the living room where Dheria peeled off to visit the necessary … actually, that was a bit of a puzzler to me. Not that she’d have to use the john from time to time, but that (1) her size changes didn’t seem to affect her bowels or bladder and (2) she insisted on using the head while at full size.

My thoughts were that, if size changing didn’t affect one’s digestive system, then both eating and eliminating should be done at the smallest size one can manage. Not only would it cut down on the food budget, but it would make sanitary clean up a snap. I mentioned this to Dheria at one point and she was speechless. She rolled her eyes, sighed, and walked away shaking her head, but she was speechless.

Jules elected to fix lunch. The first time she tried, she made a right mess of it, despite having every recipe in the world downloaded. Then she found an old television series called “Good Eats,” hosted by Alton Brown (who she insisted was to cooking what Carl Sagan was to astronomy). She downloaded the entire series and now her meals were exquisite. Granted, it was hard to get her to shut up about the history of every ingredient, the dish itself, and the people who originally came up with it …

Me, I headed to my library to figure out our next move.

As expected, none of the maps I could access listed any land mass labeled Dahamatia, so I worked off the coordinates for the Canary Islands and added a wiggle factor of plus or minus ten percent. If Jules was right, and when was he every wrong, my car would make it with charge to spare, but then we’d still have to search for the actual island, the correct cavern opening, and – if possible – descend into the cavern.

As part of my preparation, I ran an inquiry as to the various international and local laws regarding both tourism and spelunking in Africa. Niether Jules no Dheria possessed valid passports, but I was oddly sure that wouldn’t be a problem. After all, if Dheria could conjure a catfish out of thin air, then I was fairly sure that a good forgery of a United States passport wouldn’t tax her too much.

Jules signaled lunch right about when I logged off, so I headed to the dining room secure in the knowledge that … smeg. I walked back to the printer and picked up the map of the African continent and surrounding waters and then headed to lunch.

Jules had prepared croquettes, which didn’t make any sense to me since croquette was a game played with mallets, hoops, and wooden balls, or so I thought. These croquettes were four inch paddies of some sort of seafood … tuna, perhaps … that had been lightly fried. Regardless, they were very good. She also had some steamed veggies and a salad built around more seafood that was very tasty. I don’t know who this Alton Brown guy was, but he obviously knew what he’d been doing.

As Dheria and I happily munched away, I placed the printed map on the table and asked her if she could give me the general location of where Dahamatia was located, so I could better ration charge.

She swallowed a mouthful of green leafy goodness and peered at the map over her glass of iced tea. “Right around here,” she nodded, tapping the map.

I frowned and looked where her fingertip had left a moist smudge. “That’s nowhere near the Canary Islands, doll. That’s over on the opposite side of the … oh.” I looked back up in understanding. “‘Counterweight,’ right? On the other side of the continent, balancing Atlantis on the only close landmass your people knew about. Huh … well, I guess that makes sense.” I looked back at the map. “So Dahamatia is located somewhere near Madagascar?”

Jules sat down on the other side of me and pulled the map over, looking. “Madagascar, Nick? There are no large islands near Madagascar, nor are their many small ones, either. There was a fair sized island about here, but it was wiped out in the same misfire that depopulated Madagascar. I doubt there’s even an atoll left.”

“Misfire?” Dheria asked around a mouthful of veggies.

“Yeah, a lone misguided missile back in the Apartheid War. Took out close to eighty percent of the population of Madagascar, flattened their largest city, and made the majority of the island uninhabitable until … oh, I dunno. Somewhere around the next millennium, I suppose.”

Jules nodded and added, “That’s why the World Government decided to put the AIDS Colony on Madagascar.”

“Aids?”

“Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome,” I explained. “A real bitch-kitty of a disease from back in the twentieth century, one that they thought they had a handle on, but – at about the exact instant they figured out an actual cure for the damn thing – it went pneumonic, airborne, and became the worse plague ever seen.”

I helped myself to another wicket or croquette or whatever and explained that, when it started, AIDS had been a sexually transmitted disease. “You could only get it through exchanging body fluids with someone who was infected, so it could only be passed through sex, druggies sharing needles, and so forth. It killed off millions before science came up with a treatment. Not a cure, but a treatment that gave a lot of people a reason to keep fighting.

“Then, around twenty years back, it mutated. Suddenly, you could get AIDS just by being in the same room as somebody who was infected! Needless to say, the world pretty much lost it when it was confirmed. After a few bloody years of terror and panic, the World Government decided that the only answer was to set up a global leper colony and stick all the AIDS and HIV positives on it.”

“HIV?”

“Oh, sorry; Human Immunodeficiency Virus,” I explained. “It’s sort of the springboard for AIDS.” I paused, “Doll, do you have any training or education in biology?”

“No, not really, just as much as any other student.”

“Then I won’t bother going into the whole medical angle of how HIV becomes AIDS. Suffice it to say that one leads to the other, so they decided the only way to save the world was to put everyone who had either HIV or AIDS in quarantine, like they did for leprosy way back when. So they had this island that could hold a couple of dozen million people, one that almost everyone who’s survived the Apartheid misfire had abandoned, so they sent in the Corp of Engineers and a gazillion construction workers and – TADA! – instant colony, ready for occupation.”

“You didn’t mention the medical center, Nick,” Jules pointed out, collecting the plates.

“Well, yeah … remember I said that they found an actual cure for AIDS at about the exact same instant the disease mutated? (Which, by the way, the religious right really jumped on as ‘proof’ that AIDS was a punishment from God. That was before it was proved that HIV was an old biological weapon from during the big wars, but that’s beside the point.)

“The point is that they had this all but useless cure and a colony of possible test subjects, so the WHO (that’s ‘the World Health Organization,’ sorry), jumped in and opened what was considered to be the most high risk medical facility in the entire history of medicine. Labs, living quarters, and offices are sealed off from all contact with any patients. Personnel and supplies are delivered via a rooftop system and the entire facility is run on canned air.”

“They still have a small percentage that end up having to move into the colony population each year, however,” Jules added. “In addition, a joint military operation that’s been ongoing since the colony was formed keeps watch to prevent any of the population from escaping the island.”

It was about at this point that the dime finally fell. “Doll … there isn’t any other large island in that area, so … Madagascar is Dahamatia, isn’t it?”

I don’t know why I even bothered asking. It was obvious at that point that Dheria’s final observations just had to be made on the deadliest place on the planet. Oh, she checked a full sized map and referred to her notes, but – yeah – it was Madagascar.

Home of the most stupid death in the world … fitting.

Intermission – A Change of Pace

Nick Grunion looked up from his desk at the vision standing in his doorway, fighting the urge to stand and salute. It was as if some mad scientist had succeeded in compressing two gorgeous women into one body. She was taller than any supermodel, had more (and grander) curves than any video sex symbol, and if her legs were really that long, then there must have been stork DNA in her genes.

“God Bless Science,” Nick muttered fervently.

“Excuse me, Mr. Grunion,” she said, stepping into the room, “but your secretary said it’d be okay if I just walked in.” Her voice was hot maple syrup poured over a lush stack of buttermilk pancakes … and what a stack.

Without looking away from his visitor, Nick keyed the old fashioned intercom and said, “Jules? Give yourself a raise.” He released the key and swept his other hand in the direction of his client chair. “Please have a seat, Miss …?”

“Levenstein; Lenore Levenstein, and that’s Mrs. Levenstein, Mr. Grunion,” she replied casually,as if the distinction didn’t really mean all that much to her. Nick had already noted the absence of a ring and pointed it out. She glanced at her hand and laughed softly, “That’s not where I wear it, Mr. Grunion.”

After she’d sat (and his pulse was steady again) , Nick inquired, “And how may I help you, Mrs. Levenstein? Do you wish Mr. Levenstein followed, perhaps? Prelude to a divorce proceeding?”

“Really, Mr. Grunion! Do I look like the type of woman who would worry about a man playing around on her?” She replied with a satisfied grin. “I haven’t worried about the competition since puberty. No, Mr. Grunion, I’m more interested in your assistance in a matter involving my sister.”

“So if I’d asked if there were any more at home like you, the answer would have been yes?”

“Hardly,” she laughed. “Debby is … well, Debby took after father and, although he was a financial genius, his looks were really against him. She’s sweet, but rather plain, which makes it all the less likely that Randolph DelVectio is truly in love with her.”

The way she snarled that last phrase made it clear to Nick that she wasn’t the president of the Randy DelVectio fan club. “Excuse me, Mrs. Levenstein, but that wouldn’t happen to be the singer and actor, Randolph DelVectio? Then man the webs called ‘a return to the sexy?’”

“Unfortunately, yes, Mr. Grunion. The greasy little slime ball has his hooks in my sister. He’s pretending that she is the love of his life, his reason for living, and …”

“… And their getting married, right?”

She didn’t so much collapse into herself as be slightly less pneumatic. “Yes,” she confirmed in a small voice. “He’s taking her to the alter and I mean ‘taking.’ Due to the fact that dear Debby also inherited papa’s keen financial sense, she inherited the bulk of his estate. She is worth somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred and sixty-three billion dollars.”

Nick whistled respectfully.. “Nice neighborhood. You figure that DelVectio is planning on moving in and lowering the property value?”

“I ‘figure’ that DelVectio is planning on bulldozing the entire block and selling it for whatever it will bring, Mr. Grunion,” she snarled sexily. “The little meatball is going to use her money to buy his own movie/recording studio, with the intent to produce, direct, and star in his own movies and put out his own disks.”

“Hmmm …” Nick keyed the intercom and asked, “Dollface? What was the gross on Randy DelVectio’s last film?”

His assistant instantly replied, “It went straight to load, Nick, and hasn’t broken even yet.”

“Hmmm … how about his last five films?”

“‘Candy Man’ grossed a few billion, ‘Preacher from Hell’ grossed a few million, and the following three barely broke even,” she replied. “As did his last couple of disks, Nick. Nor did anything he’s done since ‘Candy Man’ gather much critical success … whatever that’s worth.”

“Thanks, Jules.” He released the key and sat back, thinking. After a few minutes, he asked, “Exactly when did your sister and Randy become an item, Mrs. Levenstein?”

“Oddly enough, it was after his contract at Sony … make that his contracts, since they also produced his disks … expired. Sony announced that they were not renewing and a week later Debby was introduced to that meatball at a party. I asked the hostess and, sure enough, he requested to be introduced to Debby.”

“Hmmm … well, in all honesty, I suppose this sort of thing happens all the time. Falling star, with no other notable skills or talent, latches on to someone with more money than sense, romances them, and becomes a member of the leisure class. Often, the rich spouse is fully aware of his or her lack of appeal and is simply making a good deal; incredible arm candy in return for financial security. A prenuptial agreement is generally all it takes to protect the family fortune … so why come to me?”

Her eyes slitted and a look of absolute detestation crossed her carefully perfect face, but only for an instant. The next, it was an open vision of loveliness again. However, that instant wasn’t lost on Nick, who was careful to keep his own face totally bland, as if he’d missed it.

“I asked around, Mr. Grunion, and was told that you’re a man who … well, frankly, I heard that you’re a man who can make things happen. Who can make people change their minds and see logic when everything else fails. My good friend Deloras Pendergrass mentioned that you were able to make that nasty blackmailer of her’s return everything he’d stolen and simply … vanish.” She spoke the last word with a slight inflection, as if trying to make it rhyme with “killed him and disposed of the body so well that nobody even noticed.”

“Ms. Pendergrass was being being generous, Mrs. Levenstein,” Nick replied, cautiously. “Once I knew who her blackmailer was, it was a simple matter of explaining facts to him. Extortion only works if the extortionist is either unknown or has enough on the victim to insure their silence. I knew who he was, was able to prove it in any court of law, and the photographs that he had stolen were only embarrassing, at best. Once he understood all this, he was more than willing to return the stolen pictures in exchange for my silence and a chance to return to his home state without prosecution. Oregon, I believe, where he is currently living, safe and sound.”

“Oh … Deloras made it all sound … oh.” She frowned and twisted a lace handkerchief in frustration. “I thought … well, never mind what I thought. I suppose I’ve been a bit of a fool, Mr. Grunion.”

“No, you just care greatly about your sister, Mrs. Levenstein,” Nick assured her. “Please take my advice for free and permit your sister her little fling, making sure that she intends to have a prenup firmly in place before walking up the aisle. Given what you’ve told me about her business acumen, I’d be willing to bet she’s a lot sharper than you think, so she probably already has it all covered.”

“Thank you, Mr. Grunion, I’ll be sure to do that.” She stood up, unfolding her long legs to do so. “I trust I haven’t taken up too much of your time with my silly concerns … and that what we have discussed will remain in this office?”

“What? That you were so concerned about your sister’s well being that you spoke to a private detective or that you loathe Randy DelVectio?” Nick laughed, walking around his desk to open the door for the gorgeous woman. “Put it out of your mind, Mrs. Levenstein.”

She thanked the shorter man and walked out of the office, secure in the knowledge that he’d been well paid for his time by being permitted to watch her walk away. After the outer door closed, Nick turned to his assistant and said, “Get Paulie on the phone, Doll. Thanks.”

He walked back to his desk, stopping to pour a couple of fingers of whiskey into a glass. His old fashioned phone rang and he picked it up. “Paulie? Nick. Tell me, is Old Man DelVectio still head of the West Coast branch of the Mafia, or did he retire? Really? Well, you have a number for him, right? Great!” He slid a pad over and picked up his pen. “Shoot. Yeah … okay. Thanks, Paulie; I owe you one.”

Nick hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair for a few minutes, thinking matters through. Finally, he reached over and started to key the intercom, then stopped with a chuckle. “Jules?” he said to the empty air.

“Yeah, Nick?” His assistants voice answered from the empty air.

“You listened, of course … what are the odds that she’s going to hire some other poor slob to kill DelVectio?”

“Conservatively, I’d say one hundred percent, Nick.”

“Yeah … well, transfer our conversation to permanent memory and make a transcript for my lawyer, just in case.”

“Already done, Nick.”

“Thanks, doll.” Nick Grunion sat for a few minutes longer, studying the bust of Borgart. After a while, he picked up his phone and called the number his buddy had given him. After passing through some household staff, he was finally connected with Antionio “Tony the Bat” DelVectio.

“Good afternoon, Mr. DelVectio. My name is Nick Grunion and I have reasons to believe that somebody is going to try to kill your boy, Randy.”

After a conversation that lasted a full hour, Nick hung the phone back up, smiling. “Jules? Tell me when a money transfer for a million bucks comes through, please.”

“A million dollars, Nick?! Why on Earth would anyone … huh. Nick?”

“Yeah, doll?”

“A million dollars was just transferred into your primary account from DelVectio Imports. I assume this means we have a new client?” Jules never recorded Nick’s office when there wasn’t a client in there, a point of contention between the two.

“You assume right, doll. Tony the Bat has hired us to make sure nothing happens to his boy, Randy, before his marriage. Do me a solid and check to see if anyone is searching the web for any odd information for Randolph DelVectio, review all traffic cameras to see where our Mrs. Levenstein went after leaving here, and tap all of her comms.”

“Gotcha, Nick. I’m on it.”

“Thanks, doll.” Nick stood and walked over to his supply closet with a smug look. The sign on the door read “Grunion and Associates” for a reason. He opened the door to his old supply closet and regarded the two dozen miniature private detectives inside. Some were dozing at their desks, little fedoras pushed over their eyes, others were surfing the web on the micro-terminals Jules had devised, and a half dozen were playing cards with a toy deck. Twenty-four six inch private detectives … now that’s associates!

“Guys?” They all stopped what they were doing and turned to look at Nick. The sleepers pushed their hats back, the surfers leaned away from their terminals, and the poker players tossed in the hand (most with an air of relief, one with a muttered curse). When he had their attention, he continued, “Who wants to play bodyguard for a crappy movie star?”

The game was afoot, but Nick Grunion knew how to run the race at a different pace than anyone else!

End

Fins, Fishing, and Finagling – Part Five

“It hurts more than I expected, Mr. Grunion,” she replied, and then nearly tore skin off of my face with a short slap. “And if you ever touch me like that again, I will tear what little brains you possess out of your nose and fry them for lunch!”

“Sorry, doll, but Darrius had to believe that you were being baked and you froze. It was the first thing that came to mind,” I explained, rubbing my cheek. Thank goodness she didn’t wear rings.

“Pinching my arm, pulling my hair, twisting a finger … none of this occurred to you? Only trying to pull my nipples off would do?” She shook her head and asked Jules, “Hasn’t he ever had a woman, Jules? He must have had at least one in his life, right? Did she run screaming into the night or did she stay long enough to kick his testicles into his abdomen?”

Actually, the first girl I ever bedded did, in fact, come mighty close to reversing puberty for me, but it wasn’t intentional. We both fell asleep afterward and she had her left arm and leg tossed across me, somewhat possessively.

Anyway, she jerked in her sleep, as people sometimes do, and slammed her left knee into my gonads with explosive force. I assume, that is, since all I knew for sure is that I had great sex (i.e., I got my rocks off), fell asleep, and woke up on the floor in mortal agony with the girl who swore she loved me more than life itself kneeling on the side of the bed, saying, “I’m sor-sor-sorry, Nick. Bwaaaaaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ah … I swear it was an accident! Whaaaaa-ha-ha-ha!”

It’s mighty hard to accept an apology when the one doing the sincere apology is laughing too hard to breathe. Mighty hard (and that was the only thing even slightly hard for the next few hours). I think of her every time it rains; I get this twinge, you see …

When I finished my painful recollection, I realized that Jules was stanchly defending my reputation as a ladies man by describing, move for move, my last bedroom encounter. Dheria seemed more bemused than offended and was alternatively listening, eyebrows raised and lips curled in amusement, to Jules accounting, and glancing at me with the same expression.

I returned just in time for Jules to start duplicating the noises she’d heard. “THANK YOU, Jules,” I quickly interceded. “I appreciate your loyalty and thank you very much, but I believe that’ll be quite enough.”

“But I haven’t even gotten to the telephone call she made after you’d fallen asleep, Nick! She was quite generous with her review of your prowess, you know. I believe her mother was very impressed!” she complained, face aglow with her mission of defending my good name.

“Yeah, well, be that as it … what?” I did a double take. If I’d been drinking, I would have done a spit take. Perhaps a double spit take, even. “She made a phone call while I was asleep and rated me?! To her mother?!?”

“Either her mother or some acquaintance she addressed repeatedly as ‘mom;’ yes, Nick,” she nodded. “And she was even quite generous in describing your physical dimensions, too! Were I her mother, I would have been terribly impressed … perhaps even aston …”

“Yes, yes; thank you, Jules!” I interrupted, having to speak loudly over Dheria’s peals of laughter. “Good to know, thank you; we’ll have to be sure to send her a box of roses, later, okay? Fine; now let’s head home and get ready for the final … of for pity sake, doll! C’mon; it isn’t that funny!”

“On the contrary, Mr. Grunion,” she gasped between giggles, “I find it generously funny!”

“Ha – flipping – ha, doll,” I muttered, starting the car. The trip home was a bowl of cherries for Dheria and Jules, as they talked men and sex in general (which is the only way Jules can talk about sex, come to think of it), gaily laughing and sniggering. The only problem was that Jules only had one conduit into the carnal world and that was yours truly, so every example she used involved me … which made the trip home less fun for Mama Grunion’s best boy.

In all honesty, I’d never considered that Jules paid the slightest attention to any of my affairs. Oh, I knew she kept tract of their coming and going, and was programmed to monitor my health and well-being, but never stopped to consider what that meant, vis-à-vis sex. I just sort of assumed that she tactfully turned off her monitors whenever I tripped the sheets fantastic. To discover that she not only left them on, but kept recordings (both sound and picture, as it turned out) was, to say the least, a little embarrassing.

The question was, however, is it more embarrassing to leave the monitors in place than it would be inconvenient to remove them, thereby losing the benefits of having an A.I. keeping an eye on everything. Would I be still be able to dance the horizontal mambo knowing that Jules was watching, actively interested, or would I need to disconnect her presence from my bedroom and lose waking to her lovely voice?

Her lovely voice … When I designed Jules (which is to say, when I paid the computer nerds to design Jules), I had in mind a combination personal assistant, data base, and, well, I guess an electronic Nero Wolfe to my Archie Goodwin. Something … no, somebody I could talk over cases with who could make those incredible deductions so popular in pulp fiction. After all, she was a computer, right?

Shows how much I knew about computers. I had never heard of GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) and believed, truly believed with all my heart, that if I gave her all the facts, evidence, and observations, she’d be able to solve any crime and unravel any mystery. I never realized that I’d be talking to a very alert echo, basically hearing my own theories reworded and repeated back to me.

Not that this wasn’t valuable, of course. Anyone who’s ever had a few sessions with a shrink knows the value of having your own views parroted back at you. However, it wasn’t what I had in mind.

So I read a couple of books, surfed a few sites, and decided that the problem was that she didn’t have a unique personality. Hence, the voice of Julie Newmar and the massive increases in her memory and processors; I wanted her to develop in the classic fiction A.I. sense. After I gave her a name, a voice, and enough power, I sent her into the web to read everything she could about law enforcement, detective novels, science fiction, and whatever else I could think of that would help her … well, wake up, I suppose.

Isn’t that what computers do in all those stories? Their connections pass a certain number or lightening strikes or they read enough and – zap – all of a sudden, they are human. Maybe human’s not the right word. Make that sentient, able to perceive or feel subjectively. An entity that could judge and deduce, suggest and resolve; somebody who I could work with … without having to split the credit, of course.

After all, I was the detective, not she.

She never quite reached that mark, however. She never underwent that magical moment described by Heinlein and so many others; she never awoke. Oh, she talked to me and managed every aspect of my business that I didn’t want to deal with, she even occasionally helped me out on cases and she was the absolute best when it came to stake outs. All I had to do was bug the suspect or put a few dozen microfeeds up and she would spend hours tracking and recording. After a few hundred hours of doing so, she even began to identify suspicious behavior on her own.

One day, out of the blue, she suggested that I permanently mount microfeeds on myself, one facing forward, so she could record all conversations for me, and one facing back, so she could warn me of any attacks. She suggested this, not me, but I saw the obvious benefits and added feeds that also faced right and left … just in case.

After that, she started simply taking whatever steps she thought was necessary to ensure my safety. She identified the override frequency of my car and started driving for me whenever needed or requested. She tapped into my communit frequencies and automatically recorded and tracked every incoming call. She spread her electronic fingers into systems all through the city, without being caught, so she could more easily monitor and observe. (Once, she even redirected traffic during a high speed ground chase so subtly that neither the police nor the city engineers knew that their precious systems had been compromised for that time.)

Moreover, and more to the point, she also started watching me all the time. More than once, her immediate warnings while I was sound asleep had saved my life, once being delivered through my audio comm links as to not awaken the woman next to me, who just happened to be part of the group trying to kill me.

She anticipated my needs and desires, having built up an extensive database of Nick Grunion. One might even say that Jules was the world’s foremost expert on the care and feeding of the wild Grunion, but only if one was silly enough to do so. Knowing all this, why would it surprise me to discover that she’d been a … well, a silent partner in my various trysts? More than that, why did it bother me to discover it?

I was still trying to puzzle that out when something Dharia said leaked through my pondering. “… Stars is a magical – and I despise using that term, but it does seem to be accurate in this instance – planetarium of sorts; a place where all the stars and planets are available for scientists to study without the need of ascending to the highest peaks.”

I’m sorry to butt in, girls, but what was that?” I asked.

“Dheria was telling me about where we had to go, Nick,” Jules answered. “It’s called the Cavern of Stars and it’s located at the far side of a maze.”

“The Deadly Maze, Mr. Grunion, but don’t let that bother you. Anyone with a little intelligence and bravery can negotiate it safely, which means you’ve got a fifty/fifty chance.”

I grinned at her in the mirror and quipped, “That’s why I always keep Jules around, doll. So this Cave of Stars is a sort of souped-up planetarium created by your society back when they were still around?”

“That’s right,” she replied.

“Well, doesn’t that mean that it’s a few thousand years out of date, doll? I mean, despite what you Atlantisians might think, the university didn’t stop spinning once you left.”

She gave me a cool look in the rearview mirror. “Actually, Mr. Grunion,” she replied with some asperity, “it is a real-time representation of the actual location of every celestial body. Unlike some, we know how to build to last.”

I grinned back and nodded, accepting the minor insult. “Good, so all we have to do is get you to this Cavern of Stars prior to your deadline and you use it to get the final bit of information you need for your master plan, right?”

She nodded.

“Frosty … so when’s the deadline for this one, doll?”

“Anytime between now and midnight on the thirty-first,” she replied.

“And midnight on the thirty-first is …”

“That’s right, Mr. Grunion; midnight on the thirty-first is the deadline for returning to Atlantis, either mine or any along the timeline,” she confirmed.

I nodded, happy, and flew along for a few moments … then locked it into the grid, put it all on automatic, and turned my seat around to face Dheria. “Right … so what’s the catch?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Darrius and his troops believe you’re dead, so they are extremely unlikely to pop up at the Cavern of Stars. The Deadly Maze isn’t all that deadly. We even have a couple of days to rest up before you have to be there and all that will remain is getting you to one of the dimensional portals so you can go home.” I ticked the salient points off on my fingers, leaving one digit standing. The digit still standing reflected my mindset nicely. “So … where’s the catch? What is it this time?”

Dheria gave me a bland look and glanced at the ceiling for a few seconds. She might have been thinking, she might have been praying, for all I know, she might have been counting to ten, because that’s how many seconds she stared at the ceiling before asking, “Can this vehicle reach Africa?”

“Sure,” Jules interjected (since I didn’t have the slightest idea). “We can go semi-ballistic for short periods if necessary.”

“What?” I yelped. “Since when?”

She shrugged at me and asked me, “What do you think I do at night? Watch you sleep? You gave me permission to buy whatever tools and equipment I needed to keep your car in top shape, so I did. It’s not a vessel I’d want to take into orbit, but it should managed semi-ballistic travel.”

“Huh,” I said, numbly. “Anything else I should know? Could I use it as a sub or boat?”

“Don’t be silly, Nick. Why would you need a sub?”

“I dunno … why do I need a ballistic air craft?”

“Semi-ballistic,” she corrected, primly. “There are only minor differences between the two, but they’re the sort of differences that could kill you.”

I glared at her for a moment longer, trying to work up a good anger that could trump my astonishment. I owned a car that could go sub-ballistic? Damn. Finally, I just shrugged and asked Dheria, “Okay, so the Cavern of Stars is in Africa, then?”

“No, it is inside an island off the coast of Africa, Mr. Grunion,” she corrected. “The island is called Dahamatia, which means ‘counterweight,’ so named because it was felt to be a natural counterweight to Atlantis. It is roughly the same size and area as Atlantis and situated as to balance the African Continent.”

“Cute,” I commented. “So Atlantis was near the Canary Islands and the Canary Islands is off the coast of the African Continent and Dalmatian …”

“Dahamatia,” both Jules and Dheria corrected.

“Sorry, Dahamatia,” I repeated, nodding. “And Dahamatia is located in the perfect position to balance out the mass of Atlantis?”

“Our maps, back then, were crude affairs, Mr. Grunion. At the time of the discovery of Dahamatia, we believed that the African Continent represented the vast majority of the planet’s total land mass. Therefore, any island directly opposite ours, especially one that so closely matched us, was – obviously – put there as a counterweight for Atlantis. Hence, Dahamatia.”

‘I guess that makes sense,” I admitted, rubbing my nose. “How did the folks living on Dahamatia take the news?”

“Well, considering there were no people living there, Mr. Grunion. The island was entirely occupied by animals, including some of the fiercest creatures known to man. The sailors who discovered the island originally were lucky to escape with as few casualties as they did.”

“Dinosaurs, perhaps?” I asked, curious.

“Nick! Don’t be ridiculous; the last dinosaur died off close to sixty-five million years before Dheria’s people ever existed.”

I regarded her for a moment, left eyebrow raised, before replying, “I’m discussing a island that contains a secret Cavern of Stars with a self-proclaimed dimension-hopping, size-changing fairy from Atlantis and you think that asking about the possibility of dinosaurs is ridiculous? Seriously?”

Fins, Fishing, and Finagling – Part Four

I still believe that there is nothing that a well educated and willing person cannot understand; given enough time and patient explanations … the trick is managing to have the time and teacher to make the nut.

We piled into my car and Jules stopped us from leaving with a sudden motion. “They’ve reached their … ‘hideout’ is the best term, I suppose … and Darrius is going to interrogate ‘Dheria,’” she announced.

“Can you pull the same gag you used to make it look like my double was talking?” I asked.

“I think so, but it might not be necessary. It looks like their going to leave the fish in the cage for the interrogation, so all I’ll have to do is provide a link for her to speak through. No puppetry needed.”

Jules and I had used a separate frequency to coordinate the physical motions of my double; me telling her what I wanted the dummy to do and making my replies through our link, and she taking care of the actual motions and delivering my speech a split second after I said it, complete with facial motions and expressions.

That was impressive … but what was really impressive is that she also relayed messages between Dheria and me, controlled the fake fish, and played her own part all at the same time. Multitasking taken to a new level, I think.

We settled in and waited for a few minutes, Jules providing a running commentary of what was going on, and then it was show time. Jules said, “Darrius just entered the room” and sat back. Her face went blank for a moment, and then arranged itself in Darrius’ perpetual semi-sneer.

“Well, traitor, I hope you are comfortable enough to answer a few questions?” she said, in Darrius’ voice.

Dheria, sitting next to me, replied, “More than comfortable enough to tell you to go to Hades, Darrius.”

“I’ve been there,” he replied, with the sound of a chair being drawn closer. “As has all of Atlantis, thanks to your plans … do you really believe that our time views you as some sort of savor, Dheria? Were it not for the power of the counsel, there would have been open revolt during these past centuries! No contact with the outside and, now that contact is once again possible, we are to move to a distant planet, instead!”

“So petition the counsel to reconsider, rebel,” Dheria snapped back. “Instead of violating every oath you’ve ever taken, petition the counsel to reevaluate and reconsider. You call me a ‘traitor,’ but which of us is betraying his vows, hey?”

“I’ll trust in history to vindicate my actions, thank you.”

“Who the hell does this guy think he his? Dick Chaney?” I muttered. History never vindicates, any first year polysci student could tell you that; history records and provides possible explanations … people vindicate.

“The only history that will be written about your acts will be in psychology texts, fool! What sort of monumental ego do you possess to believe that you can choose wiser than the entire counsel?! I know why you’re taking the traitor’s way out … you know that the counsel would laugh your petition out of the forum!”

“The counsel, fah! Twenty-four old women in the robes of wise men,” Darrius ranted. “Every one of them chosen for wisdom, but none willing to recognize that wisdom, without daring, is nothing more than pitiful cowardice. Warriors are what are needed on the counsel, not trembling academics!”

“Warriors are on the counsel, you dolt! Marcus and Phelib and others; all good men and true followers of the warriors code, not like some pathetic couch warrior with dreams of glory, but no taste for real battles! Oh, yes, Darrius! I have known ‘men’ like you all my life, those who speak huge, but accomplish nothing. Deny it if you dare!”

“I … I have … I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU ALL TO LEAVE US!” he screamed at someone in the room. “DO AS I SAY OR OFFER YOURSELF AS SACRIFICE!”

A voice stammered, “Great Darrius … Master … I only … you told me yourself you wanted to know when the pit was prepared, Master.”

“Ah! Then perhaps your interruption was not badly timed, Slavos. Report to the discipline sergeant for ten lashes, only.”

“Thank you, Great Darrius!” The door slammed and Darrius laughed.

“Is that the respect given to a ‘couch warrior,’ wench? Only a true leader commands such men. Only a true warrior inspires such fear and respect from his troops.”

“Any sadist with a sword promoted to a position of power would scare those under him just as badly, fool, but there is a world of difference between leading men and driving sheep in front of a whip. You are simply a non-entity with an army of sheep, not even able to beat a slip of a girl!” Dheria laughed. “I saw your best go down before the detective’s girl, Darrius. I know your so called men for what they really are … sheep and incompetents.”

I listened to the odd noises that followed for a few minutes before I realized that it was Darrius having what my granny would call “a conniption fit.” He sputtered and stammered out vague sounds like he was having a seizure, then slammed his fist on something, perhaps the table that held the cage, and bellowed, “THAT WILL BE ENOUGH!”

There was a rattling and a door opened. Jules regained her own expression for long enough to say, “He’s moving the cage out of the room and to some location nearby.”

“Speak huge, but accomplish nothing, eh, wench? Accomplish nothing … nothing but changing the future! Your precious academics, pleading for their pitiful lives, said that it was impossible, that there was no way to change the course of time, no way to alter events. Fools! Cowards! Short sighted slaves!” he ranted. “Well, I took their precious machine, their time portal, and I used it like a true warrior, like a visionary, like a future emperor!”

I could hear a crowd muttering, occasionally quietly cheering. Darrius was playing to his troops, making some sort of election speech … but why? “Once I return, I will lead the masses and haul them from their forum, rend their robes and cast them into the pits for entertainment! We will have a time of honest rule, a time of destiny fulfilled! We will stride across this pathetic world like Colossus and begin the rule of Atlantis. All their weakened nations will bow before us and a new golden age will begin! It will be an Age of Atlantis, Ascendant!”

“You’re mad, Darrius,” Dheria calmly replied. “The future is inviolate and no power in creation, less of all a small minded madman such as yourself, can change it.”

“Truly, Dheria?” he laughed. “Those are pretty bold words … for a fish.” His troops got a big laugh out of that one. “And as reasonable as anything any fish ever said, no doubt. Well, as Atropholese used to say, ‘There is truth in action that mere words can never equal.’”

I leaned over to Dheria and asked her, softly, “Have you ever had any acting training?” She looked at me as if I was mad and I added, “He’s about to kill you … be prepared to die convincingly.”

Darrius was still speaking and I tuned back in when he said, “Here’s a little something I’ve learned since coming here, Dheria. It’s a method of preparing food that is considered to be a delicacy in the southern most area of this country. They call it a ‘fish fry.’”

There was a smashing sound and Jules’ eyes went wide. “External temperature is … he’s tossed the cage into a fire!”

“Scream like you’re being burned alive, doll!” I ordered. She looked at me, baffled, so I reached out and pinched her nipples, hard. She let out a shriek of pain and outrage and slapped at my hands. “That’s it, but louder! Your being roasted inside of that phony fish.”

She nodded and I let go. She screamed for mercy, for someone to simply kill her and be done with it, for the Gods to spare her, for … and then degraded to weaker and weaker screams, finally falling silent after around three minutes. Jules raised a hand and said, in her normal tones, “I can hear the fire crackling and laughter from the crowd. Darrius is congratulating himself for changing history. Now there is some sort of … I think they’re burying the fire and ‘you.’” She was silent for a few seconds and then shook her head. “Nothing; either the heat roasted the mics or they piled on enough dirt to muffle everything.”

I leaned back in my chair and barked out a relived laugh. “I don’t believe it! I don’t smeggin’ believe it!” I grinned at Dheria, still rubbing her sore nipples, and patted her on the arm. “So how does it feel to be dead, doll?”

“It hurts more than I expected, Mr. Grunion,” she replied, and then nearly tore skin off of my face with a short slap. “And if you ever touch me like that again, I will tear what little brains you possess out of your nose and fry them for lunch!”

“Sorry, doll, but Darrius had to believe that you were being baked and you froze. It was the first thing that came to mind,” I explained, rubbing my cheek. Thank goodness she didn’t wear rings.

“Pinching my arm, pulling my hair, twisting a finger … none of this occurred to you? Only trying to pull my nipples off would do?” She shook her head and asked Jules, “Hasn’t he ever had a woman, Jules? He must have had at least one in his life, right? Did she run screaming into the night or did she stay long enough to kick his testicles into his abdomen?”