Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5 ) (25 page)

Bridget posed in the mirror, chin up, then said, “Oh, I like it,” in a facetious tone.

Emma said, “Well you
do
look different.” She held out the lipstick and said, “Here put some on your lips too.”

Barrett’s voice came in Ell’s ear, “I’ve been around the building twice without seeing him but there are a
lot
of dark corners.”

Ell thanked Barrett and asked him to have the two security team members who’d been inside go outside also.

Once Bridget’s lips were heavily colored, Emma put a spot of lipstick on each cheek and smeared it around as a blusher. They washed their hands.

Bridget turned her head side to side in the mirror and giggled, “You’re a
terrible
makeup artist. I look like a clown!”

Emma
frowned
, “As long as you look
different
. Put the jacket back on.”
She knelt at Bridget’s feet and rolled her pants legs under to make them look like they were
Capri
length. “OK, I’ll have my car meet us at the back door.”

As the three girls entered the club again, Ell stepped over the hostess desk saying she wanted to buy a bottle of the
souvenir
Top of the Hill barbeque sauce.
She whispered through her AI to her security team that they were going out the back door.

“Damn,” Barrett said, “I don’t actually know which of the doors around
this hodge podge of a
building
is
the back door. We’ll
do our best
to
watch
them all.”

Emma frowned at
Ell
for
her
trivial side trip
,
but when they went down the back stairs they had to stop part way down to wait for Emma’s car anyway. Once Emma’s AI said the car was pulling up out back
they went down the stairs, hoping to duck quickly into the car.

Emma went first, Bridget just behind and Ell at the end. Emma turned toward her car about twenty feet away and they had taken a few steps when Sam stepped out of the shadows. He grabbed Bridget’s wrist
saying
triumphantly, “I
thought
you bitches would come out this way… Bridget and I are going home now
,
right
Bridg?” He reached behind her and unplugged her AI headband.

Emma had turned to stare truculently at him. Ell said, “You know, unplugging her AI won’t help
this
time.
Our
AIs are recording this too.”

“But Bridget
wants
to go with me don’t you?” Sam’s eyes bored into Bridget’s. “What the hell did you do with your makeup?” he suddenly exclaimed. His lip curled, “Are you trying to look like even more of a slut than usual?!”

Emma said, “She has a
right
to look how
ever
she wants!”

Ell could see his grip on Bridget’s arm tighten as he said, “Tell them you want to go with me Bridget.”

Bridget’s head shook side to side momentarily
then she bent her knees and moaned as he squeezed harder on her wrist. “Yes,” she whispered, “I’ll go with you.”

Ell said fiercely, “I won’t accept that. Not
unless
you let go and step back 10 feet.”

He snarled, “And just
what
are
you
going to do about it
?
’”

Despite
trying
to remain calm Ell had slipped a little into the zone. In a tone cold as ice, Ell said, “You,
don’t
, even, want, to, find, out.” Randy
had appeared
about 20 feet back
, looking uncertain about whether he should intervene
.
Ell
shook her head minutely at him.

Sam dropped Bridget’s wrist and stepped back, “Tell them,” he hissed at Bridget, “that you want to come with me!”

Rubbing her wrist Bridget stepped farther from him, shaking her head, eyes on the ground.

Stepping back toward the wall Sam’s left hand lifted his jacket and his right darted for his waistband.

Ell’s hand went into her purse and pulled out the bottle of barbeque sauce.
Her hand cocked back.

The gun came out
of Sam’s waistband
to point at Bridget.
In an agonized tone he said, “If you aren’t with me, you aren’t going to be with…” His hand exploded.

Sinking to his knees, grasping his right wrist with his left, Sam
squealed, then
said plaintively, “Jesus! What happened?”

Emma stepped forward, also wondering what had just happened.
Did the gun misfire or blow up or something?
She saw an enormous spray of blood
on the ground
between Sam’s hand and her own feet.
Her brow furrowed,
does
a hand have that much blood in it? And why is it spread out toward my feet?
H
er
toes
hit something
.
S
he looked down
and saw
it was
the bloody gun by her f
oo
t. Noting absently that it didn’t seem distorted by the explosion Emma bent to pick it up.
It
smell
s
like
barbeque
?
Everything smells like barbecue! It’s that bottle of barbecue Ell bought upstairs! What?!

Emma watched as Ell stepped forward shrugging out of Bridget’s jacket and wrapping it around Sam’s hand. Sam was staring at her. He said, “Ell Donsaii?”

Ell nodded curtly. “Sorry about your hand
,
but you were going to shoot her weren’t you?”

Sam nodded dumbly.

The police arrived, downloaded everyone’s AI records of the events and took Sam to the hospital to be evaluated.

While the police were busy with the others,
Emma reviewed her own video
.
It
showed Ell’s arm
blur
right before Sam’s hand disappeared in an explosion of barbecue sauce. When Emma played it back in slow motion Ell’s hand appeared out of her purse, cocked back and flashed forward in
just
a
few
highly
blur
red frames
. A single frame caught the
fuzzy
bottle of sauce on its way to hit the gun. She shook her head in amazement.

Emma went to Bridget who sat on the curb sobbing quietly. “Hey kid, you’re better off without him.”

Bridget gulped and nodded. “Thank you. What
… what,
happened to Sam’s hand?”

“Ell threw
a
bottle of barbecue sauce at it.”

“
My God!
What if she’d missed?!”

Emma chuckled, “
I don’t think she misses
very often
. But if she had, I guess we wouldn’t have been any worse off. He was going to kill you
,
then
himself
,
you know?”

Bridget nodded
, bright eye
s straying to Ell, still talking
quietly
to one of the policemen. She sobbed.

“Buck up now, life’s about to get better.”

“I don’t have anyplace to stay
,
”
s
he took a gasping breath,
“
I… I was living with Sam.”

Ell had just walked up, “You can stay with me.”

“Oh no! I couldn’t do that! You’ve already done so much for me!”

“Sure you can. I
live
all by myself in a big old farmhouse. Plenty of room.
Once you get back on your feet you can move
back
out.
Let’s go get your stuff from Sam’s place.”

Ell heard Steve’s voice in her earpiece, “You’re picking up another stray? Good thing you can afford it.”

Ell chuckled, “Go back to bed Steve,” she told the head of her security detail, “Everything’s in control.”

Chapter
Eight

Candela scrabbled in his pocket for his Tums.
Victoria
had just come into his office to triumphantly announce that the patchwork of software that ran the guidance package for the mission had failed
its initial testing
. She
almost gleefully pointed out that
the failure point had been
the
commercial sectors
he’d told her to use for it
instead of expensive
programming resources. Head throbbing, he stared at her, wondering how she could
possibly
be happy to be right about something that might spell the end of the human race? He fumbled the Tums into lips suddenly thick as he noticed that
Victoria
had developed at purple hal
o. Now she was turning sideways?

Victoria
put a hand over her mouth and stepped forward as Candela leaned sideways, slid down in his chair and flopped onto the floor. “Call 911!” she screamed at her AI.

***

Gordon’s agent called, “I don’t know what happened to you guys at the show in
Raleigh
but that show and every one after that have been generating a huge amount of ‘buzz.’ Your next three shows are sold out already and after that I’m moving you to bigger venues. You think you could get that Donsaii girl to drop in again?”

Gordon laughed, “I surely wish! Oh my God, she’s so amazing! Not just the incredible way she dances but she is even more beautiful in person than she’s
ever
looked in the news or on the vids.

“However,
I think the ‘buzz’ is actually related to some advice we got on our sound.”

“Yeah, I caught part of one of your shows last week and you
do
sound a lot better, what did you do?”

“Hah! Trade secret. Don’t want it to get out to the competition, not even just the acts you manage.”

“Really?!
Come on!
”

“Really
.
But I will
see about getting an invite to Donsaii for the show in
Greensboro
. I have no idea whether she’ll accept.”

***

Ell stepped into the little conference room in the D5R building. She was having
one of her
regular meetings with the two “spin off” companies.  Fred and Brian were already
in the room
and
Vivian
came in just behind her. “So, how are things going so far for Portal Tech?”

Fred tilted his head and said, “
Other than for the fact that the government is trying to regulate us out of business?”

Ell said, “Try not to worry too much about that. We’ve got to expect to be regulated, it’s the American way. Just fill out
flawless
applications and submit them. I have no doubt that Secretary Bayless is trying to put us out of business and will find pretexts to withhold our approvals but two things to keep in mind. One, our investors have assured me they’ll keep you afloat until the approvals do come through, however long it takes. Two, now that Senator Flood has been elected to the Presidency on a platform of ‘less government interference with private enterprise’ we
can
expect that whoever he appoints to his cabinet will likely be disposed toward getting you approved.

“
Think of this as an opportunity to get ahead of the manufacturing
curve
so that you have
plenty of
inventory
ready
for sale when you
a
re
actually approved.” She looked around at them, “So how are things going otherwise?”

“
We think pretty
well
so far. We’ve got a building
nearby
that seems pretty good for manufacturing. We’ve got some urgent orders from NASA.
So urgent that
they look like they’re about to pee their pants.
I imagine they’re gonna be pretty freaked when we tell them that we aren’t allowed to sell them any ports.
We’ve had some pretty good ideas regarding the challenge
you gave us to keep
the ports from being used as weapons or for terrorism.”