Tau Ceti (an Ell Donsaii story #6) (31 page)

Fladwami tilted his head. “
Damn, you’re right.
I should have considered the economic implications of r
apidly r
eleasing this myself. I’ll talk to the president.”

She tilted her head as well,
“You might want to also do a press release on the
low tempo
rollout to slow the run on petroleum stocks?”

Fladwami’s eyes widened, “Crap! There are reporters and bloggers here who’ve probably put this out on the net
already
! I’d better call
the President
now
.
”
He turned
and began trotting
out of the auditorium
. He called back over a shoulder
, “
Sorry to leave you
so
suddenly!
”

Dex wearily
flew back
to camp. H
i
e’d
unsuccessfully
stooped on several burrowers. At this altitude
,
beating back into the air after
a miss
felt exhausting
,
though h
i
e kept telling
himrself
it couldn’t really be
that
bad.
The snares hie’d put out hadn’t produced, and
hie
couldn’t imagine why. Hie’d caught several animals at those
locations a while back but after a while they just stopped catching anything
. Hie’d even gone out into the forest with hies “flyer swatter” but the little flyers that attacked didn’t seem to live this high on the mountain. Swatting flyers that weren’t attacking
never
seemed to work, they easily avoided himr.
Maybe Syrdian caught some swimmers?
As hie coasted in over the meadow hie saw that
a family of zornits had taken up residence in the meadow. Zornits were larger cousins of the zornic they’d encountered in the forest. Omnivorous
,
but leaning toward eating mostly meadow vegetation they
could be
bad news. Too big to kill, dangerous to attack and
territorial to a fault, they were
likely to drive away some of the smaller prey.

Dex landed just above the cave and looked back at the zornits. Hies wings drooped. Hie looked down at the camp.
An empty handed Syrdian
looked back up at himr. “No luck?”

Syrdian shook hies head.
“I’ve caught all the swimmers in the nearby parts of the stream. Maybe I could teach you how
to catch them
and you could fly farther up than I can hike?”

Dex dipped
hies
head yes. “Some zornits have moved into the meadow. I think we should
try to
chase them away.”

Syrdian’s wings drooped also, “
I’m not sure we could.
Maybe we need to move to a
new area? Then you could p
ut your snares on
new
paths?
I could
try
a fresh section of stream?”

Dex’s head rose.
Put the snares on different paths? What a great idea, maybe I’ve just caught all the animals that use the paths I’ve got the snares on. “
I’m going to go move some snares.”

“OK, I found a big nodule of flint. Do you know anything about making blades?”

Dex shrugged, “Not much.”

“I’m going to try making a knife. I’ve re-flaked mine a couple of times and
they’re
getting small.”

“Good luck,” Dex said, turning back out to the meadow and hies traps.
Syrdian looked thinner. Dex found
himrself
liking Syrdian more and more, no longer a distant infatuation
,
but
now
what
hie
thought of as true love. To
hies
horror,
just
as
hie
fell in love, Syrdian
seemed to be wasting
away because Dex couldn’t provide enough food
high
up here
on the mountain
.

Just before hie took off, Dex noticed that
hies
meteor was standing erect on the top of the bank above their cave. For a moment hie wondered why Syrdian had put it there, but then
hie
shrugged and took off to move hies snares.

***

Wall Street Journal—The Presidential Conference on Global Warning was stunned today by an announcement
from
D5R, the technology startup responsible for the ports that saved the space station and deflected Comet Hearth-Daster. As if the ports themselves weren’t going to result in enough changes to our world
,
D5R revealed plans to pro
vide very cheap solar power
. Oil stocks have plummeted…

Ell walked into Five Eighteen West restaurant in Raleigh
and looked
around for Gordon but
didn’t see
him. As she approached the hostess stand the woman’s eyes widened. “Good evening Ms. Donsaii. How may we help you?”

“I’m meeting a Gordon Speight. Is
he
here yet?”

“Oh my, yes!
” She grinned,
“
Having him here has cause
d
quite
an
uproar. Having you here at the same time is really going to…” She ran down.

Ell thought the girl
would
go cross-eyed pondering it.
“Can you take me to him?”

“Oh! Yes, sorry. This way please.”

They went up the stairs and around a corner. Ell looked a
round as they entered the room. She didn’t see
a t
able with only one person at it?
Then she tracked the direction the hostess
was heading
and realized that Gordon was sitting at a table
for four that had
girls
in each of the other three seats!”

The hostess approached Gordon and said, “Mr. Speight, Ms. Donsaii says she’s here to meet you?”

“Yes, yes!” Gordon bounded to his feet. “Ell, how are you?”
He
looked down at the girls at his table, “Ladies, it’s been nice meeting you. I need some time to myself now, OK?”

With moues of disappointment the young ladies slowly got up and moved away,
one of them giving Gordon a desperate looking peck on t
he cheek before she departed. A
nother sa
id
“We love you!”

They didn’t go
too far. It
turned out
they had a table
nearby. Gordon said, “Man
,
Velos fans
seem to be
everywhere nowadays! I guess you
’d
know what dealing with fans is like though, huh?”

Ell shrugged and sat, reflecting that in her experience women seemed to be much more aggressive in their pursuit of famous people than men
were
. She’d certainly never had three men approach her in a restaurant and sit down with her. “Are they going to the concert tonight?”

He
grinned, “Yeah, and pretty pumped to have run into me at dinner.”

He
glanced at them so Ell did too. All three w
ere still looking his way. A
s Ell watched, one of them blew
Gordon
a kiss. Ell said, “
They’re p
retty
assertive
. Do you run into a lot of girls
who
are
so
aggressive
?
”

Gordon shrugged, “More and more, yeah.”

Their waiter arrived and interrupted their conversation with questions about their dinner. After
he
departed Gordon turned the talk to Ell and what was happening in her life. The dinner was excellent and they enjoyed themselves but the three girls came back over during dessert to ask Gordon for autographs. Ell was torn when
he
acquiesced, both disappointed because
he
interrupted his time with her to sign them, and proud that
he
hadn’t been rude like
the
Olympic
sprinter
Michael Fentis
had been to Ell years ago.

At the auditorium Ell entered with Gordon through the “artist’s entrance,” surprised
at
the way people kowtowed to him. Gordon introduced her to his business manager and a sound man that he’d had train with Vic. Then there were some other musicians that Velos had hired to “round out” their sound. Ell and Gordon didn’t really have any more time to talk as Velos prepped itself for the show.

Ell put on her ball cap and went out into the audience to
take in
the sh
ow. She stood in the shadows, tapping a foot, enthralled by the music and happy that
the few people that
recognized her
moved on without making a big deal of it
. Velos sounded
good, though not as good as the recordings they’d made a
t
Vic’s
w
hich had been climbing the charts. T
he crowd went crazy when they played their hits.

Gordon had been fun at dinner
,
and she kept rationalizing the girls at his table. He needed to
be good to his fans after all. A
s an entertainer, fans were his lifeblood. But Ell felt put off by the whole thing. She
wasn’t sure she was
read
y to come in second to his fans—i
f
her
relationship
with Gordon
deve
loped further could she take it?

She wondered if these issues afflicted
the relationships of
many famous
people. Since getting into music Gordon had pretty much ignored
Ell’s alter ego and
his old friend
“Belle
.
”
He had
returned
her the money “Belle’s aunt” had loaned him to jump start his career.
As she thought about it she realized she felt uncomfortable with
the way h
e seemed fascinated with the famous
“
Ell
,
”
but
uninterested in the ordinary
“
Belle.
”

On the other hand, she wondered if it was
fair to be hurt because he wasn’t as interested in the version of herself that she had purposely made less attractive?
Her head swam
just considering all the
ramifications.

Over the break Ell went back to Gordon’s dressing room. When she pushed the door open she found
the dressing room packed with fans
carrying VIP passes. Ell’s eyes narrowed, all but one of the
“
fans
”
were attractive young girls. The three girls from dinner were among the crowd gathered around Gordon. As she watched one of them threw her arms around him, crushing her body
against his
and kissing him on the lips! He broke the kiss after a moment, looked around the dressing room, saw Ell
and disentangled himself. “Ell!
” he called, “Come have some of the goodies!” He waved at a larg
e table set with hors d’oeuvres.

Reluctantly Ell entered the room and made her way to the table. Gordon chattered brightly with the girls gathered around him while she filled a little plate. She stepped closer to Gordon who put his arm out, “
Stancil!” he called to
Velos’
manager, “Get a picture of me with Ell.” He put an arm over her shoulders, saying, “Are you going to dance during the second set?”

Ell swallowed, smiled for the picture, then shook her head.

“Aw, come on. It’ll make you even more famous.”

Ell grinned at him, “I’m
a
lready
more famous than I want to be.”

Gordon’s eyebrows rose, “You can
never
be too famous! Stancil, get a picture with all my fans here!”

Ell slipped out from under Gordon’s arm as the rest of the girls crowded in for the picture. As she squeezed out the door a last glance showed her
another of the girls from dinner plastered to Gordon’s side.