Xenotech Queen's Gambit: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 2) (27 page)

Once dressed, I walked to the kitchen to make a cup of strong tea. Then I noticed the very cold pot of Midnight Obsidian Black on the counter. The teabags had been steeping since early yesterday evening. I filled a glass with ice, poured the dark, caffeine-laden liquid on top, and drank it down in four swallows. It was probably just a psychosomatic reaction, but I felt like I stood straighter and my eyes were clearer. Thus fortified, maybe I’d survive.

I heard a ding sound from dining room table.

“Hey Jack,” said my phone, “When are you going to get around to that overdue maintenance at Mistress Marigold’s?”

I could have hugged it.

“Already taken care of,” I said. “I’ll tell you all about it later. Right now, I have a present for you.”

“A present?”

My phone sounded surprised and pleased.

I put it on top of the new Orishen mutacase and watched as the case flowed around my phone’s new hardware.

“This is great!” said my phone. “How did you know to get one?”

It was extruding and retracting appendages faster than a protoplasmic blob in a B-grade monster movie.

“I’m a smart guy,” I said. “With smart friends.”

“Was it Poly’s idea?”

I just smiled enigmatically. Then I realized I wasn’t so smart after all. I found the trash bag with my ruined tux and the blacked remains of the old mutacase on the floor near my front door where I’d dropped it. I got a pair of latex gloves from my project room, put them on, and carefully dug around in the trash bag until I found the largest remaining pieces of the old case. Then I opened my backpack tool bag and got out my small, portable Orishen scent organ. I played several notes that I thought would have the desired effect and my Orishen mutakey floated to the top of one of the larger pieces.

“Here,” I said, tossing the mutakey at my phone. It flipped itself up in the air and caught the mutakey before it could hit the table. Then the key was smoothly integrated into the surface of the case, disappearing from sight. I returned the scent organ to my backpack tool bag.

“You’re the best, Jack,” said my phone, “even if it
was
Poly’s idea.”

“Here’s another present that really is my idea,” I said.

“What is it?” said my phone.

I removed a small phone cover made of pupa silk fabric from the knitting machine on my dining room table.

“Here,” I said. “Try it on.”

My phone moved into the pupa silk cover using hundreds of tiny legs. The cover was absorbed into the mutacase, just like the mutakey. It flattened itself out into a very thin, transparent layer over my phone’s screen as well. I hoped it would offer protection against shocks and impacts and even energy weapons, like the elevator lock’s electric shock. When I explained the cover’s benefits, my phone looked quite pleased.

“You mean someone could shoot a bullet and it wouldn’t damage my hardware?”

“Theoretically.”

I let it stew on my reply and asked it another important question.

“What time is it?” I said.

“Ten minutes until ten,” said my phone.

“Summon the van,” I said. “We have to pick up Poly’s parents at ten o’clock.”

“We’ll never make it to Hartsfield in ten minutes, Jack.”

I could tell that it was going to be a
very
long day.

Chapter 30

“It is an unscrupulous intellect that does not
pay to antiquity its due reverence.”
— Desiderius Erasmus

I brought my backpack tool bag with me when I left my apartment. I wanted it close at hand. Today was shaping up to be the kind of day when not only things that
can
go wrong will go wrong, but things that technically can’t go wrong will try to out of sheer perversity.

My van was waiting when I got to Peachtree Street and I used one of the wipes from my kitchen to clean up the piece of burnt mutacase on the floor. Most of the black residue from the case came off the stain resistant carpet, so my van would still look nice for Poly’s parents. My van’s A.I. seemed disconcerted. Maybe it was trying to connect with my phone and picked up on its confusion. It even forgot to engage its forsooth module.

“Seat belt.”

I buckled up, temporarily awake and alert. My van pulled away from the curb.

“Jack,” said my phone, tentatively. It had climbed up to sit front and center on the dash.

“Yes?”

“How did it get to be Thursday?”

“Good question,” I said. “That reminds me. Please contact your cloud backup service and change your plan to include the extortionate fee for real time backups.”

“Oh,” said my phone. It beeped and blinked for a few seconds. “Three and a half days lost?”

“Pretty much,” I said. “I’ll try to get the memories back for you.”

“Thanks. What happened?”

“A high voltage booby trap fried your circuits.”

“How did the Star Wars award ceremony go?” said my phone.

“Wait, how did you know about the award ceremony? It was last night.”

For a moment I hoped that some more recent memories had been included in the downloaded backup, but the answer was simpler than that.

“Tom
á
so has been planning it for weeks and had asked for my help to make sure you and Poly were there on time.”

“Thanks. Sorry you missed it,” I said. “Mike’s phone got some pictures. Mike’s a Xenotech Support employee now, by the way.”

“Wow. Sounds like a lot happened since Sunday night.”

“Yes. Like encounters with a pair of two-hundred-and-fifty-foot robots, WT&F blowing up, carnivorous plants, Macerators attacking the royal dinner and a nova bomb.”

“WT&F blew up?”

“Just the executive wing and the production floor.”

“Is Mike okay?”

“A few scratches. You helped save him.”

“Wow,” said my phone, “you’d better get those memories back.”

“I’ll try my best—but for now you’ll just have to fill in the blanks as we go.”

My van slowed, then stopped. We were at the hotel. Perry and Barbara were just walking through the lobby doors. I got out of my van and crossed in front of it to meet them. To my surprise, Perry shook my hand and Barbara gave me a peck on the cheek that seemed warm, not politely perfunctory.

“Great to see you, Jack,” said Perry. “You were impressive last night, using that big pan to take out the Macerators.”

“You were pretty impressive yourself,” I said, “like a raging Achilles.
That was quick thinking to use a skewer for offense and a metal lid for defense.”

“One of the benefits of a classical education,” said Perry in a hail-fellow-well-met tone that didn’t seem forced. “Not to say that understanding technology isn’t also worthwhile.”

He seemed to be on his best behavior. I didn’t know if it was because of what had happened at the royal dinner, or if Poly, or Pomy, or both, had read him the riot act. Either way, I liked
this
version of Perry a lot better than the one I’d picked up at the airport. He and Barbara both seemed to be glowing.

“It was a team effort,” said Barbara. “I threw Tom
á
so’s napkin over the Macerator’s head and Pericles pierced him. Then I pulled his power pack cylinders.”

Her eyes looked fierce as she remembered what had happened.

“My Boadicea,” said Perry, putting his arm around Barbara’s shoulders.

She leaned in and smiled up at him. I wondered if they’d had any of the Don Juan noodles.

“You were both amazing. The chairs you dropped took two more out of action, so you have three ‘kills’ to your credit.”

My van opened its side door and Perry helped Barbara step up and slide onto the rear bench seat. Then he joined her and they buckled up. Were they holding hands? I got in the driver’s seat and secured myself as well. My van smoothly pulled away from the hotel and we were off, on our way to I-85 and points south.

“Poly said you’d be able to drop me at Georgia Tech’s Advanced Galtech Department offices,” said Barbara.

“No problem,” I said. “It’s in the Figueres Center, next to the lab where Poly’s doing research at the Galactic Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Institute.”

“Where will the graduation ceremony be held, do you know?” asked Barbara.

“In the Figueres Center,” I answered. “It’s got an eight hundred seat auditorium.”

Pablo Daniel Figueres was the sports- and science-mad founder of Sirocco Legislature Network, the company that syndicated thirty percent of Terran legislative deliberations for the stars. He was a Georgia Tech alum who had seen how much Galactics loved our politicians’ antics and had sewn up long term contracts for broadcast rights before anyone else on the planet knew how popular they’d be. He was generous to his alma mater—the Figueres Center was just one of five buildings on Tech’s campus that he’d donated.

The apocryphal story I’d heard was that Pablo had named his network for the famed warm wind from the Sahara that blew across Southern Europe, because it was a large moving mass of hot air, like the kind produced by the legislative bodies he broadcast. Based on other things I’d heard about Figueres’ flamboyant personality, I was pretty sure that story was true.

“Excellent,” said Barbara. “I hate to walk far in heels.”

“That’s understandable,” I said. “I’ll have to introduce you to one of my clients who makes morphic shoes. Their heel heights adjust as needed.”

“Like the ones Poly was wearing last night?”

“Uh huh.”

“And they change color, too?” said Barbara. “Shoes like that would make packing for trips off planet a lot easier.”

“Yes,” I said. “You and Mademoiselle Ellie should have a lot to talk about.”

“Any chance she’d be free for lunch today?”

“I’ll check.”

My phone made the connection and Ellie was thrilled with the idea of having lunch with Barbara Keen, the famous travel writer and publisher. Ellie said she’d pick Barbara up at twelve thirty, take her to a lovely new Vietnamese-Nic
ó
sn fusion restaurant in Midtown, then drop her off back at her hotel. I was sure they’d get along fabulously and reasonably confident Morphicouture would be advertising in Keen’s Guides and Keen’s Guides would be recommending Morphicouture’s fashions within the month.

“You’re a gem, Jack Buckston,” said Barbara.

“Uh, thanks,” I said.
Aw shucks, ma’am.

My van pulled into the circular drive of an impressive looking academic building on 10th Street, one of the main through streets on Georgia Tech’s campus.

“Here you are,” I said. “The Dean’s office is on the second floor, I think.”

I’d only been there once, to pick up Poly from a grad school function, but I’ve got a good memory. My van opened its side door and Perry got out and helped Barbara step down. She gave him a kiss that was decidedly not a perfunctory peck and headed up the walk to the Figueres Center. Perry climbed into the shotgun seat next to me. Let me revise that. Perry got in the front passenger seat. I don’t like using the word
shotgun
in any context related to my girlfriend’s father.

“How far is it to the Carlos Museum?”

“About twenty-five minutes,” said my phone.

“Onward, noble steed,” I said.

Perry gave me strange look for my choice of phrase, but didn’t comment.

The Michael C. Carlos Museum reputedly housed the largest collection of ancient artifacts in the southeast, including objects from ancient Greece, Rome, the Near East, Africa, and the Americas.
The largest part of their collection, however, was from Egypt. Nearly thirty years ago they’d acquired a sarcophagus that turned out to contain the mummy of Pharaoh Ramesses I. Once they realized the mummy’s identity, they’d repatriated it back to Egypt and the Luxor Museum. I’d seen his mummy there when I was a kid, after my mom took that job in Aswan. I remember being blown away by the giant statue of Ramesses II at Karnak, though in my head the huge statues in Egypt were inspired by the monumental art of Tolkien’s Númenor, not the other way around. I’d wanted to visit the Carlos ever since I’d moved to Atlanta, but had never found the time or had the opportunity, until now.

“Is there something specific you want to see at the museum, Professor? Roman frescos? Greek pottery?”

“Not something, someone. One of my former students is the museum’s new curator.”

“Wonderful,” I said. “What’s his name?”

“
Her
name,” said Professor Jones, “Terpsichory ‘Kori’ Liddell-Scott. She’s giving me a grand tour of the public and staff-only parts of the place. You’re welcome to join us.”

I thought about it for three seconds. Poly wanted me to have a chance to connect with her parents and despite how tired I was, a behind the scenes tour of the museum sounded too good to pass up.

“I’d like that very much, sir.”

“You can call me Perry, Jack.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He gave me a strange look again, but this time both of us were smiling. If Dr. Liddell-Scott was in her late thirties or early forties, which seemed right for someone in charge of a prestigious museum, her first name might have inspired Perry’s selection of Polyhymnia and Melpomene as names for his daughters.

Perry turned toward me in his captain’s chair.

“I want to apologize for being a horse’s ass yesterday,” he said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“Yes you do. My daughters metaphorically dragged me nine times around the walls of Troy last night and explained in no uncertain terms that my behavior was unacceptable.”

“Apology accepted,” I said. “And my apologies for my own rude comments.”

“You were only giving back what you got,” said Perry. “I admire a man who sticks up for what he believes in. I’ll even grudgingly admit that there’s a lot to be said for modern technology.”

“Thank you, Perry. Just so you know, I love the classics, too. I was raised on Greek and Roman myths and all the stories from the
Iliad
, the
Odyssey
and the
Aeneid
. I even read your Homeric trilogy and
The Augustan Commission.
”

Perry looked pleased.

“I hope you found my books enlightening.”

There was only one right answer, and thankfully I didn’t have to shade the truth to provide it.

“Very much so.”

Perry sat up straighter and couldn’t hide the smile on his face.

“I’m beginning to understand what my daughter sees in you,” he said.

Now it was my turn to sit up and smile.

“Just what are your intentions toward my daughter, Mr. Buckston,” he said, in what I hoped was mock seriousness.

“Carlos Museum, my lords,” said my van.

Saved. We were in front of the museum’s main entrance. I’d never seen anything like it before. The entryway was an equilateral triangle twelve feet tall and eight feet deep, cut into a square facade faced with white marble and accented by two bands of pink stone. An African tribal mask as tall as I am and carved from a dark, polished wood, stood to the left. To the right was a somewhat melted looking statue carved from lustrous white stone. It had a pointed black hat on its head and looked like an Orishen sculptor’s misguided attempt at carving a human form. Most Orishen art looks like wax left in the sun too long. I learned later that the piece was also part of the museum’s African collection.

Perry and I got out and my van set off on a quest to find a parking place—never an easy task near Emory. We walked through the triangular entrance, took an elevator up one floor, and entered the museum’s spare, circular lobby. The Greek, Roman and Near Eastern exhibit halls stretched off in one direction, while halls labeled Art of the Americas beckoned in another. The reception desk, where museum visitors would pay to enter, was directly across from us.

“Professor Jones calling for Professor Liddell-Scott,” said Perry to the young man at the desk.

“Welcome to the Carlos, Professor,” said the young man. “The Curator is expecting you. I’ll let her know you’re here.”

While we waited, I stuck my head into the nearest gallery. It was filled with Greek sculptures missing heads and limbs. I hoped they weren’t foreshadowing my future. A twenty-foot mosaic depicting scenes from the Trojan War was mounted high on the left-hand wall and I had to consult the sign below it to identify all the participants. Minutes later, a distinguished-looking woman of medium height and a formidable countenance entered the lobby. She was wearing a light weight gray wool suit that complimented her short gray hair. Next to her was a tall, younger Nic
ó
sn with a long white beard. He was wearing a natty green bow tie and a white lab coat.

“Professor Jones!” said the woman when she saw Perry. She quickly crossed the distance between them and gave him a big hug. Perry looked both pleased and embarrassed.

“Kori,” said Poly’s father, warmth showing in his voice. “It’s great to see you.”

“It’s an honor to have you visit,” she said. “This is my associate, Dr. Urradu. He’s researching possible Nic
ó
sn influences on the civilizations of Babylon, Assyria and Asia Minor.”

“Before first contact?” I blurted.

“Yes,” said the Nic
ó
sn. “Galactics have been following Earth’s development for quite some time. It’s possible that some, shall we say,
unauthorized
contact was made.”

I thought about it and remembered the Mesopotamian statues of gods and rulers with long, twisty Nic
ó
sn-like beards and could understand why the possibility was worth investigating.

“This is my older daughter’s boyfriend,” said Perry.

“Jack Buckston,” I said.

I shook hands with Dr. Liddell-Scott and Dr. Urradu.

“What’s your field, Mr. Buckston?” asked the curator politely.

I’m sure she expected me to be a fellow academic.

“I run a tech support company,” I said, “specializing in Galactic technology.”

I could see wheels turning in Dr. Liddell-Scott’s head.

“Let’s talk over lunch,” she said. “But first, a tour. I want to show off our collection.”

She put her hand on Perry’s arm just above his elbow and guided him into the Greek, Roman and Near Eastern galleries. Dr. Urradu and I followed. For the next three hours I forgot I was tired.