Lady Slings the Booze Read online

  He frowned. “You’re right,” he said, and worked his jaws. I could tell he wanted to chew on his cigar. But if he took it out, he’d have to light it;…and this was Nikola Tesla’s laboratory.

  “What an extraordinary situation!” Tesla said. “Thirty armed atom bombs, and none of them can possibly hurt anybody. Yet we must prevent one going off at all costs.”

  When someone starts to talk about the amazing philosophical aspects of a combat situation, it’s time to move the briefing along. “Okay: if we do get a miner, small m or large, and he does inspect the damage and go to report back, the person nearest the bomb stays there while the others tail the bastard. We do not leave that bomb alone. On each shift, one of the two backups is going to be playing a blind beggar, tin cup and all. That’s our excuse for having Ralph around. Ralph, you’re going to be there around the clock, but you don’t have to stay awake all the time. You’re going to do the actual tailing—by smell. The others will follow you. There’s no way the miner can spot that tail.”

  “If I get too close,” Ralph said, “he may zee it vagging.”

  “Ken,” the Professor said urgently, “I see a problem. A blind man can’t just walk into Penn Station and set up a pitch, any more than a girl can just pick out a street corner and start hooking. You can get cut that way. It’s a turf situation.”

  I frowned. “You’re right. Damn. Excuse me, Nikola. I wanted the kind of person most people would look away from.”

  “I don’t sink it vill be a problem,” Ralph said. “If anyvun giffs us trouble, I vill tell him to go avay. Humans haff a tendency to obey ven I tell zem ziss. If he duss not, I shall urinate upon him vile speaking disparagingly uff hiss muzzer. Ziss neffer fails.”

  “Well, hold it to a minimum,” I said. “If The Miner happens to hear a German shepherd talking, he’s liable to start thinking in terms of James Bond, which is just what we don’t want. All right, let’s issue ordnance and materiel. Quartermistress!”

  Lady Sally began passing out party favors. First the little trumpets, to those checked out on them: Mike, Pris, Father Newman (to my mild surprise) and Tim (to my stronger surprise). Then 9mm Smith & Wesson 559s for the others, with dum-dum ammo. She brought out a box of assorted throwing and carving knives and invited everyone to take their pick. (Pris and the Professor turned out to have their own.) Each of us was issued a powerful flashlight and two pairs of handcuffs: good cop handcuffs, not bondage toys. Then things got more exotic.

  The binoculars I’d asked for came in the form of little contact lenses. The Lady had to put mine in for me. I was acutely conscious of them for a few seconds, and then I never noticed them again unless I was using them. “Don’t worry about them falling out,” she told me, “they can’t. When you want far-sight, just squint and hold it.”

  I did—and after about three seconds, there was a zoom lens effect. I relaxed my eyes, and it went away at once. I stepped out into the hallway and experimented while she outfitted the others. The max effect approximated a pair of 7×35 binoculars, although it hurt to squint that hard for very long. “Slick,” I told Lady Sally when I reentered the lab. “I can’t wait to see the walkie-talkies.”

  “You’ll only see them twice,” she said, and held out her hand. On it was the Arnold Schwarzenegger of caraway seeds. “Pay attention, darlings,” she said merrily to the group. “Observe this small device. It is not alive, in any technical sense, but it does excellent impressions. I shall place one of these in each of your mouths. There will be a short pause while it realizes I have done so, at which point it will begin to move of its own accord. Please do not be alarmed. It will seek out a convenient crevice somewhere on the inside of your teeth, and nest there. It will then buzz gently for some ten seconds to enable you to locate it with your tongue. If you are dissatisfied with its placement, hold your tongue against it for five seconds, and it will try again. Once it’s found a place you like, say the vowel e and hold it until the seed stops buzzing. From that point on, if you touch your tongue to it firmly and then speak, you will be heard clearly by everyone else within a mile who is similarly equipped. Be aware that the picophone is voice-activated: if you stop talking for one full second, you are no longer sending; you’ll have to tongue it back on again. It is quite discreet: civilians around your listeners will hear nothing, as the sound is carried by bone conduction. When the job is done, hold your tongue against the seed for more than ten seconds. It will head for your tongue and wait there to be expectorated.”

  “My God,” I said. “The inventor of that thing must have died rich. I mean, ‘must be going to die rich.’ If for some reason he decides to die.”

  “Actually,” Tesla said, “I died penniless. Fortunately, it did not stop me.”

  I stared at him. I should have guessed. It was a radio, wasn’t it? “Nikola,” I said slowly, “I know this is irrelevant—but I haven’t had a chance to ask before now, and I might never get another. Do you mind if I ask what you’re working on these days? When you’re not saving space and time, I mean?”

  “Not at all, Ken. I’m investigating electrical aspects of nanotechnology.”

  I knew it was hopeless, but asked, “What kind of technology?”

  “Nano,” he said. “Nano.”

  I blinked at him. “You’re telling me with a straight face that you work with Mork from Ork?”

  He blinked at me. “Who?”

  I gave it up. “Never mind, Nikola. I knew I wouldn’t understand the answer. Your Ladyship, let me have one of those seeds.”

  It wasn’t half as bad as it sounds. It didn’t taste like anything at all, and it wasn’t moving for that long, and once it settled in place it was not obtrusive, and when tested it worked as advertised.

  “Okay, let’s see your body armor,” I told her.

  I was expecting something odd, and she didn’t let me down. “Certainly, Ken. Please take off all your clothes.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Even for a PI, there are times not to make a wisecrack. I set down my weapons on…one of those somethings Tesla filled his lab with, and began to strip.

  “All the rest of you save Nikky too, please, darlings,” she said.

  Dammit, there were so many wonderful wisecracks to suppress. I thought of at least a dozen…and knew that to make them, here, in this House, to this crew, at this time, would be to mark myself a jerk. A garment or two later, it dawned on me that to have made them anywhere, to anyone, would have made me just as much of a jerk—even if nobody else had noticed. God, if I was going to start growing up, it was a good thing I was getting out of the detective business.

  Finally we were all bare except Tesla. It was by no means the first time I’d been in a room with a bunch of naked people. But it was unquestionably the best-looking group of naked people I’d ever been part of. Arethusa had the advantage, of course: she was in stereo.

  “Tastes like peanut butter to me,” Tim murmured near me.

  “Beg pardon?” I said.

  “Oh, you don’t know that one? I thought everybody did. Back in the Sixties a guy I knew was ordered to report for his induction physical. That morning he gave himself a thorough antiseptic enema—and then inserted about half a pint of peanut butter where the sun don’t shine. Creamy, of course. He got to about this point here in the physical, and the doctor with the rubber glove recoiled and said, ‘Jesus, what the hell is that?’ So the guy reaches behind himself for a sample, takes a lick, and says, ‘Tastes like peanut butter to me.’ They threw him out on the sidewalk, threw his clothes after him.”

  If I was the only one present who hadn’t heard that one, then I guess everybody else collapsed into weeping hysterics just to be polite. Despite the prevailing climate of gung-ho, there had been a lot of free-floating tension in the room, waiting to be released. Tim’s story did the trick. I thought Tesla was going to pee in his pants.

  I’ll say one thing for that group, though: nobody tried to keep it going, come up with a topper. Everyone laughed long and thoroughly…
and then they stopped, and Lady Sally gave us our body armor.

  It was preposterous, naturally. She produced a gizmo that was the spitting image of a roll-on deodorant…and used it to draw on me. From head to toe in two long continuous strokes, down the front and up the back, not excluding the soles of the feet. Three times around the torso. From one armpit down and up that arm, across the shoulder girdle and up the neck, right into the hair, then down the other side to the other armpit. The roller left a thick purple line, which spread slowly, growing paler as it did so, until it met itself everywhere and I was just a little pinker than a new sunburn victim. She walked around me, studying me carefully, and touched up one or two places. They tickled.

  “Be sure and get the heels this time, Ma,” I said.

  “You have a tendon-cy to say things like that,” she growled. “Would you open the door and go stand in the hall, please? I want to shoot you.” Agreeably I went out into the hall and turned to look back through the open doorway, and she shot me. With one of the Smith & Wessons. A hollowpoint 9mm slug pancakes to the size of a .70-caliber shell when it hits something, and the 559 will throw one hard enough to pierce the engine block on a Jaguar.

  She had told me she was going to make me invulnerable, and then she had told me she was going to shoot me; nonetheless I was startled. I flinched backwards—

  —and that was all the backward motion I achieved. All straight back, too: I didn’t spin, even though I was certain the slug had taken me on the left side just above the hipbone. I could feel a stinging sensation there, as if a small child had punched me as hard as he could. I looked down, and of course the spot was unmarked. I remembered that less than twenty-four hours ago, there had been stitches and a drain there…

  I touched the spot with my hand. It felt like me, Humphrey Bogart Quigley. Even my bogus sunburn was gone now.

  I glanced down the hall to my left. Minutes ago I had been looking at that wall with binoculars; there hadn’t been a bullet hole in it then. I smelled cordite. I took a firm hold on my temper. The reason you don’t like people pointing guns at you is they could hurt you.

  “Very nice,” I said. Everything sounded the way it does when a powerful handgun has gone off near you. If you know, I don’t have to explain, and if you don’t, I can’t. “How long does this stuff last?”

  “Until I remove it,” she said. “You can go a month without risk of skin trouble. It’s not perfect. If someone were to lean a knife against you and push slowly, the shield would let it in—and it won’t stop chemical weapons or laser fire or a few other things. But at what it does do, it is failsafe. Money-back warrantee. Cynthia, I’ll do you next.”

  “My Lady,” Cynthia said carefully, “no one appreciates your sense of humor more than I…but if you point that gun at me, Doctor Kate will have to return it to you, and by then you might not want it any more.”

  “Well,” I said a few minutes later, “we’re immortal, just this side of invulnerable, we have the eyes of an eagle, we’re wired better than a federal narc, and each team is armed with stun guns and death rays, with which for all I know we can also produce a few bars of Dixieland. All the enemy has is atom bombs, and he doesn’t know we exist. Anybody want to quit?”

  “It does sound like a boat-race,” the Professor agreed.

  “Well,” I said, “theoretically I suppose we’re vulnerable to betrayal. But that’s the best thing about this group: we’re all X-rated.”

  “Huh?” Tim said obligingly.

  “Not for sale to miners.”

  Three people shot me at once, two in the belly and one lower. It stung, but I had no kick coming. (Or is that another pun?) The ricochets whined around the lab for a while and finally all found homes. Tesla made no objection; he seemed to feel it had been something that had to be done.

  “Okay, people,” I said at last, when we’d all finished getting dressed again. “The teams are: me, Arethusa and Pris, midnight to eight. Second team, Mike, Cynthia and the Professor. From four to midnight, Father Newman, Lady Sally and Tim. Ralph Von Wau Wau, triple shifts, a dog’s life. Any questions?”

  Amazingly, there were none.

  “Okay, I’ve got some. I ought to ask some of these privately, but there just isn’t time. Cynthia?”

  “Yes, Ken?”

  “This is probably a rude question, don’t mean it that way, okay? I understand the difference between a persona and a personality…but I know absolutely nothing about you except your scene. Will you have a problem taking orders?”

  She looked me square in the eye and took her time answering. I looked her square in the eye and waited. I’ll play poker with God if I have to, but I was privately glad to be invulnerable.

  But when she spoke, her voice was gentle and calm. “I concede that I have a problem in that direction. Everyone else here knows that. But I am also my own Mistress…and I understand the stakes. In this cause I would take orders from Robin.”

  “Okay, you’ll take orders. Will you obey them?”

  Her dark eyes flashed, and Tim stepped back a pace. But all she said was, “Yes, sir.” Tim stared at her. And then stared at me, the way twelve-year-old boys stare at me when they find out I’m a real live detective.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You had to ask,” she said.

  “You’ll command your team,” I told her.

  She looked at Mike and the Professor. “Yes,” she said. “I will.”

  Neither of them had any comment.

  “Your Ladyship, you’ll command your team. Father Newman, a question for you. Did you get that collar before or after you were Special Forces?”

  He had the kind of warm avuncular Pat O’Brien smile that can calm a PCP zombie or charm a head nurse. I hoped I’d have a chance to become his friend. “You’re asking me if I will kill in combat.”

  “Yes.”

  “If necessary, yes. But only on my own initiative, or that of an authority I’ve personally selected. That’s why I had to swap uniforms. Here and now, you are my general, and Lady Sally is my captain.” His smile faltered. “I have one reservation you’d better know. I will not be part of an interrogation that includes torture.”

  “I will,” the Professor said quietly. “For these stakes.”

  “Shut up, Willard,” I said. “If I want volunteers, I’ll appoint ’em. Father, as your commanding officer I order you to pray that things don’t go that sour.”

  “I’ll take that seriously,” he said.

  “That’s how I meant it,” I agreed. “You look competent to me, so we can table that question for good. Back to my original question. Tim…no, let’s speed this up. I want a show of hands. How many here have never taken a life?”

  As I had expected, Arethusa raised two hands. Lady Sally raised a hand too, to my mild surprise. Just as surprisingly, Tim did not.

  “If any of you think you might hesitate, say so now. Please be honest: you can’t flunk out, but I need to know.”

  This time Tim’s was the only hand.

  “Thank you, Tim. Next question: would everyone please hold up one finger for each language you speak well enough to get by? Enough to conduct an interrogation, say.”

  The lowest number of fingers I saw was six. Lady Sally and Mike held up ten fingers each, but I figured them for double that. “Russian?” I asked, and nobody lowered any fingers. Well, it figured the staff of a bordello across the river from the UN would run to polyglots. That could prove very useful if The Miner was not American. But I was glad the commanding officer doesn’t have to answer his own questions. The only languages I could speak fluently were American and English…although I could get along in Canadian, in a pinch.

  “Okay, one last question.” I glanced at my watch. “Father, how short can you make a wedding?”

  Arethusa began to glow. There was a general murmur of surprise and approval. Cynthia’s face lost all its sternness for the first time since I’d known her; Mike’s face was split in a broad pirate’s grin; Nikola T
esla was practically purring; Ralph’s tail wagged.

  Father Newman didn’t so much as crack a smile. “You want to be married?”

  “Yes!” I said.

  Arethusa came to me and looked up at me. You could swim in those eyes…if you could take the undertow. Either pair. She took both my hands and faced the priest. “Yes,” “Yes,” she said, spacing it so that each sounded clearly.

  “Anybody here got a beef?” he asked, looking around.

  No one spoke.

  “You’re married,” he said. And then he cracked a smile, half as big as his head.

  “Is that legal?” Arethusa asked.

  “Yes,” he said, “but what the hell does that matter? It’s morally binding.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it is.” The one of her on my right turned me to face her, took me by the ears, and kissed the living hell out of me.

  The applause was loud and enthusiastic.

  There was a tap on my shoulder, and she cut in on herself.

  The applause redoubled in volume and took on a ribald undertone.

  Just for a second there, and not for the first time, I envied my darling. I kind of wished I could see myself being that happy.

  “Thank you, my general,” she said when we came up for air. “For fitting that into the agenda.”

  “It was a pleasure,” I said. “And a privilege.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” she promised. “And right back at you. But we’ve got work to do first.”

  “Right you are,” I agreed. “Let’s go shadow us a terrorist or two.”

  There was a rumble of agreement and high morale.

  “It’s going to be a real switch for some of us,” Lady Sally said thoughtfully.

  “How do you mean?” I asked foolishly.

  “Being a tail of peace, for a change.”

  “Don’t shoot her!” I cried quickly. “It’d be a shame to spoil that dress.”

  I was barely in time.

  “OKAY, people,” I said shortly. “That’s all I have on my agenda. One last chance to ask questions or raise objections.” Silence. “Okay, Teams Two and Three, you’re dismissed. Priscilla, Arethusa, wait here, please. Lady Sally, may I speak with you privately a moment?”