Terraform (an Ell Donsaii story #15) Page 18

  When they let him go, he got in his car and drove away.

  All the way to Richmond Virginia—since they’d had a cop follow him when he left.

  ~~~

  Jason rented a car at the Richmond airport. It wouldn’t have a license plate they’d recognize, so he headed back toward the Triangle. This time he stopped and got a motel in Creedmoor so he’d be outside the Triangle area.

  He’d decided that Branson was now too tough a target since they’d be watching her like a hawk. But he’d had a great idea. He’d step up his game and take out Donsaii herself. After all, she was in charge of all the claim jumpers.

  Doing her would really show the bastards.

  ***

  With some trepidation, Carley spoke to her AI, “Contact Eli.”

  After a substantial wait, her AI said, “Eli isn’t answer—” there was a brief pause, then AI said, “Excuse me, he’s answering now.

  Eli’s voice slurred, “Heey Carleey. Whaasup?”

  Drunk out of his mind! Carley thought sadly. Trying not to let her dismay show in her voice, she spoke evenly, “I just thought I’d call and see what happened with that job interview you had.”

  “Reejected! My life’s like a pile of dog poo. If you want to pick me up, you have to put a plastic bag over your hand before you do it.” He paused to laugh hysterically at his own joke.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow morning when you’re sober,” Carley said, trying not to snap.

  “Ohh, nooo! Not in the morning! I’ll be hung over and all cranky. Try me in the afternoon.”

  ***

  The next afternoon Jason found Donsaii’s little farm.

  At work, she parked in the depths of a big parking lot, protected by a fence and a bunch more of those high-end rent-a-cops. At her farm, there were enough trees he couldn’t sight in on the house from the road. After some thought, he’d decided he’d just have to wait by the road a few blocks from her farm. He’d pick her up sometime when she left to go somewhere besides work.

  He’d thought about just driving onto the property and shooting the place up, Donsaii included. But just as he was getting ready to do it, he got a glimpse of a couple of security type guys walking around in the trees.

  Those guys looked really capable.

  I’ll just have to be patient, he thought.

  He didn’t like it, but he could do it. After all, on his hunting trips he sat in blinds for days at a time.

  ***

  Approaching the admin assistant for the genetics section, Jillian said, “I’m looking for Zage Kinrais? Can you tell me where I’d find him?”

  The lady looked up and waved vaguely down the hall behind Jillian, “Probably down in Dr. Barnes lab.”

  “Oh. Not in class?”

  “Maybe?” she said. “It’s not my job to keep track of the students’ class schedules.”

  Thinking, I’m sure this lazy drone’s AI has access, Jillian kept her tone pleasant, “Um, which lab belongs to Dr. Barnes?”

  “It’s down the hall on the right. I don’t know the number, but Dr. Barnes’ name is on the door.”

  ~~~

  The lab door was open, so Jillian knocked on the door frame, “Hello? Is this Dr. Barnes’ lab?”

  Jillian knew she was in the right place when a child’s head popped up from behind one of the lab benches. He said, “This’s Dr. Barnes lab, but she isn’t here right now.”

  Saying, “Hello,” Jillian walked closer. She thought maybe the kid looked a little like Donsaii, but she wouldn’t have thought it was a sure thing. He definitely looked like his father, Shannon Kinrais. He had blonde hair, though it was lighter than his dad’s dark dirty blonde. None of the reddish tint Donsaii was famous for. Raquel Kinrais had dark brunette hair, but Jillian knew kids’ hair was often lighter than it turned out to be when they were adults. The boy’s eyes weren’t green either, they were pale gray. Jillian had access to plenty of pictures of the kid’s dad from the Nobel prize ceremony and the dad’s eyes looked like they were a dark shade of blue. There weren’t that many close-up pictures of Raquel Kinrais available on the Internet, but her eyes looked brown in the ones Jillian had found. Jillian supposed that the kid’s gray eyes could be a result of the father’s blue eyes and Raquel Kinrais’ brown eyes. She didn’t know what’d happen combining the dad’s blue and Donsaii’s famous green eyes. She realized she should speak, not just stare at the child. With no other adults there, she decided to just hit him straight on. “Are you Ell Donsaii’s son?”

  The boy’s eyes widened in surprise, but he answered without hesitation, “That’d be really cool.” He shrugged, “But, I’m Zage Kinrais.”

  “I know. Shannon Kinrais and Ell Donsaii’s son, right?”

  “Shannon and Raquel Kinrais’ son.”

  I suppose, even if he is Ell Donsaii’s son, he might not know it, Jillian thought, wondering if there were any other reasonable questions she could ask a five-year-old and still expect an answer. I guess if he’s going to college, he should be able to answer pretty sophisticated queries. But I should still be able to trip him up with a good question. “You and your parents live just south of Ell Donsaii’s farm?”

  The boy nodded enthusiastically, “Yeah, I walked over to her house one day, hoping I could meet her. She wasn’t home though. A nice lady that works for her offered me milk and cookies, but said I shouldn’t pester Dr. Donsaii.” He shrugged and gave Jillian a shrewd look, “‘Cause she’s famous, people bug her all the time, you know? It’s pretty sad.”

  “I suppose so. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “Nope. So far I’m an only child. I do hope I’ll have a sibling someday though.”

  Jillian snorted, “Most kids spend all their time fighting with their siblings.”

  “I know, but I’m more mature than a lot of kids. I don’t think it’d be a problem.”

  This kid’s definitely weird, Jillian thought, staring at him again. “You have any aunts or uncles?”

  “I have a couple of aunts on my dad’s side.” He shrugged, “But my mom was an only child.”

  Hmm, Ell Donsaii’s an only child, Jillian thought. She couldn’t think of any more questions to ask a kid this age. After a moment, she said, “Well, if Dr. Barnes isn’t here, I guess I’ll come back later. Bye.” She turned and left.

  ~~~

  As soon as she was out the door, Zage whispered to Osprey, “Do you know who that was?”

  “Jillian Pardo. She’s a reporter.”

  “Can you tell my mom about her visit?”

  “Allan’s already told her. She thinks you handled yourself well…”

  ***

  At dinner that night, Ell turned to Zage, “I thought you did great when Pardo was questioning you.”

  Shan frowned, “Someone questioned Zage?”

  Ell nodded, “Yeah. Jillian Pardo, she’s a journalist. She fancies herself an investigative reporter, though she hasn’t really had any big-time successes. She publishes stories, but she hasn’t yet turned over a big rock and found any truly ugly things.” Ell sighed, “However, now she seems to have set her sights on us.”

  Shan said, “Do we know what she thinks she’s going to dig up?”

  “Yeah,” Ell said unhappily. “She stopped me at the airport a while back. Asked me if my son had been kidnapped.”

  Shan looked up with alarm, “How’d she find out about that?!”

  Ell shrugged, “No idea. Because I didn’t like her, I suspect Agent Calder from the FBI, but that’s pretty weak reasoning. Worse than the fact that Pardo seems to know about the kidnapping is the fact that she asked me about it when I was done up as Ell, implying she knew Ell had a son. Today, she asked Zage if he was Ell Donsaii’s son.”

  “Oh, crap,” Shan said. He turned to look at his son, saying, “What’d you tell her?”

  Zage shrugged, “That I was Shannon and Raquel Kinrais’ son.”

  Ell said, “Zage said it like there wasn’t any doubt. Didn’t he
sitate at all. I thought he did great.”

  “It wasn’t hard,” Zage said, “I was telling the truth.”

  Ell stared at him for a moment, then laughed, “That’s true. You never said you weren’t Ell Donsaii’s son, you only said you were Raquel Kinrais’ son. And, Raquel Kinrais does have her own legal identity.”

  Shan spoke to Zage, “Do you think she believed you?”

  “I think…” Zage said slowly, “that she’s got a hypothesis that I’m Ell Donsaii’s son and she’s fishing for evidence to support it. I didn’t get the impression that she really believed she’d proved her thesis yet.”

  Shan laughed, “Spoken like a science geek.”

  Ell turned to Shan, “Our son also told this reporter he was hoping to have a sibling someday.”

  Shan turned to Zage with a grin, “I’m hoping you’ll have a sibling someday too.”

  Ell leaned back in her chair and casually said, “He’s going to. Someday. Some day about seven months from—” she paused when Shan leaped to his feet, sending his chair over backward.

  Wide-eyed, Shan said, “You’re two months along? How come I don’t know about this?”

  She gave him a crooked smile, “I was waiting to make sure everything was okay. And then, for the right time to tell you. This seemed like an auspicious—” Ell let out a little oof as Zage tackled her from the side, giving her as big a hug as his little arms could deliver. A moment later, Shan knelt by her chair to join the hug.

  ~~~

  Once they’d all settled down and started back on their dinner, Ell said, “You realize this means I’m going to have to go into hiding this winter so people won’t see me pregnant.”

  Zage said, “Will you still have to hide if Ms. Pardo’s already broken the news that you have a child?”

  Ell glanced at Shan, “If she breaks the news… I don’t know what we’ll do. I suppose the world’ll know who Shan and Zage Kinrais are in relation to Ell Donsaii. The Raquel Kinrais identity will be useless. Either Ell could move into this house, or Shan and Zage could move into the farmhouse where security would be easier…” Her eyes shifted back and forth between her husband and her son, “But, I don’t think you guys would like living your lives in the Donsaii spotlight. I can tell you it isn’t very much fun.”

  Zage frowned, “But, if Ms. Pardo tells everybody about us, what choice will we have?”

  “Well, um,” Ell glanced at Shan, “we have lots of other identities already made up. The most obvious, and probably the easiest, would be for us to go back to being Elsa Gardon and Daniel Reyes, who live down near Pittsboro. You’d go back to being Zage Reyes-Gardon,” she turned her eyes to Zage, “which you probably don’t remember.”

  Zage shook his head. “I remember the house in Pittsboro a little bit. But I don’t remember that my last name was different. I probably didn’t get called by my last name much at that age, did I?”

  “No,” Ell said. “Of course, you were supposed to be too young to remember anything.”

  Zage shrugged as if that was unimportant. “Zage’s a rare name though. Aren’t you worried that it might catch people’s interest in view of Ms. Pardo’s story?”

  Shan grinned, “You might have to go by one of your nicknames.”

  “Nicknames?” Zage asked with a frown. “What nicknames?”

  “You know, ‘Munchkin’, or ‘Knucklehead,’ or…” he ran down at Ell’s glare, “or, maybe Z-man.”

  “Or, just Zee,” Ell said dryly. “But, let’s not do too much planning for something that might not happen.”

  When Shan and Zage didn’t say anything, Ell said, “Tomorrow’s Saturday. I think we should go to the mall.”

  Shan said, “Sounds like fun.”

  Zage drew his head back in horror, “The shopping mall?” At his mother’s nod, he asked, “What can we get at the mall that we can’t just order online?”

  Ell said, “You need new clothes. You’ve gone from short and wide, to tall and skinny. The clothes I got you this summer hang on you like bags and your pants’re too short.”

  “So? We can order more clothes.”

  “I’d want to buy some where we can try them on you. We’ll just be using them as patterns to get some more of your special clothes made up for you. Clothes like the ones from this summer I was dumb enough to have made based on your old clothes that already didn’t fit.”

  Zage acted incredulous, “Just order several different sizes and return the ones that don’t fit.”

  Ell raised an eyebrow, “And, you need to get out and see what the world’s like. It’ll be fun. We’ll take you for junk food.” She poked him in the stomach, “I think you’re getting a little too skinny.”

  Zage frowned, “I’ve already started eating more. Maybe I should cut back on the peptide…?”

  ***

  Zage gaped at the crowds as they walked through the mall. He did enjoy looking at the people when his parents took him places like this. It seemed like at least half of them were obese, which made him wonder once again about what was going to happen with UNC’s sale of the peptide. The people’s styles ranged from those who dressed to blend in, to those who dressed as flamboyantly as possible. Brick and mortar stores had seemed to be dying out but they were making a comeback. The stores didn’t sell all that much. Mostly they displayed wares that people preferred to see, feel, hear, or try before they bought. Clothing, jewelry, furniture, art, display screens, audio speakers, personal assistant AIs, and vehicles. They only exhibited goods from manufacturers that paid them an “advertising cut.” Your AI identified you when you entered the store, then if within a month you bought a product that’d been displayed there; the manufacturer paid the store a cut. Willingly, since sales were much better for products that had such displays.

  Although most people didn’t actually purchase goods while they were there at the mall—preferring to have them delivered to their home—there were some people carrying bags in order to get a “no delivery” discount on small items.

  Zage, his mother and his dad had all tried on clothes. His mom had ordered several of the ones she liked on him. The mall also featured a lot of personal services like hairstyling, makeup advice, manicures, pedicures, exercise facilities and trainers, massages, docs-in-a-box, fitted medical supplies, and restaurants. The Kinrais stopped at a number of restaurants where Zage’s mom and dad studied the menus. Zage, however, was hoping to eat at the food court. What he liked was simple bland food like pizza, hamburgers, French fries, and ice cream.

  When his mom and dad stopped to look at another menu, Zage looked up at them and, trying not to sound whiny, said, “Can we eat at the food court, please? It’ll be faster. Besides, you know I don’t like the strange kinds of food they have in fancy places like this.”

  His dad ruffled his hair and said, “There’s no way we’re wasting fine food like this on an unsophisticated barbarian like you. We’re just trying to figure out a good place to come back and have a nice dinner some other night.”

  “Aw,” Zage said, grinning up at him sweetly, “a romantic evening.” Then he frowned, “Wait a minute, you guys don’t need to be romantic. Mom’s already pregnant.”

  Shan gently smacked the back of his head, “You’ve watched far too many of those biology videos for you to be saying something like that. Are you trying to get on your dad’s bad side?”

  “No,” Zage said, giving him a smirk. “I’m shooting for just annoying enough that you won’t change your mind and decide to take me to one of these restaurants.”

  ~~~

  At the food court, Zage spent quite a bit of time wandering around, looking at all the choices, but then settled on a burger and fries anyway. His mother bought it for him and one for herself, though her burger had lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and dressing where his was plain with catsup. He followed her as she threaded her way through all the tables in the court, wondering where she’d choose to sit. There weren’t any tables that backed up to walls the way she liked. The
tables just kind of ended where the mall started. She picked a table near the edge where the mall proper started. It was near a support column which Zage guessed was almost as good as a wall.

  They were sitting, waiting for Shan to arrive. He’d gotten Mexican food from a different vendor. Zage had just said, “When will we know if it’s a boy or girl?” when his mother’s head snapped to her left. He looked the same direction, realizing she’d reacted to a muted clanking that’d come from that direction.

  A young man had set a heavy-duty canvas bag down on his table. Zage thought the bag must have some metal objects in it to make the clanking noise. The man unzipped it and reached both hands inside the bag.

  Ell’s eyes dropped to their table. She moved their tray and grabbed her Coke with her arm in an odd, position. Zage frowned, thinking, It’s got to be hard to hold her Coke that way. Her hand was upside down, with the thumb closest to the table. She’d turned and focused her gaze back on the man. Zage had never seen her look worried before, but that’s how he’d have characterized her expression at the moment.

  Zage turned to look at the man. He was pulling his hands out of the bag.

  Guns! Zage thought when he saw pistol grips in the man’s fists. Zage’s world slowed.

  Ell lunged left out of her chair, moving so quickly she seemed to blur. Her right hand flashed forward, throwing her Coke at the man.

  Ell’s violent leap up from the table knocked their tray flying. Zage saw their hamburgers and French fries tumbling to the floor…

  She was hurtling toward the gunman.

  The guns had come clear of his bag and started to rise. He’d just shouted, “Adios mutha—” when the Coke smashed into the side of his head.

  Zage’s time sense had slowed enough that he had time to realize her odd grip on the Coke had been so she’d be ready to spiral the Coke cup at the guy like it was a football, flying lid first.