Terraform (an Ell Donsaii story #15) Page 19

  When the Coke hit the man, it looked like it’d exploded.

  The brown fluid sprayed outward like a firework going off.

  The guy’s head jolted away.

  Zage was out of his chair, running after his mother.

  Ell leaped into the air, flipping to pass over the man upside down.

  As she passed above, she grabbed his guns, jerking them up toward the ceiling and ripping them out of his hands. The gun in his right hand fired, the bullet flying high over the crowd.

  He collapsed to the floor, out cold from the impact of the Coke on his temple.

  Zage’s mother completed the rotation of her flip, landed on the other side of the guy, and, astonishingly, stopped in a single step.

  She set the guns on the floor during the crouch of her landing.

  Starting casually back toward the man as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, Ell grabbed Zage when he almost crashed into her.

  She set him back upright and pointed over him, out toward the rest of the tables. “Stop your dad and take him to sit far away from here,” she whispered. “He can buy you another burger and fries.” She turned to the gunman.

  As Zage walked away, he heard his mother mumbling to her AI, telling the security team not to get involved.

  He realized Ell hadn’t pointed randomly out toward the tables like he’d thought. His dad was rushing across the food court toward them from exactly the direction she’d pointed.

  Zage headed to intercept him.

  A glimpse back over his shoulder showed his mother kneeling over the gunman. Her face tilted upward as she began to speak to a stunned-looking mall security guard. She pointed to the guns lying by the guard’s feet and he bent to pick them up. At a word from her, he stopped and put on gloves.

  Shan was focused on the commotion and not looking at him so Zage shouted, “Dad!” When Shan’s eyes turned to fix on him, Zage put up hands to halt him.

  Shan stopped, dropping to one knee beside Zage. “What happened?!” he asked quietly.

  “Shooter,” Zage said. “Mom stopped him.”

  “Oh my God!” Shan said raising his head to look towards Ell. He started to stand.

  Using the grip he’d taken on Shan’s shirt, Zage tugged him back down, “Mom wants us to sit far away. I think she’s trying to keep us out of the news.”

  “Oh…” Shan said, taking one more look towards Ell, then turning to look back the other way. He sighed, “Let’s go sit far away then. You can tell me all about whatever happened.”

  As they walked, Zage glanced back toward his mother. A huge crowd had gathered around the incident so she wasn’t visible any longer. Shan found an empty table and sat down, then looked at Zage. “Your lunch’s still over there?”

  Zage nodded, “It went on the floor during all the excitement.” He grinned at his dad, “Mom said you’d buy me another burger and fries.”

  Shan slumped his shoulders and gave Zage a mournful look, “You’re so wasteful of your food.” He got up resignedly, “Come on, I’ll get you another. Plain, with catchup?”

  Zage nodded, saying in a serious tone, “Sorry. It won’t happen again.” After a moment, he followed up with, “And fries.”

  Shan laughed, “You’re serious about being off your diet, aren’t you?”

  “Uh-huh. Ice cream next!”

  ~~~

  While Shan was ordering, Zage watched the crowd. Policemen arrived, then a couple of EMTs with a stretcher. They disappeared into the crowd so Zage couldn’t see what they were doing. He wished he could go over close enough to see how they loaded the guy onto the stretcher. More police arrived and started downloading people’s AI’s, getting the audio-video record of what’d happened.

  Shan got Zage’s food. As they picked a table and sat down, he said, “I wonder if I should’ve gotten some food for your mom. Did hers go on the floor too?”

  Zage nodded. “I’d wait. Wouldn’t want it getting soggy.”

  “What’d she have?”

  “A burger with the works, French fries, and a Coke.”

  “Okay, spill. What exactly happened?”

  Zage described the events, realizing it was taking several minutes to describe something that’d happened in the space of a few seconds.

  Shan turned a look over toward the crowd Ell was hidden amongst. “Sounds like your mom alright.”

  Wonderingly, Zage said, “It’s like she knew exactly what to do.”

  “Yup. But, then, it’s not her first rodeo,” Shan said offhandedly.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You know, that she’s handled a lot of crises in the past. Including other terrorists.”

  Zage had to finish chewing, but as soon as he swallowed, he said, “She has?!”

  Shan turned wondering eyes on his son, “Yeah. In her first Olympics, right?” Seeing the confused look in Zage’s eyes, he said, “You didn’t know about that?”

  “I knew she was in the Olympics twice. The first time she won four gold medals,” Zage continued almost indignantly. “Nobody told me about terrorists.”

  “I guess I kind of assumed you’d probably read up on your mom. Checked out her Wikipedia page or something. Sorry. Let me tell you about how she took out seven terrorists to rescue a bunch of her teammates on the US Olympic team.”

  Zage listened with growing astonishment as Shan told the story. When it drew to a close, he said, “So she shot those guys?”

  Shan nodded.

  “Where’d she even learn to use a gun?”

  Shan shrugged, “She was in the Air Force, you know. Everyone in the military gets weapons training.”

  Zage’s eyes widened, “She was in the military? How long?”

  “Um, she was at the Air Force Academy for two years… Then she was on active duty for a while longer, I’m not exactly sure how long. She was involved in some secret stuff during the Taiwan crisis—”

  “What was the Taiwan crisis?”

  “The PRC, that’s mainland China, set out to invade Taiwan, but something happened. They called back their fleet and pretended it was just a training exercise.”

  “And Mom was involved in that?”

  “Yeah, it was something secret though. She’s never told me exactly what she did, but things other people have said makes it seem like whatever she did was of some importance.”

  “Is that the crisis you were talking about earlier?”

  Shan nodded, “One of them.”

  Zage frowned, “There were others?”

  “Well, yeah. I know you know about how President Stockton was after her for a long time. There were lots of little crises involved in avoiding arrest back then.” Shan looked Zage in the eyes, “Did you know her invention of ports came just in time to send little rockets up and save the astronauts in the International Space Station? D5R was able to provide air, water, and food after the space station’s normal rocket resupply system failed.” When Zage shook his head, Shan said, “You should read about that one. Then there was comet Hearth-Daster—”

  “Was that the comet that nearly hit the Earth?”

  Shan nodded.

  Zage frowned again, “Was part of it going to hit one of the habitats or something?”

  Shan snorted, “Yeah. The Earth. That habitat. D5R didn’t have any habitats up in space back then.”

  “But I thought the comet didn’t hit us.”

  “Yeah, but only because your mom helped NASA hit some of the big fragments with nuclear weapons and D5R pounded the little fragments to smithereens with kinetic impactors.” Shaking his head, Shan leaned closer to his son, “Probably every living person on this planet owes their life to her, that’s why so many people love her. Why she gets so much respect. It’s just unbelievable to me that some people still take pot shots at her.”

  Wide-eyed, Zage said, “I thought she got so much respect because she’s so good at science. She really saved everyone too?”

  Shan nodded slowly, glancing over to where the c
rowd around the incident was starting to disperse. “She did indeed…” Zage saw tears welling in his dad’s eyes before Shan used a napkin to wipe them away. Shan’s voice sounded rough as he said, “Maybe I’d better order our savior a burger with the works. It doesn’t look like she’ll be much longer.”

  “Okay,” Zage said, staring at his mom across the room. “Osprey,” he whispered. “Bring up the Wikipedia page on Ell Donsaii.” When he’d gotten several pages into it, he thought, I should’ve read this a long time ago! It seems insane that I knew all about her science accomplishments, but that I only read about her sports stuff recently. And then only because she mentioned she was good at sports when she was talking to me about my own reaction times. How could I not know about all these crises my mother’s dealt with?!

  Zage had stopped reading to ponder how his mother could still be so humble when Steve walked up and sat down across the table from him. Steve said, “You okay?”

  Zage nodded, “Do you already know what happened?”

  “Uh-huh. I’ve seen the video records from Allan and Osprey. I’m worried she moved so fast someone’ll figure out she’s Ell.”

  “Do you know about the reporter who asked me if I was Ell Donsaii’s son?”

  “Yeah,” Steve shook his head. “If she sees that video, it really seems like the cat’ll be out of the bag.”

  “Mom and Dad were talking about how they might have to go back to some old identities they had in the past? She’d be Elsa Gardon and he’d be Daniel Reyes.” Zage frowned at Steve, “Did you know about those identities?”

  “Yeah, I started working for your mom quite a while before that.”

  “Um, Steve?” Zage said. At Steve’s nod, he continued, “It kind of seems like I’ve known about my mom’s science stuff forever, but I didn’t know she was good at sports until February or so.”

  Steve snorted, “Good at sports?”

  Zage shrugged, “Really good.”

  “Un-freaking-believably good is more like it.”

  “Okay.”

  Steve tilted his head in a surprised fashion, “Really? You had no idea?”

  Zage nodded slowly, looking across the food court toward his mother, “Yeah, I’m not interested in sports.” He looked back at Steve “My dad says… he says that Mom’s dealt with people like this guy with the guns before. That’s why she knew what to do.”

  Steve shrugged, “She knew what to do the very first time she got in that kind of situation.”

  “You mean, with the terrorists at the Olympics?”

  “Yeah, though I wasn’t working with her way back then. But, also when she was kidnapped—”

  “Mom’s been kidnapped too?! Not just me and Amy?”

  Steve nodded slowly, looking a little dyspeptic. Zage thought maybe Steve wasn’t sure he was supposed to have told Zage about that.

  “Do you know about what she did with comet Hearth-Daster?”

  “You mean, how she saved our planet? I think everybody knows about that,” Steve said, his voice sounding rough like Shan’s had.

  “I… I didn’t know about any of this stuff… I mean, I’ve always thought she was amazing because she developed PGR technology and ports and D5R and… and she had Nobel Prizes even before the two last December. Well, two back then if you count the Peace Prize. But I didn’t know she was an athlete, or that she’d been kidnapped, or dealt with terrorists, or…” Zage shook his head, “It just seems like I didn’t know much about my own mother.” Shan arrived back at the table and sat down with a tray holding Ell’s burger, fries, and Coke. Zage looked up at his dad, then continued, “I think she should’ve told me about this stuff. Dad’d say it’d be bragging to tell me, and that bragging’s an ugly thing to do, but…”

  Shan said, “And now that you’re hearing about it from someone else, not her; aren’t you even more amazed and proud?”

  Steve leaned across the table and put a hand on Zage’s forearm. “Your mom decided that I needed to know that you’re Gordito. Have you considered that you might’ve saved as many lives as your mom did when she stopped that comet?”

  Zage frowned and tilted his head, “I just helped a little. Dr. Kelso and the others at CDC would’ve figured it out pretty soon anyway.”

  Quietly, Steve said, “Even Kelso says millions of more people would’ve died without your help. Probably billions. But I’ll guarantee your dad’s right. Finding out about it from someone else made me think a lot more of you than if you’d been going around bragging about it.”

  Steve suddenly stood up, “It looks like they’re about to let your mom go. I’m going to get out of here so they don’t have any reason to associate her with me.” He turned and ambled away as if he were going to do some shopping.

  A few minutes later, Ell sat down with them. She lifted an eyebrow and gave them one of her crooked grins, “Is that burger for me?”

  Shan nodded. As Ell unwrapped her burger, Shan asked worriedly, “Who was that guy? Do we know yet?”

  Ell slowly shook her head. “I got a glimpse of his ID when the cops checked it. Name’s Joe Rodgers. Allan says he’s got a chronically disgruntled presence on the net, but that there’s nothing there to tell us why he decided to shoot people in the mall.”

  “Crazies can be anywhere I guess…” Shan said, shaking his head. Then to Ell, “What do you think? Is your little performance going to be all over the news?”

  Ell shrugged as she chewed. When she’d swallowed, she said, “I don’t know. There was a reporter lady that showed up and interviewed some people. But, it happened so fast that hardly anyone got time to turn and look. The only ones who saw it were the ones who were incidentally facing the right direction. I heard people in the crowd asking each other what’d happened and saw them checking their AI’s recordings to see if they’d caught any video of it. I heard a lot of them saying their AI cameras didn’t have us in frame. But it’s a certainty that at least a few got part of it. Of course, I didn’t get to watch their videos so I don’t know exactly what they got.”

  “The reporter didn’t interview you?”

  “Yeah,” Ell shrugged, “I told her I hardly remembered it myself. Said I was freaked out and full of adrenalin and just attacked him without thinking.”

  “What about Allan’s recording?”

  After another pause for Ell to chew a mouthful, she said, “I told the reporter I didn’t want to share it. I gave a copy to the cops of course, but I got Allan to interpolate some frames so I won’t look like I was moving so fast. Of course, if someone on the force gets too inquisitive and cross-correlates my frames to someone else’s, that could be a problem.”

  Zage said, “Maybe you shouldn’t have done that gymnastic leap over the guy? It seems like that’s the thing that might make people think of Ell Donsaii.”

  Ell looked thoughtful. She said, “His guns were pointing into the crowd and I wanted to aim them safely up over those people. If I’d run behind him, I’d have had a hard time reaching them. I didn’t want to run in front of the guns. I couldn’t go underneath, because his table was in the way.” She shook her head, “I think the only way to do it was by going over him.” She gave Zage a serious look, “When you’re trying to save people’s lives, you can’t be worrying about whether doing it might blow a secret or cause other problems… problems that’re minor in comparison.” She looked out across the big room, “To tell the truth, I’m astonished our little secret hasn’t been blown before now. It just seems like way too many people know about my double life for it to have stayed a secret this long.” Ell pursed her lips, “Actually, it’s pretty amazing no one’s decided to sell us out to the press before now. But I think if our Ms. Pardo sees a copy of that video, she’ll sell us out before her next heartbeat.”

  Chapter Nine

  Carley hadn’t been able to reach Eli for several days—which had her worried. When she got out of the lab at the end of the day her AI said it had managed a hand-shake with Eli’s and told her he was in Ral
eigh, not Durham. She didn’t want to ride all the way over there, then have him refuse to talk to her, so she asked her AI to connect them. A moment later, he said, “Yeah?” in a gravelly, grumpy voice. Hungover again, she thought.

  “Hey, brother. What’re you doing in Raleigh?”

  He began a harangue that started with, “Those assholes in the Durham shelter…” and went on and on. The gist was that he’d gotten incredibly drunk, then tried to get back into the Durham shelter. Since that was verboten, they’d denied him. He’d taken revenge by declaring that he was moving to Raleigh—as if they’d be hurt by the loss of his patronage at their homeless shelter.

  He spent a good deal of the harangue bitterly complaining about the fact that the Raleigh shelter had much the same set of rules that the Durham one did.

  When he wound down, Carley said, “You want me to come get you?”

  “Yeah, you can take me down to Wilmington. I’ve been thinking about checking out the beaches.”

  “I’ll come get you, but not to take you even farther away.”

  There was a moment of silence, then he said, “Chapel Hill?”

  She didn’t want to have to drive to Chapel Hill either, but it was closer than Raleigh. She was afraid he’d make his own way down to Wilmington. “Okay. It’ll take thirty, maybe forty-minutes to get there.” She gave instructions to her car and leaned back to read some papers she’d been meaning to get to.

  ~~~

  When her car pulled up beside Eli, he got in without a word. “How’re you feeling?” she asked.

  “Headache.”

  “Hangover, you mean.” Carley had her AI order a couple of Tylenol and a bottle of Pedialyte from Amazon, getting them delivered to the port in her car.

  Eli took them from her without thanks, popping the Tylenol and swigging the Pedialyte. Carley went back to reading her papers.

  When they reached the outskirts of Chapel Hill, she turned to him again, “So, have you thought any more about how the injections actually were working?”

  He’d reclined the car seat and shut his eyes. He didn’t lift his head off the headrest, just said, “No.” He said it in a tone that implied he didn’t really want to think about it, or talk about it either.