The boys find Tepper with one authority; she takes them to another
Perfect Timing, Part 27, See why jokes are told about lawyers?
| We serialize this novel, set in a world working right for everyone, a chapter a week for 32 weeks. © 2008 Jeffery J. Smith, all rights reserved. |
by Jeffery J. Smith, May 2008
In the university corridor, the boys look both ways. Lost in the crowd, Corey throws up his hands, desperate enough to violate the testosterone code and ask a stranger for directions. Before he can ask a fellow scholar, Kenny pulls him in one direction, knowingly. Corey hesitates but time is too short for him to do anything but follow Kenny’s lead. Kenny’s already a pace ahead.“Find that geonomist, learn the final clues,” Kenny says, “then we can prove we were … or are … or will be, originators.”
Grabbing his pal, Corey stops in his tracks. “Man, that ain’t Plan A.” He whacks his compadre’s arm. “The lawyer, the deal, the compensation for all this getting jerked around, that’s Plan A.” He looks around. “Which way to Satan’s attorney?”
“You mean their debating champion.” Kenny leads his friend to a nearby busy intersection which has a directory on the wall. Staring at the list, Corey waves his head back and forth, deciphering nothing. Kenny points to a name and leads the way.
In the hallway they just vacated, Voltak and the triplets appear, sidearms gleaming and bouncing on their belts. They huff up the corridor, heels making a racket on the marble floor, to the door of Murky and Gwode’s lab. Voltak knocks once before they all self-importantly enter.
In a different hallway, Corey and Kenny strut along, checking room numbers above doorways. At last they halt at the office of the Debating Society. Corey exhales in relief.
“Finally,” Corey says. “Now let’s get this guy to hammer out a deal that’ll make us safe the moment we get back home.” He lightens up a bit and some of his easy eagerness returns. “And maybe make us rich while we’re here.” He smiles.
Kenny stops his pal. “If we’re back home, why do we need to be rich here?”
“OK, we don’t. But,” Corey taps his head. “It’s a good negotiating point, you know? Something to give up, to get what we want – a bullet-free welcome home. Capiche?”
Pursing his lips, Kenny nods. “Yeah, I capiche, but what’s with this Mafioso schtick?”
Shaking his head impatiently, Corey knocks on the door once politely.
Back in the lab of the scientists out on a jaunt through time, Voltak sniff the chairs, the tarp, the machine’s controls. The triplets tiptoe about. Peering around corners, Karessa holds the gelding clippers at the ready.
Inside the office of the Debating Society, Tepper leans against a desk, scowling, tail twitching. Behind her, seated at the desk, is Pilard, smiling ironically. The visitors stand still, dead in their tracks.
Tepper directs her hands toward Pilard, then the Pastians, then to Pilard again. “Presenting, this year’s debating champ.”
Looking at Tepper with arched eyebrows, Corey points toward Pilard and mouths the word “him”. She nods. He turns to Pilard.
“So if we wanted a lawyer and couldn’t find one because none any longer exist,” Corey says, “you’d be the closest thing we could find?”
Pilard bows. “That I am. And,” he pats himself, “look at this uniform. You’re looking at the High Commander of the Safety Brigade Volunteers.” He offers them his Bonapartean profile, complete with hand in shirt.
Head angling up in appraisal, Kenny takes in the profile resembling Alfred Hitchcock patting his gut. “How many volunteers do you got?” he asks.
For an answer, Pilard pulls himself up erect, adding a barely-perceptible eighth of an inch to his height, enhancing his ability to somehow look down his nose at the taller, impertinent inquisitor. “And, as you know, I am a Dear Learned, a position won by my logical skills.” On the wall are diplomas, one for a PhD in rhetoric. On a shelf is a holographic bust of Pilard with a plaque. “Would you care to argue with me?” he asks the Pastians.
“Actually,” Kenny says, “recruit you is more like it.”
“First,” Tepper says, somewhat miffed, “what took so long to find this office?” She puts her hands on her hips, school-marmishly. “Where have you two been?”
In the lab of the second chronoscope modified into a working time machine, Voltak is on the phone to Bayer. The triplets are gathered about him, listening, but still scanning the room, making doubly sure they didn’t miss any hiding places, like a pride of hungry and opportunistic cats. Both Voltak and the triplets have their tools sheathed.
“If anybody was here,” Voltak says to Bayer’s holograph, sniffing, “and it smells like the Pastians and the scientists all four recently were, they’re not here any longer.”
The holograph of Bayer exhales and rubs it forehead. A real problem is not something a Dear Learned, member of the Umbrella Committee, ever really bargained for. “Can’t be. No Geotopian would do a thing like that, take fugitives on a trip through time. Inconceivable.”
Similarly unable to conceive of such a criminal act, Voltak and the triplets nod in affirmation.
“Voltak,” the holograph of Bayer says, “you help out Dr Ultra and Yuri in their lab. Can you operate that chronoscope turned-into-time-machine there? Bring whoever left back to this instant? Or can you call Ultra and get him to tell you how?”
Inhaling slowly, Voltak regards the machine, then nods grimly. Rolling their eyes in unison, the triplets regard him doubtfully. He flips a switch, getting the machine to glow and hum.
In the office of the Debating Society, Corey closes the door, shutting out the sounds of hallway foot traffic.
Tepper shakes her head. “One pair of sneaky scientists in all Geotopia and you two got to find them.”
Corey approaches Pilard’s desk. “You got to defend us, argue our right to return to safety.”
Pilard leans back in his armchair. “I do? What for? Why would I lend my talent and reputation to a pair of schemers?”
Flanking Tepper, Kenny also leans across the desk. “Because scheming shows we’re clever enough to play a role in launching geonomics.”
With his foot, Corey drags over another chair. “All that crap aside, let’s get practical. Nobody can send us back until we show up back at Tepper’s, where we first appeared here, and where they’re fixing that chronoscope. Right? And we don’t show up until we have a deal down. That’s where you come in; you write the contract that’s cheat-proof. See what I’m saying?”
Smiling, Pilard rubs his hands. A negotiation! That would be the experience of a lifetime. He thinks back on what he has learned. “You can’t deal if you’ve got nothing to offer.”
“We got plenty,” Corey says.
Kenny taps his cranium, grimaces, then massages it, still tender from the smart taps from Gwode that briefly nailed his animation to his skull. “We got these memories that everybody wants.”
Tepper nods.
“Bigger than that,” Corey says, “we got massive compensation coming to us for being kidnapped; you, my man, get to keep that.”
Pilard smiles. Then he chuckles. Then he laughs a full belly worth’s of mirth. Shaking his head, he wipes his face. His benign countenance takes in his two naïve Pastians.
“My, my, my. Didn’t Tepper lend you her thimble?” he asks. “And her phone?” He peers at them intently. “And all her time with you and her guidance?” He chuckles again, shaking his head. “You couldn’t ask for more settlement than that.”
While Tepper’s chaperoning was a delight to Kenny, it doesn’t stack up too highly against the piles of riches that Corey had envisioned.
Pilard shakes his head, turning stern in his tone. “You two failed to inspire the masses, as I had hoped, or to show us any affinity for geonomics. You’re just commoners from the past.” He gets out his phone.
Tepper bristles at that. Common, perhaps, but one is her ancestor and, for now, her only living relative. “Well,” she asks Pilard, “didn’t commoners enjoy the protection of common law?”
“The law-abiding ones,” Pilard says, opening his phone.
Slowly Corey tilts up his jaw toward Pilard. “Hey Jack,” he says rather crossly, “we ain’t the ones sucking people through time.”
Voltak’s holograph appears before Pilard’s phone. Reaching over, Corey grabs the phone, snapping it shut.
“I beg your pardon,” Pilard says, starting to rise from his chair.
“If you don’t mind,” Corey says, “at times like this, I appreciate a less hurried pace than the one your wanna-be cop keeps. See you around.” Corey stands.
Pilard holds out his hand for his phone. “And where do you think you’re going?”
Corey bends over, getting his face into Pilard’s. Pilard leans back in his chair and sits. Tepper looks a little worried.
In his best gangsta voice, Corey says, “You got this way of disturbing people. Work on that. Dear, Learned, Pilard.”
“He means,” Kenny says, ever diplomatic, smiling politely, “we got vital business to attend to. Please excuse us.” He stands up, too.
Hurriedly trying to smooth things over, Tepper adds, “Just one last stop.”
Turning on their heels, Corey and Kenny head toward the door. Corey waves goodbye to Pilard with his phone. Tepper shrugs and follows her wards.
Pointing his finger at Corey, Pilard raises his voice. “You, Pastian, are headed straight to jail and a deep, secure coma.” He aims his finger at Kenny. “Both of you.”
As her wards go out, Tepper turns back and throws out her hands in the universal helpless gesture of what are you going to do with incorrigible youth such as Pastians?
Pilard turns his glare upon her. “And I’m holding you responsible.”
“I accept full responsibility,” she says. “I’ll have them home, on time, in one piece.” She hurries out after them.
In the university hallway crowded with students of all ages, Corey drops Pilard’s phone into the backpack of a child. Smiling at the kid, he says, “Happy Birthday.”
Walking purposefully, Tepper links arms with Corey and Kenny and leads them along the hallway, while glancing up at numbers over doorways.
“Shady scientists didn’t work,” Tepper says. “Your interview with the closest we have to a lawyer was a disaster.” Gripping her guys’ elbows, she shakes their arms. “If it’s not yet too late, talk to a geonomist; that’s your best chance to solve your problem. And who knows? A specialist could even be interested in what you might know, if it’s anything Destinon is not telling us.”
“Destinon is your problem,” Corey says. He reaches over and grabs Kenny’s shoulder. “Let’s just get out of here.”
“You got nowhere to go, gramps,” Tepper says. “Believe me; finding out if anything a geonomist tells you joggles your memory, that is your best strategy.”
“Yeah, one last stop at the top geonomist, bro,” Kenny adds. “Besides, aren’t you even a little curious what the expert’s going to say?”
In the lab off a different hallway, Voltak is on the phone to Bayer. The triplets are gathered about him, impatient. Karessa is flexing her scissors-like tool.
“I worked out the code for this chronoscope’s video log.” He nods proudly.
“Machines,” Marissa says.
“They’re so helpful,” Larissa says.
“To other machines,” Karessa adds.
“Anyway,” Voltak tells Bayer, “the log shows only two persons departing, the two scientists, Murky and Gwode.”
Bayer exhales deeply, relieved. “Good, thank God.
“One odd thing,” Voltak. “I got a call from Dear Learned Pilard but he immediately hung up.”
“Yes, interesting,” Bayers says. “Now. Let me think.”
“The boys didn’t say anything about looking for a lab like this,” Marissa says.
“They said they were looking for a geonomist,” Larissa says.
“And we still haven’t checked any of those offices,” Karessa adds.
Tepper halts her guests in front of a door with a plaque, “Department of Geonomics Chair”, above the doorway.
“Alright,” Kenny says. “The person who can fill in any tiny gaps we may have in our many megabyte skull-fulls of geonomic knowledge.” He starts to lead the way inside.
Corey throws out his arms. “Wait a minute. What if this egghead is another Dear Learned?”
Tepper knocks on the door. “You two will be fine.” She turns the handle. “It’s me, I’m the one I wonder about.”
Pushing open the door, they enter.
Inside the Geonomics Department, Alison Bayer waters plants on the windowsill. She keeps her eyes on her task. “Office hours have not quite begun.”
Corey spins around to exit. Tepper grabs his arm. Kenny takes a seat.
Tepper addresses Bayer’s back. “They’re sort of in a hurry.”
Bayer turns around. She smiles sardonically. “What a pleasant surprise. Ms. Tepper Karlin, this is a bit beyond babysitting in your home mansion, isn’t it?” The question is purely rhetorical. Bayer focuses on the pair of travelers. “How can I help you before two of you relax in suspended animation?”
“She probably can’t help,” Corey says. “Let’s just go.”
“Where, man?” Kenny says. “Hang on. I got just one quick little question. Soon’s I nail this, then we can strut our geonomic stuff before Madame Bayer, the Umbrella Committee, anybody.”
On the wall are diplomas, one for a PhD in geonomics.
At the other end of another corridor, the competitive triplets and Voltak dodge around students. Dashing from doorway to doorway of professors of geonomics, they momentarily poke a head in before hurrying off to get ahead of the others. As they dart, stop, and start, their chrome-covered implements swing and swish; as they get closer, the triplets’ shoes smack louder against the floor.
In the office of Bayer, Tepper lounges. Corey paces. Kenny sits on the edge of his seat, facing Bayer across the desk.
“OK,” Kenny says. “People get these dividends, I get that; always made perfect sense. But the money for those monthly checks, again, that comes from … ?”
Bayer takes a deep breath.
Scurrying down the hallway, the triplets and Voltak keep inspecting offices of a geonomics professor then dash to the next doorway, each trying to stay ahead of the other, shoes click-clacking the whole way.
In Bayer’s office, the Dear Learned and professor shakes her head sadly at the visitors’ inability to grasp the obvious. “My dear traveler, it’s all the money we spend … on the nature we use: for sites, resources, EM spectrum, ecosystem services. Don’t you see?” She throws her hands back and forth, listing the sources of revenue.
Kenny nods in sync with her hands. “Of course I see. I knew that. But …”
Pulling the door slightly ajar, Corey pokes his head out then quickly shuts the door and turns a knob to lock it. He braces his foot against the bottom of the door.
Tepper turns around to see what’s up.
Corey grimaces. “I knew this was taking too long.”
In the corridor, Voltak and the triplets have passed the half way mark and have just another few doors left to go.
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Jeffery J. Smith runs the Forum on Geonomics.
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