They had all gotten a treat at the little aero-course kiosk. Alvin had bought them each a Cinna-Bear Claw, and a small limeade for the others, while Trutt enjoyed a coffee. British coffee never really tasted right to Trutt, just as American (and Canadian) teas never tasted quite right to him. He shrugged and walked with them back to a set of small chairs on the concourse near what would be their departure gate.
A slight buzzing tone rounded the skin about his left ear, followed by a recording of his wife's voice saying "Hon, phone," that only he could hear, transmitted through the bone at the base of his skull.
He smiled ruefully, and hopped down off the chair, gesturing to his ear and his forearm in the universal symbol for "I have a call." His eyes roved over the milling and passing crowd of the concourse. Something was bothering him, though he could say just what it was, and while Trutt wanted to just chalk it up to nerves, he couldn't. Not until he was done and home.
"Speak." Alvin hated talking on the datpad, and letting everyone who called know it made his life just slightly that much better.
"Mister Trutt." The cultured, deeply Southern American accented voice spoke to him through his datpad implant. "How is the journey so far? No more troubles, I hope? No new trail of bodies?"
"No, sir." Trutt wondered if Stark was trying to get under his skin. "We are in Philadelphia, waiting on our last connection. Should be there this evening. Will there be a car?"
"Ahoo made arrangements, a car will be there. You will be staying with them tonight at the Franklin Street house. Once the car drops you off, and the front door is shut, no one will be able to find the three of you without already knowing you are there. So only Ahoo and I will know."
Trutt chewed his lip for a moment. "What about the driver?"
"Ahoo." This was delivered in as voice as deadpan as any he had ever heard from his employer.
"Oh!?" Alvin was surprised. The little man didn't think Stark would send his wife to pick them up, and let Stark know it.
"Yes, well, if I don't let her do these things, she finds other ways, ways I cannot always track, to get into trouble. Just let her know that You need to go directly to the Franklin house, and that you are too tired for any side trips. She might try to get you all to go out somewhere, just remind her we have tickets to see her favorite band tonight, and she will see you to the front door."
“Oh…and I think we do have a few details left to clean up in Scotland.” Trutt enunciated carefully around a mouth now packed with sugary fried bread product. “Some Sunnies that got in the way…” They had all begun calling the servants of the old Sun God of Egypt simply the Sunnies; it made things easier to talk about in public.
“What do you mean, ‘got in the way’?” Stark asked from what was most likely his comfortable desk, in his well lit and pleasant smelling office some few three hundred kilometers or more away. “I have a few friends over there, seeing to these 'details' even now. I didn’t want anything about what is happening to leak out to the press; could you imagine the panic that some of those dead bodies would put people in if it was connected to this particular man, who is now awake, and has fled the hospital? They would jump to conclusions about any number of things. As it is, I’ll have one of these friends making some rounds, and working to confuse things, just to make it more difficult for anyone to put anything together. It will be a pain but a pain worth paying for in the end.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the call. The earpiece Trutt used in conjunction with his datpad was an elderly implant model. He knew he should upgrade, but the one he was using now, he had been assured by a specialist, would be more of a pain to have removed than to just continue to use it until it died, and then have a new one implanted in the bone of his skull behind his other ear while leaving the old model in. His body would continue to ignore it's presence, as it had for these last twenty years. Besides, his current “Ear-Mite!” worked fine, it was just larger and clunkier than more modern models; the kind of people who would notice details like the size and general color of the lump you had behind your ear, just below the hairline, made him nervous. His work for Stark, and others, required subtle, and this old earpiece wasn’t quite subtle enough anymore. Replacing an old implant piece was apparently a common issue for “older people” who needed new audio datpad receivers. He didn't look it, but Alvin was old by most human standards.
He heard Stark sigh on the other end.
“Long story, but in short, our boy was feeling his oats, got loose without my help, and then pulled a 'Pandora' on Amra’s men. No problem, really. He took them down in ways that will have the Met, and any of Amra’s agents guessing for years to come. No obscure trail will lead back to you.” …or me, you demanding blowhard… Alvin thought.
“He used some very potent…um, bones on some of the Sunnies. Oh, and he used an improvised javelin thrower on the rest, it was neat, really.” Trout grinned at the memory of the chudding-thunks that ended the lives of men who would have ended his just because he was born of different stock.
After a brief silence, Elgin said in a low voice, "Bones." He didn't sound pleased.
“I’m not worried about that, I just need to know if He sent anyone heavier to greet you, or our visitor.” His employer’s voice was gravel where ‘Tj’Chin’Ker’s was smooth and silky, but they shared the same deeper ranges when speaking, and while not as deep as Trout’s own voice, he still found the effect soothing, an aural massage to make even the smallest hairs in his ears sit up. “How many of his muwazzafa did he send to gather up our boy?” Here Stark used an old word that smacked of Arabic to Trout; the old man did that on occasion, dropping into other languages in the middle of a sentence. Trout guessed that would tend to happen when the full range of human history was rattling about one’s head.
As he continued to assure Elgin about what, who, when and where Trout noticed the way the tall nurse, Miss Lindsey, continued to watch their “boy” from where she stood a few feet from the undersized chairs that aero-courses around the world put around for what some passengers might be lucky enough to imagine as the beginning of the most uncomfortable parts of their lives. ‘Ker sat in one of the small seats and even his diminutive size looked too big for the torturous furniture; with his size that should have been almost impossible, but there it was. He would nibble his bread, eyes vigilant to the surrounding area, and then shift his frame in the seat to find a better position.
All the while she watched him. It was not the doe eyed fanaticism you found in the newly besotted, and didn’t reek of the hormonal lasciviousness one saw in women who thought their biological clocks were connected to a time-bomb. It was calm, it was speculative, and it was intensely curious. Cats who knew what treats lurked in tuna cans had that look when presented with a new, unopened can. It was bright, it was alive and excited. The looks she was throwing about were also obvious and transparent. They made other women in the lounge curious about what had so stirred the tall copper haired woman about the petit auburn man.
The object of her study sat eating the last of his most recent butter-covered “passport,” he was probably going to hold off on eating the bear claw Trutt had passed him in the small, rainbow colored waxed paper bag, and he was occasionally running a hand over his short hair as if it had been newly shaved and he was not yet used to the sensation. His hair was no shorter than was the current fashion most men wore, though Alvin noted it was less styled and more... just "short", though the young looking man acted as if he had been roughly cropped to near-baldness. Over all, nothing out of the ordinary, and yet still she stared at the little man in baggy clothes.