The streets were filled with shouting, screaming people who were fleeing the flames, smoke and chaos. We were able to hire a jet-taxi to drop us off a block from the impact site. The guy charged us an outrageous sum, but we were lucky to have found him at all.
Between Wanda's and Teepee's infrared vision, Les and I were able to navigate through the rubble of what only an hour before had been one of Chi-town's oldest buildings to have survived the Ka-boom. We found Head Librarian Pixell pinned under two 19th century card catalogs; she'd dived under her desk when she heard the whistle of a missile. The desk had been blown out the front door in the initial blast, but the two catalogs had collapsed in a V-shape, shielding her from further harm.
Strangely, Chicago PD and CFD were snail-slow in responding, with only two trucks attempting to put out the flames. Pixell clandestinely passed me a small case. I put it in my inside pocket. It was a case meant to hold 20 ultra memory pins – exceedingly rare, absurdly expensive, and well beyond the salary of even an extraordinary woman like Pixell Mumford.
"You're that rich?" I ask her. Her eyebrows arch, and there's a definite twinkle.
"You have a son who's a cybe?" she responds, and points north towards the stairs, where my 9-year-old charge is standing holding Sunny from the Zippy Mart in his skinny arms, "because that's the only thing that explains the little guy's strength."
I have to stop myself from saying 'No, he's not my son' because he is now, and forever shall be, my son. And he's a cyborg. I still don't know which parts of him are robotic, and which are flesh. It doesn't matter. Off in the distance, a dog howls. Or perhaps it's Coyote, lonely old trickster calling out for company, or help, or a quickie.
It turns out to be Holly Graham, dragging her bloodied leg, her ankle now a stump, a tourniquet around it made hastily from Les' shirtsleeve. "I'm an old lady, you fat muthafrickuh! Be careful wi' me! Aah!"
Teepee lays Sunny down. She's been pierced by a dagger-shaped shard of glass. One side of it says, "Zippy Dogs – 1 credit." It went right through her upper shoulder. Through clenched teeth, she says, "he says you're his dad, Danny. I thought you didn't like kids. Can someone get this prison-quality glass knife outta me? Please?"
I look at my kid, and damned if there isn't a sympathetic tear falling down his cheek. I bend close and whisper, "Hey, son. You've got a steadier hand than I do. Just grab one end of that glass, and carefully pull it straight out. Stay still and keep the shard still too."
His eyes get real big. "I'm scared I'll hurt her."
"Don't worry. Don't even think about it. Let the robot arm do the work. I'm thinking your Professor gave it independent motion. Did he?" Teepee nods. I try to imagine myself at his age and having a robotic arm. Suddenly it's clear. An image of a coyote's tail wagging, and him being startled by it.
"It freaks you out, doesn't it – seeing it move without you doing anything?" Again, he nods. "Trust your arm. Do you trust your Professor? Good. Just do it." (I know, it's an ancient ad slogan unearthed in a 20th Century urban dig, but it fits, okay?)
The shard is removed without a drop of blood being spilled, smoothly and quickly. Sunny faints and that's good, because as I'm bandaging the shoulder it starts bleeding again. Holly needs a medic, and soon, if there's hope that her foot can be regrown or cybernetically attached.
Pixell is talking to a black screen, which then goes dark. "All right, none of you are safe here. We've been granted permission to enter the Underground Skyway. I'm figuring you're the one to blame for all this destruction, Crow Feather."
"What?" everyone shouts, much to my pride and amazement.
"Pixie, what have you been hiding? Who are you?" I slyly ask. My mother used to warn me about the silent types. Librarians in particular.
Pixell turns and addresses me: "You're a detective who specializes in missing persons. Your research today was somehow observed and interfered with, bypassing all of Les' innovative and previously unpierceable firewalls. Someone wants you to fail. Somebody wants whoever's missing to stay that way. And some asshole wants you, and the people around you, dead."
"Can you hurry it up, Book Babe," cries Holly, "because this hurts like hell!"
A hover-bus appears before us, which must have been cloaked. Only it looks different. On the front is a huge ad that reads: "Lata Lisa Tours – See the Real Chicago with Us!" In small letters at the bottom of the ad, I read "Sponsored by the Mumford-Long Foundation." Pixell was one of those Mumfords!
We file onto the bus, Holly first. There's a small cabin in the back, which I realize with a shock is a medi-bed. Holly is laid inside, and Pixell closes the lid. Wires, bulbs, tubes and screens light up the contraption which, if the holovid adverts are true, will heal whatever ails you in under 2 hours.
There were still only two fire engines and a handful of police cars when we pulled out, a full 45 minutes after whatever it was destroyed one of Uninada's oldest libraries and a good chunk of State Street. I catch a glimpse of a figure in black, running to catch us. It's familiar. Les follows my gaze and slides the window open.
Pixell sees us and shouts, "Lisa, honey – Let's ghost, now!" The driver throws her hat to Pixie, pulls a lever and shouts "Yee-Ha!" She shakes loose a mass of golden hair. If I were 20 years younger, I still wouldn't have stood a chance in hell, because she only has eyes for our librarian. I poke half my body out the open window, and that leather-clad assassin is parkouring her way closer and closer.
My cranial chip activates my finger-crossbow. A moving target, a moving vehicle, wind fore to aft at 80 mph...I call Les over and let his brain do the math.
"On my count," he says. "One..."
The woman is now leaping roof to roof and we're crossing into 30-story building territory. That's pretty high, these days.
'Two..."
I don't want her dead; I just want her...um...mildly out of commission.
"Three!"
I let the tiny crossbolt fly and it's aimed right at her left nostril. Bingo! I start to give Lisa instructions to pick her up when I hear Pixell say, "Well, shit!" Teepee simply says, "Supernovian!"
The assassin's body looks as if it's breaking up into thousands of points of light, all zipping skyward at a hundred miles an hour. I hear Angwusnasomtaka's voice saying, 'aliens to threaten' and now wishing to hell I'd asked her then and there to elaborate.
Boys and girls, things just got a whole lot more dangerous. The Dromedaries want me dead. Oh, right, we haven't talked about them in detail. Mainly because they don't talk a lot, the inhabitants of the Andromeda Galaxy. They're pretty when they sparkle, which is most of the time. When they don't – well, I've seen fresh piles of vomit that looked more attractive.
Some late night holovid host called 'em Dromedaries, after the now extinct one-humped camels. The name stuck, in spite of folks worrying that our alien buddies would find it offensive. They didn't. They thought it was hilarious. They had a nickname for us as well. Of course, it was untranslatable.
"Sucks to be you!" chortles Sunny, her good hand on my shoulder. "Look, if we run into one, I've got a Zippy Mart Dromean chirp chip implant in my ear. Every now and then, we get one wanting some Mutant chips and Synth Milk. And raw synth-hot dogs."
"Gross!" laughs my kid, making a face. Coyote's been giving me good luck along with the bad. So far, they've balanced each other out. And I think I know what it will take to better my odds. I look out the window and see below me the neon-red roof of Jake's Jazz & Juice Joint, my own little field of dreams in a town I love, quickly fading into the distance. Right now, I've got chaos following me, so I'm willingly going beyond the fields I know.