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CHAPTER TWELVE

It had begun as one of Taki's crazy ideas.

Kevin lay hunched on his back. The rubber band fixed around both him and the wadded-up pack attached underneath held him compressed into a ball: chin tucked in, knees drawn up toward his head with his arms clasped around them. Or at least, the swiveling ball-and-socket joint that functioned as a chin, the piezoelectrically activated articulations that served as knees, and the linked multi-axial appendages that were his arms.

Greenery, water, and sky turned around him in a blur as Taki's fingers, looking like hinged balloons the length of freight cars, fitted him into an inverted arch of dinosaur hide floating a mile above the ground. The kaleidoscope stabilized with Taki's face filling his view against a backdrop of sky. The mouth opened and closed to say something that Kevin couldn't hear.

"All set for launch?" Doug Corfe's voice queried. Corfe was down by the water with Taki and Ray, the ferry captain, speaking via a portable phone link patched into Kevin's audio.

"This is exciting," Avril's voice said on the same circuit. She was in another coupler up at the house with Kevin, slaved to the same mec for vision input only to share the ride. Eric was with them, handling things in the lab. Janna was there too, having to watch for the moment. Normally it would have been possible to slave both of the other couplers to Kevin's, but one of them had developed a fault.

"We're ready," Kevin said.

Trees and sky whirled again. Then, for a moment, Kevin was looking up at the sky between the arms of an enormous horseshoe. Two rails, diverging above him into a wide V, yellow in the sunlight, elongated as Taki drew back the slingshot. . . .

"Three. . . . Two. . . . One. . . ." Corfe's voice recited. "Liftoff!"

Kevin felt as if he had been hit from behind by a train, and then he was hurtling skyward past the treetops. Avril screamed.

He had tangled impressions of rocks and shore shrinking rapidly below. He could see the house, Harriet crossing the yard; a boat out near the far side of the inlet. Then he felt himself slowing toward the peak of the climb, and for a few moments hanging and turning like a miniature moon.

Then falling. . . .

"Oooh. . . . I think I'm going to be sick," Avril's voice wailed.

"Please don't." Eric, coming in on the lab mike.

"Where are you, Kev? We've lost you in the sun." Corfe, from the water's edge.

Kevin cut the band, freeing his limbs. He let himself fall for a few seconds to develop a slipstream, and then released the chute of baled silk attached to the mec. Looking up, he saw it billow out above him as it filled with air against the sky. "Yowee, perfect!" he whooped.

"Okay, we've got you now," Corfe relayed. "You're looking good."

Silence and peace, the freedom of a cloud; drifting between earth and sky. . . .

"Okay, I feel better now," Avril announced. "Say, you know something, guys. This is really nifty."

The tops of the trees were coming up and expanding around him. Below on the grass, he could make out the three figures of Corfe, Taki, and Ray, their faces upturned.

"Definitely replete with ample nift," Kevin agreed, overcome with the euphoria. There was a slight breeze along the shore. He experimented with pulling lines to spill air from the chute, and after a few tries succeeded in keeping on course, aiming toward where the figures below were standing. The figures grew into monstrous effigies the size of the Statue of Liberty, Taki waving, Corfe with arms outstretched, beckoning, heads tilting to follow him down. Then, for a moment, Kevin was floundering in a morass of pine needles and grass . . . and the folds of silk came down over him. He stabbed a finger to activate the Control menu and exited from the system.

"Very good. You've earned your wings—virtual ones, of course," Eric told him. Kevin snapped open the collar and removed his headpiece. Eric was already helping Avril out of her equipment.

"It needs the bigger mecs for the weight," Kevin said. "I don't think the 'chute would open properly if we tried it with anything much smaller."

"Then maybe you don't use a parachute with smaller ones," Eric said. "Perhaps you go to something like silk cotton-candy, like spiders do."

"Hm. That's a thought."

"Do I get a turn now?" Janna asked. "It looked great on the screen here."

"You wait until you try this," Avril told her as she stood up from the coupler. "It's like you're really there."

Eric called Corfe via the mike. "Is Taki coming?" Taki was due to take the next ride, with Janna as "passenger."

"He's on his way," Corfe's voice answered from a speaker.

"Well, we can go ahead and get you organized while we're waiting for him," Eric said to Janna. He motioned toward the coupler that Avril had vacated—it was one of the converted airliner seats. "Make yourself comfortable. It's nothing like the dentist's."

"It's a really weird feeling, looking at the house from the outside and knowing you're really in there," Avril said.

"Here's Taki now," Kevin said, looking out the window. "I'm going down where Doug is to watch it from the other end." Then, to Avril, "Want to come too?"

"Sure." She went with him to the rear door. He held it for her and followed her out. They crossed the gravel behind the house and began descending the slope toward the water.

"It must be great having a dad who's into stuff like this," Avril said as they walked. "Mine just watches football and works in the yard. So the yard's just something we all look at. No one's allowed to do anything in it."

"Yeah. My dad says something similar about museums and houses. But you're lucky in some ways. Most times he's involved with something or other up at the labs. I guess this weekend he just decided to take a break."

"How about your mom? Didn't you say she was some kind of scientist too?"

"Yes—she's my stepmother, actually. She doesn't get too involved in what we do here at the house. She keeps more to the business side of things. . . ." Kevin picked up a pine cone and threw it at a trunk, not really of a mind to pursue that subject. They passed Taki coming the other way.

"How was that for navigation?" Kevin said. "Right down at your feet. Let's see you match that."

"Huh. Doesn't look too difficult."

"Wait till you try it."

"A good slingshotter is what it takes—to send you up right in the first place."

Kevin and Avril reached the area by the water where the trees opened out, in front of the boat dock. Corfe had already repacked the chute and was securing it to the mec with a new rubber band.

Ray shook his head in amazement. "Well, I don't know. If that ain't the darnedest thing I've seen in years. And did it seem like you were really there inside that thing?" he asked Avril.

"It was unbelievable," she told him. "It's just like you are it. And that was only receiving the visual. I can't wait to try driving one."

"One thing at a time," Kevin said.

"Gotta have a try at this myself," Ray said.

"You will," Corfe promised him. A beep sounded in his shirt pocket. He fished out his phone. "Yuh? . . . We are, just about." He looked over at Kevin. "They're ready up at the house. Do you want to shoot it this time?"

"Sure." Kevin took the compressed pack of mec and chute, and held it up in front of his face.

"Taki and Janna are coupled through," Corfe announced, looking away from the phone.

Kevin leered at the mec. "Aha, I've got you in my clutches now, Taki. About that two dollars you still owe me, eh?" He tossed the mec up in the air, spinning it deliberately, and caught it again. A squeal that could only be Janna's floated down from an open window in the house.

"Here." Ray held out the slingshot. Kevin took it, placed the mec in the sling, and aimed high.

"Get set, guys," Corfe said into the phone. "Hold onto your hats. Three. . . . Two. . . . One. . . . Fire!"

It might have been some perspiration on the grip that caused it to twist in Kevin's hand; or maybe his concentration just slipped a little. . . . But he could feel the slingshot slew to the side as he let go. Sunlight glinted off metal climbing high above the trees—but it was wide of where he had meant it to go. The wait was excruciating. . . . Finally the puff of white blossomed high above and began drifting serenely back to earth. Once again, it had opened perfectly—but this time out over the water.

"Dang, I don't reckon he's gonna be able to do much about it," Ray muttered. "The wind's the wrong way."

"Taki doesn't sound too appreciative, Kev," Corfe said, looking up from the phone.

They watched helplessly as the chute descended. Then it caught on the end of a pine branch hanging out over the water. And there, it hung.

"Decidedly niftless," Kevin opined glumly.

Eric, Taki, and Janna came down from the house a few minutes later to survey the situation.

Taki talked about climbing the tree, but it was obvious that the branch would never support him all the way out to its extremity. Kevin wondered what there was that they could maybe lash together to make a long enough pole. Corfe suggested that they take the boys' boat out underneath the branch, where they could use a shorter pole. And then Eric had one of his brainwaves. "We don't need to mess around making poles at all," he said. "Taki might not be able to climb out to it. But Ironside could."

Corfe, Kevin, and Taki looked at each other. "Of course," Kevin said.

"It just might work, at that," Corfe agreed.

"I still get to do the climbing," Taki told them, getting his claim in right away.

"Who the hell is Ironside?" Ray asked everybody.

Eric answered. "One of the early Neurodyne prototypes. More of a DNC test-bed—before we started miniaturizing them. It would be big enough to carry the other mec that's stuck up there and bring it down."

Corfe, standing fists on hips, squinting against the sun, looked up at the tree limb again, then down at the water below. "You know, it mightn't be a bad idea to have the boat underneath, anyway," he said to Eric. "That branch is going to sag more. If Ironside comes adrift from it, we'd stand to lose both of them."

"Good thinking, Doug. Let's do that," Eric agreed.

Eric went back up to the house to find Ironside and bring him down to the tree; Taki went with him to direct it from the lab. The girls went too, no doubt in the hope of getting another ride. So much for feminine loyalty and attachment, Kevin thought to himself. He stayed to take the boat out with Doug and Ray.

Corfe untied from the dock, and Ray took the oars to row them the short distance along the water's edge. Kevin began unfolding a tarp to provide a soft landing if needed.

"Did I hear you say this is the boys' boat?" Ray asked Corfe as he pulled.

"That's right. Eric picked it up a while ago, somewhere along the Sound. We only fitted the outboard last week. It runs just fine."

"So I'll be running into you out on the water, then, eh?" Ray said to Kevin.

"Not for a while yet, I'd say," Kevin answered.

"Hah! More interested in those sleek young hulls up in the house there. I was watchin'. Can't say I blame you much, either." Kevin just grinned. Eric came back out of the house, carrying Ironside and accompanied by Janna—Avril had evidently won the battle for riding with Taki. They started on their way back down to the water.

"A few feet more," Corfe told Ray, looking up at the tree. "That's it. . . . Right about here."

Ray gauged the distance to the shore and rested easy, dipping a blade occasionally to hold them steady. Kevin spread out the tarp and bundled it into a cushion.

"Do you remember the guy, used to run a sloop up at that yard we worked at?" Ray said to Corfe. "Had a funny, foreign-sounding name. Ellipse? Epileptic? . . . Something like that."

Corfe thought for a moment. "Mike Ellipulos."

"Yeah, that's him. Had a big black mustache."

"I think his name was really Michaelis or something," Corfe said. "Greek, wasn't he?"

"I thought it was Cypriot."

"Somewhere around that part of the world, anyhow."

"What happened to him? I still see his face from time to time—you know, places here and there, so I know he's still around. But he disappeared from the old circuit."

Eric and Janna drew up at the base of the tree opposite. "Okay, Avril's riding shotgun again," Eric called across the few yards of water separating them. "Taki should be on line now."

Corfe used the phone to check. "Yes, they're waiting," he confirmed. Eric placed Ironside as high as he could reach, in a secure-looking niche on the trunk. The mec was roughly Coke-bottle size, with an inverted conical head, and a pinch-waisted body that swiveled along the center joint. It gripped the bark and began ascending in short, smooth movements, apparently with little effort. Corfe said something into the phone. "Taki says it's a piece of cake," he told the others.

"Is that your boat, Kevin?" Janna called across.

"Right. We'll take you and Avril out in it later if you like."

"Great."

They watched the mec progress higher up the trunk, then slow as it searched for a route out from under the projecting limb. Corfe looked back at Ray. "It's funny you should ask about Mike. What made you think of him?"

"Hell, I dunno. Talking to you again, I guess. Why's it funny?"

"He ended up at the same place I did."

"You're kidding!"

"Well, not exactly at the same place. But working for the same people. He took the skipper's job on the boat that belongs to the president of the company that Kevin's dad and I used to be with—a guy called Martin Payne."

"Well, you don't say! What outfit was that?"

"Over toward Redmond—it's called Microbotics Inc."

Above them, Ironside had made it to the top of the limb and was starting to crawl outward. "Here he comes now," Kevin said.

"Okay, I've got him." Ray checked to the shore and looked up over his shoulder. "So what kind of a tub is Epileptic running?" he asked Corfe.

"Oh . . ." Corfe shook his head. "Some tub. I worked on it a couple of times when Mike needed help with the electronics. Payne's a multimillionaire already, not yet turned forty. It's a Delta Marine hundred-thirty footer." Ray whistled. "Twin twelve-hundred-horse diesels, satellite communications, computerized nav and weather system. The works, Ray."

Above, the branch began to dip under the weight as Ironside came nearer to the entangled chute. The mec was head down now, spreading and clutching the fronds like a wary squirrel in descent mode. "Oh, I can't watch!" Janna cried, covering her eyes, then peeking.

"Go for it, Taki," Corfe said into the phone. "We're right here underneath you." He listened to a response, then finished what he was saying to Ray before the action overhead absorbed everyone's attention. "You might have seen it about. Payne throws big parties and likes to impress his friends with days out along the coast. It's called the Princess Dolores."

For a moment Kevin just sat open-mouthed.

Ironside got to the chute and released it without falling off. But by then it was easier for it to just drop down into the boat rather than have to climb all the way back to the ground.

Kevin wedged Ironside in a space under one of the seats and put the smaller mec in his shirt pocket. But he was so taken aback by what he had heard that he left Ironside there when they tied up at the dock and all went back up to the house.

Later, he, Taki, and Corfe did take the girls out in the boat as promised. And when they came back from their jaunt across the inlet, he forgot all about Ironside once again.

 

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Framed