I put a few bread loaves, scrounged from a bakery's waste bin only an hour before, beside the stewpot as my part of the night's meal. Then I rolled the Pantech into a dim corner and prepared for the night.
The trunk sprouts two wheels and a handle for upright movement, a wheel on each corner if you'd prefer to get behind it and shove. I popped the wheels back into their sockets and opened a panel on what had been the top end before I laid the trunk on its side. An air compressor began to chug quietly, and my tent began to inflate itself.
It's made out of memory plastic. Folded, it adds about an inch to the thickness of the trunk. Deployed, it makes a cube about five feet on a side. Five of those sides are rigid as plywood and much stronger; an elephant could dance on my tent roof. The floor is full of pockets and makes quite a good air mattress.
I shoved my bedroll through the sphincter door that, in a pinch, can be almost as effective as a formal airlock. Then I squeezed myself in, reached out, and snapped on the light. I just sat there a moment, breathing my own air. It was the first time, literally the first moment I had felt safe and secure since the PI tapped me on the shoulder in Brementon.
This was the second thing that kept me sane in the Guy Fawkes. When I was feeling the worst, I'd slip down to the cargo hold, deploy the tent, crawl in, and sit there and shake. I'd have cheerfully passed the whole voyage in here, but the cargo area was off-limits to passengers and I lived in fear I'd be discovered and watched more carefully, so I rationed my time. What luxury to sit on my own bed, with my own six walls around me!
I ran a quick systems check, determined that the Hadean Customs Service hadn't managed to wreak any real harm, probably not from lack of trying.
Most of one wall was the top end of the trunk. I lowered a shelf from it, a shelf containing a hot plate and a teapot. I brewed up and poured into a porcelain cup that had once been the property of Judy Garland. Luckily, there was no way of authenticating this, so I was never tempted to pawn it since, in the world of collectible Terriana, provenance is all. I pulled out a drawer and using the spoon and freeze-dried cream I found there, made the tea the proper color. I noticed I was almost out of cream. (Actor: "I'll have a cuppa tea, without cream." Waiter: "We're out of cream, sir. It'll have to be without milk." Rimshot.) Where the shelf had been there was (what else) a mirror lined with strip lights, so the tent could be used as a dressing room. The whole side would fold away, providing me access to the trunk without lifting the upper lid or leaving the tent.
I spread my blankets and took off my coat, and in the process remembered something else I'd filched from the baker's garbage. Toby slipped through the lock as I took the cupcake out of my coat pocket and set it on the shelf. He watched me curiously as I rummaged in another drawer and came up with a single candle. I poked it into the cupcake.
I'd been trying to forget it, trying to make it add up another way, but there was no avoiding it. Today was my birthday. Please, in lieu of presents, send your contributions to Actors' Relief. It was a rather significant birthday, too.
"How about it, Toby?" I asked him. "Can you count to one hundred?" He barked once, which I'm sure everyone in the class remembers meant "Yes!" Well, of course he could. Toby can count one of anything, including hundreds.
I lit the candle and was about to offer him a piece, but he scratched at the lock and looked inquiringly at me.
Ah, Toby, what am I going to do with you? For the last week he'd been going out at night, after I was asleep. I suspected he had a girlfriend out there somewhere. That, or he was getting together with one of the packs of wild dogs rumored to live in the service corridors. Probably peeing on everything in sight. Toby is quite the ladies' man. I'd seen him, with more optimism than common sense, mooning over a Great Dane bitch he'd need a stepladder just to sniff. Sure, you can write that off to high hopes. But the amazing thing was, the bitch was looking really interested.
"Oh, sure, party time again," I said. "And may I ask you, young man, when you're going to settle down and make something of yourself?" He waited patiently. He knows that when I get in certain moods I'm apt to toy with him, take unfair advantage of the fact I know a few more words than he does. "Go, then, and be quick about it," I said. "But so help me, if you come back smelling of strong drink..." He was already out the door.
So I blew out the candle, ate the cake, and pulled the covers up around my neck. I left a small night light on for Toby... and because I had trouble sleeping in complete darkness.
How about you, boys and girls? Can you count to one hundred?
"I still feel so foolish, Detective Friday," said the lovely Miranda Mayard-Tate as she rose from her genuine Earth-crafted Louis Quinze settee, a piece of furniture equivalent in price to the Gross Planetary Product of some smaller Uranian moons.
"Don't worry about it, ma'am," I said, in Friday's flat, affectless voice, giving her his flat, unemotional-but-earnest stare, and thinking, Foolish? Any more foolish and respiration would be a big intellectual challenge, you pathetic screw. I trust that opinion never showed in my face, and I continued: "You weren't the only one taken in by this bunch. But don't worry. We'll get 'em." I sketched a flat, wry smile, the only sort Joe Friday was capable of. You know Joe, the taciturn, humorless homicide dick from that old warhorse, LA. Blues? I've played him in three different productions. ("Thursday. 8:03 P.M. Went to the Larson Theater, 5543 Main Street. Heard there was a 437 in progress. Acting without dramatic license. The sign said LA. Blues. Went in. Sat Down. Watched the show. Gathered enough evidence to convict four cast members of emoting, hamming it up, chewing the scenery, and felonious gesticulating. Figured out the plot during first act. Issued a warrant for the playwright. The charge: cliches in the first degree. Had to let Ken Valentine go. No basis to the charge of woodenness. Found him to be resolute, implacable, just after the facts."—Flip City Courier.) (There was similar schtick the other times I played Friday. Why do reviewers have to be so cute?) Dropping back into Friday for Miranda M-T's benefit was like putting my flat feet into a pair of comfortable old shoes.
"Goodness! I certainly hope so." What can I tell you? I'm not responsible for other people's lines. I merely report what I hear, even when it contains "goodness" as an exclamation.
A long, gloomy silence settled over the scene. As it threatened to become funereal, or possibly even permanent, I decided a prompt was in order. "Well," I said, "we can get started on it if you'll just get the money."
"Oh, certainly," she said, getting up and looking around vaguely. It was obvious she'd forgotten where she put it. The rich really are different. "I'll just go... are you sure you won't have a drink?"
"Not while I'm on duty, ma'am." There was a double meaning to that. Every line Friday uttered screeched teetotaler. He wouldn't drink, on or off duty, not so much because alcohol was evil, but because it would get in the way of his relentless pursuit of crime. You just knew his evenings at home were spent perusing his old notebooks, and his idea of a good time was oiling his gun. As he said in the last line of L.A. Blues; "Just the facts, ma'am." That's all he was interested in. Just the facts.
Me, I would have gladly joined Miranda in a glass of something, but when I'm "on duty," playing a role, I never step out of it.
As Mrs. Mayard-Tate fluttered away to unknown regions of her palatial warren, I stood and looked at her parlor closely for the first time. What had caught my eye was a wood and glass display case housing dozens of yellow-white carvings, none much larger than a golf ball. Of all the fabulous riches in that room, the loot of generations, these are what drew me.