Mind of a Child_ Sentient Serpents Read online

  Laney struggled with the suitcase and dragged it out of the room as Natty eyed her delicious derriere from behind.

  “Are you planning on being a man and helping me?”

  “I am being a man - I'm objectifying you - and imagining all sorts of sordid sex behind your back. And that was before your swaying ass had me all hypnotized.”

  She grinned with her back to him. Okay, that was sheer speculation on his part, but the remark deserved at least a grin.

  As he followed her into the hallway he saw the strewn suitcases. Not just in the corridor, but in the adjoining rooms as well. She wasn’t kidding about needing the Sherpas. But where they were headed...

  She plopped the suitcase down in the living room. Natty gazed up at the window. “I can’t believe the Mayan calendar could be so off like that about the end of the world.”

  “Very funny.” She slipped on his glasses.

  “Well, I guess that explains the unscheduled total eclipse of the sun.”

  She made a hole by moving a suitcase so he could spy out the front window of the house.

  He immediately checked his watch when he didn't see what he expected to see. “They're thirty seconds late.”

  “They're military, darling,” Laney explained, tidying him up. The tee shirt over the cotton short-sleeve had managed to sandwich the collar on one side. “I know you expect greater precision, but that won't come until we've been replaced entirely by robots.”

  “Ha-ha, quite droll. I thought you said these guys were Special Ops. What's so special about being thirty seconds late?”

  “Well, for one, they're under strict orders from me to resist all temptation to kill you. Apparently, regular military doesn't have the necessary discipline.”

  He hit her with the plastic smile only previously seen on masks in Japanese Noh dramas, accompanied with tiny shakes of the head.

  “Seriously, honey, you need to relax.” She finished cinching his belt for him.

  “Do you have any idea what can happen to you in the tropics?! There are a thousand and one ways to die—before you step off the plane.”

  She chuckled a little harder than usual, then caught herself by raising a hand to her mouth. “Stop it, I mean it.”

  “How can you not tell when I'm not joking after three years of living with me?!”

  “Because if I took you seriously, I'd kill you.”

  The soldiers pulled up outside. Several Humvees and ATVs worth. The sounds of those motors, just idling. Then the engines being shut off, raising the sense of anticipation. The squeaking of metal springs under seats rebounding with the release of body weight. Natty eyed the spectacle. “Holy shit! You said they've sworn not to hurt me, right?”

  She looked at them, tensing up herself at the showing out the door. He didn’t think she had muscles on top of her shoulders. But apparently she did. “Just don't get too close. They don't take too kindly to baby-sitting neurotic rich people, not when they could be off killing people who need killing.”

  “Why'd they come at all then?”

  “I'm guessing they're thinking you can finance their next war for them,” she said, feeling the goose bumps climbing up her arm. “You might want to remind them of that an hour from now when all resistance evaporates and they aim some of those assault rifles at your head.”

  “Very funny.”

  “You'd think after three years of living with me, you'd know when I'm not joking.” Natty wasn’t particularly assuaged when the look of concern with what she was seeing outside didn’t evaporate.

  As he returned his eyes to the window he noticed the butterflies in his stomach had morphed into stinging bees. The cold sweat on his forehead, working its way down to his toes, had already dropped the temperature in the room ten degrees. His mouth tasted as if he’d spent all morning chewing on the sole of his shoe.

  “You know what?” she said. “I think maybe I will come along on this little boys’ getaway of yours.”

  Natty sighed relief. “Thank God!” He kissed her on the cheek. She tasted like rose petals and honey. Why couldn’t he sweat like that?!

  She padded to the front door, prepared to greet the soldiers at the curb.

  Natty said, “What would I do without you?”

  “Hire a dozen nurses, even more shrinks, and never know a soul who wasn't on the payroll.”

  As she reached for the doorknob, Natty raised his voice, “I'm really quite lovable once you get to know me. You’ll attest to that, right?”

  Ignoring him, she gulped air like a pond-surfacing goldfish to brace for what was on the other side of the door and exited to greet the soldiers.

  ***

  Outside Natty and Laney’s home, a man who looked like he tested his mettle daily, oozed confidence as he scrutinized the pretty woman walking towards him. He was as tall as a mountain shadowing her from the late morning sun and only a bit wider. He and his men, all sporting camo fatigues and assault weapons, and poised like cobras ready to strike at the slightest wrong move, contrasted mightily with the scene of suburban placidness.

  Like the guy at his three o’clock position sponging his SUV with soap, staring at the Special Ops team leader and his contingent so hard with his mouth hanging open that the water oozing from the sponge finally eroded the traction under his feet. Causing him to slip and bang his head against the rear bumper. He was down for the count.

  The neighbor at the team leader’s eleven o’clock, out for his Saturday late-morning mow of the yard, his eyes affixed to the soldiers, had just driven his tractor mower into his living room. From the sounds of shattering glass inside and the wife screaming, he hadn’t slowed the lawn mower yet. Hopefully the smell of cut grass would play against the wife’s nose better than it did against Laney’s.

  The guy with the clippers, that had spent all morning making a perfect swan with his hedge, with his eyes on the commandos, ended up clipping off the head of the swan.

  Christ, people, they’re just soldiers standing at ease. Get a grip. Then Laney panned her head to take in the rest of the vehicles and the entourage. The strangely insect-looking earth boring vehicle pulling back its shielding and morphing into a rocket launcher. Several of the Special Ops guys were futzing with the controls. A couple more of the commandos were playing doctor on a bomb they’d dragged out of the back of a truck that looked like a world killer. The explosive was being held up by a robot with half-tracks for legs. The bomb was big and spherical and… the last time she saw anything like it she was watching a Johnny Quest cartoon with the neighbor’s pre-adolescents.

  ***

  One of the soldiers messing with the bomb in the robot’s hands patted his partner in the abdomen and gestured with an upward tilt of his head at the girl that had come out of the house. She was wearing shorn jean shorts, and a sleeveless white tee and flip-flops, in what he could only describe as “pinup casual.” Her straight dirty-blond hair caught the breeze the way the sun reflected off her diamond hard eyes—both elemental forces letting go of their hold on her only begrudgingly. Strong cheeks and eyebrows. Big smile and eyes.

  His partner homed in on the coordinates of the female set for him by his friend, his eyes drinking up the same sight like water getting lost in desert sand. “Dude, not when I’m handling a nextgen atomic.”

  “Yeah, point taken.”

  The two men returned to their tinkering.

  ***

  A school bus full of kids rolled by the Special Ops team with the bus driver and all the children staring out the window. The bus ended up in a neighbor’s living room. The strange decoupage of sounds blossoming forth from the crash landing were like several instruments playing off-key in an orchestra. The youths were still staring out the bus at the soldiers.

  ***

  Pelham looked up from his newspaper and his wing-back chair at the bus in his living room. “Honey,” he shouted upstairs, “the bus is here.”

  “Hurry, darling. You don’t want to miss it,” he heard his wife say from
upstairs.

  Their eight year old ran down the stairs, hesitated wide-eyed before the bus in her living room. The bus driver, his eyes glued to the rearview mirror, must have caught sight of her in his peripheral vision, as he opened the door for her. She entered the bus and took her seat.

  The wife came down seconds later, saw the spectacle of the bus parked in her living room and started ranting in her native tongue. There was no shortage of gesturing to go with the ranting.

  The husband flipped the page on his newspaper. “One of these days I’m really going to have to find out what language that is.”

  ***

  A private citizen, out for his flight lesson, crashed his helicopter just up the street from the Special Ops team, the teacher right by his side, evidently no more able to keep his eyes on what he was doing. The blades from the helicopter detached and whirled in the commandos’ direction. The soldiers didn’t even flinch. Not from the crashing sounds the helicopter made impacting the ground. Not from the men running screaming from the helicopter. Not from the helicopter blades coming at them. Or the ensuing explosion, which was close enough to give them a face peel.

  Laney shook the hand of the man at the center of all the chaos. “I gather you’re Leon.” He just smiled. “You understand this mission, right?”

  “Yes, ma'am. Babysit some rich bastard, make sure he doesn't stub his toe on his adventure of a lifetime.”

  “More or less. Only, this rich bastard has a direct line to the President. You'd do well to remember that.”

  “Sorry about all the noise and commotion, ma’am.”

  She looked around at the destroyed neighborhood. Up until this moment, she really hadn’t taken in the big picture, just the individual puzzle pieces. “You get this a lot?”

  “ ’Fraid so, ma’am. Your rich bastard of a husband will pay for the damages?”

  Laney gestured dismissively. “Oh, yeah, yeah. It’s the least he can do.”

  She strolled back toward the house, stopped herself, and turned. “Oh, and one more thing.” She reached into those shorn jean shorts of hers with no room to spare, and tossed him a bottle of prescription meds. “His anti-paranoia medication. I'll have some with me, but that you treat like the Dead Sea Scrolls, in case I lose mine.”

  He smirked, and stuffed the bottle in his shirt pocket. As she was walking away, knowing full well he was ogling her, she added, “And stop objectifying me and imagining sordid sex with me.”

  Leon’s grin showed teeth that time. She saw it in the reflection of the front window of their house. “Let's hope she has some meds for that too,” he said under his breath.

  “I heard that!” The last thing she saw in the reflection in the window was him gesture to someone in one of the Humvees.

  He barked one word, “DeWitt!”

  ***

  From their living room, Natty and Laney watched as Leon whispered in DeWitt’s ear and then signaled to some more of his men. The soldiers jumped out of their Humvees and swarmed the house like cockroaches.

  “F-me!” Natty exclaimed. “They're invading Normandy all over again.” He hid himself amongst the boxes and suitcases.

  Laney folded her arms defensively. “You know, I think those boys may be every bit as high strung as you.”

  They watched hang-jawed as DeWitt entered rifle up. He used hand signals to direct the soldiers to the various rooms. “Go!...Go!...Go!”

  The men fanned out, weapons pointed. All Natty and Laney heard from the men that had evaporated out of sight was: “Clear!” “Clear!” “Clear!”

  Laney stepped up to DeWitt. It was her guess he was Leon’s second in command. Just as hard bodied, but scaled down in size, and younger. He had the poise of a jack-in-the-box one crank away from exploding out of the box. She yanked at his shirt. “You know this is the burbs, right?”

  “The L.A. burbs, ma'am. Surprised you didn't call us in sooner.”

  She realized they were being had, and stifled a smile.

  DeWitt sighed. “Yeah, we like to mess with civilians. It's shameless, but we're away from the action now. What else we got to do?”

  As Natty looked like he was about to pass out from the stress, he said, “You can change my shorts.”

  THREE

  A FEW WEEKS EARLIER…

  Truman’s penthouse office, located in a downtown Los Angeles high-rise, was always a bit of an adjustment coming from the burbs. Occupying the entire floor, and at just over thirty thousand square feet, Natty supposed the shock value helped to get him into character. It didn’t lack for opulence. Private gym and Jacuzzi. Marble bathrooms with gold fixtures. Furniture and finishings by the best designers in the world, most of whose pieces the average person only ran into in museums. Just one example: The Badminton Chest, which auctioned for $36.7 million. The cabinet was so intricate with amethyst quartz and other stones that it took thirty experts six years to complete the thing. But all the air-fresheners and negative ionizers in the world couldn’t make the air any less dead in here.

  Natty was currently inside one of the rooms set aside for brainstorming. He walked around and through the very impressive hologram of a hotel in space hovering above the conference table. Several suits, financiers and other power people, seated about the polished lake of Carpathian elm and ebony, gave him a wide birth.

  “A hotel in space?” Natty chuckled; he couldn’t help himself. “You know you're out of your miniscule minds, right?” The suits squirmed in their seats but held their mouths. “I mean, where do I begin? The space debris alone'll pelt it from every conceivable angle day and night. All it takes is one particle of space dust penetrating that hull and your guests will be decorating the walls like Jackson Pollocks.”

  “You solved that problem yourself with an energy field.” That was Bransen. Broad in the shoulders but narrow in the thinking. Beady eyes to go with all his bean counting. “The engineers say they can have it ready in a month.”

  “My energy field?” Natty gestured wildly. “I don't even believe it'll work!”

  “If that's all, sir...” Klepsky said impatiently. He was the one with the head too big for his shoulders. Too bad it was filled with hot air as opposed to any actual brain matter.

  “If that's all?! Are you simple?”

  A Special Ops type, wearing all-black attire and armed, gently assisted Natty back a couple paces from Mr. Klepsky.

  Truman, in his sixties now, tall as an oak tree, and somehow even more imposing, was seated at the head of the table, and took a certain delight as always in watching Natty dress down his corporate execs. His unshakable aura of confidence alone made it clear who the CEO and real power person was in this room. Natty looked to him for help but saw he wasn’t going to get any.

  Natty shifted his attention back to Klepsky. “That's a closed environment, you moron!” He blared. “Microbes, bacteria, viruses, mutating in space into God knows what... Oh, and let's just shuttle them back to Earth where they can wipe out a couple billion people!”

  Truman took a deep breath, held it. Finally, he said, “We have any number of chemical agents to rely on.”

  “Chemical agents?” Natty hit him with the thunderstruck face. “Let me guess, you're the head moron, no mere second-rater, you.” Truman restrained himself, managed a smirk. “Would those be the chemicals that will likely be the first to erode the seals—exposing your tourists to the vacuum of space?” He took another step in Truman’s direction. “Would those be the chemicals compromising their immune systems, making them even more susceptible to the microbes you say you're defending them from?”

  Truman sighed, and rubbed his eyes. “What do you suggest?”

  “I suggest you review the last dozen patents or so I filed on the subject!” Natty took a second to remind himself that while he was twenty-five, he looked eighteen. Maybe that’s why they didn’t take him seriously. It didn’t help that he was part Native American, so growing a decent beard was nigh on impossible. It took him three days to produce stubble
on his chin.

  Travelli, the "my defense against a cruel harsh world is numbers" accountant, and not the only one in the room, stepped forward with some papers, which he showed Truman. Travelli sweated grease, not regular perspiration like normal people, and in subzero temperatures, such as the chilled boardroom whose thermometer setting had no doubt been adjusted down to help keep Natty from boiling over. Travelli’s pale pasty skin and forgettable face made it easy for him to blend into the woodwork, which, in Natty’s opinion, is what he should be doing now. Not making a spectacle of himself. “Honestly,” Travelli said, “we were eying his inventions, sir, but it'll mean another fifty million or so.”

  “Trust me,” Natty said, “that's chump change for keeping a lid on this debacle.”

  Truman handed the paperwork back dismissively. “You heard the man, Travelli. Chump change. Spend the damn money.” He made a big show of checking his watch. “Are we done here?”

  “I'm sorry,” Natty said. “Am I keeping you from your golf game? Because really, I can go. Of course, there's that small matter of what you're going to do to make oxygen when your solar panels fail, secondary to taking a hit from that debris I was talking about. Oh and fifty million other things I can already see going wrong! Trust me, bozo, you're going to have a lot more gray hairs before you get out of here.”

  Truman stifled a grin. He looked up at Travelli, “We taping this session?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “I'll play back the tape from home, I promise,” Truman said at Natty as he got up from his chair. Putting on his jacket, as he finished preparing to leave the room, he said, “Unless you're afraid the tape device might fail. Do we have a backup, Travelli?”