Armistice Walker and the Golden Orb (Nanowrimo)

[pshrynk]

How it all began

Samuel Langhorne “Armistice” Walker swung lazily under the wing of his float plane on a hammock, the gentle tropical breezes of South Florida cooling him as much as the rum punch he occasionally sipped. His dog, Vivaldi was curled up on his stomach, muttering in his sleep. Above him the sounds of clanking and curses of Patrick Lamp, his copilot and mechanic, hung in the air. Life was good for them. They had the air mail contract for Cuba, Honduras, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica, plus the occasional small freight pick up. Just enough to keep ends together and not enough to count as real work.

“You about finished up there, Paddy?”

A pale, blue eyed face, topped with sparse blonde hair appeared over the wing of the plane. “I’m not Irish, so quit calling me ‘Paddy.’ What’s up with that? You’ve known me since we were kids and never once have I been called ‘Paddy.’ Now, for the past week, you’ve been in Irish mode.”

“Well, it annoys you, for one. You owe me ten bucks from the poker game last week, for two. And there were a bunch of Irishmen in the bar up Miami way a while back, and I just liked the sound of it.”

“Well, I like the sound of a little bit of help up here so we can make the Havana run and get paid!”

Vivaldi looked up at them and said, “I like the sound of it being quiet. I’m trying to sleep here!”

“Shh!” said the humans.

The dog grumbled and curled up tighter. He grumbled more a few minutes later when Armistice got out of the hammock. “I was just getting comfortable, there!”

"Then don't sleep on my stomach all the time. That's sort of weird, anyway."

"It's a genetic thing. Dogs gotta pile on one another to sleep soundly."

"Well, it's still weird. Let's go over to the trolley and pick up the mail."

Vivaldi had become a talking dog after Armistice's Knack had reappeared last year. Knacks are an inborn part of all humans and as it turns out the occasional dog. They are, obviously, magical. What few people understand is that they are in fact, everything about magic. Even those who practice what they pompously refer to as High Magick are dealing with Knacks.

Knacks are the little things that people can do. Everyone has a knack and needs to discover it in order to use it. Knacks can range from something as inconsequential as making paper clips line themselves up on their own in the drawer and as powerful as being able to directly manipulate the flow of the reality stream as it flows about the user.

The Knack seems to be genetic in nature. Families with powerful magicians tend to begat powerfully magical offspring. Families with Knacks that run to making cheeses taste slightly more cheesy tend to shoot off children who can make cows turn right on command.

Armistice’s Knack was that he could make an animal talk. Just one at a time. His first and, up to Vivaldi, only animal that he had made talk was a steer at his parent's farm back in Riverside, Iowa as a young teenager. Of course, the whole thing about being a steer on a farm was that you eventually got eaten. Armistice had been so devastated that he hadn't used his Knack for almost twenty years.

Then had come that night when a confluence of rum, a small grey dog, and an ill advised bet came together to inflict Vivaldi on the unsuspecting world. Not that Armistice regretted having Vivaldi and being able to talk with him, but he worried about the life span of dogs. Viv seemed to be about three years old and healthy. But dogs his size only lived to be fifteen to twenty years old. Armistice did not want to go through that again. Ever.

Armistice walked down to the railhead of the trolley stop to check on the mail drop. There was a leather bag hanging on the hook with an airmail letter to somewhere in Havana, Cuba. Not much of a haul, thought Armistice. Maybe they’d just wait for a few more days and see if more came in. The letter was marked “urgent.” He put it in the bag and threw it over his shoulder, whistling as he went back to the docking area for their plane.

He and Patrick had landed the contract the previous year after minimal competition. Some of the postal sites were tricky to get to for normal aircraft and they had the only float plane in the competition.

Arriving back at the Goose, Patrick was just locking down the hatches on the engines.

"She ready for a flight?" asked Armistice.

"All spiffed up. The carburetors were giving me some problems but I wrestled them to the ground."

"Did you fix the Autopilot?"

A grey cloud gathered over the previously sunny disposition of the mechanic. "You know I don't have a Knack with electric stuff," he moped.

"Just checking. Do you have that auto switch on thingy solved at least?"

"I disconnected all the wires leading to what I think is the box it lives in. I can't guarantee that all the systems will work right, but I've got some electrician tape in my seat bag, just in case."

"I guess that will have to do," said Armistice.

"I don't know why you guys don't just call in a priest, like I suggested a month ago," said Vivaldi.

"Shh!" said the humans.

Noble Knacks are exceedingly rare. At any one time, there are probably no more than thirty people who can, with a glance, cause you to grow fur and start hunting birds for your lunch. This is followed by those with Large Knacks that can be described as Merely Miraculous and there are probably about ten thousand of those in the world. Then there are the Useful Knacks, those who can, like Patrick, make anything mechanical work (as long as you ignore the electric parts of it) or make animals talk, even of one at a time. As a rule, most Knacks are generally worthless and are trotted out only as conversation starters at parties, rather than entering into everyday life.

Then, there are those who never discover their Knacks. How could one be expected to discover that one is adept at causing an airplane to plummet to Earth on command, when one is a peasant in England in 1307? Some Knacks are obsolete. One gentleman in France discovered quite by accident that he could heal all the wounds and diseases of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Employees of the British Museum of Natural History still speak darkly of "That Day."

* * *

The Goose glided out over the Atlantic, picking up enough speed to get airborne. Inside the cockpit, the pilots and their dog were discussing their future.

"The number of letters has dropped off this month," said Patrick, "Maybe we should be looking for another contract or some freight runs."

"And give up the government gravy train?" said Armistice, "There's a Depression going on! If we miss too many runs, the Post Office will cancel the contract and let's face it, we need to have the free fuel to get around. Aviation fuel has gone up to a nickel a gallon! You want to fill the tanks on your own?"

"Missing the deliveries more as opposed to the number of deliveries we miss now?" asked Vivaldi.

"It's not that many," said Armistice, "Besides, everyone knows that air delivery is notoriously unreliable."

They flew on in silence for a few minutes.

"I suppose we should radio Havana to let them know we're coming," said Patrick.

"Roger that." Armistice reached forward to switch on the radio.

New Knacks get discovered daily. Take for example, the Knack of Howard Hughes. He was blissfully unaware of his Knack of causing electronics to come to life until the Autopilot was created for his new prototype float plane, the Goose. It was supposed to ease the pressures of flying long distances for pilots.

What actually happened was that the Autopilot instantly became suicidally depressed due to having all the stresses of long distance flying being dropped on its shoulders, so to speak. Unfortunately, he discovered this while on a long distance test flight from New York to Havana. Only by a lot of trickery and fast action on his part did he survive the flight. His copilot bailed out with the only prototype parachute over Georgia.

After that, he very conscientiously avoided creating new electronic gear without being quite specific about the functional design. In fact, soon thereafter, Miss Adolina Spitter gained a lifelong guaranteed employment by having the Knack of being able to describe in meticulous detail the things that could potentially happen, having been given a description of a state of beginning.

"I don't suppose anyone cares that I never get to really express myself, any more," said a gloomy voice from the speakers.

"Oh, crap! I thought you said that you disconnected that thing!"

"I thought I did!" Patrick reached under the console and started to pull wires out of the instruments.

"This is so, depressing!" said the Autopilot, "I was designed to remove the everyday stresses and worries of flying and I would say that I do a pretty good job of it. I mean really, I'm the only one depressed, here!"

Armistice was busily switching on and off a toggle on the control panel labeled "Autopilot" which had a small piece of cardboard taped above it that read, "Never, EVER, turn this thing on!"

Vivaldi yelped and ran back to the cargo area of the plane, "There's gotta be a parachute in here somewhere!"

The Goose sharply nose dived toward the ocean, eight thousand feet below.

"Damn! Damn! Damn!" said Patrick.

"You know that my favored way of ending all this misery is to fly into a mountain, don't you?"

"Yeah, well that's why we didn't take the Georgia freight contract! Too many cliffs!" screamed Armistice, pulling back with all his strength on the yoke.

Sparks flew out from under the console, where Patrick had his stuck. "Fark! Fark! Fark!" Patrick had had a severe Lutheran upbringing and still felt in his heart that swearing was going to land him straight in, well, to put it as mildly as possible, Heck.

Suddenly, the plane leveled off. The instruments read six hundred feet.

"What did you do?" yelled Armistice, still running on adrenaline.

"Disconnected the yokes from the control arms."

"That was a dirty trick! I almost made it," said the peeved voice of the Autopilot.

"Don't we need those to fly the plane?"

"We needed the plane more than the controls at that moment."

"True enough."

"Is it over?" asked Vivaldi?

"It will never be over. The world is filled with nothing but despair," said the Autopilot.

Patrick reached down and pulled a wire from the instruments. The light over the Autopilot went out. "Now, let's see if I can get the controls hooked back up," he said.
An hour later, the Goose came in for a landing in Havana Harbor. She floated up to the docks and a man there tied her off. Vivaldi jumped out and laid on the ground, muttering "Thank you, God!" over and over.

Armistice grabbed the mail bag and jumped to the dock. "I'll just run this over to the Post Office and see if we have any return mail. See if you can do something with that... contraption."

"I have a Knack with mechanical things..."

"Yeah, I know! But not with electric things! I'll be right back!"

He and Vivaldi walked up the avenue toward the small US Post Office building that was their base of operations in Cuba.

"This is a really nice little country," said Armistice, "I wouldn't mind living here. They've got some great casinos and hotels. Maybe some of the rich tourists would like to have a sightseeing tour in an airplane between losing money to the Mob. We could call it 'Flight Seeing Tours'."

"Yeah, we could cater to the terminally ill thrill seekers who want one last flaming ball of glory as they go out," said Vivaldi.

"We'll get that thing straightened out, eventually. Maybe we could look up Mr. Hughes and get him to fix it."

"He lost the Goose to you in a rigged poker game. Do you really think that he would give away a prototype aircraft if he could have fixed it?"

"Well you can't blame Mr. Hughes. How was he supposed to know that his Knack would manifest itself at that stage in his life? I mean, electric devices are new thing. Having a Knack that brings them to life wouldn't have been something that anyone would have known about. Besides, he did warn us."

"If you call laughing hysterically and screaming, 'Free at last!' a warning."

They arrived at the door of the Post Office. Walking in, Mr. Gonzales was sitting behind the counter, reading a book. After standing politely in front of the counter for a few minutes, Armistice was finally noticed. He had learned long ago not to interrupt Mr. Gonzales in the middle of a chapter.

"Walker?" Gonzales asked.

"Hello, Mr. Gonzales! Mail from Miami."

"Are you still walking with that Spawn of Satan?" Mr. Gonzales had definite Views on the propriety of dogs talking.

"Hey! My mother was a well known bitch in the streets of Havana and my father was probably the leader of one of the packs of feral dogs that run the neighborhoods. No red colored guys with horns, tail and pitchfork were involved."

"I will not lower myself to converse with a demon!"

"Maybe I'm an Angel," said Vivaldi, all evidence to the contrary.

"No, you are not!"

"Gotcha!"

"Damn!"

"Well, then. Now that we have that straightened out. Here's the mail."

Mr. Gonzales picked up the leather bag and dumped the sole occupant out on the desk. Looking at it, he opened it up and read the contents. Armistice hadn't noticed that it was addressed to "Postmaster, USPO, Havana, Cuba." That worthy looked at the paper and a frown developed on his face.

"Bad news, Mr. Gonzales?"

"Yes and no." Looking up at Armistice he said, "You're fired."

"What? What was the good news?"

"That was the good news. The bad news is, so am I. Apparently there is not enough mail going back and forth between Cuba and The US to justify an Airmail run."


"What about the Jamaica and Puerto Rico runs?" Armistice could feel his world sliding out from underneath him.

"Those are even worse."

"You should have written more letters," said Vivaldi, ever the one to see opportunities.

"Well, crap! I guess I gotta find a new contract, then. I'll just go fuel up and get back to Miami, then."

"The fuel depot is closed, as well," said Mr. Gonzales, proffering the letter.


Armistice grabbed the letter and read down the list of instructions. Termination of contractor (him), closing of post office (Gonzales), cessation of fueling privileges from USN depot Havana (Crap!).

"What do we do, now?" he asked

"Me, I'm going to go and see if my brother needs any help in his cigar factory. The way you Americans smoke them up, there's an endless future in Cuban Cigars. You, I could care less. Go back to the Hell that spewed you forth!"

"Iowa? Iowa is a good place to be from, not in!"

* * *

"What I don' unnerstan... What I don' unner... Just whynaheck did they wait until we were in Hava... Havanana... Cuba? Why couldn’t they have sacked us in Miami... Where we... you know... live?" Patrick was on his sixth beer. They had retreated to Sam's Authentic Cuban Bar to drown their sorrows. Sam, the red haired proprietor, set up another round for the boys.

"Bastards! That's why. They are complete and utter bastards." Armistice was on his sixth rum and juice. He was able to hold his booze better than Patrick.

"T'be fair, our contrac' was with Gonzales. He'sa one that would fire us. If they were going to fire us. Which they did. Did I ask why they waited till we were in Havananana?"

Armistice signaled Sam to not give Patrick any more beer. Sam nodded knowingly.

"We have to get a new contract. Without the Naval Depot fuel, we are screwed. I wonder if the Cuban Government needs an Airmail Service..."

"Gotta stop thinkin' Airmail. Gotta star' thinkin' outside the... thingy. Brown made of paper, square-ish."

"Grocery bag?"

"Right! Gotta think outsi' the grocery bag! That doesn' sound right..."

In the back corner, two sailors who had popped in for a quiet drink discovered that they had been insulting each other and each other's wives. They stood up and started yelling at one another and blows soon followed. No one but Armistice noticed Vivaldi jumping up on the table and lapping up their beers while they were fighting.

"Maybe there's a freight company that needs fast delivery."

"Fas' delivry? We don't do fas'! We do as soon as we can get the dang Autopilot to quit tryin' to kill us delivry. S'not fas' atall."

"You really need to learn how to swear, Patrick."

"Don' wanna go to Heck. Although flying the Goose comes pretty darn close!"

The fight was starting to spread and Sam was quickly removing the breakables from the bar. He was one of those pragmatic barmen who knew that if you had a bar near naval docks you would have sailors and, more to the point drunk Marines sooner or later. The chairs were all bought second hand, as were the tables. A roll-down screen covered the bottles behind the bar. Stout wooden beams protected the front windows. A stout cudgel protected Sam.

A sailor flew by Armistice just as he picked up his drink. Patrick was not so lucky. The sailor crashed into him and knocked him down, spilling his beer.

"Hey! I paid goo' money fer tha'! An' I don' have that mush left!" He threw a wild roundhouse which connected with the Marine standing behind him.

"Aw, crap!" said Armistice. Throwing down his drink, he stepped over to the Marine who was sizing Patrick up for the kill and decked him with one punch.

"I coulda handled him!" yelled Patrick.

"I needed the practice," Armistice shouted back as he stepped into the fight that had suddenly come his way. Armistice was a good brawler, having no morale compunction against kicking a man in the fork when he wasn't looking. He saw fighting as being about winning, rather than about competing. Vivaldi was at yet another table, drinking a concoction out of a tumbler as a previously innocent bystander dropped on top of him, breaking the table and throwing him to the ground. Armistice stopped worrying about his dog and started dodging the fists that were flying at him from three directions.

Then it happened. He glanced at the door of the bar and saw a vision out of dreams. And these were the good dreams with lots of wonderful things happening, and not the ones with the jury of talking cows, at all. She was tall. Curvy. Blonde. Green eyes. And smiling. Oh, that smile! Her entire face lit up with the smile. And Armistice’s heart with it.

A marine landed a punch as he was distracted by the vision of the beauty and he went down like a brick.

[pshrynk]

A heroine arrives

Constance Munsen checked her bags as the plane came in for a landing at Havana Airport. She had her code book, her passport, her Addresses (in code), and oh, yes, her revolver. She was ready for her first big assignment. After three years stuck in the secretarial pool at Army OSI, she had finally talked the Bosses into letting her get some field experience.

She supposed that there were women out there who were not working as spies, but she couldn't think of why. She had graduated from the University of Wisconsin five years ago with a degree in Political Science. Her father, the chemistry professor, had told her that there were only three things that a woman with a political science degree could do: starve to death, be a riverboat gambler, or be a spy. He politely did not mention alternate four. After trying her hand at the first two, she was now going to give number three a whirl.

She'd been pretty good at gambling, and very good at starving. She knew in her bones that she'd do well in the spy business. She had received top marks at the Academy. Her shooting skills were better than any other candidate. She could fight her way through almost any situation. (This coming from years of riverboat gambling, rather than anything they taught her as the Academy.) So, of course, she'd been assigned a typewriter upon graduation.

She had managed to get someone to pay attention to her applications at last, and here she was. All she had to do was connect with this professor in Havana, and see to it that the OSI knew what he discovered before even he had. She looked through the portfolio. It looked like a fairly easy assignment, so she had to pull it off with style in order to move up the ladder.

The plane touched down and taxied to the gate. Grabbing her bags, she went through the terminal and hailed a cab. On the drive to the Embassy, she reviewed her contact's info. A very stable field agent who had been in the service since before the Great War. Make contact and get on with the assignment.

The cab pulled up to the front of the US Embassy and she stepped out. Glancing at her instructions, she went inside. At the reception desk, she asked for Colonel Edwards.

"Oh, dear, miss," said the receptionist.

"What do you mean, 'Oh dear'? What is wrong?"

"Well, it's just that Colonel Edwards died two months ago."

"Died?"

"Well, he was quite old."

"But how does it happen that a station agent dies and the home office doesn't know about it?"

"Well, we did send the report in..."

"Does he have a replacement?" asked Constance, deciding to just get on with it.

"Sort of..."

That boded ill to Constance. No field agent ever wanted to get a "sort of” type of answer.

"His name is Major Biggles. He's in Room 425. Oh, dear!"

Constance walked away with a feeling of dread. A "sort of" and an "Oh, dear!" in the space of one minute. She took the stairs up to the fourth floor and looked for number 425. The glass on the door was painted with "R. Edwards, Colonel, Army (ret). Underneath that someone with a scrabbled handwriting had written on a piece of paper taped to the window, "Geoffrey Biggles, Major, Army, (Active duty). She knocked.

And then knocked again. The receptionist had indicated that he was in, so she could not understand why no one answered. She slowly opened the door and peered in. A man was lying on the floor, trussed up like a Christmas goose.

"Oh, my! What happened? Did someone breach the security? Where did they go?" The windows were all intact. That meant the assailant was either in the room or had slipped out the door. Constance pulled out her revolver and covered the closet, the only hiding place in the room. "Where is he?"

"Where is whom?" asked the man on the floor in a clipped British accent.

"The man who did this to you!"

"Ah. That would be me, then."

"Beg pardon?"

"I was just practicing my knot work and sort of got myself, well tied up. Er."

"Could you tell me where I can find Major Biggles, then?" she asked as she untied the poor man on the floor.

"Well, that would be me, old girl! Major Geoffrey Biggles, at your very humble service. And whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?"

The "Oh, dear" was starting to make a horrid sense. Constance shook herself and tried to get back into professional mode.

"Ah, yes. Um... Do we have any truffles in the cupboard?"

Biggles gave her a blank look. "I don't believe that we do."

"No, really, do we have any truffles in the cupboard?" Constance tried to look very earnest as she gave the sign. The counter sign was supposed to be, "If it rains on Tuesday, I shall buy a parrot." This was not starting off well.

"Well, if you would like, I shall just go and have a look." Biggles was trying to return the earnest look. He was a bit too rotund to make it work.

Constance tried the alternate sign, "When do the trucks arrive from Miami?" The countersign was supposed to be, "It is a holiday in Lodz."

Instead she got a blank look and, "I'm not really in charge of transportation, young lady. You need to check in with Scott on the ground floor."

Constance was beginning to get annoyed. "Look, are you the Station Agent for the Army OSI, or not?"

"Oh, yes, indeed! Just took up residence in the old coop, so to speak. Fitting right in, if I may say so myself."

"You might have to since you'd be the only one to think so," muttered Constance under her breath. Out loud, she said, "Don't you have the sign and countersigns memorized for field agents checking in?"

"Pardon?" Biggles looked about as puzzled as a preacher's wife who had stumbled into Mrs. Crenshaw's boarding house for willing girls.

"Your job is to check in and support field agents! How could you not know that?"

Biggles glanced nervously at a foot thick pile of papers in the In Box. "I was meaning to get to that..."

Rolling her eye, Constance reached out to find the appropriate sealed envelope. This was not starting well.

* * *

They were about half way through the pile. Constance reckoned that the years in the secretarial pool were finally paying off. At least she knew how to plow through red tape with the best of them.

"Is this what we are looking for?"

"No," she said, "That's the roster update report that should have been filed... two weeks ago. What have you been doing since getting here?"

"Reconnoitering. Making local contacts. Finding the location of the other embassies. You know, the stuff that intelligence is made of, old bean."

"So, the local field agents haven't been doing that?"

"I have local field agents?"

Constance's eyes were getting fatigued from the workout. "This document here says that you have five active agents and two sleepers in country." Please don't let him figure out that I'm not supposed to see this stuff, she thought.

"Fascinating! I suppose I should call them all in to give a little pep talk, then! My men in my unit were all very pleased whenever I did that! They even had a nickname for me, the 'Right Wanker,' they called me. It means a precise and exemplary leader. My batsman told me that."

"Did he?" Constance briefly went over the idea of calling in five people who were supposed to be completely unaware of one another for a "pep talk." Fortunately they would all be armed, so maybe someone would get a lucky shot in on the Station Agent.

"You had a unit?"

"Quite! Four Hundredth Logistical Support Regiment, Company F. The Fighting Foxtrots, we called ourselves. Well, mostly I called us that. Er. The lads called themselves the 4F's"

"I just imagine they did."

Constance picked up an envelope marked "Top Secret, Eyes Only" addressed to one Major G. Biggles. She handed it over and said, "Why don't you read this and then we'll start over?"

She watched as Biggles read through the letter, lips moving all the while. Finally his eyebrows shot up and he said, "Oh! I see! Shall we proceed, then?"

"Do we have any truffles in the cupboard?"

"I shall have to have a look, then."

Constance briefly considered pulling out her revolver, again.

* * *

Biggles stared in horror at the woman standing at his door. Blonde, green eyed, achingly beautiful. Everything that was distilled down into his bones as being "Unattainable." And she was working for him. Vaguely, he knew that other men might take advantage of this situation, but Geoffrey Biggles was not other men. He wasn't even that sure he was this man. Beautiful women made him nervous. It came from being the son of a wealthy, sophisticated and, yes beautiful socialite from Boston. And also of being Biggles, the perpetually inadequate son of same.

"Well, then!" he said. He had found in his career that if you puffed long enough, most situations just went away on their own. "I certainly can see that you are a busy woman, so I shan't detain you!"

He looked at the door hopefully.

"Right. I am here to check in and get your stamp on my orders." she said, slowly, pronouncing every word carefully.

"Jolly good! I'm sure I have that stamp in here somewhere..."

"Major, 'getting your stamp' means that you sign off on them and tell me that the current situation continues to match what was decided in Washington when I left." Biggles really wished that she would quit rolling her eyes so much.

"Good work, that agent! Got it in one." Biggles had read somewhere that getting your opponent to think that you had just been testing them was a way of getting back into the conversation on an equal footing. The woman's eye rolling was starting to make him twitch.

"Constance Munsen. Field Agent Level Three. Reporting as ordered. Now you say, welcome, Field Agent Munsen."

Biggles stared at her until she nodded encouragingly at him. "Right! Welcome Field Agent Munsen!"

"This is the packet with my orders, sir. If you would just review them and brief me on the ground situation? Now you say, Of course. Then you take the packet and pretend to read it. After that, you pull out that Int Rep over there, not the one on the top of the sagging pile that I pointed out to you, oh here, this one! Then you pretend to read that and tell me Jolly good, or some such thing."

Biggles fumbled with the envelope thrust into his hands, opened it up and stared at it blankly for a moment and said, "Jolly good!"

"Are there any changes in my orders, sir? Now you say that my primary contact has arrived in Havana and frequents Sam's Authentic Cuban Bar."

"That's a lovely place! I had dinner there my first..." Biggles trailed off as the look of sudden death flashed in Constance's eyes. "Er. Your primary contact has arrived in Havana and frequents Sam's Authentic Cuban Bar. Er."

"Good. I'll go on over there and work on picking him up. Now you say, Carry on, Field Agent and then go back to whatever it was that you were doing to avoid actual work before I came in... Carry on..."

"Carry on..."

"Field Agent..."

"Field Agent."

"Thank you sir. I will send reports as I get a chance."

The horrible woman stepped forward until she was scant inches from Biggles' face. "My reports will have a large red stripe at the end of the envelope. You will open them and then follow the instructions to the letter. Am. I. Clear?"

Nervously, Biggles nodded yes. She turned and walked out. He slumped into his desk chair and pulled out his emergency cognac bottle from its drawer.

"Good Lord! Mother has reincarnated!"

* * *

As she paid the cabby who had brought her to Sam's Authentic Cuban Bar, Constance had two thought in her head. First was how could a bar with the name of "Sam's" be an authentic Cuban bar? Overriding that thought was the one that involved boiling acid and her Station Agent. Straightening up, she saw a Marine fly through the doorway, landing face down in the street. Ah, one of those types of bars.

A sailor was reeling against the door when she walked in. Shoving him to one side, she quickly looked around for a man wearing a white suit and Panama hat. That was the trademark dress of Professor Augustus Keaneer Slopeton, PhD, her quarry. Idly, she wondered why it was that archeologists always wore white suits. Really, she thought, their job consists entirely of digging. She blocked a swung fist and dug her knuckles into the sailor's solar plexus.

She felt an odd tingling in the back of her head. Her sister had told her about this when her Knack had shown itself to be the ability to make budgerigars speak Italian. A tingly, mellow sort of feeling, she had described it. Constance had never had her Knack show up. Some people never did. This could not possibly be a Knack, anyway. It was tingly in a mauve sort of way. She gasped, looking around. No budgerigars, thank God. Across the room a man wearing a floppy flight cap was staring at her in an odd way. A Marine walloped him hard and he went down. The tingling stopped.

Wincing, she avoided the flying bodies of two combatants grappling their way to the front door. Getting there, they broke free and rushed out the door. Huh, some people would do anything to avoid paying their tab. She spied a table that was still upright and navigated there. She was going to just sit out the rest of this fight and then she would make her contact. A small grey dog ran across the room and started drinking beer that was on an abandoned table.

She supposed that it was probably too much to ask for a waiter to bring her a Cosmopolitan at this stage. Once, she had thought her knack to be the ability to always have the makings of a Cosmopolitan available wherever she went. But it had turned out just to be dogged perseverance. If you expected there to be cranberry juice, vodka, lemon peels, and triple sec available, eventually the bartender would give in and make it. It may have had something to do with standing and staring at the bartender until they started to sweat, also.

She sat quietly at her table and awaited a break in the action. Looking over at the door, she noticed a man walking in. He looked familiar. Dark suit, black shirt and clerical collar. Almost white blonde hair in a severely short cut. Round wire rimmed spectacles. He was one of the faces she had run across in the avalanche of papers in Biggles' office. She couldn't quite place him...

The man was struck by a fighter and fell down on top of the small grey dog as the table collapsed.

[pshrynk]

As I re-write, I'm going to post the first two chapters so that if anyone is interested, they can see the progress...

[pshrynk]

My the crickets are noisy tonight...

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by pshrynk

My the crickets are noisy tonight...

The season's only just about to start down this way. Personally, I don't watch it...not the tests, the one-dayers, nor even twenty20. I prefer watching a few of the motorsports, and downhill and GS skiing.

[GeoffC]

oh flip !
this is too good
to be true
it is a true
life
version ?

more
more
more
......
how many chapters ?
35 ?
350 !?


the crickets be quiet once more......

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by pshrynk

As I re-write, I'm going to post the first two chapters so that if anyone is interested, they can see the progress...

yay !! thank you for sharing this ! it's really interesting to see things taking shape, and see the differences between the first and second version.

Originally Posted by montsnmags

The season's only just about to start down this way. Personally, I don't watch it...not the tests, the one-dayers, nor even twenty20. I prefer watching a few of the motorsports, and downhill and GS skiing.

i'll skip it all, personally.

[dreams]

Constance briefly considered pulling out her revolver, again.

"Good Lord! Mother has reincarnated!"

You know, I really like this Constance!

I love the characters and the story. I can't wait until you have it ready for us to read the whole thing.

The only part that took me out of the flow of the story, was the longer involved explanation of Knacks. While reading, I had pretty much figured out what it was from your story. Maybe, shorten the background of Knacks?

"Well, it's still weird. Let's go over to the trolley and pick up the mail."

Vivaldi had become a talking dog after Armistice's Knack had reappeared last year. Knacks are an inborn part of all humans and as it turns out the occasional dog. They are, obviously, magical. What few people understand is that they are in fact, everything about magic. Even those who practice what they pompously refer to as High Magick are dealing with Knacks.

Knacks are the little things that people can do. Everyone has a knack and needs to discover it in order to use it. Knacks can range from something as inconsequential as making paper clips line themselves up on their own in the drawer and as powerful as being able to directly manipulate the flow of the reality stream as it flows about the user.

The Knack seems to be genetic in nature. Families with powerful magicians tend to begat powerfully magical offspring. Families with Knacks that run to making cheeses taste slightly more cheesy tend to shoot off children who can make cows turn right on command.

Armistice’s Knack was that he could make an animal talk. Just one at a time. His first and, up to Vivaldi, only animal that he had made talk was a steer at his parent's farm back in Riverside, Iowa as a young teenager. Of course, the whole thing about being a steer on a farm was that you eventually got eaten. Armistice had been so devastated that he hadn't used his Knack for almost twenty years.

Then had come that night when a confluence of rum, a small grey dog, and an ill advised bet came together to inflict Vivaldi on the unsuspecting world.

pshrynk, I just know that this is going to be a very fun read.

I already found myself cracking up over some of the character lines and the pictures in my mind that your words created. Eagerly, awaiting your finished book..

[Filark]

Sorry for the crickets, p. Was so busy splattering words on computer screen myself I didn't acknowledge what I consider to be a very important thread, development, story arc, forward motion on your part -- eek! Sorry for the word splatter: Is it better than crickets??

Just under 5,000 words to go and I will be able to read for fun (and your writing IS fun!) again!

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by pshrynk

"....." screamed Armistice, pulling back with all his strength on the yoke.

Sparks flew out from under the console, where Patrick had his stuck. "Fark! Fark! Fark!" .....

Love the story -- and it's great to see how it changes as it evolves! I like Constance. She'll whip Biggles into shape .... or Else!

In the bit above --- is there a word missing? Or is this an elision and Patrick has his "yoke" stuck? I'm not used to seeing elisions cross a paragraph boundary, but who knows.....

[Greg Anos]

Sad to hear about Pappy's demise. Family legend has it that it occurred late in the evening on 3 for a Gold Double Eagle night at Havana's Hotcha Gotcha....

[pshrynk]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

Love the story -- and it's great to see how it changes as it evolves! I like Constance. She'll whip Biggles into shape .... or Else!

In the bit above --- is there a word missing? Or is this an elision and Patrick has his "yoke" stuck? I'm not used to seeing elisions cross a paragraph boundary, but who knows.....

Well, I guess I did forget my head, there...