Loonatics Undressed by Kyell Gold (a book to read .txt) 📗

paw and sighed. The silence forced him to follow Duck inside.

He activated his suit’s visibility adjustment compensator and saw a smoky room full of blank, unshaven faces staring at his partner. Of course, in the environment suits, they looked either silly or frightening. Tech was pretty sure that this crowd wasn’t frightened.

Duck turned his head slowly from side to side, hands on his hips, his scornful expression a sure precursor to some kind of remark that was going to get them in trouble. “What my companion here means to say,” Tech said quickly, “is that we want to buy everyone here a drink.”

The bartender held out his hand. After a dirty look at Tech, Duck walked over and handed him their expense chip. The bartender plugged it into his counter and handed it back. “That’s right nice,” he said. “Now get the hell out.”

“Next time,” Duck said, blinking in the sunlight, “let me stick to my plan.”

“Your plan wasn’t working either,” Tech said. “If you’d let me finish…”

“What, were you going to offer them all a blow job, too?”

Tech snapped his muzzle shut and started walking down the street, his footsteps clanking on the concrete. Duck followed him. “Or is it just Rev? Seriously. He’s not even the best-looking bird on the team!”

At that, Tech spun around. “What, are you jealous?”

Duck lifted his bill haughtily and put a palm to his chest. “Jealous? Ha! Think I want your stinky coyote slobber all over me? I have dozens, nay, hundreds of eager young ladies happy to attend to my every need.”

“Really. Funny how we never see them around the base.”

“I don’t bring my romantic liasons to work.”

“You spend an inordinate amount of time complaining about how bored you are,” Tech said. “One would think you could just open up your little black book and go get some entertainment.”

“The issue is not me, the issue is you and Rev and those disgusting things you do.”

Tech felt a flush at the back of his neck. “What we do is none of your business.”

“It is when you do it in the control room. We all walk on that floor!”

“What?” Tech stared at him.

“I mean, I don’t want to step in something…” Duck shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m even talking about this.”

“I can’t either,” Tech said. “Let’s just go to the next bar.”

“Walking?”

Tech turned and walked on down the street. “You can quack if you want,” he said.

Duck hurried to catch up with him, walking beside him in silence as they rounded a corner. Tech made a mental bet with himself how many steps it would take Duck to open his beak again. He was off by two. “Really, though. Rev?” Tech didn’t answer. “He’s so annoying. But I guess it would be over in about five seconds, right?”

“That’s hysterical,” Tech said. “You think that one up all by yourself?”

“I’m really just curious. What could the attraction possibly be?”

“I am not having this conversation with you.” Tech pulled out the alternate identity hologenerator and pulled up the Zebediah identity again. “Can’t you just go on blackmailing me and shut up about it?”

“Blackmail? I’m not blackmailing you. I’m just making sure you know what I need to remain happy. Because when I’m not happy, I complain about stuff. Like things I saw that I didn’t want to see.” Duck stuck his tongue partway out of his beak.

“Like every time you look in a mirror?”

“Har har. Did you think that one up yourself?”

“Here.” Tech thrust the hologenerator at him. “This will make you look like Zebediah. Unfortunately we have no voiceprint, but the program does an estimation based on his height, weight, throat thickness, and the way he dresses.”

“And why am I the one who gets to look like a shaved monkey with a glandular problem?” Duck didn’t take the device, just looked from it up to Tech.

“Because you can quack out of trouble. And,” Tech said, to get the argument over with, “you’re a better actor than I am.”

“While that is true, it doesn’t mean I have to do all the work.”

“Could you maybe at least do some of it?”

Duck put his hands on his hips again. “I did try, back in that other bar.”

Tech shook the hologenerator. “You call that trying?”

“No, I call you trying.” Duck folded his arms. “You remember what I said about making sure I’m happy?”

“For the love of…” Tech said, and then told himself, just relax, breathe. It’s okay, you’ll do a better job anyway. “All right, fine.”

He ignored Duck’s smug look and flicked on the hologenerator. A moment later he got at least some measure of satisfaction from Duck’s startled yelp and jump backwards. “Great Goose!”

“I gather it works?” Tech was curious to hear that his voice was higher-pitched than he would have thought.

“Down to the ugly hunting jacket and the sloping forehead,” Duck said. “So what now?”

“Now I go to the next bar and see if anyone spills anything.”

“And what do I do?”

“You stay out of the way.”

The first two places Tech visited as Zebediah, a bar and a library, yielded no information, but at least nobody threatened to throw anything at him. The locals definitely recognized him, though. At both places, he saw someone press an alarm or pick up a phone, and he got out of there soon after. They moved on to the third place, yet another bar, where Tech told Duck to keep an eye out for police and intercept them if they tried to go inside. He looked at the dancing beer holos in the windows and thought he was getting a pretty good, if depressing, picture of Zebediah’s habits.

“Evening,” he said, casually raising a hand and sitting down at the bar.

The bartender, a sallow woman with greasy black hair, froze in the middle of wiping the bar. She stared so long that Tech thought at first he’d forgotten to turn on the hologenerator again, but then she reached under the bar, pulled out a bottle, and set it in front of