Freelance On The Galactic Tunnel Network by E. Foner (best beach reads of all time TXT) 📗

watching the gryphon, and they looked disappointed when she followed John off towards the front of the tent. Georgia noticed their eyes trailing the gorgeous beast and decided to do some mooching of her own.

“You guys wouldn’t have any scraps for the gryphon, would you?” she asked. “You know, like something that fell on the ground? From what I’ve seen, she’s not a picky eater.”

“There’s a half a roast chicken that’s about to slide off the tray,” the young grill chef insinuated with a wink and pointed at a display of barbequed chickens with his tongs. “It’s the one on the end.”

“Put it on top of these quality control rejects,” the woman working the deep fryer said, and passed Georgia a large box of fries.

“Two more just like that should cover you, me, and John if we share,” Larry said to Georgia. “Can you carry a large salad with that? I’ll pay the cashier.”

“Barb,” the grill chef called to the cashier. “A large salad and three chickens in bed, but one of them is a quality control reject for the gryphon.”

While Larry was paying at the mini-register with his programmable cred, John reached the event table at the front of the tent and asked if it was possible to patch into the sound system for an announcement about the fundraiser.

“That wouldn’t be fair to the other candidates,” the woman in charge said. “Couldn’t it wait until the regular speeches tonight?”

“There might be a completely different crowd in here by then,” John argued. “Besides, I thought there were no rules.”

“He’s got a point,” a younger trader at the table said, and after a further discussion, they decided to allow him to speak.

The woman in charge had to call for technical support, and by the time a kid arrived and pointed out the menu option on a tab, John was beginning to regret he hadn’t stopped to get something to wet his throat. As he began to mount the stage, somebody reached out and handed him a cup of water, making him feel like a marathon runner passing a refreshment station on the racecourse.

A winged blur knocked him off his feet just as he tilted back the cup, and from there, everything got progressively weirder as his vision blurred and went dark. John couldn’t feel his limbs, and he wondered for a moment if Semmi had finally let her appetite get the better of her and was gnawing off his legs. There was a strange roaring in his ears that seemed to go on forever, but then he made out Larry shouting something about a stasis pod. The last thing he remembered was a voice talking about somebody’s lips turning blue, and then, nothing.

Nineteen

“I quit,” Ellen declared, throwing down her cards. “One of you is cheating.”

“We’re playing for tongue depressors,” the giant beetle rubbed out on his speaking legs. “Don’t act the spoilsport.”

“If you’re going to make accusations, be specific,” Flower chipped in via the speaker grille of the maintenance bot she had sent to handle the cards for her.

“I didn’t want to say anything, but j’accuse,” Ellen proclaimed dramatically, pointing at the large pile of tongue depressors in front of the gryphon.

Semmi snorted and motioned with her beak for the Farling doctor to continue the deal.

“Where am I?” John groaned from the operating table.

“He’s awake,” Ellen cried, leaping up and artistically jarring the wheeled stainless steel medical-instruments table hard enough to scramble the piles of tongue depressors. “Are you all right, John? Can you see me?”

“Of course he’s all right,” M793qK rubbed out irritably. “He’s my patient.”

“What happened?” John asked.

“You were poisoned,” Ellen told him. “Luckily, there was a group of retirees from the independent living cooperative on Flower visiting Rendezvous and they were eating lunch when it happened. They offered the use of the stasis pod in their shuttle.”

“I remember Semmi knocking me down.”

“The gryphon saved your life by keeping you from more than wetting your lips. She’s hardly left your side since.”

“No accounting for taste,” the Farling doctor commented. Then he rubbed out something else that John and Ellen’s implants failed to translate, but Semmi got up and playfully nipped one of John’s toes right through the boot.

“Ouch!”

The Farling buzzed his speaking legs again, and Semmi gently tapped the toe section of John’s other boot with the point of her beak.

“Feel that?” M793qK demanded.

“Yes. And I can move everything too. Can I sit up?”

“I don’t know. Are you requesting a treat?”

“Play nice, doctor,” Flower remonstrated. “The poor man was dead a few hours ago.”

“I was dead?” John asked.

“Only in the biological sense—I make no theological assertions,” the Farling told him. “Normally I’d charge a thousand creds for detoxification and reanimation, but Captain Pyun was here earlier and told me that EarthCent Intelligence is footing the bill. I’m applying my thirty percent ‘friends and foes’ discount.”

“I remember a guy giving me a cup of water. Did they catch him?”

“Semmi caught him,” Ellen said. “I got a message from Georgia that Vergallian security was eventually able to stop the bleeding and they’ll move on to interrogation as soon as he’s healthy enough. The only thing she knows for certain is that the assassin was a human.”

“I could have told you that,” John said, pushing himself into a sitting position. “Nobody I recognized, though. What’s this?” he continued, pulling a folded piece of paper out of his breast pocket. “Twenty percent discount on hip-joint replacements?”

“One of the independent living cooperative members must have thought you might have a use for that,” Flower commented via the bot’s speaker. “Probably Dave. He’s always promoting the good doctor’s services.”

The giant beetle buzzed his speaking legs again, and Semmi pecked John just below the kneecap. His foot flew up and barely missed Ellen.

“That’s