Too Small For Tall Page 4

  “Did what?” I ask. He’s brought a six-pack with him and tosses me one, and I catch it without a problem. Hey, I may not always be graceful but I never drop my beer, not unless I’m standing on or near something really expensive and easily stained. Or my date’s wearing white.

  “Hired a woman.” He drops onto the couch, which tries protesting until he slams one hand down on it, and it shuts up and goes still. And sulks. But quietly. “She starts tomorrow.”

  “Huh. Interesting. You okay?” He doesn’t look okay, but he doesn’t look completely pissed off or anxious, either.

  “Yeah, I’m all right.” He pops open his beer and I do the same with mine, then take a long swig. It’s regular old-fashioned Earth beer, none of the weird stuff we usually drink these days, and it’s kind of nice to guzzle something that doesn’t turn my skin transparent or make flames shoot from my eyes or let me hear colors (green is incredibly raunchy, it turns out. Who knew?) or make me irresistible to dandelions (that played havoc with my hay fever, let me tell you!) or any of those other things. Kind of nice, but kind of dull, too.

  “Have you met her yet?” Tall shakes his head. “Huh. Have you even seen her?” Another head shake. “So, what, they’re keeping her under wraps so nobody’ll panic?”

  “Something like that,” he agrees. “I know her name—Violet Melody Jones—and that she’s twenty-nine, she used to be CIA, and she’s borderline diabetic. That’s about it."

  “That's it?” I laugh, then take another sip of beer—trust me, it’s better than doing it the other way around. “You already know her name—her full name—her age, her last job, and her medical condition. That’s not enough? Though, yeah, what about her blood type?”

  “AB negative,” he answers immediately, then flushes and looks away. I don't think I’ve ever seen Tall embarrassed before. Wow.

  “Okay, so maybe I peeked at her medical record,” he admits after a second. “So what? I like to keep informed.”

  “That’s informed, all right,” I tell him. “Go to the head of the stalker class!” Tall actually doesn’t have a comeback for that, and we sit and drink our beers quietly for a bit. Then he spots something off to the side of my computer, which also makes a great freezer.

  “Hey, what’ve you got there? Are those . . . CampGirl cookies?”

  “Hm? Oh, yeah.” I pick up the box of ChocoMints and toss them to him—he catches it with one hand. Show off.

  “I thought you ate all yours?” He’s staring down at the box like it’s made of diamonds and rubies, or like it’s gonna tell him the answers to all life’s little questions. Which it doesn’t—I asked.

  “Yeah, I did, so I ordered more.” I grin at him. “Thanks for letting me know about that rolling sales period thing. Did you know there’s always a CampGirl troop selling cookies somewhere? So I stocked up.” Yeah, so I ordered five hundred boxes of ChocoMints. So what? If I make them last until this time next year that’s only a little over a box a day. I think that’s reasonable.

  Tall’s got this look of pure lust on his face. I hope I never have to see it again. “May I?” He holds up the box.

  “Yeah, sure, go for it.” He tears into it like a little kid on Christmas Day—which, really, would mean he’d snuck down last night, found the cookies, opened the box, ate half of them, then closed it back up, rewrapped it, put it back under the tree, and crept back upstairs until now, when he looks properly surprised. It got to the point where my parents would set booby traps to try keeping us kids away from the presents until the morning. Which just meant we spent all night trying to disarm or circumvent or otherwise outsmart those traps. I was never completely sure why they didn’t just hide the damn presents until morning, but looking back I realize it was a great way to keep us out of trouble on Christmas Eve when most of our friends were out partying. And it made us use our heads for something other than hat racks. Turns out my parents are a lot more devious than I realized.

  Tall tears open the packaging and stuffs three or four ChocoMints into his mouth at once. Then he gets this totally blessed-out look on his face, which is also something I hope never to see again. He slumps down a little, the couch shifting around him, and his eyes get glassy and his face goes kinda blank, and he’s still chewing but real slow, like he’s an old horse or something.

  “Hey, you okay, man?” I ask, climbing to my feet. He doesn't answer. “Tall! Are you okay?”

  “Of course—I’m fine.” He doesn’t sound right, though. The words come out all stiff, like one of those programs that speaks whatever you write. Which is a very dangerous thing to have, especially for a kid with too much time on his hands, and particularly when coupled with one of those untraceable burner phones and a faculty directory and a badly translated Turkish porn magazine. Hey, I’m just sayin’. But I know what a computerized voice sounds like, and Tall is edging way too close to that for comfort.

  “Yo, Tall!” I step in close and grab him by both shoulders. The look he gives me as he slowly raises his head is utterly perplexed but not concerned, like he doesn’t know how he got here or what he’s doing but he trusts that it’s all okay. That’s definitely not a look I’d normally associate with Tall, who once harassed a delivery guy into showing us his route before Tall would accept the fact that our food got cold on the way over and that it wasn’t some kind of plot to raise our cholesterol by making sure the fat was fully congealed before it arrived. He takes everything personally, yet I’m shaking him like a rag doll and he’s totally relaxed about it. This is getting out of control.

  “Snap out of it!” I practically shout in his face—and his eyes clear, then narrow as he reaches up and slides both arms up and out, knocking my hands free and forcing me to take a step back.

  “What. Are. You. Doing?” he demands through clenched teeth.

  “A better question,” I reply, “is what’re you doing? You went all zoned-out hippie in me again. How do you feel?”

  “Fine.” He stops and frowns. “A little lightheaded, actually. I probably just need to eat something.” Suddenly his gaze drops to his lap, and the open box of ChocoMints. “Oh, right! You have CampGirl cookies!”

  I snatch the box away before he can shove his great big hand into it. “Let’s hold off on these for now,” I warn him. “I’m not sure I want you eating any more of their cookies just yet. I’ll get you some water, and something you can eat.” I’m starting to think there’s something funny with these cookies, and until I can figure out what I’m putting a moratorium on them. For me and for Tall, though I don’t think they’ve messed me up any that I can tell. Then again, I’ve had plenty of nights out where I thought I wasn’t messed up at all, and a whole lot of those ended with wrecked cars and shaved pets and incomprehensible tattoos, sometimes on the shaved pets, and lots of other weirdness, so maybe I’m not the best judge.

  When I come back with some Turling beef cubes (“Like eating a slice of prime rib, but without all the mess!”) and a bowl of cloud chips (“You’ll swear they’re as light and fluffy as a cloud—because that’s exactly what they are!”), Tall’s shaking his head so hard I can hear his brains rattling from across the room. “I feel like I’ve been asleep,” he says, accepting some of the food and opening another can of beer to go with it. “Like when you have a hard time waking up, and everything seems foggy and your brain just isn’t firing on all cylinders.”

  “Yeah, like when you can’t tell the difference between dreams and reality and you try to fly, only to crash hard on the floor and almost crush your junk, and then you have to hobble to the john, cursing under your breath and wondering why it didn’t work, and then your pee is rainbow-colored and you can’t tell if that’s real or not but it smells like apricots and lilacs?” He hits me with a Number Four. “What? Is that just me?”

  “I can’t imagine it being anybody else,” he answers dryly, and I relax a little. Looks like the real Tall is back in the house.

  I do wonder, though, what address he was at a few minutes ago, and
if there was anybody at home while he was out. He may need to get a better lock on his own thoughts, or the mental equivalent of a big dog, or at least some curtains.

  Chapter Seven

  It's like a tour of the stars—only with real stars!

  “. . . and this is the Matrix building.”

  I start, and sit up, clutching at a pillow, a bowl of chips, anything—I’m not sure if I’m planning to use them as a shield or a weapon or just a way to pry myself off the floor but I figure at least I’ll have options. Then my eyes catch up to my ears and I see shadows approaching along the way from the front door, and then my brain finally joins the party to tell me, good news, it’s just Tall.

  Only he’s clearly talking to someone else, and there’re two shadows there, so I finish standing up and brushing myself off and kicking the couch back into shape—I was lounging on it and got tired, so I had it make itself into a mattress and fell asleep. What? It’s a tough job, sitting around all day—most people can only manage it for a few days, a week at most.

  Luckily, I’m a pro.

  Tall comes into view, leading someone else, and my first thought is—well, this probably isn’t very nice of me, but you know that movie? The one I always tease Tall about by saying things like “Hey, why don’t you just go by your first initial, wouldn’t that be cool?” and “when do you get a silver dildo that makes people forget their own names?” and “the really impressive thing is that somebody moved the Guggenheim so it’s only a few blocks from Grand Central, and nobody noticed!”? Well, one of the things I like to give him trouble about is, “Hey, it could be worse—you could have a co-worker who’s one of those little googly-eyed Jack Russells, in a suit and everything!” I’ve been hitting that one a lot since the whole “WiB” thing started.

  So anyway, my first thought when they come into view is, “Screw me sideways and call me a wall hanging, they went and did it! They hired a Jack Russell! And got him a suit!” Then I realize that this would have to be one HUGE Jack Russell, since it’s only a little shorter than Tall himself—probably about my height, I’m guessing. Then I realize that the proportions are all wrong on the body, this guy’s walking upright, has shoulders and arms and hands and forward-facing knees, the whole bit, and I realize, hey, it’s just a guy with the head of a Jack Russell!

  What, you think I’m the only one out there? Trust me, I’m not. Turns out the Grays have a wicked sense of humor, or they’re just insanely thorough, or maybe they’re completists and were trying to work their way through the entire Audubon collection. Regardless, there’s a bunch of us out there with partial mods like mine, only other animals. I’ve met dogs, cats, horses, elephants, parrots, eagles, snakes, rats, all sorts. We actually have a get-together once a year, out in Vegas—we figure nobody’ll notice—so we can catch up and let our hair down, or our feathers or scales or whatever. The thing is, most of ’em have gotten plastic surgery to reduce the effects, or wear hoodies all the time along with sunglasses and those surgical face masks, or just live in a trailer or a cabin somewhere and order everything they need online and never let anyone get close enough to see them. Me, I’m the only one who flaunted what he had, or at least didn’t bother to hide it. Which is how the MiBs found me in the first place, of course.

  And yes, this means theoretically any of the others could’ve gotten themselves fully attuned by Ned and could’ve come out here, re-aligned the Matrix, and saved the galaxy. But they didn’t. I did. So there.

  Though I did consider enlisting them as Matrix babysitters. They’d be a better match than most people, and like I said, most of ’em are total shut-ins, so it’s not like they’d mind sitting here instead of wherever they normally are. Besides, I get more cable channels than anybody this side of God. I haven’t mentioned it to any of them yet, though. Dunno why, exactly, except that I like being important, I guess, and I’m not sure I really want to share.

  But anyway, I think this is one of those guys, with the head of a dog and maybe fur instead of hair, and now he’s apparently a MiB, which is certainly one way to hide in plain sight. Then they get even closer, and I finally realize, oh, crap, it’s just a guy who looks a lot like a Jack Russell.

  And then I notice the way the suit fits, and realize it isn’t even a guy.

  Oh, crap. Or did I say that already?

  “And this,” Tall says, waving a hand at me like he’s showing off his prize possession, or at least a possession he’s not entirely sorry to own from time to time, when he needs it or when someone asks to borrow it and as long as the local authorities aren’t looking for it or anyone connected to it, “is DuckBob. DuckBob, this is”—I cringe, already guessing what’s coming—“Agent Jones.”

  Yes, there could be more than one MiB named Jones. Hell, there probably is. But given my luck, and the timing, this has got to be Violet Jones, the MiBs’ newest recruit. And the only woman they’ve had in forty years.

  “Hey.” I hold out my hand. “How’s it going?”

  The look she gives me is like the one you have when you open the fridge, hoping against hope to find a slice of leftover pizza or half a roast beef hoagie or some fried chicken or at least a few slices of cheese and instead you find a small Tupperware container you don’t remember owning, containing something you can’t recognize and don’t remember ever eating, labeled with some scribble you can’t possible read and are pretty sure isn’t your handwriting. And yeah, that happens to me. A lot. I’m convinced somebody sneaks in at night and stashes those in my fridge just to screw with me, or maybe to hide them from the police. Either that, or there’s some kind of space-warp just above the lettuce crisper. Which might explain how it keeps the lettuce so crisp, come to think of it.

  So, right, no hearty handshake. No limp one, either.

  “Tall, can I talk to you for a sec?” I grab his arm and steer him to the other side of the room without waiting for an answer. “What’re you doing, man?” I whisper once we’re out of earshot, or at least far enough that anyone with social graces will have to pretend they can’t hear us. “Why’d you bring her here?”

  He shrugs. “She’d heard of you, and about the mission to restart the Matrix,” he explains. “She asked me what it was like, and I said it was amazing, but that I couldn’t adequately describe it. Then she said she’d like to see it someday.” He shrugs again. “So I brought her to see it.”

  I stare at him. “Dude, I thought you guys had classified the hell out’ve all this!” He’d once told me that only like three guys in the whole organization had the clearance to see the files on what we’d done. I asked if the President was one of them. Tall laughed for a good five minutes over that one.

  “We did,” he agrees. “It is classified Triple-Octagonal-Ultramarine-Uranium, which is as secret as it can get.”

  “Didn’t she just start, like, a week or two ago?” I indicate Little Miss Friendly, who’s currently eyeing my living room with so much disdain my mother would defend me if she saw it.

  “Yes, Agent Jones has been with us for three weeks now,” he answers. He seems awfully calm about all this, and I’m getting that worried tingle between my eyes again.

  “And is she somehow cleared for this, all of a sudden?”

  “No.”

  “So you brought her to a place she’s not actually allowed to see?” I don’t even want to ask how they got here, and how many classifications that violates.

  He shrugs. “Yes.”

  “For the love of Pete’s Dragon, why?” I swear, if I still had hair I’d be tearing it out by the handfuls right now. But feathers, it turns out, are both harder to grab and more deeply rooted. Wacky.

  “She asked.”

  “That’s it?” I stare at him—I can’t help it. “She asked?”

  “Yep.”

  Now I’m sure. I reach up and grab his face with both hands, squeezing like my Great-Aunt Matilda used to do every family get-together. Hard enough to leave marks. He doesn’t react at all. “Tall,” I say slowly, “snap
out of it.”

  And there it goes—it’s like watching the computer warm up and turn on, or the monitor clear, or the defrost finally kick in and clear the window, or all the alcohol burn off the bathtub. (What?) I can see his eyes clear, and then glare, and then he’s pulling my hands off his cheeks.

  “What the hell?” he demands. Then he glances up, sees Agent Jones standing there across the room trying to touch as little as possible and breathe as little as possible, and stiffens even more than usual. “What is she doing here?”

  “You,” I answer, jabbing him in the chest with my forefinger, “brought her here. Because she asked you to.”

  “What? That’s ridiculous.” But he stops, and closes his eyes, and then shakes his head. “Oh, God. I did, didn’t I?”

  “I need to ask you something.” I study him closely. “Did you have any more CampGirl cookies right before this happened?”

  Normally I’d expect a question like that to get Stare Number One, but he actually considers the question seriously. Then he nods. I knew it! “Yeah, I just took a box out of the freezer last night,” he tells me. “I had a handful then for dessert, and brought a few into work this morning to snack on. Why?”

  I rub the bridge of my beak. “Because it’s looking like those things are seriously bad news,” I answer. “Every time you’ve eaten them that I know of, you’ve turned into a zombie, basically. You talk and answer questions and all that, but you’re not you. You’re—nice. And mellow. And you pretty much do anything anybody tells you.” I look over at Agent Jones again. “Including violating Triple-Ripple-Vanilla-Roadmonkey clearances.”