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               Tuck Season, Wabbit Season, Tuck Season!
                            Part 13
                              -*-
      Copyright 1999, 2010 by either Joel Lawrence or Ellen Hayes


Any resemblance between the writings in this work, and any actual
persons or places, living or dead, are purely coincidental, except when
used for satirical purposes.

This work contains adult situations, adult language, adult concepts, and
possibly sex.  If you are legally not allowed to read materials
containing such things, then you will be breaking the law by reading
this.  I am not responsible.
Continuing to read this document, or storing it or reproducing it
in any format means that you explicitly affirm that you are legally
allowed to possess and read such materials in your city, county/parish,
state, and country.

All rights reserved.  See the bottom for distribution rights.

***


     "TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS?" Darla screeched, making Tucker wince.
     "I had a lot of expenses," Tucker explained.  Not that he'd kept
receipts or accurate records, not during an escape where he just might
get recaptured.  "And while that's only a small part of wh-"
     "You can-"
     "DARLA!" Charlene interrupted, making both of them look at her.
"Would you two calm down?" she pleaded.
     "There's another reason for the up-front money," Tucker mentioned,
annoyed that he had to say it because it was written in the contract on
the screen in front of Darla.  "It shows a willingness to accept the
terms and conditions.  Sort of like an ante in a card game," he
explained; then he realized he might have to explain THAT.
     "What about you?" Darla asked, glaring at him.
     Tucker raised his hands and said, "I'm here, right?  I'm betting
my freedom on this," he stated.  "I could be home, could be a lot of
places right now, but I'm sitting here with you trying to negotiate."
     She glared at him a while longer - which was a lot nicer than his
sister's pinch, kick, or fist, so he didn't mind - and then her eyes
dropped back to the screen and she continued reading.

     "Hello, Kenneth?  This is Art Phillips, with Jane-"
     "Ah, Doctor Phillips," the young man said.  Then, "I presume this
isn't a social call?"
     "I'm afraid not..."  Art felt like a frayed knot, and likely
sounded like one too.

     "What is in that contract?" Charlie asked Valerie as Darla kept
reading it, and making faces and mumbling to herself.  She was obviously
unhappy with it.
     "I'll let you have a copy," Valerie said.  "Come to think of it,
you might take this opportunity to renegotiate your own terms of
service."  She grinned at something as she said the last few words,
though Charlie didn't know what was funny.

     Darryl didn't know how Valerie could think Jane would accept this.
"What is this 'performance based' stuff?"
     "I want specific goals," Valerie answered.  "I don't wa-  I
REFUSE," she amended, "to accept things like 'when _I_ decide you're
ready'.  That's just bullshit."
     "Watch your language," Darryl said reflexively.
     "If they can't figure out what they want me to do, then I'm not
going to sit around and let them play dress-up and fuck me ov-"
     "Language!" Darryl insisted.
     "-Er until they get tired of it," Valerie continued without
stopping, "Jane can find someone dumber than me to play THAT game.  If
she can't come up with specific goals, then the deal is OFF, and I am
OUT of here!"
     Darryl, watching Valerie, thought Valerie seemed more nervous, or
emotionally intense, than she'd been the whole time.
     "I don't know what specific goals Jane would set," Darryl had to
say; he knew full well that Jane did NOT normally set goals like that,
but he thought Jane might be able to come up with something, or several
somethings, that Valerie would accept but would take long enough that
the real learning could happen.
     If Valerie could possibly learn ANYTHING about changing her
behavior, after her 'success' this weekend.
     *But what choice do I have?* he reminded himself.  *Just let her
walk out of here?  And then she'll... I don't even KNOW what she MIGHT
do; she MIGHT do ANYthing.*
     *Hell, she left Marisha Chalet in her underwear, and now she's
wearing or carrying fifty pounds,* at a guess, *of military surplus, AND
a recent-looking laptop.  Whether she'd actually been travelling or not,
she'd made the phone calls LOOK like she was out of the state; and I've
no IDEA how to do that without actually being there.*
     Valerie pointed at the screen and said, "Then keep reading."
     Darryl let out a slow breath, and looked back at the laptop again.

     Pauline signed, <I guess we can go,> and Trish didn't want to, but
Valerie and the others weren't DOING anything any more.  And Valerie had
said they could leave after she went over to their table.
     She'd also told Trish to give Pauline the ten dollars when they
left, or Valerie would break both Trish's arms.
     <She said to give this to you,> Trish signed before she pulled the
ten out of her jeans and handed it over.  Besides, she already had a
ten-spot of her own.

     "I get paid for chores," Tucker said, wondering why Darla looked so
shocked by the thought.
     "No you don't!"
     "Yes, I do," Tucker insisted.  "There's a schedule of fees append-"
     "You just have to do them," Darla insisted, right back at him.
     "No, I don't."  When she started in on something that sounded like
his maternal relatives, he explained over her, "Look, if I was on my
OWN, I wouldn't get paid; but I'd also have the choice of when and how I
do them, and whether I do them at all.  If you want things done YOUR
way, YOU PAY for it.  Or do it yourself," he had to admit, but Darla
didn't look like she'd ever seen the bad side of a toilet bowl; she was
more the kind that would have a screeching fit at the maid, then fire
them, and then blackball them so they couldn't get employed again.
"It's not unreasonable."
     She seemed skeptical about that.  "Let me see the schedule."
     Tucker took the laptop back and typed the unlock password, then
opened the fee schedule he had from home - though he'd added fifty
percent to the fees as a precautionary measure - and re-locked the
viewer program.  "Hit one to go back to the contract," he said as he
slid the laptop back, "or two to go back to the schedule.  By the way,"
Tucker mentioned, "the fee schedule applies to Charlene too."
     That got both their attention.  "Why?" Darla demanded.
     "Because, she needs to get some of her own money.  She doesn't even
have enough to buy her own drink," he pointed out.

     *She was watching us,* Darryl realized, and that made him feel very
uneasy.  *Where was she?  I KNOW I would've seen her...*
     But he hadn't.

     "Valerie," Charlie said, trying to be conciliatory - not a word he
could spell reliably, but he knew what it meant from back in the divorce
days.  Not that it had done any good then.  "You don't have to do that,"
he said.
     "Yes, I do," Valerie said flatly, and sounding more masculine than
usual.  "Whatever you think about whatever they've been doing to you
there, it hasn't been fair, and you need to be compensated properly.  Or
the deal's off," he stated to Darla.
     "Do you think you can just threaten to walk away anytime you don't
like what you're doing?" Darla asked.
     "No.  That's why I'm doing it- setting everything up now, in
advance.  So BOTH sides can agree, BEFOREHAND, on what's gonna happen.
And if you don't agree to the terms, NOW, I can leave," he reminded
them.
     "Valerie," Charlie said again.
     "I am SICK of being treated like I was a rabid dog," she snapped at
Charlene.  "If they want me to act civilized, then THEY can start acting
civilized!"
     "You think this is civilized?" Darla questioned.
     Valerie pointed at the laptop.  "Contract.  Civilization.  If I was
acting like you people STARTED OUT by treating me, I'd have slit your
throat while you weren't paying attention."  She paused, and Charlie at
least realized that, yeah, she could've.  *If she has a knife; but look
at what else she's got.*
     "Note that I did not."
     Then Valerie just glared back at Darla.
     Darla let out another angry breath and went back to reading.

     "I need to talk to Jane about some of these terms," Darryl said.
He was NOT going to sign a contract for Jane, and especially not THIS
contract, without Jane agreeing to every single word.
     "Does she have a fax machine?" Valerie asked.
     "Yes?"
     "Then we fax it to her.  Go get some change for the pay phone,"
Valerie ordered.  "I'm running out."
     "I can get it?" Charlene offered, standing up.
     "Thank you.  Get dimes as well as quarters," Valerie said, and then
glared at Darryl.  Before he could get himself back under control,
Valerie motioned a couple of times towards Charlene.

     Charlie almost felt like he was having a refreshing shower,
standing in line and well away from the table.  Valerie seemed intent on
pissing Darla off, just as far as she could be pushed without exploding.
Actually, Charlie was a little surprised Darla hadn't exploded yet, but
it WAS important to get Valerie back... or Darla had a lot more
self-control than Charlie had thought.
     He didn't quite realize he was smiling because of his temporary
escape until some guy smiled back at him; and he didn't realize what he
must look like for several seconds after that.  Then he looked away,
hopefully before the guy thought he was flirting.

     Tucker attached the acoustic coupler to the handset, put in thirty-
five cents, then dialed the number Darla had given him.
     Eventually a fax machine picked up and squealed at him.  Tucker
dropped into a cross-legged sit and told his fax program to go.

     Charlie had no idea why Valerie was wearing headphones and
apparently listening to the call, but she was.  He'd accidentally called
a fax number instead of a human number once, and he didn't see how
anyone could possibly make sense out of the noises.
     "Hello, Diana?" Darla said from the other pay phone.  "I sort of
found Valerie, an-  Ye-  No, b-  Would you just go and check the fax
machine?" she insisted.  "Valerie said that the only way she'd come back
is under a contract, and she's faxing it to you right now."  She glanced
over, and Valerie just nodded without looking up.
     Then Valerie said, "If they have comments or changes to make, put
them on a SEPARATE page, and TYPED.  Or word proc-  They DO have a
computer there somewhere, right?" she asked as she looked up at Darla,
for some reason sounding uncertain and hopeful, and somehow girlish.
     Darla replied, sounding tired, "Yes, of course they have a
computer."

     "Tell her to read it, write out the proposed changes, and we'll
call back later; and let's go," Tucker said.
     "What?  Hold on.  Why?" Darla asked him after she put a hand over
the phone mike.
     *Because we've been here too long and made too many calls from
here, and I want to get out of here before the Goon Squad arrives.*
     "Protocols," Tucker said out loud instead, because it sounded a lot
better.  "_I_ have to relocate now; if you want to keep negotiating, I
suggest you come with me."
     She huffed, but didn't try to argue with him, which suggested -
though didn't prove - that she wasn't trying to delay him so the Goon
Squad could grab him.  Instead, she said wearily, "You realize you're
being overly paranoid about this."
     "I don't think so," Tucker grinned.  "Not OVERLY paranoid, no."

     *It's like a game to her,* Darryl realized.
     "Besides, seven pee," Valerie said.
     "What?!"
     "'Proper planning and practices prevent piss-poor performance',"
she obviously quoted.  Though from where, Darryl decided he'd rather not
know.  Especially since she was now grinning again and looking
expectant.
     "I suppose so," Darryl said instead, and was rewarded by Valerie's
smile melting away.  "Where are we going?  Or does your master plan
allow you to tell us that?"

     "God Almighty," Art commented absently as he read through the
'contract'.  *Just where has this kid been, to think of all these
things?  Performance standards?
     *Dear Lord, Jane is not going to like this...*  It was tempting to
just bury the fax pages in the trash and not mention them to Jane, EVER,
but he knew that would turn very bad sooner or later.  Probably sooner.
     Plus, Darla had said that Valerie would ONLY come back under
contract, either this one or a mutually-agreed-upon modification.
     *And it is definitely going to require some modifications...*  He
sighed, and looked up at the ceiling in the direction of Jane's room,
then shook his head.  *This is not going to be easy...*

     Tucker sighed as they trotted - Darla was trotting, anyway, and
being very noisy about it - past the window that had the knee pads in
it.  *Guess I get those later, if I can...*  They looked so much more
appealing than his memories of skinned knees and elbows.

     Jane surprised Art, by smiling.  "Oh, she wants performance based,
does she?  I think I can handle that."
     "What?"
     "Remember Carlton?  Or Caitlyn?"
     "Of course."
     "Remember how you said I needed to provide for full disclosure?"
     Art did remember that, and the ensuing development of a disclosure
'plan', to explain to parents of potential students roughly what was
going to happen to their boy.  "But that didn't have any real yardsticks
to measure, Janey-Jane."
     Jane coughed, then grabbed a tissue and delicately spat into it and
wiped her mouth.  "I did some anyway, just to start with.  Brainstorming
as it were, and thinking over previous students and what I'd done with
each of them.  They're simple notes, nothing formal, but they should be
workable into something."  Her eyes closed and she breathed, sounding
unnaturally congested.  "If you can help, I-"
     "Of course I can help, my love," Art replied, and took her hand and
squeezed back.  She closed her eyes and smiled, and he took the
opportunity to kiss her forehead.  She was disturbingly warm, but when
he pulled back to say something, her eyes had opened again.  "If you can
help, we can get through this, without letting that little snip destroy
our lives and all we've done."
     *Not to pressure me unduly or anything...*

     "Nice wheels," Valerie commented, making Darryl's teeth clench.
"What's it got in it?"
     "Leather upholstery, a-"
     "I was thinking engine," Valerie said in a disappointed tone of
voice.  "Never mind."
     Darryl could have mentioned that it was a 2.8 liter straight six,
with 4 valves per cylinder and dual overhead cams, producing 190
horsepower and 210 foot-pounds of torque, going through a five-speed
electronically controlled automatic transmission, and capable of doing
zero to sixty in under eight seconds...  But if Valerie was going to be
that way about it, he wouldn't.  Besides, it was unfeminine.

     *Man, BMW 328i convertible,* Tucker thought with a mild case of
envy.  *But I bet she's got an automatic in it...*
     It was a nice looking car, he had to admit; the black top and
silver body was elegant and grown-up, especially compared to the usual
junkers he was exposed to at school, and even to Dad's Volvo 850 wagon.
He just couldn't see paying forty thousand dollars or whatever for
something that wasn't armored, amphibious, or capable of flight.  Or a
tow truck or 'phone company' truck, for special operations.  *Ol' George
did have a point with those,* Tucker remembered.

     Charlie did not like trying to get in Darla's car while wearing a
skirt, but somehow Darla could do it nearly instantly, even while
wearing a pencil skirt and heels.  HE had to back into the seat while
bending over, then carefully pick his legs up and maneuver them into the
footwell without catching his shoe(s) somehow on the door or the
dashboard or, once, on the seat somehow.  *Probably because she's so
short,* he thought.
     "Guess I'm in back," Valerie commented.  "Hey, can you pop the
top?"
     "No," Darla stated.  "Well, I guess I could," she changed her mind.

     *Maybe I can blow that stupid beret off her head,* Darryl hoped; it
would be worth the mess the wind would make of his hair.
     "Great!" Valerie exclaimed, showing she didn't have a clue.
     Darryl opened the door and slid in, started the car, and activated
the convertible top.  When it finished retracting itself, she looked
around for Valerie, but she wasn't visible.
     Anywhere.
     *What the-*  

     Tucker bent down, removing his towel from an outside pocket.  *Such
a hoopy frood, knows where his towel is,* he thought as he wrapped it
around the bottom of his pack frame so it wouldn't scuff the leather
seat.  The ALICE pack frame had special polished tubing rails to act
like sled runners on the bottom of the frame, which had taken a week of
design and fabrication and testing and a horrible amount of money,
specifically designed (and fabricated and tested) to not damage the ugly
and hideously expensive plaid seat fabric, or the bland but also
expensive nylon Velcro-bait carpet, in Dan's mom's minivan.  Tucker's
suggestion of using old sneakers as footpads had been tried, but hadn't
worked well enough; and nobody had wanted to invest in new sneakers to
see if they would work better.
     On the other hand, Darla had mentioned leather upholstery first, so
she was going to be insanely protective about it, and nobody had had
leather upholstery to test.  *So better safe than sorry.  Bet she won't
appreciate the extra work either.*

     "Where IS she?" Darryl snarled as he shoved the door open and got
out of his car, looking around for her.  Jane had complained, bitterly
and at length, about Valerie doing exactly this.
     Charlene said, "R-"
     "Ah!"
     "-Ight here," Charlene finished, pointing at Valerie who had just
popped up like a jack-in-the-box and startled the hell out of Darryl.
     "You okay?" Valerie asked.  "You seem a little nervous."
     Darryl hissed, "I'm FINE!" and slammed himself back into the
driver's seat.

     *Great, glad to hear it,* Tucker thought as he carefully set the
pack behind Charlene's seat, pulled the seat belt out from the center-
mounted reel and buckled the pack in, then scrambled past Charlene and
the pack to drop behind Darla's seat.

     "Could you use the door like a normal person?!" Darryl complained.
     "Not with you sitting there, no," Valerie said like that was a
perfectly reasonable response, as she pulled her seat belt out and
latched it.
     "So where are we going?" Charlene asked loudly.

     "'Deadmanned'?" Jane queried while reading.
     Diana looked up while murmuring, "Hmm?"
     "What does 'deadmanned' mean?"
     "Let me see," Diana said while holding out her hand.  Jane put the
relevant pages in Diana's grasp.  "Oh, that."  She frowned at the paper.
"That's something I wouldn't expect him to know."
     "_I_ don't know it," Jane reminded Diana tartly.
     "Basically, he has to perform an action, or something will go off.
Like trains, which have some kind of arrangement on the throttle, so if
the engineer dies suddenly, the train will stop rather than continue."
     Jane was irritated that she wasn't thinking clearly enough or fast
enough to figure this out.  "I still don't understand."
     Diana had kept reading.  "Mmmm...  From what he says here, it's got
something to do with his computer.  He says he needs a phone line and
his computer...  Oh my."
     "What?!"
     Diana looked up at Jane.  "This is more sophisticated than I'd
expect out of most college students.  Undergrads, anyway.  He says that
if he doesn't send the right computer generated password to the right
location, every twenty-four hours, that..."  She looked back down.  "He
says that a 'effective state of war will exist' between you and 'other
parties', which aren't specified."
     "This sounds like something out of a thriller or spy novel," Jane
noticed.
     "Well, that's where I encountered the concept," Diana admitted.
"Though they weren't this elaborate, that I recall."
     Jane shook her head.  "Still, there's no reason she couldn't have
read similar novels herself. Or," she remembered, "possibly in a context
of blackmail.  Wasn't there a movie with something like this?"
     Diana shrugged.

     "Put THIS in the power p- I mean, the 'cigarette lighter' socket,"
Tucker instructed, handing her the 12 volt plug.
     "Why?"
     Tucker sighed.  And waited, hand outstretched with the 12v plug.
     "I'm not doing it until you tell me what it's for," Darla finally
said.
     "I need to recharge batteries," Tucker said.  Part of the benefit
of having an electronics geek as a dad was the ability to do things like
tie in (almost) every electrically-powered device he carried to a common
power bus, a larger common battery, and real surge protection on both
DC- and AC-source charging circuits.  Even his laptop was on Tucker
standard with the correct adapter.
     Darla grudgingly took the plug and inserted it into a socket near
the gearshift.  *Automatic, yep,* Tucker nodded.
     Darla chunked the car into reverse and shoved out of the parking
space, then snapped into drive and bounced Tucker's head into the rear
seat.  *I think she's angry,* Tucker decided.
     *Oh, better pull the beret off before I lose it,* he realized, and
removed his new beret and stuffed it into a thigh pocket.
     Darla took a parking lot turn hard enough to centrifuge Tucker into
the wall.  When he recovered, he noticed Charlene had snugged her head
backwards against the headrest, like a pilot ready for a carrier
catapult launch.  *Maybe's she's not mad, maybe she always drives like
that.  Oh...*  He felt behind him, and did not detect a headrest.
*...Damnit.*  He was glad he had a shoulder belt, but he was pretty sure
he was going to be wanting two, plus a crotch strap, and maybe a helm-
     "Uhhh!"  *Definitely want the helmet!*

     "Is she coming back here?" Jane rasped.
     "Darla said," Diana said carefully, "that they would be going to
other pay phones, she didn't know where, and Valerie would call from
there."
     "How are we supposed to get this to her?" Jane complained.
     "The same way he faxed us the original, I suppose," Diana replied,
seemingly not pleased either.
     "How DID she do that?"
     "Darla said he had a laptop, and he hooked it up to a pay phone."
     "How did she do that?  CAN someone do that with a laptop?  And
where did she get a laptop anyway?"
     Diana didn't say anything for a time, then mentioned, "Do we really
want him back here?"
     "Do we have a choice?" Jane countered.
     "We always have choices, Jane," he reminded her.
     Jane sighed, then found herself coughing painfully for a while,
capped with two head-splitting sneezes she was glad no one else could
see.

     Art picked up the phone and said, "Hello, Thompson resi-"
     "It's Darla," Darla interrupted.  "Valerie finally found another
set of pay phones she likes, and she's got her laptop hooked up and
everything.  Did Jane come up with- with the amendments to that
contract?"
     "Yes, she did, and I'm about finished typing them out."  Jane was
a woman of many talents, but fast and accurate typing was not one of
them.
     "She's gonna go for it?" Darla asked, sounding surprised.
     "I think she wants Valerie back here, as soon as can be," Art
explained.
     "Well...  I mean, I know-  What?"  There was a barely-audible voice
before Darla said, "No, it's almost ready."  More talk that Art couldn't
make out followed.  "She wants to know how long until the revision is
ready," Darla sighed.
     "I can start faxing the first pages now, and then finish typing the
last one and print it and fax it," Art offered.
     "That'll work, I think."  Darla explained this to Valerie, and
apparently it was accepted, because Darla came back with the phone
number.

     Tucker hated standing around holding the hook switch down so the
phone would ring, but he couldn't attach the acoustic modem quickly.
So, since this wasn't the first time this had come up, he had a piece of
inner tube and some string, which could combine with the CD case to
weight the hook switch down.  And when the phone finally rang, he could
just pull on the string and slide the stuff off to 'answer' the phone.
     It finally rang.  Tucker let it go once, and on the second pulled
the string and caught the CD case before it could bounce off the
pavement, or off him.
     His modem warbled, Jane's fax sang back, and then the two were
having a lovely chat.  *So let's see what kind of stupid shit she tried
to slip in...*

     Valerie, Darryl decided, was not quite as masculine appearing as
he'd thought at first.  Admittedly, her clothes were about as far away
from feminine as one could get, but when he'd been touring colleges he'd
seen at least one co-ed wearing something similar.
     Except for the straps and pouches, of course.  And nobody really
looked feminine while sitting cross-legged on the ground and hunching
over a laptop.
     *Still, with some makeup - not the leftover stuff she apparently
never washed off - and doing something with her hair,* which was totally
covered by the scarf she'd tied over it, *she could look decent enough.*
     Darryl looked over at Charlene, who seemed to be playing with the
car radio.
     *To start with.  She's gonna need a LOT of work in deportment...*
     "Okay, I got it," Valerie said, and scrambled to her knees in an
undignified fashion and began removing cables from her laptop and
burying them in a bag, like a squirrel hiding nuts.  "I'll read it
later.  Time to go."
     "What?  Again?"
     "Protocols," was all she said, and she didn't even bother looking
up.

     "Valerie!" Charlene shrieked at Tucker over the engine and traffic
noise, and he looked up from the laptop.  She was pointing off to the
side.
     "This'll do," Tucker decided, seeing three pay phones in front of
the grocery store Charlene was pointing towards.  "Dar-"
     She made the turn into the parking lot before he could finish.
"Uhh!" Tucker complained as he got squeezed in between the side of the
car and his laptop.  *I wish the bitch'd learn how to drive!*

     As Darryl found a parking spot not too far away from the pay
phones, because he didn't want to leave Charlene OR his car too alone,
Valerie mentioned, "Plus you could do some shopping if you want, like
grocery shopping."
     "We're fine, thanks," he said without really thinking about it.
*No, Diana went to the store yesterday, I think...*
     He got out, and Valerie followed - getting out the CORRECT way for
once - to the pay phones, where she sat down directly on the ground.
Without, Darryl noticed, plugging anything into anything.  He
questioned, "Aren't you going to call?"
     Valerie didn't look up as she replied, "Not until I finish reading
it.  Don't you call them now either, or we'll have to leave again."
     "You are so paranoid!"
     "Seven P's," she replied casually.

     Tucker had been surprised as hell to find that Jane was almost
reasonable in her iteration of the contract.  *Jeez, if she'd been like
this at the start, we wouldn't've had to go through all the bullshit...
Piano okay, manners yeah...*  He sighed, because manners weren't his
strong point, boy or girl.  *They just get in the way.*  But his mom had
done her best to beat manners into him, and, yeah, okay, sometimes they
worked to grease the wheels of social interaction.  *If everyone's using
the same protocols, which they DON'T.  Why don't they standardize this?
Need an RFC to settle down to ONE set...
     *'Kay, cooking, cleaning-*  "Oh shit," he sighed, because he could
just imagine how long it would take to clean all those floors and rooms
and furniture and windows and toilets-
     Darla interrupted him with, "What?"
     "Huh?"  Tucker looked up.  "What kind of cleaning?  'Cause if I
have to keep that entire place up to inspection standards..."  He shook
his head.  "I may not be able to.  Probably can't," he corrected.
"Depends on how clean she wants it, and what parts she needs to keep
clean.  There's, what, four floors counting the basement?  Do I need to
polish the floors, clean the drapes-"
     "Not that much," Darla assured him, sounding like she thought he
was being unbelievably imaginative.  "She hires a maid service to come
in about four times a year to do the really heavy cleaning."
     "Windows?"
     "They do that.  It's just mostly dusting, laundry, a-"
     "Laundry for everyone?  Do I have to iron?"
     "What is your problem?"
     "Large houses had STAFFS back in the day, because there was too
much for one person to do in one day," Tucker explained.  "I can't do
the work of five people, and I need to be doing something other than
learning how to be a maid."  Though he already had a loooong head start
on that part; and he didn't think he really needed extra practice
either.
     "You'll have enough time," Darla assured him.  "It's not that much.
Trust me, _I_ did it long enough."
     THAT sounded sour enough to convince Tucker she was telling the
truth.  But he inserted a note to clarify the cleaning duties anyway.
     "Okay, so..."  *Sewing?  Blegh.*  His dad could sew, enough to make
a tent and gear, and his mom could sew enough to repair clothing, which
of course she'd beaten into her children, but Tucker had a feeling Jane
meant make-your-own-clothing kind of sewing, which he hadn't done.
*Yep, there it is, 'garments or sets of garments suitable for wearing in
public.'  Knew it.*
     *Was noch?  Dancing lessons...  A formal dance?  Awwww...*  His
feet (current) ached in temporal resonance with his feet (future).

     Darryl was getting very tired of standing around, especially right
next to Valerie who was sitting ungraciously on her ass on the pavement
hunched over her laptop and still managing to look entirely too damned
comfortable.  His feet ached.
     "Eng- Oh NO!" Valerie protested before she glared up at him.  "I am
NOT going to summer school!"
     "If you don't meet the academic standards," Darryl said with a
sweet smile and a sweeter voice, "then of course you'll require
additional tutoring."
     "Oh, f-"  But she cut herself off and looked back down at the
laptop for a moment.  "At least tell me it's grade-based, not just
college level?"
     "What?"
     "I can't do English at college level," she explained, "I'm nowhere
near it.  And I DON'T do literary analysis.  If she wants to tell me
what stuff means, like metaphors and allusions and things, that's fine;
but I can't come up with them.  Is the English stuff going to be at
college- bachelor's level, or is it going to be my grade?"
     "Well, yes, it will be appropriate for your age," Darryl said,
lying just a little; Jane wanted her students to excel, not just pass,
and to be well-rounded, not just meet the minimum standards the public
schools tested for.
     Valerie sighed and went back to reading.

     Charlie was glad he was sort of used to being out in public as
Charlene, because if he hadn't been, the long wait, sitting in Darla's
convertible with the top down so everyone passing by or going into or
out of the grocery store could SEE him, would've driven him insane with
terror.
     Now it was just driving him stupid with boredom.  *Even that stupid
romance novel I have to finish would've been better than just sitting
here...*
     He looked over at Valerie, whose head he could just see if he
stretched his neck a little, and Darla, who looked like an impatient
female executive having to wait on something.  *Jeez.  Not like I
thought things would go...*
     *Then again, NOTHING has been like I thought it was going to be,
here.  I should just give up worrying about it, thinking about it, and
just deal with things when they happen.  It's not like they make any
sense...*
     The radio started playing 'Mmmm-bop' by the Hansons, so he reached
over and started looking for something that didn't remind him of teen
girls.

     *Jeez, this thing just gets longer and longer,* Tucker complained.
*Or maybe it's just having to do it again and again.  And again...*  He
realized, belatedly, that this could possibly take all night, and maybe
he ought to make Darla get a hotel room or some such... *No, can't trust
her not to call someone when I'm sleeping.  Fuck.  So I've got to stay
awake until I get it done, or I blow it entirely and leave.*  Which
would piss off his parents, if not at him then at Jane, and he'd
definitely lose the Libretto bonus.
     *Fuck, fuck fuck fuck-*  The modem disconnected.
     "Okay, off we go," Tucker announced as he got up and started
collecting equipment off the pay phone.
     "Again?"
     "Yeah, this place is getting boring," Tucker grinned.  "Like,
Dullsvile, man.  Too square to care."
     "What?"
     Darla did not, Tucker thought, react well to unexpected inputs.
"Let's go somewhere else.  I'd suggest a gas station; they usually have
pay phones.  Hey, did you want to do any grocery shopping?" he
remembered.
     "No," Darla sighed, and opened the door and started to get in
before she stopped herself and said, "Would you please use-  WHAT THE-
GET that THING off my leather seats!"
     Obviously she'd just noticed where his pack was.  "It's got a towel
under it to protect the leather, Dar-"
     "I don't care!  Get it OUT!  Put it in the TRUNK!"
     "I need it with me," Tucker told her, not willing to do what she
wanted if she was going to be like that about it.  "Within reach.
Besides-"
     "PUT IT IN THE TRUNK!" she shrieked.
     "No."  Tucker managed to clamp his jaw shut around all the
wonderful witty things his trouble generator was pushing into his voice
driver, and it hurt; but Darla wasn't going to appreciate it, and if she
decided to take off in her car he'd have a helluva time getting his
stuff loose and out.
     "Darla," Charlene said, sounding utterly bored, "she put a towel on
the bottom of it to protect your seats-"
     "And it's fabric-safe anyway."
     "Fabric-safe?!"
     *I knew she was going to be like this.*  "We checked.  And polished
it so it wouldn't snag."  Which had been a royal pain.
     "We?"
     Tucker suppressed his standard 'Not-cleared-for-that-information',
then decided that, "My associates and I," would work best.
     Darla glared at him and her jaw flexed, but she didn't say
anything.
     *Yeah, that worked well,* Tucker decided, repressing the smile.  He
pointed at her car and mentioned, "Shall we?  If you stop wasting time,
we might get this done before dark."
     She pivoted neatly on her elegant shoes and folded herself into the
driver's seat and slammed the door.
     *Huh, thought she wanted me to get in the other way.*

     Charlie massaged his forehead, carefully so as not to remove or
streak his makeup, as Darla yelled at Valerie some more and Valerie
snapped back.
     Then he remembered how she drove, and wriggled himself back into
the seat, put his head back against the headrest, and tightened his seat
belt.

     Tucker wasn't motion sick yet, though he was getting there, but he
was very glad he wasn't dressed up nice like Darla and Charlene; he
could spread his legs and arms in very unfeminine ways to wedge himself
in the rear corner and, if he concentrated, could type without more than
an order of magnitude more errors than usual.  And using his headphones
and CD player masked a lot of the wind and traffic noise, and allowed
him to concentrate.

     "There's one," Charlie said to Darla, pointing towards another gas
station.
     "Who's side are you on, anyway," Darla grumbled as she flicked the
turn signal and tried to change lanes.
     Charlie looked at her.  "Do you want her to come back?" he asked,
but quietly.  "And what if she doesn't?"
     "She's right-"
     "And she can be out in five seconds," Charlie reminded her.  "And
we couldn't find her the first time."
     Darla didn't say anything, but her lips got thin, and Charlie took
that as a hint to lock himself into the seat.  Valerie hadn't noticed
anything, of course, as she was singing (quietly for once) to herself
with headphones in her ears; but she stopped singing to complain about
acceleration.  Which Charlie didn't get, because Darla was turning and
braking, not speeding up.

     "Hmmmm," Jane said as she kept reading.  After a very long wait,
Darla had finally called again - Jane had answered it this time - and
Valerie had (somehow) sent the 2nd modified version of the contract.
What was puzzling, was that it wasn't modified nearly as much as she'd
thought it would be.  Though it had taken quite some time to get this
version, Darla claimed she hadn't done any negotiating on Jane's behalf
to get Valerie to accept the performance conditions.  Which suggested to
Jane that she needed to read this version VERY carefully, to see what
sort of loopholes Valerie had introduced.

     "Do you want to get something to eat?" Tucker suggested as they
walked back towards Darla's car for yet another relocation.
     "I suppose you want to move AGAIN," Darla complained.
     *Well, duh.*  "That too, but I thought you girls might be getting
hungry or something."  He was sort of sorry he'd mentioned it.
     "Could we get a little something?" Charlene asked delicately.  "We
didn't have tea."
     "I suppose," Darla replied unenthusiastically, though she didn't
sound nearly as angry at Charlene as she usually did with Tucker.  Her,
"Is that all right with you?" to Tucker sounded like the usual.
     Tucker took a moment to tune his voice and think of what to say,
and then perked, "That sounds WONderful!"
     *Yep, pissed her off,* he noted.  *Good.*

     "There's a payphone here," Charlie mentioned and pointed to Darla
as they pulled into the McDonalds.
     "I was planning," Darla stated, carefully speaking each word so she
wouldn't scream it, "to go through the drive-through."
     Charlie debated with himself whether or not to say anything, but
finally decided Darla would be angrier if he didn't.  "Darla, you know
she's going to need another pay phone in a little while, and there's one
right-"
     Darla managed to change from going-to-the-drive-through-start to
parking-at-ninety-degrees in about three seconds, bouncing Charlie off
the inside of his door.
     "What is WITH you?" Valerie complained from the back seat.  "Oh,
phone.  Good idea," she said, and unbuckled herself.
     Charlie wondered for a moment if Darla was going to explode like a
volcano.  But after only a few incoherent noises, she shut her car off
and opened her door and got out.
     "Well, Charlene," Darla said, "why don't you come in and decide
what you want to eat."  It sounded a lot like Jane, when she wasn't
really asking a question.  And, Charlie realized, he was going to have
to go in, stand in line, order - for himself, using his voice, wait for
the order, and then leave, all dressed as a girl and hopefully with
everyone thinking he was a girl.  And, just like with Jane, that was
undoubtedly the main point in Darla's mind.
     "Just get me some fries, please," Valerie said absently as he
handed Charlie a five dollar bill.

     "Very little this time," Tucker said as he looked at the fax image.
"Contract delta is decreasing."
     "What?!"
     He looked up at Darla, and remembered that if she was going to get
a non-Mrs degree at all, it would be either in business or something
useless and fuzzy like English Lit or Modern Art Appreciation.
     *On the other hand...*  One of the few geek standard social
put-downs was to say something intricate and complicated - though it had
to be totally correct - using voice tones to indicate the non-geek
listener was either a total and willfully-stupid idiot or a preschooler.
"The DELTA of the CONTRACT is approaching ZERO as iterations INCREMENT."
     Tucker thought he probably should've tried the preschooler version,
and then he thought he ought to get ready for a little wrestling match
because it looked like Darla was going to kick him very hard.
     "I got your fries," Charlene said to Tucker as she blundered in
between the two of them.
     "Oh, thanks," Tucker said.  As she dug through her bag and handed
him the oily envelope, and Darla didn't kick either of them, he started
to think that 'blunder' was entirely the wrong word.  "Nice blocking,"
he complimented her as he repacked and got up.
     "Do we have to go find another pay phone?" she asked as she stood
around watching him.
     "Unfortunately," Tucker answered.  "Still, it's getting closer.
Maybe one or two more."

     Jane didn't want to sign, really, but she'd pushed as far as she
thought she could in the terms of the contract (and been rebuffed on
several though not all items), and she HAD to get Valerie back.  While
inspiration wasn't happening to her at the moment, she did think she'd
had to work under worse conditions before - and without Diana or Darla.
"Oh, damn her to hell and gone," she said to herself finally, and dashed
off the formal version of her signature on the last page and fed it into
the fax machine and stabbed the Redial button.
     "Still reading?" Diana asked as she came back in with a fresh glass
of orange juice for each of them.  Jane wished it was brandy instead.

     Charlie sighed as they found yet another pay phone, this one in
front of a convenience store, and Darla and Valerie got out.  *This is
really getting old...  Though I'm glad nobody's a lawyer.*  The divorce
had taken MONTHS, and he had no idea how many revisions they'd gone
through.  And even then, it seemed like nobody was satisfied.
     *At least we got some fries.*  He picked out a few more and ate
them, and then noticed that he was doing it like the girls back home ate
fries, which annoyed him, and then got more annoyed because it was the
smart way to eat them when he was out and looking like he did.  *Damn
it...  I am DEFINITELY shaving my head when I get out of here.  Oh-*
And it was going to take him a LONG time to get all the tangles out of
his hair, with the way it was blowing around with the top down.  *Why
did she offer to put-*
     "She signed it?" Darla yelped, and Valerie grinned.  Then frowned.
Then grabbed another phone.

     Checking the last page, Tucker could announce, "Contract is
SIGNED!"  Then he looked at Darla and reminded her, "Contingent on that
immediate payment of two hundred US dollars.  And could you drive a
little slower?" he asked before he could stop himself.

     "You signed it?"
     "She should be on her way here," Jane told Diana.  "And I am going
back to bed.  Wake me when they arrive, please."
     She didn't want to see the look on Diana's face, which seemed to be
shouting silently at her that she had done something truly stupid,
something that she would regret for the rest of her life.  *But Darla's
with her, and she'll come back, and I'll deal with the rest tomorrow.*

     "Hey," Tucker mentioned as they waited to pull up to the ATM Darla
had chosen.  "If Jane's sick, and Marie's sick, and... we're all kind of
stressed," he maneuvered carefully, "why don't we pick up some food for
them?  I don't suppose they like pizza," he realized.  "Maybe something
like a pickup from a nice restaurant?  Or a deli?"  Plus, the fries had
been nice, but he'd made a mistake and not gotten a lot of food, and
he'd had just enough to restart his appetite, without enough to shut it
up.
     "I suppose," Darla said, sounding about as enthusiastic as she had
all day, which was not much at all.  But when she moved forward and
started interfacing with the ATM, she got out a lot more than two
hundred dollars.
     Of course, she didn't shield her PIN entry from anyone, much less
the other two in the car, and Tucker knew he wouldn't be able to get rid
of it for a month.  *Wonder if Charlene caught it?  Nah,* he decided,
looking at her as she looked out the window on her side.  *They really
ought to make those things six or eight digits.  Or seven; people can
remember phone numbers, so why not longer PINs?*
     Twenty 'chunk' noises from the ATM was four hundred dollars, he
also noticed.  *Whoa.  Must be a special bank or something... or a
special account.*

     "Chicken soup?" Charlie questioned.  *Does that really work, or-*
     "Best thing for respiratory illness," Valerie claimed.  "Well, hot
water vapor or aerosol and a nebulizer works better, but chicken soup,
especially from a good deli, works pretty well."
     "What's a nebulizer?" Charlie had to ask.  Valerie just sighed and
looked tired.
     "Did you want-  Oh," Darla said, as she apparently noticed the
items the two of them were holding in their hands.
     "You might want to get a salad or two for them," Valerie mentioned
as she placed hers on the counter.  "Sometimes it helps with the, uh,
lower digestive effects."
     "The wh- no, never MIND," Darla insisted.  "Besides, I can fix a
salad at the house."
     Charlie had to mention, "Um Darla, I'm not so sure we have-"
     "FINE!" Darla almost screamed, making everyone in the deli look at
them, and she stomped back towards the cooler that held salads.
     "It's all that driving so hard," Valerie stated, "that makes her so
irritable.  She'd be happier if she'd drive smoother; her liver wouldn't
be so distressed."
     Charlie almost said something, but thought better of it.  "Why
don't you stop annoying her," he suggested instead, "and maybe she
wouldn't be so crazy, and she wouldn't drive so crazy?"
     "Who, me?" Valerie said, but so fakely that no one would've
believed her.  Before she said anything else, though, she caught Darla
returning out of the corner of her eye and mercifully shut up.
     Charlie tried just staring at Valerie, like Marie had done to him a
few times, and it seemed to be having SOME kind of effect on her.  *I
just hope it's the RIGHT effect, and she doesn't do something like annoy
Darla MORE.*

     The familiar gate of Jane's house was more welcome than usual;
Darryl was tired to the bone.  *But at least we got her back.*

     Tucker unlatched the seat belt and hoisted the pack carefully and
vertically out of Darla's car, which he could barely manage; the pack
weighed almost as much as he did, after a day and a half of carrying it.
Swinging it into position on his back, he fumbled out his penlight.
"See?" he said to Darla when he had it on and pointed at where his pack
had been sitting.  "No damage."
     Naturally, she huffed and stomped into the house.
     *I KNEW she wouldn't appreciate it...*

     "Where-"
     "She said she had to go upstairs to change," Charlie answered,
wishing Diana would get the hell out of his way before he dropped
some of the food.  "Excuse me please?" he tried.

     "What's in the bags?" Art asked when he noticed what was in her
hands.
     "Valerie suggested we stop at a deli or something, since Jane and
Marie are both sick," Charlene said.
     "Oh.  What a lovely idea...  Here, let me take some of those," Art
said, because the girl looked like she might drop one of the bags at any
moment.  They managed the handoff, barely, without dropping anything.
"What did you get?"
     "Chicken soup, and I wasn't sure if we had enough for salads and
Valerie said that a salad might help, so we got salads for everyone, and
Darla let us get a sandwich each...  Is Marie feeling any better?  Or
Jane?"
     "Marie has been dosing herself and sleeping," Art explained.
"Jane..."
     "Did she really sign that contract?"
     Art sighed.  "I'm afraid she did."  He still thought it was a bad
idea, at least without some more review and modification.  Valerie had
shown an unexpected amount of legalistic thinking, and the unknown
method by which he'd acquired that laptop, and the capability to turn it
into a fax machine, worried Art.
     "Well...  I think it'll turn out okay," Charlene offered,
surprising him.  "I mean, she DID come back, and she seems a lot less...
angry, I guess.  At Jane and everything," she added.

     "Oh boy," Tucker grinned, because in the midst of all the bullshit
lace and satin of 'his' room, were all three pieces of his previously-
confiscated luggage.  "Excellent!"
     Then he sighed, clumsily shoved the door shut, and moved inside
just enough to drop his pack before it dragged him through the floor and
down to the center of the planet.
     *Kinda forgot what would happen when you got back, didn't you?*
Mike snarked into his head.
     "Fuck you Mike," Tucker moaned.  "Ohh...."  *I need to send him a
revision, set up the deadman...  And I gotta get dressed, since I'm
here.*  'Appropriate feminine attire and ladylike deportment' was a
performance standard.  "Oh god.  Oh shit."  *Closet, makeup, hair-
hair'll do.  Clothes...*  There were a lot of clothes in the closet.
And he didn't want to wear any of them.
     *Which explains why I'm going to the closet...*  Which he was.
     "Oh, what to wear, what to wear...  I hate this place," Tucker
sighed as he paged through the hangers.

     "And she's here?" Jane confirmed.  She REALLY was not thinking
well.
     "Yes, Momma-Jane.  She said she was going to change, and she went
right to her room here," Darla explained.
     "Did SHE sign the contract?"
     Darla sighed.  "She said she did, digitally, and I don't know how
that works.  She said she needs to use your printer to print it out."
     "Oh...  Do you know what to do?"  Jane did not.  She knew she had
to turn it on and let it warm up, and how to feed it with paper, but
that was about it.
     "No, but she does," Darla replied, sounding sour.
     *Oh, that's right... she was faxing through a laptop,* Jane
remembered muzzily.
     *I think...*
     "Momma-Jane?"
     "Mmmm?"
     "We brought some food.  Did you eat today?"
     *Did I eat today...*
     "Momma-Jane?"
     "Mmmm?  Yes, alright..."
     *What am I doing?*
     "You need to get dressed, to come downstairs and eat."
     "That's right..."

     Charlie almost smiled when he saw Valerie, who had changed into a
nice but not childish olive short-sleeved dress, and black low-heeled
sandals, carrying a matching cloth purse over one shoulder, and her face
gently made up-
     "What did you do to your HAIR?!" he gasped in shock.
     It HAD been average middle brown; Sandy had said she'd bleached it
out to a very light blonde.
     NOW it was a very stark, very startling, red AND black.  And a very
radical cut, too.
     "I did not consent to having my hair bleached, and I didn't like
being blonde," Valerie stated, sounding perfectly reasonable.  "So I
changed it to something I like better."  Charlie was beginning to catch
on, that when Valerie sounded totally reasonable and sane, is when she
was doing something utterly outrageous.
     Jane was going to EXPLODE when she saw it.
     *Maybe she could cover her hair with a scarf?  She was doing that
earlier,* Charlie realized.  *Oh no.*

     Tucker came into the dining room and found Darla, so he said, "So,
you sai-"
     "What did you do to your HAIR?!" Darla shrieked.  Jane merely
pointed and looked somewhere between terrified and enraged.
     "You shall not perform permament or semi-permanent body
modifications on me without my express prior permission," Tucker semi-
quoted.
     "But..."
     "I like this better than the blonde," Tucker claimed.  He still
wasn't sure.  Of course, if he'd had his druthers, he'd still be a
brunette.  But, in another sense, ANYTHING was better than letting Jane
et al dictate things like the color of his hair.
     "You can't go out like that," Jane stated.  Tucker winced at the
sound of her voice, because he could feel exactly where her lungs were
congested and just how that affected everything else, like having to
take very small bites of food so you wouldn't run out of air while
chewing.
     Tucker had to clear his throat after hearing Jane before he could
state, "Well, you're not bleaching it again.  It'd disintegrate if you
tried it this soon."  Well, Susan's friend's - *Pam?  Patsy?  Pastel?
Pathetic?*  He couldn't remember her name - hair hadn't literally
disintegrated, despite fervent prayers, but it had been too fragile to
brush, much less cook'n'whip like the bunch of them usually did.
     "Miss Thompson," Charlene butted in, "don't you have some wigs, for
girls that have short hair when they arrive?  Maybe she could wear one
of those when she's out?"
     Tucker didn't like the idea, but he could see it.  "That'd work, I
guess."
     Jane and Darla looked ill-tempered at the thought, which made
Tucker feel better about it.
     Marie came straggling in, wearing sweatpants and the like, and the
first thing she said was something in French that, judging by the
pointing, meant, "What did you do to your HAIR?!"
     *Libretto.  Libretto.  Libretto...*

     "Oh, and while I'm thinking of it," Valerie said, which made
Charlie wince because he was fairly sure nothing good was going to come
out.  She continued, "How about the sick ones, that's you Jane and you
Marie, you two sit at THAT end of the table, and either Darla or..."
     "Diana Phillips," Diana introduced herself.
     "Yeahcharmed'm'sure," Valerie dropped, then continued, "one of you
deal with serving them, getting drinks and stuff 'cause they won't want
to move too much; and the other one and m- Charlene and I sit at this
other end of the table," she pointed in case nobody knew what other end
of the table she was talking about, "and maybe the rest of us don't
catch what you've got?"
     There was a pause.  Charlie thought that might be a good idea, but
it did seem to be exactly the sort of common sense that Jane hated and
rejected at every-
     "Good idea," Jane announced, and sat at her usual head-of-the-table
chair.  Moments later, Marie pulled out and fell into a chair next to
her.
     "And we'll get our own food," Valerie told Charlie.

     Tucker wished he had a fan, to blow virii and bacteria back towards
Jane and Marie, or at least away from himself, but of course there
wouldn't be anything like that in the house.  *Wonder if they have
bleach- oh, right, bleach'll ruin anything nice, which is everything in
this house.  Because 'nice' for nobility's purposes is carefully defined
as 'impossible to disinfect' and 'expensive as shit'.*  Tucker sighed;
humanity was sometimes so stupid he wondered how it had lived this long.
     "Right, salad... I can drink Dew," which was why he'd brought one
downstairs in his 'new' 'purse'.  "Skip the soup, let them eat that..."
He debated opening his Spam, but cold Spam was slightly worse than hot
and he didn't want to take the time to heat it.
     As he tried to balance everything so he wouldn't have to make two
trips, Charlene said, "Oh.  Are you going to drink that soda?"
     *No, I was going to stuff it up your ass,* he managed not to say
out loud.
     "Because," she rolled her eyes, "she'll make you get a glass for
it."
     "Have you ever realized that all of this manners sh- stuff is about
the most p- most inefficient way to do things possible?"  He didn't want
to explain 'pessimal', and if he'd used that word he'd have to.
     "It seems that way some- most-  You know, you're probably right,"
Charlene agreed with a frown.
     "Plus, pouring it loses all the carbonation."
     "Not like she cares," Charlene mentioned, then shut up as Darla
came in.  "Anyway, let me show you how to pour it so you don't lose all
of it."
     Tucker unloaded back onto the counter as Charlene got a large glass
out of a cabinet and popped the top in a practiced one-handed maneuver
that she could've learned here, it looked so elegant and practiced, but
was entirely too practical and normal for Jane to consider.
     She picked up both the glass and the can and tilted both before
putting them together with a clink, and then the Dew was moving into the
glass with hardly any foam at all.
     "That's a good way to do that," Darla agreed as she left with a
pair of salads.
     "And those sandwiches were pretty large," Charlene mentioned as she
finished the pour, leaving an inch or so of the glass empty.  "I think
we need plates, and extra forks and knives."
     "Wha-  Oh, right," Tucker sighed.  'Ladies' did not use the same
silverware for two courses, and 'ladies' did not bite things off, they
sucked them through their overly-lipsticked leechlike suckers-
     *Dude, I need to stop thinking like that,* he realized.
*'Ladylike'.  Like Debbie if she's in a priss mood, or really made up
and on her manners.*  Debbie could do that.  More to the point, she
could turn it ON when she wanted it, and OFF when she didn't.
     *And if she can do it, I can learn it.*
     *Plus,* he remembered, *it makes her hot.*

     Debbie took a bite, that first hot point-of-the-slice bite, and
slowly pulled the pizza away from her mouth, trying to get the cheese to
stretch out to the end of her arms.
     "Would you stop?" Lisa complained and giggled.
     Debbie relented, biting the cheese off and watching it snap back a
little before it dangled off the slice.  "MMMmmmhmmmMM-hmm," she hummed,
which Lisa hopefully understood as 'But it's SO good'.
     "Mmmhmmm," Lisa smiled, her eyes closed in culinary ecstasy.

     While Jane was in no mood to criticize in the manner she usually
did - she refused to believe that she was even temporarily incapable
because of her illness; she was merely being wise in choosing not to
expend the effort at this time - she didn't have as much to criticize as
she thought she would.
     Whatever deli Darla had picked - *And bless her for the thought,*
Jane smiled internally at her daughter - had piled the fixings high, and
even Jane would have chosen to eat them with silverware instead of the
usual way one ate a sandwich.  Valerie, though slow, was closer to
adequate in her table manners, though not as practiced as Charlene.  She
was also watching the others at the table, and modifying her own
behavior to closer match theirs.
     *I do believe this will go better than I was afraid it would,* she
smiled, careful not to let it show.
     Her soup was hot, thick, and salty, which was just what her ravaged
throat and upset stomach wanted.  It was too bad she couldn't smell it,
but Diana seemed to be appreciative.

     Tucker was very glad he'd had some fries earlier.  *Though I guess
I ate a lot today...  Well, no, I didn't.  Just in the last twelve hours
or so.  Didn't eat until I was with Trish, that pseudo-Chinese mall food
stuff.*
     *One thing's for sure, eating like this is NOT efficient.*  Then he
had to smile, because Mike might starve to death right over his plate if
he had to eat using manners like this.
     Then he wiped the smile off his face in the faint hope Jane hadn't
noticed, because if she had she'd jump his shit on it.

     *What is she smiling at?* Jane wondered.  Then she had to smile
herself as Valerie's smirk disappeared, replaced by a mostly-concealed
flash of terror and a glance at Jane from under lowered lashes.  *As if
I wouldn't notice that!*

     Darryl remembered, "Oh, did you want to print out the contract
before we ate?"
     Valerie swallowed and replied, "It's a little late now to remember
that.  We'll do it after we eat," she ordered.  "Charlene, could you do
the clean-up?  It'd be a real good idea to get copies of this contract
printed out.  And the pay sheet for chores," she smiled at Charlene.
     Darryl protested, "That is just-"
     "If I get it, she should get it," Valerie interrupted.  "And Jane
signed the contract, and you paid on it.  Unless you want to break it
already?"
     There had been a thousand dollar penalty for unilateral breakage of
the contract, plus a plane ticket for Valerie AND UPS shipping for her
goods; which is why Darryl almost shouted, "NO!" before Jane could choke
on her soup.
     "I agree, that if you get paid, Charlene should get paid the same
amount for the same work," Jane unexpectedly turned against him.
     "But, Momma-Jane-"
     "It's little enough," Jane dismissed the money and the principle at
the same time.

     *FUCK!* Tucker realized, FAR too late.  *I should've doubled the
fee schedule!  Or tripled it... Oh, shit.*  He KNEW Jane had too much
money for any one person, and he'd ignored that because he was trying to
be 'reasonable'.  *Oh, DAMN it.*
     *And the signing bonus!  FUCK!*

     "Valerie, eat more slowly," Jane commanded, no longer able to
resist, and prompted - or goaded - by the interplay of unhappy
expressions that had washed over her face.
     After several seconds of frozen stillness, Valerie replied, "Yes
ma'am."  And ate more slowly.

     While Tucker's stomach was kind of unhappy, probably from the
combination of the stress of being back here and the torment he was
getting from both his Debbie and Mike emulators, at least he didn't feel
anywhere near to vomiting.
     *Still, I'm glad that's over.*
     "Valer-"
     "Contract, print out, right," he said to Darla as he got up.
"Charlene, you'll clean up?"  She nodded.  "Thank you.  Be sure to wash
things hot and use gloves," he reminded her.
     "What?  Wh-"
     "To keep from getting sick?  Figure that everything either of them
MIGHT have touched, coughed at, or sneezed in the direction of, is
contaminated with the Black Death."  That was pretty much how it worked,
too; they'd experimentally confirmed the hypothesis using Susan a few
times.

     Darryl wasn't happy to have Valerie anywhere near Jane's computer;
and he was more unhappy to see her dive into the rat's nest of cables
and start moving things.  It had taken him an hour or more, with the
skimpy manuals, to set her computer up, and two trips to the store to
get the correct cables; Valerie had herself plugged in and ready before
Jane's Laserjet warmed up.  "C'mon c'mon c'mon," she urged.

     *Laserjet 4 driver, which thank Finagle I have on board, single
sided pages, paper 8.5x11 inches, 600 dpi black&white, direct print of
fax images...*  It looked good to Tucker, so he sent it, and the printer
admitted it was receiving from the laptop's parallel port. The printer
hummed and began 'churning and burning'.  *Let's see...*  It took a long
time - his dot matrix was actually slower, but since you could see it
printing, it seemed faster - but finally the first page wheezed out.
Tucker pulled it out to compare it with the on-screen image.  *And...
yeah, looks good,* so he handed it to Darla.
     "What's this stuff at the bottom?"
     "Digital signature, of the fax image."  *Didn't I mention this
earlier?*  But, looking at her, he realized there was no way he could
explain it to her; she didn't have the intellectual capacity.  "I signed
the image I got, the one with her signature on it," he tried anyway,
knowing it was hopeless.
     "Why can't you sign it with ink?"  He was about to say something
when she added, "Like a normal person?"
     "Fine, Darla, I'll sign it in ink.  Like a normal person."  *Stupid
goddamned WASP retard.*  He grabbed a pen out of some container on
Jane's desk - luckily, it was a ballpoint, not a fountain pen or a goose
quill or something - and scribbled an ideogram over the digital
signature on the first page, then pulled the second page from the tray
and scribbled the same ideogram on the same place.
     "That's your signature?"
     "Don't you have something to do besides criticizing my penmanship?"
Tucker shot back.
     "I've just never seen anything..."
     "Your mother's isn't any better, at least on this," he waved it at
her.  "People who have to sign things, in REAL LIFE, learn something
fast and distinctive rather than something legible."  He felt pretty
proud of that one.

     Two raps on Charlie's door got his attention, but before he could
get to the door and open it, some paper slid under the door.  He picked
them up and looked at them, and it was the list of chores with the money
he'd get for each.
     "Damnit!" he realized after looking at them for a while, "I
could've made a couple hundred dollars!"

     "You don't look happy," Art noticed when he opened the door to
Jane's office.  Darla was sitting in Jane's desk chair, staring at her
pen set.
     "I keep thinking," Darla replied, as Art came in and shut the door,
"what could possibly be worse than having HER, HERE?"
     Before Art could say anything, she deflated.  "I know, whatever she
could come up with in the outside world has to be worse, but... she is
so INFURIATING!"
     "I know..."  He'd heard about it from Jane directly.  "I think
we're stuck with her now, though."
     "Oh, God," Darla whined.  "Why us?"
     "Jane said she had two normal ones in a row, that it was time for
one of the weird ones..."
     "I didn't think this one would be THIS weird!"
     Art suddenly had a thought.  "Did you make sure she was-"
     "In her room, yes," Darla answered.  "But we're not allowed to lock
the doors any more, remember?  She showed me that part specifically,"
she said sourly.  "And I made sure she fixed what she messed with on-"
     "Messed with-"
     "She had to unplug the printer and plug it into her laptop," Darla
dismissed.  "I made sure that was ALL she did, though.  She went to the
downstairs parlor when she finished."
     "Why?"
     "She said she needed to connect her computer to a phone, remember?"
     Art didn't mention that there was no way Darla could know she'd
actually gone there without going with her.

     "Oh good, phone," Tucker mumbled to himself as the modem connected.
"This is going to be exciting..."
     He dumped the details directly to Mike's email, and sent an alert
to Mike's system, but nothing happened.  "Oh, well, then, easy," Tucker
commented, hung up the modem, disconnected and reconnected and repacked,
and decided to make sure his returned stuff hadn't been fiddled with.
"Oh, wait, and cameras..."
     Diana Whatshername came in about that time, apparently because he'd
been left alone with a phone cable for too long.  *Must have kids or
something, to be able to smell that sort of thing,* Tucker thought as he
smiled and wished her a good night as he left.

     Mike came back from a pre-bed bathroom trip to find that Tucker had
just connected somewhere and sent him some packets.
     A bunch of packets.
     Mike looked around, and finally settled on a 'dirty' T-shirt to
stuff into his mouth, because he had a feeling that whatever Tucker was
doing was going to make him scream.

     Darryl, out of idle curiosity, had just turned the monitor on to
watch Valerie's room, just in time to see her reaching towards the
camera.  Which was supposed to be behind a mirror, which was bolted to
the heavy vanity.
     The screen went dark.
     "Oh, shit," Diana said.

     "DAMNIT!" Mike tried to scream, but the T-shirt muffled it to a
frantic mumble.  "You fucking BONEHEAD!"

     "Charleeeeeeeene!" Valerie shrieked from upstairs.  *Oh, what now?*
Charlie wondered, before the crashing noises started.

     "Are you okay?!"
     "That thing," Tucker said, staring back at the staircase, "is
trying to kill me.  It hates me."
     Charlene didn't argue with him, which was a nice change from his
home life.
     The thumping at the TOP of the stairs momentarily made him wonder
if the stairs were unfolding into something like a wooden mecha-golem
that would then try to squash him, but it was Diana and Darla.
     "Have any more of these I need to know about?!" he shouted at them
while waving the possibly-undamaged-by-fall camera at them.  He turned
to Charlene and mentioned, "They have cameras in the bedrooms.  I found
this one behind the makeup mirror.  That may not be all of them."  He
turned back and reminded the two on the stairs, "This is a violation of
privacy and a possible violation of child pornography laws!"
     That stopped them, though the stairs didn't try to kill THEM, he
noticed sourly.

     "Violation of privacy, right here, on page two," Valerie pointed to
the paragraph in the contract.  "Where's the rest of them?"
     "What?" Darryl asked before he could stop himself.
     "The rest of the cameras!"
     "There aren't any more!"
     "Oh PLEASE," Valerie sneered.
     "There aren't!"
     "You can't see half the room with these things mounted- uh, mounted
where they are," she disputed.
     "Well, I'm SORRY, but there aren't any more cameras!"
     "What is going on?" Jane demanded in a hoarse, thick, mucus-y voice
that made Valerie gag momentarily before she began coughing.  Darryl
could hear the difference in her coughs compared to Jane's, too.

     *One camera per room?* Tucker wondered as he surveyed the various
channels on the monitor in Jane's office.  *Jeez, whoever set this up
ripped them off.*
     "Oh, unless they have another monitor station somewhere else.  Or
another set of feeds and a switcher," Tucker thought.
     "What?" Darla asked.
     "What?" Tucker said back.  "Did I say something?"
     "You said something about feeds and a switcher?"
     *I gotta stop doing that.*  He almost said 'um' but Jane was right
there, and while she looked ill, Tucker wasn't sure how much of that was
true and how much of that would fall off if he did something horrifying
like say 'um'.  "Technical things," he said instead.  *Okay, so, if they
have another set...*
     "I can't believe how paranoid you're being," Darla complained.
     "Then you're incompetent and you shouldn't be playing with adults,"
Tucker shot back before he could stop himself.  "Miz Thompson, I'm done.
Thank you for showing me this..."  Not that it helped, really; she could
have smaller cameras elsewhere, like embedded in the wall frou-frou, and
this station could be a decoy.  "You need to go to bed and rest," he
mentioned.
     "I'd like to do that," she said, sounding so nasty Tucker had to
cough, "if there will be no more disturbances tonight?"
     "No ma'am," Tucker said.  *Just get a sheet and put it over the-
Oh, wait, canopy beds have canopies, don't they?  That's why the four-
poster was invented, right?  Hmmm.*  If they had a sewing machine, then
he should be able to-
     *I can think about this downstairs,* he realized.

     "How did she know about the cameras?" Darla bitched, and Charlie
wished she had gone to Diana or Jane to complain about this.
     "I guess she either saw them, or... figured out they had to be
there, and searched until she found them."  There was a word for that-
     "But how did she know?  Or deduce they were there?"  That was the
word.
     "Well..."  Everything they did here after the first few days used
blackmail as a starting point.  *Maybe she just figured out the
blackmail part of it before Jane sprung it on her.*  They had, of
course, shown him pictures and a videotape clip of him looking pretty
much uncoerced while dressing and doing his own makeup, and told him
that he'd best behave if he didn't want those to follow him around.
     *I wish someone had told me about this sort of thing before I got
here, like someone seems to have told Valerie.*  It didn't seem fair
that she was younger than he was, yet knew so much more about how to
cope with Jane and her 'antics'.
     Suddenly, he was sick of Darla.  "Darla," he started, just managing
to keep his voice sounding gentle, "I don't think worrying about it now
is going to help anything.  And I don't know about you, but I'm very
tired; I'd like to finish cleaning up and go to bed."  *And I wouldn't
mind the money, either.*  It wasn't much, but it was a whole lot more
than he HAD been getting.

     Tucker did not like Metamucil, but if he didn't have some now, he'd
regret it in a few days when he had to go to an ER, bent over a stack of
pillows and/or blankets with his ass up in the air, and let some nurse,
or worse a resident, dig the rocklike chunks of overdried feces out of
his ass.
     Just vaguely remembering all that was enough to propel the glass of
slime to his mouth and tip it up.  *Oh, god...*  But he drank it.
     Then he had to drink an additional glass of water, so it could
finish swelling.  Inside his body.  *This is gross...*

     "So you think he WAS captured?" Dan pressed.
     "Nooooo..."  Mike wasn't entirely sure what to think.  Of course,
the little shit had dropped his email and files and disconnected
immediately.  Probably because he knew what Mike would do to him.  "Or
he wouldn't have set up a deadman."  He was fairly confident about that.
     "Or he'd have embedded-"
     "A capture code, right."
     "But he didn't-"
     "No.  He put in a data file on what's going on, he CLAIMED, but
they're double-keyed, and the other key is his DAD's."
     "Oh."
     "Yeah, 'oh'."  The only way to decrypt that file would be to get
Tucker's dad to open it, and then...  Well, what would happen would
depend on what was in the file, but Mike just KNEW that if Tucker had
double-encrypted it like that, that it would be something that would
make Mike scream.  More.  But, of course, he didn't dare go whining to
Tuck's dad about it, because then HIS part in the entire mess would be
exposed, and that was something to be avoided except in dire
circumstances.  Like, Tuck's deadman triggering from lack of contact.
     "So we just sit and wait?"
     "I think that Libretto is an unreasonable influence," Mike
commented.
     "Well, you'd want one."
     "Shut up, Dan."

     *Bra, panties, nightgown...*  Tucker hoped it wouldn't be too hot
in the bedroom; long nylon clothing seemed like a good way to get the
sweats.  *Makeup off.  Including eyebrows,* which had taken a while, to
remove all the mascara, but he'd finally gotten them back to the light
brown of a real blonde.
     *I wonder...*
     But before he could do that, he had to pull the bed apart to get
the sheets, to hang over the other mirrors in the room, and he shut the
bathroom door in case there were cameras behind that mirror too.
*Really need to find the linen closet... and then maybe I can get
something besides this satin shit to sleep in...*
     Shortly, he had the blonde wig out of his escape kit, sort of on
his head, and he was looking at the only mirror in the place he could be
certain didn't have a(nother) camera behind it watching him.  *Yeah,
okay, that just about works.*  He hadn't looked too bad with the short
blonde wig at home, but the eyebrows made the fake hair look a lot more
natural on him.  *Not like being a bleached blonde is the social problem
it used to be... I think.*  He had a vague sense of a past when it was
some sort of social felony to get caught changing one's hair color.
     Nowadays, of course, no one cared.
     Tucker found himself staring at himself and not thinking, which
meant it was definitely time to go to bed.
     *Time to hide the wig and go to bed,* he reminded himself.  *And
wedge the door shut.*
     *Sweet dreams, asshole,* he grinned towards the face in the mirror.


***


Distribution:
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Permission is given to redistribute this by electronic means, as long as
the entirety of the work (from the BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE header to
the END PGP SIGNATURE footer) is distributed, and credit is given to the
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+ @>--,--'-----   Ellen Hayes   o===[--------      __      vicki .sig  +
                  -=[1990]=-                       \/      virus 12.2
+      http://www.barkingduck.net/ehayes     PGP key: EFC9 5D55 (1996) +




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