Buffalito Bundle Read online

  I nodded. “You make a good case, and I’ll consider it. When do you estimate Carla is going to give birth?”

  “That’s the other reason I needed to find you,” she said. “I altered the records in Wada’s database; they’ll believe she won’t start labor for several days. But based on the weight reported by the Arconi, and the weight obtained at customs, you’ve actually less than twenty-four hours. Please believe me, Mr. Conroy, she can’t have her pups here.”

  “This site is secure, Doctor,” said Mandelbrot. “The buffalito is not going anywhere. Especially if Wada is looking for her.”

  “Not to mention Gregor’s more pressing deadline,” I said.

  “Who’s Gregor?” said Dr. Penrose.

  “A very large Russian who believes I owe him two and a half million creds that I don’t currently have.”

  “And if he doesn’t get it?”

  “He’ll rip my arms off.”

  Mandelbrot checked the time. “In about sixteen hours,” he said.

  “You’re exaggerating, aren’t you?” said Dr. Penrose. “I thought loan sharks just broke your legs.”

  “He’s a butcher, not a loan shark. And I’m not exaggerating. You ever hear of Dimitri Konstant, possibly the greatest sculptor to come out of Eastern Europe?”

  Dr. Penrose shook her head.

  “Right, and you won’t, because Gregor ripped his damn arms off six years ago. This is not a guy who likes colorful metaphors. When he says he’ll rip your arms off, he means it.”

  “Yeah,” said Mandelbrot, “that’s another reason we’re not going anywhere.”

  She started to reply to him, but turned to me instead. “Mr. Conroy, despite their outward appearance, Arconi buffalo dogs are nothing like any creature on Earth. For one thing, they’re extremely thermogenetic.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, I don’t know that term. What’s it mean?”

  “They generate a great deal of heat when they’re being born.”

  “What are we talking about here?” I said. “Are we going to need oven mitts to deliver the pups?”

  “Conventional oven mitts would combust, Mr. Conroy. We’re talking about bursts of energy of more than two thousand degrees.”

  I looked around at the safe house’s living room, a very flammable living room, not all that different from the flammable bedroom where Carla Espinoza slept inside her crate. Somehow she’d gone from being my ticket to wealth and luxury and become a firebomb waiting to happen.

  “Are you insane?” I said. “This is Philadelphia; it’s not like we can drive out to the desert and have Carla turn the place into a glassy plain when she has her pups. And even if we could, those pups won’t do me much good if I’ve had my arms ripped off.”

  To my surprise, Mandelbrot jumped in. “I think I have a solution. Let me make a call. I know a realtor who keeps odd hours. There’s an old building that she represents that’s not far from here. It used to be a mental health facility. It’s been vacant for several years now; it’s partially gutted because of a fire on the upper floors, but the structure itself is still sound.”

  “A mental health facility that’s already burned down once? How is that better than where we are now?”

  Mandelbrot grinned. “It was originally built as a bank. The vault’s still there, and it’s intact. The door is solid steel and the walls are almost a meter of concrete reinforced with more steel. It’s built to withstand a lot more than just extremes of heat. And best of all, it’s secure. You’ll need that, for your business, after the initial birthing.”

  “A bank vault,” I said, and Mandelbrot’s grin must have been contagious because it had spread to my face. “Make the call. Offer to pay whatever it takes, so long as we get immediate access.”

  It was Dr. Penrose’s turn to look surprised. “You’re going to rent a bank? At night? What are you going to tell the realtor?”

  I shrugged. “We’ll tell her we want to open a bank.”

  Mandelbrot made his call and an hour later we had packed up my pregnant buffalo dog, my newest employee, and all his security gear. We drove off to meet the realtor and do battle with a stack of paperwork. By midnight the realtor had come and gone, and I had a shiny new lease on a dilapidated building that would soon become the Earth’s first buffalo dog nursery. The corner building had an odd, wedge-shaped design, a consequence of the acute angle formed by the two streets that defined it. Most of it had been blackened by fire, and what hadn’t burned had succumbed to water damage from the efforts to extinguish the flames. But the basement was sound and its vault still functional.

  Mandelbrot went right to work, inspecting the upper floors, installing his security systems and other deterrents. Carla Espinoza hadn’t bothered to wake up at any point in the moving process but did look plumper. Dr. Penrose and I carried the buffalito and her crate into the basement’s foyer and the vault beyond.

  Anything that had survived the fire, or been brought in to refurbish the building, had been abandoned in the foyer. The walls were lined with stacks of chairs, desks, file cabinets, drop cloths, buckets of spackle, buckets of paint, assorted brushes, rollers, and sprayers, broken furniture, and boxes of outdated office equipment. A layer of dust coated all of it. Dr. Penrose sneezed a few times, and went off in search of other supplies. I left Carla to snooze, carefully closing the vault only after I’d convinced myself I could open it again without mishap. I spent the next few hours clearing away debris and setting up a desk and some chairs. Mandelbrot popped in now and then, just to make sure I hadn’t fallen asleep.

  Dr. Penrose returned with two large cardboard boxes. The first contained an assortment of readymade deli sandwiches, several liters of bottled water, a large can of ground coffee, a battery-powered coffeemaker, and a collection of disposable plates and cups. The second box held a dozen large spray bottles and had been marked with interstellar customs stickers. She piled everything on the desk, and while I brewed the coffee she opened up the vault and checked in on Carla Espinoza. The aroma of fresh coffee had no effect on Carla, who seemed determined to sleep through everything, but the wafting fumes lured Mandelbrot down long enough to grab a cup, scoop up a sandwich, and vanish again up the stairs.

  Somewhere, Gregor Ivanovich was tracking through dreams in search of me, and being led astray. I fully intended to pay my debt, buying back whatever insult he felt I’d done his sister, but I couldn’t do it in the less than ten hours of his original time table. I couldn’t do anything until Carla had her pups, including sleep. Mandelbrot, Dr. Penrose, and I had dosed ourselves with stims before leaving the safe house, and I’d given each of us a quick post-hypnotic trigger which could jerk any of us awake. If we could just keep it up a while longer, I’d get to keep my arms.

  Dr. Penrose emerged from the vault and began spritzing orange mist from one of her aerosol bottles all over the inner seal of the door. The mist foamed, congealed, and left what looked like a candy coating on the metal. It smelled like the water left over after boiling up hot dogs.

  “It’s a Glamorkan transducing polymer,” she said before I could ask. “It will keep the door from fusing.” She gestured to the box she had brought in, and I went over and found several more bottles of the gunk. Together we spent the next couple of hours squirting and spraying every part of the vault where the door joined the circular jamb, applying coat after coat until all of it gleamed pumpkin bright and dry to the touch. Then we closed the vault up tight, sat at the table, and helped ourselves to coffee and sandwiches.

  “I can’t believe Carla slept through all of that. I thought the smell would have brought her around if nothing else.”

  Dr. Penrose shook her head. “No, that’s a good sign, really. What time is it?”

  I checked my watch. “Nearly four thirty. She’s been sleeping a good ten hours. How long until she goes all thermogenetic on us?”

  “Buffalo dogs sleep between eight and fourteen hours before actually entering labor. It could happen any time.”

&
nbsp; “How will we know?”

  She smirked. “Oh, believe me, you’ll know. And Mr. Conroy, I meant what I said about the intensity of the heat. Common theory is they evolved it as a defense mechanism to protect the vulnerable mothers from potential predators.”

  “And Carla won’t be hurt by the heat? Not even singed?” I said.

  “There’s a reason why all those alarms went off when you tried to slip her through the customs scanners. Buffalo dogs may look like adorable miniature versions of American bison, but they’re complex alien creatures. The curly hide that you think might get singed has a higher melting point than industrial steel. The vault would liquefy before it got hot enough to harm an adult buffalo dog.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m glad to have someone here who knows what’s going to happen. You make it sound like everything I know is wrong.”

  She froze at that, and just stared at me. I didn’t like what I read in her eyes. I saw nervousness, raw fear ready to escalate to terror. A tremor went through her whole body and poof, everything changed. The fear was gone. She sighed, but it sounded more like disgust than tiredness.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Conroy, my sister’s expertise with buffalo dogs is genuine, but it’s mostly theoretical. Simulations are more her style, not actual hands-dirty fieldwork, so she had a little panic attack. Believe me, it’s a one time thing.”

  Something profound had happened to Lisa Penrose. Her voice was different; the rhythms of her speech had changed. She was looking right at me but avoiding any eye contact. And why was she talking about herself in the third person once removed?

  “Your. . . sister?” I said.

  “Yes, pretty strange, isn’t it. I’m Bess, by the way. I get to handle all the high stress jobs. Say, do you have any gum?”

  “Gum? Uh, no. Stop. Back up. What just happened? What do you mean you’re Bess? Earlier you told me your name was Lisa.”

  “No, earlier Lisa told you that. This is the first time we’ve met, which is why I’m introducing myself. I’m the practical one. Lisa’s the smart one. And Betsy,—you saw her at the port when you cleared customs—she’s the sneaky one. There are others, but I don’t want to confuse you any more just now.”

  Carla Espinoza chose that moment to wake up and go into labor. Through nearly a meter of steel came a shrieking ululation that I swear must have sobered every alcoholic within a hundred city blocks. We both clutched our hands to our ears for what felt like minutes. Mandelbrot came scrambling down the stairs into the basement’s foyer, wincing in pain.

  “What is that?” he mouthed, the actual sound of his words drowned out.

  I began to feel heat on my back and turned, facing the massive circle of the vault’s door. The air in front of it shimmered and the door seemed to pulse in time to the sound, once, twice, and then the shimmer faded. The shriek died away too, or at least its volume dropped below the insulation level of the vault.

  “What just happened?” I asked.

  Mandelbrot’s pocket beeped, a surprisingly loud sound in the quiet after the shriek. He pulled out his commpadd and studied its display. “Fire suppression system in the vault activated, but it’s already shut down. The plumbing looks fused or some such. Too much heat too fast from the look of this data.”

  I turned to ‘Bess’ and asked, “Was that the thermogenesis you talked about? And what was that horrible sound? We’ve got to get in there and find out if Carla’s all right.”

  “I told you, I’m not Lisa. I don’t have the answers you’re looking for. Hold on, let me see what I can do.”

  It was Mandelbrot’s turn to stare, first at the woman who claimed not to be Lisa, and then at me. I stepped closer to the vault, careful not to touch. The metal looked ordinary. I darted one hand forward, barely tapped it with a finger and pulled back. It was warm, very warm.

  “All that heat and noise came out of that little animal?” said Mandelbrot.

  “If I understand it right, that heat was part of the birthing process. Carla’s in labor right now.”

  Bess stood and a shudder rippled through her again. She lowered her face into her hands for a moment, and when she looked up there were tears in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Conroy. I’m back. I didn’t mean for you to meet Bess, not like that. But it’s not important. Right now you need to open the vault door and get in there, or you’re going to lose the pups.”

  “Lose them? How? Why?”

  “Newborn pups aren’t as durable as full grown adults. They’re born with a protective coating to see them through their own entry into the world, but they can’t handle more than a couple bursts of heat like that.”

  “There’s going to be more?” said Mandelbrot.

  She nodded, rubbing at her eyes with the back of her right hand. “The first is the hottest, but one burst marks the arrival of each pup in the litter,” she said. “Normally, the male parent picks up each newborn and shields it and its sibs from the brunt of the heat with its own body.”

  The whole concept of birth involving blast furnace special effects still had me dazed. “The male parent? You mean Reggie? We don’t have him, the Wada Consortium does.” And then I had one of the few moments of insight and clarity that I’ve ever experienced. In that instance, I knew what to do. I turned back to Mandelbrot. “Give me a hand with the door. Now.”

  “How do you know it won’t heat up again?” he said.

  “If what she’s saying is true, it will. But that shrieking started first, it’s Carla’s early warning system. We’ve got to get in there, find her pup, and get it out before Carla begins wailing like a banshee in labor.”

  Mandelbrot and I wrestled the door open, and hot moist air rushed out of the vault as our cooler dryer air flowed in. The inner rim of the door radiated a dazzling orange glow where Lisa’s spray had absorbed heat and now released it as light. The floor and walls were bone dry, and I could see the melted and mangled remains of the ceiling sprinklers. In the middle of the floor lay Carla Espinoza, still very much in labor and panting like a bellows. Nestled against the short coarse hair of her belly was a golf ball-sized lump of wooly fur that wobbled this way and that.

  As Mandelbrot and I gaped at the sight, Lisa rushed to the door, aerosol sprayer in hand, and began inspecting the door seal for spots that needed retouching. I stepped in and knelt next to Carla, murmuring reassuring nonsense syllables in my best soothing tone. I swooped up the little furball with both hands, just as Carla barked once, twice, and then began a low sustained bleat that built in pitch and volume into the soul curdling shriek of new life that we’d heard before.

  “Move, move,” I shouted, and pushed the others back out into the foyer. I was right behind them, almost physically propelled by a wall of sound that threatened to liquefy my internal organs. The three of us threw our weight against the vault door and shoved it closed. Another pup was on the way.

  Carla delivered eight more pups, spacing them out every twenty minutes or so. And each time, once the pyrotechnics and screeching died down, we’d undog the door, dash in, refresh the door seal with more of the Glamorkan polymer, and liberate another newborn ball of fuzz. Dr. Penrose lined a box with a painter’s cloth, and the pups snuggled within, jostling one another for the comfiest spot.

  Mandelbrot stared down at them. “Shouldn’t we take them to their mother? Won’t they want to suckle or something when they get hungry?”

  “As I told Mr. Conroy, despite appearances they’re not mammals. Nor are they particularly maternal. If she feels anything, I would guess that Carla’s relieved that the whole process is over and she won’t have to do it again.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Female buffalo dogs can only be impregnated once. That’s actually how the Arconi sterilize them before letting them off Gibrahl. They inject them with a retro-virus that convinces the buffalo dog that she’s already been pregnant, and it burns out the reproductive system. To make up for the one shot pregnancy, a litter is typically about eighty
percent female.”

  “Typically? How many did we get?” I started doing reproductive math in my head.

  “It’s too soon to tell. I’ve never sexed newborn pups before. Let them start eating though, and they’ll quickly get big enough for us to tell.”

  “If they don’t suckle, what is it they’re going to need to eat? And how much?”

  She laughed and reached a hand into the box, lightly stroking the pups. “They’re buffalo dogs, Mr. Conroy, they’ll eat anything. Probably the easiest thing would be to feed them the refuse here in the foyer. It would save you the trouble of hauling it away. They’re going to be ravenous in a short while, I think it’s likely they’ll devour all of it.”

  “And what do we do then?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “A few hours after they’ve eaten their fill, they’ll be indistinguishable from any other buffalo dogs, at least using any equipment we have on Earth. And you know what that means?”

  I passed her a fresh cup of coffee and another stim. “That means I can sell one, and we can finally go to sleep.”

  Although they hadn’t managed to open their eyes yet, the buffalitos soon mastered the art of opening and closing their tiny mouths. Less than two hours out of the womb, the oldest of them began eating in earnest, and the others did not lag far behind. It was all the three of us could do to keep them fed fast enough. For hours we shoveled bits of old furniture, waterlogged case files, chunks of metal cabinets, and moldy linoleum at them. The tiny critters consumed all of it. As fast as we could deliver everything, they gobbled it down. The pups showed no discrimination, devouring everything we dangled into their box. And when we weren’t swift enough in finding some new bit of detritus for them to eat they had a tendency to chomp down on the box they were in.