Titanium Texicans by Alan Black Page A

nod. “Frakkin’ country rubes should get a tour guide with a leash before they’re allowed anywhere near civilized folk.”
    Tasso grinned. They were taking him to room 211A. They must have found out who his uncle was. They were taking him to where he wanted to go in the first place. From the sounds of it, they weren’t happy about it. Maybe Uncle Bruce was going to cause them trouble. Tasso realized their unhappiness might not have anything to do with the way they were treating him. Maybe they were just unhappy people. Maybe wearing shirts tight around their arm muscles cut off too much blood to their brains.
    The trio stepped through a doorway marked 211A. Actually, the two men stepped, Tasso was dragged more than stepped. A man at a desk pointed to an open door at the back. Tasso was hustled around desks and people working, no one looked up as they passed by. The open door led to a large office with a huge desk. Behind the desk sat an unsmiling bald man that Tasso did not recognize. Grandpa’s shotgun lay across the empty desk in front of the bald man.
    Tasso’s hands were untied. The men pushed him into a chair and threw his bag on the floor at his feet. The chair sat against a wall and was across the office from the huge desk. “Sit here and don’t move, junior.” Releasing Tasso’s collar, grabbing the back of his neck, the man squeezed hard. “Don’t so much as breathe hard or I’ll come back, got me?”
    Tasso took the hint, but refused to acknowledge the man. He even refused to wince at the pain of having his neck squeezed.
    The room was completely empty except for the desk, the man, and a few guest chairs. There weren’t any pictures on the wall, no certificates in frames, and nothing on the desk except the shotgun. Their combination bedroom and home office had plaques, awards, photos, and memorabilia almost completely covering the rock walls. His grandparents had collected a lot of those items over a lifetime.
    Tasso looked at the man. He was fat, but well dressed. He wasn’t wearing accessories: no watches, no rings, no necklaces. The man waved one finger and Tasso’s two escorts left the room. The bald man ignored Tasso. Pulling a dataport out of a desk drawer, he scanned through a few documents.
    A man rushed into the room. The bald man looking up at the other man, still ignoring Tasso, said, “I don’t like waiting, Menzies.”
    Tasso realized that the man who just rushed into the room was his uncle, Bruce Menzies. He wouldn’t have recognized him. The most recent picture he had of his uncle was over ten years old. The man hadn’t aged, but he’d changed. Tasso started to speak, but his uncle interrupted.
    “Not now, Tasso,” Bruce said without looking at him. He sat down in a chair across the desk from the bald man. “You can wait because you owe me. And, Moffatt—” he pointed a finger at the man to forestall any interruption, “this is not a time consuming or difficult task.”
    Moffatt shrugged.
    Bruce pointed at the shotgun. “There is certainly no need for a gun.”
    Moffatt shrugged again. “That happens to be your nephew’s long gun. What if you thought there was a reason? I didn’t think the shotgun would be necessary between us, even if my boys were the ones who missed him at the processing plant.” He looked at Tasso, “Speaking of that, what took you so long getting here, young Mr. Menzies?”
    Tasso said, “My flitter broke.” He didn’t know why, but he decided not to mention the cut tie rod. “It crashed on the other side of the McGrath Pass.”
    Moffatt nodded. “We have a report from your neighbors, the Lamonts, about a transponder report. You catch another ride?”
    Tasso shook his head. “No sir, I put a temporary fix on the flitter. It almost got me here. It quit out by the processing facility on the other side of the spaceport. Last I knew, the flitter was still parked out there. I can fix it as soon as I get the right tools and parts.”
    Moffatt