Mike rubbed the stubble on his face and decided that it was acceptable. One of the GalTech products he had fallen in love with was depilatory cream. The product not only removed hair, it inhibited growth for nearly a month thereafter. Of course it was in as short supply as everything else, so Mike eked out his cache by using razors in between. But he was still in the latter stage of inhibition and could more or less ignore shaving for a few days.
He rubbed his face, looked around the dilapidated room crawling with ants, and shook his head. With a snort at the fruition of their plans for the trip he took the two steps necessary to enter the bathroom. The mirror was losing its silvering, giving an impression of leprosy to his face, and had a large chunk cracked out of one corner. He propped up the seat of the toilet and did his morning business, smiling at the handwritten sign the proprietress had posted at eye level.
With the shortage of water, flushing urine was contraindicated. To point this out delicately the sign stated «If it's yellow, it's mellow. If it's brown, it goes down.» There was a bottle of bleach on the back of the toilet and Mike carefully measured a capful and tossed it into the bowl to neutralize the ammonia.
When he came out after a sketchy wash-up Sharon had come back to the room.
«If you hurry you can probably still get some breakfast,» she said with a smile. She had a bouquet of tropical flowers that she set on the cracked linoleum table.
Mike smiled and shook his head. «Not exactly what we planned, eh?»
«Not the Ritz-Carlton,» she admitted.
Although they had both visited the Keys more than once, it had always been on a shoestring. This time they had looked forward to staying in the best hotels in Key Largo. Not only were they both making as much as pre-war generals, Mike was absolutely flush with prize money from Diess.
The Fleet fell under Federation regulations. One of those complex rules related to property captured or recovered by military forces. It had been enacted, along with a slew of other inducements, when the Posleen had first entered Federation space. The monetary inducements were designed to persuade the chronically poor Indowy to renounce their minimalist and nonviolent ways and enter the Galactic military. The various inducements had failed miserably in their intent, but they had never been taken off the books.
Military equipment abandoned by the Posleen, as thousands of ships had been abandoned on Diess, fell under the category of «salvage.» It belonged to the forces that had either captured it or permitted its capture.
This was not immediately apparent to the human forces on Diess. They had simply let the thousands of in-system and interstellar ships sit until a Darhel factor had pointed out that they were responsible for clearing them off the planet. The military had protested that it did not have the equipment to remove the ships, so the Darhel offered to remove them for them.
The commander on Diess was not born yesterday. He decided to put the ships up for bid and was amazed by the response. Both in-system and interplanetary ships were at a premium due to low production rates and war losses. To date, fewer than half the ships had been sold, but the income had exceeded the Federation «payment» for all other NATO forces.
However, the Federation regulations also required «sharing» of the income from the prizes under a complicated scheme. One aspect of it related to «actions of extraordinary nature.» Since it was unlikely that any of the ships would have fallen into human hands without the actions of O'Neal and his platoon, a percentage of every ship was detailed to them.
Mike's prize income the previous year had been larger than the Gross National Product of most Terran countries. Not that it did them any good in the Keys.
«Where's breakfast?» he asked, pulling on a pair of multipocketed safari shorts and a light cotton button-down shirt with still more pockets. He tended to get lonely without them.
«Over at the pub,» she said, putting the flowers in water. «The locals apparently sell them eggs from free-range chickens. One of mine was . . . a little on the pink side.»
Mike grimaced. He hadn't had fertilized eggs since his dad got out of the egg business decades before. He had just opened his mouth to retort when there was a shriek from the direction of the harbor.
Sharon was not sure where the Desert Eagle appeared from, but before she had started to move Mike was outside with the .357 caliber automatic leveled. As she ran out the door she saw him lower the weapon from its two-handed grip and grin sheepishly. Then she realized that the second shriek from their daughter was a cry of surprised delight. It took her a moment to recognize the chittering squeals that responded.
Cally, in the company of Karen the proprietress, was squatting at one end of the closest dock, trading splashes with a dolphin. The small bottlenose was chattering back at her every squeal and she was obviously having the time of her life.
Mike slid the gigantic automatic into the rear of his shorts and stepped out onto the dock. At the creak of the wood, Karen looked over her shoulder and smiled.
«Morning sleepyhead,» she quipped and stood up.
The dolphin protested as she stepped away but she just waved and tossed it a handful of fish bits. The bottlenose caught them expertly and went back to charming bits out of Cally.
«Tame dolphin,» Sharon commented, squinting against the bright morning sun. «They aren't usually like that, are they?»
«No,» Karen said. «I was Shirlie's trainer.»
Sharon raised her eyebrows in surprise. «Where? Sea World?»
«No,» said the woman, bitterly. «Not anymore anyway. I was at the Marine Mammal Research Facility in Marathon. It was really just a tourist trap for dolphin rides, but I've never had anything against that. I was with Sea World for years as a trainer and really believe that we did good work. Making cetaceans stars kept all sorts of ugly things from happening to them over the years. Heck, if it wasn't for places like Sea World, nobody would care about dolphins and orcas.»
«So how'd you end up here?» asked Sharon as Mike walked down the dock to where his daughter continued to converse with the cetacean.
«Well, when the tourists started to fall off, we got a notice from the National Marine Fisheries Board that we were to release all of our specimens. Their reasoning was that there was no way to maintain captive marine mammals in adequate conditions and it was better to release them.»
Mike turned and looked behind him. «That's insane!» he stated. «You can't just release a captive mammal and expect it to survive!»
«No duh,» Karen said, then smiled sadly to take the sting out of the words. «That was exactly what I said, and two or three dozen other trainers that I kept in contact with. What really pissed me off was that we couldn't even get any press time. The NMFB just shoved the damn ruling down our throats and the press paid no attention.»
Mike nodded. «Let me guess. It wasn't 'newsworthy.' «
«Exactly.» Karen nodded. «Anyway, I was dating Harry at the time. Instead of going back up north–I'm from Chicago originally–I moved in with him. Shirlie and four other dolphins just sort of 'followed' me here,» she concluded with a sly smile.
«Trail of breadcrumbs?» asked Sharon, watching Cally pat the six-hundred-pound sea mammal. She wondered when the inevitable question would hit.
«Something like that,» said Karen. «We used to take them out for swims with the boat.» She gestured at a well-kept Boston Whaler tied up to the office. Something about it indicated to Mike that it hadn't moved lately. «I just told them to follow me over.»
«What happened to all the rest?» asked Mike. «I mean there was Sea World and the Miami Oceanarium and that one in St. Augustine . . .»
Karen's face pinched up at the thought. «Sea World just went over to the coast and released theirs in the Intercoastal Waterway. I don't know about the dolphins and porpoises, but at least one male orca was later found dead. The rest did pretty much the same thing.»