1~
The Clue Cruiser sat in the parking lot, one Sunday afternoon, while its owner marched through the crowded grounds of Fleach's Folly Factory. Once she zeroed in on the location of her destination, Marcie proceeded, with earnest, towards the head office of the park and its owner, one Winslow Fleach.
Each step, she believed, brought her a little closer to the truth. Each step was a statement of loyalty to the business, an avowal of fidelity to the family, and, admittedly, a declaration of filial defiance. After all, Marcie was a Fleach, as well. She might not have had as much interest in the running of the park as her father would have wished, but it was still theirs.
She stepped out of the elevator and walked with a combination of purpose and slight trepidation. She had been 'banned' from the park, whatever that meant, and she was determined to know why.
Why she was treated this way? She wouldn't have minded to pay the penance, so much, if she just knew what the crime was.
Marcie reached the door of the head office and knew that once she opened it, the answers would come to her, no matter how painful or uncomfortable to the uncovering would have been. She would see to that.
With a shaky breath, Marcie opened the head office door, expecting to be thoroughly chewed out by her father for this disobedience. What she didn't expect to see was Mr. Greenman standing by Winslow's desk, while her father sat with sadness etched deep in his face, signing something on a sheet of paper.
She was puzzled by the tableau, and if she didn't know any better, she would have thought that her father had just signed away his soul.
The sound of the opening door and her footsteps alerted both men, and they stopped to regard her. One, amusedly, the other, sternly, if ashamedly.
"Marcie! What are you doing here?" Winslow scolded. "I told you that you weren't allowed to come back here!"
"Why, Dad?" she asked him, boldly. "And why is Mr. Greenman here?"
"Why, I'm here to claim ownership of this quaint little amusement park of his," said Greenman, in a pleasant manner. "Granted, I have seen bigger and better in my time, but you know what they say in real estate. Location, location, location."
Every other word sifted through Marcie's mind, except one that almost made her queasy. "Ownership? Is that what you were signing, Dad?"
"Signed, actually," Greenman corrected, calmly taking the sheet of paper from Winslow's desk, folding it and slipping neatly into his coat pocket for safe keeping. "The transaction is already done, but, please, feel free to walk the grounds and take one last look at the place. I'm a businessman, true, but I'm still sentimental about these things."
Marcie ignored him and turned her attention to her tortured-looking father. "Dad, what's he talking about?"
As much as Winslow wanted to hang his head low before he spoke, he knew that his daughter deserved to know the truth, and so, he held it level, but couldn't keep his voice from wavering. "I...didn't want you to come back because I didn't want you to know that...I...had to sign the park to him. I'm sorry, dearest."
Marcie dismissed all of the emotionality she was being exposed to, and focused, almost robotically, on trying to solve the problem at hand. "Had to sign. You mean that you were forced to."
She then turn her attention back to Greenman, with suspicion. "Did you have something to do with this?"
She expected him to lie, to be evasive, and make her work for her confession, but he simply shrugged and said, "Guilty, but I couldn't have done it without the best little spy I ever found. You."
That was also unexpected. "Me? What are you talking about? What did I do?"
"Why, you gave me all the information I could ever want about your father's establishment," he gloated. "The condition of its rides, the quality of its food..."
'He's lying,' she thought. 'He has to be.' "I never said any of that!" she defended herself against him, and possibly, to Winslow, as well.
But her father only shook his head, slowly. "Honey, he had your voice on tape," he said. "He played it back for me, and said that if I didn't sign, he'd use what you said as evidence to sue me. We don't have the kind of money needed to survive this."
"Especially, with that near-accident from the tilt-a-whirl's damaged speed governor," Greenman added with a smile. "It was that, or poor Winslow would have been sued by me."
"Sued?" There was that word again, corrosive and litigious in this room. Marcie was truly starting to hate it. "What for? Were you even on the ride when it broke down?"
Again, Greenman shrugged. "I might have."
'For a businessman, he sure sounded like a lawyer,' she thought. But she wasn't done, yet.
"By the way, how did you know that it was the speed governor that gave out? That's a pretty specific guess, I'd say," Marcie countered. "I only told Dad about that when I checked under the ride and saw that other ride being put up, The Rolling Boulder."
Greenman straightened his already imposing frame with pride. "Ah, so you've seen it, have you? The newest attraction to my park. Taller and more fun than any of those other rides. I hope you and your father get a chance to ride it one day. You wouldn't have to pay. My treat."
"No thanks," Marcie growled under her breath, then she fired another question at him. "Where did your men take our tilt-a-whirl? I saw them haul it out of here when they put up that eyesore of yours."
"Oh, well, since it's my tilt-a-whirl, now, I had it broken up for scrap and delivered to the town junkyard, where it will never harm another living soul," Greenman explained, self-righteously.
'Rats!' she thought. 'I, at least, had some evidence of tampering, but now...' Then, she realized something else. "You! You tampered with the tilt-a-whirl, didn't you?" Greenman's half-hidden smile told her all she needed.
She stepped past him and faced her father to make her appeal, to make him understand. "You see, Dad? It was all a scam. He sabotaged your ride, so he'd scare you into signing away the park."
Greenman stood behind Marcie, casting a shadow that fell over her, as he considered her for a moment. The gods were right to counsel him about her. Her strength was of the mind and in her hands, and he would do well to be wary of them.
"You are a good detective, aren't you?" he conceded to her, mockingly. He then glanced over to Winslow. "You know, she's right, of course. It's true."
"What?" Winslow asked, confused. "That she's a good detective?" He didn't think she did anything like that and a concern began to color his expression.
"No, that I tricked you like ancient Pan into giving your business away," Greenman corrected him.
"Oh," Winslow said, breathing a little easier, his concern for Marcie doing such dangerous things, fading, despite that fact that he was losing his park. "But, why, Greenman? Why"
"'Why, Greenman? Why?'" Greenman chuckled, answering his prey's question, as if Winslow had asked him what was the importance of air. "Because you wouldn't sell the place to me when I asked you nicely in the past. At some point, I had to let the businessman come out. That's me, today. All business," he said with empty smile.
Again, Marcie ignored Greenman's taunts and focused on getting her father to focus on saving the park. "Dad, we can fight this. This park's been in the family for years. It's up to us to protect it for the Fleaches of the future."
This time, her father did hang his head low. "If I could be fooled this easily, Marcie, then that proves that I'm not capable of handling the responsibility anymore, and since you're not interested in taking the reins of the company, it's over."
"But, Dad-" she pressed.
"I said, It's over."
Marcie grew silent. She wouldn't argue with her father. He had given up the fight, out of shame, so she turned to face a pleased Greenman, fists balled.
Here, was this mystery man who breezed into town, and brought about all of this. She wanted to punch his smug English face inside-out, but anger in seeing her father being broken down like a math problem had her settle on stepping up to the man…and slapping his face, instead.
His head hardly moved from the strike, but for Marcie, the pent-up frustrations of the past few months went away in an instant, and she felt a little better for giving the large man some measure of punishment, even if she almost doubled over from the pain of slapping something the hardness of half-frozen beef.
"My dad might have given up, but I'll figure out what you're doing here in Crystal Cove," Marcie vowed, while trying to shake the ache from her hand. "And why you want my dad's park so bad, and when I do, you'll regret messing with my family."
Greenman's rebuttal was simply a chuckle and a shrug before telling a stunned Winslow, "Your daughter has more spine than you. Remember that." Then, he left the two of them, alone, to reflect on what happened in the office.
Winslow's eyes were still as wide as golf balls, as he looked in shock at Marcie, while she stood where she was, staring holes in the closed office door.
"Marcie..." he scolded in a whisper. "He could sue us for that."
Marcie, her blood flowing hot and righteous from her striking Greenman, glanced over to her father, in annoyance, saying, "Don't tell me. I'm still banned from the park, right?"
Greenman was not used to standing on ceremony, but stood he did in the quiet man's dim, tastefully appointed office. His host sat in a plush high-backed chair with his back to him. The very fact that he presented his back to him was insolence enough to have him killed on the spot, in the old days.
But, Greenman renewed his patience with a low sigh and realized that these were not the old days. Not yet, at any rate. Where he toyed with the Fleaches earlier in their office, like a cruel child with an oft-abused plaything, here, he had to swallow his pride. He needed the man because, incredibly, he had resources that even Greenman lacked, and Greenman was a man who lacked for very little in his business and personal life.
"We have time technology that we acquired from our good friends at Sundial," he told the host.
"It figures that you would get it. I looked all over this provincial town and found nothing, so, I suppose congratulations are in order, but since you have T.H.R.O.B.A.C, what do you need from me, Mr. Greenman?" the host asked him. "All of space-time is your oyster."
"We're having trouble...getting it to work," Greenman patiently negotiated, finding that he was gritting his perfectly maintained teeth. It was galling beyond belief to beg for this man's help, and for the host to know that he was begging. "The Wacky Racers and The Rotten Racers may have did more damage to the robot's Hour Tower core than we realized."
"Indeed," the host casually said, as if Greenman was stating the painfully obvious. Then, said nothing again, and Greenman was getting sick of staring at the back of his chair.
"I was hoping that you could take a look at the ruins we gathered," Greenman continued. "See what sense you could make of it." Again, silence.
This was insufferable. 'The people of this time,' he thought, bitterly. 'No respect for their betters. That will change, gods willing. It will be a paradise on this earth, when I am done.'
"If you can't repair it, then, perhaps, you can reverse-engineer it to make another time machine."
"Perhaps." the host said with thoughtful slowness. "However, all I've heard, so far, is your wants and needs. What do you think I am, sir? Santa Claus?"
For the first time in a very long time, Greenman was thrown. Not being in control was something he dislike, greatly, and for a moment, he feared that this meeting would dissolve into hot failure. "I-I don't understand. What do you mean?"
An arm from the host came out and gave Greenman's urgency a dismissive, lazy wave. "You come into my office, interrupting the kind of critical, global endeavors that have made me legend in the scientific field, and not once, not once, have you offered me something in return," he chastised. "A trinket? A greeting card? A boon? A favor to be called upon at some future date? Nothing. Nothing at all to trade."
"But I never said-"
"Mr. Greenman, you claim to be a great businessman with years of experience..."
'More than you could ever know,' Greenman thought, darkly, rewarding himself with a smirk for knowing something that his great and gracious host didn't know, yet.
"And yet, you try to negotiate with nothing to give in, at least, good faith. Some businessman." The arm slowly went down behind the chair as a point of finality to this meeting. "I trust you know the way out?"
"I may know more than you think," Greenman announced, with a cool steel to the voice. "The scientific field that you boast to be a legend in, has named you over the years, pariah, outcast, and because you tried to steal Sundial's technology in the past, and failed, criminal. And so, you've been forced to use your wealth to hide and scheme in a world that you say respects you."
Greenman waved dismissively at the office. "Here, in this hidden, cliffside base, in your secret laboratories scattered here and there in the United States and Europe. And, most tragically, in your own heart. Oh, yes. The reason for your obsession with time travel is quite known to me. The death of your-"
The arm shot up from the chair, its hand holding up a forefinger in a gesture of peace. Greenman said nothing more. He knew that business was war, and that he had won.
"I...will have my people work on this tech you've brought me. If this is truly Sundial technology, then they will succeed, even if I have to work on it, myself."
Seeing his host rolling up the sleeves of his expensive shirt and getting busy with his underlings gave Greenman a private chuckle. "It may not come to that, if your people are as competent as you claim. Only that you get the T.H.R.O.B.A.C in complete working order for me. Now, as you know, I am very influential and superwealthy-"
"I don't need to know your resume, Mr. Greenman. I already know that you're rich and have a lot of pull with people. That is the only reason we are talking in my...hidden, cliffside base."
"Very well, then," he offered, fearlessly. "Name your price." If it was to be money, he figured, then, he could pay a king's ransom ten times over for a working time machine. It would have been a pittance compared to the victory he would obtain before too long.
It wasn't to be money, however.
"My price is utilization of the time machine, as well. Repairing a time machine, in exchange for its use. I believe that is an equitable trade, Mr. Greenman."
Greenman nodded. He could always have him killed later. "Excellent. Shall we get started?"
"I've already told my engineers and technicians to prepare," the host assured him. "Will that be all, Mr. Greenman?"
"Almost," Greenman said, lightly stroking the cheek where that impudent girl Marcie had stuck him. He wanted to have her killed, as a matter of course, because his gods warned him of the possible threat she posed. Now, he wanted her father punished for her rash actions. Killing her was a good way to do that. "If you wouldn't mind, could you to get rid of someone for me?"
"Mr. Greenman," the host said, evenly. "I'm not an assassin."
"Even if it's just a girl?"
The host sighed at this new demand, but acquiesced. "Very well. My prototype does needs a field test. Name?"
"Marcie Fleach." He felt good saying her name as a way of signing her death sentence.
Feeling that everything was satisfactory to the host's liking, he slowly began to rotate his chair to face Greenman, finally.
In the dim, atmospheric light of the office, his well-cut hair and goatee shone a blazing red, and his eyes were fixed in a perpetually thoughtful scowl. The suit, a deep black number with almost hair-thin stripes of red running vertically down its surface, along with a matching crimson, silk necktie, was tailored to within an inch of its existence, fitting the man so well, it seemed as though he was born into it.
The prospect of being able to change his personal history, not to mention, the world's, made the man chuckle with scientifically, malevolent intent, before reaching over his office desk and shaking Greenman's hand to seal, what could literally be called, the deal of the centuries.
"Mr. Greenman, it seems that you only wanted the best. Fortunately for you," boasted the evil Doctor Benton Quest. "You have it."
