Junior Hero

Part 3

"You're a cape?" whispered Kate, after I finished telling her what had happened.

"A Tinker," I confirmed. "I've got all sorts of ideas for things I can build."

"So what do you think your speciality is?"

"Teleportation," I told her. "I mean, I have ideas for body armour and stuff like that, but building D-1 just came so easily to me."

She tilted her head. "D-1?" she asked.

"Device Number One," I confessed, hanging my head. I should have used a much more impressive name, like ... Quantum Wormhole Teleporter Module or something.

She laughed and put her hand on my shoulder. "Oh, Rob, that's so cute."

"Cute good or cute bad?"

"Cute good, of course." Her eyes took on a daring gleam. "Can you take me along on a teleport?"

I shook my head. "No, but you can help me test out D-2. And then I'll show you how to use it yourself."

"Ooh, how can I help?"

I unstrapped D-2 and handed it to her. "The red button there will recall D-1 to it when you press it. I'm going to jump back to my bedroom, then wait for you to recall me. Give me five seconds from when I disappear till you press the button, okay?"

She nodded seriously. "Okay." Grabbing me, she gave me a kiss on the cheek. Thinking back, it was maybe the first time she'd actually done that. "Come back safely." Wow.

My tone was joking when I replied. "I sure will, if I can have another one of those when I get back."

She giggled. "Mayyybe."

I stood up and stepped away from the bed, then hit Return and memory 1 on the keypad. Nothing happened.

"Is there someth-" began Kate, and then she was gone. Or rather, I was gone. When my eyes cleared, I was in my bedroom.

Okay, so longer distances involve a delay before jumping. That's good to know.

I was just beginning to process that when all of a sudden, I was back in Kate's bedroom, blinking away the teleport haze.

"Wow."

Kate stood up and kissed me again, same place.

I blinked again. "Wow."

She smiled at me. "Did it hurt?"

I grinned dopily at her. "I'm not feeling any pain at all."

She jabbed me in the ribs. "I mean, did the teleport hurt?"

"No, not at all. I mean, there's a little bit of dazzling when you arrive. Don't know what that's from. But apart from just a little bit of a delay for a longer jump -"

"You mean, you hadn't jumped that far before?"

"Oh heck no. Farthest I'd jumped before was from the back yard to my bedroom."

She stared at me. "So that's the longest jump you've done so far?"

I nodded. "Piece of cake."

"So ... can I have a shot?"

I shrugged, although I felt a strange reluctance about handing over the device to her. "Uh, sure?"

"Thank you!"

With her willing help, I unclipped D-1 from its harness, and showed her which buttons to press. "Return and one to get to my bedroom, and return and seven to get back here. Got it?"

"Got it," she announced happily.

"And if you're not back here in thirty seconds, I'm hitting the recall button." I held up D-2, which she had returned to me.

She nodded seriously. "Thirty seconds, gotcha."

Before I could give her further unnecessary instruction, she pressed the first two buttons. There came the pause, and then she vanished. Just like that.

"So that's what it looks like," I murmured.

"What's what looks like?" came a voice from the doorway. "And what are you doing in Catalina's room? Where is she?"

"Ah, hi, Mr H," I temporised rapidly, standing up and moving toward the door. "Kate's just gone to the bathroom, I think. Her mom knows we're up here."

Carlos Hernando, burly dock worker and man I did not want to cross, nodded. "Very well." He headed off down the passageway to his bedroom.

There was a soft pop from behind me, and Kate reappeared, her face alight with excitement.

"That was estupendo," she enthused, breaking into the Spanish of her parents, which she rarely did. I grinned, and took D-1 back off of her.

"No discomfort?" I asked, as we clipped it back into place.

"None," she assured me. Then she paused, and looked at me with huge puppy-dog eyes. "Could I ... maybe ... have one of those for my own?"

I could never resist those eyes. "Sure. I can put it together tonight."

"Can you use it to bring things to you?"

"No. I'd need to attach ... hm. If I made smaller versions of D-1, controlled via a panel, so no controls needed ..." I pulled out my notepad and began to scribble.

She snuggled up to me. "Thank you, Rob."

She kissed me again; I didn't object.

When I finally, reluctantly, decided to go home, I walked out the front door of the Hernando home, ducked into a park, and jumped to the waypoint nearest my house. Then I walked the rest of the way back.

This Tinker tech stuff was very, very handy. And Kate was promising to maybe kiss me again sometime, just because I'd said I would give her one.

I could think of worse reasons.

By the time I got to the front door, I had ideas for several new devices floating around in my head.

"Evening, Rob," Dad greeted me. "How's things?"

"Pretty good, pretty good." I still hadn't told him or Mom. It never quite seemed the right time. "Actually, you know that physics problem you set me last week, the one about quantum wormhole tunnelling?"

He chuckled. "Ah yes, that one. I kind of pulled a dirty trick on you there; that one admits of no answer. I keep it to pull on my advanced students when they get too big for their boots."

"What the hell, Dad? I worked for hours on that one!"

He shrugged, lightly. "Sorry. It's to illustrate that not all physics problems have a coherent solution, and more importantly, to be able to recognise when you see one."

"Dad, I'm not up to your advanced physics classes!"

"Well, bring it to me and I'll show you what to look for."

I shook my head. "Maybe later. I'm kind of over physics right now."

"Suit yourself. Oh, have you been taking stuff out of the garage? Some of my teaching materials are gone."

"Yeah, I kind of took them for a project I'm working on."

"Could you replace them at some point, then? I might need that some day."

"Sure thing, Dad."

He went back to his paper; I escaped upstairs, stored D-1 and D-2 in my closet, and washed up before supper. Mom was kind of a stickler about things like that.

Tomorrow, I thought, I would go to the store where Dad got his teaching materials from, and buy as much as I could afford.

I had all sorts of ideas for devices.

End of Part 3