The next morning, they awoke refreshed and ready for another day. The women were ready for another day of fun. Jim pondered the reactions of the women, and any clues he could surmise about how the Amazon race as a whole would react to earthmen. More curious still, when would they make their first kill?
"Warm up the van, Jim boy," Antiope harped.
"Right away dearest," he retorted as he winked at Helen, "but first, let us pack. Genie has some special new toys for the van. You ladies, however, must exit my ship first, as he showed them the way out."
As they went through the door, they found themselves back inside the motel room.
"Not bad for $100 a night."
Antiope had an idea. "Jim, how about a yacht and we can hang out on the lake?"
Helen rapidly agreed. "Yes we can rent one."
This gave Jim an idea, a very interesting idea. He would hold that thought and consider it longer. Yes, we could appropriate a boat, a very special boat, he thought.
"A boat we shall rent," he complied.
Jim folded up the booth back into his money belt and strapped it around his waist. "Watch, Antiope." Jim disappeared. He reappeared behind her. "Neat, Huh, invisibility. Now watch this," Jim levitated from the floor, defying gravity.
"Very impressive Jim. Can we do that, please?"
"Sorry, no can do, girls. There's more than meets the eye here and I can't really show you how to work the controls that I invented. But I did want to assure you that I should be quite capable of protecting you from any threat and I wanted to show you some of my defensive hand to hand combat tactics."
Methodically, the trio set up the van with all the comforts of home after Jim had relocated Genie back to the van. Once again, the space inside the van was altered to make everyone comfortable. The console of the van had a very nice display showing a local map, which Genie had managed to access from inquiring the Internet. Antiope volunteered to drive. Helen sat as copilot as Jim sat in the back to conduct electronic scans. First order of priority was to establish Idiot's passive defense system. This would alert him of any parties showing more than a casual interest in the van.
Helen asked Jim for some radio news. Jim signaled for them to wait a few minutes. He directed that they would drive to Wisconsin or perhaps even Michigan where they would obtain a boat. He searched the Internet for any clues as to what to expect from local authorities. He also requested Genie to do a similar search. Genie came up with hundreds of matches. The market was recovering somewhat, and the price of gold had shot back up to $1300. Jim had no intention of any more high profile gold sales.
Of particular interest to Jim was Genie's match indicating that a high level military command had been issued directing for his neutralization. This command was not public domain, but Jim knew about it anyway, because Genie was now capable of accessing and decoding any information transmitted over the air. Genie could also access any network that could be accessed via the airwaves. Granted, Genie's circuits had a great deal of information to sort, but it was a far simpler task than performing energy mass conversions or hyperspatial displacement. Jim was extremely irritated by the natural assumption by the authorities that he was involved in organized crime. A great deal of misinformation indicated that he was a suspected drug kingpin, to be considered armed and extremely dangerous. His message from the previous night was taken as a terrorist threat. All scans indicated that the authorities, at this point, did not feel that they should honor Jim's simple requests. None of these things surprised him. He was probing them and they were probing him.
Gradually, Genie and Jim developed a very up to date picture of the current state of world affairs. Jim, in a very short period of time, developed a good understanding of the world governments, world squabbles, as well as some very real threats. He would have no time to rally all national governments to counter the threat of Isis. The United States would have to be his primary target for the moment. He would have to assume some legitimate command respect from the military in order to be heeded. He would then be able to use some earth military hardware to ward off the Amazon fleet. While he staged the earth counterattack, he would effectively use the Box and perhaps Pegasus to deal the truly damaging blows to the Venetian fleet. In the dust of the battle, there would be a great deal of uncertainty as to how the fleet would have been defeated. The Amazon fleet would have no alternative but to retreat. However, things could go wrong, and Jim knew he would have to be extremely vigilant.
With a few commands, Jim instructed the Idiot to access one of the Air Force's military satellites.
US Air Defense noticed the change in status of one of its satellites. Immediately, they attempted to identify the carrier of the new signal.
VENETIA
Chapter Eleven Cruisin' Part I