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.What's love got to do with it?	By : keithcompany Category: Titles in the Public Domain > Gulliver's Travels Views: 2191 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work fiction, based on Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift.

Chapter List
- 1-What's Love Got To Do With It Part 1
- 2-What's Love Got To Do With It Part 2
- 1
- 2
Disclaimer: This work is my own. The characters are my own. The setting borrows from Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ which I do not own. Much of the narrative, and the entire theme, borrow from Tina Turner’s song of the same name, which I do not own. I make no money from this work.
Do not repost this story beyond the limits of the Fair Use standards of Copyright Law (quotes, examples, ‘you gotta read this’ excerpts, the usual).
I tend to work with size-themed fiction, which includes overwhelming control issues and outrageous differences in scale. Such disparate sizes between partners is not for everyone, so be warned.
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Antanda kept a close eye on the radiation output as the reactor came online. She glanced across to the other side of the pit that functioned as the control room. At her own panel, Cuddinka sat poised to shut down the chromodynamic reaction. Their eyes briefly met.
Antanda shot an ‘A-Okay’ gesture, but Cuddinka merely rolled her eyes at the Englishism. Anta smiled and rubbed her eyebrow. Cudd returned the gesture and they returned their attention to the experiment.
The voice of their group lead pounded from above them, overriding even the growing whine of the turbines. He marked the power output against the expected maximum. “Thirty percent….Forty percent…”
When the output exceeded seventy five percent without slowing, a spontaneous cheer sounded from the various stations and a few of the observers. The whole reactor had vaporized the last time they’d managed sixty percent. Mark reported a steady climb to an even one hundred percent. They leveled power production there, as planned.
The sound of the turbines faded. The reaction was self-sustaining! Antanda crossed her fingers under her panel. The Lilliputian gesture for luck was to touch elbows and she didn’t want to be so visibly superstitious in such a technical group.
Mark kept the reactor running at 100% for half an hour. Every division of the egg-heads got to take all the readings and make all the calibrations they could imagine. Some started to urge taking it up to see what it could do, but the Director kept to the event plan. They banked the output and destabilized the reaction. The reactor wound down and the meters all crept to zero.
Almost before the last erg was squeezed out, the mechanics were setting up a radiation work area to take Chromo Four apart and see how their baby had performed.
Antanda closed down her station and stood to stretch.“How does Four look?” she mused.   For an answer, the team lead plucked her up out of the pit and lifted her to the viewing window.
“See for yourself,” he said. Anta couldn’t see much of anything at first. At the touch of his hand, her pulse doubled. She tried to tell herself it was only an expectable thrill from being hoisted like a toy in the hands of the human.
Nothing emotional, surely, she repeated to herself. It was becoming her personal mantra, since joining this project. So she tried to focus past his strong, firm knuckle, and through the leaded glass.
“How’s it look?” Mark was asking.
“Um, she looks excited,” was the best she could come up with. Mark stood up out of his own chair to bring his eyes level with his safety monitor. Chromo Four looked the same with his eyes as it had looked in the remote monitor…like a really blunt pyramid with a dull sheen.
“Excited?” he asked. A gust of his breath flowed over her face and neck, through her hair. She regretted opening her mouth. Her hands curled into fists until she realized she was pinching his finger and let go.
“Uh, well, maybe I’m projecting. The integrity is good, and the, the whole thing didn’t melt, or blow up or set the sky on fire….” She was babbling. Well, she hadn’t been getting much sleep for the last two weeks. She turned to face Mark. He looked from her to Four again.
“I dunno. I can kinda see her being excited. She did real well, didn’t she?” The Lilliputian maid blushed at the smile he shot her, and nodded her head.
He set her down gently at her station and turned to speak with the director. As Anta gathered her manual into her sidepack, Cuddinka stepped up. “The Englishman seems to like our little Anta, doesn’t he?”
“Oh, back off,” Anta told the older woman. “He was just being polite.”
“Polite, is it?” The physicist shook her head. “He doesn’t lift any other Lilliputian here.”
“You BIT him!” the engineer pointed out.
“He surprised me,” Cudd explained. “The English need to make sure we’re prepared to be snatched and mauled and battered before they pick any of us up.” The two of them walked to the elevator doors.
“He knows he made a mistake. He’s said he was sorry. He never meant to upset you.”
“Oh, of course not,” Cudd said archly, “he thought he was picking YOU up.”
Anta groaned and stabbed at the elevator button. The doors opened instantly and the pair stepped in. Cuddinka selected the conference room and the car started to move. They leaned against opposite walls. The physicist regarded her younger partner closely.
“You find him…attractive, don’t you?” she finally asked.
“What? He’s got a mole on his face the size of my mom’s glake cake!” Anta protested.
“Still….?”
“Well…not that it means anything, but when he smiles, and he’s at least a meter away, and he’s showered, he’s not… I mean, I could imagine… It’s just… It doesn’t mean anything!” The other woman’s smile infuriated Anta. “It’s a biological response. Gene pools reward new blood; we’re interested by the exotic; opposites attract.”
Just then, the doors opened to admit a few engineers from the power room. They were excited about the test and everyone kept congratulating each other. Anta was more than glad to change the topic and revel in the success. Cudd seemed to, also, but as the doors opened for some coolant monitors, Anta could hear that someone in the car was humming a song.
It was the most popular number from a very old opera back home: The Man Mountain and the Woman Hiker. The opera was a fanciful treatment of a scandal that rocked the country during Gulliver’s visit to Lilliput, concerning his alleged dalliance with a local married noblewoman.
Women found it romantic and loved the emotional roller coaster of their whirlwind romance. Men were intrigued by the mechanics of such an affair. Someone had been humming the love theme from the work: “I know that a phrase there for it is.”
Anta fumed all the way down to the conference room.
------
The table was full of human and Lilliputian technicians, scientists, engineers and a token politician Doctor Bluothe kept on the team as a liaison to people he’d rather not see. Mechanical Engineering was notable in their absence. Lilliputians surrounded a table in the center of the human one.
The director stood at the end of the big table and raised his hand for silence. The babble of cheer slowly faded.
“Okay, I know we’re all excited," Bluothe understated. "And I’m proud of your hard work over the last few. ME will be performing a systems analysis of Four for the next two weeks. I want to maximize downtime for all other departments.” He raised his hands to forestall a rising bubble of cheer. “Starting tomorrow afternoon! Right now, I want every team to take a quick look at their data and give me a summary tomorrow. Then each team lead will have the chance to manage his people.”
As the meeting broke up, Anta and Cudd turned their chairs towards where Mark sat behind them. He waited expectantly while most of the others stalked through the doors. The Lilliputians and Blefuscans mostly kept to the elevator in the center of the table, but a few picked up rides from coworkers.
Operation Controls was about the only team that could analyze their data in the conference room. Mark raised an eyebrow.
“It started when I told it to,” Cudd reported. “And it stopped when I told it to.” Mark nodded and raised his other eyebrow. Anta stammered a bit then basically echoed her partner. He nodded without drawing attention to her acting confused.
“It worked well for me, too. Okay, Operation Controls is pleased to report that our quicklook shows no indications that require additional investigation during the downtime.” He raised his hand from below the table and turned off the vocal recorder. Anta stared as she realized she’d been speaking for posterity. Or, she thought, as Mark ejected the chip and tossed it to the Director, for Doctor Bluothe. She wondered if she could blush deep enough to actually turn invisible.
“Okay,” Mark turned to his ‘team’ as he stuffed the recorder back in his pocket. “It is my professional opinion that we have nothing to contribute to the effort until the engineers decide they need to redesign our panels. So, where’s everyone going for the next two weeks?”
Cuddinka didn’t move as Anta glanced in her direction. The younger woman tried to keep her voice bantering as she asked, “Well, where are you going?”
“Road trip!” he replied. He seemed excited but he kept his voice soft. Cudd may not have liked his attitude towards Anta, but even she was the first to brag about how their Englishman was considerate to little team mates. “I finally traded in my bike for a car.   It’s a sweet little Antelope 3000. To break her in, I’m taking a spin down to Vegas. Long desert drives, no effective speed limit, enough neon to blind God…”
“It sounds….fun,” Anta managed to say.
“Oh, Anta, you should go some time. A fun place.” His smile slowly faded at something in her face. “What is it?” Cudd gave a long suffering sigh. Then she stood, waving to bring Mark’s face closer.
“What she had hoped was that you would invite her to come along, chazzak of chazzaks.”
“What? Oh, sure.” He started to turn towards Anta when Cudd jumped up and grabbed his mustache. Hanging from a handful of hairs right where his nose met his lip, she had his full attention.
“What she WANTS is to be INVITED. Not allowed to hang out, or tag along, or given a ride to. ASK her, politely!”
Mark was carefully not moving at all. Tears formed in his eyes but he wouldn’t risk any harm to the smaller woman tormenting him. “Antanda, I know how it looks, but I would really enjoy it if you could see your way clear to accompanying…to being my guest for a short trip to Las Vegas.”
“Oh, let him go, Cuddy.” When she’d dropped back down to the table, Anta smiled up at the poor man. “You don’t have to take me, Mark.”
“No, no,” he argued. “I really would like your company. You’ve just never asked to go along anywhere, and I never thought of it. But since I went everywhere by motorcycle, I can see how riding in my leather pocket for 500 miles… Well. I owe Ms. Cuddinka,” he bowed his head formally to the little bully, “gracious thanks for bringing it to my attention. And I truly would like it if you could join me.”
----
For all that the walk to the barracks was three lorps of hallway, Anta thought she could run the whole length. She bounced on her feet as she and Cudd made their way to the Lilliputian compound.
“So, you’re looking forward to this?” Cudd inquired. “Riding a wheeled cruise liner at aircraft speeds, hanging out with a man who could step on you and not notice, and being in buildings where they smoke cigars bigger than you?”
“Yep. And I owe it all to you.” Anta stopped dead in her tracks. “I do. Why did you do that?”
“I was young, once,” Cudd admitted, but wouldn’t say another word. She laughed a bit when Anta invited her to come along, but just shook her head and turned to open the door to her own suite.
She turned back to Anta and, with her infuriating habit, returned to a conversation from an hour before. “The thing is, if it were just being attracted to opposites, you’d be cooing over the memos from that Brobdingragian engineer.” Then she was gone, shutting the door behind her.
-----
The next morning, Anta was on the steps with her travel trunk. People entering the compound glanced at her oddly, but the humans walking by the entrance barely noticed her. Until Mark arrived. Everyone in sight watched him pick up her trunk in one hand and her in the other and walk down to his car.
He placed her on the roof while he opened the door. She smoothed her skirt back down, glancing at the still-staring project members. Perhaps she should have worn something a little more professional looking, at least until they were on the road.
Inside, the passenger seat was taken up with a Lilli-port. “Where did you get that?” she asked, amazed and forgetting the audience entirely.
“Standard with the Antelope,” he shrugged. Art placed her down on the top level, holding the trunk to one side. “Where to you want this?”
She took the stairs down to the next level and threw open the balcony doors. He eased her luggage through to where she could wheel it against the bed. She lashed it in place while he shut the door and got in to drive. There was time for a brief glance around to locate the restroom, the cold room (stocked already!), the lidded hot tub and the closets. Finally she was back on the port roof, strapping into the seat of the observation platform.
“Ready?” he asked with a smile. She nodded, and they were off. She looked out the window at the city streets going by, but all she saw was his smile.
----------------
Once he was through the stop and go of city traffic, and on the freeway, they figured she could unstrap and move around, as long as she stayed inside the railings. She made a more detailed exploration of the Lilli-port, then returned to the observation platform.
“So, I was talking to Cudd about the sensor net…”
“First rule of road trips,” he interrupted, “is that we don’t talk about the job. This is a vacation. We can talk about the people at work, but not work.”
“Okay,” she agreed. “So what do you want to talk about?”
“Why does Cudd hate me? If you can tell me, of course. I don’t want any confidences betrayed.”
“Hate you?” Anta was dumbfounded. “What makes you think she hates you? She’s always bragging about you.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. Everyone else in the compound has a boss that acts at least sometimes like we’re toys or something. Clever pets. You’re the only one that always makes it clear you think you’re dealing with people.”
“I am dealing with people,” he insisted.
“Yep,” she agreed. “Tell that to the managers in cooling. Some of those guys think the only reason they hired Lilliputians is because they can’t give orders to the rats while they’re crawling through pipes.”
He considered this in silence for a while. “I wonder if it was my first job?” he mused. She turned to face him. After a long moment of silence she shouted.
“Where did you work, she shouted, trying to remind him that he was in a conversation,” she joked.
“Oh, I’m sorry, he responded, jerked out of his memories,” he replied with a smile. “I worked at the power plant in Elhuandarand.”
“That’s….Brobdingrag,” she noted, eyes wide.
“Yeah. So, I kinda have an idea what it’s like to work in an environment where you’re the size of a small screwdriver. I try not to take anything for granted about what you guys are experiencing.”
“Oh. That…makes sense.” They compared their experiences in the lands, and hands, of giants for a while. The miles fell behind as they traded anecdotes.
Somewhere around Raft River, though, he returned to his original question. “So if I’m such a good manager, why does Cudd get so frosty around me?”
“You…how do I put this. She worries about me.”
“About you?”
“Yeah. She’s afraid that you’re going to…well, hurt me.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. She thinks I don’t think enough about my own protection, so she tries to buffer for me. And you take the brunt of it.”
“Antanda, I’d never hurt you.”
“Not intentionally, no. And she knows that. She just worries about what might happen without your knowing. Like when you picked her up, that time, and were squeezing her…her bosom?”
“Is THAT why she bit me? Well, no wonder. I thought…I mean, I’d never…Damn. I guess I owe her some flowers.” He tapped the console to bring the telephone online.
“Chocolate,” Anta corrected. He nodded briefly, then placed an order with a florist near the Reactor Project. Knowing the Lilliputian cultural addiction to chocolate, he ordered the biggest assortment they had, so she could share with everyone that would be showing up at her door.   His passenger was out of sight when he hung up.
“Hey, Anta? I think it’s about lunch. How’s a truck stop sound?”
She popped her head out of a viewport. “Never stopped a truck before. What’s it like?”
“Second rule of road trips,” he announced, hitting the turn signal to take the exit, “never ask what you can investigate yourself.”
The parking lot amazed her. The idea of a single being, however large, controlling these behemoths was positively mind blowing. And a little exciting, she admitted. Mark took her out of his pocket to hold her hand against the frame of one that was idling. It shook her entire body.
“Can I help you?” Mark turned slowly to face a man in a leather jacket, eyeing him suspiciously. He held Anta up slowly to show the trucker.
“My friend was curious about your rig, here. Didn’t mean anything by it.” The man’s eyes bugged out a little bit once they focused on her and realized she was a person.
“Oh. Yeah, hey, welcome. Would, uh, would she like to see the inside?”
“Ask her.”
“You’re quite right. Little lady, would you like to see the inside of the truck? The cab, the cargo?” He fell overhimself giving the two scientists a tour of his vehicle. The sides of beef in the refrigerated portion were more than a little disconcerting, and for a second she thought the dashboard Jesus was a countryman, but for the most part it was an enjoyable visit. She thanked him kindly and shook a finger with him at the end.
He was shaking his head as he climbed into the cab, while they walked on into the diner. A waitress handed Mark a menu as he slid into the booth.
“My friend would like one, also, please?” he asked politely.   Flo, at least her name tag said she was Flo, glanced towards the men’s room door as she smoothly placed another menu down. Mark opened it and placed his friend on the page. Flo’s eyes bugged almost as much as trucker Frank’s had.
Anta would just as soon have read from his pocket, but he always treated his people as individuals, and demanded the same from those around him. Still, it was fun to walk across the glossy pages and see what was available. Some of the foods resembled the traditional foods of home, which was largely what was available in the compound, some were quite different.
Mark seemed to decide quickly, but then he’d stopped trucks before. She decided she wanted something as new and non-traditional as possible.
“What are finger steaks?” she asked. It was on the menu, so chances were good that it wasn’t obscene.
“Mmmm. Good choice. Strips of meat, about the size of my finger,” he stuck one out to show her, as if she could possibly have confused it with one of her own. “Dipped in batter and deep fried. Here, they dip them in sourdough batter.” She considered that for a minute, but his next comment decided her. “I almost never meet anyone outside of Idaho that knows what they are.”
It took some convincing to get Flo to bring Anta her own order, but Mark insisted. Civilized people get their own meal, not cast offs or scraps, was his view.
Through the meal, patrons of the diner kept walking past their table to goggle the Lilliputian. Mark bent low to ask if she wanted to leave, or call the manager, or make a bomb in the kitchen to blow the place to hell. She made a show of considering it, even asking what he’d use as a timer, then decided to downplay it.
“I read that the first blacks to move into this area got stared at a lot. I’m just glad my size isn’t something people are going to try to wash off of me.” She shrugged and hacked away at one of her finger steaks.
Mark laughed. Then he wet a finger and pretended to wipe at a spot two or three inches above her head. Then he got a bit more serious,
“I have a bit of a problem. Well, we do. I need to go to the bathroom.” Anta stared at him, wondering where this was going. “As it is, I’d feel uncomfortable leaving you on the table.” He nodded slightly towards yet another trucker wandering past the table to get a look at Anta.
“Put your jacket on, put me in the pocket and zip it up all the way,” she suggested with a shrug.
“You don’t get claustrophobic, do you?”   Anta thought of her first apartment, and how it compared to the box his shoes probably came in.
“I think I can handle it,” she assured him.
As he paid the bill, Anta asked for the recipe for the finger steaks. Flo got flustered all over again. She started with, “Well, we take about four pounds of roast…I mean, well, you’d take, what, an ounce? A gram?”
“Just tell her what you do,” Mark suggested. “Leave the conversions to her. She’s an engineer, she can handle it.”
----------
With the delays of the truck tour and getting the recipe for sourdough and the steaks, they just made it over the Nevada border before Mark just had to stop for the night. He found the hotel he’d made reservations with an hour before, registered, and carried his suitcase and her port inside.
Anta asked him to set her stuff down under the night table between the beds. It seemed the most secure spot. He eased it into place, plugged in the recharger, then threw his own suitcase onto the dresser.
He stretched out onto the bed for a minute. She climbed up and stood beside his head. “So, what’s next?”
“Dinner, some time in the casino, maybe a swim.” He opened his eyes and turned towards her. “At least, that’s what I normally do. When I’m alone. If there’s anything you…”
“No, that sounds fine,” she assured him. “I’ve never been to a casino.”
----
She’d also never been to a human buffet. Mark carried her the length of the spread, giving explanations on unfamiliar foods.   Then they returned to the start, he took up a plate and a bowl, and filled the bowl at her direction. He was just scooping a shrimp up for her when someone screamed. They turned to find a horrified middle aged woman pointing…right at Anta.
“Oh, my god, what is it? It’s on the food! Oh! Eugh! Eugh!”
“What ‘it’ is, is an engineer,” Mark replied, “and ‘SHE’ is not on the food, she’s on the counter. She’s much better mannered than I am, really.”
The distraught woman was scanning back and forth along the food bar, obviously looking for more tiny invaders. When the manager arrived, she shoved her plate into his hands and asked what he was going to do about the vermin. The man also scanned about the room, looking for mice, rats or insects. Mark’s wave drew his attention to the counter where Anta waved a hello. He instantly grasped the situation.
“Well?” the woman insisted. “What are you going to do?”
“Obviously, I’m going to comp her meal, offer her a free room upgrade, and hope she’ll accept an apology for the fact that one of my customers called her vermin.” He handed the dumbstruck woman back her plate, which she let fall to the floor. He didn’t even deign to notice as he stepped around her to give a brief bow to his very first Lilliputian guest.
“You’re the Starlight’s very first Lilliputian guest, my dear. I am so sorry we didn’t make a better first impression. What can we do for you?”
-------------
The Lilliputian maid pushed back from the tiny trestle table the waiter had set up for her. She relaxed into the cushion they’d scrounged somewhere and sighed deeply.
‘Wow,” Mark observed, “you actually put a visible dent in that shrimp.”
“Mmmhmm,” she purred. Eyes closed and smiling, she stretched across the cushion.
“Man, I’m full just from watching you eat. I think we’ll skip the casino tonight and just go back to the room.” They expressed their thanks to the wait staff, the manager, the chef and the kitchen, then retired to their new, upgraded room. Luggage had been moved for them.
Mark emulated Anta’s stretch on his own bed. He mumbled something about watching some TV then drifted off to sleep.
Anta watched him for a bit from the nightstand. She thought he was more adorable asleep than he’d been when smiling at her. She imagined kissing him awake in the morning. Being an engineer, though, her fantasy drifted away from how they’d start the day and into figuring out how to reach the lips in the first place. Precautions to be taken in case he rolled over. An escape route if he didn’t wake up right away.
Then he started to snore. She dropped down to the Lilliport and lowered the soundproofing curtains around the bed. Soon she was asleep herself. She never knew it, but her face was pretty adorable in sleep as well.
----
On the next day’s drive, Mark pulled over much earlier. “No need to rush, and I want to make sure there’s time for a swim, even after trying to keep up with you in the buffet line.”
“No problem,” she assured him. “I think I’m still full from last night.”
“How about a swim first, then?” They checked in and settled into the room. Mark took his trunks into the bathroom to change. He came back out, with a bath towel and a hand towel, and waited by her port.
When she stepped out onto the balcony, he stared. Anta watched him for a moment. He seemed to be breathing, but nothing else moved. “What?” she asked.
“Your…your suit. I thought. I always thought Lilliputs were… were more… preferred…. covering. I thought you people liked to be covered.” She glanced down at her suit. The two pieces of cloth covered everything that was required by the standards of modern social norms. Barely.
“Oh. You’re thinking the fashions from spring. No, the queen threw a party last month. It’s all different. Let’s go to the pool, I’ll tell you all about it.” She stepped to the rail and raised her arms. He started to reach for her, then stopped. “Now what?” she asked with a wince.
He stammered something about discomfort, for her, and not wanting to offend and a few other things. She finally realized that he was a bit overwhelmed by seeing so much of her. And that the sight of her was making HIS pulse react. She frowned.
“Are you really telling me that for the very first time, after two years of working together, you see me as a woman?” Her stormy visage cleared as he finally nodded. She smiled up at the stricken man. “Good.”
He finally found a plastic cup to carry her around in…dammit. She grabbed the rim and reached over to stroke his finger as they made their way through the motel. Anta tried to explain the speed with which Lilliputian fashions changed, but he just seemed confused.
“So,” he tried, opening the gate to the pool area, “the princess sets fashions until the queen overrides the fashion by what she wears in public, and her popularity is reflected by those who adopt her style?”
“Sort of. Not when she’s wearing a fashion she disagrees with in order to mock those that wear it.”
“How do you know?”
“Duh…she’d be all mocking.”
“Okay. Um, what if there’s no princess?”
“There’s always a princess. Even when there isn’t, there is.”
“Is there a book on this?” He spread the towel on a deck chair, hers on top of it, and sat at the edge of the pool.
“Yeah, the Rise and Fall of Fuscan Influence on Post-Angellepult Fitherings in Pre-Modern Lilliputian Social Dynamics. I’d start with Volume II, I isn’t all that useful.” He stared at her for a long moment. She put her hands on her hips and looked back evenly.
“You just made that up,” he finally decided, then upended the cup. She hit the water clean, dove deep, and surfaced a few inches away.
“I knew you were going to do that,” she told him, smiling wide. He climbed up from the edge and stood tall.
“You knew you deserved it,” he replied, diving into the water over the top of her. She knew she should have swum for the edge, in defense against the wave, but she couldn’t help herself. She followed his entire, gigantic form as it sailed overhead. The water closed over his feet as the first ripple pushed her to the side. She recovered, and stopped spitting out water, by the time he surfaced next to her.
“Come over to the center,” he invited her. “I think there’s a Lilliput-scale pool there.” Anta grabbed the back of Mark’s head and rode the waves like a sea-nymph. There was an island in the center of the odd-shaped pool, and it was scaled as her homeland.
“What’s this doing here?” she asked. “Do you see anyone else?”
“Well, it’s close enough to Vegas that travelers or tour groups from Lilliput aren’t impossible. But we’re still far enough away that there probably aren’t many. And, it’s early. Go look around.”
The plants were imported the paths paves with sand instead of gravel, and the pool was covered by a mesh to screen out birds. It was even private from the humans, there was no real place for him to stand and watch her, so he waved and went to do some laps.
Anta swam in the minipool for a bit, then stretched out in a chair. Time alone was at a premium back home, and nearly impossible at the reactor project. She lapped up the silence.
Later, when she got hungry, she made her way back to the biggie pool to wave down her dining partner. She stood at the edge and looked around. A few more swimmers were in the pool, but she didn’t see Mark.
“THERE SHE IS!” One of the kids in the pool pointed at her, shouted, then charged across the water. Froth marked him and another kid arrowing towards the island. She took a step back, but was still in reach when the teenager popped up out of the water and grabbed her.
“Got her!” he told the other.
“Put me down!” she screamed. The other teen looked closer at her.
“I don’t think it’s her.” The one holding Anta turned her back and forth, evaluating. Anta just hollered.
“I think the lady asked you to put her down,” Mark’s voice came from nearby. Anta stopped screaming. The kid didn’t put her down, though.
“What’s it to you?” he asked. The two kids were hanging off the side of the island as if they were ready to fight. Mark looked comfortable facing both of them down while treading water.
“The question is, what is it to you? You can put her down, or we can go talk to your parents about assault, kidnapping, and violations of the Lorbrulgrud Charter. We’ll probably talk to the cops, the feds and the State department, too.”
“Yeah, whatever,” the kid snorted. But he dropped Anta into the pool and swam away. His partner followed. Anta tumbled in the water then floated to the surface. She was just starting to tremble in reaction to whatever had happened when she was scooped up out of the water.
“What was that about?” Mark asked as he cupped Anta in his hand and floated. She hugged herself against his thumb while the shakes subsided.
“I don’t know. Can we just get out of here? I’m hungry.”
“Sure,” he replied, but he was scanning the water around them.
“What are you looking for?”
“THIS!” he replied, triumphantly. He reached into the water and pulled up a tiny strip of fabric. She blushed a little as he handed her the top of her swimsuit, lost in the struggle. He blushed more.
She tried to get the top on as he backstroked to their towels, but it had been torn. She just held it in place until he wrapped the hand towel around her.
Mark forgot about the cup when they returned to the room, he just cupped her, in the towel, in his hand and walked off. As they reached the stairwell she tapped his thumb.
“Toss this in the trash can over there, please,” Anta requested. She handed out two slips of wet clothing. He took them and glanced from the fabric to his passenger.
“This is your swimsuit?”
“Yeah, those kids ruined it. I’ll just replace it. Don’t worry, it’s not expensive.” She felt him grip slightly tighter around her. He kept staring at the suit. “And, yes, that means I’m naked under this towel. Is that a problem?”
“Uh, no. No, of course not.” He tossed the suit in the trash and walked face first into the wall beside the stairs. She tried not to giggle until she was safely inside her portable apartment. This was easier than it might have been, as his hand squeezed her on impact and the sore ache remained.
It only took a few minutes to shower and dress for dinner. The red dress was very tempting, but Mark probably would tip them both over the railing. She went with a more demure (against human standards) black skirt, white blouse. When she stepped out, she found Mark in one of the few collared shirts he owned.
“We expecting company?” she asked. He bowed to offer his elbow to her.
“If milady would care to accompany me? Dinner awaits.”
The novelty of the buffet style of dining hadn’t worn off yet. This time, though, Anta directed Mark’s efforts from a perch in his shirt pocket. Aside from not drawing the attention of the crazies, it gave her a much better view of the back row of dishes.
They went much more lightly through the line this time. It avoided the paralysis that kept them from the casino the night before. So it was with a flourish soon after that Mark swept through the doors and gave Antanda her first view of a Nevada Casino.
The first thing she noticed was the noise. Even worse that working with engineers or college dorm midterms, the level of sound was physical. She could swear she was ‘hearing’ with parts of her body that the ears had subcontracted to handle the load. The smell of tobacco and the light shining off of…well, everything vied for second notice.
Her beast of burden strode through the chaos with confidence. She’d done some reading to prepare, but was having a hard time seeing the connection between the texts and the reality.
Sirens and clanks marked the passing of slot machines. The gamblers displayed the widest range of human fashion she’d ever seen. Old ladies in neon spandex beside suited men; a woman in a tuxedo and fishnet stockings was surrounded by Goths in funerary t-shirts and jeans; a line of Japanese business men congratulated their supervisor on his ability to stand while a machine randomly selected symbols.
No one seemed to notice the dwarf dressed as Buffalo Bill, any more than they seemed to care about a man wearing the back half of a pantomime horse, striding through the casino with murderous eyes.
Some woman who looked like nothing so much as a Valkyrie in Christian Dior, who by rights should have drawn every man’s eye as she strode through, had to shoulder college boys to the side and step around old men in Hawaiian shirts.
“It’s… it’s…” she couldn’t find the words. She turned and shouted to Mark over the background noise.   “What’s the opposite of a sensory deprivation tank?”
“Las Vegas,” he answered. “But we’re not there yet. Maybe we should find a copy of ‘Fear and Loathing’ before we get there.”
“There’s MORE?!” Anta didn’t know if she was shocked or excited. None of the Human Society indoctrination courses touched on this or anything like it.
At the cashier’s cage, Mark bought a respectable stack of chips. Anta signaled him to hold her next to the microphone.
“Do you take checks from Lilliputian banks?” she asked. The cashier goggled a bit, once she realized who the speaker was. She hit a button at the edge of her work station. “Is there a problem?” Anta asked. Surely they didn’t think she was trying to rob them? Although, the engineer thought, looking around, she could fit under the security window easily enough. But to be realistic, the most she could haul off would be half of a stack of bills.
And if they had a flyswatter in there, her evil plan would be stymied quickly. Or even an ashtray upended over her…
Her reflex plotting was interrupted when the floor manager arrived, extending a hand and a smile. Mark shook his hand, Anta shook a finger. “Hello, I’m Victor. You’re our very first Lilliputian guest. Were you planning to gamble in the casino, tonight?” The staff was very excited to welcome Anta to the rooms. They offered to stake her $2000 in chips if she would evaluate their new Lilli-scaled facilities, offer suggestions, and perhaps allow a few photographs to be taken.
Anta glanced up at Mark, worried about any negative impact on the Reactor Project from giving the casino any publicity. Mark was more worried about the fact they were asking an engineer for suggestions. It was seldom a good idea to give them a blank check to change things.
Anyway, a phone call to the legal staff of the Project established the guidelines. Photos were fine, as long as she wasn’t wearing any Project ID. Endorsements were out of the question. The $2K would be considered her fee, it and any winnings would be hers. The Silver Dollar staff was delighted to comply. Anta was equally delighted to participate, Mark happy to tag along.
They had a blast.
Swing arms had been attached to all the gambling tables. They provided a railed, rugged area for her to stand, a rack for chips, and cushions. She estimated that about 10 people of her size could comfortably fit in any one arm. Best of all, a fan arrangement piped clean air to the Lilliputian, keeping away the cigar, cigarette, perfume and bodily odors of the human gamblers.
The craps table had a chute attached to allow her to roll the die down onto the table. The card tables had a recessed, lighted pit with a glass cover. She could sit comfortably and privately see the faces of her cards, or stand and see the cards the dealer had.
The bets still required a human helper to place, but they were looking into electronic indication systems.
Perhaps of the most use, though, were small, discreet plaques listing the rules of the games, the odds and the etiquette.
In the end, her only complaint was the drinks. They’d dropped the ball on the scale, and shot glasses came in the same size cups as a McDonalds Minimeal drink. She kept meaning point this out to the waitress, but she couldn’t catch her attention.
She got everyone else’s attention, though.
Tourists and gamblers pushed close to get a look, and to gamble on her success or failure. The attention was as intoxicating as the oversized cocktails. Almost.
A redheaded woman in a sapphire nun’s habit with green tassels pushed her way through the crowd around the crap table. She waved a handful of chips in Mark’s face and screamed, “Can I pet her? I’ll pay.”
Before Mark could even answer, or punch her, the hovering staff swept in and removed her. But the damage was done. Everyone wanted to touch the tiny woman; for luck, for the thrill, for something to tell the folks back home.
Mark snatched her from the stand and secured her in an inner pocket. The staff kept the casino guests clear until they could escort the pair to a private area.
In the manager’s office, Anta offered her impressions and suggestions for improvements. She mentioned a few games Lilliputians enjoyed in their salons, some Fuscan symbols for good luck and some snacks little people from the two islands would find attractive. She also offered to teach everyone a traditional Lilliputian drinking song, and the little dance that went with it. She just needed a traditional Lilliputian party hat.
That was when Mark put an end to the evening, scooping his drunken partner up in mid-jig, pocketing the check for her chips, and shaking hands all around.   He also accepted a CD with copies of all the pictures that had been taken, as a souvenir.
As he walked back to the room, he started planning the best places to post the pics of her. Anta lay back on his palm and kicked her legs in the air while he walked back to the room.
“I could have danced all night,” she sang.
“We never danced,” he pointed out. “We did everything else.”
“Well, we’ll do that next time.”
In the stairwell, she saw a snack machine and suddenly realized how hopelessly starving she was. While Mark tried to juggle his passenger, his room key and the CD to get into the room, she demanded to be placed on the ground. Once down, she didn’t enter the room with him, but scurried off towards the vending machine.
He got the door open, threw the disk to the bed, propped the door open with the night latch, and went off to get her. He found her at the foot of the machine, about four feet under the coin slot. But she wasn’t looking at the food, rather she was peering underneath it.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“I was just wondering that myself,” she replied. He knelt down to look where she pointed. Another tiny woman lay huddled on the floor next to an empty cracker box. She was naked and crying. When she looked up to see Mark, she curled up even tighter, trying to cover herself with her hands.
“Oh, no, no, I’m naked.”
“It’s okay,” Anta assured her. “There was a party. The Queen wore her red number.”
“Oh.” The woman popped upright, and without a trace of self consciousness strode out to face them both. “You must help me. I’ve…well, I guess I’ve been kidnapped.”
Anta pointed up to her partner. “He’ll help you. That’s what he’s for.” Then she tipped over and fell to the carpet.
------
She woke up in the Lilliport bed. The motions of the case told her they were back in the car. Luckily, she seemed to have slept through her hangover. “Thank the Egg for Lilliputian metabolism,” she muttered.
“No lie,” came a reply. She spun around to find a strange woman sitting on the other side of the bed.
“Who the hell are you?” Anta demanded.
“Loolilenda, the girl you rescued last night,” was the answer. Slowly the details returned.
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