“Eddie” A stand alone short story

 

“Eddie“

By

Mackey Chandler

            I remember the first time I saw Eddie. We didn’t really meet. I was in the cafeteria trying to eat breakfast and there was the usual parade of people with problems, or petitions, or just trying to suck up to the boss, all clueless to the fact that the boss just wanted to eat her English muffin in peace and let the coffee slowly boost her brain into some semblance of function. If they could just wait until 0900 my office officially opened for business and we’d have a whole long shift to sort out the problems.

Eddie was reading the news on a hand com and chatting with a bunch of outside workers. He seemed the sort who listened a lot and laughed easily instead of dominating a conversation. The yard dogs were running close to the clock. They needed to get in the locker room and suit up. That wasn’t something you rushed, but if you had too much suiting up time versus work time the foreman would start to bitch about the ratio, no matter that the safety regs said you couldn’t impose a time limit for suit checks.

There was one of those lulls in the noise level you’ll get in a big room, and I heard Eddie tell the boys, “You guys run along. I’ve got plenty of time and will clean this up.” He didn’t get any argument at all, just a few muttered thanks and the half dozen men at the table were happy to hurry out the door.

Eddie shuffled a few plates around consolidating them on a stack of trays and made a trip to the trash bin. When he returned he made up another final stack to finish the clean up, but settled back in to finish reading the news. The first time I looked he was sitting with just coffee in front of him, but now he seemed to be eating breakfast. I saw him spreading jam on toast and wondered, just a little put off, if he was eating after somebody.

I’m a bit fastidious I admit. My mother constantly warned me not to share food with kids at school when I was growing up. Of course in the 20’s that made sense, it wasn’t just excessive mothering. There was the mouse flu out of Africa, and that especially nasty form of Norovirus that showed up in Toronto, and others I can’t remember by name. But even considering how my mom trained me I’d take toast if a friend offered it. It’s hard to see it as unsanitary to share somebody’s untouched toast off a separate plate.

I should have been glad it wasn’t wasted, because no matter how we urged people to only take what they would eat, there was always food thrown out. A damn shame when you consider what it cost to lift. Still, it made me notice him, and Eddie isn’t a very noticeable guy. He was older than most Loonies, but the buzz cut many wear for inside a helmet looks about the same whether it is blond or white.

That was the same week in 2048, right at the start of the year, that the Chinese and Israelis got nasty. So I wasn’t thinking about Eddie or any trivia once the crisis gripped us. We were all dealing with the fact nobody was lifting much off Earth as long as the those idiots were lasing each other’s satellites and using kinetic weapons in LEO. Nobody wanted to get caught in the cross fire and lose a shuttle or crew to mistaken identity. Later I found out what was a big problem for us was a godsend for Eddie.

Armstrong was hovering around two thousand population then. That doesn’t sound like much now, but it strained our supply lines at the time. Our shipping schedule was very firm for about six months ahead, with about a five percent margin for shifting loads to accommodate unexpected needs or badly estimated usage. We had a little production of salad greens and

sprouts and even an experimental fish tank. But nobody had yet seriously considered raising corn or wheat, or bringing chickens or rabbits to the moon. We were way too dependent on lifted supply.

Well, the flare up, or whatever euphemism you want to apply to a Sino-Israeli space war shot the hell out of all our plans. A week may not sound like much of an interruption. I’m sure nobody went hungry. Nobody died because the surgery or pharmacy ran out of supplies. But we didn’t know it was only going to last a week and the stress of not knowing had an amazing effect on morale. People were glued to their screens watching the news blogs and commercial channels. Not just on their free time either.

If we punished people for taking shift time to watch the news we’d have had to punish everybody. Even the outside workers in suits and rovers would clear their official traffic with the dispatcher and then ask, “Anything happening with the Earthies?”

When things settled down quickly everybody heaved a sigh of relief. But we were a week out of synch and had to make it up somehow. Dated medicines and such got priority. I was administrator so I caught the blame for the worst screw up, even though it was a food service tech who made the actual mistake. Just let me say that you may think you know what is important to people but you are probably wrong. Having nineteen hundred people pissed off at you because they ran out of coffee can set your thinking straight in a hurry. Being one of the caffeine deprived drudges yourself doesn’t help.

Of course one of the other things bumped off the first few supply ships, besides the unfortunate choice of coffee, was the usual two percent or so capacity that was allotted to private shipping. FedEx, RightNow/PayPal, and UPS all contracted space on an ‘as available’ basis. Suddenly “as available” meant none

Having nineteen hundred people e-mail orders to Earth for instant coffee, brewers, espresso makers, gourmet beans and such, on top of all the normal commerce, had to produce an impressive backlog in the shippers holding bins.

Just as we didn’t know when the Chinese and Israelis would stop bashing each other, the shipping companies undoubtedly had no confidence in when we would get our act together and have excess capacity to sell them again. If administrators will cut off nineteen hundred caffeine addicts with whom they are sealed up in an intimately close environment how much confidence would you have in their judgment?

All that apparent demand lead the shippers to quickly acquire their own lunar spacecraft. Something they had all avoided, despite having fleets of conventional aircraft on Earth and shuttles for LEO. UPS won the race to land the first private cargo craft on Armstrong field. They had an orbit to orbit maintenance scooter outfitted with extra big tanks and landing jacks. They cut it in half and stuck in a cargo module in complete with brown paint and a gold logo slapped on just like their trucks have carried on Earth like forever. It wasn’t very efficient and it didn’t have much capacity, but nobody was arguing with their rates either.

The next time I saw Eddie was in my own office. Valentine’s day it was, 2048. My assistant Cheryl was talking to him as I came past returning from a meeting. He immediately excused himself and disappeared. Cheryl followed me into my office and offered me a piece from an open box of chocolates, the sort shaped like a heart and covered in gold and red foil. It was at once familiar and as foreign as a horse standing in my office. The sort of little thing from Earth that you didn’t realize how much you missed until you saw it again. The absence of all those small comforts was why it was a hardship post more than any real danger.

“He seems a little old for you,” I said around a mouthful of chocolate. I got a nut fudge, which was fine with me, “but if the man can score chocolate on the moon he’s a keeper.”

“Oh, that was just the delivery guy,” Cheryl informed me. “The chocolates are from Bob Hanson who is with the MIT team. The ones who take turns going around to the backside observatory. I guess it gets pretty lonely over there with three guys on separate shifts and hot bunking over a long dark lunar.”

“What happened to Chris the rover driver?”

“Oh, I still see him now and then. You know how it is, kind of like the chocolates, it’s nice to have an assortment,” she said smiling.

Back then Armstrong had about three men for each woman, so there really was an assortment. For some, like Cheryl, it was a veritable smorgasbord. There was no comparison to Earth; only the best got sent to the moon so the box was full of ‘good ones’.

“Here, if you need chocolates this is his card. I already put him in my address book.”

You didn’t see many business cards on the moon. In fact it was pretty much a sign somebody was an Earthie or at least a new arrival. “Love Sent” it said on hot pink over a heart. “Discreet and affordable, personal gift shopping, candies and love tokens, delivered with your message – Eddie – comcode 2222.”

I tucked it in the crack along the edge of my monitor where the bezel didn’t fit. There was a line of AVOs, job tickets, and personal appointments. I read once that when computers were new people thought paper documents would disappear. How foolish.

The comcode bugged me. I was sure we didn’t have 2,222 people. And as people rotated back Dirtside the numbers were reassigned. I called the radio shack and asked our head techie how she came to issue a number ahead of the current usage range.

“Oh, Eddie came in and asked if he could have that one. He explained he wanted something easy for people to remember. As far as I could see it wasn’t against any rule, and I didn’t see what it could hurt, so I changed it for him. Is that going to mess up something?” she asked worried.

“No, I don’t see how it could. I was just curious how we got a comcode higher than our population. It jumped out at me. I don’t want us to get like Earth with senseless bureaucratic rules about everything.”

That summer, yeah we were all so tied to Earth thinking and North America so we still thought of June and July as summer, we had a big increase in tourists. The cost dropped down to where we had ten or twelve at a time. That was all our new Holiday Inn could accommodate, even at double occupancy. Before that two or three a shuttle stayed in transient bachelor quarters.

I was running to a meeting at environmental, and there was Eddie standing in the commons with a group of six that were visibly tourists. You don’t even have to see them walk; they stand different. The way he faced the group and his gestures pointing out things made it obvious he was giving them the nickel tour. There was a paper laying in the corridor, and I immediately blamed the tourists in my own mind, sure they were bringing littering along with every other form of Earth sloth and rudeness to the Moon. I was right, sort of. I scooped up the

offending paper, but didn’t throw it away. I have learned the hard way never to throw away a piece of paper until I was sure what it was.

The meeting in environmental had already started. I didn’t get chewed out for being late, only because I was Chief Administrator. The Department Head John Yoho still looked daggers at me as I slid into my seat, but it was quickly obvious I wasn’t missing anything. He was still rambling over a rehash of our last meeting before he got around to any new business. The man was as boring as watching moon dust fall.

I looked at the paper I’d scooped up under the edge of the table. I knew when John finally got around to saying something new he’d pause dramatically and say – “Now, that brings us to the present.”  It was as set in stone as a religious ceremony.

The paper was an advertisement. Quite a nice piece of printing, good color in a trifold brochure on glossy paper. Nothing you couldn’t do in a good printer, but somehow I suspected it was Earth work, commercial printing at that. It said -“Take a Day Tour on the Moon. Do you or your small group want to see something not on the official tour? Do you want to visit with natives in their home and meet like minded Loonies with the same interests and hobbies as you? Any interest that can be safely accommodated is available. Do you want to ease the expense of your vacation? We buy unused luggage allowance, either way, or leave your dirty laundry on the moon after wearing it, and receive typically 3x the retail price of your items left behind. Exclusive picture files available for tour members only.” The pix in the brochure were pretty good. He’d managed to make our commons look about the size of a football stadium, and I’d never seen the cafeteria looking so neat and uncluttered. “Call Eddie – Armstrong comcode 2222.”

John still hadn’t recounted all of the department’s history from its founding so I folded the brochure closed and over again and slid it in my pocket. The question briefly worried me that Eddie must be so busy with all these entrepreneurial pursuits that I didn’t see how he could attend to a day job. However, even then, most of the activity in Armstrong was private sector. We set it up that way from the start. The people like me, who were public servants were only about forty out of two thousand.

John Yoho, just mentioned for example, was not my employee, but a contractor hired to keep our air and water services running. He was nice to me not so much because I ranked him as because I was outside his chain of command entirely. The air would have to be pretty nasty before I could think about terminating John’s contract. I mean, everybody goes home from the moon. We even send our dead back to bury. But we’d do a lot to avoid sending somebody back early. It made everybody look bad and was expensive. So if I thought Eddie was short changing his boss, it really wasn’t any of my business.

That year was different for a lot of small reasons. We had some businesses display small pumpkins and gourds for the season, and they just smiled when you complimented them on it. One day in the fall there were suddenly autumn leaves mysteriously scattered on the deck in the auditorium. Maple and Oak, Aspen and Hickory. Bright red and orange and yellow. People took them home and they ended up decorating apartment doors and monitors and bulletin boards. Not a few ended up woven in people’s hair like a pagan fairy crown. There were none left for Housekeeping to clean up so how could anyone complain?

In the winter suddenly there were greens displayed and wreaths hung on business entries. A few businesses started putting out a dish of mints or hard candies. Things were slowly getting – comfortable.

* * *

            It isn’t often a subordinate comes to me with a problem they can’t handle. I have good people and give them lots of freedom, so it really bothers me when they have an ugly problem and I don’t see any way to help.

Aerron Fisher came in to see me about March of ’49. He looked upset and hadn’t e-mailed me or called so I knew it was bad. He walked in and flopped in an unruly heap in my chair.

“I have a girl in my programming section. Nice kid. Delores Bray. Everybody calls her Faye though. Does good work. But she has a real problem and I don’t know how to solve it. She’s so upset she can’t work. I wouldn’t trust her work if she tried, and I might have to send her back home on disability leave.”

“For emotional distress? Is she treatable here, so we don’t have to transport her?”

“No, I don’t think there is anything we can do. It’s not like it’s unreasonable distress. Something would be wrong with her if she wasn’t upset. Her mom has one of those fast growing brain tumors. The sort that only give you about a two week window to start treatment. They have an orphan disease treatment but it’s not covered by public medicine, and it costs fifty thousand up front for the injections.”

“She only makes thirty five-k a month and sends three or four home to Mom every month to help her. She spends most of the rest for cafeteria fees and cubic. The couple thousand a month leeway she has she just pisses away. She’s young and I don’t think anybody ever showed her anything about managing money. I talked to payroll and there is no way we can advance her that much against her salary. She can’t get a loan down below because her credit and her mom’s before she got this job were horrible.”

“Aerron, I found out quite a while back that private charity to your subordinates can be a disaster. Invariably others find out and resent it as favoritism or you get buried under requests.”

“I agree, and frankly I’d probably never get it back as a loan. The girl isn’t evil, but I’d hate to count on her suddenly becoming competent financially. It wouldn’t ruin me, but that’s more money than I can comfortably throw away.”

We sat there looking at each other, unhappy and not seeing any solution.

My secretary Cheryl came to the door and cleared her throat. “I know you didn’t ask me, but with the door open I could hear, and half way down the corridor to Engineering probably. I don’t know for sure if he can help, but you might want to give this guy a call.” She handed me a small neat business card on plain white stock. “Payday Loans – reasonable rates – small personal items bought and sold – pawn for jewelry and precious metals, Eddie – comcode 2222.”

“This is getting ridiculous,” I objected, and handed the card to Aerron. “Is there anything this fellow doesn’t dabble in?” I’m not sure we really need loan sharks on the moon. Next he’s going to open a pleasure palace with him as head pimp, or get a bootlegging business going.”

Aerron squirmed around all uncomfortable and looked down at the floor.

“What? If you tell me he opened a hook shop I’m not going to be amused. And you sure as hell better not whip out a business card offering a free one to new customers!”

“Houses of ill repute are traditionally run by women, a madam, not men, and I really doubt with two thousand people here that somebody isn’t pursuing the world’s oldest profession at least on a part time and unofficial basis. There are several, uh, clubs, of people with very

exotic tastes in personal relationships that have formed. I’ve even had a few subtle hints that I could join in at least enough to find out if it worked for me.”

“Really? I don’t know whether to be insulted or complimented I haven’t had an such an invitation.”

“Sharon, you are a sweet lady. And your sort are the backbone of the race as far

perpetuating the species. But reports are that you are totally oblivious when seriously flirted with. You might as well have ‘mundane’ tattooed across your forehead. You’re just fine for an administrator. Not too radical, not too smart. Stable above all. But don’t expect this bunch to be as plain vanilla as you. We have swingers and swappers, hell I know for sure we have a scene and even furries. Just be happy the natives aren’t running up and down the public corridors in paint and feathers scaring the tourists.”

Not too smart? I didn’t care for that. And yet I’d made the same observation about geeks and academics failing to connect with others. “Meet like minded Loonies with the same interests and hobbies,” Eddies brochure had said. It made me wonder if that was code for something more.

“Which leaves the bootlegging.”

“What?” He grabbed me right out of my introspection. “You can’t be serious.”

“He didn’t offer. I approached him.”

I wanted Aerron to wilt under my gaze, but he looked back unashamed.

“You know alcohol is one of the few items absolutely prohibited from being shipped up. Well, they make no more exception for ceremonial use than they do for casual consumption. I wanted Kosher wine for my Seder. Eddie seems to fulfill every other need people approach him with, so I asked if he could help me with that.”

“Is he a smuggler on top of everything else?”

“Probably,” he said with a dismissive wave, “But no need. Alcohol is prohibited. Grapes are not. Now somebody else would have just supplied the grapes, or worse raisins, and told me to look up wine making on the net. Eddie affirmed he was not an idolater and otherwise was qualified, and arranged for a machgiach to supervise his wine making by video conference, made sure there was a teshuvah to validate that process, and got his product certified with a proper hechcher. He had bottles hand blown and printed a rather nice private label. It was a very pleasant dry red with a nice nose and we enjoyed four glasses of it with Seder dinner and set the usual cup for Elijah.”

“Now if you don’t approve Madam Administrator, I have to warn you I can get very nasty about religious freedom and civil liberties. If you have never studied the American period of Prohibition I suggest you call it up on your screen and consider the lessons learned from that farce. Fermentation is too common a natural process to outlaw. You might as well outlaw gravity to make coming to the moon cheaper. I strongly urge you not to make the same error of judgment the Prohibitionists made.”

As a matter of fact,  history was my first major and my real love in school. I was very aware what a failure Prohibition was but I still parroted the official line to Aerron.

“Yes, but the moon is a hazardous environment. You don’t make mistakes in a spacesuit or you end up dead very quickly. Alcohol has no place in that kind of situation.”

“This is dishonesty.” He waved the rule aside with another flip of his hand. “For an exploration crew living in a hut or a rover yes. But we are way past that sort of frontier living.

When was the last time you were out in vacuum with a suit on?  On Earth people who fly planes, police and firefighters and hospital workers all know they can’t drink for a set period of time before coming on duty. Yet Earth abides somehow,” he allowed sarcastically.

“There are only a couple dozen people here who need to be on call to get in a suit and go outside at any moment who should never have a drink. It’s a holdover from when public money lifted everything we needed. Nobody wanted some reporter announcing how much a bottle of Bourbon cost to transport to the moon. And they were trying to give us a squeaky clean image. Well it’s way past time to dump that crap.”

It had been over three years since I put a suit on and went outside. They do it for you at your orientation when you first come up. Since then I’d only unrolled and pulled on an emergency suit annually, before it was inspected and rolled back up.

“I agree. I’ll make a note of it to publish a rule change. We’ll strictly limit restrictions to rational safety considerations.” When you are wrong you are wrong. Better to say so early and get started fixing it, than to resist change long enough to prove to everybody you are an ass.

“If you guys are through arguing do you want me to call Eddie or not?” Cheryl asked.

“If you want to call Eddie in I should get my programmer to come sit in at the same time.” Aerron said.

“Why don’t we do it over lunch tomorrow?” I suggested. “I’d rather do it in a more relaxed atmosphere than over my desk. The poor girl will feel like it’s a trial in here instead of a chance to get some help.” I also wasn’t sure I wanted to promote Eddie’s loan service in an official way either. Something doing it in my office would suggest.

“Now that’s the kind of idea that makes you good at what you do,” Aerron allowed.

Once Aerron was away, and Cheryl was calling Eddie with a lunch invitation, I opened the public files and looked for Eddie. I didn’t have a last name, but there were only five Edwards in residence. A glance at their official images told me none were our Eddie. Interesting. I thought about running it as a middle name, but it could just as easily be a nickname.

* * *

            I brought Cheryl along. I’m not sure why. It just felt right. Maybe having another woman so it didn’t appear so male dominated. Maybe for me instead of Faye if I were honest. We got there early and went off to the back wall. Everybody normally clustered close to the coffee pot. Only one person was too dense to see we went off by ourselves for privacy, and Cheryl waved him away with a emphatic gesture that seemed very out of character for her. There was more steel there than I suspected.

Eddie arrived before Aerron and Faye. He got a cup of coffee and sat down smiling and looking too damn innocent for my taste.

“We’re all going to eat Eddie. Why don’t you get something too? It will help give it a less formal set to the meeting. The young woman we are trying to help needs all the tact and soothing we can manage. That’s why I didn’t have it in my offices where she might feel more like it was a disciplinary hearing than an attempt to help.”

“Well,” he smiled and hesitated.

“Tell Marcy to put it on the Director’s account.”

“Well, that’s different. I was taught never to pass up a free feed. Do we have lobster on the menu today?” he joked.

“When we can pull lobster pots up from the depths of Mare Tranquillitatis. But I know somebody who can probably get them with a few days lead time,” I said pointedly.

“Ah, it’s handy to know a fellow like that,” he said, and went off to the serving line with a smug little smile.

Aerron came in with Faye and she was about what I expected, the name already told me she was a twenty something. I never knew a Delores or a Faye growing up. Names wax and wane in popularity and shift from group to group. We had several girls named Edna and Eunice in my class, but not a single Betty or Alice which my mom found strange. And when my friends Ruby and Queena came to take me along to a concert mother was surprised they weren’t black.

Faye however, looked like her mother had already died. She wasn’t just worried, she was grieving already. You could forget being on the moon how many people below have no resources and no hope. It wasn’t nice to see it here. At least Aerron made her pick out  a meal with him and guided her over. Eddie was actually ahead of them but fussed around with the condiments and such until he was on their heels coming over.

I spoke right away, not wanting any awkward silence or Faye getting twitchy. “Faye dear. Aerron and I are both concerned and feel terrible for your mother. We’ve been searching for some way to help you get the funds you need. There isn’t much here on the moon to work with, but we’re given to understand Mr. uh, that is, Eddie here, will make small loans. We don’t really have any rules about personal loans between people. I’m just concerned nothing develops where anyone is taking advantage of our people. Loan sharking and such are usually covered by state laws, and we only have Federal law. I imagine it will be awhile before we have a real bank office in Armstrong. Doing your banking online is so easy, and nobody really needs cash for anything.” Eddie gave me an amused look at that, but what surprised me was how Aerron scowled at me clearly unhappy at what I’d said. I made a mental note to find out why they both disagreed so strongly.

“Would you explain what you need and Aerron and I will listen and advise you if you don’t mind our input in your business.”

Faye explained her mother’s medical condition. The details were irrelevant to whether Eddie would write her a loan, but he didn’t tell her that, patiently listening to all the details and even asking a few questions with seeming genuine concern.

“Miss Bray, I certainly see your concern and it seems a worthy reason to indebt yourself. May I ask you a few questions in front of the others?”

“Sure, I don’t really have any secrets. Aerron and Ms. Hadley know everything.”

“Very well. I get the impression from what you say that your mother is an intelligent and forceful person, but that being from a rural upbringing she may have difficulty dealing with an urban sort of attitude and a bureaucratic maze. Does that seem like a fair statement to you?”

“Yeah, I think you understand just fine.”

“Then if we can reach some sort of accommodation on terms I’d like to suggest we have a professional patient’s advocate follow her through the medical procedure and validate everything the hospital does. They not only can demand to see the medication wrappings used to check their authenticity, but are familiar with the treatment codes and normal availability of services. They make sure the patient gets what she is paying for and often a patient with a visible on site advocate seems to spend less time waiting out in corridors and such. The advocate standing there

with the well known purple cap on seems to be have an amazing clarifying effect on the mental processes of doctors and nurses.”

“That sounds really nice if I could afford it,” Faye agreed. “It sounds expensive though. How much would it add to the hospital bill?”

“I’d write it off as an expense just to know my money loaned was being well spent. It would be a shame to see your mother treated less well than she deserves. Now, the question of loaning you the funds needs to be addressed separately from your need and the appropriateness of the purpose. I hope you understand. That’s how business is done.”

“Oh I do. I’d take charity in a minute, if that’s what it took to keep her alive, but if I can pay for it I’ll actually feel better, and if you knew my momma she would too.”

“Very well. What sort of monthly payment do you feel you can afford to repay me?”

“I make about thirty-five thousand. My cubic and air-fee and cafeteria fee, and water all add up about twenty-eight k. A hair more with com fee and power. So I have about six k a month I can do with as I please. I send maybe half of that to momma to help her support herself. It doesn’t sound like much but it goes far down there. She has a ration allowance and gets the negative income tax every month. She plants a huge garden and keeps chickens, but that feeds half the neighborhood as well as her. I have to have a little for personal items like soap and toothpaste. So I could give you five thousand a month until I’m paid up. Does that sound like enough to you?”

“While I admire your spirit in the matter, that doesn’t sound practical to me. Do you really want to stop sending the extra money each month to your mother right when she needs it perhaps more than before? If she feels ill from the treatment she might need some help around the house instead of being out in the garden fussing and weeding. And can you really go a year without a new blouse or shoes, or something to keep your spirits up like a video or some fresh music?”

“It would be hard,” Faye admitted. But it seemed little enough if we both sacrificed.”

Eddie shook his head disagreeing. His mouth was full of burger and we waited for him to clear it so he could continue.

“What I’d suggest is you pay me back fifty payments of a thousand dollars a month principal plus fifty dollars interest. Fifty months may seem forever to you, but if it leaves you enough to live on comfortably you can sustain it. However, I’ll only do it if you agree to save a thousand dollars a month into your own account for as long as you are paying me off. Once you see what it is like to have some money sitting there as a protection I believe you will like it and perhaps even continue to save after our business is done. Could you also write down your mother’s address and contact information?” he asked. He shoved a small pad across to her.

I saw a huge problem there so I butted into this conversation.

“Eddie, that sounds easier, but paying less than the full interest means you have a big balloon to pay off at the end of the loan. How do you think Faye is going to deal with that?”

“I did not intend to write an amortization schedule and shift the unpaid interest to the end. I will be happy in her case with the set fee each month. If she pays it off early I intend to still ask the fee considering it is modest. After fifty payments of a thousand-fifty she will be free and clear.”

I couldn’t believe it. Faye was so ignorant of financial matters she didn’t seem to twig to the fact it was barely disguised charity. It was certainly a kindness. I wondered if it was a give-away to make sure I didn’t come down on his other activities? If so, he was going to have a rude awakening if I found him charging some other Lunnie a usurious rate, or any other scheme I thought injurious to my people.

“Faye honey, it’s a real good deal,” I told her, “I’d take it myself in a heartbeat. Why don’t you have Eddie write it up and we’ll all look at it tomorrow and you can sign it?”

“I’m rather busy, and I don’t have the luxury of a personal assistant like you do,” Eddie said. “Why don’t you have Miss Polzinsky,” he nodded at Cheryl, “write it up and you can be quite confident of the wording and accuracy?”

“Did you follow everything well enough to write it up?” I asked her. From all appearances she was busy eating lunch and not listening at all. I should have known better.

She gave me a wry look that asked if I really thought she was an idiot.

“Fine then. Lets meet again tomorrow and finalize everything.”

“Same place – same time?” Eddie asked.

“No, let’s make it after lunch tomorrow in my office.” I wasn’t going to let him put the old soft touch on me for lunch again that easy, and I intended to make him stay after and answer some questions about who he was and just how far his business dealings extended.

“Why don’t I come back to your office right now,” he suggested, surprising me. “I’d like to use your com and get the ball rolling. I’d just as soon you know it’s taken care of also.”

“Sure, come on back with me,” I agreed. “That way you’ll be around if Cheryl has any questions writing the contract.” I noticed he wrapped up his uneaten fries and a dessert in a napkin and slipped them in his pocket.

Back at my office Eddie seated himself in my chair with an ease I found disconcerting. The screen quickly showed a live receptionist and surrounding graphics for a legal firm. Harold, Green, Harmon and Greyhawk it said in gold letters on the wall behind her. There were forms across the bottom of the video window for file transfer and encryption selections.

“EP here Toni. I need to talk to Al Green right now.”

“Yes sir, paging him,” she agreed with no argument at all. The receptionist’s office made mine look like the janitors closet. Green’s office when it appeared looked suitable for royalty to hold court. I thought the city outside his window was New York, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure. Wherever, it was mostly down from his vantage point.

“Al, I have something I want you to take care of today. You don’t have to do it personally, but check back and make sure your people got it all right before you go home.”

“Hello Eddie. I’ve missed you too. Don’t you want to know how everything is going? I’ve been using my power of attorney right and left in your absence. Aren’t you a bit concerned?”

“Nah. The market has been in the pits. Wouldn’t matter what you do. Everybody lost a ton of money the last few months unless they held a narrow range of issues. What the hell do I care for a number anyway? Am I too broke to pay your billings?”

“I think you can still cover a couple hours. You look friggin’ weird with that gorgeous mustache gone and your hair all mowed off. Quite a lag in transmission I’m hearing. You’re on the moon aren’t you Eddie?”

“Yes, and that’s privileged information. I’m calling on borrowed com so don’t bother the nice lady and call back here looking for me. Now, I want you to have a patient’s advocate contact this lady,” he gave Green the data for Faye’s mother, and outlined the problem. “I want her walked through with an advocate at her elbow all the way, not just a daily check up. She’s rural and poor and I don’t want to hear she was treated with any lack of respect because of that.

There’s a lady I used before, she should be in my personal records, Marta Singh. She’s not only a certified patient’s advocate but an attorney also. I liked that combo. She’s her own expert witness. See if she’s free to work a client right now.”

“Is this associated with any particular corporation?”

“No, but you can pick anything remotely connected to health care and have an associated  charitable foundation pick up the funding. Put ten million or so in a irrevocable Visa card and give it to the advocate. Make sure the patient has support after treatment and is stabilized back in her home environment before everybody walks away. If she needs somebody to clean house or do her shopping for awhile see to it. If that means somebody to tend her garden you find a gardener, or a farmer I guess since she raises vegetables.”

“Okay. Can I run what’s brewing past you before you hang up?”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m just not interested. You can have one of your clerks write a summary for me. I do want to know what is required to open a community based Federal credit union and a list and samples of what forms need filled out. You can expect I’ll be drawing funds to start that, and send it to me general delivery, Armstrong. Anything else?”

“No, it really is nice to hear from you. Don’t be such a stranger is all.”

“Thanks Al. If I’m back on the Dirtball for any reason I’ll stop by. Maybe even get away for a couple days and fish or chase the little white ball around. My love to Dorothy. Bye.”

“Goodbye Eddie.” The lawyer looked dismayed to be losing him already.

“Eddie Peterson,” I accused him before he could even turn away from the screen.

“Yeah, notorious weirdo and wannabe hermit, if there was anywhere left for a hermit.”

“Reclusive Billionaire is how the newsies usually describe you.”

“Nowhere left to recluse yourself either. If you get lucky and draw a permit for a wilderness area you can sit on a mountaintop and pretend you are a guru for two weeks, then the entry permit expires and you better be leaving. If not they send a chopper in and charge you for kicking you out.”

“So which company here in Armstrong do you own that you are secretly lurking around running?”

“That’s the funny part. I have an interest in several, but none of them are aware I’m here. I’ve been inside Selene Survey to deliver chocolates, I’m happy to see it seems to be well run with lots of bustling activity and camaraderie. The fact it makes money is nice too. I’ve sold autumn gourds and mini-pumpkins to We Can Do That Personnel. They seem to run a tight ship too. They certainly keep a close watch on petty cash, and although they saw the wisdom of catching the public eye with seasonal decorations they were modest in their choices and didn’t pay to put them where the public wouldn’t see. I’ve been my own secret shopper survey. I haven’t named any of my new businesses or even used a DBA. I just sold things as Eddie. Nobody ever pushed to know Eddie who?”

“But we don’t have open immigration. You must have come in on a business authorization. You have to buy a return ticket as a tourist with a thirty day maximum turn around. I know I’ve seen you around for a year.”

“Yeah, well you know now I’m not poor, so it wasn’t that hard to write off my return ticket. I found I really liked it up here. I thought about it the night before I was supposed to go back and dropped an e-mail to the shuttle service that I was indisposed to fly and would take a flight back when I felt better.”

“You can’t do that Eddie. If we let anybody come who simply wanted to what would it be like?”

“Hmmm,” he seemed to consider. “No more labor shortage? Well, less of a labor shortage for sure. I doubt there are enough who could afford to come to swamp you. Just as I doubt if I am a vanguard of thousands of illegal billionaires who will end up sleeping in the corridors for lack of cubic within their budgets. More business as the market determines who succeeds or fails? Right now your conservative analysis of which businesses to allow in means you have to pretty much see a guaranteed success to consider it, and any you let in are then shielded from competition. Even the Soviet model of a centrally controlled economy wasn’t set up for such certain failure.”

“Why didn’t you propose a business and come in the conventional way? There are lots of open slots in our economy you could have filled.”

“I did. Are you really too bureaucratically blindered to see that?” he asked irritated. “Oh, none of them were anything you and the development board would have approved. Heavens no! They were all service companies that wouldn’t be a poster child for your administrative skills. None were mega-projects worth calling a press conference to announce. I made a game of it really. I decided I’d limit myself to the funds I already had in my debit card I use traveling. I had a bit less than thirty k on it the morning I called and begged off my return. I decided if I still had the touch, if I still could make something out of nothing and a little hard work I’d allow myself to stay. I was sort of pretending I was stranded and gamed how I’d survive if I really didn’t have a fortune backing me up on Earth. If I couldn’t survive and thrive on what I had and make my way locally then I’d buy my passage back and give up on the idea of staying.”

“And you’ve survived for over a year on thirty k? I find that hard to believe.”

“No, no. You underestimate me. I’m hurt by how badly. As of this morning,” he flipped open his small computer and checked the screen, “I survived and have increased my bank roll to  Eighty-Seven Thousand, Seven-Hundred and Sixty-Two dollars. There are so many people who desired my services I can’t keep up with the demand. I wish I were twins. You’d be shocked at the list if I showed you everything I’ve done in the last year. I could have handled Ms. Brays loan from local funds, but I stopped my game this morning. I think I made my point, I can survive quite well here on my own, and once you knew about me the game was pointless, since part of the challenge was hiding.”

“So, you are ready to buy that return ticket, and end your extended vacation?”

“Whatever gave you that idea? No, I live here now. I may go to Earth for a vacation sometime, but this is my home. I intend to continue much as before. I find it really pleasant to be able to deal with people without being surrounded by security. I was concerned what would happen when somebody did recognize me. I shouldn’t have worried. Loonies are basically different from Dirtsiders. When I’d been here about a month I ran into a former employee, Red Harman. He saw me and just said, “Hi Eddie. Good to see you.” That’s it. He was deep in another  conversation and kept on going. There’s nowhere on Earth I can get treated like that.”

“I don’t see how I can let this arrangement stand.”

“I’m pretty sure you can’t stop it. Not only have I stopped playing the game with just my pocket money, but I already have a lot of people who depend on me now for services. If you send me packing to Earth you are going to piss off a lot of your own people. And it would be for a very limited benefit. It might inconvenience me for a week or two. I can spend twenty billion or fifty billion or whatever it takes to put myself back up here, and then you’d have thrown away my goodwill as well by playing the evil bureaucrat with me. Are you really foolish enough to want me as an enemy?”

“I’ll think on that,” was all I agreed. He was wise enough to just nod, satisfied.

I simply didn’t bring any of it up when Eddie came to sign the Bray papers. He’s not stupid, neither did he.

* * *

            I saw him a lot more after that, but spoke to him infrequently over the years. When I retired I realized that it was Eddie who had made it possible for me to stay in Armstrong. Otherwise I’d have been back on the Slime-Ball hunched over a walker in a crushing full G. That’s what moved me to go acknowledge it to him, and offer thanks, when I heard he was dying.

“I’ll open up another door for you before I’m done,” he said with that devilish look of his.

I didn’t know what he meant, but now I do. It’s been a long time since I wore a suit, but it was important to come out here. His lone headstone is turned so the sun never degrades the carving, but it’s easy to read in the backscatter. It says “Eddie Peterson  1979 / 2071- a rich guy from Earth – first man to come to the moon and stay.”

END

All Rights Reserved

A new stand alone short: “Breakfast of Champions”

Breakfast of Champions

By

Mackey Chandler

                Secretary of State for the United Americas the honorable Lewis Poule examined the urgent  message printout with distaste. The third alien race known to Humanity in Survey System 8423, three hundred odd light years from Earth had suddenly developed a problem. The Abroteen as their own language named them and their world, more commonly known as the Beagles, were upset about some matter that was difficult to explain. Very few Humans spoke much Abroteenian and none with absolute confidence. The Abroteenians spoke English but with a occasional lack of rational syntax and seeming spontaneous word combinations that resulted in it being called ‘Abrish’.

The Beagles had a steam engine level civilization that had not lifted them off their planet. So an error in dealing with them would not result in a nuclear bombardment or UA ships being excluded from their part of the heavens. However trade with them was very profitable. They bought electronics and machined goods that were difficult or impossible for them to produce, and trivially easy for automated machine tools to create. They sold handmade crafts and exquisite jewelry at a price impossible to match with human labor.  That trade should be safe guarded if at all possible.

The United Americas ruled from the Aleutians to Tierra del Fuego. They basically owned the Western Hemisphere, but The Eastern Bloc, the self styled Association of Allied States were in direct competition for off world resources both system and interstellar. If they didn’t patch things up with the Beagles the Easties would be there sucking up to them with better trade terms like white on rice.

The trouble was there was an election in four months. President Hernandez was going to lose even if it was publically impossible to admit it. He personally would be removed as Secretary because the likely winner Senator Wu hated his guts. The place to be was here looking to his interests and profitable retirement. Not three hundred light years away on a God forsaken primitive planet arranging a trade treaty that Wu would try to repudiate when he returned.

He brought up his organizational chart to consider who he could send. Everyone directly under him was too senior to send. Most of them knew they were outgoing already and would resign before they would accept a mission isolating them from home during the presidential transition. Most had seats on various corporations and  charities lined up waiting for them. Many were too old physically to wish the rigors of travel and months of isolation. They were fond of their comforts with good reason.

His finger went down, down, further down the organizational chart, hesitated a few times but ended up on the fifth tier at the end of a branch. John Champion was Deputy Assistant to the Associate Minister of Interstellar Affairs. He was young enough to travel with no issues and ranked low enough he’d likely not be purged by the incoming administration. Best of all he would likely know any refusal of an assignment would mean he would never advance to the next level and his career would be over before it ever took off. Perfect.

Secretary Poule wrote a brief memo having the Trade Minister Belson brief Mr. Champion on what was an acceptable outcome for their negotiations and send him off with limited portfolio.

* * *

            Mr. Champion was ambitious. Rather than protest a hardship post he was nodding agreement before the Minister finished briefing him. “You can count on me sir. I’m happy to have a chance to prove myself,” he said, practically snatching the portfolio out of his hand.

“Your attitude is commendable. Tell me, have you ever been off planet?”

“No, sir. Not even to Luna. I’ve been to Tokyo and Cape Town for the Department. If you have any suggestions from your own experience I’d be honored if you would share them.”

Don’t go, was what immediately sprung to mind, but he could hardly say that…

“You are slightly built Deputy Champion. That is an advantage. Accommodations on a space ship tend to be cramped. You should limit what you plan to have open and use aboard ship. Four outfits are probably sufficient. You can ship the rest ahead. I’d have it sealed under bond because anything shipped interstellar is worth a great deal just in shipping fees. Usually the fees exceed the costs of common items like clothing. But the common things you are accustomed to aren’t available in the Beyond.”

Champion looked confused but held his tongue.

“If you have any medications you favor take a supply. Especially any prescriptions. If you have a favorite candy or liquor spend the money to send a case ahead. I’d take an extra com pad and several libraries of reading material and videos. Read up on the world and see what the travel guides tell you to take. One world they may suggest a pair of rugged boots and on another world an insect net. I’ve never been to Abroteen myself so I suggest you do some research.”

“Four outfits? I thought a diner jacket, Tuxedo and white tie ensemble, for shipboard and maybe entertaining on planet.  A formal day coat for official calls. A few business suits for informal meetings, some sports clothes and exercise outfits for using the gym and sauna.” He stopped at the look he was getting.

“Abroteen has never been a port call for passenger liners,” the Minister assured him. “There is no tourism for either their culture or any unique natural features. It is just too far out for the amount of time most have for a cruise too. It is a commercial system and there are regular bulk carriers and on rare occasions a military vessel will stop to show the flag. I’m not aware of any business that was so urgent the Department ever sent a fast courier. The occasional businessman or academic studying the Abroteen take passage on a freighter with passenger accommodations, which is what you will do. You don’t have to worry about dressing for dinner or using the gym. Since the invention of gravity plates nobody has seen any need of a gym on a freighter.”

“Oh.”

“Indeed, this will not be a vacation. But it is a chance to enhance your career. It is a serious problem and you would not have been chosen to go take care of it if we didn’t have the upmost confidence in your abilities,” he lied.  By the time he got to Abroteen he’d likely have new bosses completely unknown to him back home. Whether he did well or failed would no longer matter much to the people who sent him. They’d be retired.

“Go, do your research. I’ll make sure you are given a generous allowance for personal items and shipping, and I’ll see you get the hardship stipend for the remoteness alone. Don’t doddle, but in the next two or three days have the Department book passage for you.” He leaned back with a finality that announced the interview was over. With a little luck the kid would shut up and go away.

“Thank you sir, I’ll do my best,” he said, standing up clutching his papers. He appreciated the brevity so much he shook the boy’s hand.

* * *

            The Beagles were not much to look at. Champion couldn’t see why they’d picked up that name. Beyond the ears they looked more rabbit-like to him, especially when they moved fast, they loped more than ran. They were not as entirely hairless as Humans, but wore clothing, tending to trousers and tunic for both sexes. The norm seemed to be wild patterns and glorious embroidery rather than solids. He’d never seen one in the flesh. It appeared they didn’t maintain an embassy on Earth.

The videos of the planet were so similar and familiar that when something was alien it was all the more jarring.  The streets looked like historic pictures of Human cities in many ways. The gas lights with glass globes and cobbled streets might have been from pictures of old London.

A steam locomotive has to look a certain way due to the physics of the engine. The cars though were not the same. Instead of the railroad providing cars they were private. They ranged through every size and color imaginable. Apparently garish decoration was a form of advertising. A gypsy caravan would be deemed bland in comparison. Some were simple flatbeds and some palaces on wheels. One could rent a car if you were not wealthy enough to own one. Or you could own a car and sell space on it independently of the railroad. The world was rich in metals and that was how they paid for Earth goods. Their money was coinage and any script just a certificate to be redeemed for coins.

John Champion loaded most of the material to his com to study on the trip out there. The advice from Minister Belson he took to heart. He spent his own funds to acquire a formidable supply of coffee and Scotch. He bought eight boxes of the best Havanas, fifty dollars a cigar.  The Department paid the shipping and not a penny of their money went to the goods so they could not complain. It was all just ‘personal goods’. If he returned early he could likely sell them at a profit.

Clothing he found out was dirt cheap on Abroteen. A hand tailored suit was the cost of a light lunch back home. However a pair of knit briefs with an elastic waist couldn’t be had for any price. He loaded up on dress socks and t-shirts. Hand knit socks and even bespoke shoes and boots were cheap. But a pair of light running shoes with all its synthetic materials was strictly an Earth luxury.

“Deputy Champion? This is Lisa in Travel Services. I have three vessels leaving within the week. You have your choice between the a Greek flagged vessel that carries a crew of six and four passengers, or a Brazilian vessel in which you would be berthed in the bunk of a crewman they are running short, or an American flagged vessel with a crew of six and again accommodations for four passengers.”

“Is that four and six combo pretty common?” John asked.

“Yes , a lot of Advanced Composites/Boeing hulls are set up that way.”

“Do you have any advice? Have other Department people shared their experiences with you?”

“Unofficially, I would pass on the Brazilian ship. If you bunk in the common room you will have zero privacy for six weeks. The Brazilians have almost no concept of personal space in an already cramped environment. And I’m told they tend to spend their off shift naked or nearly so if that would bother you. They tend to cook a lot of very spicy food and you will eat whatever the crew does.”

“Thank you, unofficially I really appreciate the straight story. What about the Greeks?”

“The Greeks are rumored to run a really easy going ship. If you are not standing watch and don’t have the conn they  are not big on regimentation. The stories about Greeks liking boys are said to be true on long voyages. They are pretty easy going and open about that too. They drink a lot off duty. And some have just raved about the Greek food, but others came back vowing to never eat anything with  tentacles or feta cheese the rest of their life.”

John thought about his size. He was very slight framed and boyish. Skip the Greeks.

“How about the American vessel?”

“Culturally it would probably be the easiest. And it’s always good to support our own merchant fleet,” Lisa agreed.

“Is there a ‘but’ in there somewhere?” John asked.

“Not a big one. The vessel is the Yellow Rose, and it is a private ship, not a large corporate line. They actually have better safety inspections and cleanliness reports than the big lines. It’s just the Master and owner is a Texan and tends to hire westerners. Some find the subculture irritating. But of the three I’d take the Yellow Rose if it was me lifting,” she assured him.

“I appreciate your candor.  Book me with the Yellow Rose, please.”

* * *

            A shuttle was really not much different than an airliner. Especially not any different from a ballistic hypersonic. When he crossed the dock and hit the call button by the hatch of the Yellow Rose it was a different world though. It was a real airlock not a door, and it opened into a corridor not one big cabin. The walls had take holds if they had to be in zero G, and the ship smelled different.

The Second Officer, Will, shook his hand and saw him to his cabin. He grabbed the bigger bag without being asked as if he were a porter. He was thin but maybe twenty centimeters over the two meter mark. He didn’t explain if the name was his family name or given. The man had on Jeans and a checked shirt with piped edges and snaps instead of buttons. He didn’t affect a hat, but he did have on boots. The corridor rang with the hard heels. At his neck was an oval of turquoise on silver as a bolo tie. John didn’t know that particular subset of jewelry, but he knew a piece of hard rock turquoise like that was probably worth five thousand dollars. He had on ring and bracelet to match. His belt buckle was very different but John didn’t want to stare at it.

“Let me show you where everything is,” he told John agreeably. It was so cramped John stayed at the door as Will lowered and raised the bed, which took half the floor space, showed how to open the locker and set the lock. There was the luxury of a private bath about a meter square with a toilet and fold down sink. With the door closed there was barely room to stand and turn to use the shower or you could do so sitting on the lowered toilet seat. There was no tub.

The wall screen was big and you could set it for a variety of decorative themes. Lighting and ventilation and a temperature range of six degrees Celsius could be set. A fabric chair folded up and hung on the wall. Gravity could be set plus or minus a fifth G.

“Watch schedule and a short bio of each crew member is on the computer. The ship runs on Zulu time. Mess schedule is on there too. There are always cold sandwiches and snacks in the mess. Beer with your palm print. Crew gets less, you can have one every three hours since you have no duty. If you had any bad allergies or religious dietary restrictions they wouldn’t have taken you as a passenger. But if they screwed up on that now is the time to run before you are stuck with us for six weeks.”

“We have a really good environmental suite on the Rose, you should have no trouble running out of water. We allow sixty liters a day and a generous allotment to the galley for you. If you hit forty liters in the shower the ship’s computer will warn you and again at fifty.”

“Is there an allowance for laundry?” John asked.

“There’s a shore bag in the locker. If you leave any laundry out in the corridor the purser or cook will take it to be vacuum tumbled. That generally gets it cleaner than wet or dry cleaning. There is a recessed take hold in the wall you can tie the bag closure to. I don’t recommend you use it on woolens regularly as they get dry and brittle unless you restore lanolin to them with a spray. And it destroys leather, but it works really well for everything else. Computer is built in the com. You can plug your unit in and the ship will give you free cycles as they are available. If you try to hack into the ships computer I must tell you Captain  Travis sees no humor in it, and he is the law between the stars.” He wasn’t smiling at all and John sensed he wanted a response.

“Thank you, I’ll take that advice to heart.” That got a nod, and he excused himself.

He tried the bed. Set it a little harder. Then eased off the gravity a little. He had room to lay flat on his back with his arms at his sides, and not a hands breadth more. He thought about Will fitting in a standard bunk. He wasn’t sure the man could even get his legs straight.

The computer said it was 14:07. Dinner would be served at 17:30. He looked at the crew bios briefly and set the on-screen wake up timer to take a nap.

After the Second Officer John wasn’t sure what to expect. Would they all be dressed in western garb? Or would they wear uniforms? He wore his own jeans and a plain shirt hoping to fit in.

He was a few minutes early. There was a place set at the end that must be for the Captain. Nobody was at the other end seat. Three crewmen were already seated along the opposite side. Two he recognized easily. One didn’t look much like his picture at all. And the Second Officer was there, still in his western garb, while the other two were casual but not uniformed.

There were apparently only three passengers. His place was marked with a card furthest from the Captain. Another passenger, a man, was seated next to the Captain. He was dressed casually in Khakis and a sport shirt, and John would bet a week’s wages he had on tassel loafers under the table. Between them was a petite woman of Oriental ancestry dressed in whites that looked almost like a tennis outfit except for the large broach on her collar he suspected was a video cam.

The Captain entered and sat down. He was dressed casually, but better than either of his male passengers. He had on chocolate brown slacks and an open collar black shirt that was either real silk or a good synthetic. A very light jacket was unstructured and a deep crème with a lot of texture and darker threads scattered in the weave. He was entirely bald and had simple hoop earrings.

As soon as the Captain sat a crewman hurried in and started serving with a cold shrimp cocktail.

John noted the crewmen didn’t touch a fork until the Captain took a sip of water. However he engaged the near passenger in conversation after sampling one shrimp himself.

The man, Albertson, was forthcoming about the purpose of his visit to Abroteen. He dealt in small electronics from hand-held games and phones to hearing aids. The natives had not even possessed telegraphs when contacted. Someday they would make their own, but for now modern electronics might as well be magic. The products were deliberately made to be difficult to reproduce too.

The woman, Wu, got his attention next, and John was surprised she was not just of Eastern extraction but a native of Macao. The Abroteen had bought a very limited amount of batiks and printed silks from Earth, but trade in them was uneconomical. She was going to establish a manufacturing facility and bring in a half dozen Human workers to print on native fabrics. They would hopefully keep the process a trade secret.

It bothered John that Eastern sphere commerce was coming to a Western influenced world, but it was a tiny niche market. He’d known they didn’t technically own a patent on the world like a colony. But one never heard of cross trading in the news unless it was a conflict. He was somewhat upset his briefing did not cover just how much cross trade went on between the two spheres of interest.

The Captain glanced around the table and laid his fork across the edge of his appetizer plate. John saw why he delayed now. Everyone was through and the server took that for a signal to clear that course.  It paced the dinner at a pleasant tempo.

“Mr. Champion,” the Captain finally got to him. “I’m given to understand you are a government official. Does your visiting Abroteen  portend a change in status for the world?”

“I hope not. As I understand my instructions, I’m to smooth over some matter about which the Abroteen are upset. I don’t have an in depth briefing, but the local ambassador is supposed to tell me more. If I can placate them readily I hope things remain relatively unchanged and I can return home swiftly with a quiet resolution to my credit.”

“You haven’t been to the world before?” the businessman asked with a raised eyebrow.

“No, I’ve been reading everything I could, and I brought a lot of material along to read on our voyage. Perhaps Ms. Wu and you would give me the benefit of your own experience and help me avoid any pitfalls?” he suggested.

Wu inclined her head to give Albertson first privilege.  The crewman returned with grilled steaks and sweet potato fries. He didn’t ask anyone how they wanted them cooked, John noticed.

“Keep everything as simple as possible,” he counseled. “Are you familiar with the blanket method of trading?” he asked John.

“No, I have no idea what you mean.”

Captain Travis took a bite of his steak and nodded his approval to the crewman. John found his pink in the middle and faintly seasoned. He had no complaints.

“If you don’t share a language with someone you can still trade. You lay a blanket out and put an item you wish to trade on it. Several identical items are easier actually. The other side of the trade puts what they consider a fair exchange on the blanket. If it is agreeable you take away the item offered and leave your offering. If you don’t like it you can just let it set, or you can remove one of your items to change the exchange ratio and see if that will be taken. If you want an entirely different trade offered just move it over to a new blanket. Get the picture?”

“Yes, you bid back and forth until one side accepts the offering.”

John was surprised to see all the gristle and almost all the fat that edged a strip steak was trimmed away. But then he realized; why pay to haul something that would be discarded? The sweet potato fries had something hot on them. Hot paprika maybe? They were good.

“Well our trade with the Abroteen has never successfully progressed beyond this method. The few times we tried writing an actual contract in English it was a disaster. We still sometimes trade by laying things out physically, but fortunately we have good hard translations of numbers and our respective calendars.  We can for example put a drawing of a miniature machine screw on a paper with a number to be delivered and a local date. They then write in how many coins of what metal they will provide for those terms. If they cross out an item and write in a new offer it is just like moving the physical item. This progresses down the sheet until both sign their chop under the other’s offering and ‘yes’ or ‘no’ which terms we are very certain on also, or one side just removes the paper and terminates the negotiation.”

“That has resolved any problems?”

“Well, a few times I have seen trades where I signed and wrote ‘yes’ and the fellow let it sit for a few days and then wrote ‘no’. I suppose that is buyer’s remorse. No harm. The only time a fellow brought his copy back and crossed out his ‘yes’ and wrote ‘no’ we called in a bunch of other traders and told them we didn’t understand. They started yelling at the trader pointing at his chop. He wasn’t having any part of it. Most of the Abroteen that have any status wear some sort of medallion around their neck. I can’t translate them of course, but they ripped this guy’s medallion off and beat him around the head and dragged him outside. We never saw him again so it’s pretty plain he isn’t a trader anymore,” he said smiling. The crew all seemed to find that amusing.

“How about you Ms. Wu? Are you an experienced Abroteen trader?” John inquired.

“No, this is my first trip. However I had extensive training with several experienced hands. The primary thing I had driven home was the agreement to avoid cultural pollution by introducing new technologies. I will have to take significant pains to not let our in house techniques be observed and copied by the natives.”

“How is it we can supply electronics with integrated and optical circuits but batik is forbidden?”

“Batik is an immediately adaptable technology. They will get it all eventually, but the idea is to make it a prolonged process to slow the culture shock. By the time they can dissect a cell phone and understand what makes it work they will have advanced to the point they are ready for it.”

The Captain spoke up. “The cynic in me notes this concern for their cultural stability happens to have the happy effect of extracting the maximum possible profit from the conveyance of the technology. I’m glad to report it will continue well past my projected retirement.”

“Seriously Mr. Champion, if you are not familiar with all the details of the Technology Transfer Protocols I’d review them carefully and ask the Ambassador for the latest files on them,” Wu said. Albertson nodded solemn agreement.

The server had returned and put out hot yeast rolls and various relishes.

“The ship has fairly up to date files on the matter if you care to check the partial Web in the public files,” the Captain offered. “We need them to review manifests and any personal items we take down planet. A lot of spacers just stay on the station for fear of breaking  the regulations. If you just go down with your clothes on your back you are pretty safe, if you don’t talk after a few drinks.”

“We don’t know anyone like that,” ventured the Second. “Well not on this ship,” agreed the Engineer.  It didn’t seem sarcasm. He was spreading apple butter on a steaming roll.

“There was the fellow who bought a Abroteen muzzle loading rifle as a collectable,” Travis reminisced, “he looked it over and asked the smith if he’d put on a rear sight with a hole instead of a post. They line two posts up. Then he was dumb enough to bring it home. They didn’t have too hard a time tracking down the source of that improvement when peep sights showed up all over suddenly.”

Albertson nodded at the story. “One of our people got in trouble and got handed a hefty fine. He chartered a fishing boat and when he lost a hook to a big fish he put the new one the line with a snell knot. He tried to say knots were obvious, but they didn’t buy it. The natives never invented it and it’s about 40% stronger than the same line and hook just knotted on the eyelet. Pulls in more and bigger fish, so it is significant to both industry and the ecology.”

Dessert was a choice of baked custard or a coconut-lime ice cream.  John went with the ice cream and it was served with a few mint leaves and a thin slice of lime. Ms. Wu got the custard and it was drizzled with a caramel sauce. Six weeks of this and his pants might not fit.

* * *

            The next morning John was a bit grumpy. He liked a cigarette or two in the morning and that was prohibited on a space craft as was his evening cigar.  At least there was decent coffee available and he added a dash of whiskey from his flask. It wasn’t his usual breakfast of Champions being minus the nicotine but it would do. He slept in to ten O’clock and showering and dressing took him a half hour so he only had an hour and a half wait until lunch. He entirely avoid the disgusting uncivilized sight of people eating half cooked eggs early in the morning. By noon he was functional and ready for human company.

Lunch turned out to be an informal affair, a simple buffet set on a sideboard. Only one crewman sat at the table and the lady was not present at all. Mr. Albertson ate with his computer open on the table working and gave him one polite nod. Another crewman came in and hastily assembled a sandwich and a few pickles and such and hurried out. Next time he’d do the same John decided. He retreated to his room and studied the object of his travels further.

It would be easier to take the Abroteen seriously if they didn’t look like a bunch of clowns. Both sexes favored baggy pants and tunics. They apparently had some rule against plain colored fabric. At least in the pictures he was studying he had yet to see a garment without a printed pattern, mostly shiny fabrics and eye assaulting yellows and reds and orange. Even the occasional green or blue was of the fluorescent variety. Then add polka dots or swirls or geometrics including checker squares. Tops and bottoms seemed to be deliberately mis-matched. If he had only known he’d have brought some plaid Bermudas and a paisley shirt. When in Rome and all that.

He woke up early, his personal clock still  off, and threw on the previous day’s outfit just to go grab a carafe of coffee. It was just past 0500 on the ship’s clock and Mr. Albertson was coming out of Ms. Wu’s room with his tie over his shoulders and carrying his shoes. John nodded pleasantly at him but the man stared straight ahead and pretended he didn’t see him. That amused John. The man didn’t need to be embarrassed on his account. It did surprise him how quickly they came to an understanding. But then both were professionals at negotiation. He hoped to do so well on Abroteen.

* * *

            The last shipboard dinner was a relief. He’d tired quickly of every variation of grilled meat and experienced at least a dozen kinds of beans in tomato sauce with something or another added. The bread had some form of corn in it way too often for his favor, and the variety of vegetables was too limited. He did not consider Cole Slaw a vegetable. The desserts he had to admit showed some imagination. He didn’t recall any of them repeating the entire trip. The sole time they had fish it was fried catfish, and he had absorbed a lifetime limit of barbeque sauce. Ms. Wu had been increasingly absent as time passed. He suspected she was saving a bite from lunch or hitting the snacks in the evening.

* * *

            Docking came very late in the day by the Zulu time the ship ran on. Middle of the night really, but he was ready to get off the ship. He’d gone to bed early and caught almost four hours of sleep. Even if this was the God forsaken middle of nowhere the crew assured them there was a decent hotel on station. They were going there before heading down. They agreed to send his luggage with their own and he planned to stop for a drink and a bite of anything neither Tex or Mex and sleep for about eighteen hours to get in sync with the local clock.

The purser opened the lock and lead the passengers down the ramp to the dock. There was an official with the station to verify their identity and log them on the station. John hung back and watched the process with the other passengers. There was an anxious looking man standing back on the dock who ignored Wu and Albertson so he had to be waiting for him. The fellow was small, perhaps a hair shorter than John even, and had a receding hair line and the start of a middle-aged belly.  He presented his State Department credentials and passport and watched them get scanned. As soon as he had them back the fellow rushed forward and offered his hand.

“Deputy Champion? I’m George Yates with the embassy. We are so happy to have you. The situation with the Abroteen has actually deteriorated. They are holding up trade on a number of shipments waiting to speak with you. They refuse to speak with the Ambassador anymore and are waiting for you. I get the impression they think Ambassador Rollins might be lying about sending for a special envoy. The last few days there have even been people outside the embassy throwing stones and shouting nasty things.”

“Could you be more specific about their complaint? I keep hearing generalities.”

“Well, we had a dispute on a trade deal. There were some bad units and the supplier didn’t have enough spares on hand to cover the bad ones so they demanded a cash refund if they couldn’t make good on the defective units. Cash on Abroteen means coins. They wouldn’t take any check or credit or script of any kind. So the native company asked for arbitration. The supplier seemed to agree, but when the Ambassador offered to be an arbitrator they simply made fun of him. And they complain we don’t respect their law which we don’t see at all. It seems to accept arbitration.”

“Made fun of him how?” John inquired.

Yates blushed deeply and scowled. “It’s just scandalous. They mocked him for being old and I’m ashamed to even repeat it, but they called him a “lard ass” in public. They said he couldn’t defend the contract and to get a serious arbitrator. I have a private shuttle on hold. Follow me and we’ll drop right away. We’ll be given priority clearance.”

“This is the middle of my night,” John protested. “My luggage is all going to the station hotel and I have a seat reserved to drop with the crew of the Yellow Rose in about thirty-six hours.”

“Oh my, no. It is the express order of the Ambassador you come right now. I dare say we might have riots if they find out you are on station and dilly-dallying.  I’ll see to it your luggage is forwarded.”

What was there to do? He followed the man. The shuttle was the smallest he’d ever seen. Two crew seats and two passenger seats behind. They only had the one pilot however. An economy that he didn’t appreciate. This whole things was slowly pissing him off. He desperately needed another cup of coffee, a smoke, and he didn’t appreciate being bullied.

They dropped away from the station and the pilot asked control for a hot straight in approach. The drop was hot alright. The air outside was glowing as the shuttle sliced through it. The way the pilot yanked the shuttle around in a couple high G turns left him swallowing hard to keep the last cup of coffee down. The runway approached at an angle that made John think they would crash on the end of it and solve all his worries. That was when he realized there was no engine noise. This was an unpowered glider shuttle and they either landed in one pass or crashed.

The flare out squashed them in the seats and the nose lifted so high the runway disappeared from the forward view. Then when the wheels touched down they were thrown forward against their straps for a long time as the shuttle braked down the long runway.

“I’m opening the hatch and dropping the stairs,” the pilot informed them. “They’ll have to put a new door gasket on but they said they are willing to pay for  that to save you sitting in here fifteen minutes waiting for the hull to cool. Just be sure to hold your arms in and don’t grab the hand rail until you are a couple steps down the stairs. The hull right around the hatch opening is still hot enough to burn you or singe clothing.  Thanks for your business,” he added.

There was a vehicle waiting on the tarmac, sort of a mini-trolley with a ridiculously thin tall smoke stack and lots of brass trim.  It had a platform on the back with stairs up from each side and most of the coachwork was wood with magnificent carving and bright painted panels of art inside the fancy moldings.

“This is what passes for a limo locally,” George Yates informed him. It was comfortable inside with a half dozen big plush chairs. There were no seat belts and the no steward of any sort. As soon as he was seated George pulled a cord dangling by his chair and the vehicle lurched forward making a chuffing noise that built to a steady hum.

“Internal combustion engine?” John asked him. He had seen a few automobiles in museums and seen one operated at an event in a park. But he’d never ridden in one.

“External actually. It has a steam engine and is more like a little locomotive than a car.”

George was making a call on his phone as he spoke. John didn’t catch much but he caught a few ‘sirs’ so the man must be speaking to the Ambassador.

“We are going directly to the Abroteen Supreme Court,” George informed him. “The Ambassador will meet us there.”

“What exactly do you do at the embassy George?”

“I’m an aide to the Trade Delegate and concern myself with trade from other spheres,” He explained. “I’ll be watching closely what Ms. Wu who come out with you is up to,” he explained and gave a little wink.

John just about choked on the unexpected wink. George was a spook. He didn’t look like one.

* * *

            The Ambassador got out of his own limo and waved it away as they approached. He was pushing the edge of ‘elderly’ John decided. He was carrying enough extra weight he wouldn’t be winning any sprints, but portly would have been a kinder description. it was disgraceful to mock the man if only out of respect for his office.

The Abroteen Supreme Court looked as serious and important as any Earth nation court. The building was imposing and marble, but black marble veined in green and white and gold. There were columns across the front, but they were hexagonal instead of the fluted round Greek columns of Earth.

The steps were spaced for alien limbs, shallower in height and deeper in width. They required two small steps instead of one. There were guards at the doors, dressed the same so it must be a uniform. They wore weapons sheathed, but carried a little wand like a conductor’s baton.

“Hold! Who wants justice?” one guard asked, but they crossed wands like they were halberds or something, not little sticks.

“Ambassador Rollins, Aide Yates, and Deputy John Champion of Earth,” John growled.

They both stamped solidly on the pavement and said, “Pass Deputy John.”

“Friggin’ nonsense,” John muttered. “Who did they think we were?”

The hall they entered was wide and impressive. The floor was laid with mosaics that seemed to tell a story. He saw mountains and rivers and castles depicted, armies clashing and sailing ships maneuvering. Eventually he saw railroads and cities without walls. It had to be a history.

It ended in a circular room under a dome. The floor was a depressed circle with stairs leading down to a floor only twenty meters or so across. Two groups sat across from each other and nine Abroteen sat between the two. One of the nine stood up and waited. The guard who let them in came up beside them and announced: “Deputy John, Champion of Earth and associates.”

“Little fellow ain’t ya?” the Abroteen asked insolently.

“You can’t imagine how tired I am of hearing that,” John assured him. “I’ve been big enough for everything life has thrown at me including better men than you. I came here straight from docking. You want to get this show on the road or you want to stand and trade insults until lunch? I could easily ask where the hell you bought that clown outfit you got on? My God the purple!” He shook his head.

“Really John,” the Ambassador started to reprove him, but the Abroteens on  both sides drowned him out stomping on the stairs with their boots. By the third stomp they were in sync and fairly rocked the place with the noise.

“Why are they doing that?” John asked.

” That is their way of applauding. The crowd likes your spunk I’d say,” George told him.

“Good, good,” the official agreed, “We go to the sacred yard.” He announced. Everyone got up and headed out the back way.

“What’s this about?” John asked. “They go outside for hearing instead of using the fancy building? It don’t make sense.”

The mob from inside was surrounding something ahead of them and others were streaming in. They made just barely enough room to let them in. He got to the inside and it was a big circle of bare dirt, about fifty meters across, but groomed like a clay tennis court. That was something with which John was intimately familiar. The same official that led them made a sweeping gesture inviting him on the dirt, but held a hand up and stopped the Ambassador and George.

John looked at the crowd pressing in. He didn’t have to know the language to know what they were doing, coins and slips of paper were changing hands with much discussion and flashing of fingers held up as numbers. They were placing bets on the outcome.

“You show respect finally,” he said. “We go Earth we give Earth law same stuff.”

“That is a huge thing, Deputy Champion,” the Ambassador called from the edge. “We’ve been trying to get an agreement on that with them since we made contact. That’s why no Abroteen have ever visited Earth. They always refused to subject themselves to our law. They demanded even their cook and janitor have diplomatic privilege.

“How does this work?” John demanded. “I ready to arbitrate, but where are the parties at conflict?”

“You Earth Champion,” the Abroteen explained slowly like he was speaking to a little kid.

“You for Earth company. Abroteen Champion soon here. He for Abroteen company. No split, no draw. You win say settlement. He win he says. Simple. You go out circle lose. You die lose. You both die complicated. Do over or companies say  heads or tails,” he said making a flipping motion.

“This is a trial by combat? That’s not what we mean by arbitration! This is not at all what I expected to be doing!”

The alien shrugged big shoulders inside his purple robe. “Tell scholars work Abroteen/English dictionary,” he suggested. “You in circle,” he said pointing at the ground. “Walk away now lose. Stay you fight,” he promised. “First Ambassador say he be Champion. Old as rocks and no faster. Now you,” he couldn’t read the alien face but he sniffed disdainfully.

“I am not leaving this circle,” John told him between clutched teeth. “Where the hell is this Champion?” he             asked enraged.

“He there,” pointed the purple fellow and stepped back outside the circle.

An Abroteen stepped in the circle and got a modest thumping of feet for his efforts. At least a few folks were cheering the home boy on. An official of some sort came into the circle and stabbed a big sword into the dirt by each Champion. “Visitor, first. Pull from ground to start,” he instructed.

“Thank you,” John said looking the sword over. It was ridiculously big. The coffee was working through him and he left the sword there since it was his option, and walked to the edge of the circle. There was a low murmur from the crowd. Some apparently thought he was going to walk out. He unzipped his pants and relieved himself on whatever passed for grass. A few of the natives barely got their silks out of the way before he let loose. He walked back to the sword amid a bunch of what sounded like sneezes.

“They’re laughing,” George called from behind him.

He didn’t have to ask if they were laughing at him, because he looked across the circle at the Champion. He was very unhappy, shifting his weight from foot to foot and looked at John slit eyed.

Hmm, so that’s what they look like pissed off. He needed a smoke and really didn’t give a damn if this over sized bunny worked himself up until he had a stroke waiting for him. He drew out a cigarette and lit it. There was a ripple of surprise through the crowd at the lighter. Pretty soon the near edge of the crowd melted away from the smoke, coughing.

“Do you fight Deputy Champion?” The guy in purple called from the sidelines.

“There some kind of rule how long this can take?” John growled at him.

“All end by sundown,” he admitted, unhappy. John was starting to understand their body language a little. Both the purple clad fellow and the Champion were exhibiting extreme nose twitching. He might be a rabbit, but John did notice he was a damn big rabbit, about half again as big as most of the others in the crowd. Twice what John massed at a guess. Besides really not liking any references to his size, John had also grown up with a father who would give him a second licking if he came home beaten. There wasn’t a whole lot of back down built into his personality. He tossed the butt down and stepped on it, and yanked the sword out of the ground.

The Champion made a theatrical show of drawing the sword and thrust it at the heavens. Then he swirled it nimbly in figure eights, shifting it from hand to hand, and ended with it held double handed before him in a high guard.

“That’s mighty pretty,” John said loud enough for the crowd to hear. Another round of sneezy snickering ran through the ranks. John started walking steadily toward him. He didn’t know much about sword play, but the object was to stick him with the damn thing. He was having trouble just holding it up so there was no way he could get fancy with it.

The hired Champion of the Eastern Continent Trading Company was a professional. He knew all seven hundred and thirty-six sacred movements of the sword in perfection. Each posture and movement had a proper response. The holy eighteen initiating actions started a duel. From them one could move into ever increasing complex branches. Only certain actions followed one another. The hand was set up for the next motion by the previous. It was as formalized as ballet. He had no idea what the hell this crazy alien was going to do holding the sword at an angle no Abroteen wrist could duplicate with all the grace of a butcher getting ready to stick a Princhen fat for market.

He wanted to initiate the exchange, but John was already shoving the sword forward in the general direction of his guts. It sort of looked like a number twenty three, the woodpecker, which was not a proper opening gambit, but he shifted to the corresponding defense.

The sword was simply too heavy to hold up and when John got it extended one handed the point plunged out of his control right under the graceful guarding movement of his opponent and sank into the alien’s foot. The noise the fellow made was definitely a new one he’d not known an Abroteen could make. He barely managed to hold on to the sword. It seemed to be stuck in the boney part of the foot and the noise it made when he jerked back made John a bit sick to his stomach. It almost yanked out of his hand.

The Abroteen seemed to be too angry to be subtle anymore and hobbled forward with the sword raised straight overhead in both hands.  He doubted he could deflect such a stroke so John turned and ran along the edge of the circle. The crowd was yelling all sorts of things in Abroteen. He had no idea if he was being called a coward or urged on to greater speed. Maybe they just saw their bets close to a pay-out. The Champion could not keep up with him with the injured foot and he pulled away.

After two turns he was about a third of the circle ahead, the alien was losing heart and gave up a straight pursuit. He turned and crossed the middle to cut him off.

John stopped. He was as tired of running as the alien, who hobbled across the circle leaving a line of red footprints behind. He approached John cautiously, sword back to the side like a baseball bat. Nothing fancy now, he just wanted to cut him down like a tree.

As tired as he was he drew back slightly and telegraphed his intent. He swung with everything he had and it swished audibly through the air over John’s head as he ducked. Abroteen can’t squat. Their back legs don’t bend that way. He followed through wildly, having expected resistance that wasn’t there. He spun, dropped the sword trying to balance, took two mincing little steps and poised, toes over the edge of the circle arms wind milling to avoid a fall.  John planted a foot flat on his big bunny butt and shoved. He sprawled flat in the grass.

There was s shocked silence and then a minor earthquake of applause.

The purple guy walked out blank faced. “What your will hot-shot Champion?”

“My will is to go get a meal and sleep half a day. About this time tomorrow I’d like to speak with somebody from both companies and find a solution that is just.”

“Huh – Not make contract never was?” he asked surprised.

“That hardly seems fair to me. I want to ask questions. It seems to me both of them were being a bit unreasonable and I want to judge after getting facts.” He ignored the noises from the Ambassador.

“It shall be done,” the purple clad  fellow said in perfectly good English for once, and damned if he didn’t bow.

* * *

            The next day on the Ambassador’s balcony, he looked out over the Abroteen’s capitol. If he looked in the distance it didn’t look much different than Paris. He wondered if they would keep it pleasant or mess it up with sky scrapers and huge boxy buildings as they learned ironwork. He’d slept until almost local noon.

The Ambassador was having lunch, a chilled soup and cucumber sandwich. He didn’t have much to say.  At first he thought it was disapproval of his cigar and the whisky he requested for his coffee. But after awhile he figured out the man was afraid of him from the previous day’s performance. He was pretty sure it wasn’t a set-up. The man had no more idea than him what the Abroteen intended when they arrived.

If they had accepted the Ambassador as a Champion he would have walked right out of the circle once he understood. That would have been bad for Earth’s reputation in the long term. That was likely the other half of why he was unhappy with John. He knew he’d have never even tried.

“If their Champion had you balanced on the edge of the circle he’d have cut you down from behind instead of planting a boot on your ass. You know that don’t you?”

“Undoubtedly,” John agreed. “He was young and aggressive and would be looking to be hired as a Champion again. He might have bumped me out if I hadn’t stabbed him in the foot, but there was no forgiveness after that. I’m satisfied it serves our interest to show them a gentler way.”

“That in itself is probably a social intervention. Those can be worse than technological revelations. However, if you read the protocols as Ambassador I have the ultimate local say in what is a violation. I thought your improvisation yesterday was masterful actually, but I’m concerned what you are going to do in this meeting today.”

“I have no idea what I’ll do before I hear the matter,” John explained spreading his hands. “All I can assure you is I will do nothing to put Earth in a bad light, or act spitefully toward either party. Surely that is enough to accomplish when matters are thrust upon us like this?”

“You could have cancelled the contract out as they expected and as they surely would have done themselves if they had won.”

“Yes, that would have been the easy solution. But I’m not sure it would have been the best thing for how they regard us. Perhaps there is a better solution they can respect and see as superior.”

“See here, you sound like you intend to meddle in their law.”

“Not at all,” John insisted waving the idea away, “I’m Champion and I won so I can do anything that pleases me and it comports perfectly with their law.” He was right and the Ambassador knew it. But he probably wished he wasn’t enjoying it so much.

“Could you have the kitchen bring me something after all?” he requested. “I think I could face one of those sandwiches if they could find some meat to stuff in the thing.”

* * *

            “His Excellency isn’t joining you?” George asked  when he got in the limo.

“He indicated he had other talks with the political leader while I speak with the judiciary.” John explained. “I think he did that to remove himself from whatever I do. Tell me George, which way did you bet on the outcome of the duel yesterday?”

“I bet five gold pieces against you at ten to one,” he admitted sourly.

“Do the Abroteen bet a lot?”

“They bet on bloody anything! They stop and buy a sweet roll and they will toss the store dice for double or nothing. They sit in a café having a toot and they will bet on what song will come on the radio next. If you roll against them make them use a cup. These boys have magic fingers,” he complained.

“I didn’t think you were as clueless as the Ambassador,” John told him. “Come along if you want to see how it goes. I don’t think they will argue with a Champion about his guests.”

* * *

            They were lead to the same tiered bowl under the main dome of the Supreme Court. The crowd was smaller today, the nine judges separating a small group of Abroteen from an even smaller mixed group of Abroteen and humans.  If the Abroteen company executives were at the trial yesterday John didn’t recognize them. The Human company owner immediately apologized for not being at the trial. “We were on station, by the time we were told and had a shuttle hired it was all over,” he explained.

The nine indicated he should seat himself on the steps below them, and invited him to officiate however pleased him. They motioned George to sit behind them. As soon as he was seated on the third step the Abroteen who had been in purple yesterday approached and held out the sword he’d used. “You left this stuck in dirt. It polished, sharpened and got sheath. You guardian now. It third ranking instrument arbitration our court.” He had on an eye searing tangerine tiger stripe today. How could John turn it down? So he took it with both hands.

John sat, put the sword across his knees, and asked the Earth company to pick a spokesman.

They apparently had that all arranged. A middle aged fellow in somewhat casual clothing stepped up and faced John.

“What is your position with the company?” John asked for the crowd.

“I’m Bert Ferguson, founder and principle stockholder still.”

“Who are those two in expensive suits frowning at us?”

“Those would be the company lawyers,” he said without needing to look.

“Can they practice Abroteen law?”

“Anybody can practice Abroteen law,” the fellow insisted. “You come before the court and state your case. There are records of decisions, but no real lawyers like we have. The lawyers are for me to deal with Earth law.”

“Tell me in your own words why things got to be such a mess we progressed to trial by combat.”

“We sold the Eastern Continent Trading Company a couple thousand walkie-talkies. They have far less population over there. It’s a lot drier, and it will likely be a long time before it is economical to use cellular systems. They are using them for stuff like keeping in touch with shepards and for police with their deputies. The rich even buy a few for their servants, that sort of thing.”

“We reserved a hundred to replace any bad ones. That seemed plenty given our experience with similar units. These aren’t cheap kids toys, they are mil spec hardened units that should be dust proof and water proof and very shock resistant. Trouble was they turned out to be crap. We ran out of replacements and we’d sent most of the money home. We retained just enough cash for local expenses and we simply don’t have the money to buy them all back. Once they invoked arbitration that ended any further settlement by law.”

“Did you understand what they meant by arbitration?”

His lawyers were trying to hush him, but he answered anyway. “Not at first. I was pretty sure what they meant later, because we had a couple champions come and offer their services. Apparently having a government hired Champion is like having a public defender at home, a token defense for the poor. It’s a way for the inexperienced or guys who lost but survived like yesterday to get back on the game. I didn’t know what they meant about The Circle until then.”

“Did you tell the Ambassador about that?”

“I don’t tell the Ambassador anything,” the man scowled. “He lives to tell us we can’t do anything and would be happier if this world was closed so he wouldn’t have to actually do anything.”

“Are you still willing to make good on either the funds or the radios?’

“I have new radios. Another brand but they are on the same band. They were already in the pipeline but the guy from ECT wouldn’t wait for them. The money went to pay for them back on Earth. It’s spent. So it’s the radios or nothing.”

“I may have some questions still. Who speaks for the Eastern Continent Trading Company?”

“Me,” said an Abroteen standing quickly who looked too young.

“What is your position with the company?”

There was a brief discussion of position with a couple councilors.

“I middle son and heir.”

“Why isn’t the owner speaking?”

“The family says me to speak. Papa owns. He holds,” the boy showed with a hand, “but for us.”

“Why did they decide that?” John asked, refusing to let him off the hook.

“Father doubt everyone,” he explained. John had never seen an Abroteen wring his hands before. “Has been good. Was needed. But now bad. Doubt old house servants, doubt me.”

“So the family does not feel the same?”

“No, we count days. Same as old business. Done faster can’t. Earthmen want money fast same we want radios fast. Too late what old man do we hear.”

“I am ready to make a decision. Last chance to speak if you don’t think I have all the facts.”

“Know this, Champion. We gave money back. Not like Earthman.”

“If you get new radios do you think your buyers will give them another try?”

He considered that briefly. “Most. They need. Most want radios not money, nobody want wait no radio, no money. I same,” he concluded and sat down.

“I want you, Mr. Ferguson to replace the bad radios with new ones, and give the Eastern Continent Trading Company an extra new radio for every ten they turn in. After ninety days no more bad radios can be turned in. You can’t promise they will last forever. At the end of ninety days we end all obligations and any new deal between you two has nothing to do with me or this trial. If you want to trade with each other in the new radios besides replacing the old ones that is up to you two to work out terms. I suggest you ask Mr. Ferguson to post a performance bond if you buy from him again. Questions?”

“Bonds are not recognized in Abroteen law,” Ferguson informed him. “I’d be willing, the bookies or the banks would write one, but most forms of insurance are not recognized as enforceable contracts under their law.”

“They are now. I demand they be allowed as a part of my judgment.”

“Will that stick?” Ferguson asked shocked, looking past John to the Supreme Court.

“He can do?” the Trading Company heir asked big eyed with surprise.

“Word of Champion is law,” the guy in the tangerine tunic answered simply.

John stood up and laid the sword across his shoulder. “Last chance to say anything before I declare the matter settled. Don’t complain later you didn’t get to speak.” He looked around. There was a murmur of voices, even among the Court, but it died out and nobody stood up.

“We’re done here,” he announced and turned to the Court. “You want me to hang on to this?” he asked, patting the sword.

“Unusual was justice of Champion,” the guy in tangerine admitted. “The Court says all of them it served both parties most excellently. Third sword now named Sword of Earth Justice, good you guard.”

* * *

            “You certainly have those boys snookered,” George said when they got in the limo. “I was sitting back there on the steps and the junior member of the court was whispering in my ear. He said you were playing with the other champion and it is only in great strength you can afford to show mercy. I can’t believe you changed the whole mess about insurance by decree. The Ambassador has been beating his head against the wall on that since he came here.”

“George.”

“What John?”

“What Deputy, you mean, or What sir? If you want to go back and go in the ring with me I’d be happy to accommodate you. I imagine the court would find it very entertaining. Swords or bare handed, pickle forks or road flares, I don’t really care. The spook thing doesn’t impress me any more than all that fancy sword twirling the kid did. Understand?”

“Yes sir, I will decline that invitation, thank you.”

* * *

            The Ambassador asked John to dinner. He got dressed decently for the first time since Earth. It was just the two of them, and an impressive dinner for two. There were several Abroteen items that didn’t really provide any nutrition, but could be tolerated and were a novelty.

“You did a smashup job on this my boy. The head guy, the Tas they call him, was very happy with the outcome,” he said smiling and jolly.

“If you are pleased too then I’m satisfied. I wanted a good note in my file for a job well done and a quick turnaround home. A little career builder for when something comes open for a promotion. Could you have your secretary inquire what will be leaving for Earth soon with an open berth?”

“Yes, I just had him search that,” the Ambassador said smiling. “I think I can promise you a substantial promotion too,” he said agreeably. “The sister ship to the one you came in on, the Hopalong Cassidy, will be undocking in about eighteen hours. It’s a bit of a rush, but I intend to be on her.” That got a quizzical look and a slow feeling of dread from John.

“The Tas was rather adamant the Earth Champion should remain here. Lord knows he was never happy with me. I will make every effort to press for my temporary assignment of you as acting head of mission be followed by a full formal appointment as Ambassador. Let me tell you, very few young men of your age have ever snagged a ambassadorship, but I think your record here will leave them little choice given the insistence of the Tas. You have accomplished more in a few days than has occurred over the last several years. I hold no resentment of that, but I’d look rather silly and superfluous to stay on after such sweeping changes.”

“I don’t know what to say, sir,” John said stunned.

“I can imagine,” Ambassador Rollins said smiling. He stood offered his hand. “I’ve been trying to get relieved for the last year,” he admitted. “This is a perfect opportunity for the both of us.”

“I wish you the best in whatever your new endeavor is, sir,” he shook his hand numbly.

“Thank you, Champion. I’m seventy-two you know. I have quite a few healthy years left with medicine the way it is. I intend to find a quiet little place in the Caribbean with good fishing and relax  and enjoy myself for awhile. George will brief you on other more mundane matters we have been dealing with day to day. I’ve got to finish packing up the mementos I’ve collected if you will excuse me.”

He laid his napkin on the table and marched out.

George came in and sat at one of the other chairs with no setting.

“What just happened here?” he asked rhetorically.

“I believe you were a victim of your own success, sir.”

“Are you eager to be relieved at this post too, George?”

“Not at all, sir. I will in time go home, but until then I will make the most of my time here.”

“How many humans on Abroteen, George? Is there any sort of society?”

“There are usually less than a hundred humans on world. However they change rapidly as the ships come and go. Most traders and spacers would find an invitation from the embassy for dinner a treat, so society here might be what you make it.”

“I take it Ambassador Rollins did not chose to do that?”

“No sir, he looked down on merchants and spacers. But I don’t, and a word to the wise, if you treat them with respect you find all sorts of favors offered. There is considerable traffic on the ships off the manifest if you know the crews.”

“Smuggling?”

“No need to smuggle, sir. Everything is pretty much wide open if you are respectful of the protocols for technology transfers. And very few get out away from the Capitol and see any of the world. It is a very rich world in metals as you know. Perhaps I should mention that even as isolated as the Ambassador kept himself his trinkets and mementos we packed up and sent up to the ship added up to about eighty kilograms. Every local merchant and prince that came to see the Ambassador over the last four years brought some ring or medal or little bowl or statue as a gift. Most of that eighty kilos is gold and platinum.

“No kidding? I suppose there might be a bright side to this posting after all.”

“I don’t get gifted much,” George allowed. “But I get out into the country every few weeks. They have a decent rail system and you can go to a small town to do a little trading on your days off. Just to give you an example  I had a pilot friend run me in a box of ballpoint pens last month. They are allowed technology. I set up a little table in the town market and paid the local cop a silver coin to ignore me. I traded for this and that people brought more than cash money. One old woman brought me a old pail with a hole worn in the bottom, about a sixteen liter bucket and held out for two pens. She was very happy with herself. The bucket was platinum.”

“I take this to mean you aren’t holding a grudge about yesterday?”

“There is no advantage to getting in a pissing match with the Ambassador,” George concluded. “You are either very, very, good or incredibly lucky. What does it matter to me which really?”

“I’m not the Ambassador yet.”

“Hah! The bookies are betting forty to one you are confirmed by the end of the month. No way I’ll take a gram of that sucker bet.”

END

All Rights Reserved

New stand alone short – “A Mother’s Son”

A Mother’s Son

By

Mackey Chandler

            Theodore looked out the narrow port of the ballistic express and watched the glare of the sun disappear behind the curve of the earth. He’d be on the ground six hours before it managed to catch up. He took another sip of champagne and his implant scrolled a message in his corneal display warning him his blood alcohol was at .016. If he had another glass he’d be turned away at customs and refused entry to the Caliphate. It was irritating to have his AI in nanny mode but safer when he was working. Some people hardly show any signs they had been drinking at that blood alcohol level, but Ted knew he had little capacity for alcohol and would be pulled aside for testing. His clients would bump his per diem back if he had to sit in customs until he dried out or even worse get stuffed back in another flight and not be able to pin down the source of the rumor he was tracking. He’d even get stuck with paying his round trip fare if he was sent back.

His clients spent big money on rumor futures and trend insurance. Especially terror and organized crime futures. The street talk was about a genotype targeted infertility plague that would cost five figures in ransom for the antitreatment, or six figures plus if they refused to pay and had to reverse engineer and counteract it themselves. Three of his clients were in active pharmaceuticals, and one was a protection mob that didn’t want some upstart horning in on the limited market for medical ransoms. Corps only budgeted so much for employee protection before they saw direct action as being the better long term investment. Given two adversarial deals they were as likely to spend their discretionary funds on wiping out the older threat they knew better than the new threat that would require research. Ted looked at the odds of that happening and discretely shifted some of his personal investment out of medical coercions and into natural disaster futures from behind several proxies.

The weather and volcanic activity had been on a flat trend for nine years and he figured it was time for a upswing. When he plotted it against historic cycles and sunspot activity he was even more convinced, even though his assessment was contrarian.  That’s where you made the real money; bucking the herd and being right when you did so. He took a small sip of the Champagne making it last if he couldn’t have a refill. There were no alerts popping up, but he checked zinc futures in depth and his bets on the Super Bowl. Zinc was sweet and he still had faith in the Packers. At least enough not to throw the bet away on a buy back. All that took less than thirty seconds so he still had almost five thousand long seconds to fill with something before his flight touched down in Manama.

Tomorrow was his four hundredth birthday, and he was feeling sorry for himself. He was making it just fine day to day. If he stopped working right now he projected he could retire for another hundred years, probability ± 12%, before he had to work again. Trouble was, in a hundred years all his skills and knowledge would be obsolete if he didn’t stay on the treadmill. He’d have to find a new line of work or take a downgraded retirement like his mother. Once you did that almost nobody ever came back to the real world. It wasn’t that he was burned out. Far from it. If anything he was bored. Last time he’d taken vacation he’d come back to work after three days before he went nuts. Sitting on the beach, watching the surf with his link down he’d lasted as long as it took to suck down one Margarita before he  started running extrapolations on his implant to predict the pattern of short and high waves. He hadn’t tried really cutting himself off completely – shutting not only his link, but also his implant for about twenty years. Last time the sensory deprivation had unnerved him so badly he’d taken several days to recover from the experience.

If he didn’t want to retire and wasn’t unhappy with his work what did he want? What would make him happy? It had to be a challenge and he suspected it had to be soon, or he would succumb to the primary source of morbidity in today’s population – suicide. He’d seen enough agents and traders who should have been happy falter just a bit to where you thought they were just down for a couple days, and then you’d hear they were gone.

Perhaps he should have taken Sandra up on it when she proposed to him. He checked memory – one hundred seventeen days since she’d broached the subject and he thought about it every day. He’d said no quickly, but that hadn’t put her off dating him. They’d spent a two day together just a week ago. If she was seeing – or pursuing – anyone else he saw no evidence of it. He talked to her pretty much daily. He talked to several hundred people a day normally, keeping networks alive, but she was different. He didn’t need to talk to her and took time anyway.

His immediate thought at her offer was they didn’t have enough in common. Not enough for a life together. They’d never share the same work. He’d met her in the diorama club. Most everybody collected something, and with the trend for professionals to invest in large houses, how well your collection was displayed was as important as the pieces themselves. You needed to fill the empty rooms with something or it looked silly.

He primarily collected tools and displayed them in a twentieth century home workshop. She collected turn of the twenty first century home appliances and kitchen items and displayed them in a 1998 home kitchen. They both had museum quality displays that had won prizes. Maybe that wasn’t enough upon which to base a life on together, but even her job was interesting when it was her explaining it. He’d never had any interest in the law before meeting her. Pretty much everything he’d done with her had been fun because he was doing it with her.     Maybe her offer could be renegotiated… Ted thought of her contact code and let the link form through ship com. He expected vision and sound but got text messaging…

LawyerShark:  Hi Ted

TeddieBeah:  I miss you Sandy

LawyerShark:  Rough day?

TeddieBeah:   No more than usual – but I’m asking myself some serious questions…

LawyerShark:   Work?

TeddieBeah:   No – yes – maybe – personal life more – I’m not happy.

LawyerShark:   I’ve known that for awhile

TeddieBeah:   Do you miss me?

LawyerShark:  A little – but we’re not joined at the hip  : )

TeddieBeah:   You offered something more permanent.

LawyerShark: Yes – you didn’t think long before saying no…

TeddieBeah:   I’ve been regretting that – because I have been thinking about it every day. Is there a reason you went to text? Bad hair day? (evil grin)

LawyerShark:   I’m on the Moon. The trans. delay drives me nuts with real time video. I’d show you how much I miss you if you were here.  ; )

TeddieBeah:  LOL – safe to say from a million miles away…

LawyerShark:  The Moon is closer than that.

TeddieBeah:  Always with the legal precision – call it poetic license.

LawyerShark:  U R a snoop not a poet.

TeddieBeah:   Hot job? You didn’t say anything about a lunar trip last week

LawyerShark:   Hot enough to pay 3x for a direct lift ticket instead of an orbital transfer. More than that is too hot to put in an IM.

TeddieBeah:   Your job is more exciting than mine. Dinner when you get back?

LawyerShark:   Maybe….Are you considering a counter-proposal?

TeddieBeah:   More like a hostile takeover…..

LawyerShark:   I’ll think about it too. Maybe a limited contract? Five year – no kids?

TeddieBeah:   Renewable if both agree?

LawyerShark:   Any contract can be renewed if both agree…YOU might want to change the terms before five years – one year to start maybe

TeddieBeah:   Dinner  when you are back and talk about it if you still want to then?

LawyerShark:   Back to Toronto in two days – mid-day Thursday.

TeddieBeah:   Back to Atlanta tomorrow – Meet Harrington’s on the Chesapeake for dinner?

LawyerShark:   Reserve a room – two day maybe? –  and a sailboat if the weather is fair?

TeddieBeah:   Yes and yes – I’m clear to do that. Bye then – rip into them Shark…

LawyerShark:   Don’t worry – there will be blood in the water – bye………

A thought closed the link and he stared out the window not really looking at the scarce splashes of light on the dark planet below. It was the high Asian plains so there was still little to shine into the night sky. He was thrilled at the idea of marrying Sandra and scared to death at the same time. He’d been married once in his first century and even in the fog of time distance he still remembered it had been bad. He’d been very young and stupid, and his mother had been hard on the girl giving her hell at every turn.

He’d tried to explain to her that his mother had never approved of him either, but she saw every slight as a battle to be drawn out and won. Sandy wouldn’t put up with it. She’d give her some hell right back. Ted learned even before leaving home as a young man to simply ignore his mother’s complaints and go ahead like nothing had been said. Four centuries later it still worked. At least now he’d learned enough to ration her to one call a week.  His brother Harold had tried to explain the sheer necessity of that to him for almost a century before he adopted the practice.     Harold had a family and his mother would have them in a constant uproar if she called daily – or  more. He had only himself to be put in an uproar, and felt obligated to take her calls for years. Finally his doctor had laid down the law and protested he could not counter the anxiety the woman produced, not even with drugs. When faced with being pushed into an early rejuv he couldn’t afford he finally got a spine.

Now if she called again the same week he refused the call. It had only taken a few hundred tries before she realized he, the good son, meant it just like Harold. She still was simmering over the time last century he had visited Triton to write a series on their mining industry. She honestly had no clue why they could not just chat back and forth normally at that distance. He’d given up trying to explain it. Damn sure she wasn’t going to give Sandy a hard time or he’d cut her down to a call a month – see if he wouldn’t. In four centuries almost anyone can manage to grow up. Even a mama’s boy.

There was a slight feeling of dislocation, an almost unperceivable tug forward that made Ted look out the port. There was a faint golden glow standing away from  slight flare of the lifting body shape. He pulled his harness he had never taken off nice and snug. If anything happened it probably would be of no use, but old habits are hard to break. Finally there was a soft chime and the cabin crew announced what he had already noted – that they were in approach for Manama. He wore long sleeves and an embroidered hat in respect of local sensibilities.

He accessed his translator service and made sure he had the latest local slang, names in the news and current events for the district of  Bahrain and the Greater Caliphate. He looked enough like the locals to fit in well. He’d had his hair and moustache trimmed in the local style, and his white shirt was sewn with the proper shape of collar and double front pockets with plaits currently in style. He carried his documents and a few other necessary items in a small belt purse instead of a western wallet. Not that he was going to try to pass for a local. He just wanted to be as little off-putting as possible. They would know he was a North American as soon as he opened his mouth, but at least they might not tag him as Jewish and as an investigator so easily.

* * *

            The medical supply firm which he approached in Manama, supposedly to buy a compact gene sequencer should pay it’s sensitive people more. Fifty thousand EuroMarks and a ticket to Yemen had been sufficient to get a copy of their customer list going back six months. The young woman who supplied the list had called in sick the next morning and plead a family emergency was taking her home. It should take her employers several days to figure she wasn’t coming back. Yemen was conveniently beyond her employers ability to summon her if her male relatives forbade her to return. By the time they had any desire to really press the point they’d have greater concerns.

The one address on the customer list which stood out was a user of agricultural equipment, not medical devices and systems. That had been the smoking gun he was looking for. Other investigators were already pursuing that anomaly and Ted was done with this case and speeding home, still headed west by a coincidence of available connections, losing a day to circumnavigation, which would cut into his per diem. That was ok, in his work that averaged out.

* * *

            Sandra wore tailored tan pants in the current loose style, with scarlet piping along the seams and edges. A safari jacket with a padded shooting shoulder showed a matching scarlet lining at the collar and cuffs. Not only unusually modest, but it had enough body he suspected it was armor. A wise precaution considering some of the places she traveled. She enjoyed explaining the padded shoulder’s function and seeing people’s discomfort. But she didn’t constantly try to tweak him, just the majority of the so mundane public she regarded as fools. The host at Harrington’s remembered them although it had been at least a year since they’d been in. Even if it was just hospitality software he appreciated being remembered. They declined companionship and entertainment and accepted a table in the public area. Both of them enjoyed the feeling of being in a group even if they didn’t want the adventure of meeting strangers tonight. They had entirely too much of a private nature to discuss.

The scallops were marvelous, faintly browned on the edges, with just a hint of Sherry. The fireplace near their table was real, not simulated. Every once in a while a waiter would add a piece of wood so the reality of the extravagance was not lost on anyone. Ted skipped the wine after a few sips wanting his faculties for the proposal. Sandra had it recorked and sent to their room after the entree.

Ted plowed ahead with his proposal, wanting to resolve it so he could either enjoy the rest of their date or wallow in his misery. It seemed to amuse Sandra and she accepted his proposal for a year, signing it electronically with an almost absent minded indifference before they even had dessert. By the time they retired to their room the court had recognized their contract and they were man and wife. He would have carried her across the threshold, but she declined teasing he would hurt himself or bang her head on the doorway. If she wasn’t a traditionalist it still felt like a honeymoon.

They both traveled so much in their work it didn’t matter which home they favored. Both of their homes were investments and they determined to keep and use both of them, rendezvousing in whichever was handy to meet. A few more changes of clothing and some toiletries were all the move either needed.

* * *

            Next week, Ted was in Singapore, Sandra was off somewhere in secret. What he didn’t know he couldn’t accidentally divulge. Business over for the day he was looking forward to his mother’s weekly call. Usually it was strained. He’d try to tell her in a simplified way she could understand what he was doing in his profession. Even though they got video and the extravagance of printed out news papers at her retirement community he could tell she didn’t really understand what he told her. In her mind governments still told corporations what to do, and hazard futures were immoral because you were betting that bad things would happen, and profit from them if they did. He’d tried to point out death insurance let you profit from a predictable bad thing with little effect. At least this time he’d have good news to tell her about marrying Sandra. He was sure she’d disapprove of some detail, probably that she had not taken his name, or keeping both houses. She disapproved of his massive house for one person before. She was proud of the fact she was content with four hundred cubic meters, and didn’t see why one person needed any more. The fact she had no ground or air car, no need to entertain large groups, no hobbies that required room, and the retirement village served all her meals didn’t matter. Her unit did have the luxury of a snack kitchen where she could prepare pop corn or even sandwiches if she didn’t want them delivered from the community kitchen. She had an exaggerated idea of the independence this gave her.

He was relaxed in his hotel, soft music playing when she called. The picture that came up was just flat not a holo. He wondered if her phone died if she could even buy another 2D now. The people at her retirement village were such fossils some probably used audio only.

“Where are you Teddy?” He could see her examining his background, looking for clues. She still had glasses, not trusting any surgeon to ‘mess with her eyes’, and refusing the modern deep rejuv that would alter basic genetic defects instead of just rewinding the clock. Ted wondered if they still made butterfly glasses with rhinestones or if those were the same pair she’d had forever.

“What does it matter Momma? My number connects you to me wherever I am. I’m in Singapore tonight. In a hotel room that could be in New York or Berlin. They’re all the same.”

“Traveling is not good for you. You never eat properly traveling. I hope you have some prunes or something to keep your bowels moving.”

“Believe me Momma, if the hotel didn’t serve safe nutritious food they’d be out of business in a week. It isn’t like the old days when you were growing up. You can’t hide anything like that today. I check to see if there are any complaints on the net before I even make a reservation. And they have a beautiful gym. I swam laps this morning before I had breakfast and went out for business.”

“I called on your birthday last week but I couldn’t get through.”

“Did you leave a message for me?” Ted gently prodded.

“You know I don’t talk to a machine. I’m your mother not a phone salesman. You should take an extra message on special days.”

“Yes Momma, taking a deep breath and staying calm, but I remember when Harold let you call special days too. You called everything on the calendar. The high holidays and the new year, the legal holidays and the commercial ones like grandparent’s day. My God Momma, we’re Jewish and you called on St Patrick’s day, Valentine’s day and Christmas!”

“It don’t hurt to fit in,” she protested. “That’s why I named you boys like I did. There are too many won’t give you the time of day if your name sounds Jewish. I was being practical.”

Ted wanted to tell her that was out of date too. Here in North America it almost was, but last week in the Caliphate it would have been worth his life to wander around the back streets marked as a Jew.

“Momma I have some good news that will make you happy,” he said, ignoring the previous argument.  “Sandra asked me some time ago to marry her and after some thought I brought the idea up again last week and she accepted.”

Ted could hear the deep sigh clearly. “Is she a nice Jewish girl Teddy?”

“Well, I don’t know Mamma. We never talked about religion. I’m not sure if she has any strong religious opinions at all. What does it matter Momma? I haven’t seen the inside of a synagogue for a couple hundred years myself.”

“It matters to me. And I wonder what sort of a wedding you will have. Do you think I want to go in some church and see you married with a big cross hanging behind a preacher?”

“Momma, we’re already married. She affirmed my contract and registered it with the court before we were even done with dinner. We never considered having a big formal ceremony and inviting people.”

“That’s not married,” her face went into that mask he knew too well meant she didn’t approve. “That’s a business merger.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way. I thought you’d be happy for me.” Ted decided now was not the time to tell her it was a one year renewable contract.

“Is she from a good family? Are they people of substance or did she marry you for your money?” she asked suspiciously.

“The financial part of our agreement says we keep our financial affairs separate. That’s what most couples do now Mamma. I have no idea how much she makes, but she has made partner in a very well regarded law firm. Most firms pay their partners well and add a bonus of fifty or sixty million a year for even the newest partners.” Ted knew that would sound like a lot of money to his mother. “She has a beautiful home in Toronto nicer than mine, and a small flat on the moon. We are keeping both houses. I don’t know much about her parents except they are younger than you. She is only in her second century and they were only in their fifties when they had her. They retired early too. They live in Armstrong.”

“That’s the moon, isn’t it?”

“Yes Momma. The sector that lives under American law.”

“But she’s Canadian?”

“I…I don’t know Momma. I’m not sure where she was born. She might have multiple citizenship or declared herself extraterritorial. A lot of lawyers do that so they can’t be accused of bias. It doesn’t matter much unless you are living off  negative income tax.”  That was a sensitive subject because his mother’s savings had not kept up with inflation, and she was more and more dependent on the distribution.

“Whatever,” Momma said in slang mode that was almost four centuries out of date. Every year her usage got further from the main stream so he was almost translating their conversation to understand it. “So when can I meet your new wife?”

Ted kicked himself for not anticipating this. He imagined she’d want to screen her, but not ask for a physical visit. Maybe he could manage her away from the idea…

“She’s working Momma. I don’t even know where because her current assignment is a secret. She should be done in just a few days and when we are together again I’d have her screen…er, call you.” That would cost him an extra call, which she’d try to keep asking for once he yielded a bit, but better than a trip.

“A call is not like seeing someone face to face. Are you ashamed to have her see your mother? Are you afraid I’ll be old fashioned and embarrass you?”

Yes, he thought, but didn’t dare voice it. The way med-tech was going they could both be around another four hundred years, and if he had kids she could get a court order for visitation more generous than anything he wanted to grant. He had no desire to emigrate to the outer system to avoid her. He liked living on a planet with skies and real gravity.

“You know traveling doesn’t agree with you,” he reminded her. “If you’d only let me get you a decent holophone. You can’t tell the image from the real thing.”

“You can’t hug a holo. Besides, I want to see how this girl lives and what sort of person she is to take care of my son.”

He bit off telling her he could take care of himself just fine and he didn’t marry her to take care of him. It would have been wasted. It had been sixty years since he’d taken her outside her retirement village. The last time he’d taken her on public transportation and she’d asked out loud  in her booming voice, “What the hell kind of freak is that?” when she saw a gene altered gentleman. She had to have seen them on TV, but maybe she thought they were special effects not real. The judge although noting such behavior was the norm when she was a youngster, and that she choose to be isolated in her period retirement home, had fined her fifty thousand dollars and told her not to come out in public if she didn’t learn what was acceptable behavior. Ted was sure it didn’t mean anything to her because she never stood before the judge in a physical courtroom. The hearing was done on com and the money never left her hand – it was just numbers that changed in an account she never looked at anyway.

“Maybe I should bring Sandra there. Remember how much trouble it was last time you traveled?”

“I want to see how this Sandra of yours keeps her house and what her taste is. I have to buy you a wedding present yet. It’s just across the lake to Toronto. Why don’t you bring a car? You’re always telling me you make plenty enough money. Surely you can afford to hire a car. Martha my neighbor I play cribbage with hires a car and driver every Christmas to go visit.”

“I’ll do that, Momma,” he relented, seeing no way out, and dreading a present that would need stored and hauled out for displayed if she came to visit again. “When Sandra gets back and we are both going to be at her place I’ll give you a call.” That satisfied her and he was able to wind it down and terminate. His usual post-Momma headache pounding, he got some analgesics out of his case and washed them down with mini-bar vodka. They hit like a ton of bricks when washed down with the booze. A car was a better idea, an extravagance he hardly ever bothered with for himself, but much cheaper than a fine for insulting strangers if she blurted out some inane observation again. Much cheaper if the judge saw the record and noted her previous conviction. He did maintain a license for air and ground. No need to take a chance she’d insult a driver.

The rest of the week went slow. The impending visit hanging over him like a sentencing hearing. He wrapped up his work sooner than he expected. He didn’t realize the cloud hanging over his head was so visible. One of his sources he expected to bribe had spilled his guts for free and seemed anxious to be clear of him. The man thought he was the object of the smoldering resentment on Ted’s face. The normal TeddieBeah looked like an angry Bruin this week. He got twice as much work done radiating anger like some sort of beacon. When he was able to retreat to the comfort of his own condo in Atlanta he signed himself off as unavailable for assignment. He did that so rarely that there was no objection.

A long run on the track and a comfort food breakfast at the community dinning hall of grits and real eggs helped soften his mood. He walked home to his workshop and put on some calming music. He’d displayed his workshop at the Pittsburgh convention in the spring. And taken the second prize losing out to a fellow who had a 2010 garage. The fellow had deserved the blue ribbon easily. There were no hard feeling over it. He wasn’t that competitive. The first prize diorama had not only a real 2006 Jeep but all the working tools and instrumentation to maintain it. The fellow even had some exotic tools like an arc welder that took special license and certification to own just as side items in his display. There were numerous extra details such as period containers of auto body products like polish and wax. As a fellow exhibiter he’d been invited behind the rope and even sat in the Jeep talking to the owner. The fellow had a video of him driving the manual control vehicle on a private ranch road out west. He’d joined half a dozen other auto owners there for a vacation and traded rides. They had all managed to pilot the behemoths around with no radar or computer controls and not bump into one another. That was amazing when you read how many thousands of wrecks had happened every single year back when auto controls were not mandatory. It made him wonder why they had been called automobiles back then when they really were not automatic at all.

His own display was a woodshop of the same period. He had class A through C power tool operator licenses for drill press, router and power saw. His Dewalt saw was an original antique with a cast iron table and a old 115 volt motor he had to run off a step down transformer. Because the man held the same certificates he’d allowed the Jeep exhibitor to cut a block of walnut with his help, and route his name on the face. The fellow had been really tickled. It took a full two days to ship everything back from Pittsburgh and set it back up at home again. Unwrapping each tool and hanging it on the peg board just so. He’d started a project of boxes before going to Singapore. He’d had the wood on order for over a year. Real Oak not simulated. They were glued up with mitered corners and he’d flock the inside when they were done. The lid was topped with a bought wood knob. That was his next acquisition – a lath for turning that sort of thing. A couple hours cutting and assembling and his frayed nerves were much better. He wished he had been born of an era one could do this sort of work for a living. He knew a CNC machine center and robotic handler could do in seconds what had taken him hours. But there was a satisfaction you couldn’t get by rendering it on a screen and having it returned completed to your hand with no effort.

Between the comfort of his own home, and soothing time at his hobby, by the time Sandra was back home he could join her and was able to calmly ask her to meet his mother. She didn’t seem put off despite his warnings that his mother was a caricature of herself, a twenty first century New York Jewish Mother in full plumage. He carefully warned her what subjects were sensitive and needed care or avoidance. In their home she rarely wore more than a sports bra and baggy shorts. Sometimes nothing at all. His warning to be modest was laughed at and she finally chased him away saying she had to get ready and he should calm down and go pick her up.

The guard at the retirement village checked his ID with more care than he’d received at classified government installations. He was directed away from the residence wings to the recreation and enrichment hall. He rolled over with the electric taxi motor in his nose wheel. It was too close to bother to lift and the elaborate landscaping looked like his fans would damage it.

As he parked he figured out the gardeners were not professionals but residents doing the flowers beds and sculpting the hedges as a hobby. He had to admit the results were impressive. Every bit as much a labor of love as his woodworking.

Walking through the doors was always strange. The furniture, the lighting fixtures, everything was dated like walking on a period movie set. Even most of the residents had on older fashions. He wondered who made them. Surely the originals were long worn out. It almost felt like the color should drain away from the scene and leave it sepia like an old faded photo.

His mother was sitting dressed for her outing and enthroned in a lounge chair like a queen for a day. She had on a suit with a straight skirt and a handbag that belonged in the Smithsonian. Her shoes were utterly impractical. He was glad they weren’t marching around an air terminal. Not to mention such shoes were considered kinky sex toys now. A fact that would horrify her. She even had a funny little hat pinned on her hair. Thankfully she was not quite old enough to consider a pair of gloves necessary for a public outing. Ted wasn’t sure by how many decades she had missed that custom. He could remember seeing them in flat movies that were not too far behind her era. A hard sided suitcase at her feet announced that she considered Toronto an overnight trip. He wasn’t about to correct that with the circle of cronies in pants suits and blue jeans inspecting him to see if he was worthy to remove their queen.

“Momma, you look lovely. Ladies,” he acknowledged, and bowed gallantly to the hostile audience. He snatched up the suitcase before she could force him to engage in chit-chat with her minions. “We’d best go,” he suggested adding a little white lie. “There’s rain coming soon and I’d rather have clear skies to cross the lake.”

“Oh you’re taking an air car,” one of her purple pant suited retainers said with obvious distain. “I always get queasy in those things.”

“It’s a five hour drive to go around through Buffalo,” he explained. “On auto it’s rarely more than twenty minutes straight across.”

“Don’t worry,” his mother patted her companions knee. “Teddy’s father always flew us about back when it was all manual. He was a as heavy handed and clumsy as a flier as he was with everything else,” she said , winking. “and I survived that too.” They all exchanged smirks and seemed to share a private joke in which Ted was left out. He was happy his mother stood up and they could flee the circle of harpies.

They taxied out of the security gate, Ted being more certain now that blowing the flowers  lodged flat wouldn’t go over very well. He turned into the slow lane, turned it on automatic and control granted them an immediate rolling lift. It was a glorious pretty day and the windows darkened on the sunny side as they lifted into sunlight. Downtown Cleveland was a bit to the west on their left and they could see the Canadian side before they had cleared the near shore. There must be a lot of traffic today for them to be slotted so high. This was Sandra’s flyer. His was in Atlanta. He only used his locally and always went commercial between their homes. He thought his mother would comment on it, the mauve interior with plush fabrics obviously not his taste. But she seemed oblivious. The noise increased subtly as the car switched from lift to forward acceleration. In just a couple minutes the pattern of waves in the water below was falling visibly astern. There was a slight vibration to the slipstream that said they were pushing the Mach, then the nose dipped almost imperceptivity and the noise faded back so conversation was easier.

“Sandra’s condo is in a rather large community just like mine,” he tried chatting up his mother. “They average about three thousand occupied units. Quite a few families. Some people like it so well they stay and just buy out a different floor plan when their needs change. That way they keep the same kitchen and services package. My place in Atlanta has private garages, but hers has a community parking deck. That’s not much of a burden because her car here,” he patted the dash, “is smart enough to go park itself.”

“Does she know any of her neighbors then?” her mother seemed actually interested.

“Oh yes, She had a little party back before we were married and there were two neighbors there. One an artist lady who works in physical media, and an older gentleman who is retired now, but used to work in banking. I gather quite a few meet each other for tennis and chat in the exercise rooms and pool.

“Is that it?” Momma asked. A sprawled clump of buildings loomed close in front of them. They were on a long shallow dive aimed well below the horizon straight at the complex.

“Sure is. We should be down in five minutes.” He let the car stay on auto but laid his hands loosely on the yoke – just in case. A stab with his right thumb would override and put them on manual. Then he’d better have a very good reason to explain why he did so to control.

Sandy’s car was a luxury model and wasted a few grams of fuel making a gentle transition to hover and touched down so lightly they couldn’t feel it. They knew they were landed when the turbines spooled down to silence. As they walked away the car taxied away to park itself silently.

The landscaping was not nearly as impressive as his mother’s building. Security however was just as tight. Momma seemed a bit put off, but didn’t complain when she had to press her hand flat on a glass panel for the guard. She did wipe it first with a frilly hankie. The guard watched from a holo screen, unsurprised. The people in this complex went in an out a great deal more than a retirement community, and he had to cover several entries. There would have been much more of a delay if Ted hadn’t cleared all his momma’s information ahead of time with security.

Ted hoped the inside would impress her. Her retirement home was old fashioned. It had hallways like a hotel. The sort of building the current generation would dismiss as a rat warren. Here the residences opened on a common courtyard in groups of eight. It was a domed area like a little park, with a short passage at two corners to other courtyards. Even that was wide not a hallway, with benches and art to break it up. They only had to walk to the far side of the first courtyard to reach Sandy’s door.

“Hello, we’re home,” he called for his mom’s benefit when they stepped in. He’d dropped a message on Sandy’s implant when they landed, but he knew from experience his mother would find it spooky if they communicated silently. Something smelled good, stronger than he was used to. He was nonplussed when Sandra came out of her hobby room wearing a costume she used for exhibitions, but she took over hugging his mother and chatting away so she never noticed his confusion.

“That’s your show getup.” Ted IM’d her so she’d read it off her heads-up privately.

“Ted take your mother’s things down to the blue bedroom,” she instructed ignoring his message. “I have just a couple things to wrap up in here and we can have a bite. Would you like to step in my kitchen for a moment Mother Weis?”

“Oh, Just call me Sara,” his mom said in a buttery voice he hadn’t heard in a long time.

“Don’t be juggling my elbow,” Sandra instructed him by implant as he walked the suitcase down to his mother’s room. “I can’t trade IM’s or audio and not show it to where she will figure out we’re talking around her. I’ll give you audio but just listen,” she warned him.

“My goodness, I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve seen a young woman in a shirtwaist dress,” his mother gushed.

“Do you like it? There is a lady in the building who can make clothing from your measurements for almost any period. Here, sit at the table and I’ll finish up and take this in the dining room.”

“Why don’t you just serve us here dear? I’m sure there is plenty of room and it seems so much more intimate.”

“If you’d like. Here, I have a pad and table cloth for this table. I’m ever so careful of the enameled top.”

Ted came back to find the Sears table which he knew to be insured for seven hundred thousand dollars actually set for dinner with antique Corelle and almost priceless real glass tumblers. The smell he’d noticed coming in was now identified by a loaf of bread cooling on the sideboard. He wondered briefly if Sandy faked that, putting an unsliced loaf in a warm oven, but the bread fit too tightly in the antique loaf pan. She’d actually baked bread in her oven.

They were going to sit and eat with her best collection pieces. He was scared to death. One mistake could ruin a piece that might be insured, but that didn’t mean a replacement piece could be found. It might take years for one to come up at an auction.

“Sit down Ted. You look like you need a drink. Would you like a little wine?”

Ted pictured himself holding a glass of red wine over her antique Irish Linen tablecloth. It would be like holding a grenade with the pin pulled. “No, please, just a glass of water would be fine.” He sat on one of the chairs carefully. He’d never sat on one before. His mother and Sandy babbled on about roast beef and new potatoes and he eased the chair up to the table careful not to stress it. They hardly knew he was there.

The beef was tender as could be. That was fortunate, because he was afraid to really cut hard with his knife. He knew it was silly but he could see the precious plate splitting in two under his cut. Everything he did was awkward – calculated – and when Sandra insisted she would serve dessert in the TV room he was relieved even though he had never heard they had a TV room. He’d gladly follow anywhere they wanted to go to get away from the terror of damaging something.

The TV room turned out to be Sandra’s office. It did have the biggest wall screen in the house. To his relief they didn’t screen anything though. Sandy had the screen on an environmental channel with great herds of African beasts on a dusty plain. He knew his mother was disgusted with most modern  entertainment, but she was content talking away with Sandy. She seemed genuinely interested in her work. Sandy was relating a case she had tried on Luna and if the legal details were beyond his mother she approved that way Sandy had made sure the scum who had committed fraud was brought to sure justice. Finally his mother started yawning, and Sandy insisted on showing her to her room.

“I’ve had such a good time,” his mother said getting up. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve had such a good visit with Teddy.” Ted just smiled. He hadn’t said a thing for hours.

“You just speak my name out loud if you need anything,” Sandy told her giving her a hug. The house AI will call me if you need me. I have to be up and away early, but I’ll have the community kitchen lay out a nice breakfast for Ted and you in the morning.”

“Oh, that too bad. But I’m glad we had this evening.” If he’d done that to her his mom would have given him hell for ducking out on her. He was amazed. Sandy had her wrapped around her finger. He just sat still, scared he’d do something to spoil it as they walked down the hall. Momma didn’t even say good night, busy chatting away with Sandy.

* * *

            “You are amazing,” Ted told her when she returned to their room. “I’ve never seen anyone tame the savage beast like you. I’m so relieved that is over and I don’t have to worry about it anymore.”

“Oh she’s nothing. She’s a sweetheart. I’ve had experience with much worse.”

“I’ve met your mother,” Ted objected. “Both your parents are very modern people. I can’t imagine them giving you are hard time like my mother, or being an embarrassment in public.”

“No, not my mother, my nonna, my granny.”

“You’ve never mentioned her. What’s she like?”

“She was born in 1930. It was the Great Depression worldwide. There was no work and no money so her family had to go back to the Italian mountain village where they had roots to survive on the family farm.”

“That’s even before my mother’s generation.”

Sandy nodded agreement. “Then when she was almost thirteen the Fascists took all the men away from their village as unreliable.”

“Fascists?”

“World War II – what they call the First Atomic War now. So she got involved with the resistance, the partisans. She’d quite proud she learned to handle a rifle as well as a man and shot or blew up a few Nazis herself.”

“That’s – remarkable.” Ted had never held a real firearm.

“So after the war the family came to America. She did too many jobs to even start to tell and ended up in a nursing home in 2027 when she was ninety-seven years old. She was frail but sharp mentally. Of course I wasn’t born yet. My parents hadn’t had their first rejuv even. I have pictures of her in the nursing home. She was the stereotypical Old World grandma in all black with the button up kidskin shoes and a head scarf. In 2032 she had her first rejuv. It took really well, and her next one was even better. To look at her today she looks about like a natural sixty. A very robust sixty. And she dropped the period clothing so you’d never notice her in a crowd. She’s likely one of the oldest people alive today, coming up on her fifth century.”

“So she’s a handful? Does she live in a period retirement home like my mother with people her age?”

“Not at all. She lives in a regular community on Sicily and she climbs on the shuttle any time it strikes her fancy and goes to visit my folks in Armstrong. As far as a handful…If I tried to handle her she’d give me her beady eyed look and tell me not to teach granny how to cut hay.”

“So, Italy, she…I mean your family must be Catholic right? Have you told her you married a Jew? Is that a problem?”

“Not at all. When I screened her she said any people the Nazis and Fascists hated so bad couldn’t be all bad.”

“Does she uh…get in trouble out in public like my mother?”

“No, if she makes a point you can bet she can defend it or it can be taken two ways. She has implants and has declared herself extraterritorial. She cave dives for fun and keeps a shuttle certificate current for orbit to orbit and airless landings. She said if you have a backbone and can drink like a man, we’ll have her blessing.”

“Backbone? Oh…” he hadn’t heard that usage in awhile. “Well I better lay in a supply of Sober-Ez  if we ever visit her.”

“That might be a good idea Dear,” Sandy said giving him a peck, and calling the lights out. “She’s coming to meet you this weekend.”

“Dear God,” he whispered to the dark.

END

All rights reserved

Ball and Chain – A stand alone short

 

Ball and Chain

Mackey Chandler

            “It’s this damn Slump,” Tim Kirkland grumped. “There’s no market for even Earth mined materials, how can Luna possibly develop an economy without exports? If it wasn’t for defense they’d have probably pulled back and mothballed the Moon bases already. For sure they would have if they weren’t scared the other fellows would snatch the whole Moon. When things get back to normal and scarcity kicks in again things will open up. I’ve had my application in for Luna now for seven years. I’m way ahead of most folks in the Queue.”

“Are you applied with the Americans, Indians or the Chinese?” Aaron asked skeptically.

“The Americans and Indians both actually. The Chinese wouldn’t take my reservation without a full deposit and an assurance I wasn’t signed on with anyone else, snotty little buggers.”

“I’m tired of hearing The Slump, The Slump, as an excuse for everything,” Aaron growled. They should tell the truth and call it the Greater Depression. You’re thirty-two years old man. How long has it been The Slump for you?”

“Call it twenty, twenty-six years. Depends on if you count from 2008 or 2012. I remember as a kid we had it pretty good. I was an only, but still, we used to go out to eat a couple times a week. My mom and my dad both kept a car. My God those were cars too, big lumbering steel beasts built like a battle tank.”

“Let’s be honest. Is there any guarantee it won’t still be The Slump twenty years forward from now? Other than the same promises just before every election?”

“Prosperity is just ahead. It’s as certain as global warming,” he said sarcastically. The continued cold weather was as responsible for the prolonged slump in the economy as any political stupidity. Nobody had ever disavowed the carbon treaties and such, they simply stopped talking about it. Maybe they hoped people would forget, but they hadn’t.

“You could save enough to go by the time you are forty likely. If you don’t marry and if you don’t get caught with your ‘investments’.”

Tim made a squelching motion with his hand and grimaced. It was a family burger place, and noisy, but he hadn’t pulled the battery on his phone, and you just never knew when you might be monitored at random. He pulled it now, and pulled the foil faced paper from under his fries and wrapped the phone in that too.”

“My, you are getting paranoid,” Aaron marveled. “Don’t you have your minders on the take so you don’t have to worry about such things?”

“You can buy off your security folks but it gets expensive. I’d rather make the effort and keep my profits maximized. Anyway, you know I don’t just want to take a two week lift as a tourist. I want to live up there, maybe even beyond the Moon if that happens in my lifetime.”

“If you’re that much of a risk taker I’m encouraged. I wanted to run a solution past you, but wasn’t sure you’d have the guts to consider it.”

“If that’s your idea of drawing me into a warm feeling of camaraderie you need to work on your presentation. If I’m such a cowardly lout you can find someone else better I’m sure.”

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t know anyone as eager to go to the Moon, except my nephew Eddy and he’s just turned twelve, so that’s a bit of a wait too. What if I had a way to open up travel not just for you, but for everyone? We can’t change the economy, but there are other factors in the equation to alter. Changes that would do a world of good for quite a few people. I have a little development I’ve been working on. I have a patent application in on it right now actually. It can change the expense factor of lifting to the Moon, and everywhere else above Clarke orbit too.”

“Lift vehicles are a very mature Technology,” Tim objected. “Nobody is willing to build  nuclear rockets for political reasons. I suspect they have a few actually, but if they do it’s damn black and likely to stay that way. I know you do fiber design and nano fabrication for the University. I’m pretty sure you’re the smartest guy I know, Aaron. But I don’t see even you designing an anti-gravity machine in that home workshop of yours.”

“Not at all. But you are aware they have had materials now for about five years, which could be used to make a Beanstalk?”

“As in “Fountains of Paradise”? A humongous ball and chain on the Earth? I read it would take about fifty-Trillion dollars to put a real one up, and that was US dollars, not Canadian. I can just imagine every jihadist in the world salivating at the idea of getting a tactical nuke on an elevator car if they did build the thing. I don’t like to characterize us as the poor cousins, but if it gets built it will be the Americans. Canada doesn’t have that kind of wealth free to use, and it will take a huge application of military and political power to run the thing. You have to buy off some nation on the equator, and then pour enough troops and equipment around the base of the thing so nobody thanks you for building it and then nationalizes it. I can’t think of anywhere around the Earth’s waist I’d want to trust.”

“Yes, but, it was a Russian, Tsiolkovsky, who developed the concept, long before it was popular in fiction. But a ball and chain is restrictive, this is more like a lifeline thrown in stormy seas. I’d like you to give me your word that you will hold this closely confidential, and I’d like to invite you over tomorrow evening to demo a few things for you.”

“Well,” Tim huffed, raising his eyebrows. “I’m not used to such gravity and formality, but you have my word as a gentleman, if such a thing can truly exist today.”

“It does if you wish it,” Aaron assured him. “I’ll pick up the tab today too,” he offered and swiped his paycard for both meals.

* * *

            “I’m here to see the stuff,” Tim growled in his best gangster style when Aaron opened the door.

“What, no body guards? No evil henchmen waiting in the car?” The absurdity of a wiseguy named Timmy made him smile, but he’d never tell his friend that.

“I prefer minions. They’re much more cost effective and low key.”

Tim hung his jacket and stood on his boot heels in turn to step out of his boots. He’d been here before. It wasn’t a house rule, but if he left his boots on Aaron’s eyes kept going back to them, worrying about his crème carpets.

“I hope you can wrap this up in time for the game.”

“Who’s playing, uh, you mean hockey I assume?”

“No, Bocce Ball,” he said and rolled his eyes.

“I don’t think I have any beer, you’ll get cross with me.”

“I have twelve cooling in the car. They won’t freeze for another hour.”

“Let’s get downstairs then. They lose all their fizz if you pop them slushy.”

 * * *

            “This is a pair of die maker’s stereo magnifiers,” Aaron offered, putting his on to show Tim how. “You turn the knob on the left to adjust the magnification. The right knob adjust the little headlight at the temple pieces. The over shade is to protect from laser so don’t be tipping it up.”

He picked up small bit of metal with a frosty stone set in it. “This is a diamond anvil with a nice tapered hole drilled through it. I have a piece of Bucky wrap that is strong enough to build a space elevator looped through the diamond. And the anvil slips into this handle,” he said sliding a hand grip back until the anvil snugged in hollow on his side, “so you can pull on it without slicing your fingers off like a cheese cutter.” A tube surrounded the line on the other side.

“That’s so thin, do you loop that through and tie a knot by hand? I’d never feel it.”

“You’d feel it when it cut your fingers. The line is braided of nine smaller fibers. You clamp it two places, push them towards each other to spread them open, and interweave the end back into itself. Now, this is as far as the line reaches from the wall over there.” He pulled on the handle and it didn’t come past the edge of the bench he was using. Tim squinted along the line in the direction of an anchor set in the concrete wall. He could see a few centimeters of it finer than a hair, and then it was lost to sight off toward the wall.

“I’m going to have you snap this, but I want to anneal a place near the anvil. If it snaps at the other end the whole thing can whip back and cut you. When it breaks near the handle it will fly toward the wall.” He pulled a pocket laser and laid the tiny line across a graphite block. He pushed the switch repeatedly and  a red spot glowed hot each time. “There, pull on it a bit, see how strong it is.”

Tim picked up the hand piece  and pulled it. It came to a definite stop, but was free to move side to side. The line to the wall was long enough you couldn’t feel the arc. Tim leaned until his weight was hanging on it.

“Amazing stuff.” Tim said. “There is no give to it at all.”

“Now go ahead and give it a good jerk. I can break it so I know you can.”

Tim took a stance, so he wouldn’t overbalance and turned his hand around with the protective tube sticking up through the middle of his fingers. He gave one pretty good jerk, but it didn’t snap. He backed his swing up a bit further and snapped it clean with one hard pull. He followed through but didn’t lose control.

“Tough stuff,” was all he acknowledged.

“Indeed. Now this is the new thing I brought you to see,” he said picking up a similar but bulkier hand piece. “It is a bit thinner so crank up the magnification because I want you to see it better”

Tim leaned in and adjusted the viewer.

“See the wedge pushed in the hole with this one? That’s an electrical contact. Now observe the surface color of the thread.” He flipped a switch that stuck out of the grip. “Did you see that?”

“It went from dull black to kind of shiny I think.”

“Yes. That’s exactly right. Now I want you to do the same thing as before, except…”

Tin snapped the line taunt with everything he had.

“I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

The handle ripped out of his hand and he doubled over his abused wrist holding it against his waist with his other hand.

“Holy shit. Nothing should be that strong,” Tim objected hopping up and down a little.

“Did you break it?” Aaron asked concerned.

“I didn’t hear a crack, but I think I better put some ice around it and watch it a bit. You can damn well go out and bring the beer in. You could have talked a little faster Dude.”

They stayed upstairs and watched Toronto starting against Detroit. The wrist didn’t turn funny colors or swell quickly so they concluded he didn’t break anything.

“I’m thinking about it,” Tim said. “I still see problems.”

“I know a few. I have something else to show you after the game.”

“To hell with the game,” Tim said getting up. “Toronto zero, Detroit two. They have the better goalie and that’s how it will wrap up. If it doesn’t I’m down six-thousand dollars in the morning. Try not to hurt me with this next demo.”

“I know you are concerned about a site for a Beanstalk. I have a model prepared to show you a concept. Here we have our globe.” It was a globe too, taken off the usual mount and put on an electric motor shaft.

“This is our base location,” he pointed out a screw firmly driven into Ecuador on the globe.

“Here is our counter weight,” he produce a golf ball with an eyelet screwed into it and a straw colored thread dangling. “The tread is just Kevlar, but it is our cable.” He looped the thread around the screw and tied it. The tread reached all the way around the globe and just enough to hang it back over the screw.

“Stand back, I cracked myself on the knee with this first time I spun it.”

“You’re dangerous man.”

Aaron retreated to a switch and turned it on. The globe spun and flung the ball out. It whipped around the globe in a blur until he killed the switch again and it dropped and bounced to a stop.

“Yep, that’s just what I pictured,” Tim agreed.

“But that isn’t the only way to do it,” Aaron told him pulling a screwdriver out of his pocket. He took the screw out of Ecuador and started turning it into a hole he hadn’t noticed. It was Toronto.

“But, you can’t do that,” Tim objected.

“Would you rather Vancouver?” Aaron asked pleasantly. “It has a better climate I admit. And you don’t have to bring shipping for the elevator up the Saint Lawrence. But there are financial reasons and political considerations. I certainly don’t want it in Quebec, and it’s about a tossup for shipping grain off the plains. I suspect a great deal of rye and oats will be riding up the thing.”

“That’s not what I mean. You can’t just screw the bloody thing on anywhere. That’s cheating.”

“Why?” Aaron asked him. “Oh it might get a bit difficult above above sixty degrees north. But at Toronto you have significant angular velocity.”

“Well, you know, it’s out of balance. It has to hang off the center straight.”

“Ah,” Aaron sighed agreeably, You’re going to hang another on the other side so we don’t unbalance the earth and make it wobbly all over the place. I expect some die hard environmentalist  to bring that up actually. I didn’t think you so Green.”

“Well not wobble,” Tim insisted indignantly. “I know the elevator won’t mass that much compared to the Earth, But it won’t pull straight. This is just a shell. The real Earth pulls with gravity, so the line of force pulling on the counterweight down,” he demonstrated with his hands, “won’t be in line with the tension on the line,” he asserted, very happy with himself.

“And the counter weight would not be exactly at the Clarke orbit. In fact it would be just a hair more difficult to match a spaceship with it and dock than on a perfect equatorial orbit,” he went on and finished repositioning the screw. “But then too, a lot of other users in Earth orbit might be just as happy  not to have this huge battering ram of a counter weight whizzing about the planet right in the plane where they want to naturally orbit free floating objects.” he pointed out.

“But tell me. If there was no gravity involved where would the counterweight float when you spun up the system?”

“Right in the lane of rotation. At right angles to a line through the poles.”

“Okay, ” Aaron agreed, retreating and flipping the motor on again,”pretty much like this right?”

The ball zoomed around in a plane that passed through Toronto.”Now gravity is pulling the golf ball down too. It must be dipped down toward the floor a half degree or so. It just swings over on the thread a bit and finds an equilibrium position right?”

“Too small to see, but yeah, must be,” he agreed.

“Now if we were talking about using material that was strained almost to the yield point, I’d worry about having it in a slight arc with side forces on it. The primary problem has always been the weight of the cable hanging on itself, not the tension or forces of cars climbing up and down. My new material is so much stronger there’s no need to worry about that. We’ll have a good engineering margin like proper designers know is necessary. None of this building the world’s biggest high speed centrifuge with no protective cage.”

“Crap, I feel stupid.”

“Not at all. We just changed a part of the equation everyone assumed was a constant.”

“Let’s go back upstairs. I need another beer.”

* * *

            “Can you tell me in short sensible terms why it’s so strong?

“It’s a form of Bucky too. You have a long bucky-tube and create regular defects on the side walls. There is a high temperature superconductor inside and it cross links through these defects and locks the fibers together. It’s similar to how wool felts up when you pack it, but on a molecular scale. You work harden them by moving them around and more of these side opening line up and bound. So it grows stronger as you load it and unload it. It has about the same strength as regular bucky tube material. But if you hook a battery up it will actively resist being elongated. It actually pulls back against the force applied. Pull more, it draws more current. You reach a threshold where it can’t draw any more current and it fails spectacularly. Obviously using it to build you need a very reliable power source to trust something with actively powered mechanical properties. You start off with a big roll of bucky with the material inside and keep rolling it down thinner and thinner. At the end you have to draw it through diamond dies in an intense magnetic field.

* * *

            “Would you like to help me build it?” Aaron asked. “I mean, you’re going there anyway, right?”

“I’d love to see you build it, but you need some real high-powered business help to bring something like that to market. You need investment bankers, and lawyers and people I don’t know.”

“You want to go yourself. This will open the road faster than anything on the horizon. You can go while you are still a fairly young man. It will be all the other applications that pay for the Beanstalk. That will be your work for a long time. Somebody else I wouldn’t be sure they wouldn’t get bogged down with all the other applications and never get around to building the Stalk. I’ll have other people for various things, but I want you for my business guy. This is going to change everything about bridges, and body armor, and rotating devices, pressure vessels, high pressure chemistry, synthetic diamonds and other materials. All that has to be started and the use of it known and standard before the cable goes up. I’m willing to let you have the majority ownership of the Beanstalk as a separation bonus when we are done. By that time you won’t want to work for me anymore, and I will have so much income from the other uses it’s silly to think I can want for anything.”

“Aaron, you are talking Billions of dollars to own an orbital elevator. I don’t have the kind of capital to start to do a mailing to promote this thing.”

“So we start with lesser applications. You are good with business, I’m not. At least there isn’t any cloud hanging over my rights. I was smart enough to document all my work on this. Every time I logged on the computer and the time line of every physical experiment I did. There is not a dollar of Government money or an hour of University time involved. I own the intellectual property clear. I’ve even kept a more detailed log of my work for the University so if they say – “Well, you must have worked on it sometime.” I can say – Here, show me where it fit in. Was it while I lectured all day on April 8, 2019? Just lets have one thing clear,” Aaron said and looked at him hard. “You try to screw me out of the whole thing, and I’ll cut the living heart out of your chest and let you die looking at the bloody thing.” He was holding his hand out cupped between them and looking Tim right in the eye.

Tim looked at his palm like he could see it beating there. “Partner, those are the kind of contract terms a guy doesn’t forget. I’m still in.”

* * *

            “I thought twelve years was wildly optimistic,” Aaron said. “Ten years was fantastic. You did a fine job, Tim.”

“I thought twenty years was downright depressing,” Tim countered. “I didn’t want to ride a gurney up the damn thing.”

They both stood and watched the dots of elevator cars accelerating away up the shiny black column. So huge it seemed unreal, and the fact it tilted off the vertical over toward the South still looked strange to Tim.

“I thought we’d have more resistance, especially from the Americans, but everything fell into place, especially the last couple years.”

Tim just looked at him with that superb poker face.

“What? You know I can’t read you when you are like that. But it tells me you have something going on in there you don’t want to reveal.”

“The government got a lot more cooperative two years ago. Remember when General McPherson was retired?”

“Yeah?”

“They called me in the morning you flew to Hong Kong. You remember that trip?”

“Sure, we were having trouble getting cobalt. The guy who controlled it was there.”

“McPherson had a bunch of Air Force goons, come by and give me one of those invitations you can’t turn down to go talk with him.”

Aaron thought a minute and nodded. “Now I remember, I got the appointment and if I took the fast plane I could be there for breakfast and head right back. You weren’t in your office and neither was Madeline, so I called a car and hustled to the airport. I knew you had stuff to do anyway, so you wouldn’t have come along.”

“You remember when you called me next?”

Aaron made a show of thinking. “It’s been two years. From the hotel?” he asked.

“Nope, you called from the plane. General McPherson had just explained to me that the government couldn’t let one man in private control of their access to space as a matter of national security. He was letting me know I was expected to help them in the transition to nationalization.”

“Son of a bitch.” Aaron said.

“So right at that point you call, doing paper work and talking to me on the side all distracted. I know exactly what you sound like when you are doing that.  McPherson wanted to know what was happening. I informed him that as soon as he pulled me in you, by some strange coincidence, were on a private supersonic headed for Hong Kong within ten minutes. I told him that was the first time in eight years you’d walked out like that without telling me. His communication tech looks at him and says, “Voice analysis says a bit more than 97% probability of truthfulness.”

“There’s no way he could have known we set this up,” he objected. “That’s when the other two guys with us wearing stars started getting all twitchy.

“You can listen in I assume,” I told them and went back to your call. “You never noticed.”

“Well sure. You were always covering the mic and yelling at somebody. I never twitched at a little dead air time. I guess that would sound strange to somebody who doesn’t know us.”

“So I asked when you would be back, and as usual you were noncommittal, so I took a chance,” I said, “Aaron tell me straight. Are you coming back?”

“You always say weird stuff like – Are you going to stay in Fuji with the native girls? Some of us have work to do Aaron. Don’t you think it’s time to buy Peru? I distinctly remember one time I had you on speaker phone and you told the whole executive board of Mitsubishi you didn’t think I loved you anymore. They all think to this day that we’re secret Joy Boys. That’s how I know your calls are over. You never say hello or goodbye like normal people.”

“Do you remember how you signed off?

“Nah, it’s been too long. I always try to be as big a smart ass as you, but it’s hard. You’re pretty damn quick.”

“Give me a reason,” you said. It had just been a particularly nasty week here with snow and ice. That could explain why you said, “I might find the climate more pleasing in China,” you said that and hung up.

“That sounds…”

“Yep, couldn’t have said anything better if we’d had a play book and worked it out ahead of time. They thought for sure you were defecting. The jackass looked at his creep with the military grade lie machine. Kid just shakes his head he isn’t reading any deceit at all.”

“The General says, “You expect me to believe this private citizen penetrates our security better than we hack his, and is willing to fly away from all this wealth he has created these last eight years and will start over again in China?”

“So I told him a little bit of the truth.”

“I don’t expect you to believe anything. But one of my main jobs is spreading his money all over the planet as fast as it comes in, so some self-important fascist, who couldn’t start to create what he has created, can’t just walk in and steal it without even a gun in his hand. That ‘private citizen’ just sold licenses this quarter greater than the GNP of France,” I told him.

“What can we do? One of the other Generals asked.

“I have no idea,” I told him. “I have no idea who he uses or how he gets intelligence. Are you familiar with when his University sued him and tried to take his patents?” I asked them. “His lawyers came into court with twenty-six spiral bound notebooks. They were provably his holographic documents by the handwriting and their age was testable. They were too extensive to have been generated as a fraud in the available time. They detailed any period of ten minutes in his life for the last six years to prove he made his invention on his own time. They documented every drive, every meal, every phone call and movie he saw. He even documented when he took a crap. What kind of a man foresees he’s going to need something like that? Every point you could check like stopping to buy fuel for his car or if he bought a coffee with his paycard was accurate. I do know for damn sure I’m not going to cross him.”

“Thank you, Tim.”

“Don’t thank me. I related to them the little speech you gave me about ripping my living heart out and letting me die staring at the bloody thing if I tried to screw you.” The asshole actually had the nerve to look at his techie and confirm I wasn’t making it up.”

“Oh, my.”

“All I could suggest to them was that they dismantle whatever idiotic scheme they had devised and if you thought they could be trusted to mean it you’d find out and  you’d come back. I wasn’t about advise you what to do when you obviously had better sources of advice than me. I was going to go back to work and hope the whole sorry mess blew over. And I did.”

“Wow, the whole thing was a gigantic bluff,” Aaron said smiling. But his eyes weren’t laughing anymore than they had been for the heart speech.

“Was it? You always have kept everyone separated doing their own job. I barely knew we have a Security department for example. Except they are there instantly if you need them. I thought maybe it was bluff, but Hiroshi saw me last year and started reminiscing about when you flew out to talk to him. Funny how people remember and replay a visit with an important person when mundane things are forgotten. A fellow might be in the army and sixty years later what he remembers is the day the President  visited his outfit and shook hands with him. Hiroshi said how impressed he was with your decisiveness. He remembered how you dashed to the plane in order to get there for a breakfast meeting and then called him when in the air to make the appointment, not the other way around. ‘How can you turn down a person with that force of will?’ he asked.”

“Well it’s been two years, those things get kind of hazy,” Aaron allowed and looked at Tim with honest affection. “You know, I told you I wanted you for my business guy. It wasn’t really your concern who took care of other matters, or how. I’d say everyone did a splendid job. It’s time for me to hand over the rest of my stock in the Beanstalk like I promised. You’ve had your fill of running back down here for little problems these last couple months. I expect I’ll come up for a weekend and see how you are doing. You can show me the sights, take me to Apollo Park.”

“I’d love that, but don’t dawdle. Things are so much cheaper now, and building up so fast, I expect to be able to buy commercial passage to Mars pretty soon. I think I’d like to see it before it is all crowded.”

Aaron nodded agreement but had that distracted look he always got when he was really thinking. “I expect you already know, it would be much easier to build an elevator on Mars than Earth. I mean, as long as you are going there anyway,” he pointed out.

END

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