Mackey Chandler

A short Family Law #3 snippet

“Commander Gordon,” Robert Frost, captain of the Sharp Claws appeared not just on the command audio feed but came up on the video feed to Gordon too. That indicated he had something more than routine to discuss.
“Captain Frost,” Gordon acknowledged and nodded, a human gesture many of them had assimilated.
“We have the first case of an infection from an alien life form. I just finished speaking with my medical officer about it. The crew woman who reported to sick-call tried to treat it herself but it didn’t improve.”
“Well, I guess all those protocols put in place by the Earth powers were not entirely without merit as our recent hosts implied.”
“Oh, we’ve known there are things one can catch already. Thorn has a whole list of them, mostly various amoebas and parasites. The people who keep an embassy open on the Elves’ world just in case they ever want to have anything to do with us get something called Blue Dot. They feel tired and get little blue bumps that go away in about three days. Nobody has ever isolated an organism causing it or documented a human to human transmission. I don’t think they’ve ever had a Derf on world to see if they catch it. The thing Earth worries about isn’t that sort of thing. They are fearful of something deadly like the flu or smallpox.”
“I take it this isn’t such a devastating disease or you’d be more upset?” Gordon prompted him.
“Yes, it another irritating thing that I’m pretty sure we can deal with, but it still seemed worth a word of warning.”
“Good, I’m putting our medial guy on the circuit. He’s our environmental officer too. Would you describe how you became aware of this and we’ll send the recording to our other vessels too.”
“The young Human woman is a previous Fargone missile tech who left their service before we recruited her. She’s twenty seven Fargone years old, a bit more than twenty eight T-years. She got a patch of white and itching to the inside of her little toe on her right foot. Thinking it common Athlete’s Foot she asked our medic for a tube of anti-fungal cream and she prophylactically applied it to the other gaps between her toes with clean hands , and then applied it to the afflicted area last. It didn’t improve, indeed it got worse, appeared on the other foot, and changed color to a yellowish hue. That’s when she returned to medical and sought help.”
“What is this Athlete’s Foot?” Gordon asked, puzzled. It seemed like an athletic foot should be a good thing.
“It’s a common fungal infection in humans. It is often spread in communal areas where people go bare footed. But it is incubated in the dark and moisture between their toes. The more so because shoes and socks keep the foot in the dark and limit drying air circulation. This is a Badger analog of a fungus, but the medical tech was smart enough to scan a swab and see there is alien genetic material present. Indeed it returned an error message because there are sequences not common to any Earth organisms.”
“How did you confirm it is a Badger organism?”
“We have some sequencing of Badger and Badger planet organisms from trading items. There were short sequence matches once the medical scanner was supplied a wider database. But we showed photographs of her foot to Badgers on the Dart and they immediately said: ‘Oh yeah, boot rot.’ It seems it is an occupational hazard to those who have to wear boots for their work such as caring for herd animals and working in industrial settings. Most Badgers avoid wearing an enclosing shoe unless absolutely necessary.”
“Then I assume they know how to treat it?” Thor asked on the audio feed.
“Yes, but their cure is to crush a sort of common weed that looks like a succulent and stuff the sticky mass in the toe of the boot. The other folk remedy is to find a source of mud near a natural body of water and coat the foot liberally with it, getting it between the toes thoroughly, and allow it to remain and dry out for a few days before washing it away. Apparently there are naturally antagonistic organisms in such mud. Since neither cure is available here my medic cut the upper section away from the toes on a pair of cloth shoes. We are coating one foot with a disinfectant wash we use for surgical prep and the other foot with a dilute solution of iodine.”
“Thank you. Keep me appraised if this becomes a bigger problem or doesn’t respond to treatment,” Gordon requested. He appeared ready to end the discussion but Lee spoke up.
“Gordon? Captain Frost? Just a thought here. Most Human laundry is vacuum tumbled. A freeze dried fungus may be dormant but not dead. You might make sure her socks get wet washed in chlorine bleach or something similar or they may just re-infect her.”
“That’s interesting,” Frost said looking surprised. “I’ll mention it to my medic right now.”
“How did you know that?” Gordon asked Lee after Frost was gone.
“When I lived with my relatives in Michigan for awhile their kids got Athlete’s Foot at the community pool and quickly spread it to everybody else at home. I remember my cousin’s wife putting bleach in the wash to get rid of it.”
“So you did learn some practical things on Earth,” Gordon said, amused.
“Just all kinds of skills,” Lee assured him, scowling. “I know how to form a jail gang to keep safe. I know how to get back in line quickly to get a second serving in the jail mess, and I know how to slowly eat a candy bar in tiny little nips and make it fill you up if they have you on lock-down and aren’t feeding you. I learned how to sit in the sun where there is a breeze to keep the mosquitoes from leaving you a mess of welts. I even know how to suck-up to a bureaucratic negative tax official so you get your case moved forward while the angry combative folks don’t get what they need. Doesn’t mean I want to live on a planet where I need those sort of skills,” she said, firmly.
There was a lot Lee still hadn’t told him about her time on Earth Gordon reflected.

A snippet of April #6

April slouched deep down in the oversized Hardoy chair. She’d bought two in this larger size thinking they would be more comfortable for Gunny and other big men. It turned out she preferred them. The back went up high enough for her to lean her head back and the extra width spread the heavy ballistic cloth flatter than a smaller chair with light rip-stop fabric. It supported her legs clear out to the rolled over padded edge under her knees.
In the half G apparent gravity that her apartment was kept at the chair was as comfortable as a hammock and almost as hard for her to lever herself from its depths. It was low enough she could safely sit her coffee mug on the floor beside her and plenty of room on each side to tuck snacks or reading material. She had her comp-pad laying screen down on her stomach at the moment paused on the newsfeed she was reading while she gazed out her view port.
The commonest size of apartment on Home wasn’t any bigger than a cheap motel room in North America and every square meter had to do double or triple duty. Kitchen tables and beds that folded up against the wall when not needed were common. They used the sort of appliances and fixtures common to travel trailers and motor homes on Earth. She had a huge apartment by local standards. So much so it embarrassed her on occasion as a visitor would freeze for an instant with surprise on their face when they stepped inside the door.
Her bodyguard Gunny had immediately rated it a four-car apartment upon stepping in the first time, since he had an annoying habit of comparing every place he saw in Home to the size of a garage you’d expect on a North American home. He was of the opinion what he called the half-car model might drive people crazy from confinement, but he had a skewed view of things having lived most of his life on Earth. April knew that some of the Japanese found the local accommodations compared very favorably to what they had lived in back home.
She’d been spoiled rotten growing up because her family was relatively well-to-do. Her grandfather had helped in the construction of Mitsubishi 3 and put all his money in both spun residential cubic and zero G industrial space. Also her father was the resident manager for Mitsubishi with a generous housing allowance.
As a child she had her own bedroom that was the size of a walk-in closet on Earth. Even more of a luxury was her own square meter all-in-one unit bath that became a shower stall with the door sealed. By orbital standards that was a palace. So she might have found the very smallest apartment oppressive herself. They were barely more than hot slots, but she’d never admit that to Gunny.
Behind her there were two sofas facing each other across a table on a rug that defined a formal living area. In smaller apartments they would be wall hung fold-downs from the wall. They were IKEA super light hide-a-beds in case she needed to put up guests. She had enough wall space for both a fairly large 32K video monitor and some big pieces of art. There was also room by the cooking area for a real table that could seat six which she left set up. It looked sturdy enough but the legs could be folded inside the drop apron and set to the side if the floor area was needed.
The kitchen against the inside bulkhead had a simple two burner stove and a microwave. April had the luxury of a small refrigerator too. A few folks didn’t bother with even that much, taking all their meals at the cafeteria. It was decent food too. Mitsubishi saw to that. If you had a stove that meant you needed dishes, pans, utensils and things like spices and volume to store them. It soon escalated to the status of a cooking hobby rather than any necessity. You easily could keep a few cans of self heating stuff like soup or stew for when you felt sick or were just too tired to trek down to the cafeteria. The cafeteria also would pack take away and there were cheap courier services to deliver it.
Further from the entry behind the kitchen and dining area the end of her space was divided into two small bedrooms with a bath between them. Each had a private section but a shared shower stall between them with lockout doors so only one side would open at a time. That was all framed off in temporary wall panels that jammed in place between overhead and deck with locking vertical seams.
If she let her body guard, Gunny, go it would be easy to remodel by removing the panels. Neither had brought idea up the idea of him leaving in some months now. His one month gig had turned into open ended employment, although less than full time. His status now was more ‘on call’, especially since Home was further from Earth and trouble now. He could take short security jobs with other associates.
The reason she pulled her chair over by the port was to enjoy the view. Right now the moon was in a thin crescent on the edge to her right. From this side there was no light reflected off the Earth so it was utterly dark on the left portion. You were made aware of it more by the absence of brighter stars than any illumination of the surface at all.
The sun was directly visible to the right of the moon and she had the port darkened until it was bearable. They were at that point in their orbit around the L2 point where the Earth disappeared behind the moon. In a couple hours the thin slice of moon would have the sun just barely shining past the edge of it and the blue marble of the Earth would rise from behind the opposite dark horizon of the moon to the left. It would display a crescent to the same side as the moon but a bigger section. They were much too far away to see the lights of cities in the dark section by eyeball.
Neither were there any lights to be seen from here on the dark portion of the moon. All the settlements of humankind were on the other face of the moon that stayed pointed to the Earth. The few places with any people or surface structures on this side were barely visible with a very good telescope when they were in sunlight. The headlamps of a rover or floods outside a habitat entry were insignificant.
April could still call her friend Heather at Central on the other side of the moon or anywhere on Earth for that matter. There were plenty of satellites in lunar orbit to relay the call. There were now several such systems so you couldn’t be cut off easily. It was on the one hand still conveniently close here. Hardly any further than Low Earth Orbit in terms of propellant cost. Being at L2 only cost about ten percent more it in freight costs over lifting from Earth to LEO. Unless you were in a hurry. On the other hand it was just distant enough from Earth to enhance their safety. The Earthies had never seemed able to resist the occasional pot shot at Home when they had been in LEO and the added distance was sufficient to give them warning of hostile approach.
That was all background however which all slowly turned every few minutes as the habitat rotated. Their current orientation kept the sun in view although it looped back and forth. Dominating the close view that stayed fixed was the nearby strut tapering from the ring in which April’s home was to the hub above. The same ring extended horizontally across the bottom of her view with another spoke extending to the far side of it a third of the way around. The view was dramatic with massive elements one rarely saw in Earth architecture. The only dynamic aspect of the close view was the slow dance of shadows back and forth as Home rotated.
The glass curved from knee level to almost straight overhead, and most of the new ring being built was visible by looking up. The spoke to the new ring were positioned at the same angles off the hub. April had wondered briefly if there was some reason for that but forgot to ask anyone.
There were only a few panels missing from the skin of the new ring and some gaps where ports like her own were not fitted yet. A few places scaffolding hung off the outside of the ring and two bright yellow lines and hand rails temporarily marked the inside limit on which suited workers could walk without danger of sliding down the curved surface. The ring wasn’t a perfectly circular cross section. There were center sections top and bottom that were flat before it started to curve.
Only a couple months ago there had been a lot more machinery, materials, and scooters floating two hundred meters or more back which was the closest safety zone in which material and equipment could be parked that would be used that shift. Construction was winding down.
Some items could be brought in by scooter by matching speed with the ring and side-slipping onto the inside surface. That was fun to watch. Her pilot friend Easy could do that as slick as catching an egg on a plate. Some were too massive and had to be lowered from the hub on a tensioned cable and slowly nudged up to matching rotational speed without over torquing the hub.
There was talk of extending the hub and putting a third ring on, but she’d read that would be the last as after that the calculations said a forth ring would be unstable in too many situations. It would make moving the habitat as they had from LEO an impractically slow operation to avoid over stressing a long thin hub. Nobody wanted to give up their mobility since it had proved so vital to their safety.
If they wanted to build a similar habitat it wouldn’t be difficult to park it in a slightly different halo orbit around L2 such that they both danced around the same point in space but never crossed over the center at the same time. A necessity that had made Gunny smile and explain to her the Earth custom of a figure eight race or demolition derby. She thought he was pulling her leg until she did a net search.
The area behind April had head room to stand but the glass overhead curved down until it met metal shell about knee high. Her chair was pulled forward close enough to the glass she had to be careful standing up. That low area helped make the room feel bigger but was rather limited in how you could use it. She had some storage cabinets made to fit up to the edge of the glass with castors so they could be pulled out of the low overhead. Heather’s mom had a similar lay-out and raised tomatoes and a few herbs in the narrow space along the port. April intended to do that too… someday. Now she just had a few green plants that helped keep the air pure. Most people had one or two even if they didn’t have exterior ports and needed to illuminate them. They were just nice to look at beside making the apartment smell better – something natural for the eye that wasn’t man made.
There was a pattern of light in the corner of the port she hadn’t noticed before, a little dappled splash of light from internal reflections in the port maybe… April squinted at it. But it looked odd. It wasn’t something her mind recognized as a familiar pattern. She levered herself out of the chair to investigate leaning over closer… and jumped back.
“Gunny!” she called out horrified. Gunny appeared from his room looking rattled from her tone with a pistol in hand. He scanned the empty apartment looking hard for something like a Ninja army hidden behind the sofas.
“Not there, here.” She said, pointing at the corner of the port.
He came over and leaned close as she had, but didn’t jump back. Then eased back a couple steps so he didn’t hit his head when he stood straight. He tried to look neutral but didn’t manage it to hide his irritation at alarming him.
“You want him shot? Most folks just pick a spider up in a tissue and flush him down the toilet.”
“I’ve never seen a spider on Home before. Aren’t they venomous?”
“A few. The really bad ones are big hunters and jumpers like tarantulas. Not little web weavers. None of them are deadly unless you have a sensitivity, but I have to admit some of the little house spiders can give you a nasty bite if you roll on them in your sleep. I’ve had a couple nip me but it didn’t even wake me. Down below nobody makes a house air tight to keep everything out. I’m just happy leave the mosquitoes behind on Earth. They really bother me. The filthy little things carry disease.”
“Just do the tissue thing would you? It doesn’t belong here.”
“OK,” Gunny agreed, but stopped after a few steps and pursed his lips, looking back thoughtfully.
“What?” April demanded.
“Nothing, I’ll get rid of him for you. I just have to ask. What has he been living on?”
That question didn’t make April happy at all.

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