Snippet – 2nd Chapter of “The Middle of Nowhere”

This is the third book in the “April” Series – “Down to Earth” being the second.

Chapter 2

The next morning when she got up it felt strange to be in her own room. Somehow it made her feel about eight years old. She showered and dressed, and when she went out Gunny was sitting watching the recording of the second assembly of Home. “You been up long?” she asked.

“Hours and hours. It’s been boring and I thought I’d go mad waiting.”

“Just got up, huh?”

“Yeah, just saw your mom before she took off. She explained something you should know. Part of the reason everybody was in such a jolly mood when we arrived. Last night when we were in Tonga, the Patriot Party made a big move and tried to pull a coup on Wiggen. They let them carry it out far enough to really nail down who were talkers and who seriously intended to overthrow the government. There were about seven hundred arrested and about three hundred killed. The Patriot Party is pretty much gutted. Word was getting out while we were on our way up in the shuttle. Most folks here figure you precipitated it with Harrison.”

“Does that change anything for you?”

“Not for the better! They were willing to allow me to be arrested if it helped them flush out all the bad guys. Never mind the danger to me or to you. That terminates my service. I gave them years of loyal service and they use me like a pawn. I’m done.”

“I don’t blame you, but wouldn’t it be smart to leave as gently as possible? You know they screwed you, but if you can leave and still get your retirement, sell your house, and feel free to go down there again openly…Well, I’ve heard living well is the best vengeance. If things get back to normal, and I can call Wiggen, I might even be able to put in a good word for you.”

“Amazing advise from a young lady who ends her disputes by orbital bombardment.”

“How about if we go get some breakfast. I think much better on a full belly.”

* * *

         Gunny declared the cafeteria breakfast ‘not bad’. April bought him the standard service plan and he got his own card. He could get anything on the menu as often as he wished. Any special orders or catering he had to pay upfront. Air and water she’d arrange off her pad.

April pointed out a number of characters and told a few stories about them. Nobody mobbed them but five different people stopped and welcomed her back. They walked out down the main business corridor and she pointed out the bank, employment agency, ship’s chandler and general store, as well as a shop new since she left offering bespoke clothing for men and women

“Is there a gun shop? I really need to buy something. Is that a problem?” he added.

“Nah, you want a laser?” April suggested. “I have to go get one from Jeff and explain I loaned mine out. I can try to get you a deal if you want.”

“As much as I’d like to try one out, I’d rather go with what I know right now.”

“In that case, Zach sells firearms,” she turned back to the Home Chandlery and Provision Company. “I remember seeing them on his special board.”

First think she did was buy Gunny spex and sign him up for com service. She figured she’d cover that as he might be on call. Then she let him see to his own pistol.

There were three pistols laying on the carpeted counter. Gunny wasn’t happy with any of them. Two were caseless Sigs and one was a Portio Custom Arms chambered for 10mm Hornady. He’d never carried that caliber before, but it looked like he was going to try it.

“What kind of ammo you stock in 10mm?”

“Full metal jacket for cheap target shooting, frangible copper rounds, special segmented defense rounds,  memory metal rounds, armor piercing and special hard core armor piercing.”

“A box of each and three of the cheap plinking stuff. I need a hanging holster and a lefty inside the waistband clip holster. You got a leather holster? I’d rather that than synthetic.”

“I do indeed. And I will throw in a free cleaning kit and a bottle of neatsfoot oil.”

Gunny tried his new card and was relieved when it worked. He loaded and holstered the new gun and clipped it inside his pants on the left, cross draw. The rest was bagged. He reached and touched hands lightly with Zack instead of shaking grounder style.

“Ah, another little custom thing,” April said, embarrassed she hadn’t told him.

“Yeah Mr. Muños taught me that one last night in the cafeteria. I think he’s going to be a friend. He impressed me. That feels better,” he said, pressing the pistol against his hip with his elbow.

They walked back home in companionable silence. “What is on the agenda for the day?” He finally asked when they were inside.

“I need to talk with my Grandpa about Bob’s businesses. I suppose Jeff and Heather next and Eddie Persico or the other way around if one is busy,” she prioritized. She put a call in to her com and waited. “And I need to get back with my Japanese study group and see if I learned anything visiting the Santos. I’m hoping my instructor thinks my accent is a little less horrible.”

“You’re still in school?” The idea seemed to surprise him.

“I don’t ever expect to not be in school. There’s too much to learn. I need a ticket for ground landing shuttles too, and I bet I’ll never get back to Hawaii before my student driver permit expires. I’ll have to start all over again,” she complained.

Gunny just horse snorted through his nose in amusement.

“Hello little gal,” her Grandpa greeted her on the com screen.

“Gramps when can we get together and talk?”

“Right now if want. I’m at home.”

“Yeah, please. Come on around.” His apartment was cut out of common cubic, like Bob’s, but it had its own door on the public corridor. It was a seven meter walk. He had the codes so he came right in a minute later. April introduced Gunny and he went off to the other side of the room and seemed to get engrossed in his pad. Gramps had a cheap portfolio, well stuffed.

“I know you’re probably wondering if this was something your brother did after your breakup with him. I think you will be happy to know he wrote a will leaving everything to you right after your first business venture together. Remember what that was?” He asked smiling.

“The  meal delivery service? Where we picked up a meal from the cafeteria and delivered it to peoples apartments? I was what? Nine years old?”

“No, even a little before that. I think you supplied the money again, because he’s spent all his and he took care of all the footwork.”

“Oh, the used clothing. He offered to buy clothing from tourists after they wore it. Why clean it or take it back to Earth when he’d give them more than the retail price for dirty and used? That worked pretty well didn’t it? Even though we got maybe two or three tourists a month back then. And he picked up the down leg luggage shipping it freed up cheap too.”

“It did,” her Gramps agreed. “It’s interesting, Bob sold the company off, but retained an interest. He was still getting a small income from it. He did that with almost every venture that succeeded. Individually they aren’t much but they add up to a nice little income. Here, there is a folder on each one, and notes about any obligations you have.” He gave her a short stack of hard copy and a memory chip.

“Then making me his heir wasn’t something he did in guilt. It gives me hope I didn’t cause his other – behaviors.”

“We’re all responsible for ourselves little gal. You can influence people, but blaming your behavior on others is a lie. Nobody made your brother selfish,” he insisted. “If you assign blame for what a person is then who made Eddie generous? See? If a person has good qualities people are happy to allow it is their own volition. In fact I imagine it was just plain inertia that you stayed his heir. It reflected his earlier personality, not lately.”

“I don’t understand why that happened. Mom and Dad or not selfish. You certainly aren’t selfish. He wasn’t raised that way so where did it come from?”

Her Gramps shrugged. “People are complicated. I’m not sure it is learned. There are all sorts of things folks do that we just put up with because they are not extreme enough to warrant intervention. Where do you draw the line? Pretty soon you are counseling people for taking the last biscuit.”

April remembered some fellows who rushed to hog all the stuff in the cafeteria, and saying something didn’t sound too extreme to her at all, but she didn’t say it.

“We gave Bob’s clothing and shoes and stuff we were sure you wouldn’t want to charity. Fred Folsom in station com who preaches a Sunday service keeps a locker of household things for folks who need a hand.” He explained.

“We saved this for you though,” he said opening the box he’d kept to last and laying the contents out on the couch between them.

A few memory modules were a mystery she’d have to explore, a food service card apparently he didn’t like to carry, A couple certification cards for environmental tech and some IT specialties. A couple hard prints of photos. The one on top was a girl on a beach. That must be her grandparent’s neighbor in Australia. Decency dictated she should be notified.

There was a short stack of business cards with a rubber band. The top one was blank with a hand written blurb, probably a password. It said – SAF)dz$PckXib.  Out of curiosity she checked and the other side was blank too. A tiny two bladed pen knife was sharp and apparently unused. It had elaborately embossed and enameled handles with a level of finish that said expensive. There was also a common multi-tool still new in the box.

Oddly there was a man’s tie, something she had never seen Bob wear. It was so different she could see why they saved it out of the clothing for her. Besides being a mystery. It was very pretty, with shades of blue and grey in a fine basket weave and subtle dark red edging to the grey parts, rolled to fit in a small clear box that was almost a cube. On the back a little label said, ‘Hermes – Paris and underneath that – SILK. She rolled it back up and fit it in the box again.

“I suspect these things were gifts,” her Gramps suggested.

That left a small decorative box. It had a sliding top in a dovetail grove, but no notch for your finger like most of that sort had. Fitted so closely it wouldn’t slip on its own. The grain was matched to the body so maybe they didn’t want to mar that. There was a band of carving around the sides and a very complicated dragon inlaid on each end. The inside was divided with thin wooden partitions.

There was a substantial rose gold chain. What they call an anchor chain but the links were puffy like they had been made out of dough and allowed to rise. There were some plain gold hoops, an impressive pair of simple diamond studs and the emerald and diamond earrings her grandparents had given Bob. April pulled those out and held them. She couldn’t help it, she started quietly sobbing.

“Those mean something to you,” he grandpa said, arm around her shoulders. She couldn’t answer she just nodded yes. She put them back in the box. The chain she put on over her head. Her Gramps held her until she stopped crying. Then they put everything back in the portfolio and  closed it up.

“I’ll read the business summaries in the next couple days,” April promised.

“They’ve been waiting, a couple more days isn’t going to matter,” he assured her. He went in the kitchen and made them tea without asking. He used the big tea pot and carried a cup to Gunny too who nodded his thanks.

“What are you going to do now?” her Gramps asked gently. He must think her fragile, April thought. He never used that hushed tone of voice.

“I have to see Heather and Jeff, she still has the Moon thing going on. Eddie deserves to hear what all his money bought. That looks a little better than it did yesterday. At least we know the Patriot party isn’t going to be in power next year. What are you doing now?”

“I’m helping Heather get her expedition ready as I promised you. Jeff and I are still working on some things even though we have the next generation of ship designed. We are saving up ideas for the next level of ship, and beyond. I’m getting some treatments from Jelly you were worried I’d skip. He can do everything important for life extension therapy without me going down to Italy. I’ll see you soon, Dear,” her Gramps promised and patted her knee. He got up and made a abbreviated wave of his hand to Gunny who wasn’t even looking up, and left.”

She took the personal items in her room and returned to the living area. It seemed rude to disappear and leave Gunny alone without a word. It wasn’t like having a guest,” she thought. But it wasn’t anything else that fit the rules of behavior she’d picked up either. She contacted Jeff and Heather and agreed to see them over supper. Gunny saved her from wondering what to do by announcing he was still not adjusted to Zulu time and he was going to take a nap. That sounded pretty good actually, so she said she would nap too.

Snippet – First chapter of “The Middle of Nowhere”

The Middle of Nowhere

By: Mackey Chandler

Third book in the “April” series.

Sequel to “Down to Earth”

       April was tired and a bit depressed. Her trip down to Earth was a failure. She hadn’t rescued the two lieutenants who had asked her to help them get to Home. She had certainly tweaked the Giant’s Nose as far as irritating North America. But she couldn’t see she had really improved anything about the USNA ignoring their treaty obligations with Home. She’d spent a great deal of Eddie’s money, but if it made war less likely as he was hoping she didn’t see how. His fortune was still at risk if whoever replaced President Wiggen wanted war with Home.

About the only thing she could claim to have accomplished for sure was Preston Harrison was not going to ride the Patriot Party ticket to the USNA Presidency. He’d tried to arrest her and she’d shot him dead for his trouble. Her Earth hosts the Santos intimated that might not have been the best PR move of all time. However the fool swore to her face he’d kill her family and nation as his first official act. What did he expect?

Whatever their private plans and opinions April doubted other candidates would make such a public threat if they ever intended to stand under an open sky again. She’d certainly be happy to put a smoking crater where any of them showed themselves. Harrison had certainly underestimated how difficult one young girl could be to drag off under arrest.

Things were sort of a mess. Her Earth hosts were unsafe to go back to their home and instead were going off to do her job and rescue the men she’d intended to extract. Her bodyguard was sitting in the other shuttle couch beside her, apparently betrayed by his own government, the same as the lieutenants. Mixed up in politics that didn’t concern him. Assigned by Wiggen it was true, but because she’d asked for him, and she felt responsible.

She had to sort out the businesses she’d inherited from her brother. She wasn’t even sure what all of them were and if he’d left anybody in charge running them. There was the real possibility some people would blame her for precipitating his apparent traitorous theft of the armed merchant Home Boy and the destruction of it in Lunar orbit while collaborating with the USNA.

Since she’d walked away from her interest in their courier business and left her share to him she certainly had not expected him to leave anything to her. She had bluntly made clear she didn’t approve of his business practices and had separated herself before going down to Earth. So why had he left everything to her? Why not their parents or her grandfather? A friend even, if he had one. Was it guilt?

Just about everyone she knew had a good reason to chew her out or blame her for things ending in such a muddled mess. She wasn’t looking forward to facing the music.

This was a freight shuttle, so it would dock at the north end. They wouldn’t go to the passenger dockage for two people. Not unless they were high end VIPs, and VIPs didn’t ride freight shuttles. To switch docks was another hour for the flight crew, a couple hundred bucks of propellant for maneuvering jets and an expensive hour on the shuttle airframe to move it. The north end was industrial and lacked carpet and bright colors and shops. There would be an unlocked com pad at the airlock with a camera and touch pad for crew. Jon might not even send security all the way up to the north hub for one person knowing both crew and she would direct them to check in.

“I don’t know much about Home,” Gunny spoke up from the other couch. “I mean I know about you, because I read your folder. That told me a little bit about Home, but otherwise I only know what I’ve seen on the news, and we know how reliable that is. Are there any customs I should be aware of to avoid offending people?”

“I’ve been thinking about my own problems so much I didn’t stop and think about what you need in practical terms. I have a bad habit of assuming everybody knows what I do and probably more. Look, I’m not sure who I’ll get you placed with. I have to look at the companies my brother left me. One of them may need you,” she assured him.

“Believe it or not we got an actual employment agency running before I came down. How about if you stay on as my bodyguard for a month? You hang out with me and I’ll try to explain things as they come up. You can read the recordings of the public meetings when Home was formed. Especially the few before the war will explain how we voted to break off with North America. You can meet people and get a feel for how things work. I have to go around and smooth things out with a whole lot of people. Don’t be surprised if some of them are angry with me. I didn’t get the basic things I intended to done on Earth and blew a bundle trying. But I don’t think anybody will be mad enough to hurt me. Guarding me shouldn’t be hazardous.”

“How much you paying, and where would I stay?”

“Say, a hundred-ten for the month plus basic cafeteria access and your air and water fees. The Holiday Inn is really expensive for a month. Let me see if the company still lets transients rent out space in the company barracks.

“A hundred-ten?”

“Yeah, thousand dollars, USNA, unless you insist on EuroMarks.”

“That seems, generous,” he said. So generous he was somewhat dubious.

“It won’t after your first hundred dollar t-shirt and you need to buy lunch off station and it’s a forty-five dollar cheeseburger and a fifteen buck beer with a ten buck tip.”

“I see,” Gunny said slightly stunned.

“If we hadn’t had the devaluation back the year before I was born think what it would be.”

“That’s of course easy for me to remember. My paycheck was suddenly one tenth what it was the month before. The prices didn’t all instantly adjust either. I kept a bunch of clean uncirculated notes figuring they would be worth more as collectibles in my lifetime rather than turn them in. I’m pleased I’m on the plus side of that deal already.”

“But if they were in your house or a bank box you might never recover them.”

“No, no. They are out in the piney woods. You have to dig down as far as my arm will reach  under a big old pine tree where you have to crawl under the branches. You get down there and you find a screw out cap. Then the stuff is on a line hanging down at the end of a three meter plastic pipe. There’s old money, some newer money, a few gold coins, and a spare pistol. I’m sure I’ll be able to recover it someday. I have the GPS coordinates memorized.”

“Kind of hard to do that on an orbital habitat.”

“Not at all. I can hide stuff on a ship or an aircraft. That’s one way I can earn my keep. I will teach you how to cache stuff so others don’t find it while I’m working for you. Perhaps there are a few other tricks an old man can teach you if you want.”

April was still processing the original question. “Gunny, we don’t have many customs different from North America, I can’t think of anything important, but I’m sure we’ll run into little things as you get settled in. But we do have a lot less laws. Don’t assume anything you see is illegal by ground side standards. You can let your minor child alone in your apartment, or let them go to the cafeteria unsupervised. They can be in public in short sleeves or even shorts. Marijuana and tobacco are legal to own and use, but it is against regulations to pollute the air or have an open flame in public spaces. And you can own and carry any crazy sort of weapon you want.”

“Burn in thirty seconds,” announced their pilot. After a very sort burn there were a couple minor taps on the attitude jets and the lurch of the grapples pulled them the final couple centimeters flush to the station with a >clunk<.

The number two passed through and opened the airlock hatches. The pilot waited at the hatch of the flight deck for them to exit before she’d leave her vessel. There was the slight pressure change when it opened and they had to swallow and force a yawn to get their ears to feel right. Neither had any carry on to deal with. April motioned Gunny ahead. He’d never been in zero G and she wanted to watch and help him. He was so big he sort of blocked the view, which is why she was to the outer door before she saw it was the tunnel for the south end passenger docks.

She grabbed the edge of the flange. “Why aren’t we up at the freight docks?” she asked their copilot. “You didn’t have to dock here for us.”

“We were told the north docks would create a problem. It isn’t set up to handle a crowd meeting the shuttle,” she explained.

Just then Gunny reached the end of the tube. It did have a line for newbies to go hand over hand. April heard a murmur of voices. She hurried after him without another word to the crewwoman. Where the tunnel opened up there was Jon manning the entry station himself, and here outside spin where they restricted access were her parents and Jeff and Heather, Ruby and Easy, Eddie, Doris, her Grandpa Happy, and a couple of Jon’s off duty people as well as a half dozen of the militia guys.

Around the entry bearing to spin there were folks elbow to elbow all around the rail looking through at them, and there was a banner strung beneath it that said, “Welcome Home April”. It was so long you had to watch it a full turn to read it all. The crowd noise indicated there were quite a few out of sight on the other side of the rail. She looked up there and most of them waved. What else could she do? She waved back. Then a dozen people all tried to hug her at once and she was squished. Somebody had her left hand and was patting the top. She couldn’t even see who it was so she just squeezed back.

She folded her arm over her ribs worried she’d get bumped but people were careful though they still reached to touch her hand.

Gunny had been signing in at the entry com before she’d looked up and waved. It didn’t look like she was going to get a chance to log in. She was more or less dragged along by both hands and elbows as the mass of friends and family all took off for the rim of the bearing like a bird flock. Somebody kindly grabbed her by the belt in back and pulled her over to the rail as they approached it.

She gave the rail a symbolic touch but there was no need to swing over it. More hands grabbed her patting back or arm or shoulder, whatever they could reach, urging her along and a succession of people most of whom she at least knew by sight hugged her.

The astonishing thing was the brief greetings spoken softly in her ears as she was passed along. “Good job, good job, welcome back.” – “You scared us. Damn Earthies.” – “Hated to see you on the slumball, but thanks for going.” – “‘Bout time you came Home.”

She had home and a bed in mind. They ended up at the cafeteria. A hand fell on her shoulder and a male voice asked what she wanted? “Coffee please,” she told the fellow, giving the hand a touch. Wasn’t he from maintenance? She wasn’t sure. The coffee when it came had whisky in it. Pretty good whisky by the taste of it. She didn’t object. Music started up and people started dancing on the other end of the room. The chairs all scooted down and one with Gunny was inserted next to her.

Somebody reached past and slid a plate unasked in front of April and then Gunny. They had a nice little steak and fresh rolls and butter. It didn’t take long before a cold shrimp plate and a sweet potato casserole and fruit salad got passed down the table to them.

Gunny had a glass of amber fluid, the same as hers minus the coffee. “I’ve never seen so many civilians with weapons,” he said in shock, “and all of them pissed off at you just like you warned me,” he said straight faced over the noise. “I’m moving. People want to talk to you,” he pointed out with folks reaching across his dinner and leaning out past him. He moved down to the end of the table but opposite so he could see her.

The chairs next to April kept changing owners. Eddie took too long talking to her and somebody grabbed his chair back and dragged him off into the crowd. The next chair was just slid down and it was her mom.

“I am so glad to see you,” April turned and hugged her as best she could sitting down. “I thought I’d just come home and get Dad to settle my hired man Gunny in and I could go to bed and sleep a shift. Do they still sell transient bunking down in the Animal House?”

“He’s your body-guard isn’t he?” her mom asked.

“Yeah, but I just have him on a thirty day contract. I imagine I’ll find him a slot somewhere else. I don’t really need him here,” she insisted. “He’s sort of another rescue. He got caught up in the politics for guarding me and they wanted to arrest him.”

“You should keep him close, not all the way across the station. We boxed all Bob’s stuff up for you, and gave away his clothing to charity, but the cubic is still partitioned off and there is still a bed in there. Why don’t you stick him in there?” her Mom offered.

“Wouldn’t that make you feel weird, having somebody in Bob’s room?”

“I’m not going to make it a shrine. Some folks leave everything like it was as if maybe the person will walk back in some day if they keep it the same. I’m sad, but that’s just sick.  I’m not in denial, Honey. I just haven’t got around to hiring out the remodeling to tear it out. Go ahead and use it. Even a hot bunk with a small locker is around two hundred-fifty a day in company housing. No reason to throw that away. Besides, if you have a body guard use him for now. The same people who would hurt you down on Earth might infiltrate somebody here.”

“Okay Mom, thanks.” April had worried. She thought her Mom favored Bob, just like she was sure she and her Dad were closer. But if she didn’t seem any warmer she didn’t seem any cooler either. That was a relief.

When Bob had gotten so selfish and driven he’d tried to take advantage of their parents. Her Dad had firmly resisted. April wasn’t sure if her Mom could have resisted without her Dad to quietly point out what was reasonable and not. She worried she’d be blamed for Bob’s actions, but so far nobody was looking daggers at her.

“I’m whipped. This is nice, but I need to get home and get some sleep.”

“Collect your man then and we’ll go home. These folks are all charged up and out of sync with your day by almost twelve hours. Let them party on and you can talk to them when you aren’t sleep deprived.”

April gave Gunny a ‘come on’ jerk of the head and he excused himself. It was Mr. Muños next to him. That was a good choice to find out a lot about Home in short order. But he had to be tired too. He could speak to him another day.

Making a book is easy – Hah!

Don’t you believe it for a minute.

I started out using MobiPocket Creator to make a file which the Amazon web site would convert into a Kindle book. It sort of worked.

Of course it looked like it was assembled by a typesetter on LSD. There were unexplained gaps and lines and indents…and sometimes what I wanted centered would be on the left margin. At one point all my hyphens showed up as solid black triangles.

Well it turned out a great deal of the trouble was I didn’t know how to use MS Word properly to produce a correct .doc file in the first place. I’m 64 years old and learned to type on a mechanical typewriter. It’s a miracle I could work around being deaf to learn to word process on a computer at all.

It certainly didn’t help that Word 2009 fights me tooth and nail in many ways. If you started any files before knowing you MUST have a .doc file to convert it will never forget you started that document without specifying a .doc file in your options. It will change back to a .docx file at every opportunity – even if you go in and change the default in the system registry. You must convert the document – reset the options to save as .doc and do a save as choosing .doc – three separate steps every time you save. It’s worse than Simon says. MS is evil because they know better than the customer what is good for him.

I really didn’t appreciate that the one book I bought made fun of elderly people for using the TAB function to indent paragraphs. But after taking the time and space to mock us he said it was not the purpose of his book to teach us how to use Word. He assumed (demanded) that we know how to use it properly in order to follow his instructions, although he obviously had cataloged a number of such common errors. He was above sharing them with us.

I now have a copy of the software caliber downloaded and I understand it will make an even cleaner file for Amazon to convert. Perhaps after I am done learning it I can get the page numbers for the table of contents over on the right side of the page where they belong.

I’m not sure – but I think those of you who have bought my books and found these terrible formatting errors can delete the copy in their Kindle and force a newer copy from your Manage my Kindle page. I’d appreciate your experience if you try that.

I very much appreciate all of you readers who looked beyond these faults to enjoy the story I had to tell. It is of great value to me if you will give me your thoughts and review my books on Amazon. – Thank you. – Mac’

April is FREE again Sat. 4/21

Help yourself please. I’ve updated the file on Amazon to make it much easier to read. I’ll post about that later tonight.

If you have an older copy of “April” you should be able to get the update by deleting and getting it again off your Manage my Kindle page.

“April” is a free download Sunday 4/8 on Kindle

No Fun at All – Mackey Chandler

Jeremy Kyle was hurting. He’d got a whipping from his uncle on top of the one from Billie Lee Osborne and a lecture about how the only way to deal with a bully was to stand your ground and fight them even if you got whipped. It rankled him that his uncle felt it his place to act like his daddy even if he was living under the man’s roof.

He was still heart broke that his daddy died going on a year ago now and instead of sympathy uncle Earl seemed to think everything gave him cause to ‘toughen’ the boy up. It was irritating as hell that his old uncle could still whoop his ass one handed when he was fourteen. With Billie Lee he stood a chance. That boy was just mean and didn’t have his full growth much more than Jeremy. Uncle Earl was a full head high over him and twice as wide. Years of felling trees and cutting lumber gave him a grip like a vise and massive shoulders and arms.

It didn’t seem like he’d ever grow out of his skinny long arms and legs. He had delicate long fingers his grandma said were meant to play piano, but with his ma and pa dead and living off the charity of relatives that was a joke. He didn’t know anybody that could afford a piano. He didn’t even know anybody who had a house big enough to fit one in.

Uncle Earl was agreeable that Jeremy might not win a fight. He admitted up front he’s got the bad end of a few over the years. He pointed out some fathers would give a boy a whipping for losing.  But he was absolutely firm that you had to give it a go. He wasn’t mad Jeremy lost. He was mad he tried to run.

“You watch all those nature shows on the TV,” he reminded him. “There two kinds of critters in this world. There’s the ones that get up in the morning and go looking for breakfast, and  there’s the ones that wake up and are looking over their shoulder scared before they ever take a morning piss, because they know they are breakfast. What do you call them?”

“Prey,” Jeremy supplied.

“Well if you want to be like that, looking over your shoulder and jumping at every little noise afraid all your life then keep running. Once you make a habit of that Billie Lee and all his kind will never give you any peace. They’ll go after anything running like a mean dog.”

“My teacher is just as likely to punish me as the guy making me fight,” Jeremy pointed out. “She and the district head don’t believe in self defense for anything. I’m going to have detentions or even get suspended if I leave a mark on Billie Lees face.”

“Miss Blanchard is paid by the government to come up here in the hills of Appalachia,” he said with a sarcastic twist. He never did like that word. “She’s set to teach us poor hillbillies about civilization like we was a bunch of heathen savages. That’s fine, you need all your letters and such you can get to live today. But this isn’t Cleveland and things don’t work in the hills like they do there and maybe never will. You do what’s by God right and I’ll stand by you with Miss Blanchard. If you get a suspension, well they got to let you come back. I spent a few days in jail when I was younger. If you aim to never upset nobody you’re gotta be a damn little mouse of a man.”

That was yesterday and it was good it was Friday. He had the weekend to get over being sore and he didn’t have to see Billie Lee again for a couple days. Billie was always all agitated about something. By Monday chances were he’d be on somebody else’s case. Miss Blanchard ground her teeth a lot dealing with Billie and said he was borderline something or the other that didn’t sound good. But she’d never lift a hand to him no matter how much trouble he stirred up.

He didn’t want to see uncle today either. He got a hunk of cornbread left over from yesterday and a candy bar he had saved in his dresser. He put a length of fishing line wound on a stick and a snuff tin of hooks and bobbers in his jeans. If he decided to fish he’d cut a pole wherever he happened to be.

His daddy had given him an old nine-shot .22 revolver before he died. Uncle had not taken that away. He actually felt better about Jeremy roaming around out in the woods if he took it. They just had another big talk like he’d had with his dad about responsibility and never, never, ever, taking it to school. That got tucked in his waist and some loose cartridges in his jeans pocket with the pocket knife and the few coins he had right now.

He had on his sneakers that were too ratty for school, with holes worn in the sides where they bend, his Tractor Supply Company t-shirt and a baseball hat that said DRB across the front. He had no idea what that stood for. It had been in the lost and found box at the diner forever so he’s rescued it. That’s where he’d got his sunglasses too.

* * *

            Diroc worried the last little bit of flesh off the bone and tossed it in the bushes. He had gobbled it down so fast he let out a mighty belch. Yorpac hadn’t been as thrilled with the deer as his partner. It had given them a good chase, and the pheromones it threw off in terror had been just lovely. He just didn’t care for the flavor. The People had excellent taste and sense of smell. He could taste too much of the bitter plants the deer had been eating in its flesh.

Still, this world might be worth claiming as a private hunting preserve. The People did not trade nor did they form alliances. They claimed worlds as private preserves and occasionally they found those who objected. About two thousand years ago they had found a race who objected so strenuously that six worlds of the People had been rendered uninhabitable. They now refrained from any expansion in that direction.

This world had a very heavy population of bipeds that looked like they really needed to be managed back to a more sustainable level. The People always saw to it that a race they owned was taken care of and properly managed and responsibly harvested. They probably would not be as fast as the deer they’d just run down, but maybe they’d taste better too.

The alien chemistry of the deer didn’t bother them at all. They had a digestive system that processed anything remotely organic with an efficiency that made a Death Angel mushroom a spicy garnish. Diroc had eaten a discarded plastic water bottle a few miles back and thought it had a pleasant texture even if it had little flavor. In fact the People sorted others into two groups, fun to eat, and impossible to digest due to owning Nova bombs.

Just another half hour and they’d come to a cluster of the bipeds and get a decent sample.

* * *

            Jeremy was deep in thought climbing the long familiar trail. He’d cut himself a good hiking staff from a downed maple tree. He’d eaten the cornbread and was saving the candy bar for later. He didn’t think he was done with Billie Lee and he was working himself up to a good snit. If he couldn’t punch his face in without getting blamed for defending himself then he needed to use his head. How could he give him a really memorable thumping and not leave a mark above the neck? Didn’t somebody tell him a piece of hose left no marks?

He looked up and there were two very strange creatures walking down the trail toward him side by side. They were sort of dog like, but big for a dog. The head and shoulders were kind of exaggerated like a male lion. They wore stuff, not clothing exactly, but a collar and a sort of harness around the shoulders and crazy as it seemed, what looked like safety glasses.

When they got real close they had a pink triangle of a nose like a cat, and they were both actively twitching. You didn’t have to be real smart to see they were not animals.

As they came down the trail well, here came a native, climbing to meet them. He should have been able to see them from far away but he didn’t slink away into the brush.

“Is he blind?” Diroc asked. “Why didn’t he take off when he saw us?”

“He’d have to be deaf too, not to hear you bellowing to me.”

“Maybe we look like some local animal. When he gets closer and realizes we’re different he’ll soil himself. Be ready for him to give us a good chase.”

“He’s awfully little,” Yorpac remarked critically. “The ones we saw from the ship were easily twice his size.”

When they got close they all stopped. Jeremy could not have reached out and touched them, but he could with the hiking staff. He was well inside their jumping distance, but he had no reference for comparison.

Now that he was close they looked very much like the paper mache lions  on each side of the entryway at the Thai restaurant in town. Sort of cartoonish. He wasn’t sure what business these weird creatures had in mind, but he could sure tell they were not from around here.

This was his country, his horizons kept him from thinking his planet, and his mountain, and sure as hell his trail. He had pretty well had all the back down and run knocked out of him yesterday so that option just never occurred to him.

“He doesn’t smell afraid,” Diroc said disappointed.

“No, no I think that’s anger, Yorpac agreed. It was actually more entertaining because Diroc was so out of his element with anything that didn’t flee.

“A little noise and a display of teeth will fix that,” Diroc assured him. He didn’t step closer but he leaned forward and opened his mouth wide and gave a mighty roar.

Jeremy smacked him right on that pink nose with the maple shaft so hard the last six inches busted off. He was – quick.

“Oh, oh, oh, I think he busted it.” He said holding his nose in both hands.

“Oh come on you big sissy. It isn’t even bleeding.”

Then the native did the damnest thing. He clearly motioned with his free hand for them to get out of his way.

“Of all the impudent…I’m going to just shoot this crazy biped. He’s obviously deranged. Probably driven out by his own kind to wonder the hills until he dies.” He drew his weapon and pointing at the sky he thumbed the charging bar with a chuh-chunk.

Jeremy had been taught responsibility for owning a pistol, but when somebody pulled a gun out and waved it around that was a direct threat. He pulled the .22 out of his waist and held it the same as the critter, and rolled the hammer back. The click, click, click was loud in the silent woods.

“I do believe that is a projectile weapon,” Yorpac cautioned his friend.

“It doesn’t look like much of one,” Diroc said. But he kept his gun pointed at the sky.

“I’ll have that engraved on your memorial plaque in your clan hall if you are wrong.”

“He smells really pissed off now,” Diroc noted.

“Uh-huh. Why don’t we just back up a bit?” he suggested sensibly.

After they had a little distance opened up Yorpac suggested, “How about if you turn around and holster your weapon? I’ll keep an eye on him.” When Dirac had done so Jeremy stuck his pistol back in his waist band.

Yorpac considered the conciliatory nature of that matching gesture and the distance they had opened up and turned away like his friend. Not without a certain itchy feeling at having his back to the native, even at a good long range for a hand weapon.

“I’m pretty sure that was an immature specimen of the locals,” Yorpac decided. Unsaid was if the kids were so hard case nasty and run around the woods armed what were the adults like?

“Yeah, they looked so promising from afar.”

“My vote is we write this one off,” Yorpac suggested. “It looks to be more trouble than it is worth.”

“Oh yeah, Diroc agreed. “The locals are just no damn fun at all!”

END

New book up – “Down to Earth”

April seems to make a habit of rescues. Now two lieutenants from the recent war appeal to her for help to reach Home. The secret they hold makes their escape doubtful. Her family and business associates all think that is a good idea. North America, the USNA, has been cheating in their treaty obligations and a public figure like April taking a very public vacation there would be a good way to remind them of their obligations. Wouldn’t it? Things get difficult enough just getting back Home is going to be a challenge. It’s a good thing she has some help. Why does everything have to be so complicated?

How it goes…

I ended up giving away over 5,000 copies of “Paper or Plastic?”

I also saw somebody returned a copy of “April” for refund. That’s the first that is ever happened. Upon investigating I found I had edited a typo somebody pointed out and when I submitted the new file it did not convert properly to Kindle. All the hyphens were solid black triangles. New lesson – view manuscript after any change no matter how minor.

What’s happening 3/31/2012

I’ve finished the sequel to “April”. It will be titled “Down to Earth” per beta reader Xander Opal. It has to have a little editing and it will go up as my fifth Kindle book.

The third book in the series is started and will be titled “The Middle of Nowhere”

“Paper or Plastic?” already has over a thousand free downloads the first day. – Make that 2k.

Free book 3/31-4/1 “Paper or Plastic?”

Paper or Plastic? was not the first book I wrote, but it was the first I published to Kindle.

It started because of a discussion in the AIM baenbarchat room on channel 5. It was remarked science fiction has exotic scenes of star ship bridges and exotic worlds, but few everyday places. So of course I had to write one that goes into a grocery store and other common places.

I have recently finished a sequel to my book “April” and it will be my fifth book on Kindle.

Sequel to “April” – second chapter

I’m well along on my sequel to April. I have not named it yet and no, May will not do. It has some necessary lead in material that any sequel needs to catch the reader up to date. It may be a spoiler if you have not read “April” so be warned if you don’t want to see spoilers.

The first chapter is a set up for further action in the book and not very interesting standing alone. That’s why I went on to the second chapter. As always any insights and comments are very welcome as long as they are slavishly positive fan boy raves.

Chapter 2

April carefully appraised the gentleman across from her. He looked older to her in the way she was coming to associate with Earthies. However she knew from her research yesterday he was only forty-two. On Home now the norm was to have life extension therapy or LET and start it as early as possible. That meant as soon as a person was firmly into adolescence for most doctors.

When it was new many people delayed for years because of the expense and fear of leading edge treatments, waiting to see how others fared before they committed themselves. But now it was cheap enough if you could afford to live above the atmosphere you should be able to buy life extension, and a whole generation of pioneers had grown from adolescence to adulthood carrying the basic elements of LET. There wasn’t enough data yet to show getting an early start had any great advantage, but that was the common assumption. There was enough data to show all the dire warnings about sudden gross mutation and raving madness were nonsense, mostly.

April’s parents first bought it for themselves. Obviously they needed it more, and still managed to afford it for her and her brother later. Only her grandfather was still visibly lacking the treatment and April was afraid to ask him why. She knew he had the money to buy it.

Below on Earth it was still priced beyond most of the middle class unless they devoted their whole means of living toward it. It was controversial and even outlawed some places. Oh, in absolute numbers there were a whole lot more North Americans with life extension treatments done on them than the whole population of Home, but they were a tiny fraction of the population down below, wealthy, and already keeping out of the public eye. The smart ones kept their status secret for their own safety, some politicians and media stars adding gray to their hair now instead of color.

Once looking older might have built confidence in a person because their face to the world declared this was a person with some experience in life. Now, on Home it was more likely to say – Here is someone that is poor and can’t afford to take care of himself or worst here is a religious nut who feels life extension is profane, a presumption to medically turn aside the stroke of heaven. Such a religious stand on LET was not exclusive to such groups as the Amish, but common to many who otherwise embraced a modern society.

Her breakfast companion was bald on top with a wreath of short gray hair reaching in a band around the back of his head from temple to temple. That was unusual because there were cheap treatments to fix that problem which didn’t involve LET at all. But it was a sure sign he had not started any life extension therapies or that little matter would have been cleared up and other small changes would have had him looking closer to thirty. She’d seen that happen with her father when he lost his little crow’s feet around his eyes and his skin smoothed out. Otherwise he seemed fit enough for someone who was in his forties, but not vain. He didn’t have on any makeup or tattoos either, and a simple bracelet was his only jewelry.

April had seen him a number of times in recent months having breakfast alone in the cafeteria. She made a habit of observing people here, and his behavior was consistently different than others. For one thing he always looked happy. Not the mindless happiness which some simple folk have or the false mask some devious people put on to beguile the unwary. He seemed to be genuinely satisfied with life every morning, poised and relaxed not rushing through his breakfast and jumping up to hurry off like some driven working people but savoring his food, reading the news off his pad or doing the same thing April did, watching the crowd and enjoying seeing the variety of people interacting. She was predisposed to like him before ever speaking with the man.

She’d been behind him in line before and heard him charming and chatting with her friend and favorite cook Ruby. He’d complimented her skill and gently flirted with her without being vulgar. She trusted Ruby as a judge of character and knew if Ruby had doubted the man’s sincerity she would have cut his banter right off.

Yesterday, the last time she saw him in line however something remarkable had happened which had taken all the casual out of her interest in him and sent her home to research his history as a priority over her planned business for the day.

It was a remarkable coincidence that she sat down and glanced up in time the witness the scene. The time window was literally seconds. There was a couple at the front and a secretary she knew worked in one of the offices here on the full gravity corridor next in line and the doctor at the end behind her. The woman had on Earth style business dress with those silly hard sole shoes they wear.

As they moved up someone had spilled something on the floor and as the woman stepped forward on it her heel slid forward, knee locked straight, going out from under her uncontrollably and she struggled to regain her balance long after the point recovery was hopeless. She jerked her tray back and up as she fell, and her silverware and full mug of coffee went sailing over her shoulder straight for the doctor.

April just happened to look up at that instant to see clearly what happened. His left hand shot out like a snake striking and gathered the tumbling utensils into his hand. Then, after they were snug in his palm he snagged the mug with an index finger through the handle. The coffee was a long brown splash still climbing in the air when he stepped out from under it like it was falling at lunar gravity instead of standard and reached out with his free right hand and cradled the falling woman’s head to soften her fall. He succeeded enough to keep her from sharply cracking the back of her head on the hard floor. Likely he saved her from serious injury.

April had been working out with Jon’s exercise group every Wednesday doing Tai Chi both unarmed and sword, and watched people of other disciplines working out. She knew the normal limits of reflex and training. She was certain the doctor had moved with greater speed than any normal human was capable of doing. He had not just swatted the items away but gathered them in a controlled manner that spoke of being so fast he had time to carefully observe the action and grasp all four objects with thought as to what he was doing. It had looked more like rehearsed stage magic than a spontaneous save. She replayed and replayed what she had seen in her mind again and still had a sense of awe.

Yesterday she found Dr. Ames had moved here soon after the hostilities ended with North America last year. He had gone on vacation to Hawaii and then just never returned to his tenured, secure position at the University of California Riverside. Instead he had lifted with a very small shipment of his most important belongings on a supply shuttle from Tonga. It was as slick a carefully planned defection as she had ever heard of anyone doing successfully from North America, and it was done with no public fuss.

She had no doubt if he could slip away that smoothly he probably got all his money out too. Financial restrictions were the biggest handle the USNA had on defectors. In fact the terms of surrender Home had imposed on North America last year addressed freedom to travel to Home but made no provision to force them to allow the transfer of assets for emigrants. It was up to people to be smart enough to do so themselves. That was a sort of unofficial intelligence test that kept the flood gates from opening for just anyone who wanted to emigrate.

She also was able to document online that the man was associated with the U of C Davis Veterinary program. That would have been regarded with suspicion down below. The inclusion of animal genome in humans was perhaps the touchiest legal aspect of genetic engineering in North America. If you tested for non-human code in your genome it was enough in North America to have your citizenship revoked and either be deported if you were naturalized or imprisoned if you were native born. So to even have a human geneticist associated with a veterinary school in North America was to invite an uncomfortable level of scrutiny from the government and religious groups. The slightest rumor or accusation invited the modern equivalent of a mob of villagers with torches and pitchforks storming the castle.

The name of the Agency regulating gene mods in North America said it all. The religious forces which had demanded its creation named it The Genetic Hygiene and Heritage Board. So you knew from the start promoting change was not what it was all about. Most USNA students insisting on a Genetics career track were in foreign schools by the time they were in graduate work and never returned to America to seek employment.

Italy was the country of choice for careers or treatment involving human gene mods, because China was still a strange and difficult place for a foreigner to live and work. China’s anything goes attitude was hard for even the most liberal genetic modification proponents to swallow. China didn’t even have an authority which considered the ethics of genetic manipulation so the only limit was each researcher’s conscience. At least Italy, having gone through one cycle of banning and then a moderate relaxation, had some concept of ethics. You might easily get your eye color altered in Italy but in China they wouldn’t balk if you wanted webbed fingers and toes.

Dr. Ames was named Gerald, and she had no idea what he went by or if he liked to be formal or casual. But the fact he had accepted her invitation to breakfast without insisting on knowing what she wanted to talk about or how she was acquainted with him was a good start. He was not an M.D. She thought – hoped – the company he had formed was aimed at offering genetic modifications if the title was any indication. After a year of independence the making of new law and custom was still proceeding with slow caution on Home. There was no legal basis for incorporation yet in Home law. There might not ever be as some were arguing for personal responsibility being more important than promoting a uniform environment to attract business to the habitat. Certainly there was no shortage of business coming to Home on their terms so far. So his business had to be a DBA unless he had some silent partners.

The name on his corridor door, and his business cards, one of which she had acquired, was Custom Tailored Genes. The name alone would get his office burned out in California. If he had sold genetic services here yet he was still keeping a low profile because nobody had bragged or complained about him yet on the business rating boards. That raised the interesting question of how he was supporting himself if he hadn’t sold any of his services. Home was an expensive place to live.

Dr. Ames had carefully inspected his silverware by eye and passed a small pad over the utensils and breakfast. She assumed he had a pad plug in which looked for pathogens, but he wasn’t as fussy as some Earthies who wore gloves or even masks in public. Of course some of the recent epidemics gave them cause to be cautious. Her own mom could be a bit of a clean freak when they went Earthside.

He had a substantial breakfast of waffles carefully brushed with butter and piled with fresh strawberries and blueberries and covered to excess with whipped cream, and an eggs and bacon plate to the side with orange juice, but paid attention to the waffles first. He wasn’t in any hurry to talk either, patiently waiting on April after a brief greeting.

“I do the same thing,” April told him nodding at the waffles. “If you don’t eat them fairly quickly they get all soggy and aren’t very good.”

“Yes the butter slows it down but you really have just a few minutes before they are all limp. When I came up here I wondered what the food would be like because I do enjoy eating so much. I was really getting tired of the pressure at the University to put on a public display of limiting consumption. Skipping a decent meal doesn’t really mean anything if there is no mechanism in place to let a starving person buy the food I just skipped. I knew having all the equipment and space to cook myself would probably not be practical. I have to say, I am very pleased with the service available on the standard monthly contract. Do you have a private kitchen available to use Miss Lewis?”

“Yes, not what an Earthie would consider a real kitchen but we have a two burner stove top and a small combination oven, as well as a coffee maker.”

“Then your family must have been fairly well to do to have room for that even before you gained notoriety last year for your part in the revolution.”

April blushed because she was already uncommonly conscious of the fact her family had a much bigger apartment than usual even before the war and the hostilities over the Rock had improved the family fortunes. Since then she had become much more publicly visible as a crew member of the Happy Lewis. Now there was no way to conceal her interest in Lewis Couriers and Singh Technologies. Her family’s partnership in the captured asteroid trailing Home in orbit, the Rock, hidden behind a corporate name before, was too well known now. It had been easy to turn such comments aside before by saying everybody on Mitsubishi 3 was relatively wealthy because it is so expensive to live here you have to be well off. But now her finances were so public it was impossible to shrug them off.

“My grandfather was among the riggers and beam dogs who constructed the station and he came from a family of working people who were all shrewd investors and savers. He put all his money in buying cubic here when it was speculative and undervalued. If he hadn’t acted boldly the family wouldn’t have had the financial base to buy into the Rock. We still own cubic outspin on the North end and we were one of only two families that didn’t throw their zero G cubic away cheap when the South hub cubic opened to the public for dockage. Everyone said, ‘Who is going to dock up North where there are no facilities?’ They didn’t see the industrial value.”

“And unlike some Earth families I’ve observed where the family fortune creates conservative caution in the second or third generation yours seems bold still, Miss Lewis.”

“Thank you, I hope so,” she agreed. “I haven’t seen the world carefully taking care of the shy and tentative I’m sorry to say. But if it doesn’t offend I wish you’d call me April. I’ve never felt like a Miss Lewis.”

“Well, I appreciate the offer. It sets my mind at ease.” He heaved a big sigh of relief from a tension she wasn’t aware was there. “It would please me to call you April, and honored if you would call me Jerry. Although if you eventually count me a friend you’ll find most call me Jelly.”

“How did you get such a name? You seem nicely trim and not Jelly-like at all.”

“Perhaps now, but when I was in school they didn’t have the meds they have now and I constantly struggled to keep an acceptable weight. I’m one of those unfortunate people who when they carry extra weight wear it as a soft disgusting spare tire right around the middle were it squishes over the belt. Not one of those flat sided solid fellows who look like a fireplug,” he illustrated with his hands, “On top of which I had a reputation for always having a pocket full of jelly beans and when I met friends I’d offer them a few so the name was an easy choice.”

“And why,” she asked genuinely puzzled, “would it be such a relief to be on a first name basis with me? A lot of people are very uncomfortable with such informality. I met a very nice Frenchman, a Msr. Broutin last year and he would agree to call me April, but he was more comfortable to be addressed formally himself. Using his given name made him feel as funny as Miss Lewis did me. But usually older people like formality and the younger ones don’t.”

“I was relieved because I was concerned perhaps you or your family disapproved of my business and this meeting was to tell me so. When I saw you were gene mod yourself I thought surely that couldn’t be, but then when you asked to be on a first name basis I know you wouldn’t extend that courtesy to someone you’re going to ask to leave.”

“Leave? Jerry, I have no authority at all to ask anyone to leave anything. Not even this table, certainly not Home if that’s what you meant. Banishment is the worst possible criminal punishment the people voted for so far. It’s reserved for those who we don’t want to live with anymore.”

He took the chance while she was talking to polish off the waffles and placed the platter of eggs and bacon on top of the empty dish.

“Well you may have no official authority,” he agreed, dusting the eggs heavily with black pepper. “But I’ve been generally informed that what the Lewis or Singh families want to happen generally does. When I came up here a few months ago everybody from the agent who rented me my cubic to the fellow who fibered up my data net said what a great place the habitat was, how the future was here and a man could do anything he could dream, and don’t piss the Lewis or the Singh clans off or they will flush you out the airlock in your boxer shorts and teach you to whistle without air,” he said, and went calmly back to his breakfast.

“Why would anyone think such a thing?” she argued indignantly. “I can’t think of one person these people have ever actually seen me harm. I mean, we did run down those troopers that invaded us from the Cincinnati, but they were invaders after all. Margaret had already blown half of them to hell and gone at the dock. She blew their shuttle folded over double. Now there’s a lady with whom to be very polite,” she advised him. “I helped Easy fry one outside the Holiday Inn, but Neil was the one who nailed the rest of them in the lobby with a homemade Claymore when we chased them in there. Jon’s crew and the Prentice family wiped out so many of them in the corridors I don’t even know if I ever did get a decent hit on anyone out there blasting away in the smoke and confusion. North corridor was just horrible – bullet holes and fires half way across the station and a trail of dead Earthies in breached armor. And it’s true Easy and I toasted the Pretty As Jade when we ambushed those two ships but I was sitting laser weapons board and had hardly even got a start on burning the James Kelly, just took their laser mast out, when Eddie put a missile in them and made ‘em confetti – made my contribution kinda moot.”

She stopped suddenly, stricken, realizing how counterproductive her testimony was, and sank her face in her hands in understanding for the first time. “Oh crap, I never stopped and really thought out what it all looked like before,” she admitted.

“Indeed, by the most amazing coincidence there does seem to be a history of expensive damage, death and destruction strewn closely behind when you get rolling. If it isn’t by your own hand you can’t blame people if they think you must at least be an inspiration to this crew who seem to run with you. I might point out, when your people got through with North America the best they could come up with for the Presidential succession was the Postmaster General. Most of us assumed the rest of them hadn’t gone into hiding to avoid taking the office. That took what? About a week? Speaking as one who has just recently come up, and I still maintain contacts below, they are still trying to hide from the public just how badly you pounded them. In military circles I believe the term is decapitation.”

“Yeah, well, I heard they stopped trying to dig into the bunker at Cheyenne Mountain and the Deepwell bunker they’re calling the Charleston bunker now on the news. The mountains are so broken up inside they shift and are too dangerous to open up. They’d have to work down from the top like a strip mine, and what’s the point anyway? Nobody is alive in there.”

“Hey,” she said, thinking back on what he said. “Who says I’m gene mode anyway?” She managed to sound a little indignant for the privacy issue, but her heart really wasn’t in it.

Jerry just lifted his chin and looked down his nose at her basic four thousand calorie breakfast with an expression that invited her to deny it.

“Well, yeah,” she admitted, defeated, and changed the subject quickly. “So, I have a couple questions for you but I really don’t mean to coerce you to answer them because I’m a Lewis. Just for me, not anything to do with Home or the militia. If you want to tell me it’s none of my business and to butt out it’s fine,” she assured him.

He took a sip of coffee and nodded his agreement for her to continue on those terms.

“You’re in the gene business but I notice you don’t try to pretty yourself up so the customers are impressed with how you look. I mean, for most people it’s a huge part of it. Maybe the most important part for some. They may want to live longer but if you gave them the choice between living longer and looking good I bet not a few would take the looks. So I’m wondering why? I saw you catch the lady’s stuff off her tray yesterday morning and I know you have to have some alterations to be so fast. It has to be a real advantage to be that quick. Is that something you’d sell?”

“Well, yes. I intend to offer a number of mods eventually but I’m rather cautious, waiting to see how the political landscape settles out here before I make myself too conspicuous. Eventually I’d like to attract business from off station, but if there is a sudden movement to restrict such things I’ll be in a very bad situation. I’ve cut myself off from North America and I’m not sure where else I’d be welcome. I’ll do some gene business eventually, but I’m not so broke I will worry about buying lunch for some time. I have some other small sources of income. You however make two who’ve noticed this mod,” he said with a grimace that briefly replaced his happy face.

“After I made the mistake of moving too quickly I went back up to get my bowl of oatmeal from your friend Ruby. She didn’t say anything to me, but when she turned around she held it and the little pitcher of cream on a saucer well up off of the counter and just let go of both of both and turned away. I have to say she is very fast herself for an unmodified person. She was turned fully, back to me before they had fallen very far. By the time I caught it without spilling anything she wasn’t even watching. I thought at first she was testing me, but on thinking it over she would have watched if it was a test. She was just telling me that she had noticed. I think that’s just how her sense of humor works.”

“Not much gets past Ruby. Her husband was our primary command pilot on the Happy when we rescued the Singhs. Among other things she is a Doctor and professor of Medieval European Music and has military experience.”

“She makes a wonderful Western omelet too,” he added.

“Sometime have her make you an asparagus and mushroom omelet with Monterey Jack

cheese,” she suggested.

Abruptly her expression altered and she changed the subject as a thought hit her. “I bet you would be one tough sucker to shoot wouldn’t you?” she asked, looking at him real hard. “You’d see the person reach their aim point and start to squeeze the trigger and – zip – you’d not be there to be drilled. It would actually be harder to shoot you up close. Better to stand off down a corridor and hose the whole hall down with a continuous beam.” She illustrated with a sweeping index finger.

He looked down at the finger of death sweeping over his breakfast with considerable apprehension. “April, believe me I understand and appreciate the survival traits you have. The same as you can appreciate a leopard in a nature video. But it’s harder to look up in a tree and admire one hanging off a branch looking down on you like it’s reading the luncheon menu. You are a lovely young woman and so dangerous you don’t look at someone and say ‘Can I take him?’ You progress directly to ‘How?’ But when you think about it you unconsciously shift your weight to the left and cup your hand, poised like you are thinking through the motions to draw and burn the life out of me. I really think you need to learn not to telegraph these things so I can enjoy my breakfast and not be sitting here considering ‘Could I possibly reach the door if I jump up to run, and zig – zag fast enough?’ it does not aid one’s digestion.”

“I’d think it would be more effective as fast as you are to close on me instead of run.”

“You flatter me,” he assured her, looked pointedly at the pebble textured handle sticking forward from her wide belt. “Whatever the handle is connected to I don’t want a close up experience with it.”

“The aikuchi? It’s a present from Genji Akira,” April said, touching the hilt lightly. “He sent it as a gift after he won the Publishers and Editors award with a piece which used some material about me. I suppose he was apologizing in a roundabout way that he didn’t ask permission to use his stringer’s pix of me. He indicated this was a proper mate to a couple pieces my grandfather gave me. He thought it a bit easier to carry than a tanto.”

“The Japanese writer? I didn’t even know he’d won something. Would you care for some more coffee?” he offered, getting up with his own empty cup.

“Please.”

When he returned he commented on the coffee, “Smells good.” He took the small pad he favored and passed it over the cups as he had done when he sat down. You couldn’t see the laser.

“You are checking for bacteria?” April inquired.

“Actually this one checks now for bacteria, viruses, drugs, poisons and pollutants.”

“Nice. I didn’t know they had gotten so much coverage in a pad plug-in. The coffee here is OK, but my friend Heather’s mom Sylvia Anderson has me to dinner now and then and she has me appreciating a much better sort of coffee. She serves a very mild roast which isn’t as bitter, and it’s the sort we buy now for our shipboard use. She’s one of the few people here who really get serious about cooking. I’ll introduce you if we get a chance. Now they have a real kitchen.”

“April. You mentioned a Msr. Broutin. You don’t seem the sort to drop names, but I have to ask, are you speaking of the Foreign Minister of France?”

“I don’t think so. I thought he was some sort of art broker. I meet him at the lady’s house I was speaking about, Sylvia, just before the war. From what he said over breakfast he was there to speak with my friend on behalf of the Treasurer of Lebanon. Nice middle aged fellow – spoke English with almost no accent, just sort of softly inflected. A handsome fellow with a bit of a pointy nose and a little patch of gray at each temple, and dressed like a million Euro. He had on one of those expensive handmade suits which hang just perfect around the collar,” she demonstrated stroking both hand like she was smoothing lapels down, “even when he sat, and the cuffs actually unbuttoned to fold back to wash. He had cuff links on I asked about and he made a present of them to me. I wear them all the time now. I should really get some more.”

“For the Treasurer of Lebanon? He seemed perplexed, tapping his pad. “Is this him?” he turned the little pad around and she had to look close to see the small screen.

“Well! I’ll be,” she was genuinely surprised, “it is him. He never mentioned he did any government work. But then why would he?” she shrugged. “He wasn’t here for them; he was doing his friend a favor.”

Jerry refrained from explaining how much some people delight in flaunting their position and power at every turn. He suspected she would be disdainful of such pettiness.

Jerry stopped talking for a bit to do a search and kept pecking at the pad while stuffing his face. After a bit he admitted, “Ah – my mistake really. He was appointed after he was up here, but quite soon after the whole mess last year, when the previous Minister was sacked.” His eyes narrowed slightly, and he looked at her. “You wouldn’t have had anything to do with that though would you?” he asked suspiciously.

“No not, uh, explicitly,” she denied automatically, and could see Jerry purse his lips at the qualifier. She wondered now if Broutin had turned the knowledge his visit gave him to some advantage. “He was nice. He warned me the North Americans would blockade us.” She wanted desperately to get away from discussing politics, and grasped for anything.

“The French have this cute custom of kissing,” she started to relate with a smile, remembering how he took her hand and brushed her knuckles with his lips, but when she looked at the expression on his face, she cut it off and said, “No, never mind. I can tell you think I’m making things up.”

“On the contrary I don’t think I’ve heard the half of it. How many other famous people do you know?” he asked directly.

“The most famous person I will ever know is Jeff Singh,” she said without hesitation.

He carefully considered how she phrased that and marked it as important to remember.

“A lot people have been trying to figure out if it is Heather Anderson, or if you are Jeff’s girl friend. Care to let me in on it so I have the straight stuff instead of rumor and gossip?”

“People shouldn’t worry about such things. I’m surprised they’re even interested. We’re all three business associates. Jeff and Heather worked together before me. But I know for a fact they both take anti-bonding medication so they don’t get distracted with romantic complications. But we’re all three bound together in a lot deeper way anyway.”

Our lives, our treasure, our honor, in friendship and loyalty, April thought silently with an inner surge of pride, remembering a toast, a solemn oath and an earnest hope for a nation that had come wonderfully true, but said nothing aloud. That story was way too private to share with anyone, even her grandpa. “If you look at the question, well, why shouldn’t we both be his friend?”

He wanted to say people don’t do that, but they do he knew, if not easily or often, and he’d feel stupid to say otherwise. Still, he thought it would be a rarity if they were close without conflict or deception. Anti-bonding meds or no he had seen even chaste same sex friendships destroyed over refusing to share a friend. The very expression best-friend was singular. Not best friends. Maybe a mate and a best friend? But he had also seen people drive away a spouse’s friends from before their marriage… He realized he had stopped chewing and frozen up all conflicted unable to answer her.

He suddenly wondered if that was why he hadn’t married, because he assumed it would limit whom he could have as friends. How could such a young girl make him ask such disturbing questions about himself? April saved him from answering that he had no idea by going on.

“So, how about your modification to reflexes, is it something I could buy?

“You know I’m not a Medical Doctor don’t you?” he asked carefully. “It’s one of the big reasons I’m here, because I can pursue what I’m interested in without being hampered by studies and regulations which would slow me down. Back on Earth I’d be old and dead before I could accomplish anything. So everything I do will be experimental and there will be risks which are unacceptable to North American law and regulation.”

“We’re results oriented here. You can’t be licensed because we don’t have such a thing yet. Don’t know if we ever will. You must feel this mod is safe or you wouldn’t be carrying it in your own body.”

“More than you can know,” he said, surprised at her perception. “The reason I don’t have many modifications is two-fold. One,” he said lifting a thumb in the European manner, “it was safer in North America to be visibly lacking in any life extension when my work was already suspect, and two,” he said lifting the index finger, “I plan to live a long time so I don’t want any modification done I am not sure I can undo later if something better came along. I’m in good shape and there’s no reason I can’t wait and let the technology mature another twenty years or so before I commit to any significant therapy. Since I’m not living down there I can be a little more liberal with minor treatments which show. When I knew I was defecting it was easy to convince myself to do this treatment because I reasoned it could help me if I were on the run. I’d be harder to capture, and much harder to shoot as you pointed out.”

“I researched you a bit. You were involved with veterinary. Does your treatment use animal genes? I don’t know how I’d feel about that, but I know a lot of people are squeamish about using them.”

“The reason behind the prejudice is people imagined because we don’t know what all the genes express, if we added cat genes say, which altered the eye, we might be adding an unknown change. We might change personality for example, and become a killer lacking in compassion like a cat with a mouse, and far less human. It’s sort of a modern version of the animist belief that you take on some of the qualities of the animal when you eat it. And it has its basis in the same error – not understanding in detail how the process works at a molecular level,”

“Now it is true, in the early days of gene mods, when we just looked for a marker, entire blocks of genes were moved to create a change when it was not understood how all the instructions in the block were expressed. That fear might have had some basis in reality then. But it would be a far greater risk something far less subtle would be expressed wrong, like a change in an enzyme or hormone which would cause the person to be sick or die. Especially when they could not control the insertion point with any accuracy. They created quite a few problems with that crude method including inducing cancers.”

“Now what I do is quite different. I find a model for faster reflexes and then create an entirely artificial gene with that information which causes your body to create the same sort of mechanisms but without ever taking an actual physical piece of genetic material from an animal and inserting it. There is no opportunity for extraneous instructions to be dragged along.”

“But doesn’t that accomplish the same thing?” April protested.

“Let me illustrate. Say your ship built here has a motor in the back with a stainless steel valve and you find out the Chinese have a valve made of titanium and it works a little better than yours. Now if you capture a Chinese ship and yank a valve out of it and adapt it to substitute for your original it’s fair to say your ship is part Chinese now isn’t it?”

April nodded in agreement.

“But if I hear that report and go back to the shop and tell them, ‘Make up some new valves to connect to our pipes, but make them out of titanium now. Change the dimensions or whatever you need to do in our design to take advantage of the new material so it works better but start from scratch with new materials.” Now, is the ship still part Chinese, or is it all Home?”

“It’s all Home but you aren’t as sure you are going to get what you want from the change if you didn’t understand why their valve is better. You may think it’s the material and it turns out it’s the shape of the innards or it how bolts on the pipe or something.”

“Right you are. And so you better have the guy doing it be someone who knows all about the different kinds of valves and why they work. If you don’t have someone like that better leave well enough alone. And there are still lots of poorly understood processes in the human body which we would be wiser to leave alone right now.” He looked in regret that all his plates were empty and salvaged one little fleck of whipped cream that had escaped on his finger and stuck it in his mouth.

“So, is there any down side to being faster?” she pressed to know.

“Oh yes, you are more likely to hurt yourself. It becomes much more important to stay in good shape with training. You might tear tissues or even break a bone if you act rashly without being conditioned. And as I found with Ruby if people become aware of your edge they tend to play tricks on you.”

“If you would consider treating me what do you need?”

“I’d need permission from your guardians,” he said, but stopped because she was shaking her head emphatically no.

“I’m a legal adult. You can check the public record. I have the honor of being the first person on Home voted their majority instead of attaining it at an arbitrary age.”

“I’d heard about that but I didn’t know anyone who had done it. When I meet someone how am I to know if they are a minor or an adult?”

“For business I’d check the public records. Really, even with a set age of majority we still needed documentation before because it was becoming difficult to judge a person’s age with LET. But most of the people here are adapting the social convention that adults wear weapons even if just symbolic ones like a Sikh’s sword might be a pin on his turban. So if you meet a young boy in the corridors and he has a knife on his belt chances are he’s an adult. You might think about doing it yourself. It’s getting to be people think you’re an Earthie if you aren’t carrying,” she teased.

“Then all I really need is a copy of your genome and a history of your in vitro modifications and your usual medical history. I’d still encourage you to discuss the change with a trusted mature friend. Do you have somebody who you’d trust their wisdom in the matter?”

“My grandfather will do fine. He’s extremely safety conscious.”

“You should also not take any anti-viral medications. I’m afraid you are going to have a mild cold for about three days and you’ll have to isolate yourself to avoid passing it to others. I have a counter infection but you’d put us in an awkward legal situation if you were negligent and carelessly changed someone’s genome who might nor welcome it. You also can’t take anything which compromises the immune system, and you must be absolutely sure not to get pregnant. I’m happy actually to have a famous client from an important family. So let’s keep my fee reasonable. Is fifty thousand EuroMarks good for you?”

“Sounds fine. I’m concerned though. Is the infection tailored to me? Is there any danger the infection would be fatal or damaging if someone got it off my laundry or by coming in my room?”

“No the carrier is a really mild corona virus which produces such mild symptoms many people aren’t even sure they have a cold. They may get a bit sniffly or feel tired. But people can get very upset if something is forced on them against their will, even through carelessness. And an accidental transmission might be to someone pregnant or immune deficient.

Are you developing other treatments?

“I will be continuing some studies with that goal. The delay right now is I have to buy lab services somewhere to have them run tests on mice. I’ll supervise remotely and send samples back and forth, but I’m already living in the back of my office cubic and I doubt that housekeeping would like me sharing it with twenty thousand white mice even if I could afford them here.”

“Any chance you could make a mod to help a person take higher acceleration?”

He didn’t hesitate long before shaking his head no. “You better look to an engineering solution on that. It’s way too complex for me to tackle at this stage.”

“Since you’ve had your treatment do you feel any faster? I mean does it alter your time sense? I’d hate to feel like everything around me was in slow motion and it would take forever to get through the day.”

“Funny you should ask that. I never thought of that possibility before I did this. It would have been a big shock if I’d felt such an effect. I feel like I always did but when I move I’m able to get there a little faster. It may look fast to you but it just feels natural to me. Slowed time sense is one of the unpleasant withdrawal effects of a number of addictions. So I do know it’s possible to induce it. In studying the matter I found out a few athletes are capable of basically the same level of performance I’ve induced but I could never get one to agree to allow me to take samples and do biopsies. I’d really like to have access to such a person someday.”

“I’ll mail you what you need. And the fee. Say, half now and the remainder on success?”

“Works for me,” he agreed. “Shake on it?” he offered across the table relaxed.

She grasped his hand firmly and smiled at him. There was just a moment’s awkward hesitation where she delayed letting go of his hand. Looking him eyeball to eyeball. He thought how she could have stopped him from pulling away if she wished, better reflexes or no. He could picture the dagger coming out in the other hand while the right held him trapped. It was a chilling thought which flashed on him unexpected.

As if to underscore it was a lesson she told him, “If you are going to be a spacer now we don’t shake. It doesn’t work in zero G so it’s better unlearned. Just touch your finger tips in the palm of my hand.” This time he reached up and her finger lightly brushed his palm at the same time he touched hers. It was a gentler custom, and so much safer too, he thought.

First chapter possible book

I’m tempted to write an action book similar to David Drake’s work or John Ringo’s Kildar series. The main character is a bit larger than life and the action fast and rough. The language is coarser without going totally nasty, but it appeals to a different audience. Don’t expect the people to be exploring their inner self in long thoughtful self examinations while the bullets crack by.

Her is my idea of opening a book with quick action and minimal scene setting. Tell me if it is too graphic or not enough. More gun porn or less?

Chapter 1

            Looks are deceiving. Garret looked as relaxed as a big cat sprawled in the chaise. He was reading a new novel, but his eyes left the page frequently and scanned the surroundings. Hypervigilant was the official diagnosis he’d received leaving the service. In his case it would have been an accurate assessment when he’d entered training if they had only tested him then. Three tours in the sandbox left him in a mental state the Psychologist could not really imagine. He was attuned to the slightest noise, the smallest scuff, insignificant dislodged pebble, or a tiny glint off metal or lens a kilometer away.

That was why he was alive and so many of his companions weren’t. Given the choice he couldn’t see being aware of his surroundings as a bad thing. It beat cold and dead. He’d been discharged and back home a year now. Logically it was time to relax a little, but the human brain is a funny thing. It yields a proven survival mechanism very reluctantly.

His house had a very good security system. Most people would have turned it off during the day and set it at dusk or even bedtime. It was on now even though he was out back by the pool. In fact it had sensors along the property edge  and spaced around the grounds in a pattern that would be very difficult to evade. His father had a basic system in but he’d augmented it.

The sensors included cameras on the walls and poles along the property perimeter looking in as well as out. What appeared to be sprinkler heads in the lawn were not. They were heat and proximity sensors. The Bluetooth earpiece he had on occasionally gave him a false alert from a stray pet or bird, but he preferred that over a  system set for only an aggressive intrusion.

A tall glass at his elbow was dew speckled halfway up with ice still in it and a twist of lemon to flavor it. Clipped inside his jeans on his left hip was a 10mm Ed Brown. The new one with thin grips to allow a double stack magazine for the new Hornady 10mm Magnum rounds.

Garret took a sip of the cool drink after he flipped a page and got his thumb back in the spread. He had an e-reader, but he also had quite a collection of classic paperbacks.

Two things happened at once. He’d just looked up to examine his surroundings and a flicker of movement took his focus to the glass patio doors. Simultaneously there was  warning buzz in his ear that he had an intruder on his security system. The reflection in the glass was a dark human shape silhouetted against the white west wall of his property behind him. The shape definitely had a helmet on and he landed with that slight flexing of knees you saw in a gymnast that made a perfect dismount at the end of his routine.

Garret rolled off the chaise on the open side opposite the table and glass. He looked up just in time to see the figure pixilate and vanish from sight into the background, almost. There was a bright specular reflection of the sun on the man’s visor that didn’t quite disappear, and he still cast a partial shadow although it was faint as it got further away from the feet.

A bright line split the air with a crack and the back of the chaise blew out with a spray of cushioning material and a flash of vaporization around the hole that materialized. Some of the hot fragments cut across the back of his left hand and he felt a couple pepper his cheek.

Garrett already had his pistol pointed in the right direction and didn’t give the man a chance at a second shot. He laid the sights just under the bright point that still pinpointed the helmet faceplate and squeezed gently. The trigger broke just like a day at the range, sharp as a glass rod cracking. For eight thousand dollars it damn well should.

The outline of the man reappeared instantly, his head thrown back and a cloud of chunks and spray behind it that indicated there was an exit wound. The masking device failed spectacularly flashing a coarse pattern of pixels of all colors and brightness. His arm was extended from firing at Garrett, but at fifteen meters he could not make out a weapon.

Garrett had just had three tours in hell. If there was one thing his hind brain could process it was tactics. If he was facing somebody who could materialize out of thin air the next place for one to appear would be – behind him. He rolled over to the stub wall against which the BBQ grill was set and sat up looking back at the house. He waited bracing his pistol on a raised knee and almost gave up on a second appearance after thirty some seconds. Then there was a faint violet flash in a distinct circle in the air he’d missed the first time and two black clad figures dropped from the air between him and the house back to back.

The far one landed slick as the original intruder and the near one landed a little off balance crouching deeper and touching the patio tiles with a spread hand to recover. His first round went over the crouched figure taking the far one in the back of the helmet. It didn’t penetrate like it had on the faceplate, but it snapped his head forward and staggered him. He had just caught himself against the shove by throwing his arms up and taking a bracing step when the second shot went in the gap opened up between his helmet and collar.

They near man had recovered and was half way vertical again. His suit was starting to react to the environment and make him vanish, and he was swinging a large carbine around on a harness strap to bring it to bear on Garrett. They were much closer, around four meters away and he could have hit him with a brick, much less an Ed Brown.

He wanted this one alive if he could and shot him just above the knee. It didn’t get through his armor he could tell, but it made his leg buckle and he caught himself again with the left hand spread on the tiles, dropping the muzzle of his weapon.

Garrett took slow careful aim and put a round in the back of the man’s left hand shattering it. Support gone he rolled on his left side. He tried to bring the weapon up again but he was laying on the harness strap and it was too short to swing away from his body. He rolled on his belly and tried to do a one handed pushup to clear it. Garrett shot him through both buttocks. With a little luck he’d busted the hip bone somewhere.

He could not believe the man still managed to pull a knee under him and plant the right hand flat on the ground to try to get up. He carefully shot the other hand, but this round hit further back and blew out the wrist almost severing the hand.

The man must be on some kind of drugs, because he was pawing at his chest trying to do something with the shattered left hand. He was sideways to Garrett now and he aimed at the helmet knowing he couldn’t punch a hole through it, but he could rattle the man’s brain by brute force if he absorbed enough foot-pounds in the helmet. He shifted his aim off center just a hair, not wanting to break the man’s neck. The shot gouged a furrow in the helmet and slammed the man’s head back. He crumpled in a limp pile finally, dead or concussed Garrett didn’t know.

It took a bit more than a thirty count for these two to show. He rushed forward and grabbed the near man by his harness and dragged him back to the short wall. He dumped him there and got his pocket knife out rolling the blade open with his thumb. Two slashes freed the carbine from the harness, and cut his chin strap so he could tilt his helmet off.

The man’s face was nothing special. Some sort of southern European Garrett would guess. Slightly olive and a blocky wide peasant face. Hair black and slightly wavy. But there was a band of tattoo crossing his face from ear to ear, straight across the nose. It was an intricate band of tiny geometric shapes, deep blue with tiny triangles of red and green, abstract art instead of representational, like the trim Arabs used to decorate things.

He retreated to the end of the stub wall where he could duck behind it either way for cover. He wondered if the thirty second interval was something their equipment dictated, or if it represented how long it took somebody to make command decisions.

But nobody new appeared at about the same thirty second interval. He scrambled back to the man and cut his belt that held a pistol and knife as well as several cases. He didn’t seem to have pockets. There was some kind of electronics on his chest and he cut that loose. He could see the man was still alive from the bleeding, it didn’t seem as bad as it should have, especially the shot through his wrist, it should have been a nasty squirter and there was just a tiny pulsing dribble that stopped as he looked at it. He looked down and the man’s blood was smeared across his wounded hand. Shit…He hoped he didn’t have hepatitis or any of a dozen other nasty things.

The carbine was lighter than a firearm, but still substantial. It had a recessed two position switch on the left side and a similar paddle switch with four detents on the top rear where you could work it with your thumb. He checked all that out and looked around again even though his security system was giving him an all clear again.

He lifted the weapon and pointed it down into the pool. When he pulled the trigger it drew a white line with a crack and a big puff of steam boiled up into the air. He pushed the switch on the left down and tried it again. Nothing happened but the holographic sight had a yellow light flash in it. That had to be the safety.

Another look around saw no hostiles, and he flipped the safety off and thumbed the top switch from second to third detent.  He fired into the pool and the crack left his ears ringing and the reflections of the shock wave slapped him in the face. The water rolled back so hard it sloshed out of the pool at both ends. When he recovered he discovered the beam had punched through the opposite wall of the pool and the tiles were all bulged up from below in a line a couple meters past the edge of the pool.  The last power detent had to be a real bitch he decided.

So far he’d made a lot of noise. As far as he knew nothing had reached outside his fenced back yard to tell anyone where all the noise originated. He knew how hard it was to assign anything but a general direction to a big boom. But he had a feeling he couldn’t just sit tight and hope the police would drop the matter once the shooting stopped. He was almost certain they would do a hot house to house without waiting for warrants. And he had two bodies and a prisoner to hide. No way he could get them all hidden in time to pass a walk through. It was time to bug out permanently.

Another violet circle formed between him and the house, but vertical this time, angled a little toward him and part of the glowing edge was actually below ground level. It seemed a bit taller than wide, an oval. Apparently they changed the insertion format when they failed. He was still holding the unfamiliar weapon, but had no time to switch. He wished he’d counted again. It must have taken them a good three minutes or more to open the third hole from wherever…

He aimed too high as the first armored figure came out of the hole in the air in a dive and rolled. He corrected and followed and triggered the weapon. It ablated a huge chuck of armor off and rolled the man away, but he was still moving before he even came to a stop. That didn’t leave him many options. He thumbed the top lever all the way to the fourth detent and fired again.

The beam was the same except it didn’t pulse. It stayed on as long as he held the trigger down and after less than a half second it ate through the armor and the man disintegrated in a messy steam explosion. He just had a brief and not too clear image of limbs flying and he had to shift his aim to the next person emerging holding the trigger down hard.

He was off again, low this time, the man running out instead of diving, carrying a canister of some sort cradled in his arms. The beam cut him off just below the knees and his swing carried it to the open oval and the third fellow emerging ran full tilt right into it and went down too. He reversed burning the last man to emerge in the head which wasn’t as spectacularly messy as the first.

The fellow with the canister had one end open and was fumbling with it. Garrett cut both his hands off at the wrist with the beam and zig zagged the beam across him several times awkwardly as he fell back. He didn’t blow up but he was a charred ruin. The barrel of the carbine was hot now the air over it shimmering.

He was pretty sure the canister was something nasty, some sort of demolition charge, and he rushed forward carbine at ready and looked in the hole in the air. It appeared to be a corridor inside the glowing ring, not like a normal building, but more like a ship with metal bulkheads and artificial lighting. He could feel the air flowing out of the hole so it was at positive pressure on the other side.  Where the oval was in the ground was a step down from his patio. He laid the carbine down so he could grab the canister.

The end cap on the canister was hinged back and there was a knob set about half way in an arch of strange symbols. The symbol its pointer was turned to was showing in a small screen steady and not changing. It was a timer and the loop handle beside it had to be the initiator. He’d used satchel charges not too different himself. Question was, how fast was the timer? Long enough to let them get back to safety he’d guess. He checked the corridor again. Nobody coming but there was a bend in it about three meters back.

Well if they wanted to play rough he’d take a chance. If they kept pouring people into his back yard long enough they’d overrun him. There were twelve calibrations and the knob was set half way. He grabbed the pull loop and yanked. It yielded a little like it was a plastic material. It resisted until it got about a hand’s width away and then ripped out.

He lifted the can in both hands and heaved it for the bend down the hallway. It wasn’t that heavy, maybe eight or ten kilo and he saw it hit and bounce around the corner. He snatched the carbine and ran to get out from in front of the opening counting and dove to the pavement behind the strange portal, opening his mouth and covering both ears.

When he got to the nine count the ground smacked him in the face and even through closed eyes he was dazzled by the flash. He had to have passed out briefly, because he woke on his back but he didn’t remember landing. When he rolled over he looked and the oval was gone. Overhead there was a second sun just starting to shrink. It was far enough from the normal sun that they cast weird double shadows.

The bodies that were in front of the opening were gone, except there might be a burnt smear in the fused dirt that extended from the middle of his patio to the house. It just caught the corner and sheared it off. The shock wave had knocked the rest of his bedroom into the center of the house. His east fence was down flat except for a section that was just gone where the grass was vaporized off the dirt in a straight lane. The street was slick and steaming shiny black where the line of destruction crossing it had melted the pavement. The house across the street caught the blast square on and was knocked flat into the back yard and burning pretty good already. The rubble of his corner had a couple wisps of smoke already. It would be in flames in minutes.

Everything hurt when he got up. He didn’t have much time. He was surprised he couldn’t hear sirens already. He grabbed the unconscious soldier and stuffed his com and pistol in his belt and dragged him one handed by the harness to the garage. The other hand had the carbine and he wasn’t sure which he’d keep if he had to lose one.

Inside the garage his pickup was parked pointing out. He raised the tonneau cover and stuffed the man in the rear. He had no time to fuss with him and he had stopped bleeding on his own, which was freaking weird. He turned to his cabinets and withdrew two big soft carriers and tossed in after him. The weapons he put in the cab.

It was insane, but he ran in the house. There was already smoke crawling along the ceiling out of the hallway. He ran in his study and the safe was set to open by turning to the final number. He hefted the heavy ruck off the floor of the safe and unhesitatingly grabbed just his best rifle. When he slammed it shut he spun the dial for all the good that might do. He really doubted he’d even get back to open it. The smoke was much thicker when he cut through again. He walked fast leaning over holding his head down out of it, eyes burning.  It was hotter too. He knew he’d pushed too close to disaster. The back couple rooms might have already flashed over.

The ruck and rifle went in the cab even though it was illegal and way too visible. He wasn’t about to put them with the guy in the back even as badly hurt as he was. He started the truck and reached up and hit the garage door opener. He was rolling the window down even as he went down the drive.

He could hear sirens now in the distance. He turned in the driveway of the third house down and cut around the house on the grass. Into the neighboring yard behind and out on the next street. The ground was dry and he hadn’t even engaged the four wheel drive. When he looked back there was no obvious ruts across the lawns, just a couple lines of pressed grass. He kept his speed down and left the other subdivision turning north away from town and all the fuss.

When he stopped on the outskirts of town to top off his tanks he could see a column of smoke billowing up from his old neighborhood. It was a shame, he had grown up in that house and was attached to it. He doubted there was much that could be saved from what he’s seen. And when they got there they’d have the house across the street to deal with too. At least he knew the Zimmerman’s both worked and wouldn’t have been at home. Not that it was his fault. He’d been attacked and he had no idea why.

He got past the cashier into the rest room without showing his face. Only one customer looked at his bloody hand and face and turned away with that vacant look that said it was none of his business. After he cleaned up he bought some bottled water and a couple sandwiches he settled in for a drive. His one buddy had a cabin north almost into Oregon, and he intended to go there without checking in a hotel along the way, even if he had to drive through the night.

Eight hours later his main fuel tank was empty. He didn’t like dipping into the auxiliary, so he pulled in a truck stop. He was past Sacramento and he could go east and follow mountain roads now if he needed to. He had fuel to make his buddy’s cabin, but wanted full tanks when he got there if he could. Taking the back roads would use more fuel too.

His commercial Diesel permit was tied to his credit card. He was  limited to ten gallons at full price if he paid cash. He’d stop and make another purchase to fill the tank and again and before he got too close to his friend’s cabin. He wanted a shower, but worried about the prisoner in the bed. He didn’t want to come out and find the cops investigating why somebody was pounding on the inside of his hard tonneau cover.

He pulled to the edge of the lot and parked where the floods would shine in the bed when he opened it up. He put his hand around his pistol under his jacket and unlocked the cover left handed. He was prepared for the prisoner to be dead or to attack him, either way.

The man was laying on his side back against the auxiliary fuel tank that occupied the front quarter of the bed. He had gotten a bandage from some pocket and wound it around the really severely injured left wrist. It looked to be elastic. All Garrett could figure was he used his teeth to open it and help wind it on. He should have searched the man but he never had time.

The man was conscious however, eyes alert and watching him. He had a big scab on the hole blown through his right hand. That was simply impossible. It would have needed surgery to close it up and then skin grafts and a month of healing to look like it did now. The fellow made no effort to sit up or speak. He wasn’t dressed that outrageously. Except for the armor because it was impossibly thin and the tattoo he could have been county SWAT in black tactical.

Well, if he could bind that wrist up he could drink out of a bottle. He broke the seal on a bottle of water and took a drink to show him what it was and that it was safe.

The cap he put back barely finger tight and rolled it across to him. It came to a stop right against the man’s chest. He picked it up right handed, fingers all working which was freaky. He took about half the bottle down at once and made a gracious nod, turning his head slightly.

“Gaz,” he said softly. There was no hint of a second syllable.

” Lei è italiana?” Garrett asked.

“Italian? No, I speak,” he hesitated and looked genuinely dismayed. “My prime language is similar to Spanish. I speak a little English but not well, and not your idioms.”

“I’d like to talk to you, that’s the only reason you are alive. However, if you make it difficult I will dump you on the roadside. Make it really difficult and I’ll kill you. You want to get out and walk away here or continue with me?”

“The others are dead then?”

“All dead. Even the ones above in your ship.”

“Caquetá! How could you possibly?”

“You picked the wrong bad ass to invade. They put three more through after you. Apparently they figured it was going to hell and sent a fellow through with a bomb to clear a landing zone. I left the timer set and tossed it back through that opening in the air. It bounced around the corner into your ship and – BOOM. I saw the fireball up above. I assume that was at an orbital level? It was sort of obvious. I toss a bomb in here – it goes boom above. Suitcase nuke I assume?”

“I don’t know your names for them – but a bomb, yes. That was to clear the area of any of our machines. Rule one is you don’t leave behind samples of advanced machines. If they sent three after me and you killed them…” He seemed to make it a question.

“I did,” Garrett affirmed and gave a nod to familiarize him with the gesture.

“Destroying the ship will delay things. We have not lost a ship in centuries. They can’t slip time in small sections. It will be a delay to note the ship does not report and send a new one. The team with the bomb would not have set it off if they had recovered our equipment. But now I think they will just pop a bomb through set to explode quickly. A big bomb because things might have been moved already by the locals.”

“You had a box on your chest. Will they detect it and pop a bomb on it?”

“Yes. It can be turned on remotely too. If you have it you must remove the battery.”

“I don’t know how, and how can I know you won’t just call for help with it?”

“You don’t. But if you don’t trust me with it please throw it away here and start driving again as fast as possible. When an operation goes this bad they will not try to recover me. All they will care about is cover your ass.”

“You got that idiom just fine. I’m an idiot, but I’m giving you the radio. If you look like you are using it instead of pulling the power I’ll shoot you. Understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Come on up to the cab then,” he said reinforcing it with a hand gesture. “If you don’t want to walk away no reason to ride back here in the dark. Can you make it on your own?”

“I think so.” He was stiff and a bit wobbly. He came over the side and was slow to let go. He held on with his right hand and held the left tight against his chest, protecting it. The door was a struggle to open and he couldn’t slam it hard enough to close it. But then he shouldn’t be able to walk. By right he should have bled out. Garrett closed the door for him and walked around to the driver’s side.

The fellow was leaning his head back, taking deep breaths.

“You hurting? You want something to help with the pain?”

“I have little machines in my body. They make pain medicine for me. But if you have something that doesn’t slow down my breathing I’d welcome some.”

“Here, these are Naproxen. They don’t suppress the breathing reflex. Take them and finish off the water.”

When he had the pills in him Garrett dumped the radio in his lap. “Pull its teeth.”

That got a brief grin. “That’s a new expression for me. Here, see the latch I am sliding to the outside? Do the one on your side. My left hand is useless.” The entire bottom edge of the radio popped out about a half centimeter. The soldier held the latch with his thumb and got a finger in the opening. The battery when he rolled it out was triangular and had a large contact plate on each end.

“Don’t, uh, I don’t have the word. Don’t bridge from end to end with metal. It will get really hot.”

“Don’t short it out. No problem.” Garrett stuck it in the center console.

“There were no lights on. It had not been turned on remotely. We can go without needing to run for our lives.”

Garrett drove out of the truck stop and merged back on the expressway.

“You are not afraid to be within reach of me?” the fellow asked.

“Don’t get too full of yourself. The only reason you are alive is I wanted a prisoner to question. If you decide you can finish the job I can do without the talk. I’d say my twelve year old niece could finish you off, shape you are in. I’ve taught her to take care of herself and she’d shove a number two pencil in your ear right flush if you got frisky with her. Right now if you take me up on walking away I predict you will be dead or in Federal custody before the sun comes up.”

“I am instructed.” The fellow said. Sounded like he meant it.

“Trading me for the Feds is a bad bargain. They will interrogate you with drugs and pain. You heal fast but I bet you can’t breathe underwater, and those boys can inflict pain I doubt even your little machines can cancel out. I won’t torture you. If I figure you are bullshitting me I’ll just dump you in the desert and see if you don’t cook in the sun without water like anybody else, and feed the buzzards and coyotes fast enough.”

“How can you trust what is told to you to stop pain?”

“I can’t. But the Feds have instruments that will read your brain patterns and they will know if you are lying or if you plain don’t know.”

“We had no idea you were that far along.”

“Bit off more than you could chew huh? That explosion in space is going to put everybody on alert. Nobody will admit it was theirs and they are all going to be on a hair trigger for anything threatening their satellites and space stations. If you have another ship show up they will likely have three or four countries shooting at them.”

“Where do you imagine I’m from?” the man asked with renewed interest.

“Well, I read a bit of science fiction, I can make a better guess than most.”

“What is science fiction?”

“Writing about possible futures. Speculating, guessing about what new technologies will be invented and how people will live with them. Trouble is our world changes so fast by the time you write a story and predict something half the time somebody is selling it before you can get the book printed.”

The fellow looked horrified. He seemed to be on the edge of saying something and decided against it shutting his mouth with a visible effort.

“No way you come from another world in our universe. That pretty much leaves you coming from our future, or from a parallel world very similar to ours.”

For an instant Garrett thought he was choking, then he realized the man was laughing so hard he couldn’t get his breath. The tears rolled down his face and he took a long time to gain control again. It took several false starts before he could speak.

“If my commander could hear you say that so, so, it’s just so. He would simply soil himself. You understand?”

“Matter of fact is our expression. If your commander heard me say that so matter of fact he’s shit himself. The second is not a polite expression, but what most folks would say.”

“Yes,” he agreed nodding vigorously. Was that natural or had he picked it up already?

“Science Fiction is illegal in our culture. Fiction even about the past is frowned on. It is officially viewed as lying and deviate behavior.”

“Well they don’t ban it for us,” Garrett pointed out. “So if I was you I’d have to ask, What sort of things do they know are possible they don’t want anyone speculating about among their own people? My take on it is once you have the concept something is possible the rest is just engineering.”

They rode along for some minutes in silence as he digested that idea.

There were scattered clouds above in the night, something Garrett knew by the light of the moon and the lack of stars in patches. Suddenly the bottoms of the clouds and the ends toward them were illuminated by a flash that faded away. After a minute a dull red sun climbed

over the south horizon behind them.

“Shit, they just killed a couple million people to cover up a couple weapons and radios? They could have negotiated with us before. Now there will be no quarter.”

“What does this mean? No quarter?”

“The way I let you live? None of that. Not even if you surrender with your hands up.”

“We are trained not to surrender. If my commander captured me now he’d gather the whole assembly and kill me in front of everybody. I didn’t fight to the death and worse I let you capture my equipment and kept them from tracing it.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“It’s stupid. It’s always better to live. I’m a soldier not a, caquita!, I don’t have a word again.”

“Shit, I recognize that from Spanish, and I think fanatic is the word you are looking for.”

“I thank you for the water, he said changing the subject. “I don’t mean to complain, but my injuries are making me very hungry. Would it be too great a favor to ask to be fed?”

“Actually, by the laws of war I owe you certain treatment, including food, shelter, medical care, and to pass on any packages and communication from your family. That is if you give your parole and agree to stop fighting against me.”

“Rules for war? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Why would you even have such a thing? How can you have such a thing? Don’t you just fight until you win or lose?”

“Once upon a time we could. When we got to the point that the weapons were so terrible they could destroy cities we had to limit things. Now we have rules about targeting civilian populations and treatment of wounded and prisoners. They are what they call the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Conventions mostly. Otherwise I’m sorry to say my people can get pretty ugly.”

“And how long have you needed this law of war?”

“Well now, there were actually rules of war in the bible two thousand years ago. You were prohibited to cut down all the trees around a city. Especially the fruit trees and olive trees. You were not permitted to kill all the kids and old people and sell the women off as slaves.”

“The modern rules of war came about after war was mechanized. Aircraft and artillery throwing fire and explosives and poison gas and biological agents all can get carried away. Then nuclear explosives – well if that isn’t what you guys used  there behind us it is pretty similar in effect. Those modern rules have been in their fourth update for about the last hundred years.”

“You can make a bomb like you saw go off behind us?”

“Yeah. They stopped making them so big. They really aren’t very efficient. Better to drop three smaller ones than a huge one.”

“You have so many?”

“Oh sure. Some of the big countries have the makings for thousands even if they don’t keep them assembled. They have hundreds mounted up and ready to deliver anywhere in the world in about twenty minutes. Even some of the tiny countries have hundreds. That’s why we need to keep a lid on it. If they start flying we could glass over a small country in a couple days.”

“Glass, like this?” he touched the windshield.

“Yeah. Some of the small countries. They mess with you they could end up a green glass parking lot. You know? They’d glow in the dark a thousand years.”

“How do I give this ‘parole’ to be your prisoner?”

“Just agree to stop attacking me. Does your word mean anything to you?”

“I am third generation of a conquered world. My grandfather fought the Overlords. We still speak privately of such concepts beyond just winning or I would be dead now. I advice you not to regard our Overlords as capable of such acts. They will think you a fool and kill you first chance they get.”

“Not more than once.” Garrett said smiling.

“Your uh, payback, is harsher if your rules are violated, right?”

“Got it in one.” Garrett admitted.

“I give my parole then. I think I understand it. I’m almost sure.”

“Hell of a concept to absorb huh?”

“My command has a doctrine to grab a group of hostages and interrogate then when finding a new world of man. That’s what we were going to fan out and do from your home. There were about twenty people we could detect at home in the sub-section of houses yours was in. They do not do a slow, time eating survey to see what they are dealing with. Not even when we find satellites like we did here. Am I right in thinking by bombing behind us they have already broken your rules of war?”

“Yes, they have. We’d have talked before, now it’s going to be a matter of retribution.”

“Another word I don’t know.”

“That’s Okay, I think they are starting to show you,” Garrett pointed into the sky. A couple pulsating  bright dots were headed south west faster than he was used to seeing a satellite move. Another hotter dot came down from the north east to intercept them. Four small sparks climbed away from the first pair at incredible acceleration to meet it.

“Look away!” his passenger warned.

The warning was perfect. He looked down and blinked. The flash was incredible. It had a double component so at least two of the missiles detonated. He slowed down a bit. If a flash blinded him temporarily he didn’t want to run off the road at speed. He held it at forty-five mph so he could feel the edge of the pavement and run off the shoulder if needed.

One after another a series of missiles lifted to their left and climbed away to their rear. The angle changed as each lifted tracking some unseen target until they were cutting across their front to the east. Dawn was starting but a steady flickering lit the scene like a steady strobe as warhead after warhead silently detonated. Finally a huge flash lit them from high and behind them. He had flash blobbies in his vision, but not so much he couldn’t guide the truck off onto the shoulder. He had no choice as the engine ran rough and then quit.

“That last big one fried my engine electronics. Man I bet it fried half the continent. That was a big sucker.”

“I imagine that was our ship dying. They can defend themselves from a certain number of missiles. But we have never had to fight anyone who throws one after another in the air like I just saw. I can’t imagine the wealth we just saw fired into the air.”

“That was just one base. I’m not sure which one even. Vandenberg back where we started would have been pounding the shit out of them too. I think it would take more than the one bomb we saw to put them out of commission. They probably had multiple locations from here and Japan and China hammering them if they came in from the west like those missiles were tracking. . They likely got hit with orbital weapons and lasers and crap from naval assets. I know damn well San Diego has ballistic defenses for the fleet. Alaska might have been able to reach them too. Maybe even the Russians if they have stuff in Siberia.”

Garrett looked around. There was a big truck and a couple cars stopped going the other way far ahead. The truck had managed to get off the pavement. One of the cars was half off and the other stopped in the left lane. There was no other traffic on their side. The road went down at a shallow grade into a valley and on the other side of a small bridge climbed away. The other vehicles were on the other side of the bridge, perhaps three miles away. The valley was pines and no sign of human habitation. It was the bright light just before the sun came up and the clouds above were clearing.

“I doubt I can walk far. I understand if you have to kill your prisoner,” he said resigned.

“First of all I don’t do that. Second of all if we sit here awhile the computer may  reboot and run. I’ve read they do if you were not too close. If not we can sit for a day or so and let the big boys get through throwing those big ones around and I have a spare computer wrapped in foil beneath the rear seat. I got a junk yard extra just in case this happened.”

“You planned on the possibility of your own people having just this sort of war?”

“Sure did. I don’t want you to think that is common. The government plans on a war. The power companies and data centers and banks and such are all hardened as well as the military against EMP from nuclear weapons. But guys like me? Private individuals who stock up on food and weapons and such. I bet there are not more than a couple hundred thousand of us in North America. Folks prepare for storms or riots or earthquakes, but not usually nuclear war.”

“We are so, so…”

“Short of words again?”

“Do you have a word for painful violent sex inflicted against your will?”

“Ah, we are so screwed, is the idiom. One of the milder ones at least.”

“That, most emphatically.”

“Here, work on this for now,” Garrett have him a granola bar. “You have a name you want me to use?” Garrett asked after a bit.

“One,” was what it sounded like.

“If I use that around others it will seem odd. May I suggest a variation?”

“Please.”

“Juan with a breathy H sound is the closest name in Spanish. In English that would be John. How do those strike you?”

“English is the language of this area, right?”

“Officially. Spanish is a close second, and you look close enough to a Hispanic that nobody would blink at it.”

“But the English speakers are dominant right?”

“Yeah, not like your Overlords, but they have the upper hand it’s true.”

“Upper hand. Interesting. John it is, please.”

Across the bridge the big truck threw a puff of smoke from its twin stacks.

“Let’s give it a try.” Garrett turned the key on. The dashboard lights ran through their usual sequence. That was encouraging. The starter he expected to work. It’s circuitry was fairly robust. The engine did fire however, first roughly and then caught enough it kept going without the starter. He ran it up a few times with the throttle. When he eased off it returned to a normal idle. When he dropped it in gear that engaged just fine too.

When they passed the cars there was one person in the car partly on the shoulder. There was nobody in the one in the passing lane. He wondered if they got a ride in the truck?

About ten minutes later two Highway Patrol passed them flat out. There was no traffic and they weren’t bothering with lights or siren. They didn’t give their truck a glance.

Five exits and a half hour later was a truck stop. His dark grey shirt and pants were unremarkable. So dark he’d thought them black. “If you take that armor off your shirt looks just fine. You just imitate what I do and you’ll be Okay. If anybody asks about your tattoo tell them it is an Indian thing. If they push tell them your family was from Mexico.”

“Mexico?”

“Yeah, that is the country to the south, not all that far away. They have a big Indian population.”

“I need to uh, shit, but I don’t know the polite word.”

“You say, I need to use the bathroom or the restroom. There are stalls in there for privacy. Fasten the latch, and there will be a roll of soft paper to wipe yourself clean.”

“No place to wash?”

“There are basins to wash your hands,” he illustrated with his hands, “but you can’t drop your pants standing at them. It’s firm custom. Here, this is the best I can do.” He produced a small pack of wet wipes. “Use the paper then these. I’ll buy some more in the trucker store, but try to make them last.”

An Ohio trip – w/pix

We visited friends in Ohio who have a hard time visiting us because of their health. I spent a couple days with no writing time, but very rewarding for giving me a different perspective than what surrounds me here in the northern suburbs of Detroit.

We spent a day driving into central Ohio in an area heavily Amish. It’s striking that while the Amish are tolerated they are still surrounded by the heavy hand of government from the moment they hit the end of their driveway. It is dangerous to drive a buggy on the hilly terrain and narrow roads knowing a car may overtake them any time going 55 mph. The bright orange triangle the state requires to use the public roads is so offensive some will go to jail rather than use it.

I’m sure many of them would also prefer a landscape uncluttered by power poles and cell phone towers to service their ‘English’ neighbors. The conflicts of culture here make me wonder how much longer we will see these folks living embedded in our culture before they have to live aside in a sort of reservation to exist.

The rolling hilly country and patterns of fields in different states gives you a lot of pretty scenes. However the narrow roads with close fences or deep ditches makes it a challenge to stop anywhere and compose a photograph and take it with any safety.

We took our friends to this meat market in Marshalville Ohio –

It reminds me of how many stores looked in the 1950s – no frills. They have a big window to allow you to see in the area the butchers are working. Most stores now don’t want the customer to see a whole hog hanging on hooks being disassembled. But it was encouraging to see it looked clean enough to do surgery there. The beef was as expensive or more so than we can get at home. Probably the quality was better, but the real attraction was the pork. We bought bacon and sausage that were outstanding. They have no water added and they don’t bleed all the water back out when you cook them to delay the cooking – they cook up fast and smell and taste different. A good kind of different.

Another thing I noticed is they have antiques from the front door all the way to the back of the store. A big shelf over the freezers displays old implements of the trade and other old things. They are just sitting there unchained and unbolted. They have items worth hundreds of dollars right by the front door, and indeed out of sight of the workers, but have no expectation of theft.

We also stopped at another store further on. Can you guess what they sell?

It’s hard to tell it’s a store at all isn’t it? But they have a small heart shaped wooden sign by the road that says Smith’s Bulk Foods. They are not Amish, but the lady running the store wore the dress and hair covering common to the Amish or more likely here, Mennonite. She was doing her paper work on a computer. The store had a lot of items like dry soup mix that they formulated themselves. I noticed they had very tiny packages of most things including even rice. The size of package that would cook up a single pot for one or two people. They also had unknown to me salves and liniments in tiny tins that were not cheap. They were $14 for a tin the size of a silver dollar. The run down look is something that is just common there. Many surviving businesses obviously have no extra money to waste on maintaining a fussy appearance. Note these two businesses at the main crossroads of Marshalville, a couple blocks from the meat market.

On the opposite corner was this diner. Obviously not built as a restaurant , but they make do with what is there. They are listed on Yelp I will note.

If you yearn for such a country life a good 40 minute drive from a bigger town with services there is a house for sale a few hundred feet down the state route from those stores. This was a bit over $100k I forget the exact number. A nice big lot and double garage – built in 1880. Probably framed in local hardwood and wet plaster.

Built when Ohio was still a territory, not a state. That’s all for our trip. Most of it was reminiscing with old friends and eating out. We will be back for the bacon though.

Success with free book offer

I’m happy to report that I moved over a hundred copies of “Common Ground and Other Stories” this weekend. My report doesn’t break down which were free and which paid, but most were free. I was informed you had to use the ‘one click’ buying option to get the deal. A few of my readers don’t want to sign up for that system and I feel bad I did not know that detail to warn them. I offered to refund one fellow, but he said it was no problem he just wanted me to be aware.

Thank you for all the people who took the time to look at my work.

New book up – “April”

On Amazon/Kindle. I’m off B&N Nook at least temporarily while I try Amazon’s lending program to Prime. Click image for link or http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0077EOE2C

April is actually the first book I wrote although I published others first. I tried publishing April with a conventional publishing house. It went through the slush process and sub-editors and then the second tier editor made quite a few good suggestions and I did some revisions before it went to the chief editor/ owner. Then it sat – for a long time. When I inquired after some months The editor I worked with so much was honest enough to tell me the chief editor had a whole list of new author’s work on her computer desktop but she was not reading any of it and would not delegate doing so.

I figured if I extended the courtesy to her of not making simultaneous submissions to other publishers as she had asked then that obligated her to make some small effort to either look at the material or tell me she wasn’t accepting anything. It turns out some authors had let her abuse them in this manner for literal years.

It is probably for the best I withdrew and published electronically. April is a honking BIG book and it would be very hard for a publisher to decide risk the money to print such and expensive big book for a new author. I had written (and sold) other material by the time I withdrew April and felt my writing was improving so it was better to publish the new material first. I did eventually get back and edit it again. New material was added and entire chapters removed. It’s better for it. In fact I an writing a sequel for it when I have not done so for any of my other books. I hope you enjoy it.

>FREE< Kindle download this weekend, 2/11-2/12 >FREE<

My new collection of short seven short stories. “Common Ground and Other Stories”.

Sat. and Sun. Pacific time at   http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0050YYVHY

“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

Find my books on Amazon

Search for:

Recent Posts

• Apologies… “Friends in the Stars” file wrong
• On editing…
• Kindle issues
• I just published Family Law #8, I Never Applied for This Job
• I’ve finished “I Never Applied for This Job”

Recent Comments

• Meg Lifgren on Apologies… “Friends in the Stars” file wrong
• Mac on Apologies… “Friends in the Stars” file wrong
• Matt on On editing…
• Roy Bynum on I’ve finished “I Never Applied for This Job”
• Roy Bynum on Apologies… “Friends in the Stars” file wrong

Archives

• May 2025
• April 2025
• March 2025
• February 2025
• December 2024
• October 2024
• September 2024
• July 2024
• May 2024
• March 2024
• February 2024
• January 2024
• December 2023
• November 2023
• October 2023
• September 2023
• August 2023
• July 2023
• June 2023
• May 2023
• March 2023
• February 2023
• December 2022
• September 2022
• August 2022
• May 2022
• April 2022
• December 2021
• November 2021
• October 2021
• September 2021
• August 2021
• June 2021
• May 2021
• April 2021
• March 2021
• February 2021
• January 2021
• December 2020
• November 2020
• October 2020
• September 2020
• August 2020
• June 2020
• April 2020
• March 2020
• January 2020
• December 2019
• October 2019
• September 2019
• August 2019
• July 2019
• June 2019
• May 2019
• April 2019
• March 2019
• February 2019
• January 2019
• November 2018
• October 2018
• September 2018
• August 2018
• July 2018
• June 2018
• May 2018
• April 2018
• March 2018
• February 2018
• January 2018
• December 2017
• November 2017
• October 2017
• September 2017
• August 2017
• July 2017
• May 2017
• April 2017
• March 2017
• February 2017
• January 2017
• December 2016
• November 2016
• October 2016
• September 2016
• August 2016
• July 2016
• June 2016
• May 2016
• April 2016
• March 2016
• February 2016
• January 2016
• December 2015
• November 2015
• October 2015
• September 2015
• August 2015
• July 2015
• June 2015
• May 2015
• April 2015
• March 2015
• February 2015
• January 2015
• December 2014
• November 2014
• October 2014
• September 2014
• August 2014
• July 2014
• June 2014
• May 2014
• April 2014
• March 2014
• February 2014
• January 2014
• December 2013
• November 2013
• October 2013
• September 2013
• August 2013
• July 2013
• June 2013
• May 2013
• April 2013
• March 2013
• February 2013
• January 2013
• December 2012
• November 2012
• October 2012
• September 2012
• August 2012
• July 2012
• June 2012
• May 2012
• April 2012
• March 2012
• February 2012
• January 2012
• December 2011
• November 2011

Categories

• -Snippets-
• > Gallery <
• Ramblings