Family Law 6 – a tiny snippet

“Oh, my goodness.”

“Sam, I hate it when you say something like that out loud and then expect me to beg to know what has you upset. Can’t you just go ahead and tell me?” Bill asked.

“I’m sorry. Lee stayed at the hanger rather long. I expected her to head home. She waited to leave until a couple of Red Tree soldiers showed up in full gear. They had duffels and some equipment cases like they aren’t just paying a visit and they appear to be putting cameras and sensors out.”

“You probably precipitated that,” Bill King speculated.

“Then why not right after my visit?” Sam asked.

“Fair point. But maybe they would have been lax without anybody nosing around. The way you described it the aircar was just a shell at that point. You said it was up on stands. I bet it didn’t have the pods mounted yet, did it?”

“No. I can’t say I ever saw them sitting around either,” Sam admitted.

“Well, in any case, now they have a functional vehicle, with whatever is in those pods to make it go,” Bill said. “You may assume the chassis you saw before is nothing special so it wasn’t worth guarding. Be happy you didn’t go snooping around and get caught by Red Tree’s Finest instead of an irate mechanic. I doubt they’d let you go as easily.”

“I can’t argue that. These boys looked hardcore. I’ve been trying to think how we could use this locally instead of reporting it home and everything I come up with is simply too dangerous.”

“Keep thinking that way. And warn me if you suddenly get crazy brave because I don’t want to be anywhere around when you start juggling this time bomb.”

“No, I won’t do anything stupid,” Sam promised. “It’s just frustrating. We’ve been here years and when we finally start getting some important intelligence everything has changed so it’s pretty much useless to us.”

About the CONTACT service here.

WordPress is not very user friendly in some ways. And I am no expert user.
I discovered after several people couldn’t contact me that I had a huge backlog of messages in my contact folder. Some quite old and several fairly important.
I set my email to forward posts from contact@mackeychandler.com and now found out it isn’t doing it… Doing web searches on the matter I find this is a common problem not easily fixed.I tried to set up a gmail account to forward them to since AT&T is a horror story to try to configure. The WP server won’t accept authentication from there…
WP uses PHP and I may have to go to SMTP to get the forwarding I want.
Please be aware making comments instead of using contact is much better.
Last night I sat and deleted HUNDREDS of contact messages for sunglasses, Russian ladies seeking sexual partners, sure fire investment services…from the backlog. I responded to a few old messages but still have to go through several hundred not spam.
I apologize if anyone thought I was just ignoring them and indifferent.
So bear with me please people.

Family Law 6 snippet. Rough and unedited.

(I can’t get the last part to show paragraphs – sorry)

“I believe the English idiom for this is a dive,” Born said.

“The Badger expression translates barn but that doesn’t really convey the full feeling,” Musical said. “We have different words for different kinds of barns and that one is for a stinky animal barn.”

“Nick’s. A working Spacer and Beam Dog bar with traditional bar food,” Born read off the guide on his pad again. The door was steel faced with modest painted lettering on it the only signage and had no windows. It would have eased their minds to see inside. The place was on the half g level which was semi-industrial.

“We can always leave if it’s too pricey,” Musical said. “I had no idea we should bring snacks. One of the university cafeteria sandwiches sounds pretty good now, even a little stale.”

“Yeah, especially since I usually get to finish two-thirds of yours. Follow me,” Born said with sudden resolve.

The bar was so dark they had to stop and wait for their eyes to adjust or risk walking into things. The only thing he could really see was a massive table in the back with its own long light hung low over it. It had a translucent shade over it bright with art that Born would have never expected in such a place. The two Humans standing by that table with sticks looked at them and turned back to what they were doing indifferently.

Musical recovered first being able to see the long bar that had lights low behind it to allow the bartender to work. There were more bottles on tiers behind it than he’d ever seen in one place. The man was sitting on a stool not busy at all at the moment, regarding them with interest. He was dark enough to blend into the dark but had on a brilliant white apron. The light from below the bar made his face grotesque from the harsh shadows. Two other Humans were seated at the bar hunched over their drinks. Only five people were in a space that would hold fifty easily. Business must be as slow as the hotel. There was no music just an occasional tock, tock, tock, from the table in the back.

“Put your hand on my shoulder. I can see well enough to guide you. I see a little table by the wall where we’ll fit nicely. You can sit on the floor and the table will be plenty high for you.”

“I can see the outline of other tables now, I’m just not getting much color yet.” But he did let Musical guide him.

The bartender took his time coming over with a couple of single sheet menus.

“You guys speak Standard?” he inquired.

“No sir, English, Derf, and Badger,” Musical said.

The bartender gave a forced little laugh.

“Local hab idiom, I guess. Standard is English with a little Japanese and Spanish tossed in.” He paused like he was thinking about it. “A bit of Tongan and Yiddish too for that matter. We’re a real mix. If you hang around very long, we’ll probably steal Derf and Badger expressions from you without compensation.”

“Oh good. We’re both proficient in English, at least enough to deal with our English-speaking patron.”

“That’s interesting. You work for Humans?”

“Yes sir. We’re researchers for Lee Anderson, though she went back home to Derfhome. We’re here with April Lewis and Jeffery Singh. They have business to do and cut us loose to be tourists while waiting on them.”

“Homies,” he said. “I know of them. Seen both stand up in the Assembly and they show up in the gossip boards. You don’t have to sir me. Nick is fine.”

“Nick, we are finding everything expensive here. What do you suggest to fill my Derf friend here without busting our budget?” Musical asked.

Nick regarded Born’s size dubiously.

“A pitcher of beer should be a decent mug for him. Maybe four double burgers and I’ll throw in a big bowl of chili at the normal Human serving price.” He pointed to them on the menu and both managed not to whimper at the price. “You mind spicy stuff?” he asked Born. “The chili is kind of hot.”

“You are obviously unfamiliar with our Devil’s Horn peppers,” Born said smiling. “The recent influx of Humans from Home found them hot enough to seek medical attention.”

“I’ll have to get some of those,” Nick said interested. “They might make some of my usual customers shut up who always complain our chili is too mild.” To his credit, Nick wasn’t bothered by the smile.

“If one may inquire without offending, those usual customers seem to be absent,” Born said. “Your establishment seems sized for a larger clientele. We noticed the same thing where we secured a room for this evening. Is my assessment correct? Has this move to Fargone disrupted business?”

“You’re so carefully polite,” Nick said, amused. “Yes, business is shot to hell. The pilots and maintenance guys are all laid off until they get more work and afraid to spend much until they see what shakes out. Quite a few went over to the Fargone station to set up routes and businesses between the stations or find work there. Some of the beam dogs and fabricators are working so much overtime they barely have time to sleep much less come spend money here.”

Nick did an exaggerated shrug.

“Eventually they’ll all have either time or money again and the pent-up demand will be awesome. You don’t have to be so careful of my feelings. With all the careful precision and disclaimers, you sound like a college professor.”

When Born and Musical both broke up laughing Nick got the joke too, smiling.

“You are quite perceptive,” Musical said. “What you suggested for the professor here, but just a beer, a single burger, and a normal size bowl of chili for me.”

“Coming right up,” Nick said. He retreated to the bar so there must be a kitchen somewhere out of sight. But he saw to their beer himself.

Sure enough, a shorter man with different pigmentation but similar black hair came from the back with their food on a big oval tray.

“I don’t know what you guys can eat safely,” the cook said. “We don’t get much alien trade. I’ve never seen a Badger except on video. So, it’s on you to know if what you ordered up is safe.”

“We’re aware,” Musical assured him. “My friend here can eat things you can’t. I can handle everything here.”

“Jolly good,” the man said putting the plates before them. “This is all the condiments for the burgers if you want to experiment.” He set a separate tray down with onion, pickle, hot sauce, mustard, and ketchup.

The burgers were big enough to allow Born to take two bites. That pleased him because he’d had burgers back home that were a scant bite, that he could toss in his mouth whole. He loaded them up with everything.

“Will that hold you?” Musical asked when Born was on the last of his chili.

Born held a true hand spread out palm down and made a rocking motion. He’d picked that up from Lee.
“It’s not going to bust my belly but it will hold me. I could fast for a day after all. I just don’t want to.”

The same fellow from the kitchen came and removed their dishes. Nick looked across the room and made the gesture of lifting a mug.

“You want another beer? Musical asked Born.

“Why not? What else do we have to do? I want to make a circuit of the hab at the one g level and look at everything but how long can that take?”

Musical nodded yes, emphatically enough to be seen from the bar.

The door to the corridor opened and a young woman entered with her spex heavily darkened. As soon as the door closed behind her she set them clear. Musical noted that to copy if they ever came back. She still was a little blind or maybe just cautious assessing the place. She had on the bright clothing and heavier shoes of a Fargoer. Even a badger noted she was dressed differently though. He thought she had to be cold showing that much skin with no fur. She had on shocking-fuchsia velvet shorts that couldn’t be any shorter and still meet in the middle. Her shoes were a bright pink that didn’t match at all and her sleeveless rose top ended so short there was a large gap to the top of her shorts.

Musical looked over at Nick the bartender and his mouth was hanging open and his eyes were wide. He took that as a look of surprise in Humans.

Now that her eyes adjusted, she saw Born and Musical in the shadows. The >Squeeee< shriek she emitted was so piercing one of the pool players jerked and knocked the cue ball clear off of the table. She started babbling to somebody obviously on her spex. All Musical really understood was “Oh my God, Oh my God." The door burst open behind her and four more young women in outrageous outfits entered, one in mincing little steps because she had on very strange shoes. Musical had never been exposed to glitter makeup, green or purple hair, leopard skin, stretch fabrics, or sequins, but even an alien knew this was something different. They all rushed over and surrounded Musical declaring him a real live Badger to each other. “Are you here for the Bode Benjamin show?” the pack leader asked. Musical was embarrassed to admit he wasn’t familiar with it and got glowing reports of how they never missed it and they’d had absolutely wonderful cute pix of Badger cubs when Lee and Gordon were on the show. Another group of Fargoers came in the door, this one appearing to be couples and one of the girls hopped up and down excitedly waving them over. A couple of the men staked out a table of their own. Musical found somebody was holding his left hand and when he looked back at Born a couple of the scantily clad ladies were sitting on each leg coaching him to put his lower arms around them and show lots of claw for pix. When Nick came with their beer he had to push and tell them to make way through the gathering crush. The noise level in the room was way up. “Bring these guys another round,” a girl in red leather leaning over Born’s shoulder called out before their glasses were even empty, “and some finger food for the table. Can you make a pitcher of peach margaritas?” she asked Nick. The kitchen guy went past carrying what Born recognized as pizza. Since the house didn’t have music, somebody set their pad on loud to provide it. Pretty soon a few of them were dancing to it drinks in hand. People were still showing up as their friends called them. The crowd sort of rotated to their table and away, everyone who wanted them getting pix, patting and stroking Musical, and prodding Born to fake ferocity. After three rounds of beer, much calamari, and chicken tenders they begged off that they had to go to their hotel. Born waved down Nick since Musical was invisible seated behind everybody standing. “We’re heading out,” Born said reaching across several people to offer his card. “Your money’s no good here,” Nick said shaking his head and refusing the card. “I don’t understand. It worked just fine at the hotel,” Born insisted. Nick looked at him like he was crazy, then grinned. "It’s just an expression. You don’t owe anything, ever. In fact, you’re welcome here any time. Look at all the business you suck in,” he said sweeping the place with his eyes because his hands were full carrying drinks. “Oh, thank you,” Born said and signaled Musical to go before he changed his mind. Everybody waved goodbye. When he explained the source of their good fortune and Nick’s invitation to return in the corridor, Musical said, “Now, if we could just figure out how to do that with the hotel.”

April 13 a snippet.

Most of my time is being spent on the next Family Law book. But when I need a break I work on April 13. I did this today As always rough and unedited.
…………………………..
“Come look. It’s doing it again,” Eileen said leaning over peering out the window.

“Let’s go outside,” Victor suggested. He put on his slippers and grabbed a pistol out of habit and caution. They hadn’t had any trouble at all. Late at night it was cool in Northern California but not cold. A jacket might be needed to sit for hours but not to see the lights in the sky. This was the third night the conflict between the Spacers and North America was visible. The first night was spectacular but it seemed to be winding down now.

None of this conflict seemed aimed at their area which was just fine with them. All of Southern California suffered from the bombardment of Vandenberg a couple of years ago. The delicate balance of services and legacy infrastructure that made the lower part of the state habitable had collapsed in a cascade from the point of that strike within three days. The rural northern part of the state still didn’t have electric power and existed in a political power vacuum but was habitable. If you had the skills and means it was possible to live much like people in the area had back at the start of the twentieth century.

The wrap around porch shielded the sky but they went to the corner where they could see the sky both to the north and east. Their eyes were already adjusted to the dark since they’d been in bed. Vic examined the open areas, the tree line, and listened carefully before he allowed himself to look at the sky. There was no traffic noise or other sounds of civilization to break the silence and no glow of electric lights to spoil the view.

A man-made meteor passed by to the north shedding fragments of various colors as it disintegrated. It was too high and far away to hear anything. It petered out, consumed before it got anywhere near the ground. Vic silently hoped it wasn’t a manned object. There were fine single lines of debris reentering, very much like a natural meteor shower, but they suspected none of it was natural. Suddenly there was a bright spark high overhead, then another until there had been a regular procession off them leading off to the east. After a pause there was a gentle orange glow on the eastern horizon that faded away. A few minutes later there was a brief white flash reflected off some clouds and then nothing more. That seemed to be it for this round.

“Do you want to look at the news on the satellite phone and see if anybody knows what is going on?” Eileen asked Vic.

“Not tonight. It always takes them some time to decide what to say, or to sort out what others are saying. Better to wait until tomorrow when the foreign reports will be more reliable. Let’s just go back to bed for now,” Vic said.

“You’re right,” Eileen said but leaned out and took one last look. Nothing was happening so she followed Vic back inside.

A snippet of April 13. Rough and unedited.

After Jeff Singh abruptly left the treaty signing to return to his ship the North American negotiator, Quincy Love, turned to his Hawaiian supplied security and asked to be returned to his hotel rooms. The press immediately started packing up their equipment, and minor officials seeing the principal participants leave, headed for the exits too.

Prime Minister Tanaka was temporarily besieged by his own military and law enforcement demanding what they should do with the nuclear weapon at their feet with which Jeff had gifted them. By the time he made clear he wanted it as far from Honolulu as they could take it and secured with guards in a remote location the hanger was almost cleared. Their security people were standing around the perimeter still but the janitors were there too, looking eager to clean up and close the building.

Tanaka looked around dismayed. His Business Minister Naito was still standing fast by him but even the mayor of Honolulu and his aide were in retreat for the exit. “I had no idea the signatories would just abruptly march off without taking time to issue closing statements to the press. I was going to propose an official luau tomorrow as a grand celebration. That isn’t going to work with the guests of honor gone.”

“That’s pretty hard to top as a closing statement,” Naito said, gesturing at the white cylinder of the weapon resting on the hanger floor. “I suspect the North Americans never thought he’d offer hard evidence of what sort of weapons their ship carried. If they had they would have never issued a flat denial. Other governments would at most offer up photos or video as evidence. It’s an intelligence bonanza few would share once they got a sample of their enemies most advanced weapon.”

Tanaka looked deeply thoughtful. An expression Naito wasn’t used to seeing on his face. “That tells me they see little value in the tech. They must have as good or better. I think you got the key there when you said other governments. Singh and his ladies are not really a traditional government. I don’t get the impression it was ever something to which they aspired. They are just some very strange people who fell into significant powers. There’s no predicting what they may do because they are amateurs.”

Naito had to stifle a smile at the strong disapproval Tanaka put on that word.

The roar of exhaust from Dionysus’ Chariot made them turn their heads and look out the open hanger doors. The dark wedge of the ship was already well off the ground rising on a pencil line of purple flame when it winked out of existence. The roar cut off abruptly a couple of seconds later.

“And North America should be cautious and treat these odd amateurs with all due respect until they can do that,” Naito concluded.

“That’s some seriously spooky stuff,” Tanaka agreed.

“Thank you for your support,” Naito said. “I think this left us looking very good, and the fact North America didn’t contest having the talks here would make arguing against the reality of our independence in the future rather difficult.”

“As if you left me any way to graciously beg off,” Tanaka said. “You got away with it this time, but if you keep pulling this sort of stunt it will eventually blow up in your face. Don’t think for a moment I wouldn’t have put the whole thing on your head if it had turned into a fiasco. You are almost as dangerous and unpredictable as these Spacers.”

“I’ll only take such risks if the potential benefits are worth it,” Naito promised. “I’m pretty sure Singh is going to reward us with regular shuttle service. That puts us on a par with Australia, Tonga, and Japan. That’s an exclusive club to join with economic benefits.”

“Good, because I don’t think the North Americans are going to reward us at all for facilitating this. I’ll be happy if they don’t try to recover their weapon by military action and then try to pretend we never had possession of it.”

“Where are you taking it?” Naito wondered. “Are you going to call in the French as Singh suggested? You had your heads so close together with the brass I couldn’t hear.”

“We’re going to make a great show of loading it up on an aircraft and taking it to the French Frigate Shoals,” Tanaka said. “Where it is really going you have no need to know. The suggestion we share it with the French is an excellent suggestion, but I have no idea if he cleared it with them first. It’s just the sort of thing this amateur might blurt out as an ad hoc thing without worrying about it failing if he hadn’t arranged it behind the scenes. In any case, the French can damn well open an embassy or a consulate here if they expect us to share such advanced technology with them. Hawaii has no need of such space weapons and no ships to carry them. I’m perfectly willing to let it sit unopened until it’s obsolete if they aren’t willing to acknowledge us that much.”

“That seems a small price,” Naito agreed. “I think they will readily agree.”

Tanaka gave him a sharp look. “Don’t try to help me on the sly. I’ll handle the French.”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” Naito said, showing his palms in surrender. He was already thinking who might be a conduit to the French but dropped that thought reluctantly. “I’m going home up the hill with my neighbor to celebrate privately and leave it all to you now.”

Tanaka nodded a goodbye without scolding him any further. Naito took his leave before he issued any more restrictive orders. Diana was visible waiting for him by the exit. One of only a handful of people who hadn’t vacated the hanger. There were armed soldiers circled around the weapon already. Naito figured they would bring in some sort of a lift as soon as the place was empty and they had some privacy. He didn’t think it was a rational fear, but he’d just as soon be several kilometers away when they started handling it.

A snippet from Family Law 6

April woke up slowly. Normally her eyes popped open and she was eager to get up. Today she still felt tired and a bit stiff, to the point she wondered if she was coming down with something. It had been years since she had even a cold.

“What time is it, House?” she called at the ceiling.

“Eleven o’clock and a tenth,” it replied.

“Oh, Derf time,” April muttered, trying to remember their system.

“Yes,” the house agreed taking it for a question.

“How many hours are there in a Derf day, House?” April asked.

“Twenty.”

OK, so it was early afternoon, April thought. She’s slept longer than expected. She knew exactly with what inflection Heather would say “You must have needed it.”, she might be right too. She had been through a long rough day from which to recover.

“Is Jeff Singh at home, House?”

“I am blocked from discussing Jeff’s location, schedule, or history.”

“Are you allowed to send him a message, House?” April inquired.

“Yes, I am,” It agreed.

“Then tell him I am awake if not actually up yet, House.”

“We have not been introduced for me to be able to define ‘I’,” It informed her.

April ground her teeth a little. There was nothing like dealing with an Artificial Stupid to irritate her. Even the top-end AI in a ship was so literal minded it could reduce you to tears. An AI supposedly suitable for a house had the personality of a two-year-old. On the other hand, this was probably Jeff’s fault in granting his permissions, because he was paranoid. It tended to make for a paranoid machine too.

Just out of curiosity, April asked, “Do you have my voice sample logged from yesterday, House?”

“Yes, I do.”

“In those conversations did Jeff call me by name so that you could extrapolate that the voice sample you took matched my name?” April asked.

“Your name was never spoken by Mr. Singh,” the house said. “Your name was mentioned by him to the hotel preceding your arrival, but Mr. Singh has blocked me from accepting identification directly or inferring second-order associations by event, proximity, or third-party testimony. I may only attach a name to your voice file by his direct order.”

“I’ll ask him to do that, House. Please tell him that the guest, claiming to be April, informs him she is awake and contemplating getting up sometime today.”

“Message sent,” the house informed her. It took it a full ten seconds to parse out her statement and decide it passed every test.

She’d be even more irritated if it wasn’t for the fact AIs irked Jeff almost as much as they did her. For the first time, she considered that perhaps he brought some of that upon himself. In particular, she hated it even worse when people used a cheap or free AI as an unannounced com answering avatar. If she called someone and found out several sentences into the conversation that it was just a message taking program, she just disconnected. If they obnoxiously allowed the program to use their voice, she just deleted the contact. April had to admit that giving an AI any freedom to apply logic could come back on you in a nasty way. One way to deal with that was Jeff’s way – to lay narrow restrictions on them. Since that didn’t work with people, why should it with AIs? She still had no real solution.

“Hello, guest claiming to be April,” Jeff’s voice teased her from the ceiling. “Do you have some mutually known fact or event to verify your identity?”

“You could march in here and see who is in your bed in about the time it took you to ask that. Or, you could check your guest registry and see how many other guests could be talking to you through your insane paranoid house computer, and identify me by process of elimination. If you don’t introduce me to your house I’m going to go stay elsewhere.”

“No need,” Jeff assured her. “Just a simple DNA scan will satisfy me.”

“I could be a clone,” April warned him.

“Aged the same? I can imagine the Chinese might try to do that. Though I think you’d be one of their last choices who to try it out on. I could write a nasty horror novel where an April clone turns on its creators by its devious nature before they can properly program it. I think I’d accept that as functionally equivalent if we could do it,” Jeff said. “It might be handy to have two of you even if one could be brought up to speed somehow.”

“The maintenance would kill you,” April assured him.

“You must be ready for lunch,” Jeff said.

“That wasn’t what I had in mind, but you’re right, I am hungry already. Did you make an appointment to speak with Lee while I slept? Do we have time for lunch before seeing her?”

“I arranged for us all to have our luncheon together,” Jeff said. “She, the hotel kitchen, and I are all waiting in breathless anticipation for you to refresh yourself and join us. Your bag is beside the shower and when you arise, I will give word for Lee and breakfast to join us in a half-hour,” Jeff said. “Same table, same balcony as this morning. Do you think you can find it?”

“Likely, but if you will introduce me, the house can give step by step directions.”

“Oh, very well. House, the person I am speaking to is April Lewis. You may register that ID to her voiceprint and give her full administrative rights to the house.”

“Noted.”

“See, was that so hard?” April asked.

“We’ll see who comes to lunch,” Jeff said darkly.

“Or what,” April replied in the same ominous tone. “Conversation ended, House.”

“Noted.”

Leaving Facebook

I don’t feel I can give Facebook my clicks anymore. It’s a horrid toxic environment. I liked to promote my books there but I’m leaving tomorrow. Ending my account. I’ll try to post more promotional material here. I’m on MeWe if anybody wants to look for me there. I hang out in Sarah Hoyt’s Diner.

“Who Can Own the Stars? is up on Amazon

Advance Notice of Sale

With the April sale ended I put Family Law at a buck.

A little bigger snippet. Unedited. April 12 is at 78k words.

“Prime Minister Durand, I’m sorry to bother you, but we have an irregular situation at the security station. There is a gentleman who insists you will want to see him but refuses to give his name. He said to tell you Chen sent him, and that is sufficient identification. Is this some sham? Should we arrest him?”

“No! Please, extend every courtesy to him and I will see him in the blue conference room as soon as they can prepare it. Have them sweep it and activate the jammer fields. Explain to him that is the delay, and offer him refreshments until I can join him.”
The officer started to turn away but Joel thought to ask. “You weren’t able to ID him?”

“The security station has priority access and ran a national and European Union search as well as Interpol and what partial searches we can do in other systems. We have no data on him. That should be impossible inside our borders. Are you sure he is no danger to you?”

“Quite sure,” Joel said, even though he wasn’t. The officer could probably read that easily with his portable software. The basic sort foot patrolmen used on a street corner suspect. He looked at Joel, unhappy, but didn’t contradict him and went out.

The man was seated at the corner of the conference table turned toward the other seat he’d pulled out and turned toward him a little. It was an obvious invitation to sit. It felt odd like Joel was the supplicant in his own secure room. The man was Asian but dressed very nicely in a western manner, and thanked Joel for his hospitality in flawless French. The high end spex were unusual for Earth. He had a cup of coffee he pushed away. He didn’t rise but Joel didn’t feel disrespected. He extended a memory stick to Joel.

“I was told not to deliver this over com. I suggest you only read it on an unconnected computer in a shielded facility. The files on this detail who sold your fuel process to the North Americans. Who paid him, and the routing of the funds through seven banks to an end account in Columbia. The small changes the North Americans made to the drive system to improve the probability of it working at lower velocities are included as requested. We have no idea of course if it resides on any air gaped machine, but the server on which it resides in Maryland is identified and an administrative password for the network included if you wish to verify it, delete it, or alter it. You can transfer fifteen hundred grams in payment to the account listed in the end file at the Private Bank of Home. Is there anything else we can do for you?”

“Is this same information being conveyed to Miss Lewis on Home?” Joel asked.

“Certainly not. We are contracted with you. If April Lewis desires that information she will have to request it be obtained as an individual outside our arrangement with her partnership or as an officer of one of their associated businesses.”
That was normal policy but the man had no idea the depth of Chen’s personal relationship with April and what he might confide.
“Details of specific hardware and systems doesn’t fall within the sort of general report we make daily. Since we were told she recommended us and you have confirmed it, we will forward a finder’s fee to her.”

“You will pay her?” Joel asked.

“That’s just good business,” the fellow insisted.

Joel took a deep breath and tried to make sense of it. April could get the report, but she’d have to ask for it. And apparently hadn’t. Would she have to pay extra, or was that covered by some sort of retainer? He didn’t want to ask.
“Can you tell me how this information was obtained,” Joel asked hefting the card.

“I’d have to ask permission and that will undoubtedly entail a fee. Methods are closely held and valuable.”

“Never mind then. I’d have to ask for a secure…”

The lights in the room flickered and came back. The fellow looked briefly distracted and then snapped back too.

“Your pardon, I asked already but it’s a three second lag. It took a lot of power to get past some local interference. I hope I didn’t damage anything. My supervisor says the method is reproducible with your technology, so a general description without actual plans has significant value. If you wish to know how the information on the guilty party was obtained that will be an additional two kilograms of gold. The methods to search and crack North American secure networks aren’t for sale at any price.”

Joel thought about it. This sort of secret payment of huge sums could create problems later. It was the sort of thing political opponents dredged up and questioned. No way was he paying for this himself. On the other hand, his own people might be delighted to have this ability. They undoubtedly spent more in a year on things less effective than this seemed to be.

“Very well, tell me.”

“We identified your primary drive research facility and who works there by transport and phone records. Examining the education and work history of everyone who could be confirmed to work there took about six hours. Your security was too good to cost effectively penetrate there. We then went about bugging their homes and places they frequent with micro drones. Of the one hundred and sixty-four targets, three were impossible to bug, having aggressive drone safeguards and other high-end security. They are probably intelligence agents of yours or other countries. Of the remainder, six had such abnormal psychological profiles and atypical responses to key words and visual stimuli as to be unreadable. They may be socially functional but we consider them to be functionally insane. The rest we watched and noted their reactions to video programs, conversations they conducted, and conversations they overheard. The software is not much different from veracity or interrogation software. Pupil dilation, skin resistance, and other physical attributes can be sensed remotely. Even brain activity, if not detailed mapping, yet. It’s simply a bit slower to tally reactions to random words instead of read off a list of preselected words. Within twenty-four hours we had three candidates. Examining their associates, banking records, online interests or searches, and travel histories quickly isolated the individual thief. We were fortunate our man was not one of the well protected or insane workers. That would have delayed us.”

“All that is within our technical ability?” Joel asked.

“Yes. You may need some experience to catch up, but you possess all the elements.”

“That’s kind of scary actually. I’ll forward both payments together,” Joel promised. Now, he had doubts after the fact if he wanted his own people wielding such an invasive capacity.

“Thank you for your business,” the nameless man said and left.

Joel sat and thought about it a bit. For a wonder, his security didn’t rush back in and ask if they should follow the man. Apparently, they now saw him as a private asset of the Prime Minister. It might disturb them to know he could have other assets, but that was fine. It might keep them on their toes. As far as following him, Joel suspected that wouldn’t be easy. Chen’s minions seemed extra spooky if not downright creepy.

A rough snippet from April 12

“Mr. Hall, I’m Henri Colombe. We met at dinner in France.”

“Certainly Monsieur Colombe. I remember you well.” Irwin also remembered he’d seemed rather cold and skeptical of Jeff and Jeff’s associates. Even though it was Jeff who had extended an invitation to call anytime he wished to discuss banking, it was instead Irwin he was calling. The lag between speaking and Henri’s visible response said he was still on Earth.

For some reason, there was a ding, ding, ding of alarm sounding in the recesses of Irwin’s mind. He smiled pleasantly at the man, but was already sliding a pencil back and forth through his fingers. Something he did as a stress reliever. People thought he was taking notes and felt good that he assigned their conversation that much importance. In reality he doodled fantastic creatures, fragments of ancient movie scripts and odd nonsense lyrics from early TV used to sell soda and razor blades.

As Henri inquired about the progress on Beta, Irwin scribbled paisley creatures with big eyes, zen-doodle fields of geometric shapes, and in careful script, Danger Will Robinson, danger! He made the exclamation extra dark and circled it all. What was bothering him so? It came into sharp focus suddenly.

People on Home were not above name dropping and flaunting influence. They were human after all. It simply wasn’t quite as structured as Earth. Colombe should be reminding him they met at the Prime Minister’s home because that enhanced his status. If he wanted to emphasize the social aspect over political considerations, he still would say they met at the Durand’s. Why wasn’t he doing either?

Irwin mentioned a few milestones in the progression of Beta’s construction. That was easy to relate since it was all things he’d told others recently. All the while, he was thinking furiously on why Colombe had disassociated himself from the Prime Minister. Or was he avoiding any mention of France itself? That should be easy to find out.

“Were you interested in Beta as an investment or as a personal residence?” Irwin asked. “I made that mistake recently with another gentleman. I’m afraid I subjected him to my standard investor’s sales pitch only to find out he simply wanted to buy an apartment for his own use. He was rather kind about correcting me but I still felt silly.”

“For my personal use, certainly. I’m surprised you still have any room for general investors,” Colombe said. “If it was a high-rise apartment building, I’d think you’d be at the stage you had all the street level commercial space leased and a big billboard out front saying there are residential units for sale. I’d like to get in before all the desirable units are spoken for.”

“It’s true many of the business spaces were designed for specific customers,” Irwin admitted. “Including a high g cubic sited and drawn to spec for a branch of our bank. I do have one gentleman who put a deposit down to have first choice on a residential unit on a full g corridor. We’re not as restrictive as most Earth cities with zoning statutes. There isn’t a strict division of residential and commercial unless there was a noise or mass issue that would encroach on their neighbor’s quiet enjoyment. Or dual use for that matter. I’d be happy to accept an earnest deposit to reserve second choice for you if you wish. That is still early enough to give you access to equivalent units.”

“What is a suitable deposit?” Colombe asked. “I’ll arrange transfer if you will grant me that reservation status pending receipt.”

“The first fellow volunteered a four-hundred-ounce bar. That seems like a good enough token to make standard,” Irwin decided. That at least finally elicited a few extra eye blinks from the fellow. Whatever his personal wealth, a standard bar was nothing to be sneezed at.

“I’ll arrange for it to be shipped,” Colombe promised.

Now that the deal was sealed, Irwin could try to dig a little deeper to see if his misgivings had any basis. He wanted new business but not if it was shady or outright criminal, and that’s what his inner voice had been telling him about this from the start.

“I’m surprised you didn’t look to acquiring a property on the Turnip,” Irwin said. That was the unofficial and much shorter name most applied to the French habitat due to its shape. “It has more of a French culture and uses your language. It’s also closer so you don’t have this irritating lag to do business. It’s not as if the North Americans and Chinese are a threat, constantly snipping at you like they did us.”

Colombe waved that away with one emphatic sweep of the hand when he replied. “They aren’t shooting at us right now, but I regard the entire Earth as a less stable region I don’t care to stay near. I want a clean break from Earth law, even French law, and all my attachments to the past when I leave. I don’t plan to stay active in business to need good quick communications.”

“That’s fine then,” Irwin said. “Beta should suit you.”

“Very well,” Colombe agreed and disconnected looking satisfied.

Irwin hadn’t wanted to keep questioning him further but Colombe’s answer raised more concerns than it answered. Colombe was in his fifties by his appearance, young for a man of his station. Irwin needed to find out his exact age and a lot more. He was at the peak of his career and there wasn’t really anywhere to advance. The head of the European Central Bank wasn’t going anywhere soon, and was pretty much a figurehead now.

The previous head of France’s Bank had remained at his post for a couple of decades and there seemed no reason that Henri Colombe could not do the same if he wished. Right when he was ‘sitting pretty’, as Irwin’s mother used to say, he was subtly disassociating himself from their present administration and planning his exit. It smelled.

He’d have to investigate what Colombe actually made and if he had unexplained wealth beyond his earnings and smart investments. Perhaps he had inherited wealth and all of Irwin’s misgivings were wrong. But it felt like the man had his hand in the till the way he wanted to be beyond the reach of French law.

Irwin did regard that as his business. He didn’t want to be associated with a crook, didn’t want to be responsible for bringing such a person into Beta. Besides that, he’d taken a liking to Joel and knew that a scandal in banking would attach to him and his administration even if he was personally uninvolved and unaware. That would be a shame. Irwin would give Joel a back-channel heads up to audit him if Colombe still looked dirty a few days from now.

If he was innocent, and Irwin in serious error, it would simply be an inconvenience to him. The harm done would be more to Irwin’s reputation with Joel, so he wanted to be certain about the matter.

A short snippet of April 12 in progress

It might make sense to build this way, Irwin Hall thought, but it lacked the lovely vision presented in completed architectural drawings with props like attending spaceships and suited figures to give one a sense of scale. The hub of Beta hung there as attractive as a length of pipe with holes hacked in it. There wasn’t anything to show why it was worth tens of thousands of solars to get to this point. It wasn’t even rotating yet to at least display some action for a video. At this distance, the dots of workers might be mistaken for rivets by Earthies unaware rivets were an anachronism rarely seen now except in cartoons.

That’s why Irwin hadn’t exactly prohibited shots of the floating hunk of junk before him but had always shown his investors the future end product in promotional documents. Showing the reality of what they had now would be like using the bare chassis and suspension points of a ground car in an advertising brochure. The only people who would appreciate those unadorned sorts of technical details were the kind of fans who didn’t need to be sold on the idea at all.

“We’ll be closing off those big opening,” Eddie said. “Two will get spokes extended right away, and two will have temporary bulkheads put over them until we need to put spokes on them. That will be right before we finish running the full first ring around.”

“When you cover them up paint the temporary plate a contrasting color,” Irwin said.

“Why?” Eddie demanded. “Pigments are cheap, but the organic carrier and binders will be a couple of hundred bits wasted to no purpose. In fact, it will have to be burned off to salvage the plate. It’s kind of obvious where they go. The stress reducing radius sticks out around the opening already.”

“It’s obvious to you. I want it to be obvious to somebody who knows nothing about aerospace architecture and may have a hard time finding three brain cells that can hold hands and work together. Be glad I’m not asking you to outline them in a dashed line and print – CUT HERE TO ATTACH SPOKE – in letters three-meters high. When an Earthie investor looks at it, I want them to be able to immediately see where the spokes are going to attach,” Irwin said. “It’s marketing.”

Eddie had to smile, thinking how silly that would be to do, but he stopped arguing. “Do you want to go over and look around inside? There isn’t much there yet but decks and some bulkheads with no hatches mounted,” Eddie said to him.

“No, a construction zone is hazardous. I might create risk not just for me but to others by being in the area and disrupting their routines.”

“Why did you come over then?” Eddie asked. “I could have sent you a view off my helmet cam that would show everything you are seeing from here.”

“Because now I can write an update to the investors that starts: ‘I was at the Beta site today, watching work progress.’ It makes them think I am right on top of things exercising due diligence, not just reading reports from some project manager who might be self-serving.”

When Eddie looked at him funny, he explained. “That is no reflection on you, Eddie. On Earth, it’s simply what you would have to do to make sure you weren’t being cheated. It really makes sense in an Earth context.”

“Better you than me,” Eddie said. Irwin knew exactly what he meant.

New book up –

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083QN7M7M“All in Good Time”

Out to readers

April 11 = “All in Good Time” is being read. Sits back and waits for incredulous replies and accusations of dementia. No, no, it’s the booze.

Coming along.

April 11 is at 121k words.
Looking back for continuity I found a couple small errors such as mixing Alpha Centauri with Proxima Centauri. I’ll fix those too.

A short snippet from April 11 = All in Good Time

“You go ahead of me,” Barak said. “I want to keep an eye on you and help you if you have any trouble with the sliders. I’ll be behind you but to your right so when we try the thruster you won’t be right in my path.”

“Alright,” Laja agreed. She leaned forward and slowly crouched before pushing into the ground behind her with the poles. She went forward but still came off the ground for about three meters.

“We need long telescoping poles,” she immediately decided. “The angle you push should be almost parallel to the ground so you don’t lift.”

“Good idea,” Barak commended her. “They’ll be fabricated before our next visit.”

Laja managed to stay in contact with her next shove, but it was going to be really slow. She looked up at the machine and then back at the ship. It might take ten or fifteen minutes to get to the machine. Barak hadn’t come along with her at all. He was still standing just barely off the landing pad.

“Are you going to come along? Laja asked him.

“I let you get a little bit ahead. I want to try pushing with the suit thruster.”

“You better lean forward a little or tilt it up a hair. It’s really easy to lift off the surface,” she warned.

“I think leaning will be enough. I’ll give as short of a burn as I can and try to just catch up with you,” Barak said.

Laja could see him lean forward, poles behind him off the ground. He used his helmet controls to fire a short burst. The exhaust wasn’t visible at all. He moved forward sharply and let off quickly enough. However, his right slider seemed to be pointed off to his right from the left one. As he passed her he was doing a slow-motion split and his forward lean was increasing. About three meters past her the split widened until the backs of the sliders crossed and the sideways drag of them threw him forward. He crossed his arms in front of him and managed to keep his helmet up out of the slime. The front of his suit and arms were all smeared though. On the plus side that took him two-thirds of the way to the machine.

“I’m coming,” Laja called. “Don’t try to get up yet.”
It took her five minutes to reach him.

“Are you hurt?”She worried when she pulled up beside him.

“I may be a little sore later. I don’t think I’ve done a split like this since I was about eleven years old. Once the slider was running straight it just went off with a mind of its own. I should have turned the fronts towards each other so they’d run together.”

“Is that what you did before?” Laja asked.

“This is the first time we’ve tried them,” Barak admitted.

Laja just looked at him, put out.

“I’m going to push off with my arms and see if I can get back vertical.”

“Why don’t you plant a pole right in front of you and lift yourself up it hand overhand? It seems to me that would be a lot more controllable,” Laja advised.

“That might work. It’s a good thing they are on lanyards.” Barak levered himself up enough on his left arm to get his right hand pole out from under him. In the light gravity, he worked his way up the pole with both hands until he could drag his right slider back in and get some weight back on top of it. Lifting himself on both poles he got the sliders both together.

“I’m going to skip the thrusters until we have some way to steer better,” Barak said.

“Do you need to go back?” Laja asked. “Don’t risk yourself.”

“No, no. I just stretched a few things further than they enjoyed. Let’s go on.”

Going even slower, they arrived at the machine. The side facing the shuttle was caked with slime thrown up by their exhaust.

“As hard as it is to move around, it still might have been easier to sit down further away,” Barak decided.

“It’s really not that thick,” Laja said scraping at it with a pole. “Is it stuck here?”

“It wasn’t when it shut down, but it looks like it might have sunk a few centimeters. I will have Deloris command it to back up. It’s already pointed straight at the ship. See the track marks in the muck? Deloris landed almost right on top of them.”

Laja kept quiet while Deloris and Barak made sure what they intended to do. The tracks on the machine started turning dead slow, but it didn’t move.

“Hold on a second. It doesn’t have a lot of clearance. I think maybe it sank until it is dragging bottom. Laja and I will go around the front and pry with our poles.”

After much side-stepping and careful maneuvering, they were at the front with their sliders jammed up against the front.
“Ready?” Barak asked Laja.

“On your word.”

“Pry as soon as you see Deloris engage the tracks,” Barak said. “Go ahead, Deloris.”

The tracks started again and they pried, but it didn’t move.

“Speed the tracks up please,” Barak requested.

The tracks sped up once and again. The machine backed up hard and started for the ship. Barak fell forward between the sliders his toes still in the straps.

“It’s rolling,” he called. “Do you have it on camera to stop it short of the ship?”

“Yeah, I have a good view. Don’t worry, I’ll stop it before it bumps us but close enough to get the crane cable on it,” Deloris promised.

“I know the drill on this now,” Barak said before Laja could be helpful. He lifted himself on a pole until he was on his knees and then
repositioned the pole and got all the way upright. When he looked over the spinning track had sprayed Laja from head to toe with a sticky mess. She wasn’t saying anything but she didn’t look happy.

Book anchor –

I do this with an idea. I write enough of an intro to lock down the idea for later. Some of them I’ll likely never have time to get back to. The core idea in this one is what if something happened to prevent people from lying? Would it be a minor inconvenience or collapse society as we know it? I lost an afternoon to this idea after Rebecca brought it up. I wanted to at least outline how such a thing might come to pass.
————————————————-
A Terrible Talent
Mackey Chandler
Core idea shamelessly stolen from:
Rebecca Vance
Han Xianchu might have been mistaken for one of those unhappy people who hate their native culture. He fit very well into the composite California culture and was exceptional enough to transcend any problems with discrimination. His high school had cliques like any other and bullies, but they also had a big enough Chinese population that the lesser factions held to the wisdom that if you contended with what they called the ‘Chinese Mafia’ they would ‘mess you up’.

He legally changed his name to Robert Wilson while in college and made no effort to affect any strongly Asian appearance or dietary preferences. He would have been happy to never wear anything but old jeans and graphic t-shirts, of which he had so many he’d lost count. He wasn’t shy to inform people he preferred cheeseburgers over rice, and although he spoke Chinese just fine he made no special point of using the ability.

What Bob actually detested was his grandfather. Among his earliest memories was the old man berating him even before he knew what the words with which he was being scolded meant. His face was enough to understand he had no use for Bob. His mother told Bob he loved his grandfather so many times she might have even believed it, but the repetitions had no effect on Bob. By the time he was in college and changed his name there wasn’t any trace left of the familial guilt she’d tried to instill.

Fortunately, his father while not lavishing praise on his single male child presented a sort of reasonable neutrality. He never disagreed with his own father in specific detail, but the rare occasions when his grandfather was particularly unfair he’d just make some comment that Bob carefully remembered. Once, when as a teenager he professed an attraction to a Caucasian classmate his grandfather expressed his disapproval for an entire evening. When the old man finally wore himself out and went to bed his father said, “Why do you think we never have milk in the house? If the old man looks at it first it is soured beyond use.” Which said nothing directly about dating, but Bob cherished that brief message and what it intimated over his grandfather’s many words.
As a researcher, Bob was similarly able to turn a keen perception for the less obvious phenomena to his advantage. What others might have regarded as a failure in an experiment he stopped and regarded with curiosity. Why didn’t it go as expected, and something even harder for most minds to consider, was his entire base understanding in error?

His early training at signal filtering shaped his views on his obligations. Just as he felt no obligation to agree with his grandfather’s disapproval he had hard boundaries in his mind about what he owed an employer as a researcher. Someone from a different culture, or more to the point from a different household, might have thought him dishonest. He was working for a pharmaceutical house on a drug for the treatment of dementia. Bob was very aware of the limits of his contract and would have dutifully reported any off label possibility for the current drug he was evaluating. His idea of his obligations and a lawyer’s departed significantly when he observed something completely unrelated to the drug, and at least to his mind, unrelated serendipity.

The drug he was working on was at best a dud. Worse he was coming to find it had significant nasty side effects that would have outweighed all but the strongest of benefits. It wasn’t going to be long at all before this project was wrapped up and his team moved on.

The last three populations of geriatric rats being examined were an untouched control group, a group being treated with the experimental drug, and a third group being treated with an older anti-dementia drug that had a similar metabolic pathway and this new drug. The hope was that it would at least boost the effect of the older drug and permit a commercially viable combination that could reset the clock on a new patent. Alas, it didn’t.

Bob’s monitoring of variables was exemplary. Just about any physiological variance that could be monitored on a rat was watched and recorded. That’s why when his untreated control group started showing higher body temperatures and distressed breathing and loss of appetite it was obvious they had a viral infection. His facilities were sufficiently stringent in their isolation that the other two groups didn’t catch it.

If the treated populations had shown any promise at all it would have been a responsible procedure to run the entire test with new uninfected controls. But since they were a bust it wasn’t going to be necessary. He had ten days to go and he’d just let the control group die or recover from this infection and be euthanized with the rest at the end of the test.

What Bob didn’t expect was that the cognitive testing running on all three populations showed an improvement in the natural control group. It wasn’t an improvement in just a few of the rats showing signs of age-related decline. It was an across the board improvement of the entire population. It was even more observable in three days as the rat’s temperatures returned to normal. They overcame the lethargy of the illness and went back on their feed.

Bob saw potential in this unrelated to his original purpose and detached from what his employers were asking him to examine. His initial thought was to take tissue samples but by the time the rats were sacrificed, they might not be infectious. The potential legal difficulties and the physical barriers to taking an entire animal home from work seemed insurmountable, stealing one even crossed the line for what Bob considered ethical. When the trial was completed, however, there was little difficulty in acquiring both feces and contaminated cage bedding. It was just trash after all. Not weighed or accounted for in any way before it was fed to the incinerator. Fortunately for him this proved to be an effective vector to propagate the disease.

The next couple of years were an exercise in patience. Never having many expensive hobbies or vices outside his professional existence, Bob had accumulated a decent investment account in his ten years with the company. Due to his early family life he had never had sufficient trust to have a relationship progress to marriage. His father said little but his mother appeared to be near losing hope for that to happen.

The idea of a viral infection conferring increased intelligence was worth making sure nobody would contest his ownership. Not only would it be worth wealth and fame to rival other major discoveries of mankind, but Bob wanted it for himself. It was nearly as valuable as something extending lifetime, and who knew, being smart enough might make that a goal within his reach too.

Bob was aware he was smart. He was just smart enough to realize how limited standard intelligence tests are. He was smart by that metric. Smart in the 145 to 150 range where IQ tests still meant something. He was aware however that there were different sorts of intelligence and that one’s development could nurture or destroy the potential of most.

There had been times he’d had instructors who in explaining something would get tired of plodding along step by step and at some point draw an arrow on the board and say: therefore – and conclude the matter. What was exasperatingly obvious to them became apparent with a great deal of effort by working out the details of their ‘therefore’. Some students never had that ability and might not have grasped the concepts even if the impatient instructor had spent another hour filling in those details. Bob was just jealous.

One of his fellow students of similar intelligence had advanced the theory that being that smart might be a constant trial. That as wearisome as dealing with the average person was for him and Bob, how much more so must it be to see Bob and himself as rather plodding and dull? Bob accepted that might be so but was willing to risk it if he could find out.

In the end, his ethnicity turned out to have some value. It was easier for him to find investors and start a company to research this discovery in his own community. His grandfather being dead several years he was able to speak freely to his father about the potential. There was a core group of relatives eager to take on a high-risk investment and experts of other needed specialties available to cover areas Bob had no knowledge.

An unfortunate result of outside expertise was that the two lawyers associated with the founding group strongly advocated moving the startup to Canada for long-range protection from claims by his previous employers. As one of them said, “If they can convince a jury you ever thought about intelligence in the abstract while on the clock they have a crack into a claim on your intellectual property.”

Bob was smart enough to depend on expert advice. He had no irrational attachment to San Jose or his apartment. Vancouver had cheeseburgers and t-shirts. Sometimes it was more American than even the natives wished their identity to project. Although others would rate Vancouver as having a very mild climate, the only thing that Bob didn’t like and would put up with as a temporary indignity was snow in any quantity at all.

* * *

Bob established that the infection that popped up in his rats wasn’t easily transmitted to humans and in particular, wasn’t virulent and deadly by exposing himself to his samples. It was not in line with his intelligence level to play Russian roulette in this manner, but it had a long history of being a decision many researchers made. It got around a bottleneck that would have added considerable delay and expense and posed ethical dilemmas.

It wasn’t until much later in the program that a colleague pointed out the error in his assumptions.

“Did you ever have an illness you attributed to having a cold or the flu during the decade you spent in research before acquiring this strain?” she asked.
“Of course, I had two or three minor illnesses over those years,” Bob admitted.
“Then without an antibody study how could you know you weren’t the vector of the infection from a source outside your lab? You couldn’t have suffered a minor infection, never attributed it correctly and had immunity to an attempted reinjection.”

Bob had to admit that was true, but it at least the limit in place that he hadn’t suffered any severe illness and ignored it. Bob wanted to think an exceptionally grave illness would have caused him to examine such a possibility. It was too late to test by then.

* * *

The program to find other hosts and a form of the virus that could be transmitted to humans went well but presented hazards. It could be transmitted to pigs. That was very encouraging given it was a past path of so many viral adaptations. They did show a boost in cognitive abilities, which was both encouraging and a problem. Pigs were easier to work with for their purposes than expensive apes or exotic wombats as a host animal, but their very ubiquitous nature and economic importance presented a problem. If the virus got loose in the porcine population it could create problems for pig farmers, the animal rights people would have a fit no matter what the absolute level of increase in their intelligence, and one of his researchers pointed out another problem.

“I grew up where there was a population of wild boar,” the fellow said, radiating concern. “They are pests, damaging crops, changing the environment by edging out other species, and dangerous to hunt as they are now. If they are much smarter I’m not going to go in the brush to hunt one. I may have to just cede the territory to them and only hunt them by helicopter. If this gets in the domestic population it’s just a matter of time before it gets to the feral and then native wild pig population.”

What sidestepped that roadblock and moved the program ahead dramatically was other research from outside their group that established methods for modifying the outer shell of viruses so they could utilize or reject various receptor sites. This was critical since their subject organism was DNA based not RNA and not easily modified. In just another two years they were able to make sure in vitro that the virus could infect humans and make sure it didn’t infect any domestic animal of economic importance or with strong support groups such as canines, felines, and bovines.

There was no question of conducting human trials with paid subjects or volunteers. Of the small group who understood the nature of what they had first isolated and then modified almost all of them wanted to try it themselves. The few who intended to take a pass on it cautioned that any unexpected adverse result could destroy the firm. A public revelation could easily prevent any recovery of the original goals by removing all the talent with the knowledge needed to engineer such a recovery. Only single people were picked to test it due to the difficulty of separation from family.

Still, Bob was one of the six chosen to test the infection because others now had as great or a superior technical understanding of the discovery. Also, most felt he would find some way to bypass their decision if they attempted to exclude him. A poll of his workmates would have found that although no few would acknowledge his intelligence a larger majority would list his being sneaky as a more prominent quality.

All six agreed to make their previous testing open to the group and undergo now tests for purposes of comparison. The company had a facility long-held and prepared in a remote area. The cabin was fairly luxurious, almost a mini-resort, at the end of a long dirt road that was barely more than two wheel ruts for much of its length. The access to that was fenced and gated in such a way it appeared to just provide privacy to a small chalet that was actually a guardhouse for their security.

There was some variation among the six infected. Bob merely suffered a mild sore throat and a raw nose. Other than clearing his throat and making a lot of hot tea he didn’t feel that bad. At the other end of the spectrum, one man had chills and went to bed missing supper the second night in the cabin. Nobody reported any emotional disturbance or striking mental changes, not even bad dreams.

Their experience with pigs gave them an idea of the infectious period. They doubled that for safety and had a moon-suited crew strip all the bedding and linens from the cabin, dispose of them in a portable incinerator and fog the building thoroughly with an extremely dangerous and persistent gas. To be on the safe side they agreed to forgo public activities for the next month and restrict themselves to work and home. To that end they had food and meals delivered and their trash was sealed and delivered to the same incinerator used at the cabin. Those around them were monitored for possible infections and there was only one false alarm from a woman who got a common cold.

One of the testers reported they were reading a book they’d set aside some years before and the material now made sense that hadn’t before. They were all hopeful that was valid and looking forward to more definitive tests.
The economic model for the treatment was something they had given a lot of thought. A geographically remote resort seemed impossible to control on a larger scale with patients who did not have a vested interest in cooperating with their own isolation. The model decided upon was a cruise ship that would stay away from national waters for a full month.

Initial testing showed as much variation in benefits as the infection showed in symptoms. Bob tested fifteen or twenty percent higher on standardized tests. He didn’t feel differently internally, but it was enough to drive him to the edge of where the tests had any repeatability or meaning. One of the altered said that the tests were obviously created by people in the core standard range and needed to be reformulated and structured by people smarter than they intended to measure. Everybody agreed with his analysis but didn’t see any way around that meaning that there couldn’t be any metric for evaluating the very intelligent but the opinion of their peers.

The test group was expanded and married researchers brought their spouses in. A couple even arranged to have their children cared for to have time for the isolation it still required. One mathematician was their greatest success yet, suddenly gaining insight on so many aspects of his professional life that he burst forth with a flood of new papers. He confounded those who thought him stodgy and unremarkable in middle age and destined never to be more than a competent teacher. His wife and friends had to intervene to make him sleep, eat, and see to his personal grooming reasonably in the face of this new obsession. In time he did get it under control and didn’t need continued oversight.

The first sign of trouble was in the company cafeteria. Bob was at a table with Fred who was a Cryo-Electron-Microscopy guy and Alice who was a Forensic Veterinary.

“I’m concerned I do see DNA loops in the cells of post-infection organisms,” Fred said. “I have concerns those will get spread to other hosts that might reincorporate them. Possibly reincorporate them with unknown effects, even if a loop can’t recreate the entire organism.”

“By entire organism, I assume you mean the virus,” Alice said. “I’d avoid using that term to describe a virus because many will argue it is not an organism. The discussion will then devolve into debating nomenclature and miss entirely the point being made.”

“Fine, but I find that all as silly as the seventh round of declaring Pluto a planet or something less,” Fred said.

“And yet words have meanings and so much trouble can be avoiding by taking the narrower meaning if one is aware it exists,” Alice said.

“I’m a rather practical fellow,” Fred said. “I can only tolerate the nitpicking so far before it gets to me. Most of these people couldn’t use a screwdriver without a user manual and personal instruction.”

“I agree in principle,” Alice said. “But if the poor soul in question is that limited you will probably have to devise separate tutorials for bladed and Phillips screwdrivers, so I see being as precise as possible a great benefit not an error.”

“You agree with me, but I have always thought you regard me as simply a technician and not worthy as a person since I don’t have a doctorate or two,” Fred said.

Alice looked shocked at that. She might have replied, but Bob interrupted.

“Please stop. This conversation is shocking and out of character for both of you. I must invoke our agreement to note any changes in personality. I demand you both have careful evaluations to see if something has changed. I can’t imagine either of you having these responses a month ago. For that matter I’m going to have a full psych workup myself now, and I’ll encourage all the other test subjects to do so, strongly.

“How do we seem different to you?” Alice asked.

“More aggressive,” Bob said, and made a face unsatisfied. “Perhaps that’s not the right word. Neither of you seemed angry. You didn’t raise your voices. You were definitely less tactful than I’d normally expect. Do you feel differently?”

No, I didn’t feel emotional,” Alice said. “It just seemed like the truth, and I was perhaps more vigorous in saying what I thought than usual. If I seem to be a bit of a snob over having a doctorate I apologize, Fred. I do value it and all the hard work it took to attain it, but it is my judgment of my own self worth and it is against my core principles to extend that to denigrate others who have other skills and took other paths.”

“My pardon for attributing my suspicions to you,” Fred said. “I know I am no mind reader and yet I’ve harbored such feeling for a long time. If I feel there is some truth in them it’s still wrong to apply them to you because I feel that way about a group. That’s the core of discrimination applying group metrics to the individual.”

Bob looked at them and didn’t say anything for a moment. The common thread in what he heard had one unifying word, truth.

“Do you still want us evaluated, Bob?” Fred asked.

“Oh yes, very much so. But I wonder if I might conduct my own small test with you right now?”

“Sure, go ahead,” Fred said.

Alice just nodded yes.

“I want you to each tell me something you consider a basic truth of your life, something basic that you couldn’t imagine changing. You first, Fred.”

“I love working with hardware because it isn’t a matter of opinion. It either works or it doesn’t You don’t have that in things like anthropology where everything is only opinion and you could upset the whole apple cart and have to start from scratch at any time.”

“Now tell me verbally that all the soft sciences are full of facts, we just can’t measure them and they are just as valid as hard numbers.”

“Say that?” Fred asked.

“Please. I’m not asking you to believe it, just quote me,” Bob invited.

“Soft sciences…” Fred stopped and put his head in his hands. I know I’d just be quoting you but it’s wrong. I can’t say that. It makes my head hurt so bad I can’t think.”

“Well stop trying, please. I don’t want to hurt you,” Bob said.

“How about you, Alice?” Bob invited.

“I’d say my core belief is we are all animals. I don’t believe people have a separate supernatural component that your dog lacks.”

“Then please tell me we will all meet in heaven and I’ll be reunited with every dog and cat I ever owned.”

“Oh sure. We’ll all cross that rainbow…” She stopped and gasped. “Bridge,” she managed to choke out through clutched teeth, and then she threw up trying to force the rest.”

“What happened to us?” Fred asked.

“I’m not sure, but it’s scaring the hell out of me,” Bob admitted.

An April 11 snippet

As requested another April 11 snippet. The book is past 66k words.
…………………………….

Heather didn’t get many requests for a private audience from her landholders. They could speak to her after she held her weekly court, but most were too busy to want to sit through the judicial matters to speak to her. The doors were locked after she started hearing cases and there was no telling how long they would take. All of that was by design to save her precious time. Most of them communicated with her by text instead of demanding a face to face, which was just fine with Heather.

Several described discussing issues among themselves before having one of their number approach her. She wasn’t offended or suspicious of that. A less confident ruler might have worried about the potential for conspiracy. It just made good sense to her. It probably saved a lot of her time that would be wasted rehashing everything with them one by one. The number of people who were always finding something to propose could be counted on the fingers of one hand anyhow. Frymeta Obarzanek was not one of them and had not in her memory ever been the spoks to present a group proposal.

The whole Obarzanek clan kept to themselves to the point of being reclusive. Heather hadn’t seen Frymeta for some time and she obviously had gotten Life Extension Treatments. When she first walked in, Heather had a momentary disconnect, thinking she’d sent her daughter instead, because the woman now looked so much like her older daughter Yetta. It didn’t help that she had her younger daughter Laja with her. Heather was used to seeing the pair of sisters together. They did much of the clan’s business dealing with the public. It helped Heather clue up on who she was, and not say something stupid, that the woman looked younger now but still wore the same dark clothing as before. An American would have immediately labeled it as ‘old country’. The daughters were both thoroughly modern in dress wearing bright colors of a stylish cut.

The clan was one of the bright spots in her domain as far as business activity. They were the first of the landholders to start sinking an elevator big enough to handle freight and they took it all the way up to the surface too. Others owners started smaller and lower, avoiding surface exposure for safety. Central had been bombed once and might be again.

“I’m going to have coffee,” Heather informed them. “Would you care for something?”

“That would be fine,” Frymeta said. Her daughter waited on the mother’s response before adding her own, “Please.”

Heather looked over her shoulder getting a nod from her housekeeper that she was on it. Heather didn’t waste time on ritual chit-chat by asking after their family. For one thing, they had imported so many relatives she’d lost track of their names and relationships. They’d also put a sizable deposit on another lot as far away across Central as possible from their first holding. They had a twenty-year option on that property to redeem it or lose the deposit. Heather didn’t expect them to lose the deposit.

“What can I do for you?” Heather asked and sat back relaxed. She’d learned to do that to signal to people she intended to hear them out and they needn’t rush to get their say in.

“Have you observed we have accumulated a mound of broken rock in the middle of our property?” the Matriarch inquired.

“My engineer, Mo Pennington, mentioned it some time ago,” Heather remembered. “He remarked on it because other landholders are also bringing up material from tunnel boring, but most of them inquired where they could dispose of it. We obtained permission from Robert Lewis to dump them on the south slope of his mountain.”

Frymeta nodded. “That side already has a gentler gradient. I expect in a few years he’ll be able to plow a series of switchbacks up the contributed material and have a road to the top of his holding. I’d charge him if he wanted our fill, but that’s other’s concern if they want to donate it. Once they abandon it there as waste I don’t think anyone would argue they can claw it back should they find it has value or they find a personal use for it after all.”

“I’m sure you are aware that is a source of litigation among the Earthies right now,” Heather said. “Landfills and waste storage are suddenly resources and claimants are trying to regain rights to what they paid to throw away. It’s a mess with much of the trash having been hauled across county or state lines. There is even an international case where New Jersey wishes to mine the ocean floor beyond the national limit where they dumped millions of tons of garbage for decades.”

“I don’t expect any better of the Earthies,” Frymeta said. “We fled North America before we too were reduced to being rag-pickers. Australia is better off, but some of our cousins and Grandfather Blas have joined us from Australia, unsure of their long range future.”

Heather felt the same but just nodded and stayed silent. As Sovereign, she realized everything she said had an official component to it. She didn’t have the luxury of a completely private opinion except speaking with her partners April and Jeff. Australia was, if not an ally, a trading partner who treated them better than most Earth nations. It would be better if she could not be quoted as viewing them negatively.

“I try to have as light a hand in governance as possible,” Heather claimed. “It’s no concern of mine if you want to build your own mountain. If it gets high enough I assume you will put a radar reflector and a warning light on it. Mr. Lewis did that with his mountain even though it is a natural formation and nobody asked him to do so.”

“So shall we,” Frymeta promised, “and we will stay back from our property line a good margin, so whatever the natural angle of repose turns out to be with our waste it won’t intrude on our neighbor’s property. Have you wondered why we have all this rock?”

“I try to mind my own business and not speculate,” Heather said. “I’m happy you are tunneling like a bunch of demented groundhogs and I assume you are just going to keep excavating your elevator indefinitely.”

It was Frymeta’s turn to nod noncommittally. “We stopped the surface shaft with a break at ten kilometers actually. We’re going to have parallel shafts running from six kilometers down to wherever it gets too hot or the composition of the rock is unfavorable.
We’ve put measures in place to prevent any blast from the surface damaging the parallel shafts. It’s safe from anything short of a ground penetrating nuclear device, coming straight down the center shaft. We put the elevator at the corner of our property to facilitate selling lift services to our adjoining three neighbors. They are welcome to make connector tunnels to our bottom stop as long as they build in certain safety features. Their tunnels must have jog-backs from blast attenuating dead ends and provisions to collapse large sections on command.”

“That seems like sound practices,” Heather agreed.

“Where most of that pile has come from the last couple of lunars is a new shaft on the opposite corner of our property,” Frymeta said. “We are building an elevator six times the area of the old one to be able to carry the largest anticipated rover or a spaceship.”
Frymeta stopped talking and just looked at Heather as if she expected a reaction.

“Did you think I’d object?” Heather asked, surprised. “Knock yourself out. Just because we own a few ships doesn’t mean we’ll regard you as competition. We’ve never thought of ourselves as primarily freight haulers. I’d be happy if Central were known for ships. It’s too bad we can’t really compete with Home for shipyards because building in zero-g is easier.”

“Who are we?” Laja spoke up for the first time and asked, a little irritated. “I dislike having undefined terms when we are talking business.”

Her mother looked uncomfortable.

“We are Myself, April Lewis, and Jeff Singh,” Heather said. “You can always assume we three support each other without reserve.” Her tone conveyed the Royal self perfectly.

“No, I couldn’t assume that,” Laja said. “I just don’t operate on ‘everybody knows’ but now that you have defined it I accept it.”

“Heather is closer in age to you than me,” Frymeta told her daughter, “but we are both still products of a different culture that was more circumspect in our personal life than in business, where everything must be documented in black and white. You may think that lingering Earth Think but it was the reality in which we were raised.”

“While we are defining things, I think the limits of what is considered Earth Think is expanding, and that trend will probably continue,” Laja said.

“I should have seen that coming. Neither will Earth Think itself stay static, any more than how you regard it. Cultural norms change no matter how authorities try to keep them enforced. Let me explain the background,” Heather told the young woman.

“When we three declared the revolution on Home we did so in secret, fearful to even put a name to our association. To give something a name is to invite discovery. We were already facing the prospect of banishment to Earth. Being named as criminal conspirators would have just added another thing to overcome to ever get back in space. We kept everything secret as a matter of personal safety. We also avoided any public pledges or legal contracts to each other because the majority of those raised on Earth would disapprove. Our own families were a concern that way. April still feels her grandparents are prejudiced and don’t accept Jeff, and Jeff hasn’t had his Earth-side Indian relatives speak to him since the war.”

“What about your family?” Laja asked directly, horrifying her mother.

“My mother is so in your face and unconventional she puts you youngsters to shame,” Heather said. “My brother manages to occasionally shock her.”

“Then I think I’d like to meet them,” Laja said, with obvious sincerity.

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