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.

Print of April and Family Law

Well I have a new supposedly cleanly formatted print copy of April. The young man helping me has been through two moves weeks apart, two illnesses, and starting school. Can’t entirely fault him. Looked at every page carefully in preview but still ordered a proof copy to look at before putting it back up for sale. I’ll do Family Law this afternoon.

April #11 a new snippet

Irwin appeared in their video exactly like the official North American release showed him, except he had on a heavy neck collar attached to a waist chain and another long heavy chain hanging to ankle shackles. A separate long chain connected wrist to wrist. There were two black clad figures standing behind him pointing sub-machine guns at his head. He recited the same message exactly as before. When he naturally paused a little in his recital one of the figures nudged him with a muzzle.

At the end of the official video somebody off camera called: “Cut!”

The black clad figures lowered their guns and swept black balaclavas up and off of their faces revealing the President of the USNA and the Secretary of State.
The Secretary smiled and reached in his pocket. “Good boy!” he said, and tossed a treat. Irwin stretched a little to catch it in his mouth and looked stupidly happy.”

“It’s ridiculous,” April said, shaking her head.

“Good, that’s exactly what we were aiming for,” Chen assured her. “The thing was documentary length by news standards, but it made them look ridiculous, not us. If we claimed their video was fake that would be easy to ignore but we just demonstrated how easily it could be faked. That has much more power than the unsupported claim.”

“What?” Chen asked at the flash of consternation that showed on April’s face.

“It just occurred to me. Somebody down there will believe our video with the added officials just like they did North America’s video.”

“Well sure. I could have put them in clown suits and somebody would believe it.

A free short – too small to publish

Liars

“The first thing you have to remember is that Earthmen lie.”

“I’m sure we have very skilled negotiators who can deflect and limit their responses with the best of them,” Planetary Administrator Oolapon hissed.

The hiss had no emotional content. That was just the nature of their language.

Explorer Aeelotip shook his head so violently his crest flopped around. A negative gesture the Ooowapie shared with Humans, though it had more meaning than just a negative.

“Not a deflection or failure to reveal full details. They lie.”

“One may mislead a subordinate and put them forward to negotiate in ignorance. It’s a terrible thing to do but not unknown in our history,” Oolapon said.

“You are willfully refusing to hear or believe,” Aeelotip said. This was a horrible accusation and the fact he could say it at all was near a criminal indictment of his boss.

“Earthmen will look you in the eye and knowingly affirm a total lie with full knowledge of what they are doing. Not only will they do so to deceive, but they will do so fully aware you have just watched them do the very act they deny. They can shoot someone dead in front of you and say, ‘I didn’t do that,’ with a straight face and no shame while standing there holding the smoking gun.”

“Then they are all crazy,” Oolapon decided.

“Every – last – one, as far as I can tell,” Aeelotip agreed.

Oolapon went through a series of color changes that indicated increasing levels of stress. Since they took significant energy and produced toxic waste in his blood stream it didn’t take long before he felt really ill.

“I… I… ” Oolapon rushed over to the balcony rail and threw up violently.

Aeelotip sipped his liquor and ignored his boss’ distress, which was in itself a terrible antisocial act. He’d found some of his social obligations a little silly since dealing with this new race. In fact, he had grown distressingly pragmatic and insensitive.

Oolapon came back to the table and rinsed his mouth out with the strong liquor. Maybe he was made of sterner stuff than Aeelotip expected if he thought he’d keep it down now. He did not rebuke his subordinate as lacking in empathy either.

“I’m at a loss to imagine how it is possible to have any dealings with them,” Oolapon said. “How long did it take you to figure this out?”

“We found a small recently established colony of theirs. It took us three days, I’m ashamed to say. If only we’d found the home-world it would have been apparent before we ever landed or hailed them. That would have saved us a great deal of time. In fact, if we’d found their home-world I’d have tried to slip away and never let them know we exist.”
He looked distressed himself if not nearly as much as his superior.

“But then if we had found their home-world we’d probably all be dead. That might be for the better since they still wouldn’t have any idea what we look like or have elements of our language. They’d still be able to guess which quadrant of the heavens we came from, but they still don’t know our home-world or its distance, thank the gods.”
Oolapon ignored the superstitious reference, assuming it was sarcasm in an educated star captain.

“Why dead? That’s an extraordinary claim all by itself.”

“They have separate political factions holding different land-masses, sometimes holding segments of the same continent with arbitrary boundaries. If you encroach on their space suddenly and appear a threat you can be vaporized before you realize you alarmed them.”

Oolapon looked at Aeelotip like he was daft. “They not only lie but they fight?”

“Like it is their favorite sport or hobby,” Aeelotip assured him. “They pour uncountable treasure into weapons and the people to man and maintain them.”

“So each of these factions is sealed off and hostile to the others?” Oolapon deduced. “How does one ever attain the resources to get off the planet, much less get star travel?”

“Oh, they find hostility and territorial paranoia no barrier to trading with each other. In fact, selling weapons to their lesser territories seems to be one of the major industries of their world. If anything, it has driven them to develop the technology to leave their planet’s surface before some other state or nation as they call them, beat them to it, and physically attain a superior military position over them.
“They have all this information readily available in the public data-net. It’s positively obscene. I have a copy of the data fraction this colony world held in its public net. We are still deciphering the language, but the images tell the story well enough. It took the entire memory we expected to last for a ten-year voyage to download it. It took all the first day and a half to do that. I asked why it was so large and their administrator laughed and said it wasn’t a hundredth part of the data held on the home-world. It is filled with useless personal correspondence about daily life and repetitious images of domestic animals.”

He paused and looked at Oolapn, gauging if he’d believe him.

“They keep carnivores as what the call ‘pets’. They are companion animals to amuse them but with fang and claw. Some big enough to pull them down and devour an occasional fool. Some are kept to guarantee their territorial obsession while the owner is absent.”

“Why would they care if somebody used their space in their absence?” Oolapan asked.

“They would carry their private possessions away with nobody there to prevent it.”

Oolapan looked at his glass. Aeelotip thought he might be regretting putting anything on his stomach again. Indeed, he half expected him to head to the rail again. Instead, he downed the rest of it in a gulp and poured another.

“They have copies of our technology,” Aeelotip revealed. “I let some of my officers mingle with their officials and of course there were lesser personnel about to serve both sides. They tricked our people into trade and outright theft to obtain personal communicators. When that came to light, I complained. They were amused by how naïve we were. It was shortly after that I realized what danger we were in and did an emergency recall to the ship and departed on a deceptive vector. None of the communicators should have navigational data, and the equipment itself, I’m sorry to say, seems inferior to theirs.”

“Assuming we both have volumes of exploration that are just now touching, how can we avoid them? It seems impossible to retreat from the sky. Surely, on your voyage back you have given this some thought. Did you come up with anything?” Oolapan asked.

“I have. I concluded it is impossible to deal morally with an entity that has no concept of truth or morality. One must meet it head-on with the same raw self-interest if it is impossible to destroy it. I don’t think we have any chance of doing that. We must withhold every fact from them that might be used against them and be willing to deceive them at the same level and skill they would use against us,” Aeelotip concluded. Even though he was inured to the idea for some month his color flickered and he could feel his gorge rise.

“But how?” Oolapn wailed. “I feel sick just to imagine someone else doing it. If I try to imagine doing so myself I’m sure I’ll be back at the rail. I might have to throw myself off bodily to get relief this time. In all our worlds we may have a few score criminally insane who can utter a falsehood without flashing a rainbow and making themselves sick. Are we to empty the insane asylums to recruit ambassadors to these monsters?”

Aeelotip had his crest stiffen a little and got some healthy color back. “There you go. I’m so happy you came to the same conclusion without my help. They will, of course, be difficult to manage. Perhaps some of the less stricken can be a buffer between those who deal with the Earthmen face to face and the sane. It may take two or three layers of insane between normal people and our interface to the Humans. The hard part will be enforcing no contact between Earthmen and the sane. They will feel slighted and resist it. My deepest fear is I am able to contemplate doing this after only a few months thinking on it as we returned. I’ve adjusted. I’m not entirely sure it isn’t contagious.”

A snippet of April 11

In Northern California, Eileen was still in her first year with her new husband Victor Foy. He was a local and older than her. She was a refugee from Southern California, displaced by the bombardment of Vandenberg that Jeff mentioned to his business associates. April carried out a strike on the base a couple of years previously to make them stop shooting at Jeff. She really hadn’t used excessive force. The damage was far out of line with the level of her response. There was some splatter from the primary weapon into the adjoining counties, but she really hadn’t targeted civilian areas.

The problem was that all of Southern California was a hodgepodge of obsolete and barely adequate infrastructure waiting to do a chain-reaction collapse if any important piece was damaged. Southern California was depopulated and reverting to desert in a month of the strike. People who built luxury seaside mansions on the Baja after the Mexican annexation fled or died. The northern part of the state and parts of eastern Oregon were more like the tribal areas of Pakistan now than part of the United States of North America. The new seat of North American governance, Vancouver, looked dangerously close to being cut off from the rest of its populated areas when you looked at an honest map.

The Texas Republic in the South and East was keeping the USNA too busy to do anything about the autonomous areas. Nevada wasn’t exactly lawless, but it was a lot emptier than before The Day. Many businesses were closed, including all the casinos, and services limited. You might get mail if you could get to your post office, but forget delivery or seeing state services like the highway patrol. There was no city water in Las Vegas, and when the power went down in outlying areas, nobody was fixing it now.

Eileen walked from near LA to her father-in-law’s home after The Day, with a stop to winter over halfway. She quickly became eager to leave there, chaffing under their thumb, and picked Victor Foy over younger men for his substance. She’d left her family early when things had come to a head and walked to Vic’s late the previous fall.

“When we go to the Fall Festival I want you to talk to Mr. O’Neil and arrange for him to get me a prescription flown in from Nevada,” Eileen said. She was standing close in front of Vic, her hands on his shoulders. He was sitting on his favorite kitchen chair, which put her eyes just a little higher than his. He’d been reading but sat the book aside when she wanted to talk.

“Feeling poorly?” Victor asked, but he knew better.

“Feeling entirely too good, and you also have that look on your face that says you are tired of being patient and understanding about feeling half married. I’ve grown enough this year that there’s no arguing a pregnancy would be too risky for me. Well, no more than all the other women here in the autonomous zone who don’t have modern medicine like before The Day. But I still have the same goals. I not only want to go to space, but want to take you with me. I’d be pleased to have children with you – later – out there. If we have to get passage for three or four, my guess is it will never happen.”

“We can try,” Vic said, “My understanding is the doc in Nevada will issue a new prescription against an old pill bottle. I’m not sure he’d send a new prescription for a seventeen-year-old girl he’s never met or had as his patient before.”

“Do you know what the legal age is to marry in Nevada?” Eileen asked.

“Eighteen, without parental consent,” Vic said. “Why? What are you thinking?”

“I could fly to Nevada and return his next trip. I’m easily within his weight limit to take passengers. Both of us are near it. If it’s still business as usual enough to have a pharmacy and get a prescription written there has to a doctor and maybe even a clinic or hospital. If there is any way we could pay for it,” Eileen worried. “Is there any way we can convert some of our nuggets or gold dust secretly?”

“No need. If there are drug stores and aviation gas in Nevada they must be doing business normally in dollars,” Vic said. “I have a credit card that hasn’t expired yet. It had no balance and was set up to auto-pay from my bank account. If Chase Bank is still in business in Nevada it should still be active even though it hasn’t been used lately.

“If that doesn’t work, I always kept some cash on hand. I should have enough in twenty and fifty dollar bills to pay for your flight and pills. I always worried the teller system might go down and I wouldn’t be able to get to my money. I just never figured everything would go down so hard that very few people would take cash for anything. I was thinking in terms of a couple of weeks or a month. If there is a branch open I may even get some more cash.”

“Like you kept a few extra rounds of ammunition?” Eileen teased.

“I’ve got somewhere around fifteen thousand dollars in a bank bag in my safe. What I am more concerned about is things may be too normal in Nevada. They may not accept you are an emancipated minor and a married woman and try to declare you at risk and put you in foster care if they have that sort of thing still functioning.”

“I could lie and tell them I’m eighteen,” Eileen said. “That wouldn’t bother me.”

Vic shook his head no, looking unhappy. “You might be in national databases even if your old California records are lost. Sworn statements from our locals that our marriage is notorious and recognized by the community might mean more. Especial from the pilot if he’s well regarded there. We need to discuss it with either O’Neil or his pilot buddy. If they need to make inquiries at the other end we’ll have a couple of weeks until he can report back what it’s possible to do there.”

When Eileen made a face, Vic shrugged. “Thank you, but we’ve waited this long. A couple more weeks won’t kill me.”

Eileen put her arms around his neck and leaned forward nose to nose and forehead to forehead. “Do not assume my concern was for your patience.”

Temporarily withdrew paper

I’m having difficulty with the paperback editions. You change one thing and it changes others unexpectedly. The young fellow helping me with this is tied up getting a place to live for a couple weeks so I’m just pulling them until we can get together and get them formatted right. I’m pretty sure a couple sold with problems like no indents in a couple chapters. Let me know if you received an unacceptable copy like that and I’ll replace it when we have it fixed. As much as Amazon wants for this big a book you should have a clean copy.

A snippet of April 11

Irwin Hall had a very productive meeting in Havana with a number of bankers and investment professionals from South America. None of them were interested in provoking the Giant to their north. Irwin assured them the habitat offering would be structured in a company totally divorced from any association with the System Trade Bank or other entities subject to North American sanctions.

Instead of going back to Hawaii, Irwin received private invitations to have a smaller meeting with some investors in Belgium who had complex reasons for not wanting to be seen with the South Americans with whom he’d just met. That was fine, Irwin didn’t really care about their internal squabbles and would accommodate them as long as they didn’t require him to publicly disassociate himself from one side and support the other.

Cuba had heavy traffic in hypersonic connections, which were forbidden in North America for supposedly environmental reasons. That was a big reason they’d met in Cuba, besides a lovely climate, relatively cheap accommodations compared to Singapore or Tokyo, some of the best duty-free rum and whisky in the world, and they still made well-regarded cigars even if they were subject to tobacco bans in a number of countries.

He could get a very quick flight to Brussels and probably just keep going east after. He could get a direct flight to reconnect to Hawaii that direction and lift for home. The flight to Brussels was Air France and he had one of the twelve first class seats at the front. There was only one couch to each side of the aisle in first class. The rear had one seat to a side and two to the other in two staggered sections, with the service bay for drinks and such in the middle. First class had their own services and kitchen even as short as the flight was.

The plane took off aimed south a bit to avoid the Keys and American airspace. They would build altitude and then turn north accelerating through the transition to a semi-ram engine, then shut down that engine entirely at about forty thousand meters. They would pick up enough speed from the compact rocket in the tail to go ballistic until they dropped back in the atmosphere passing off the coast of Ireland and made a long supersonic turn to the South East over the North Sea, going subsonic before crossing the coast of the Netherlands lined up to land at Brussels.

The attendant offered Irwin a mini-quiche and champagne or a freshly prepared sandwich if he was hungrier. He declined and asked for coffee. The eighteen seats in the rear had to make do with pre-mixed drinks or soda, and bag nuts or pretzels.
The coffee was served in a delicate handled-cup, but its appearance was deceiving. It was a glassy ceramic that would not shatter and produce shards that might injure someone. At least it wouldn’t if you didn’t have a hydraulic press or an anvil and heavy hammer handy.

Irwin took a sip and was pleased with it when there was a >WHAM< and the cup flew off his serving tray and splashed the coffee up the left bulkhead. The hypersonic slewed clockwise so hard it thrust Irwin’s head down against his left shoulder and then it decelerated so hard his chin went against his chest and his arms went out straight in front of him. He was belted in and the crew made sure the passengers stayed that way until they went ballistic, just in case something like this happened. The crew was not all so fortunate and several of them were injured severely. The first class seats were in pods, and the top of Irwin’s pod came down like a clamshell and locked closed. Emergency lighting from under the seat illuminated it indirectly. There were a rumbling and pitching motions, then a long hard turn to the left. “This is your Captain. We lost our starboard engine and shut both down. We are already cleared to land straight in at Miami which is easily in our glide range. I’ll announce when we are on approach. We expect an orderly exit without hazard on the ground aided by airport personnel. Well, that was interesting. Irwin never intended to, but he was going to have opportunity to test the free travel provisions of Home’s on again – off again treaty with North America. He sent a text to Jeff and Eddie, then canceled his Brussels meetings.

“Friends in the Stars” is uploaded

It will take Amazon a few hours for it to propagate in their system.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07V6VZPFC

Cleaning up my act

Both “April” and “Family Law” in Kindle have been run through Grammarly to correct much of the punctuation. This will be carried forward to all the books as I am able and the print editions in time. The newer print editions will start that way.
Family Law 5 – “Friends in the Stars” will be published as soon as I have a cover. Which was supposed to be yesterday…….

About the two new paperbacks…

I enabled Matchbook in Amazon. I thought it just automagically did that when you set up a print version, but there was a box I had to tick off. It isn’t in the forms you walk through to publish – it was in a pull down menu.
The first two books of the series April and Family law are so BIG they are relatively expensive in paper, so I set it for the e-book to be free with them. They are both over 500 pages and there is now way to get the cost down and make anything.
I currently don’t make a cent on April if it is a 40% sale and FL I think was like 26 cents. I make a little at 60% and I’ve spent several thousand getting it done right.
If I get some more follow-on books up I’ll consider setting these books at no profit – as loss leaders to sell the other books. You are welcome to tell me what you think about my pricing.
“Friends in the Stars” F.L.#5 is out to readers.
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If anyone wants a signed copy they are the same price as Amazon. By the time I pay for them to ship it to me and put it in my own box and take it to the post office and mail it to you I’m making about the same as I would if you bought it from Amazon. If I thought I was going to be swamped with a hundred I wouldn’t even do it.
I’ve had some trouble getting a perfect book. If you wait a bit you will get a better copy.
I am still waiting on minor fixes to the “April” cover and intend to carry over a re-edit with better punctuation to the paperback. By the time I do the rest of the books I will have learned how and have it perfected from these first two.
Even after I removed the font that was giving me trouble from my computer it still showed up in the print version. Apparently because it was embedded in the PDF. I uploaded a .docx file and it appears to be finally fixed in the online preview.
My apologies the product is not perfect yet.
There were paragraph indents missing in two chapters and I’ve fixed that.
Very soon there is going to be a edit to improve punctuation using Grammarly.

Another snippet of Family Law #5 Friends in the Stars

Some more about Pam and Kirk…

Kirk Fuldheim got a hot chocolate in a thermo-mug and returned to his bunk. He’d had a bite of supper in the galley a couple hours ago. He suspected that the crew were under orders to take their meals elsewhere if there were passengers using the galley. No one said anything but it was a pattern he noticed. If there were two or three already there when he went for a meal they dispersed fairly quickly if he stayed. If he took his tray back to their cabin they stayed. Since it was one of the few places to get away from confining space he hated to impose on them that way. He didn’t mind returning to his bunk. It could be configured like a lounge chair, and he was free to watch video or wear earphones without feeling he looked like a jerk ignoring others present. It didn’t fit any social situation with which he was familiar. The crew wasn’t there to serve him yet they didn’t have any other well defined social relationship. They weren’t like co-customers sharing a restaurant. It was awkward – at least for him. Pamela hadn’t gone to eat at all as far as he could tell. He couldn’t see that as any of his business.

At the moment Kirk didn’t have any music playing and he was reading a book rather than having it read to him. He preferred that for non-fiction. If he let a narrator drone on he found he might drift off in a thought from something in the book triggered without stopping it, and before he knew it he had no idea how long it had been running without him listening. He had no sound canceling activated, just an obscuring privacy net of a dark soft cloth material pulled across his bunk opening. He suspected Pamela made comments aloud with the same unawareness with which he drifted off in thought. Just now she muttered an ugly string of expressions he was sure she never could have learned as a good girl in a religious school.

She might be pursuing the lines of inquiry he’s suggested this morning, but the angry outbursts didn’t really tell him if she was upset at the things revealed or upset with him for giving any credence to the ravings of foreign devils. It didn’t seem like a good idea to ask. He wondered if she could be heard outside the cabin or if the Fargoers ran surveillance on foreign nationals for their government? That was something he’d expect USNA carriers to do. If so they were getting an earful.

There was a high pitched sound the eyelets for the security curtain made when you whipped it back on the plastic track as Pamela exited her bunk.
“Are you awake in there you motherless bastard?”

Ignoring her would probably just make things worse, Kirk decided. It didn’t sound like this was going to be pleasant or avoidable.

“Yes, I’ve been reading. I was concerned when you didn’t have any supper.”

That produced a quiet pause. “It is late,” she admitted. She must have just checked the clock, unaware she’d been so engrossed she’d lost track of the time.

“I’m extremely unhappy with what I am reading,” Pamela said. “This is not just a difference of perspective or cultural bias.”

“Oh?” Kirk asked, neutrally, still not certain with whom she was unhappy.

“Do you realize the Spacers think we are funny?” Pamela asked.

“I’ve seen that on parody sites,” Kirk admitted. “Things like headlines that Spacers are stealing our irreplaceable water in secret by buying health drinks, that oceans will fall a meter in the next decade as they drain it away, a half liter at a time. One hopes even the most innumerate know that is tongue in cheek.”

“I wish that was the extent of it,” Pamela said. “It’s subtle and much, much worse. Like at the end of a serious news program they will quote something from a politician that implies what I told you, that Spacers depend on Earth for the necessities of life. But after making the quote with a straight face they will look off in the air like something is flying by or outright roll their eyes and sigh, like it is beyond refuting.

“When I was a girl in school I had to deal with all the bullying and cliques anyone does. Girls are much nastier than the boys. What I absolutely hated though, was being made the object of humor, being laughed at. Now, I find not just my nation but my whole world is an object of snickering disbelief.”

“Well yeah, I wouldn’t expect the government to allow people to see that,” Kirk said.

“You realize I believed yesterday that if a Spacer sat down to a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast it was lifted from Earth somewhere? Not off on other worlds. I know you couldn’t ship that much interstellar, but in our own system. I was a fool,” Pamela said.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Kirk said. “Those commodity numbers are a little harder to gather and analyze than how many cans of drink it would take to drop sea level. In fact a lot of them are classified now that used to be public.”

“I never thought to take a hard look at any numbers, because I couldn’t imagine they would lie to me,” Pamela said.