Another snippet of “Conspiracy Theory” for you.

Chapter 6

 

Jack dropped all his gear off at his apartment. There were no marks around the lock or anything disturbed inside. Mrs. Hanson sometimes napped in the day, so he didn’t bother her for his mail. The rental agency informed him his refund would come in the mail as a gift card in six to eight weeks. Anything to put it off, and hope he never used it. It didn’t surprise him.

He didn’t have anything to carry so he took the bus back to his neighborhood instead of wasting money on a taxi. Carrying nothing it was pretty safe mid-day. The rental was with one of the cut rate places that didn’t do pick up or drop off, but a bus was cheaper than a ‘free’ ride from a fancier rental. He made sure to sit where the surveillance camera was behind him, so it would show anyone’s face who bothered him. Some people sat where the camera could see them, which the criminals had long ago figured out was useless, just like the cheap store cams installed to look down on robbers that get a great shot of the top of their hat.

He logged on the SF chat group and was pleased to see the new user FANattic had posted a few times. Since some real life extension therapies had become available a wave of new fiction was exploring the ideas of people living hundreds of years or forever, and was being discussed heavily.

The reality was the latest tech was projected to add fifty percent to a person’s life span, if the studies on smaller mammals carried over as well to people. Nobody would know for another fifty or sixty years. It didn’t matter to most folks because the work all involved creation of custom treatments tailored to your specific genome, driving the price into the multi-million dollar range.

It might work, but it wasn’t a sure enough thing that a bank would loan you money for the treatment based on extending your wage earning years to a hundred and forty or so. In particular the treatments might become much less expensive, resulting in a person owing a five million dollar bill for something that could now be bought for a half million.

The reality of a number of economic bubbles in recent years had driven the lesson home that those sort of loans tended to default. There had been a wave of home owners with loans for million dollar two bedroom bungalows who suddenly found themselves working for the new greenbacks at one tenth the Federal Reserve note pay rate. A lot of them became roomers or went directly to cardboard boxes.

He was so far from being able to afford life extending treatments that he didn’t worry about it. You might as well worry and fret because you didn’t own a private jet or a Greek isle.

There was one day remaining of his vacation, and he’d have to return to work. Tomorrow he’d just do shopping and buy some perishables he’d used up or took along with him. Not too many because in about a week he’d get a box of vegetables and fruit from somebody with whom he had an ‘arrangement’. He didn’t want to make it a hectic day, and have to report back to work frazzled.

A tentative little tap at the door told him Mrs. Hanson knew he was home and had his mail. He invited her in and asked if anything interesting happened while he was gone, putting the bundle of mail on the table to sort later. He made tea for them without asking, and sat giving her his full attention. Mrs. Hanson was not a resource to be taken lightly or ignored while he sorted his mail.

The news was all benign as far as he could tell. The Mexican family in number seven sent their daughter back home to take care of an aging relative, and the fellow in apartment 12 had two lovely young women living with him now. The super was going to change the bushes at the front of the building to low water plants and decorative stones. The apartments two doors down had a burglary, and a nearby liquor store had a hold up. That was hardly surprising.

The nearby supermarket had stopped carrying the kind of food her cat liked. She was upset with herself that she found an site online who would ship her a case cheaper than the store had charged, and she wondered now how long she’d been throwing her money away. Mrs. Hanson had a keen nose for a bargain.

“Did anyone coming looking for me, or knocking on my door?”

Mrs. Hanson was relaxed sipping her tea, and her face changed abruptly, painted with concern. “Are you in trouble Jack?”

“I don’t think so. Why the sudden concern?”

“I had two husbands and three sons and not a one of them could lie to me worth a damn. You just tried to keep your face neutral and keep the fear out of your voice. You’re a nice man and a good neighbor, but you better never try to make your living playing high stakes poker.”

“I did have some young fellows follow me, and I was worried how much they know about me. We had a little confrontation, and I don’t think they’ll be eager to come find me again, but their bosses might insist, or they might send someone else.”

“You didn’t make it a permanent solution then?”

Jack sat silent a bit, wondering what to tell her. If he lied she’d probably know it. That might be the end of a useful friendship. “No, I left them restrained. I shot out their tires, and took their papers and burned most of them. These people might have something I want. If I made myself their enemy there might be no way to fix it. They are hiding some things, probably from the government, and even if it is criminal, I might actually approve of what they are doing. If it’s what I think, it’s bigger and more important than me as an individual, and I don’t want to ruin it for others.”

“My first husband was pleasant like you. He didn’t hold a grudge. If you did him wrong he’d shun you but never seek to get even. I often wondered if he died young of a heart attack holding it all in. My second husband was very nice to me, but to people in general he was a son-of-a-bitch. It depends on what these people are like. Some people you can get what you want from them being pleasant. Some view it as weakness and will actually punish you for it. Do you know which sort these folks are?”

“Not yet,” Jack admitted. “They didn’t just send somebody to put a bullet in my head. That speaks well to being moderate. But I heard the young guys talking, and they were willing to rough me up. They were themselves subject to conditioning, so their bosses were pretty ruthless with them. I don’t think I could accept that as a condition of employment.”

“And yet you allow your boss to make you show up every morning by operant conditioning.”

“How so?” Jack asked, visibly upset.

“He rewards you with a paycheck, and you are certain he will punish you by withholding it if you stop coming to work, even though you have not experienced that.”

Jack looked at her like she had started speaking a foreign language he didn’t know.

“You’ve never asked what I did before retiring, dear. I was a psychologist, and had an active practice with all sorts of patients. When you say these young men were conditioned you don’t mean the simple classic conditioning like a cult or an isolated family use, do you? You are talking about the sort of drug induced deep conditioning that intelligence agencies or some armed forces employ.”

“Yes, I don’t know if I mentioned it before, I served briefly in the air force as a young man. I thought I might stay in until I had a retirement, but I found out it wasn’t for me. People strongly hinted that some of the agency people we worked with had that sort of conditioning. We were encouraged not to ask questions that might provoke it. I never really knew the details of what made it work.”

“I won’t try to cram six years of psych instruction in your head over a cup of tea. If you want I have some texts that will start you understanding how it works. Let me know if you want them and I’ll send them to your phone. The point I’d make now though, is that you can’t expect to reason with someone like that. Their normal responses may be impaired. The drugs and the conditioning tend to make them both Obsessive Compulsive and to a lesser extent Manic/Depressive. They will fail to display normal responses to things outside the object of their conditioning. Some start to neglect personal hygiene. Others will lose their sex drive or lose weight because they neglect eating. You may think they are unintelligent when they are not, because complex reasoning suffers.”

“Would a person seem unusually defiant when it wasn’t reasonable, and then when they do see their situation is untenable break entirely and start crying? The one young man was telling me how I was in trouble while tied up and helpless on the ground, but when he saw me retrieve a locating beacon off my truck he suddenly saw I was aware of them long before he’d thought it possible, and he was immediately reduced to tears.”

“Yes, what you are describing is entirely possible.”

“I think I’d like those texts then. I might not have time to know them before I have to deal with these folks again, but it’s something I want to know now.”

“I’ll send them, but for right now I’d like you to go across the hall to my apartment, and behind the front door my shotgun is propped in the corner. I want you to have it here. It has five rounds in it. The shot are hard tungsten pyramids with concave faces and very sharp apices. They’ll go right through body armor except the stoutest plate. If five rounds won’t fix any problem at your door then likely fifty wouldn’t either.”

“I can’t leave you defenseless,” Jack objected.

“Really Jack, do you think that’s the only protection I have?” She smiled wickedly.

* * *

It felt funny to fast forward through the video from his dash cam before going out the door of the super market to get in his little car. It would take a few times to find out the optimum speed to run through it. He had to stop and back up twice the first time when the car next to him left, and when some people walked past the car on their way through the parking lot. Neither had touched his car or stopped or leaned over, but their image had flashed by too quickly the first viewing to be sure.

Nobody paid any attention to him looking at his phone. So many people stopped and stepped out of the way to text or talk with spouses over what to buy in a store that they were invisible. Or didn’t step out of the way, just blocking the aisle totally oblivious in some cases.

Putting the food away, it seemed this normal activity was strange to be doing now, with the action at the campground replaying in his mind frequently. Nothing was going to seem right or important until it was resolved.

The next morning he found everything normal at work. There was new work waiting for him, and even one of the files he’d not finished when he went on vacation. It was hard concentrating on the mundane. The office seemed a little shabbier and the work less important since it wasn’t space related. Who really cared about a new clamshell case for designer eyeglasses? Why was a new design even necessary? Had anything changed about them in the last fifty years?

At lunch a couple people wanted to know how his fishing trip went. He found it easy to smile, because he imagined how they would react if he told them the truth. He refused to lie however, telling them he hadn’t caught anything worth keeping. If one was a six footer that weighed a good hundred and sixty pounds, well, he’d still been a catch and release.

After lunch his boss came by looking serious, and asked him to come talk with him. They didn’t go to his office, but his bosses office. He was looking pretty grim too. Jack reached in his pocket and started the little recorder he always carried at work. His boss took a seat so he did too. He wasn’t invited, but he wasn’t going to stand at attention at the desk either.

“Jack we just had two FBI agents visit and ask about you. They asked if you were a problem worker, and if we had any concerns. We’re very concerned now. If you are involved with anything that is going to embarrass the company we want your resignation.”

“I’m not aware of anything that should make the FBI have any interest in me. If you tell me the agents names I’ll ask them directly. They should have come to me directly instead of casting a cloud on my name here. Do you have their cards?”

“They were Heinemann and Jefferies, they didn’t offer a card.”

“Did they leave a number?”

“No they didn’t offer a number. I suppose the local office is listed…”

“Did you at least see their ID? They surely at least offered their shields for you to see?”

The two bosses looked at each other, uncomfortable.

“So two strangers walk in with no ID and bad mouth me. But they offer no way to contact them if there is a problem? Kind of like an old lady gossiping across the back fence? If they’d asked to see the company books would you have walked them down to bookkeeping?”

“I can’t believe somebody would be so bold as to present themselves as FBI with no documents. That would be a serious offense. I’d seem some sort of an anti-government rights nut to demand ID.”

Jack pulled his phone out. “Speaker on. Number look up – Los Angeles office FBI,” he asked the phone. “Dial that please.”

“Uh, Jack, I don’t think…”

“I know you didn’t. I’m trying to fix that now.”

The ring was loud in the quiet office. There was none of the hum and rumble he had to deal with in his cubicle. “FBI, Los Angeles field office, agent Howe speaking. How may I help you?”

“My name is Jack Thompson and I’m calling you from Midwest Molding in San Marino. I’m in conference with my supervisor and the owner. We just had a couple gentleman stop at our business making inquiries about an employee, and they did not show ID or present a shield. Could you tell us if you sent a pair of agents, Heinemann and Jefferies to this business as part of an investigation?”

“There are no agents of that name in our office. We take impersonation of a Federal agent very seriously. Do you by any chance have security video of these men so we can investigate them further?”

Jack lifted an inquiring eyebrow to the owner, holding the phone out toward him.

“No, we don’t have the sort of a high security business to need that. We have some cameras on the loading dock area for theft, but our offices keep no cash or anything to attract trouble.”

“I’m not sure what we can do then. If these men solicited some sort of charity or asked the company to do something it was bogus. Was there anything unusual or distinguishing about them? Were they of unusual size or height or displayed tattoos or scars? Anything odd about their dress or demeanor?”

“Now that you mention it both wore glasses, not sunglasses, but regular glasses. You don’t see that much anymore except older people. Otherwise they were unremarkable white males in average business suits. Perhaps a bit on the young side, but I’m not sure how old you need to be to finish FBI training.

“We have some agents that are qualified before they are thirty, so they can look pretty young, but I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen an agent with glasses either, now that you mention it. Corrective surgery is so cheap now, and they do a marvelous job with it. I’ll make a report on this to my supervisor. I’m not sure if he’ll send someone to try to do a drawing or show you some known impersonators. If he wishes to do that we’ll call ahead, and our agent will display credentials to you. I do thank you for reporting the matter. It’s just as well you didn’t confront them while they were there. They might have become belligerent with you.”

“You’re welcome agent Howe. Thank you for your help.” Jack disconnected.

“Well it’s your call,” Jack concluded. “If you want to let me go I’ll take my coffee mug and not darken your door again.” He forced himself to look merely irritated, not scared. “You had a couple strangers in here. We have no idea what their agenda was. They might have picked me or any other of your employees and used our name just to get into your office. I’d certainly have the place swept by a good company, for bugs left behind, whatever you do.”

The owner looked around like he might see one stuck on the middle of a wall some place. “You don’t know somebody who does that?”

“Nope, when I worked for NASA we had in house guys who made sure everything was kept clean on a regular basis. I never even talked to them. In a town this size there has to be a ton of them.”

The owner looked rattled. His own supervisor spoke up. “Well I hardly think we want to let you go on the say-so of a couple criminals impersonating government agents.” He was talking to Jack but looking at the owner, who nodded agreement. “We’d appreciate it if you kept this to yourself, and don’t give the other employees something to speculate about needlessly.”

“Absolutely,” Jack agreed. “I really doubt anyone has any useful information. Nobody watches the parking lot either, to know what sort of car they came in or get their license plate. They’d just waste time on idle chatter.” It seemed the perfect time to assert himself to make an exit so he rose. “Since my name was involved, I’d appreciate it if you tell me, if you ever do hear anything about who they were.”

“Certainly, though it looks unlikely,” his boss agreed.

Jack just nodded and left unescorted for his work space. A thousand bucks says they were in a Honda Portage, Jack thought. And if it wasn’t my two idiots, I know who employs them… Jack was honestly irritated. How could these people possibly be doing space work if they were this inept investigating one seni-retired designer?

A new snippet – Chapter 5 of “Conspiracy Theory”

Jack had a few days to kill now, somehow. He didn’t think running straight home was a very good idea. Certainly not back down the same route he’d come. He didn’t have a tent anymore, but the truck wasn’t so bad to sleep in he’d found out, and he had almost seven hundred dollars from the security goons. He decided a loop further west, down through the center of the state would work. Following the coast back would have been fun, but everything there was touristy and expensive. The middle valley was agricultural land, what still could get water, and there were cheaper rooms and places to eat that served the less glamorous business trade, or even the pickers of crops that still hadn’t been successfully automated.

A robot could be trained to judge the ripeness of a avocado or a melon, and pick it without bruising it, but they had yet to program anything to pick a green bean without breaking the plants, making the other beans inaccessible, and costing more in the end than nimble hands.

Jack wouldn’t bet on any of the picker’s grandchildren having a job in the fields, but for now there was still the odd shaped or extremely delicate item, or things of such limited market it wasn’t worth making special machines for them.

If he was home, Jack had a friend Albert outside Los Banos, tucked up against the coastal range. He certainly didn’t want to call him, especially now that he didn’t know who might be watching, but the fellow was very good with electronics and computers. The man was retired from NASA like him, but they’d kept in sporadic touch for years. Al was Jack’s favorite sort of people, smart. He’d know what to do with the cell phones.

He’d planned on getting a room near town and driving to see his friend, but when he got into the little city there was some sort of tomato festival. He inched along, tied up in traffic, and once damn near ran over a bright red tomato that jumped out in front of him when traffic slowed, waving it arms to direct him into a paid parking lot. All the possible headlines that would have generated kept him amused for miles.

He didn’t want to put his battery back in and check for rooms. The rental agency might reveal where he was from tracking the truck if these Tangent people had the right connections, but using his phone was just making it too easy. The traffic for a few blocks was as bad as being back in LA. The few places he saw had no-vacancy signs up, one place even posting a big A-frame sign at the end of their driveway. He turned west at the first street that his map said would connect on further west, and traffic dropped off quickly.

Jack had never been to Al’s house. He didn’t have to look it up because he had an anachronism, a little pocket address book. It was worn rounded on the corners, but it had near thirty years of entries, many of them slashed out and updated. It worked along with his big state atlas just fine to substitute for GPS and online maps.

Al’s house was in a tiny subdivision, tucked between the flanks of a steep hill to the west. A bit more than a dozen homes on a cul-de-sac, the paved street wider and nicer than the county road that led to it. A few had tiny lawns, more the size of an area rug right by the front door than what easterners would consider a lawn. The rest went with native plants and stone gardens. There was a ham radio tower uphill from one place, and as he expected that was Al’s place.

Jack drove all the way to the end and turned around where the end expanded into a circle twice as wide as the two lanes. One house was boarded up and another looked empty, the tiny lawn brown, and leaves and debris on the driveway. Jack parked in front of the empty place and walked down three houses to Al’s

He didn’t have to knock. Albert was standing behind the screen door, inside door open, waiting for him with a tall glass of cold water. It wasn’t terribly hot, but it sounded good.

“How long have you been running, and are they very far behind you?” Al asked, observing how he parked well away and pointed back out of the street. He didn’t seem all that concerned despite his frank assessment, just interested. In fact he held the door open.

There wasn’t any point in denying it with Al. “Just today, and I’m not sure they’re even on my tail yet. They’re kind of slow.”

“That was good you parked down on the curb. We’ve had trouble with the empty houses like you parked in front of getting stripped. If you’d backed up flush to the garage doors somebody would be calling the cops. That’s why that other house is all boarded up. Somebody came in at night and stripped all the pipes and wiring. They won’t even put up a for sale sign any more, ’cause it attracts the looters. Of course if somebody comes looking for you it won’t take them long to figure out you aren’t there.”

He led Jack into a sparsely furnished great room with a mix of Mission Style furniture and odds and ends of Southwest and Indian stuff. There wasn’t a lot of it, but what there was looked to be good quality. A small fireplace was just big enough to cook at, with a iron arm swung to one side that would hang a kettle, and ample bookcases on both sides. He reclaimed a chair that had his own glass on a table next to it, and waved Jack to pick a seat.

“I’d think that radio tower would attract attention. Has anybody ever cut down your feed cable?”

“I’ve got a cable conduit buried five feet down, and my antenna mast is inside my garden fence. I kind of have a reputation with the locals too. They tend to leave my stuff alone.”

“I can leave if you’d rather I don’t attract trouble.”

“Not at all, but I was getting hungry and ready to go get some dinner. I know a repair place far enough out of town that the festival traffic shouldn’t be bad there, and I know the owner. If I ask he’ll let you park your truck out back, and you can come back and stay the night here.”

“If you let me buy dinner,” Jack agreed. Dinner was a bargain compared to a likely hotel bill. Al took his time drinking the water and asking about Jack’s work and living in LA. He didn’t immediately press for an explanation of who he might be avoiding or why.

Jack followed at a distance until they reached the outskirts of town. Al pulled in behind a low white building with a fenced lot in back and a couple tow trucks parked on the side. He pointed in the fenced lot but parked outside himself, and went in the office.

He had his small suitcase on the pavement but hadn’t locked up before Al joined him with a numbered card stock repair tag in his hand.

“Hang this on your mirror. It lends a little authenticity.” He thought that was it, but when he turned back Al had a little black plastic half bubble in his hand. “If you want to leave that on the dashboard Frank runs a wireless net as part of his alarm system, and this will record any activity around the truck overnight and stream it to my house. If the net goes down it retains what it sees in memory too.” Jack was happy to accept that, and positioned it carefully in the exact middle of the dash so it might be taken for a hard wired installation.

Al opened his trunk for the suitcase without comment and waited until Jack was seated and belted in to start the car. “You like Mexican OK? I have a place I favor at least once a week.”

“That’s fine with me. There isn’t much I don’t like if it’s well prepared. You can order for me.”

Al didn’t go further into town, turning and heading south. The restaurant when they got to had a metal carport running the length of the front, giving you shade for your car. There were only three vehicles parked there. It was a little early yet for supper. The building itself was stucco, windowless, and mostly hidden behind tall shrubs. It had a stout plank door so low Jack ducked a little worried he’d clip his head. The outer wall was so thick it was almost like a short hallway. It was dark inside, and surprisingly cool given the rear door was propped full open. The inside had a handful of tables, and if there were two chairs of the same kind he couldn’t see them. The smell of meat cooking was strong.

Albert didn’t break stride marching across the dining room and out open rear door. There were a half dozen tables out there under a metal awning, and a stucco wall on each side made it like a courtyard, but open to the north side. Wicker chairs with green cushions pulled up to round tables with a green plastic tablecloth. It was much nicer than inside.

The land rose slightly away from the patio, and a few hundred meters away were a couple modest homes, just before a respectable hill went up sharply behind them. The day was far enough along the shadows were starting to get long.

The waiter was in a long sleeved white shirt, and brought Al a tall lemonade without asking.

“Mis pedido habitual, por favor. E lo mismo para mi amigo, Juan.”

The waiter just nodded and went away, he hadn’t bothered to bring menus.

“What is your usual order?” Jack asked, able to follow that much.

“Fajitas, but with pork instead of beef. They do it right here, and a big guacamole.”

Juan brought another tall drink and a pitcher of it without ice. Jack took a sip and found it was lime instead of lemon, with something else, he wasn’t quite sure what. Something sweeter. They didn’t serve chips, which was pretty standard down in the city.

“How much do I want to know?” Al finally got around to asking. “Are you screwing around with some government agency? Or is this some private enterprise?”

“No, not agency. They are too inept even to be a letter agency, they are private, but big, and I can’t figure out what they are doing. It’s none of my business really, but I’ve always cared about space, and whatever they are doing is all about space, and they are trying to cover it up. I don’t appreciate when people lie to me.” He stopped and thought a bit. “OK, maybe lie is too strong a word. I don’t appreciate when people try to deceive me, even if it might be benign personally. You want to know more? I have a couple cell phones from these folk’s security professionals, and I intended to ask you what to do with them.”

“You stole their cell phones? I hope you at least yanked the batteries.”

“Oh sure, and I’m paranoid, so I wrapped them in foil from my cooking stuff just to be sure. They might have some sort of backup power in them, enough to let them be pinged.”

“Yes, this is interesting, and you’ve displayed enough caution so far. I’d like to hear as much as you’re willing to tell me.”

The fajitas came then, steaming on cast iron grills, marinated strips of the loin with char lines and sweet onions and peppers. The odor of cumin was strong, and the waiter sat plates of warm corn tortillas and a bowl of chunky guacamole with sides of chopped tomatoes and a sweet corn relish. There was a hot salsa verde and red pepper sauce if you wished. Juan inquired if he’d like flour tortillas, but he stayed with the corn. Jack usually had sour cream with Mexican, but since he’d invited his host to order he decided to try it as is. He stuffed three tortillas and downed them before he was sated enough to talk again.

“It started with a print I was given at work,” Jack started, and related the whole thing. By the time they had sweet egg custard and little cups of strong coffee Al had heard the whole story. Other than a detail or two he’d kept silent, just betraying amusement with his expression.

“It’s unlikely I can get anything out of the phones. I’ll try, but most companies know to encrypt everything, and all the decent phones wipe their memory if you keep trying to unlock them and don’t know the password. That doesn’t mean they have no value. They’re a significant bargaining chip if you threaten to give them to the government, because they will have a backdoor to read them.”

“I’m not sure I want to damage them that badly yet.”

“After they threatened you directly? What do you owe them, and why wouldn’t you give them back a bit of their own medicine?” Al asked, looking very skeptical.

“I feel like I already gave them back about as bad as I got. I’d really like to know what they are up to. They may not be guilty of more than unwisely choosing some horribly incompetent security people. The government has totally screwed up space travel, even if they are not as evil as the government I’d like to know what they are doing to need space suits. It’s not like I demand anybody to be shining heroes to leave mind my own business at this stage in life. If they are doing an end run around the law, well, I’ve done that a time or two myself when I had reason.”

Al had a wave of surprise flash on his face. “You’re hoping to get a ride out there aren’t you?”

“Nah, I’m sixty eight. No damn way somebody is going to give me a lift, even if they are sneaking off the planet. If they are it’s going to be a handful of people who actually launch, and a whole lot more supporting them to do it. But I may very well approve of it once I know what they are doing.”

“Leave the phones with me. There has to be someplace you post regularly online isn’t there?”

“I post to a science fiction readers group every few days. I have a few writers who I read everything they publish, and they post about conventions and related topics like astronomy and different technologies, and the writers post to promote themselves too.”

“Show me back at the house, and I’ll join up and start posting a bit, if you don’t show up online for a set period I’ll see the phones get to the right people. What is a reasonable period?”

“Three days. I’d go longer, but if I had something rough happen, like these people snatch me, I’d rather not be sitting knowing it will be a week before they have any pressure put on them.”

Al got a slow squinting smile that wasn’t pretty.

“What? I can almost hear the wheels whirring. What devious thing are you thinking?”

“If you get disappeared, what better way to deal with it than to post the whole story on your science fiction group? The authorities might not believe it, but these folks have the capacity to believe a great deal of outlandish things. Am I right? How many in the group? Enough it would be very hard to shut them all up?”

“Al, it’s a very popular genre. There’s a good thirty-thousand people who follow it worldwide.”

“Excellent. Write out a file tonight and I’ll hold it back as a serious weapon. I won’t keep it on a computer attached to the net either. I have a free standing box you can use and I’ll put a copy on a thumb drive and stash it away.”

Jack refrained from asking him why he needed a free standing computer with no net connection.

“I’ll do a little research and find out who owns the real estate for these companies,” Al volunteered. “There are other public records, and I may drive by and drop off some surveillance modules to see who comes and goes, and get some license numbers of the cars and trucks visiting their facility.”

“Don’t get yourself in trouble,” Jack worried. “I think that’s how I drew their attention, because I drove around their place once and turned around and drove back around it the other way. I showed way too much interest in them.”

“If I drive past on the actual street out front I won’t be displaying my own license plate. I have a list of plates for my color and model of car, and can check and see if they are in their usual locations. But I don’t need to even get that close. The sort of bug I have in mind I can throw out the window without stopping on the next road over, and it will walk in overnight, or fly over and position itself where it can watch the place. It can even go inside their perimeter and attach to the building or parked vehicles.”

“Is this something I can afford?”

“Come on Jack. It’s my hobby. I’ll do it for fun.”

Al’s guest room was nicer than Jack’s apartment. He turned in early after composing his story and getting Al registered to the science fiction group. He suggested a few books to read if he wanted something to post. It turned out Al had read quite a few of the same books he had. “I’m just not much of a joiner, and anytime you have more than about a half dozen people, you know somebody is going to be a jackass everyone else has to tolerate. I don’t have much patience I confess.”

In the morning Jack was up before Al. He considered starting the coffee, but felt shy given what it cost now. He didn’t know if Al made it strong or mild and a full pot or half. He decided to wait.

Al had a lot of interesting books in the living room. He examined them, but didn’t pull any from the shelf. It gave him a slightly deeper insight into a man he knew at work for years, but never was the sort of friend to pal around with and do things together after work. He’d been the competent sort at work, one of those they took a mess to after somebody else failed at it and it needed cleaned up.

“Would you like some breakfast?” Al called from the large arch into the dining room and kitchen.

“Sure, can I help?”

“Pull a stool up to the counter and talk to me. That’s help enough. Can you eat napolitos OK?”

“Probably, I have never had any food allergies. Do you grow them back in your garden?”

“No, there’s plenty to be had growing wild, and they do fine here with the natural rainfall. I grow stuff in my garden that wouldn’t be able to survive here on the natural rainfall. Tomatoes and onions that I’ll scramble in our eggs too. I have peppers and squash and dwarf fruit trees. I’m cultivating some vines too, not for wine but just for table grapes, but they’re not very mature.”

“You irrigate them?”

“No, you can grow stuff if you space the plants out and treat the surface to minimize evaporative losses. The soil has to be loose enough to let the roots go deep where the water is. Some of the fruit and the grapes are really superior. They are smaller, but have higher sugar content and very intense flavor, but it’s not usually a profitable way to do commercial agriculture. That will still need water until it gets too expensive to bring it in.”

“I put some delicate things under an arch that protects them from the sun at its peak. And my back lot running uphill is paved with flat stones on top of metalized plastic. When we do have rain it all runs down hill and is directed into a couple dry wells that take it down a meter to keep the water table up in the garden. It doubles the effective rainfall which is only about eighteen centimeters a year.”

Breakfast was good. Al knew just when to pull the eggs so the vegetables were still firm, but not crunchy. He passed on the fiery hot sauce though. He was starting to think Al didn’t make coffee in the morning, but he started it late, so they could enjoy it after breakfast.

“Do you want to be taken back to your truck today, or do you want to kill another day here? I’d imagine you have several days you planned to be fishing before those two messed your schedule up?”

“I rented the truck prepaid for six days. I can turn it in early, but they only refund a quarter of the fee if they get it back early. I’m not sure you should have me two days. It marks us as closer associates than just bumming a one night stay from an old friend. It turns it into a destination visit. And I’m also kind of worried and want to see if anyone messed with my apartment while I was gone.”

“If they went in your apartment I predict they did it before your encounter with the guys at the campground. After that they should leave you alone if they have any damn sense at all.”

“I looked at the police report for my neighborhood when we registered you last night. I doubt they went in my place unless they could do it very quietly. The widow lady across the hall knows I’m gone. I have her get my mail instead of the post office holding it. She’s eighty two, but sharp as a tack, and has my door keys as well as the mail box key. If she heard anybody trying to get in she keeps a big Mossberg twelve gauge propped in the corner by her front door. She doesn’t look terribly frail with that leveled across her hip.”

Al thought that was laughing out loud funny. “I reviewed the security cam we left in your truck on fast forward this morning. If anybody checked it out they were not clueless enough to come up to the fence. And I watched specifically for any Honda Portage to cruise by, even if it didn’t slow down. There wasn’t one all night. Do you have a cam watching your car at home?”

“No you can’t see my parking spot from my apartment.”

“Then I suggest you keep that cam in your truck and put it in your own vehicle when you get home. I’ll give you the address to track it on your phone. That way you can be safe at work or out shopping and such. I suggest getting into the habit of checking it each time you are away.”

“Thanks Al. I appreciate your help.”

“You’re welcome, but I expect to be filled in on what these guys are doing, once you know.”

“Agreed, that’s the least I can do for your help.”

“Good, then we are co-conspirators,” Al told him, and offered his hand to shake on the deal.

A Short Story for you.

I’ll eventually publish another collection of shorts when I have enough, like “Common Ground and other Stories”. But for now…

 

 

Ball and Chain

Mackey Chandler

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

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

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

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

“Call it twenty, twenty-six years. Depends on if you count from 2008 or 2014. I remember as a kid we had it pretty good. I was an only, but still, we used to go out to eat a couple times a week. My mom and my dad both kept a car. My God those were cars too, big lumbering steel beasts, built like a battle tank.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Tough stuff,” was all he acknowledged.

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

Tim leaned in and adjusted the viewer.

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

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

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

Tin snapped the line taunt with everything he had.

“I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

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

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

“Did you break it?” Aaron asked concerned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re dangerous man.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The ball zoomed around in a plane that passed through the latitude of Toronto.”Now gravity is pulling the golf ball down slightly compared to the force of the thread pulling it. It must be dipped down toward the floor a half degree or so. You can see it dip lower as it spins down to a stop. It just swings over on the thread a bit and finds an equilibrium position right?”

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

“Now if we were talking about using material that was strained almost to the yield point, I’d worry about having it in a slight arc, with side forces on it. The primary problem has always been the weight of the cable hanging on itself, not the tension, or forces of cars climbing up and down. My new material is so much stronger there’s no need to worry about that. We’ll have a good engineering margin like proper designers know is necessary. So why is it a problem if the cable climbs off into the sky at a bit of an angle?

“Crap, I feel stupid.”

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

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

* * *

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

“It’s a form of Bucky too. You have a long bucky-tube, and deliberately create regular defects on the side walls. There is a high temperature superconductor inside, and it cross links through these defects, and locks the fibers together. It’s similar to how wool felts up when you pack it, but on a molecular scale. You work harden them by moving them around, and more of these side opening line up and bond. So it grows stronger as you load it and unload it, and the modulus decreases. It has about the same strength as regular bucky tube material,” which as you saw is not too shabby.

“But if you hook a battery up it will actively resist being elongated. It actually pulls back against the force applied. Pull more, it draws more current. You reach a threshold where it can’t draw any more current, and it fails spectacularly. Obviously using it to build, you need a very reliable power source, to trust something with actively powered mechanical properties. You start off with a big roll of bucky with the material inside, and keep rolling it down thinner and thinner. The excess ‘stuffing’ is squeezed out. At the end you have to draw it through diamond dies, in an intense magnetic field. Have another beer.”

* * *

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

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

“You want to go yourself. This will open the road faster than anything on the horizon. You can go while you are still a fairly young man. It will be all the other applications that pay for the Beanstalk. That will be your first work, and likely for a long time. Somebody else I wouldn’t be sure they wouldn’t get bogged down with all the other applications, and never get around to building the Stalk. I’ll have other people for various things, but I want you for my business guy.”

“This is going to change everything about bridges, and body armor, and rotating devices, pressure vessels, high pressure chemistry, synthetic diamonds, and other materials. All that has to be started, and the use of it known and standard design, before the cable goes up, for people to trust it, or indeed to even believe it will work. I’m willing to let you have the majority ownership of the Beanstalk as a separation bonus, when we are done. By that time you won’t want to work for me anymore, and I will have so much income from the other uses, it’s silly to think I can want for anything.”

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

Tim just looked at him with that superb poker face.

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

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

“Yes?”

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

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

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

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

“You remember when you called me next?”

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

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

“Son of a bitch.” Aaron said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you remember how you signed off?

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

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

“That sounds…”

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

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

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

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

“What can we do? One of the other Generals had the sense to ask.

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

“Thank you, Tim.”

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

“Oh, my.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

END

Rights reserved

 

Another Big Snippet of “Conspiracy Theory”

Chapter 2

The rental car clerk acted like he was a criminal for wanting a small pickup truck. He kept a two seat electric run-about for commuting to work and shopping. If the young woman was such a strict environmentalist, why was she even working for a car rental company? His little commuter car wouldn’t make it half way to Sacramento on a charge. Not to mention he’d be cramming his junk in the passenger foot well, and on the seat to bring his camping and fishing gear along. That meant it was visible, and a target for theft every time he stopped, even if he locked up.

He sent an e-mail around to his entire address book, offering to haul anything north with him that folks needed moved. No price being mentioned, so nobody could accuse him of running an illicit business. He got two jobs lined up, both this side of Sacramento. One a college student who wanted his dorm furnishings moved back home, and a lady friend who wanted him to haul a couple boxes of specialty dry goods and groceries to her mom up north. The price differential between LA and northern areas made it well worthwhile. Even in a town the size of the Capital, things ran higher.

A third offer to send a sealed box he turned down, when the point was strongly made he could not open it to see what he was hauling. They must think he fell off the turnip truck yesterday.

The little side jobs covered his fuel costs for almost half the trip, and gave him a bit more to spend up north. He’d be able to eat in restaurants a couple more times if he wanted and still be in budget.

He had a tarp over his load although rain was unlikely. Another truck slowed down, passing him once along the way, and the passenger looked him over, more than the vehicle or the load. Old guys had a reputation with the younger criminals. Far too many of them still had guns stashed away, from when you could buy them legally, and worse they knew how to use them. A worry that had some basis with him. The young fellow turned and said something to his driver and they pulled away. Jack was older, but he didn’t look soft or addle brained, and he favored a buzz cut like ex-military, which he was.

The retired lady was grateful for her supplies, and fed him lunch. She was so friendly he was glad of the furniture on the back of the truck, that still needed delivery. She had that look in her eye, that said with a little training he could be cleaned up and domesticated. He’d had enough of that thank you.

The parents of the college student were unprepared to unload his truck. He’d made clear his price did not include moving heavy furniture. The man looked to be about fifty-five, but if anything he was in worse shape to move furniture than Jack. It took the father driving somewhere in his car, and returning with two young men who didn’t speak English, to get the load off. He must know a place day laborers hung out for work. The fellow was smart enough to have them put the stuff in the garage. Letting casual labor case the inside of your house was dangerous. He saw them being paid cash, and shaking the fellow’s hand. He didn’t look all that happy about it, but they did.

The little motel he went to next was off the beaten path now. It hadn’t been when it was built. It survived the loss of traffic on the road by being cheap, and having minimal services. The bed was decent though, not broken down, and everything was clean if worn. The man was obviously a handy-man, and maintained the place himself. It was so old they gave him a brass key for his door.

Like the day laborers, the owners took their payment in cash, and that was good for a one-third discount from the price they quoted the first time he’d come here. They never asked for cash, or quoted a different price in case he was wired. They just wordlessly left a fifty on the counter, after he laid down three. If they stopped doing that he couldn’t complain, but he could, and might, look for another place to stop.

There was no TV, no wireless, and no ice machine. There was a sign saying unscrewing any of the LED lights would set off an alarm in the office, and if the room was unoccupied for more than a half-hour the air conditioning shut itself off. The bath had no soap, a single half-sized roll of toilet paper and one bath size towel. It wouldn’t surprise him if the towel had a chip sewn in it. It certainly would if he were owner.

It was early in the fall and he was content to ignore the heater unit, and let the room cool off. He spread a camping ground cloth on the bed and brought in a sleeping bag, using them on top of the bed linens. Everything was so clean he doubted the place would have bed bugs, but why test it?

He had a stout hardwood 2×4, cut with a notch in the end that went on all his road trips, and jammed that under the door handle. It would take much more than a good hit with your shoulder to open the door with that in place. He put his own smoke and CO detector on top of the dresser, and laid back on the bed to read a little before sleeping. The place was quiet, and he finally turned in when his reader beeped at the time he’d set.

Chapter 3

With everything delivered his time was his own now. It was a pleasant drive around Sacramento. He bypassed the downtown and got through between the noon traffic and the evening rush. They claimed the air in LA was clean now, but the air up here sure smelled better. LA air might not have sot, and aerosols, and other crud in it now, but it also lacked sage and pine trees and wild flowers. It was more relaxing to drive here too, the streets not all jammed. The first time he drove right up to a cross intersection, and didn’t have to join a line and inch up until it was his turn, it felt strange.

Tangent Fabrication was not a hole in the wall shop, in an industrial park. It was a campus of buildings, with greenery around it that would have been extravagant down in LA. As much for the water allowance as the idle square footage. They had three gates into the complex and fencing all the way around. No signs, just street numbers. A lot of businesses did that now. The only thing not behind chain link was about ten meters of façade, that was the public entry to their offices.

The gates were all manned, not automated, and the loading docks were completely hidden from public view. He did another circuit of the property going the other way, looking for somewhere he could park and observe the facility. There simply wasn’t any. All the adjoining businesses were of a nature that they wouldn’t want a strange vehicle on their approaches or parking lot. There was no street parking, even if it wouldn’t be painfully obvious.

He hadn’t learned much, except they seemed well funded, had good taste in architecture, and liked their privacy. There weren’t a bunch of security cameras hanging everywhere to intimidate would-be burglars, but they could be very small and well hidden now, if you weren’t into putting on a big security theater.

That’s all he’d learn today for sure. Possibly he could check out the satellite view of them later. He was running out of daylight, and wanted to get a few miles north, and get a room for the night. There was an independent little place that looked good online. They posted a few pix and it looked like his kind of place, cheap.

The motel was just like the online pix. They unfortunately didn’t show the sports bar next door, favored by some sort of convention of loud motorcycles. The parking lot was full of bikes, whose owners had already gotten rooms, far from home, or anticipating they would be too drunk to ride home when the bar closed. The few not at the bar yet, were ripping up and down the parking lot, showing off their ride to new friends, or old friends who hadn’t seen their latest acquisition.

Jack took the parking lot exhibition to be a preview of what would be happening at three AM, when the bar let out. It was easily into dusk, but he didn’t even go in, he decided to head on down the road anyway, hoping to find something not too ramshackle, and not extravagantly expensive either.

Two young fellows in a nice little burgundy SUV had pulled into the office check-in lane behind him. They sat briefly, looking unbelieving at the spectacle in the parking lot, and he could see them talking to each other. They didn’t go in the office. When he left they weren’t far behind. They must want to sleep, and had apparently figured out the same thing he had, that they wouldn’t be doing much of that here tonight. Thank goodness he didn’t have reservations held by his credit card.

It quickly became apparent he was near the edge of the suburbs. There were fewer commercial buildings, and he could see he’d be back out in the country pretty soon. When a non-chain place had a vacancy sign a couple miles along, he pulled in. The young fellows apparently were pickier, and continued down the road. It was near dark and he was happy to be off the highway after dark.

The room was one-eighty, and when he counted out the money in twenties the fellow gave him no discount. That was OK, once, but he’d find a cheaper place if he came this way again. It did have a few amenities though. Two towels and washcloths, and a coffee dispenser in the 24-hour lobby, that mixed each cup from liquid concentrate. A sign promised there would be donuts in the morning.

The bed was decent, and he could park right in front of his door. He left nothing in the truck to steal, so that made it a little more to re-pack it in the morning. He wedged his board under the door knob, and positioned everything on the night stand to find in the dark if need be. His flashlight the first item at hand, to help him recover the rest.

In the morning the compact burgundy SUV was parked next to him. He was amused, and wondered how far down the road they’d continued, before giving up finding a room, and turning back last night. However far, they still hadn’t roused out when he was loaded and pulled away. The donuts were local made, not factory food. The clerk hadn’t batted an eye when he took two, and loaded up his small thermos off the coffee machine. That was worth ten bucks against the cost of the room, making him feel a little better.

He found a tiny restaurant along the way that had a decent breakfast. When he did a web search it didn’t come up on the search engine. The young woman who took his order called it out to the older man cooking in some foreign language. Even recent immigrants usually knew the advantages of being listed online now. He briefly considered speaking to the man, it looked like he was the father, and the place was a family operation. However he reconsidered after reflecting that almost every seat in the place was filled. They seemed to be doing fine without his marketing help.

When he went back to his truck the sun was up a little. It made very visible that his rental had a film of dust on it. He’d parked away from the other cars deliberately since his stuff was in the truck cab. Nobody wanted to mess with a vehicle sitting all alone where you were obvious. In a full lot nobody paid any attention when there were people between cars, you couldn’t really see what they were doing anyway. Standing off alone everything you did was visible, even from a distance. There was a big palm print where somebody had leaned on the front fender, by the right wheel, on the side away from the restaurant.

Jack hesitated, thinking about getting out and checking his tire before moving, but the truck wasn’t down at that corner. If he’d done something to a fellow’s truck, he’d watch to see if he drove off normally. Unless it was a bomb of course. He’d had some adventures as a young man, but nothing that should follow him this many years, and nothing worth a bomb, at least in his mind. Sitting too long would make it as obvious something was bothering him as getting back out and looking, so he started up and headed for the road, feeling carefully that the truck was level and steered straight. Stopping hard well before the street, to make certain the brakes didn’t fail.

When he got down the road a bit he saw a self-wash place that let you rinse your vehicle off with a high-pressure wand. It might be ten bucks wasted, but the wash bays were narrow, and there was a high block wall separating the wash from the residential area behind. On the opposite side of the road there was a fenced off industrial area, right up to about three meters from the curb. Nobody could see what he was doing in the narrow bay, except by driving past, and that gave them just an instant’s view.

He went over the truck thoroughly, figuring if anybody was following him, and looked in on him they would make one pass quickly, and position themselves well off the road further along to watch for him to resume his journey. When it was all rinsed off he knelt and felt inside the fender by where the hand print had been. High up was a boxy shape, candy bar sized, with a wire hanging from it. When he pushed on it pretty hard it slid on the metal, so it was magnetic. He didn’t pick it off for fear it would sense that and report it. He just left it there, hung the wash wand back in the wall bracket, and resumed his drive.

The more he thought about it, the tracer might as easily have been put on at his motel last night. He hadn’t noticed the palm print there, but it had been in shade, and with other vehicles parked close to him he might not have thought anything about it back there if he had seen it. If so he was really fortunate not to have noticed it earlier, when he’d have dismissed it easier.

So, who would care where he was going? Could the police suspect him of hauling more than used dorm furniture and few boxes of groceries? It didn’t seem likely. If they did, he’d expect it would have been the fellow offering him the sealed box who was a cop, trying to entrap him. If so he’d passed that test with flying colors. No way they’d expend the resources to track him. It wasn’t the bug, you could buy those cheap. Rather it was the time and manpower to follow the bug and document his moves. The police had never tracked him before, on a half dozen other fishing trips, when he’d hauled other stuff.

The only thing different about this trip was Tangent Fabrication. Maybe driving around their place twice opposite directions hadn’t been so smart. A lot of big companies orbited a drone overhead now for a security overview. And if he hadn’t seen any external cameras, that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Even a cheap one now could read his license plate easily. That just confirmed to him that something smelled about Tangent. They had something to hide. Something oddly enough to do with space, and he wanted to know what, but didn’t see how he could find out with his limited resources.

He’d been interested in space as a kid, wild about rockets, following everything about the space program in the news. He’d just assumed the future would be one where he as an adult could buy a ticket to low Earth orbit, if not the moon. It had been a bitter disappointment when there wasn’t a moon colony, and at least a voyage of exploration to Mars by now. The various sub-orbital flights one could buy here and in Europe didn’t excite him. He felt anyone who bragged on being an astronaut for anything less than an orbital flight were deluding themselves.

First chapter of a possible book

See if you can tell where this is going. Tell me what you think.

HooDoo

Chapter 1

The cab was in a queue of much nicer cars. There was a canopy from the door of his destination clear to the curb, and very much needed today, with a steady cold rain. A uniformed doorman with a huge umbrella shielded guests, as they stepped across to shelter.

The cabby was angry, scowling at him in the mirror. He’d pretended to not understand English very well when he’d picked David up at the airport. Then he’d taken off on a circuitous route, designed to inflate the fare. David checked the man’s license to confirm his name fit his appearance, and then corrected him in harsh terms in Farsi, producing a shocked expression, and grudging compliance. Then he’d wanted to drop David off at the curb, well away from the door. He would have been soaked through before getting to cover.

Not that he wasn’t eager to leave. The well entrenched stink of garlic and sweat seeped around the bullet-proof partition, and infused the whole cab. The insult was compounded when they pulled up, and the uniformed doorman tried to open the door. It was locked, as if David was some deadbeat who might skip on the fare. It remained locked, until David swiped his pay card past the pay-point bolted on the partition.

He stepped out of the cab, but declined to do more than leave the man with just his fare and no tip. The cabbie glared at him, but voiced no insult. He had no idea how lucky he was today. David had other irons in the fire, and other players of immediate concern, starting with his half brother, who had exited the limo in front of him in line.

Mark was already at the front door of the office building as David exited the cab. David hadn’t seen him in years, yet the sight of him stirred stale animus. The man radiated arrogance in his every step and gesture. It was a mark common to the entire family. He watched another liveried worker ease the massive brass and glass door shut behind his brother, keeping his hand on the door as David approached.

His half brother was black as a piece of coal, and proud of it. The whole family was fiercely proud of the fact they were not the descendants of slaves, but had come to America as immigrants. Around the turn of the previous century, when legal entry for their race was near impossible, they came in as household servants of a French diplomatic family, and stayed to the astonishment of their employers. A very unusual history, but not one he could personally see as relevant today. Yet they all retained the French language, and made a point of teaching it to the children.

He was probably the only one of the family in town, who hadn’t been met at the airport by a driver, and treated with dignity. No private limo had been available at the airport, so his only choice had been a grimy hack, that smelled like a Basra slum. As it was, he wouldn’t have been on time if he hadn’t been able to intimidate the driver.

The doorman greeted him with a friendly, “Good afternoon, sir,” but the man didn’t know his name. He nodded pleasantly, the cabbie dismissed from his thoughts in just a few steps. He’d been in the building once when he was seventeen, and never since. That made it eight years since he’d been here, and the place looked exactly the same. Pale Italian marble walls and intricate terrazzo flooring didn’t lend themselves to a remodeling every few years, like a modern office building with steel stud walls and carpeted floors. It contained the offices of his father’s attorneys. They fancied themselves the family’s attorneys, but David retained another firm, who he was certain would not mistake his father’s interests or the family’s as his.

He was here to hear his father’s will read. Crenshaw, of Henry, McPherson, and Crenshaw called him in Atlanta just yesterday, and told him he was a beneficiary. That’s all he would tell him, suggesting strongly he be there. If he’d interrupted his schedule to receive the equivalent of a posthumous raspberry from his father, he was going to be seriously pissed. To the point he’d find some way to make a certain attorney intensely unhappy. It was possible he had been left a final scolding, and the nominal dollar that made it more difficult to contest a will’s provisions.

His mother died six years ago, and he’d ignored the hostility from the family to attend her funeral. When his father passed recently he’d been in Germany, and they managed a memorial service so quickly he hadn’t been able to get back. He was pretty sure that’s exactly what they had in mind. With the reading of the will, he doubted they could exclude him without dangerous legal consequences. They had still failed to notify him by letter, rushing him with a phone call just a day ago. He had to wonder if he’d been overseas, if he’d have been notified at all.

The high ceilings and marble made the sound of his hard dress shoes on stone echo in the corridor. The elevators were old fashioned, with a brass arrow above each door indicating the floor it had reached. He’d hung back to let Mark get ahead of him. Neither would fancy sharing an elevator with the other. He punched a call button and took his coat off, giving it a little shake to rid it of any water beaded on.

The law firm entry was slightly more modern than the building. It had a single glass door, with a glass panel on each side. One bore the name of the partners in gold letters. The Secretary inside looked up at him, expectantly.

“I’m here for the Carpenter reading,” he told her.

“Thank you,” she said grabbing a clipboard. “You are?”

“David Carpenter,” he supplied. “The son.”

“Excellent,” she said, checking off a line on the document.

She pouted a bit at the list. David wondered if the family relationships were noted, and what it said beside he and Mark’s name.

“Everyone is here now.” She didn’t seem inclined to take his coat, or direct him where to go.

David thought of his offices, and wondered if their own receptionists were ever as clueless. He’d have to have a friend test them. It was certainly a security issue too.

“So, if you could find somebody to take my coat, I can wander around until I find the family,” he suggested. If that didn’t give her a hint, he’d have to be blunt.

“Oh, let me take that. There’s a rack in the conference room. Just follow me,” she said coming around the desk.” As far as he could tell, she just left the front door unmanned and unlocked, while she took him out of sight. There was no security here at all.

The conference room had the normal long table, but it also had a nice lounge, with upholstered furniture, and a table with a coffee maker and fixings. The family had all the soft furniture occupied, and a couple of the cousin’s children sitting half way down the conference table, were playing some hand held computer games.

David grabbed a high backed executive chair from the conference table, and wheeled it over by the windows. The noise level in the room had gone down a notch when he entered, and the receptionist removed herself without a word after hanging his coat. David looked around at his relatives, but didn’t greet or acknowledge any except Mark, who nodded, and he nodded back, a neutral sort of gesture. Everyone else avoided his eyes. Mark was looking older. He’d be thirty-five now, a full decade separating them. There were a few uncomfortable strangers, being ignored just as thoroughly as him.

Dave went over and helped himself to the coffee. He poured a bit in a cup and sniffed it. It smelled good enough to take a taste. Not bad, he decided, surprised. He poured, and then added cream, playing an old game his father had hated. He tried to get the coffee the same color as the back of his hand. It came close, but no match. The few times he succeeded seemed to require evaporated milk, and that was rarely offered except in remote areas, and private homes.

The rest of his family couldn’t play the game. They all matched a strong espresso straight up, as his father had. That was one thing they had against him, but there was more than that. They resented his independent success, and the fact he didn’t knuckle under to his father, as almost every one of them had at one time or another. His father had made fortunes in food service, real estate, and property management. David had dropped out of collage early, and formed a company around several patents he owned. Space based com, and aerospace electronics, was what he designed and sometimes actually built. His hardware was all through LEO and the moon. Someday he hoped to get out there himself.

He sat in the chair sideways to the windows, watching the rain hammer down, and sipped his coffee. Some of the family were fidgety, but patience was something he’d taught himself.

Crenshaw came in with several folders. He looked at the children playing at the table, and everyone comfortable in the lounge, and decided to drag a chair over like David, instead of uprooting all of them. He pulled up close enough they were a half circle before him, and he could speak normally. He distributed copies of the will. By the time he was seated some were on the second page. He was very casual crossing his leg over his knee to make a desk for the folders. David thought how his tailor would be outraged, to see him stretching the knees of his trousers out.

“Thank you all for coming. I’ve been instructed to read Joshua Carpenter’s will as he wrote it, with no abbreviations. I will say, he made conditional bequests, which we encouraged him not to do. They complicate matters, and sometimes result in the final disposition of the estate being delayed. Mr. Carpenter therefore said that I should remind you, and I quote. “If my family decides to contest the provisions of my will, I have instructed the firm to fight it vigorously in the courts, sparing no hours or effort. If you are collectively so foolish as to see the money wasted on extravagant billings to lawyers, rather than let someone else get a chunk of it, so be it.”

Crenshaw looked over the tops of his half glasses at them. “I think you will find the body of his will, has the same blunt economy of expression.”

“I, Joshua Carpenter, being of sound body as I write this document, and more importantly of sound and undiminished mind,” – ‘Here he attached certification from his physician and an attending psychologist as to his condition,’ Crenshaw noted, “do make this my true and final will,” he droned on through more boiler plate.

“To the following blood relatives I leave the sum of one-hundred dollars instead of the traditional dollar, to establish I did indeed remember them, but felt this was an adequate bequest. I do this because if any of you answered the call to the reading of my will, I don’t wish to insult you with a dollar for your morning. Most of you have not spoken with me in years, and a hundred dollars is adequate compensation for a morning lost.”

“There is a list of thirty-eight recipients of a hundred dollars, only two of whom have come in today. The rest will be sent a check by certified mail.”

Well, at least I’ve got a hundred, even if that wouldn’t pay the air fare, David thought.

“To my cousin Queena’s children, I leave two-hundred-fifty-thousand dollars each, conditioned on them attending a university, starting sometime between the age of eighteen and twenty-one.” Neither of the children at the table looked up. Nor had they been given hard copies, although their mother had. “Henry, McPherson, and Crenshaw shall disperse funds sufficient to cover their documented expenses while at university, and a lump sum of any remainder upon graduation.”

“To my secretary, Eva Johnson, I bequest five-hundred-thousand dollars. Thank you for your loyalty, and the many times you put extra effort into your work. Now, I’d suggest you and your husband Bob can pay off your mortgage, and I hope this helps make you a little more comfortable. To my miserable family, no I wasn’t sleeping with her, or I’d have left her several times as much.”

“To John Harding, the bartender at Elaine’s, I leave an identical gift of a half million dollars. John listened when I wanted, and never shorted my drink or assumed he had a tip coming. Also he could mix the best vodka gimlet straight up I ever drank. I bet you didn’t even know I knew your last name, did you John?”

A beefy fellow who had a five o’clock shadow, and looked like a wise-guy, was sitting with his mouth hanging open in shock.

“To my son by my first marriage Mark, I leave the sum of ten-million dollars.” That cause a stir and a murmuring to pass around the room. “While this is not the bulk of my estate it should offer you security for the rest of your life, if you do not slip into the error of thinking yourself independently wealthy. If you fall into the trap of spending wildly on homes, cars, and boats, it will be gone faster than you can imagine. You are not receiving the bulk of my estate, because I judge you incapable of maintaining the businesses I’ve created over a long period. When major adjustments are needed, I don’t think you are the decisive, strong willed sort, to make them. There are thousands of people in my companies, depending on them for their livelihoods, and I couldn’t throw their futures away on the chance I’m wrong, and you’d rally to the occasion.”

“To my son by my last marriage David, I leave the rest of my estate conditionally. He must travel to Africa, and take a walking pilgrimage with a traditional healer in our Homeland. I found doing so the firm basis of much of my business ability. I believe he has the temperament, and genetic make-up, to benefit from the experience. If he is unwilling to do so, I leave him the same ten million dollars as his half-brother, and will have my counsel Henry, McPherson, and Crenshaw put the balance of my estate in a trust, with professional management, for the benefit of future generations of the Carpenter family. This will have the additional benefit of encouraging you to produce such future generations, instead of selfishly remaining childless.”

The crowd was making quite a bit of noise, several people with their heads together whispering urgently.

Crenshaw looked at David, seeming really interested for the first time. “These are the conditions of your undertaking the pilgrimage. If you decide to do so, you will receive an immediate payment of ten million dollars the same as your half-brother. You will leave and undertake your mission within thirty days. You must survive, and report back to the firm within three years, as to whether you were successful in accomplishing your duty. You must decide today, before you leave the building.”

“He gets to decide himself if he was successful?” Mark asked, incredulous.

“Yes,” Crenshaw confirmed, smiling.

“He can hole up in a hotel, and drink and whore, and never see the back country.”

“Indeed, he could, if he was so disposed. Mr. Carpenter must have made the judgment he was of a character not to do so. We were not instructed to hire investigators to check on him. I imagine some of you might.” Something about the way he said it made it an accusation.

“I have my own company, and people depending on me. I’m not sure I want to do this,” David protested. Most of the family were looking at him like he’d lost his mind. “I’ve not kept up with what my dad was doing. May I ask what the remainder of his estate amounts to, over the minimum bequests?”

“After the twenty-one million-five-hundred-three and eight-hundred dollars of bequests, the total value of all stocks, properties, and insurance, will approximate one-hundred-seven million. The total will vary with market conditions, expenses, and we have ongoing hours billed. But that was the value yesterday, give or take a million.”

The murmur from the relatives was loud, and Crenshaw frowned disapproving.

“I had no idea,” David told him. “I thought a few tens of millions at most.”

“Three or four years ago, yes,” Mr. Crenshaw confirmed. “The market has been kind.”

“In that case I shall undertake to complete his request,” David told him.

A large snippet from late in “A Different Perspective”

The  >BOOM<  jarred her physically, rocking the bed. She woke to complete darkness which was wrong, she always had enough of a light to find her way to the bathroom. Even outside the window was pitch dark, wrong again on so many levels.

>CRACK< >CRACK< >CRACK< disturbed the brief silence, from inside the house.

>BOOM< sounded again, but followed by a long shredding sound and a horrible scream. President Wiggen threw the covers back and went to the closet. She had to get some real clothes on for whatever was happening. She wasn’t about to face it in her flannel nightgown. She was angry at herself for not having a flashlight and knowing where it was. The closet was closer than she gauged, and she bumped into the door hard.

Light flared behind her, and her empty bed was illuminated. “Oh my God, where are you Wiggen?” her security chief cried. He panned the room and caught her in the beam. “You scared me,” he told her, “I thought they beat me to you.”

“I’ve got to get dressed,” she informed him, ” shine that light in my closet will you?”

“Yes, yes, and dress for outdoors, some good shoes, running shoes or cross trainers, not some silly dress shoes!”

“Are we running then?” she asked.

“Unless you want to stay here and die,” Mel answered bluntly.

“Not especially,” she agreed, already fastening jeans. She sat and pulled shoes on, sturdy ones he’d approve of, not taking time for socks, but she jammed a pair in her pocket. A  pull over top and a sweater, it was cool out. She reached for a white one, and then threw it on the floor, it would just make her a target in the dark. Instead she pulled on a chocolate brown one.

“Gloves if you have them too.”

She pulled a drawer open and grabbed fine leather dress gloves.”Lead on,” she commanded, as she was pulling them on.

“First you need this,” he stuck a spray injector to her neck and triggered it before she could object. It burned and felt cold all at the same time.

“You’re knocking me out?” she asked angrily.

“Not at all! That’s a stimulant. It will help you run, not slow you down.” Come on.”

He went not to the door but the window, pulling a strange weapon. “No visible beam. Polycarbonate target. Sixty percent power.” He wasn’t addressing her, oddly he seemed to be talking to the weapon. He used it to cut away the bottom half of the thick window, tilting it to cut a taper wider on the outside. The smell of burning plastic was choking, and the plug melted back together on the bottom. A hefty kick fixed that, and sent it tumbling into the dark. The rush of cool clean air cut the chemical smell quickly.

Mel was dragging a case from beneath the bed. One of many equipment boxes tucked here and there she was encouraged to ignore. When he flipped the lid open it was a stout bar and a rope ladder folded back and forth accordion style. Mel scooped this up in an awkward bundle with both arms barely going around it, the bar against his chest He waddled to the window and stuffed it in the opening, the bar coming up against the window frame noisily.

“Out you go, I’m right behind,” he assured her, offering a hand to back out the window.

“Look down, don’t look back up here,” he commanded as she felt him join her on the ladder. That seemed odd advice until there was a dull concussion and flaming fragments of something sprayed past them from above.

There was a funny rushing sound in her ears, and when she couldn’t find the next rung with her feet she just lowered herself with hands suddenly stronger than normal. She took a breath that seemed deeper than any she’d ever taken before. When she reached the end of the ladder there was no ground under her feet, and she let go without being told. It was only a meter or so to some bushes, and they cushioned her fall. If she was scratched up by them she never noticed. The drug had her heart pounding and she was insensitive to mere pain.

Mel rolled off the bushes and up against her. “Run with me,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her up. She ran like she never had in her life. There was just enough light from distant lamps and sky glow to see the fence. Mel jumped for the top and swung over with drug induced strength. She was crouching  to jump even before he reached the top.

She let out an exultant cry of joy at the sheer physical power the drug gave her. She hooked her foot on the top bar and levered herself up and over the points  with a push of her foot and both hands levered around one of the uprights. Grabbing the bars below the top rail she slide down, the metal shredding the palms out of her thin dress gloves.

When she looked back at the White House her bedroom window was shooting a flame out like a torch. Mel had made sure nobody would follow them out that way. There was a sudden burble  of bullets past them from a silenced weapon, clattering on the pavement, and Mel urged her, “Come on!” pulling on her hand. He didn’t try to return fire.

Across the street there was a police barricade along the edge of the park. They cleared that with about as much trouble as a frightened deer. “Two more blocks,” Mel told her. To what exactly he didn’t say.

The first block went by and Mel turned right at the corner, and cut across the short side of the block to a new street. They turned left, and that quickly they were back in an area that had power, and it would have looked better in the dark.

Mel slowed to a walk, although it was hard to do in their state, and there were a couple large black men, bouncers in satin jackets guarding the roped off entry to a club, but nobody waiting to go in at this late hour. The guards looked hard at this odd couple passing, he in a suit, and she in casual clothes, as out of place in this neighborhood as a horse in church. She took the tattered gloves off and put them in a rear pocket.

A store down at the next corner showed lights and appeared to be open, it’s façade a mass of hand written signs listing it’s goods and services, sprinkled with logos ads for beer and wine. A framed red on white sign assured everyone they took negative income tax cards. There were three thin, scruffy young men standing close to each other, their breath frosting the air. One had a paper bag and took a drink from it as they watched.

When they got near the store Mel walked off the curb into the street, telegraphing they wanted nothing to do with them. The trio sauntered, with an exaggerated slowness that fooled no one, into their path. Mel drew a black pistol, unlike the previous strange weapon, and held it pointing up by his shoulder, finger along the trigger guard with perfect discipline.

The three men split without needing a consultation, one walking fast around the corner out of their sight and the other two suddenly remembering a purchase they needed to make in the store.

Mel holstered the weapon, but stayed in the street, ignoring a sanitation truck that had to swing wide around them. He cut right into the side street the one young man had fled to. He was nowhere in sight. Cutting across, he went to an ally that ran up the center of the block between commercial buildings.  He pointed a small device down the alley, and there was rattle of a steel shuttered door being lifted by a motor, but it was so dark she couldn’t see it, and the echoing sound in the dark alley was no help.

Mel took her hand again, confident, and guided her. “Easy,” he warned her, slowing. “Feel ahead of you, low.” Her hand came up against something cold and hard. It was grimy too, and she wiped her hand on top of her pants leg.

The noisy door came down behind them, making her jump. It was much louder now. Once it was down Mel turned on the same torch he’d used in her room. They were standing in front of a boxy delivery truck. Paul Romano and Sons Produce it said across the front in green letters with yellow shadowing. He beckoned, and walked her to the passenger door. It unlocked with an old fashioned milled key, and he slid it open.

Once Wiggen climbed in, a high step, both in and up, he went around and climbed in the driver’s side. The seats were much nicer than you’d expect in a utilitarian vehicle. He didn’t pause, sliding across the seat and going in the back. There was a rattle of keys again, and metallic sounds. He returned and laid a heavy long gun on the floor within reach. A large white box with a red cross he propped against her seat and opened up.

She was surprised again when he stood back up, undoing his trousers let them fall in a pile around his ankles. Bright blood streaked his leg down the sides. There was a neat hole, still trickling blood. “You didn’t say you were hit!” she objected.

“And what good would that have done?” he asked. He had a point. He took a little tube with a flange on the end and pressed it to the outside hole and pushed, injecting something in the wound. After a shudder and a pause he did the same to the inside.

“Surely you need more attention than that. We need to get you to a hospital.”

“With the Patriots watching the hospitals? No thanks. My blood is on the sidewalk, and even though I twisted my pants leg tight below the wound, I don’t doubt I left a drop here and there. If they don’t find it tonight they surely will in the morning. This will stop the bleeding, inhibit infection, and if I never get further treatment it will slowly dissolve as it heals.”

“What if it’s damaged inside?” Wiggen insisted.

“I can still feel my toes and move them, so no major nerve damage.” He was fitting a flexible cuff on his right hand while he talked. “If it had hit the artery or bone I wouldn’t have ran here two blocks with you, drugs or no drugs. As soon as this cuff finds a vein in my hand, I’ll put a slow drip on it to replace some of the fluids I’ve lost, and we’ll get out of here before they track us down. Ah, good,” he said, when the cuff around his hand showed a green light.

He hung the soft IV bag on a coat hook behind his seat, and eased the pants back up past his knees but didn’t fasten them, turning carefully to face forward. “Would you go in the back,” he asked, handing her his flashlight. “There is a bin labeled ‘rations’ and I’d like you to get us several energy bars and bottles of water. Also there as a big plastic bucket. Dump the stuff in it out on the floor, and bring it and the rations back up front please.”

She did as he asked, carrying the stuff up front in the bucket. He dumped the food out and left the empty bucket between the seats. “What is the bucket for?” she asked.

“It will likely be obvious in a bit,” he said cryptically.

The truck started with a low rumble, which meant it was a Diesel, not an electric or fuel cell drive train, he ran the door up and when it was all the way up turned on his headlights and pulled out. She heard the door start back down as soon as they pulled out. They went a few blocks and pulled into a open market, busy with activity even though there was no sign of the sun yet. Mel parked by some other trucks and plugged his hand comp in the dash and did something.

“We are going to make a few deliveries, working our way to the west, and somewhere out near the edge of the Metro area we’ll stop, and when we start again we’ll be a different truck,” he promised.

“I don’t feel so good,” Wiggen complained. “My hands are shaking, and, uh…”

Mel handed her the bucket quickly. She shoved her face in it and was horribly sick.

“Unfortunately that is the price for the boost my spray gave you.”

Wiggen rinsed her mouth out with one of the bottles of water.

“Why aren’t you sick then?” she demanded.

“I had three of those injectors,” he explained. “They are calibrated for me, and I weigh about ninety-five kilo. I never thought to have one made up for you,” he admitted.

“For all you know it could have killed me!” Wiggen said horrified.

“Well staying there was going to kill you for sure,” he said, shrugging.

A short story to hold you you over…

I feel bad “The Middle of Nowhere” is not up. Here is one of my short stories. I don’t quite have enough of them to publish a collection like “Common Ground and Other Stories” But when I do this will be included.

 A Mission to Earth

 

In the security  business when you guard the President of the United States you’ve reached the height of your career. Not many are good enough to even get close to the position, and for sure the job isn’t a political plum to give away, it’s for a pro.

Two terms, eight years, is plenty for a president. You can look at photos of the Presidents that got a second term and see how the years hang their shoulders and line their face like an illness. Two terms, eight years, whether over one or parts of three administrations was also about as much as a Secret Service boss wanted to put in guarding the Big Man too. Eight years was plenty to get your own grey hairs and worry lines. After you held the top job all you really had to look forward to was a clean retirement.

Not that you had to worry about losing your pension or  benefits if you failed. But nobody wanted to be remember in the history books as the guy that let the President of the United States get killed. Do that, and there would be no golf dates with the replacement team, no hearty welcome to have a drink with  active duty members, no invitations to sit on boards of elite security firms, and no publishers seeking your memoirs of insider stories. Really, worse than failing would be if for some reason the Big Man, or those with his ear, lost confidence in you and wanted a change of guard.

That’s why Eddy Beckem felt a small twinge of fear when he picked up the phone and was told to report across the street.  The Protective services operated quietly in the background, and the only time they were really noticed was when something went wrong, or their charges were chaffing under the needed restrictions. He closed up his safe and terminal and checked out of the office locking up even though his secretary was there.

The tunnel when he got downstairs was in high security mode with extra guards. That would be mirrored on the White House side too. The higher alert must have happened in the short time since he left his office. He dropped his hand to his ‘Berry, then he remembered the tunnel was a dead zone for wireless. He passed a couple staffers in the tunnel. They didn’t seem to be hurrying or particularly grim faced, which was good.

The President was in the Safe Room, so that meant he went down not up from the tunnel level. The President been in the hole or on his way when the secretary called, so the security tightening was a thoughtful ongoing response to something not a panic reaction. He calmly collected and categorized a hundred details as he walked along and arranged their chronology in his mind. He even examined the cleaning crew and their carts looking for any change from a thousand other days.  If the flower vase on a table was different he knew it. Later the data might all crystallize into a sudden insight or not. That was how his mind worked every day and why he was so good at what he did.

The down elevator had two guards, and once inside he needed a swipe card and hand reader to verify his identity. There was no button to push because there was only one destination for this car, the same as the two other shafts going down to the secure level from further above. Eddy looked up in the corner at the camera lens, aware one of his men was watching behind it real time. If something struck that man as wrong he could suspend the car’s travel or override and send it back up. The elevator car had no maintenance hatch on top, and it would take some powerful cutting tools to breach the floor or overhead. It was more secure than a lot of jails. If the worst happened and an armed intruder made the elevator it could be allowed to fall free the considerable drop to the bottom of the shaft, then flooded if need be.

The President’s Secretary was waiting to lead him in, and he’d have welcomed some chit-chat and a chance to feel him out about the reason for his summons, but the man had a blank face and he turned on his heel without a word and motioned him along. That stroked his paranoia again, that he might suddenly be someone with who you didn’t want to be seen talking.

Through the doors into a vestibule and airlock if truth be known. The inner doors were propped open and there was a clump of people still standing backed up into the doorway like they’d just arrived. Nobody was seated yet. Usually everyone was seated waiting for the President and any late arrivals were underlings called in for dog and pony shows.

The President was talking, facing him on the other side of the knot of people and he recognized everyone in sight, but there were two foreigners with their backs to him with some sort of fancy robes on. They appeared to be the ones the President was addressing. He didn’t know of any such visitors scheduled, but he’d find out what it was about in a moment. He’d never seen anyone but staffers on this level before.

The foreigners were tall, having a half head on everybody, even a couple inches on the President. The one with the fancier robes had on something like a beret with fancy embroidery all around the edge. The other some sort of hat or helmet with fur stretched over it. He looked for the edge of it and it just seemed to blend into the neck. Then he looked at the ears and his hair stood up on his neck and he found himself holding his breath. The ear was a big triangle like a fox’s with a tuff of fine hair spilling out, but when the suited man beside him added something to the President’s comment the ear turned nimbly and alive and pointed at the speaker. He felt a hand on his wrist and his man Davison on the Big Man’s detail leaned close and whispered in his ear.

“Not good form Boss. Take your hand off your gun.”

He hadn’t been aware of gripping it, which was bad in itself, but Davison was a good man, and he trusted his judgment.

“Thanks, what the Holy Hell is with the freak with the ears?”

“Cute aren’t they? I’d bet with ears like that he can hear every word we whisper,” he warned. “I’ve had the morning to get used to them, but they do take your breath away first time. You’re just seeing the back. Wait until you get a full frontal and see the nose on these babies.”

The head turned like it had been a request and a narrow long nose bisected a reasonably normal face from well above the pale yellow eyes to where he expected a chin. It was covered with fine fur with a part down the center visible from ten feet away. The corners of the mouth where it was visible at the top curled in a natural smile and then he turned back to the President.

The overall impression was like a fox or maybe more like a reddish golden wolf with its chin tucked in. The snout didn’t poke out so much as it sloped down. And the eyes looked straight out over it not rolled up like the head was carried down. Where a wolf would lower his head to feed this creature would obviously lift it.

“Genetic engineering?” Eddy asked Davison quietly.

“Alien,” was his clipped reply.

“Made where? China?” he asked still not getting it.

“Alien – like spaceships and bad science fiction movies,” Davison explained a little irritated.

Well shit, excuse me if this is a little hard to absorb, Eddy thought. But then his brain kicked back in a bit finally and he realized the robes alone should have told him. Some lab creation would have been naked or in western clothing. Nobody was going to put a hybrid in embroidered Arab’s robes. And now he saw the creature had a heavy gold chain around his neck just above the robes. Well…

“Take me to your leader, huh?” he muttered to Davison, who looked shocked he’d gone from clueless to joking about it fifteen seconds. That’s why Eddy was boss. He was back in the groove already. “Why didn’t I know about this days ago and have time to brief everybody so nobody had to make mental adjustments on the fly like I just did?”

“Because they just materialized in the hall outside the Oval Office this morning and politely knocked on the door and asked if they could have a word.”

“They speak English, know our customs enough to knock for entry, and have matter transmission?”

“Good summary. They have a ship they want to bring down, but these two came ahead to ask permission. They didn’t want to upset us by landing at Andrews without clearance.”

“Okay, scratch the understanding our customs. Or they’d have known popping out of the air inside the White house would freak us a lot more than landing at Andrews.”

“Maybe they wanted to freak us,” Davison speculated. “Besides, they had much less of a chance of getting a missile up the butt in the hallway than in restricted airspace.”

“But much more of a chance of having a Secret Service agent take you down on your face and cuff you before you can say, Hello.”

“Their timing was good that way too. President Lowther saw then through the door and called off his detail from touching them. In the case of Morrison he had to tell him three times, but he stopped before the other agents had to stop him. Lowther claims he knew they were aliens the instant he set eyes on them.”

That surprised Eddy. He didn’t think of President Lowther as especially imaginative, but if he made these fellows that fast he was nimbler mentally than himself, he had to admit. “So we don’t have any knowledge what weapons these fellows may be carrying while they rub elbows with the President?”

“Come on Eddy, they could have materialized a bomb in the hallway, or likely wiped the city off the map and we’d have never known what happened. We might not even recognize a weapon as such, their stuff is so advanced from ours.” Davison rarely used his given name, but it worked to remind him they were equals in experience if not rank.

“Probably, but I don’t like how it sets a precedence for them to bypass security.”

“If it makes you feel any better, they don’t like to use the matter transmitter thing. They said once in every couple million tries you fail to come out the end where you are supposed to show and just disappear. Sounds safer than flying to me, but I guess they have a lot higher standards of reliability.”

“Good, if they walk in the door now like everybody else we can at least passive scan the heck outta them. I’ll assume their clothing is bullet proof, but if I stick my pistol in the Fox’s dainty ear and let one off I bet he’ll make just as big a mess as you would.”

“Come on Ed, he can probably hear you.”

“Good, they should know someone is dead serious about protecting Lowther.”

“They don’t seem particularly aggressive. They have not made any demands or even politely requested anything but talk. What they told Lowther first thing was one of their merchant ships found our world a couple months back and reported it. They are obligated, that’s the word he used, obligated to investigate and evaluate if our species should have a relationship or ignore each other.”

“Huh, Okay we can’t build space ships. I mean serious ones like theirs, yet. But if they are Captain Cook in his tall ship and we are the Hawaiians, the natives should still have some amusing trinkets or crafts to trade. Maybe we have some natural resources we can license them to exploit. A coconut or two, fresh water, whatever. As long as we are smart enough not to jack the price up until it is just less trouble to take it.”

“They haven’t mentioned trade at all. It doesn’t seem to be an imperative to them. Nor have they planted their flag and announced we have been discovered and Earth belongs to them like your explorers did. They are interested in talking. They want to speak with our philosophers and learned men. They asked to see how we conduct our family life and run our professions.”

“Oh good. They will see what humans are like from the people least attached to reality, ivory tower academics. I’d rather send them to a Vermont farmer or somebody running a decent  family restaurant.”

“You have a Doctorate yourself. Aren’t you kind of devaluating your own credentials?

“I know how the system works. I paid my hours and dollars and have the pretty sheepskin that says I’m socialized and can smile and nod and bullshit with the best of them. But nothing I learned in school showed me how to keep the President safe. If I could teach a course on it I’d probably have to flunk out more than ninety-nine from a hundred. You can’t flunk out that many and keep getting applicants. Crap, you couldn’t give that many a ‘B’ today before they give you a bad student evaluation and kick your butt out.”

“I don’t know how anybody as cynical as you ever got into public service.”

“If I was shoving license plates across the counter to the public or filling pot holes a ‘B’ mentality or even a ‘C’ performance would be fine. Guarding the President requires your ‘A’ game every damn day.”

Davison gave a grudging nod accepting that was the truth. He was a good man and detail oriented. He just wasn’t imaginative enough to lay out all the details himself. He needed direction from Eddy and they complimented each other well. Eddy needed Davison and several others because he was human and couldn’t function and be alert twenty-four hours a day. They respected each other enough to speak candidly.

The President was doing introductions. The Secretary of State had just been presented and as usual didn’t know when to shut up. President Lowther didn’t quite turn his back on him. He did however turn to his Press Secretary and draw attention to the second alien with the bare head and away from the alien in the fancier robes.

That fellow turned his head away to the new action too, leaving the Secretary talking to his ear, everyone looking at a new center of interest, and isolated awkwardly. He had no choice but to step back or look like an idiot. He could hardly chastise the President for speaking to someone. The alien didn’t appear offended, instead Eddy was sure he saw the same faint smile he’d seen on the other alien.

The President beckoned him with his hand, and Davison actually urged him forward with his hand on the small of his back. He’d tell him about that later.

“This is Edward Beckem the head of my protective services. Eddy has been with me from before I took office, when I was assigned protection as a candidate. This is the head of their delegation to our world and chief scientist. He tells me his name means ‘Watches Trees Grow’. Sounds like the sort of naming conventions our native Americans use, doesn’t it? And this is the fellow who does for him what you do for me, as I understand it. He is named after a Hawk like bird on their world so use that. He says we couldn’t pronounce it if we can’t whistle through our nose.” He took it as a joke and chuckled.

Eddy was surprised the second alien offered his hand. Eddy shook it easily. It was hard and slender. The nails were not claw like but way thicker and smaller than a human’s. He had an extra thumb he felt curl around the bottom edge of his hand

“Since you are employed similarly may I request I be paired with you?” Hawk asked.

“Don’t you have to guard your, uh, leader, friend, whatever you call Watches Trees?

“Hawk made a very human snickering sound. “See Excellency? “He immediately abbreviated your name. I’m told it is an American cultural thing. It was a tossup between shortening it and assigning you WTG as an acronym. I.bet that by tomorrow once he has my ear trained to Watches Trees, he’ll shorten it to ‘Watches’.”

“Don’t get smart or I’ll abbreviate Hawk,” Eddy quipped. Several dignitaries behind the President winced, but Eddy wasn’t going to pussy-foot around these fellows afraid to say anything. If Hawk could dish it out about American culture he could jolly well take it too.

Hawk was not offended. He both snickered louder and smiled even harder. “Indeed, I shall look forward to that,” he agreed. Good, he wasn’t a stuck up prig.

“Eddy doesn’t see me face to face that much. I’m sure he has his department functioning smoothly enough to take a bit of time away. So you keep guarding Watches Trees, he said deliberately shortening it, and he can both give you an Earth Human to study and be of service if you need a local to consult about security matters.”

Oh Shit, Eddy thought. But he smiled and nodded graciously.

Hawk leaned over and whispered in his ear. “Nice smile square tooth, but you look like you just ate a small animal and it wasn’t well.”

“Sometimes there is no point in arguing,” Eddy said quietly. “Better to know when to pick your battles and the rest of the time make nice, nice.”

“I’m going to learn a lot about the nuances of the language from you.”

* * *

     “Do you have a wife and children? Hawk asked later, over a buffet. More aliens had arrived in a more conventional shuttle once they were given clearance. Everyone had been moved upstairs into the White House proper. The aliens had brought their own lunch and had a fellow testing human food with a portable lab about the size of a cell phone that had a few humans salivating to try it more than the food. They marked the safe items with a toothpick with frilly green cellophane on the end. The bad stuff got a red toothpick, and the yellow ended ones meant we don’t know, but don’t blame us if you fall over dead.

“I was married years ago,” Eddy told him. “Our children are old enough to no longer live at home. They are both at university and have been several years. Being married to someone doing my work was very stressful. I wasn’t wise enough to balance my work and the demands of my mate and she decided it wasn’t worth the aggravation eventually. She was polite about it. She didn’t try to demonize me or impoverish me.” His answer rattled Hawk for some reason he couldn’t tell. Too honest? Too different than his cultural norms? He could speak up if he wanted, Eddy wasn’t going to interrogate him.

“Since you are alone, would it be too great an inconvenience to allow me to room with you rather than go to a hotel? We have a few staying in hotels so that experience is sort of covered.”

“I have a spare bedroom. I might like that actually. If only to see the look on the face of the old lady next door who calls the cops if you park crooked on your driveway. With a little luck one look at you and she’ll pop a vessel somewhere and keel over.”

“Once again you have turned words I am supposed to understand into a sort of nonsensical gibberish. You are making nautical references? Vessels and keels?”

“No, I mean if she is stressed sufficiently, and believe me everything stresses her, perhaps she will burst a blood vessel and go like an overturned sail boat – keel up,” he demonstrated, flipping his hand over.

“Ah, an aneurysm . Now I understand. You are one of two humans so far honest enough to express a dislike of fellow humans. The rest of them are still making nice, nice as I believe you put it.”

“You have a little radio in your head to access your computers when you need a word or an explanation?”

“Yes, but it isn’t a radio.”

“Neutrinos?”

“Good guess but it doesn’t work like that. And it isn’t my field, I’m not a physicist or a technician to explain it. A tiny diamond in my unit has a sameness with another little diamond on our ship. They speak to each other.”

“Ah, quantum  entanglement of macroscopic objects. Very neat,” Eddy allowed.

“The computer just brought in a Spatial Physicist on our ship that deals with our ship drives more than personal coms, and asked him if that was an accurate assessment of the technology. He said the equivalent of, “Son of a bitch; that short nose is quick.” The fellow walks around in a cloud of superiority, sneering at all of us peasants, so congratulations on impressing him.”

“Short noses huh? Could be a lot worse. How do we hook up with your boss in the morning and guard him?”

“A limo will come pick us up and then him. We’ll have a driver. Does that work for you?”

“We take him where, tonight?”

“We don’t. He is staying here in the White House.”

“Good, I should have seen that one coming. That makes it easy.” Eddy looked over a pile of alien delicacies and popped a thing in his mouth that looked like a little yellow paper. “Ah, hot ginger, but fruity. I was expecting a different kind of hot.”

“You aren’t afraid to try our food when it might be poison or provoke allergy?”

“Hawk, you guys are so far ahead of in biotech, I figure you wouldn’t take the chance of setting anything out here some fool would eat and kill himself. It would ruin the party. This was just a little test. You only brought nine items, if you had thirty or forty  plates laid out here I wouldn’t have believed that many safe. But nine? You guys like fancy stuff. Look at your bosses robe. No way you’d put out nine items at home for what amounts to a state dinner. I bet you go all fancy with pretty décor and fancy plates and such. Given how he dresses, Watches Tree’s place probably makes Versailles look like a country cabin. Am I right?”

Hawk just got that faint smile. “If you like hot try those little purple things. But don’t complain to me later. They won’t kill you, but if you didn’t grow up eating them you may wish to die.”

“Not bad,” Eddy agreed, chewing, after a bit. “Sort of like a Habañero, but with more flavor. Do you sleep on a bed and is a guest bathroom with a toilet and shower stall suitable for your use?”

“I can sleep on anything, even the floor. We don’t do that much wet bathing. Maybe once a month, because we don’t sweat. We like to sprinkle dry agents on our fur and comb them out. That affects our social structure. It is time usually spent talking or taking instruction together.”

“Bring your brush along then if you want. I had horses as a kid, and I’d use a curry comb on them after a ride. Little guy like you I can comb down in half the time. If it leaves a pile of hair we have a vacuum device that makes cleaning our carpets really easy. I bet sweat is really disgusting if you don’t do it. Fortunately we don’t care for it either. We go to a great deal of trouble to avoid it. My whole house cools down when it gets hot later in the summer.”

“We cool our places too. It’s pretty hard to carry on a conversation panting.”

* * *

     “This is called a townhouse. It’s an old style of housing, but they have been building them again in urban centers. You don’t mind stairs?”

“Not at all, we have had them back into prehistory.”

“How long you folks been out among the stars?”

“Is this an official questioning?”

“Not at all, that isn’t my job. But I’m not going to take a vow of silence to never tell anybody if you tell me something interesting.”

“You would keep such a vow if you made it?”

“No, because I wouldn’t make it. I am maybe a little off to the edge of the bell curve. I won’t lie to you but if I don’t like how you are treating me I will tell you to go to hell.”

“That, would bother me,” Hawk said suddenly serious. “Personal integrity is the main study of our philosophers and the theme of almost all our literature and theater and art. I have to examine our files and see this bell curve you are referencing.” He paused communicating again.

“This curve,” he traced in the air with a finger after a bit, “is statistics, range of variation, it can be a narrow curve or wide,” am I understanding? The alien asked.

“That’s good as a verbal summary. A mathematician would say it different.”

“Would you explain who would be at the other end of the curve from you?”

“Well, that’s an interesting question. I don’t think anybody has put that to me like that before. I’ll try to come up with a good answer.” Hawk seemed to lose interest if he wasn’t going to answer straight away and went to bed.

* * *

     Sitting watching old men talk is boring. The scientists and government officials and even a few military asked all sorts of questions. They seemed to dance around asking anything specific like it would reveal too much about them. Eddy thought they were idiots if they didn’t know Watches Trees Grow and Hawk could suck so much data out of not only the net, and any private computers they could see, that there could be few secrets. If alphabet agencies could do it from a van down the street these guys could probably do it from the moon. Or from a drone the size of a horsefly circling the building.

He always made general remarks about what sort of relationship the races would have was key to getting specific. Nobody ever asked what sort of relationship he wanted to have. They talked past each other with catch works like cordial and productive. It was depressing.

There were a couple times demonstrators were either on TV or visible from where people were meeting him. He volunteered a couple times to speak with them. He clearly said he’s speak with anyone.

Watching Trees Grow was always told he didn’t have to meet fanatics and the superstitious. The scholars were embarrassed. They also kept any of the popular news anchors well away. Foreign governments were furious, sure they were being cut out of all sorts of deals. The one lobbyist who had enough punch to get a brief interview was removed when Watching Trees suggested the man was unbalanced and he should be evaluated for a mental condition. He also asked if that was real English the man was speaking.

The unproductive days wore both sides down. It was only a week before Watching Trees Grow announced they would wrap things up and go home in two days.

“Will you be allowing traders to stop and do business with us? he was asked.

“No one is forbidden from trading with you, but I doubt any will choose to.”

“Is there something we said to offend you?” One of the President’s advisers asked.

“Not at all. You’ve made every effort to speak with courtesy.”

When they returned him to the White House Eddy could tell the alien was really tired. He saw signs now how very old he was compared to the others.

He had supper with a sullen Hawk.

“Watching Trees Grow” would seem to be the name of somebody with a lot of patience,” Eddy pointed out.

“Indeed he is.”

“But your leaving seems early to us. You just got here to our way of thinking. And it doesn’t seem like we have accomplished much.”

“Well, like when your boss sent you off with me, sometimes you can just see it wouldn’t do any good to speak, and it is better to let it go and make nice, nice. We are taking our leave as nicely as we can.”

He got up and made himself a drink, considering it. “Do you folks drink ethyl alcohol?”

“We drink fermented fruit. Stuff you’d call wine I think. We never invented beer, because we eat very little starchy grain. My computer tells me those of us who have tried beer like it. If I eat much rice or potatoes it will upset my digestion. But beer hasn’t bothered anyone.”

“You don’t distill alcohol?”

Hawk looked alarmed. That was a new face to catalog. “We distill alcohol for fuel, or chemical stock, solvent. Not to drink.”

“Oh, well here is what we call a shot and a beer.” He brought a couple tall chilled bottles of beer, and poured tiny glasses of whiskey. “Up to you if you want to try it.” He knocked back his whiskey, rolled it around in his mouth and chased it with the beer.

Hawk sniffed at it dubiously. “For science,” he declared, and tossed it back. He blew his breath out in one long blow. For a minute Eddy was afraid he wasn’t going to suck it in again. Eddy pointed at the beer. Hawk regarded him with tear filled eyes and sucked a shuddering breath in. He chugged some beer and belched and chugged it again. “No wonder they like beer if it is after the whiskey. I’d drink anything to uh, flush? rinse?”

“We call it a chaser,” Eddy supplied.

“I don’t think it chased it far enough.”

“Now you are cracking jokes in English,” he said pleased. “To answer your question you proposed to me a few days ago, I have a relative. He shall remain nameless to protect the guilty. He’s at the other end of the curve in my opinion. He lies even when he doesn’t have to lie. Maybe just to keep in practice for all I can tell. He might lie because he doesn’t want to start any bad habits and if he tells the truth casually he may mess up and tell it when it matters. He would never make any complaint about you unless it was for gain.”

“Don’t people avoid him after his nature becomes obvious?”

“I do. I haven’t seen him in years. But a lot of family will still invite him to family functions. They seem to forgive anything for kinship. Not that they would loan him money. The thing about it is if you live in a big city, you can meet new suckers and never run out of new people to fool in a lifetime. He doesn’t lie about business badly enough to be taken to court. At least not too often. But when you put your hand out for change you better count your fingers as well as the coins you get back.”

Hawk snickered. “That translates very well actually.” To answer your question. We have been out of our star system for a bit more than two thousand of your years. It took us that long to explore and get established all over our home system.”

“About as long we have a fairly reliable written history,” Eddy noted.

“This is usually the third question others ask.” Hawk volunteered.

“Good, I’d rather not bore you. What do normal aliens inquire first?”

“How did you get here? That is, how does your ship work, and have you met other aliens traveling around?”

“No point in my asking how your ship works, because I am not the technical sort who would be able to make a functioning device from your answer.”

“Says the guy who so casually figured out our com system.”

“Doesn’t really matter if we find out exactly how you travel faster than light anyway. Once you know something is possible that is 99% of it right there. The rest is engineering.”

“You believe that!”

“Absolutely. You must be in our net and have access to our history. Please look and see how long we took to go from sail boats and horse drawn carriages to nuclear powered ships and rockets into orbit.”

“That’s impossible,” Hawk said staring into the air, seeing other things in his very literal mind’s eye. “Less than two hundred years? Why didn’t I see this before?”

“And as for other aliens. Of course you have met them. You are slick at learning a language and presenting yourselves effectively to the local savages. What tells me more about them and maybe you, is you didn’t bring any of them along with you.”

“Could I have another beer?”

* * *

     Later, when they were both a little deeper into their cups, Eddy asked: “I know he’s in the White House. There isn’t any place much more secure than that. But doesn’t it make you itch not to be near and supervising his security?”

“I’m not so much his physical security,” Hawk explained. “We are more like your Japanese. A very homogenous society. There are very few who would harm his holiness. We have much less mental illness, because our medicine is more mature. I’m more a balancer. I provide a counterpoint to his decisions and desires. I’m more an administrator and he is an idealist, but neither of us compel, it’s not our way. Sometimes you go with what you want to do and sometimes the cost is too much. I try to keep him from biting off more than we can all chew.”

His holiness? Eddy thought. He didn’t ask. He just got Hawk another beer.

“So what sort of bite have you taken on that was a burden?” Eddy asked two beer on.

“Oh the Riyth,” Hawk answered without hesitation. “There were twelve billion of them on three worlds. It has been three generations since we uplifted them and we are still recovering. It will be another three before we are back to taking care of our own concerns.”

“Were they oppositional? Difficult with you?” Eddy didn’t want to say the word war.

“Difficult? They loved us! Loved us to death almost. Do you know how bad they were?” He asked Eddy in a slurred voice.

“No, tell me.”

“They didn’t know how to read. Twelve billion sapients who memorized things and did calculations in their head and carried on astronomy by oral tradition. Can you imagine? They would call across the continent on a telephone, describe a complex part to be machined and when they made it and sent it the part would fit.”

“They must have generally good memories.”

“Well, they breed for it obviously,” he said waving a hand. “If you can’t entertain your lady love by singing five hundred page classic ballads you don’t stand a chance of winning her love. All we did for them and the joke on us is they pity us for being what they consider mental defectives.”

“That seems, unappreciative at the least.”

“Glad you understand. It’s rough doing the right thing. Sometimes it is just too much to expect us to keep volunteering,” you know? He was having trouble sliding off his seat. “If you guys can bootstrap yourselves up like that in two hundred years, I don’t see you need much help.”

“Your probably right,” Eddy agreed. Hawk was on the thin line between being open and unconscious. Eddy thought this was a good time to ask what he had been holding back most of the evening. “Why do you call your boss his holiness? Is he the religious head as well as the political head?”

Hawk looked at him slightly cross eyed, “I’m as close to what you think of as the secular head, executive call it. My job to be practical,” he explained. “He’s religious, well not head, but public voice? speaker? conscience? He doesn’t order the race about. He just states the ideal if you wish to know and try for it. It horrified him to see your scientists and religious people at odds with each other. He’s the head scientist. If he finds out something about the universe it makes God’s face just a little clearer to him. But any time somebody religious wants to meet him they make excuses and are embarrassed they even exist and shoo them away. Not like us, and he doesn’t know how to tell you. Galileo? Our church folk would have carried him through the streets on their shoulders and given him a prize, not put him on trial. There’s a passage in your bible we saw – ‘His invisible qualities are seen by the things made.’ Something like that, pretty close. Somebody here got it right at least once…”

“What should I do?” Eddy asked. “How can I straighten things out?”

“Can’t order you. Not my job. You gotta ask his holiness. He can’t order you either…”

“What should I ask him?” But Hawk was passed out, and aliens snore.

* * *

     All the lesser aliens were in their ship and seemed eager to go. Only Watches Trees Grow and Hawk remained on the tarmac to bid a formal goodbye. President Lowther looked dismayed. His career was over next election. Nobody understood why there was a failure, but if the aliens were leaving without mankind getting any goodies that is how it would always be seen.

Eddy was so close to understanding it, and it just didn’t click. They didn’t want trade. Mankind didn’t seem to have anything they wanted. If they didn’t want something why were they here? He stood there looking at Watches Trees Grow shake hands with the President. He had on a gorgeous cape today. It was a silvery fabric with little seed pearls and a rolled candy strip piping along the edges. He always had on the same beret,  just like the pope always had his little beanie. They were really leaving. All of them. Crap, even if an island didn’t have any gold or anything the Europeans at least left somebody behind. They, they, Oh! Oh,oh,oh…

The alien turned to go and Eddy stepped out of line and sank to one knee. Alarm filled the faces of the humans. But nothing like the horror on Hawk’s face. “Your holiness, how can you leave without instructing us? Will we ever see the face of God clearly on our own? Do you refuse to help us?”

“No indeed,” the tired alien answered, bags beneath his weary eyes. “it is my great honor to instruct you, if you ask. You said to just show you one,” he said turning his face to the other alien, “Well, here is your petitioner.”

– END –

Snippet of “A Different Perspective” about half way –

“Come on in” one of the Gumbas casually invited them in the suite the next morning. He seemed much recovered from his ordeals. Buscemi was in good spirits too, sitting back from an amble breakfast. There were five places. That was interesting. Mackay wasn’t sure if Buscemi would eat with his lieutenants. He wasn’t certain what the social order was like within crime families. Gunny assured him, in some interesting detail, that April’s friend Eddie could tell him anything he wanted to know about La Cosa Nostra.

They decided to dress a little less aggressively this morning, and picked lower profile under armor instead of the higher grade stuff that rode on top. Neither did they have long guns, and although Hall had on the backpack auto-aiming gun, he’d thrown a light windbreaker over it and the snouts were laying curled on his shoulders like some strange necklace of black metal.

“I have some good news,” Buscemi informed them. “I was able to obtain some help from local friends and my boys are packing now. They will have a fellow at the outgoing shuttle to collect all the hardware, so we don’t need your services any longer.”

“If that is your judgment. Certainly our contract can be terminated at will. We do know local custom and have zero G skills, but if you think you’ll be Okay without us we’ll be going. If you’d just scan our fee to my pad we’re done with each other.”

“I’ll send it around when I’m back to my business offices,” Buscemi said waving it away as unimportant. “Shortened to one day instead of three of course.”

“No. We are due the three days we contracted even if you withdraw early. I insist,” Mackay said with no particular rancor, but firmly.

The fellow who must be the head gumba looked so sad and shook his head. “You don’t ‘insist’ with the Capo. It isn’t respectful,” he explained, spreading his palms like he was laying the matter before them to see.

Mackay wasn’t done talking yet, but the gumba to the left of Chen worried he might be and reached inside his jacket. Chen knew he wasn’t going to offer them gum, so he proceeded on the assumption they would be taking them all down.

Chen suddenly had a polymer covered iron rod in his right hand, coincidentally the same length as his forearm. He swung it backhand without even looking to the right. He’d checked the distance to that fellow when they all stopped moving and knew where he was. It smacked him across the forehead with a surprisingly soft >POCK!<. He folded limp as an over-cooked noodle.

The fellow drawing the gun was by this time showing some wrist again and Chen swung over hand with a will. The wrist made a much more satisfying crunch, and the gun fell to the floor. The silly boy leaned over trying to recover it left handed. Chen gave him an unhurried and restrained love tap above his ear so he joined his friend on the floor.

The chief gumba was caught by the movement with his hands spread wide gesturing to make his point to Mackay. He was far too slow anyway but that really left him in an awkward position to respond. By the time he had his hand on a pistol butt Gunny had stepped past Mackay and drawn and extended his Sig. It was cocked and his finger inside the guard and jammed under the man’s nose. He just pushed and walked him back against the bulkhead in three fast steps. He drew the pistol to the side and the man didn’t even try to duck. He just closed his eyes and grimaced. He backhanded him on the side of the head and there were three on the floor.

The junior most gumba was the smartest. He had both palms showing standing very still. Both the muzzles hanging over Hall’s shoulders had come alive like startled snakes, and were both pointing from each side directly at the fellow’s nose.

The whole action had taken a little less than four seconds.

“Are dollars Okay or would you like EuroMarks?” Buscemi asked, fumbling with his pad, sweat beading up on his flushed face.

“Dollars are fine.” Mackay swiped his com pad past the offered port, and checked the total carefully. “A free word of advice,” Mackay told the man mildly. “People on Home are different. There are very few sheep and victims to be found. I know a teenage boy on Home who has no military experience and you’d think he couldn’t walk out to buy a sandwich without getting rolled to look at him. The Chinese decided to steal one of his little space ships a month back. He dropped a fusion bomb on their spaceport rather than let them steal from him. Destroyed his ship and the main Chinese spaceport and a town of a million and a half people next to it. There’s a crater there now five or six kilometers across. If they had not backed down then I have no idea how many more he would have send down on their heads.”

“If you mess with Home you aren’t setting yourself up to avoid windows the rest of your life. You have to worry if they will find the house you are in and drop a Rod from God down the chimney, or if they know what neighborhood you are in they might decide a ten-kiloton warhead is a sufficiently surgical strike. If you really, really, piss them off they may decide Lake Michigan needs new big Chicago Bay on the South end.

“Why haven’t I heard that about China?” Buscemi reasonably asked. “Something that big should have been in the news.” He was much braver now that Mackay was talking, and it seemed he wouldn’t be shot out of hand.

“I believe the Chinese found it embarrassing,” Mackay explained. “If they publicly acknowledged it they lose face, and all the more so if they are impotent to respond to it. Yet even those crazies are not stupid enough to find out how many quarter-Billion megaton warheads they could absorb. I don’t imagine the USNA wants a story on the news that would make their people  realize they only stay in power because some teenage boy hasn’t decided to give them the same treatment China got.”

“Yeah, yeah I can understand that. You look like you can’t hold your territory you’re done.”

“Go back to your territory,” Mackay advised him. “You know how things work there and fit in. You don’t understand things up here.”

“You got the families here too,” Buscemi objected.

“Yeah, and if I have to do business with them I’ll ask Eddie The Lip Persico how to deal with them. They may be in the same line you are but they are spacers now too.”

“Persico! Why didn’t you say you were connected to them?”

“Because I’m not. But I’m Home, that’s enough he will speak respectfully with me.”

Buscemi nodded, still uncertain of the full social dynamic. “Okay, you and I, we’re square, Okay? We’re quit of each other after today, capish?”

“Agreed. Move out guys,” he told his crew. The last through the door was Holt. He turned his back on them, but the black muzzles at his shoulders turned to the rear, and tracked on them until the last sliver of doorway was closed.

Snippet from Chapter 22 – “A Different Perspective”

 

“What about you?” Fay asked Lin. “What has your life been like before you came to Home and what do you want to learn and do?”

“My life is boring,” Lin said with conviction. “I’m not allowed to go anywhere with friends. I can’t pick what I wear or wear make-up. I have my com pad looked at every few days by my mom, and she flies in a tizzy if anything I’ve said is true.”

“Give me an example of this campaign against truth,” Faye asked, dubious.

“Oh, if I say anything about my teachers. Sorry, you seem to be an actual human being, but some of the teachers they gave me… They seem to have the soul sucked out of them before they are allowed to teach. If you ask a question they don’t know the answer, then you are a trouble maker. And if you question something they say is a fact they go ballistic.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Do you really?” Lin asked skeptically. “Or do you want me to pretend everything is just fine, joy, joy, and not make waves like everybody else?”

“I’m here,” Faye said, putting her tea mug down in front of her. “You are over here,” she said, taking Lin’s mug out of her hand planting it on the table in front of her. “Your mom is over here,” she said pulling an empty mug from the rack and positioning it to the side.

“I can see what motivates you, and I can see what motivates her,” she said waving at the empty mug. “I’m detached enough not to be totally invested in either of you. I’d like to have you as a student, which could give me some satisfaction, and I’d like to take your mom’s money, because that’s what other reward you get from a business. But neither is strong enough motivation to play the ugly game you all had to play on Earth,” she explained, with a dark look.

“Here, I am a private school and business. I want to make my student’s parents happy, but only within the limits of accomplishing the goals we agree on. Neither the parents nor Home can tell me what to do. If I don’t like what your parents demand I can tell them to take their little darling back and educate him or her themselves. I don’t need the school or the income to survive. If my student is a horrible abrasive person who makes me or the other students unhappy and doesn’t want to be in my school I’ll send them home. It doesn’t matter if the parents want them here, I’m running a school not a prison. The schools you went to had to accept basically every student who lived in the district. I don’t,” she assured Lin.

“If the Home Assembly tried to tell me how to run my school, or that I had to indoctrinate patriotism in my students, I’d tell them to go to hell, and inform my family we need a second revolution already.”

That rattled Lin. At home a teacher who used a curse word could be suspended. One who repeated it could be fired. And besides revolution she’d said hell…

“So if I don’t want to be here I can go home? Lin asked, unbelieving.

“Not only that. I’d refund all your Mom’s money. It’s stupid to make anyone unhappy with you so early in starting up a business. In a small community that matters a lot.”

“At home if I skipped a day they would arrest me if the cops saw me out on the street. I’d never get in the mall or on a bus but they’d call the cops. And they’d fine my folks.”

“I suspect you are finding it hard to believe, but Home is not North America. I assume you have  never been to another country before?” Faye asked.

Lin shook her head no.

“Maybe if we spoke a different language and wore weird clothes it would be easier to believe,” Faye speculated. “We have almost no laws. If your mom decides to home school you, or your brother, nobody is going to come by and stick their nose in her business. Nobody will demand you take standardized state tests. There are no Social Services or Family Court.”

“What if I think one of your tutors is stupid?” Lin asked.

“I’d be shocked. Boring, irritating, repulsive, or on a completely different wavelength than you maybe, but none of them have tutored for private fees, where they can be dismissed at will, by being stupid. If one drives you bonkers sucking on his teeth or tapping his foot on the deck I’d encourage you to rise above letting petty issues distract you. We all need a certain level of socialization. None of us can run amok down the corridors elimination all the folks we find irritating, no matter how attractive it is on occasion. You can always kindly tell them what they are doing irritates you,” she suggested.

“But if you are really a bad match and their style of instruction just isn’t helping you I’d dismiss them and see who else we could get. It happens. There are a very few subjects so exotic that only one person tutors them. I believe Ms. Hoarsh is the only one who teaches fine furniture making, and Jonathan Truboni is the only one who teaches saber, but I somehow can’t see you taking up either,” Faye joked.

“Saber?” Lin asked dubiously. “Is that software?”

Faye drew an invisible saber, cocking her wrist convincingly at the end, and swirled a

horizontal  moulinette, ending with her elbow bent vertically looming over Lin. You could almost see the glint off the blade it was so convincing.

“That’s what I thought you meant. Not my thing,” she agreed.

“Yet it is offered at many Earth universities, and is an Olympic sport,” Faye assured her.

“Are you going to contact my old school and get my transcript and grades? Lin asked. Are you was definitely a step closer to yes than would you.

“Lin Honey, my opinion of the public schools Earthside is so low I don’t see any point in it. I trust neither their system or their motives. Figure you start fresh up here.”

Lin leaned back and actually relaxed a little. Maybe she’d try it a few days. After all if it was horrible she could go home. She told her so. There would be hell to pay with her mom of course, but they couldn’t throw her in jail for it, she realized now.

“What day do you want me to start?”

First Chapter of a possible stand alone book – just playing

 

Conspiracy Theory – Chapter 1

Jack’s butt was numb and he stretched and leaned, lifting each cheek without getting up. He felt his coffee cup. It was dead cold. Sixty-eight was too damn old to be putting in ten hour days, but he was glad of the work. The Second and Greater Depression had wiped out his retirement accounts even before the previous administration had seized them, or taken them into protective custody to hear them tell it. They were saved in Federal Reserve dollar denominated bonds, so if he cashed them out they’d only be a tenth of the value in new United States Greenbacks. He’d really have been up the creek if his wife’s life insurance had not been ruled fully payable in the new notes.

Guys his age usually had trouble finding work, but his age was a benefit with this struggling niche plastics company. His experience with their obsolete computer and older AutoCAD software let them suck a little more use out of it. The youngsters who came by his cube looked in horror at the six year old box. It might be obsolete but it could still handle files for the relatively simple plastic parts they were contracted to tool and produce.

If you wanted five million crappy parts with flash and uncertain material specs the job was going to Malaysia or Vietnam. If you needed five hundred parts and actually needed the dimensions to resemble spec then Midwestern Molding was the company to shoot your job.

He’d have been delighted to have this computer or the huge high definition screen twenty years ago. He started out years ago with NASA on a machine that you could instruct to do an operation, like rotate a part, and then go use the bathroom, refresh your coffee, say hello to your work mates in the coffee room, and still be back at your desk before it was done.

There were five job files waiting for him. None was labeled hot by some miracle so he skipped down to the third. That file was smaller and perhaps he could finish it off by the end of tomorrow and have a clean wrap-up for the weekend.

The screen showed a standard three view line drawing print with details and a 3D rendering rotating in separate window. Jack couldn’t help the big smile that came to his face. It was a long time ago but you don’t forget a part once you’ve gotten every detail about it in your mind designing a tool to make it. He’d worked with this part when he was at NASA. It was a space suit visor.

He looked at the revisions list and was unsurprised to see it called out a different material. They’d done a lot with plastics since he was a green NASA nerd. The material it called for was stronger and more heat resistant than the original Lexan. The revisions included anti-reflective coating and sapphire on the inside but deep bonded diamond film on the outside. That was a whole new technology they hadn’t dreamed of back then. The gold film was deleted so they must be using separate flip down sun filters and shades.

The seal groove was modified. Likely the seal was new up-to-date material too. There was still room for ejector pins outside the seal groove so this tool as going to practically design itself since he’d done one before. It needed a lot of diamond polishing on the mold for the optical surfaces. That wasn’t going to be cheap. It was still a highly skilled hand craft.

Jack looked at the corner to see who was having it made. Tangent Fabrication. He’d never heard of them but he’d been out of the aerospace game for years. Then his eye caught the part name: Face Shield Motorcycle Helmet.

“Bullshit!” he said out loud. Then he looked over his shoulders. Sudden paranoia made him want to keep this to himself until he understood why. No way in hell was this for a motorcycle helmet so what did it mean? Why would anyone make an obsolete space suit part and lie about what it was?

Jack was agitated enough he had to get up – taking his coffee mug and going for a fresh one. The coffee was old and burnt. If he made a new pot at 3:30 people would complain about the waste. The price of coffee was out of sight. He just rinsed the mug and got water from the cooler.

By the time he walked back and sat again he was calm again. It was even starting to make a little sense to him. If you needed space suits quickly on the cheap most NASA research and data was in the public domain. The basic design was pretty good, not like the suit they used for Mercury which was basically a high altitude aircraft suit. It was far better than the Apollo suits or even the very early Shuttle suits. Modernize the materials and the basic design was damn decent. But who the hell needed space suits and needed to keep it secret?

He wrote down Tangent Fabrication and the address and print number on a Post-It note. He considered putting the CAD file on his key ring drive and decided against it. He wasn’t sure the network administrator wouldn’t see the download. They didn’t run a high security shop. Most of their work was appliance parts and high end toys. Anybody could reverse engineer them by buying the product and measuring it. But they might watch his activity to keep track of his productivity.

He had a funny feeling about this. It failed the sniff test and he intended to find out why. In fact he had a vacation penciled in for next month. It would be worth missing a little fishing time to see what Tangent Fabrication looked like. It was north of Sacramento were he’d been going anyway. He wrote down the revisions on the Post-It and put it in his wallet. Then he pulled a standard base out of the D-M-E catalog and started designing the tool. This was the most interesting thing that had happened to him in years. In that way it wasn’t entirely unwelcome.

New Big Fat Honking Snippet – “A Different Perspective”

Chapter 6

 

They left Otis in the Dunestar in one of the upper levels of the deck that was almost empty. His newly met companions all exited to the glass elevator enclosure and caught the lift without looking back. Otis went up front, started the Dunestar and drove back down two levels to where most of the spaces were filled and people walking about. Parking off in the corner of a nearly empty level was a stupid way to stand out and make people wonder what you are up to.

Otis looked for security cameras and parked well away, backing in since there was no sign prohibiting it, and several other vehicles were aligned that way. First he walked around back and lifted the hatch, confirming what sort of equipment they left for him. Then he pulled his cell phone and called Keith Anderson, the head of Safety Associates in Southern California. The man didn’t expect to see him until the signing this afternoon, and he’d undoubtedly be interrupting his work, but he needed some help right away.

“Keith? Otis here. Yeah I got in ok and I’m set for the signing later. I ran into some complications and I need a hand right now. This isn’t any kind of bizarre test or anything. I do need you or somebody who can scan a vehicle for tracking devices and dispose of it for me. Also I need a ride away from here and have some things to haul, and I’ll need a vehicle until later this evening. By ‘dispose’ I mean take it to some bad assed nasty neighborhood and park it on the street with the keys hanging in the ignition. I’d try not to park it in front of any security cameras. Or if somebody knows a chop shop sell it to them, not too eagerly though, get the best price you can to avoid suspicion. Yeah that’s good.”

“I’m in a grey Jeep Dunestar at the Century Medical building on Sepulveda on parking deck level ‘D’,” he looked and gave him the license. “And Keith, do you have anybody with the shop who shoots a .416 Tac-Tech Barratt? Great. Would you have him loan you a round of ammo and a bullet puller? Well stop and buy one if he doesn’t load his own. I also need a set of golf clubs in a bag and cart. – No, I don’t care what kind, just not antiques. They can be any length, used cheapies are fine, but wipe them for prints and spray them down to inhibit DNA testing.”

“Oh! run a couple names for me too, passive search only, not a directed inquiry, see if the Feebs or Interpol has anything out on a Polzinsky, white male, European features, unaccented American English, shy of two meters, eighty kilos, pushing forty, moustache, no beard, graying at the  temples. – I don’t know, assassinations, gun running, war crimes, that sort of thing. -Yeah, no shit. And a Home national,” he said, reading the data off the black card. The picture on the card was horrid. He described it as best he could, but it was like medium everything.

ONI knew somebody was meeting Mr. Polzinsky, if that was his name. Could be they knew his real name. No way did he intend to remain associated with this Dunestar. If the Navy didn’t have a tracker on it the creeps who gave it to him probably did. Crap, could be both of them following it around on a map. The very thought gave him the shivers. He decided to take a walk until his people got here. No point in standing beside such a trouble magnet.

Otis found a coffee kiosk in the lobby of the medical building. He got a latte with a hefty top of whipped cream, and grabbed a handful of napkins for the inevitable mess. He tipped the fellow exactly twenty percent, not enough to remember him as cheap or generous. He walked around outside, taking a different route back to the Dunestar, and saw Keith drive in past him as he walked up the ramp.

He was pleased to see his man backed in on the far side from the distant camera. They both went to the rear and opened their vehicles. Otis opened the big case on the floor and Keith looking over his shoulder let out a long whistle. The long barreled .416 Barrett was the military model, not the civilian version. It had the long tension sleeve barrel and a computerized Nightforce scope with integral laser range finding and Doppler wind correction. The lumps of self adjusting servo motors rode on it instead of manual adjustment knobs. The compartmented case had trigger and barrel tools, cleaning necessities, and two ten round magazines loaded with Hornady match ammo.

There was a window breaching charge that could be wired to the gun’s electronic ignition. It would open a hole a few milliseconds ahead of the gun firing so there was no danger of deflection. The whole rig was way serious overkill for a two hundred meter shot. To the point Otis doubted the pro had specifically requested this gun. A cheap hunting rifle would have been plenty and less likely to be tracked. In other circumstances he’d have been tempted to substitute a lesser gun and keep this for himself, but not given what it was involved with and its unknown providence. Unless, he reflected, possibly the gunman didn’t intend to use the hotel room they provided at all, but planned to shoot from a more distant point of his choosing.

Otis moved the gun and several other items to Keith’s minivan. Otis could read the alarm in his eyes to have the gun in his vehicle. Several sworn officers that worked for Keith shot the .416 or .50 Barratt for their agencies or the Guard, not California cops, but Federal. Barratt didn’t sell to California, so the state hated them and especially didn’t issue private security permits for the big rifle. Possession broke so many laws in California a grand jury would be a week making a list. Otis was his boss, and he trusted him, so he didn’t object – yet. Otis was pretty sure he was near his limits though. He had the bullet puller and requested round, and a man in street clothing who must be his disposal driver.

“I have Phil rounding up the golf bag,” Keith assured him. “He’s supposed to buy one at a used sports equipment store and park a couple blocks over on a residential street. We can meet him there or call him in on the phone. You know, Wiggen is coming into town tomorrow. That’s a hell of a bad time to be riding around with this in the van.”

“Where he parks is just fine,” Otis said. “Sooner we’re out of here the better.” He pulled the bullet, poured the powder on a coffee napkin, and pinched just a couple grains between his fingers to drop back in the neck of the brass cartridge. He replaced the bullet, tapping it home with the back side of the puller and chambered the round. “This will be a lot less of a problem in just a minute,” he assured Keith.

“Uh, Otis…” Keith started to say something in alarm as he tilted the rifle over to get at the trigger. He fired it before he could object. The gun made a funny thump, but no real bang to Keith’s relief. Neither did he have a hole from the back seat out through the front grill as he likely would have made with a full powered round.

Otis ran the cleaning rod down the bore. He was satisfied the bullet was lodged, fully engraved on the rifling about two inches from the throat. He took a magazine and made sure it still accepted a standard round and ejected it properly. There was no visible bulge on the barrel. If somebody checked both magazines were still full. The empty travel case went back in the Dunestar. The empty brass went in his pocket.

“I have to leave this rifle somewhere this evening,” he explained to Keith. “No way do I want it to be a functioning weapon.” It was a nasty thing to do to a sweet weapon, but if something happened to him he also didn’t want anybody to be able to ‘take over’ and fulfill his mission for him. If that should happen, well, with a little bit of luck whoever tried to use the gun would get a big surprise. The thought made him smile.

“Here,” he told Keith’s man, “shake this powder off the napkin over edge of the deck, and when you get rid of the Dunestar stop somewhere along the way and dumpster the case too.

The man nodded an acknowledgment, but was checking out the Dunestar with a laptop. He must be the bug finder too.

“It’s cold, sitting still. Mind if I start it, and circle the deck if I need to?”

“Be my guest,” Otis invited him.

He went around once then surprised Otis by whipping around fairly fast. Otis didn’t want him calling attention to them, but he pulled in after one quick round. He got out and went to the rear of the vehicle, fiddling with something.

“You had two hot spots. First your remote start fob was emitting. Don’t have anything to do with the vehicle, it just runs all the time. Second there was a transmitter in the spare tire valve that didn’t come on unless you were moving. Both are dead now, but you don’t have a spare tire until you get a new valve stem in the rim.”

“Good work. You ready to go dump it?” The fellow gave him a mock salute and climbed back in. He never did get the man’s name.

“Let’s go get my golf bag,” he told Keith. “Then I need the van for a couple hours to check in the Sheraton. Your man with the golf bag can take you back can’t he?”

And that was the second coincidence he didn’t deserve, Otis thought fingering the key cards in his pocket. He’d had a reservation at the Sheraton from three weeks ago, _before_ Wiggen was announced to be visiting the city. No need to find an excuse to enter the building or risk trying to get a room at the last minute when they were probably sold out. He wasn’t sure if he’d even look in the room the conspirators had provided. He was thinking on how to play it.

* * *

     Otis checked in to the Sheraton uneventfully. He had two throw away phones in his pocket he’d bought before returning. They were busy enough at the desk no one objected or offered a hand when he piled his own luggage on a cart and took it up to the eighth floor. There were two security cameras on each floor, one pointing down the hall and one covering the elevator.  It was dubious anyone was monitoring them real time. Their deterrent value was in reviewing them if a crime occurred. They would undoubtedly be reviewed after an assassination attempt originating in the building, but not before.

The room was average, boring really. He dumped the bag of trash he’d been given in the toilet and ripped the bag into smaller pieces he was sure would flush. He looked around the room trying to decide where he could hide the spacer ID. He rejected the Gideon Bible. Taped to a drawer bottom or table bottom was too well known. He finally saw the cheap floor lamp in the corner had a slip joint half way up. He pulled the brass plated tubing apart and rolled the ID up around the cord. When he fitted it back together he wiped it down to be uniformly shiny. The key cards went inside the plastic cover of the hotel room service menu. It was a slide in folder so they could change inserts, but a very tight fit.

He considered finding the cleaning cart room and using it to access the shooter’s room. But he had nothing with which to disguise himself as a cleaning lady. Pushing a cart down the hall after check-in hours started would draw attention immediately. Anybody from the hotel he ran into would want to know what the hell he thought he was doing. In the morning all the carts would be in use, and the only way he could get control of one would be to bribe or incapacitate a cleaning person. The reasonable thing if he could do what he had in mind seemed to be to brazen it out as soon as possible before everyone was on alert status for the visit in the morning.

Once his things were in his room he took the luggage cart in the elevator back down to the parking deck. He got in the minivan and pulled on dark pants over his khakis, rolled up his sleeves, and put a crushable hat on that was part of his usual kit. Then he ducked down and used the van to shield himself from the camera and came out from behind a car further down the row wheeling the golf bag. The luggage cart was still in the elevator when he called it back.

This trip in he had only the golf bag on the luggage cart with the broken down Barratt in it. He kept his head down so his face was hidden from the security camera by the floppy brim. As an added disguise he drew a gang tattoo on the back of his hand with his pen, and made sure the camera saw it. It would come off easily enough with a disinfectant wipe. Going directly to the room he swiped himself in without a guilty look either way in the hall. The suite had the look of one used as an apartment instead of for travelers. His conspirators probably knew the owner was on a trip or something.

The desk made a fine shooting bench dragged into the middle of the room. It took less than five minutes to refit the barrel and position everything. Just for insurance, besides the plugged bore, he turned on the scope and changed the zero point up a meter and a half meter to the right, deleting the history. He positioned the window breaching charge clipped on the edge of the curtain instead of on the glass where it might be visible with binoculars, and wired it up to a brand new throw-away cell phone. The drapes were only open about an inch. Hopefully that wouldn’t bring anybody from below up to inspect the room. The golf bag was unimportant, assuming Keith sanitized it properly, so it was left in the corner of the room.

Otis left, walking out of the Sheraton along the street until he found a place for lunch. The dark pants went in the trash can in the men’s room; the hat rolled up was tucked in his waist band. It was a pleasant walk back to his room where he cleaned up a little, flushed his gloves and the wipe from removing his fake tattoo. He put his clothing out for the Hotel to dry clean over night in the little bag provided and dressed with a jacket and no tie instead of a suit, this was California after all, and drove the minivan back to Keith.

A stop at a print shop got him a memory card his computer could read. While Keith finished up business to get ready for their signing Otis sat at the small conference table in his office. He opened a throw away mail account and contacted Credit Suisse. A few minutes work had the balance shifted to a new account he was sure had no cosigners. Something he’d have been unable to do without an initial account. A little more work sent half to a new account at First Caribbean on Grand Turk. Unlike the Swiss bank you didn’t have to be there in person to open an account. This evening he’d spread the money around even further, safe from claw backs. He’d leave just a couple thousand in the account the new card serviced.

While Keith spent most of the time on his own phone Otis pulled out his small computer and opened a Program called Lineup Artist. He worked quickly, familiar with the program and proficient with it. He made a face for each of the three who met him at the airport, concentrating on the senior player. In a half hour he had likenesses that would have taken him days of back and forth with an expert artist or forever if he depended on his own freehand drawing skills.

The easy part done he considered what to write. He got a sheet of paper from the mid-stack Keith’s printer and wiped the table clean changing his gloves again.

“FBI – Imperative we inform you there will be attempt on life of President.” he started. He intended to imply he was speaking for an organization, and leave a few articles out and print some of the letters in a form that would suggest a well educated Eastern European who had learned English in a British setting. He printed working to make it different than his normal printing. An expert would find subtle similarities, but only if they had a decent sample of his writing and were already on to him.

“We find ourselves able to frustrate this scheme by communicating, but unable to halt entirely on our own. Your Mr. Polzinsky returned to Atlanta by ONI was not only first layer or persons involved. On enclosed chip please find artists best work up of men working directly with your suspect. If  attempt made on President then you will know these words true. Strongly suggest you remove President Wiggen from area under tightest security when this happens. If you temporarily refuse to divulge President’s condition and imply she is receiving medical attention will prevent launch of backup attempt planned. We have identified second attempt – next is up to you.  Sincerely – A. Friend.”

It wasn’t perfect. It might cause them to pull Wiggen out of the event entirely, which wouldn’t bother him too much. It might cause a more intense search which would find the sniper’s nest. It might be, probably would be, ignored as the work of some demented flake. Certainly no intelligence agency would really communicate this way, but once the attempt was validated, could they afford to ignore the warning and recommendation? He didn’t think so. It was after all cheap insurance and all the plans would already be in place for an emergency removal to medical attention. If they went along with it and the implication was that Wiggen was injured he might just get the second payment in the Swiss account. That would be delicious.

“I need some DNA spray,” he informed Keith.

“That stuff is illegal in California now you know.”

“I hope that doesn’t mean you didn’t spray the golf bag down.”

“No, I’d have told you if we couldn’t. I just wanted to make sure you knew. They’re getting smarter too. Instead of outlawing a particular reagent they outlawed any chemical agent that interferes with the replication and identification of DNA residues for criminal analysis.” He rummaged through his drawers and brought Otis a can that proclaimed it was Acme Premium Lens Cleaner. When he applied it to the paper and chip it was more a fine fog than a spray.

“I want this delivered today to the FBI through at least three cut-outs. The last two should be somebody you have never used. A courier service or a cab. And they need to be watched so we have positive confirmation of delivery.”

“I’ll call some off shift people in. I need to have somebody else boss it so we can get over to the signing.” He didn’t ask Otis what was in it.

* * *

     The studio signing was anticlimactic after the other events of the day, but he got fully engaged in it, assuring the executives more by presence than words what a wise choice they’d made. A couple times Otis caught Keith giving him a thoughtful examination. When they were back in Keith’s van he finally spoke.

“You’re working for somebody else too.”

Otis didn’t say anything. I am, sort of, he reflected. They just don’t know it yet. Certainly several players would gladly pay him to do what he was if they only knew. Wiggen’s own party, and even the off-worlders who would be hurt when she lost the office, now or later. If he could get that to translate to gratitude after the fact – that was a whole different question.

“No answer?”

“You didn’t ask anything.”

“Does John know about it?” he asked, refusing to play that game. He meant John Trumble the CEO of Safety Associates.

“No, I got recruited on the plane. But John would approve. He’s made his politics plain to me and this mission fits them. I have the authority to sign the company to contracts, and I have my own morals to serve too.”

“You figure you’re on the side of the angels then?”

“Always. Have you ever known me to do something dirty? Illegal maybe, but actually wrong?”

“No,” he sighed. “And when you spiked that gun it just reassured me you were the right kind of fellow to support. Contacting the FBI reinforces it. I wouldn’t have done half of the things you requested today for somebody else. I hope you know that.”

“It will work out fine,” he assured him. “The most important part is wrapped up already. Now it’s just tinkering with the details.”

“Something to do with Wiggen?”

“You’ll know tomorrow.” Otis promised him with a wink.

When they pulled in at the Sheraton Otis pulled out the two silenced pistols and laid them on the console.

“You might hang on to those for us. Might upset them at the airport if I forgot and tried to board with them.”

“Sweet Jesus, man. What if I get stopped on the way home?” Keith protested.

“I guess you better be an exemplary driver this once.”

* * *

     Otis didn’t want any further entertainment and just ate in the Sheraton. It was good but overpriced like most hotel food. His expense account would cover it. He was more aware of value because he didn’t have much money growing up. It had been a struggle for his mom and dad both working to stay in something like a middle class lifestyle with two kids.

After dinner he walked around outside. Across the street and in front of an office building there was a decorative terrace with a small fountain. It appeared most everyone was gone for the day. There was no foot traffic at the main door and the lot was almost empty. He walked slowly giving himself time to examine it. He walked up to the rail around the fountain and worked his way around three quarters of the way until he was standing sideways to the building Wiggen would enter in the morning. It was directly across a huge parking lot from here with his Sheraton sitting on the left. There were coins in the fountain and he dug in his pocket finding a few dimes. While he picked them out he peeled off the sticky back on a web cam that looked like a bolt head. When he gripped the rail to lean out and toss the coins the camera was firmly planted on the vertical aluminum support. It was a good three hundred fifty meters to the only entry that looked possible for Wiggen to use in the morning.

They would likely jam cell phones right around Wiggen as she moved, but if they jammed data wireless it tended to be a tight bubble around her, not this far away. He sat on the edge of a planter and accessed the camera from his phone, zoomed in on the door and centralized it. Then he carefully erased the address the phone had automatically recorded. After a bit he planted a second camera. Not so much as a back-up, but it was better than throwing it away, and he didn’t want to take it back to his room. There were several public wireless nets hot on the plaza so he set the cameras to different ones.

Back in his room he made a pile of pillows and got comfortable. He had several new books in his compact computer, and made himself comfortable to enjoy them.

A firm knock on the door interrupted his immersion in the book. “House, unlock,” he called, and then realized it wouldn’t do that here like at home. It was a plain mechanical dead bolt on top. “Coming,” he corrected and sat the computer aside on the bed.

The pair in the hall were mid-thirties, in nice, but off the rack suits, and the shoes screamed they were cops.

“Hmm, not local, not military,” he checked out the haircut and ties. “You boys gotta be Feds – probably FBI. Why don’t ya come in and make yourselves at home?”

“Thank you,” the man seemed indifferent to his analysis. “You are correct. I’m Special agent Pilato, and this is agent Harrison.” He offered ID and Otis made the gesture of really looking at it since it seemed expected.

“We’d like to ask you a few questions. Do you have any objection?”

“No, not as long as you answer one of mine first. Am I a suspect in some criminal act? If so I’m afraid I’d have to lawyer up on general principals. If you have questions about third parties I have no problem talking to you.”

“Would you mind me seeing what you were reading when we came in?”

“You’re welcome to look at the item displayed. If you want to do a general search of my computer or phone I’ll have to ask you to get a warrant. The comp has all sorts of private information about Security Associates, and my boss would have my head if I just casually handed it over.”

The Special Agent nodded an acknowledgement and picked it up. Otis expected him to toss it back down after a few sentences, but he obviously read it all the way to the page end.

“This is damn good stuff. Who’s the author?” he asked.

“Michael Z. Williamson, the novel is ‘Better to Beg Forgiveness’.”

The lesser agent looked uncomfortable at this chatty exchange. Unlike the older agent he had looked pissed ever since Otis had ID’d them as Feebs.

“Do you know why we came to speak with you?” he asked, probably out of turn.

“Oh sure, President Wiggen is in town and I just flew all the way across the continent to be in the same city. I’m a shooter, an actual competent one. So that scares you guys. Hell of a shame the government needs to train people like me, it makes your job harder, but no way around it unless they go to all mercenaries instead of a citizen army.”

“Leaving aside the political tones of that you are correct. Can you tell us why you are in town and when you expect to leave?”

“I’m here to sign a contract with Yani Cinema for security services. I work for Security Associates out of Atlanta, and we signed the papers up this afternoon. My local man Keith  Anderson drove me over there and dropped me off after. You can check with the studio people that I was there too. I might mention this was all arranged and we made reservations before it was ever announced President Wiggen would be in town. If I’d know I’d have re-scheduled it for another week.”

“Why’s that?” the Special Agent reasserted himself.

“Because I don’t like to fly back at night, but if I try to fly out in the morning I can get caught in all the jammed up traffic and flight delays from President Wiggen being in town. No telling if she’ll leave early or late and I could get stuck sitting in the plane for five or six hours waiting to take off. We moved my flight up to tomorrow so all that will be sorted out before I board.”

“And do you feel resentment over that Mr. Anderson?” the under agent asked again.

“Don’t be a horse’s ass.” Otis told the younger man. “Of course I resent it. I won’t play this childish game of any hint of dissatisfaction being the same as disloyalty. I served with officers who needed help to tie their shoes in the morning. I did my job and ignored what I couldn’t fix. I swore an oath to protect the United States and its constitution. That didn’t end just because I’m no longer active duty. I don’t know Wiggen, but I’d do anything to protect her or any other serving President, even if she irritates me. Shit, just about everybody irritates me. You sure as hell do. It’s almost my frigging hobby. I think your computer will tell you I mean all that.”

“With a probability of 97%,” the senior agent agreed. “Nevertheless, I need to follow procedures and ask if we can look around the room, and your vehicle.”

“I don’t have a car. That’s why my local man drove me here and back. I hate rental cars and dealing with them. Feel free to look around. If I make you too nervous here you can always move me out by the airport and upgrade me to a nicer room. I wouldn’t argue with you at all.”

“I doubt my supervisor would buy that. We don’t usually get put up in anything this nice when we travel.”

Otis recovered his computer and sat in a chair by the table. Putting his feet up on the other chair. The agents checked under the mattress and in the drawers, It was interesting that one grabbed all the tissues in the bathroom dispenser and checked behind them, as well as in the toilet tank. They looked at the Gideon bible, but just a cursory glance, they didn’t fan the pages thoroughly. They’re just going through the motions to cover their butts, Otis thought. They didn’t check the backs of the curtains or take the grill off the bathroom exhaust fan.

* * *

     If he were doing these interviews Otis would leave an underling in place to observe each person interviewed after the agents left. Any precipitous flight or flurry of communications would be a tip off that something was awry. So he leaned back and relaxed to enjoy his book. If they had anything concrete on him he’s be in an interrogation room being sweated, especially anything from the airport. He believed they really were just scrutinizing anyone with military service who suddenly decided to rush to the same town President Wiggen was visiting. There were always a lot of know mental cases and political extremists to check out too. Probably local cops would be running most of those down. They should have his letter by now, but he didn’t expect that to be taken seriously or to affect their routines until it was validated in the morning.

Snippet – Chapter 5 of “A Different Perspective”

Chapter 5

 

“The two lieutenants and the two security guys who defected from New Las Vegas appear to be very compatible and are talking about opening a private security company,” April informed her friends. “I was glad because I felt responsible for setting up the situation that made the two flee from NLV.” She needed to talk less and finish her breakfast.

Heather and Jeff exchanged a glance but didn’t say anything. April felt responsible for everything and had a definite rescue complex. It wasn’t her fault how President Hadley had treated his people. Or mistreated them. “How about the vacuum rat who turned the Happy Lewis free from the dock grapples on ISSII back when the war started?” Heather asked. “Did he settle in and get a job here?”

“Well Eddie gave him a big enough reward for saving our butts that he could have started some sort of business of his own, but he doesn’t have that mindset. Dave found him a position with one of those former workers of his that splintered off and started their own shop. I’ve seen him three of four times and he seems happy. He’s a real solid sort,” April asserted.

“We seem to be accumulating a lot of refugees,” Heather observed.

“I think that is all for the good,” Jeff said without hesitation. “We always had fairly good screening to keep mentally unstable and the criminal from coming up. The sort that are leaving Earth now are self selecting for decisiveness, and obviously for awareness that things are steadily getting less desirable down there, and we have something better to offer them here.”

“If only we can keep it,” Heather said worried. “I hold my breath waiting for some junior fascist to tell the Assembly we have to license every sort of activity and start making lots and lots of laws for our own protection.”

“Don’t worry too soon,” April advised her. “We have the right to challenge and duel, and my granddad and Jon, Gunny and Eddie have all talked and recruited others. There is a very unofficial party if you will, that doesn’t have a name or officially exist.” They looked at each other, intensely interested, because they three made just such a secret pact before the war. “Don’t give them away, but if anyone stands up and tries to bury us under a new flood of government control they will either end up on the next shuttle to the mudball or have to stand to the fire of a half dozen of Homes fastest, most accurate pistoleros.”

That got a slow satisfied smile from them.

Snippet – 3rd Chapter of “A Different Perspective”

Chapter 3

 

 

April had a lot of issues to settle with Heather and Jeff. She told Gunny she wanted her privacy this morning for breakfast. He just lifted an eyebrow and didn’t object. He probably thought it was some sort of lovers spat or something, she thought in a foul mood.

Not least of what she wanted to hash out was that Heather had accepted her real estate customers suggestion and declared herself sovereign when the administrator of Armstrong had pursued them to their new homes and tried to arrest them. It had been a brilliant expedient to confer authority on her to act for them quickly. However April was still disapproving that she’d not dissolved the arrangement after fighting their rover force and saving her refugees. In fact she had instead accepted the fealty of the remainder of the Armstrong people when she returned. That wasn’t sitting well with April.

She after all was owed a lot in Heather’s development for her support and transportation services. April had not known she’d be owning a lot in a kingdom. One likely to be disputed.

That bothered her enough, but the cherry on top was that Heather named her and Jeff as peers. She was getting a lot of involvement she hadn’t asked for, but on top of all of it she certainly hadn’t asked to be Dame Lewis!

They were already at a table as she expected. Jeff barely started because he was busy waving his hands and talking to Heather. Heather further ahead because she was methodically eating while she listened. April got a tray, heavy on calories and protein both as she was gene modified and need the extra fuel.

“How long are you here?” April asked right away.

“Maybe three days,” Heather allowed. “When are you coming to visit?” she countered.

“When you have a shower,” April answered without hesitation.

Jeff thought that far funnier than she intended. He launched into a description of the horrors of moon dust that did absolutely nothing to change her mind about the shower.

“Look, you don’t need an entire sanitary plumbing system,” April insisted. “How about just a shower stall standing on a base tank. The mechanism vacuum distills whatever is in the base to an overhead insulated tank. Total capacity say thirty or forty liters. It heats it on a timer when you expect to use it. The base tank has a one liter trap for the solids that get distilled out of the waste water. You remove that and dump it outside every few days. The only loss is what gets carried out on your skin and the humidity lost getting in and out.”

“Thirty liters isn’t much,” Jeff objected.

“You set the temperature at one level. No mixing. You have a momentary contact switch that gives you a quick blast to get wet. You blast – shampoo your hair – blast again soap up your body. Hit the other switch and it runs steady to rinse off. You have a selector to pick fine mist to make it last or a heavier spray, maybe pulsing,” she speculated. “And it isn’t just for you. It is a product to sell. Broken down to assemble or in a box ready to bolt in.

He liked the manufacturing part of the idea.

“A sealed box,” Heather said dreamily. “That could fit in the back of a Russian rover,”

Jeff just looked at her open mouthed.

“You have that much headroom in a rover?” April asked.

“You can just barely stand straight in the rear. You couldn’t stand it on top of a holding tank,” Jeff allowed. “You’d have to put a thin centrifugal lift pump in the floor drain in one corner,” he said, immediately visualizing it, “the motor spinning it just outside the stall, with a waste tank and then a holding tank vertically beside the stall,” He drew in the air with his hands. He looked at Heather again and realized he’d just admitted it was not only possible but he basically had the whole design in his mind already. He bowed to the inevitable. “I’ll draw it up tomorrow and let the specs to a prototype shop,” he promised before she even asked.

“So I understand your refugees are willing to pay for the stuff they took from Armstrong when they fled,” April reminded them. “Have they ever got back to you and named a price or negotiated at all?”

“No, not only are they not talking, but even though the Lunanet satellites are active again they won’t take calls. They tried to sucker a bunch of people back to Armstrong with promises of new freedoms and openness. When you can’t call in or out you know it’s all a lie. I imagine they just want their critical techs back, because they are asking how to run systems that are going down on them without experienced workers.”

“I heard about the lawsuit some of them filed. I understand their motives,” April agreed, “and most of the accusations seem entirely accurate, but I wish they hadn’t named President Wiggen on that list of defendants. In talking to the woman she is one of the few USNA politicians who doesn’t irrationally hate our guts. I doubt the woman had anything to do, or was even aware of the oppressive atmosphere at Armstrong.”

“I hear what you are saying. Wiggen is one of the few things we have going for us, keeping Home and North America from war again,” Heather agreed. “And yet they have a point. If she didn’t know about it she did have a responsibility to know what her government was doing. If her underlings hid things and kept them from her, well, it is her responsibility to keep that from happening if she is really in charge.”

“You may regret setting such a high standard for yourself,” April pointed out. “As Queen of the Moon you have a lot of head strong smart subjects there already. Are you really going to be able to keep them from slipping something past you ?” This was the first talk they’d had about Heather’s new position.”

“I’m not Queen of the Moon,” Heather assured her. “I am Sovereign of The Center of the Moon, which is a very limited thing, and administrator of the Central Lunar Ranches. I advised them on this very suit, but they did not take all my advice. I will not limit my subjects freedom to file in other jurisdictions, although I agree with you about Wiggen. If you hadn’t been a trip wire on your recent trip down to Earth and precipitated the Patriot Party coup attempt before they were ready, I doubt we’d be worrying about Wiggen. She’d have been dead by now.”

“My advice is to get everything you can from the Earthies while she is in power. We really don’t know what is coming after her. And it wouldn’t surprise me if they try again, so you might not have a couple years. If you can get a write-off of the rovers and stuff they took I’d think about dropping at least some of the terms of the complaint in turn. If you get real freedom for the folks left behind in Armstrong who didn’t escape that’s the biggie isn’t it?” April asked.

“I’d think so. If they all insist on being vindictive it will disappoint me. I’m going to quote you about yielding on some points if they reciprocate. You don’t seem to realize it but they respect you.”

“Do they respect me or Dame Lewis?” April asked darkly.

“Now April, be reasonable,” Heather pleaded.”If something happens to me I want to give both Jeff and you the authority to have a say in what happens to Central. If it were a corporate structure I’d have named you to the board as officers. If it were a legal partnership I’d have named you as junior partners. It’s a sovereignty so you are named as peers, as are my first subjects and heads of household Dakota and Bob. Do you suddenly have some irrational hatred of monarchies? I seem to remember you heartily recommending involving the King of Tonga to me as a partner in this adventure. Did he mistreated you when you lifted through Tonga that you changed your mind?”

“It’s just a general feeling I’ve picked up from history lessons and things people say that monarchies are outdated and, you know, despotic. Jokes about ‘Off with their head’ and such. I feel uncomfortable being identified with one,” she admitted.

“If you see me being despotic I’m sure you won’t be shy to tell me,” Heather noted. “In fact if you just see me being stupid I’d really appreciate your saying so.”

“So, we don’t have to wear funny clothes or do any rituals in your kingdom?” April asked.

“Absolutely not. It’s a responsibility not a privilege. In fact nobody is obligated to address people by their titles. If somebody addresses you as Dame Lewis it will be because they respect you and want to,” Heather said.

“Or because they want to be sarcastic, and know they can get my goat that way,” April predicted uneasily.

“In which case it is political expression I dare not stifle,” Heather asserted.

“Great,” April agreed, grinding her teeth. “How benevolent of you.”

“I think April is right about one thing though,” Jeff spoke back up. “It’s to the good for now President Wiggen stays in power, and whatever small influence we have on Earth we should hope she remains and do anything we can to encourage that. We have no agents in place, so we are sort of at the mercy of people like those two lieutenants you had rescued, whose agenda just happens to agree with ours. And that’s kind of scary.”

Chapter 2 – a snippet of “A Different Perspective”

Chapter 2

Otis Dugan didn’t smile easily. His serious demeanor complimented his physique. He didn’t have the bulked out mass of a body builder, but there was very little fat to be found on him and he moved with the balanced grace of a dancer. His alert posture and his habitual scanning of his environment spoke of someone dangerous even to men who couldn’t articulate precisely why they felt that way after meeting him.

He was a Chief Warrant Officer, recently retired, with a long stint before that as a E7 Specialist Armorer. He knew every sort of small arms the North American military used in intimate detail, and quite a few of the foreign and civilian arms special forces seemed to collect along the way and forget to destroy or turn in. He was every bit as expert in their use as he was in their care. That he considered his body just another weapon to master was an obvious extension of his world view.

Safety Associates of Atlanta happily employed Otis the two years since his discharge. They also employed a lot of common rent-a-cops nationwide in retail stores and manufacturing facilities, but the reason they bought his more exotic expertise was their very expensive personal protection services for celebrities and executives.

Like most truly dangerous men his biggest asset was not strength or lightning fast reactions, but intelligence and mental dexterity. Otis was brought in, not to stand watches like a younger man, but to be involved in planning and corporate liaison. He had advanced in the company already to making the pitch to the customer for such customized protective services.

He was signing for the company later today on a contract to provide such a package to one of the many small specialty studios for their off-lot film shoots. Most of the work was still routine, guarding actor’s private trailers and providing drivers off a secure production lot, but on rare occasions a film shoot  put a star or an executive in very dangerous territory, the very worst being a public ceremony where others controlled the security environment. That would call for his personal attention running a team hands on. He also had to plan for such contingencies to be fulfilled on very short notice.

After a quick contract signing at the new customer’s studio in LA he’d be back in Atlanta on a late plane tomorrow. He was dressed in conservative business attire. His suit was far from his best, but a practical combed wool blend that would travel well and he could trust a hotel to clean without damaging it. Neither the suit or his accessories were flashy enough to attract unwanted attention. That was an important consideration, because even if he wanted to go through the hassles of sending a weapon through in his luggage the People’s Democratic Republic of  Kalifornia as he called it, didn’t offer reciprocity for his Georgia CCW, or anyone else’s for that matter. Not even for a security professional. He hated the naked feel of going unarmed, but not enough to call in one of the company’s local men to protect him. It just didn’t seem to project the image he wanted to his subordinates.

It was a shame they couldn’t FedEx the documents around instead of meeting, but there were too many signatories scattered in too many places. Safety Associates would be fulfilling this contract internationally. The studio shot Nufilm or video, and had agents and subsidiaries, on every continent but Antarctica. He’d have flown back this evening but he’d been advised by his secretary that the President was scheduled in town on some sort of building dedication. Who knew what that would do to the flight schedules? Better to relax in his hotel until tomorrow.

He’d  rather wait for them to clear the whole mess up than to get trapped on a plane in a taxi queue for ten or twelve hours waiting for the big boys to wrap it up. He was flying conventional for economy too. Safety Associates didn’t throw money away on flashy travel. The ballistic flights, orbitals especially, would all be cleared to fly first anyway when they sorted everything out from the mess a VIP visit would make. The peasants in sub-sonic econo-airliners would be released to fly dead last. It might be midnight before everything was back to normal.

Safety Associates had been his second tier choice. Coming home from the service he’d found folks not much friendlier than the natives where he had served in the Trans-Arabic Protectorate. He was ready for a new start in a new place. The only place really fresh and new was off world, but finding a position there was harder than he’d imagined. They had enough high grade applicants they could be picky, and they were.

He’d sent resumes to a couple companies on ISSII and New Las Vegas when he first got out of the service, but nothing had come of it. A discrete inquiry to casino security on a working trip to New Las Vegas for Security Associates had bombed out too. He could have found work as a mercenary easily, but his skills were too lethal and direct for most domestic security or investigators.

He had the price of a ticket in his accounts, but after that he didn’t have enough to live more than a few months at the cost of living in orbit. So going up without a firm offer of work didn’t seem prudent. He wasn’t sure what they did with the homeless up there. They probably didn’t just shove you out of the air-lock. But somebody would be pissed for sure if they had to pay for a ticket down to be rid of him. Somebody who would  likely make sure the cost of it would be taken from his wages for the next twenty years.

Applying to a foreign hab was a problem. If his boss found out he was looking for an off world job he might fire him, but he was sure he could still get other security work. On the other hand, if the government got wind of your interest in a foreign habitat then your loyalty would be suspect and you could be blacklisted for any work connected with the Feds. That made it far too risky to try unless it was a last desperate measure.

The seat he was in was too narrow for him in the shoulders despite being in first class. He had the window seat and could twist sideways rather than intrude on the other seat, but it was occupied by a boy of about twelve who was with the couple in the row behind. That made it much more comfortable than flying with an adult  beside him. The kid played a computer game plugged into noise canceling headphones, and then slept most of the flight, obviously a veteran of air travel with no nervousness or awe like a newbie. His parents in the row behind were an unremarkable upper middle class couple, dressed for comfort, not business. Otis didn’t sleep where he couldn’t lock himself in. He wasn’t diagnosed as hyper vigilant, but his attitude was common in a veteran.

He’d walked to the lavatory twice, which helped the boredom and restlessness. If you went too often the crew would mark it as suspicious behavior. The three movie choices were insipid, and he didn’t want to work where someone might read his screen. The news was the same old – same old. Another boatload of English had drowned trying to escape to Ireland. The only variation being they went down in bad weather instead of being shelled by His Majesty’s Royal Navy. The Australians were having dust storms blow in from South East Asia so bad they were having brown-outs because the automated cleaners couldn’t keep the solar collectors clean. Sometimes he wondered how much of Indonesia could blow away before there wasn’t anything left. In the end he turned it off. He knew from firsthand experience how bad things were overseas. No reason to think it would change anytime soon either.

The man directly in front of him slept, getting a pillow before they even took off. The fellow beside him up there on the aisle seat stayed awake like Otis. The one time he had gotten up and walked to the toilet he had gotten Otis’s attention because he examined everyone in the cabin  much like Otis did. Indeed it seemed to amuse the fellow a little when Otis returned his stare  without embarrassment. He was perhaps a couple years older than Otis, in fact he looked a bit like his older brother, with a little grey at the temples and a neatly trimmed moustache.

The engines eased off cruising power and the airplane slowed enough he felt himself shift forward a tiny bit. They were starting the long descent for landing.

An attendant came back from the flight deck and said something to a man in an aisle seat further up front on the opposite side. Something about the tension in her stance caught his eye. The man got up and came toward the rear of the plane with the uniformed attendant following. When he was close but still about two rows away he produced a badge case and displayed it to the attentive fellow in the next row forward.

“Mr. Polzinsky? You are under arrest sir.” His right hand hidden behind him came around with an automatic pistol held in close to his side. He had his finger laid over the trigger guard with good discipline, muzzle dipped toward the floor slightly, but Otis had definitely heard the safety being taken off and the hammer was back.

Otis checked the pistol out quickly. The light caught familiar lines of engraving under the muzzle so he knew it for an Ed Brown made weapon, although he couldn’t really read it at this distance. That was reassuring. Anybody carrying six thousand bucks of pistol instead of government issue likely knew what he was doing with it. He also favored the 1911 model himself, though he liked the modern 12mm Hornady cartridge over the old .45 ACP. Otis was so close to the fellow’s line of fire he welcomed any small comfort to be found regarding the man’s competence.

The man he’d thought sleeping, directly in front of Otis, turned in his seat and produced a set of cuffs holding them in close to his chest.

“Air Marshal, I don’t know who you think I am,” the man protested, “but you must have me confused with someone else.”

“No sir and we’re not Federal Marshals. Look closer,” he suggested still holding the ID folder out, “we’re ONI Protective Services. If you’d turn slowly to your left and put first your left and then your right arm behind you my associate will cuff you.” He was attentive to the point he refused to blink, and Otis felt sure the slightest twitch on the seated man’s part would be fatal.

The fellow complied, very slowly. Otis was relieved when he heard the cuffs ratchet closed. The seated agent felt the man’s arms and waist band before ordering him up.

“I’ll have people meeting me at the gate, or their driver at least, and we can get my identity cleared up with no problem,” the fellow was still protesting.

“Yes sir, I’m sure they would vouch for you,” The agent agreed. “We’re quite aware you have deep local resources. That’s why we’re not getting off the aircraft in this jurisdiction. We’ll remain in the back of the aircraft for the layover and return to Atlanta on its normal turn around.” They ran a wand over him in the aisle, and Otis hoped they would do a full manual pat down in the rear before they got too comfortable.

The boy beside Otis was quite awake now, watching the drama with rapt attention. He leaned out looking back as the agents escorted the fellow out of first class cautiously. The attendant went ahead of them telling the passengers to stay seated and not interfere.

The speaker instructed them to belt up again. Otis had left his latched, just loosening it a bit. The boy turned and looked Otis in the eye for the first time, obviously excited at the arrest, but too well trained to speak to a stranger. Otis knew better than to speak to a strange child in public too. That was a quick way to get a trip to the local lock-up and a court ordered search of his home and computer spaces. Instead Otis turned and looked out the window at the rooftops flashing by and growing closer. They must be under a thousand feet now and the airplane’s wheels went down with a clunk.

4th April Series book started.

“The Middle of Nowhere” is in beta reader review and not ready to publish until some final editing, but I have started writing the fourth April book which will be titled “A Different Perspective” Here is the rough draft of the first chapter.

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Chapter 1

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April looked at the cubic critically. It was on the half G deck which lowered the price quite a bit. She at first asked about full G cubic and was told there were now only eight residences maintained on Home at the full G level. Mitsubishi politely declined to make usage information public so she had no way to check the agent’s information, and she refused to ask her how she knew that number. She knew a lot of the level had been converted to businesses. A lot of entry hatches were just numbered, so she hadn’t realized just how many.

Growing up she had not appreciated how privileged it was to be able to sleep at home with her family, not to mention her own tiny closet sized bath, but she certainly valued it now. Her grandpa had helped build M3, not as a distant investor but as a working beam dog, and sank every buck he had into the initial auction of private spaces. It was a great investment, but more importantly it allowed him to bring his family up. Leaving Earth was the primary goal of his working life.

When she insisted she was still interested and asked a price she was informed that in the rare event such a property came open she could figure a hundred square meters of floor area would run seven to ten million USNA dollars. Even figuring her recent inheritance from her brother that was still a staggering number to her. That’s why the half G level suddenly looked much better. It ran a third of that.

Children were required by regulation to spend at least their eight hour sleep period in a full G. Most families did that by sending their child to a tiny business that had hot slot beds and a single shared bath. They could miss a few days for something like a illness, but were expected back as soon as they were not contagious.

The full G was needed to stimulate the growth of a normal bone structure. Indeed people were encouraged to add a couple hours a day of vertical time to the sleep hours. Most did this by taking their meals at the cafeteria in full G. That was required until a person was twelve years old or fifteen hundred centimeters, whichever came first.

April was still growing approaching sixteen, but she would be for a long time because she had Life Extension Therapy. What that did to the mix was anybody’s guess since her’s was the first generation to grow up in mixed G and LET. She figured she’d have enough full G exposure to keep her body able to function at that level. If it resulted in her being a hair shorter than she would have grown on Earth that was Okay. Being compact was no disadvantage to a spacer. Indeed being much over two meters made it almost impossible to use standard acceleration couches and P-suits parts.

The cubic was on the inside of the torus with a sloping overhead along one side. If she wanted a view port it would look out at the new ring being built off the hub. That was more interesting than looking at stars streaking by. Even if there was a ship or something to be seen it went by so quickly it was in no way a relaxing view. Her friend Heather lived in similar cubic and she had seen all sorts of tricks to maximize utilization of the area with the low overhead.

The entry door was only twelve meters from an elevator which was very convenient, and that elevator dropped to full G less than a quarter of the ring away from the cafeteria. Some people might not like having the elevator spoke right near the view port pretty much filling a quarter of the view to one side, but April thought the long taper of it ascending to the hub was a dramatic perspective just as her Hawaiian home had a much more interesting view perched on the end of a wooded ridge than a home in the middle of a flat plain of grasslands.

The agent wasn’t talking the place up. In fact she wasn’t chatty at all, had ignored her bodyguard Gunny when she hadn’t introduced him and regarded him as a piece of furniture. But then she was standing off to one side doing a pretty good furniture imitation herself, letting April form her own conclusions about the cubic. April would never guess she intimidated the woman.

“How long has this been empty?” April asked the agent. The floor covering and some of the things left behind and markings by the lighting controls suggested a Japanese speaker if not citizen had lived here. There was a faint odor of tea lingering but nothing unpleasant.

The lady looked surprised. “Just today, the fellow cleared out yesterday. The Sakura Pharmaceuticals company he worked for is in a bit of cash flow trouble on Earth. They still have a production lab on the north end, but they only need three shift workers to oversee the equipment and can’t afford to maintain an on-site administrator. He’d do it remotely now. Residential cubic doesn’t sit vacant, dear. You are the first to look at it, then I have a showing at eleven hundred and sixteen hundred. I’d be shocked if one of you doesn’t take it.”

“What if more than one of us bids on it?” April asked.

“If you bid less than the three point seven million asked I am obligated to present the offer but I’d advise the company to leave it on the market for a second day. I think I priced it very accurately. There is a shortage of materials so the new ring is building slow, yet almost all the cubic there is either pre-sold in this price range or has rental agreements. Mitsubishi is holding back half the new cubic to lease instead of sell. I suggested to the pharmaceutical company they would be better off to rent the space and retain ownership as an investment if they don’t have to provide a local executive living space, but they are eager to have the cash.”

April considered the possibility one of the other interested parties would bid over asking price. A glance at her com said it was 09:17. “I accept your offer at full price. I have the cash to do an immediate wire transfer if you can have the papers ready this afternoon. That should be a plus if they are looking for cash. The other buyers might need financing or time to liquidate something. I want you to communicate this now, and the offer is valid no later than 10:30.”

“That’s smart, but what if they want to hear the other two offers?” he asked.

“That’s their privilege. However if the other parties don’t make as good an offer I’m going to lower my own to the range the others feel is a fair market value,” she warned. “I appreciate this is what new cubic is going for, but I wonder if they will offer as much for used? Surely some of the amenities like lighting and environmental systems are more advanced in the new section, and just like a ground car they only have so many hours life in them before they will need replaced.”

“I’ll text it to them right now,” she offered. If she was offended by April’s reservations on the price she didn’t show it at all. After a few seconds of fingers dancing on the keys she folded the pad away. “It’s up to them now. I’ll contact you when they get back to me,” she promised.

“Thank you.” April checked the time out in the corridor when they stepped out, curious how long it would take her to reach the cafeteria. The answer was slightly less than four minutes plus elevator wait. That was better than the time from her folks apartment so she was happy.  She  could take the stairs that spiraled around the elevator shaft if she wished, but it was narrow and the angle increased as you went up until the last level was a hand rail and ladder without flat treads. Most folks if they used the spoke section just slid down the rails like a fireman’s pole. Or pulled up it hand over hand it was so close to zero G.

Gunny and she would have a late breakfast, delayed by the cubic viewing.

Heather and Jeff were meeting her for breakfast tomorrow. She belatedly thought she could have had them look at the cubic with her. But then she would have had to reveal all the price information in front of them or go off with the agent to bid. She loved them both, but they were not all joined at the hip. They still had customers and secrets they didn’t share with each her. More than likely things they didn’t share with each other she was sure.

Jeff for example hadn’t shared the existence of the biggest of his private weapons system with them until after it was in place and active with five big warheads. Since then he had expanded that part of the system to an even dozen warheads, replacing one expended, and capped building them at that for now. They were upgraded in new maneuverable buses with decent decoys and jamming. More than that they not only fell at orbital velocity, but now accelerated in the drop phase to the target at another six G, making interception very unlikely.

Her phone gave a priority ding just as they sat down. “You own the cubic,” the lady told her. “Can you meet me at our offices at 13:00 and do the closing?” she asked.

“Sure, I’d be very happy to do that,” April agreed with a big grin. To Gunny she just gave a thumbs up. He simply nodded.

 

Headlines add a little spice

I like to have my characters look at the news and it gives the reader a feel for the world they are living in without adding a big chunk of information to the manuscript. Here are just a few I slipped into “The Middle of Nowhere”

A fourth grader in Mississippi was taken into DHS custody at school for asserting that President Wiggen was indeed, a “poopy head”.

A junior at Jefferson High School in Montpelier Vermont was expelled when she refused to cover her naturally red hair which the administrators deemed a distraction.

Inner city high school students in New York City staged a strike over wages. They remained in class and took instruction, but turned in all state standardized tests unmarked.

A new snippet of “The Middle of Nowhere” – a short chapter

Chapter 8

The Chinese military aide stationed at ISSII was startled at a rapping on his hatch. Most people did business over the com and he had very few visitors to his work space. He liked it that way. “Just a moment!” he called and looked over his desk and shelves carefully to make sure nothing of a confidential nature was visible. Then he shut his computer  completely off. Turning just the monitor off didn’t mask the emissions this machine could give off, betraying it activity.

When he answered the door his section chief was standing there with a Laowai right in their secure cubic. He bristled at the sight, but was neither reprimanded nor given any apology. His boss apparently had bigger troubles today than what he or the foreigner either one thought.  

“Song Zhang, if we might have a moment of your time, do these have any meaning to you?” He thrust forward a multi-pane printout of  tattoos. They were oddly distorted in a way he’d never seen, but still legible. He looked at the White Ghost, unwilling to speak what he knew in front of him.

“We have need of your knowledge. Be assured you will not endanger anyone by telling us what these mean. The body on which these were seen is beyond concerns of the living.”

“That is – unfortunate,”  Zhang allowed.  “These are inspirational slogans common to the elite of special forces and usually tattooed with other images of unit banners and badges. Yes, I see the edge of one there. May I ask how we come to be in possession of these?”

“Traffic control noted an object slowly drifting away from the station large enough to be a hazard to navigation. When a scooter was dispatched to collect it they were surprised to find a corpse in a rescue ball. The discoloration is due to exposure to direct sunlight and the fact the pressure had bled off somewhat,” he explained.

“Rescue balls are only designed to hold breathable pressure for a few hours unless the person inside releases oxygen from the small canister attached to the inside. This person had been in the ball for something like six hours, and was in no condition to activate the canister when he was put in the ball.”

“You mean he was deceased when he was inserted?” Zhang inquired, surprised.

“It certainly looks that way. He had three rounds to the heart and lungs of a large caliber pistol with frangible ammunition, an ordinary kitchen knife jammed to the hilt through a kidney, and visible burn marks about his head and shoulders that indicate electrocution too.”

“Was he in uniform?” Zhang asked both sickened and alarmed, but hid it from his face.

“No, he was in European civilian clothing, and oddly his hair and upper body were stained with coffee. Does any of this make sense to you?”

“Not at all. But with those tattoos I can assure you he is ours. If you would acquire custody of him I will run his identifying characteristics through the military system and find out to whom he should be returned. Undoubtedly he had comrades and family who would want to know.”

The supervisor just looked a question at the foreigner, and he gave a nod of agreement. So he spoke Chinese well enough to have followed their exchange.

“That is all then. The fellow will be repatriated with our medical section in a few hours so you can conduct your inquiry,” and they left without another word.

It was bizarre. He knew no special forces were present on ISSII. He’d be notified if one was even passing through to another destination.

Chapter 7 of “The Middle of Nowhere” – snippet

Chapter 7

“There used to be a place in town, a deli,” Gunny said cleaning up their lunch, “and there were several parks and a beach nearby so they offered a pre-packed picnic basket for however many people you wanted. Sort of like this. My wife loved that place and we ate there fairly often. She liked everything so she just told the fellow to pack a picnic for two and surprise her. He was afraid to do it the first time, but when she was happy with it he learned not to worry. We’d do it three or four times over the summer. She liked doing something different just for the experience. I loved that about her.”

“I like hearing stories like that. I’m sorry you lost your wife, but I think it’s wonderful you ever found anyone who suited you so. I’m starting to think it’s not as common as the videos make it out to be.”

“Perhaps not. The videos show a lot of nonsense. You seem to have a lot of sense for your age. Good thing, since you got caught up in the middle of things and needed a lot of maturity to cope with it. A lot of kids years older than you couldn’t have handled it. All you kids up here seem three or four years older than what you are. My brother’s kids in Virginia are a year and two years older than you and he wouldn’t dare leave them alone at home or they’d trash the place, or start making illegal phone calls, or drinking mouth wash and end up in Emergency. It’s not legal to leave them alone anyway.”

April looked at him oddly. “I ran into a spy in the corridor and the contact seemed to make him break off his mission early. That was unexpected. But I could have stepped back and never got involved any deeper. I used it to ask Jon to ally with me, and later Jeff and Heather too. After that Jeff and Heather and I all pushed our way into adult affairs because we were made aware we might lose our home on the hab and be forced to live on the slum ball. We actively made weapons in secret, and got tech from others I still can’t talk about.”

“We didn’t get caught up in it; we conspired to promote revolution every chance we got. When Jon had to rescue Jeff’s dad from ISSII we got a huge break because ours was the only ship he could hire and we armed it with Singh technology knowing there might be trouble. But even Jon kept trying to drop me from the crew right up until launch. It was no accident.”

“I thought from reading the record of the Assembly that they authorized armed ships.”

“Yes, but that was after we got back, after we had engaged both the USNA and Chinese ships. They authorized it after the fact. We were pirates plain as could be. They could have decided to repudiate our actions. I took my personal weapon off my belt and let them bolt it on the ships camera arm with three others. Things might have settled down and the whole thing fizzled out if the Earth governments hadn’t kept acting stupid and irritating people.”

“I’m starting to suspect what they allowed on the news in North America presented a false picture more than I even realized. Perhaps more so because I was military. If we looked for foreign news and bypassed the censors and they found out it could hurt your career, get you dropped in rank, lose a fellow his security clearance even.”

April just looked at him, but held her tongue.

“God, that sounds so sheep-like,” he admitted.

“Looks different now from orbit and not under their thumb I would imagine,” April allowed. “Did you ever see the video of us engaging the Pretty as Jade and the James Kelly? It was licensed to the BBC.”

“Nope. They kept that quiet. Oh, probably a lot of civilians worked around the net blocks, and sent it around to each other. I saw quite a few of the kids dressing like you though. It drove the school and city authorities nuts. How did that come about anyway?”

April blushed deeply and made waving away motions. “There was a Japanese news report. I was dressed in a costume to try to get a rise out of my exercise group. It was taken out of context,” she insisted.

“You have a copy of that? I’d like to see the stuff that was censored to North America and compare the timeline against what I’m reading in the Assembly record.”

“I’ll give you the whole dump my brother sold the BBC,” she said, hoping that would keep him too busy to see the Genji Akira piece.

April sent the files to him. There was plenty there to keep him busy for days. Weeks if he cross checked them with the Assembly records. Did she have time to look into economics classes before Edward came? Probably not, she decided. Well if she wanted to know about economics why not ask Ed? He certainly had more money than anybody else she knew. Maybe he’d have some insight on what was worth her time.

Gunny sat the empty rinsed lunch pack by the door and then stood there reconsidering. “I’m going to run this back. I’ve been sitting too much.”

“I’ll be here,” April assured him with a wave.

The sound of voices jarred her out of her study after a bit. She wasn’t used to someone coming in unannounced. Then she relaxed hearing Gunny’s low murmur and Eddies sharper faster reply. Eddie always did kind of bark things out. He didn’t talk over you though.

They stayed in the kitchen area, and when they finally emerged Gunny had the big tea pot and Eddie carried a tray with cups and honey.

“You just need a couple small machines for customizing things and repairs,” Ernie was saying. “There are plenty of prototyping and short run shops working here and on a couple other habitats to make parts for you. It’s not like you’d need a hundred thousand pieces. The Swiss and the French already have a small hab that specializes in metallic glass alloys. With the materials coming off the Rock you shouldn’t have to lift anything from Earth.”

“What ya making” April asked Eddie.

“The Sergeant was running the idea past me of opening a gun shop. He wasn’t impressed with the selection at that new Chandlery, and he would manufacture and do custom work and repairs, which they don’t.”

“I only got him contracted for a month and you’re already trying to steal him away?”

“Not me,” Eddie said, holding his hands up in dramatic innocence. “He’s talking about starting his own business. He hasn’t said anything about partnering or loans. But it sounds like something we need. If he can’t carry the start up costs himself somebody will buy in. The investors from the smaller countries are practically running up and down the corridors yelling and waving cash money right now.”

Gunny poured them tea, and leaned back relaxed.

“You know what?” April directed at Gunny, and suddenly grinned.

“What?”

“You are acting different already. I feel different too, but had to see it in you to think about it. I didn’t expect that medication to work this fast, but no way you’d have leaned back all relaxed like that yesterday morning.”

“You’re right. I never thought to ask Doctor Lee how long it took to kick in.”

“PTS meds,” he said to Eddie’s worried look. “After awhile people shooting at you starts to get to you.”

“Eddie has been in combat,” April informed him. “He put a missile in the James Kelly and blew her in two. He has as much right to be stressed as us.”

“Yes, but sitting at a weapons board and seeing a dot get wiped off your radar screen isn’t like seeing your assailant pointing a weapon at you and hearing bullets crack past.”

“You seriously need to see the video,” April insisted. “I’ll bring it up on the screen.”

“Wow, they were right there,” Gunny admitted dismayed. “And you opened the lock up to shoot it right off your shoulder. I was treating you like some poser. I apologize Ed.”

Eddie just waved it away as unimportant with a flip of his hand.

“Yep, they were just a couple hundred yards away,” April agreed. “We have external racks now, but back then everything was make-shift and jury rigged, we only had two missiles in little disposable launching tubes anyway.”

“I was under stress from the combat such a brief period,” Eddie explained, “and my attention was really focused on doing my job and recovering Mr. Singh. I was worried because my family became involved more than any brief personal risk. I’ve experienced no bad dreams or anything. I can see how chronic stress happens however, especially when it keeps being reinforced over and over.”

“You have family up here that were at risk?”

“No, I might as well tell you. My family are Earthies, but they are all Mafia. I’ve had a horrible time keeping my professional life separated from them. When I disappeared myself to work undercover they had the misapprehension I’d been kidnapped or worse. Once they were quite sure the fellow playing my double  hadn’t harmed me they saw me safely back on our ship and quietly left.”

“Does the mob have a boss running its business on Home?” Gunny asked.

“Do you know I never wondered about that? Before the war I always assumed we were too small to support a criminal underworld. But now consider, how can you have organized crime when there is almost no law? If you want to sell drugs, or engage in prostitution or take bets you can. There are no cops to bribe and any conflict between competitors wouldn’t have to be hidden.”

“But you do have the community standards that are backed by the ability to call a duel. I heard it related there was very nearly one already. Until those boundaries are pretty well established and defined I’d tread very lightly on any activities that might get me called out.”

“Indeed you are very much correct on that. There are already several services being offered that would be illegal below, but the practitioners are keeping a very low public profile to not call attention to themselves. It would be hard to call someone out if it wasn’t a public matter. I expect it to stay that way for a long time,” Eddie told them with an amused smile. “It isn’t that much different from when I was growing up in a small rural town in Illinois. Everything looked prim and proper walking down main street, but you could buy any vice you wanted.”

“What sort of stuff?” April wondered.

“Nothing you need to know, and telling you would embarrass me. Do you really want to make me uncomfortable?” Eddie asked.

“No, I’ll just ask my grandpa. I know he had a bookie before the war, so he probably knows everything going on, and he’s impossible to embarrass.”

“That’s one of the perks of being older. I suspect Life Extension is going to make it hard to be a grumpy old geezer. It’ll be hard to carry off if you don’t look old.”

“I’ve got to get started on that,” Gunny admitted. “Before I look the part.”

“I’ve recently begun some treatments. We have a fellow on station now who can do all the basic treatments. Another friend of April’s by some coincidence,” he said smiling at her.

“Everybody seems to be April’s friend,” Gunny scoffed.

“Except for the Chinese guy in Medical’s freezer,” April pointed out.

“Yes, there are a lot of folks down on the mudball that don’t like you. And if they are smart they’ll stay down there, Gunny said gruffly. It was the first time April heard him say mudball.

“Thank you again,” that prompted Eddie to say, shame faced. “We very badly misjudged the hazard we were exposing you to in North America.”

“That’s the main thing I wanted to talk to you about,” April said, seizing the moment. “I don’t feel I accomplished much, I certainly planned to stay much longer. I know my grandpa said if I didn’t use any funds to keep the balance, but I felt it went so badly I should offer you a refund if you were not satisfied with my performance.”

Eddie looked at her, mouth open a bit which wasn’t like him. “My thought was you might be going to chew me out for sticking you in the middle of such a mess. If you asked for a hazard pay fine for my having such bad judgment I wouldn’t have argued. Just like we pay a premium to the lock guard on our ships at dock. No, keep the funds, and more than welcome to them. I didn’t expect you to have to shoot your way free to come home.”

“We’re square then?”

“Maybe for money, but if you ever need me to man up and travel into hazard I owe that.”

“Let’s try to avoid that for both of us,” April said.

“Maybe Heather’s real estate project will be an easy one for a change,” Eddie hoped. “It’s so far away from the other lunar bases, way off in the God forsaken middle of nowhere really. I can’t see how anybody can object.”

“You two certainly don’t sound like typical hardcore businessmen, determined to see every nickel extracted that your contract says you are owed,” Gunny observed. “I’m used to seeing companies suing each other in the news so often that it seems more important who wins in court than what they actually do or make.”

“That sort of behavior made a sort of sense once,” April said. “At least down on the slumball, because they have so many other businesses and people jammed elbow to elbow you could write any one off and survive. Even on Earth the rise of internet reporting of crooks and scams on social networks and business rating boards was making that sort of behavior hard to hide.”

Eddie nodded agreement. “The community above the atmosphere is really limited. We don’t even need net boards to spread the word if somebody is a shyster. As April says I can’t afford to have anyone unhappy with me. If one of my customers or suppliers has a failure that isn’t even my fault I might take a loss to help him stay in business if I can, rather than take advantage of his misfortune. You can have a situation where there may only be three proto shops that can fabricate certain sorts of items. Losing one of them is a tragedy to the business community. You lose irreplaceable expertise, and the others do not just absorb his workers and machines and keep offering the same services at the same price. I may need his services for a different one of my businesses. I can’t imagine how long it will take to fill the solar system with so many businesses that reliable vendors become disposable.”

“I can see that,” Gunny agreed, looking thoughtful.

“But it means that good, honest businesses can hold customers longer too, April said. “Used to be if a business lasted a hundred years it had to have three generations of good proprietors. Soon it will be one. A single owner consistently managing a business two or three hundred years may be something we’ll see in our lifetimes. It’s going to concentrate customer loyalty, and concentrate wealth, and make it much harder to break into any sort of venture that has other established vendors. The volume of business is going to grow faster than the number of suppliers. I want to take good care of my business associates so we have stable long term relationships,” April said.

“The shop Eddie and I use to build ships will call up their supposed competitors and share out work if they get a sudden load they can’t handle. I can’t see that happening among Earthies.”

“Gary Chalmers,” Eddie said to April. “Prime example of shooting self in foot.”

“Oh yeah! Gunny, this fellow Chalmers was secretly working as an agent for North America back when we had the war. He thought he was going to be running the whole habitat for the USNA soon, so he stopped making any pretense of being polite. For example, when one of his customer’s sons sat at the cafeteria table and tried to talk to his daughter he very rudely separated them since the kid wasn’t a proper Christian to dare speak to his daughter. You can imagine how that went over with the boy’s father,” she said rolling her eyes.

“He alienated all the dozen or so people he could do business with by stupid stuff like that in a matter of months and had to shut down his business. His guys all went off to other companies. What was even worse, he had moral objections to life extension, and wasn’t shy to say so. All these other owners looked at him and saw any business they had with him as temporary, because all the other guys were buying extension treatments. See how it works?”

“Indeed, I see I better get treated if I want customers. Is there no medical privacy up here? How does word get out whether somebody has LET or not?”

April looked surprised. “Gunny, you’ve been living down on Earth. I bet you haven’t seen a dozen people with LET face to face. Up here over half the population has it and we’ve seen the changes when they went through it. You see it in their face and hands, the little wrinkles disappear and the voice changes, even how they walk changes sometimes.”

“Oh.”

“It’s different, but you’ll figure it all out and fit in soon,” Eddie promised.

“I’m making more tea,” Gunny announced, getting up. He looked like he had absorbed as much different as he could for now.

“Would you bring us a bunch of those cookies too, please?” April requested.

“Are we operational now on the new ships? I have to become involved in that again. My grandpa must be sick of dealing with it.”

“Your grandpa is good at delegating. He hired Jed Allison who worked for Dave at Advanced Spacecraft Services. He’s tired of doing the nut turning and ready to try his hand at administrative work. He’s been doing most scheduling, and even some sales. Your grandpa has just been reviewing what Jed does. We have a couple new guys coming in for flight crew too.”

“Well, if that is working, fine. I’ll leave it alone. I have enough other things to keep me busy. I have to see what condition all of Bob’s old companies are in and decide if I want to keep them or sell them. I have some ventures with both Jeff and Heather and of course Heather’s moon thing,” April explained.

“We have the Happy of course, Home Again, and Eddie’s Scooter. Eddie’s Rascal and Eddie’s Folly are functional, but still missing some systems,” Eddie counted off on his fingers. “Hopefully the Earthies can’t tell they are not in full fighting trim. We have Eddie’s Fortune on the rack, but we are building it slow because of material shortages and because we don’t want to build any more of that series. We are stretching the market for fast couriers. I’m making them pay for themselves in order  to have them for our defense, but I think we could actually make more money running two fewer ships and charging higher rates.”

“You take lower priority loads to keep them busy?” April asked.

“Exactly, and I don’t want to drive any of the older outfits out of business. Having more eyes at other docks and more Home ships in flight at any time is good for us. You’d be amazed what an informal intelligence outfit Jon has made of all of them. He has them bringing him video and recording of local radio chatter everyplace they stop.”

“I’ve invested more in Heather’s venture than I planned, pushed the money at her actually. I simply made more on my investments than I expected and had to put it somewhere.” He looked slightly embarrassed at his good fortune.

“It isn’t something I expect to continue. The economy is heating up. Some things look to be building to a bubble. We kind of put a damper on it with the war temporarily, but a lot of my so called wealth will disappear overnight if there is a recession. I’m trying to convert paper wealth to tangibles, but it is a very difficult thing to do. Even buying land is uncertain because one of the first things countries in trouble do is nationalize the holdings of foreigners.”

“At least you shouldn’t have that trouble on the moon.” April stopped and looked worried. “Does that mean they might take my house in Hawaii?”

“If we end up shooting at each other again, yeah, that might easily happen. The fact that we didn’t do that with Mitsubishi-3, with the actual physical habitat, was a bright spot of modern politics. But whatever dollar value we refrained from stealing it was certainly worth the support it gained us from Japan and Tonga. And I think it only could have boosted the investment we see now, because people see us as a stable and safe place to invest instead of waiting to see how our government acts and if they will go crazy nationalizing things.”

“It was all your money that bought my house. You might not think I’d value it, but I went out and picked furniture and colors and really got attached to that place even though I didn’t get to live there,” April admitted. “I just don’t get politics at all. I agreed to study economics now for Jeff, because we’re starting a bank. But what good does it do to understand how an economy works if some politicians can just change all the rules and steal your stuff ? How can you plan anything? I intended to ask you about that today. You have so much money now I figure you have to have learned something about economics. Or maybe you’ve hired an economist by now?”

Eddie closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He had his hands wrapped around his tea mug like he was warming them. His lips were unhappy, and April was starting to think he was going to refuse to answer her when his eyes popped open again. He got in his case and pulled out a wallet, and laid a USNA hundred dollar bill on the table.

“How did this come into existence?” he asked her.

“Well I don’t know much about printing, but I think you are asking more than that.”

“Yes, you’re a bright young woman. I should say what is the basis upon which it was created?”

“Well I understand it isn’t backed by tangibles. I’ve read several times it is backed by the full faith and credit of the USNA. Do I have that right?” April asked, afraid of sounding silly.

“Yes. Now consider what that means. The government still has considerable land, and it has all sorts of stuff on the land. Courthouses, agency buildings, bridges, and sometimes even airports, the roads themselves and all the things in museums and gold reserves and things like vehicles and even patents rights. It can parcel out the rights to oil and gas and metals under that land. Those things are all capital assets. If they wish they can put up a toll booth and charge you to use the road. They can charge you to go in and use the national parks or land on their runways, right?”

“Okay I’m following you,” she agreed.

“Yet they chose to base the money on their credit. Not that I can blame them. If I want to have money loaned to me given a choice between putting up the Home Boy as collateral, or being given the same money just on my word I’ll repay, I’ll take the unsecured loan any day,” he said. “So why should you trust the government to repay more than me?” he asked directly.

“Well, I know you’re rich, but the government is so much bigger. I can see you going broke if you make enough stupid mistakes, but they are hardly going to go out of business!”

“And what is their business?” Eddie asked.

April looked uncertain. “Making those roads and stuff?” she guessed.

“No, any of those things could be done privately. There are private airports and bridges and even toll roads. No, the business of government is to tax. They have an unlimited right to tax the future earnings of their entire population to meet their obligations. And that right to tax is backed up by force. They can send armed men to put you in prison if you refuse to pay your taxes.” He waited and let April think about that.

“We don’t do that,” she finally said.

“Indeed, we are currently the only nation in which payment of taxes is voluntary. Some make the claim but when you examine it closely it is a lie. The only effective way to pay no taxes down below is to not make any money,” he assured her. “Being able to tax means they can also borrow money against those future taxes, and that is the source of more problems than I even want to get into with you today. If Home wanted to borrow money right now people would be insane to lend it. We have no assured mechanism for paying them back. No port fees, no entry fees, no tariffs, no income tax. When you get right down to it all the Earth governments are just as much a protection racket as any my relatives run.”

“Ouch, that seems a bit harsh.”

“Yes, it is, but think on it a few days and see if isn’t true. Can you opt out?”

“Well, Gunny is opting out. He’s moving up here and is going to take up Home citizenship.”

“Did he get all his money out?”

“He got some help to get his cash money out, but he has real estate he wants to sell, and he is going to pay the exit taxes so he is free to visit again if he wants.”

“And if he didn’t pay those fees to buy himself free?” Eddie asked.

“Yeah, I see what you mean,” April agreed. “He could never go back.”

“He already paid tax on all the money he saved back when he earned it, so why does he owe them anymore? I bet it’s a good chuck too isn’t it?”

“About three-hundred thousand. A pretty good sized chunk, yeah, of what he owns.”

“See, that tax is not on what he earned, it’s a fee because he is removing that future income from their taxation. Hey, they have already borrowed against it. It’s spent.”

“Wow.”

“Wow indeed. And you will never see an economics textbook explain it that nakedly.”

“It does sound pretty ruthless and ugly, the way you explain it.”

“That’s why I don’t have much use for professional economists. If you were going to hire an economist how would you chose one?” Eddie asked her.

“Just like a pilot or a fabricator. I’d want to see their certification and schooling and trade experience.”

“You might find somebody with a degree in economics, but there is no certification, no professional organization to issue them like engineers or architects. In reality a lot of people working as economists have degrees or experience in mathematics or computer science or even as working farmers. You could call yourself an economist and go into the predictive side of the business if you wanted and nobody could stop you.”

“How did you come to know this stuff?” April demanded.

“My mafia uncles explained economics to me when I was your age. But they couched it all in their own business terms. It translates quite well believe me. A lot of the conflict between my family and government is simple competition for resources, not morals. The government used to oppose gambling of any sort for example. Now almost every state has casinos and lotteries. What is amusing is the Mob would give you better odds of winning than the state.”

“So what are you saying about economics? Not to bother studying it?”

“Not at all. It’s good to know the language of economics and the history especially, but be skeptical. Don’t fall into the trap of embracing a particular school of economics like it is a religion. Jeff is very smart. Ask him which school of economics he thinks you should study. I bet his answer will be educational all by itself,” he stopped and thought a minute.

“I’d like you to look up how money is created. All money now is debt. If you go for a loan to buy a spaceship say from a USNA bank, the money is created right then. It isn’t paid out to you from other people’s deposits. There used to be requirements that the banks had to have funds to back what they loaned out. That has been nibbled away until it is just token amounts. And one last idea I want you to understand. Credit spends the same as capital. Make a note of that on your pad even. In time you’ll see why it is important. It spends the same but you have to pay back the interest too. There is all the systemic difference in the world, and lots of really smart people don’t see the difference.”

“Thank you, Eddie. I’ll do that,” she said taking notes.”Maybe I’ll look it all over and come up with my own theory of economics and gather disciples,” she teased.

“Disciples? Make any sense of it and I’ll hire you.”

“Tell me what you think about Heather’s moon project. Are you going to go there yourself?”

“Do I look crazy? They will be roughing it for months. I like hot showers and pleasant breakfasts in the cafeteria, not sani-wipes and boxed rations. But let me tell you about the rovers we found the Russians want to sell…”

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