April 5: A Depth of Understanding (14 page)

They were in exile from North America. It had seemed a good bargain before, to retain freedom and find a new home and career, rather than go back to North America to face a wrathful President whose orders they had admittedly ignored and worked against. Facing time in prison and eventually facing a second set of charges in the World Court, brought against them by a group of former Armstrong inhabitants now living at Central on the moon.

President Wiggen had kept their bargain and arranged for the French to give them refugee status. Why not? It seemed like accepting every dubious reject and person without a country was a French hobby. Wiggen had even sweetened the deal with a favorable trade agreement on French cheese that had been a long standing, if minor, point of contention. The six outcasts had even gotten supplements to their very low salaries and were given a lump sum to buy things to settle in their new homes.

Silverson honestly didn't think they had been tricked, or that the French had been encouraged to give them menial positions. His own big mouth had been sufficient to ruin their prospects. The young woman assigned as the liaison had been amused by his 'accent' and his admission he'd grown up at a diplomatic mission, but telling her he'd learned his French living in Paris had been an unfortunate mistake. She'd taken it as a snub on the purity of
her
language, an unfortunate misunderstanding he now saw no way to repair. How could one approach it? Especially since she did sound like she was from the border provinces, if not a colonial.

"Think about it," Silverson challenged him. "What crime have we committed on Home?"

"None, but my understanding is that young woman who started Central is pretty influential on Home. I don't think she would welcome us with open arms. A lot of the people who ran off to the lots they bought in Central don't see us as any different than the old Director. If they give us the boot at Home, we may run out of places to go," Frederick worried. "And if we leave our arrangement here I doubt the Americans will continue to subsidize us."

"It's true we didn't rush to change the rules as soon as we were running the place," Silverson admitted. "But we didn't take a rover over to Central and try to arrest them either. Miss Anderson would look very petty to ask the Assembly on Home to banish us, based on something that happened on the moon. Especially since the most culpable are dead. I understand they've only banished a handful of people. They have a labor shortage on Home and it's pretty much an English speaking hab. We could make something of ourselves there. If we stay here, we'll still be cleaning filters when we are old men. I doubt they would force us to do such stinky, filthy, monotonous work in prison. The courts would rule it cruel and unusual."

"What does Jared say?" Frederick asked. The third member of their team was still washing. He'd drawn the filters for one of the kitchens today and the black greasy dirt always managed to get on you
somewhere
, even with gloves, booties and a paper jump suit. Little fuzzy crumbs fell off and seems unnaturally attracted to your face.

"He seems to think if he is here alone, he'll be better off without us. He hopes that means he'll be boss of the filter gang."

The fourth member of their group had drawn another job and was avoiding them like the plague. If they left and he got sucked back into filter duty he would not be amused.

"Well after the first one, you
have
stuck him with every kitchen filter that's come up for service," Frederick pointed out.

"I didn't hear you volunteering to do any of them," Silverson reminded him.

"Hell no. I'm just saying," Frederick gave a very French shrug he'd picked up.

Chapter 11

"Come sit with me," April invited, waving the next morning. Matt Wilson changed course and joined her. He was another one who left everything on his tray and ate off of it. She'd been mentally tallying who was in that camp and who unloaded everything to the table. So far she hadn't found any common traits to explain the difference. She'd tried eating off the tray herself and found it uncomfortable, she wasn't sure why. It wasn't an extrovert / introvert thing, nor male / female. But she'd keep observing. Maybe there just wasn't any pattern.

"I've been thinking about you," he said, buttering his pancakes. He looked at his pancakes funny. "Do you know, I'm used to having my butter served melted in a little pitcher. This is time consuming and by the time you get all the pats in between the cakes they are half cold. I wonder if I can get it served that way? At least the syrup is hot and doesn't chill them."

"Anything else you are used to it served that way?"

"Well, lobster and clams, but I doubt I'll see that served here. When we'd go to the fair back home they served sweet corn steamed in the husks and they'd dip that in butter too."

"Ask, all they can say is no," April suggested. "Where did you live down below?"

"We lived in New Hampshire and then for awhile in Maine before we came up. You think it is a regional thing?"

"I've no idea, but now you have me wanting to try it."

"You know, I didn't tell you some of the things we did down there to deal with black markets and being spied on. It felt uncomfortable to tell you, even here. You get in the habit of not speaking freely. We'd switch cars with friends so we didn't have a pattern of going to a flea market or such too regularly. There are license plate readers everywhere and you don't want to establish a pattern of going to certain areas all the time. Or we'd park in a public lot or a business lot and take a bus to a market. If we used a business we'd buy something. We'd get a room in a cheap hotel on vacation and then use the shuttle bus the hotel provides to visit a local farmer's market or swap meet. They supposedly provide it to go to the airport or casinos, but if you are a guest you just ask the driver to drop you off and there's no record which guest got off where. We always did lots of shopping on vacation."

 "Having your license plate stolen is a constant pain in the butt. We had ours stolen at least once a year. You can't legally cover it up and bolt it on from the inside. It messes up the plate readers. Some crooked people even maintain a list of where they can find cars the same color and model as theirs so they know where to go steal a plate if they intend to commit a crime. That way if you happen to run into a cop car that runs your plate they won't know it is off a different car without stopping you. It pays to have an oddball color and model of car."

"My kids swap their school ID with friends all the time to confuse the computers, or one kid will carry two ID and the other goes naked with no ID that can be scanned. If they get caught they just claim to have lost it. Some parents try to stop it, but they are likely the neighborhood snoop, getting paid and scared their kid will get them dropped. The schools track which cards show up together and know who are friends without having to ask, or co-conspirators to hear them excuse tracking them. Having special friends over others in school is antisocial. If you hang out with the same kids all the time they give you a lower grade. So even kids that don't like each other will swap cards to trick the system. If a kid gets caught turning others in for 'shadowing', that's what they call spoofing your location, their social life pretty much ends."

"My partner Jeff smuggles stuff into both North America and China. I know he gets several times the normal price for certain drugs and computer chips. I wonder though, from what you've told me, if he wouldn't do better trading for kind? Maybe cancer drugs for maple syrup or rough cut lumber instead of cash?"

"I can't believe you just told me straight out you are smuggling."

"Who's going to do something about it? He knows his customers just like you told me the other day and you admitted illegal acts yourself. You just don't spell out specific time and place. Neither would I. If they want to intercept him or arrest his people they would have to do it out in international waters. I'd suggest they think it over really carefully before trying to steal from Jeff. Last time the Chinese tried that crap they got a honking big crater where their biggest space port used to be."

"I didn't know that. That's a danger for the police trying to entrap people in black markets. Sometimes their undercover agents just disappear, tooth and nail. In fact there are places in North America any cop doesn't want to be out of sight of surveillance cameras and radio contact. Sometimes the rural areas are worse than big cities. Some agencies run their guys in pairs for safety. There have been no few cases where cops went to buy stuff on the sly from a black marketer, just because they
need
stuff just like the rest of us and they got disappeared because somebody knew they were a cop and assumed it was a sting, so they got killed for a pair of socks or bag of disposable razors."

"I guess that's the danger when you are a statist," April said with little sympathy.

"I'm very impressed with your Mother's school," he said, switching subjects.

"It's new, but my mom has been interested in education for a long time. She home schooled my brother and me. There was little choice, there wasn't any school back then, just a few people who did tutoring."

"She has my little girl and some others tutoring an older boy in English, but he in turn is teaching them Chinese. She is learning how to teach very effectively and she comes home all enthused and rattles off Chinese to me. I'm learning some whether I want to or not," he grinned. "She still uses a lot of Earth expressions, so she's getting taught the local dialect too."

"I'm surprised your older boy isn't doing it."

"The kid picked his own tutors, those who had been helping him the most and my little girl is a talker, you can't shut her up. My boy Iaan is more given to sitting back and not saying anything himself until somebody drags it out of him. So it doesn't surprise me."

"Are you getting your books out there on the market OK?

"Yes, I have a sequel up for one of my previous releases. It's only been up two days but I'm quite happy with it. Tonight I'm publishing a new stand alone novel. I don't want to release new books in a series too quickly. It's better marketing to space them out."

"Glad to hear it. I suspected you'd do OK."

"We'll see. It's still too early to tell. I'm hoping a lot of North Americans know enough to get around the net blocks and order from Australia."

"I've got to go. Have you met Ben Patsitsas, the author, yet?"

"No."

"Well that's him over by the coffee, pecking on his computer. Go introduce yourself if you want. Tell him I sent you over," April offered. She took off, unsure if he'd do it.

* * *

"It's no more risky than working outside here. Probably less risky than actual construction work. We won't be moving big struts or plates by hand, just plasma engines with Waldos on a scooter, all fairly compact and the same. Everything is redundant, lots of multiple systems for everything life critical and the pay is  good. I'd get a cash signing bonus and a tenth of a percent of the whole load back at Home," Barak told his mom.

"You'd have to drop your classes at Faye's school," Sylvia pointed out.

"I enjoy them and I've learned a lot, more from the other students than Faye. But I'm pretty close to the point I'll have to be a paid instructor and not a student if I stay there a few more months. I see a lot more to be learned in a Out System voyage than the two days a week I'm attending school at Faye's. I'm the next to oldest student already."

"I'm just not sure you are mature enough to live independently for so long. You have to understand, it hasn't been that long ago I saw you do some pretty stupid things," His mom said.

"Stupid yeah, but life threatening? I just plain forgot I had a tea bag in my shirt pocket when I did the laundry. I didn't turn all Heather's stuff sepia on purpose for a trick. I had some of my own pieces in that wet wash too. I've learned to check
all
the pockets."

"There was that God-awful Anderson plastic coat of arms you got and they ripped you three times what it cost in shipping charges for that ugly blow molded thing and a photocopied 'genealogy' straight off the web."

"Hey, I was eleven years old. They made it look like it was a nice plaque in the photo. Cut me some slack, adult people get suckered in to buy those things. How far do you want to go back? Ten? Eight?"

"I'll think on it. Did you look up the principal investors and see what you could find out about them?" Sylvia asked.

"I did and I'll send it all to your pad. Some of the same guys did the Rock recovery. And Jeff Singh has a finger in it, supplying tech for the ship, the
Yuki-onna
."

"Well then at least that part of it should work," she acknowledged. "I'll look at it."

* * *

The shuttle from ISSII docked early on the off shift. Those intent on diving into a full work day with Home contacts took the early shuttle, arriving before most Home residents even awakened to start their main shift jobs. Most were comfortable enough with the trip to nap on the way over, trying to be somewhat rested rather than carry a full six hour disadvantage to early morning meetings.

Jesse Silverson and Frederic Tutman didn't nap. Both were terrified, not of the flight, but the commitment they'd made to leave their menial existence on the French habitat and seek their fortune on Home. They knew that it was Home people, well connected Home people, who had established the Central colony on the moon. Their previous overseers had decided to pursue Armstrong personnel fleeing to Central and arrest them. That had cost them their lives. The owner of Central had killed every Armstrong official in hot pursuit.

Their error had been in not seeing which way the wind was blowing when they inherited the top jobs. They had continued to obstruct the Central people from communicating and continued the oppressive regulations that created the problems in the first place. President Wiggen had removed them. If they hadn't done a deal to get refugee status at the French habitat they'd be sitting in an Earthside Federal prison right now.