April 5: A Depth of Understanding (15 page)

Jesse realized he'd blown their opportunities with the French all by himself. Cleaning air filters for the next several decades didn't seem all that much better than a Federal prison. They'd likely have better entertainment and leisure time, if not food, in the prison.

What they had no way of knowing was if the same people who had a grudge against them from the moon were vindictive enough and had sufficient influence, to have a watch set for them with Home security. If they were denied entry or black-listed from getting a decent job on Home, they would be in a very rough spot indeed.

The Japanese didn't accept casual immigrants and ISSII was a cluster of sovereign territories with few neutral areas in which it would be difficult to live or work. Most of the big habs like New Las Vegas were under USNA law. The few habitats of small nations or regional associations like the Scandinavian association or the Israeli hab supported a much smaller crew and didn't accept outsiders as permanent residents unless they needed their skills desperately.

They were administrators not technicians or tradesmen. They had no rare skills. If they were turned away at Home they were pretty much screwed. They left the shuttle and went to the security check-in with trepidation. Allowing several of the other shuttle passengers to go ahead of them so they could see how difficult the entry process looked to be.

They couldn't hear what the first few through the check point said to security. The line was moving almost as fast as having no check point at all. They said just a few words back and forth and touched the ceramic DNA reader plate briefly. A few didn't even bother to clean their fingers off with a sani-wipe after the plate. It was silver impregnated and self cleaning, but most Earthies were scared of disease. The fellow Jesse was watching tapped the plate, said something to the security officer in the pale blue uniform with a smile and jumped for the bearing tunnel that was the entry into spin without even wiping his finger tips on his trouser leg. Surely they must be repeat travelers, already documented into the system.

The fellow ahead of them said, "David Holloway," tapped the plate and added, "You are radiant in your beauty, as usual, Miss Margaret." The screen added a line the man glanced at, so apparently the voice recognition got his spelling right.

"Keep moving you slick tongued devil," The officer said smiling. In North America she'd have arrested him for sexual harassment and added a few charges for impeding an officer in her duties at a minimum. Jesse was shocked at such public stereotyping.

"I'm a first time entry, my papers," Jesse offered. He had quite a stack, not knowing what would be required. His passport, medical history and a brief list of residences.

"We don't care about anything but if you have been expelled from Home previously. Actually there have been so few I still know them all by sight. But eventually there will be enough of them the DNA reader will really be needed. Right now it just lets us know who you are if you do something stupid and we have an inconvenient corpse to identify."

"But you could tell that from my ID in my wallet," Jesse protested.

"You would be
astonished
by the number of people who happen who to be naked when they do something stupid enough to kill themselves," she informed him, laughing. "Besides, Home doesn't really have any requirement to carry ID. And we don't much care what you call yourself. We don't even have a legal procedure to change names and some of my friends have adapted rather fanciful names, since you can do it as easily as sending a text to everyone on your com list. Now changing your hanko, that's a hassle. If you are staying on Home or doing business regularly I suggest you go by the Japanese consulate and  obtain one."

Jesse blinked at her, wide eyed, mind racing. "I thank you for your instruction. John Wycliffe," he declared himself and touched the plate.

"Welcome to Home Mr. Wycliffe," she said with an amused expression. You will find many facts and a history of Home, as well as the few important regulations on our local web." She looked over his shoulder at Frederic Tutman, an obvious dismissal.

"Frederic Remington," Tutman declared without hesitation, touching the plate. He figured himself too trained to respond to his given name to change it.

"Welcome to Home Mr. Remington. I'm a big fan of your sculpture," Margaret added.

"Thank you ma'am. I heard your advice to my friend," Fred added, eager to get away. Sculpture? What the heck was that about? He'd have to look it up.

They followed the signs to the elevators and out to the main business level. The cafeteria was close which was fine. They were both starved. "Crying out loud, have you ever seen so many civilians wearing guns?" Jesse, uh, John that is, asked Fred.

"No, I feel like I'm on the set of some strange video," he admitted. "Let's see what you have to do to get fed here," he suggested and headed for the source of those good odors.

* * *

There were a couple men in line getting breakfast she'd never seen. April zoomed in with her spex and capture a good enough picture of them for ID. They were having a prolonged conversation with Wanda, which suggested they were new and probably signing up for a monthly cafeteria subscription if they had any brains. The a la carte rate on everything for more than two or three days was ruinous. She'd forward the pix to Jeff and Eddie. Their fledgling intelligence service could try to find out who they were.

The tailor shop girl Lindsey came in with a portfolio under her arm and made a beeline for April. She flopped it down on the table.

"Do you have time to look at a few drawings this morning?"

"Nothing I'd rather do, but let me finish up eating so I don't get anything on your samples. Grab something if you haven't eaten."

"OK," she looking at April's breakfast. She probably figured it was going to take awhile to finish eating all that. She trotted off and greeted Wanda by name. She returned with an English muffin sandwich and tea. That would carry April for about twenty minutes.

"This is all my current work. I had a lot of fashion drawings I left behind on Earth, but I've decided I've gotten better, so it isn't really stuff I'd like out in public for people to judge me. I hope I can recover it eventually, but just for myself."

"You're good," April told her without qualification. If you have a career of this and a following, your early stuff may be of more interest to scholars who want to follow how your style and ability grew, rather than make judgments about any one drawing standing alone."

Lindsey blushed heavily. "Thank you, but I'm not counting on that. I only have two subject areas so far. I've done mostly fashion design and I've done drawing of the Assemblies. I've only been up for the last three of them, but I plan to attend them all in the future."

"Let's see the Assembly stuff. Do you have any personal favorites?"

"I like this one," Lindsey admitted, turning to the drawing of Lieutenant Moore, the USNA officer who the militia captured after his satellite fired a rail gun load of pellets at Home. The lethal strike was what finally forced their move to L2 and the destruction of two identical USNA manned satellites in LEO. North America in the middle of a coup hadn't made a peep.

The Assembly had allowed that anyone who lost blood kin had first call on any retribution or punishment for their loved ones over public concerns. Mrs. Hu, who had lost her husband to the attack, asked April for the loan of her sword, a precious gift and family treasure from her maternal grandfather.

She'd instructed the prisoner to kneel and laid the cold blade across his neck in front of everyone. When she asked him if he admitted being an accessory to murder the man had tearfully admitted it. He certainly expected to die, as he fainted dead away and wet himself when Hu unexpectedly lifted the blade and said to send him off to the mercy of his bosses.

April was still of the opinion Hu would have hacked his head off with a single stroke if he'd tried to put the blame off on his command. She certainly would have in her place.

The drawing was powerful. The expression on Hu's face was just as she remembered it and Moore's expression was surprisingly well done for all that the angle obscured his countenance. The principal moderators of the Assembly behind the two main figures wore serious expressions, an Earthie might think they were judges if they didn't know how an assembly worked. April was surprised to see she and her partners were shown to the side in some detail, as was everyone important enough to have been seated flanking the makeshift stage.

The drawing was in landscape mode, in order to fit in the crowd. Lindsey had tiny printed notes running along the long edge of the drawing and it was dated.

"I'd buy a bigger version of this if you'd draw it again. It doesn't have to be an exact copy, but the same feel and subject matter. I'll give you the full ten thousand for this one," she offered.

"Ah, but this one is twelve thousand," Lindsey insisted. Taking the lead this time.

"Eleven," April said sternly, but she was grinning.

"Done," Lindsey agreed, but after enough of a pause to show she was thinking about, it and splitting the bids wouldn't always be an automatic thing.

"I'm still glad she didn't cut his head off," Lindsey said with a shudder.

"You and me both," April agreed. "You were right in line to be splattered. There would probably be little blood spots all over this page and I'd have been handed back a nasty bloody sword. I'm so glad he confessed."

"Was that the key?" Lindsey asked.

"I really think so. And if she'd executed him and the story was different, this wouldn't be such a powerful positive picture, it would be an unpleasant reminder."

Lindsey thought about that awhile, looking off in the distance, picturing what didn't happen April was pretty certain. Finally she just nodded agreement.

Chapter 12

To whatever political authority is responsible upon the habitat Mitsubishi 3:

From the director's office, ITU, Geneva, March 30, 2087 – 1300 Zulu

Notice of Regulation and Order to Desist

"The International Telecommunications Union has determined that the positioning of structures on and about the Lagrange points of the Earth Moon system may have the same sort of impacts upon radio relay and broadcasting rights as the filling of slots in the limited halo of available geostationary satellite slots.

To that end the Union intents to exert control over all naturally occurring regions which offer particular advantage and limited traffic bearing capacity anywhere in the solar system.

It is therefore needful to accept applications and assign resources for any artificial structures occupying these regions, or similar areas of stability anywhere in the greater solar system. While much consideration is given to current usage of such limited resources, we are in receipt of harsh complaints ahead of creating these new usage regulations. Protests have been filed that the political entity which styles itself as Home has a history of attacking and destroying the communications infrastructure of a number of members in both the Union and the parent body the United Nations.

We therefore call on you, in the face of such objections from our members, to withdraw from any manner of orbit around these islands of stability until a determination can be made who has the greatest need and who offer the widest benefit to all of mankind in exploiting these natural spaces.

If you have not removed yourself from the areas cited within ninety days of the date on this communication, the Union will petition the United Nations, our parent body, to call for a vote among our members on applying sanctions and entertaining options to recruit forces from within our member states to enforce our rulings.

Attached find forms for making application to our awards committees for license to use limited telecommunications assets. These may be forwarded electronically to the address which sent this message, but we still recommend a hard copy be forwarded after the electronic one to:  
International Telecommunication Union
(
ITU
) Place des Nations 1211
Geneva
20."

It wasn't signed. Just the header that it was from the Director's
office
.

Jon, head of both Security and the Home militia, wondered which hat he should wear on this one. He printed out a copy and considered to whom he needed to forward copies. He hated to call an extra Assembly of Home, but one was not scheduled in the next ninety days. Of course there were always lots of extra issues and business raised any time an Assembly was called. He wondered if they'd ever just have one Assembly a year to pass a formal budget, without some emergency forcing an early one? He had his doubts.

In the end he decided it merited notifying both his Security mail list and notice to the militia. The key word near the end was force. If this agency thought they were going to send any armed force past L1 then it would be the first test of Home's decree that no armed Earth ships would be allowed past that line.

* * *

April's emergency buzz sounded on her com pad. That almost never happened. It was a text from Jeff and brief. It just said: "Read this." The rest was the UN notice.

She wasn't through reading it before several other messages addressed to 'ALL' stacked up on her pad. Few people had her code to reach her anytime like Jeff. She'd never seen so many general broadcast messages sent the same day, much less the same hour. She skimmed them quickly for now, sure they were all about the notice.

Call to hold an Assembly at 1200 hours March 31, 2087:

"Primary subject is discussion of UN threat to initiate force and sanctions if Mitsubishi 3 does not vacate its present location."

 It was signed by her father, who managed the physical structure of the habitat for Mitsubishi.

Call to hold an Assembly at 1200 hours tomorrow:

 
"A threat of force has been received. Home militia must set member response levels and plans of action in response." Signed – Jon Davis Home militia coordinator.