April 8: It's Always Something (36 page)

"Sixteen in each magazine and one up the snout. If you shoot more than that you can buy them. Drop it off any time before you leave on a shuttle, or April can tell you who to pay to courier it to me from the dock."

"How much for seven days, maybe a couple more?" Diana asked, not getting what he was doing.

"For anybody else, I think a half gram a day, but for you it's free, and the coin is your fee for giving me the business idea. I don't know why I didn't think of it, and I thank you. Any other ideas you have please speak up. I'll reward them similarly."

"Thank you, Zach, I certainly will." She scooped the coin up and looked pleased.

As she was clipping the gun inside her waist band, Margaret remarked. "As safe as Home is, I feel better not having you march around unarmed."

"Sweetie, you assume too much," Diana said. She tilted her head, sort of theatrically, and lifted a flat hand to her hair with the fingers bent back, like she was going to make a great show of patting it in place. Suddenly there was a good two hundred millimeters of thin stiletto in her hand. She smiled, reached out in front of her and did a funny little shift of the knife back and forth like a slight of hand trick. April wasn't sure exactly how it was possible one handed, but the handle split in two and folded around both sides of the blade in a little dance, enclosed it and looking more like a folded up hand fan than a weapon. The miracle was she still had all her fingers. Then she slid it in the back of her hair somewhere.

"Did you mention lunch?" Diana asked April.

"Yeah, put it in your spex, pick door to door routing, Home Chandlery and Provision to Cafeteria. It'll paint a line in your spex that looks like it's on the floor and you can lead us to lunch."

When they went out the door Zach was grinning big at April's joke, because the cafeteria was in sight, almost straight across the corridor.

* * *

"The crazy thing is, I thought I was being absurd," Diana confessed, as they got in line. "It never occurred to me it would be legal to rent out pistols. I can't think of anywhere on Earth you could do that without the cops fainting dead away in shock."

"I'm not going to sugar coat this," April told her. "A lot of people can't adjust their thinking to Home. It's so different people went back to Earth when we declared independence. And a few every year since have found they can't hack it here and returned. I think some of them thought we'd get over this foolishness quickly and return to all the rules and laws with which they were comfortable. We generically call this Earth Think, and it shows up in everything whether it makes any sense or not."

"Not just laws against renting out pistols?" Diana asked.

"Can you believe you can get your hair cut and styled with no government protection from the deadly scourge of unlicensed barbers or stylists?"

"I already noticed more buzz cut heads here than I've ever seen before. Even some of the women. How much training can you need for that?" Diana asked.

"That's because it's the only sane way to work in a pressure suit. Even people who don't do that every day often have to be available on short notice to do so. That's why I only have this little bit in front that I can comb up in spikes and wear with a little color added," April said, running a hand up her forehead. I have interest in ships and couriers and am on call to sub for people if they need me."

"Sub doing what?" Diana asked, checking out the small hot buffet.

"I've got my orbit to orbit and docking ticket, and am qualified to do open field landings."

Diana pounced on that. "So there
is
something that's government licensed?"

"Not at all. Such certification predates our revolution. It's an independent agency and you pay for testing, it isn't tax supported. I think the French started it. I'd have to look it up."

"If it was Earth based they'd have a big tax paid budget
and
charge you a hefty fee, both!" Di said.

"And thus you start to define Earth Think," April said. "I very much recommend the stuffed peppers if you like them. We still don't get them that often."

"I don't have a card yet," Diana objected. "Will they take cash?"

"USNA dollars? Probably not. But I never use my subscription for half of what I could. I'll put you on mine today and you can tell them you want a card. She'll bring it out to you when things ease off. That's Wanda up there running the counter and doing special orders. It doesn't hurt to introduce yourself and call her by name. She can be a little crabby still, but she's much better than she used to be."

"Go ahead and order for me," Diana said.

"Two of the stuffed pepper with all the trimmings," April said. "Wanda, this is my friend from Hawaii, Diana. Put her meal on my tab for now, but she wants to buy a week ticket."

Wanda checked Diana out, and it wasn't a superficial examination."She must be OK if she's with you," Wanda allowed. "I'll get her a week ticket starting tomorrow and you can carry her today if you come back for supper. Extra dinner roll and butter?"

"Thank you, dear. Yes for me. Diana isn't gene mod so you'll have to ask her."

"One sounds fine, thank you, Wanda," Diana said, and got a curt nod, as Wanda turned away.

"Let's get coffee and stake out a seat. By that time it will be up," April said, waving at the empty counter beyond the cashier's station.

They got coffee and set it at the far table April favored. When she turned to go back Diana balked. "What's wrong? Would you rather not sit so far away? It's always crowded next to the coffee machine. I like to sit off a bit where you can watch people."

"I'm used to not leaving my drink where anybody can mess with it," Diana admitted.

"I'd be less surprised to have an assassin walk in the door and open fire than anyone try to poison me," April said. "That's happened, but nobody could come over here and put something in our coffee without somebody noticing."

"And they'd
say
something?" Diana asked.

"They'd likely have them on the deck with a gun to their head and security already called."

"OK, Earth Think," Diana concluded, and left her coffee.

"I should have taken the extra roll," Diana concluded after a bite. "But, I'm going to be
fat
if I keep eating here. It's too good."

"Dr. Ames can take care of that too," April assured her. "You can have a metabolic tweak that lets you eat a lot more and burn it up. If food gets scarce you can do a several day fast and it re-sets it until you start eating more than about twelve hundred calories a day and it kicks it back in. You have much less chance of getting fat or becoming diabetic. You could, but you'd really have to work at it."

"He's supposed to do a consultation with me. Mostly I want to live longer. Sixty will be my next decade, and I can tell I'm not a kid anymore," Diana lamented.

"My grandpa Lewis insists that if the therapy made you
forget
, he wouldn't trade feeling younger and better for being
stupid
. Of course that makes me feel terrible, because I can only get over being young and inexperienced so fast, and I'll never catch up all the way."

"Honey, Some people never show a lick of sense and you showed more at... What was it? Fourteen? Than they do by forty," Diana assured her. "My second husband was rich, but I swear that man was never a grown-up. That's what killed him too, driving like an eight year old who had no concept of his own mortality."

"I thought you divorced all your rich husbands," April said.

"Nope, I was headed that way, but he saved us the aggravation," Diana said. "I
did
have the sense not to ride with the man driving, no matter how it irked him."

"Got room for dessert?" April asked.

"Not without being a pig. What have they got?" Diana asked.

Chapter 26

"Now that we have landing rights in Australia, Old Man Larson is busting a gut to get a runway landing shuttle built. He wants the Australians to build the airframe from cheap Earth materials and he'll license our power and have Dave build the drive," Jeff said. April could see he was calling from his office. She could see the screens and his man going back and forth behind him.

"Who's financing it?" April asked. "Larson?"

"The Reserve Bank of Australia," Jeff said. "They are parceling out pieces of the pie to smaller banks and claiming it's a first step, building three first generation shuttles, and after that a space station."

"Wow, this is the first anybody has seriously talked about building a new manned station in years."

"Well yeah," Jeff agreed. "Things were already slowing down before the flu, and then both China and North America went nuts politically and left world markets in turmoil. Nobody in their right mind wants to build from lifted materials. Even our third ring would never have been built without the Rock and lunar materials."

"You didn't get an exclusive on the landing rights?" April asked.

"Monopolies are unstable," Jeff insisted. "They have to be
maintained
. Usually by being bought over and over because politicians change. The new ones have to be bribed all over again."

"You bribed them for landing rights?" April asked surprised.

"The submarine," Jeff reminded her, unashamed. "They may yet be upset when they find some obvious gaps where equipment was torn out. It was beyond our ability to make some fake stuff up to fit in there anybody would believe. Of course we could have just scuttled her."

"No, no," April protested. "That seems, wasteful."

"I'm encouraged really. Things seem to be going much better. We have a minimum decent relationship with a few Earth powers. Supply is up and we're getting lunar goods to the point we don't have to worry we'll starve if Earth cuts us off again."

"The better lunar sources we have, the less likely they will cut us off," April said. "The leverage just isn't there once we have other sources. They just hurt themselves to cut off people paying in hard money. Not that the ones who really hate us might not do it for sheer spite. But we have more than one Earth source now."

"I haven't mentioned it lately, but have you looked at our numbers recently? Just the last six months even, we've done
very
well," Jeff said.

"No, I have enough to live on and a lump held back. The cost of money has been high enough that the lump has been growing nicely without trying to actively invest it. You've been doing that for me pretty well with our shares. I have a little of the money Eddie gave me in Irwin's bank too. He's been getting me around five percent on it."

"I'd say that's conservative," Jeff told her, "but Irwin is conservative by nature. You can get seven percent for private projects, like the ice ball recoveries, as long as they aren't as badly managed as Barak's voyage! When we started licensing tech, right after the war, I remember the first monthly payment for all three of us was five thousand USNA Dollars. That was about ten percent of our income, but it dropped off for a few months after that first surge. Fortunately we had very few expenses then either."

"Well the Dollar was worth a lot more then," April remembered. "At the time it all seemed like a lot of
extra
money to me. That seems so
long
ago."

Jeff shrugged. "Things have been happening fast. If we had more room for people it would be crazy. It would be like a gold rush with them all pouring in. As it is a lot of them are simply sending their money as a proxy. Prices would go nuts if they all arrived wanting services, and you wouldn't be able to make a living at anything but the best paying jobs. We'd probably be outsourcing services down to Earth because it would be too expensive to do here. They used to ship laundry to China from California to be done during their gold rush. Things get crazy in that sort of a situation. Of course we're more productive. They had no way to automate their laundry then."

"Some of the people working lower paying jobs
have
had a hard time," April reminded him.

"Yeah, and it has reduced some services," Jeff agreed."There are a lot of things you can buy on Earth that just can't be had here. It helps we don't need a lot of the overhead. Nobody needs an automobile. Earthies are spending much more on security systems and private police than we do. The cafeteria would never have developed such a monopoly on Earth. It started early with cheap cubic and has buying power no small operation could match. But there is the beam dog's cafeteria, and now there will be a smaller one on the third ring soon. We have two clubs and a couple unofficial ones."

"We do?" April asked surprised. "Why don't I know about them?"

"They serve the beam dogs and a few people who fit in the tight little society around them. Both are physically close to the dorm. Consider them a specialty market. You wouldn't be a customer and they are smart enough to know there are still vestiges of Earth Think that would want them shut down. So they don't advertise openly. I'm assured some of the personals in local sites are ads if you know the code words. Even in something as stodgy as "What's Happening". If you read the personals and a few of the ads don't make any sense to you...then you've likely found one."

"Oh, well that doesn't bother me," April decided. "Nobody's holding a gun to my head to make me go there. I don't think they'll run the Fox and Hare out of business."

"Long term, I don't see Home being where growth will happen," Jeff said. "We'll have non-rotating cubic nearby that will help for awhile. I even expect it won't be that many years before we have another habitat or two built near us. But I think most of the growth will be on the moon. We just can't build and maintain living space as cheaply as they can."

"You said something a little bit ago," April remembered. "Nobody in their right mind would try to build from lifted materials. But power and really efficient drive impulse is so cheap now, and Earth materials and labor so attractively cheap. Could you fabricate something like one of our rings and lift the entire assembly to orbit? Put ten or twelve drives under it just like an ice ball and then remove the motors and use them again later?"

"I'm...not sure," Jeff admitted. "You ask the most interesting questions. All I can say is I'd ask Dave to run the numbers for us, if you want me to. It shouldn't be too expensive to come up with some basic numbers. I can see some problems right away. The stresses a ring is designed to take are much different than those that would be put on it in the plane of rotation. You might put in some temporary braces to help with that, especially if the brace materials would have high value when removed. Do you want me to do that?"

"Please. You don't have to invest a huge amount," April allowed. "Maybe cap it at a few hundred hours for one of his designers. But I think it's worth looking at now, with the changes in engines."

"I'll do that," Jeff agreed. "It might make a difference in building other habitats, but it's not going to change the fact it's still going to be expensive relative to the moon. Home, and any companion habitats, are still going to be like an Earth city with cheaper suburbs. Like London or New York. I don't think it will suffer the same fate of decline some Earth cities have. It's a different dynamic to maintain things."

"Some of the decline of Earth cities was sheer stupidity. People made a conscious decision at some point that the city was in decline, and decided to basically
mine
the value of their buildings and property. Once such a mentality takes hold it's self fulfilling. I don't think we have the exactly same social forces either. But there's a lot more room on the moon and tunnel machines have a long life. The number of tunnel machines will increase steadily so the new kilometers of tunnel bored will go up each year.

"What I'm trying to get around to saying is that we should shift our investments towards the moon somewhat, and also, we're making enough income now that if you or Heather want to take a bigger dividend just say so, and we can afford it."

"I'll read the numbers, but I'm pretty content to let the money ride to make more money," April decided. "I do think if we're doing that well, I'll feel safe to use a bit more of the funds I'm holding to improve my property on the moon."

"You know, a couple families are making apartments available if you wanted a place all ready to stay with access to pressure and utilities," Jeff said.

"To rent or to buy?" April asked.

"Both, but they aren't unlimited in depth like your ranch. They're a defined cubic."

"Maybe. If I can get something close enough to Heather's offices and cafeteria," April allowed.

"The longer you wait the further away they will be, unless somebody resells. Or you can buy way out, beyond public pressure, and try to guess where new commercial development will take place."

"How about you?" April asked. "You're living in your office with a hired man. Would you want to work from the moon?"

Jeff shook his head. "I think Home is going to be the center of business and banking for a long time. The moon will have a lot of production, of things like food and heavy manufacturing. But shipbuilding and high tech needs zero G. I still want to be where the heavy action is, and be able to see people like Dave, and Irwin, and Larson face to face without taking a shuttle."

"If we just want to see Heather we're welcome to stay with her," April pointed out. "She plans on moving periodically until they reach a depth where the rock is a shirt-sleeves comfortable temperature, and then they will spread out. I think I'll wait until they hit that depth before investing in anything. Otherwise she'll move away from me vertically anyway.

"OK, that makes sense to me," Jeff agreed. "Do you want to do dinner tonight?" Jeff asked, which signaled he'd run out of anything to say on this topic.

"If you don't mind my house guest tagging along. My neighbor Diana from Hawaii is here to get gene mods and I wanted to take her to the Fox and Hare."

"We were just there," Jeff said surprised. "I thought you didn't want to go too often, because they write the owner's visits off and won't charge you?"

"Our profits for the club are as healthy as what you are telling me Singh Technologies is experiencing. That, and none of the other owners seem to be showing any restraint with the surge in money pouring in. I can't feel too guilty to take my share. It's seems that's how they decide to take their dividend, instead up upping the cash payout."

"Fine, let's do it then. You've said before she's a character. It'll be fun."

* * *

"A quiet banquette along the wall?" The maitre d', Detweiler, asked. He was appraising Jeff's lack of flashy clothing and a second guest this visit, correctly.

"That would be perfect," April agreed. Detweiler didn't fool her. Most people would think him poker faced, but she'd seen the smile around his eyes even if his lips stayed straight. Her use of public appearances probably paled beside some of the shenanigans he saw, and was more effective, she hoped.

Diana turned a few heads more than Jeff or herself, April noticed. It was getting to the point an Earthie stood out and caught people's eye as an oddity. The wave of immigration had slowed from sheer lack of capacity long enough for people to start to assimilate. People liked to fit in and some styles like hard soled shoes just made no sense in an environment that was all indoors by Earth standards.

Diana was not oblivious. "Got a few stares," she said when they sat down, quietly for her.

"Your blouse has buttons, and the shoes, although they aren't leather are still uncommon here. People tend to footies and what look like house slippers to you. And the floral print and the bright stripes on the shoes really stand out."

"What's wrong with buttons?" Diana asked, fingering one thoughtfully.

"Enough people work in zero G that the styles carry over," April explained. "Buttons gap when your clothing floats loose away from your body. You can put them closer together, but that has its problems too. The sort of cut that works in gravity doesn't even look nice in zero G, so they tend instead to stretch fabrics and elastic. If you get on a shuttle and loose a button, or any other small object, a lot of pilots would refuse to lift and charge you for the delay until it is found."

"Gum up the works somewhere huh?" Diana figured out. "On Earth people would just keep their mouth shut and hope nobody noticed."

At the look on April's face she said, "And so we are back to Earth Think I believe."

"Exactly. You'd be playing games with your
life
, and those of everyone else. Spaceships are hard enough to build without making them button-proof. Not only fans and other moving things that need internal clearances, you have circuit boards and chips that can't have a small random object touch them. You'd have to add screens and ways to get to the screens and clean them. There would be a weight penalty and add hours of maintenance."

"I have screens on my doors and windows at home," Diana said. "It doesn't seem burdensome."

"Yes, but in a spaceship it isn't just the ventilation. Back home, do all your electrical appliances have screens and filters? Your TV and your computer? Printer and monitor? Your refrigerator? Your lighting fixtures? Because in zero G things
float
. The vents being on the bottom of your blender won't mean anything in zero G, because it has no bottom side any more. Down has no meaning. If there is a staple or paper clip or coin, they can float in and short out electrical contacts or circuit boards. Even a piece of broken off lead from a mechanical pencil. Jewelry can break and have rings and pins and stones float away. The little piece of plastic that held the price tag on your clothing, or a cap off a pen, or the little plastic closure for a bread bag can jam a motor or solenoid or get under the seal on a hatch."