Friends in the Stars

by Mackey Chandler

  “We’ve been discussing business and formalizing some agreements, but we’re taking a break and having dinner before we bring you up to speed, is that fine with you two?”

  “One must eat in any case,” Born said. “I thank you for your hospitality.”

  “Your partner Lee ordered, so any complaints about the menu must be addressed to her. She gave me a lesson on how to deal with room service. I believe there are some dishes peculiar to Badgers and others marked for your safety,” he told Musical. But here let me introduce those you don’t know.”

  He identified Strangelove and the Foys, explaining what their relationship was to everyone else.

  “Then senior tech Strangelove is Red Tree?” Born asked.

  “Silly me, I should have known clan affiliation would be important to you,” Jeff said. “Yes, Strangelove is Red Tree and at the level of command that reports to their champion. Are you of a different clan, and how would that affect your dealings with Strangelove? I’m afraid I am ignorant of these things.”

  “I’m a second generation town Derf. My father was Green Stone clan from the same continent as Red Tree, though not neighbors. My mother was from Big Sky clan from this side of the ocean, but she was an outlaw and technically clanless. My father was a mechanic and also the sort Humans would call a machinist. He decided to stay when his contract with the business for the clan ended. He sent a little home from each pay, but the next time he went to visit he felt unwelcome, and he stopped sending even that. I never got to meet his kin. You might regard me as clanless, but I am not an outlaw. There is no more hostility or camaraderie between Strangelove and me than there is between us,” Born said, flipping a true hand between himself and Jeff.

  “I don’t mean to offend, but why then did you ask?” Jeff said, puzzled.

  “Because you are right,” Born said, laughing. “Clan means a lot to Derf even if they don’t have one. Red Tree is rich, and I know its history. They were the first contact for Humans and spoke their law for everyone without consultation to form a treaty for all Derf with them, and they warred with Humans for breaking that treaty. They are still the only clan with the nerve to announce others under their protection, like the Badger and Bill embassy. They are the only one I know of to accept a Human as a clan member and use her as their Voice like this one,” he said, nodding at Lee.

  “And about a third of all legal challenges, this generation, have been to Red Tree. Their previous champion was forced to kill more than one challenger at the same event. To try to wear a fellow down was unheard of. They stopped lining up to take turns like that when he beat the last one to death with the flat of his ax rather than cut him. When he got through, he just turned to the other challengers all gore splattered and said, ‘Next’. He was old when he did that, and now when a champion talks about challenging Red Tree’s new guy his peers just invite him to go ahead and be next.”

  “And on that note, the hotel people are done setting the buffet,” Jeff said. “I hope that doesn’t put anybody off their feed.”

  “Nah, I knew William,” Lee said. “He was a sweetie and I miss him. He declared himself my personal champion before the Mothers and made things a lot easier for me with them. Let’s eat.”

  A sweetie, Jeff thought, I guess that depended on if he was on your side.

  * * *

  Dinner was instructive to Musical, a little better taste of how the rich actually live than their visits with Lee alone. He was the only Badger there, but they had a spread of Badger-safe dishes on one end of the buffet sufficient to serve his embassy. There were six serving carts attached end to end to make a long buffet table, then draped attractively. The hotel staff was smart enough to mark off his dishes by draping a yellow cloth over one end while the rest of the long table was covered in white cloths. His dishes were safe for Derf too. Only a few items set on a red napkin against the back wall with a warning sign were unsafe for Humans. Nothing was prohibited for Derf.

  Born could tell Musical was anxious. He’d spent enough time now working with him to read his whisker puckers and ear movements. He’d like to reassure him it was OK to relax and enjoy dinner but wasn’t going to say so out loud. The other Derf, Strangelove, would hear every word if he whispered it loud enough for Musical to understand. He could read Lee’s body language even better than Musical’s, and it was saying that everything was fine and under control. She was sitting by Jeff Singh and there wasn’t a trace of a cautious or adversarial set to her posture. She was laughing and speaking low. Low enough she might or might not know he could follow it all.

  After thinking on it, he wondered if Musical would understand if he told him the same way he would inform Lee? It was worth a try. It was hard for him to relax and enjoy this seeing Musical suffering so. When Musical looked his way, he turned his head a little like he was going to speak, but instead, he gave him an exaggerated wink and then smiled. That wasn’t a natural Derf mannerism, he’d learned it from Lee and used it on a couple of other Humans very successfully. Had Musical learned that too?

  Musical tensed and showed just the tips of his incisors, which was a deep stress indicator with Badgers, but then he looked at Lee really hard, with that muzzle pattern that said he was being thoughtful. When he looked back at Born, he gave that little head tilt that meant - really? Born gave one slow affirmative nod. Musical took a deep breath and gave one slow nod back, acknowledging his message.

  It took a few minutes, but he relaxed and looked a lot happier. Born scanned the room to see if anyone noticed the by-play and thought he’d gotten away with it, until his eyes met Vic’s reflected in the window glass. The Human had that inscrutable look Lee called a poker face, and then he gave a small toothless smile before turning his attention back to his food. Oh well, no serious harm done, especially since Musical didn’t know they were caught out.

  When everybody was satisfied the hotel staff came in and rolled the tables out, leaving one with the beverages and desserts. When they had some privacy again, Lee informed Singh she should bring her ‘guys’ up to speed before he talked shop with them. Lee got two copies of a document from the com desk and handed one to both Born and Musical.

  “Here’s what Singh and I agreed to this afternoon,” Lee said. “As far as I’m concerned, it leaves our relationship the same. It just changes the direction of your work a little. Read it and tell me what you think.”

  Born was fairly far into it before he became aware Musical was making the little snorting noises that were Badger laughter. Little snorts became full gasps, and Musical held his sides ricking with mirth.

  “Do tell us when you can,” Lee begged. Everybody was interested.

  Musical nodded, but Born knew what was coming and didn’t wait for him.

  “He’s so amused because when we were asked here he guessed correctly that Central sent Mr. Singh here to share their gravitational tech with us.”

  “I’m surprised he thought that,” Jeff said. “But I still don’t see why it is so hilarious.”

  Musical recovered enough to answer. “Because Born said it was as likely that Lee was going to show us a gene engineered red tree, altered to grow Ceres dollars on one side and solars on the other.”

  “And he will never let me forget it,” Born said.

  “Neither would I,” Jeff said, smiling. “But try not to remind him every day. I’m going to be working with you awhile, and I’d like us all to get along” he told Musical. “We’ll get into the deeper details between just the three of us. I’ll tell you our timeline of developing the tech, but would you tell us a little about how your own work has progressed? I’d like the Foys to have a general outline too.”

  “Lee really had a solid concept of what she wanted to be investigated before she every found Born and me and brought us together,” Musical started.

  “She has an intuitive feel for the physical principles even if she has to describe them with words instead of math,” Born said, after Musical ran down. “Words are much harder actually
. At least you need a lot more of them.”

  “We knew from our gravity plate tech that we were looking for a superconductor,” Musical told Jeff when he took another turn. “The improvements the Caterpillars added to the device when we traded with them showed us it was a glassy material, so we had to basically start over and look for glassy superconductors after we had a ton of disks run with crystalline material. I suppose we should just discard them and clear out our storage locker.”

  Some of them are toxic and will be difficult to strip and recycle. But if… ”

  Strangelove’s eyes popped open, and he sat up straighter. You might not have thought he wasn’t listening, but that was obviously not true.

  “Stop right there,” he said, with a restraining digit held vertical. “You have research materials held off-site not under the security umbrella of the university? I was already concerned with how secure your labs are, but Lee never asked Red Tree for additional security for your research. It’s not directly our concern so Garrett said to wait for Lee to request help if she wants it. What kind of security does this storage locker have?”

  Musical looked surprised at the interruption, and the authority with which Strangelove suddenly commanded his response. He was suddenly aware none of the responsible parties were telling Strangelove it wasn’t any of his business. They were all silently but intently waiting for him to answer too.

  “Well, it’s just a commercial storage facility, Westside Storage. Businesses use it for overflow or people rent them for personal property. You have to be a renter and get a passcode to enter the facility and you put your own lock on the door. I don’t think we ever mentioned it to Lee, because it isn’t important. It’s all the disks of failed materials we keep there.”

  “A padlock? Is it at least a unique passcode so the facility can log time and duration of each customer entering?” Strangelove asked Musical. “Do they even run a video log?”

  “I have no idea, I didn’t ask. They just gave me a swipe card and wrote four digits on it I have to enter. As far as I know, they might use the same numbers for everybody.”

  It was probably a bad sign that Singh and the Foys all facepalmed simultaneously. He looked at Lee and she looked too stunned to breathe, much less react like the others.

  “So, not only do you expose the broad nature of your research with these samples, but if somebody else is running the same research you are, you have no problem sharing all the things you have eliminated with them?” Strangelove asked.

  “We uh, never really thought of it that way,” Musical admitted.

  “How did you pay for the rental?” Strangelove asked.

  “We paid a year’s lease. It’s a new facility across the ridge so being outside the city it’s really pretty reasonable,” Musical said, grasping for something positive to say.

  “No, I mean, whose money? Did you pay cash or on your own accounts?”

  “We just charged it to Lee’s bank like so many other small expenses,” Musical said.

  “So, since there is a lease agreement it’s a publicly shared contract,” Strangelove said. It wasn’t a question. “Anybody can do a search and discover you keep stuff there.”

  “I’m a technician and not a Derf anyway. I don’t think about how things are charged here to know if they are in the public contract database,” Musical said.

  “But I should have,” Born said. Nobody contradicted him.

  “That’s why you’re going to have security oversight now,” Lee said. “Meet your new director of research security,” Lee said, nodding at Strangelove, “at least until Garrett assigns somebody else for me, or helps me hired suitable commercial security.”

  Born and Musical both nodded, embarrassed. “What do we do now?” Born asked.

  “I’m going to call our clan facility here in the city and have two soldiers meet me at the storage facility to assess if it can be made remotely secure. I’ll put a guard on it until it can be moved or secured,” Strangelove said.

  “I’m still at your disposal as driver and bodyguard,” he told Singh. “I’m sure I can wrap this up and be back at your service in a couple of hours.”

  “As it happens,” Eileen Foy said, “we have rooms at the same facility, both for our household goods waiting for the embassy to be finished and for a project of our own. We’d like to come along and make sure neither of them has been compromised, since we are known associates of Lee.”

  “I’ll come along,” Lee said. “I want to see this thing I rented. I’m at fault too, since I didn’t examine my bank charges line by line. There just isn’t time in the day to do that, so I’m going to give Strangelove access to it now to arrange for security checks. You do understand you have to agree you segregate that from any reporting to the Mothers?”

  “I have no trouble with compartmenting my responsibilities,” Strangelove said.

  “Well, I’m not going to sit here and twiddle my thumbs waiting for everybody to return and tell me what happened,” Jeff said. “I’ll tag along and see for myself.”

  Strangelove looked unhappy, like he was trying to think about how to deny Jeff.

  “Besides, better to be with my bodyguard than waiting on him,” Jeff said.

  Strangelove didn’t like it but he gave a curt nod, accepting it.

  “We can all fit in the same car if you little people will squeeze in the back seat together,” Strangelove said, standing up to go. “I’m calling for the car to bring itself to the front entry right now.”

  “I leave our key on my desk at the lab so Musical has access to it if I’m not around,” Born said. “Do you need to swing by and get it?”

  Strangelove just shook his head at another security weakness revealed. “That is not a problem,” He assured Born. He patted the big ax with the armor-cutting hook he wore by way of explanation.

  * * *

  “We have the Foys and Singh still together with Miss Anderson at the Old Hotel,” Sam said. “I’ve never seen such a meeting of high-end players, and now that I know he uses a university car service card I can see the researchers have joined them too. It sure looks like something big is going on.”

  “And the Derf,” Bill reminded him. “After checking out the townhouse I think he is far more than just a driver. You don’t need to set up that sort of a secure house in town for the mundane sort of clan menials they hire out to manufacturers and fishing boats.”

  “Well, we know he is Red Tree,” Sam said. “That makes sense. The Foy’s and Lee and the Red Tree Mothers are all tight with each other. I think while they are all tied up with each other and safely located we should swing by our storage locker to pick up a couple of boxes of crackers, and take the opportunity to see what is in that storage room next door. Just to make sure they aren’t hiding nuclear missiles between the breakfast cereal and the date tarts, because none of this makes any sense to me.”

  “Sure, why not bust in the State Department people’s place too?” Sam asked. “I show them at home. We can bust in all of them, and our own too as a cover. Nobody will have any idea which one was the actual target. It will look like somebody broke in and was just breaking in all the units at random. We’ll look like innocent victims too.”

  “And risk somebody stealing my Graham crackers?” Bill said.

  “I can buy you more.”

  “Do you have your lock picking kit?” Bill asked.

  “Yes, and if it’s too difficult I have a laser cutter,” Sam said.

  * * *

  “Oh crap, the Earth spies are headed to the storage place while everybody seems to be at the Old Hotel,” Kirk said. “They have a head start on us too.”

  “Do we care?” Pamela asked. “We don’t have anything incriminating there, and if they mess with the Foy’s or scientist’s stuff what’s it to us?”

  “No, but they may do anything. We don’t know what their mission is. They may find what we are trying to discover and leave traces of their break-in so the storage facility will put serious securi
ty in place we won’t be able to penetrate later. Or they may even have incendiaries and torch the place. The really black agencies do crazy things like that. Most food burns well and it’ll cover up anything else there was to discover. Even scaring the Foys off to use a different place could really mess us up, and their agency, that I haven’t even identified, could act on this before ours can.”

  “Get a car and let’s catch them in the act. They may have a start on us but we are closer. I know Bill King and I don’t care who he is working for, if I can’t put the fear of the State Department in him I’ll threaten him with my father. He knows not to mess with my old man. I’m not about to let a creep like him mess up my mission.”

  * * *

  “Master Leonardo, I overheard something of interest,” Atlas said. “The odd couple were running a new disk on the machine and sitting guarding it again. But they received a call on their phones. Born spoke with their patron and indicated they had been called to a meeting as soon as they were done. I heard the name Singh which I looked up. It is a common Human name. And they are instructed to meet at the Old Hotel. Also, there seemed to be some disagreement between them over who was in charge.”

  Atlas didn’t repeat the part about not trusting Leonardo. From experience, that would just get his superior angry, and he didn’t process information well when angered. In fact, some of the irritation seemed to stick to the messenger no matter what the source. Dealing with his professor’s prickly personality was always walking a tightrope. Besides, why should Born trust them? He wasn’t a fool as far as Atlas could see.

  “Really? Perhaps now would be a good time to pay a visit to their storage area and see what they are doing while they are busy elsewhere. Do you know what room is theirs, for sure?” Leonardo asked.

  “I’ve read it off things Born left sitting carelessly on his desk,” Atlas said, “and there is a public contract for the lease.”