All in Good Time

by Mackey Chandler

  “I knew I wanted to marry,” Vic said. “I didn’t say I was desperate.”

  * * *

  “They don’t seem very upset at having those data centers cut off,” April said. Maybe I should have taken out the actual building with all the computers and data instead of just the communications center.”

  “On the surface, you wouldn’t think so,” Chen allowed, “but you’d be amazed the number of public officials who suddenly had industry visitors, the huge volume of increased traffic and the physical movement of assets and people from their offices. You stirred up a hornet’s nest if you know where to watch. You can still hit the buildings if you want, and they know it. They are probably going to spend a fortune to build redundant dispersed facilities. Don’t forget what I said about taking out their transformers. Those would be much harder to replace than the comlinks.”

  “So if I did bombard the data center they’ll have alternatives pretty soon?” April asked.

  “Yes, but I’m pretty sure I can identify almost all of them,” Chen said, and smiled.

  “I’m going to hold that in reserve and switch targets again,” April decided. “I’ve been looking at government targets. They have a huge data facility in Utah that feeds all their intelligence agencies, not just the NSA. This one I will destroy, not just their communications links. They spy on everybody, so they undoubtedly use it to spy on us as well. People hate being spied on so I’ll probably get some public approval on this one even if they don’t dare say so.”

  “I know exactly which one you mean,” Chen said. “They called it the Bumblehive, but it’s expanded from the original. I seriously doubt they can have sufficient backup off-site so hit it hard in case they have deep storage bunkers built under it.”

  “I don’t want to damage Salt Lake City. Once I have the surface facility gone I’ll hit it with ground penetrators. This one, they get no warning. I don’t want them to get a chance to whisk anything away and save it. The whole idea of the thing is evil to my thinking.”

  “It’s a major asset, you can expect they will protect it vigorously,” Chen warned. “I’ll look to see what they have in place.”

  “Protect it better than Vandenberg?” April asked.

  “No, but you said you don’t want to damage Salt Lake City,” Chen reminded her.

  “I’ll try to show a little finesse,” April promised.

  * * *

  The buzz of aircraft engines made Vic and Eileen look at each other. They jumped up and ran outside. Alice looked perplexed at their action but decided she better follow before they were out the door.

  The large tarp blue they’d staked out on the lawn had the pink blanket Vic described to Cal as ugly weighed down in the middle with stones. Eileen agreed with him. It was a horrid Pepto-Bismol color. They had to shake a light snowfall off the blanket and sweep the tarp twice now. Despite two light dustings of snow melting off both of them were losing hope Cal would make a drop to them this year and they’d have to wait for spring.

  Their improvised windsock was limp and you couldn’t feel any wind on your face so conditions were good. Cal made a full circle and swooped down low and slow, shoving a package out the door as he approached the house. It fluttered and trailed a small chute that didn’t open right away. He released it from somewhere between two hundred and three hundred meters. Neither of them could estimate it any closer.

  It looked aimed well enough at first, but about halfway down when the small parachute opened it caught enough wind to carry it toward the house. It hit on the roof and slid down toward them. When it reached the porch roof the pitch changed and it didn’t finish sliding off. Cal circled once, climbing, saw they’d be able to retrieve it and flew off waggling his wings briefly.

  “He’s probably having a good laugh about that,” Vic said.

  “He would, wouldn’t he? And if you razzed him about it I bet he’d say he meant to do that,” Eileen said.

  “I’ll go get a ladder,” Vic said.

  “Just boost me up,” Alice said, linking her hands and lifting to show what she meant. She stepped in Vic’s hand and then off his shoulder and went over the edge easily. After she swung the package down by the parachute she backed off the roof, then hung by her hands until Vic reached up and got her by the hips.

  “You going to open it up?” Alice asked, getting excited now.

  “I’m going to hang the blanket to dry in the barn, wipe the tarp down to fold, and then after we get supper on the stove cooking we’ll open it up,” Vic promised.

  “Old people can take the fun out of anything,” Alice said, and stomped her foot.

  “Vic and Eileen looked at each other and laughed. That just irritated Alice worse.

  * * *

  “Hello, are you the April Lewis who is having a dispute with North America?”

  The young woman on the screen was blond and fair-skinned. Relatively few Earthies bought Life Extension Therapy and of those few, almost none started it in their teens like Spacers. The young woman was probably about sixteen-years-old, just as she appeared. She seemed terribly serious for her age but not at all hostile. That alone was fascinating, because she was almost certainly an Earthie. The window behind her looked out on evergreen trees and she wore a button-up blouse. It all looked convincingly real, not like a fake set.

  “Indeed, I am. I can’t remember the last time I got a call from Earth. Is that is a real window behind you and not a scenic monitor?”

  There was nearly a three-second speed of light lag and then the girl’s face registered surprise. She looked over her shoulder at the window like it was suddenly a new thing to her.

  “Yes, I live in Norway. I’m sorry, should have identified myself already. My mother would scold me for bad phone manners. I’m Anna Krøvel, but everybody with whom I am familiar drops the A and calls me Ann.”

  “If English isn’t your first language you speak it very well, Ann.”

  “Thank you. I should speak it fairly well. I’ve had three years of instruction in it. But I’m sure you can still detect that I have an accent,” Ann insisted.

  “Everyone has a characteristic accent,” April insisted. “Even among native speakers, there are a variety of accents. Unless it interferes with accurate communication, the problems are from attempting to impose official forms or trying to identify certain accents with political factions or social classes.”

  Ann considered that well past the lag.

  “Like the French,” she said.

  April laughed but shook her head in agreement. “I’m tempted to start telling stories on exactly that point, but I doubt that’s why you called. What is your intent?”

  “I was given a class lesson to interview someone who has done something of sufficient importance to be mentioned by two or more for-profit news organizations,” Ann said.

  “Why for profit?” April wondered.

  “My professor felt the profit motive would act as a restraint from making wild claims that could result in expensive lawsuits. Other partisan sites and sites with a philosophical agenda tend to more extreme statements and can change their identity or deny being a publisher to avoid legal action easier,” Ann said.

  “Interesting theory,” April said, tactfully. “So, you are a college student?”

  “Not exactly, not yet. I attend a specialized private school doing classes in English past the first year and I’ll finish with a GCSE. But the program has expanded to allow advanced studies with foreign schools that offer internet classes.”

  “I don’t believe I’ve met anyone from Norway,” April said. “Home was Japanese owned but by the North American subsidiary. Most of the people were from North America before we sought our independence. Both my parents were from North America. I’m not sure how much anybody in Norway cares about my problems with North America. I’m surprised you haven’t picked somebody closer to home with issues that would resonate with your peers.”

  Ann managed to look a little embarrassed. “I did try to s
peak with several city and national politicians. It was impossible to get past their staff and nobody would promise to even forward the request. A couple suggested I send a letter.” It was obvious they might as well have asked her for a cuneiform tablet. “I picked you because I wasn’t getting anywhere and I decided to change what I was doing radically. I’ll be honest, I have your picture although I can see it’s dated. I did a lookup in the directory for Home. When you answered yourself, I was a little rattled. I was sort of prepared to be blown away again.”

  “Ah, at last, you got an English idiom wrong. It’s blown off. Blown away implies violence,” April said, smiling.

  “Oh my, thank you. As notorious as you are, don’t you get a lot of harassing calls from being listed in a public directory?”

  April decided to ignore notorious. The girl might be right. “Right after we rebelled I had a lot of unwanted calls. I was dressing dramatically and the teens in North America started copying me. Of course, their parents and school officials thought it was the end of civil society. I mostly had calls from teen-aged boys who wanted to chat me up and maybe get a photo or just record the call to brag about to their friends. I did have to filter my calls. It almost drove me to go unlisted, but it tapered off. I was just a fad and they moved on to some other outrage. I wish some of the people with whom I am disputing would call me. We could resolve this if they agreed to release my friend. I’m prepared to be very stubborn about it and make their lives utterly miserable.”

  “The reports in our news indicate people have died. That’s much more than creating difficulties for them. Do you dispute those stories?” Ann asked.

  “Somebody probably has died. I gave notice before I destroyed each bridge. If some damn fool went out on it and stood there watching for my inbound rod to impact I don’t have a lot of sympathy for them. The same with the private, financial links, I knocked down towers with antennas on them. They were in use on fenced-in private property. The odds anyone would be working on them while they were active was very low. However, the next thing I am hitting I consider a valid military target, and I’m not giving any notice at all. I’ll keep escalating until they release Irwin Hall.”

  Ann scrunched her features up in puzzlement. “What does being a military target have to do with it? Isn’t this a criminal matter?”

  “No, it is not. Irwin simply had his normal money on him that we use every day. His hyper was diverted to Miami involuntarily. If that is a crime it’s because they framed it as mischief. They are in violation of their treaty with us which is a political and thus a military issue not criminal. In violation again, I might add. President Wiggen gave us an unconditional surrender after our war of rebellion, and we demanded free passage of North American territory and respect for our laws in doing so as one of our conditions. Surely that is not unknown in Norway?” April asked.

  “But you are not Home,” Ann objected.

  “Indeed, I am not. I have a very limited objective. All I want is my friend released. Now, if as you say they want to deal with Home, that will be a very different matter. For one thing, I doubt they will enjoy the result of if they make the Home Assembly convene and set matters right. At a guess, I would expect them to pursue an entirely different set of objectives, that is to force another unconditional surrender. Since our previous engagement didn’t impress them enough to make them keep their word I’d expect the Assembly to act much more harshly this time. I doubt releasing my friend would be a primary concern of theirs. He could easily be forgotten in a serious war. On the other hand, reinstituting the treaty is not an objective of mine. They have lied to me so many times their word no longer has any value to me.”

  “You can’t just make war on a major country all on your own,” Ann objected.

  “How small must a country be before that’s permissible?” April asked her.

  Ann didn’t see the humor in that at all. She just stared open-mouthed.

  “We have no constraint at all in declaring or engaging in war as individuals,” April assured her. “I am not a subject of Home. To think otherwise is arrogance that I’ll happily punish. Just a few years ago I very politely asked North America to stop shooting at my partner’s shuttle. The base commander at Vandenberg told traffic control to stop forwarding calls from any child with a pocket phone. I’ll send you the video of that if it would amuse you to see how I was treated.”

  “You’re talking about the Home bombardment of California,” Ann said. She didn’t seem interested in acquiring the video.

  “No, I bombarded their missile base,” April said. “The rest of the damage was from their negligence in failing to maintain and upgrade an antique infrastructure. I just gave it a bigger nudge than the usual earthquakes, storms, and wildfires they’ve managed to deal with over and over. It was inevitable something would eventually damage them enough to cause a cascading failure. It just happened to be me. Home as a nation didn’t have anything to do with it. I’m certain some of my fellow citizens didn’t approve at all.”

  “It’s scary to see you excusing actions that harmed others,” Ann said. “I can’t imagine trying to justify it.”

  “But it’s fine to harm Irwin? Because one person doesn’t count? Well, it is impossible to excuse if you believe the North American politicians,” April allowed. “I can’t blame you for that, they are expert propagandists and they control their media. You hear what they want you to hear and what I’m saying must seem shocking.

  “Or perhaps you don’t understand because you have nobody in your life you’d try to save if it involved any personal risk. Entire nations are afraid to challenge the North American giant, much less individuals. Even with all their problems, they are dangerous to a little nation like Norway so I can understand your fear.

  “I won’t engage in a lot of hand wringing and fake public sorrow at being forced to do anything. My friend Irwin is worth more to me than all of North America. That apparently is very hard to believe. I have to assume it isn’t the custom on Earth to support and protect one’s friends. The idiom is to throw them under the bus when the relationship becomes inconvenient. However, I’m working hard on making them believe I won’t abandon him.”

  “What if no matter what you do Mr. Hall is never released?” Ann asked.

  April showed teeth and it wasn’t a smile.

  “The North Americans often put people in prison knowing they won’t survive. It’s a death penalty but they like to pretend it leaves their hands clean to use the institution as an unofficial executioner. If they do that, or if as has been known to happen, Irwin mysteriously finds the means to suicide in a maximum security jail I will seek retribution. I’m not sure how expensive it will be, but removing New York City from the map would be a start.”

  Ann looked too scared and horrified to pursue that so she asked a different question.

  “Do you care to announce what you will target next?” Ann asked, making no other reply.

  “No, it could reduce its effectiveness. It will have to be a surprise this time. Is that sufficient interview for your assignment, dear?” April suspected Ann couldn’t force herself to be civil much longer. Better to end it before it got ugly.

  “Yes, I thank you for your time,” Ann said, polite to a fault, voice still controlled. Her face told April that she sternly disapproved. April certainly didn’t expect any favorable slant in her report since she’d just accused her and her nation of cowardice.

  “The best way you can thank me is to turn in a full transcript of our conversation and then make it public,” April said.

  “I’ll see if that is permitted,” Ann hedged.

  Don’t hold you breathe, April thought as she disconnected. Ann knew a lid would be put on the interview. Her hedging at the last showed that. Most people would be like Ann, but a few here and there would be drawn to April’s view. They could imagine being snatched and held prisoner themselves and would want to be rescued. That was far too dangerous to allow happening on any scale. Ann might very we
ll get in trouble at school for revealing her interview even though it was obvious she didn’t personally support April’s view.

  Chapter 14

  Alice was visibly exasperated with Vic and Eileen for their casual attitude about opening their package. She’d have dropped everything and torn into it without delay. It really amused Eileen that Alice could think of her as old. Perhaps Vic a little less so, but in Alice’s mind the gap was just as wide to Eileen as Vic. Eileen was wise enough to recognize there was no point in trying to correct it. The viewpoint was too basic and Alice would self-correct when she found herself regarded as old by someone else.

  Cal was a good packer. The package was waterproof even though that wasn’t necessary. There was a layer of crushable cardboard honeycomb on the bottom and layers of shock-absorbing foam holding accessories and on top, a brand new satellite phone.

  There were receipts and an extra manual beyond the short version in the box. Cal’s note itself was brief. He invoiced them for making an extended flight beyond his last trip of the season to O’Neil’s. That would be one of their first payments with the phone. Since they had a solar charger for the phone he included a couple of LED flashlights and a hanging camp lantern he thought might be handy for them. He indicated they were his gift and didn’t include them on the invoice. He detailed his efforts to acquire bikes for them too.

  “You can use one of these,” Vic told Alice, handing over one of the small flashlights. “I have one that will charge off this already. I just didn’t have any way to charge it.”

  “Thank you,” Alice said, surprised she’d be trusted with such a treasure.

  “This phone will reside on the table from now on,” Vic informed them. “After yourself, it is the most important thing to save if the house is ever on fire or we are attacked.” He looked at both of them until he got an acknowledging nod.

  “Are you going to teach me how to use it?” Alice asked.

  “Yes, although we have to learn how to use it ourselves first. If we’re unable to use it you may be a valuable backup,” Vic agreed. “You can read the manual and watch us make calls, but you aren’t to use it without either our permission or obvious necessity. Agreed?”