Been There, Done That

by Mackey Chandler

  “I can just see your mother standing up and asking when I decided to interfere in her family’s’ affairs and alienate her children from her?” April said.

  “O’m’gosh, I can just hear her saying exactly that,” Lindsey agreed, horrified. “Jeff actually gave up his apartment for us to live in so he could hire my dad, and she still makes out that it’s somehow a devious ploy to keep him under his thumb.

  “She just can’t explain exactly how it’s worth him sleeping in his office jammed in there with his hired man. But she’s sure in the proper order of things they would have a nice place similar to how we lived on Earth. She doesn’t want to hear about hot slots and people taking in renters. I wonder if she’d turn her nose up at your place?” Lindsey wondered, gesturing around at it, one supposed with approval. “I shudder to think what this had to cost.”

  “I’m quite aware how fortunate I am,” April agreed. “Wait until you see Sylvia’s. She got in really early and has a huge cubic.”

  Eric arrived looking serious, and looked at Lindsey’s boxes. “I haven’t been home. I see you really did clean everything out.”

  “Do you have anything you want me to take for safekeeping?” Lindsey asked.

  “I never keep anything at home I care about,” Eric said. “That’s been my habit even from before we came up to Home. I had a few memory cards I hide in my clothes and smuggled up, but found places to take them within days. I haven’t kept anything where mom could find it since she had a fit and threw all my books away back on Earth.”

  April looked so quizzical he explained, “Print books I couldn’t download.”

  “Why in the world would she do that?” April asked.

  “She started looking through them and found a couple she said had bad ideas. One was an original text copy of Huck Finn that was illegal, but worth some money. Once she found a couple of them she didn’t like, she just tossed them all as suspect. I got pretty good at hiding stuff after that. I had no idea she was going to do this to you or I’d have warned you, Lindsey.”

  “I know you would. If I can, with April helping me, I may petition to be granted adult status. If I get that they might allow me to keep you as family if Mom goes back to Earth. The thing is, I know you’ve seen me do incredibly stupid stuff, but I’m not like that now. If do get a chance to be free and I take you as your guardian, it has to be real. I mean you’d have to actually do what I say and treat me with respect, not dredge up every idiotic thing I did in the past and fight me.”

  Eric looked at her really hard and took a deep breath. “I can do that.”

  “Come in with us at Sylvia’s,” April requested. “It may help me later for them to remember you work with me.”

  “I’ve delivered to her, but whatever you say.”

  * * *

  Sylvia had an elaborate interactive door screen that fascinated Lindsey. Eric smiled but said nothing. April realized if he delivered here he’d seen it before. It was worth the delay and video playing out to a trumpet blast entry to let a newcomer enjoy the spectacle.

  It was Diana who answered the door, but then Lindsey delayed them again in the entry. One side of the L-shaped airlock was one of Sylvia’s art glass panels. It was stunning and well worth the time to examine it. It was a nature theme with a Great Blue Heron and the details of a swamp environment around him. The detailed images extended under the water in which he stood too.

  Inside Sylvia was working with a diamond wheel on another block of glass. April hated to think what that cost to lift to orbit, and made a mental note to ask Jeff if they could make glass on the Moon now. Sylvia turned the grinder off and the louder vacuum built around the wheel also turned off after a couple seconds delay. Sylvia pulled out earplugs and took off her helmet and face shield, taking a break to meet her guest.

  Lindsey went into a gushing rant about the panel in the entry before anybody could actually introduce her. Diana looked past the two of them lost in animated conversation, and gave April and Eric a come-hither jerk of her head.

  “I’ve seen this before,” Diana said. “No point in trying to pry them apart until they run down. Let me show you where her room is and you can throw her stuff in there.”

  “You sure she’s going to let her stay?” Eric asked.

  Diana looked amused. “Look at them,” she told Eric.

  He looked back and the two artists were leaning over, their heads almost touching, and Diana was saying something earnestly, and Lindsey was running her finger tips over the gouges in the glass, nodding just as earnestly.

  “Uh, yeah,” Eric conceded the point. “I’ve got her bedroom stuff here,” he said hefting the duffel, “but there’s more back in the lock. I hope that’s OK, because I told the cart to go back home to the rental company.”

  Diana went back with them to recover it, and looked dismayed.

  “I thought spacers didn’t accumulate a bunch of junk,” Diana said.

  “These are her drawings and notes, everything she cares about,” April said.

  “Let’s line them up over at the end of the studio, where she stores extra boxes and stuff,” Diana decided. That’s exactly what April would have suggested.

  Once tucked in the storage area and a cover draped back to the deck Diana led them back and started making coffee without asking. April suggested Lindsey liked tea better.

  “Fine, we have that too,” she looked and appraised the two artists’ continued conversation, “for whenever she starts to run down, but this is for us.”

  “Why don’t you call one of your people to bring us some lunch?” April proposed to Eric. “It looks like we have time, and we can tell Diana the story about why Lindsey left home. She doesn’t look like she wants to talk about that yet. She can fill it in later if she wants.”

  “Sure, a double picnic buffet for five OK? Lindsey and I are the only two without gene mods, right?”

  “Yeah,” Diana agreed.

  When the food arrived and everyone else sat at the table Sylvia and Lindsey did notice, and pried themselves away from the panel. Sylvia took off her work smock and gloves and threw them in the tumbler for contaminated work clothing. The glass dust was pervasive even with a vacuum system.

  “Lindsey and I are going to do a panel together,” Sylvia announced. “We’ll lay it out in her center weighed style and I’ll do the carving and tinting. I’ll teach her a little bit about roughing it out too.”

  April couldn’t see any advantage to forcing the conversation around to why Lindsey needed shelter. His mission to place Lindsey was accomplished. If Lindsey hadn’t filled Sylvia in neither of them seemed all that concerned about it. She built a sandwich and let them talk. For a wonder, Eric was smart enough to keep his mouth shut when things were going well. If neither of them demanded a ride to the Moon tomorrow to see their dad she wouldn’t press them to come. There were cheap enough shuttle seats available on a regular schedule after all.

  * * *

  The new summary distributed each evening by the local radio net was, by its nature condensed. It was for people too far from any of the folks with satellite links to visit easily. Most of them had acquired the ham radios from Nevada and weren’t licensed for them. A few people who still had a sat link would set up a home theater for pay in their garage, and showed movies and served refreshments.

  People who relied on the free evening radio report were busy and many of them needed to conserve their batteries. A lot of folks wouldn’t be able to charge them back up until the morning sun let them hook up a solar panel. The report was very different than the teaser news casts, they had all grown up with. They didn’t waste three quarters of the air time telling you what they were going to tell you several times before getting around to it. There were no commercials to entice you to hear. So they read everything off one time and didn’t repeat. It helped if everyone in the family followed the unspoken rule, that nobody talked over the broadcast. They could discuss it later if something wasn’t clear. She did wonder how long
it would be before they had commercials.

  Local news meant about a thirty mile radius now, and past that, even the rest of Northern California wasn’t local anymore as it didn’t touch their lives much. There was a birth announcement and news that a neighbor had an injury and needed help while he recovered, but that was ten miles away and beyond their ability to help. If somebody could spare a person to go live with the man until he recovered then they might be able to help from so far away. They couldn’t.

  Mr. O’Neil who ran the tiny general store off his front porch announced he would take orders for prescription glasses to be flown in, if you had your numbers to have them made. He’d been getting prescription drugs for a couple months now with the cooperation of a Nevada doctor. All he required was an old pill bottle with your name to issue a new Rx. That wasn’t exactly a commercial.

  The country east of the Rockies didn’t get much of a mention unless there was something like a hurricane to report. Tonight they announced a coalition was formed between God’s Warriors and the Sons of Liberty. That wasn’t entirely a surprise. Eileen’s dad, Barney, had predicted they had better get their act together. Though he’d been a bit saltier about expressing it, when the news a couple days ago told of Texas annexing Louisiana. He predicted if they didn’t settle their differences Texas would be back for another bite in a year. There weren’t any further details, but the short version was astonishing enough. It was like cats and dogs forming an alliance. The head of the Warriors announced he was stepping down and handing the party off to his number two man as part of the deal. That was downright amazing.

  * * *

  Pierre got to the north dock, the industrial one, early. When April arrived she was wearing a one piece jump suit, and frowned at him, which was unnerving since he had no idea why.

  “I never thought, you don’t own a suit. We’ll open an emergency suit before we undock, and let you use it. The Folly only has about a eight cubic meters of pressure cabin and I don’t want to explain to France why I survived and you didn’t if we get popped open.”

  Well, that explained her unusual garment. It was a suit liner.

  “The shuttle coming to home didn’t make us wear suits,” Pierre pointed out.

  “Yeah, and that makes me all twitchy if I have to ride in one,” April countered. “It doesn’t take much of a hole to depressurize a small cabin in two or three seconds. It’s bad enough to have to take time to slap your faceplate shut and keep flying something. If you really had to crack open a bin and unroll an emergency suit you probably aren’t going to make it,” April assured him. “Besides it’s a big production to get a pressure tunnel connected on the Moon. It’s normal and a lot quicker to just wear a suit out the lock for this class of ship. It’s not set up for it like a transport shuttle.”

  “That’s going to be a pleasant thought flying back home,” Pierre said.

  April shrugged. “Keep the suit if you want. It has to be recertified to roll it back up and repack it anyway. I can afford it.” She smiled. “Though just by wearing it you might make the other passengers on the shuttle nervous, wondering why you have it on. I do appreciate you don’t have a ton of luggage.” She secured his single bag when she got him a suit out of its bin.

  “Unlike you, that wouldn’t amuse me, to discomfort them. I’ll pass thank you,” Pierre said. It was really easy to put the suit on in zero G. Pierre tried to imagine doing so in gravity on a floor with his usual shoes. That might be awkward. April gave him a soft thick packet from the opened suit roll to stuff in his pants. “This will absorb near a half liter of urine and stay dry on the surface if you can’t open your suit to go use the head.”

  She helped guide his limbs in the suit, adjusting all the straps and showing him the way the helmet worked. It was “One size doesn’t fit anybody,” April said, tongue in cheek. Her own suit was clipped to the back of her acceleration couch and took her about as long to put on as Pierre needed to tie his Earthie shoes in the morning.

  April seemed more concerned with positioning him correctly in his reclined seat than she had fitting the suit.

  “When the seat changes shape and these accessory units fold down don’t fight it, just let them move you and position you. Keep your arms inside the shields here and don’t try to reach outside the slots if you want to keep those arms bending the right way,” April warned.

  “You are going to accelerate that fast?” Pierre asked.

  “Nah, I was told to limit it to ten G today because of some packages we are carrying. But that’s still enough to break your arm and make a mess if you don’t keep it tucked in when I boost. I want to get there quickly. I’m an owner, sort of, and if I want to waste a little fuel and mass nobody is going to argue with me.”

  April climbed in her seat and strapped in. Pierre was thinking about what she said while she started talking to the traffic control. Most of it seemed like any professional chatter, but his ear caught it when she said the armed merchant Eddie’s Folly. He’d never been in an armed vessel before, he thought, but then he wondered if maybe Larkin’s ships were armed, if that was the custom. Would ISSII allow them to dock if they carried weapons? He seemed to remember French military vessels docked there, so they must. It wasn’t unlike war ships making calls in foreign ports.

  April identified herself as Master, ID 737-62-4002 and asked a half G clearance to their control limit for lunar departure, uploaded a flight profile, and promised to contact Central Control on approach.

  “OK we are on a ten minute hold while some local work stuff in transit gets out of the way of where our exhaust plume will point,” April said.

  “What did you mean you are ‘sort of’ an owner?” Pierre asked.

  “Business on Home doesn’t have a lot of regulation,” April reminded him, “but that doesn’t mean it can’t get complicated. If you checked you’d find Eddie’s Folly technically belongs to Just on Time Services, but Just on Time contracts with Singh Technologies of which I own a third. Both these companies may be tied different ways with the System Trade Bank and the Private Bank of Home. Even Eric who showed you around may have an interest in this ship second or third hand, since he is not only employed by the System Trade Bank but has an arrangement for half his royalties to be reinvested in the bank.”

  “The kid?” Pierre asked, incredulous. “Royalties?”

  “He invented the little folder gold certificates,” she said, drawing the shape with her fingers, “the bits. Eric actually prints them, rakes off a percentage fee for them, and does other stuff for the bank. I have an interest in the bank, but I’m usually too busy to do much for it, but some planning. It was my idea to start the bank up though, once we had our independence from North America. I mean, why not, since there was no law against it?” April asked.

  Why not indeed? Pierre thought.

  “Here we go,” April said as the clock neared the ten minute mark, just before Control started chatting with her again. “Be safe out there,” the male voice counseled her lastly. The apparatus above him folded down and his couch changed shape elevating his legs. He didn’t resist it just as he’d been told. The push was easy and unexciting until they reached the control limit. Then it ramped up and a series of adjustments tugged at him in small steps until he seemed a little heavier but unevenly. His legs actually felt lighter than they should.

  “And we’ll hold ten G for a few minutes,” April informed him. I have the coffee maker set to be done brewing when we stop our burn,” she promised.

  “How does that thing work?” Pierre demanded, waving at the retracted machinery when they dropped back to a zero G coast.

  “I know it’s a very bad old joke, but I’d have to kill you if I told you,” April assured him. It didn’t seem all that funny. Pierre dropped that for a different question.

  “You called this ship an armed merchant. Is the Larkin’s Line shuttle I flew an armed merchant too?” Pierre wondered.

  “Going to ISSII in Earth orbit? You better believe it. N
obody is real comfortable in LEO any more. The Earthies just have too much of a history of taking pot shots at us to feel safe that close to all their systems. Old Man Larkin is not very trusting. Jeff would tell you plainly he’s mean as a snake, if not in his hearing. It was at ISSII that the Chinese snatched a sister ship to this one, Eddie’s Rascal, and wouldn’t give her back. We lost her, and two crew,” April said, sounding angry about it still.

  Pierre knew about the ship, but not the crew. His own agencies hadn’t found that significant to mention to him. He seemed to have a talent for reminding April of unpleasant things. As he remembered the story, it hadn’t been a great exchange for China.

  Pierre declined coffee, not wishing to deal with the unfamiliar suit or test the absorbent pad. April indulged and he didn’t want to know how she handled it, but she did disappear to the back after awhile. April settled in and seemed to be reading or doing some sort of work, so he didn’t bother her with idle chatter.

  Central Control gave them clearance without any trouble and then copied their flight plan to Armstrong who acknowledged it. That seemed awkward, but Pierre kept his mouth shut about it for fear it was another sore point.

  April informed him she was pumping the cabin down to save some of the air and instructed him to close his faceplate firmly. It made a distinct loud click.

  “I’m going to slave your suit readouts to my board to watch your pressure, and turn on your radio. You don’t have to do anything,” April said.

  “Stand ready to move with your seat again,” April warned after a bit. She said no more again before the seat changed shape again and the frame work pivoted down around it again. April was chatting but he didn’t follow most of it. Suddenly it was a lot quieter and he realized they were down so smoothly there was no final bump at all.

  “Mind your step. You aren’t used to the gravity. I’d just jump out the lock, but it can look scary if you haven’t done it, so I’ll rig a line to slide down. Watch me.”