Paper or Plastic

by Mackey Chandler

  "I don't like that our people with Martee interfered," Josh said. "They should have called us in and stayed tight on their primary."

  "Then we'd be out searching for Stacy and there's no guarantee she wouldn't be in the American embassy, or in the air halfway to Italy by now, suffering an interrogation about the villa and our operations. It's hard not to forgive them when it went so well and saved so much trouble. I mean, they did have the Gold's help and from this report some irate citizen seeing it was a snatch, blew the hell out of all the car's tires before the wheelman could get away. I mean the idiots might as well have been yelling 'Jihad fi sabil Allah' to frost the cake, in that part of town. Gold said the man just walked off smiling, so we can't even thank him."

  "Still, it's too bad they couldn't stop them without making such a fuss," Josh said wistfully, "but I wouldn't ever say anything, I'm just happy they got them back safe." Roger solemnly nodded agreement.

  "You're one to talk," Martee said. "At least they did it without using a machine gun, or burning the place down."

  "Your point is… right on the money, Martee," Roger agreed. "It's bad to second-guess people who have to make operational decisions on their feet." "Trouble is, I can see the Americans trying to get some righteous retribution for this. It might have been better if they had just disappeared, but Gold had his employees drop them off outside the service gate at the American embassy. I know they were Americans, but we could have kept up a polite pretense we didn't know who they were and left them at the beach or along a road."

  "It might have been a nice touch to drop them at a hospital to show some concern, even though the driver and the fellow Dak took down were definitely dead," Josh explained, "but Gold apparently is almost as bloody-minded as Dak and really upset they'd invaded his space at the market, so the one that Dak kicked the snot out of was still breathing, but when they dropped him off at the embassy he had a plastic fruit bag pulled over his head and tied under his chin. I don't think he'd have made it anyway, but that looked bad." Josh said.

  "Ouch," Roger agreed. "I hope it didn't have the store name printed on it."

  "Well if it makes things so bad we have to hole up in here, like we're already in jail, I think it's time to implement our business plan and get a trade mission rolling back to my people," Martee declared.

  "Having just one of us here would make the security easier. We're going to have to make the town off limits for our people, which mean we'll need more recreation here, including some outdoor things such as a patio and grill and a pool - maybe some tennis courts. You have the plant sales and physical assets like metals and diamonds set up pretty well already," Josh admitted. "It's mostly my star drive that is the holdup, requiring personal attention. That's not going to happen quickly, nothing happens quickly with government."

  "As jealous as it makes me, I have to say I'll feel better when you are both safely away. Let's make it within forty-eight hours so they don't have much time to respond."

  * * *

  That evening after supper, Phil descended on Roger with a roll of blueprints and dragged him off for a consultation.

  Josh approached Martee and brought her an iced Mocha like he knew she favored.

  "Martee, you know how I said it makes me jealous to have to send you away and stay here myself?"

  "Uh-huh," she murmured, still half engrossed in her reading.

  "Well, jealousy can be a bad thing. But loyalty can be a very good thing," he explained.

  He finally had her attention looking over the book at him.

  "Now we three are loyal to each other and I don't want to hurt that, but some things we owe each other and some things we don't and never will."

  "I'm not sure what you are trying to say Josh."

  "Here, I had this rushed ahead, instead of the bigger ones we'll have done eventually." he handed her a little blue plush case.

  The platinum ring inside had a beautiful princess-cut diamond. It was far from the biggest of their stones, but it was about as big as was practical to wear everyday – around four carats.

  "That's very thoughtful of you. I do admire how your people cut these."

  "It's more than just a present," Josh explained. "In our culture it is a symbol, meaning that the ones who exchanged it are engaged to be married sometime in the future. I wanted to give it to you before you go and ask if when I get the miserable business stuff settled and we can be together again, will you marry me?"

  "Hmm… Did you put Phil up to dragging Roger off so you could ask me this alone?"

  "Well, yeah. I wanted it just to be us alone. It's a private thing."

  "Were you worried that I'd go off to trade with Roger and being with him and not with you, I might get attached more to him and then you couldn't ask me this when I come back?"

  "Jeez, Martee. You know how to put a guy on the spot. I don't think badly of Roger. I don't think he's planning on horning in on me when you go off. But I'd feel pretty stupid if I didn't say anything and he got the girl because he had the sense to ask first! He may be a bit slow that way, but even he may wake up and smell the coffee if he's away with you for a month or two and he suddenly thinks – 'You know this is pretty nice with Martee. I better see if I can make it a permanent arrangement before she trots off to other pursuits.’"

  "Well the implant is pushing two years now. I should have expected this sort of thing to start happening again."

  "Martee, this is not some young kid sniffing around. I'm older and I'm serious and I want a long term stable life with you that isn't some nose-induced passion that will run out in a year or two. I am talking marriage, not a fling."

  "I'm not real sure I want to marry anybody," Martee said.

  "Well, I'd have to respect that," Josh agreed reluctantly. "I had to lay the offer out. And if you'd keep the ring as a reminder, well, if you look at it and change your mind, I'm quite sure what I want. You just let me know."

  "I'll keep it and wear it – most of the time at least. When we get back together I'll have to talk to you about your marriage customs and tell you how our customs may differ."

  "Thank you, Martee. I'll look forward to that." But he looked disappointed.

  "If I promise to live with you and have your children and share our fortunes and our fates for a very long time, until we die, or you get old and tired of me, would that be sufficient to keep you happy, while I carefully consider the offer of formal marriage?"

  "Yeah, Martee," Josh said head swimming from emotional flip-flops, "long engagements are kind of common for my people anyway."

  Chapter 25

  At breakfast Josh and Martee showed up together and Josh looked uncommonly pleased with himself. He announced Martee was "entertaining his offer of marriage."

  "Well it's about time the clue bird of haplessness swooped in and paid you a visit," Roger said with no surprise. "I was starting to think you were going to let her go home and sit around here being miserable and inconsolable until she got back. I was sort of dreading how you'd treat everyone while we were gone. Good for you. It was obviously fated."

  "If it was so obvious why didn't you tell me months ago?" Josh grumped.

  "You wouldn't have listened to me. Likely you'd have picked a fight and suggested I didn't appreciate her properly, if I didn't try to court her myself."

  That was so dead on the money Josh shut up. It took a couple cups of coffee, before he stopped pondering why he was his own worst enemy and was mentally present again.

  After breakfast they reviewed the items they were taking for trade and what they'd bring back. Josh would pre-sell all he could.

  "I'd like you to start the ball rolling to acquire something for us," Roger asked Josh. "It's related to your stardrive sales so it should be easy.

  "What's that Rog?"

  "Well, if they are going to start making spacecraft on a crash program, somebody must be moving along pretty quickly to make space suits. I imagine a lot of the NASA technology is in the public domain. I'd like you to
slip a little line item in there, that we also have the right to buy as many space suits as we need, for cost or a low margin of profit. Under 5% if you can get away with it," he suggested.

  "I suspect they might try to make it hard to buy them, to control people like us doing actual space construction. After all, you are pretty limited if you can't go EV to do anything. You're not going to build any space stations, or set up any bases on the moon or other airless worlds."

  Josh made a note in his PDA and leaned back. "I'm glad you mentioned that," he said. "I don't care how low the failure rate is… I'd be a hell of a lot more comfortable in Martee's ship with a space suit. I'm just a belt and suspenders sort of guy when it comes to stuff like breathing."

  The ship was packed full and ready. They had considered applying to the CAA, Israel's aeronautical regulators, for an airworthiness certificate and a PPL with a special rating for Martee. Then they'd have been able to call the airport and ask for clearance to take off straight from their villa and climb right through thirty thousand feet. Past that they weren't the controller's concern.

  Trouble was, they still didn't trust this government enough, to be sure someone wouldn't decide the best thing to do would be to shoot a SAM up their butt. It might be too tempting to remove two of them, leaving the lone survivor in a much less tenable position. It was a measure of their distrust that they had snuck the ship into the house late at night, flying about a foot above the roadway to imitate a wheeled vehicle.

  Martee could not out climb an anti-missile-missile at low altitude. Calling and telling them when and where to aim, would not improve that. In the end they decided it was safer just to climb out unannounced, because their exposure would be so brief no chain of command could decide to shoot at them, before they were out of range.

  Once she was above about fifty kilometers the air was thin enough she could open it up and even jink if she needed. To further complicate things for any decision maker, she decided to take off at a steep angle over the sea, so she'd be over international waters before anyone could even think about firing on her.

  They all hugged and some of the new staff gathered, interested because they had never seen the vehicle fly. Josh hoped they would have another lift from here, before they had to worry about this one returning. He'd already started talking with people in Maxwell Industries and Borealis Ltd., who had the nano-tech expertise to build his stardrive modules.

  As soon as the ship disappeared into the blue, Josh turned away. Most of the others were still staring at where the ship had disappeared. The com tech Stacy was waiting for him as he went inside. She had required some persuasion and reassurance not to leave, after the attempted kidnapping and now she looked a little apprehensive again.

  "A Mr. Haim is waiting for you on line four," she informed Josh. Haim, while reserving the right to accept a position, had decided he could serve them better staying inside the Israeli government right now. He wasn't even double-dipping, though Josh would have arranged that with no moral qualms at all. Other than a verbal promise of a job, the only thing he'd accepted was the stones Josh had handed him when they landed in Israel. His wife was wearing them in a very nice necklace, which he referred to as his retainer.

  "Josh, if you are going to launch space vehicles from your house we need to have some sort of warning. We have a bunch of old farts around here who about had a coronary, defusing the situation you just threw in our laps."

  "What's the problem, Haim?" Josh tried to jolly him along. "It was going out, not incoming. How could you have taken it for a threat?"

  "We didn't see it as a threat. But the ground track for the lift went across Greece and Italy and France. NATO just crapped a huge brick with sharp corners sideways. It took them precious seconds to determine the launch wasn't from Iran. Nobody is sure the Americans have found and neutralized everything in that huge can of worms. Thank God you didn't fly the other way. NATO has some semi-rational people. If you'd launched on a track over the Paks and the Chinese, there's no telling what they would have done. They're both in a launch-them-or-lose-them mode with their present hardware."

  "Oh… I didn't realize there would be a problem. Why don't we get together tomorrow and we'll work out some procedures so it doesn't happen again?"

  "Seven o'clock. I'll be at your gate."

  My, he was in a hurry.

  "I'll feed and soothe you." Josh promised.

  "One question," Haim said. There wasn't a hint of ‘request’ in his voice.

  "Yeah?"

  "You got anything else launching, before we talk?"

  "No, Haim. No problem."

  "Good, we can send a whole bunch of people home and let them sleep like normal then. Thank you."

  Chapter 26

  Martee put on something with violins. Beethoven? Roger wasn't sure. Josh had installed a very premium sound system in the starship and Martee loved it. It helped Rog drift off. With no engine noise or bumps, it was easier to sleep than on a big jet. The first jump stop they made was interesting and kind of unnerving. There wasn't any sun when they looked around. By the third time it was boring.

  It had to be cold out there, but the jump equipment retained waste heat in a mass and used it to warm the interior. Josh had calculated the insulation was effective enough, most of the loss was through the viewport they still, out of habit, called the windshield. It had a infrared reflective coating but still lost by conduction and radiant loss at other frequencies.

  The world they circled after five jumps was beautiful. It was strange to see continents in different shapes. Martee pronounced it Liñool, with the nasal rolled Spanish ‘n’ like mañana and the soft double 'o' like school. There was nothing visible from orbit to show men lived there. They had to be low enough the horizon didn't have a curve, before they could see the city they were going to. Yet the planet had been occupied for several thousand years.

  The landing field was grass and they had to pick a spot where there was not a clump of animals grazing. There were only two other small ships, sitting with no activity around them. Martee had been here before for her University and assured Rog a truck would be out to take them to town. They hurried to exit, because they barely had room to crawl out. The rear of the ship was packed tight to the overhead with trade goods. They didn't want anyone to see that and be a target for theft.

  What came looked like an oversized golf cart, with a canopy crowning it. Martee explained that the climate was such it was sufficient all year around. Winter was brief, rarely bitter and some side-panels snapped on was their only concession to it. There was no heater, or air conditioning, just an electric defroster built in the windshield glass. They threw their luggage in the back and two cases of samples for their trade goods, before the driver could come to help them. The driver was dressed in a grey outfit that must be work clothing, but looked like a prison uniform. The sleeves and legs were cut straight and square and the coarse fabric almost looked like canvas.

  Martee was dressed in a conservative outfit that showed little skin - by Earth standards, but the soft and tailored jeans were very revealing of her shape by Trishan reckoning. Her bright tennis shoes had pink accents on white, which picked up the tiny pink flowers in her blouse. They had decided to try not to be too shocking, but Roger could see the man hesitate and then overcome his surprise at their appearance when he got out of the vehicle. His eyes inspected Roger just as thoroughly, but it was obviously Martee who left him rattled.

  Roger had decided to wear a muted outfit with charcoal slacks, a neat trim belt with a gold buckle and a black silk shirt. He had on low-topped grey suede laceups and a plain Panama hat. Not wanting to be obvious with his weapon, he elected to carry a soft black case like Brazilian men favor, with room for his wallet and other pocket items too. In America he'd have been teased about carrying a purse, but he found he liked it.

  The driver looked like a menial, even if he did carry a clipboard like a clerk. However his conversation with Martee quickly made it obvious he was a
fairly responsible official, although the port department of this world was tiny because it was a freeport. He was happy to accept Martee's printed manifest as sufficient without inspecting the goods. In fact he complimented her, on having it printed so nicely and well organized.

  They disposed of any question about prohibited items in two short sentences. Their luggage and personal belongings were of no interest. His only concern was to track the volume of trade goods and unsaid was that he'd be checking their identity against a list of criminals, that was circulated on a regular basis. On Trishal they would have been inspected for contraband Earth goods and even the clothing they wore would have been forbidden.

  Roger could see why they'd wanted to have some statistics on how much trade was taking place, but he also wondered if the information would find its way to local businessmen and the bank Martee intended to use. The driver's name, Fist, had nothing to do with the English word. Martee explained it meant ‘hill’ in Trishan and the man's distant ancestors were probably from a town on a hill.

  The fact that Roger was not registered on a civilized world was no problem. The Port of Andepuh was serious about being open. They were happy for any commercial traffic they could get, because they had no unique exports and there was little traffic that could be called tourism. Roger knew enough Trishan now, he understood Martee when introducing him had called him a barbarian. The way it was said and the completely neutral inflection, left him thinking there was really no malice in it.

  Roger couldn't help appraising the vehicle as they rode into town. The forward windscreen was hinged to flip up out of the way if you wanted the breeze. The seats were padded and upholstered in coarse cloth, that you wouldn't slip off of easily, but they were simply flat pads on a bench and nothing he'd want to ride on all day. The floor was some sort of grit paint or non-slip peel-and-stick. It dropped off at the edge and it would be easy to hose the whole floor when washing the vehicle.