April

by Mackey Chandler

  Everything came together with good timing, as Sylvia set a big bowl of lightly oiled spaghetti and a bowl of sauce on the table. Barak had rejoined them now and was putting butter and some small loaves of bread on each end of the table. It was the biggest private kitchen table April had seen on M3. Her home with her parents was considered large, but their table was full up at four and really cramped to force six. Most folks had a fold down, like they had used at Jeff's place, which went back up out of the way when it wasn't needed.

  This table look like it could seat eight very comfortably and it had a seam running through it the short dimension, which she suspected would allow an extra section to be inserted. It was nearly as big as the table she remembered in the Holiday Inn. The napkins Jeff was putting out were cloth and the utensils have an odd mellow glow to them.

  "What kind of metal are these?" She asked, picking up a fork and examining it. It was heavier than she expected, even in the half G.

  "It's silverware April," Heather explained. "It really is actual sterling silver, instead of stainless steel like most are."

  Sylvia sat without any announcement. She caught April's eye and patted the table at her left, to indicate April should sit there and Barak sat next down the table from her. Heather sat across with Jeff beside, opposite Barak. Sylvia started putting pasta on deep plates and sending them around the table. April was surprised it was bare.

  When her mom made pasta she mixed the sauce in the common bowl, but Sylvia sent the bowl of sauce around, for each of them to put on their dish. It was totally unfamiliar looking. Not red like she expected, but creamy. She copied Heather in how much she took, but when she was passed a small bowl of grated cheese it seemed terribly pungent to her and she just put a small spoonful to one edge of the dish, where she could avoid it if she didn't like it.

  Another dish came around with olives which were a glossy brown with wrinkles, unlike the black or green ones she was used to. She put several beside her tomato as Heather did. She noticed Jeff make a full ring of them around his slice. Sylvia poured a dark wine into a plain glass from a carafe, for herself and Heather, but she saw Barak had a glass of some pale juice and Jeff had a plain glass of ice water.

  "Do you care to try some wine with dinner April?" Sylvia asked.

  Earthside that was far too dangerous a thing to offer a minor, even within one's family. Neighborhood Defenders might pry the secret out younger siblings, or a random test at school might reveal the alcohol use the next day.

  "When my folks served wine I haven't cared for it." She admitted. "It's usually too sour for me. I'll try just a tiny taste if you would. Don't waste too much on me."

  Sylvia smiled. "Never sour, or we throw the bottle out for having gone to vinegar. The word you are looking for is too dry. She splashed just a little in a glass and offering it said, "See what you think."

  April took a sip, but it made her pucker. "Sorry," she said, "too strong for me."

  "Now try something else," Sylvia suggested. "Take a few bites of your pasta," she said, spinning a ball of it on the end of her fork with a few casual twists held against her spoon and popped it in her mouth.

  April just stared in dismay. She had been about to start cutting her spaghetti into manageable lengths so she could eat it with a spoon or fork. She suspected that would make her look like a little kid here. "Do it again." She asked. "I've never seen anyone do anything but cut it up."

  Barak spoke up on her left. Obviously happy he knew something an older person didn't. "Like this," he said deftly catching a few strands against the spoon and with a few twists of the fork had a neat little ball which he stuck in his mouth, all pleased with himself.

  April tried the same, self-conscious with everyone staring at her. The method worked well enough, but she had started with too many strands and had about three times as much on her fork as the others. Jeff made a loud comment, "Whoa - delicate little appetite."

  Everyone else joined in, hooting and laughing at her first try. She defiantly stuffed the whole thing in her mouth making a face at him. They patiently waited while she was chewing away on the massive bite. Finally she got it clear without choking to death and said, "What's wrong anyway? Aren't I dainty enough for you?" He was wiping tears away laughing so she did another bite, everyone still staring at her and managed to do better, if still on the big side. Jeff just started clapping and they all joined in applauding her initiation.

  "This is fantastic stuff!" she exclaimed. "What in the world is in it?" The embarrassment had taken her attention, but on the second bite she started to pay attention to the food and it was shockingly rich and full of flavors she did not recognize. While she got a third bite spun up Sylvia explained.

  "It's very simple really. A cream sauce with crushed pistachios and pine nuts and a little hint of garlic and fresh herbs from the garden." April took the new forkful from the spot with the cheese. "That's amazing!" she said. "How can anything so stinky taste so good?" She immediately realized it couldn't be very diplomatic and apologized. "I'm sorry. It's rude to say something so unappreciative when I'm your guest."

  No, no it's really OK," Sylvia said. And her smile said she meant it. "You wouldn't want to sit and eat the Romano with a spoon. It's way too strong a flavor. But now, see how the wine is the same way. You have the sauce flavor in your mouth now, so just take a sip of the wine and see if it isn't easier to take than before."

  April was willing to believe, after the other revelations so she took a sip. "You're right. It tastes much sweeter now and the contrast is really good. It makes me want to go back and get the taste of the sauce again."

  "Exactly. You say it 'cleanses the palate'. Otherwise the taste of the sauce gets a bit old, before you can work your way through a whole plate."

  Jeff tore one of the small round loaves apart and passed the butter to her. She spread it generously. She knew for sure it was one thing she really liked. The crust was thick and chewy. She applied herself with a will and was doing fine, until she popped one of the olives into her mouth and bit into it with enthusiasm.

  Her teeth bore down on an unexpected hardness and she made an involuntary "Umm!" It made them all look at her. "Sorry, there's something hard in it," she protested. Sure she was in the right this time. They roared with laughter all over again and she asked, "You mean I've done it again? There's supposed to be something hard in it?"

  "Honest April," Heather said, obviously trying to be conciliatory, "we're not trying to make fun of you. Not in a mean way anyway. It's all new to you and we are so used to it we didn't think to tell you. It's just a pit. It's the seed in the olive, like a peach or plum. It's just they don't always remove them, like the ones you get in a salad at the cafeteria, or in the green ones where they stuff pimento in the hole."

  "You know, I remember now about olive pits, but the theory and practice are different, when you are not used to them being there. Are there any other surprises lurking for me?"

  "Watch out for the pepper!" Barak warned. "It'll make you sneeze like crazy if you get a sniff!"

  "OK," she said. "Carefully now. The tomato is the only thing I haven't tried. If I can get past it I think I'm safe."

  She made a show of cautiously taking a bite, with everyone watching her again. "Oh, that is good. But I have to tell you, I've had good tomatoes before. When we went down to Australia to visit my grandparents we'd walk down the road a bit and buy them from a stand a neighbor kept. He grew them right out in the open, in his back yard. But we never get them this good in the cafeteria."

  "April, most of us who grew up Dirtside miss much more than tomatoes. Believe it or not, a great deal of what we get here is not up to snuff, if you have ever really had the very best quality. Apples and grapes for examples are pretty good, but there is still nothing like a peach or a nectarine, that was ripened on the tree. But most places it means you only have about a two-week span each year, where they are available locally. If you like, some time we'll show you how to raise tomatoes."

/>   "Sylvia you're really generous, but we three are working on so much, my brother has me training to get a scooter license and I have classes going on in several subjects. Maybe after things settle down a bit, but right now I can't add another project."

  "Then you'll have to come visit in the future," she offered, "and get an occasional treat until you have the time."

  "I certainly won't have to be begged" April considered what she had just eaten. It might not be a good idea to rush back to the full G level carrying this load.

  "You three go ahead," Sylvia offered. "I know you want to see what Jeff is making. Barak and I can clean up the table."

  "I want to see what he's made too," Barak protested.

  "Then you'd better get cracking and clean the table off before they're all done," his mom replied smartly.

  Chapter 14

  Jeff led them back to the bench where a gray casing lay open, with the two halves hinged apart and the inner workings visible. April recognized one of Jeff's power storage units behind some of the components and she was pretty sure some of the parts were optical devices, but the most obvious thing, was there was a large hole unfilled in the one half. Jeff opened the package she had brought and took one of the laser heads out of a protective foam box. It was wrapped in a static free bag.

  "This is a hoot," he said smiling. "They put this in protective packaging, but they are made to survive in terrible industrial environments. They use them to slit steel plate right down on the rolling mills, with yellow hot steel rolling by a couple centimeters away. Even worse they use them in mining, to shatter the ore, just ahead of big diamond gouges which are chewing away the hard rock face and vibrating like crazy for hour after hour. The contacts on the pumping diodes are about 6mm square, so I don't think a little static discharge is going to hurt one of these babies. These are not the latest and greatest, they are the previous generation of Europium doped technology, but they are really rugged and the crystals are big enough so if you do damage one, you can crack it open and shift the pumping diodes over and get a fresh area which will work just as well. Now the new ones have a crystal about a sixth the size, but they over heat easier and once they are damaged it's final. They are just old enough now that they are only sold as service parts and the price has come way down."

  April thought to herself they were dear enough, when she remembered the chunk of cash they required, but said nothing.

  Jeff carefully put a single drop of thick optical matching fluid on the front lens and lowered the unit into the void. It fitted exactly into a cradle molded in the case. The lens fit flush against the optics already installed with an O-ring seal and the mounting holes lines up from case to module perfectly. Four small screws were enough to hold it.

  The more difficult job was the electrical connections. Jeff put a thin foil washer of low melting point alloy, between the beefy cable termination from his power unit and the bus sticking out of the laser. A stubby bolt held the sandwich together. After ratcheting down the bolt with a tiny torque wrench, he marked the connection with a temperature indicating crayon and applied a microtorch until the mark turned dark.

  "There, that isn't just a solder. It is a binary glass foil. The first alloy dissolved the face of both conductors when it melted, but it had another alloy mechanically mixed that will turn it back solid by diffusion. It's one piece now with a thin band of a little different composition where it joined," he explained.

  Lastly he folded the case closed and a single recessed screw held it shut. Jeff sat the weapon pointed into a hole in the face of a graphite cube, about 250 mm on an edge. "Whenever you use this you should always wear a pair of these spex," Jeff told them. He handed them conventional looking VR and audio glasses. "They don't look different, but they have a layer on the lenses, which will protect you from back scatter and stray specular reflections. Even a p-suit faceplate may not darken fast enough to be safe and of course you have to avoid specular reflections elsewhere on the body." He plugged a data fiber in his pad and slipped his own spex on. "I'm going to test the lower range of power and see how much it draws, then you can slave it to your specs. He got up and pulled a curtain across, which closed the work area off from the rest of the apartment.

  His pad showed a graph with 5-kilowatt intervals along one edge. When he keyed in a command it showed an amperage and wattage datum point over the 5-kilowatt line, although there was no noise or anything to indicate it was on. After a second it switched to the 10-kilowatt level and displayed a new point at a higher draw. April could smell a hot dry smell now. After another second it switched to the third power level and April could feel heat radiating from the graphite slightly on her face and arms.

  When it switched lastly to the 20-kilowatt level, she could see the rear of the black cube starting to glow with a dull red color. Jeff's pad connected the data points with a rising line, which fell off the straight slightly, as it rose from left to right. It extrapolated the curve out to the limits of the power cell.

  "I can be happy with those numbers," Jeff allowed. It starts at 96% efficiency and drops off to about 93% at the maximum output. It means it won't overheat so fast you can't hang onto it, after firing it.

  He disconnected the data line and picked up the laser. "See, you have a belt clip on this side." He demonstrated and clipped it on his own waist. "If you pull it off with your left hand you squeeze a pressure pad on both faces and it causes a grip to deploy." He pulled it off, but turned it over so they could see the pistol grip swivel out very fast, but in the last centimeter or so, it slowed down and locked open without a sound. "I kind of borrowed that design off a vid camera I own," he admitted.

  "You would normally run it through your spex, but if you need it, a little screen will pop up on the back. He transferred it to his right hand taking the grip and squeezed each side of the rear and the rear folded up like a flap in the back, doubling the rear area and lighting up with a camera view. "I used a flexible screen so there's no line across your view at the hinge. Whether you use the on board screen, or send it to your spex, it can zoom from a wide-angle view, which covers a 60 degree angle, up to a 20x magnification."

  "But when it gets to about 10x, there are six little gyroscopic camera stabilizers which kick in to keep it from shaking. If you want to move it without fighting them, just take your finger completely off the trigger and it will let you move it freely until you touch again."

  He carried the hot cube on the white insulating board April hadn't noticed and walked it down to the end of the work area. He pointed the weapon at the distant target and called up the routine to adjust the sights to the point it heated. When he fired, it heated a small spot and the cross hairs adjusted minutely to that aim point.

  He handed it to April. "Why don't you slave it to your spex and teach it your voice." She was used to doing that with all sorts of devices and did it in seconds.

  "OK April, pull down your menu on the left corner on your specs and select power level, then select low/target/pulse." She did it almost as fast as he said it and nodded.

  "Pull down the menu and select preferences/trigger pressure."

  "OK." she said.

  "When you squeeze it will flash a bracket around the center of the screen. It's not supposed to pulse in trigger setting mode, but just to be safe this first time, point it at the bench top here anyway."

  She squeezed and saw a circle flash on her spex. "It's way too hard to pull now," April informed him.

  He held his hand above the bench top and then touched tentatively, to make sure he had not missed any emission. It was dead cold. "It's set at a kilopond right now so change the 1.00 in the box to whatever you think would be easy enough."

  April back spaced the numbers and entered .50. She pointed it down carefully at the bench again and triggered it. She thought about it a bit and set it down again. "It feels good now," she told Jeff. "Four tenths of a kilopond."

  "That's awfully light April, That's less than a Newton, but you can practice with it
and suit yourself. Commercial guns run three or four times as much."

  Jeff took it back briefly and demonstrated closing the handle back into the case and how to hold it to clip on a belt without opening it. The pressure sensitive decals were on the left back corners so it could be held on the right rear without opening. April accepted it back and clipped it on.

  "I'll make up two more, for you to use or assign as you want and then later a couple for Heather and I. We won't have many more to give out until we can set up my nanoboxes, to make some smaller power cells. You said your family has some dockage in zero G. Do you think you can you can get me in there, where I can get some access to vacuum also? I need zero G, vacuum, net access for them to report to me, if they are done or lock up in mid-process and a little bit of power. But we can set one of my generators up for power if you don't have a place to plug in."

  "How big are the boxes?" April wanted to know.

  Jeff showed her a stack of a half dozen stainless boxes, about the size of a small microwave oven, while Heather drew the curtain back and clipped it down.

  "It shouldn't be hard to fit those out of the way. Let's call my grandpa and see what he says. I want you to talk to him anyway. Can you check out the scooter he's working on with Bob and see what one of your power devices would do to improve it? Having the scooter might prove important if things get really bad with the USNA. We would expect to pay for it. It's used for business after all."

  "Of course," Jeff said. "We'll talk about it when you get us together. I assume then, your Grandpa wouldn't be shocked at our politics, or our attitude about staying off the dirt ball?

  "No, I never had the slightest doubt he wouldn't sacrifice anything to keep us on M3. That's been his whole life bringing our family to the station and making sure we have the assets to prosper here. My dad might surrender and go Dirtside rather than fight and I don't think my mom has a clue what reality is politically, but I never thought that of Gramps." April stopped and thought a moment. "But Bob, I can't tell you what his politics are, if he has any. I don't think we should propose anything to him except as a business deal." That got a nod and a thoughtful look from Jeff.