"You're welcome to tell me what's so upsetting if you want. It might help."
"My parents, April. I had another big argument and walked out because they just kept hammering and hammering on me and I couldn't make it end or go in my room. It's my Dad who yells, but my mom never crosses him at all. She's terrified of him. He might figure out I came here. There are only so many places to go after all. If you don't want to sit with me I understand. I don't want to get you in trouble too."
"This is the public cafeteria, Doris. What trouble could I get in for eating breakfast?"
"Well, if my dad complains to your dad. He would probably tell him I was disobedient and left the apartment when I was ordered not to and you were encouraging me by feeding me and sympathizing. Would he get on you about helping me?"
"Not without hearing the whole story he wouldn't. I have to say, it has only been real recently he has listened to me like I'm not a little kid, but he was never was one to assume if something was wrong it must be my fault. More likely he'd come down on your side and figure your dad was a flaming jackass, just by the fact he is yelling at you. He doesn't care much for people who yell and scream to make their point."
"Oh, don't ever use cuss words where he can hear you," Doris got big eyes and looked seriously scared.
April was hesitant to say what she was thinking, which was she could say a whole lot worse than jackass and it might fit, but she took a few bites and then decided to take a different tack.
"If he did anything more than give me a nasty look, I assure you he would be sorry. If he laid a hand on me I wouldn't put up with it. I've always been taught not to let anyone put their grubby little hands on you. Tell me straight out - Is he getting physical with you or your mom?"
"Oh, not really, I mean, I suspect he has hurt my mom and she won't say anything, because she has bruises sometimes, but they are always where they don't show and if I ask about them she laughs and says she's clumsy. But I sure never see her bumping into anything."
"Sometimes he grabs me by the arm and drags me over to the door and shoves me in my room, but he has never hauled back and hit me with his fist. He just gets so close and the look he gets on his face when he yells," she stopped and folded her arms in front of herself defensively and shuddered, "I'm scared he will."
"Doris. He's over the line. Even if he never touched you, not all abuse is physical. There's emotional abuse too."
"Yeah but you can't show any bruises from it can you? Uh, could I take a little of your bacon there?" Doris wondered.
"I don't mind, but I'm probably going to go back for some more myself. Why don't you go get a tray of your own and join me?
"I can't April. My dad dropped the food service off our housekeeping menu, so he gets a little credit back. If I go up they'll serve me, but there'll be a minimum fee on the housing cost for the month and he'll have a fit. It's one more of the things we were arguing about. He doesn't want my mom or me to come to the cafeteria, because he says it's bad association. He'd be upset I'm talking to you now. And he won't let my mom or me have money so we can decide to do something without him. My mom isn't even on the bank accounts. She has to tell him what she needs and he orders everything."
"The last time I was up here, one of the Japanese boys brought his tray to my table and started talking to me and my dad came up and rushed me away before I could finish my food and said something rude to the boy about looking at me. I mean, excuse me for growing up. Why shouldn't he want to talk to me? But you wouldn't believe the nasty things he said when we got home."
"Today when we were arguing he said to me, 'No matter what you do, little girls grow up to be little whores. It's just what he assumes about women and it isn't fair. I've been a good person and never done anything like he assumes I want to. So I told him, "If sex is so horrible how did you two ever manage to have me?" He got madder than I've ever seen him before and he was between me and my room so I went out the corridor door and here I am."
April fumbled around in the little belt purse she carried and come up with a handful of mixed bills, sorted out some Brazilian notes, a few EuroMarks and found a fifty dollar USNA bill. "I'm sorry. I hardly ever have cash, because I just use my com to beam cash straight from my bank account, but this should buy you breakfast. Go get a decent meal and we'll figure something out for you." Doris didn't argue at all, just thanked her.
She sat steaming. The more she thought about it the angrier she got.
When Doris came back she had a very modest plate of scrambled eggs and bacon with a bagel on the side.
"Did you need more money? April asked. "Looks pretty light to me."
"Yeah, but you're engineered aren't you? It's just another reason he'd be upset, because I'm talking with you and he says gene altered people are an abomination. I couldn't eat like you have stacked up there without getting fat and probably having insulin resistance and hormone imbalance down the road, so this is plenty."
"Yeah, I can get away with eating about 4500 calories a day and I don't have the bad side effects, because of a few tweaks my folks gave me in vitro. I can throttle it back by going on a fast for about three days and I revert to a normal metabolism just like you. Then can ease back up to 2000 or so and my gene mod metabolism doesn't kick in until I start eating heavy again. When I do I think just fine, but I sleep more and don't have the strength or endurance I do when I'm running boosted."
"I wish I had a few more alterations, like the marathon gene set, but some of them were not invented fourteen years ago and some of them were not proven out so my folks didn't buy 'em. They would tell you how conservative they were, because they wouldn't try anything very new on me. Remember reading about the Wiz Kids in Germany, about ten years ago?"
Doris nodded yes. A clinic in Italy had offered a mod which produced child prodigies. There was no telling what direction the talent would take, but all of them were early learners with number skills, or playing musical instruments and other showy abilities while still toddling. A lot of Germans bought the mod. However, when they reached puberty they all crashed into a massive induced schizophrenia, which was marginally treatable. It was a favorite horror story, of genetic mod opponents.
"Another thing we're having fights over - I could have started life extension therapy almost two years ago and I want to, but he won't let me."
"Well it is pretty expensive. I was talking with my grandparents about it and they are looking at maybe even selling their house and moving up here, if they start it soon."
"April, I can have some of the basics done free. My dad was born in France to Canadian parents and he has all the medical rights for the family from his parents. They won't do the cosmetic stuff, but they'll do the work to keep you from developing cancer and heart disease and stuff, which costs more to treat than to prevent."
"What you're talking about is not extension work Doris. It's just normal medical care, that lets you live a full life span without dying early. You'd still die somewhere in your 110's probably. My folks are looking at possibly lasting to 160 or so if the treatments they are getting work well. Who knows what else they will come up with in the next 120 years? I mean, 120 years ago they were almost witch doctors. They couldn't read your genome much less alter it. They thought ulcers and arterial plaque, were caused by what you ate and they couldn't even grow you a new finger if you cut one off, much less a hand. Why in the world would he deny you the chance to be healthy?"
Doris leaned toward her like she was afraid someone might overhear. "They're religious," she said and then seeing the blank look on April's face. "I mean really, really, religious. Like the Bible says a man's life should be three score and ten, so it's wrong to stretch it past what has God given and it's wrong to drink anything with alcohol in it and is wrong to do any work on a Sunday, because it's the Lord's Sabbath even if environmental is down and the air is going bad. It's wrong to wear any clothing not gender specific. It's wrong to question anything your father says, or let a boy talk to you. Especially a d
irty third world boy, who's not a Christian, so doing evil just comes natural to him."
"Oh, man...." April didn't know where to start, or what to say. What a mess.
"He'd be mad at me for sitting here eating with you because you're not Christian too."
"How would he know what I am?" April protested indignantly, "We've never talked religion for him to know anything about me."
"You don't even start to get it. There isn't anybody on this station who he would think is righteous. I hear him talk on the com with the Church people back home and he and his friends discount about half of the people in their own church as not really Christians. It's always this stuff like – 'Oh yeah, we saw the Evans driving in from town. I think they shop on the Sabbath.' Or, 'Did you see the gay shirt the Allens let their boy wear to services? Godly people wear white shirts not blue!' Believe me, you don't stand a ghost of a chance to make his short list."
"I could walk out the door in a few months and have myself declared emancipated, but they've made it clear if I did walk out it would be with what was on my back and a big footprint on my butt." She looked over her shoulder, like saying butt might get her in trouble.
"He's never allowed me to keep any real money, even when I worked for his company and you know how expensive it is to live on M3. He did buy me a real Goodyear p-suit to do work for him and I don't think he knows I swiped it and put it in a pay locker when he shut his business down, so he couldn't keep it from me if I did leave. He's got the empty case for it in storage. I got a few of my clothes and a few keepsakes in the locker too, but it will take every penny I have saved to keep the locker until I'm eighteen. But all of the effort I put into saving those few things is probably pointless, because he insists now we are moving back to Canada before this thing with the Rock comes to a head."
"I'm concerned about the Rock and all the problems about it too, but isn't it a little drastic to go Earthside before they make you?" April asked.
"I don't want to go down myself, but I can see why my dad wants to. He didn't just act rude with the one Japanese boy. He has been saying nasty things to so many people it has come back on him. It's such a small community here and when you start insulting people and their children, it doesn't take long before you start losing business. He tells people they are headed straight for hell and then doesn't understand why they don't send him work. He hasn't made it any secret he won't take any life extension and the other business men look at him now like he has a terminal disease and won't be around long."
"There are competitors who they figure will be around long after he is gone and they don't call their customer's kids nasty names. He hasn't had much work for months and the guys he laid off all went to work for other companies. He's been working for a bunch of ground-siders, doing something he won't tell us about at all. I'm scared he may be doing something illegal and get in trouble." She was twisting her napkin unaware.
"These new guys he's working for are telling him people on the station will be straightened out and things run tighter when everything is settled. He brags on it to my mom and I and insists we'll be coming back up, but I don't believe it for a minute. He's lying, or fooling himself, because he's never going to get the crew he had back, or get back the business he lost, either one."
The story put a chill up April's back. She immediately suspected he wasn't coming back to go into the construction business again. He'd be coming back as a martial law administrator for the North Americans. She pulled her pad out and found the file she wanted and isolated a frame of video and cropped it.
"I might be able to sort some of it out for you Doris, but can you tell me if you ever saw this fellow?" She turned her pad around and showed Doris a face shot of Art.
"Oh boy, this is bad if the director's family is carrying his picture around. When this guy came to see my dad, he picked up a duffel bag my dad had been holding for him. My dad acted scared of this guy and that isn't like him at all. He gave me the willies too. And if the stuff in the duffel was anything legal, why didn't he just stick it in a public locker? Is he some kind of fugitive you carry his picture to show people?"
"He broke in and he did a lot of damage in the Singh's apartment and then he fled the station in a way which endangered a lot of people outside pressure. Yeah, if Jon could have found him in time I'm sure he would have arrested him. But he's not just a criminal looking to steal something. We're pretty sure he is military and some sort of spy."
"April I really don't think my dad would help anyone from another country. He has always made a big deal of being a patriot. He considers himself as righteous politically as he does religiously."
"Who said anything about another country? This guy jumped out of the lock into a USNA space plane. He seems to be in a special naval outfit called the SEALs. He had a gun and from the way he broke in Singh's place he had to have other special tools too."
Doris just looked at her like what she was saying was nonsense.
"Look Doris, what will it take to let you walk out the door? Are you waiting to turn eighteen or what?
"No, we're using California law on station and you can be emancipated as young as fourteen. But it is easier the older you are. You can be emancipated if you get married, or join the military, or you are living on your own and supporting yourself. The court basically has to think you have made a good case it's in your best interests, unless you are just plain abandoned by your parents. They still feed me and I have a place to stay but the isolation is getting to me and they just never ever approve of anything I do. But then my mom is an adult and she's getting the same treatment too."
"So you need a job and a place to stay?" April asked.
"Yeah but both are pretty tough on M3. I can't even afford a real one room apartment. I'd have to rent a hot bunk like temporary workers do and keep my stuff in a locker like I already am. Try explaining that as a normal way to live to some judge in California, who has never been up here and has no idea what it costs to live. I'd look like a vagrant to him."
April got back in her purse and pulled out her key card for the Holiday Inn. "I'll probably have some hassles from this, but here, take this and you'll have a safe place to stay tonight. I'll tell Jon, who heads Security, you're afraid to go home and ask him what we can do to help you. Do you have anyone you can go to today and ask to tell the court they will give you a job?"
"My dad will kill me, but his foreman who quit and went to work for Trevor and Thompson, worked with me when I was running supplies out to my dad's work crews. He knows I can handle myself in zero-G. I do some helmet talk too and I have all the safety training. He was treated so crappy, I think he'd hire me just for the chance to get back at my dad."
April gave her a quizzical look. "Why was he having you work for him if he wanted you to stay at home and not have any contact with anyone?"
"Oh, he never was going to make a real place for me in the business. It was never a possibility being female. It's just that FedEx and UPS are pretty cheap to ship stuff to the hub and pick it up in pressure, but if you want it delivered to vacuum it costs about three times as much, when they have to go through a lock."
"He would save several thousands of dollars some weeks in vacuum fees. I'd run fasteners and wire and stuff out to them, but he just gave me a hundred dollars a week allowance. It's a wonder he didn't make me wear a skirt over my pressure suit, in case his church buddies thought I was wearing pants. Although I suppose in zero G it wouldn't hang very modest!"
April just shook her head in disbelief. "That's cheap. I mean a hundred bucks won't let you buy supper for you and a friend unless you get burgers."
"But he didn't want me buying supper for any friends. He doesn't want me keeping company with people who are a bad influence."
"You're able to handle yourself outside pressure. Have you ever gotten a ride in a construction scooter to deliver stuff?
"Oh sure, don't ever tell anyone, but a few times we were off a ways from M3 and if they needed to shift an empty scoo
ter the guys would have me move it, just following one of them and typing in command lines to the autopilot instead of manual controls. We were always a couple hundred meters away from each other and if it hadn't done what I intended they made sure I knew how to do an emergency abort. One of them would have come over and helped. But I never had any problem. It's really simple to program a couple burns and make sure it's pointed in the right direction. But I'm not licensed so I could get in trouble." To April, Doris seemed to constantly fear being in trouble. What a horrible way to live.
"Put your pad up here and I want to give you something to read. This is the exam I am studying to take in a couple weeks for a scooter license and the study material and manual for the scooter. You look it over and tell me if you think you could study up and take it. I might know someone who would give you a job if you can do it, but you still go ahead and see what you can do for yourself."
Doris fished in her pocket and came out with a memory module and switched it with the one in her pad and April raised an eyebrow questioningly.
"I keep one for myself and one in the pad for my dad to snoop through," She explained. "He gets all bent if I even have somebody's address he hasn't approved. I'm not allowed to have an AI in my pad, so it doesn't take much to switch out a dumb system on a small chip. I could hide stuff too easily if I had an AI and he's not sure they aren't an abomination too."
April let the pad talk to Doris's pad and then keyed in a new action.
"Here's a couple hundred bucks. It's a loan until you get a job and get on your feet. You have to have something to eat on for a couple days."
Doris looked at the pad silently for few seconds. She had accepted breakfast easily, but it was obvious she didn't want to take more money. Finally she hit enter to accept it and looked back up at April.
"Thank you for believing me. We never got to know each other enough to feel really close, but you've turned out to be a real friend when I needed it. I do appreciate it."
April Page 24
