"Things?" Jeff asked.
"I got a request for safe deposit services six days ago," Irwin said. "I explained we don't have a huge vault, that we send most everything to the moon where it goes in deep storage. That there's no local demand for the service. Also that we wouldn't take anonymous bundles, that the risk of something being a bomb or bioweapon was too great on a habitat. The client was from Russia. He asked how secure it was there. I laughed, which might have been stupid, and said Central had already been attacked with a one megaton nuke dead on target and they were still there. My flippant answer apparently decided him.
"He asked a fee to send ten kilograms to the moon and hold it indefinitely, after a visual inspection here. I quoted twenty grams of gold, and ten grams a year thereafter. He didn't dicker, he said his courier would be here in five days and I could inspect his package, sign for it and send it on. I informed him it usually took three days to recover items from the moon, and asked very explicitly if he wished for the items to only be released to specific persons or anyone bearing the receipt? He opted for the receipt."
"Did he show? And if so, what did he send?" Jeff asked, surprised how upset Irwin appeared.
"His courier came in and laid a small case on my desk with two ten gram gold bars. I opened it and there was a emerald necklace with huge graduated stones, each with a halo of diamonds, but the center stone was a diamond, about the size of a half walnut. Then to the side there were four containers, each with a diamond almost as impressive as the center piece of the necklace. I pulled them all out and laid them on my desk. The poor fellow looked nervous, wondering what I was doing. He looked over his shoulder, worried about the unlocked door.
"When I pulled all the finger foam out of the case and made sure there wasn't anything else hidden he seemed surprised. I put all of it back and signed his receipt with my hanko. That didn't seem to surprise him at all. Earth people usually remark on them, so figure he's seen them used before. I put a wrap of the bank's tamper proof tape around the case both ways and thanked him. By that time Dan was standing at my desk because I'd pinged him with my spex, and he carried the case away to the vault. The whole thing was surreal to me, and the Russian went away looking like he felt the same."
"They trust us. I'm not entirely sure why," Jeff admitted.
"It isn't so much they trust us," Irwin insisted. "They have nobody they trust on Earth, and the situation must seem even less stable to them that it appears to us," Irwin theorized.
"You didn't charge enough," Jeff said.
Irwin thought about it and frowned. "I believe you're right."
* * *
"Mr. Larkin, I'm glad you could come early," Eduardo Muños, said to the fleet owner.
"My wife already disapproves of my poker night. I might as well have supper with you, as sit and watch her frown deepen until I leave. The odd thing is when I said I was having supper with you she expressed approval. For some reason she has a good opinion of you. I refrained from telling her you'd be joining us at the poker table. No reason to let her know what a scoundrel you really are."
"I appreciate you keeping my secret. Neither will I tell her she shouldn't begrudge you your fun, since you win so often."
"Oh please, that would only make it worse," Larkin assured him with mock horror. "She once remarked that Home isn't Texas, and that was one of the things she'd hoped to leave behind."
"What are you having tonight" Muños asked, picking up his own daily menu.
"Well, I'd love a big hunk of beef. I'm past being picky what cut. But I'm afraid I'll get the meatballs and spaghetti, and thank my lucky stars it isn't plain sauce."
"That sounds good to me too, and we can split a nice bottle of Chianti between us," Muños offered.
"Indeed, we could if their cellar wasn't cleaned out," Larkin laughed.
"I brought a bottle of my own and they can charge me corkage to serve it," Muños said.
"I'm amazed. I thought everyone was dry by now," Larkin said. "Thank you, Eduardo."
"It's my pleasure."
"So...Got any good gossip? You always seem to be at the center of things," Larkin said.
"I'm assured there is a steady stream of valuables leaving Earth. I was told they are lifting important paintings and antiquities. People are afraid. They worry about another engineered disease and disorder. The authorities would have done better to reveal all they know, so the public is not worried the same players may be waiting to unleash another plague," Muños said.
"Perhaps they don't know," Larkin suggested.
"We know, so they must, but they have decided it is policy to imply it was us," Muños said, sadly.
"Then why didn't we reveal it? Force their hand to charge them? It was a crime against humanity!"
"The evidence didn't meet the standards of an Earth court. It was extracted involuntarily."
"Damn snake-pit," Larkin growled. "They have no sense of justice. I take that back. They have no sense, period. I'm so glad I'm off the Slum Ball and never have to go back!"
"You'd be hard pressed to find anybody to disagree with you," Muños said. "That's why we're getting this influx. Not just gold and art. But treasures in people too, the smartest and most inventive."
"And no place to put them," Larkin complained. "I'm just glad old habits die hard. We don't have Earth laws, but apparently nobody has figured out it isn't illegal to lie down and sleep in the public corridor. You can hardly rent a hot slot and it's near bad enough for people to try that."
"Well I was told in confidence that next Assembly we're going to hear some proposals on that, but I have my doubts it can pass the vote. I can see benefits, but problems too."
"What can they do, Eduardo? They shouldn't add on a fourth ring, and I'm informed they will house some people on the moon soon, but nothing near as many as want to emigrate. I'd say build a whole new habitat to be a mate to this one, but I don't have a couple trillion dollars to start the project."
"With the superior new drugs for zero G, and material from the moon, they could be housed in auxiliary quarters for now. You simply make some pressure vessels, much simpler to make than a ship hull. And position them off a couple kilometers to give local traffic a little room. Some folks would commute to work on Home, and some might stay there for days at a time, and only come over here for recreation or things like the clinic. But the politics of it are much harder to deal with than the physical creation," he said, sadly.
"Why can't that pass the vote?" Larkin said, scowling. "It seems brilliant to me. Whose idea?"
"Young Singh," Muños said, "But it would take funding from other backers. I'm not sure the voters will want to see these people having Home citizenship, and diluting their vote. They may doubt they are as solidly committed to Home, not living here full time. They will probably want to argue about air and water fees. It's always the petty details like that which torpedo these kind of changes. It's very easy for people to identify others as outsiders, and find reasons to exclude them at first blush. Perhaps after they think on it, get used to the idea, and housing continues to be tight. Maybe then in two or three Assemblies from now it will look more attractive."
"Ah, thank you," Muños said, as the antipasto was delivered. He signaled they could open the wine.
"That would be a big boost for business," Larkin objected. "All we need to do is talk it around early to the business owners. Almost all of them will see the potential benefits to their bottom line. And quite a few people will go along if their employer persuades them that it's good for their livelihood."
"Perhaps," Muños agreed. "If you wish to mention it to your friends, you might have a consensus form around the idea. I'm not sure I'd be an effective advocate. I'm less a business person and more an administrator. It's easy for people to say – What does he know? He doesn't have to make a payroll and crank out product. And there's some truth in that. But if respected business people, their own peers, stand and endorse the idea it might be possible to save it."
&nbs
p; "Certainly! I think you gave up on it too easily. It can be sold if one does it with a little finesse. People simply don't like a hard sell, and being pushed into something," Larkin said, and waited a moment for Muños to approve the wine. It might be his, but the waiter still presented it for his inspection as if the house had provided it.
"Really?" Eduardo asked, when done with that chore. "Thank you. It's quite interesting hearing someone else's perception of it."
* * *
"Jeff, I think you should see this article," April said. She hadn't used the priority com tag.
"Just a second," Jeff begged. He looked at the material on his screen about their virus detectors, added a note that would be on top when he opened the files again, closed another program without notes or concern and cleared his brain of several other things pretty much running 'on top'.
"OK, send me the link. Why is it important?" he asked April.
"Well, look at the title. Anytime they use the word 'war' it gets my attention."
"Looking," he assured her.
Currency Wars, Again? – Byron Winslow – Money Market Matters
Currency wars can't happen now. Ask any economist. There are too many agreements and treaties in place. Nobody benefits from instability and uncertainty...
Jeff stopped reading then because his eye caught his own picture, half way down the page.
"Where did they get my portrait? I don't recognize that one," he said.
"I think that out of focus line on the edge is the old coffee machine," April said. "I think somebody took your picture in the cafeteria. So it's not very recent. It's not bad actually."
Jeff resumed reading and April waited patiently. It wasn't that long of an article.
"You'd think they would have interviewed the principal individual named. I notice they quote a 'Federal Reserve Spoks' but don't name him. They could have asked Irwin for comment too, and gotten much the same answers as I'd have given them."
"You might have confused the issue with facts," April observed.
"The main fact I'd have mentioned is they excluded us from being able to process payments in USNA dollars. Exactly why would we take dollars, if we can't freely spend them?" Jeff asked.
"Surely you could spend them in India or Brazil," April suggested.
"Physical cash yeah," Jeff agreed. "Still...most of them can clear electronic payments through North America for USNA dollars, but they'd have to hide that the transaction is for us or they'd reject them as tainted. But if they are a depreciating asset, whether like the EuroMarks by design, or just because their value is declining steadily, why should I risk holding them? Even for a few days? Easier just to refuse dollars."
"Mr. Winslow accuses you of making it decline," April pointed out.
"I don't imagine the USNA authorities were pleased with that accusation either," Jeff said. "They'd much rather not hear that a few thousand people on the far side of the moon are capable of shifting the value of their currency. But if they'd asked me I'd have said they precipitated it. It's almost like a futures trader accusing a small bakery in Kansas City of crashing the bid on wheat by not ordering flour this week."
"Did you crash it?" April asked.
"Not on purpose," Jeff said. He sounded sincere, but not exactly unhappy about it.
April just gave him a questioning look.
"It might have been near the tipping point anyway," Jeff claimed. "I just was in a bit of a snit from being booted out." He paused. "Irwin is sure I consciously orchestrated it, and he's scared of me now."
"He doesn't act like it," April said. "He's doing more business with you than ever."
"Yeah, but you've been teaching me how to read people too well. It was easier sometimes when I was oblivious. He speaks slower and is careful what he says. As if he's scared to say the wrong thing, or I might do something crazy. What's he going to do? He still has limited ability to clear USNA dollars. Come out with his own bullion currency? Then they'd kick him out too. Everybody has accepted Solars and the market quotes them. I think he just decided he had to ride the tiger," Jeff said.
"He doesn't see it as a positive?" April asked.
"No, he insists Solars will eventually be valued too high and Earth people won't be able to buy our products. My take on it is nine billion people are a big enough market we could skim off value for decades before it was enough to worry about. It's not like we are anywhere near similar sized economies. He admitted they are still buying anything only we can make. The odd thing is he says they are trying to buy things that they should be able to make themselves. That agrees with some other things I'm hearing, but it doesn't make any sense to me. I don't understand why."
"I'd ask what they are trying to buy. Surely he'll provide that detail. He doesn't have to say which of his customers are getting the requests. Have Chen ask his Earth contacts why they wouldn't be producing those things for themselves. You know, it is cheaper to drop things down the gravity well than lift them out," April reminded him.
"Yeah, but I can probably figure out which customers from the 'what', and he knows it. Ideally you'd have full loads of similar value going both ways to have a long term stable situation. But it's never close to that in the real world, never has been. The high value stuff goes down and the loads to lift always have a good fraction of mass market commodities and food." Jeff stopped and scowled. "We do need more capacity. I'd love to need to worry about deadheading a shuttle one way or the other.
"And I've had requests for the ability to drop small packages in stealthy reentry vehicles. We got stuff to our agents in Europe that way during the flu, but they had the ability to move around freely and find safe remote locations to intercept them. We could practically drop one in the bed of a moving truck on a country road. But how are we going to do that with untrained people?" Jeff asked.
"Bribe a farmer," April said. "Somebody that has a big field and can plausibly deny he has any idea if weirdos are out in his field when he's home in bed," April said. "Surely you can hit a big field, and it shouldn't have close neighbors. Even untrained people should be able to retrieve something in a big flat field with no trees and marked boundaries."
"That seems practical," Jeff admitted.
"What do you need to drop that way?" April demanded. "It has to be a pretty high value item."
"The virus detecting touch panels," Jeff said. "They're already pretty rugged and we can easily make the internal wiring and electronics much more resistant to shock and vibration. Then we foam 'em in a sturdy box with shock absorbing foam, with a crush layer under it. You could just drop it from a few hundred meters and it would be fine. I've been informed that delivering it to Myanmar by the Tobiuo isn't going to happen. We'd need an order of twenty five or more, not ten, to make it worth the trip anyway, and Li says the route there is pirate infested and dangerous."
"And once you have the delivery system working there will probably be other uses for it."
"Yeah," Jeff agreed, "but when we dropped stuff for Chen's agents it was a rush, and cost wasn't the first concern. If we're dropping stuff to make money we want the cost kept way down. The stuff we dropped to Europe was smaller and took over two kilograms of carbon on the face of a ceramic heat shield. No way we can keep throwing away that much carbon and not get it back."
"I guess besides water and metal we're going to have to get carbon in the outer system too," April said. "Maybe scoop hydrocarbon off some of the moons."
"Yes, but I can't see moving methane with a bulk tanker. Not even liquefied. I think we'll have to process it to elemental carbon out there," Jeff decided.
"Unless there's someplace where there are deposits of long chain hydrocarbons," April said.
"Now that would be funny," Jeff said. "Vaseline mines!"
Chapter 18
Ben Patsitsas looked at the young man on the com screen with open suspicion. He was entirely too clean cut and earnest. He had on a soft golf shirt, but sat ramrod straight and his manner shouted military as clearly
as a row of medals on his chest.
"This is Martha Wiggen's residence," Ben confirmed. "However she doesn't refer to herself as President Wiggen now. You should be aware she doesn't even qualify to be President anymore. She renounced her USNA citizenship and is a voting citizen of Home. I'm her husband," Ben said in a tone that clearly indicated he felt the job title included protector.
"A legal quibble," the fellow said with a dismissive gesture. "I'm aware of who you are, that you're a writer. I've read your political dossier."
That made Ben smile to think they had a political dossier on him. It was ridiculous.
"I'm here to present a proposal to her from a rather large group of...admirers," he said, smiling like he thought that was a witty ruse. "I am charged with presenting it to her directly. I intend to be polite, but I can't go back and tell my people I was simply waved off by her staff and meekly complied. I will persist until President Wiggen grants me an interview. When might I come speak to her?"
"I am not staff," Ben said, slowly. "I'm family. You look like several kinds of trouble to me, and I'll be blunt. If you show up at my door and get too pushy, I'll shoot your silly ass dead and call housekeeping to come clean the corridor. Nobody will give me the least grief over it on Home, unless I breach pressure or shoot innocent bystanders." He reached across outside the range of the camera and drew an antique Webley revolver, that looked like a prop for a steam punk movie. Ben displayed it to assure the young man he had the means close at hand to do what he'd said.
"Is the security situation so bad you go armed inside your own residence?"
"I put my gun belt on the first time I go out in the morning," Ben explained. "That's usually breakfast. I just leave it on to go in and out, and don't usually think about having it on, until after supper, and I'm in for the evening. The security situation is just peachy, because I and most all my friends carry, and will all respond for each other at need."
"Oh, I did notice that seemed to be the local custom when I arrived yesterday."
"So, what you're really saying is you're going to make a pest of yourself until Martha speaks with you," Ben said.
They Said It Would Be Easy (April Book 7) Page 24
