Family Law

by Mackey Chandler

  "Thank you. I'd be happy to accept your hospitality," Hiroshi decided, sitting down. "Will your daughter be joining us then?" he inquired innocently.

  Gordon laughed easily and corrected him gently. "Lee here is my daughter. She is daughter to me and has been acknowledged and seated by the Mother of our clan as a matter of law, so she is Derf. You might say she is naturalized I suppose. In fact she was given the right to offer hospitality at the clan table. I have to tell you that's an extraordinary gift, of a right usually reserved to the First Mother. I'm rather proud of her," he admitted.

  "What did you wonder about the weed?" Hiroshi asked Lee, pouring himself an orange juice. He didn't appear to have any problem with her adoption. "Am I mistaken, or do I catch just a hint of Blinky in the room?"

  "Well, we wondered about the origin of the name, Blinkweed." Lee explained. "We looked it up in the Web mirror on Derfhome station and there was no explanation of how it came to be named that. And yes, I do have a pouch of it given me as a gift. After I clean up I rub a bud between my hands and wipe it in my hair."

  "Ah, you should know that a standard pouch of prime bud is worth about seventy- thousand EuroMarks on Earth right now." That made Lee and Gordon raise eyebrows to each other. "But I salute your use of the straight bud without bringing in any secondary scents. Blinky is one of the few prime scents that will stand alone so well. As to the name, if you let it bolt, that is, go to seed, it produces a single black elongated seed at each bud. The outer pedals of the flower fall off and the heavy seed hangs over on the stem in the wind," he demonstrated with his hand curved over. "The inner petals cover and uncover the seed as it rocks in the wind," he said, spreading his fingers and bobbing his hand up and down, "making it look like a blinking dark eye."

  "Marvelous," Lee clapped her hands together, delighted. "We'd never have figured it out on our own," she admitted.

  "It's probably cited in the full Web," Hiroshi explained, "but colony mirrors may only have a quarter to a third of the English Web and no other languages. Almost every item, except quotes of speeches and recent news articles are condensed."

  "Jack my first father explained that to me," Lee agreed nodding. "We carry about a tenth of the English Web in our ship library and it has been very useful in my schooling. Gordon, we have to find a way to buy the full Web for Derfhome. I imagine we can contract for ships that make regular runs to carry the memory for us."

  "That would be," Hiroshi struggled for words, "a staggering expense."

  "I was told we should have a pretty good income from this find," Lee said. "I can't think of anything better to buy than knowledge. Mr. Bertrand, can you give us an idea what sort of response you expect at auction?"

  "Why don't I wait until we have some privacy," he suggested looking at Hiroshi.

  "It will be a matter of public record every time the Commission sends us a dividend," Gordon pointed out. "Would you keep what you hear to yourself for a few days Hiroshi? Unless you can do some personal trading on it. I couldn't blame a man for that," he allowed around some sausage.

  "On my honor," he said very formally. "I will take no liberties with your information."

  "There ya go. Speak freely Mr. Bertrand and I wish you'd relax and have some breakfast. Do you have any reason to think somebody would want to harm us?"

  "Not at all!" Bertrand blurted out shocked. "I mean - you have the risks any wealthy people do. I'm sure the hotel security and yours are more than adequate to keep you safe. I'd certainly say something if I suspected a problem. What makes you ask such a thing?"

  "I thought maybe you were afraid the strawberries might be poisoned or something," Gordon explained. "You're sitting there ramrod straight like a soldier. Makes me uncomfortable just watching you. Here, try some of this," he offered, serving him with his own hand a little glazed apple pastry. "It's kosher and probably will pass for halal if you observe any restrictions. I think they are the best thing here this morning so far," he said popping one in his mouth. For him they were bite size. For a human they were just small enough to be eaten out of hand.

  "Thank you," he said softening a bit. "I am nervous. This is the biggest claim I've seen in my career," he admitted. "I'm North American and since your vessel is registered North American that is why I'm assigned to process it. I'm appointed to the Commission by the North American President and they expect me to maximize the process to get as much as possible in the bidding."

  "That's what we want too," Gordon pointed out. "No reason for us to be at odds on anything at all."

  "I must say, it's good you picked Green, Bennett and Glenn to write your patent. First it's good to see a North American flagged ship, stick with a North American firm and these fellows are top rate for wording the patent to wring every last dollar out of the claims. Economy in having your patent prepped can come back to hurt you later when people challenge provisions, because some detail was not noted, or even a simple typo was missed. It could make a huge difference in your final pay out and ours too of course," he said smiling.

  "I didn't know any of this," Lee spoke up. "I know we get fifteen percent and the rest goes to the Commission. But how you guys divide it up nobody ever explained."

  "It didn't seem important to detail," Gordon said. "Basically the eighty-five percent that the commission gets, most of it goes to the government the ship is registered under. We get a tax credit, so we don't pay tax on our fifteen percent. All the space going nations send a rep to the commission and they vote on how to spend the portion that the flag nation doesn't get. Some of it they spend on quarantine and safety, some of it they spend on small nations that don't have a spacefaring capacity and this is the only way they get any benefit of what was decided long ago is common property. In theory all of it is offered at auction to the highest bidder, even poor nations bidding with their credits from the commission. Do I have it fairly straight?" he asked.

  "Yes, but I'd add that the spacefaring nations do this by consensus. If something appears to give one member an undue advantage any member of the club can veto the process. It hasn't happened in awhile and that's part of my job to make sure everything is fair so it doesn't. I can't just arbitrarily decide that something found in a new world would really benefit Chad and direct the benefit of it there. And it has to be monetized in some way, so the benefit can be carefully quantified and made equal all around. Handing out benefits directly in kind is frowned on."

  "Huh," Gordon grunted. "And it has to be monetized so nothing escapes being taxed," Gordon added cynically.

  Bertrand just spread his hands as if to say, 'But of course,' conceding the point.

  "I know that look," Gordon said looking at Lee. She was staring off in the distance sitting very still. "I can practically hear the gears whirring about in your head. What did we say that got you thinking so hard?"

  "I think I should wait and ask you about it in private." Lee said. That wasn't like her at all.

  "If it's that bad you probably should wait until we are in our ship in space," Gordon told her. "Once you become a billionaire who knows who might snoop on you?"

  "Oh for crying out loud," Lee complained. "I might forget the question if I wait that long. I just wondered - The commission takes the lion's share. What is to keep somebody, like Faraway for example, from finding a world and keeping it for themselves? Why split it with anybody? Couldn't they auction it off, or develop it themselves?"

  "Audacious!" Hiroshi exclaimed, amused and delighted. "She'd take on all the power players and overturn the order of things!" he said laughing.

  "As attractive as that is my little pirate, the Commission does do something worthwhile," Gordon admitted. "The members all will lend their space navies and military power, to protect anyone from having their claim wrestled away. It used to be in the first few decades of interstellar exploration, whoever found a world had to run quickly back to Earth and get an expedition organized with military force, to run back and hold their discovery against claim jumpers and pirates who wou
ld loot visible resources. Everybody is quite happy with the current civilized arrangement, that precludes interstellar wars and raiders dropping into the back country of new worlds to try to snatch high value minerals and such away. If we had to hold our claim against all comers, how much of that other eighty-five percent do you think we'd have to spend on out-system sensors, interceptors, killer satellites, mercenaries and spaceport defense systems?"

  "Uh," she thought about it, "quite a chunk of it."

  "And that would be true of any new world," Mr. Bertrand pointed out. "Instead of civilization benefiting from these new finds, much of it would be wasted protecting it from each other. There was a human cost in casualties too. Everyone benefits from the current arrangement," he assured her. "Really, it is one of the most sensible things politicians have agreed to in the last couple centuries."

  "OK, works for me," she agreed. "If we ever meet a really advanced starfaring race, we'll have to work real hard to get them to come onboard the system," she predicted.

  "There are scholarly papers about the very thing," he told her," and I can assure you the Commission has first-contact people trained to present our system of live-and-let-live, to any such newcomers in a positive light."

  "I can be personally happy with my cut I'm sure. When will we start to get some of it?" she asked Bertrand.

  "You two have already received mixed cash payments of something over a hundred and fifty million USNA dollars while you were in quarantine and hard contracts for a bit more than fifty billion USNA dollars in payments, ranging from months to some years," he assured her. "You get paid in North American dollars, what with your vessel being registered there, but Gordon wanted the majority account in a Ceres dollar position, with EuroMarks a second choice, so they are bought at market automatically. At each midnight Zulu time it is paid out to the Ceres accounts you gave us."

  "Wow and that's just our cut? What did you sell off that quick?" she asked enthused.

  The rep opened his pad and squinted at the small screen a bit. "Advance payment for lease of land, for a full service spaceport. We try to avoid selling land until it is very mature in value. That runs ninety-nine years, with escalating clauses based on traffic each year. Advances and bonds paid for various service businesses, such as fueling at the port. Rights to install and sell various necessary services like satellite communications, GPS service, emergency beacon response and aero-space traffic control.

  "All those sort of things are annual fees which will rise with volume of business of course. They will make you much more in ten years than now. We are entertaining bids for pharmaceutical search rights for all the samples you collected and rights to search further on Provenance. If there are actual drugs found, that will be a separate source of fees as we retain the patent rights for organisms.

  "Your patent was written as a stellar claim, not a planetary claim. That's one of those details for which you want a first rate firm writing the patent. So you will have Helium 3 mining rights on the gas giant out system from Providence once local traffic makes it profitable. That of course will get bigger and bigger as business in the system grows and even more if traffic picks up beyond to other stars.

  "Your lawyers were so thorough, they reserved personal landing and field rights and fuel rights for you to personally mine no matter who buys the franchise. Most don't think of that given non-explorer ships rarely carry fuel scoops.

  "Ah, you have a patent for a food plant, Pearl Potatoes. So you must have short-form proved it out to patent it. You should have an agent offer the non-food rights for you."

  "Huh?"

  "You can sell any rights beyond simply raising it as a food plant. The leaves may have value. The genome may have segments people will want to incorporate into other organisms. This plant patent alone might make you a wealthy woman."

  "We did prove 'em out," Gordon confirmed. "They are so good we were eating them every day on Providence. We brought about four hundred kilos of them back for trade samples, but when we run through the hundred kilos or so of them I have stashed in the galley I'm going to miss them. They're really delicious. It will be a couple years I assume before you guys can get up to speed to market them widely."

  "I would like to bid on exclusive rights to Providence's sources of basic scents and essential oils, for the cosmetics and topical therapy markets," Hiroshi told him. "We have a history of development that favors our actually bringing products to market, instead of simply sub-licensing them, so I ask a favored status on those rights."

  "I'll let such a bid," Bertrand agreed, making a note in his pad. "I have forty-seven small deals such as I described sealed and paid, that contributed to your fund. Do you want me to detail them and print them all out for you?" he asked Lee.

  "No, I have an idea now how it will go. I'll get the information later how to access it all online and I'll look at it regularly. I'm sure it's going to be fascinating."

  "I've let everything it is proper for me to put out on a non-bid basis. Some things that are a matter of security, like the spaceport and global communications, we are more concerned with performance than price. If you two have no objections we are going to make a public announcement at noon and start revealing the discovery to our broader staff, so we can solicit bids such as Hiroshi wishes to make."

  "You haven't announced there was a living world found? Well sure, go ahead. I'd have thought you'd have done that as soon as you could see it was a valid claim," Gordon said.

  Hiroshi and Bertrand looked at each other. Obviously Gordon had said something so outrageous they didn't know what to say. Then Hiroshi broke down and laughed. "My friends, forgive me, have you been watching the news feeds? Have you called out to any friends or relatives and revealed your find?"

  "I've been watching a bit when Gordon was busy," Lee admitted. "I haven't called anybody locally because we don't know anyone. My parents rarely talked about any relatives and they made it clear they weren't close to anyone they'd left behind."

  "What are they talking about on the news feeds? Hiroshi asked her, smiling.

  "The high price of water in North America and a typhoon in the Indian Ocean that was going to mess up someplace – I forget where. And how badly the Mexico City team was beaten at football." Lee rattled off. "There was a cooking show on too and they made a big deal about how tank raised shellfish are just as good as wild and a quarter of the price."

  Hiroshi nodded, looking inexplicably amused. "Mr. Bertrand when will you have a news conference?"

  "At noon, if the discoverers have no objection. It's all been kept to my office staff and security so far and non-bidding suppliers sign non-disclosures, but it's hard to hold a lid on it. If I delay too long somebody is going to leak it. Do you desire to stand on the stage with us when we make the announcement? You don't have to take questions if you don't want." He was looking at Gordon and didn't seem to be offering it to Lee.

  "We got lucky," Gordon told him. "No reason for anybody to eyeball me. There are enough who don't like Derf. Why give them something to stir them up? I'd just as soon you keep our information private, where it doesn't have to be in the public records."

  Bertrand nodded and looked like he wanted to say more, but refrained.

  "I won't break it early," Hiroshi repeated. "I gave my word, but Lee, Gordon, I suggest you turn on the telly there," he tilted his head at the big flat screen on the wall, "about eleven-thirty and see what sort of reaction it produces." He and Bertrand both stood and made brief goodbyes.

  Chapter 19

  "If it's OK with you," Gordon told her after their guests had left, "I'm going to send about two thirds from our Commission account to cover our advance from the bank and put about the same amount on our cash cards as the advance we have now. There is a ship lifting for Derfhome tomorrow that can carry the documents."

  "Fine," Lee agreed, indifferent really. "Let's get out of the hotel soon and do something," she begged.

  "Armstrong is supposed to be one of the system's pret
tiest cities. Armstrong is most of the Lunar Republic. Don't be surprised if people use the two almost interchangeably. I was never outside the Commission compound when I was here before, let's walk and find someplace for lunch."

  "That will be fun, just like when you took me all over Derfhome station."

  "Don't be shocked, but I'm going to wear a jumpsuit when we go out."

  "Whatever for? Is it chill out here?" she asked.

  "No, but there are extreme groups of Earthies who feel Derf and the other races are animals. Actually, some of them are so crazy they want all animals to be dressed in public too. They take video or pix of any aliens in public and show us in as unfavorable a light as they can. The Mothers quietly asked us to wear something in public in the Earth system. I'm in agreement with it actually. Besides there are other advantages, pockets are nice too," he said smiling. "But I don't want to hear any crap about lederhosen."

  "Whatever," she said rolling her eyes, "anything in particular you want me to wear?"

  "Long pants and soled shoes, if you would please and in the Earth system you should wear gloves in public. It's not style, it's for disease. In fact when we go down Earthside there are places it's smart to wear a mask. I have data link spex for us too," he added.

  "If it's that bad a filth hole, why don't we skip the parts where you need a mask?" she asked, wrinkling her nose up.

  "Perhaps we can," he agreed.

  "I was too busy talking to do breakfast justice," Gordon complained. "Get yourself something if you want before I ask them to take it away." He started making another plate, with a couple pounds of ham slices and pineapple chunks and Lee found room for another of the pastries and a cup of tea.

  Chapter 20

  A full belly had Gordon taking the little postmeal nap he favored. Lee let him sleep, knowing it didn't last long. Sure enough in a half hour he paused breathing, got suddenly still and his eyes popped open.