"What is keeping me from going around and asking people if they have old spex to sell cheap and reselling them on eBay or The Mad Closet to make some money?" Eric interrupted.
"Nothing of which I am aware," Jeff said, thoughtfully. "Those are Earth corporations so you are too young to contract with them, but I assume you'll think of a dozen ways to work around that. The Private Bank will open accounts for you regardless of age. They would undoubtedly act as a proxy for you and open an auction account. and shipping is cheap on the down leg. But do you have the capital to buy the glasses?"
"You mean the money?" Eric asked.
"Yes, or anything to trade or something liquid that could be hypothecated to the bank to raise cash money. An Earth account, or valuables."
"No, I brought some stuff from home, but it's kid stuff. I doubt anybody would give me anything for it. They said we had eighty kilos of personal lift and my clothes took most of that and my mom let me bring some seashells and a few books, but most of our stuff got packed away and put in storage."
"What books?"
Eric looked at his mom right away. "You can tell him," she allowed.
"I have "The Mote in God's Eye", "Have Space Suit - Will Travel" and "Treasure Island."
"The 1911 edition?"
"Just an acid free reproduction of the 1911 edition," Eric corrected. "None of them are allowed in our school back home. If I took one to school they'd confiscate it. Having it at home is just antisocial, but they wouldn't come take it," he said, with no certainty at all.
"This does not surprise me," Jeff said grimly. "How about the seashells? Where are they from and how did you buy them?"
"I didn't buy 'em. We'd go down the coast and I picked them up on the beach and took them home. They're really pretty and I packed them very carefully so they wouldn't get smashed. I had them all laid out in a row on my window sills back home. But it doesn't look like there is any place to display stuff like that here."
Jeff smiled. "Spacers tend not to put out little nick-nacks. They have a mentality that they can become missiles under unexpected acceleration. I admit that is unlikely in something the size of Home, but it's human nature that those sort of habits get ingrained."
"Do you ever move it at all?" Linda asked, surprised.
"Yes, the last time they moved it you could see your coffee slosh over to one side of your cup. Otherwise it was pretty tough to tell it was moving. Eric, if you took some of your shells, maybe a few that are not your favorites and put each of them in a frame with a map showing where you picked it up and a short letter describing the circumstances and establishing the provenance, that is the provable history of its origins and chain of ownership, I believe you'd be surprised what some of the station dwellers would pay for a little reminder of ordinary Earth things like walking on a beach."
"I have pics of me on the beach too, but when I was younger."
"That would go in the frame nicely too. Didn't you save any money when you got a little?" Jeff asked, eyebrows all screwed up like it was hard to understand such a thing.
"I get an allowance, but I have to save it for college."
"I see," Jeff said, like he didn't. He refrained from asking, "All of it?"
"Trouble is, I really like my shells and I don't know if I'll ever get to go back to the beach and get more," Eric worried. "I don't want to sell them off. I think I'd regret it."
"Then you probably shouldn't. I'm afraid you'll have to think of some other service to offer people and build up to your spex trading idea. I'll leave that to you to figure something out."
"My dad told me his grandfather used to go cut lawns and shovel snow from people's sidewalks as a kid. But they don't let kids work like that now and you have to have a business license and a tax number and be insured and everything now, before you can work."
"I'm sure that is true back home on Earth, but on Home there are no licensing laws or age limits. If you can figure out something people will pay to have done, you can do it, as long as it is OK with your folks," he added, seeing a very unfriendly look from Linda.
"So, do you folks have any sweatshops yet, with little kids working twelve hour days assembling something?" Linda asked. Mo looked alarmed at the hostile tone she was taking with his new boss.
"There are so few children on Home I doubt they could fill a shift. Most parents want to see their children devoting the majority of their time to learning. But many of them see doing as the best way of learning. My father used to take me into Lucent with him and let me see how he designed nanoelectronic systems. I could go over and play at a lab bench and work with my hands making simple circuits and take things like the junk spex, of which we were speaking and modify them. It was very educational. It was in no way a sweatshop." He finally seemed a bit put out with her tone, which made him reconsider.
"I tell you what Eric. I like how you think. I can see you have been in a system that stifled any real opportunity to accumulate capital. Here," he said, flipping him a coin. "If you go into the Private Bank with your dad, when he sees about his pay, they will open you an account against this. It's issued by my bank. Consider it a personal loan with no collateral. If you succeed in your business ideas I'd be happy to get it back and any profit you care to share. If not, well we both guessed wrong. I'll take the risk," he decided.
"And I'll see you start of first shift day after tomorrow," he told Mo. "We'll do a suit fitting and start getting you squared away. Does that work for you?"
"That works. Where though?"
"Put my name in station com and it will show you my business offices. and unless it is messed up, it shouldn't show this cubic." He nodded and headed out the door suit under his arm.
"I'm surprised you didn't object to him giving Eric a loan," he said after the door was sealed.
"Yeah a single coin," Linda said unimpressed. "It looked to be about the size of a quarter. Big deal. How much can their local funny money be worth?"
Mo put out his hand and Eric reluctantly gave him the coin. Twenty-five grams Platinum it claimed on one face. Heavy little thing for its size. The last time he remembered seeing it on the news, platinum was running about twenty-thousand dollars USNA a Troy ounce. An ounce was a little bigger, but not all that much. He handed it back with a warning look not to say anything. Eric knew exactly what that look meant. Linda was off on something else with Lindsy already.
* * *
"Welcome to the Scientific Research and Industrial Production Orbital Station of the French Nation," the young lady welcomed them. "We have some consultations scheduled for tomorrow with the immigration authorities. We have some strictly perfunctory forms to fill out and necessary interviews to carry out, but they are simply formalities, your asylum has been approved on the highest levels. We will have translators available and take you to a hotel right now, so you can rest and refresh yourselves before dealing with those tedious details."
"That's very kind of you," Silverson thanked her switching to French. "My associates have started studying French, but I'm afraid it has only been a few days and they only have a handful of simple phrases. I was fortunate that I was in a diplomatic family and until I was sixteen went to a French private school and used French every day with our household help and out and about the city with my mother. If I can be of help with my people let me know."
"But of course. You do speak exceptionally well. and you have the cutest accent," she allowed, perhaps flirting with him a little. "Where was your family posted?" she asked, curious. "The Ivory Coast? Or perhaps St. Martin?" she guessed.
"Actually it was Paris."
"How lucky for you!" she said still smiling, but it had turned brittle and forced.
Silverman smiled back, too late to say oops, too late to say sorry. He just hoped she didn't have the authority to make their lives miserable. He hadn't meant to cast any aspersions on her accent at all. Damn.
* * *
"I may build it, but I sure as hell won't ride in it," Dave informed Jeff gruffly
, looking at the plans. "At least not down into the atmosphere," he qualified his objection.
"We've done computer modeling and it should vaporize the throat plug and blow it out against atmospheric pressure. The exhaust should keep the air out of the chamber right down to sea level. With a good margin actually. It's a lot like the old style diffusion pumps on steroids."
"At a steady state," Dave protested. "What about the back pressure and reflected wave from the initial pulse?" he asked, skeptically.
"That's a little harder to model," Jeff admitted. "It should be well within the pressure levels known to standard engineering practice."
"In what?" Dave asked directly. Dave was pretty hard to slip past with smooth phrases.
"Firearms. We'll build a hefty safety factor in the first drive, about like a howitzer breech in fact and think about reducing it after some real world experience."
"It isn't very pretty," Dave said, looking at the drawing.
"Ugly as sin and it will fly like a brick going sideways, but it will shed most of the heat of hypersonic passage in the displaced plasma instead of accumulating it in an ablative heat shield. Otherwise it would need refurbishing every third or fourth flight."
"Which means it will shed a shock wave that will bust windows on a corridor fifty kilometers wide if you take it below about twenty-five kilometers," Dave warned.
"Hey, take a full speed pass at five kilometers and I can save the expense of bombing them," he said, not entirely facetiously.
"We'll run the numbers, so you don't do it accidentally, but yeah, the overpressure is going to be fearsome. OK, I'll build it for you on one condition," Dave agreed, making up his mind.
"What's that?"
"You run the first one as a drone, like a robot freighter. I don't want to be the guy who enabled you to blow your silly little butt to plasma. We wire it up with extensive stress and strain sensors and measure the crap out of the thing, tear the drive all the way down to basic components after, if it survives and do checks for gross deformation, as well as microscopic surface inspections and crack detection. Then maybe, if it looks golden we trust a human in the crazy thing. It's damn scary and right on the edge of the development envelope I gotta tell you."
"Agreed, but this first one should still be a real human rated shuttle, with eight seats, two with acceleration neutralizers, not just a scale size. In fact being able to run it as a drone means you can lift bigger loads or two extra people without the mass of the pilots. That might be critical to do some time."
"Also, we drop the first one on a remote island or off in the middle of Antarctica. If it blows up trying to lift no harm to anyone and if it fails, but is sitting there stranded you can bombard it out of existence safely," Dave demanded.
Jeff just nodded an easy agreement. It seemed reasonable.
"You got it," Dave said satisfied and offered his hand. "I'm thinking six weeks on the rack for the basic build out. Then another two weeks for fitting internals and special systems."
"And no mounts for special weapons, you'll notice. Too much risk of having them captured. Just missiles. But make sure it has a decent coffee maker," Jeff reminded him, taking his hand.
* * *
"Ms. Lewis, I'm Linda Pennington and this is my daughter Lindsy and my son Eric. I inquired and found there is no active school on Home, but was informed you intend to start one soon. Could you tell me a little about how and what you intend to instruct and if you will have groups appropriate to their ages?"
"We have eleven students signed so far from six to seventeen. Everybody will be instructed in a common area. We'll form groups according to ability and age for the subject at hand. Some things like art or languages might have a wider age range than reading or mathematics. I will have an assistant to help me all day long and occasionally others. There are already a number of independent tutors on Home, used by the folks who homeschool. I don't pretend to be proficient in mathematics, so I will use a gentleman who teaches trigonometry and the calculus. I can teach simple algebra and plane geometry myself. Are you planning on blending my instruction with some of your own at home?"
"That's a good question," Linda admitted, a little taken aback. "I never considered formally instructing them myself. It is rather viewed as, antisocial, in North America. I'd have to see what resources I can find. I wanted them with other children as much for the socialization, as for formal instruction." and to give myself a sanity day, she thought, but didn't say aloud. "Do you think there will be any hostility toward them for being North American?"
"I haven't seen children thinking that way," Faye told her. "They usually have to be taught by adults to dislike foreigners and you might be surprised how little animosity is directed at North Americans by Home citizens. They do tend to speak very harshly of the North American government, but neither you or your husband are politicians are you?"
"Hardly," Linda laughed. "I'm a housewife and he's a mining engineer."
"In any case I wouldn't tolerate that sort of mindless prejudice," Faye told her. "I expect to have courtesy and respect, or I'll send the student home. If they demonstrate it is too deeply ingrained to stifle I'll remove them as a student. I intend to make a profit but I won't deal with foolishness and stress to make a few extra dollars."
"What is your tuition schedule?" Linda inquired, trying to appear unconcerned.
"I'm starting at three-hundred dollars a day per student. Half days for two-hundred. If a student doesn't have a cafeteria card I put their lunch on mine. I may charge for exceptional expenses like hard copy books or really exotic tutoring and expensive art supplies. But I'm projecting what I can afford to provide in the future, with a bigger class and lower costs. I hope to grow into that."
"Oh my," Linda said stunned.
"Oh, I know I'm low balling it," Faye said, completely misinterpreting her shock. "It's not like I need to do this to eat. Don't be afraid they'll just get baby-sat for that. I think you will be pleased with what they tell you when they come home."
"Would you consider taking my two Tuesdays and Thursdays for now and we'll see how that goes and what I can add at home for now?" she suggested. That was absolutely all she could afford.
"Certainly. The first couple days will probably be interviews," she explained. "I will be asking what they have already studied and finding out what they are interested in doing and perhaps a very little testing if it seems useful. That will give me a chance to find out their personalities a little bit and they mine of course. I expect the children with special skills to teach others. I keep telling them that you don't really know a subject, until you can explain it to others."
"Well, that's an interesting take on it," Linda said surprised. "It makes me think back to my mother. She could cook up a storm, but she didn't teach my sister or me how to cook. I wonder why?"
"I wonder if it wasn't too hard to teach both of you?" Faye speculated. "Did you get along with your sister or were there sibling rivalries? If she had picked just one it would have looked like favoritism, but if you argued, she likely didn't want that in her kitchen while she was trying to work."
"That's very perceptive," Linda admitted. "My older sister was a very strong personality and bossy. I think you might just have the right of it."
And you are you sweet and mild of personality and lack aggressiveness? Faye wondered silently. Somehow she doubted it, but she smiled and accepted the compliment.
Chapter 21
After his father settled all his banking business, Eric slid off the chair and stood against the desk. "I wonder if I can do some business with you?" he asked very tentatively. The fellow had a sign made up with his name on his desk. It said Irwin Hall, with no title.
"Sure, that's why I'm here all day until 1700," the fellow assured him, very friendly.
"I would like to make a deposit and ask your advice on how business is done here."
"Certainly. Let me open an account for you and get your signature. You're new just like your dad so you likel
y don't have a hanko either do you?"
"No sir, but I will get one if you think I should." It felt strange, but good, that this adult was speaking to him as an equal and he wasn't smiling a condescending little amused smile, or constantly eye shifting to his dad, to make sure each statement was OK.
"Yes, your dad is going to simply deposit wages and pay bills. He really doesn't need one. But if you are going to actively do business on Mitsubishi 3 it would be best to have one. You go down the corridor anti-spin," he said pointing the way, "and you will come to a door with a Japanese flag and writing on a plaque by the door. That's the Japanese consulate. Among other things he will very kindly make you a registered hanko. You want to guard it closely. It obligates you on a document just like your signature. Although the new ones won't print unless your thumb is on the end and they're pretty hard to hack."
"Are they expensive?" Eric worried.
"I'm not sure if you would think so or not. Last time I knew, they were running about eight-hundred dollars USNA. Do you regard that as expensive?"
"I've never had that much money before. I guess I better find out how much this is worth," he said and laid the One Solar coin on the desk. Eric hated to give it up. It was really 'da point', as the kids said now and he'd have liked to just keep it forever. On one side it showed Home with just two rings not the third they were starting on and the Rock way closer behind it than it really was. The Earth was behind, not the full face of it, but an intruding arch, filling about two thirds of the coin face and the full moon floating in the area of the heavens left over.
But on the side he put up to Mr. Hall it had no graphics and inside a thick raised rim said: System Trade Bank of Home, 25 grams Pt – 99.9999 Pure - One Solar – 0000000217.
Irwin slid his working mat to the side and keyed something on his hand computer. He dropped the coin on the hard desk surface and read the screen. Satisfied it rang true he keyed a request into the computer and made an inquiry of the System Trade Bank. It informed him Solar 0000000217 was the simple property of Eric Pennington, previous owner of record, Jefferson Moses Singh.
April 4: A Different Perspective Page 15
