April 4: A Different Perspective

by Mackey Chandler

  "Why wouldn't it?"

  "We don't have a decent model of what makes it work. No real theory. So we have no idea how it will function away from the thick gravitational gradient near a planet. We've never tested it in outside that environment. I'd be happy to, but we've never had time and funds for a deep space prone to go actually measure it."

  "This is critical enough to our effort we might be willing to cooperate with you in such a probe. Especially if it could radio back the test results in a timely manner, so we could apply them to our building program."

  "That's a welcome offer. We could send it to Jupiter and have it slingshot around the planet to come home. You should be aware though, that our device is not going to allow you to have anything approaching a one G deck, where people walk around with a one G pull on them from head to foot. Right now, you are looking at a state of the art, which will allow you to form a one G pull, with perhaps a plus or minus tenth-G difference from one side of your body to the other laying down. Think of it as a tidal gradient. Would you like to sit in a one of our pilot seats and experience the system?"

  "That would probably tell me more about applying it to our problems, than all the graphs and technical data in the world."

  "We have a ship at dock. Let's go over and let you experience it. Perhaps we can work a trade of equipment for an interest in your venture."

  * * *

  "We are being probed," the head of station, Seattle, complained angrily.

  "We're always being probed one way or another," his security head shrugged.

  "Not physically. Electronically, distant optical surveillance, yes, but not invaded." He tossed a tiny wad of fine wires and foil on the desk.

  "What, uh, was that?"

  "Some sort of robotic drone. I'm almost certain it flew."

  "It isn't like you to qualify statements."

  "There was a crow thrashing about in distress on the lawn. It was unusual enough I wanted to know why. This was in its gullet. I theorize it thought it a moth or junebug and swallowed it in midair. It is of course indigestible. Whoever designed these obviously didn't test them in real world conditions sufficiently. They need some way to repel birds."

  "These? You've found more than one of them?"

  "No, but it's like turning a light on and finding a roach. You know there is never just one."

  * * *

  Molson strapped in the number two seat, as Jeff instructed. "You need to hook the helmet link on the back that limits helmet motion too," Jeff instructed. "Here, on the couch edge, behind the belt lock," He guided the man's hand until he found the lever inside a guard. "Pull until you feel a snap and then try to lean forward and lift your head."

  He tried to lift his head but it only went about a centimeter before it hit a cushioned stop. "It's set to allow you to turn your head a good thirty degrees each way," Jeff explained. "You need that to see out the back edge of the view ports, piloting, but I'd set it to about ten degrees if you were a passenger." Jeff moved over to the command couch and flipped some switches, bring up power on the systems he needed. Some of the lights went from red to green. "The seat is going to reconfigure and lift your legs," Jeff warned him.

  "You don't have to undock to show me?"

  "Nah, it's still pretty much an inverse square field, unless you are down in the guts of the thing, where it gets a little more complicated. All that's inside the housing and you won't have to deal with it," Jeff assured him. "It would be hard to detect outside our hull. I'm going to run it up about a quarter of the range now," he alerted him again.

  There was a barely-felt vibration and a faint whine near the limits of audibility.

  "Oh my goodness, I'm hanging, uh, down, or is it up, on my straps? It feels weird," he said, amazed. His arms had floated up at first, but then he pulled them back across his chest. "My legs seemed like they are pulled up more than my torso."

  "Yep, you can take more acceleration that way. Your heart doesn't have to work as hard to pump blood to the legs. So to use it the way you guys are thinking, the units would be behind you, pulling you down, into the couch, or bunk, or whatever."

  "We need this. What will it take to get it for a crew of six?"

  "Let's go talk to my mum," Jeff offered. "A lot of it is up to her."

  * * *

  Heather greeted April with a hug, prolonged when April wouldn't let go of her and spoke softly in her ear and then she was allowed to greet Jeff.

  "Johnson, we are in conference," Heather called on com. "Don't call me on com unless you have an invasion you can't repel yourself. – No, not Wiggen either," she said emphatically, to his unheard question, tension crackling in her voice. She took her spex off and left them on the console.

  "Come on, let's go to my quarters," she invited. "I'll make some tea and we can talk."

  In the administrative dome Dakota lifted an eyebrow to Johnson. "Big boss talk-talk," he said, with a smirk. Dakota feigned to not hear.

  When they didn't come out in a couple hours, Dakota started to worry a little. Then they missed lunch. When they finally did came out before supper, there was no explanation or new orders. Heather checked the com board and called for a rover to go somewhere. They suited up and seemed as happy as could be, but left in the rover, still without going to supper. There were always rations in a rover of course, but not a nice sit-down meal.

  "Well, apparently nothing happened that is going to upset our world," Dakota said, with a sigh of relief. Johnson squinted, visibly holding laughter in.

  "What?" Dakota asked, unhappy with him. She didn't communicate this way, with smiles and frowns and eye rolling and what she felt bordered on insubordinate innuendo. Couldn't he just spit it out what he had to say, honestly?

  "They all had wet hair, fresh from the shower," was all he'd say.

  Chapter 31

  "What the hell is this?" the custodian asked his supervisor. He was holding a shiny silver bug trapped in a water glass, with a paperback book sealing off its quest for freedom. When he sat it on the table it made a circuit of its prison checking for openings and then sat in the bottom of the glass waiting. After a few seconds it slowly became the same color as the table.

  "Where did you find that? It creeps me out."

  "I was dusting the overhead lights in the lunch room and disturbed it."

  It wasn't until the next morning that it worked its way up the table of organization to the head of station. By then it was in a cherry jelly jar, with a few completely unnecessary air holes punched in the lid.

  "I want this building searched, top to bottom, like you are looking for a lost gold mine," he ordered. "every light fixture, anything that has a bottom surface, starting with my desk here. and send this RUSH to our national labs and get a complete analysis what it senses and how it communicates." The jelly jar got a private jet ride across the country.

  Two days later they knew what frequency it used to send a very low power pulse, when it had archived sufficient data. It wasn't until late that day they detected such a transmission, but with no directional fix. Getting everything set up to locate it took another day and two more burst transmissions, to localize it to the head of station's office.

  Finally they tore the office apart. They disassembled the desk and other furniture, tore the couch to pieces, pulled up the carpeting and set up temporary lighting so they could rip the lighting fixtures out. Bare wires dangled from the ceiling.

  Finally they pried the chair rail off the wainscoting and found it flattened and wedged up the crack from the bottom.

  "Oh crap, it did a burst transmission when we uncovered it," a techie said.

  "Why would it do that?"

  "It probably had audio archived and transmitted video of the last few seconds. With my face up nice and close. I don't like that at all."

  With it removed they set detectors in every room and waited. When a full day passed with no transmissions, they declared themselves clean. The order went out to check every agency building world-wide.
Their detectors were not however, sensitive enough to discover any emissions from the parking lot.

  Attempts to trace the origins of the bugs ran up against the problem that there were already over fifty-thousand sold, with a dozen Japanese shops along the main drag in Akihabara selling them from eighteen dollars each in lots of a thousand, to two hundred and fifty dollars a single copy. One shop in Vancouver was already selling them grey market to early adapters, for five hundred dollars apiece. They carried no serial number.

  * * *

  Heather parked the rover looking out at April's lot. Jeff left the command chairs for the women and put a folding chair from the back between them. The sun was out of direct view behind the mountains to their right, so that side was in deep shadow. Ahead of them and to the left it was still brilliant with sunlight and the boundary was not a simple line, but a hash of long shadows, growing longer as they watched.

  Jeff got in the supplies and opened three cans of self-heating stew, pulling the tabs and letting then sit to warm up. He opened a tin of brown bread, as well as small jars of strawberry jam and peanut butter. He set the plug in skillet to a hundred eighty degrees and cut slices of the dark brown bread to grill for dessert. By then it was time to stir each can of stew, the heat was generated in the container wall, but it would burn before the center got hot if not stirred. He could smell Heather was taking care of the coffee, the rich odors all filled the rover.

  They sat in companionable silence, watching the shadows chase the light away, until Jeff had to tell the interior lights to come up 5 percent. That gave him enough light to flip the bread and bring the stew up front without burning himself. A full mug of coffee was waiting for him.

  "I need to go right back with you, to work on the shuttle finish."

  "I can stay a few days if you need to wrap anything up here," April offered.

  "You did say you could handle roughing it, if you had a shower."

  "The stew is really pretty good," she argued. "It's got plenty of chunks of identifiable vegetables and a decent amount of beef. This isn't roughing it."

  "We buy the stuff rich people take backpacking. It costs about three times what the supermarket stuff does and it heats up hotter too."

  "Our bread is going to burn if you don't catch it," Heather warned.

  Jeff hurried to the back and returned with everything on a tray. "The tray's clean. We don't seem to have any plates, but you can work on a napkin if you want."

  April loaded a slice up with peanut butter and jam, thoroughly content.

  "I wonder if anyone makes tinned cream cheese?" Heather thought out loud.

  "I shall make diligent inquiry," Jeff promised. "Your wish is my command."

  "I thought my wish was your command," April teased.

  "That too."

  "Such confidence," Heather marveled. "I'm worried he may be getting a little full of himself. Don't you think?"

  "It's a definite danger," April agreed. She leaned over and kissed him with strawberry lips. Heather nibbled on his ear waiting a turn. When April withdrew Jeff started to protest and had it smothered by Heather's kiss before he could get a whole word out.

  "We can take turns eating his dessert, while the other keeps him occupied," April suggested.

  Jeff sort of whimpered.

  "Oh my, his little heart is going pitty patter," Heather told April.

  "It certainly is," she agreed laying a hand flat on his chest to feel.

  "Males are the weaker sex," Heather reminded April. "They die young."

  "They die stupid!" Jeff insisted, indignant. "I'm not going to do that lethal heroic stuff."

  "Are you not the Jefferson Moses Singh who flew a spaceship and had never bothered to read the first page of the manual, or take a lesson and came home with a hole blown through it big enough to jump through?" Heather inquired.

  "Well yeah, but Happy made me to do it!"

  "You're right, he'll jump in with both feet and die spectacularly. We can only hope somebody captures it on video and enjoy the brief time we have him," April agreed.

  "Are you not the girl I remember in that news video, with laser beams and bullets holes laced all around you, calmly blasting away at men in space armor?" Jeff protested "Or do you have an evil twin?"

  "No, twin. Heather will have to do. I have minions now, to deal with that rough stuff."

  "Please ladies, might I finish my dessert?" he asked, piteously.

  "We are rejected for mere food," Heather groused.

  "Weakling," April complained, leaning back.

  "I am wronged from both sides."

  "Get used to it," Heather suggested, then looked thoughtful. "Are people going to give us a hard time, seeing us together?"

  "I have news for you. We are already a public threesome so often, people have been making little remarks to me for some time."

  "Remarks?" Heather asked.

  "Just, uh, the guys. There seems to be an element of, well, jealousy, that you two get along. The women don't say much, but I get some venomous looks, from the older ladies at least."

  "I must admit, Adzusa asked some very pointed questions, clear back when I went down to Earth and she accompanied me. "I simply told her it wasn't anybody's business and certainly not a matter of public interest. I didn't deny either of you. I'd never do that."

  "I think that's exactly the tack to take," Heather agreed. "We've had a public business relationship for a long time. Nothing beyond that is anyone's concern."

  "Whatever you two say," Jeff agreed, wisely.

  * * *

  "Eddie has asked me, upon the advice of Miss Lewis, to inquire if your sailing ship, in which you and she spent time together, would be available to transport aquatic or aerial drones to release points, outside the maritime boundaries of various nations, or meet a water landing shuttle in international waters."

  "Oh my, an ocean landing shuttle? That just opens up all sorts of possibilities, doesn't it? You may inform her I gave the Tobiuo as a severance payment to Lin, who she knows very well. I can of course lay her offer before him, but he is her master now and will decide what jobs he wishes to accept. She was operating under the name The Sly Spy when we transferred her and he may have reverted or picked a new name for her."

  "I would like to present it to Mr. Persico as if I have recruited you," Chen suggested.

  "Well you have!" Papa-san insisted. "In every way that pertains to their organization. I'm entirely happy with working up-line through you. Would you also remind Miss Lewis that she offered a power source for the Tobiuo, to greatly increase its cruise capabilities and to give them extravagant auxiliary power? If they are to work for her she should make good on that deal. It also wouldn't hurt to remind her that it affords spacers an opportunity for vacations, away from the political and social problems they might otherwise suffer on an Earth visit. Perhaps some arrangement might be made to trade services, to everyone's benefit."

  * * *

  "Good morning, Cindy, Frank. May I have tea with you and show you some things?" Frank had just made coffee and was putting the beans back in the store safe.

  "Of course my dear, you know where everything is, help yourself, please." Lindsy left an actual paper notebook on the table, but Cindy resisted the urge to peek, although that must be what Lindsy was going to show her.

  "I've been doing some sketches of ideas I have for clothing," Lindsy revealed when she had her tea. "I'm just no good drawing on a computer, so I use paper and pencil." She opened to the middle and slid it to Cindy. "This is an outfit with high boots and jeans. The pockets are horizontal and zippered, just below the belt and no rear pockets so it's sleek. The belt is extra wide and special just for it. The loops have to be big to hold it."

  What surprised Cindy was not the design of the clothing, but the drawing. The figure was not drawn floating on the page, it was in a detailed setting, an old fashioned hotel lobby with an elevator on the far wall, leather furniture, carpets and ferns in planters, There were other fig
ures, simplified, but not that much, inhabiting the setting. The model was leaning on the registration desk , impatient, pouting, one leg extended lithe as a leopard.

  "This is a beautiful drawing and the pants are, indeed, very sleek. I've not seen that pocket treatment in a very long time and it does avoid gapping when you bend or sit."

  "So it is possible to really sew it up that way?"

  "Certainly. It is harder to reach in such a pocket, but you usually make them shallow to avoid needing to stick your whole hand inside them. They are easier to make really than a conventional pocket. This is remarkable, the extra detail, the way you set a total scene instead of just the figure."

  "It looks stupid all alone. I saw this scene in an old movie and used it, but moved things around a little bit to make it work."

  "Where did you learn to draw like this?" Cindy wondered.

  "I doodle all the time. I had an art class a couple years ago, but if you don't get good marks in it they won't let you sign up for the advanced classes. My teacher hated the way I draw, like the ferns there, I draw the part hanging toward the middle of the drawing in detail, but as I get out toward the edge I just do the outline with less and less detail until near the edge of the paper it's just a few swoopy lines to suggest where the ferns extend and you have to kind of fill in the details in your head."

  "And your teacher hated this?"

  "Yeah, he'd ask me why I didn't finish it. He wanted the whole thing to look like a photograph edge to edge. Life is too short, I'm not going to sit and do all that. That's not the important part anyway, I want you looking here," she said, tapping the figure with a finger.

  "Lindsy dear, I'm going to cut straight to the point. Your teacher was a fool. This is lovely work. Your clothing design is fine and you certainly should pursue that too, but your drawing is wonderful and you should never have been discouraged from it."

  "You're sweet," Lindsy said patting Cindy's hand. "I wish I had some more to show you. I have a couple boxes of loose drawings down on Earth, in storage, but this notebook is all I brought up."