"All the comforts of home," Diana quipped. "I'll call Ames and tell him to pedal the live-in package to somebody else and I'll do the treatments out-patient. He better give me a discount or I'll make his life miserable."
"Tell him if he doesn't give you at least a partial rebate you'll write about it in "What's Happening". He'll know what you mean, and be happy to comply. It makes you sound like you know how things work here too."
"Which I may seriously need to learn."
"Can you find your way here?" April asked.
"Have a map," Diana said with no confidence at all.
"A paper map?" April said with scorn.
"Yeah..."
"Totally useless. Are you down to the one G level with the offices and cafeteria yet?"
"Not yet. That's where I was going, but there was a fellow who was friendlier than I liked and a mob jamming into the elevator, so I went back to the security station and asked the lady cop where there was a public com. I mentioned calling you by name. She looked like she had never heard of the idea of a public phone and handed me her pad. Did you know the cops have your com code in their one touch list? I'm not sure if that's good or bad."
"Only to the good," a muffled voice said. "Jon Davis will want to know why, in horrid detail, if we don't take care of Lady Lewis."
"Who's this Davis?" Diana asked skeptically.
"My boss, the head of Home security," the voice said off camera.
"Lady Lewis?
"Don't ask, and we don't do titles on Home!" April said extra loud for Margaret to hear. She was doing that just for Diana's benefit. It wasn't sincere or funny.
"Yes, M'lady," Margaret said a prim voice, just to be irritating. Diana raised an eyebrow.
"Here's what you do. Go down to the business level. That's all the way down to the full G deck, and there's a ship's chandlery there. Tell Zach I said to give you his best spex and get you an account on Home com. Put it on my account with him and by the time you have them on your face and a com account I'll probably be there. If I'm not have Zach show you how to do a map with them. It'll be 3D and guide you point to point. It's near lunch time and I'll meet you at Zach's store and take you over to the cafeteria, it's right there."
"This Zach knows you?" Diana asked.
"Unless he worries about you being an Earthie and denies it. He's kind of paranoid. He might decide you're an assassin or a bill collector. But you can tell him I'm on the way over."
"I'll do that," Diana promised.
When April arrived at the Home Chandlery and Provision Company not only was Diana there with a set of spex on her face, but Margaret was there in her powder blue security uniform with a beret and an Air Taser. They were both perched on stools and Margaret was drinking coffee from one of Zach's house mugs.
"I only had to work the shuttle docking today and was going back off duty. I walked Diana down so she didn't get lost," Margaret explained.
"How can you get lost in a big tin can?" Diana asked.
"How can you get lost on an island surrounded by water?" April countered.
"Ouch...I hear some pretty stupid tourist stuff so I better not say any more," Diana agreed.
"Has Zach showed you the map functions and door to door directions?" April asked.
"I have, now I'm trying to sell her a gun. Never too early to start fitting in," Zach said.
"And if I'm out of here in a week or ten days I can't take it home. Well actually, I might be able to," she corrected. "But I'm not going to count on it."
"That's not a problem. I buy used guns," Zach said.
"Used a week, and probably never shot? I shudder to think how much it would depreciate in that time," Diana guessed. "Why don't you just rent them for folks like me who'll only be here a week or two? Just like rental cars or vacation condos."
Zach looked at her with his mouth hanging open. Then he turned and disappeared in the back and returned with a slim automatic pistol in a clip over holster, with an integral magazine pouch. He laid it on the counter and slapped a coin down beside it.
"Sixteen in each magazine and one up the snout. If you shoot more than that you can buy them. Drop it off any time before you leave on a shuttle, or April can tell you who to pay to courier it to me from the dock."
"How much for seven days, maybe a couple more?" Diana asked, not getting what he was doing.
"For anybody else, I think a half gram a day, but for you it's free, and the coin is your fee for giving me the business idea. I don't know why I didn't think of it, and I thank you. Any other ideas you have please speak up. I'll reward them similarly."
"Thank you, Zach, I certainly will." She scooped the coin up and looked pleased.
As she was clipping the gun inside her waist band, Margaret remarked. "As safe as Home is, I feel better not having you march around unarmed."
"Sweetie, you assume too much," Diana said. She tilted her head, sort of theatrically, and lifted a flat hand to her hair with the fingers bent back, like she was going to make a great show of patting it in place. Suddenly there was a good two hundred millimeters of thin stiletto in her hand. She smiled, reached out in front of her and did a funny little shift of the knife back and forth like a slight of hand trick. April wasn't sure exactly how it was possible one handed, but the handle split in two and folded around both sides of the blade in a little dance, enclosed it and looking more like a folded up hand fan than a weapon. The miracle was she still had all her fingers. Then she slid it in the back of her hair somewhere.
"Did you mention lunch?" Diana asked April.
"Yeah, put it in your spex, pick door to door routing, Home Chandlery and Provision to Cafeteria. It'll paint a line in your spex that looks like it's on the floor and you can lead us to lunch."
When they went out the door Zach was grinning big at April's joke, because the cafeteria was in sight, almost straight across the corridor.
* * *
"The crazy thing is, I thought I was being absurd," Diana confessed, as they got in line. "It never occurred to me it would be legal to rent out pistols. I can't think of anywhere on Earth you could do that without the cops fainting dead away in shock."
"I'm not going to sugar coat this," April told her. "A lot of people can't adjust their thinking to Home. It's so different people went back to Earth when we declared independence. And a few every year since have found they can't hack it here and returned. I think some of them thought we'd get over this foolishness quickly and return to all the rules and laws with which they were comfortable. We generically call this Earth Think, and it shows up in everything whether it makes any sense or not."
"Not just laws against renting out pistols?" Diana asked.
"Can you believe you can get your hair cut and styled with no government protection from the deadly scourge of unlicensed barbers or stylists?"
"I already noticed more buzz cut heads here than I've ever seen before. Even some of the women. How much training can you need for that?" Diana asked.
"That's because it's the only sane way to work in a pressure suit. Even people who don't do that every day often have to be available on short notice to do so. That's why I only have this little bit in front that I can comb up in spikes and wear with a little color added," April said, running a hand up her forehead. I have interest in ships and couriers and am on call to sub for people if they need me."
"Sub doing what?" Diana asked, checking out the small hot buffet.
"I've got my orbit to orbit and docking ticket, and am qualified to do open field landings."
Diana pounced on that. "So there is something that's government licensed?"
"Not at all. Such certification predates our revolution. It's an independent agency and you pay for testing, it isn't tax supported. I think the French started it. I'd have to look it up."
"If it was Earth based they'd have a big tax paid budget and charge you a hefty fee, both!" Di said.
"And thus you start to define Earth Think," April said. "I very much recommend
the stuffed peppers if you like them. We still don't get them that often."
"I don't have a card yet," Diana objected. "Will they take cash?"
"USNA dollars? Probably not. But I never use my subscription for half of what I could. I'll put you on mine today and you can tell them you want a card. She'll bring it out to you when things ease off. That's Wanda up there running the counter and doing special orders. It doesn't hurt to introduce yourself and call her by name. She can be a little crabby still, but she's much better than she used to be."
"Go ahead and order for me," Diana said.
"Two of the stuffed pepper with all the trimmings," April said. "Wanda, this is my friend from Hawaii, Diana. Put her meal on my tab for now, but she wants to buy a week ticket."
Wanda checked Diana out, and it wasn't a superficial examination."She must be OK if she's with you," Wanda allowed. "I'll get her a week ticket starting tomorrow and you can carry her today if you come back for supper. Extra dinner roll and butter?"
"Thank you, dear. Yes for me. Diana isn't gene mod so you'll have to ask her."
"One sounds fine, thank you, Wanda," Diana said, and got a curt nod, as Wanda turned away.
"Let's get coffee and stake out a seat. By that time it will be up," April said, waving at the empty counter beyond the cashier's station.
They got coffee and set it at the far table April favored. When she turned to go back Diana balked. "What's wrong? Would you rather not sit so far away? It's always crowded next to the coffee machine. I like to sit off a bit where you can watch people."
"I'm used to not leaving my drink where anybody can mess with it," Diana admitted.
"I'd be less surprised to have an assassin walk in the door and open fire than anyone try to poison me," April said. "That's happened, but nobody could come over here and put something in our coffee without somebody noticing."
"And they'd say something?" Diana asked.
"They'd likely have them on the deck with a gun to their head and security already called."
"OK, Earth Think," Diana concluded, and left her coffee.
"I should have taken the extra roll," Diana concluded after a bite. "But, I'm going to be fat if I keep eating here. It's too good."
"Dr. Ames can take care of that too," April assured her. "You can have a metabolic tweak that lets you eat a lot more and burn it up. If food gets scarce you can do a several day fast and it re-sets it until you start eating more than about twelve hundred calories a day and it kicks it back in. You have much less chance of getting fat or becoming diabetic. You could, but you'd really have to work at it."
"He's supposed to do a consultation with me. Mostly I want to live longer. Sixty will be my next decade, and I can tell I'm not a kid anymore," Diana lamented.
"My grandpa Lewis insists that if the therapy made you forget, he wouldn't trade feeling younger and better for being stupid. Of course that makes me feel terrible, because I can only get over being young and inexperienced so fast, and I'll never catch up all the way."
"Honey, Some people never show a lick of sense and you showed more at... What was it? Fourteen? Than they do by forty," Diana assured her. "My second husband was rich, but I swear that man was never a grown-up. That's what killed him too, driving like an eight year old who had no concept of his own mortality."
"I thought you divorced all your rich husbands," April said.
"Nope, I was headed that way, but he saved us the aggravation," Diana said. "I did have the sense not to ride with the man driving, no matter how it irked him."
"Got room for dessert?" April asked.
"Not without being a pig. What have they got?" Diana asked.
Chapter 26
"Now that we have landing rights in Australia, Old Man Larson is busting a gut to get a runway landing shuttle built. He wants the Australians to build the airframe from cheap Earth materials and he'll license our power and have Dave build the drive," Jeff said. April could see he was calling from his office. She could see the screens and his man going back and forth behind him.
"Who's financing it?" April asked. "Larson?"
"The Reserve Bank of Australia," Jeff said. "They are parceling out pieces of the pie to smaller banks and claiming it's a first step, building three first generation shuttles, and after that a space station."
"Wow, this is the first anybody has seriously talked about building a new manned station in years."
"Well yeah," Jeff agreed. "Things were already slowing down before the flu, and then both China and North America went nuts politically and left world markets in turmoil. Nobody in their right mind wants to build from lifted materials. Even our third ring would never have been built without the Rock and lunar materials."
"You didn't get an exclusive on the landing rights?" April asked.
"Monopolies are unstable," Jeff insisted. "They have to be maintained. Usually by being bought over and over because politicians change. The new ones have to be bribed all over again."
"You bribed them for landing rights?" April asked surprised.
"The submarine," Jeff reminded her, unashamed. "They may yet be upset when they find some obvious gaps where equipment was torn out. It was beyond our ability to make some fake stuff up to fit in there anybody would believe. Of course we could have just scuttled her."
"No, no," April protested. "That seems, wasteful."
"I'm encouraged really. Things seem to be going much better. We have a minimum decent relationship with a few Earth powers. Supply is up and we're getting lunar goods to the point we don't have to worry we'll starve if Earth cuts us off again."
"The better lunar sources we have, the less likely they will cut us off," April said. "The leverage just isn't there once we have other sources. They just hurt themselves to cut off people paying in hard money. Not that the ones who really hate us might not do it for sheer spite. But we have more than one Earth source now."
"I haven't mentioned it lately, but have you looked at our numbers recently? Just the last six months even, we've done very well," Jeff said.
"No, I have enough to live on and a lump held back. The cost of money has been high enough that the lump has been growing nicely without trying to actively invest it. You've been doing that for me pretty well with our shares. I have a little of the money Eddie gave me in Irwin's bank too. He's been getting me around five percent on it."
"I'd say that's conservative," Jeff told her, "but Irwin is conservative by nature. You can get seven percent for private projects, like the ice ball recoveries, as long as they aren't as badly managed as Barak's voyage! When we started licensing tech, right after the war, I remember the first monthly payment for all three of us was five thousand USNA Dollars. That was about ten percent of our income, but it dropped off for a few months after that first surge. Fortunately we had very few expenses then either."
"Well the Dollar was worth a lot more then," April remembered. "At the time it all seemed like a lot of extra money to me. That seems so long ago."
Jeff shrugged. "Things have been happening fast. If we had more room for people it would be crazy. It would be like a gold rush with them all pouring in. As it is a lot of them are simply sending their money as a proxy. Prices would go nuts if they all arrived wanting services, and you wouldn't be able to make a living at anything but the best paying jobs. We'd probably be outsourcing services down to Earth because it would be too expensive to do here. They used to ship laundry to China from California to be done during their gold rush. Things get crazy in that sort of a situation. Of course we're more productive. They had no way to automate their laundry then."
"Some of the people working lower paying jobs have had a hard time," April reminded him.
"Yeah, and it has reduced some services," Jeff agreed."There are a lot of things you can buy on Earth that just can't be had here. It helps we don't need a lot of the overhead. Nobody needs an automobile. Earthies are spending much more on security systems and private police than we do. The cafeteria would never have d
eveloped such a monopoly on Earth. It started early with cheap cubic and has buying power no small operation could match. But there is the beam dog's cafeteria, and now there will be a smaller one on the third ring soon. We have two clubs and a couple unofficial ones."
"We do?" April asked surprised. "Why don't I know about them?"
"They serve the beam dogs and a few people who fit in the tight little society around them. Both are physically close to the dorm. Consider them a specialty market. You wouldn't be a customer and they are smart enough to know there are still vestiges of Earth Think that would want them shut down. So they don't advertise openly. I'm assured some of the personals in local sites are ads if you know the code words. Even in something as stodgy as "What's Happening". If you read the personals and a few of the ads don't make any sense to you...then you've likely found one."
"Oh, well that doesn't bother me," April decided. "Nobody's holding a gun to my head to make me go there. I don't think they'll run the Fox and Hare out of business."
"Long term, I don't see Home being where growth will happen," Jeff said. "We'll have non-rotating cubic nearby that will help for awhile. I even expect it won't be that many years before we have another habitat or two built near us. But I think most of the growth will be on the moon. We just can't build and maintain living space as cheaply as they can."
"You said something a little bit ago," April remembered. "Nobody in their right mind would try to build from lifted materials. But power and really efficient drive impulse is so cheap now, and Earth materials and labor so attractively cheap. Could you fabricate something like one of our rings and lift the entire assembly to orbit? Put ten or twelve drives under it just like an ice ball and then remove the motors and use them again later?"
"I'm...not sure," Jeff admitted. "You ask the most interesting questions. All I can say is I'd ask Dave to run the numbers for us, if you want me to. It shouldn't be too expensive to come up with some basic numbers. I can see some problems right away. The stresses a ring is designed to take are much different than those that would be put on it in the plane of rotation. You might put in some temporary braces to help with that, especially if the brace materials would have high value when removed. Do you want me to do that?"
April 8: It's Always Something Page 34
