April 8: It's Always Something

by Mackey Chandler

  "It is grown...without the cow," April assured her. "It is very good."

  "That must be...lonely. Don't tell me too much," Diana asked, holding a hand up. "I'll try it. But if you get too technical and make it sound gross you'll ruin it for me."

  "Not another word," April agreed. "The mixed salad is quite good and the roast potatoes go well."

  "All from the moon I bet," Diana said, but it was inflected as a question.

  "All but the butter I think, and possibly some oil in the salad dressings," April allowed.

  "Ah, here are our appetizers," Jeff said, spotting them before they reached the table.

  After noshing on them a bit Diana admitted, "These are nice and fresh and crunchy. I know the olives have to be from Earth, and the cream cheese, but all the local stuff is wonderful."

  "The cream cheese is fake," Jeff told her. "It's from local soy, the olives, yeah that's going to be a tough one. Maybe with some serious gene mod. We have a guy who can probably do something that radical. If we can get it to grow up a trellis as a bush," he speculated.

  "Some things...why not just stay wealthy enough to buy the imported?" April asked. "It's not like we are in danger of starving anymore if they cut us off. Money needs to flow back the other way too, no?"

  Jeff stopped and looked surprised. "Yes, yes it does. Thanks, it's easy to lose sight of that."

  "Finally," April said. Diana didn't know what she meant, and then the house lights dipped a little. The first act was coming on and the place quieted down.

  Chapter 27

  The door signal was insisting April wake up. They'd stayed up very late talking, and she wanted to sleep in. The clock in the corner of her bedroom screen said 10:36. It really wasn't that early to be bothering someone, normally. April threw on a long t-shirt she sometimes wore to sleep and stumbled out to the door half asleep. She picked her pistol up in passing and hesitated long enough at the com desk to demand: "House, display corridor cam."

  There was a very young man, boy really, standing in the corridor with a bunch of flowers. April couldn't have been any more surprised if it had been a horse. The kid tried the buzzer again and the house was smart enough to know she was in the living room instead of the bedroom, but not smart enough to see she'd looked to see who it was and stop pestering her. Diana stirred on the couch.

  "Good morning," April said, opening the hatch. Her assertion totally lacked sincerity, and the boy, although he was perhaps ten looked dismayed. His eyes also followed the line of the arm held behind her, and he probably figured out she wasn't holding his tip.

  "Begging your pardon, I have a delivery for this cubic," he said, hefting the bouquet of roses.

  "The address, or are they for a particular person? Need a signature?" April asked.

  "It's odd," the boy admitted. "Here's the card for them," he offered and extended it slowly like he didn't want to startle April. She took it left handed.

  My damn reputation for mayhem, she thought ruefully.

  The card said: For the lovely lady in the tropical print. You brightened my day. Eduardo Muños. It was written by hand in wet ink.

  By then Diana was looking over her shoulder. April just handed the card to her.

  "Stay here," April commanded. The kid looked worried but didn't say anything, didn't even nod. Damn, she hated it when people were afraid of her..."Acknowledge it please," she said, as nicely as she could so early in the morning.

  "Yes, Ma'am, I'll wait right here," the boy promised. April hated being called 'Ma'am' even more, but she forced a smile, and tried not to show too much tooth. She walked away and didn't even try to hide the gun. The kid had that figured out anyway. She got in her pouch and got a bit card, remembered how badly she scared the kid, and added a second bit. That was extravagant, but what the heck...

  Diana was still standing there, but at least she had the flowers now. When April gave the kid his tip he bowed way deeper than any Japanese had ever acknowledged her, and thanked her. He was even bright enough to figure out he was excused when tipped without her needing to formally dismiss him.

  "Got a vase for these things?" Diana asked.

  "No," April realized, and wasn't even sure where to get one. She could order one from Earth on standby, because they were heavy, weren't they? But the flowers would be history by then. Her brain wasn't working yet, and Jeff came out of the bedroom in spex, shorts and footies, and saved her

  "I'll put those in the tall pitcher you keep for lemonade and mimosas," he volunteered. April closed the hatch, came back in, and laid the pistol on the com console in passing.

  Since Jeff was busy doing something with the flowers at the sink, April started coffee. Diana knowing where the bath was from last night headed there on her own.

  "What are you doing?" April asked Jeff when her task was done, and it was brewing.

  "The cut ends get dry and they can stop taking water up. You should recut them under water before you put them in a vase. I'll add a pinch of sugar to the water too. It makes them last longer."

  How does he know this stuff? April silently wondered.

  Diana came out and April traded places and went off to the bathroom without a word. Jeff was getting mugs out and put the roses on the slab table between the couches. Muños favored bright colors and pastels, so the yellow roses didn't surprise him. They went with April's decor too.

  "I'm going to special order some breakfast from the cafeteria," he told Diana. "I'll order up a buffet, unless you want lunch stuff?"

  "They deliver? That isn't like any corporate cafeteria I ever saw," Diana said. "You haven't starved me yet. I'll take whatever you guys are having. Breakfast is fine."

  "They don't deliver, but there are lots of courier services. The kids love it for spending money. We might get the same kid back that brought your flowers," he predicted.

  "What did April give him? I thought she was getting him a tip, but it looked like a fancy business card, a double one that folds over."

  "That's a bit. A certificate for a hundredth of a gram of gold," Jeff explained.

  "Really? Kids can get paid in gold for running errands? No wonder they're hot to do it. Who guarantees it?" Diana asked. "I may start delivering pizzas myself."

  "I do. Well, April and Heather too, as officers of the System Trade Bank," he added when Diana looked askance. "Irwin Hall of the Private Bank does too, but through our bank. I trust him to cover the gold if it gets called, but we will pay up even if he goes broke," Jeff vowed. "There isn't all that much out in bits to demand he transport bullion for every printing."

  Diana was regarding the flowers, and card. "So, who is this Eduardo Muños? If I brightened his day so, why didn't he come by our table and introduce himself?"

  "I saw him with some other people on the same level we were at, but across the room. Likely he didn't feel free to leave his company. Here, I can pull his image up from my spex and show you."

  He routed the pix to the wall screen and it showed a slow sweeping scan of the whole room.

  "Do you always record the entire room when you go out to a club?" Diana asked.

  "Yes, if there is a problem later, if someone tries an assassination, we can identify who might be responsible," Jeff said.

  "And this happens, how often?" Diana asked.

  That irritated Jeff. "Often enough I can show you the scars if you want," he said sharply.

  Before she could say more he froze the scan and said..."There, the gentleman with the soft unstructured creme jacket over the melon colored shirt." He was with two other men. They all looked of a similar age, and had drinks.

  "A business meeting I'd guess," Jeff said.

  "What sort of business is he in? Diana asked.

  "Do you know, Mr. Muños has never made that very clear to me. As far as I know he's in the business of being rich," Jeff joked. "How he made it, back on Earth, I don't know. He's made a number of valuable suggestions to me, to talk to this person or that, but our business has never been intertwined
to any degree. He does have deposit accounts in our bank. But of course I can't discuss that."

  "But enough you know him," Diana said.

  "Everybody knows Eduardo," Jeff said. "He's the Registrar of voters and conducts the Assembly. Let me tell you this, so you understand the trouble to which he went. There's a family on the moon selling flowers. That's the only source I know of unless Eduardo grows his own. To have called and gotten them ordered and on the early shuttle here would have been difficult. He probably had to call from his table last night at the club. A dozen long stemmed roses likely ran him five thousand Australian dollars, and an expedited shipping fee."

  "He's not bad looking," Diana allowed. "Maybe a little young for me."

  Jeff laughed. "Eduardo is older than you, but he's had Life Extension. After you've seen it enough you'll recognize the signs, but I was reliably informed that he was extremely good looking when he had a full mane of white hair and some wrinkles beside his eyes. He's almost as bad as April for knowing everything that's going on. He might have been looking you over, figuring that Life Extension is why you are here."

  "Hmmm. I'm not going to marry again," Diana declared. "Been there done that."

  For an instant Jeff thought that was a presumptuous stretch, from a gift of flowers, and then he reconsidered. Maybe they would be a pretty good match. Both were bold as brass.

  "So, you guys...you three, have a bank, and a nightclub, what else have you got your hooks into?"

  "No, no. The part interest in the Fox and Hare is entirely April's holding. She has a number of business interests her brother willed her. I'm not entirely sure what. She does hold a share in the bank and Singh Technologies with Heather and I. We all pooled our resources and agreed to hold them in common for...specific events, that are long past. But we have each acquired or started other interests on our own. We never vowed to keep bringing everything to the pool forever."

  Diana's examination of him left him so uncomfortable he added. 'We don't often speak of it, but it's nothing you couldn't piece together from public documents and records, if you wished. Just reading all the archives of the public Assembly would do it."

  "I knew she wasn't poor, to afford the house next to me in Hawaii, but I may have been badly underestimating how un-poor she is."

  "This is not the home of a poor person on Home," Jeff said, surprised he needed to say that.

  "I haven't seen any other apartments," Diana pointed out. "I've got nothing to compare it to.

  "Compare what?" April said returning, hair wet from a shower. "Are you going to drink that coffee or just stare at it?"

  "Let's start by all means," Jeff agreed. "I have breakfast coming. Diana was just inquiring about local real estate," he said, almost truthfully. "I was assuring her it's a very dear market right now."

  Diana took a slug of the coffee, and made a noise they took to be approval. "And he filled me in on who Eduardo Muños is."

  "Everybody knows Eduardo," April said echoing Jeff and dropped that subject. "We had a few billionaires want to move in from Earth. They came in and named a higher and higher price to a few folks who supposedly weren't interested in selling. When they reached a crazy enough level a couple of them broke down and took the money. Now everybody expects that kind of money to sell any cubic outright. But I think the tide of Billionaires dried up."

  "But then, where do the people who sold out live ?" Diana asked her, reasonably.

  "I assume they downgraded and paid another crazy price, just somewhat less, for a tiny place. Something like the picture you showed me that Dr. Ames set up. You can figure at the bottom of the chain somebody got bumped and had to live in hot slots or go homeless."

  "That's terrible," Diana said.

  "But a consequence of their own greed," Jeff pointed out. "We're trying to make unspun housing nearby, but it's going to be awhile. The preliminary work is on the moon right now."

  "Another business venture?" Diana asked.

  "Yeah, my idea, but I have just a piece of it," Jeff said.

  "That's breakfast," April said, and headed for the door. She let the young man carry the insulated container to the table and said, "Thank you, Eric."

  "Are you aware there's a humongous spider hiding behind your entry camera?" Eric asked.

  "Oh, don't bother it please," April said. "It's a bot to hunt other bots. You'll probably be seeing more of them in time. These are just in a local test."

  "Oh good. I was worried about what something that big could be eating."

  Eric stopped passing through the living room to smell and touch the roses. "Very nice," he commented on the way out.

  "That reminds me," Jeff said, "Natsume got back to me about the tiny bot we killed. Neutron activation analysis of the remains suggests from isotopic ratios that the battery was Chinese. It's a stretch to say the rest was too, but it increased the likelihood of that."

  "I thought they were too busy with their own problems to keep bothering us," April said.

  Jeff shrugged. "China is big. There must be plenty of areas and enterprises that are moving right along, doing business as usual. Especially anything military will get priority on resources."

  Di was ignoring all this byplay that didn't interest her. "The corner over there that's walled off, what is that? Your secret laboratory?" she asked.

  "My body guard Gunny's room. But he's off doing security work for a client. You may meet him if he gets back in time," April said, opening containers.

  Diana's face said she had even more questions but she concentrated on the food for awhile.

  "You tipped the first one, but not this last young man," Diana noticed. "Why?"

  "Eric owns his own courier business. You don't tip the owner," April explained. "He has this crazy idea he has to handle our account personally."

  "Influence," Diana said. "I'm familiar with the concept myself. But he couldn't run anything back home. It's hard to get a variance and permit to employ a seventeen year old in your own family business. The state would take him from his family for child labor abuse, and ruin anybody who'd hired him."

  "Perhaps Nick and his friends will correct that if they succeed in removing Hawaii from the grip of North America," Jeff suggested.

  Diana looked like she wanted to say more, but she just said, "Perhaps."

  April had the dishes laid out in the center of the table and they sat around it on the cloth chairs so common to Home. They folded up and hung on a hook when not needed. Jeff topped off their coffee and everybody was quiet for awhile while they were eating.

  "I have a yellow light blinking on com," April said. "That's a second tier message or a news search that returned some solid results. Would it offend you to have me throw it on the big screen?" She said it to both of them, but was looking at Diana.

  "Your place, your customs, if you don't mind me seeing it," Diana said, with a wave of her hand.

  "House, display yellow priority com on screen," April ordered by voice from her seat. She had oatmeal with raisins and no desire to get up.

  "You change your voice when you talk to the house computer," Di told her.

  "You do the same thing when you talk to your dog," April observed.

  Diana thought that was hilarious.

  Seven news retrievals with seventeen to three key words. Five North America, one European, and one undefined. The screen showed silently.

  "Show first with highest key words," April said.

  "Official news program, National release, Tues. 1800 local time each zone, from the Joint Committee of Temporary Governance. Timothy Borden spox."

  The program captioned the release, highlighting key search words.

  Tim spoke breathlessly, and revealed there was a thankless mob action in Hawaii of bandits and criminals. He recounted some of the previous movements to repudiate Hawaii's statehood, laid it on thick what a privilege it was to have been admitted as a state, and glossed over the fact Hawaii had been overthrown as a sovereign nation, basically for commercial
interests.

  When he commented on the heathen nature of the Hawaiian culture it twigged Jeff to what was going on. "Ah...OK, he's God's Warriors faction or he wouldn't be bringing this up."

  "This movement is not new, but its modern expression has new life from outside influences," Tim asserted. "The Wiggen administration allowed a Home operative free reign to operate in Hawaii." A window opened to the side and showed a shot of April running along a beach.

  "That's you!" Diana said, stating the obvious, incredulous.

  "An agent of the Presidential protective detail was even dispatched to Hawaii, and they all met and colluded with a notorious spy, resident on the island, and foreign news agents."

  Thankfully Tim offered no pix of Gunny or Papa-san.

  "After killing a senior member of Homeland Security attempting to arrest her, these people were involved in an incident that involved a Chinese submarine in Hawaiian waters."

  "All true, but entirely lacking in context," April said to Diana's shocked looks.

  "The three principles managed to elude authorities and slip off the island, probably by boat."

  "How many ways are there off an island?" April asked, amused.

  "These people all now reside on Home, untouchable and not subject to extradition from that lawless habitat. An agent of North America recently went to Home and tried to bring one of the master minds of this operation to justice. Sadly Mr. Singh, personally responsible for several criminal bombardments of Earth after a supposed treaty, forced him into a duel. The results were tragic. Our agent was cut by a weapon tainted with a neurotoxin and died."

  The screen with April, cut to an ugly video of the Earthie Patrick flopping on the floor in weakening seizures. Jeff was holding the knife he'd picked up off the floor aloft like a salute. Mr. Muños was standing in front of a crowd in the background, as was April. The killed bystander was cropped out.

  "And that's Eduardo!" Diana said, amazed again, but didn't note April being there.

  "Yes, and if Jeff hadn't killed the son-of-a-bitch Eduardo had promised to do so the next morning."

  Diana was staring at her, mouth hanging open. What she noticed most, at the moment, was April was continuing to eat her oatmeal, visibly irritated, but not enough to spoil her appetite.