A Sudden Departure (April Book 9)

by Mackey Chandler

  "What is this?" the manufacturer's rep asked suspiciously. It looked like a fold over business card.

  "It's called a bit. I got them from an Australian fellow who was on Home to do some business. He got them in change while he was staying there. I thought you might be interested because you told us a couple months back you'd accept payment in gold. It's not bullion, but it's convertible."

  The rep turned it over and made a show of giving it a little shake with the fold open and down.

  "No gold," she concluded.

  "Of course not. It's a certificate for a hundredth of a gram. It wouldn't be practical to attach such a small amount of gold to it. How would you do it? Print on it with gold leaf? There'd be no way to check on purity, weigh it or keep somebody from simply rubbing some off. But they'll redeem them in gold if you present a hundred of them at a time."

  "I'd rather have bar or coin," Mía said, skeptically.

  "Sure, but this travels through customs without arousing interest. You have an import license don't you? We can't legally redeem it and then pay you but we can use it for partial payment."

  "And we assume the risk if it isn't any good."

  "Less risk than taking my North American dollar, I'm sorry to say," Jared told her.

  She did one slow blink, and kindly didn't disagree with him.

  "If you worry about their stability research the Private Bank of Home and The System Trade Bank. They are the issuers," Jared said.

  "I thought the spacers were rich," Mía objected. "This seems like a cumbersome small denomination."

  "They invented it to take the place of coins," Jarad said, "except they sort of reversed things. They use these certificates for small change and coins for larger amounts. They issue a one Solar coin that's twenty five grams of gold or platinum."

  "And that's too big. . . for everyday commerce," she hastened to add. "Though our factory would be happy to get a couple a week. Last year we had so much trouble getting gold we set up an operation to buy people's jewelry for scrap. Things have gotten a little better since."

  "Take that and show your people, if you want them let me know. It's unusual to be able to obtain these and we've let him know we'd welcome more. I still don't expect to see many."

  "Gresham's Law?" Mía asked.

  "Exactly. I figure most people will simply hoard them. Who knows what a dollar will be tomorrow? But a gram is a gram and they aren't stupid enough to start changing that. . . I hope."

  Chapter 7

  "Sweetie, I'd like you to come by my apartment when you get a chance," her grandpa asked. "I'm packing and sorting things, and I'd like you to see if you want any of it before it goes in the charity bin."

  "Why do that?" April asked. "You could put it in storage if you want to let Mom and Dad use the room while you're gone."

  "I'm letting them have it permanently, to use or merge into their cubic as it suites them. The storage fees would quickly be more than the stuff is worth. I'll be gone years and no hard date to return. If I come back I'll have the means to buy a place of my own. If I don't clear everything out, I know your mother, she'll hesitate to tear down the partitions and do what she pleases with it."

  All April really heard was, "If I come back." For some reason that rattled her more than his previous announcement he was leaving. This suggested she might never see him again.

  "Honey. . . You don't need to look like that. I haven't died. Projects don't last forever. This job will end and I'll go on to something else. I can visit, or for that matter you can visit wherever I am. I expect that will be getting easier all the time, and I intend to try to work against this isolationist attitude the Martians have. Are you absolutely set on staying on Home all your life?" Gramps asked.

  "I'm content here for now," April said, defensively. "Jeff and I have said maybe we'll have to join Heather eventually for economic reasons. But even then Jeff would keep an office here. It's true Home is a lot different than just a couple years ago, but I still like it."

  "I'm a bit bored with it, but look how many more years I've been here than you," Happy reminded her. "It was interesting building it, and I've had plenty to do until recently. Now though, there's no particular cause I wish to promote or business I'd care to start. I'm not ready to sit around sucking my gums and boring people with tales of the olden days."

  That made April smile. She couldn't imagine her grandpa like that.

  "I can come over now if you want."

  "OK, but would you swing by the cafeteria and grab a couple sandwiches," Happy asked. "I want to keep at this and maybe get it done today."

  "I'll do that, and be there in a half hour or so," April promised.

  When she came out of the cafeteria she ducked in Zack's chandlery. He carried a lot of fancy foodstuffs the cafeteria didn't. Candy and fresh fruit and liquor. She got four bottles of Negro Modelo - in glass bottles, not the plastic ones Happy made jokes about. It cost half again what the special light weight ones cost. It even had steel pry off caps, not aluminum twist off versions. They were four bits, or three and a half bits a bottle if you bought four, but April knew it was her grandpa's favorite.

  It would probably be twice the price if things hadn't normalized until there was such a thing as standby freight again. A shuttle loaded to within a kilogram, and if the load was short the loadmaster might toss two bottles of beer and somebody's t-shirt in from the standby bin. April marked almost everything she ordered to be sent standby. She didn't understand why people who could afford it a lot less than she could demanded instant gratification.

  * * *

  Happy was sitting in a the middle of a mess when she arrived. He only had the one desk chair so April sat on the floor between him and the charity pile, which was the largest. Spacers were almost compulsively neat, so the disorder made her a little uncomfortable. One explanation she'd heard suggested was that it was because loose items could become dangerous missiles under acceleration. That might have made sense at one time, but there were people born on Home who'd never served on a ship, and who were just as fanatical about stowing things away.

  Home itself was so massive and fragile, especially now that they had a third ring, that it would take a very gentle and calculated acceleration to significantly alter its orbit. Indeed their previous move from Low Earth Orbit out past the moon to L2 would take months more than it had before with just two rings. April knew they made occasional corrections, but she'd never felt one. You might be able to tell one was happening with a plumb-bob hanging from the overhead and a bulls-eye underneath it. But you'd never have to worry about your coffee sloshing out of your mug when they moved.

  The keep pile had several of the brighter Hawaiian shirts Happy favored. A few of them were on the charity pile. April had her doubts how quickly they'd be snapped up. There were two coffee mugs that were keepers. One from his Mitsubishi retirement, and another with a military emblem on it that had crossed swords over a black wedge shape. A knit hat in seven or eight colors was a keeper. Happy explained it matched anything or nothing.

  Quite a few items provoked a smile or a frown a few required a story so they were nearing supper time with quite a lot to go. Happy refused to explain the military mug, but kept and discussed his Mars mission patch. Spacers didn't normally accumulate much in the way of physical possessions, but it was surprising how many little items you could lay on the palm of your hand Happy owned.

  April had started her spex recording the process and conversation while they were still eating lunch. She hadn't asked permission but was very glad she'd done that. Some of the stories about building M3 were things she'd never heard until some keepsake triggered them. She had one of the beers and nursed it along. The others probably helped lubricate Happy's story telling.

  A double size Snickers candy bar, hard as a rock inside its pristine wrapper, got Happy started on the uncertainty of meals during the early construction, or at least doubt if they'd actually be edible. Workers always had a backup. One cook in particular h
ad been so bad the workers threatened to stay in their barracks and take a strike day if he cooked supper again. It was so bad one of the supervisors took over and cooked instead. He had to agree the man could burn water trying to make tea.

  April had a small pile of her own now of things she remembered from her childhood and things she didn't want to see given to strangers. Most of no particular value except sentiment. Happy was past elbow deep in a narrow storage cubby and surprised her by pulling out a pressure suit helmet. Then he reached in again almost arm's length deep and pulled out another.

  Her astonishment must have shown because Happy looked a little sheepish.

  "I haven't had these out in a long time, I just kept putting things in on top of them. It's probably been ten years since I've seen them."

  "They're art!" April exclaimed. "I had no idea anybody did this."

  "All the construction workers wear color coded now," Happy said. "White for ordinary workers. Yellow for supervisors. Bright blue for anybody who rigs or activates explosives. Red for EMS. If they bring out a new guy he has to wear a reflective band attached for at least thirty days. After that it's up to his supervisor to say when he knows what he is doing enough to forgo it. If they get a big wheel from the company or a politician who has to be watched closely so they don't kill themselves, they paint a helmet green for him. And they all have a number stenciled across the back."

  "But you guys used these for work?" April asked. The one was painted very convincingly as a knights helm. Convincing enough to make the near spherical helmet look cylindrical. The other had a lady of ample proportions on each side, completely naked but posed so that all the vital areas were concealed. One woman had a zero G counter-force power wrench to aid in that task, and the other had an old fashioned kit for explosive rivets and bolt headers open and the crimp tool floating away. But they were reaching out and clasped hands across the back of the helmet.

  "Yeah, it worked fine then, because there were so few of us everybody knew everyone else on the crew. If your radio went out and you waved and tapped your ear one of the other guys would call it in without going over close to see who it was. They didn't have a system to color code or even put on numbers big enough to read from any distance at first. So we took matters into our own hands."

  "So what happened? Did you ask for a better system or did it get to where there were too many Beam Dogs for you to know each other to force a change?" April asked.

  Happy sighed. "You are a very bright young woman, but you still underestimate the depth of pettiness and stupidity a bureaucracy can display."

  "I'm not sure that's true. I just blew a North American missile base clean off the map a few days ago because they were too full of themselves to listen when I told them to stop shooting or I'd stop them."

  "OK, maybe you have a point there. In the case of the helmets at least nobody was killed. But they didn't supersede our ad-hoc system for the sake of safety. What actually happened is that a crew came up and did a documentary about us building the hab. When the editors saw some of the designs, Charles' helmet there in particular," he said pointing at the nudes, "They had a fit."

  "Remember, this was when North America was in a big resurgence of cleaning up public morality. When I first came up here to work, you could still wear short sleeves in restaurants and movie theaters. People wore very skimpy bathing suits on the beach or even at hotel swimming pools. Boys didn't have to wear a top at all swimming."

  At April's raised eyebrows Happy just invited her to search European or South American sources of the era. The North American sites were all censored. So much so a search wouldn't return much in the way of images of beachgoers or resorts mid-century.

  "They altered the images to remove all the offensive designs," Happy said. "It wasn't the very best job, but good enough for the public. Since we knew what things were really supposed to look like in unfiltered sunlight it looked fake to us. It wasn't long after they made us dump the custom paint jobs and go to the sort of system they should have had from the start."

  "Poor Charles bore the brunt of it since his ladies were what pushed them over the edge to censor all the private designs. They fined him twenty thousand dollars to replace the helmet, because there was no way to strip the paint off the thin composite without damaging it. They refused to just paint it over. When he retired and returned to Earth he was afraid to take it back with him. They'd probably have prosecuted him for owning it, so I saved it. The helm was mine, and I was very proud of it at the time."

  "Why didn't I ever hear this story?" April asked.

  "Well, it isn't the sort of story you tell a seven or eight year old. You wouldn't have understood it, or all the politics and social things behind it. Even though the paintings don't embarrass me, they aren't the sort of thing you want to explain to little kids. You've been grown up enough to understand it all for awhile, but they've been stuffed in the storage cubby for years and I never thought about them until now."

  "They remind me of pictures I've seen of nose art on old warplanes," April said.

  "It probably springs from the same urges. Done in the field by people who aren't great artists, but capable draftsmen. These old things can't even fit on modern suits. The lock tabs are all wrong. I'll just put them in the recycle pile for the metal. They're not only huge, they mass over a kilo each. My mass allowance for Mars will be tight."

  "No! I want them," April insisted, and took them carefully, before he might toss them on the scrap pile and mar them. "These are history. We're going to have a museum some day. On the moon if not here. This is exactly the sort of thing we'll need. I hate to think of all of it we've already tossed away."

  "If you're interested, I have a couple old memory modules. They have hours and hours of suit time recorded, both audio and helmet camera. There will be lots of shots of the old helmets and video of us creating helmet talk. Of course you can see the hab being assembled too, but it's strictly linear with lots of boring hours and close-ups of common work. It isn't a slick production like folks expect now."

  "Please, I'd very much like that. I know somebody else who would want to see them too. I'm sure Lindsey will do some drawings from them if I show her."

  "OK, I think they're in the next cubby, under the helmets. . . "

  * * *

  "Dave says the instrument drone is ready," Jeff said. "I think for about three times the price we're paying for a rental we could have bought it outright."

  "And save it to use it for what exactly?" April asked.

  "I'm not sure," Jeff admitted.

  "Could you use it to test a drive like James is doing?"

  "Probably not. It's too small."

  "And if you own it you have to dock it or store it. Traffic control isn't going to let you park it just anywhere nearby. It's a traffic hazard," April said.

  Jeff just tilted his head and back to acknowledge that.

  "And Dave did make significant changes to it. Changes he'll have to undo to return it to regular service after," April reminded him. "Don't look at it as spending a third of what it's worth. Look at it as saving two thirds of what a custom built would cost you."

  "That makes me feel better," Jeff decided. "I still need to park it, but I'm going ask your grandpa if I can leave it on the mooring post outside his cubic on the north hub for a few days."

  April's eyes got big and her mouth formed a sudden 'O' of surprise. It rattled Jeff because she hardly ever reacted so visibly.

  "Is that a problem somehow?"

  "I don't know. You're still running nanofabricator boxes up there, aren't you?" April asked.

  "Yes, and Happy let us move our production of bits there too."

  "Happy is going to Mars. Maybe for a couple years. He gave his apartment back to my mom and dad to merge with their cubic if they want. We talked about all kinds of things, and he gave me a lot of small stuff because he's not taking much to Mars. But I never thought to ask what he intended to do with his zero G property."

 
"Did he sell it to them or just gift them with it?" Jeff asked. "The whole thing was his originally, wasn't it?"

  "They'd never talk to me about that," April said, furrowing her eyebrows. "But a kid hears snatches here and there. They'd mention when they got a deposit or talk about other payments. If you are sitting reading or watching a video kids are mostly invisible to adults. They wouldn't think I could listen to both things. I think they were paying Happy the housing allowance Mitsubishi gave my dad as manager. Or at least some of it. They didn't give him company cubic, he got a cash allowance. Now whether they were paying pure rent or getting some equity I have no idea. I was little and didn't really think about stuff like that in any detail. I didn't know how things worked."

  "I offered Happy rent once, a long time ago," Jeff remembered. "He waved it away and said not to worry about it, that the cubic was an investment and with no property taxes he didn't need rent."

  "But there's still Mitsubishi's maintenance fees," April said.

  Jeff nodded. And we weren't making anything. . . then. I should have offered again, later."

  "What do you think it would go for in the current market?" April asked.

  "Maybe a half Solar a month, and the renter carry all the fees," Jeff guessed. "We don't use the whole space. If we rented we could go much smaller."

  "Two years ago maybe. I think closer to a Solar a month now. Industrial space is harder to find than residential right now," April insisted. "Chances are you'll need more space not less."

  "But when we get the auxiliary housing fully built you know some tenants will use it for light industrial. Not that that's a bad thing. Rents aren't going to go down, but they may stabilize for awhile. Nobody wants anything like zoning. That just kills start-ups. As long as they don't disturb their neighbors nobody will care what they do."

  "But that's still being built out. It might help in another year," April said, skeptical.

  "We better ask what he's going to do with it, and if we can stay there," Jeff said. "If we can't it's going to be hard to find zero G cubic with access to vacuum at any price."