“I asked to be shown residential properties, but nothing was available that is more than an efficiency I’d characterize as a cubby hole. It appears, even among those tiny properties, most are sold unseen because the buyers are familiar with the basic layouts. They are sold ahead before they are even vacated. I’d like to at least be shown actual floor plans if a computer model is not available.”
“I’ll get them for you but I haven’t looked at the detailed files for residential cubic,” Irwin confessed. “I know the first ring will have a cafeteria and an administrative office with a communications room. It will have a docking mast adjacent to the hub, so you will have all those services available. Most, such as the cafeteria, won’t be replicated until the last ring is built at the other end. So if you would be happy with living on Home, Beta will be very similar.”
“One assumes these necessary facilities will occupy enough volume that the end rings will have less space for residential volume, cubic as you say. I’d like to buy now before they are all spoken for by the administrators and the owners of businesses who want to live close to their shops and offices. If you have those architectural drawings, could you not spare a couple of hours to run a computer model of interior spaces? I’d think you are going to need simulated images for your own sales efforts before they physically exist and can be shown.”
“I have to admit I’ve probably been a bit lazy about that. The demand for cubic is so high I expect it all to sell without any great effort.” Irwin stopped and thought. “I do business with someone who has such a property. I can ask her if you might see it as a personal favor. That would give you a much better idea of what such a property would be like to live in than a virtual walk-through.
“Does she owe you a favor?” Gupta asked, curious.
“No indeed. Rather I owe her so much another little debt will hardly alter the balance. If you come to live on Beta, you will undoubtedly do business with her or her partners. So I might as well introduce you in any event. Let me see if she is on Home. She spends a lot of time on the Moon too.” He leaned back in his chair and called up April on his spex, opening his call on the wall screen.
“Hi, Irwin. What are you doing today? The usual wheeling and dealing?” April teased. She was sitting on a sofa with a print on the wall behind Irwin recognized. That answered the question about her being home.
“Something a little different today,” Irwin said. “I have a gentleman who I mistook for an investor in Beta. It turns out what he really wants is to buy some private cubic. I’m neither a real estate agent nor know how to fake being one. He’s taken a couple of days to scope out Home on his own before speaking with me. Now he would like to see what decent cubic looks like, not a two-person apartment. Might it be possible to walk him through your place to give him a feel for it? I can schedule it when you are away if you want. However, he’s a fellow of some substance who I’d expect you will eventually meet and have business dealing with anyway, if he buys into Beta.”
“Name?” April asked in a side window that didn’t show on the wall.
“Sajit Gupta,” Irwin replied the same way.
“We were about to send out for some lunch,” April said. “Jeff is here and Gunny is in residence. I’ll ask them to send it as a buffet for eight. Nothing ever seems to go to waste when Gunny is home for a few days, so that will be fine to have leftovers in the fridge. We can chat and eat, and perhaps give your customer an idea of what it is like to live on Home. Are you free to come right over?”
Gupta nodded yes, and Irwin agreed. That was interesting. April didn’t have time to do a search and read it, so she trusted his judgment. That made him feel pretty good.
Chapter 4
Vic had enough trade goods to haul to this fair that he would need to pull them on his garden wagon rather than try to carry them. After thinking about how old it was, and how much he would depend on it to make the trip both ways, Vic took the wheels off and greased the axles. The time when you could let something bust from neglect and just order a new one was long gone.
Deeper excavation of the trash pit in a nearby gully had yielded more glass jars. The deeper they went the less the chance of finding redeemable lids, but they still had a market. Extracting the jars without breaking them became harder where they were embedded in the soil. Vic left that to Eileen. She had a delicate touch with a border fork and perhaps a little more patience than Vic.
Another old outbuilding was sacrificed after Vic reluctantly conceded it had no practical value to them and the roof would likely not last until materials became available again to repair it. That gave them several kilograms of recovered nails. The wiring was carefully removed, as was any hardware. There were two windows from which the glass was carefully recovered. The wood was separated into a pile that could be burnt next winter and a smaller pile of boards worth saving to be put in the large barn. Those would be used to repair the old chicken coop for Eileen.
Despite all their preparations, it wasn’t certain they would be able to go. Tommy, Pearl’s beau seemed determined to go to the festival instead of housesitting for them as he’d done in the fall. They intended to announce their marriage and that he’d be staying on with Pearl’s father as family instead of as a hired hand. Vic had nobody else he knew and trusted to take over for Tommy. Indeed, finding a replacement was the sort of thing he’d have done by personal interviews at the fall fair if he’d known they’d need someone. It was far too sensitive a position of trust to try to hire anyone via the radio net.
Pearl’s announcement that she was pregnant solved that dilemma. As soon as that was known, both Tommy and Pearl’s father suddenly felt she was made of glass and far too delicate to make the trek to the fair. While that irritated Pearl no end, it solved Vic’s problem.
“Vic, what about the Woodleighs’ house?” Eileen asked.
“What about it?” Vic said with a quizzical expression.
“Nobody was guarding it when we went to the festival with them. I never thought anything about it at the time,” Eileen admitted.
“Arnold said they have a few special dishes and tools they took out in the woods and hid. Pearl brought their good kitchen knives and a lantern along when she and Tommy stayed here. The household things like bedding and towels they just left and accepted the risk somebody might carry them away. Arnold joked about how before The Day, burglars could back a truck up and clean you out of all your furniture. Who is going to carry away your sofa and kitchen table now? Hardly anybody has a horse-drawn wagon. Certainly not petty criminals. They are pretty much limited to what they can carry now. The things they used to take like a TV or other electronics, nobody would give a second glance. He said if thieves want their microwave it’s on the back porch, and Pearl’s game system is on a closet shelf. They didn’t even lock the place up, because having the door busted would be a bigger inconvenience than anything people could steal.”
“But we have enough stuff to be worth guarding?” Eileen asked.
“I couldn’t start to carry just the things in my gun safe,” Vic said. “We have a lot more tools and stuff like fencing and metals worth taking. The attitude of people to salvaging now has gotten so liberal that I’d be afraid that leaving the place unoccupied is an invitation to looting. I’m at least as worried about a group squatting and claiming the place while we are gone as simply taking anything. The land attached to the house is also worth a lot more than Arnold’s ten acres. It used to be you could call the sheriff and have people evicted. The last few years before The Day they made it pretty hard to do that, even if we still had a sheriff.”
“OK, I’m still not used to the idea we’ve rich,” Eileen admitted.
* * *
Irwin introduced everyone, careful of defining it as a business meeting by introducing Sajit Gupta as his client. April was easy to introduce first as the homeowner, and then Jeff as her business partner. Gunny wasn’t evident yet, simplifying things.
“We have a third equal business partner w
ho isn’t present,” Jeff said. “She resides on the Moon and doesn’t get to Home very often now.”
“You maintain a Home residence also?” Gupta asked Jeff.
“Yes, but nothing so grand as April has,” Jeff said making an encompassing gesture. “I have a standard two-bedroom unit that is very utilitarian and serves me more for a business office than a home. Circumstances forced me to offer space to an employee who came up from Earth. At the time there was nowhere else to put him. We three also share zero g industrial cubic on the north hub, but it’s unsuitable as residential.”
“Lunch is ordered,” April said. “Come sit and make yourself comfortable. We can eat while it is hot and talk a little before I walk you through. It’s not like it is going to take hours.
“Our partner, Heather, who Jeff spoke about, grew up on Home. Her mother still lives here and has a cubic very similar to this but even a bit bigger. Having visited with them helped me know how to effectively utilize this space when I was fortunate enough it came on the market. She had two smaller bedrooms sectioned off like I have one for my bodyguard Gunny Mac.”
“How many similar residences exist in the four rings?” Gupta asked April, looking around.
“There aren’t any public records such as exist with real estate on Earth. Also, there isn’t any zoning into residential and commercial. I’m sure Mitsubishi has a pretty good idea of how each cubic is used just from the utility usage, but it would take quite a bit of research to find that out without their resources. I wouldn’t do that because if my neighbors found out they might consider it invasive. Spacers have expectations of privacy most Earthies don’t share. Even Home security is cautious about surveillance in public places. I’m pretty sure a lot of it is just sitting vacant. Every time there has been trouble on Earth it motivates the wealthy to buy safe retreats and you can’t retreat much further than this. Especially since we moved from LEO out past the Moon. The last wave of that we saw got ridiculous, with buyers actively approaching owners who weren’t offering their places for sale.”
“That seems such a waste to have a good part of it sitting unused,” Gupta said.
April shrugged. “It is, but if you buy similar cubic will you be offering it as a vacation rental by the week when you don’t need it?”
Gupta laughed heartily, unoffended. “No, I do take your point. I’ve heard horror stories about the damages and indignities suffered by people who had literal palaces to let. The idea they would get a better class of people for expensive properties didn’t work out. In any case, I intend to live in it, not just keep it as a vacation home or a safe retreat.”
“Heather’s kingdom on the Moon is probably a better choice for safety,” Jeff said. “They go deeper every day and they already survived a direct nuke hit. The trouble is, it is a huge undertaking to develop a property there. You have to start from scratch to create a livable environment. You have to tunnel and seal before you can even think about building environmental systems like a ship.”
“But it’s still a frontier society,” April warned him. “There aren’t any clubs or fancy shops. There’s one sort of a deli and bake shop now. Other than that, you cook yourself or go to the common cafeteria. They’re just starting to tie tunnels together to extend the public right of ways and private tunnels from property to property far below the surface. The first few years, you had to go back to the surface to go any distance to visit or trade with a neighbor.”
Gupta looked thoughtful, pursing his lips, and looking from one to the other. “But I imagine it must be much less expensive than here if it is so primitive. How expensive is the cubic, as you like to call it, there compared to here?”
“It’s sort of hard to compare,” April said. “Here, you can buy an apartment fee simple even if you are obligated for utilities to Mitsubishi. On the Moon, at least at Central, I don’t know of anyone selling small parcels of cubic. I know you can rent space with some limited services, but if anyone has sold off part of their holding, I haven’t heard. The owners aren’t the sort who let go of land once they own it. Some risked their lives to get there and fled bad circumstances on Earth or other lunar outposts to get there. Heather hasn’t sold small lots because the rights go down to the center of the Moon and it would be complicated in time as they taper smaller. You can still buy a property very reasonably though. Heather is still selling outlying lots that are twenty-five kilometers on a side for eighty solars.”
“What’s the exchange on a solar?” Gupta asked. “I don’t bother to follow it because they are outlawed in India. For that matter, most foreign exchange is very limited and has to go through the central bank.”
“That’s hard to compare too,” April said. “This is a solar.” She reached in a pocket and flipped him a coin off her thumb. “It’s twenty-five grams.”
“Amazing,” Gupta said, examining the coin he’d snatched out of the air. “I didn’t turn into a demon on contact with the evil thing. The temples are about the only ones allowed to hold gold now. The government keeps trying to get them to put it on deposit. The jewelers get so little metal allowed to be imported that the older ones have retired and the young ones don’t know how to make the traditional wedding sets now.” He blinked a couple of times looking at the coin. “So a lunar lot is two kilograms of gold?”
“We do platinum solars too,” Jeff told him. He didn’t insult Gupta by answering an obviously rhetorical question. Gupta wasn’t innumerate.
“Doesn’t that create problems when there is any spread on the price?” Gupta asked.
“Maybe it will someday if we find enough of either to make one common. So far people have been willing to accept them at par. I’ve had a few people ask for one or the other if they were just going to use the platinum for a catalyst, or the gold for electronics. The mentality here is more like - How many dollars or euromarks do twenty-five grams buy today? The solar is seen as the constant side of that equation and Earth currencies fluctuate. Somebody needing electrical contacts for a prototype doesn’t need a London Good Delivery bar.”
“I wouldn’t expect to find such a thing on a space station,” Gupta said surprised.
“At the moment, we have three in the vault back at the office,” Irwin informed him, “but as Jeff said, the Moon is safer and we send most items on deposit or held in safekeeping to the Moon. There’s a courier to do so every two or three days. It goes down to vaults located kilometers deep. You might be surprised how many national treasures and publicly known works of art have been deposited there. We see an uptick in that service any time there is political instability or a threat of war.”
“But I see Miss Lewis chooses to risk her art here rather than bury it in a vault,” Gupta said with a wave at the walls.
“Are you familiar with Lindsey’s work?” April asked.
“No, I rather guessed they were all the same artist by the style, except that big weaving. That has a primitive tribal look to it.”
“That’s a tapa from Tonga,” April supplied. “It isn’t woven. They beat out Mulberry bark strips and glue them together. It’s more like paper than cloth. I count myself fortunate to have it because they banned the export of older mats and over a certain size since I acquired that. That mat would be considered a museum piece now. It’s a bit large even to fold up and wear as a skirt. It’s more the sort to be used for ceremonial occasions or as a gift suitable for Tongan royalty. They are culturally important for special occasions, such as births and deaths.”
“That’s interesting,” Gupta said. He didn’t seem to mean it sarcastically at all. That made points with April.
A soft chime sounded.
“House, show the corridor,” April ordered.
The big wall screen opened with two views of the corridor outside April’s door. A young man dressed in kitchen whites was standing behind an enclosed stainless-steel cart.
“House, unlock, and activate corridor speaker. I’m coming,” April promised the worker.
“In past the li
ving room, on the edge of the kitchen,” April instructed, leading him in and pointing where she wanted it.
“Would you like me to stay and serve, Ma’am?”
“No, thank you, we’ll do fine,” April said and slipped him a couple of bits. He looked happy and correctly took that as his dismissal.
“House, lock up,” April ordered again after he was outside and checked the corridor before closing the view.
“Let’s see how this works,” April said. “My club started this delivery service just a couple of months ago. I was told they made a couple of these buffet carts, but this is the first time I’ve ordered one.” She lifted the top shell open by a recessed handle. The delivery man had parked it just far enough from the wall to allow space for the cover to stand vertically. The center section had plates and silverware as well as napkins and condiments. The handles at each end revealed hidden trays that pulled out and swiveled up to the same level as the center section at the end of their travel. One side for hot things and the other for cold. They locked with an audible >chunk<.
“It seems well thought out,” April allowed. “You are our guest. Would you like to make a plate?”
“Thank you. I’ve been to your public cafeteria and was favorably impressed. Is this club of which you speak a closed membership club?”
“No, it’s open to the public, at least to adults. You don’t have to be voted in like a country club. I’m a partner with a minority interest. They aren’t open this early but I knew the kitchen is working by now to do all the prep work for later. They take care of the owners.”
Gupta favored the cold side getting a couple of tiny tea sandwiches, some pasta salad, and chilled prawns.
“Is it adults only because they serve alcohol?” Gupta wondered.
“No, there isn’t any law requiring that. We have very few laws. It’s the policy of the club to serve adults to maintain an atmosphere. It just isn’t the sort of place where children belong. If the parents don’t have the sense to come without their children they are quietly told at the door. The place has entertainment, and they don’t serve in the middle of an act. The kitchen is aware when they start and will likely finish coordinating serving. I’ve been told the Maître d’ has a half dozen or so people prohibited from entering again because they wouldn’t dress appropriately or displayed boorish behavior. The help all have their pix in their spex in case Mr. Detweiler isn’t at the door.”
A12 Who Can Own the Stars? Page 6
