Jeff nodded. “I’m going to text a quitclaim deed to all the residents using a private residence. I don’t expect any more gratitude than you do, but it’s the right thing to do. I’ll also be giving you a bonus, equal to the real estate agent’s fee, above your pay for administering and improving Camelot. My payment is split between gold and Australian dollars. But since the dollars are a floating value, and difficult for an individual to dispose of, I’m paying you and the agent in gold. Would you be happy with payment to an account at Irwin’s Private Bank?”
Annette laughed. “I don’t even have a bank account and don’t want the bother of one. I had my salary sent to my mom’s household accounts. She tracks it and assigns me a debit number to use when I wanted something personal. I bet I haven’t used a quarter of it for clothing and special snacks. Just send it by courier to my family’s place. I’ll be moving back into my room until I take another job. I’ll keep my bonus separate as a keepsake of this adventure and first job. Maybe I’ll have some jewelry made.”
“Whatever you wish,” Jeff agreed. It was that much less for them to coin. He smiled and wondered how the public would receive a Bank of Mom?
* * *
Vic’s little company arrived home late and hungry. The route back was not only longer, but had more ups and downs than the old route. The four extra homemade seed and berry bars they took for each of them didn’t come near covering their caloric expenditures cycling. On the plus side, they’d pushed through over soreness and stiffness to the point they were getting conditioned to biking.
Their house-sitters joked they were going to move the rest of their things in and claim the place if they had delayed a couple more days. Vic didn’t think that was very funny. It made him aware he hadn’t made any provision who would inherit the property if they hadn’t returned. He had copies of the plat and deed. The courthouse having been ransacked and burnt, a lot of people would be hard pressed to prove ownership, and many were outright squatters anyway. It was going to be a mess if anyone claimed authority over the area again.
Alice, who wasn’t sure she wanted to join them in panning at first, now suggested she go a day early and start concentrating paydirt before they joined her on Sunday. She wasn’t willing to pay the percentage Vic wanted to sinter and forge her dust into rings. He ended up showing her how to stamp them into the mold, heat them in his little forge orange hot and restrike them until they could be burnished to look solid. That was fine. He hadn’t wanted to do extra anyway.
He did make rings from a portion of what he and Eileen found. Having it in a legal form made sense. But in the back of his mind, he kept thinking that he wanted some way to do a proper melt. Once he showed Alice how to let the swing and weight of the hammer do the work, instead of trying to muscle it in short strokes, she did just fine.
* * *
“There isn’t a big enough flat spot to land near my house,” April told Jeff. “You might set it down over the traffic island at the end of our dead-end street, but you’d ruin the landscaping and throw hot dirt over three or four of the houses. The same in Diana’s yard. You’d have four or five meters each way to avoid a stone wall or patio and blow over her lanai if not blow her windows out, and leave a big fused pit in her lawn. If you missed hitting your mark dead-on setting the Chariot down, you’d topple it, and wouldn’t that be fun?”
“Have you been to their airport?” Jeff wondered.
“No, but they’re pretty much all the same. It’s North American built, so it has fencing and pretty decent security. Nobody leaves any facility wide open since terrorism became common. Nick said they’ll park us on the concrete apron across the runways from the terminal building. We’ll have lots of open room around us and they will have armed security around it overnight. It won’t be a target until it has the gold sitting in it the next morning. By then you will be sitting in the command chair. If it’s that dangerous we should be meeting them at sea.”
“I gave them a choice and they picked Hawaii. Maybe I shouldn’t have.”
“If you renege, I’ll support you, but it looks bad,” April said.
“No, we’ll go. But I want to be sitting in it with the comp running and your board hot while they are loading,” Jeff insisted.
“That’s fine with me. Been there, done that with the Martians, and I was more worried.”
* * *
“What are you thinking about so hard?” Eileen asked.
“I have some ideas,” Vic said. “I need to talk to Ted Foster. He knows electrical stuff a lot better than me. I want to ask him about how to hook up and use the solar panels we liberated.”
“We flat out stole them and no apologies for it. Salvage is accepted if it’s not malicious or plain old vandalism. I consider it property abandoned by the state that had no chance of ever being reclaimed. We need it and would work for it and buy it if we could. I thought you’d use them to charge batteries,” Eileen said.
“OK, stole them talking to you. I’m not going to admit anything that could come back and bite me to others. Even one of those panels is way more than you need for say, radios. I’d like to know if I can hook all of them together and use them to weld. I have an old cheap Lincoln welder in the barn, and all the stuff to go with it. I’d like to be able to fabricate some stuff, but most of all, melt gold, without revealing to Ted that’s what I want to do.”
“Send him a text and ask him to talk about it at the fall fair. You’re going to take those aluminum poles to him anyway, aren’t you? If he doesn’t pay you anything else for them, he can at least advise you. Write out what you want to know and think on it until then. Outline briefly about welding and see if he volunteers enough to let you figure the rest of it out on your own,” Eileen suggested. “Or you might come to trust him.”
“I’ll do that,” Vic agreed. “I could look up stuff up online, but it would cost a fortune on the satellite phone. I sure miss being able to browse for hours and not pay extra. I know I talked to Ted at the fair, but I don’t know him. I asked about lib… stealing the panels and he had some suggestions, but I didn’t tell him everything I wanted to do with them. He expressed interest in trading for them, if the posts were extruded aluminum, but didn’t tell me why he wants them. I’m reluctant to tell him why I need stuff when he doesn’t trust me fully.”
“It seems to me you need to talk a lot more,” Eileen said. “I’d say you two both trust a lot of the same people. If you both trust and work with Mast and O’Neil and Ritner you should be able to work together. It just sounds to me like you both want the other to make the first move.”
“Well yeah, I’m pretty cautious about revealing we have gold. It could make us a target.”
“He’s pretty cautious about revealing who has sat phones,” Eileen pointed out. “You are two of a kind.”
* * *
“Prime Minister Durand, I’m sorry to bother you, but we have an irregular situation at the security station. There is a gentleman who insists you will want to see him but refuses to give his name. He said to tell you Chen sent him, and that is sufficient identification. Is this some sham? Should we arrest him?”
“No! Please, extend every courtesy to him and I will see him in the blue conference room as soon as they can prepare it. Have them sweep it and activate the jammer fields. Explain to him that is the delay, and offer him refreshments until I can join him.”
The officer started to turn away but Joel thought to ask. “You weren’t able to ID him?”
“The security station has priority access and ran a national and European Union search as well as Interpol and what partial searches we can do in other systems. We have no data on him. That should be impossible inside our borders. Are you sure he is no danger to you?”
“Quite sure,” Joel said, even though he wasn’t. The officer could probably read that easily with his portable software. The basic kind foot patrolmen used on a street corner suspect. He looked at Joel, unhappy, but didn’t contradict him and went out.
> The man was seated at the corner of the conference table turned toward the other seat he’d pulled out and turned toward him a little. It was an obvious invitation to sit. It felt odd like Joel was the supplicant in his own secure room. The man was Asian but dressed very nicely in a western manner, and thanked Joel for his hospitality in flawless French. The high-end spex was unusual for Earth. He had a cup of coffee he pushed away. He didn’t rise but Joel didn’t feel disrespected. He extended a memory stick to Joel.
“I was told not to deliver this over com. I suggest you only read it on an unconnected computer in a shielded facility. The files on this detail who sold your fuel process to the North Americans. Who paid him, and the routing of the funds through seven banks to an end account in Columbia. The small changes the North Americans made to the drive system to improve the probability of it working at lower velocities are included as requested. We have no idea of course if it resides on any air gapped machine, but the server on which it resides in Maryland is identified and an administrative password for the network included if you wish to verify it, delete it, or alter it. You can transfer fifteen hundred grams in payment to the account listed in the end file at the Private Bank of Home. Is there anything else we can do for you?”
“Is this same information being conveyed to Miss Lewis on Home?” Joel asked.
“Certainly not. We are contracted with you. If April Lewis desires that information she will have to request it be obtained as an individual outside our arrangement with her partnership or as an officer of one of their associated businesses.”
That was normal policy but the man had no idea the depth of Chen’s personal relationship with April and what he might confide.
“Details of specific hardware and systems don’t fall within the sort of general report we make daily. Since we were told she recommended us and you have confirmed it, we will forward a finder’s fee to her.”
“You will pay her?” Joel asked.
“That’s just good business,” the fellow insisted.
Joel took a deep breath and tried to make sense of it. April could get the report, but she’d have to ask for it. And hadn’t or the man should know of it. Would she have to pay extra, or was that covered by some sort of retainer? He didn’t want to ask.
“Can you tell me how this information was obtained,” Joel asked hefting the card.
“I’d have to ask permission and that will undoubtedly entail a fee. Methods are closely held and valuable.”
“Never mind then. I’d have to ask for a secure…”
The lights in the room flickered and came back. The fellow looked briefly distracted and then snapped back too.
“Your pardon, I asked already but it’s a three-second lag. It took a lot of power to get past some local interference. I hope I didn’t damage anything. My supervisor says the method is reproducible with your technology, so a general description without actual plans has significant value. If you wish to know how the information on the guilty party was obtained that will be an additional two kilograms of gold. The methods to search and crack North American secure networks aren’t for sale at any price.”
Joel thought about it. He should have accepted that bar back from Irwin as a secret resource. This sort of secret payment of huge sums could create problems later. It was the sort of thing political opponents dredged up and questioned. No way was he paying for this himself. On the other hand, his people might be delighted to have this ability. They undoubtedly spent more in a year on things less effective than this seemed to be.
“Very well, tell me.”
“We identified your primary drive research facility and who works there by transport and phone records. Examining the education and work history of everyone who could be confirmed to work there took about six hours. Your security was too good to cost-effectively penetrate there. We then went about bugging their homes and places they frequent with micro drones. Of the one hundred and sixty-four targets, three were impossible to bug, having aggressive drone safeguards and other high-end security. They are probably intelligence agents of yours or other countries. Of the remainder, six had such abnormal psychological profiles and atypical responses to keywords and visual stimuli as to be unreadable. They may be socially functional but we consider them to have insane thought processes we can’t analyze. The rest we watched and noted their reactions to video programs, conversations they conducted, and conversations they overheard. The software is not much different from veracity or interrogation software. Pupil dilation, skin resistance, and other physical attributes can be sensed remotely. Even brain activity, if not detailed mapping, yet. It’s simply a bit slower to tally involuntary reactions to random words instead of reading off a list of preselected words. Within twenty-four hours we had three candidates. Examining their associates, banking records, online interests or searches, and their travel histories quickly isolated the individual thief. We were fortunate our man was not one of the well protected or insane workers. That would have delayed us significantly.”
“All that is within our technical ability?” Joel asked.
“Yes. You may need some experience to catch up in integrating them, but you possess all the necessary elements.”
“That’s kind of scary. I’ll forward both payments together,” Joel promised. Now, he had doubts after the fact if he wanted his own security people wielding such an invasive capacity.
“Thank you for your business,” the nameless man said and left. Joel sat and thought about it a bit. For a wonder, his security didn’t rush back in and ask if they should follow the man. Perhaps they now saw him as a private asset of the Prime Minister. It might disturb them to know he could have other assets, but that was fine with him. It might keep them on their toes. As far as following him, Joel suspected if they tried without permission it wouldn’t be easy. Chen’s minions seemed extra spooky if not downright creepy.
* * *
Vic wasn’t certain how secure the text function was on his satellite phone. He wouldn’t mention details to Ted but just speak in generalities.
To: Ted Foster
Subject: Have extrusions
We obtained the extrusions you want. You can owe us a favor or possibly help with some electronics projects I’m doing. I’d like to take time to talk to you much more about it when we attend Mr. Mast’s Fall Fair/Festival. I noted some outsider activity I don’t feel free to detail in text. I’d also like to know how secure you consider this mode of communication.
Victor Foy
What Vic didn’t expect was a reply in ten minutes.
To: Victor Foy
Subject: Meeting and trade
I am reluctant to travel overnight. I’m even considering taking on a partner to keep the radio net open when I travel to Mast’s Fair or other events. If you could consider visiting me earlier to deliver the extrusions, I will show you my projects and advise you on yours. I sure we’d both rather move ahead with our projects sooner than the fall.
On security, I think our encryption is sufficient to protect us from other phone users, but I have always assumed there are back doors in the system for bigger players.
Attached: County map with location and suggested routes.
Theodore Foster
Vic showed it to Eileen.
“Looks like he’ll meet you halfway,” was her opinion.
“No, he wants us to travel all the way to his place,” Vic said.
She looked at him irritated, but he was grinning.
* * *
“Nick says they have no ties to Earth Traffic Control,” Diana reported to April. “The North Americans have been opposing their inclusion. They are so far from anyone else they see no need of it,” Diana said. “I’m looking forward to seeing you back at your house, Kiddo. Nick also asked if you want him to move into town while you are here? He keeps a place in town if you want your privacy.”
“We’re only going to be there one night and we’re not going to throw a party or anything.”
&nb
sp; “You better not. I’m going to cook supper for you on the grill. The kind of real barbeque you don’t get on Home, that belches smoke and fumes, but tastes wonderful.”
“I’m up for that,” April agreed. Her mouth was watering right now thinking about it.
“You travel light. Nick and I will pick you up at the port,” Diana insisted.
“I could rent a car,” April offered.
“You have a driver’s license?” Diana asked.
“Oh, OK. I have a learner’s permit that’s probably expired. You’re right, I remember what a hassle it was last time. I ended up buying a car because it was easier.”
* * *
The last person Heather ever expected to see on com again was Nathan DeWalt. He appeared almost as stressed as the last time he called her. On the plus side, he was dressed much better and had a nice natural tan, not the orange chemical sort, and no raccoon eyes from lying under lamps with eye protectors on.
“Good evening Nathan. I’m glad to see you looking prosperous and healthy.”
“I’d probably be dead if I hadn’t followed your advice,” he acknowledged.
“Even after you agreed, I wasn’t sure you’d follow through on it fast enough,” Heather said.
“I got out of Europe quickly enough. The trouble is they’re still looking for me.”
“I wasn’t aware they’d have the assets to do that,” Heather said. “Are you sure it’s the Martians and not some Union state or agency acting for themselves?”
“Not entirely, but I don’t have the sort of intelligence you folks do and I can’t exactly approach any of the people I’ve suspected of following me. My resort cabin in Tahiti blew up last week when I was on the back deck because I couldn’t sleep and it knocked me unconscious into the landscaping. When I woke up all sore and with some debris embedded in my back the thing was burning and I saw a couple of guys walking around examining the ground to make sure there were no tracks away from it. I arrived in the bushes ballistically so I was good. I think they are counting me for dead, but for how long?”
A12 Who Can Own the Stars? Page 24
