A12 Who Can Own the Stars?

by Mackey Chandler

  “That’s how it works,” his boss agreed, “but everything he described is his perception of events. We have to remember his observations are subject to human error. Some of this doesn’t make sense. Even he asked at that one point if he’d lost consciousness because his own experience didn’t make sense to him.”

  “Sir, permission to speak freely and be a smart ass?” Meijer asked.

  “As if you ever needed permission to tell me I’m being stupid,” Morton said. “I am not one of those insecure people, terrified to have someone smarter than me working for me. I hope you realize I’m a buffer for you to several people above me. People who would have fired you by now for that very crime if you reported to them directly.”

  “Your intercession is appreciated,” Meijer assured him. “I just wish to reference the remark the Lewis girl made when he asked if anything he’d seen was a secret. She said he could tell the truth and he wouldn’t be believed.”

  Morton flipped the hardcopy report to the end and back-tracked a few pages.

  “Yes, she said that with qualifiers. I consider my skepticism, having not interacted with the subject directly, which can be an advantage. One develops subjective opinions of anyone you interview. Those I report to will be even more critical, being further removed by not knowing you. Even reading the same report by your hand that I am. You’ve interrogated quite a few prisoners, interviewed witnesses, and taken legal depositions. Why do you give Naito’s account more weight than the average eye witness account? They are notoriously inaccurate.” He looked at the thick printout in disgust. “And this one is a damn book.”

  “I don’t expect our political masters to believe that,” Meijer said pointing at the report. “I’d really like to convince you, however. If you believe it, that will guide what resources you expend and who you watch closely for years.

  “Naito, if you listen to the audio recording, has a disturbingly detailed memory. He is a natural observer. Now I know excessive detail is a feature of creative lying. Our bosses, being expert liars, know that trick and assume it is in play when they hear too much detail.”

  Morton frowned because he’d rather not have had that on his office recording.

  “In the courtroom, a jury hearing a witness say he saw a green car hit the pedestrian and speed off, will more readily believe the witness who says he saw a green Brazilian Fiat hit the victim, and point to him, going south on Palolo avenue.

  “Details have a flavor. One layer can be added on the fly and never checked. He had a gun in his hand, can be added with impunity. But an expert liar knows that “He had an antique Sig Sauer P226 with the hammer back” will be too detailed, and get you in trouble. If you do that you’ll mess up and the gun will turn up being something visibly different or a model that has no external hammer and contradicts your story.

  “Naito adds things like April pointing to storage lockers and specifies number five. He even adds qualifiers for things he isn’t familiar with and knows he may be in error. He’s the sort of expert witness that terrifies lawyers to cross-examine.

  “When we stopped for dinner, I stopped discussing the case and made some supposedly idle conversation with him. In matters that touched on politics and his personal loyalty, he was as precise there as he was remembering his flight on the space ship. He openly advocates closer relations and trade with both Texas and Home, but qualifies everything in advantages and disadvantages. He kept speaking in such detail that the interview ran almost to midnight. I’m not sure he can ever be politically effective if he doesn’t espouse one position and hammer on it to influence his peers,” Meijer said.

  His boss, Morton, sat back considering all that, and Meijer let him do so quietly.

  “First, I’m not sure that you aren’t being hard on Naito because he disturbs your world view that all politicians must be crooked. You may be expending energy trying to affirm your private convictions. Secondly, imagine how much easier it is for him to remember everything if he simply tells the truth. Liars have to remember all the versions of events they told various people. Why, if Naito makes that a constant habit to qualify everything, then later he can always say in full honesty and under oath that he pointed out the advantage of something that prevailed, and the disadvantages of something that failed.”

  Meijer looked a little dismayed. “Do you know what? I think maybe he’s smarter than me.”

  * * *

  “What could be more important than our current project?” Holbrook asked Heather.

  “It isn’t a matter of importance,” Heather explained patiently. “Jeff needs Dr. Houghton’s skill set on a matter held in tight security by a group of a half dozen people. As I understand it, you are at an impasse with the two devices which we obtained and unlikely to make any quick advance without significant improvements in human tech or theory. Indeed, since it looks unlikely that we will get any more artifacts you should be considering how to wind down the effort to understand what we do have. It would be time now to plan on returning to your previous research and what assets you want to keep for that and what you will mothball or release to other uses.”

  “I may take a sabbatical and pursue some other studies that caught my interest at Marseille,” Holbrook said. He had an expression that said he had a bad taste in his mouth. Heather suspected he expected her to encourage him to stay. He was an asset but at this point, the drama he created took the shine off his utility.

  “I’m sure you are the best judge of how to use your time,” Heather agreed. “I hope you find the studies you wish to pursue useful and refreshing. If we find something new that may be challenging and of interest to you, I’ll be sure to inform you.”

  Holbrook looked blank for a good three-beat and then seemed to realize the song was over and nobody was still dancing but him. That was the termination of their conversation. He nodded and disconnected with anything else unsaid.

  “Doctor Holbrook thinks he is a Fermi or a Newton, and should be privy to all your plans and secrets,” Dakota said from the side, where she’d followed the conversation with Holbrook off camera.

  “I know. He’s going to go stew on it and compose how he’ll turn me down if I do try to recall him to some project. Marseille can have the joy of smoothing his feathers down every time he feels slighted. What he doesn’t understand is we get along just fine with the French, and anything they get off him they’ll offer us in an equitable trade.”

  Chapter 22

  Eric was on the com for Jeff. Before he accepted the call, and Eric could see his scrutiny, Jeff looked closely at his face. He wasn’t sure what had changed, but Eric was making the transition from looking childish to looking like a young man. If he petitioned for his majority soon Jeff should consider how he was going to vote. Indeed, they did so much business together he might owe him a sponsorship rather than a straight vote.

  “What’s up, Eric?” Jeff asked after he connected.

  “Two things. I’ve looked into collector coins and found some special issues that would be profitable to copy. There are commemorative coins for special events and anniversaries, there are challenge coins for all sorts of organizations, and there are official coins that have a face value but are special issue. I’ve prepared a list of offerings from Earthie coin dealers. Those kinds that had the greatest appreciation in value are noted. There is also a list of questions I haven’t attempted to answer and would welcome your input.”

  Jeff didn’t like Eric creating work for him instead of relieving him of it.

  “Give me an example.” If it was easy stuff, he’d tell Eric to decide more himself.

  “If we have commemoratives, for what sort of anniversary?” Eric asked. “Earthies are big on centennials, but sometimes they do twenty-five or fifty-year anniversaries. Those might be of interest to people still living when it happened. I think you could saturate the market and lose people’s interest by bringing them out too frequently.”

  “Yes, maybe aimed at different markets.” That was complicate
d, Jeff had to admit. “Perhaps depending on if the event is Earth-centric or Spacer. We’ll have to see how Life Extension works out. It might be necessary to go with the centennial, bicentennial, and then the quincentennial,” Jeff decided. “I’ll look at the list.”

  “The other thing is, I’d like to open a post office,” Eric said.

  “You mean you want us to open a post office?” Jeff asked. “You don’t need my permission to do that. How would it fit in with the banking business? As I understand it, the UPS office accepts postal mail. They notify you if it matches a com address or has a real corridor and door address, and they charge if you wanted it delivered. If you don’t want to pay, they toss it in a bin. Anybody who wants to can come in and pick it up during first shift. They get stuff that doesn’t have a recognizable recipient too. They bag it all for carbon scrap to the Moon when it builds up.”

  “That’s what I was told too, but their bin self-purged yesterday. They’re not going to hold undeliverable envelopes and won’t even accept postal packages for somebody who isn’t a regular known customer anymore. The bin caught fire from something in it off shift, so the fire control system locked the room down and flushed it to vacuum. It made a mess and cost them extra to clean and restore pressure.”

  “And this makes you want to do the same, why exactly?” Jeff wondered.

  “Because I read that some tiny countries that are just an island with hardly any people make a lot of money by issuing postage stamps. It would more than pay for the trouble of dealing with it.”

  “No thank you. It was just a fire this time. Next time it may be an explosive device. UPS is already set up to scan everything for hazards and something still got past them. I don’t want any part of it. Neither do I see it as a bank related service.”

  “Then, you don’t mind if I pursue it with somebody else?” Eric asked Jeff.

  “Not at all. May you make a ton of money and get much joy from it, far, far, away.”

  “Thanks, Jeff. I’ll let you know how it works out,” Eric promised and disconnected.

  Jeff shook his head in disbelief. Maybe Eric wasn’t that grown up yet. If it didn’t work out, he’d either get an emergency message or feel the pulse ripple through the deck.

  * * *

  Vic stopped weeding when the sun was high. There was about as much sunlight as he would get today on the eight solar panels he had lined up along the south side of the barn. They were hooked up just as Ted suggested and drawn to get the best combination of voltage and amps. His best set of jumper cables were attached and draped through the window into his shop.

  The four new panels were from six miles further down the state highway than where he collected the first set. If they didn’t provide enough power he wanted to wait until he had armed companions to go further afield. They hadn’t seen any scouting forces like before but they had traveled carefully in the moonlit night, assuming outsiders wouldn’t risk that.

  Ted wanted the tubes from these blinker signals badly enough to send Arlo and one of his new men to pick them up. He also sent some handwritten sheets making more suggestions about what might work to cast gold and some other useful do it yourself ideas. He surprised Vic by asking his advice on how and where to pan the river and tributaries upstream than ran past his place.

  Vic was trying his suggestion for making a mold in which to melt the gold directly. Ted included some nice drawings that helped. He’d crushed several dozen graphite battery electrodes and made a paste of them, with a touch of honey as a binder. Vic formed a bar shape in a folded foam box, with a waxed wooden form making a tapered cavity for the ingot. The plain end was where he’d clamp a lead. After drying it and pulling the wooden form he fired it in a tin in their cook fire.

  The bar was lowered into a slot cut in a firebrick salvaged from the fireplace of a derelict vacation home. He clamped a carbon battery rod in a homebrew holder and put on his welding helmet. There were some chunks of sintered gold already in the mold with some borax, and more ready to add with BBQ tongs. The first arc he struck told him this was going to work much better.

  The last time he’d experimented, striking an arc between two carbon rods with only four panels powering it, he couldn’t maintain it. When the metal melted it was hard to see it run together and slump away from the arc. Once the whole end of the mold bar was glowing bright yellow. The gold was a molten puddle filling the bottom of the mold. He hadn’t been able to do that before.

  Vic had five troy ounces of gold dust and flakes measured against an ounce silver coin on a homemade scale that was also Ted’s design. He added a little extra, expecting some loss from impurities boiled off or absorbed in the flux. If it was a bit heavy, shaving a little off would be easier than remelting it, when he had access to a better scale. When it was all melted the hollow was half filled and his carbon rod was pretty well used up. He carefully disconnected his feeds, clamping them on dry wood. Vic sat a washtub over the still hot brick and mold, weighing it down with a rock. He wouldn’t feel safe to leave the barn without doing that. It would stay hot enough to start a fire on contact for a while. After supper, it should be cooled all the way and he’d see if he could tip the ingot out without destroying the mold.

  * * *

  Walter had his sensor package ready to show Jeff. At first, Jeff didn’t understand the long rod in his hand was the fly-by sensor to check the North American ship for weapons.

  “For some reason, I assumed it was going to be a sphere,” Jeff said.

  “Any particular reason?” Walter Houghton wondered.

  “That’s how we made a lot of our drones and little spy bots. It’s the best volume to surface area ratio. But I suppose it’s just habit,” he admitted. “Why a skinny cylinder?”

  “As it sweeps past the North Americans’ orbital facility it will adjust and turn to stay pointed at it.” Walter pointed the rod at Jeff’s head and swept it from left to right, changing the angle to keep it pointed at his head.

  “If it can do that accurately it will present a very small cross-section,” Jeff said, nodding.

  “Both optically and for millimeter waves,” Walter agreed, “but there are other advantages. It is easier to make a very sensitive detector with its long axis pointing at the source. Also, if there are any sensors watching from another angle, off to the side, they will see this as a thin line. It’s still very stealthy, it’s covered in nanotubes that will absorb both visible light and microwaves. But it will still occlude stars.”

  “I take it that coating isn’t particularly delicate?” Jeff asked.

  “You’d have a tough time scraping it off without destroying the thin tube under it. My skin oils and contamination from being in the air will boil off in vacuum.”

  “So, tell me more about how this works,” Jeff said.

  “All the security and surveillance systems heavily process the images before they categorize them and decide if they should be reported to a human observer. I believe they will all have the same presumption you did of a bulkier drone. A thin dark line sweeping across their field of view is more likely to be interpreted as a lens aberration or a software artifact. However, if you keep sweeping past too frequently, you run the danger of the software being sophisticated enough to keep track of similar anomalous events and issue an alert.”

  “We shall use it sparingly,” Jeff promised. “One thing bothers me. What happens if they detect it and don’t just shoot it? What happens if they send a drone or manned ship after it and capture it? How would you feel about having the North Americans take your probe apart piece by piece and thoroughly analyze it?”

  “That would be a problem. There are several physical devices in it obtained from Loony sources. They would be very upset with me for leaking them to the Norte Americanos. I’d be even more upset to have them capture the onboard software.”

  “What can you do to fix that?” Jeff asked, before he started offering suggestions.

  “I can strip the guts out of this thing and put it in
a double walled tube just a few millimeters bigger in diameter. Between the inner and outer tubes, we’ll pack it with a layer of CL-20. It will have a command in the software to detonate it, a secondary receiver on the back end in case the primary command module fails, and I’ll make it look super simple to take apart in such a way removing the first screw will make it self-destruct too. It shouldn’t take more than two days.”

  “I’ll buy that,” Jeff agreed, “and once assembled, test it by doing a fly-by scan of something else with a sample of fissile material.”

  “When do you want to make a real pass?” Walter asked, eager to see how it worked.

  “The Earthies are almost fanatical about controlling nuclear weapons. They tend to only load them on a manned vehicle at the last moment before it departs. We’ll wait for signs they are almost ready to send the ship out again before taking a pass. When they have a burst of activity bringing materials up on shuttle flights, then we’ll surveil them. But there’s something else we need to do first, to be ready, even if we miss a chance at surveying them until a future mission,” Jeff said.

  “We can grab an object in the jump field of two or three vehicles and drag it along. I want to test out our ability to do that very quickly under computer control. Just detecting they are violating the L1 limit is pointless unless we can do something about it. I want to stand ready to intercept their ship and capture it. We then can snatch it away wherever we wish in our fields. Your drone is not the only thing waiting on that. We are holding up our crew from making a return trip to a very interesting planet. They know why, but it’s still driving them crazy being made to wait.”

  Walter screwed his face up in thought. “That sounds dangerous. You may have a fight on your hands. If it is armed as you think it is, then they may fire on you.”

  “Since the ships doing the intercept would be within fifty meters, directing nukes at them wouldn’t work out so well for the launching ship,” Jeff said.