Another Word for Magic

by Mackey Chandler

  “Things are getting complicated,” the Brazilian said, worried.

  “My experience is they seldom get simpler,” Heather said.

  The way she phrased that reminded the Earthies about their driver’s lecture. Heather did have a great deal more experience than them. It was easy to keep forgetting it.

  “As a gift, and to demonstrate I have no desire to exclude all of Earth from the heavens, I’m sending a large transport to Derfhome tomorrow. I promised I would repatriate those caught by surprise and whisked away when we relocated the habitats. The transport will make a circuit of all the habs restoring people where they wish to be. It’s a freighter with scaffolding in the holds to support seats so it isn’t a luxury vessel. You are welcome to take it to Derfhome to discuss your desires with Lee Anderson. When it makes another circuit, you can ride it home. I believe after that I may keep it in service making the same circuit for a fee.”

  “This is so sudden,” the Brazilian said. “We weren’t assigned to go to Derfhome. We didn’t prepare for a trip or have any authority to do so. We’d have to consult with our governments to get authorization to do such a thing.”

  “I’m just offering. One or all. It doesn’t matter. There’s the com if you need to consult,” Heather said pointing across the room. “I’ll release the house to let you call anywhere you want. I won’t be surprised if they tell you all to come home while they think about it for a month or two, until the situation is as you say, even more complex. But it’s a free ride that will have you at Derfhome tomorrow instead of a week or so after your bosses make up their minds what they want to do.”

  “We didn’t bring luggage or aides,” the Australian objected. “Just for overnight.”

  “Derfhome is reasonably civilized,” Heather said. “They sell toothbrushes and underwear. They’ll take your government credit card. Home is in orbit there, where my ship will dock. They will have prêt-à-porter as well as auto-tailored clothing there if the planet doesn’t. Frankly, that would be more practical than the stuff you are wearing. Nobody you want to talk to will care about proper diplomatic wear. You could show up naked painted blue and they’d treat you with respect.”

  “I’ll take your ride, thank you,” the Indian lady said without hesitation.

  The Brazilian gaped at her, shocked.

  “I’ll inform my superiors I’m going,” the Frenchman said with a sneer. “They appreciate their people displaying initiative.”

  “Mine would think I’m grasping for power to do more than exactly as instructed,” the Australian said. “I’m not even going to ask them.”

  “I didn’t even want to go to the Moon,” the Brazilian confessed. “I was assigned and I surely did not sign up for an unexpected trip to the stars. Have fun,” he told the two going. He seemed to think that constituted a witty riposte.

  “Oh, I shall,” the Indian lady said. “I’ll send a postcard if they have such a thing.”

  And just like that, the Brazilian’s contempt cemented those willing to go as allies.

  “Is there a hotel for tonight?” the Indian lady inquired.

  “There are a couple of bed and breakfasts. We keep guest rooms in Armstrong but it’s too far to do the round trip for overnight. If you don’t like the looks of the B&Bs off their net sites, you are welcome to our transient barracks. That sounds awful but they are clean and have privacy. They aren’t really barracks anymore, but the name stuck and we didn’t have to change our signage. It’s just one night so you don’t need a suite.”

  “That should do nicely,” the lady agreed. The Frenchman just gave a nod.

  “Dakota, show our guests the B&B sites and arrange to get the others back to Armstrong. While you are at it, inform the loadmaster for Derfhome we have two Earthie passengers for Derfhome via Home. Please inquire of the cabbage mines if there are any perishables we can’t preserve that might be sent to Home. I’d like to see if they will still buy them or if there is a market on the planet. If they can’t sell them and have to dump them to take on passengers it’s no loss. They have to box or bag them and load them overnight. We’re not going to delay departure.”

  “I’m on it,” Dakota said.

  * * *

  “Wow, there’s some sort of big affair at the Old Hotel,” Sam told Bill. “Half the folks I track are headed there and even a couple of extra Red Tree soldiers from that Derf safe house.”

  “You aren’t doing anything risky to try to find out what, are you?” Bill worried.

  “Nope, just passive observation,” Sam assured him. “The more I think in terms of being private actors instead of state agents, the fewer risks I want to take. I know we left a bad taste in their mouth when we showed up at that storage facility at the same time a whole mob of them did. They don’t know what, but they suspect we were up to something more than picking up an extra tin of graham crackers from storage. If only I could convince them we are a possible asset to be utilized instead of a known opposition force to be tracked and neutralized, they could give us a lot of work.”

  “Dream on. The Centralists seem pretty fair, but don’t even contemplate getting Pam Harvac to regard you with neutrality, much less favor,” Bill warned. “If you get her stirred up against us, she has lines of communication straight back home. She can do us dirty with very little downside to herself or the State Department. Come to that, I’d rather mess with the State Department than her rich father.” Bill lifted his nose and looked theatrically disdainful. “She’d ask fath-hah to sqaash us like a bhug,” he said in his best Boston accent.

  Chapter 18

  “I’m amazed you had a soldier who knows how to tend bar,” Jeff said. Clarke was busy setting up and displayed every sign of being familiar with his equipment.

  “I didn’t,” Strangelove admitted. “I assigned him to learn how and gave him funds.”

  “I was under the impression it isn’t that easy,” Jeff said. “I understand there are hundreds of mixed drinks and people are fussy about how their favorites are prepared. I remember an old flat movie quote: “Shaken not stirred.” I have to wonder how that could make any difference mixing them. Mixed is mixed, isn’t it?”

  “What are spex for?” Strangelove asked. “He has all the recipes in an index that can be accessed in seconds. If it seems really difficult most of them have videos available too. I’d worry about the buffet server as much as the bartender, if I were given to worrying. Fortunately, it’s only my charges who make me worry, not my soldiers.”

  Jeff gave him a brittle smile. He couldn’t argue he never gave Strangelove grief.

  There was extra seating provided on request by the hotel. The usual furniture was pulled to one side and the loaners made into a second seating group. They all were shifted to one side to allow a buffet and bar to be set up along one wall. The Foys showed up first with a gift of flowers and dressed in Earth styles Jeff was surprised they still owned after all this time. Eileen was in a long blue dress, and Victor in a fancy shirt with pearl buttons and a hunk of turquoise at his throat as big as a duck egg.

  “Get a drink and park yourselves wherever you please,” Jeff invited. Vic didn’t have to be asked twice. He headed straight for the bar.

  “What’s the odd bottle there that looks different?” Vic asked.

  “I’m informed that is a whiskey Mr. Singh produces as a hobby.”

  “He still does that? I had some years ago. Give me a double neat,” Vic said.

  Clarke stopped and his eyes flickered in the spex.

  “That means without any ice or mix,” Vic supplied.

  Clarke poured a generous double and managed to do the long pour without spilling any. He was a little disappointed Vic didn’t want anything fancier.

  Vic took a sip before walking away and considered it thoughtfully. Took another sip and nodded at Clarke’s unasked question.

  “That will do. I don’t need to add anything.”

  By the time he rejoined his wife, she was talking with Martha Wiggen and
her husband Ben. They’d met some time ago but it was nice to see them again. Mel Wainwright was standing at her elbow and Vic wasn’t sure if he was a guest or her security until he engaged in conversation easily. He wouldn’t do that if he was working.

  The Badger ambassador known as Talker came in holding hands with the Bill ambassador Singer. They presented April with a bottle of alien liquor which she took to the bar. Lee came in behind and covered Talker’s eyes from behind. He threw his hands up like he was being robbed. Gordon did some kind of elaborate hand slapping greeting with Singer. Everybody seemed to be in a pretty good mood.

  There was much discussion of the effects of Home on the Derfhome economy, speculation about where things would be in a year or ten. April and Jeff’s associates Jan and Chen showed up in tuxedos with their wives dressed to the nines.

  Lee’s techs, Born and Musical, showed up and gravitated to the other Badger and the Bill but didn’t say much, intimidated by company that was their bosses and above.

  The hotel kitchen was asking if they could bring up the buffet and Jeff asked if April was sure Papa-san was coming? He saved them begging a delay by turning up asking for clearance to come up on the elevator.

  Strangelove went to the door to make sure the hotel staff handed off the buffet carts without coming in and Jeff noticed he inspected them closely for anything untoward. He very much approved of his caution. When everything positioned along the wall and Strangelove’s second soldier ready to help serve it, Jeff announced the buffet was open.

  People got quieter and talked to those nearby while eating.

  “I understand you are going back to the Moon,” Wiggen mentioned to the Lees.

  Chen just nodded. His wife Huian was the one who perked up and answered.

  “Yes, not immediately but Chen is needed there and I have business with various Earth people. I was conducting that through the Private Bank but Irwin Hall isn’t going back. I’m going to take over as his manager for the Moon and conduct any business in the Earth-Moon system he’d have done from Home before. He isn’t sure if he’s staying here or will move on if Home does.” She did an elaborate shrug being careful of her plate. “Wherever he ends up, there will be transport there and banking will be needed. He’s no fan of Earth and happy to be a bit further away.”

  “That seems to be a recurrent theme,” Martha Wiggen admitted. “Even my husband set his last two books off Earth. He says when you are no longer immersed in the culture you lose touch with the changes in language and customs. Pretty soon your works are dated if you aren’t trying to write period pieces. He doesn’t want to write Earth-centric stories. The surprise to me is they are selling pretty well with off Earth settings. He even has Derf fans!”

  Talker leaned back from a seat facing the other way.

  “I’ve read both those novels, so you may be surprised to know he even has alien fans.”

  “Sugar, this may come as a shock, but Derf are aliens to us,” Martha said.

  “We need a new word then. All the people in our… uh, group. Badgers, Bills, Cats, and Sasquatch aren’t alien at all anymore. They’re known qualities. Some very strange,” he admitted looking over his shoulder at Singer. Singer made a gesture at him that was probably rude. “But well past being alien. I’m still thrilled to see a Hin, and I’ve never seen any of the self-isolating aboriginals from Human space. However, I’ve been around Humans and Derf so long now I don’t think of them as alien.”

  “Mr. Ambassador, it would take a long time to explain, but that’s about the sweetest thing you could say. It speaks very well to your personality.” Martha reached and gave him a friendly scratch around his furry little ears.

  “When you figure out what word you want to use for the comfortably familiar just start using it. That’s the nice thing about English. There’s no static standard. We can change it by usage whenever we please.”

  “My daughter there,” Gordon lifted his chin and looked across the room at Lee. “Found the Earth Humans as alien as any Hin or Elf. It rather put her off planets at all. I’d like to see her get past that but experiences get mixed up with feelings. We’ve talked about it. She finds plenty of Earthies acceptable once she knows them, but the bulk of them are still on probation with her.”

  “I read the account you sent to the Mothers,” Mel Wainwright said from behind Wiggen. “They entered it in full into the legal record for the other clan Mothers to see their reasons to declare war and to presume to speak for all Derf again.”

  “Again?” Martha’s husband interjected.

  “The Treaty of Man,” Mel explained. “Which they defended at considerable cost to the opposition. I’ll note they found no such objections to their war on North America, even though it exposed other clans to great risk.”

  “They may not have appreciated they were at any risk,” Gordon said. “They well could have regarded it as a matter between Red Tree and North America.”

  “But would the Treaty of Man have stood if Red Tree fell?” Mel asked.

  “Read it again,” Gordon suggested. “Every statement is between Man and the Derf. Nowhere does it limit any provision to Red Tree.”

  Mel nodded, accepting that.

  “As a lawyer, even if I am somewhat in arrears on my bar dues, I’m curious. I have to ask why you didn’t instruct your attorneys to pursue and appeal the juvenile judge’s decision? Wouldn’t that have been much simpler than declaring war?”

  “Much simpler but wrong. My Mothers would have disavowed it and corrected me if I had followed that course. You mistake why I was in court that day. I was going to invoke the Treaty of Man and ask for Lee back. It was a courtesy in the face of rude mistreatment. However, I was labeled an animal and kicked out before I could make any statement myself or through my attorney.

  “Talking to my attorney later, he did invoke the treaty and a bunch of other blather I didn’t request. The judge was even told by the prosecutor that he was in opposition to his own government. To finish matters off Lee appealed to the Mothers’ law and asked the intercession of the Champion of Red Tree both in her case and to support the Treaty of Man. I was surprised at the time she had the understanding to invoke both.

  “Once she appealed to the Mothers’ superior court, I’d have been undermining her case… her cases, if I appealed the cases in lesser Human courts as if they still had jurisdiction. It would have been hypocrisy to appeal and refuse to accept the ruling going against us, then declaring war anyway. Now, I admit there was a lot of miscommunication between me and my lawyers. They kept refusing to do the practical things I asked to do to find Lee and extricate her. They kept asking to pursue things I didn’t understand. But once she stood and asked for the Champion to act for her there was no way it would end in anything but war.”

  “Oh my God,” Mel said. “I appeal to Caesar.”

  “You said that in a different tone of voice, the way people do when they are quoting someone,” Gordon said.

  “It ended a very famous hearing. Something we’d regard as a probable cause hearing. It might have ended with no charges but the man undergoing it didn’t want to risk being subject to that court, so he appealed to a higher authority. Who knows if it was the course of wisdom or unnecessary? It altered the history of western civilization in any case.”

  “Did it end in war too?” Gordon asked.

  “Not immediately, but it helped move along the destruction of that world power, its culture, and religion. It had already taken to wounding itself other ways without recognizing it. It just took another thousand years to bleed out on the floor.”

  “Little girls can’t wait a thousand years for justice,” Gordon said.

  “I’m glad she didn’t have to,” Mel said, “Too many little girls have had to do without justice entirely. But you are making me consider whether this culture and its adversarial justice system may be on a similar decline. Sometimes it’s hard to stand back and see such a big picture. If Lee’s case gave it a nudge in that direction, I won
’t mourn it. I used to be an officer of the court but this conversation makes me see I could never go back and stand before the bar. I just hope whatever succeeds it is kinder.”

  “The Mothers’ law is adversarial too,” Gordon said with a four-armed shrug. “Lee and I worry it won’t be up to dealing with the trade towns and the clanless Derf. Now Humans add a further complication since you have such different customs. Cases only arise out of conflict. If you can formulate a gentler system that removes some of that hostility, publish it and we’ll all give it serious consideration,” Gordon invited.

  “Perhaps I will,” Mel said. “It seems like a worthy use of my time since my Life Extension Therapy is working so well. Are they making any progress on LET for Derf?”

  “I’m no molecular biologist,” Gordon disavowed. “What I’m being told right now is that it took years to detail all the metabolic pathways and genetic deterioration aging Humans suffer. Derf are different but any biological machine that accomplishes the same thing will have similarities. We all metabolize glucose. We all transport oxygen with some form of hemoglobin. The details of the protein differ, but all carry iron. As one fellow explained to me, we all bleed red. Since they have a model in Humans and Earth species it will take much less time for them to detail the same functions in Derf.”

  “And Badgers and Bills,” Talker piped up with hopeful enthusiasm.

  Gordon looked and most of the others had turned their chairs around and were following their conversation.

  “Probably everybody except maybe the Caterpillars and the tentacled people on Ocean,” Lee said from the other group. “I want to eventually get back and talk to them.”

  “Good idea,” Gordon said. “They know we exist now. Better to go back and get to know them before they come looking for us.”

  Talker’s eyes got big. “Can you imagine the difficulties of making an orbital shuttle in a planetary ocean with no dry land?”