A Tower in Space-Time (The Stasis Stories #5)

by Laurence Dahners

  Arya thought, That’s why Kaem was so polite to the admiral! He was already thinking of the perspective it was going to give the public! “So, tomorrow we go in and appear to cooperate as much as we can, blaming all issues on Mr. X?”

  Kaem frowned, “I’m not going in. As the conduit to Mr. X, I’m worried that they might restrict my freedom in an effort to force X to cooperate. If you enter that building, I’d suggest you do it with your phone suspended from your neck and openly recording audio and video the way I do. Livestream it to the cloud and the net. If they ask, tell them you’re doing it.”

  Gunnar said, “The SOBs are probably gonna say it’s a secure location and refuse to allow any pictures or recordings.”

  Kaem looked at Arya, “If they do that, I’d recommend you leave. Protest it on your AV record as you do so.”

  “But, how can I try to make sure our people are financially cared for if I’m not there?”

  Kaem said, “Let’s you and I talk about that after this meeting’s over.”

  A few minutes later the group broke up and started leaving. Before they went out the door, Kaem sent each of them an encryption app for their phone to allow them to communicate securely without having to meet in person. Arya felt as if nothing had been resolved, but Kaem seemed happy and cheerful. As they left, he told everyone to be patient, that everything was going to work out in the long run.

  Finally, she and Kaem were the only ones left. He turned to her, “You okay?”

  “Oh, Kaem,” she said, throwing her arms around him, “Is this going to destroy everything we’ve built?”

  He held her gently as she cried, patting her back and listening to her fears. They wound up on the couch together. For a moment she feared he’d choose this moment to finally try to kiss her—she was far too upset.

  He didn’t. Instead, he listened to her fears and answered her questions with queries of his own that somehow led her to create her own solutions.

  He could just tell me what to do, she thought. Instead, he’s helping me find answers myself. She studied him a moment, Why do I resist the love he gives me? She leaned back, “I’d like to just hang out with you tonight…”

  He gave her a crooked grin, “There’s a ‘but’ coming, right?”

  She nodded, “We’ve got too much to do.” She blinked, “You’ve helped me come up with a good plan, but I still don’t understand how I can do any of it with my computer locked up.”

  “When you get to work, boot up your computer. While you’re bent down to hit the power button, put a piece of electrical tape over the power indicator light. Sit back up swear about how it’s still locked up. Then turn off the monitor and pretend to turn off the CPU. Tell them you’re leaving since you can’t do your job until they figure out what’s wrong with the computers. Call me when you’re on your way home and I’ll meet you there to show you how to log onto your work computer from your home device.”

  “I don’t have any electrical tape!”

  “Just a minute,” he said, getting up and heading to what she thought must be the door to one of the bedrooms. A minute later he was back with a small roll of tape.

  “Aren’t they going to wonder what a piece of tape is doing on my machine?”

  He shrugged, “It’ll blend into the black case. Besides, there are a lot of people who tape over indicator lights for various reasons.”

  “Okay,” she said thoughtfully. “And you think I should move our funds out of Mideastern Business Bank to our personal accounts?”

  “You’re the expert, but I’m thinking you should withhold and pay our taxes on that income first. Then pay all our employee’s salaries for six months so we’ll be sure we’ve taken care of them even if Halser doesn’t. Then cut us final payouts. Um, once the money’s in our accounts, you have any ideas about how we can put it somewhere safe? Somewhere Halser can’t get to it?”

  Arya shrugged, “A Swiss bank?”

  “Sure. Is that legal?”

  “At present it is, as long as you pay your taxes.”

  “Okay. Changing the subject. I’ve been working on a gift for you.”

  “What?!” Arya asked, stunned.

  “A gift,” Kaem said. He grinned, “You know. One of those things it’s customary for someone in love to give the object of his affections.”

  “And this is when you choose to give it to me?!”

  “Well, no. Believe it or not, I didn’t know we were going to be nationalized today or I would’ve moved up my timeline.” He reached over, picked up a slender white box, and handed it to her.

  “What is it?” Arya asked rhetorically as she undid the ribbon holding it closed. When she lifted the lid, she found herself looking at a gleaming Stade rod about a foot long, covered with nubby rubber hand grips on each end. It’s beautiful, she thought. “What is it?” she asked again, puzzled.

  “Pick it up,” Kaem said.

  When she lifted it, she found it heavier than she’d expected. Heavier than the air-Stades she was used to handling it had a nice heft. “What…?” she began but trailed off.

  “Push the button under your thumb.”

  Feeling a little give under her thumb, she pressed. Suddenly the rod pistoned out longer, almost doubling its original length. She thought to about twenty inches. “Is this like a nightstick?” she asked, swinging it experimentally.

  Kaem nodded, “Push the button again.”

  She’d opened her mouth to ask another question but instead pushed the button again as directed. This time, to her astonishment, the stick lengthened a little more and fell apart into two twelve-inch sticks joined by a fine Stade chain. “Nunchaku?!” she asked, eyes wide.

  Kaem nodded, “Push the button again.”

  Blinking, she did so. This time the chain lengthened to about eighteen inches. Looking up at Kaem, she said, “I don’t understand this one?”

  He grimaced, “Now it’s a garrote.” He sighed, “Honestly, the more I think about this, it’s a terrible gift. Especially when you just decided you were a pacifist.”

  She stared at her gift a moment, then said, “I’ve decided I’m a pacifist only when it comes to wars between groups. However, I think a pacifist should be able to protect herself.” She looked at Kaem, “And it’s beautiful. It’s a wonderful gift. One I hope never to use in anger but will proudly carry. Thank you.” She stepped closer to embrace the one she loved, wishing she had time to tell him. But, now, when we have all this hanging over our heads, is not the time, she thought. I’ll do it when we have time to talk.

  ***

  “I’m worried, Emmanuel,” Sophia said. “Could they have arrested Kaem?”

  “I don’t know what for. He’s committed no crime. Nationalization of a company isn’t done because of lawbreaking. In this case, they say they’re seizing the company to secure its secrets for the American military, not because of any wrongdoing.”

  “But why isn’t he answering our calls?” she asked plaintively.

  “I told you, I think he’s very important to the company. I’m sure he’s swamped with figuring out how to turn Staze over to the Feds.”

  “Are you and Kaem going to lose your jobs?” she asked anxiously. “Having my job just suddenly shut down in the middle of the day really put me on edge. What if I don’t even get paid for the work I’ve done?”

  “Sophia, you’ll get paid. You’re a subcontractor. Even under the government, they’re still going to need whatever it is you make for them. And, I’ve looked this up. They don’t replace everyone in a company when they nationalize it. They just put government managers in over the existing bosses.”

  Sophia thought to herself that, however it was reorganized, the company would surely need stazers in the future. But she couldn’t stop worrying that they might decide to have someone else make them. Especially because one of the reasons for nationalization was to keep the secret of stazing and she might not qualify for that kind of security clearance. The previous fiction that Mr. X made them all mi
ght go up in smoke once the government was in charge. Still, she was bound by her agreement with Kaem not to discuss the fact that she spent her days building stazers.

  Instead, she focused her verbalized worries on Emmanuel’s job. “But what if they don’t care about the environmental damage piece you’ve been working on? From what I’ve read, the American military isn’t known for being a steward of the planet.”

  Emmanuel sighed and patted her hand, “Try not to worry about what might happen. Let’s focus on what has happened and what we can do about it. At present, I don’t think there’s anything we can do, so I propose we take our minds off of it by watching a movie.”

  “At a time like this?!”

  Sounding exasperated, he began, “Sophia—” he broke off at a knock on their door. Standing, he headed that way.

  Sophia thought he might be happy for the interruption.

  “Kaem!” he said when he opened the door.

  Sophia squeaked. Getting up from the couch, she rushed across the room to hug her son. “Is your job going to be okay?”

  Kaem laughed, “Don’t worry. We’re gonna be okay Momma. I’m just here to talk over some options with you guys.”

  “Options?!” Just hearing the word put her further on edge. She didn’t want to hear about options. She wanted to hear that, once the dust settled, everything was going to be the same.

  “Um-hmm,” he said, deftly escaping her grip and leading them across the room. “Let’s sit down, maybe have some Chianti. I think you need something to calm your nerves.”

  Emmanuel went to get the wine, so Sophia sat at the table with her son. She told him, “They just sent me a message in the middle of the day at work. Told me to leave the building immediately, as if it were on fire or something! I ran down the underground tunnel and climbed up the stairs into the second building, freaked out the whole way. As soon as I stepped outside, I could see nothing was on fire. The cold made me realize I’d forgotten my hat but I couldn’t get back in!”

  Kaem nodded calmly as if it were no big deal. Speaking quietly so Emmanuel wouldn’t hear, he said, “Mr. X wanted to lock down your facility so no one could get in to see what you were doing.”

  “But surely the government—”

  Kaem stopped her with a hand on her arm, “The entire building’s in stasis, Mom. No one’s getting in.”

  Sophia blinked, “Really?”

  Emmanuel came back out of the kitchen with three glasses of the dark red Tuscan wine. He settled a particularly full one in front of Sophia, suggesting he also thought she needed calming.

  I shouldn’t put up a fuss about it, she thought. I do seem to need something to soothe my nerves.

  Emmanuel looked at Kaem, “So, what are these options you’re talking about?”

  Kaem shrugged, “Well, first of all, you could just keep working for the reorganized Staze. The toxic chemical cleanup is finished and I doubt that the Feds are going to go out looking for more work in that area, but Staze still has its contract to treat radioactive waste.”

  Emmanuel tilted his head, “I thought none of the stazers worked anymore?”

  “Mr. X will let ones that’re already contracted out to jobs keep working unless the government tries to use them for something else. So, the ones at Space-Gen and GLI, as well as the ones your team’s using will still be functional.”

  “How would X know if they took over those stazers and started to use them to make aircraft carriers?”

  “A stazer can tell the shape of what it’s stazing. It sends a log back to X on each thing that’s stazed. He sends that on to Staze for billing, though he’s planning to do his own billing for stazing events now. It also alarms if it’s asked to staze anything significantly different in shape from what it’s stazed before. X has to approve whatever that might be before it can be stazed.”

  “Oh,” Emmanuel said thoughtfully. “So, X is going to war against the government?”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way. He just doesn’t consider himself to be an industry or property that can be taken over by the government. He especially doesn’t want Stade used in building offensive weapons. Admittedly, it doesn’t seem to lend itself very well to offensive weaponry, but he doesn’t want it out of his control in case someone does think of a way to make terrible weaponry out of it.” Kaem sighed, “So, he isn’t going to let them have control of stazing.”

  “I thought he didn’t tell you much?” Emmanuel asked.

  “He told me that much about this problem.” Kaem shrugged, “Helps me know how to deal with issues.”

  “What are our other options?”

  “One would be to quit and take jobs elsewhere.”

  “That’d be a big demotion,” Emmanuel said before Sophia could protest over the same issue.

  “You’ve got to consider,” Kaem said slowly, “that government salaries are paid according to some scheme I don’t understand. Even though they probably won’t fire people, they’ll probably reclassify them and that’ll change salaries. Um, since you don’t have college degrees—”

  “Our salaries will probably go down,” Emmanuel said grimly. “Yeah, I get it. Any other options on your list?”

  Kaem got a huge smile and cheerfully said, “We could move to Italy?”

  “What?!” Emmanuel exclaimed, rearing back in astonishment. “There’s no way we’d get decent jobs there. Hell, that’s a big part of why we left!”

  “Ah, but,” Kaem leaned forward and spoke conspiratorially, “this time we know someone in business there.” He looked at Sophia, “Remember that Bana did her summer internship at your brother’s company?”

  Sophia nodded, still surprised her brother’s business was doing well enough to employ Bana as a summer intern.

  “I’m not sure you’re aware that Amato Industries is a big deal in European manufacturing? They’re far from the biggest, but they’re way out on the cutting edge in terms of new technology and they’re certainly growing faster than anyone else.”

  Shocked, Sophia only shook her head.

  Kaem raised an eyebrow, “They’d like access to Stade, and Mr. X says we can give it to them.” He looked back and forth between his parents, gauging their reactions.

  Whiplashed by emotions, Sophia found herself speechless.

  Emmanuel was watching his son with narrowed eyes. “And why would he do that?”

  “He feels like the government here might try to track him down and force him to give up the secret of stazing. He doesn’t think that effort would be lawful, but… emotions will be high. So, he wants to leave the country and try to do the same work somewhere else.” Kaem shrugged, “He thinks Italy’s nice.”

  Sophia looked at her husband. He was turning to look questioningly at her. She nodded. She loved Italy and would be happy to go back, but knew Emmanuel felt ashamed there. In his mind, he’d had a great career and blown it—and felt humiliated that he’d had nothing to show for it. Living there after his injury, it’d embarrassed him to be recognized, though that’d seemed to be less of a problem on their trip to Tuscany last year.

  Emmanuel turned back to their son, “Give us some time to think about it?”

  “Sure,” Kaem said. “Before I go, I’d like to install an encryption app on your phone so we can talk or text without worrying about it being intercepted. Okay?”

  “Um, sure,” Emmanuel said.

  About five minutes later Kaem was gone and Sophia was staring at the new app on her phone. “This doesn’t look very professional,” she said.

  “What doesn’t?” Emmanuel said distractedly.

  “This app. It looks homemade.”

  “I’m sure it is. Remember how Kaem loved coding his own apps?”

  “But, for something this important, shouldn’t we be relying on a professionally coded app?”

  Emmanuel looked up and gave her an amused look, “I think I’d rather rely on Kaem’s app than any other in the world.”

  He thinks his son’s a genius who can do n
o wrong, Sophia thought. Whereas I just think Kaem’s smart. Deciding she couldn’t change Emmanuel’s mind on that, instead she asked, “Would you be willing to move back to Italy?”

  He looked up. “Yeah. Hardly anyone recognizes me anymore. I don’t want to work for your brother, but I’d imagine Kaem can set up something where we work with them instead of being underlings.”

  “I’d like to go back,” she said wistfully.

  ***

  Raffa was brushing his teeth when his phone chirped. Must be bad if work’s calling me this early in the morning, he thought, picturing a broken machine with an assembly line shut down. But when his phone spoke, it said Kaem was calling. “I’ll take it…” he said, then switched to English, “Kaem! You have any idea what time it is here?”

  “Yeah, sorry,” Kaem said tiredly. “It’s after midnight here, but things are happening that need quick decisions.”

  “And you need to consult your older, smarter cousin?” Raffa asked, trying to keep it light and hoping Kaem wasn’t having serious problems.

  “Yeah,” Kaem said with a little chuckle. “Before we talk about it though, I’d like you to install the little app I just sent you, okay?”

  A little icicle ran down Raffa’s spine. Could my cousin be trying to scam me? he wondered, thinking about how little he truly knew about the Sebas. After a moment he decided he’d trust to blood on this one. “Sure. I call you back once I’ve installed, right?”

  “Right,” Kaem said and hung up.

  The app in his inbox was labeled “encrypter,” and its icon looked amateurish. Raffa paused again, but then told the phone to go ahead and install it. It was only a couple of minutes until he was calling Kaem back.

  “Hey cousin,” Kaem said, sounding like a man with too much to do. “Is it okay if I just get right to it?”

  “Sure,” Raffa said, wondering what it was about.

  “You know how we’ve been trying to work out ways for Amato Industries to build food stazers?”