“The others were busy busting in the barn where I couldn’t see. I always knew that’d be a weak spot so I booby-trapped it. When they broke in it set it off and caught four or five more. Hard to tell how many unless one of ‘em was wearing mismatched shoes.”
Eileen decided maybe she didn’t want to see, if he couldn’t tell how many he’d ‘caught’.
“We had a hard march to make up the time we lost evading those guys. We were hoping you’d let us sleep in the barn to save setting up camp. We want to get to O’Neil’s in the morning and fly to Nevada to see a doctor.”
“No, no, the barn ain’t secure now and it’s still a mess. You just go on up to the house. Drop your stuff by the front door and when I finish up I’ll come up and we’ll have a bite together. There is a big pot of venison stew on the floor in the mudroom. If you care to set it on the back of the stove it can be warming. You can have the bedroom to the left, up the stairs. It’s the one done all in blue. If you go in back off the mudroom and you’ll see my water heater. You can start a small fire in there and keep it going if you’d like a hot bath later. There’s a big old footed tub in the downstairs off the kitchen and but it takes the whole tank to fill it once.”
Vic had never heard of anyone being invited up to Mast’s house. This was a big step up in the local social order for them.
“Thank you, your hospitality is really appreciated,” Vic said.
Mast gave an ‘Aw shucks’ dismissive wave. “Go on up, you look set to drop.”
* * *
April went to the Private bank of Home to talk to Dan. Speaking on com was fine for certain things, but there was a sense of separation that allowed a different mentality. Just as people expressed things online more harshly than they would ever dare to do face to face and got into flame wars, so trying to conduct business online allowed a detachment that made it too easy to say no. The fact that a person had to get up and leave or even worse tell the other person plainly to leave was much more emotionally wrenching than knowing they could simply be rid of you at the touch of a button.
Dan would feel safer on his own territory in his own bank than dealing with April on her turf or even in a neutral site such as her club. He’d hesitate to deny her requests. She was finally coming to understand how intimidating she could be, after long denial.
It had been months since she’d been in the physical bank. Her partners and she had no public space like the Private Bank, theirs was totally virtual. She had conflicting feelings about that. If they ever did have a walk-in lobby she thought basing it on the Moon would make a lot more sense. Just the expense factor was so much better on the Moon, and Heather’s Central had survived being nuked already. Nobody on Home had any illusion it had that level of security. Indeed, the Private Bank kept the majority of their hard assets and all the things they held in safe deposit in deep lunar storage.
The immediate change April noticed was Dan’s desk, as well as Irwin’s sadly unoccupied desks were set back and semi surrounded by glass, and there was a new desk totally in the open set right in front of the entry. It was wider than strictly necessary with two chairs behind it and two very nice comfortable chairs on the inside of the curve facing the entry. It didn’t say, “Stop Here”, but it strongly suggested it. The young man sitting there looked familiar but April was uncertain enough to ask.
“Are you Iaan, Matt Wilson’s son?”
“Yes, I know I’ve grown a bit,” he told her, amused.
“Yeah, at least a full head higher, would you ask Dan to talk to me when he’s free?”
“You are on the ‘send them straight to me’ list,” Iaan said, “and you are on my favored list too because I remember and appreciate still how you got us on the shuttle to come up here.”
“You’re welcome,” April said. She walked around the boomerang and into Dan’s glassed- in area, Iaan escorting her. The noise level went down noticeably. It wasn’t just isolated, it had to have the active noise cancellation of a hush field.
Dan looked past April and made a tipping motion with his hand. “Iaan will get us some coffee,” he said.
“Good, I need a jolt, thank you,” April said.
“What else can I do for you?” Dan asked her.
“It’s more like what you can do for Irwin and by extension yourself. It will benefit me but well down the line. I’d like to suggest you make some public statements if Irwin didn’t tie your hands to make it impossible.”
“Irwin was remarkably trusting and said it is impossible to know what might come up so setting all sorts of rules could be a catastrophe,” Dan said. “He said to try not to be a butthead and make some money if I had a chance.” He leaned back and clasped his hands.
“Tell me what you have in mind and I’ll consider it.”
* * *
A NOTICE to Our Customers and Interested Business People
Daniel Prescott * IT Manager * Acting Head Private Bank of Home
Starting immediately with this notice and press release the Bank will no longer facilitate payments that start or end with USNA dollars due to the illegal arrest of the Bank’s principal owner, Irwin Hall. The USNA government has taken the stance that any foreign coin is in competition with the USNA dollar and thus illegal to possess, even in the pocket of a traveler in distress forced to land on USNA territory by a carrier emergency. This, of course, ignores the history of thousands of coins travelers have commonly carried back from trips abroad and kept as curiosities or were simply not worth converting to their own currency before going home. These have never been treated as criminal contraband. It ignores the fact foreign coins were once the majority of circulating money in their own early history.
The Home banks have never promoted the solar to be introduced to the USNA or anywhere on Earth as a circulating currency in violation of Federal law, or sold as an illegal bullion coin such as was prohibited in the Gold Restriction Act of 2072.
Mr. Hall’s arrest is an aggressive political act in violation of North America’s treaty obligations. This narrow interpretation and application of their own laws was targeted at Mr. Hall to the exclusion of thousands of others who have been ignored for prosecution. A similar application of the law to everyone would bring international trade to a standstill and stop any reasonable person from visiting the USNA for business.
Citizens of Home are guaranteed free passage and to be treated by their own law while in North American territory. Breach of these promises releases Home citizens from any obligation to reciprocate the peaceful resolution of our previous conflict. Until such a breach is repaired and compensation made, Home sovereign citizens are free to take whatever actions they feel necessary to remedy the harm done them. North America risks the Bank and others bringing the matter to the attention of the Home Assembly for a resolution of joint action and resumption of general hostilities between North America and Home and her allies if we are unable to resolve the harm done to us.
* * *
“Wow, he went beyond what I suggested,” April said. “He never looked upset. When I got through talking to Dan I wasn’t sure he was going to make any statement, and here he talks about compensation and threatens to ask for what would be a declaration of war even if he doesn’t use that word.”
“Dan doesn’t emote and wave his hands around and shout much. I’d never mistake that for not having any strong feelings. Look at this market chart,” Jeff said. “The USNA dollar is down three percent against the Australian dollar in the six hours since he released this. I’m not sure that is enough to provoke them into saying anything. They tend to regard an individual as not important enough to gift with a response. You seem to need to be a head of state to be on their radar.”
“Well I’m not going to ask Heather to speak for us,” April said. “She’s the only real head of state we have past L1, and they’d croak to see her hold court.”
“I’m staying out of it too. They already have me painted as a monster. Oh, look at this screen,” Jeff said, adding a wi
ndow to the wall display. “The price of gold is up slightly in every single market where it is legally quoted against the local currency.”
“Platinum a little more so,” April noted.
The corner of the screen showed a priority search notice, and then about ten seconds later, a message from their intelligence chief Chen.
“Want to bet they are about the same thing?” April asked. Jeff just shook his head no. Chen was important to them so they answered him first rather than the search alert.
Chen looked cross, which was unusual for him. “The Secretary of the Treasury just let everybody know which way North America leans on the issue of arresting Irwin by imposing the same sanctions on the Private Bank as stood on the System Trade Bank. He also elaborated on sanctioned goods and make clear firms or individuals who trade in nonessential goods for Home, Central, or the Lunar Republic will be blocked from dealing with North America and their assets will be subject to seizure. He then went on a long rant about the full faith and credit of the United States of North America, and made it clear no modern economy can function using any physical asset as a basis for settlements, that gold was fine for Iron Age farmers and Medieval princes, but was now a commodity like any other metal and had no special economic significance.”
“Well, so much for Treasury wanting a channel open for payments,” April said. “He’s the boss over the Office of Foreign Asset Control, so he just affirmed its policy and that they didn’t arrest Irwin by mistake or as a rogue action.”
“Or was told to own it from the highest executive levels,” Chen said.
“We have a net search alert, so we probably have the full speech and supporting document, but thank you very much for the synopsis,” April said. “We’ll let you know if we hear of any further response. Dan really surprised us and made a stronger statement than we expected.”
“Were you instructing him to issue that statement?” Chen asked bluntly.
“I don’t have any handle on Dan to order him to do anything. I merely suggested it in a general way, without carrot or stick,” April admitted. “The words were his. I did urge him to move on it, because I thought it would lose any power by delaying it. I’m glad he got did get it out before the Secretary’s statement. Now it looks like they are the ones reacting to Dan, not in complete control of the situation.”
Chen nodded. “Dan really had nothing to lose. Everything the Secretary detailed was already implicit in his actions. His news conference was so soon after Dan’s release that I suspect it was coming anyway, but you are right, the optics of it favor Dan. Enumerating their position publicly was not directed at Dan and the Private Bank, but to keep everybody else in line who wants to do business with North America. In my estimation, it was not worthy of a Great Power. It made them look weak and reactive. They should have just ignored him. I’m surprised they let you goad them into it so easily.”
“He not me,” April protested, “and this really isn’t sufficient reaction to justify taking stronger action. I need something more.” She hoped Chen might suggest something.
Chen just looked alarmed at that and had no helpful suggestions. He just said, “Uh-huh. We’ll talk about this again,” and terminated his call.
“He doesn’t want to give me reasons to escalate,” April observed.
“Chen knew too much about it too soon to have gotten it off the news services,” Jeff said. “He didn’t even have ten seconds to read it between your AI doing a keyword search and his calling us.”
“He has an inside source, a leaker who fed him the text of the Secretary’s speech before it was broadcast,” April said with certainty.
“The only way spies get stuff like that is to trade other information for it,” Jeff said. It seemed to worry him.
“You have to pick your people and trust them,” April insisted, seeing his line of thought. “Otherwise you need to create a huge expensive bureaucracy with everything compartmented so the right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing. It requires institutional paranoia and is inefficient, destroying any ability of your people to display initiative. I have to trust Chen not to damage us by leaking the wrong thing. If he picked carefully he could leak and actually help us.”
“You had me until that last,” Jeff said. “How could he possibly do that?”
“We’d be happy if they released Irwin. Without naming us or detailing what we might do, Chen could still say to lower echelon intelligence that some of his Home contacts are watching the entire drama with interest and could easily be provoked into intervening themselves. Chen has good credibility with his peers. Being starved for anything of actual substance, you can bet his take on it would be included in all the reports being generated as on-site intelligence. If they are indecisive it could be enough to tip them to the decision to release him.”
“So, you are comfortable with Chen or his people putting rumors and minor revelations out there that in his opinion might work to our benefit? That seems risky and of very low probability,” Jeff said, skeptically.
“Chen knows how back channel information and disinformation flows between agencies and spooks far better than us. I trust him to share the right sort of rumor and speculation that might work to our benefit. History is the sum of all the low probability events added up,” April insisted.
That seemed backward to Jeff and he almost protested, but he sat thinking about how improbable most of the events that had shaped his life were, and stayed silent.
Chapter 6
Eileen was having trouble going up the hill, all shaky because as soon as she’d stopped walking to talk with Mast her legs immediately started cramping up. They dumped their gear by the entry and went to the kitchen in the back of the house. It was warm there so they hung their coats and put their rifles against the wall out of the way. Eileen went through to the mudroom and started getting her boots off, wishing she’d left her coat on as it was cool.
The fire in the kitchen stove had burnt low, so Vic presumed to put a couple of small pieces of wood on it and went past Eileen to start a fire in the water heater. It appeared to be entirely handmade but functional. It was cold by the door and more so down on the floor. Fetching the stew from the mudroom, Vic could see why Mast used it for a cooler. The pot had a good four or five liters of stew, that was good, Vic didn’t feel they’d be imposing. He just sat it on the back of the stove to heat gently and didn’t take an eye off to set the pot in the hob. He had no idea how long Mast would be and didn’t want to scorch it.
Eileen came in and put her head down in her arms on the table. Vic started thinking they might not be able to get up early and make the long walk to O’Neil’s in the morning. Indeed, Eileen looked like she might need a few days of rest before she could travel.
* * *
It was full dark with stars showing before Mr. Mast came in from his gruesome task. When Vic looked over Mast’s shoulder he shook his head no, and said, “Ted went home. It’s close and he could get there through the woods if he needed to.” Mast was in no condition to cook so he asked Vic if he was up to putting a skillet of cornbread on to cook. Vic assured him he could, and tossed some more wood in the stove, not banging the door.
“I’m going to strip down to my underwear in the mudroom and then just use enough of the hot water to clean up,” Mast said, keeping his voice low because Eileen was asleep. “I don’t want to rob your lady of her bath. Nobody will want to use my bathwater second hand and I’m not going to eat like this. I can have a full bath and take my time in the morning after you are gone. I’ll need to wash these clothes in boiling water too. Before The Day I’d have just tossed them. That’s too big of an expense now.” Vic followed him to the mudroom.
“I have serious doubts we’ll be pushing on to O’Neil’s,” Vic told him. “I think Eileen is going to be too stiff to even try in the morning. The plane is coming back the eighth of next month but we were warned we might get stranded and not be able to return if there is early snow. I can’t take that chance
. We may have to wait until the spring.”
Mast frowned and looked grim. “Is that girl sick?” he demanded.
“She’s not sick. She wants to buy birth control. She doesn’t have a previous prescription so the doc won’t just send a refill. He has to see her. She has big plans that need putting off children for a few years, and I married her knowing that clearly beforehand.”
Mast nodded, thoughtfully, and could see any deeper questioning would be intrusive.
“I’ve heard good things about you. Then I saw you use good sense doing the salt deal instead of looking for an argument. You know, I wouldn’t ask just anybody to my house. Quite a few at the festivals have gotten their feathers ruffled that I don’t pack a crowd in my house who think they are important. Truth is I’d need to have all of them in here to avoid offending someone. Not having any in is easier than a mob. I can help you with this trip tomorrow, but I want a formal commitment that we’re allies and partners to support each other. I’ll help you other ways, but when I need a helping hand you have to stand ready to return the favor. Think about it and you can answer me after I’ve washed up.”
“I need to know what kind of ventures you have in mind,” Vic asked.
“When things get back a little closer to the old normal here I’d like to organize a political machine. I don’t want to see outsiders come in and control everything. I’d like a local sheriff and local county executive. Not me, but I want a hand in picking them. I might invite you to do some business with me, in certain things. I wouldn’t charge you storage to keep stuff here, and I can offer you transport to O’Neil’s tomorrow or in the future at need.”
Vic nodded, not acceptance, it was too important and complicated to seal such a deal with a nod, but that he’d think on it and Mast went off to get cleaned up. Vic went back to the kitchen and found the stuff to make cornbread and thought about the offer. He was impressed that Mast had shell eggs. He poured the batter over hot pork fat in a cast-iron skillet and stuck it in the oven. He checked the thermometer on the oven door. It read between 375 and 400, Fahrenheit scale of course, but it was too old for that to even be marked on the scale, it was assumed. He was satisfied he didn’t need to open the damper more, and he’d check it in about twenty minutes. The stew got moved forward over a small hob with the eye pulled off and stirred, not a larger one it would sit down into.
All in Good Time Page 9