All in Good Time

by Mackey Chandler

  “Mr. Foy, Ma’am. Glad to see you. What can I do for you?”

  “My wife is interested in keeping some chickens. If you could provide a couple of dozen fertile eggs at the spring festival you can consider them pre-sold. If you know what you would take for them you can tell us when we come back another time or right now.”

  “Have you ever kept chickens, Ma’am?” John asked.

  “No, but I’m prepared to follow advice. I’m not stupid,” Eileen said.

  “OK then, we’re talking two dozen eggs and a handwritten set of instructions about how to raise chickens,” he decided.

  “If you can write a manual it should sell well at the Festivals,” Vic suggested.

  “I have books and old magazines from when I started,” John said. “A lot of it is common sense, and stuff I learned about how to keep out rats and weasels and keep the hawks off them that the written articles never touched. A lot is local, like what sort of stuff they’ll eat instead of commercial feed. I’ll tell you one thing, we don’t have any mice around here! Not for long at least. I could condense it all to ten or twelve pages I think. If you are headed toward O’Neil’s, I take it you are flying out. I need a couple of non-electronic thermometers for regulating egg temperature. The batteries died and I had to make homemade cells with cut up metal and paper separators. You should have one too. If you can bring me a couple of the thermometers and a stack of lined paper,” he showed what size he had in mind with his hands, “that will do.”

  “That seems reasonable,” Vic said, and offered his hand. John shook on the deal and stepped back. When they rode off he stood there to watch them go.

  * * *

  O’Neil’s place was well back from the road but there was a painted sign on a full sheet of plywood between posts at the road. It was rather good hand-lettering that said: ‘This and That General Store’. They were in a river valley flood plain and Mr. O’Neil’s fields were flat. Running parallel to the road was a grass strip that had to be the runway. There were was a line of patio pavers across the end painted white and a big windsock sticking up well clear of the buildings. Along the grass strip, vertical boards called out in big black on white numerals how many meters of runway remained to be used up. If the interval stayed constant, Vic estimated the man had a kilometer long runway. He couldn’t see anything that was a real hazard off either end; it just wasn’t groomed as well.

  There didn’t seem to be any activity, but there was a big sign leaning against the house by the front door that said ‘OPEN’. Vic turned in the drive which went over a ditch and pulled around back of the house. He wanted to get out of sight of the road.

  O’Neil immediately came to the back door and urged them to bring the motorcycle inside. It was light enough the men on each side and Eileen pushing from behind got it up three steps with little trouble. They went through a big kitchen, a smaller dining room, through a fancy wood arch with carvings of oak leaves and acorns, into a sparsely furnished living room that was obviously his office and through another grand arch into a smaller room. O’Neil pulled the doors with beveled glass panes closed enough to draw drapes across the back.

  O’Neil could see Eileen looking at the fancy oak arch, French doors and to her odd sequence of rooms.

  “This is what they used to call the parlor,” O’Neil said, gesturing at the corner room in which they found themselves. It had a tiny fireplace of its own and two chairs facing it “The house is that old. The parlor is a social thing. My great grandmother could have probably explained who was important enough to be entertained here, while others were never invited past the kitchen.”

  Eileen suspected it had been demoted to a storage room and the emptiness was simply that O’Neil’s stock was low at the moment.

  “Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly,” Eileen remembered an old expression.

  “Ha, you do know something about it,” O’Neil said, laughing.

  “No, that’s childhood memory that popped up and I have no idea where I heard it.”

  “I’m not sure either,” O’Neil said, “but I remember my mom saying it something similar sarcastically when somebody made a false offer or accepted a foolish one.”

  “I’ve turned the valve off under the gas tank,” Vic said, getting back to business, “but do be careful, it is a fire hazard to have any gas inside a house.”

  “I have a big commercial extinguisher. I’ll move it in here by the door just in

  case,” O’Neil promised. “Nobody else will come in here, and I don’t have a dog or a cat to knock things over.”

  “Thank you, may we leave our long weapons here too?” Vic asked.

  “Lay them over against the wall and nobody will bother them,” O’Neil promised.

  Outside there was the buzz of a plane making a low pass over the landing strip to check it visually for obstructions. As he climbed away, the pitch of the engines changed as he went away and then turned.

  “And it looks like we arrived just in time,” Eileen said.

  Chapter 7

  “Otis and Mackay both seemed relieved I was just picking their brains and not meeting them to try to set up a rescue. I don’t understand why they would be so concerned to refuse me. It’s not like we do a lot of business with them and refusing me might jeopardize that. If they said no, I’d just move on. Not to another security team,” Jeff clarified. “They are the best, and if they refused I wouldn’t put Irwin’s fate in the hands of a ‘B’ team. But they didn’t have to convince me. I think a commando-style raid would be reckless. We don’t even have sufficient lander capacity to carry it off unless everything went perfectly. Even then it would be messy with lots of collateral damage.”

  “I think I can explain their apprehension,” April said. “Back after the war, when I was getting ready to go down to Earth for my grandpa and the rock owners, I saw that Doc Ames had some gene mods beyond the normal life extension work. I met him for breakfast and wanted to know if he’d sell at least the mod for faster reactions.”

  Jeff looked surprised. “I always assumed he was offering them around quietly before he went into the business openly and approached you.”

  “No, it was too soon after the war,” April said, “and Jelly was uncertain what was going to be legal and what would be prohibited. He was scared he’d start doing gene mods openly and then the Assembly would pass laws against it. That may sound silly now but he’d just come up from Earth and didn’t know how local politics would shake out. When I asked him if he’d sell me the mod I’d noticed he carried himself, he let out a big sigh of relief. He thought maybe I was going to express my personal disapproval of his business. He even intimated I might ask him to leave Home.”

  “That’s Earth Think,” Jeff complained. “That’s how politics works in the big cities run by personal influence and corruption.”

  “Well, he had just come up, but he said that he’d been told a lot of positive things about Home by everybody and quite a few also said not to cross the Lewis or Singh clans if you knew what was good for you.”

  “That far back?” Jeff asked, and looked upset. “We were near broke and had no real history of speaking in the Assembly. I have a hard time imagining why anybody would have thought we had so much influence back then, maybe a little more, now.”

  “He attributed it to the fact we wrecked a few billion dollars in Earthie satellites and shot up some of their shuttles. Then when we came back to Home we helped Jon shoot-up the invasion force that came down the North corridor. I had a hard time understanding it too. Apparently, we got a reputation for direct action very quickly. As he put it, I left a trail of expensive damage, death, and destruction, strewn closely behind me.”

  Jeff laughed out loud. “That does express it concisely.”

  “My point is, he said the Singh clan too. You’ve always said I have a public image as a bit of a celebrity, and all the gossip boards just regard you as the boyfriend in the background. It’s time to own up to the fact you have a re
putation and influence too. You have for a long time really. Otis and Mackay know you can influence a lot of business people. You wouldn’t even have to be deliberately malevolent. Just have honest reservations about them from being turned down. People do ask your opinion and recommendations about who to go to for certain things, don’t they?”

  “They do, at the bank mostly, but I’m very reluctant to say anything negative unless I had really strong reasons to do so,” Jeff insisted. “I’d rather suggest those I can say positive things about.”

  “Good, keep it that way, but be aware all of us have biases, and people may have concerns about that without necessarily thinking ill of you.”

  “OK, that’s very sobering,” Jeff said.

  “So since you all agreed about a rescue, did they have any alternatives or cautions? Did you present my possible action for their analysis?” April asked.

  “I did, in a general way. I expressed it as attacking expensive infrastructure without mentioning bridges,” Jeff said. “The only downside they saw was the danger of escalation. That they might be provoked to attempt to attack Home again or come for you personally. Of course, that’s much harder since we moved beyond the Moon. Jon has gotten pretty skilled at screening arrivals and everybody is paranoid about their freight and packages. We learned a lot from the bio-attack on the Martians. Their military is much less enthused about confronting us than their politicians, but they will if given absolute orders. After all, the ones issuing the orders don’t have to carry them out.”

  April made an unhappy face with pursed lips, thinking hard. “I’ll announce I’m going to the Moon and stay away from Home. That will remove the risk of action taken against Home to catch me here. But we’ll have to set up extra security on my cubic. If people think nobody is home, they might try to take advantage.”

  “That’s a kindness. Some fool might find Gunny at home,” Jeff said.

  “I’ll compose a press release, but give Jon and some friends an immediate heads up as soon as I have it composed. I expect they will try to defend a bridge from being bombarded if I give advance warning, but I want to take the high road and warn people so they can stay off it if they wish. It may take a little extra effort to overcome defenses if they move mobile launchers into place, but I’m going to do it that way. I’ll try to make the warning as simple as possible and not get into name-calling.”

  “Rods are so simple. If you burn the vanes off or push them out of the way, you are as likely to make them hit something more valuable than protecting what you want,” Jeff said.

  “We know that, but I bet they’ll want to be seen as doing something,” April said.

  * * *

  Vic and Eileen’s pilot was Cal DeWitt. He was unloading goods for Mr. O’Neil when they walked out to the plane and turned away from that, not seeming to mind the interruption while O’Neil introduced them. He was even shorter than Eileen but stocky, bald on top, leaving him a gray tonsure. He offset this with a massive bushy mustache. His hand was as big as Vic’s when they shook and Vic had the unfortunate thought that he looked like a gnome lawn ornament. It was a struggle not to smile for fear the man might know why.

  Cal was pleased they only had Eileen’s small backpack for luggage and asked to lift it. He hefted it with no particular expression, looked at both Vic and Eileen with an appraising eye and nodded. “You two and the pack are about 40 kilos short of what I normally will carry, assuming you both have pistols and not too much else heavy on you. I’d like you to sit in the back opposite me to help balance the plane out. I’m short,” he said to Vic, completely unconscious about it, “but I’m heavier than Eileen. I’m going to go use his outhouse and we can head back.”

  When he marched off around the house O’Neil got in the door of the plane and finished handing out boxes and bags of smaller packages, Vic jumped forward and helped him, carrying them a little way to a make a pile on the grass. When Cal came back he was pulling a sturdy child’s play wagon to save O’Neil fetching it from the house. Most of the boxes fit on it and they all helped carry the rest in a single trip to the porch.

  This was the first time Vic and Eileen saw the store and looked around. It had a passage through to the sturdy front door and an opening with a small counter to the right. The counter and bottom swung like a Dutch door. You didn’t walk through and pick your own things self-service, you had to point or say what you wanted.

  Vic noted this with approval and said so. That would cut down on shoplifting.

  “Not my original idea,” O’Neil said. “It’s like the Sari-Sari stores I used to see in the Philippines. They weren’t much more than a roof on posts, but the walls were chicken wire. You could see everything they had to buy and they’d pass it out a little window to you.”

  “I’ll see you the day after tomorrow or the next if these folks don’t get their business done,” Cal said casually. There was no checking a manifest or counting boxes. They trusted each other. Cal walked around the plane and looked it over carefully. That’s as much of a preflight as it was going to get. It sort of made sense. He wasn’t going to do any mechanical work here.

  “You seem kind of nervous. You have flown before, haven’t you?” Eileen asked.

  “Yes, but they were big jets. It’s like the difference between going out in a big cruise ship and going out in a rowboat,” Vic said.

  “Good analogy, but if I need to park this thing somewhere, I can set it down on a country road or any halfway flat piece of ground. You simply can’t do that with a jumbo.”

  That sounded reasonable, but it still bothered Vic their pilot needed a thick booster seat to see over the nose of the plane to fly.

  The plane vibrated a lot and most of the electronics seemed to be add-ons not original to the plane. Cal showed no inclination to climb very high and after he flew through the mountains below their peaks, making slow lazy turns, he followed a road below them east into Nevada. Vic had no idea if that was due to a lack of other navigation or to have a place to land if he needed to as he’d mentioned. One screen velcroed to the dash seemed to be a GPS, but it seemed set on a local scale rather than zoomed out to show their destination. They were given headphones that cut the noise but Cal had an irritating habit of humming under his breath from time to time.

  Once, he dropped down and slowed as they passed a group of a half dozen buildings grouped around a crossroads. He looked them over without explanation and then climbed back up and increased the throttles nudging one control until an annoying beat frequency stopped. When they reached their destination Cal didn’t call anyone on the radio, they just circled the airfield once and landed. At least it did have paved runways.

  There was no car rental or public terminal, just some hangers all closed up. The view was vast with distant mountains and starkly beautiful. Cal led them to a smaller hanger with an old Cessna and a beat-up old Toyota pickup. After getting the truck out, he locked back up and explained they could use it to visit their bank and the local doctor. He’d alerted the doc’s office they’d be in sometime today or tomorrow. He had a map printed out for them and said they should return it with as much gas in it as when they received it. There was one gas station in town and they ran out sometimes now, but they’d just got a delivery two days ago. The gas was all midgrade and last time he filled up it was running eighty-eight bucks a gallon. The tanker came in with two guys armed for security.

  They dropped Cal off at his home partway into as much ‘town’ as there was and went to the doctor’s office. The receptionist said it would be a few minutes because the doctor was stitching up a farmhand who had to be attended to right away.

  When it was their turn, Doctor Sharp informed them the law was he could provide reproductive service to anyone who was biologically mature enough to need them. He asked their relationship and nodded unsurprised when Eileen told him her abbreviated story of her family’s walk north as refugees, and her leaving her grandfather’s home because of no respect. She admitted she and Vic intended to
marry from before that, so she fled to him and entered into a common-law marriage early. She described how useless she considered the callow youths otherwise available in terms that made the doctor grimace.

  His eyebrows went up when she explained they had a long term goal of going to space, and starting a family too early would make a difficult task impossible.

  “I have to admire setting difficult goals. Going to space is something even people in areas with access to launch services find difficult. My understanding is there aren’t any empty seats and even people with an official need get bumped down the lists. It may be easier to do so from foreign sites. I’ll privately caution you that the government has sanctions in place for many spacer jurisdictions and their products. You may be wise to keep your intentions private to avoid hostility toward your plans as displaying disloyalty.”

  “Thank you. It seems silly but we’ll do that,” Eileen agreed. Vic nodded assent.

  “I’m required by State and Federal law to ask some questions and keep them in my records that may seem invasive. To offer reproductive service I have to ask, are you already sexually active?” Sharp inquired.

  “We’re not engaging in intercourse and mighty tired of that,” Eileen said.

  “Again, I must ask if you are both here of your own free will and if you are in your home and partnership situation voluntarily? I’m obligated to call law enforcement and report if you are being coerced or abused, or kept from freely seeking to leave or move about.”

  “I’m not, and it’s not going to happen. I left my family at gunpoint and I don’t need anybody to rescue me. Anybody who tries to enslave me, better plan on never sleeping.”

  “I’ll take that for no,” Smart said, making a show of checking off a box on his sheet.

  There were a lot of questions about her health history most were answered by ‘Never had any trouble.’ She had no numbers for things like blood pressure and hadn’t seen a doctor or had blood work done since well before The Day.