Been There, Done That

by Mackey Chandler

  The lights had been dimmed and they had a local comedian deliver a short show that was surprising in how lacking in coarse language it was. The audience seemed to appreciate the local references and even he understood a few by context. The lights had gone up again for just long enough to give the servers a chance to freshen drinks, deliver orders, and then dimmed for a couple guitarists who were exceptionally good if they were local talent.

  When the musicians took a break and the lights came up again Pierre offered a small velvet case to April. “When relating our first meeting to my Prime Minister some time ago, he very much enjoyed the story and expressed approval of you and your actions. He’s quite the romantic, and sternly charged me with being prepared to gift you with something better than my old cuff links when next we met. Since it was his idea, and I could easily embrace it, I prevailed upon him to let France contribute towards it as a state presentation to Lady Lewis. I hope that doesn’t diminish my credit for it to zero, because I helped make sure it was something that would do you justice.”

  April held the case unopened until he had his say. “You seem to have instigated the whole thing, so I’ll credit you with being clever too,” April said, and opened the little box.

  The design was unique, which Pierre had insisted upon with the jeweler. That included not using close variations of the design in the future. It was in yellow gold of a rose tint. The problem presented was Pierre didn’t want a design in pavé. He wanted a pair of significant stones. In a pair of cuff links that was a difficult task since they had to stay flat to the cuff to display well, not hang at an angle from their own weight.

  The solution was to create a rectangular plate that aligned along the arm on the long side, but had a raised dome in the middle of sufficient depth to hold the stone at the girdle. There was no way to cut a diamond shallow and create the internal reflections needed to make it brilliant. This allowed it to be held at the widest point and the bottom of the stone enclosed. The stones used were about eleven millimeters in diameter which made the required dome shapes to hold them six millimeters high. They projected another four millimeters, and had a combined weight of a bit more than ten carats. Rather than plain polished gold the base plate was granulated in the Phoenician style, within a rolled raised rim, and the surface of the domed part a visually contrasting grid of deeply engraved meridian lines like a globe. The inside plate didn’t try to compete with the outer stones, just echoing the domed design in contrasting platinum.

  “They’re beautiful,” April said. “Thank you, and extend thanks to anyone you feel deserves it who acted for France.”

  “Joel certainly,” Pierre agreed.

  “They are lovely, but these have great sentimental value,” April said, removing the ones she was wearing. She exchanged them from cuff to box. “I will certainly use and treasure both,” she promised.

  After two more acts April announced she was ready to call it a night. Pierre felt no personal interest in April’s friendliness, but he entertained some small hope he might get an invitation for a nightcap. He’d at least like to see how a person with her resources lived on Home, but instead she asked if he was confident of his ability to make his own way back to his hotel. He declined the offer of another guide.

  Chapter 8

  April wasn’t expecting a call from that com code. Lindsey wasn’t working on anything for her at the moment. Lindsey was one of those people who she respected. The girl was a huge reservoir of talent. April had no doubt Lindsey would display even greater artistic abilities as she matured. Even so early in her career she had a huge following and was making serious money.

  The fact April had several of Lindsey’s expensive pieces hanging on her walls testified to her appreciation for her talent. Still, for some reason April could not explain, Lindsey in person didn’t excite her the same way her art did. Lindsey had visited April at home and been entertained. There was a very short list of people who April welcomed in her home.

  But April had grown restless and wished her visit to end. Lindsey was one of those people who seemed to like April more than April liked them. Most of those unrequited admirers were creepy gossip board stringers and Earthie fan boyz, not people like Lindsey at all.

  Lindsey was actually very sweet. She even had her own fandom to keep at arm’s length, and lots of people would be delighted to call her a friend. That thought made April vaguely guilty, and she got a flash of that again at Lindsey’s call. She couldn’t find any reason for her feelings that wasn’t what she would regard as a serious character defect in others. It seemed like something she should fix, if she just knew how. Lindsey was on her second tier com list to at least notify April she was calling, even if she didn’t get an auto-connect. She answered the call rather than let it go to messages.

  Lindsey was looking in her pocket pad. That was obvious from the angle and the view behind her that was the top of a bulkhead and overhead. It appeared from the color and finish to be a public corridor. She also looked a bit flipped out.

  “April, I’m standing out in the corridor and have no idea where to go or what to do. I have my stuff with me and need someplace safe to take it. Can I come to your place?” she pleaded.

  That raised a thousand questions in April’s mind. But it seemed cruel to make her start answering complicated questions standing in the public corridor in distress. No matter what she felt about her, Lindsey was an asset and needed to be protected. “Yes, come to my place, I’m home. Do you need me to send some security to escort you? Are you in any danger?” April worried.

  “I don’t think my mom even knows I’m gone yet,” Lindsey answered. “She had to go to work. I went out the door because I had to, but there is no place to rent but hot slots, and I’m scared to trust my stuff to a public locker. I’m not even sure it will fit in one.”

  “Come on over then. I don’t have any appointments soon and we can talk and see what can be done for you. I have to go to the Moon tomorrow, but we’ll get you safe and squared away by then,” April promised. It sounded like it was a family issue. If worst came to worst she could bring Lindsey along with her and Pierre and deliver her to her dad on the Moon.

  * * *

  Pierre had a whole day to kill before April’s promised ride. He thought about unblocking his phone and seeing if anything of importance was happening in his office. It was pleasant however not to be bombarded by issues that should be settled by competent subordinates. He wasn’t entirely sure the speed of light lag to his phone might not be noted as an anomaly by automated systems and raise an alert. In the end he decided just to enjoy today as a vacation day.

  He could call Eric to play the native guide again, but he hesitated to remove the boy from his schooling two days in a row. He could find his own way to the cafeteria easily, and then later the place Eric mentioned the day before, Cheesey’s might be fun to try. After a bit of looking he found the mic logo to toggle his spex to audio mode. He still was not proficient with spelling things out with a virtual keyboard. “Map, show a route to Cheesey’s restaurant in the Barracks,” he said. Surprisingly it knew the informal names for places. A green virtual line appeared in translucent overlaid on the floor appeared in his spex leading to his hotel room door. That amused him. He might have discovered that part of the journey on his own. “Map, close for now,” he instructed, confident it would work for him later.

  * * *

  April got some tea things ready. Lindsey liked tea better than coffee and she would probably feel better to have something to occupy her hands while they talked. She was upset enough she might have neglected to eat, so April got some cookies out that Gunny hadn’t finished off, for a miracle. Lindsey caught April just out of the shower and she hadn’t had breakfast yet herself. Maybe she should leave her things here and take her to the cafeteria? No, if she was upset she’d probably feel better speaking in private. April ordered breakfast sandwiches and burritos couriered from the cafeteria. If they didn’t eat them, Gunny would.

  Could
Lindsey even have that much clothing to remove from her parent’s apartment? They were living in Jeff’s apartment as part of her father Mo’s wages. Like most places on Home, there wasn’t room to accumulate a huge closet full of outfits and shoes like Earthies kept, neither did people have a lot of knick-knacks and junk to sit out on display. It just wasn’t the style. Apartments weren’t built with shelves to use for that. Nobody in their right mind would hang them on a bulkhead to encroach on their precious living space. Spacers were obsessively neat to the point that grounders found their quarters starkly bare.

  Lindsey arrived at her door just ahead of a young man from Eric’s courier service who had their breakfast things from the cafeteria. April was dismayed to see Lindsey had three foot-locker sized shipping containers on a follow along cart. The sort of composite shell boxes that were a standard size to fit in ship holds and storage lockers. No wonder Lindsey didn’t know what to do with them. She had a big duffle bag on top of the hard containers. That must be the clothing that was all April had anticipated her having.

  The courier insisted on helping them bring Lindsey’s things inside. April suspected Eric had given him special instructions to treat them well since he always insisted on serving April and Jeff personally, if he was free. She not only thanked him but gave him a bit for a tip.

  “I have tea brewing and the thermo-pack is breakfast. I bet you haven’t eaten, have you?” April demanded.

  “I’m not hungry,” Lindsey said. “I’m too upset.”

  “Of course you are,” April agreed, “but you won’t make good decisions until you calm down a bit. Being pumped full of adrenaline with low blood sugar isn’t going to help you think straight. Now, you’re someplace safe and your stuff is safe, so that’s your first big worries out of the way. I’m going to pour us both some tea, and I want you to take a couple bites of sandwich even though you don’t want it. Consider it medicine for your body’s sake. Humor me. I’m having one just because it’s morning and I’m hungry. Your body would be telling you the same thing if your mind wasn’t in a tizzy. What are all these boxes anyway?”

  Lindsey looked surprised she didn’t know. “My only possessions that matter to me to keep, all my notebooks and original drawings and the preliminaries for stuff like… that,” she said, pointing at April’s huge drawing on the wall she’d commissioned Lindsey to create.

  “I hope you have it all digitalized and archived at separate locations, so if the originals are ever destroyed it’s not all lost,” April worried.

  “Of course, but you know it’s not the same,” Lindsey insisted. “That’s why I have the certificates of authenticity and actively confirm them. Viewing the original is never like seeing the image on a screen. Even if you print it on the same brand of paper, you never get the texture exactly right. Do you want to trade your drawing here for a digital copy?” she asked, nodding at it.

  “I’ll keep it thanks.”

  April poured tea and took it upon herself to add about as much honey to Lindsey’s cup as she’d seen her do before for herself. It was really dear stuff, pricey even before the freight cost.

  “I’m not going to talk until I’ve had a chance to eat a sandwich and have a few sips. I need it if you don’t,” April said. Dear God, she sounded like her mother.

  “It’s not that I’m worried about them being destroyed,” Lindsey tried to say around a mouthful of egg muffin. She had to stop and chew. Then she was too dry to talk without a sip. April just looked interested. She hadn’t said she wouldn’t listen. The story came out with April saying little and only occasionally needing to stare pointedly at her muffin and Lindsey would take a bite.

  “I’m worried about them being taken,” Lindsey revealed. “My mother started showing interest in my art for the first time. I was happy because she has always made snippy little cracks about what a useless waste of time it was. But she’s not stupid. The interest was a sham. The questions got to what she was interested in pretty quickly. It was how much can you sell these for? I wish I’d never started pulling things out and showing them to her before I realized she was just interested in liquidating them.”

  “You mean stealing them,” April corrected.

  “That’s such an ugly word to use with your own mother,” Lindsey said, and looked down favoring her attention on her tea for a moment while she thought. “I’m sure in her mind it would not be theft. I’m a child and whatever I have is only because of her. She gave me life and she owns me and I don’t own anything until I reach a magic number of years where her society says I am suddenly infant one minute and adult the next. I still have a year to go for my majority by Earth law. She grew up with that logic and believes it is some kind of natural law.”

  “Indeed, most people never understand the customs of their village aren’t the same as natural law,” April agreed. “Even as hard as it is to get to Home and find a place here, Mr. Muños tells me a third of the people never adjust because it’s too big a change. That many go back within about six months.”

  “Really? I had no idea it was that many. My mom seemed to be adjusting to life on Home. She got a job and she stopped complaining about things like she did at first. But she never would consider going to the Moon, not even just to look it over. As soon as she thought she might get a chunk of money from me she started saying how we could be very comfortable back on Earth with enough money. Not like before when they were struggling financially.”

  “So, if she forced you to return to Earth, she’d depend on you financially for the indefinite future? Doesn’t that seem a bit precarious? I mean, you don’t want to go, and yet she expects you will just forget about being basically kidnapped, and continue to support this arrangement after you do reach your legal Earth majority? That won’t be very long at all.” April gave her a very skeptical look.

  Lindsey was calming down enough to start on a second breakfast sandwich without April’s prompting. She ate a little and took a sip of tea, confident April would wait on her.

  “It isn’t rational. None of it is. I’m sorry to say my mom can twist things in her mind to come to almost any conclusion she wants. She just expects I’ll do all these things because it’s necessary to what she wants.”

  “Well, your presence here kills that theory,” April noted.

  “Yes, and she is really going to be so angry when she gets home and I’ve cleaned all my stuff out. I’m still trained enough at keeping her happy to dread it. She’s going to unleash a barrage of nasty messages, trying to make me feel guilty and demand I come right back,” Lindsey worried.

  “There’s a block feature on your phone you know.”

  Lindsey looked incredulous at the idea.

  “Maybe you’re conditioned deeper than you think. Are you going to go back and hand all your stuff over to her if she says the right things?” April asked.

  “No way,” Lindsey insisted.

  “So why accept the abuse? It won’t help you, and it won’t help her. If you come right down to it, all it can do is waste time and make both of you even more unhappy. Tell me I’m wrong.” April demanded.

  “I’m still scared of her,” Lindsey admitted. “I’m afraid she’ll get people to support her to force me back. I’m scared of what she’ll say to Eric and my dad.”

  “Haven’t you told either of them what happened?” April asked.

  “No, I was in a big hurry to pack and get out.”

  “Then I’d sit and compose a short simple message to both of them first thing. Saying your mom wanted to take all your things to sell and you won’t allow it. You don’t have to explain every detail right now. Keep it short and sweet. It wouldn’t be any kindness to let them walk in on her, or get the kind of message you said she’ll send out, with no warning,” April urged.

  “Oh God, Eric is going to flip out too. He’s already been avoiding coming home more than me. She has to let him go to the full G sleeping barracks because of his age, so he has an escape. Then, he doesn’t have to come home until s
he is off at work. She’ll be nasty to him just because he’s there and I’m not. He makes enough money he could eat even if she pulled his cafeteria card. She asked us both to contribute to household expenses and we both do. So she knows that’s not a handle on him. It actually seemed to make her angry we agreed so easily, like she wanted to argue about it. That never made any sense to me either.” Lindsey said, and sat there, still thinking.

  April wondered if they contributed, but hadn’t wanted to ask. She had unpleasant memories of her brother, and how he only wanted to take.

  “You’re right,” Lindsey said after thinking on it a couple minutes. “I owe a heads up to both of them,” she started keying in a message with a determined look. April refilled her tea.

  “And sent, and… blocked. Wow, that was hard to do,” Lindsey said.

  “I think you fail to credit the people here, at least the voters, with good sense and fairness. I’d say, if they have the whole story, the Assembly is more likely to vote you your majority than send you back down to the Slum Ball with your mother. Nobody who has toughed it out and made a go of things here will want to force anybody down to Earth except as criminal exile,” April said.

  “I’m not sure I’m ready to be an adult,” Lindsey said. “I just don’t see any alternative. It’s not like I can ask somebody to adopt me.”

  “There are plenty of people who would be happy to advise you, and help you deal with transitioning to adulthood without a formal adoption,” April assured her. “I know you have a huge community of fans who appreciate your art.”

  It’s scary,” Lindsey said. “I’m not sure what will happen with Eric either. I wonder if dad would take him on the Moon if my mom goes back to Earth?”

  “How would you feel about taking him if you were voted adult status?”

  “We get along now. We didn’t so much when we first came up here. I’ll admit I had to change a lot more than him. Did you know I set off the fire extinguishers in our hotel room the first day we were here? I was just covered with foam and we were kicked out and had to go to the other hotel. My parents made me wait out in the corridor dripping wet so the hotel staff didn’t see me and refuse us a room.”