Been There, Done That (April Book 10)

by Mackey Chandler

  That wasn’t really a question so Heather didn’t reply.

  “Why don’t you want me as a subject?” Holbrook abruptly asked. “You went to a great deal of trouble to help me remove from Armstrong and continue my work. You just trusted me to join in this project even though I have not yet formally renounced my USNA citizenship or assumed citizenship at Marseille.”

  “You haven’t asked,” Heather said plainly. “You still could return to Earth, to another nation if North America isn’t to your taste. You could align yourself with Marseille or likely be accepted as a French citizen and live there. You have skills and many options. Most of the people sworn to me have done it for safety, in the early cases because they were literally running for their lives. I don’t ask people to swear to me unless they want to.”

  “I want nothing to do with Earth, and while Marseille is pleasant, and I’d like to continue working with them, they still have a tie to Earth that makes me distrust my future to them. May one swear, not from fear, but because this is where the action is and I want to live here? Even if you kicked me out I have no desire at all to go back to Earth,” Holbrook said.

  “Yes, that’s plenty of reason,” Heather agreed. “Kurt also asked to swear to me and I have neglected giving him an answer. I sent him off on a mission where it was better not to be sworn to me so they couldn’t pressure him to act beyond his authority. But he deserves an affirmative answer now. I’d propose we have a ceremony tomorrow and not interrupt this meeting to do it today. It deserves some pomp and a dinner not just a tray of pastries. Is that agreeable?”

  Kurt just nodded, Holbrook said yes.

  Mo looked very uncomfortable. “May I speak?”

  “Of course,” Heather allowed.

  “I’m aware I could swear to you and still be a citizen and voter at Home. I’d love to ask, but my home life is unsettled. My wife will not consider coming here. Otherwise she seems to have come to terms with living at Home, but I have no desire to seek work at Home and return there.

  “I don’t want to swear to you if I can’t answer your call to do whatever is needed. Right now I have no idea what I’ll need to do. I visit Home between tours here, but it doesn’t feel like a stable solution, long term. If I’m the only obstruction to speaking freely here, I’m not irreplaceable, I’d gladly withdraw.”

  “Leave things the way they are for now,” Heather told Mo. “I can’t imagine anything I can’t reveal to you unsworn. There are things you can’t do for me, and things in which I may not be able to act for you as your sovereign, but that has nothing to do with what we are considering tonight.”

  Mo nodded agreement and leaned back, somewhat mollified.

  “The composition of the bodies won’t be known until the survey is taken, but we know French mills will have to work in lower temperatures and weaker gravity. I don’t think the old Ceres lander data is of much use since they only sampled inside one crater in the polar region,” Heather said.

  “And surface composition only,” Mo said. “But if you are talking a week or two you aren’t going to be drilling any deep holes either.”

  “Or even checking that many points on the surface,” Dr. Holbrook added.

  “Ceres is just big enough to have been pulled into an almost spherical body by its own gravity, the smaller bodies less so,” Jeff said. “I suspect their surfaces will be less smooth than our lunar environment. Carrying a French mill on a tracked vehicle may be impractical. However, on a small body with low gravity a walking type chassis may be very practical.”

  “Could you whip up some designs?” Heather asked.

  “I don’t really need to,” Jeff said. “There are some fairly robust designs made to work at a full G so all I need to do is remove some excessive weight from the design and make sure the joints and actuators will work in the cold. The technology is mature enough we don’t need the latest designs. Battlefield mules or fire and rescue bots from ten or fifteen years ago are fine basic designs.”

  “Oh, those things. They creep me out,” Dakota said.

  Heather’s immediate thought was, so does Kurt, but that was hardly a helpful thing to say. It did finally dawn on her that Dakota had a lot of aversions.

  “Is your intention, after this survey mission, to use this Hringhorni, for an attempt at a first extra solar voyage and return?” Dr. Holbrook asked.

  “No, it’s too late for that. It’s been done, a couple times,” Heather informed him. It was probably a character defect that she enjoyed how much it shocked him. But he didn’t seem unbelieving at all, which was even more satisfying.

  “Well, you certainly aren’t glory-hounds,” Holbrook allowed

  “Our game plan is to go far, go fast, and plant our flag on as much of the best real estate as we can find before the Earthies even know we are out there.” Jeff said. “I don’t care about glory and headlines. I don’t even care if history ever corrects the Earth perception of things in the end.” But after he said that a deep frown flashed on his face and he had that detached appearance that said he was somewhere else in his thoughts.

  “What?” Heather asked, concerned he suddenly saw a major obstacle.

  “I’m going to have to design you a flag,” Jeff said. “It’s traditional.”

  Chapter 6

  Frank fussed around folding and packaging the clothes Pierre had worn in, while the other pieces were being sewn. Pierre turned down further refreshments, to Eric’s dismay. The fabricating machine had a count-down display and only had minutes to go.

  “I’m going to wear this to dinner much later today. I’d change out of it to keep it fresh, and wear one of the casual outfits right now.”

  Pierre examined the four pieces critically when they were laid out for his inspection. He examined the seams which didn’t seem to bother Cindy or Frank in the least. “I’ll wear this red shirt, with the yellow and teal boomerangs, and the navy slacks,” he decided, scooping them up. When he emerged from the privacy booth his other items were bagged too, and he told Eric, “I’m done then. Let’s swing back by my hotel and drop these off.”

  Cindy looked at Eric and lifted an eyebrow. He hurried to text someone. “No need, Jenifer will be here in a few minutes,” Eric promised.

  “That’s part of the service,” Franks said. “Eric handles that for us.”

  “Ah, the card did say courier services,” Pierre remembered, “but I assumed you were busy with me.”

  “I have people for that. I only carry stuff for a few special customers.”

  Pierre raised an eyebrow at that claim. Eric didn’t even notice.

  Jenifer appeared at the door at a dead run, but slowed to a walk at the threshold. She was about ten years old Pierre would guess, with a long braid down the middle of her back and a pair of spex that would be a week’s wages for Pierre. She stopped a meter short and gave Eric an abbreviated bow.

  “It looks like you already have a delivery to make,” Pierre joked, because she had a sack in hand. Frank was holding his things in a handle bag.

  “Your pardon, I was in the cafeteria. I’ll finish my lunch after making your delivery,” Jenifer explained, with a nod that was less than her bow to Eric.

  “Thank you,” Pierre said. He was thinking how his nieces might act if they were asked to interrupt their lunch to run a package down the street for hire. Assuming they wouldn’t be arrested and their parents charged with neglect.

  Jenifer took the sack from Frank and headed out the door without any more chit-chat. She took off at a run once she was in the corridor. Pierre thanked his new tailors and followed her at a much more leisurely pace.

  Outside Pierre questioned Eric. “Their shop looked like something from my childhood. I swear my mother had the same ugly chairs we sat in. The crème wall covering and the lighting fixtures as well, and those robots were silly. Nobody uses them and the automated sewing system obviously doesn’t need them as finishers. I know the owners look old enough to match the décor, but is the shop actually th
at old? Was Home even in existence when those things were in style?

  Eric was a little dismayed that Pierre didn’t get it. “A lot of their customers are of an age with you. Cindy and Frank spent a huge chunk of money to get the right period look to amuse them. The customers like the nostalgia. It reminds them of their childhood like it did you. They name the robots and start telling Cindy stories about when their mother’s house looked just like that while they are being fitted. Did you notice the music they had playing was period too? It’s… I think the word is campy.”

  “Oh, I suppose it’s like making an ice cream place look just like a 1890s soda parlor,” Pierre realized, a little embarrassed he hadn’t understood.

  “Now that I’d go to,” Eric said. “Somebody should start one on Home.”

  “If you would not consider it an invasion of your privacy, how much does a runner like Jenifer make from being a courier?” Pierre asked Eric.

  “An Australian dollar a minute rounded up from point to point. The hotel is pretty close, but she won’t complain because most jobs are a lot longer. It’s complicated,” he admitted, “if she had to get a cart I’d pay her until she returned the cart. If she had to go to another ring I’d pay her until she returned to this ring, unless I got her another pickup somewhere. I don’t have rules to cover every possibility, but I try to treat her right. If she doesn’t feel she was treated well I’d hear about it. I’d make it right if she felt that way, otherwise I might lose her.”

  “What’s to keep her from offering her services directly to people?” Pierre wondered. “She had on really nice spex so it would be easy to contact her.”

  “She doesn’t want to do this every day. Jenifer only makes herself available a day or two a week. Sometimes she skips a week. If she did it on her own she’d have to do it like me and organize a group to have friends on call. That would probably be pretty tough right now because I have most everybody signed up who is reliable and wants to do it. Her brother Iaan works for me too, and if she can’t take a job she’ll recommend him before I call somebody else.

  “People won’t keep calling you if they offer a job and you work alone and are busy doing school or are with your family and turn them down often. I have enough people to cover so we’re dependable, most of the time. Though it can get sketchy on the off-shift,” Eric admitted.

  “What would people do then?” Pierre wondered.

  “If it’s parts or contracts or something really vital that can’t wait for main shift they can call the local agent for UPS and Larkin’s Line. He’ll even get out of bed and run your stuff in the middle of the night, but he charges a lot more to do it than me. I don’t know anybody who will drop a couple hundred bucks to UPS for immediate pick-up and delivery to get a sandwich delivered from the cafeteria.”

  “Speaking of the cafeteria, I could go for a light lunch already if you want to go back before we are too far away,” Pierre suggested.

  “OK, we’ll beat the rush,” Eric said, “then footies and a haircut.”

  “It’s a plan,” Pierre agreed.

  * * *

  “My guest tonight is French, so please see if you have a nice French Champagne, and reserve it for us,” April requested. “They can get pretty snitty if you offer sparkling wine from Australia or somewhere as Champagne. I’d rather not give him the opportunity.”

  “Do you plan to order for him?” Detweiler asked.

  “I’d rather not. You can reserve a second bottle if you want to cover all the bases and I’ll release the one you don’t use back to stock.”

  Detweiler was looking down, checking something, before he looked back at April. “I checked our menu for this evening. I have a very nice rosé that isn’t too sweet and should work well with just about anything he might order.”

  “Even a hamburger?” April teased him.

  “If you intend to drink a tenth Solar bottle of Champagne with a three bit hamburger it’s not my place to fault you,” Detweiler insisted. “One might upgrade to the bacon cheeseburger if you are splurging,” he suggested.

  “I’ll tell him that if he seems shy to order freely,” April agreed.

  * * *

  “Back home, people would salute me with this haircut,” Pierre said, examining himself with the help of his pad. That was one thing you couldn’t do with spex, he reflected.

  “I’m not sure I understand why,” Eric said, carefully.

  “Very short hair is associated with military service,” Pierre explained.

  “Anybody who works in a pressure suit keeps it really short here,” Eric said. “Almost all the militia guys are ship people, so I guess it’s the same.”

  “The humor is a bit mocking I’m afraid. The upper social classes don’t regard the military with much respect. Many regard them as a necessary evil and a waste of money. The more so now, since the majority of the French forces are committed to the European joint command.”

  Eric looked confused. “Why would they agree to that?”

  Pierre seemed embarrassed at such a probing question from a child, mostly because he felt the same way, but had to support the policy.

  “Probably the only real benefit is it seems to have kept the various members of the Union from going to war with each other for some time now, at least not without kicking one of them out first.”

  “Not mine to judge,” Eric decided. “Let’s get you some footies. There’s a machine near the elevators.”

  Pierre was glad to drop the discussion too. It was a difficult situation to justify as the foreign minister of France. Life would be easier if only some other high government officials were as flexible as Eric.

  * * *

  Jeff was alone with Heather after Dakota was the last to leave.

  “Tell me what you think of this,” Jeff said, turning his pad to her.

  There was a black screen with a pearly disk and four small dots of the same color in the top right quadrant. They were along an arch with the same center as the big central disk.

  “What is it?” Heather asked.

  “Your flag, it’s the Moon and the four smaller dots are the minor planets you are going to declare under your sovereignty.”

  “What about Camelot?”

  “It’s actually on the Moon, so it’s included in the big central disk,” Jeff said. “As well as anyplace else you care to claim on the Moon. I’ve been thinking you should lay claim to some of the distant craters we’re putting French mills in too. Maybe put a radio on each one declaring it Central territory even if there isn’t anybody living on site.”

  “That’s fine, as long as April doesn’t get a bug to annex Pluto or something. Then this will be obsolete. If we have it plastered all over then you have to go to the trouble and expense to change them all,” Heather said.

  “You know, the United States had a similar thing. They used to have a star for each state in the blue field. They started with thirteen in a circle, until it got to be so many, what with Canadian and Mexican provinces, that you couldn’t see them as individual stars from any distance. Then they went to one big star. They pretty much wanted to forget about any autonomy anyway. I was thinking more about extra-solar territories. You could just decree old flags don’t have to be scrapped, but new ones add the dots. They will wear out and be replaced anyway.”

  “It’s too much round stuff,” Heather complained. “It looks like you’ve been using it for target practice. Make the little ones diamonds. A flag is symbolic anyway, not literal, or we’d have to size them all to scale. Do that and I’ll buy it.”

  “It’s heraldry, sort of, so you’d call them lozenges.” Jeff typed in a few commands and the dots changed to four sided elongated diamonds.

  Heather looked at it and thought a bit.

  “You intend to actually use this? Maybe hang it out on a pole here?”

  “Sure, why not? I’m not sure any nation lacks a flag.” Jeff said.

  “That’s fine for blue sky Earthies. But if you hang that against the bl
ack lunar sky it’s going to look like the pearly parts are just floating there unsupported. That might be OK, but it won’t look like a flag.”

  Jeff didn’t say anything, he just altered the image. A border of the same pale color as the disk appeared, then he narrowed the edge a bit.

  “There, what do you think?” He asked when he was satisfied.

  “Not bad. Show it to a few other people and if we don’t get any really brilliant ideas to improve it we can go with that,” Heather agreed.

  * * *

  “Not the ones like socks,” Pierre insisted, “the ones that look like ballerina slippers. What do they call them?”

  “The menu calls them flats. I didn’t even remember that. Everybody calls them moon shoes, except the real ones have a special sole that’s grippy pushing back, and slide really easy going forward.”

  “How do they do that?” Pierre asked.

  “I don’t know,” Eric admitted. “I sort of figured it was nano, like sticky bottoms on duffle bags or the butt of zero G pants. You can check a box off and get plain any-direction sticky soles on the flats too, way cheaper than real moon shoes. This machine doesn’t make those, you have to order them from Armstrong and they’re about fifteen hundred bucks Australian.”

  Pierre grimaced. Everything was so expensive here.

  “Step on the outlines,” Eric said. “Don’t worry, it’s sanitary.”

  There was a bench to allow you to remove what you were wearing without balancing. The menu only offered a dozen colors and finishes, and no patterns. Pierre picked the black suede with a charcoal sole, non-skid but not grippy. They would work fine with all three of his outfits. He’d pass on semi-slick for dancing, and didn’t think he’d need insulated.

  The machine asked him to step up and down a couple times. After he complied it showed him a picture of his intended purchase and indicated three currency choices. They were three hundred forty Australian dollars, and Pierre remembered Cindy and Frank would have charged him much more, so maybe the specialty soled moon shoes weren’t that outrageous.