April

by Mackey Chandler

  "Yes ma'am, no problem. I'm Eddie Persico and I work for Jon Davis in Security on Mitsubishi 3. I'm not exactly advertising I'm here. So if you check with him, I'd appreciate it if you can do it second hand and not tell the world I'm here."

  "Fine Eddie. And what do you go by on the street?" She said giving him a look which bored through him like an awl.

  "I, uh, beg your pardon ma'am?" he stammered.

  She just looked at him without repeating and he could feel sweat starting to bead up under his hair. Her stare pinned him like a raptor examining a plump pigeon.

  "I guess you'd mean, some folks have called me Eddie the Lip," he admitted.

  "Hmm...I wonder why?" She mused before closing the connection.

  She is one intimidating lady, he thought as he went back to his meal.

  The waiter came by and brought him a fresh carafe of coffee and said, "Excuse me, sir. I'm going off shift. It has been a pleasure to serve you."

  Eddie nodded and didn't think much of it. The new waiter however had a decidedly mixed Asian look. There was a marked resemblance to his beloved uncles which was oddly disquieting. He looked at the time. Midmorning seemed an odd time for shift change, but it was not close to the even hour or half hour. Who's work shift ends at 09:17? There was also the new fellow's lack of any neck and his incongruous light movement on his feet, which did not match his bulk. This waiter must spend a lot of time in the gym, because he didn't get those shoulders carrying trays.

  There was something else odd about him hard to pin down. After awhile he figured it out. He was too attentive. Most servers have enough other duties they are busy elsewhere and know how long they can let you go before you need attention. This fellow never seemed to need to do anything in the kitchen and didn't have any other tables. He checked the sugar and cream, refilled the water and whisked his carafe away to top it off. All the while markedly cheerful. He expected at this rate the fellow might soon polish his silverware.

  Then when the next table came empty, it was filled with two more heavy weights who wore jackets and one of them carried a bag like you'd take to the gym. Those weren't a common sight on stations. They could be Malay or Indonesian, but clothing and haircuts told him they were probably Filipino. Eddie was starting to think either the Nano-tech convention was being followed by a convention of professional bouncers, or he was being quietly surrounded with some real muscle. That's OK he thought. We're on the same side and they just don't know it yet. So upon consideration he decided he was actually safer with all his new companions. They would have been surprised to know they kind of made him homesick for his uncles.

  His breakfast dishes had been long gone and he had gotten bored with reading the news on his pad, before there was a slight, middle aged fellow, who appeared at the dining room entry wearing a tunic shirt, with embroidered panels down each side in front which shouted - I have money, but I'm just folks. He looked about until he fixed his gaze on Eddie. His gaze then swept to the table of heavies to the right and then a similar table two places away to the left, which Eddie had missed, until the fellow's survey identified them.

  He came forward to the table and introduced himself. "I'm Dr. Ton Agapito Mr. Persico. May I join you?

  Eddie made an inviting gesture to the chair with a welcoming nod. "Would you care for anything? I've had breakfast while I was waiting and have been enjoying the coffee, but feel free to order something if you're inclined."

  "Thank you. I will, as I have been up all night and not eaten." He made a small gesture to the waiter and refused the menu when it was offered. "I'd like a large bowl of Kasha with maple syrup and butter. A Danish with butter on the side and a pot of tea with lemon and honey."

  It made Eddies teeth ache just to imagine so much sweet stuff, but he said, "I was hoping we could have Dr. Singh also, as I wanted him to know there might be some problems returning to Mitsubishi 3. I hope I can get a chance to repeat this to him, but if not we want him to know his apartment was invaded by an agent, who ransacked it. We believe he did not get what he was looking for."

  "We have no idea if his work space has been searched but his employers have not reported anything wrong so we have not asked them to check. If it was the same person who searched his work area that did his home they would know, there was nothing subtle about the search. His son however is fine. We located him in a safe place until we could repair the apartment and now he is back there."

  "Do you have the agent in custody then, so it is safe to return the son to their home?"

  "No. Sorry to say the agent was tipped off we were aware of him and he left early by jumping out an airlock on the hub, to an awaiting shuttle. It endangered quite a few people and caused a near accident ignoring local control too. We have video of his exit so we can ID the agent and we have put much stricter security on our incoming shuttles."

  "They grow too bold!" Ton exclaimed. "Did anyone complain to the Chinese about making such an illegal pick-up?

  Eddie hesitated and Dr. Agapito saw something was amiss.

  "It wasn't a Chinese shuttle Doc. It was a USNA spaceplane. And the agent who slipped away was a USNA military man, a SEAL."

  "My, this is getting complicated." Dr. Agapito admitted. "Neither Dr. Singh or Dr. Nam-Kah felt safe to come walk through the corridors to meet you, because of the Chinese. We had no idea the USNA was involved too. In fact I'm not even sure what the Chinese would do, if they had either one in custody. I don't think Dr. Singh has done anything illegal and it might be an embarrassment having Dr. Nam-Kah seek to defect. From a technical legal aspect, I don't think you can actually defect from ISSII, because each person is under the laws of his own country while on the station."

  "Given that, China for all their restrictions has great personal freedoms on the law books. They just don't really follow their own laws at all. We could try to make sure they do follow their law here, instead of just using strong arm tactics as they would at home. However it might take too long. It leaves them enough room to maneuver and delay using legal tactics, even if they don't snatch her. So we don't want to confront them if we can avoid it. Now we have to try to figure out what the Americans want and will do also." He shook his head at how complex it was getting. "Too many players," he muttered.

  "Dr. Agapito. It's even more complicated than you think. I have no idea who this Dr. Nam-Kah is at all. Never heard of the person until you just mentioned them. It's not even a Chinese name is it?"

  "No. It's not. It's a Tibetan name. But of course Tibet has been occupied by China for years. So you aren't here to help Dr. Nam-Kah to get back to Mitsubishi 3?" He seemed disappointed.

  "I had no idea the man existed when I came here."

  "Woman actually." Ton corrected.

  "Well if Dr. Singh feels it is necessary to bring this lady back in connection with his work, then fine. I was hoping to facilitate his travel, because we don't expect the USNA to follow their own rules and laws, anymore than you were saying the Chinese do. I have considerable latitude in how I discharge my assignments." Mostly 'cause I do as I damn well please, he thought. "Tell me why I should help the lady come along and I'll be disposed to help. I'm not exactly a big fan of governments which act like they own a person. I always figured it said a great deal bad about anywhere you need to defect to leave."

  Ton seemed to be dropping his apprehension somewhat. "The lady, as you say, has done some important work and I really could not explain it to you, because she has only been willing to speak about it in a very general way, until she feels she is in a safe place. Dr. Singh is privy to more of it than me and I trust his judgment it's not something we want the Chinese to have before the rest of the world."

  "Enough to say it involves significant advances in technology, not just theory. We can't just walk her on a shuttle. The Chinese here can stall her departure with false charges and demand her arrest under their law on this station. Once she is outside a closed airlock she is free from their authority, unless they're willing to commit an act o
f piracy before the world. One thing I don't understand is Dr. Singh has mentioned several times he has to have her meet his son. Do you understand why it would concern him so?"

  "Got me." Eddie lied. He had been briefed by Jon and knew Jeff was a prodigy. "Maybe he is planning on proposing and wants him to meet his step-mom."

  Dr. Agapito looked a scowl at him as if he were flippant and then grew thoughtful as he gave it further consideration. "They are both single and marriage confers certain rights of association and travel to be with your mate under almost any nation's laws, doesn't it?" He asked brightly. "Indeed, the U.N. charter as expanded, mentions it specifically I believe."

  "Doc, do you know a preacher, priest, notary-public or whatever they would need here to say, I do? If it doesn't help them get loose then it might save our butts down the road for helping them. Hell, I'll even buy them a wedding gift!" he offered.

  Chapter 18

  Dave Michelson hated being called back in the office off the shop floor. He had just fully gotten things sorted out for this Wednesday Main-Shift, which meant it was almost lunch time. He had worked his way up to manager by his skill out there, then owner and unlike many who were promoted beyond their level of competency, he had found a balance which allowed him to satisfy his new duties and keep a hand in where his real talent was needed. He simply found the best secretary to be had, paid her lavishly and demanded she deal with almost all the routine paper work and leave him free to supervise things hands on. He could sign his papers and OK her excellent communications electronically, from his pad on the shop floor.

  He was smart enough to stay out of the way when his men could handle a routine job, but there was no shortage of tougher problems to use his talents as a trouble shooter. He never took over and finished a job up for a man, but would get in shoulder to shoulder and teach the man how he thought, by reasoning aloud how to fix something. There were plenty of jobs which were not a simple, take one out and bolt one in repair, straight out of the service manual, to use his talents. His dark blue jump suit was just like everybody else's on the work floor. It just said DAVE above his left breast pocket and Advanced Spacecraft Services on the right. Everybody knew who was boss, without him making a big show of it. As a result he had the best repair shop near Earth, despite training a few fellows so well they went off and formed their own companies.

  He was so skilled at turning problems into assets he encouraged those that wanted to strike out on their own, rather than view them as betraying him. As a result instead of being rivals the workers who left were a loose network of friends, all trading business back and forth with each other, according to their specialties and all of them making even more money as a result.

  The five waiting in his office were an odd bunch. A young girl, an older teenage boy with the same nose as the girl, another teen boy obviously not of the same family, an old fellow in a shirt that hurt his eyes and a huge black fellow with a bald head, who looked vaguely familiar. Someone else might have dismissed them all offhand, just because they were used to dealing with one person instead of a mob, but Marilyn had asked him to meet them and he knew she didn't waste his time. She was lots smarter than him when it came to administrative matters. It's why he hired her after all. He felt strongly people who only hired people not as smart as them, set themselves up for failure.

  Dave grabbed a cup of excellent coffee from Marilyn's office, which was bigger than his, because it used to be his before they swapped and went in his own seldom used space. Everyone fit - barely - because they brought in two chairs from Marilyn's and the old guy sat on a case of vacuum lube. "There's coffee in the next room. Feel free to help yourselves. Now would you like to introduce yourselves and tell me what I can do for you?"

  He would have expected the older fellow to go first, but the teen boy who looked like he might be the girl's brother spoke first, while a couple of them immediately ducked out for coffee.

  "I'm Robert Lewis. You're already working on a scooter which belongs to my sister April and me." He indicated the girl with a gesture. "We have opportunity to acquire an important account for our service with Station Security, represented here by Mr. Davis." The bald man gave a grave nod. "Mr. Davis is willing to financially support expediting the refurbish of the vehicle, so it can enter service as soon as possible. We also have a number of design changes which we are hoping we can have started, concurrent with the usual repair work."

  "Those would be aided by Mr. Lewis assisted by Mr. Singh, who have both engineered the modifications. We'd like to hire the help of your yard hands in installing these mods also. In fact Mr. Singh would be an observer and technical adviser only, as he is not experienced at working in zero G or out of pressure. We were previously going to add the modifications at the Lewis private dockage, but it would be too time consuming now. As owner that's all the information I need to impart. So I will direct you to Mr. Davis for financial questions and Mr. Singh or Lewis for technical matters.

  Dave had never heard such a brief presentation from an owner. Most people loved to hear themselves talk. The girl was a mystery. The only one he had not been invited to question, so he wanted to know her place in this first.

  "April was it?" He asked. "You are Robert's sister then? How do you fit in this?"

  She thought about it a minute. "Along with Jon Davis and my brother, I supply money. I recruited our primary pilot, who will command this mission and like my brother I'm busy qualifying to pilot our craft as soon as we can pass the tests. And none of them knew each other a few days ago and I am the common element which brought them all together."

  It had the sound of a brag, but was a totally true statement and just fell off her tongue without enough forethought to hold it back. The enormity of it kind of hit her when she articulated it. "I suppose when it is all over, I will be indicted as a co-conspirator." She said, cheerfully and not entirely humorously. "Why don't you let these two show you what they have in mind?" she suggested. The two she indicated had returned with coffee.

  "I appreciate your frankness in telling me Mr. Singh is inexperienced in zero G, or a p-suit." It surprised him, as he had caught them chatting in helmet-talk as they came in. Everybody picked up a bit here and there, but the kid looked fluent. "Do you realize the hazards involved in his being in the work area? We do as much as possible under pressure and spin. But the heavy stuff is done outside. I can't really assume responsibility for his suit training or for watching him."

  "I can handle that," Grandpa Lewis told him. "I have a lot of experience training new people in the environment and he will only go in the work area under my direct supervision. He's a bright young man and able to take orders. I'm willing to take the task and sign off on the responsibility."

  "And how much experience do you have in a space work setting?" He wasn't so willing to assume the old boy's experience was sufficient. He thought he could ID any working spacer or beam dog who had five years experience. Unless he was from before...

  Happy thought about it a moment and pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I'm not sure what the official logs will show, because the first four or five years I was doing high work, they didn't really have much of a system for logging hours. We were more concerned with getting paid full wages for our hours, than documenting career credit. Off hand, I'd say I have about forty thousand work hours in zero G and vacuum, with about a half of those hours carrying supervision responsibilities and about a quarter or a third of it piloting or co-operating scooters and yard tractors. You have to understand a lot of off duty hours back then were still in zero G and sometimes our recreation was in suit time too. Nobody counted it if it wasn't paid time. A bit of orbit to orbit in various craft for the military also, as a civilian worker, but some of that was too black to show up on any tally and a few thousand hours of trans-lunar deep space work."

  "Well it does sound, um, sufficient," he admitted. He had no idea anyone living had ran up those sort of hours and every human who had any serious time beyond the moon, was still was in
a fraternity of less than a thousand. "We pretty much have the scooter stripped down already and we have the standard replacements on hand. Of course it will take some time to take any custom modifications you'd like to implement and reduce them to CAD files, which the fabricators and floor workers can read and let out bids for the materials and sub-assemblies."

  "One of a kind assemblies we have to fabricate by hand. It's too expensive to write the routines and debug them for robotics. We'll probably have to pull the stripped frame off the work rack for a couple weeks and let the design work and fabrication catch up to it."

  Jeff Singh handed him a memory module. "We can make it a bit easier. Here is a complete revised shop manual for the scooter, with exploded views of all the sub-assemblies. It's in a printable format, with the old view on the left pages and the new version on the right, with all the modifications and new components shaded in color. The sequence of disassembly and assembly have been corrected and all the changes there have been color coded also. There is a file showing the delivery sequence for all the components, which have already been let out to prototype and job shops."

  "We are going with the faster fabrication method, rather than the cheapest in each case. Some of them are done and waiting to ship already. Some things we wanted to do will simply have to wait until after the first flight. There isn't a bit of cosmetic care taken either. The instrument panel is going to be an ugly open rack with gaps between the modules for example."

  "The next section shows the modified moment arms of all the masses which have been changed and the stress analysis of the space frame for the adjusted values. There are integrated mass moments, to adjust the attitude jets for an initial setting."

  "The last section shows a profile of all the performance envelopes possible with different suitable fuel loads and consumables for a crew of one to four and a payload of zero to a half ton. The frame currently limits us to a nine G boost. All are based on a worst case scenario, with everything formatted for a navigational computer. Alternative solutions are based on possible degraded performance due to loss of fuel load, or loss or damage to either sort of engine."