A Hop, Skip and a Jump (Family Law Book 4)

by Mackey Chandler

  "I think the biggest card you have to play is your own stern disapproval," Ha-bob-bob-brie advised. "For some reason the girl is more afraid of your displeasure than nervous Fargoer Admirals."

  "You think so?" Gordon asked, seeming dubious. "Then why does she argue and crack smart all the time?"

  "You need to read the chapters on teenagers again," Jon Burris said. "That attitude almost defines them."

  * * *

  The landing field had a fence around it. It appeared to be more for keeping livestock from wandering out under a landing vessel than any sort of security concern. Gabriel locked the ship with his palm on the pad beside the lock and insisted Lee let the ship read her palm too. The grass was lush and thick. It seemed to have a rich odor too. Lee wondered how they kept it mowed if it wasn't grazed, and then after walking through it she saw some it had gone to seed, so she decided it was gene modified. It must never grow over six or seven centimeters high. Just enough you had to lift your feet a little to walk comfortably.

  "When we rushed from the Earth system and you took the Retribution to Derfhome for us, I sort of expected the Caterpillar ship to rush after us," Lee said. "They've displayed interest before when one of our ships broke away from the main body to reconnoiter."

  "I have no clue as to their thought processes. Perhaps they will follow your other ships back to Derfhome. I very much doubt they could have followed us," Gabriel insisted.

  "Your people haven't met them before?" Lee wondered. "We saw you had quite a bit of com traffic with them. You certainly seemed to be getting acquainted, or trying." When he said nothing Lee added, "We know you were aware of the Centaurs."

  "I'm not comfortable discussing in any depth where we've gone and who we've met among the stars," Gabriel decided. "That's, as they say, above my pay grade to reveal. You'll find out more if you progress in becoming allied with our Sovereign Heather."

  "There are secrets in the stars and I want to know them all," Lee protested. "It's like an itch."

  Gabriel looked at her amused, and smiled. "I'm not unfamiliar with that trait." But instead of addressing it, he asked, "How long do you expect it will take to set up an alternative claims organization? You expressed interest in leading another voyage of exploration, but I can't see you doing that until you have agreements worked out for the claims process between the Badger sphere of influence and the Human dominated space. It might set you back a couple years."

  Lee shrugged. "I can dicker on details. I think there is a lot of room to allow discoverers more than the Earth Claims Commission allowed. The commission had very low expenses, because there was never any serious challenge to its authority. However, if our new alien friends want to argue about every little detail, I'll tell them to go to the devil and make their own commission. If they think they have the assets to do it, and offer better guarantees than us, let them try.

  "We should keep it simple. No need to do constant expensive show the flag cruises, but if somebody tries any serious piracy . . . drop on them like a Moon deorbited." She demonstrated that, stroking a fist down sharply into her other palm with a smacking sound.

  "I'd forgotten you got your negotiating style from Gordon," Gabriel admitted. "It's hard to remember that you haven't met Jeff Singh yet when you talk like that."

  "Why's that?" Lee asked.

  "He tends to have a similar negotiating style. I can easily imagine him saying, 'Leave us alone, or I'll leave you a fused plain of glass that is visible from orbit.' And he'd say it like he's ordering lunch and doesn't really care which you pick. He's not one to raise his voice to make a point. If you think he isn't upset and doesn't mean what he says without yelling, it can be the death of you."

  "I think I'd like him," Lee decided. "He's friends with April and Heather, right?"

  Gabriel looked reluctant to speak, appraising both Lee's demeanor and 'friends' carefully.

  "You might say that. They are both peers of Heather and long-standing partners," he said carefully.

  Lee nodded, happily, leaving him no clue how much she understood.

  "This must be our ride," Lee said.

  Gabriel looked up and there was a vehicle approaching. It wasn't unexpected, they'd sent a taxi before when he was here, but he hadn't feel like sitting cooped up in the ship waiting for it on such a lovely day.

  "Ride to town?" The driver asked when he pulled up.

  "Yes, to town, to Yoder's Restaurant, also to sit and wait for us to return to the ship. Get yourself some supper take away and eat in the taxi on us, if it's your meal time, and you wish. How much?" Gabriel asked the man.

  "A silver dollar Ceres or the equivalent, round trip, and I'll take you up on dinner. Yoder's is a good place. If you dally past sunset another silver piece because I get fined if I operate and make noise and hazard after dark."

  Gabriel flipped him a coin and handed Lee into the high taxi. It had big wheels with pneumatic tires and a roof, but open sides with side curtains tied up out of the way. It was a pleasant day and no need of them. The six rear seats were comfortable and the driver had no separate compartment, nor a seat to his right. When the taxi made a wide turn in the grass the motor barely made a hum. Lee didn't see how that would disturb anyone passing in the evening, but she said nothing, but Gabriel read on her face that she had questions.

  "It's run by a nice little diesel engine. Tiny is fine, because this cab won't go over forty kilometers an hour. Taking us in to town he probably won't even go over twenty-five or thirty. It gets very quiet at night here, and people sleep with open windows, so he might very well disturb people. They haven't any petroleum drilling, so the fuel is all agricultural by-product, and limited," Gabriel said.

  "Would there even be any oil, with life mostly in the sea?" Lee asked.

  "I know there is methane that percolates from the core," Gabriel said. "You always have that with an iron core and water. Whether it gets trapped or polymerized is beyond my knowledge. You'd have to discuss that with an exo-geologist."

  The gate opened to let them out of the field. Lee couldn't tell if it was opened by a signal or had sufficient AI to know the difference between a cab and a cow. The road seemed to be pea gravel, with something sprayed to bind it. The noise of the tires now drowned out the sound of the motor entirely. The buildings that they passed seemed like something from a historic video. The sides were covered with slabs of something in horizontal rows, one overlapping the one below. If they'd only been here forty years could they be wood? Lee wasn't sure how long it took to grow a tree that big. None of the trees she saw, and there were plenty of them, looked big enough to make such planks.

  They passed a little traffic going the other way. One was a freight wagon of a similar size to theirs, but with an open box. It was full of fruit of some kind, and it had an exhaust pipe sticking up at the rear that released a barely visible wisp of vapor.

  "That's a steam truck, with a load of apples," Gabriel supplied when he saw her looking intently.

  "The trees are old enough to make fruit?" Lee asked.

  Gabriel was amused. "The trees bear fruit before they are as tall as you."

  The men had on clothing that looked hot. It ran to black and blues with some grey, of heavy fabric. All of it with long sleeves and no short pants. Quite a few wore hats too. There didn't seem to be many women out and about, but there were girls where there were children. Lee noticed that the girls all seemed to wear a small white cap or bonnet of some sort once they were about her age. She was wearing trousers with wide legs. There wasn't a single woman dressed like her. They all had some sort of skirt.

  "They won't object to my wearing pants?" Lee asked.

  "Nope, not as an outsider. They'd rather see you in pants than a skirt they consider too short. And they're nice loose trousers," Gabriel noted. "If you'd shown up in sheer tights like Loonies wear, some of these old fellows with white beards would faint dead away."

  Lee stifled a laugh, not sure if their driver could overhear.

  "H
ere's our place," Gabriel said. It was clearly not a residence. The building was too long, with windows inappropriate to a home. There was a lot beside it with quite a few vehicles parked and a rack with bicycles. Any other time Lee would have been keen to go examine the bikes, because they fascinated her. Sometime she wanted to try to ride one. It was hard to believe they didn't just fall over. Today she was hungry and anxious to get back to her people.

  "It certainly smells good," Lee agreed.

  A middle-aged woman in a rather full blue dress, with a white apron and a lace cap, took them to a table and left them with menus in both English and German. Lee was disappointed there weren't any pictures of the food.

  * * *

  "Message coming in for Talker," Jon Burris said. "Big message coming in," Jon said, amazed.

  "They couldn't wait until we were close enough to speak around the speed of light lag," Talker said, with a resigned sigh. "Go ahead and put it on an open channel and a real-time translation. It's going to be a hundred thousand words that say - We will take over now. You are being replaced." Talker predicted.

  "Do you want to move up to a private console with a screen to read it?" Gordon offered.

  "No, I'm not hiding anything from you or your crew. Unofficially, you are going to be my allies against the bureaucracy," Talker told them. "Singer needs to see it as well. I am certain they will try to undo everything that doesn't have their imprimatur on it. I'll try to be as polite as possible, but I need you to appear ready to abandon the entire enterprise if they don't keep prior agreements. If they try to say I had no authority I suggest you appear incredulous. Ask them how I could muster ships and resources to come with you if I had no authority. Stand firm, that if they don't keep agreements, then you have no confidence any pacts they make can't be swept away by somebody else just as easily."

  "I don't have to play act," Gordon told him. "That's a pretty fair assessment of my feeling."

  Talker, rapidly skimming the message, informed them. "I should tell you that so far the message is just a detailed accounting of who they sent, and exactly what their authority is. When that section ends I'll put a page break and a yellow highlight bar across it from my personal pad. They have sixteen officials on board with sufficient power to get their names on the list. It's interesting the order in which they appear, each with their own header before their name and credentials."

  "Yep, it's dominance games," Thor said. "All politicians do that in some form or another."

  "Indeed," Ha-bob-bob-brie agreed, "among the Hinth the last listed would be said to have the fewest tail feathers from their struggles for position. The big boys would have pulled them all out."

  "Ah, here we are. Twenty-three pages in, they finish telling us how important they are, and finally get around to telling you that I didn't have any authority to make treaties and agreements with you."

  "You are The Voice of Far Away are you not?" Thor asked Talker, gruffly.

  "I am, and besides being an executive, I speak for the judiciary both high and local, if they have a case important enough to demand a reading from the executive. I am authorized to speak for the species to all the other races in residence and visiting ships and merchants. I suppose they didn't foresee the possibility an entirely new set of aliens would appear and I'd have opportunity to speak for more than Far Away. But my charter and office in no way preclude doing so."

  "They're slow to learn then," Gordon accused them. "The arrival of the Biters and the troubles they've brought you were plenty of notice that such things happen."

  "True, although nobody has had much success talking to them," Talker admitted.

  "Explain something for me if you would," Thor requested. "I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I'm curious. Why does the court ask you to do a public reading or a face to face with somebody impacted by their decision, but not others?"

  "As Commander Gordon has mentioned, government is force," Talker said. "It should be applied with some delicacy. Why don't you beat your children with a club when they fail to have perfect table manners? Things should be...proportional. To do otherwise creates dissent and invites rebellion in the long run. If a worker creates a fuss by being drunk in public or puts his ground car in a ditch, a judge will fine him, or perhaps even just issue a public reproof. One does not expect defiance at that level from our people. But if someone causes bodily harm to others or steals from others with a criminal scheme, well, that is at a much higher level. The judge will ask me to read their decision so the miscreant knows the court is willing to have me as executive enforce their judgment. They are put on immediate notice that I can send officers to arrest the person or seize their goods."

  "Wouldn't the judge do that if the fine was ignored for a lesser offense?" Ha-bob-bob-brie asked.

  "Yes, but then it isn't for the original offense," Talker said.

  "I don't understand," Ha-bob-bob-brie said, puzzled.

  "I do," Jon Burris spoke up. "In human courts if you ignore a minor judgment they call it contempt of court. Ignoring the authority of the court and defying their decision is easily a much more serious infraction than the original offense."

  "Exactly," Talker agreed. "I was short of words to describe it. I believe I'll try to have that language added to our statutes when we have an executive convention. It translates very well."

  "Nothing about that diminishes my view of your authority," Gordon said. "These fellows are going to get a pretty thorough grilling from me if they try to dismiss your authority and recommend their own as superior. I've had to make decisions out on the pointy end of things plenty of times myself. When all the dust is settled, and the issues are safely decided, you don't need a bunch of desk pilots second guessing you," he growled.

  Talker was trying to cover his mirth with both hands, but couldn't. "Another graphic expression I'll borrow," he promised. "It transliterates beautifully, but better if you introduce them to it than me."

  "Desk pilots?" Gordon asked, to be sure what was amusing him.

  Talker could only nod yes, still giggling.

  "Give me a picture of a Badger desk and I'll have somebody sketch it with oversized thrust nozzles and a wind canopy," Gordon offered.

  That didn't help Talker stop laughing at all.

  Chapter 2

  Even though there were only two of them the restaurant served everything family style, when Lee echoed Gabriel's choices and ordered the same. Lee saw that expression on the menu, but didn't realize what it meant. They were brought a pot of coffee and a platter with four kinds of breads. The butter was a solid block of about a half kilo. The salad was chopped cabbage and other vegetables tossed in a thick creamy sauce, just slightly sweet. Lee asked for and ground a heavy dusting of black pepper on it, which surprised Gabriel. Pepper was an import. You had to ask for it special, and the menu noted it was extra cost.

  "That's a treat. We had some experimental hydroponics on our trip. It's the first time in some years it was attempted again, so we had enough greens for garnishes and dressing on sandwiches." Lee looked at Gabriel and thought... "But I guess you get where you are going so fast you have no need of gardens."

  "Don't forget we run to much smaller ships too," Gabriel reminded her. At least any of their ships she'd seen, so that was slightly disingenuous. Gabriel wrongly supposed she wouldn't remember that in a few years. He spread sweet butter thickly on a slice of white bread with little chunks of candied fruit and nuts in it. They sold it by the loaf in the lobby and he intended to take some home when he left.

  The dining room was open. They could see other tables and their occupants, but after a glance they were politely ignored, getting less examination than she'd received on other worlds that were supposedly more sophisticated and urban.

  The roast beef was falling apart tender, and the gravy thick and rich. Lee had opportunity to give full rein to her recently modified metabolism. Their waitress was about the same age as Lee and her face betrayed a little shock at how Lee packed it in.


  Far from keeping everything carefully separated, Lee piled firm egg noodles in a nest of heavenly mashed potatoes, added butter and gravy, and topped it all with bright green peas. She'd never had peas that weren't starchy and soft. These were crisp and had a lively sweet flavor she'd never experienced.

  The coarse multigrain bread with all sorts of chunks, including very visible whole seeds, was pretty good too. It had a firm chewy texture and worked fine to chase the last bit of potatoes and beef onto the fork. That was the last of three plates for Lee, so Gabriel felt safe to wave off the scandalized waitress when she paused with her hand on the empty bowls to see if he'd ask for more to be brought.

  "We better leave a little room for dessert," he said, lest Lee think she was cut off early.

  "Your recommendations on supper were wonderful," Lee said. "What's good for dessert?"

  "Pies," Gabriel suggested. "They have all sorts, different custards and creams, with fillers like coconut or covered with chiffon. But I very much recommend the fruit pies. I'm having apple."

  "What fruit pies do you have?" Lee asked their server.

  "Apple, as your . . . companion suggests," the girls answered carefully. Not sure of these outsider's relationship. "Blueberry, raspberry, peach, pear with walnut, pineapple, cherry, rhubarb and strawberry rhubarb, cranberry with pecans, raisin, and blackberry."

  "Oh my," Lee said, overwhelmed.

  "The apple is very good," the girl prompted, hoping to avoid any long-term indecision. "Aunt Beth makes it with Northern Spies and lots and lots of cinnamon and ginger and a few golden raisins."

  Lee just blinked at the idea of any sort of spies in her pie and let it go. They did have to get back today, and that seemed like it could be a long discussion . . .

  "I'll have the apple, but give me a piece of the blueberry too. I just love blueberries, and if I can't eat it I'll take it home. That is OK to do here isn't it?" she asked on second thought.