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

by Mackey Chandler

  "If one may suggest," Talker offered, "it would ease my future dealing with my own people and please Gordon if you said, The civilization of the Badgers, Bills and associated races."

  "Pleasing Gordon is a concern?" Heather asked, raising her eyebrows. "If you want, that's how you'll be described."

  Dakota came back in holding hard copies and stood back waiting.

  "One is aware you are very powerful," Talker said, with careful respect. "But Gordon has dominated our contact with the Human sphere, and we sleep much easier if he is happy."

  "I'm impressed," Heather allowed, looking at Gordon. "You have an entire star spanning civilization concerned with keeping you happy, and except for this one," she indicated Talker, "they have no idea I even exist. Should you be a signatory?"

  "I'm bound by my Mothers. I'm sure your Voice can continue to establish the value of your friendship with the other embassy personnel who are with Talker at his mission. And we certainly hope we'll have continuing contact both ways from Derfhome for them to meet others From Central. You will become known through their actions," Gordon pointed out.

  "Dear God, he can sound smooth if he wants to," Heather said. "Dakota, add to that press notice that the Voice to Derfhome will be Lady Eileen and her husband Mr. Foy."

  Dakota's eyebrows jumped at the honorific, but she said nothing.

  "Also, since he declares himself equal to the job, Gabriel can have the ambassadorship to Fargone as my Voice, and whomever he wishes to nominate. I won't OK your snatching away somebody vital who I need," she warned him.

  "Eric Pennington my lady," Gabriel requested.

  "Granted, and a good choice for your aide," Heather commended him.

  "I'm missing something, if you wouldn't mind clarifying," Sally requested.

  At Heather's go ahead nod she continued. "You never addressed the end of the matter with the aliens. They will easily suicide if there appears the least chance they will have their nature and their technology exposed to another. You said you now think they aren't these Centaur people the Little Fleet found. Surely you investigated them further?"

  "Yes. Very cautiously," Heather said. "We didn't want a fight, or to provoke this self destructive tendency. We went to the system where they and the North Americans first met. We didn't ping it with radar or make a showy deep entry. We jumped to the system edge at angles to the system's plane, and coasted through with passive sensors. Finding nothing we examined small bodies in the system. We found some indications of space based activity. It would have probably escaped a casual examination, if we hadn't known there was something to be found. If there were others than these four ships they vacated the system and took almost every trace with them.

  "This provoked us to start a survey of systems along a line back to Earth. That survey is still expanding and will be ongoing for some time. North America seemed to have backed off exploring deep in that entire quadrant after meeting hostiles who were an even match for them. That didn't make us sad, and then when Gordon here created such a sudden shortage of North American warships they seem to have backed off military exploration until they build more ships, which will have to wait until they rebuild an entire naval shipyard."

  Dakota stepped forward and laid the sheets down for Heather, and stepped away again. Heather called Lee forward and they leaned over the documents and spoke softly. Everyone else kept silent, aware they had no input and were merely allowed to be present at a significant event. When they both nodded in agreement, they forced their hankos on all three copies. The Mother's seal had to be inked and pressed as it wasn't self printing. Lee suddenly wondered just how old the seal was? She's have to ask. Dakota was still working on her hand pad, so Heather rolled the hard copies up in little tubes herself, and gave two copies to Lee. It hit her all over again that she had a private copy as a party to a treaty.

  Dakota had been working. "Does that look good?" Heather asked of the revised release, nodding at the pad Lee held. She didn't read aloud from the tablet this time, but looked.

  "Seems fine to me. I appreciate the brevity too," Lee agreed.

  "Then we have a deal. Dakota, publish that, please. Give copies to everybody here."

  Dakota didn't leave, but touched a few places on her own screen and it was done. Lee passed Heather's machine back to her.

  "Do you think there will be much reaction from Earth?" Talker wondered. "I'm still not sure I understand your species well enough, especially the Earth variant, to predict what their reaction will be."

  "Honestly, I think it will either be silent acceptance or war," Heather said, "That again is why we have avoided making an issue of everything, their binary responses."

  "You frighten us at times," Talker admitted. "I remember when the person we were negotiating with made a slip of the tongue and revealed Gordon had blown up a small moon testing weapons. He kept saying it was a small moon, and other things to try to dismiss and minimize it. My companion was even more shocked than me. The more this fellow tried to wave it away as inconsequential the deeper he was terrified."

  "Yeah, sometimes you just need to say 'Oops,' and move on," Heather counseled, "If you find yourself in a hole, at least stop digging."

  "Ah, English. You never stop learning it." Talker made a notation on his pad.

  "I've about reached the limit of my productive ability for one session," Heather announced. "With an embassy on Derfhome we can provide faster travel for future talks. Is there anything else that needs said before we send the mission to Derfhome off and chase the rest of you out to make your own way home at your leisure?"

  "Since I am leaving quickly, would you make sure Sally gets the Life Extension treatments we promised before she has to deal with the banking for which she is here?" Lee asked.

  "Dakota? See that somebody does that. Sometimes it's so good to be Sovereign so you can go crash and not have to deal with things yourself. Anybody else?" she demanded, a little louder. "Then the party is over. Don't slip on the mess getting out the door." Heather said, and headed for her private rooms.

  Both parties filed out the entry the caterers had used. Shashi gathered Lee's party to guide them back to their rooms. Eileen and Victor came with them. A few of the others got in a cart, but most took off walking down the corridor. Gabriel stopped and looked hard at Lee before he turned and joined them, but said nothing.

  "I hope you haven't made an enemy there," Gordon said softly to Lee.

  Not low enough, Shashi heard. "He has a century of learning not to cross Heather," Shashi said. "There are a few I'd worry would do something stupid, but not that one. If Heather was worried about it she wouldn't have sent him to your general neighborhood at Fargone. She'd have created a sudden need for him to be at the other end of Human exploration."

  The Foys hadn't heard Gordon, but Shashi spoke normally, not lowering her voice, and they'd seen Gabriel stare. It wasn't hard for them to infer what had been said. A knowing glance went between them but they didn't offer their own opinion if they had one.

  "Thank you for your reassurance," Gordon said, and resolved to watch out anyway.

  By the time they got back to their rooms there was a cart sitting by their door. The Foys took seats, saying they had no need to come in. Lee grabbed the few things she had in their rooms, hugged Gordon and Sally and briefly held Talkers hand.

  When she turned to leave Ha-bob-bob-brie was standing there and she had no idea what would be an acceptable gesture of thanks to him. She'd never seen him touch hands much less hug. So she said as much to him, seeking guidance.

  "We are more cerebral that way," Ha-bob-bob-brie assured her. "Even in a threesome the Hinth only interact with the nest-sitter and not to each other, apart. No tactile gesture is needed to demonstrate your thanks. I assume it from your nature."

  "There isn't room to come with me. Are you distressed to stop guarding me?" Lee asked.

  "Not at all, my dream is played out. I'm not needed now. Who knows if I will experience similar necessity in the
future? But it was interesting having a dream. I have to wonder why I didn't for . . . other events, but I've never heard of anyone having two!"

  "I have them most nights, but I don't always remember them when I wake," Lee said.

  "Then I hope they are different." Ha-bob-bob-brie said. "I'd find that unbearable."

  "Then take my sincere thanks," Lee said, and left to join the Foy feeling slightly uncomfortable, because even if Ha-bob-bob-brie was happy, she missed a tactile leave-taking.

  * * *

  The Foys weren't exactly like anyone she'd ever known. Victor had a moustache. Lee was sure she'd seen one before, in video, but not in real life. Full beards with a moustache yes, but it seemed odd to shave off most of it, and leave that one little patch. Well, in his case not so little. It flowed to each side rather full and ample. She tried not to stare.

  Unlike Gabriel, who answered every question with another, they were happy to talk about their life on Earth and how they struggled to get the means to lift to Home and eventually on to Central. It was fascinating and horrifying story at the same time.

  The flight was so short with their sort of star drive that she'd have liked to have had time to hear more of their story, and said so. They laughed and said they expected to be running the embassy for a few years and there was no reason she couldn't visit or have dinner with them until she got sick of their stories.

  They stopped and deployed their own drones on the system edge before proceeding to Derfhome. Lee forced herself not to ask a bunch of questions about how they worked and what they could do, that they likely wouldn't answer. The fact they put them all out at once, and they would position themselves, said they were advanced. She couldn't even tell how many they deployed. But she felt free to share one thought with them.

  "If a large force left Earth on a Derfhome vector I'd expect your people on the Moon would skip ahead of them and warn you," Lee said.

  "Yes, but they probably know that, and may send single ships off on other routes and assemble them to come here from a different direction," Victor explained.

  That made sense to Lee, if Earthies could be subtle.

  They had questions of their own, and it became quickly obvious they expected her to help them pick a location and guide to what was appropriate for a building. They informed her they had a storage capsule grappled to their vessel with their personal possessions, trade goods and even some furniture for their private quarters.

  When they arrived at Derfhome station she suggested they book into the Old Hotel below in Derfhome City. The Foys seemed surprised she didn't have a home of her own. They went to dinner on station and it was her turn to describe the Keep at Red Tree and how she took a room anytime she wanted there, but never maintained one or kept her things there between visits. It seemed odd to them, but perfectly natural to the nomadic way she'd been raised. They seemed amused that she had a condo on Fargone she never used, but no home here.

  They surprised her by leaving their ship in trailing orbit from the station. Derfhome station wasn't expensive. She'd have thought they would just leave it docked and negotiate a long-term contract. With nobody aboard it seemed better to leave it on the station where they had security cameras on your docking collar constantly. In orbit anybody could approach and mate up to their lock. Eileen smiled, and assured her the ship could take care of itself. If they had a fancy AI like Gabriel used, she'd never seen evidence of it, but she let it go.

  Once the seed of the idea was planted she determined she'd be researching how to build a place of her own, or buy something while she helped them do the same. Naturally she'd make full use of the Bank of Derfhome. The Foys liked the local idea when she explained that a bank was expected to be a concierge service.

  They took the commercial shuttle down from the station, and there was an awkward moment when she asked for a suite and they kindly said they'd rather have their own rooms. It was a different culture and she'd never stayed separately from traveling companions.

  * * *

  The next morning at breakfast they seemed fine, she must not have offended them terribly.

  "Don't you have to report in to the Mothers and inform them how your mission went?" Eileen asked. Victor, Lee was finding out wasn't all that chatty most of the time.

  "I do, but they never get in a rush. If I take a week or two to show up nobody is going to think a thing of it," Lee said confidently. "Let's take time to get a site picked and maybe start them building your embassy, and when I return to Red Tree I can take you along to present you to the Mothers."

  "First things first. We want to open a bank account and present a letter of transfer from the bank of Ceres. The Three suggested they haven't done business with the Bank of Derfhome so they are sending funds through the Bank of Ceres. We can try to establish a relationship for the Solar Bank later," Eileen said.

  "There are other banks if you don't want to automatically use the same as us," Lee said.

  "No, that's fine. We took it as a recommendation Gordon chose them," Eileen said. Victor gave one of his rare nods to show he was in agreement. The bank was less than a kilometer away so they walked, the Foys commenting on things that were different to them.

  At the bank when Lee walked in the greeter knew her by name and led them to a private room with a glass wall looking over the main floor of the bank. Lee was amused to see the same group of older investors still occupied a table drinking coffee and watching the screens for investment news. The greeter introduced herself as Honey. Lee suspected that name was chosen from the color of her coat.

  "Would you rather the glass be set for your privacy?" Honey asked, Her hand poised to switch it from clear to mirrored.

  "No, I enjoy watching the old codgers get all excited every time something breaks on the screen," Lee said. Honey looked over her shoulder at them and just rolled her eyes.

  "May I bring you some refreshment?" she offered.

  "I'd like a mocha, and if you have some, cookies to nibble on," Lee said. Breakfast wasn't that distant a memory, but her new metabolism did run fast.

  "Just black coffee, if you would please," Victor requested.

  "Do you have tea or the local equivalent?" Eileen asked.

  "A lot of the local teas are toxic to Humans, just so you know, but I'll bring you a safe variety to try. Would you prefer a very strong flavor or something delicate?"

  "Strong is fine with me," Eileen said.

  Honey seemed to approve of that by her vigorous nod and ducked out the door.

  Eileen did not expect a full English style tea service with lemon, sugar, honey and cream. She didn't express any opinion, but she had a second cup.

  There was a tray of cookies as Lee requested, and tiny sandwiches and muffins. Victor seemed to approve. Lee remembered they likely had boosted metabolisms too. They hadn't held back at breakfast.

  "I have to talk to Jeff sometime," Eileen said. "There's a phrase Earth system bankers use, 'Full Service Banking'. I have to tell him they have no clue at all."

  Darius came in and Lee introduced the Foys and explained their mission. He accepted the letter of credit, and asked just a few questions about what services they needed and how much they wanted to be able to draw upon from their account. The more they tied it up the higher the return, or if they just wanted it to be held in safekeeping and immediately available they'd be charged a small fee. Lee noticed he never mentioned a number or displayed anything she could see to expose the Foy's data. He did it without being obvious or rude.

  Eileen suggested they start having access to half their money until they learned what local costs were and how much they'd need to give as deposits to local tradesmen. Victor listened and then just nodded, but the way Eileen stopped and gave him her whole attention convinced Lee it wasn't perfunctory, and he was really a full partner.

  Darius stuck a couple cards in his pad and then gave them to the Foys, encouraging them to activate the taster pad now rather than risk carrying them around unlinked to their DNA. They
did so and he informed them how they might use them as a key with their pad to access their accounts remotely.

  "Is there anything else I can do for you?" Darius finally asked.

  When the Foys didn't have anything else, Lee spoke up. "They're going to buy or build an embassy. I'm going to take them to the Badger embassy, and suggest it's a good area. They may end up elsewhere, but would you investigate properties available within say ten kilometers of them and send them to our pads?"

  "Certainly," Darius agreed standing up confident they were done. "That's distant. Would you like me to call a cab for you?"

  "Yes thank you," Lee agreed.

  By the time they walked to the front door the cab was waiting. Eileen stopped and looked back. Lee had no idea why, and wondered if she forgot something.

  "Do you know what their hours are?" Eileen wondered.

  "Standard Derf hours, twenty a day, four thousand seventeen standard seconds and a fraction long. Did you think they'd use Terran hours?" Lee asked, mystified.

  "No, I mean, when does the bank open and close?" Eileen asked.

  "Why would they ever close?" Lee asked.

  The Foys just looked at each other and laughed. They never did answer her.

  "This is huge," Eileen said in the cab.

  "Not if you're a Derf. If we had Gordon along you'd think it cozy. Take us to the Badger embassy," Lee said, and swiped her card past the pay port.

  "It's going to take months to adjust," Eileen decided. Victor nodded and smiled. "We have our own aircar in the container with our things, but we really should buy a ground car to use locally."