"Am I still clear to go back next week and have some time with my family?"
"Of course."
"You're not worried I'll go all wobbly and switch sides again?"
"Nobody will watch you. Nobody will stop you if you get on a shuttle and leave," Jeff assured him. "I'll even send flowers to the funeral," he promised. "I'm absolutely sure that's how forgiving they'd be." He wondered if Mo recorded that and would run it through some verification software? It would be good if he did. Jeff believed every word.
* * *
"What interests you?" Faye asked Lindsy. "Is there anything you miss about Earth you'd like to see here? Your brother mentioned he likes to be outside. That's pretty hard to arrange here. We have a gym with a running program that simulates outside, but he didn't run, he just liked to walk in the park and sit on a bench reading sometimes. We haven't been able to afford a park yet. I may be able to get some folks to take him out in a suit, but even that will be a onetime experience, not something you can go do casually, because you are in the mood."
"I miss being with kids my age every day," Lindsy admitted. "There are only two near my age in your school and I haven't met any others. Back home I called my friends every day and talked about what was happening in the evening. Stuff that you had to be there to see. Who wore new stuff to school that was interesting, crazy shoes, or new music and who was going with who. We had some shows everybody watched and talked about." She was obviously still not reconciled to the loss.
"I have com again now at home and can call, but it's amazing, the few days I was gone I got disconnected and it seems impossible to link back up again. I called a couple old friends and it was awkward. They had to keep telling me people weren't together now, who I didn't know had broken up. It was all about what's happening down there and I had nothing that would be interesting to them to add from this end. They got tired of telling me stuff a week old and getting nothing back."
She looked at Faye funny and hesitated. "It all seems kind of stupid now. What do I care if Jackie broke up with Steve and is flirting with Ed? She'll be batting her eyes at somebody else in another week anyway. It seems unreal that I ever cared"
"I had much the same happen when I was on Earth," Faye reminisced. "I graduated high school and couldn't imagine I wouldn't stay close to all my pals from school, but they scattered to different universities, or got jobs, or got married. A couple of them did all three pretty quickly. I had their numbers on my phone, but nothing I was doing really mattered to them anymore. I'd give them a call every week or two and give them the short version of what I'd been up to, but that sort of tapered off to one call around the holidays, to tell them I still thought about them. A few of them I lost their number when they changed it and then when we all graduated university and got jobs and got married, a few more got disconnected. A few even died and I only heard roundabout. But there are a handful who still get a New Years call from me."
"That's so sad."
"Not really," Faye insisted. "I just couldn't imagine how much would change. I hadn't experienced anything else like graduation, to anticipate how different my life would be. I couldn't stay frozen in time. Although there were a few people who did. They had a brief moment of glory in high school, because they were athletes or very popular. But not good enough to become professional athletes, or with that power of personality to go into show business beyond high school. They just sort of plugged along diminished as adults and lived for the next class reunion. Now that's sad. "
Lindsy looked surprised, but then thoughtful. "I can think of a couple in my class, or the seniors ahead of us, who might end up that way."
"You're interested in clothes?" Faye plucked from the conversation. "Might you like to study fashion and clothing?"
"I think my mom would wonder why you are wasting her money, teaching me about something as frivolous as clothing."
"And yet she doesn't send you forth into the corridors naked," Faye marveled.
Lindsy looked at her astonished and then burst into laughter. "On Earth it is very bad form to use that word. If your students told their parents the school would probably warn you sternly not to be vulgar. But I see your point. If it isn't that important, why do we all wear them so faithfully?"
"Yes and why do they throw you in jail if you skip them? These things come and go in cycles. That's part of the history of clothing and fashion, which is well worth knowing. In the Victorian era it was so shameful to acknowledge one had legs, that you couldn't say the word in polite company. Not even to refer to table legs. You had to substitute the general term of 'limbs'. It was daring to even allow a glimpse of one's ankle beneath your skirts. North America is headed back that way now, with bare arms being grounds to bar you from a business or other public place."
"You can't go to a public pool now if your trunks don't come down over the knee," Lindsy said.
"Yes, I know. I could show you pictures of high school students from eighty years ago, who are wearing low slung pants that show the navel and tops that expose the arms and shoulders."
"Where? At a beach?"
"At school," Faye assured her. "When things move away from that, then such pictures disappear from public media and may even be reserved for 'serious' researchers and scholars, in the supposedly public archives."
"I never thought about clothing having a history. I wonder if we'll have a history the way they sell stuff now. It seems like they change things for no reason. It's frustrating because they think it has to be all new, all the time, to sell. If I buy something I really like, I can't find another one a month later," Lindsy complained. "I have a few favorite pieces I hardly ever wear, because I don't want to wear them out."
"That's true of consumer goods," Faye agreed. "But most of them are simplified copies of designer clothing. The really high end stuff is custom cut to fit your measurements, bespoke they say and then the design copied in standard sizes for retail and done in cheaper fabrics most of the time. But even the better made cut-to-size sellers will alter a piece to fit you better."
"The girls at school would make fun of you, if you sewed a button back on something instead of throwing it away. They took that as a sure sign you were poor," Lindsy remembered.
"That's amusing. That tells me they've never known anyone with really expensive clothing, because it is well worth repairing or altering. Shoes too. Good ones can be resoled several times and new heels put on."
"Did you know you can take a garment carefully apart along the seams and use it as a pattern to copy it? Of course you can use a different fabric or color."
"But I'd hate to lose the original."
"Ah, but you can sew it back together, if it's not worn to the point of having holes in it."
"Oh really? I guess there are some things about clothing worth knowing."
"And you may like to understand some of the elements of design. If you have favorite pieces of clothing, you already have formed tastes and opinions about fashion."
"OK, I'll study fashion and clothes," Lindsy agreed. "But we have to do something that sounds much more serious, so when my Mom asks I can tell her about that first."
"Very well, I'm sure we can find something scholarly, she'll regard well." She had to fight looking too happy at Lindsy demanding some serious instruction.
Chapter 26
"One day, about four months ago, you took the kids shopping with you and I was alone at home." Mo related the whole story of intimidating visitors, the threats, the job offer and his failure when Jeff discovered the device he'd placed, as soon as he arrived back at Home. It wasn't a story to relate on com, but he unburdened himself as soon as he came in the door. Wondering if it was the end of his marriage on top of his life in the USNA.
"So what do we do now?" Linda wondered, dismayed.
"Is it still we?" Mo asked, plainly. "I can't go back, but I can't see why they would harm you or the kids. You don't have to stay here. You made pretty clear you don't care for Home or the people here."
If it wasn't a ringing endorsement, it was more than he expected and closer to 'I was wrong' than he'd heard in years. "Jeff seems to feel I can find employment after his project is finished. If it is too expensive here I'll have property at Central, you know."
"And I have work and can ask for more, or find better," she offered.
"Why don't we go get some dinner and you can tell me all about this job and the kids' new school?" he proposed.
"The kids are still at school,"
"Good. Leave them a note and let them see to their own dinner," he suggested. "Unless your habit is to go there and walk them home. Are you afraid for them to be in the corridors?"
"Oh no, not at all. It's easy to forget you were only here a couple days and spent those getting trained. We are much more settled in now and know how things work. I have to admit, they are probably safer here than back in Canada. They both wear spex now," she said touching hers. "I'll just drop them a low priority text, so they don't interrupt their lessons. Let's go," she agreed, standing. "I'll keep mine on, in case they respond. Eric gave me a set and showed me how to use them. I needed them to clock on and off my job."
"Did he want to sell them to you?" he asked, voice pitched lower in the corridor.
"No, he never hinted at such a thing, but he wouldn't give his sister a free pair, when she asked and I wouldn't make him. In fact, she didn't have any money up front, so he made her sign a note. She was rather indignant he called her a 'poor risk'. Then she tried to get me to pay her for doing her chores, to get the money, but I suggested she could get a cash allowance after her chores covered her cafeteria subscription. I'm pretty sure she looked up the fee online, so I haven't heard any more about that from her. If Eric can make his own money, then being two years older than he is, she can too!"
"Lindsy has chores?"
"She cleans the bathroom and Eric cleans the common room. If I go out to work before breakfast, why should I come home and have to clean up after kids too?"
"No reason at all," Mo agreed. "She's really done this already?
"Twice. The second time I didn't need to make her re-do anything."
"Would you like to go to the other cafeteria so we can talk and the kids won't come find us and interrupt us after school?" he suggested, offering his arm.
"That sounds nice," Linda agreed. "How long are you staying this time?"
"A week minimum and then however many days until the next ship."
"That's good. The kids will get a chance to tell you what they are doing themselves and me too," she hastened to add, squeezing his arm.
* * *
"It needs a weapons bay," Jeff said of the 3D wire frame model turning on the screen. "It should be able to carry both interceptor missiles and stand-off ground attack weapons. I didn't see anything like that when you went through the subsystems by color coding. Did I miss it?"
"You have the two pylons just like orbit to orbit shuttles," Dave pointed out, bringing that back up in a brilliant green. "Those are only for space use though. At hypersonic velocity in atmosphere, I have no design for a hatch or weapons door that can open without severely disrupting the stability and handling. The pylons would shear right off if you extended them."
"Perhaps we could eliminate those and combine orbital and atmospheric weapons in a common magazine."
"I could certainly use the recovered volume for several things, but how do we get them out safely? I can have a section of hull pivot out, hinged at the front to stay flush, but it will act like a speed brake and heat up quickly. The entire vehicle will either turn to or away from it also."
"You don't know which?"
"Not until I model it and it depends on how far forward or aft it is positioned and how the shock wave it generates interacts with the others."
"Drop them out the back," Jeff decided. "Next to the drive and inside the shock cone trailing off the rear edge of the vehicle.
"There was a bomber that did that, about a century back. It was nuclear capable, so it never got used the few years it was in service. But in theory it ejected the weapon right between the engine exhausts at supersonic speeds, but your exhausts would damage it," Dave insisted.
"Remember when airplanes had propellers? They would time it and shoot between the blades. Put an interrupter circuit in the drive, to throttle it way back for a half second or so, when the missile is ejected."
"That just might work. It's going to add a day to the design time and it won't be able to fire sitting grounded."
Jeff shrugged. "We don't even have a specific mission for this beast yet."
"We also don't have any ground attack missiles. That's another design assignment and the guidance and electronics are very different to interceptors."
"Buy them from somebody," Jeff insisted. "A few to shoot and one to take apart and copy, or better yet, improve on the design."
"The French have an air to ground design that's older, but pretty versatile. It works in both ground attack and ship mode. "I'll see if I can buy a few from one of their allies on the cheap, or direct if I must."
"I want you to look at this too," Jeff said, revealing one of the optics Mo had given him. "This is supposedly a targeting marker. It's to locate where a bunker buster will strike. Does that sound reasonable to you?"
"Yes," Dave agreed after inspecting it, "but you'd locate these ahead of time, not wait until you were dropping a weapon to use it for guidance. It's more for advance data collection, not real time."
"How would you counter it?" Jeff asked.
"You could move them to areas you don't care if they bombard," Dave said, wrinkling his brow. "These have to be illuminated to locate them. They have to illuminate them from a fairly small angle off the vertical. Ten degrees or less. You could destroy the ship doing that as a hostile act. It's just like illuminating you with targeting radar. Is it North America or China placing these?" he asked.
"North America, to three nines certainty."
"You could send samples to the intelligence agencies of other countries. It's hugely embarrassing they got caught. Or you can reposition a few of them where they will send a message. I don't imagine they could fail to take the correct meaning if one of them turned up stuck in the President's lawn, for example."
"I may use a combination of those, thank you for your advice," Jeff said smiling.
* * *
"Is this the favorite jacket you told me about?" Faye asked Lindsy.
"I like this one a lot, but it isn't my favorite piece. I'm still a little scared I'll never get it back together," she admitted.
"You won't be after you see how it works," Faye assured her. "This little tool is a seam ripper. Let me show you how to use it." She started at a corner of the front bottom and opened the seam for about an inch. "Do that until it's all apart. It will take some patience, but you'll get faster as you go along."
At first Lindsy worked with her head bent over the work, concentrating so much the tip of her tongue showed through her frown. But after awhile Faye looked and she was sitting back, much more relaxed and apparently listening to the history lesson with the others while she worked the seam open.
Later Faye showed her how to turn the jacket inside-out to get at some hidden construction to remove the lining. Near the end of the day the garment was completely disassembled and Faye gave her a small bag to hold the pieces.
"Next week, don't bother coming to class on Tuesday," Faye instructed Lindsy. "Go straight to the shops by t
he cafeteria and tell the lady at Cindy and Frank's Tailoring and Design that you are the student I said I'd send around. I think you'll have an interesting day."
* * *
"Mr. Detweiler, do you have a moment to answer a couple questions?"
"Certainly Ms. Paddington, how may I help you?" he asked. He closed the screen over the keyboard on his computer to give her his full attention.
"First of all I'd like to know if you are satisfied with my work? If you have any minor things you have been saving up to tell me, I'd like to know about them sooner rather than later."
"I am entirely satisfied with your work," he assured her. "I couldn't be happier with the thoroughness of it, if I were doing it myself. The entire staff is happy not to have it taking an extra fifteen or twenty minutes added on the end of our work days"
Linda nodded, pleased to hear his acknowledgement of it. "Also, I wonder if you have found anyone to do the remaining three days on which I passed? Now that I have some experience at it and because the extra income would be welcome in our household due to changing circumstances, I'd welcome doing the entire week if it is available."
"We had another person try out for the other days, but they just did not have the patience to be as detailed as we require. We'd be delighted to have you assume the entire task. If your circumstances are changed, are the same hours still manageable for you?"
"Oh yes, nothing has changed short term, but we're in agreement now that we'd rather not go back to Earth when my husband's current contract runs out. He has the possibility of other employment, but as you are aware Home is so expensive, I'd like to help out."
"Excellent, I'm glad you find it so agreeable here. If you find that even the expanded hours are not enough, speak to me again and we'll try to find something additional for you, or even have you train someone and assume other duties."
"Thank you. I'm satisfied with just the other days right now. If I need to I'll bring it up again though. It's good to know there's something available."
April 4: A Different Perspective Page 22