"Can you do it? Or am I asking more than you can handle?"
"How far does this reach?" Eddie asked, instead of answering. "Am I working for just you? Or am I working for her Royal Highness, Heather, too? Does April have a finger in this?" he asked suspiciously, "or do you intend to feed this intelligence even as far as Jon and the Home militia?"
"It goes to me, Heather and if you haven't figured it out by now, we won't hold anything like this back from April. They don't know I'm talking to you yet, but they will soon. But Jon? No. At least no, unless we need to tell him something to keep Home from being shot out from underneath us. Does Jon have assets you want to use that are worth trading information with him? We've worked with Jon but never fully, never with all our cards on the table. We have always kept a slightly arm's-length relationship with Jon, especially Jon as Spox for Home, or Jon with his militia hat on."
"I'll do it," Eddie decided, with shocking abruptness. "It's really just an extension of what I was already doing, but the next rational level. I need more information for business purposes anyway. There's a Chinese fellow who came up recently. I'm going to feel him out to do some of the footwork for us. What you are asking is going to require sending people to Earth and recruiting Earth citizens. It'll be hard to find people to do that. We probably will have to offer asylum to people, if they should become suspected by Earth authorities. There will be bribes and trades to be made."
"Let me know, if it's within my capacity, I'll fund it."
"Don't worry too much," Eddie waved that aspect away. "I'll help prime the pump too, but intelligence operations historically have been self funding, if not actual profit centers. Just don't get all righteous and huffy with me, if I trade equities and commodities based on the data we gather, or actions we take. When you start moving people and surveillance devices about secretly, it's quite easy to do a little smuggling at the same time too," he gave Jeff a smile that disquieted him. But Jeff still nodded his assent to those terms.
"I do have a first tasking for you."
* * *
Lindsy walked back to the shop with Cindy and Frank. They never seemed to hurry. She remembered a book she'd read. They seemed very much like a character in it who liked to mosey. She wasn't sure she had that style of locomotion straight until now. Maybe when they got those treatments they'd pick the pace back up again. Maybe not…
The machine said her jacket was optimized within four millimeters everywhere but in the upper sleeve, which Cindy assured her was an amazing fit. When she gave the OK to sew it back up it took the robot only three minutes. The robotic hands and sewing head were a blur. She took the jacket from Cindy and, shrugged it on delighted.
"They would have been happy to have robotic hands this sensitive ten years ago for surgery," Cindy assured her. "Besides which these are customized for handling fabrics. They are hard to see working, they are like your hand with a second thumb, but then there are two rows of smaller fingers behind the front ones. It can hold tension on the cloth with one row while another set of fingers takes a new grip and it never has a chance to bunch up, or feed too fast."
"Would you like it to sew up that other design for you? I'm going to give you the design files for the original and the variation, but if you'd like the velvet jacket we'll make it free, if you just pay for the cloth," she offered.
Lindsy felt her face flush deep red and she looked down ashamed. "I'd love to, but I have no money of my own at all," she admitted. "My brother started a little business already, since we moved up here, but I just haven't figured out anything to do yet. Could we hold off on that and when I get something going I'll be back and have you run it?"
"Of course dear, you just got here," she said to soften it. She didn't ask why she was broke when she arrived. Didn't the girl get any allowance? That was the Earth custom when they'd lived down below. At least in North America.
Frank cleared his throat. "Seems to me this is the perfect opportunity to do what you mentioned last Saturday, when we were swamped and you couldn't clean up or offer refreshments between customers and get some help."
Cindy looked at him like he was daft, she remembered no such thing, but recovered nicely and smiled. "Now that's an idea, if you have no job yet. Do you go to school Saturday, Lindsy?"
"No, just Tuesday and Thursday so far."
"Well then how would you like to come in Saturdays and give us a hand, until something better presents itself?" she offered. "You can clean up the floor when trimmings and thread start to make a mess and we like to offer our customers coffee or tea, but when we have others waiting, we can hardly stop and take time to do that. There might be the occasional errand or even taking a seam apart like you did with your jacket. For all its speed the robot does that very poorly. Would you like that dear?"
"I'd like that just fine," Lindsy said and didn't even ask what it paid. "I'll have to go ask my mom and dad though."
"Her parents are going to ask her how much she will be earning," Frank predicted.
"You'll have to show me everything," Lindsy admitted. "I don't expect a lot."
"Let's say forty dollars an hour at first," Cindy suggested. Frank silently nodded agreement.
"That's fine. I should be paying you. Ms. Lewis sent me here to learn, not work. I'll explain that to my mom. I learned a lot just today."
"Of course dear, if she has any other questions just have her give us a call. I predict she'll be happy for you," she said, with all the confidence she could muster.
Chapter 28
"Mr. Chen?" The young man stood close enough he could speak softly and not broadcast to the entire cafeteria, but far enough away he didn't feel threatening. Chen didn't acknowledge that it was his name yet, but looked up at being addressed and gave him his attention.
"I'd like to speak privately with you about a business proposal. I have my vessel, Eddie's Rascal, delivering some rush freight to Mitsubishi 2 tomorrow. If you'd like to ride along we'd have privacy to talk and I'll provide lunch. We are leaving at 0700 from dock four on the north end. Figure it will be about six hours total, including an hour lay-over for delivery. Are you interested?"
"I'm free tomorrow, yes, I'd be interested."
"If you come, I suggest you stop by Dave's Advanced Spacecraft Services an hour or so early and tell him I said to loan you a light flight suit. The Rascal is a very low volume ship. If you lose pressure it tends to drop very fast. Most of us will only fly in a pressure suit."
"And your name is?"
Eddie blinked hard, then grinned. "Eddie, Eddie Persico. Dave will know me."
Oh, Eddie and Eddie's Rascal, he meant his ship literally and the man expects people to know who he is, Chen realized with a jolt. He'd initially thought the man rude not to introduce himself, but instead found he was remiss in not knowing a major player in his new home. This is Eddie the Lip, who Mackay was talking about on their recent job.
"I'd be happy to take a few hours and discuss whatever you want Mr. Persico."
"Mr. Persico is my dad. Just call me Eddie, my family name invokes too many complicated connections. See you tomorrow then," and he ambled off, unhurried.
Complicated connections? Chen thought. Is that what you call being from a crime family? He had to call, no, go talk to Santos, face to face and see what else he knew about this Eddie. He absolutely didn't want to go into this interview tomorrow dead cold.
* * *
"Why are you frowning, you almost never frown, is it something that should worry me?" It didn't worry Mo enough to slow his assault on his roast beef and gravy.
"I don't think so, Mo. It's just that something doesn't make sense. I don't know if I should be worried about it. Once we got a grid laid out and a perimeter road, Heather decided we have enough infrastructure in place to look serious, so she upped the price of lots. She also made clear in the sales material on our site, that she intends to raise them again soon, once we have our command center buried deeply and make some significant progress on the tunneling p
rojects."
"Oh, did raising the prices kill sales?"
"No! We're getting a lot more sales and even more inquiries. She'd only sold about six percent of the planed site, so this is going to mean a great deal of difference in the total projected take for the project. I just can't figure out why."
"Maybe it's just the sudden realization that they won't always be cheap, so people decided to stop thinking about it and buy, before the prices go up again."
"That could be a factor. The buyers are a bit different though. They are trending to have a lot more money. We've sold a few to people from other moon colonies again, two to the French and one to a Japanese fellow. But the rest are Earthies and we have two Swiss and an Australian who really got my attention. These three are the sort of people, who if you do a Earth-Web search, it turn up pages of cites for their business activities. and they paid cash without blinking."
"I'd call that desirable," Mo said. But then after thinking a bit he wondered. "Those sort of rich people are used to having their own way. Do you think they might start challenging Heather's authority?"
"They seem to like the idea we have a strong central authority. The one Swiss guy even inquired what the form was to swear fealty. In fact things are going so well, Heather is planning on putting survey markers out, to claim two other areas about the same size as this one."
"The sooner you do that, the less chance somebody will get in ahead of you." Mo advised.
"True, but I don't think any of the other moon bases are in a position to come do it, yet."
"But you have the settlers from Armstrong here, with their own rovers. Sooner or later they are going to get their housekeeping problems all squared away and they will get the idea to take a couple days to drive out and stake out some territory, once they have some spare time. The sooner you have the close stuff claimed, the less chance they will drive really far and claim beyond those too."
"OK, point taken, we can't fool around and take forever."
"You don't run the rovers all three shifts, not most of the time. May I make a proposal?"
"Ah, please do," Jeff said, surprised and very much amused. This wasn't Mo's usual mode.
"Next time I have leave, let me call my wife and inform her I need to stay over an extra cycle this one time. I will take a rover and lay out a circle road with markers, delineating the new areas and a connecting road to Central from each. I don't need any extra cash, but for doing that I'd like another standard lot in one of the new areas. I'll plow that one boundary for my lot and put a moon hut on it. I get a good investment and you safely secure a huge asset."
"I have to talk to Heather, but I think she'll go for it. We need your written agreement that you aren't claiming the whole area, by the act of using our rover to mark it out. and your choice of lot in payment ahead of time."
"That's agreeable. I'll probably take the first lot next to the connecting road. If you can site these two areas so they can be connected independently of Central, it will pay off in the future."
"Worried about traffic already?"
"It's never too early to alleviate problems; that's the engineer side of me speaking."
They ate a bit in silence, until Mo asked, "Are you going to waste those carrots?"
"I've never cared for them much. Finish them off."
"You know, another angle on it, is these are rich guys. They are probably pretty well connected and they might know if there is a possibility of trouble on Earth fairly soon," Mo suggested. "At least within their lifetime, even if they plan long term. The moon might look like a fine place to sit it out, if things get rough on Earth. You might factor that in your planning, considering what you need from Earth. Supplies might get disrupted, because they are too busy with other things to send you carrots," he said, holding the last orange disk up on his fork to drive the thought home.
"There are things they need from us too," Jeff pointed out. "A lot of vital parts and pieces of all sorts of systems are things made in zero G now."
"That's good. It gives us some leverage."
Oh, it's us now. Jeff noticed.
* * *
"I want to establish an intelligence gathering network," Eddie explained to Chen in the back of Eddie's Rascal. They were at dock and the crew was off loading. The lunch turned out to be a deli-pack from Home cafeteria, instead of going on station. But it was very private.
"It has to have human intelligence assets worldwide and it is not going to be top heavy with desk pilots and analysts. I'm thinking four layers from the street to me, maximum. The lower level agents will not be tasked with any active acts of violence or sabotage, they will be eyes and ears only. There will be a separate team for active measures. The entire organization will be a few dozen, to start and never more than a couple hundred people, so that it is possible for one person to be aware of every individual working under them, not all of who have to know for whom they are working. The tasks are both for awareness of military hazards and for the purpose of maintaining economic advantage and assuring a continued supply of Earth materials and business for Home and the Central lunar colony. You would be in the second executive layer, mostly concerned with Earth. We don't anticipate a presence in other orbital habitats or the moon, at this time."
"Will there be a signals and data gathering agency also?"
"Yes and it will be even smaller. Their product will be fully available to the human intel side, but the human side will only get fed to surveillance anonymously, to tell them where to direct their attention."
"Who knows everything?"
"Only the top two layers."
"What are your arrangements for internal security?"
"Anyone in the top three layers can call for the interrogation of anyone up to their layer, or the one above, under brain scan. Several peers will sit in on such an interview to moderate, if there are any conflicts about a question being necessary. You may ask my peers to make me take a scan, if you think I have turned, or errored and won't own up to it."
"Well…" That obviously surprised him.
"It requires a genuine commitment and no way to weasel out."
"Shall this agency be interested in, or inquire into, one's activities outside the job?"
"Only in a limited sense. I expect people to protect themselves and their family, including making provisions for the destruction of Home as a political body, or the physical destruction of M3. As head I intend to make few moral judgments. If you have personal vices I really don't care, unless they make you a security risk. If you cheat your partners in business dealings, or cheat on your wife, I'd quietly let you go. It shows you have a base character, that is not to be trusted and you might damage us before a scanning interrogation could uncover how."
"You don't mind if one involves himself in other gainful activities?"
"You'll have to. I'm not offering you full time employment yet. You will need other employment to survive and to provide a cover for your activities. I can offer to steer some work your way, but the more you acquire yourself in legitimate ways the better your cover will be. At this time I'm offering you a Solar a quarter to start, for what will be basically keeping your ears and eyes open, while you go about your daily business. I'm aware of the security operatives you are associating with and that you already have done a small job with them. That's good. It should take you where you can collect information for me."
"Would I be authorized to recruit?"
"Yes, but as a rule you don't need to explain for whom the person is really working, other than you. Better to pay for specific information, than put someone on retainer. Too many will milk a regular income, by making up something if they don't have legitimate data. Actually bringing someone inside our organization should only be done on the basis of necessity. We need to do it on the cheap so to speak. We are not a huge government agency, drawing on a bloated national budget. So we can't be extravagant with bribes."
"Last question, who else is in the top executive layer with you?"
/> "I will run it. Jeff Singh, Heather anderson and April Lewis and myself will all consume our product. But they are not inside, actively functioning, members of the organization. If they contribute it will be by coincidence."
"Not Home, or the Home militia, or Mitsubishi?" Chen asked skeptically.
"The Assembly will not be asked to provide a plastic deciyuan and they will get exactly that for which they've paid. I imagine Mitsubishi has their own organization, as does their nation. The only way we will feed information to some third party, is if it is essential to serve our own interests."
"I am disposed to accept your offer. The immediate benefit is not that great, but the long term prospects are quite good, I think. The fact I will be in the information stream is very, very enticing. Do you wish to conduct an initial brain scan interrogation, before finalizing my acceptance?"
"No, I'll hire you right now. You know you are subject to it any time. That's enough at the moment."
"And if you find out in a month I still work for Chinese intelligence?"
"I don't remember asking for an exclusive," Eddie said surprised. "If you can work for three or four other agencies and get paid by all of them, that should keep my costs down," he said, reasonably. "However if you betrayed us, I'd have to kill you," he said, like it was obvious.
"Yes, I believe I can work for you," Chen agreed, with an amused smile.
"First quarter in advance," Eddie said and handed him a platinum Solar.
"Do you have anything with which you wish to task me, or just keep my ears open for now? I actually have some classified information about North America in my possession. I happen to have hard data on their last corn crop and projections for next year," Chen offered up.
"You should sell that while it's fresh, if you have a market for it. You might try asking Jan over on ISSII. What we'd really like right now is a complete list of all the USNA intelligence operatives starting with the CIA and concentrating upon those in the Seattle – Vancouver area. As soon as possible, I will have photos of everyone frequently accessing their offices there and some other locations. That may help."
April 4: A Different Perspective Page 24