"Twenty dollars each, for a hundred," Dave said, shocking him. "I got a deal. It's a new Japanese item. You can program them to hide. They will find an overhang, or seek the bottom of a table or chair. They have a little routine that lets them latch onto a pants cuff or edge of a jacket and ride along on a person entering a building and then detach inside. They have a limited chameleon ability. A plain beige or green surface they will blend in, but something like marble or herringbone fabric is beyond them."
"How fast can they walk?"
"They fly," Dave said, grinning. "As far as you want, but they are slow. About three meters a second, not even as fast as a stiff breeze if they are bucking it, unfortunately."
"How fast is the little mini-sub?"
"Now that moves along pretty well. It will do about ten meters per second."
"OK, I have a mission ready for this when it can drop. I'd like to put it near the Pacific coast of North America, on a trajectory that mimics a meteor and a couple hundred kilometers up the coast, so it isn't obviously pointed right at the Seattle and Vancouver area. There's a CIA office listed in the public directory and I want to put it under surveillance. Can one of these little flyers grab onto a ground car and ride home with someone? Stay attached and silent, but come back the next day to report its moves and move over to a different vehicle?"
"I'll make sure it has a program written to do just that."
* * *
"I most strongly approve," Papa-san agreed, when Chen approached to recruit him. "An alliance with this group is essential to your long term safety and to thrive on Home."
"But I have not named the principals."
"Bah, am I blind? If Ed Persico recruited you, then you are most certainly are working for Jeff Singh. Jon will tap Eddie as a former employee, but would never recruit through him. If Jeff Singh is involved then Heather anderson and April Lewis are too. The three are thick as thieves, though Miss anderson seemed the quieter one for a long time."
"Miss Lewis was not even aware I'd been recruited."
"They have little formal command structure. I've seen her dealing with her peers on com. They don't order each other in any discernible rank structure. They chat as friends, or maybe lovers and form a consensus or trade favors. It frightening to see the power they wield so casually. But it works. April calls up her friends on com and says, "I have this irritating, stupid, multi-billion Yuan nuclear submarine trying to kill me, would you please drop a few rods from God on them?" like another teenager would ask to borrow her girlfriend's boots."
"I am informed Heather conferred titles of nobility on April and neglected to inform her for some days. She was put out that she was Dame Lewis, talked it out with Heather and begrudgedly accepted it later. So it wouldn't surprise me at all if Eddie or Jeff hired you and didn't get around to telling her for some days."
"You have the right of it. Once she understood I now worked for her, it didn't seem to be any big shock. She actually welcomed me aboard and accepted the relationship that casually. She didn't even ask any proof that Eddie had hired me."
"Chen, they look like children to you. But if you falsified your relationship with Eddie she would find out in a few days. To her mind you wouldn't dare. In fact, you had better not dare such a thing. If you did, you'd get to see what the stars look like with no faceplate separating you from their beauty, for as long as you could hold your breath. If this is to be your home, never cross them," Papa-san counseled the man in a soft voice.
"I'm tutored," Chen acknowledged.
"As it happens, I have a few sources you may find useful in North America and other areas you did not normally work when employed by the Chinese. I'll make a list, for what they are useful and how they must be approached. Perhaps if you have Asian contacts we can trade and I can pass them on as items of barter or reward to some of my old associates."
"That's good," Chen agreed, but he had this disquieting feeling that he wasn't sure who recruited who here. "How is it that Miss Lewis has not recruited you directly, knowing you have a background in intelligence?"
"April is of the firm opinion that I am fully retired and would rather not be bothered by my former associates. If only it were so easy. I've presented myself the same way to that hulking bodyguard she keeps, although I am not so sure he believes it as firmly as she does. He did get to read my full North American file, which has far more than I'd like in it."
Chapter 30
"Mom, I stopped in the shop this morning to bum a cup of tea. They aren't usually busy and can talk. Cindy said they are very happy with how I go do things, like pick up the trimmings and wash the coffee mugs and stuff, without somebody having to ask, so they are bumping me up to fifty dollars an hour. Isn't that nice?"
"Anytime you get a raise without asking for it is very nice." The fact she was doing the same thing at home, cleaning the bath without being nagged, was a miracle.
* * *
"Let's talk in my offices," Jeff suggested. "I have things to discuss that are too sensitive for the cafeteria. We can get a pack to go and I have my own coffee there."
"I'm going to give Gunny the day off early then," April decided. "Nobody is going to bother me in your offices. Besides, it's claustrophobic already, Gunny fills it half up himself."
"Can you swing by and get a deli-pack for us? I'll meet you at 1300. Does that work for you, or is that rushing it too much?"
"Works. What do you want to eat?" April asked.
"Food. Just double up whatever sounds good to you. I'm not picky."
April got sandwiches, a variety because whatever they didn't eat she knew from experience she could put in the refrigerator at home and Gunny would have them gone in a day. She made sure to get some pickles, the sweet-hot ones and a container of coleslaw.
Jeff's door was set to her hand so she walked right in. Jeff was sitting at his work station, elbows on the counter, face in his hands, deep quiet sobs shaking his shoulders.
April put the carrier down quietly and walked up behind him.
"Hey, hey, what's the matter?" She put a hand on his shoulder, the thumb kneading the back of his neck. He just shook his head no and kept on crying. She put both arms around his neck and waited. It took quite awhile before he ran down.
When he finally was breathing normal and straightened up, she let loose of him. He pivoted the chair around and she leaned over and hugged him again. It tilted him back in the chair and he held her back, keeping her from sliding down, the chair jammed back against the desk.
"I'm so sorry. I've been doing that. I can't hold it back. It just comes."
"You don't need to apologize," she said in his ear. "You don't have to explain."
"I do! I don't want you to think I'm unstable. I care a great deal what you think of me. I'd hate for you to ask me to log off our weapons net, or stand down from piloting, because you think I'm not fit."
"Then explain if you must, because I hadn't thought to do either of those things."
"It's the Chinese. Having to destroy Eddie's Rascal was necessary, absolutely necessary to our survival, but all those people hurt, it just tears me up," he admitted. "The idea I might have to do it again, or worse, it's horrifying to me. But I will not trade Home for them. I wouldn't even trade you, one single person, against the whole Chinese nation if they push me into a corner. But that doesn't mean it's easy. It hurts."
April backed off from holding him around the neck and took his face in her hands. She locked him in place with her hands, looking eyeball to eyeball with her, so he couldn't turn away.
"When you steal and murder and try to enslave people, you can have no complaint if it comes back on you. They stole your ship. They murdered your crew. They want to lock your mother up and break her with their 're-education'. Yes, there were people hurt, but the nasty fact is they are responsible for their actions. Both if you are a government representing people, or if you allow such men to keep power over you, your actions, or lack of action, has consequences."
"I
hear you and it sounds reasonable, but I don't feel it."
"You have a responsibility to us too. To Home and your mom and to me. What they want to do to us is wrong. Just because there are more Chinese than us doesn't make it right."
"That I feel."
"I'd say from what we saw in Beijing, all the fighting, the fires, their armor movements and the announcement of the change in their chairman, there was somebody who thought the old officials were wrong. If they didn't agree you were right in principle, then at least they are scared enough of you, to concede you have the power to tell them how you will be treated. I don't expect them to snatch one of your ships again," April assured him. "Not while the memory of what it cost is fresh."
"You're making me feel better."
"You make me feel special. You'd go to war for me, like I was Helen of Troy."
"Helen had nothing on you. I love you." April keep his face trapped and kissed him thoroughly, rubbing her face in his intoxicating smell.
"This is wonderful and complicated," Jeff complained.
"Why? Are you intimate with Heather?" April, as usual, cut to the heart of the matter.
Jeff laughed a little crazily. "No, when I found myself in much the same situation with her, on the moon, she said, "Is this going to hurt April?" You both declare your love, but neither want to hurt the other. Perhaps you both love each other more than me?" he asked, confused and frustrated. "I didn't mean that like it sounded," he protested right away.
"I don't take offense automatically. You know Heather and I aren't like that. I don't think it serves any of us to try to quantify love. I certainly love you differently than Heather, or my grandpa. Can we really define love units and assign them? Is it a zero sum game and if I give you seven love units I have to take some away from my grandpa or Heather or Barak? Do you love Heather?" April asked directly.
"Oh absolutely. You are both wonderful and both care about me past anything I deserve and have so many good qualities I can't start to list them. You each and both, deserve everything I can give you and more."
"Well I love her too. I think we better get together and talk this out, before any of us stakes out any sort of ownership, that makes the other feel excluded. If you had to chose one of us and forsake the other, how could you chose?" The panic in his eyes was answer enough.
"Let's eat and talk business and when you go back to the moon I'll go with you. You do have a shower there by now, don't you?"
"Oh, yeah. Heather loves that thing. We actually have several now. One for Heather off her quarters. The Sovereign has privileges after all. One in the back of the armed rover and one for anybody to use in what we call the bunkhouse." It doesn't really have bunks," he hastened to add. "More like suites. Thanks for pushing me to design it."
"That was my one condition to come rough it. Anything else I can endure."
* * *
"Patience," The General counseled Col. Allister. "I'm shifting personnel, concentrating our people in physical proximity to the target. Putting trustworthy men in the same groups and finding reason to shift those who have never been recruited or seem of an oppositional mind, to other duty groups in the same units. I know you are chomping at the bit to go. When we do so it is going to be at full, overwhelming strength. You know it doesn't work to keep men in an elevated state of readiness for weeks. They wear down and lose their edge. Don't do the same to yourself. I'll inform you a couple days before we move, so you can whip them into the right psychological state."
* * *
"I hired Eddie and charged him with establishing an intelligence network for us," Jeff explained, brushing crumbs off his shirt, absentmindedly. "He was reluctant at first, but eventually came around and admitted he needs better intelligence himself anyway, for his business dealings."
"How can we possibly offer enough to hire Eddie? He's got more money than all the rest of us put together."
"Well, it was my idea," Jeff said. "It's true he didn't seem to care all that much about the financial side of it. He sort of blew me off when I offered to chip in. He seemed to think it could be self supporting anyway."
"How? Will we sell the information we've gathered?"
"No, he pointed out you have the mechanisms in place to move things secretly, so you have the assets you need for smuggling. and knowing of events you can anticipate market moves and trade on it."
"I can direct you to some folks in Hawaii that are in that line."
"I'm sure he'd welcome that."
"When I was on Earth we cruised around the South Pacific, in Papa-san's boat, trying to avoid the Chinese and the fallout of the coup in North America. It was a very impressive boat. I'd bet Papa-san, uh, Mr. Santos, still has some way to contact that boat. He might be willing to direct them to move some things for you too."
"That's good, it brings up something else. A long time ago you said we really shouldn't depend on the Earthies to shuttle up and down. We talked about doing it one way, with an old fashion reentry vehicle with just a heat shield and maybe a steerable chute. Well, I've commissioned Dave to make a real planetary shuttle. You mentioned this ship you traveled on. Dave pushed pretty hard to make the shuttle capable of water landings and take-offs. So if you had fairly calm seas you could meet that ship somewhere and transfer freight or passengers."
"That would have been very nice back then, instead of needing to get to Tonga and worrying if the political situation was stable, or if we'd all be arrested. When will it be operational?"
"I'm guessing flyable, if not detailed out, in a month, maybe five weeks. Dave had it framed out when I went by a couple days ago. The plasma drive chamber is massive though, special steel that takes almost twenty kilobar to deform. If they have trouble lifting the round stock for that, it could be a hold-up. I promised we'd do a remote control landing and takeoff with it, before operating it manned. He isn't convinced we can model the startup of the engine sufficiently for manned safety."
"Does Eddie know you're going to have this asset?"
"I haven't told him. If he's much of a spy-master he probably knows," Jeff joked.
"I'd tell him. Soon. He may be irritated you didn't tell him, even if he finds out himself. I tried to try to hire one of his guys and found out he worked for me already. I felt sort of silly not knowing. He's that fellow Chen, who hangs out with the security guys."
"I didn't know Eddie had recruited him yet either," Jeff admitted. "We haven't talked since the initial proposal. I'd hate to demand a constant flow of reports. It eats up time for him to stop and tell me nothing important is happening. It's after all a part time thing for Eddie to supervise. I'm going to leave it the way it is. If he has something important I know he'll tell me and the mundane he can accumulate until he has enough to bother."
"That's smart I think. What you are refusing to do, is to create a bureaucracy that feeds on itself to make work. Pretty soon you'd need another guy, to produce summaries of all the reports you demanded, but don't have time to read."
"I never really thought about how these huge expensive agencies get so bloated, but I think you have it figured out, right there. I need to spy on the CIA and the very size of it is daunting. I spent money for a reentry sled to drop some drones near their Seattle offices, but I can't afford to keep spending that sort of money to cover them. They're everywhere. But I think the agents I'm looking for will be in that office. The drone carrier drops tomorrow and then it will take a day to get in position."
"If you succeed in having agents on Earth, drones are not forbidden technology. A lot of places, you could just FedEx drones to them. Loading the really sensitive stuff, the software, down there of course."
"I'd have never thought of that."
"And if you can get Papa-san to have his ship do work for you, they can release a drone for you off a target's coast. From out past the legal limit if need be."
"I'll discuss all this with Eddie," Jeff promised.
"When are you going back to Central?"
"Two, ma
ybe three days."
"I'll be ready to go with you."
* * *
"Mr. Singh, I'm Rupert Molson. I'm one of the directors and an owner of the SIH partnership. We intend to send a mission to the Jupiter region and return with an object of ice and other volatiles."
"I'm quite aware of your venture. We'd have bought in, but we just had far too many other projects going to afford a share."
"We?" asked Molson raising an eyebrow.
"I am equal partners with Heather anderson and April Lewis, just as your operation is a partnership. We each have a few ventures of our own we have not merged. Heather is developing real estate on the Moon and April has a whole portfolio of little companies, but Singh Industries is jointly held, not to be confused with Singh Technologies, that is my step mum and my dad."
"We are looking at a very long voyage. Certainly the longest space voyage to date. It will likely be a year or more outbound and two to five years back to the Earth-Moon system, depending on what they capture. This is assuming you will sell us Singh power systems," he added. "With conventional engines we wouldn't attempt it at this time. We could do it with polywell reactors, but power density is not there and there are licensing issues."
"That's not a problem. I wish you every success and feel your project is a plus, necessary even, for Home."
"That's good to hear, because I'd like to speak of using some of your other technology. We are aware you have some sort of gravitational control. The ships Eddie Persico owns have been seen accelerating for prolonged periods, at levels that imply such systems. What we would like to know is if you can provide not just nullification of perceived acceleration, but the reverse, an artificial gravitational gradient, in a vehicle not accelerating? We were looking at spinning two ships on a cable, to avoid the long term health problems of weightlessness. If we could avoid that it would make the mission significantly easier and more efficient."
"First, this would involve my step mother," Jeff said thoughtfully. "She is the only source of the proprietary material used in our ship systems. This would take a lot of it, although she is trying to ramp up production. The thing is, I don't really know if it would work the same way in the outer system as it does locally."
April 4: A Different Perspective Page 26