"I don't trust my Japanese enough to use it, but I want your man to understand, I'm not a hired gun, but if there was trouble while I was your guest I wouldn't stand back and ignore it, I'd support the household that was extending hospitality to me."
"You understood enough," Adzusa told her. "How long have you been working on that?"
"I've been mostly studying with Jeff when we are together for other things. He just about has me to the point where I can order in a restaurant and the help can make it to the kitchen to laugh, instead of bursting out with it right at the table."
"Then we shall help you along," she promised.
April didn't have any idea what to expect. She had read a great deal about etiquette and customs in Japan and didn't know if Adzusa's folks would have a Japanese style home with traditional furniture and mats. She was sort of reviewing it all mentally. She waited to see when they went in the back door if they would have slippers waiting for her or what. When she stepped in, it was more like a mud room in a Midwestern farm house. There was a low bench with shoes kicked off under it and not a slipper to be seen. There was a rubber backed industrial mat on the floor and a box in the corner beyond the bench, with umbrellas, a broom, garden markers, a walking stick carved from a crooked tree limb and a metal baseball bat that had a dent in it. A high shelf above had hats, garden gloves, a beat up paperback, some envelopes of seeds and a baseball glove with a ball jammed in the pocket. A couple slickers hung on hooks.
Adzusa kicked her shoes off under the bench, almost without breaking stride and April hurried to do the same and keep up with her. Inside was a surprisingly big kitchen, that looked like it belonged in a restaurant instead of a house, with a woman working at a counter dicing something. Adzusa greeted her warmly, but kept on moving. Another servant, April thought. Two servants and a huge spread of land for Hawaii. April was revising her estimate of Adzusa's family. She had read the signs wrong on Home, that Adzusa must be middle class by American standards, but from what she was seeing they were quite well to do. She was irritated with herself, that she hadn't figured that out when she hit the end of the driveway.
They went out through a formal dining room, that had rather plain but tall European style furniture and entered a very large room that was set up for comfort, not formal entertaining at all. It had two groups of furniture, one group clustered around a huge thin screen on an inside wall and around a grand piano tucked in a corner that would have filled the Lewis living room on Home all by itself. A sun room that extended out of the side of the house with plants, had more casual furniture and a set of sliding doors let out to a small pool and a patio area with table and chairs.
Adzusa passed right through, just glancing to make sure April was keeping up and went to a tree shaded glass patio table set, where April was finally sure they had reached her parents. Her mother jumped up to hug her and she stood with her arm still around her mom and said, "These are my parents April. They know you of course from my work." It was an awfully informal introduction.
"Sit down, join us and relax," her dad invited. He got up and walked around the table, holding the white painted steel chair out for her. When she sat he scooted it in just right. Not like some people who take two or three tries to get it in far enough. Another young man in a white jacket appeared and silently set a plate and silverware for her, a napkin and then a place for Adzusa beside her. Three servants, thought April. Very well to do indeed, she realized.
"How should I address you?" April asked. "I'd rather just be called April if you are comfortable with that."
"I go by Lin which is a syllable in my Japanese name if you like," her mother offered. "We have a man servant Li, but everybody seems to keep us sorted out in conversation. They say Mama-Lin or such if there is any question."
"Well on the estate here, I usually go by Illustrious Lord or Benevolent Master," her dad suggested. "But if you want, most of Adzusa's friends end up calling me Papa-san and I've been known to answer to Hey-You. As you can tell we're not big on formality and don't try to run a Japanese style household. If we wanted to live like that we wouldn't have stayed on the island when I retired. We both went to college in California and have been back and forth three times over my working years and we like it here just fine." Both of them had the subtle signs of having extensive life extension therapy.
Looking around April could believe he liked it just fine. It was the most impressive private home she had ever been in. Adzusa got done hugging her mom for the third time and gave her seated dad a hug from behind, before coming around the table to join April. He just reached up and patted her arm affectionately, when she circled him. There was a pitcher of iced tea and she poured for April and April guessing maybe this was one of those Japanese customs they did retain, so she poured for Adzusa. But she didn't serve April, she took a bowl of fruit salad and spooned a serving for herself. But in all fairness, after seeing April eat lunch, she might have wanted to get some before April polished it off. April took the clue and served herself also. The man came back with a plate of cookies to go with the fruit. They were warm from the oven.
"That vest looks awfully stiff," her dad observed. "You're welcome to make yourself comfortable if you want. If you want to lay weapons on the table it won't offend us."
April though about it and looked over her shoulder at the tree line. It was about a hundred and fifty meters away.
"Silly me," her dad said. "I didn't realize. It's a ballistic vest isn't it?"
"Yes and it's cooled. But it does get tiresome."
"I'm sure it does. You should know we will be aware of any intruder, long before they can get to the edge of the grass. The sensors are way back in the trees and indeed on the other edge of the woods also. House," he instructed aloud. "Set the intruder alarm from silent, to be sounded in all areas until instructed different. Give us a sample right now just in the patio area."
There was a ding - ding – ding, that seemed to come from the bushes and near the doors.
"There. I'll leave that on for you. If you hear that, you know we have a problem. House, take a voice sample. This is April Lewis. She is a guest. She can enter any area of the house but our bedroom. She has rights to declare an emergency and lock herself in any room. She has rights to page anyone through you. She has access to outside com and data. You can share surveillance information with her. Go ahead dear."
"House do you have aerial surveillance capabilities?"
"Yes, both radar and optical. We buy feed off a commercial aerostat."
"Do you understand what a drone is?"
"Yes, an unmanned instrument platform that usually hovers and is difficult to track with human vision or hearing. Usually with flexible or ducted fans for lift and sometimes lighter than air cells. It may be stealthed for microwaves or lidar also."
"Could you tell me if we have any drones loitering within range you can detect?"
"There is a drone that comes within two miles of our southern boundary occasionally. It appears to do so as the edge of a pattern, that centers on an area further south. It has not changed the pattern in a statistically meaningful way in the last two months."
"Would you please alarm me if you should see a drone take a new interest in this area?"
"Yes, you are on the alarm list. That is sufficient voice sample to identify you now."
"You have a very smart house."
"We like it. I hope you like it here too," her dad said. "I wouldn't worry about the paparazzi finding you here though," he assured her, grinning. "It seems they are all surrounding a hotel down on the beach, waiting for you to come back."
"Huh, looks like you got good value out of that reserved room after all," Adzusa noted.
April felt safe enough now and took the vest off, folding it and putting it on the edge of the table and laid the aikuchi on it. She could tell Papa-san was itching to ask about the knife but restrained himself for now. The laser she left on. She was used to it and it didn't even feel it or think of it anymore.
"Papa-san your security is good, but I'm thinking somebody from the government might be able to pressure the aerostat company to corrupt your feed and it has to be limited in area. Would you permit me to make a gift of the Home Militia satellite surveillance feed to the House?" April offered.
"That would be very much appreciated," he said nodding thanks. "There is an element of risk being around you, but that is just factual observation, not complaint."
"They had a drone tail us and April shot it. Took three bugs off the truck too," Adzusa told him. "We stopped at Sam's for lunch and she went outside and burned it over his pasture."
"Well, I hope they don't give him much trouble over it," her mother said.
"If one shows up here just tell me," her dad offered. "I don't think they'd have the nerve to do that, but if they do - then if you don't pot it I will."
"Sounds good to me," April agreed. She was wondering what kind of business he was retired from, that he wouldn't be shy to shoot a drone himself. The Feds would get ugly with one of their own citizens about that she would think and she remember Adzusa wasn't naturalized. Maybe he was though? That would be odd.
The fruit salad was good. Especially the strawberries. A quart of it and a half dozen cookies and she could probably make it to supper OK.
Chapter 26
They spent a long time on the patio, until the sun disappeared behind the house and the shadows started getting long across the open areas. Adzusa's parents were so nice and had the skill of making a person comfortable. Papa-san finally steered the conversation around to the aikuchi and April explained it was a gift from the man Adzusa worked with, Genji Akira. She invited him to examine it. When he was done he asked for himself, to see her pistol. He was amused when it spoke Japanese to him.
"Speaks it better than I do," she admitted ruefully. "Pistol accept input from holder. Full function except single shot, administrative access and self destruct. Initiate designator beam on trigger pressure. Go ahead and shoot it if you want," she invited. "It is usually run through spex, but doesn't have to be."
"Not that I'm objecting," he said. "But why did you lock out single shot? It sounds like it would be safer than say a continuous beam."
"Because if you take a single shot, that means it is the last shot the pistol will every take. It will go into an emergency mode, where the power supply dumps as much as it can into the pumping diodes, without self destructing. It will pump out one tremendous shot for about a half second and then the residual heat after will ruin the crystal. When it does that the little ring on the barrel blows a sheet of gold coated Mylar out from the barrel, to protect the shooter from back scatter radiation from the beam. After that the only function that would work would be self-destruct because the guts are burned out. But there would still be enough power in storage for that. We're never going to let a pistol be drained dry, so it can't keep itself from being opened up and studied. The pistol is probably as smart as your house. It's a very smart pistol," she assured him again.
"And how much power does it discharge if it self-destructs to keep out prying eyes?"
"It usually dumps the whole charge. Right now about four kiloton."
"My," was all he said rolling it on its side, looking at it thoughtfully.
He looked out between the buildings, where a portion of the driveway was visible climbing to the house. One of the switchbacks with a couple boulders piled on the inside of the curve was visible, about eighty meters away. He held the pistol out in a relaxed grip and when he touched the trigger April noted the aiming dot appeared on the biggest boulder, without him fumbling around walking the point of light where he wanted it. She could see he'd shoot just fine without the aid. He squeezed the trigger and held the beam steady on the rock. In the dusk a little flash of backscatter light ran through the rainbow and as usual seemed to have green dominate. The noise, usually a shriek in thinner materials, was a bass moan from the solid dense material of the boulder. There was a sound like popcorn being made, as the beam ate away a crater in the side. Then after perhaps three seconds at full power there was a loader pop and the rock shattered into three or four major pieces when the core expanded and burst it. When he let off the trigger, there was a small area visible in the jumbled pile, that still glowed with red heat in the gathering dusk.
"I can think of a few times I could have used this," he admitted admiring it. "You could heat some rocks if you didn't have fuel in the desert and cook dinner on them."
That was a use April would have never thought of. "It has a port in the bottom there that will allow you to plug your p-suit in and run off the power pack," April explained. “I suppose there are all sorts of things you could run off that.”
Thinking how very different their perspectives were she blurted out, "Have you ever been up there? Have you been above the atmosphere?"
"No, I haven't. And that's always been a major regret," he admitted. "I've rode a hypersonic on the very edge, but never been into orbit."
"You are ex-military then?" April asked.
There was an uncomfortable silence and then Adzusa spoke. "She'll find out sooner or later. She sticks her damn nose in everything and if you drop one little word once that hints at something, she'll remember it a month later and deduce the whole story. My dad's a spook April."
"Not true," he objected. "I'm a retired spook. There's a great deal of difference. In fact it's quite a difficult status to attain. The profession isn't really one you'd choose, if you looked ahead at how many finish out their service and have a quiet retirement. Way too many end up dead or in mental hospitals. Sometimes even their own county's mental hospitals. Even worse, some end up as politicians."
"A spy?" April asked, perhaps a bit skeptically, afraid they were putting her on.
"I'd prefer intelligence officer," he assured her. "Spies they just drag out back and shoot in the head when they are caught. Intelligence officers they sometimes trade for each other."
"You wouldn't by any chance know a Swiss fellow, Jan Hagen?" she asked, testing. Jan had said the same thing about spies. It was a good line, easily remembered.
There was a flash of recognition and a big smile. "You know Jan? No kidding? What is the evil scoundrel doing now-a-days?"
"Well, we had a little problem at ISSII one day and Jan was seeing us off safe. He was security officer on the hab. He escorted Eddie Persico and some folks we were rescuing to us, on the Happy Lewis and the Chinese were giving him a heck of a time. It was quite an adventure."
"If Jan was involved I'm sure it was. How did he resolve his problem with the Chinese?"
"Well, we really didn't stick around to see. They were refusing to ungrapple us from dockage and Easy was getting ready to cut us off the station with our weapons systems, when a vac rat who had fueled us did us the favor of manually unhooking us. Easy had already blown pressure on their dock shooting a sniper and then shot up their control room through the view port. So when we stood off, nobody was exactly chatting with us or waving goodbye. The Chinese tried to ram us with a yard tractor and we burned them and I admit I was kind of peeved. So we were kind of hanging there, burning their antenna farm off the sat, so they couldn't yell for help or follow us on radar, when we saw the airlock open and a bunch of the Chinese went for a space walk without benefit of p-suit. That's when we knew Jan had resolved his issues with them," she concluded.
"That sounds like Jan. He always was weak on negotiation."
"That's a tremendous story," Adzusa told her. "Why didn't you ever tell it?"
"Well we did. We sold video of that and a bunch of other stuff to the BBC. Hours and hours of it. But you know from inside how news is. They cherry pick one little clip and play it over and over and never do a story in depth unless it's pay for view, or on some obscure specialty channel. All they ever showed much was us ambushing the Pretty as Jade and the James Kelly, then a short clip of the Chinese marine off the Jade getting killed by Dr. Singh. He's the guy we rescued," she added. "You can write t
he story if you want. I'd give you a copy of our video to the BBC, because they only paid for a forty eight hour exclusive. It's no secret at all. But it's kind of old news now. I don't think anyone would be all that interested."
"You went all through these battles with space stations and space ships and sold the video of it to the BBC? Heavens how much did you get?" Lin wondered. Papa-san looked embarrassed she would ask such a personal thing.
"Oh my brother sold it for us. He got ten million Euro and we split it even between all of us on the Happy and him. We figured if we gave it to them they wouldn't value it or show it. That's how people are. They don't appreciate something if they get it free. So it wasn't much split six ways."
"It wasn't?" Lin asked.
"Hey, you didn't think we were poor did you?" April looked concerned.
Papa-san was laughing behind his hand at the look on his wife's face.
Chapter 27
The same young man who had served them when they sat, came out and asked if the cook could serve dinner in a half hour? Papa said that was fine, which April was happy to hear. He walked back in and before anyone could resume the conversation April's com chimed.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know who would be calling me. Do you mind if I take it?"
They all made dismissive gestures. "Go in if you need privacy dear," Lin offered.
April just shook her head no and flipped the pad open.
It was a four-way conference with Dave who serviced their ships on the main screen, her grandfather in one corner, Jeff and Heather in another and Jon and her dad in the third.
"April, I got your communication this morning about not being a partner with Bob any more. He came in to do an emergency run today with a new crewman and the Happy was not prepped to boost. We had too much torn down to slap it back together, so he loaded his crate on the Home Boy and insisted on taking it. I offered to send one of my guys with him if he needed a third crewman, because that's what you've been doing, but he refused. He said he was doing an orbital transfer, so he didn't need a dock guard. We're kind of worried about him because he didn't do a near earth orbit. He did a Lunar insertion burn, has been in a Lunar orbit and was joined by a ship lifting from Armstrong. Do you know of any orbital transfer delivery he'd be doing with an Armstrong company?"
April 2: Down to Earth Page 22