Paul leaned forward. “The 737 was not their first choice, was it? They wanted a 767, one that still had most of its hardware including the landing gear. But they couldn’t swing the cost.”
“They told you this? Quite frankly, I can’t say anything—”
But Paul waved a hand in dismissal. “I will pay the difference.”
Corey blinked several times. “Excuse me, mate?”
“You sell the 767 to your other customer for the same price as the 737. I will pay the difference. And then I will buy the 737 for the same price you are asking from them. Which is perfect, since I don’t need the landing gear or anything else which is missing from the 737. Everybody wins. They get their plane, you sell two planes instead of just one, which makes you look good to corporate. And I get the plane I want. What could be sweeter?”
“Mr. DeWitt,” the Asia Pacific man said, struggling to find the right words. “That’s a pretty steep price to pay for the shell of a 737.”
“I can afford it,” Paul assured him. “I’m the CEO of a manufacturing company. We make baby diapers—”
“Diapers!” jabbered Daneel excitedly.
“—in Fiji and export to the rest of the world. Maybe you’ve heard of us. Cuddles, Inc?”
Corey shook his head, still puzzled by the whole situation. “What do you want with the plane anyway?”
“The same thing I wanted with all those other planes that I bought,” Paul answered. “It will be part of a house I’m building. This one will be in Canberra. I’m tired of staying in hotels there when I make a trip to Oz.”
“Canberra? Do you know how far that is from here, mate? The 737 has no engines, no control surfaces, no doors, no gear, no avionics, and no hydraulics. It’s just a shell of a plane. How are you going to get it there?”
“No problem. I’ve got a couple of people that are real good at moving things.”
Shaking his head, Corey leaned back in his seat. “I really can’t allow just anyone into the storage field. There are safety risks and possible disruptions to my own work crew to consider.”
Paul chuckled. “Believe me when I say this, pardner. You won’t even know they’ve come and gone.”
• • • •
Later in the afternoon, they portaled to Perth to the Karrinyup Shopping Centre, one of the larger malls in Perth, with 170 stores and services, in order to do a bit of shopping.
As they emerged into the rotunda, Daneel under cloak behind them, Paul let Capie steer them toward the escalators leading to the second floor.
“Thanks for coming with me,” Capie said with a grateful smile. “There’s just a few things I need to pick up now, that are not readily available in Kalgoorlie.”
“No problem, dear,” Paul responded with a nonchalant wave of his hand. “I bought what I wanted today in Alice. It’s only fair that you can do some shopping too.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, as she skirted around an older couple blocking their path. “There has been something that I’ve wanted to talk to you about.”
“Oh?” Paul’s mental radar went immediately alert. “And what would that be?”
“While we are in Australia, you want me to do most of the shopping for the supplies we will need on Mars. On the other hand, you will be doing most of the real work. Building the ship, making the first super-talisman. I feel like I’m not making a real contribution here. I am not an airhead or a bimbo. I want to do more.”
Paul came to a full stop, staring at his wife as she continued onward several steps until she realized that he wasn’t still with her. Capie turned back, noting the incredulous look on his face.
“Mommy, drink?” Daneel babbled, clearly sensing that something was not quite right between his parents.
“Bimbo?” repeated Paul, quizzically. “And just where did that come from? Did you not save me in the Chicago Hospital from McDougall? Was it not you who unearthed the plot at the Olympics? Was it not you who figured out how to get additional help from the Brazilian Errabêlu wizard and stopped the bombing? None of those are acts of a bimbo!”
All around them, people were steering a clear path, keeping a safe distance so as to not get involved.
Capie stepped closer to Paul. “Okay, maybe that was a bad word choice. But you know what I mean.”
Paul sighed and then resumed walking slowly ahead. Together, they headed for Myer, the largest department store in the mall and their first stop.
“Yes, I suppose that I do,” he admitted reluctantly. “And I admit that I am taking on most of the “work” as you call it, leaving you to do the shopping. But that’s just the best allocation of resources, my dear. You like shopping. You might consider it menial but I consider it a vitally important and necessary task. On the other hand, I can barely tolerate it, the amount of time that it takes, the inefficiencies involved. For building the ship, I am the trained engineer. You are not. It’s only a logical application of expertise, CB.”
“You could teach me,” came her sour reply.
He both heard and understood her dissatisfaction and chose his next words with the greatest of care.
“Yes, I could,” he conceded with a nod. “And as intelligent as you are, I have no doubt you could learn it and rapidly too. Moreover, I would absolutely love to teach you engineering. But think of the time element involved. We’d only be giving Errabêlu more time to find us, more time to push Earth toward World War III, more time to kill more people.”
As they set foot in the first store, Capie sighed. “I suppose you are right. You really are a terrible shopper.”
With a small shake of his head, Paul swallowed the first comeback that came to mind. No, she was right. Shopping was not one of his better talents.
“Let me assure you,” he soothingly said. “You are not my flunky or my servant. You are my wife, my partner, my companion and my friend. My closest friend ever.” He grinned at her as they maneuvered through the aisles to the women’s department. “Does that help any?”
She smiled, leaning up against him, taking his hand and squeezing it gently. “Have I told you today that I love you?”
“Only one or two hundred times,” he admitted with a shrug. “But you can tell me again. I don’t mind. And, oh, I love you too.”
“Kissy-wissy!” shouted Daneel. “Lovey-dovey! Mommy! Daddy!”
• • • •
Just south of Eneabba, Australia, a hundred yards east of a deserted section of National Route 1, a man-sized portal opened up, letting Paul and Daneel fly through.
Paul held up a hand to shade his eyes while studying the semi-arid landscape. There was little here in the way of vegetation and absolutely no sign of civilization except for the two lane road. Mostly, all he saw was just sand.
With a wave of his hand, he closed the portal behind him and opened up a small new one, both ends of it in front of him.
“Now tweak it for ilmenite and rutile mineral sands,” he muttered, waving a hand back and forth in the direction of the portal. “And send it prospecting!”
He watched as one end of the portal dove into the ground.
Daneel, who was watching, enthralled, snickered and pointed. “Wee! It flies!”
Patiently, Paul waited. At first, almost nothing came through the end of the portal above ground. But then, quite suddenly, quite a bit of sand did.
With a tight smile, he watched the mound of sand in front of him grow larger.
Ilmenite and rutile mineral sands were the primary sources for titanium, the one mineral that Paul needed more than any other in the construction of the spacecraft for the trip to Mars. The very valuable metal was harder, stronger and lighter than steel, and thus was a good choice to strengthen the ship’s hull. And too, titanium had a very low thermal conductivity, far lower than aluminum. A hull made of the metal would hold up much better in an atmosphere at high speed and would also retain cabin heat better in the vacuum of interplanetary space.
And he needed several tons of it just to get started. Sinc
e only a fraction of the sand in front of him was actually titanium, he needed to mine a considerable amount of sand to get all of the metal that was required.
Yes, he could have purchased the titanium on the open market and avoided having to process the raw ore into a finished metal. It would have been faster and a lot less trouble if he could have done so. But there were two problems. First, buying that much titanium would have cost him millions of dollars. And two, no single source could have furnished him with that much titanium, not all at once. He would have needed to have made several purchases at places around the globe. And he just didn’t care for the amount of exposure that gave him, the potential for Errabêlu to find him.
Mining it and refining it himself wasn’t as fast, but it wasn’t that much slower a process either.
Titanium wasn’t the only mineral he needed. After gathering it, he would need to visit a few more places around Western Australia, collecting other minerals that would be required. But that would be for later. Right now what he mostly needed was titanium and then carbon for the spacecraft rocket engines. Those he had to build first.
Most of the sand he was collecting he would take to the desert location just about five miles southwest of Kalgoorlie, quite literally in the middle of nowhere. Later, he would process the minerals and use them for the fabrication of the components of the ship.
Fortunately, not everything needed to be mined. He could and would buy some items such as the helium, argon, and the bottled oxygen he had to have. And too, the mineral needed for the rocket fuel. It was readily available on the open market and cheap enough.
As for Capie, she was already very busy visiting almost every store and shop in the Kalgoorlie-Boulder area. She was spending hours researching and purchasing all sorts of items ranging from food and clothing to sleeping bags to furniture to linens to items of hygiene and more. Everything that they might possibly need on Mars during the next six months. And she took each day’s haul in a rental SUV or had it delivered to the building they had leased, the one they had jointly and jokingly christened as Warehouse 13.
With a glance at the sun’s position, Paul estimated that he could spend at least three hours here before it would be time to head home. He had promised to take Capie out to eat every night, to unwind as best they could and give her some personal attention. Life was a lot more enjoyable if some time was allotted for relaxing and enjoying a good meal and good company. He was most decidedly looking forward to that activity this evening.
“Sand, flies!” whooped Daneel.
• • • •
Snapping her fingers in annoyance, Capie cast her spell, rolling up the large metal door on the building they were calling ‘Warehouse 13.’ When it was high enough, she proceeded to back the vehicle she was driving, a Toyota Land Cruiser J200 rental SUV, into the opening.
Once she had the SUV inside the building, she shoved the lever into park, killed the engine and climbed out.
She was more than a bit unhappy and she knew it.
Another spell and the rear doors on the Land Cruiser popped open and cartons of food and other supplies began floating out, wending their way on their own through the air and stacking themselves neatly against a wall, joining other stacks of supplies sitting there, purchased on previous shopping trips.
All of the magical work was pretty much taking place on automatic pilot. For the most part, Capie’s thoughts were concentrated instead on her situation, her concerns, yes and even her problems, the truth be told.
There were a lot of them too, pestering her. Nagging at her.
She was not happy. Not even close.
First off, she didn’t like living in Australia. Oh, the people were nice enough, very friendly and helpful. They weren’t the problem. But the weather here was so incredibly dry! Never any rain or fog. Surely there was no drier place on Earth! You had to carry a full canteen just to cross the road!
She also didn’t like living in such an isolated community. Yes, the people of Kalgoorlie did their best to fight their isolation, with all sorts of outdoor events, community activities and the like. But their city was too small! She was accustomed to all of the urban amenities, accommodations and facilities in a large city like Chicago. And too, San Jose. By comparison, even Perth didn’t offer nearly as many services and luxuries. She felt stifled and trapped. It would be far worse on Mars, she knew.
Which directly affected her time with Paul as well. In California, ever since the attempted bombing in Rio, they had gone out three and four times a week, to theaters, dancing, sailing, swimming, or any of a dozen other activities, none of which were available in the Australian outback!
She missed Paul’s attention, his support, his understanding. She could see him slipping away, being drawn into his own world, building a spacecraft and Scotties. Yes, intellectually, she understood the reasons and even approved of them. But that didn’t mean that she had to like it.
And then there was the situation in the Middle East.
Practically the entire world had condemned Iran’s involvement in the attack at the Olympics. Well, except for the usual cast of baddies like Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela and so forth. Ever since then, there had been a lot of saber rattling and “tough talk.” But no one, not even the United States had done anything concrete about it. From past experience, Capie was glumly expecting the unrest to quietly fade away, with no changes in the international situation.
Except that Iran was still pushing the envelope. Last week, the director of the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, had disappeared from his home, leaving no clue to his whereabouts. The Israelis were claiming that he had been kidnapped by the Iranians. No one had claimed responsibility, but the Israelis were gearing up for possible retaliation.
Capie had considered making a run over to Israel to look for the man, but Paul had talked her out of it. Even now, she had not completely recovered from her injuries in Rio. And, as he pointed out, she couldn’t go charging off to the Middle East for every little thing that went wrong.
Moreover, on top of all that, there was the situation with Daneel. His birth, his existence was seriously impacting her in ways she had never expected and would have never believed possible. It was even difficult to put her finger on the exact nature of the problem, let alone formulate it into words. The closest she could get was to think of it in terms of children.
Capie had always wanted to be a mother, to have children. Supposedly, it stemmed back to the time when she was old enough to realize that she didn’t have a mother, not like most other kids. No one to confide in, no one to shop with, no one to talk to about clothes and homemaking ideas or boys or anything like that. Oh, sure, Dad had been there for her but it wasn’t quite the same thing. She had wanted a mother and never had that experience.
So, to compensate, she wanted to be what she had never had. She wanted to have and raise children of her own, to counterbalance the circumstances. In her mind, it was only fair.
The traffic accident that had crippled her had changed that equation, though, or so she had thought. It was the cruelest injustice that had ever been levied upon her, as a consequence of the thoughtless act of another human being, robbed as she had been of any chance at love, a family, and having children.
Paul had saved her of that fate, or so she had come to believe for a few short weeks. But now she doubted it. She had love now, yes. But children? Could she justify that? The murder of her father had proved to her beyond any possible rationalization that she was not safe. And neither would be her children either.
No, this was not a good time to bring any kids into the world. She simply could not expose them to the dangers of the Errabêlu menace. Such risk could not be countenanced.
And that’s where Daneel came into the picture.
He was not her child—and yet he was. This was the hardest feeling she was experiencing to understand, leaving her confused and overwrought. There wasn’t any doubt that she loved the A.I., that she cared deeply about what
happened to him. He was, after all, partly her creation. Not as much as Paul’s, to be sure. But that scarcely mattered. Daneel was part of her too.
As such, it bothered her immensely that Paul planned to make a warrior out of him. To turn him into a soldier in a war of magical proportions against evil wizards. To deliberately make him a target!
He was terribly cute and so sweet! The baby that she had never had! Her emotions tore at her again, different from when her father had died but still powerful for all of that. A mother’s instinct to protect her child. Even if technically, he wasn’t really a child at all, let alone hers. The emotion was there for all of that.
Dealing with all of these emotions was a burden and directly impacting her relationship with Paul. And she didn’t have the foggiest idea of what to do about any of it or how to resolve any of the feelings involved.
• • • •
On the floor of the open mine, fifty yards from the camo nets, Paul stood with back straight and arms stretched fully forth, fingers spread wide. Daneel was back at the hotel with Capie, it being her turn to watch the ‘youngster.’
In front of Paul was a large white-hot ball of molten materials floating several feet in the air.
“Aye, that’s good,” rumbled the holographic image of a short man standing at Paul’s side. The specter sported a heavy muscular frame and was dressed in a gray tunic and a heavy black apron. The face was broad with thick black whiskers and a full head of curly black hair. The eyes gleamed like lumps of coal. In one hand, the image carried a massive blacksmith’s hammer.
“Ye’ve extracted the titanium from the ilmenite and rutile sands and the aluminum and vanadium from the bauxite ore and the iron from the magnetite ores, and mixed them together in a helium encased sphere, raising the temperature to 1,000 degrees. These are the primary ingredients of the titanium alloy 6Al-4V. Now, if ye will use plasma arc melting of the elements, in the right proportions, 89.65% titanium, 6% aluminum, 4% vanadium, 0.25% iron and 0.1% oxygen, ye will have the alloy you need.”
Paul grimaced and swallowed hard. “That’s easier said than done! I had no idea that making titanium alloy was this difficult!” Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and concentrated hard. “Here goes!” he muttered.
Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2) Page 21