A Sudden Departure (April Book 9)

by Mackey Chandler

  * * *

  Mo Paddington's code appeared on her com screen. It didn't have any urgency markers which was good. It meant Heather could take a shower and look human when she had to screen him back. She dragged him to the top of the list, and marked a few others as read, based on her administrative AI's analysis of them. They weren't worth wasting Dakota's time either. Mo hadn't made personal contact with her for a few weeks now. That said everything was going fine. She wished there was some way to teach a few of her other administrators that needlessly sending her a daily message with zero real news didn't make them look busy and effective. It just made them look insecure and needy.

  Heather had finally got to the point her time was valuable enough to need a housekeeper. Mo had been one of the people confident and honest enough to scold her for doing laundry and making her own meals at odd hours while she fell behind both work and sleep. Now when she came out of the shower the bed was made, the clothes from yesterday were gone, and there were three possible outfits for the day laid out on the made up bed. When she picked one the others would be put away.

  When she left the bedroom she could smell breakfast. Her housekeeper, Amy, made her oatmeal every morning. She always sat and at least had coffee with Heather. She liked oatmeal too, about once a week, max. Heather had the steel cut sort with apples or peaches, strawberries or raisins. When that ran its course she'd have it with peanut butter, brown sugar or honey, and the occasional cream when they actually had some. When she was feeling really decadent she'd have it with chocolate. It never grew old.

  The informality had upset the woman at first. She'd been in service with an Austrian family on Earth and had the idea at first she should be totally invisible and silent whenever possible. The idea of chatting with her employer was hard to accept. The fact Heather craved normal human contact with someone not standing tense and worried before their sovereign was reasonable, but it took awhile before she relaxed enough to poke fun at any of Heather's quirks. The first sign Heather saw that she was able to break that barrier was when her kitchen screen got a permanent note in the corner that logged 'Days Without Oatmeal,' made to look like an officious workplace safety notice, complete with a black border. It stayed at NONE and Heather ignored her little jab.

  However, Heather drew the line at having live in help. It seemed ridiculous to have somebody on call into the night, and sometimes she wanted her own privacy. Amy might leave dinner set up, but most of the time just ordered in or reminded Heather to pick something.

  Besides saving Heather several hours a day, and allowing her to live in clean organized surroundings, she was a brutally honest sounding board. She'd also learned that when Amy frowned and said, "There's something sneaky about that man," it was worth reviewing her logs of her conversations with that person, and running them through the veracity software again for possible double meanings and emotional nuances.

  Amy, like Mo, wasn't sworn to her and she was content to leave it that way. Heather was starting to understand why the royal courts she'd read about in history had peers and advisors, jesters and even guards from foreign lands. Your relationship with subjects was always different than outsiders.

  She put on a light jacket, because she kept her office and audience room cooler than her home. Supplicants wasted less of her time if made to sit on a hard bench in a cool room. She'd toyed with the idea of having an infrasound generator installed in the floor where people stood to address her. It would distress the hopelessly wordy and make them wrap it up to escape their sudden unexplained discomfort. But it seemed a dangerous experiment on further investigation. The damn stuff propagated weird ways. It might end up disturbing operations down the corridor. Instead of making petitioners wrap things up she might spoil lunch or make an accountant key in crazy numbers. But the idea still amused her.

  Heather pocketed her pad, buckled on her gun belt, and put on her spex. It was a fifty meter walk to work down a private corridor. The end had a turn right before the door, for privacy and security. The exit from office to audience room, though shorter, did the same thing. Dakota was there already as usual. Heather had come in early a few times and still found her there first. She'd been moved once to ask her if she'd ever gone home or just stayed the night? Dakota had just laughed, which wasn't an answer.

  Mo answered her call right away. He, like Dakota, was already at work. He was either getting ready to do some suit work or had been out already, because he had the quilted sort of cap on that vacuum rats favored. Behind him was an unadorned wall with bare conduits.

  "I haven't heard from you in a couple weeks," Heather said right away. "I wish I could train a few other folks to do that. You must have some news for me. Is it good or bad? Do you need a fire put out?"

  "I have generally good news. One thing in particular, I'd rather share privately with you, face to face in a secure environment," Mo requested.

  "That's unusual. It's usually bad news that has to be delivered like that," Heather said.

  "Good news for us can be bad news for somebody else," Mo said, smiling.

  "How intriguing," Heather allowed. "You look like you are on the way out. Can you be done and come by midday? I'll feed you lunch if you like. Or this evening if you are in the middle of something."

  "This evening," Mo said. "Make it supper if you can wait for me. By then I'll have something to show you too."

  "Drop me a note when you can guess the hour closely. I'll have Amy set up for us," Heather promised. She disconnected on Mo, sent a text to Amy to get some take away reserved for her and for Mo based on his recorded preferences at the cafeteria, and asked Dakota if anybody was waiting in her audience room?

  "You have a Madeline Kost sitting and asking to make a petition. She declined, but very politely, to share the details with me," Dakota said, with a wry expression, "but she said it involves her son. I think you'll perceive the nature of the problem as soon as you meet her."

  Heather didn't comment on Dakota's confidence in her perceptiveness. Dakota occasionally told her sovereign that "even you" could figure something out. It must be obvious.

  "She's from the original Armstrong group, isn't she? Is this son with her?"

  "She is, and no he isn't. I looked up what we have on her. She left her husband behind in Armstrong, and that may be part of the problem. It gets complicated."

  "Then I shall return her courtesy to you by not making her wait. What does she do that is getting neglected while she is here? Anything critical?" Heather asked.

  "Not immediately as in, somebody will stop breathing, critical. She's your best bean counter. She is very, very, good at it and can look at a department report and tell you if somebody is padding their expenses or skimming something off. But she's so smart she understands the difference between somebody taking a pencil home, or letting the fellow across the corridor bum a cup of coffee every morning, and systematic looting. A lot of watchdogs can't grasp the idea of things being proportional."

  "OK, announce me so she doesn't feel slighted, and you can go back to work," Heather said. "It doesn't sound like we need any security or a formal closure. I'll see if I can solve her problem and send her off, happy, if it can be done."

  "If it's all the same to you I'd like to hang around and see how this works out," Dakota asked.

  Heather granted that with a nod, and let her get ahead. Dakota was still speaking when she caught up. The woman was waiting on the hard wooden bench. She was middle aged with a slightly round Slavic face. Not fat at all but you'd never call her dainty. She didn't pop up and rush forward like so many wanted to do, even with nobody else waiting to dispute her turn. She waited until Heather seated herself and laid her pistol and pad to each side on the table.

  When Dakota retreated behind her Heather invited the woman forward with an informal wave of her hand. She seemed to know the ritual, coming forward and standing on the small carpet. Heather had to actually invite her to speak. The woman really was polite.

  "First of all, I'm from
the group who came from Armstrong with the second rover train under Ted Hedley. I'm not family with him, but I agreed to put myself under his leadership back then to get here. I realize he is sworn to you, but I'm not."

  "The number of people sworn to me is still small enough that each is significant and memorable to me," Heather explained. "But that need not preclude us having a good relationship. Most people never find themselves in any conflict with me over their status."

  Madeline gave a sharp nod. "I've no complaint that way. I've found I have the same rules, eat the same, have the same access to com, generally am treated the same as sworn. But I understand the risk of either sort standing before you to request your justice. I'm not here to present a complaint and ask for justice. That would be a bit dicey for me right now. What I have is a problem, bigger than I can deal with and I'd like a solution more than any strict justice. You have the resources and I'm bringing my problem to you before it gets any bigger and becomes your problem too."

  "Preventative action is usually better," Heather agreed. "Does this problem have anything to do with that tremendous big shiner that has your eye swollen half shut?"

  "Heh. . . I haven't looked in the mirror for a couple hours," Madeline admitted. She reached up and touched it gently with her left hand and grimaced. "Looking pretty bad?"

  "Bad enough I think you should drop by medical after we're done and have it scanned. I've seen worse, but it would still be smart to make sure there isn't any hidden hematomas or any fracture in the orbital bone."

  "This is the culmination of several months of increasing difficulty with my son, Karl. He's a couple months shy of fourteen years old, big for his age and getting very hard of listening. He's decided he is angry I brought him with me instead of leaving him at Armstrong with his father. He suddenly doesn't like his schooling or the few kids near his age. He doesn't like the apartment, the food, or the com restrictions I put on him. He has two other boys a little older than him he's taken as friends, and I got this," she indicated her black eye, "when he announced he was going to go visit them instead of meet his tutor as scheduled, and I wouldn't let him out the door."

  "So, he forced his way past and went out anyway?" Heather asked.

  "Hah, no way! He caught me with one sucker punch, but I've been around the barn a time or two more than him. He's going to have a few marks on him and he's locked in the bathroom. He's probably angry to find out my voice overrides the house computer too. I don't believe he ever had reason to find that out before, but I invoked the owner override when I locked him in. It's a pretty solid door. I'm pretty confident he's still there. He's got the toilet and water in there, so it's not like he's locked in a dark closet. It'll do him good to sit and calm down awhile."

  "Is this the first time things have gotten out of hand enough to seek help?" Heather asked.

  "Here, yeah. We had some difficulties living at Armstrong. The medical people there didn't have a child psychologist on staff, but they did a video consultation and decided to medicate Karl. At Armstrong that wasn't open to debate. If you rejected their advice it was an automatic ticket home. My husband and I didn't agree about that anyway. He was happy the complaints from the school stopped. They warned us if the problems continued, even with medication, we'd be sent back to Earth and that made my husband furious. I had my doubts after a few weeks because I saw his performance on his lessons drop."

  "Exactly what sort of problems?" Heather asked.

  "Karl didn't get along with the others. He didn't want to get along. As far as I know he never did anything outside school with the handful of children near his own age. Nobody ever called us and invited him to anything like a birthday or just a plain old party. He was disciplined for striking other boys several times. He always said they hit him first, and they were simply sneakier about it than him."

  "But that wasn't a problem when you came here?"

  "No, by the time we got any kind of schooling organized here Karl had been off the drugs for quite a while. He seemed just fine without them and with the new kids even though they were a wider range of ages. The lessons were more interesting, a lot less structured, his age group only meets three mornings a week and he studies independently otherwise. At Armstrong the kids were held at school until they knew you'd be home from work. It made for a long day and no gym or free time. He liked that he was allowed to ask questions in class again, which the Armstrong school didn't allow."

  Heather and Dakota just looked at each other. They couldn't imagine a school where asking questions was forbidden. Madeline seemed to have missed their glance at each other.

  "What is the problem then?" Heather asked. "Do you have any idea what changed?"

  "The only thing I know is that when all the trouble started up at Armstrong recently our family back on Earth contacted me to let me know my husband was one of the first people sent back to Earth. Young Karl took that hard, and was upset Karl senior didn't call from Armstrong, even though he knew com was down and we couldn't call back and forth. What do you do or say when people just won't accept the way things are? If he was five or six years old I could write it off to his age that he couldn't understand it. But he's old enough to know there's things his dad or I can't change."

  Dakota gave a little flick of the finger to Heather that she had a thought, and she nodded.

  "Not to pry, but it seems relevant," Dakota said. "But what is your situation with his father? Were you living together or were you estranged when you left Armstrong? Or divorced even?"

  "We weren't getting along at all. We'd probably have been arranging a divorce if we were living on Earth, it's very hard to explain if you weren't living there, but there wasn't any access to the legal system at Armstrong. Try filing a complaint remotely and the Earth courts would tell you they didn't have jurisdiction.

  "There isn't a federal court for divorces, and we were no longer residents of a state. If you wanted to go to a court you'd have to go back to Earth, and doing that would assure you'd never be allowed back. If you had any dispute the only option was to take it to an administrator, and nobody wanted to do that, because their attitude was they'd send everybody involved back to Earth as the first, second and third way to solve anything."

  She looked back at Heather, as if bringing Dakota in bothered her.

  "The logistics of getting a divorce would be impossible too. There was no extra housing and very little in the way of barracks for singles and visitors. If one of us moved out of our apartment the one who stayed would have had to keep Karl junior. If I tell you the truth about Karl it will just sound like most bitter people who want a divorce. If he ended up with Karl junior he'd have neglected him. He worked long hours and he wouldn't be home for supper. That would be a huge problem. I doubt the school would keep him over that late. The two of them had a sort of truce and hardly spoke to each other. Karl seems to have completely forgotten he didn't get along with his dad that well.

  "He's a problem now, but I'm sure it would have been worse sooner if I'd left him there. I know it's just a couple years, but there's a huge difference between fourteen and eleven. Karl needed a parent and supervision much more back then. It just wouldn't have worked to separate, and I'd probably have been back on Earth first with the boy, instead of Karl senior."

  "Why do you assume it would be you who would be sent back to Earth?" Heather asked.

  "My husband worked on environmental systems. He knew their systems well and would have been much harder to replace than me."

  Heather nodded, that made sense.

  "Did you renounce your North American citizenship?" Dakota asked. She had a way of bringing up questions that didn't occur to Heather.

  "No, I just left. And I don't have a passport, or one for Karl, but he's still a USNA citizen."

  "So, what can I do for you?" Heather asked. "I doubt I could talk sense to him if he doesn't respect you. I find children a lot less in awe of a sitting monarch than adults. He'd just see a woman younger than his mother. I don't do cro
wns and robes to awe the peasants so I can't impress him that way. If he won't obey you perhaps it is time to send him off to your husband. Possibly on Earth he has the means to care for him better than he could have at Armstrong. He only has four years now before he can be on his own anyway."

  "That occurred to me," Madeline said. "I hate to send anybody to Earth. Karl was one of the first children born on the moon. We came up when we'd only been married months. If he didn't like things at Armstrong. . . on Earth he'd probably end up in prison. So many young men do. I don't know what to do. But I can't live with him like this."

  "We don't have much in the way of specialized psychological services and certainly not a juvenile system," Heather said. "I'm not about to add it to someone's job description. It's not something you ask an unqualified person to add to their duties. So we somehow adjust him, rather quickly, or down to the Mud Ball he goes. That's not to say you have to go. You've made significant effort to care for him. I'm not sure you owe him going to Earth. At best, it will only be a few more years of your care he'd get, but bluntly, you'd probably be stuck there for life.

  "There's no guarantee you would get better control of him down there, so you may not even get four years. Unless you could locate near his father, and he accepted joint custody, there would still be a separation issue. He does have a father, who could be responsible, whether he chooses to or not. If the child is dropped on him he may be forced to deal with him."

  "You could try something else," Dakota said.

  "So far we don't have any good choices, what would you suggest?" Heather asked.

  "Emancipate him. We don't have any shortage of housing, but we do have a barracks for transients and singles who don't want to maintain an apartment. Declare him an adult. Inform him he is on probation for a year for assaulting his mother. Give him a job cleaning public areas or scrubbing pans and such in the kitchen.

  "He wants to do what he pleases. Well, let him find out what it's like, and do whatever he wants, after hours, just like the rest of us adults. Living in barracks I can assure you the other residents will put up with a lot less crap than his mother. He's not going to punch anybody out more than once before he finds out that crap doesn't fly.