Another Word for Magic

by Mackey Chandler

  * * *

  The Humans were all glad to be called back to dinner. They all had modified metabolisms that increased their appetites. They were early because just a few Derf were drifting in to populate the Great Hall. The Mothers seemed in a good mood so they must not have received any bad news since they’d gone to their rooms.

  “Have you received any new communications yet from your Home people?” the First Mother inquired.

  “Just that they arrived, and will take a couple of days to refine their information about the objects and motions in the Derfhome system,” Jeff said. “It will take some time to plan their solutions to attain an accurate orbit trailing Derfhome station. The ability to change the vector of Home with conventional drives is very limited. They can do so to perfectly match orbits, but at such a low acceleration the inhabitants won’t even feel it.

  “Despite the fact we were sorely pressed for time, I’ve been warned that there are people who have a grievance with my sovereign for whisking them away. They will likely express it to me as her peer in residence when they arrive within easy com range. I’m not sure they are aware April and the Foys are here to yell at. Under the circumstances, I don’t think I’ll reveal that to them. I remarked to my friends that you save people from being shredded to hamburger and still they are ungrateful. Let them yell at me or challenge me so the others can deal undistracted.”

  “Do you mean a challenge at arms such as Derf do to establish law?” the Second asked.

  “Yes, though we have different customs,” Jeff said. “I’ve survived one duel. I heard how your Champion William reduced the willingness of others to call him out. I intend to do something similar if some hothead insists on meeting me.”

  “Beat them to a pulp without using the cutting edge?” the Third Mother inquired.

  “Indeed, no. If challenged I have the choice of weapons. I’ve given it some thought, and if called out I will specify pillows.”

  “Perhaps I don’t have the full usage of that English word. Soft headrests for sleeping?” the Third Mother asked. “How can that be lethal?”

  “You simply hold it firmly over their face until they smother,” Jeff said.

  The Mothers didn’t look at each other to share the horror of imagining how slow that would be, with the supporters of the challenge obligated to watch without interfering. Jeff seemed confident he’d be the survivor of such a test. One wondered if he’d planned some sort of tactics. It was a long silent pause before the Third Mother could bring herself to speak again.

  “We’ve noticed gratitude is not an automatic Human response. But be warned various Derf can also neglect it to an amazing degree.”

  “I’m glad one of our races isn’t virtuous at a saintly level,” Lee said. “If one was, the other would never be able to put up with them. We both need to be similar to get along.”

  “Or even too dissimilar in the level we are defective,” Jeff said, amused at himself. “However, I want to say we discussed other consequences that should be summarized for you, but I’m tired of talking. If April would explain it for you?” he proposed.

  April explained there was a handful of slower Home registered explorers and that they had long-standing rights to letters of marque and reprisal. That one had already left Home for Fargone and their supposition why. She explained the likelihood the Earth Claims Commission would cut off Lee’s royalty payments and those of the other off-Earth explorers.

  “You’ve been expecting to be cut off?” the Second Mother asked Lee.

  “I was shocked they didn’t do it back when they refused to register our claims in the deep beyond,” Lee said. “I can’t imagine they haven’t done so now with the resumption of hostilities, and word just hasn’t reached us yet. When we visited Providence, our reception was chilly. If we go again, I expect to be treated as a hostile vessel.”

  The Mothers looked up and down the table at each other, the Second Mother in the middle pivoting her head back and forth to read the interaction between the First and Third Mothers. No word was spoken but they visibly came to a consensus with the First and Second Mothers giving the Third a nod to speak that they’d picked up from Humans.

  “To clarify, do you think they will just cut off your royalty payments or would they repudiate the entire claim so your system rights and land claims would be voided too?”

  Lee looked thoughtful. “To hold title to lands is so basic it didn’t occur to me they would try to invalidate them. But I’d like to ask Jeff and April what they think.”

  “I’m afraid if they deny any one aspect of your claims, they will all be obligated to deny all of your claims,” Jeff said. “To accept one would give you a legal weapon to show they are all valid. There’s an underlying fact that overrides any legal nitpicking. They are simply too greedy to do it by half measures.”

  “If they do that, then our holding on Providence will be invalidated too, because Lee will be deemed ineligible to have passed them to us,” the Third Mother reasoned.

  “Is that going to put us at war with North America again?” Lee asked.

  The First Mother held up a single taloned digit. “No need to get ahead of ourselves with suppositions. Even if they contest with you, we can wait for that to play out before we have any need to protect our derivative rights.”

  “That puts it on me to defend our ownership,” Lee said.

  “Indeed, it does, but I suspect you would do so for yourself in any case. I expect with a much gentler hand than we would feel obligated to apply,” the First Mother said. The hand with which she illustrated a slapping application was not a true hand but a middle one with claws extended.

  “I’m not sure I have the means,” Lee worried. “Most of my crews signed up to explore, not as mercenaries. I’d have to recruit with honesty about what they were signing on to do. Right now, a good chunk of the Exploration Society is off with Thor in the Deep and I have a greatly diminished pool from which to recruit.”

  “If it helps, we will put the Sharp Claws and the Retribution at your service along with any Red Tree crew who wish to volunteer for shares,” the First Mum offered.

  “Shares of what?” Lee asked. “We’re not going exploring.”

  “Why the loot,” the First Mother explained. “When clans warred, we kept the whole thing. If you have to take your planet back why would you limit yourself to what little they already granted you? Your limits on what you were able to claim were based on the Claims Commission shouldering the burden of defending it for you. If they void the contract and you have to assume that burden now you should be much better compensated.”

  Lee was momentarily shocked silent.

  Jeff cleared his throat loudly and waved a much less threatening digit than the Mother.

  “We have several thousand Homies arriving in orbit. Any number of them are suddenly unemployed, many with military experience. None of them are restrained from acting on behalf of another government. Indeed, they are capable of declaring war and acting on their own behalf if they wish. I have. Also, several fine security firms on Home have experience working together as a team and are well equipped. We can recommend them as we’ve hired them ourselves with good results.”

  “I’m not sure how many people live on Providence now,” Lee said. “It must be a couple of thousand to service the basic systems they have in place like the port, satellite com, and a space station. It would be hard to raise anything near that big of a counter-force, equip them, and transport them.”

  “No need,” April assured her. “Most of the population are there to get as far away from Earth as they can. As long as you make clear you don’t intend to throw the genuine colonists out, or diminish their holdings, very few will concern themselves with protecting their Earthie administration. For that matter, make it clear you will provide expanded opportunities for land and reduce the fees for providing the services already in place. After all, you are seizing the infrastructure and don’t need to recover any investment. They may very well t
hrow the scoundrels out before you can land and do it yourself.”

  “Also, there are plenty of Homies with administrative experience if you do have to replace some of the basic oversight of things like the Port and communications systems. All Earthie bureaucracies tend to be top-heavy so you aren’t going to need that many. Even some who are minor government officials may ask to defect and work for you, if the alternative is returning to Earth,” Jeff said.

  “OK, you’ve convinced me. The Mothers are willing to kick in the use of two warships. Are you willing to sit an overwatch on the system for a couple of days while we find and remove the Earthie administration and send them home? Just to keep any surprise North American presence from suddenly appearing in our sky.”

  “I doubt they will have the assets free or the ability to communicate with them effectively,” April said. “Heather is making life difficult for them right now. I will however, sit high guard for you.”

  “Do you have to ask Heather?” Lee asked.

  “I have considerable authority to act for her,” April said. “In this case, I find it a logical extension of our protection of Derfhome. The Red Tree Mothers have extended territory there and it is in our mutual interest to maintain control of it.”

  “Then I’ll start assembling the means to do this,” Lee agreed, “but I want to wait to move on it. The North Americans pretty much tell the Commission what tune to dance to, but I’d rather force them to kick us out rather than anticipate them. It just looks better.”

  The first Mother smiled and nodded her agreement. A wave of her hand signaled that their dinner that was delayed a few minutes while they discussed business could be served.

  * * *

  After sweets and coffee, the Mothers inquired what Lee and her guests intended next.

  "If things were much calmer, I’d love to take them to see the first contact site and march them up for a day at the old fort. Someday, I’d like to ask you to show them the old armor and weapons, but my researchers are asking for a meeting, my bank wants me to come in, and the Foys are begging a meeting with Jeff and April. I’m afraid we need to leave those pleasures for another time. We will walk out in the morning to the mail road, so we don’t make everything come to a halt again because everybody wants to gawk at an aircar.”

  “You don’t have to, if it robs you of a morning,” the First Mother granted.

  “It will be good for us,” Lee insisted. “Exercise isn’t just a weird Human fetish. It has health benefits which even life extension doesn’t fully replace.”

  “You know, when airplanes were a new thing on Earth, people did the same thing. If they heard one passing, they would run outside to see it,” Jeff said.

  “Maybe if they upgrade your older model aircars to be quieter it won’t be as interesting to people,” April speculated.

  “They just need to be so common nobody thinks anything of them,” Jeff argued.

  “Even if they are quieter, that sounds terribly invasive,” the Second Mother said. “We might as well pave a highway right to the Keep door to have them landing all the time.”

  Lee didn’t say anything. Even more so because the Third Mother who was the most progressive of them had a thoughtful look. Lee wasn’t sure that sounded so bad to her.

  * * *

  Heather had a lot on her mind planning the removal of North America as a space capable nation. A demotion in rank that would leave it behind others they disdained as second or third world nations. A good dozen countries built a nominal space capacity to qualify for the Claims Commission subsidies that were much better than the payment shares to non-space nations. The last thing she was anticipating was Dakota rushing in with urgent messages from Mars.

  “I know you don’t have time for this, but the Martians are complaining the Folks on Gamma are ignoring their traffic directives from Phobos, and they are requesting access to shuttle service because they didn’t have a lander of any kind docked to them when they were snatched away to Mars. The Gammans are complaining about pretty much the same things, but from their perspective.”

  Heather blinked, not sure what to say to what she saw as conflicting thoughts.

  “It would seem to me if the Gammans are requesting services of the Martians it would be the course of wisdom to try to get along in such matters as traffic control. Fighting them with the left hand while supplicating them with the right hand is folly. Who died and appointed me sovereign over either? Central is enough trouble to govern.”

  “Undoubtedly, that’s pretty much how the Martians see it,” Dakota agreed, “but they are viewing it from their cultural perspective, which is that everything is run from a central authority. The idea there are private factions free to express opposing interests on Gamma is going to be a hard sell. I have my doubts about whether they’ll even believe such a thing is possible. It certainly would never be tolerated on Mars.”

  “Why do they even want to go down to that pest hole? The Martians are hanging on by their fingertips as far as environmental security. They don’t produce anything in excess to trade with the Gammans. I’m not sure how the Martians would pay for anything if they expect the Martians to buy from them. I haven’t checked, but Gamma had no superluminal vessels working from that hab, and maybe a half dozen orbit to orbit shuttles. They can sit and stew for a little bit until I get this other stuff sorted out. Nobody is going to starve or run out of air in a week or two. They have fab shops. They could build a decent lander in a couple of weeks. This is a fake emergency. They should be discussing where they want to go not settling in like they are going to stay there forever.”

  “I’d ask why you parked them there if you didn’t expect them to interact with the planet. I guess they don’t trust you not to abandon them now that you have stranded them there,” Dakota said. “They are asking the Martians to lift water for them. They want to drop where there are surface sources of water and recover them for the hab.”

  “If that was viable or efficient the Martians would be doing it for themselves,” Heather said. “You get very little payload and waste most of it as reaction mass. The maintenance on the shuttles soon outweighs the benefit of the water you can transport compared to extracting it locally. It isn’t going to be all that far in the future that the Martians will need to rebuild and refurbish those shuttles. Habs have always orbited around some body. I guess we thought that’s just how things were done. Maybe that was a mistake. Nobody has ever put a habitat in Solar orbit all on its own. Even if it was, they should both be trying to find a path of cooperation.”

  Dakota looked even more unhappy. “Worse, I don’t think there is anywhere in the equatorial band where you can get water without digging and mining it. They either have to set up a facility or land on the sections you and Jeff own.”

  “OK, I do have to nip that in the bud,” Heather said.

  “Do you? Couldn’t you just sell them the water?” Dakota suggested.

  “They still need a way to get to it, and they aren’t displaying much patience or the good sense to call and ask how I can help. I suspect if I don’t make them feel secure, they will use what they have on hand in the way of orbital shuttles to invade Phobos to control access to the surface. That will complicate our already bad relationship with Earth. Just like Martians see Gammans as a whole, Earthies think Spacers are a monolithic group. Other Earth nations who were neutral or even favorable to us will condemn all Spacers if the Gammans invade Mars. I can see the giant font headlines now. Mars Invaded!” Heather said.

  The two women stared at each other silently, thinking hard.

  “It’s a temporary solution, but here’s what I’ll do. Send a message to Gamma security and request it be shared as an all-hands message. That will both cover whoever is creating this problem and everybody else allowing it, without us making inquiries to discover the details and players. Tell them I’m short of ships right now to help them, but that in approximately a week I will send a ship to grab a small snowball from the outer system and p
ut it in a trailing orbit behind Gamma. When we are able, we’ll repatriate those individuals who got swept up in the emergency exit and return them where they want to be. When they have some idea where they would like the entire habitat to be moved permanently, we’ll facilitate that for them.”

  “What about the two snowballs that got left behind when the habs were moved?” Dakota asked. “They probably have the machinery to process water.”

  “And somebody owns those snowballs and the machinery,” Heather said. “That’s supposing the extraction facilities weren’t damaged or the snowball busted up. I’m not going to pay for them to give them to the Gammans. It’s about as easy for us to get a new snowball for free as move one of those. Indeed, this isn’t going to be charity. They can pay the bulk rate for cometary water and see to extracting it themselves. They aren’t without machine shops and work scooters.

  “Remind them the polar regions are owned, and I will be sending someone with the snowball to oversee the sales of water and permission to land or extract anything of value from the Martian surface. I’m acting for Jeff without his permission, but I’m sure he wants his property to be secured. I won’t release access to any of his territory until I get his agreement. Is that sufficient for you to write up the message?” Heather asked her.

  “Yes, I’ll create it. Do you know who you are going to send?” Dakota inquired.

  “No, you can find somebody too. If you can’t find anyone free, look at which department has functioned best short-handed and rob them. Don’t bother me with a draft either,” Heather said with a dismissive wave.

  “I’m on it. I’ll have it sent in a half hour and find somebody today,” Dakota promised.

  * * *

  “I’m showing you this first,” Tod Oliver, head of Gamma security said, “but then I’m releasing this message as she requested.”

  “Are you afraid of the Moon Queen?” Franklin Abel asked after he read it.

  “Damn right,” Tod answered with no hesitation. “Anybody above the atmosphere who knows how things work has a very healthy respect for her and that crew that runs with her. You had a complaint and a worry that got folks stirred up. She just addressed it even though it wasn’t an honest emergency, yet. If you just move right on to pick another point to complain about people are going to see a pattern. This isn’t a bunch of Earthies on Gamma, who will watch the talking heads on the telly and nod their heads in vacant agreement.”