Another Word for Magic

by Mackey Chandler

  “I’m surprised you didn’t invent plywood well before other things I see,” Jan said.

  “Oh, it was known,” Xerxes said. “It’s just it was laid up by hand for things like a base on which to build a shield or a very fancy sort of turned bowl that is a regional art form. What we don’t have is cheap mechanically made plywood in standard sizes and thicknesses with different modern glues and wide facings without seams. The roofers and boat makers alone are looking forward to having it available.”

  “You can make some rather nice furniture with it,” Jan said. “I’d encourage you to look that up. It can be steamed and pressed into curves and shapes and retain that.”

  “I’ll certainly look that up,” Xerxes said around some ham.

  “Jan Hagen,” a voice said. “Do they know what they’ve let in?”

  Jan twisted and looked over his shoulder. Mel Wainwright was standing, fists on hips giving him a dramatic scowl.

  “They will if you blab it all over the place in your outside voice,” Jan said. “Derf have very sensitive hearing. Sit down and shove something in your pie hole if it will abate the noise,” Jan offered. Their waiter looked a question at Jan with his hand on a chair at a vacant table but didn’t move to bring it until he got a slight nod. He was going to have to leave that fellow a very nice tip.

  “I thought I beat most of the mob down here. Has the mass stampede started already then?” Jan inquired.

  “I’ll have you know I was here yesterday. I bribed and blackmailed old man Larkin into taking me to Derfhome station on his shuttle way ahead of the maddening crowd.”

  “You bribed him and blackmailed him?” Jan asked.

  “You have to apply pressure at every point to get him to agree to anything,” Mel said. “The man is very difficult. I offered an exorbitant fee to be taken along because I knew he’d be the first to launch when he had a half-liter of fuel margin, then, when he refused, I had to threaten to go around asking the other shuttle owners to take me as soon as they were in range to launch. He didn’t want me giving them the idea so he not very graciously allowed me along for only twice what I offered. He complained my mass made him lose five minutes on his planned launch time.”

  “So, he still beat everybody there? That figures,” Jan said.

  “Yes, when they finally do timidly launch and arrive, they will find he tied up a big chunk of the available dockage in long-term leases,” Mel said. “I don’t think the natives realize the income disparity and he got relative bargains. I did the same tying up a few suites in the hotel with long-term contracts for some clients. It won’t take them long to wise up.”

  “No, it won’t with one native sitting at the table taking everything in. But then I told you they have very good hearing. Half the room probably could quote you verbatim.”

  Mel looked at Xerxes uncertainly and got a carnivore’s smile that would have intimidated a lesser man.

  “I didn’t mean to interfere with your deal,” Mel apologized.

  “He’s just my local guide, hired as a day worker. I’m going to have him drive me around the city and point things out and answer questions. You can come along if you wish. In fairness, you should pay him too,” Jan suggested.

  “You agreeable to showing both of us the sights and having to listen to us exchange insults and lies?” Mel asked him.

  “It would be my pleasure,” Xerxes assured him. “I’m already benefiting from working for Mr. Hagen. My rate is five dollars Ceres a day or part day.”

  “Wow, that is a bargain,” Mel said. “Count me in.”

  Neither Jan nor Xerxes betrayed the least reaction on their faces, but Jan decided he was never going to play poker with Xerxes.

  * * *

  Dakota and Heather were discussing reorganizing the cabbage mines. With the trio of habitats gone there was suddenly no market for fresh greens, cut flowers, or prospects of a ready market for other staples already started, with a longer time to harvest.

  “We can set up to freeze-dry easy enough. We have free vacuum. The trick will be to recover most of the water and not let it sublimate,” Dakota said. “If we need to transport it in bulk that will make it easy to do so.”

  The com console pinged once and displayed a flashing light. Not the highest priority, but they weren’t engaged in anything time-critical. Dakota looked a question and Heather nodded.

  It was a search robot that returned a hit on the BBC reporter, Wayne Howe.

  “That’s interesting. I thought he was afraid to quote you,” Dakota said.

  “Go ahead. Run the video,” Heather said.

  It turned out the entire segment was a recording of the domestic dispute between John Zimmerman and Kayla Orley.

  They watched, although they knew the story and Dakota commented over it. “Well, he figured out how to recover some sort of a story for the expense of coming here,” Dakota said. “It must be a slow news day.”

  “Nah, he was already on the Moon for something else,” Heather said. “He was here too fast to have lifted and got here over the Idaho bombardment.”

  They watched until both litigants presented their case and then the segment ended abruptly. He didn’t show Heather’s judgment. Rather, he provided commentary on how women and by implication all minorities were as badly treated on the Moon as in most unenlightened Earth nations. Heather and Dakota looked at each other.

  “He deliberately abused my hospitality to present my justice as non-existent and the culture of our kingdom as toxic,” Heather said.

  Dakota just nodded, afraid to say anything. She’d sort of suggested allowing the interview in the first place. That seemed a bad idea suddenly.

  “I’ve never made a ruling about the duel. Suddenly it seems a good idea but sadly when the person to whom I wish to apply it is far away. He’d never return if I challenged him,” Heather said.

  “No, he’d just twist it again to make you look bad to Earth eyes,” Dakota agreed. “They are very good at that, just like you expressed to him and the lady reporter.”

  “Oh, yes… I tell you what. Simply release the full video record of that discussion, the case between John and Kayla, and my ruling on their case as one continuous video.”

  Dakota smiled. “Including the segment where he said he could never go home.”

  “Yes. I don’t think anybody will play the whole thing. They have the public trained to such a short attention span they’d all tune out. But they can cut whatever segments they wish. He was rather emphatic,” Heather said. “I think his bosses will see all of it.”

  “Very much so. I don’t think the way he put that will be very acceptable to his superiors. It may never reach much of the public but yeah, the right people will see it.”

  “Good, that’s exactly what I hoped,” Heather said. She seemed happier.

  * * *

  Lee ordered a picnic lunch from the hotel restaurant for two Humans, two Derf, and two Badger. She wanted variety and to have enough for sure. If it was too much, they could take some home. The cooler was big enough to be awkward so the hotel had a kitchen worker carry it to her car when it came. She called ahead to Born. He met her at the car and tucked the cooler under one elbow to walk her in, all chatty today.

  “What’s this?” Lee asked. There was a new piece of machinery hanging in a cradle still sitting on the shipping skid with the cover freshly removed and to the side. It was a plate with a hole pattern on top and something complicated hanging underneath.

  “That is a standard grapple post like on a space station. The drive will bolt on the plate with a cover over it, and the nose grapple on your ship will grab on the part hanging down.”

  Lee squatted down and inspected the hard pin in a yoke. There were tapered flats on each side of the yoke that would engage similar flats in the nose of her ship. The claw that grabbed the pin would pull the flats into tension against each other, locking it in three dimensions. “So that’s what it looks like from the side. I’ve never seen one, except for head
-on from the nose camera. I wonder if I can persuade Jeff to come along for a test flight?”

  “I believe he is expecting that,” Musical said. “He suggested sending your ship on a few short hops and back to you remotely from one of his vessels. They used a drone in their early testing but they didn’t know near as much as we do now.

  “Good. I’ll confirm that with him later. I doubt you are going to get this together today. Let’s have a bite and then I’ll sit and watch you assemble it. If you talk about what you are doing, I’ll try to stay quiet and not interrupt,” Lee promised.

  She did try, and even made some notes of questions to ask later and took some pix, but she couldn’t help but interrupt a few times. By supper time she was ready to go home and reminded both of them they had no deadline and would benefit from going to supper and a good night’s sleep. They said they’d eat some of the leftover lunch and go home at a decent hour. She didn’t believe it for a minute.

  * * *

  Jan and Mel were in the front seats of the auto-car and Xerxes in the back, with the seats folded down, occupying the full width. He was hunched forward with his head between the Humans and true arms braced on their seatbacks.

  “What do you think of the way traffic is handled?” Jan asked Mel with a broad sweep of the hand that encompassed everything.

  “I love it,” Mel said in a heartfelt tone. “I got here before the mob yesterday and got a regular manual car. I let it run on auto for a while and just observed. Once I saw what everybody did, I switched to manual and made much better time.”

  “I was afraid to try it cold with no instruction. I suppose I could have looked up the rules on the local net, but I was happy to have Xerxes bring a car from the city,” Jan admitted.

  “It makes all kinds of sense. I just hated stop signs and stop lights in Earth traffic. This is like an endless chain of roundabouts except nobody slows down all timid and hesitant. I quickly saw that the auto-cars like this always yield if there is any doubt who has the lead. If you speed up instead of yield all the auto-cars will defer to you and most of the manual drivers. You can just rip like hell if you don’t mind a little lateral acceleration.”

  “Oh, one of those,” Xerxes said slightly behind their ears.

  “And what happens if the other fellow doesn’t yield?” Jan asked.

  “Skreeee…. Thud!” Xerxes said high pitch tapering to a low rumble that dropped off below Human audibility. The onomatopoeia was self-explanatory. You could practically see the wreck unfold in your mind’s eye.

  “Well yeah, if you’re stubborn,” Mel agreed. “But the brakes on these cars are really good and if all else fails they have no curbs and the landscaping always seems to be set back a bit.”

  “Always walk along the concave side of the curve,” Xerxes warned them.

  “I’m curious. You said you’re going into forest management, but you picked an ancient Human king for your short name. Does that indicate a secondary interest?” Jan asked.

  “No, that’s just a custom. I picked it because I like how it sounds.”

  “I suppose Paul Bunyan is a mouthful,” Mel quipped.

  Xerxes didn’t say anything but leaned back to check his pad.

  * * *

  “It looks like an invasion,” April said in the lobby the next day.

  “Did anybody stay on Home?” Jeff wondered.

  “There can’t be that many even if they ran the shuttles as fast as they can turn them around. But I see three people I know and the other Homies stand out like a sore thumb.”

  Jeff nodded. “Even if you go straight from auto-car to hotel the sidewalks are going to tear up footies in short order. Did they think the planet was carpeted?”

  “A lot of these people haven’t set foot on dirt in decades. Some of them have never been on a planet,” April said. “The local stores don’t serve that big of a Human market. I bet they sell out of boots and shoes before the end of the day. We missed a chance to corner the market. Socks too,” she added.

  “Look at that,” Jeff said, pointing.

  There was an easel with a physical board, not a monitor, set where one had to walk around it between the door and check-in desk. It said “NO VACANCIES” in neat hand-drawn letters.

  “Some of it is pent up demand. It hasn’t been safe to take a vacation on Earth for ages. People miss walking under an open sky and wandering along a beach. The ocean is only about fifty kilometers that-a-way,” April pointed. “If there is a road down there a lot of this crowd will go down to take a look soon if not today. After a week or two, a lot of them will head back up to Home.”

  “I don’t know,” Jeff said, frowning. “A fair number of them are suddenly unemployed. It’s going to be cheaper to live down here than on Home. Fresh food will have to be lifted and it’s going to cost more than they are used to getting it from the Moon. Some are going to want to find jobs and stay here.”

  “There are always a few who can never save anything and will have to find something down here quickly. If they liquidate their cubic to get funds there may be a nice wave of properties for sale at decent prices,” April speculated.

  “I’m on that,” Jeff said, pulling his tablet out and punching in the preset for his real estate lady. It was no surprise she had a queue waiting to talk to her. With a little luck, she was tied up with sellers instead of buyers smarter and quicker than them. He left a text message to use her discretion to buy anything for them she considered below market. If he waited and tried to micro-manage her, somebody would get in ahead of them.

  Chapter 8

  “My guys should have the drive prototype assembled tomorrow,” Lee said. “I understand you are willing to accompany my vessel and help us do tests safely by remote control. Do you have copies of your superluminal control software I can test and make sure it’s compatible with my own navigation programs?”

  Jeff blinked and thought about it a minute.

  “I’m not sure that’s part of our deal,” He said. “I’ll check with my partners. The software is just software, not really gravity tech per se.”

  Off-camera, April looked alarmed and waved both fanned hands in a negating sign.

  “That’s true,” Lee agreed but she didn’t look happy. “Of course, the data embedded in your software is unique and very much gravity tech. If you give that data to us stripped out, we can write our own programs without all that much delay. It’s a security hazard bringing in new people and expanding our program, but that’s your choice. I thought you were intent on moving this forward as quickly as possible. My researchers have given you the process to produce their special material is that correct?”

  “Yes, and I’ve sent that to Heather so they can have our people do a peer review.”

  “Perhaps cooperation is looking less imperative now that you have enough to go forward on your own. Be aware that if we’re both going to very strictly interpret how we share gravity tech, then we won’t be sharing mundane engineering designs. After all, how to design rotors and their associated mechanical systems are all as well-known as how to write software. If we discover other novel uses outside the current art of a superluminal drive, then they will have to be subject to separate agreements and compensation,” Lee insisted.

  April moved around to better be in Jeff’s line of sight. She was shaking her head and silently mouthing the word NO.

  “That would make both of us waste time and resources on needless duplication, wouldn’t it?” Jeff asked.

  April threw her hands up and closed her eyes in relief.

  “That’s exactly how I felt,” Lee said. You could tell she was still put out.

  “I’ll see that’s it’s copied and couriered to you rather than transmitted,” Jeff promised. “Make sure your pulsar location algorithms are compatible. You may have to run a faster clock to be as accurate.”

  “I will. That’s a good idea and much safer,” Lee said. She nodded and disconnected without arranging a time for testing as she’d intended. Ma
ybe after they received the software and integrated it into their systems.

  “I didn’t mean anything by that,” Jeff said.

  “Jeff, you sounded like an Earth lawyer,” April told him.

  Lee sat looking at the screen she’d closed, but not really seeing it, rattled, and reappraising her relationship with the Centralists. Maybe it would be wise to not offer up everything they knew immediately but keep a few chips back before betting everything on their goodwill.

  * * *

  “Have you set up a headquarters already?” Jan asked. “Perhaps established an office?”

  “I got some rooms and a couple of suites in the Old Hotel for my clients,” Mel said. “Just in time, since they cut off any more long-term leases after my requests. They are determined not to abandon the day room market and become just an apartment building.

  “On expert advice, I opened a local bank account. It seems banks here will do almost anything you ask if it’s within their power. They will even do things I’d normally ask the concierge at the Hotel to do. I’m not quite comfortable with that yet. I need an alternative source of guidance for local customs and business practices. Even if I ask the bank’s take on certain things, I’d like a second opinion on what they tell me.

  “There aren’t any lawyers in the sense Earthies have them. The clan Mothers make all laws and as far as I can find out it applies to the trade towns. I’m still trying to find out how that works. But looking through the local net there are a pair of Earth lawyers, Brunstein and King, who make a business of advising Derf on Human legal systems, and Humans on Derf law and custom. They seem to have been around for a while so they should have some experience. I’m going to check them out and see how they strike me,” Mel said.

  “That must have been an awfully lean business before Home arrived,” Jan said.

  “It does seem like it, doesn’t it?” Mel agreed. “Our arrival must be a bonanza for them.”

  Xerxes pointed out some historic buildings and businesses but Jan was quiet.

  After some time, Jan asked. “Is this the King fellow whose ad you saw?”