Another Word for Magic

by Mackey Chandler

  “That might be dangerous with Life Extension Therapy,” Mel pointed out.

  “You can be sure there would be exclusions written,” Sam said. “The Derf also are not nearly as security conscious as Humans with their data systems and automated services. We can mine a great deal of information from them indirectly.”

  If they were extracting data the owners weren’t aware they were providing, Jan took that to mean they were effectively hackers too, even if the systems were leaky.

  “If you were financing a starship, you might not want your bank to be handling the details of arming it,” King said. “At some point, they might worry your level of physical protection indicated you intended to take it in harm’s way very aggressively. We know who to direct you to on Fargone or New Japan to handle those sorts of details discreeteley without a Derfhome contract.”

  “To go back to something. You said your status as intelligence agents is an open secret on Derfhome. Does that mean you know others in the trade? That would be useful information to us,” Mel said.

  “But much too dangerous for us to supply,” King said. “That could lead to our status being reported back home in retaliation.”

  “Then other Earth agencies are active here,” Jan concluded.

  “Of course!” King said, surprised he’d think otherwise. “I’ll give you this much for free. The Third Mother of Red Tree is the one who directs their intelligence operations. Mostly using their military personnel. If you want more, ask the Moon Queen’s people on planet, or Lee Anderson if she’ll speak to you. They can tell you who all the players are but they’ll expect you to share information back to them, not just coin.”

  “I spoke with the peers, Lewis and Singh yesterday,” Mel said. “They recommended a bank but I didn’t know enough then to ask a lot of other questions that I would now.”

  “You have their ear and you’d bother with us?” King asked. “If you want our services, I can offer them to you for a modest retainer, if you share the things you get from them that you judge may affect us.”

  “I may owe them a higher loyalty than you. I’m reluctant to put myself in that position.”

  “If something is that dire, just tell us to abandon our post and run for our lives,” King said. “We have several contingencies to remove ourselves rather than be removed.”

  “You would, wouldn’t you? I tell you what. For somewhat limited service between us, and avoiding mentioning my name back to Earth. I’ll pay you a solar a year for such minor advice as you mentioned and introductions. I may have Jan here call for me.”

  “I’ll state minor advice and introductions on our public contract. That will rouse little attention or worry. The more so for its brevity.” King said.

  Mel gave King his contact information, produced a solar, and flipped it to King.

  “That finishes us up then,” he said rising to leave.

  “He’s at the Old Hotel?” Sam said when his partner shared the contact. “There’s a lot of traffic there but I’m going to expand my surveillance of the hotel and car service traffic there. If he’s living there, probably other important Homies will be in residence too.”

  “Some of them his clients,” King warned. “Don’t work at cross purposes to our new customer.”

  When Sam looked at him askance, he elaborated.

  “I mean, don’t get caught at it.”

  Bill was kind enough not to say, again.

  In the hallway, Jan had a question.

  “You named me as a continuing contact. Do you intend to extend my day contract?”

  “No, but they don’t have to know that,” Mel said. “Consider it a tip. You have access to them if you should ever need it. They would have wanted a separate contract for you and I’m not entirely sure they are going to earn out that solar.”

  “Thank you, boss.”

  * * *

  “Were they what you expected?” Xerxes asked when Jan and Mel returned.

  “Yes, they may prove useful,” Mel said. “Let’s loop through the south side of town going back to see some different areas.”

  “OK,” Xerxes said, instructing the car. “Did you figure out how they can afford such nice offices?” he persisted.

  “They own the building,” Mel said turning his face full on and giving him Xerxes a different enough look that the Derf could tell he was provoking a new reaction he hadn’t seen before. “They’re into a lot more than their advertising would suggest.”

  Xerxes didn’t look satisfied by that, but sensed Mel didn’t like all the questions.

  “When we go back across the river, note the bridge,” Xerxes said. “It’s pre-contact stonework but only five hundred years old. It’s a good example of Derf engineering.”

  “How did they pay for it?” Jan asked.

  “Tolls, our car company will pay to cross it and it will be covered in our charges,” Xerxes said.

  “I imagine it is long paid for,” Mel guessed.

  “Yes, and very low maintenance. I believe the English idiom is that it’s all gravy now.”

  * * *

  “My Lady, we were able to run the small unit in a sturdier frame with no mishaps. We have a good solid thrust reading and I captured a video of the run which I’m attaching.”

  An icon for the file appeared in the corner of her screen.

  “Born, who told you to call me your Lady? I’m not nobility and I don’t require that.”

  “My… Lee, I’m not sure who I heard using that, but it just felt right.”

  “Just use Lee, please. If we have a special relationship that is fine. I very much appreciate both of you. But others will probably pick up the habit if they think it is something required, and that despite not having any close relationship. We’ll just keep our affinity both ways something private, OK?”

  “Certainly. The reading was just under sixteen thousand Newtons. I’m confident of five percent accuracy. Musical suggests we can boost performance without retesting by closing up the gap from rotor to housing and deepening the clearance off the rotor edge. The prototype people are offering a design for a lightweight housing and a lighter rotor. The design numbers say it should be close to two-hundred ten kilograms. If you want to wait a couple of weeks for special order electric motors to be made for you at Fargone, we can shave that down to a hundred eighty kilograms. They will be significantly more expensive wound with silver wire. I wouldn’t recommend superconductors for a high-speed motor. They have catastrophic failure modes.”

  “Safely?” Lee demanded. “That seems awfully light. Do they know this is a life-critical application? Not some industrial machine that if it busts and has to sit a week waiting for repairs it’s no biggie?”

  “Indeed, it has a good safety factor. Design and materials just get better all the time. I’m constantly impressed too. Are you still interested in producing four working units without waiting for more design improvements? We’re so early in the design cycle that in a couple of years it will probably look quaint. I’m sure we can make incremental improvements if you want to wait and let us refine it a bit.”

  Lee looked at the guesstimates Alonso made for a composite airframe, added allowance for avionics, and ultra-light seating. The excess thrust would more than work, it would give decent enough performance for an aircar, especially at higher altitudes.

  “Please, I very much want four and a spare for a proof-of-concept prototype,” Lee said. “I’m not willing to wait for incremental improvements, I want to own the first. The guy I hired to build an aircar chassis has astonished me with how light it can be made. It benefits from the same advances in materials. In a couple of years, we can build another and donate this one to a museum. The weight savings for the motors sound worth the short wait. If the silver is expensive, it will be there at the end of the service life to scrap out, won’t it?”

  “Then I’ll release them to the Fargone motor shop to start fabricating,” Born agreed.

  “I reviewed my meeting with Jeff Singh a
nd our written agreement. I conclude we agreed to share all gravity tech, even if unrelated to the superluminal drive. We will be sharing this thruster phenomenon with them, but I’m not in any hurry to do so before we have had a chance to gather more information about it. Is that agreeable with you or do you feel it’s dishonest not to make an immediate report?”

  “I made no treaty with anybody,” Born said. “I work for you. I’m happy to help you fulfill your agreement with him as you see it, on any schedule you please. I believe the English idiom for this is that it’s above my pay grade.

  “Then for right now, we’ll keep it private,” Lee said. “I’ll talk to you again soon.

  “She’s going to fit them on an aircar,” Born told Musical after the call ended. “I thought they’d be for her ship or some other space application. I’m surprised.”

  “I’m not,” Musical said. “That’s exactly what I expected. She won’t put one in her ship until we have improved them quite a bit. This is just a toy for fun.”

  “Some toy at this much expense,” Born said.

  “The rich are different than you and me,” Musical said. “They have more money.”

  Born looked a question at him. It sounded like Musical was quoting someone, but he stopped and just shook his head.

  * * *

  “Here are the size, weight, and performance numbers for the lift pods I’ll be mounting, with the plate size, bolt pattern, and wiring connections,” Lee told Alonso.

  She had it printed out for him, with a sticky-faced memory chip stuck on the first page.

  “Sea level performance?” he asked skeptically. “It will fall off quickly at altitude you know. Turbine or battery? If the weight is to be kept acceptable you aren’t going to have battery range for anything but around the city. Any turbine that can produce that much thrust is going to be a fuel guzzler throttled back to cruise power. I know you are rich but a polywell fusion reactor is just too bulky for an aircar. A ducted turboprop will likely be your best compromise. Do you want it redesigned as a lifting body to extend the range? It would be hard to do that with the low sill and bubble canopy you want.”

  “There are numbers in the spec sheet for current draw,” Lee showed him with her finger. “These will be constant thrust units and it won’t fall off at higher altitude. The electrical power unit will be novel too. Something new on the market out of New Japan. It’s a fusion reactor but a high-pressure coating of bucky tubes on a sintered platinum group alloy core. It runs hot too. You have to feed it fuel on standby or use battery power to restart it if you let it cool down.”

  “I figured that was just auxiliary power usage. That wouldn’t be too bad a draw even with batteries. Don’t even tell me what that New Japan power unit costs,” Alonso said. He spread a big hand on his chest like it might make him go down in cardiac arrest.

  Lee was impressed he’d picked up that Human gesture.

  “There’s still a whole lot you aren’t telling me,” Alonso complained. “If you have some kind of magic motors that can do that, I want to buy some for myself.”

  His wrinkled-up snout said it was sarcasm, not sincere belief.

  Lee thought about it a little. She basically liked Alonso. His crude nature and crusty lack of respect for most everybody could be excused since plenty of people were idiots of both species, but it was irritating her today. She could lose him as an asset if she took offense.

  “I will give you the Derfhome franchise on them for aviation,” Lee offered, “if you continue to give me preferential treatment in design and fabrication as you are able.”

  His muzzle smoothed out and he looked amazed.

  “This is no-shit real? This is going to be fun to build. I’d offer you a marriage contract to get one of these.”

  Lee laughed. “I can’t imagine you married. Not even to another Derf.”

  “Tried that, twice. They both lasted about as long as my shop assistants,” he admitted.

  * * *

  “Besides the new people, all our old contacts keep adding new associations,” Sam complained. “I may have to hand this over to a program to track and alert me to new ones instead of trying to keep it all in my head. It won’t fit in a Venn that isn’t a mess or a spider web of contact lines. The Foys seem intent on meeting everyone in town and Singh and Lewis are meeting people who were never on my radar. Lee is meeting some fellow at an aircraft shop I’ve never heard of before. For a Derf, there is almost no information about him but his public contracts are very high value. A lot of them are complicated swaps for service and materials instead of cash. Derf don’t have to avoid taxes so that’s unusual in a high-end business. There’s also like a huge black hole there that must be filled with cash trades that have no public contract.”

  “I wouldn’t expect we’re the only ones who find ways not to post what they are doing on the public net,” King said.

  “No, but if they have any reason to do that, then they are much more worth investigating,” Sam said.

  Chapter 10

  “Well, it took them long enough, but we’re cut off,” Lee told Gordon.

  “Oh dear, the liquor store or the deli? Did the bank mess up and decline our charges?”

  “The Claims Commission. It runs to twenty pages if you want to read it. The short version is that North America got their butts bombed so badly by Central that the commission’s biggest member can no longer serve the commission for defense as required. Since everybody knew they were the tail that wagged the dog this is no surprise. They claim to be broke, hurting, and feel badly used, yadda, yadda, yadda, and suddenly need that fifteen percent that was promised the little people, who obviously don’t deserve it anyhow. So, sorry, sucks to be you.”

  Gordon nodded. “The Mothers sent me the transcript of their conversation with you about Providence. I was expecting this to happen even before being privy to that conversation. It was rather obvious from our visit to Providence. The governor was an ass. He disrespected us discoverers, and he is just a reflection of those who sent him.”

  “Will you command a fleet from the Retribution?” Lee asked.

  “I’m not sure. Tell me what the command structure would be,” Gordon asked.

  “You as commodore. Pick two captains for the Retribution and Sharp Claws. I’m captain of the Kurofune and don’t wish to be linked for combat operations. I’d like to retain its status as a diplomatic vessel and only act defensively. I’m close to being able to have a Central type jump drive for it, and I have to show you other tech my guys are developing.”

  “No planetary bombardment?” Gordon asked specifically.

  “Not unless something on the surface shoots at you. I doubt that they have the ability.”

  Gordon nodded agreement and presumably satisfaction.

  “For whom am I acting?”

  “Me.”

  Gordon did that fake widening of one eye that implied a lifted eyebrow so well.

  “Well, for me, and for the Mothers, as I granted them title to lands now in jeopardy, and for you. I’d argue I am acting for both of you. You own a third of the claim, more than the island I granted them. Since they defaulted on our contract, I intend to take the whole thing back. To protect the Mother’s interests and administer the development of the planet since the improvements they have made are forfeit. I do not acknowledge I am bound by their contracts with the colonists. After all, I’m repossessing it, not buying it so I should assume their liabilities. However, I intend to treat the leaseholders and contractors well. I hope most of them can be persuaded to stay on. At this point, I’m not even going to worry about our previous claims. We aren’t going to be paid for them either.”

  “At better rates. I saw that in your conversation with the Mother’s,” Gordon said. “I will reserve the right to argue about my old claims when I have an opportunity. Be aware, some of the North American firms who paid the commission will probably be blocked from continuing to do business with you.”

  “But it was open to b
ids from other countries too,” Lee reminded him. “If you don’t want your third of the planet for some reason, if you don’t like the new management, I can arrange to buy your fifteen percent royalties. I’m not sure how we’d calculate what it is worth after terminating all the leases and contracts. Do we try to project what they would have been worth? I intend to demand less on the old agreements and be generous on new ones. Most of the unapportioned land would revert to us. I can’t pay you a fair price for a third of the planet. Unless you want payments forever. I sort of assumed you would support repossession if you support everything else too.”

  “I’m rich already without ever getting another payment,” Gordon said. “I’m also sure I’ll start collecting on our claims from the Little Fleet before I run out of funds I’ve received from the Claims Commission. I like the new management just fine, Sweetie, but I’m trying to calculate if the notoriety is worth the price. I’ll be a political figure like I’ve never been before and it will heavily affect my life. A life that may be much longer now.”

  “I think you are oblivious to what a huge political figure you are already,” Lee said. “You are already notorious with the Fargone and Earth military. You even have a reputation with the Badgers and their civilization.”

  “I just acted for the Mothers, like any clan son,” Gordon objected.

  “I should have April and Jeff talk to you,” Lee said. “You’d listen to them better than me. They straightened my thinking out in that regard. I tried to take the same tack that I was just an agent for others with them and they blew that argument out of the water. They made irrefutable arguments that I’m a sovereign now. Not that I welcome that. It’s a burden. But if you aren’t a power in yourself, forcing agreements on nations and with Providence land holdings, you are at the least an agent of both the Mothers and me.”