Another Word for Magic

by Mackey Chandler

  “Yes, if only to deflect any suspicion that we had anything to do with it. I suspect the Moon queen will inform them too. One hopes the stories match sufficiently to satisfy them. They had close contacts with previous French administrations and I’m not sure how much they have maintained them.”

  “Look at it this way,” the number two fellow said. “Her mission for her ministry was a success. We did establish we can make claims in this new system to expand and protect our interstellar commerce. At least off in that half of the heavens.”

  His boss nodded. “I expect that will move most Earth-based ships to explore in that direction as safer than the other, which has no organized protection. But everything else she revealed makes me unhappy.”

  * * *

  “Want to come over and have some breakfast early?” Lee invited Jeff and April.

  “It’s barely sunrise,” Jeff said. “Did you rouse the others out this early?”

  “No, but I know you two get up way early. Our talk yesterday made me realize I’m not prepared to deal with Providence, and I want to talk about it more. We can include Sally and Gordon later or even another day if I don’t have a plan to share with them,” Lee said.

  “Give us ten minutes,” Jeff said. “I like that we have our elevators but sometimes I wish we didn’t have to ride down and back up.”

  “You’d fret over the security if we had any common connection on this floor,” April said loud enough Lee could hear.

  “You’re probably right,” Jeff admitted.

  “See you in ten,” he told Lee.

  Lee considered joking that they could remove the privacy panel and gap between their balconies. The trouble with Jeff was you never knew if he’d take you seriously. The thought did make her decide to serve them on the balcony and she ordered a breakfast buffet.

  April and Jeff were dressed casually and without the lunar armor. Jeff’s shadow, Strangelove, was in spex and fur without weapons beyond his axe, was persuaded that he could sit with them since there were no others that had to be watched from behind Jeff. It was early enough in the morning that Jeff was soon reaching in his collar to dial up a little more heat. Lee had a pot of coffee she made before the hotel brought breakfast. She warmed her hands around the mug, preferring the old-fashioned kind instead of insulated. Strangelove got the rest of the pot after a cup for each Human.

  “Did you get Walter set up?” Jeff asked.

  “Not fully set up, but I introduced him to Born and Musical. I left them in full geek mode and have no idea if he even came back to the hotel. He had a room waiting for him if he didn’t pull an all-nighter with them.”

  “He’s here but returned late,” Strangelove said. “I keep track of who is in the building.”

  Jeff and April nodded and didn’t have other questions. They seemed to be waiting on her to direct the conversation this morning. That was typical of the Centralists, to speak little and somehow manage to make you reveal everything, but only fair today, since it was her problem and her party in several ways.

  “I thought about it a great deal last night and decided I’m not old enough or wise enough to formulate a legal code. I sincerely doubt I’d create better than a couple of thousand years of human thought and history has. I briefly considered offering Heather sovereignty over Providence and decided she was too smart to borrow trouble.”

  They both nodded their agreement to that.

  “The idea of having an administrator like Jeff did with Camelot has a lot of appeal. The trouble as I see it is that they still need some sort of direction. My personal sense of what is right and wrong is a hodge-podge of Human and Derf, with a little Badger thrown in. I’m sure most of the people already living on Providence are North American. They’re going to think the cultural norms of North America as they learned them at their mother’s knee by observation are laws of nature and truth. That’s just Human nature.”

  “No argument so far,” Jeff allowed. “Nobody ever tells little Johnny that you don’t eat your siblings. Yet by the time they are five or six they all know cannibalism is forbidden.”

  “Normal children,” Lee said. “I’m just now seeing the comics and videos that teach all that undercurrent of cultural rules. Growing up in a mixed-species family with no external community, I missed a lot. I can figure out pretty easily that cannibalism is a bad idea as an adult. But it’s not the same instant revulsion that is taught by jokes and depictions of missionaries in big cooking kettles. I can’t tell you how weird I thought that was the first time I saw a cartoon showing white people in pith helmets in a pot surrounded by black folks with spears and bones in their noses intent on cooking them.

  “I can’t even remember the written joke in the speech balloons. It gave me a glimpse of how deeply cultural prejudices are embedded in some things. Nobody would ever draw the black people in the pot and the missionaries outside putting wood on the fire. The North American web fraction my parents could buy had most of that sort of thing sanitized. But when I saw a wider web fraction later it was shocking. There were things my parents were uncomfortable explaining that I learned to ask Uncle Gordon. Some of them were so far outside Derf understanding he could only shrug and say he didn’t understand it any better than me.”

  “It’s easy for us to forget you had an odd upbringing,” April admitted. “Don’t forget, we were both raised in a hab under North American law and most of the population was North American, even if there was some Japanese influence. I’m sure that, if we have to be totally honest, we both have lingering elements of Earth Think in our preferences. We can already see some divergence in the cultural norms at Central. Some things the younger generation find normal makes us uncomfortable.”

  “That’s why I decided I can’t impose arbitrary standards on Providence,” Lee said. “If I tried, I think it would just lead to lots of conflict. I considered doing what Jeff regretted not doing and just forcing everyone to leave. It would be unjust. If it were just a couple of hundred people that might work. You could make some compensation. Then you could start over granting licenses and land.

  “There are somewhere around three thousand people on Providence now. The Commission didn’t make a detailed census available. I don’t think I can remove that many people without being condemned by others who don’t even have a direct interest. History would condemn me. It doesn’t even feel right to me.”

  “Since you are going to give us land, I’ll have an interest,” April said. “I’d rather the planet wasn’t in a constant low-level state of rebellion that must be suppressed.”

  “Exactly,” Lee agreed. “You did help me formulate a solution by explaining why I can’t reject sovereignty. As sovereign, I can explain what basic principles I want advanced by my Voices. I can still invite the locals to form local regulations that feel right to them, but subject to approval and gaining the force of law from my Voices. I just have to pick Voices whose personality I trust to be reasonable even if they don’t make the exact choices I would.”

  “I hope this isn’t a job interview,” April said. “I have no desire at all to ride herd on a bunch of North Americans, not even a full generation removed from the fatherland. I can assure you my choices for them would probably enrage them. Besides, I have a life.”

  “No, and I’m not stupid,” Lee insisted. “I’m aware you have businesses and assets to oversee. You could throw mine away without bothering to count them.”

  “Maybe not that vast a difference. But I shouldn’t try to correct you,” April said.

  “If I appoint someone like you there is still the problem that all the Providians will look at you and expect you to follow all the norms they know are ‘right and true’,” Lee said.

  “Did you just coin that name for your residents?” Jeff asked.

  “Yeah, I opened my mouth, and it just kind of jumped out,” Lee admitted.

  “So, how do you get around their expectations?” April demanded, dragging the conversation back on course.

  �
��By always having at least one of the Voices a non-Human,” Lee said. “A Derf or maybe down the road eventually a Badger or Bill. Who knows? Maybe even a Hin if a crazy singleton could be recruited. They won’t have any expectation an alien shares the same values they do. It might even jar some of them into thinking.”

  Strangelove mostly stayed out of their conversations while guarding Jeff, but this struck him so funny he couldn’t help but have a giggle fit.

  Lee blinked at him, uncertain.

  “I know you are amused, but still uncertain if it struck you as a good idea or terrible.”

  “Oh, good. Definitely good, Missy. How to say this? Maybe you can hear it without taking too much offense. Humans tend to be smug. You have the sweetest toys and the newest tech. There are so damn many of you that you have more geniuses busy inventing new toys and tech than there are Derf alive. Knowing that, we don’t expect to catch up. But it does amuse me to think of Humans coming before a Derf to get approval for their own community rules. I’ve learned to read Human faces very well. I’ll tell you plainly that I can read them nearly as well as your veracity software. So, I can picture the repressed look of consternation some Humans would wear being judged by a Derf. It will be hilarious if you ever do implement it.”

  “Maybe I should offer you the job so you can have the joy of it daily,” Lee suggested.

  “Not-a-chance,” Strangelove declared absolutely. He showed all four palms to Lee in a gesture of rejection. “Like your friends. I have a life. I’m happy at what I do, and I do it well.”

  He stopped and his countenance changed abruptly to serious with another thought.

  “I will suggest, if you haven’t noticed, we Derf rely on the Mothers to govern and regulate our affairs. Not our Fathers. If you appoint a Derf as such a Voice choose a female. They are much more suited to the job by their way of thinking and temperament. You don’t want to pick a male unless you wish him to quietly put up with all sorts of nonsense until he’s thoroughly exasperated and ready to use the axe.”

  “I’ll take that advice to heart,” Lee promised him.

  “Assuming you use Strangelove’s suggestion, it sounds good to me too. That was another mistake I made with my Chinese,” Jeff admitted. “Their avowed philosophy was supposed to be Socialist and deeply committed to equality. The truth I found out after the whole affair wrapped up was that they disrespected my administrator because she was too young and female. It seems a few thousand years of Chinese history were imbedded in their attitudes deeper than a couple of hundred years of political indoctrination.”

  Lee’s pad pinged her and Jeff’s and April’s phone pinged them before she could read the message. Strangelove’s spex alerted him last of all judging by the tilt of his head.

  “This is strange,” Jeff said. “Jan is informing me Mel got this message and it is copied to several other people and marked as not being confidential. It lists your mechanic and aircar designer, that other Earthie, Pam Harvac, and several people I don’t know, andinforms them that the lawyers Sam and Bill are no longer working for any off-planet entities.”

  “That’s polite talk for North America,” Lee said.

  “Heather made supporting anything off-planet very difficult for them,” April said.

  “They cut them loose?” Jeff asked.

  “I can’t think of any reason they’d lie about it,” Lee said. “On the other hand, having a misunderstanding that they were still affiliated could be embarrassing or even lethal. Say if somebody comes looking for them and we thought we were being helpful to ID them.”

  “Is that what you were just pinged about?” Jeff asked Strangelove.

  “I don’t see how you knowing that helps me guard you,” Strangelove replied.

  Jeff thought about it a little. “I guess it doesn’t,” he concluded.

  “They don’t want to go back,” April concluded.

  “Well yeah. I never thought they were that stupid,” Jeff said.

  “How many left to go back to the Solar System on the Out o’ My Way?” Lee asked.

  “A hundred eighteen boarded, but we have no idea how many wanted to go to Beta at Fargone, or Gamma at Mars. Even those who returned to Central may have business to do there and then get on the next trip to go somewhere else,” Jeff speculated. “There may be people who board at Beta to come here via Central. It will be interesting to see if there is enough traffic for Heather to keep it going as a paid service.”

  “Are we still going to talk to Sally and Gordon?” April asked.

  “If you will, yes, but later. I asked them to come this evening to give us time to unwind from this meeting and digest it before diving into another. Does that work for you or do you have commitments?”

  “I leave scheduling to my ladies,” Jeff said.

  “We’re in luck,” April said. “If we cancel your polo lesson and move your net-cast, we can fit in an evening meeting with Gordon and Sally.”

  “See?” Jeff said. “They always make it work.”

  * * *

  “That’s crazy,” Kirk told his boss, Pam Harvac. “If they got recalled why would they tell everyone? Now, they are just two mediocre business guys without any government support or resources. How does that improve their situation here? For that matter, what in the world did they tell their agency? You don’t just remotely resign from an intelligence agency, do you? I’d think they’d demand a debrief of some sort.”

  “It tells everybody who already knew they were grade B spooks that they have entirely different motivations now. It may even drum up some business that people wouldn’t give them as long as they had any connection to North America. As far as what they told their bosses, I have no idea. I just sort of assumed if Bill King is involved, it didn’t involve any excessive truth. Now that North America has been cast down from the heavens they would be returning to a very uncertain future. They might be pensioned off in a newly devastated economy so it would be risky to go back voluntarily. They could end up barely above a negative tax existence. They’re not that stupid.”

  “You put things so oddly sometimes. Do you think they can survive OK here without being subsidized?” Kirk asked.

  “With all the Homies that just moved in and the Moon queen promising regular visits by a ship making a circuit of the habs and worlds? They should thrive.”

  She cut off the last awkwardly, like she had more, and had decided not to say it.

  “I’ve gotten to know you too well. What did you just decide not to tell me?” Kirk asked.

  “I don’t think you can know me too well, sweetie. I didn’t want to worry you,” Pam said, taking his hands, but we didn’t get any funding last month or this month. I imagine it’s the same for the spook lawyers. The banking pipe got cut off.”

  “Oh, my goodness. What are we going to do?” Kirk worried.

  “See? That’s why I didn’t want to upset you. You haven’t paid any attention to the books for our cover business,” Pam said. “If you had you’d see it can cover a great deal more than our reason for being here. It’s running sufficient profit that I could be sending support home instead of the other way. We’re just fine. The bees are busy working for us. The Derf love their honey and the price is not dropping at all. Price inflation in food has been strong and I can sell all we produce. I won’t say we’re rich. My father would be amused at that idea. But we’re comfortable and improving steadily.”

  “Then we’re not in any rush to go back home either?” Kirk asked.

  “With things so uncertain back home?” Pam asked. “I honestly think it would be foolish. If they do recall us, the State Department is much less fussy and formal about quitting. I’d do that in a minute and not have any need to lie about it to have a friendly separation. My father’s interests are large enough it would take a very long, terrible down-turn to damage his worth. But we don’t need to ask him for a rescue when things are going so well here. I feel good about that, and he’d approve of our success. Let’s just let things slide u
ntil we see how the Moon Queen’s actions play out for everyone before making any moves. I can be content here, can’t you?”

  “As long as I have you here, yes,” Kirk agreed. “But I guess my work here isn’t needed now. I’m not sure what I’ll do.”

  “Oh no. All your information gathering about the Derf economy and understanding them has been invaluable to my running the honey business. You should continue and add even more detail to the studies,” Pam insisted squeezing his hands. “I may even want to diversify eventually and will need your data for that.”

  “Oh, I’m glad. Maybe I’ll write a book about it,” he decided.

  Chapter 23

  Jeff and April were relaxeding with drinks when Sally and Gordon arrived. Everybody waited while Gordon got a huge mug of chocolate and Sally got tea. Gordon eyeballed the finger food, decided to give the Humans a shot at it first, and sat down. Strangelove saw his inspection and gave him a wink.

  “I talked with Jeff and April this morning,” Lee informed them. “The good news is they agreed to drag the Sharp Claws and Retribution to Providence so we can move forward a little faster than I thought.”

  “The faster transit time will be welcome, but I still need another two weeks for provisioning,” Gordon informed them. “That is unless they intend to make supply runs to make up for the fact the ships aren’t fully provisioned.”

  “How long are you intending them to be able to stay out?” Jeff asked.

  “Just like when we went on the voyage to the Badgers, months,” Gordon said. “I intend to lay siege to the planet and not get into a fight, if that can be avoided.”

  “Oh, that does change things. I’m not objecting,” Jeff hurried to add. “We didn’t know you didn’t intend to go in hot and get it over. Tell us more, please.”

  “The exception to that is if there is still a USNA warship stationed there,” Gordon said. “It gets turned into scrap on sight. If it won’t leave dock that may be messy, but they can build a new mast for the station.”

  “We have no objection to actively lending a hand,” April said. “We have jump drones that can go in and punch a gravity lance through a docked ship with no danger of damaging the station at all.”