April 2: Down to Earth (32 page)

"It's absolutely amazing how different you are, than the mob that was waiting for us at the airport yesterday," April told her honestly, but didn't take the card immediately.

"Well, after you shot the toes off four of them, even the hardest paparazzi is probably going to learn to be a little more circumspect with you. It takes about a year to grow them back right." There was no tone of disapproval there either, she grinned when saying it.

"A phone interview is so cold. Why don't you sit with us briefly before we leave and we'll have a little chat. I can talk around dessert. You're welcome to record if you have equipment. But you should avoid or edit out my luncheon companion, for her privacy."

"Thank you. I didn't want to presume. This is not a public place." She dug in her purse and came up with a public eye. She slapped it on her shoulder and it just stuck. There was no pin or anything. Must be nano-tech, April thought, expensive.

"If you wish to use software to analyze my responses for probability of truthfulness, you are welcome to do so. Just tell the full numbers and what they were run through. It would be nice also, if you point out when any counter statements from others are not verified."

Kyrah's eyes got real big. "I've never met a public figure that had the nerve to do that," she exclaimed. "They all beg off and claim the software is too unreliable and gives false results."

"If that was so they'd have just allowed it to be run and wave the results away as unimportant. They all know you run it, even if you can't tell. The fact is it's so good now, that the only reason it's illegal is because almost all politicians are really ugly lying sons of bitches."

"Almost all?" Kyrah asked suddenly the very skillful interviewer, and thrilled with the hard hitting statement she was getting. "Have you met one you liked? You only pegged out at believing that 98.7% on my software," she said, amused, "which is Bio-Eye by the way."

"I met a fellow, a Msr. Broutin, last year. Since then he has become the Foreign Minister of France. I didn't run software on him like you are, but I'm confident from the wetware between my ears that he is a gentleman. He loves the arts, good food, good company and I would be shocked if he ever knowingly told me a lie. Beats the hell out of me how they ever had the good taste to allow him in public office. Perhaps when he messes up and tells the truth a few times, they'll purge him. I think that's likely what will happen to your own President."

"You mean President Wiggen?"

"Yes. I know quite a few people are unhappy with her. Although the worst of them seem to want her job, which makes me question their motives. But I asked my grandfather what else she was supposed to do? She made the best of a very poor situation. Frankly, if she had not acted as she did, I think at least every other person in North America, half the population, would be dead today. And the rest living in ruins. But where is their gratitude for avoiding that? It amazes me, that individual people I meet here can be so nice. But the public as a whole can be such an ass."

"Quite a few of the opposition candidates say your weapons, though novel, are not as fearsome as President Wiggen suggests, that you mostly took out highly visible targets like bridges. I take it you don't agree?"

"It's a simple cover-up. I sat at a weapons board from orbit and tore apart anti-ballistic missile batteries. I sank aircraft carriers and escorts, including at least one of those secret submersible carriers. I couldn't tell you how many ships in all I sank. We busted up the ballistic missiles right in their silos, after they shot a couple nuclear missiles at us and we busted your deepest mountain bunkers at Cheyenne and Deepwell into gravel. We never even touched the visible targets like bridges, until we did so at the last as a propaganda gesture. By then your military was already shattered. We could have taken out your power grids and data trunks and left your cities full of people without power last winter, but we showed some restraint."

"Wouldn't that have been a war crime to target civilian populations?'

"Tell that to the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Or the fire bombings of other big cities that killed as many as the nukes. I studied Japanese History at the University of Kyoto. War crimes are what the losers did. Never the winners."

"How can you say the military was shattered, when we are secure today in our borders and we have the army almost untouched?"

"The Army!" April snorted through her nose. "As if we care what you do down here. We just want to be left alone above the atmosphere. When somebody asked, "Should we take out their armor and ground forces," our commander said, "No, don't do that, or we'll be obligated to defend them from other Earth states if they can't defend themselves. It's only as smart as leaving a police force in place when you conquer a nation, so there isn't chaos. Off course you folks haven't always been smart enough to do that either," She reflected, alluding to the well known chaos the Middle East suffered chronically.

"Tell you what. You can analyze and verify this as a formal statement from me: ‘I have the ability sitting here right now eating my desert, to pull a menu of weapons systems down in my spex and drop a bombardment on the North American continent over the next few hours, that would do what we avoided before - killing half the population of the continent. I wouldn't even have to destroy the power plants, just the transformer yards outside them. People would freeze and starve, before you could make that many big transformers.

"The ugly truth is that most of you folks live in an environment that is just as artificial as the space station I live on. If you put some irrational fool in the White House that doesn't believe that, be it upon your own heads. I'm not saying anything your officials don't know. They've been told, even if they don't pass the warning along. I'm not sure you'll even be allowed to file this story. They might kill it."

"That I assure you won't happen," Kyrah said. "If they attempted to stop this, I'd post it privately."

"Well yes, you could," April admitted. "But privately posted claims are rarely given the confidence the news services get. People privately posted the story we were attacked with nuclear weapons by the US last year and they were dismissed as nut cases."

"So you are asserting that was true? Could you release documentation of that? No one has shown video or eye witnesses to really verify it."

"I'm an eye witness. I saw them on our boards launched from North America and then on radar come back around the curve of the Earth chasing us. Then they blew up far behind our track, well above the atmosphere. But I won't give you video, because it would show who intercepted them and I feel obligated to protect them from your government's wrath."

"Home didn't intercept them?" She asked, genuinely surprised.

"No. We might have succeeded in doing so. Even probably would have. We were starting to try, but we got a little help from a friend with an exotic weapons system we don't have, or know how to build. The world is a far more dangerous place, full of more secrets than your government wants to tell you. But that's all we have time for today Kyrah. Give me that card in your hand and perhaps we'll talk again."

* * *

"That seems to have dispelled the black cloud, that was hanging over your head all morning," Lin said, looking at her funny.

"Yes, working is good for you. I needed to get my mind off my brother for a little bit. It was cycling and cycling the same thoughts and not getting any resolution. I don't think there
is
any resolution. I can't stay locked in that mental rut forever, like a computer wasting most of its capacity in the background on an endless loop."

"You were suffering from a bit of survivor guilt?" Lin asked gently.

"Very much so. My brother and I had a breach just before I left. I withdrew from doing business with him. But when he died, I was informed he left everything to me in his will. I have to wonder if my words precipitated his crazy risk taking. I couldn't answer my Grandpa what should be done with our business holdings yesterday.  I will text him and Eddie, to let them know what to do. I still don't want to have to talk to them about it out loud. I might start crying. We have two new ships that need to be expedited and when they have the courier service covered, my friend Heather needs the
Happy Lewis
to support a startup she has going."

"Did your leaving the business stress your brother, because you withdrew support he needed to keep the business going?"

"Not at all. I actually just walked away and handed the ownership to him, after he refused six million dollars USNA to buy him out the other way around. I left in place licensing he needed, at no charge for the time being. I'd have worked that out with him too, when I got back."

"Well, that hardly sounds mercenary," Lin scowled. She thought about it a bit before she said more. "I have some years of experience you don't," Lin pointed out. "Not to make too much of a big deal about it, but given what I have seen of human nature over those years, your brother did not suddenly change everything he was doing and rush to his death from one small confrontation with you. I'd say the events that led to his death were months, if not years in the making, even if you never know the details. There were other players and events in this story."

"Yes, you are probably right. At least one of the players was a man named Del, who worked for the yard that services our ships. I didn't like him and worried he was a bad influence on my brother. His boss told me he suppressed his dislike of the man, because he didn't have a solid enough reason to fire him. I very firmly resolve not to make that sort of mistake myself. If I have a gut feeling somebody has character faults, I'm not going to keep them."

"Oh my dear, you are so right. This is a thing my mother taught me, when I was still living at home. If you have a servant who makes you uneasy, you let them go. No apologies needed to them, or the other servants. You may give then a severance or some other help, to make the point you are not harsh, but you move them out completely and don't allow them back on the grounds to socialize, or visit working for a new employer."

"Do you think the interview will get air time?" April asked, when they went back out for their vehicle.

"I don't know," Lin admitted. "It's a little strange to see someone calmly spooning French Vanilla ice cream and telling how they could rain death on you. People know the software just tells you what a person
believes.
It doesn't tell you if they are correct in that belief. At least some of them will quickly conclude you are just delusional, because they don't
want
to believe."

‘I'll keep that in mind," April agreed.

* * *

When they got to gravel roads Lin pulled off the edge, flipped off all the warning sensors, walked around and said, "You drive." April strapped in, fired all the systems up and looked down the road both ways. She was as nervous as taking the
Happy
out the first time. She pulled out slowly and ran it up to the velocity the sign indicated was legal and rolled along. She gave the wheel a little pull right and left and made the truck veer a little inside the lane to get the feel. She looked in her mirror and nobody was behind, so she braked to a stop feeling how it reacted as she pushed harder and harder. They stopped with a little bit of a lurch, but Lin didn't complain. When they started again she gave it a lot more power and the tires spun on the road with a rubbing sound.

When she got to the cross road where Sam's store was, she stopped at the octagonal sign like you're supposed to and turned the wheel to go around the corner. However she found the truck still turning after she was done and ready to go straight. A little frantic wheel turning got them back on track, before they were too deep in the ditch to climb out. The military was gone. Their yellow tape was missing and the fence back in place and the plate across the ditch gone with nothing left to show anything had happened but some matted down grass and tracks. There were trucks again in Sam's lot, now that the military was gone. April just missed trying to join them, by a shortcut across the ditch. Even this big truck probably wouldn't have made it. The ditches here were made to carry major storm runoff and deep.

Chapter 30

Back at the house, Lin led her in a back way April had not seen. Ducking through a greenhouse full of exotic smells and strange shapes, that fascinated April. They ended up on the patio by the pool, without traipsing through the house proper. It was mid-afternoon and Papa-san was on a lounger, with what looked to be a lemonade and a paperback book. He was in shorts and a gauze thin shirt unbuttoned in the front and he looked happy to see them. What was markedly different, was there was a long black weapon lying on a towel beside his chair. The first she'd seen any such equipment in the household. It had a thick heavy barrel and a tiny bore opening. The stock was a dull black composite, with a rough surface to grip and a scope with an enormous front lens. He saw her looking at the rifle.

"We had another drone come hover and I took the liberty of dispatching it since you weren't here. Too bad, because I'd have liked to see the laser engage it."

"Does that mean the military is going to be tramping around on your land?"

"Oh, no. It wasn't military. It was local TV for the Disney Channel. They were even foolish enough to show a little of what it transmitted, before I wrecked it. So my lawyers will be yelling at their lawyers, until they offer a settlement for invasion of privacy. They'll have to, because they were clearly in the wrong by our law."

"We photographed it all and kept a few labels and equipment plates, then my man is taking it all down to an auto wrecker he knows and they will compact the whole thing into a cube about a half meter on a side and we'll send it back to them by freight. They cost about a million and a half for a high end civilian drone like that, so it won't make them too happy. I also had cook give Li a chicken out of the freezer, to put in the middle when they compact it. I thought that would give them a nice message in about four days."