April 3: The Middle of Nowhere (23 page)

"So are you the sort of a royal cousin toiling away in government bureaucracy when you aren't visiting space stations?" April inquired.

"Not I," James disclaimed, "Elena is the bureaucrat, hard at work preserving Spain's antiquities. She works with several museums and universities and has a great deal to say about how thoroughly an area must be inspected and searched for archeological finds before it is dug up with earth moving equipment to make a road or a building foundation. I, on the other hand, oversee a Royal Charter charity which grants funds to special cultural projects that are worthy, but might otherwise go unfunded."

"Well, isn't that a match made in heaven?" Gunny said grinning, connecting the dots on that quickly and getting involved for the first time.

"Indeed, some crass barbarians have suggested it is a conflict of interest," James agreed, making a prissy face. "We simply see it as efficient. It avoids all the unseemly late night skulking about and sneakiness that such relationships seem to involve when the associates are not married. I think they are just jealous we can keep reasonable hours. Sadly for them as long as the King is happy with us it doesn't matter what they think."

"It always seemed to me having a King could work really well if you had a good one, because you lose all the inefficient layers in decision making. He just says to
do
something and it jolly well better get done. On the other hand it could be really terrible if he orders all sorts of things, but he's an idiot," April speculated.

"I would share that amusing appraisal with the King at one of our rare extended family soirees, but he's a fanatic about history. It would set him off on a monologue about all his ancestors and into which category they fell during their reigns. Mostly idiots I fear."

"I didn't expect the food in a cafeteria serving the general population to be anywhere near this good," Elena admitted. "I was looking in the business directory for private restaurants and didn't see any. If this is typical of what they serve it would be difficult to compete with them. I had no idea exactly what blackened meant, but my grouper is delicious." She seemed to be doing justice to the Cajun rice and grilled asparagus too.

"We do have a couple small private clubs that are by membership, that's something new. I doubt they'd want to advertise. It has only been recently we suddenly grew from about two thousand residents to almost three thousand now. I don't think it will slow down any time soon. I was told the next ring will need to have another cafeteria. If you'd like to go to a club I can ask my grandfather to arrange it. I've asked him to take me next time they have jazz."

"Will they allow you in a club?" James asked dubiously.

"Without going into a big story, I'm an adult, think of me as emancipated. We don't have any laws about serving liquor to minors even if I were not. We have almost no laws about
anything
and most of us are working hard to keep it that way."

"I noticed all the weapons people are openly wearing. I was trying to think how to ask about it politely," James admitted.

"Citizens of Home are sovereign, They can arm themselves with anything they please."

"Oh, come now. I don't think you'd want individuals holding nuclear weapons would you?"

"How many days were you over on New Las Vegas?" Gunny asked.

"We spent four days at the Nuevo Ritz. We're still checked in there actually, We didn't want to advertise our business here if it could be avoided. I'm just glad this place doesn't seem to be infested with news photographers watching the entry. There were a few on NLV."

"Paparazzi? If I see any here I'll invite them to be on the next down shuttle, or meet me before breakfast and give me the satisfaction of standing to my fire," April vowed. She laid her hand on her laser to leave no doubt what she meant.

"You can see guarding her is a joy," Gunny said drolly. "You might like to know that the second day you were on NLV the Chinese landed a vessel they had hijacked from a Home company at their main spaceport in the Gobi desert. The owner rather politely asked for it back and they declined. The spaceport is now a crater about six kilometers across. So you see they are perfectly happy with private ownership of nukes. And this fellow was not the least afraid to drop one on China if they insisted on playing rough."

"That's insane!"

"He thought so too. You just don't steal people's stuff and expect there to be no consequences," April agreed, deliberately missing the point of
who
was insane. She was pleased how Gunny took Jeff's side. "These people are armed because North America invaded us last year. They sent up a shuttle full of Space Seals to try to keep us from seceding. Didn't work, we killed them," she said with blunt economy.

"You're very fortunate they didn't use a nuke on you!" James said horrified.

"Oh they tried that too, didn't work any better," April said blandly.

"None of this was on the news," James protested. He was visibly shocked.

"Really dear. You are close enough to the workings of government to know that is a silly thing to say," Elena said, but not unkindly.

"Yes, but…" words failed him.

"The Valencia affair," Elena said giving him a look that invited him to dispute it.

"God, don't even say that word in public. That's been buried long enough hopefully we may all die before it sees the light of day."

"You see? Every nation has affairs like that tucked in the closet," Elena assured him.

James took a deep breath. "This
is
remarkable," he said of his pork tenderloin medallions in a dark sauce with mushroom caps and potatoes Lyonaisse. There were three little yellow roses made of shaved squash. "I somehow thought you'd be eating a lot of freeze dried things to conserve lift weight." If it was an obvious forced change of subject nobody objected. He looked stressed enough nobody wanted to add to it.

"Food is very important for morale," April observed. "You are right it is expensive to lift, but nobody would put up with dried stuff for months. If you're going to spend the money to bring it up then the ground side cost is a small fraction and you might as well send the very best."

"Still, someone back there knows what they are doing," he observed.

"Yes we have some good people," April agreed. "What sort of business are you hoping to do here?" she asked, "Perhaps we can help you."

"We have arrangements already," Elena told her. "We just need to find our way to Doctor Gerald Ames. We were told we didn't need a specific appointment time, to just call him on local com to arrange a meeting. It seems a bit late to bother him today however."

"Oh, Jelly. Sure I've done business with him. Most of my friends and family have had the pleasure of working with him. He's okay," April assured them, bestowing a blanket approval.

"We'd rather this didn't get known at home, so if you'd keep it confidential that would be very much appreciated," James asked of them.

"Sure, nobody cares about gene mod up here," April explained, "it just isn't anything that would come up or be of interest," she assured them. "Earthie attitudes don't penetrate much here, less every day."

"If you are emancipated, I'm assuming your time is your own," Elena guessed, "would you hire out to us as a guide and escort for tomorrow?"

April opened her com and looked at her calendar critically, "Yes, if you like I'll be your guide and my man here Gunny will cover you as a bodyguard, subordinate to me. I'll toss in the rest of today freebie. Tomorrow will cost you seven thousand dollars USNA or the exchange in EuroMarks. If you want service after that we have to negotiate it." Little did Elena know April would have likely done it free, if she'd asked nicely.

"Is that really your daily rate?" James asked astonished again.

"I can't remember the last time somebody wanted me to work on the clock," April admitted. "That's approximately double what I pay Gunny, so I didn't ask any more than what my hired man makes for myself and to cover him. I'm not gouging you with tourist rates if that's what you wonder. I have other interests to manage so I couldn't do this as a long term thing either. I tell you what, if that is a burden I can arrange free passage back to New Las Vegas when you want to go. I have fast couriers that go there, every other day usually, three days at the most. That ought to balance out my fee pretty much if you haven't bought your passage back already."

"Do you work for this courier company?" James asked.

"No, they work for me. I'm April Lewis, the firm is Lewis Couriers."

"How old are you?" James insisted, skeptical of the implications.

"What does it matter?" April asked a little put out. "Are you ageist?" she demanded. "I hold a ticket for orbit to orbit so I could fly you myself," she told him.

"I haven't been up here very long myself," Gunny told their guests, "but the young people here are not at all like my nieces and nephews back home in North America. They don't even grant majority at an arbitrary age, you have to get a public vote of confidence that people recognize you as adult. All the teenagers I've met so far are serious and responsible and involved in studies we'd view as college level back home. They mostly learn by
doing.
They start little businesses and find out what works long before I'd ever have any hope my relatives kids could do the same. I've never seen anything like it. They don't even
talk
about games, or sports, or what  some celebrity is doing. April here sets the pattern for young people's fashion instead of following it. She's the one who got them all wearing black and carrying fake lasers. You really need to change your expectation of what you are dealing with here on Home."

"So what happens if somebody
never
displays any sense or ability and he gets to be thirty years old?" James asked.

"Well, from what I understand, down below people are very reluctant to declare somebody incompetent and appoint a guardian for them. Likely Earth folks would
demand
he act adult even if he didn't have the capacity, so he'd skate along until he got in trouble," April predicted. "He'd likely end up in prison for some impulsive act. We have not had this system long enough to have a test case. I don't know what we'll do with somebody who doesn't have the
capacity
to manage their own affairs. I know we won't just stuff them away in a prison because we don't have a jail. I'd be surprised if the Assembly would vote the money to build one. Maybe a holding cell to keep somebody violent until they can be banished to the slumball. What to do with native-born like me if they have no family will be a tough one. I suppose we will have to all pay for some kind of supervised residence," she guessed. James visibly twitched at the term slumball.

"This norm of early maturity is not unknown," Helena informed them. "I know this from studying history. In Earth societies there were eras where life expectancy was very short. You had to marry and breed as quickly as possible because odds were you'd be dead by forty years old on the average. You don't have
that
situation, but it shows young people
can
be pushed to an earlier maturity if there is need or reason."

Gunny was nodding agreement. "In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare wrote Juliet as a thirteen-year-old and in reply to her reluctance to marry she was told many girls her age were already making fine mothers."

"Your interests continue to surprise me," April told him.

"Hey, just because I'm a grizzled old shooter doesn't mean I can't think. That's one of the reasons Shakespeare is banned in North American schools now, they feel it promotes teen promiscuity and other unwholesome values."

"Oh yeah, like panic suicide on bad information is really so attractive," April said.

"You had a situation on the frontier that made for early maturity too," Elena added. "The land was there to be had for free if you could start a household and work it. So a lot of young boys would marry and stake out a claim for a farm or a ranch next to their family, sometimes as young as fourteen. They might be out alone and armed, riding a wire fence to maintain it as young as twelve or thirteen years old."

"I can see that," April said. "Here we have the pressure of a hostile environment too. We're bigger now, but it used to be that just about every compartment had a bulkhead to vacuum. One of the first things I remember learning was how to open a patch kit and cover a hole to vacuum
fast,
" she told them. "I might have learned that before how to use the toilet. We have emergency pressure suits at our entry now, but I remember when I was little we had them beside each bed."

"Yes, that would make you grow up in a hurry, understanding you are responsible for yourself to keep your very air to breathe," Helena acknowledged.

"So just for the sake of argument the other way, why are my sibling's kids back home such colossal idiots that they can't be allowed alone by law until they are eighteen? And some things like buying alcohol they have pushed the age back to twenty-four now? It's not unneeded," he assured them, "If you left my nephews at home alone they'd tear the place up like a dog left locked in alone all day. It wouldn't surprise me to see them burn the place down, or start making false emergency calls to the public safety center. You are even liable if you don't keep all the cleaning chemicals and your medicines locked away from the little monsters."

"Not much different than Spain," James told them. "If you leave the car keys out and they go for a joy ride it's your butt on the line. I can't imagine trusting any of my relatives' children with a motor scooter, much less a spaceship," he said looking at April.

"I suspect, if we were honest, a careful look at the times it became expected to stay in a childish state would show there were economic reasons underlying it," Helena said.

"You mean to keep them out of the job market?" April asked, surprised.

"Yes. There is no shortage of labor anymore. Unneeded hands are a burden now with automation. But materials are the new shortage. There are a great many things that could be improved and better designs introduced, but the old systems have to be used up. It isn't economical to introduce a new computer or com pad or washing machine until the service is extracted from the old one. And even though the laws have made most of the materials in an old device recoverable, there is still a cost in energy to recycle the old item, fabricate the new one and transport the materials both ways."