April 5: A Depth of Understanding (33 page)

"Yes, but not pissed enough to wipe Brussels off the map. Those were just kinetic weapons I think. Or if explosive not even what we'd regard as a tactical nuke." He sat thinking a bit as they drove along.

"You know, for all anybody knows I didn't rush out to leave right away. I'm not sure I want this job anymore. I was never a big fan of the Patriot Party, but I was presented with one of those, we're going to make you an offer you can't refuse, kind of deals. If I'm dead they can hardly hold it against me I don't come home, how about you? If you could seize the opportunity to vanish would it be attractive? Or do you have family and such you'd miss?"

"Well, besides being your driver I'm also supposed to be your handler in case you get too far out of line. I'm not married and my dad is dead. My mom is in a nursing home and wasn't too sure who I was last time I went to see her. Only reason they picked me as your handler is they have my mom and a bunch of trumped up political charges to hold over my head as a leash. I'm never going to get a better chance to leave, where they won't demand a huge exit tax I don't have. I'd be years paying it off or looking over my shoulder every day worried some IRS agent would render me. I need to get off this main road up ahead and find someplace quiet I can put on the set of fake plates I have in the trunk. We are fortunate they supplied me with a lot of equipment and a second set of documents. You probably have more assets stashed away than me. If you help me defect with you I'll come along and be of what use I can. Do you have anywhere in mind that will take us?"

* * *

"I've published my response letter, Jon. I know it has been published to some public news agencies. The BBC World News and their European feed picked it up for sure. They made fun of it, but they published it word for word in its entirety."

 "I know Jeff. You sound like you expect me to be unhappy with you."

"Well, you made it pretty clear you don't want me to make us a stink to the Earthies. I don't feel like I can do
anything
and come up smelling like roses."

"Do you even know what a rose smells like?" Jon asked, amused.

"Yes, when I went down to Earth ages ago with my dad my relatives had roses."

"My pardon."

Jeff waved it away as inconsequential. "I see you are continuing to prosecute our conflict with the UN. Do I need to coordinate anything with you on China?" Jeff asked.

"No, I have enough on my plate looking for worthy UN targets. I want to go for the leadership and not the ground level grunts. I don't want to burden our merchants with too many demands, so they suffer irreparable economic harm. Anyway, I figured anything I did to China would pale beside whatever you do."

"You might consider similar actions for China. I promised not to destroy Beijing, but even in the city, if you saw a really high ranking party official traveling or reviewing a parade or something, one rod isn't going to take the city down."

"OK, I can see that. Can you have your, uh, people tell me if they have a clean target of opportunity?"

"That I can," Jeff agreed, smiling. Jon had given him a hard time before about having
people
. You are welcome to my offices if you want to see our strike. It will be in about twelve hours now."

"No thanks, Believe it or not I have as much as I care to do with the Militia and Security. I might even fit in a couple hours sleep. How is the shoulder doing? Still hurt?

"Yes, the direct wound is going to heal OK and they can minimize the scarring, but the hydrostatic shock did damage deep in the joint. It's going to be stiff a long time," he quickly went back to the issue of China. "You might leave your news filter loose in case it is noted in the earth nets and services."

"For one weapon? They kept it pretty quiet last time. Won't they try to do that again?"

"Maybe. We'll just have to see."

* * *

"Go to the BBC North American News and look at the Arts and Culture section," Jeff called to told Jon an hour later. "April just called and told me about it."

Young Artist Documents Home and its Conflicts and Culture, ran the title. There was a video interview with Lindsey Pennington after the news service was high bidder on her latest drawing, "Assassin!".

"Why do you fade your images out to the edge?" the lady asked, sweeping her hand from the middle to the edge of the drawing displayed on a screen.

"I'm telling a story," Lindsey said, not near as shy as she'd been recently with Sylvia. "Why would I want to distract my viewer with things that are unimportant to the story? The images are sufficient to give context, but the faded hues and weaker lines tell you, yes this is where it is happening and the time and others present there, but the action is in the center with the serious detail and saturated color there."

"Well it certainly has a following already. We had to bid thirty six thousand EuroMarks to get this drawing. Miss Pennington was not particularly eager to talk with us, saying she was busy, but if we owned one of her drawings she'd take time to speak with us. The consensus seems to be we won't lose any money on the purchase. What are you so busy doing young lady?"

"I attend a local school with my younger brother and of course part of my schooling has to do with my art. Some of it has been studying fashion and clothing manufacture. I was very fortunate to have a local couple with years of experience running a tailor shop allow me to work part time for them. It was drawing clothing designs that got me started with art. Though I'd submit their clothing design is as much art as any design that is merely aesthetic and not utilitarian. Since my drawings have sold well now I have income to manage and invest and I'm learning about that as I go along. My younger brother has a head for business and helps me."

"You are allowed to work at fifteen? I certainly hope child labor is not winked at on Home. Are your earnings put in trust for you, for your future?"

Lindsey looked at her oddly. "My future has arrived. I'm living today and this isn't a practice run, a hobby, to see if I really want to do these things someday."

"But surely you will want to pursue your education, with a talent like yours go to a college and pursue a degree."

"One college?" Lindsey asked. "I expect to attend different schools, depending on who has the more interesting courses. I expect to keep learning my whole life. I don't need someone to verify they consider me properly educated so I can stop," she said. "That's Earth Think.

The interviewer lifted an eyebrow. "This is a phrase I have not heard. It sounds a little demeaning," she challenged tight lipped. "Would you care to explain it?"

"I'm not sure where I first heard it. It might have been my father's boss. They were discussing taxes and he asked about withholding tax from his wages. They don't do that up here and he remarked it was Earth Think to allow others to coerce you and demand your wealth.  If you want to be a voting citizen here you volunteer to pay taxes. If you don't pay you don't vote. And you vote down the line on each item yea or nay if you approve of spending for it. It takes some research and personal effort to know the issues," she explained.

"Our taxes are voluntary too," the lady insisted.

"Oh get real. Who collects them? The tooth fairy? If you don't pay some government goon comes around and shoves a gun up your nose. I'm just a kid and I know that much."

"I understand you mimic what your elders say," she said with a saccharine smile. "But to go back to your art, I understand all your art is drawn from life?"

"Well, some things are pure fantasy. Some of my clothing designs are just art and may never be sewn. And some of my models for them are composites, or people who have aged but I hold in memory fondly. The piece you bought is as true to life as I could make it, both in the timing and the people it portrays."

"So this was a real gun fight, in the cafeteria where your family has to eat?"

"We don't 'have to', but it has great food and we have an account so we can stop there and have what we want any time. They don't do food pyramids and force you to pick groups like we did in Earth schools."

"Aren't you afraid to go back there now? Surely you have had counseling and perhaps medication for the stress?"

"I never heard a gun go off before," Lindsey admitted with a shrug. "Not back on Earth or here on Home until now. It isn't at all like in a video. It's more than loud. It
slaps
you. They gave me a capsule to keep my hearing from being damaged. I don't need or want anything else. You let them dope you up – do you think I could draw like this full of drugs?" she asked. "No way."

"You didn't run?" the woman persisted.

"Obviously, you've never seen a gun fight. It was maybe ten seconds start to finish. By the time I looked up there was no time to stand up, much less run. It was over. It was kind of
gory
," she admitted, grimacing.

"My dad's boss Jeff Singh just got grazed across the shoulder. He was the one the Chinese guy was aiming for, but I showed the assassin the instant he was hit, not
after
, the drawing wouldn't have worked looking from behind him, because the ship captain, the other Chinese guy in the jump suit, shot him in the head and it blew a big spray of pink stuff out behind him," she illustrated it with both hands bursting apart finger spread.

"That would have been just gratuitous to show in the drawing. I'm not going to draw gun porn. I sat and drew the rough sketch while it was fresh in my mind and went home and started on the full size until I could post it. I'm afraid I didn't get much sleep until it was done."

The interviewer looked a little pale. She might need some counseling and a couple days off.

"I'd rather not show more of my large drawings on camera, but would you like to see a few of my fashion designs?" Lindsey offered.

"That sounds lovely," the woman agreed, happy to change the subject.

Jon muted the feed, not really interested in the details of fashion design. "It isn't like North America to allow something like this through their filters."

"If I hit China as hard as they may suspect in a few hours, they can say it was no surprise and blow it off as retaliation for the assassination attempt using this as evidence, not about the UN. I think they still believe they can shock that sad old corpse back to life."

"They better hurry. If any of the UN executives we can ID show their face to the sky they're going to get a gift."

Chapter 22

"We have a break out. Mo called us on a handheld about ten minutes ago," Johnson said. "They broke through the surface about thirty kilometers from us. The surface debris that fell in the tunnel was a bit hot. They are sweeping it out and will do a gas flush if they can't get it clean enough that the count is back down where they want. When we get a rover there we'll see if we can plow the hot debris away from the opening down to clean rock."

"I'm assuming everybody is OK? You have no causalities to report?" Jeff asked, irritated that isn't what was reported first.

"Oh no, everybody is fine except one electronics tech who thought about all the rock over him a little too much and gave himself a big dose of claustrophobia. I'd send him out on the first flight if we have room. He's doped up and has been a couple days."

"We'll make room."

"The new landing field here is flat and fused. Some of the people who have been buried are going to want to be evacuated when you can schedule a shuttle to meet the jump bug. I'm attaching a text file of needed supplies for when you can actually land it."

"Did anybody lay a fiber up the tunnel they dug out?"

"No, they didn't have enough."

"We'll send fiber. Did you at least task somebody with updating Heather on the militia actions against the UN and the assassination attempt on me?"

"Yes, I was surprised the militia hasn't done anything to China myself."

 "I'm going to strike China myself in about two hours," Jeff told him. "I published notice to them so the militia has been dealing with the UN, figuring I'd get to China soon enough."

"Oh, well I don't think she'll argue with that," Mo said. "She's pretty pissed about all the roads and surface work gone and a big crater. She's been trying to figure out how to back-fill it without the job taking a couple decades."

"That's a problem. It's just on the back-burner right now as far as I'm concerned."

"OK, I'll tell her about the China strike. By the time I talk to her again it will have happened. We are supposed to meet at the tunnel... Well I don't want to say where in the clear. I'm still paranoid. We're going to meet at a set time so they don't have to sit waiting in p-suits and we don't have to sit on the hot debris in a rover. We're going to add some shielding to the rover floors under the seats to cut the gamma coming up through the floor. In another two weeks it will be much lower, but nobody wants to wait that long."

"That all sounds good. I'll tell you what happened after we deal with China," Jeff said. "Talk again in about eight hours?"

"Works for me. I'm about to get some sleep, so talk to you in my morning."

"Thanks Bo, you're doing a super job. Jeff, out here," he said rather formally.

* * *

April, Gunny, Eddie Persico, April's grandfather Happy and Louis, a hired man Jeff used for com work gathered in his office. At their request Chen, who worked with a security group, was sitting in as a China expert. In the case of Eddie his security work was a euphemism for spying and the results were fed to Jeff, April and Heather as well as Eddie. He knew that. He wasn't comfortable being there, for a number of reasons and his face showed it, but he was present. A Solar coin a quarter and all sorts of information meant he couldn't afford to throw away his relationship with Eddie. He did ask and make sure, he was out of the camera view on their com board.

"Louis, we know my letter was published and the Chinese government has to be aware of it, but try contacting them anyhow and see what they say."

Louis tried the address Earth Traffic Control had given them before for the air traffic controllers in China. They had passed them along to the military without giving an address. Maybe they'd do it again.