April 8: It's Always Something (22 page)

"So you've given it some thought?" Jeff deduced from his quick offer of a wager.

"Nah, I'd just never bet against her. She's...Well I heard a good one that nails it...A fellow was quoted as saying April knows the change in your pocket when
you
haven't counted it. Damn near true. She makes everything her business."

"She has been a tremendous asset to the bank and our other businesses. Not so much in
minutiae
,
but in broad trends and opportunities," Jeff admitted. "Starting a bank was actually her suggestion. She mentioned it almost off-hand just before leaving to go down to Earth."

"Does she have an opinion about forming an off Earth banking association?" Irwin inquired.

Jeff had the decency to look embarrassed. "Again, it was actually another suggestion she made, at the same time she predicted we'll have another bank by year's end."

"Well that's good," Irwin allowed, instead of being critical, to Jeff's relief. "Not everybody is a detail person and somebody has to have a wider vision. I'm in favor of this association, in broad terms...but I'll want to think on it and plan it carefully to be adaptable for the long haul. For starters, if we can meet here once a month, and perhaps have a cap on serious business at an hour, and can wear funny hats from time to time, then I'm on board."

"That seems a reasonable start on the proposition," Jeff agreed, more amused at the funny hat crack than he wanted to let Irwin see. "Until our next meeting then, that seems like sufficient business today." Perhaps the next meeting would consider business first, before any serious drinking started...

"Seconded, move to adjourn to dessert."

"Carried by acclamation," Jeff agreed.

* * *

Kurt presented himself at the entry in a suit liner. "What can I do for you Ma'am?" He gave a polite nod to Dakota that didn't hint that he knew how badly she'd reacted to his killing of the Earth agent.

Heather motioned him over. "I thought you were helping with the fungal vats," Heather said, eying the suit liner. It had creases that said it wasn't fresh. "I didn't mean to drag you in and make you unsuit. Is the hand functional?" He had a white elastic knit glove over it, but no bulky bandage.

"I
was
helping with the vats," Kurt said. "They had one go bad and are afraid it will get cross contaminated to some other culture. It's always something. They have me cleaning it with a suit on, sealing the waste in metal drums, and vapor sterilizing them and the suit in a temporary lock. It's a really nasty soil bacterium. It must have snuck in on a batch of spawn. The hand still hurts if I try to squeeze it too hard, but this is really light duty today, and they gave me a size larger suit gauntlet. "

"Well, the chances of contamination will decrease as we cultivate our own spawn," Heather decided. "The more generations away from Earth dirt, the harder for anything to lurk unpropagated."

"If you say so," Kurt agreed easily enough. "I'm picking up a little knowledge here and there, but I'm far from being any kind of farmer."

"Keep that humble attitude," Heather instructed. "I'd like you to do a quick task for me. You'll need to take a hopper to New Marseille. They've had a peaceful transition to a new government and there is a Monsieur Albert Poincaré who has been instrumental in that. We mostly have just his word for both the state of affairs there and his own status, but I'm fairly sure you won't be walking into danger like happened at Armstrong.

"I have not committed myself to any formal treaty with these people. Nor am I sending you to treat with them in any formal capacity. Poincaré called on com all mysterious and wants me to send someone as a
witness
. I'm stretching my patience with him to send anyone at all, but I have no desire to send a peer whom he can pressure to speak beyond their authority.

"Are you willing to do an overnight trip, observe whatever momentous event he wishes to display, and report back to me? You need not respond to any entreaties the man makes. You don't have the authority, you aren't even sworn to me, so you need feel no pressure."

"Actually, I've been thinking about what you told me, that it's possible to be sworn to you, and still be a voting citizen of Home. I'd like to talk to you a bit more about being sworn." He blushed and looked down. "If you'll pardon me presuming you'd
want
me as a subject."

"What is your motive to swear to me?" Heather asked, suspiciously.

"Entirely selfish, Kurt admitted. "What I'm hearing is that nothing happens on the moon unless you permit it, and you are between Home and Earth. It seems like it couldn't hurt to have your protection when I don't have a lot of other pull with anybody or other connections. I've heard some...stories. I was led to believe you'd be less than amused if somebody screws around with your people. You stopped the North Americans from dragging their bolters back to Armstrong. I asked around about what you said at my trial, about calling arty down on them, and people confirmed it. So, I realize there's a cost. You can call on me as you will, even if I move back to Home I presume. But it still sounds worth doing to me."

"If you consent to go to New Marseille, let us consider that when you come back. As I was explaining, you will be under less pressure if perceived as a paid man rather than a sworn subject. That is not a promise to take your oath, but I'll think on it. Or would you rather not have another adventure so soon after Armstrong?" Heather asked, and appeared to really mean to allow him to choose.

"Nah, I haven't seen the French place, and you've got me curious. I'll go, but I'm not rated to pilot a hopper," Kurt reminded her.

"That's not a problem. We have an excellent pilot who is qualified on much larger vessels and just qualified on lunar hoppers recently. If you will grab whatever you wish to take on an overnight trip you can meet her at the field," Heather consulted her pad..."Let's say in an hour. You can wear a normal soft suit. Pull a fresh one if yours is soiled from the tank work. The field controllers will direct you and your pilot's name is Deloris Wrigley. She'll also overnight and be on call to run you back. It isn't worth running the hopper back and forth for an overnight stay. Take pix of whatever they wish to show you. You don't have to contact us before returning, since they obviously don't wish this on com."

"Will they take my bankcard at New Marseille for accommodations and meals?" Kurt asked.

"If they don't extend hospitality to you just come back," Heather said. "You are invited, more than that, requested. I'm doing them a favor to send anyone with them being so coy about
why
."

Kurt's smile said he liked her style. "Thanks Ma'am. See you in a couple days then." He gave Dakota a polite nod on the way out, and for a miracle she managed to return it.

"I have a crew hired for you, and the previous master of the vessel is still in Singapore and willing to work for us," Li informed Jeff. He left the message on com, because it had been the middle of Jeff's night when he sent it.

"They didn't balk at working for their previous wages. The cost of things has gone up, and the standard rate really isn't keeping pace. But truth is they'd probably work for room and board given the number of seaman out of work," Li told him.

That might be
, Jeff thought, but it didn't mean they'd be happy workers if they felt it was a bad deal taken in desperation. He wanted contented workers who wouldn't begrudge extra effort if the situation called for it, and wouldn't leave at the drop of a hat. Who wants to work with a crew full of resentment? When they were on station and sorted out he'd increase the wages of the ones he wanted to keep and let the others go. Even then, he'd give them a separation payment. Things were rough on Earth. Why build a group of people with a grudge against them?

"There is air service between Darwin and Singapore again since the flu has run its course, and I expect all the crew will be aboard by four days from now," Li said.

That was good. Once the ship was in international waters he'd be dropping a team on it to set up security and arrange further modifications of it to their use. The new power source and external drones to protect it. Something he didn't want to happen at dock with union workers demanding to do the job and prying eyes from who knows where in Singapore. They would be loading some steel, cables and other supplies in Singapore, but they were for fabrication not cargo.

Once they were located in the area of open ocean in which they intended to loiter, well away from busy trade routes, one team would start to work on modifying the ship to run on fusion power. They could make the changeover when weather conditions were safe enough to allow them to drift for a short period. A second team would go to work on the front hatch, modifying it as a landing pad.

If the design his ship builder, Dave, supplied him tested well, then they could arrange to procure more steel and progressively convert three more hatches to landing pads. The only part of the design that Jeff had any question about was the arresting gear. The shuttle had to land centered within two meters, and the guidance had to position it not only on the hatch, but radially within twenty degrees.

The landing jacks extended almost three meters from the edge of the shuttle. An over- cap with three openings to the hatch face had to be hit accurately with all three landing jack pads. It then rotated to entrap them and lock them down. Raised retaining lips rotated into place over the pads on the ends of the landing jacks and moved the whole shuttle . The hydraulics were strong enough to slide the pads across the hatch, under the whole weight of the vessel, until they were pinned against backstops. Once they were fully trapped there were coarse serrations on both pad and arresting gear to prevented them from moving radially if there were heavy seas. The whole structure would take about twenty seconds to rotate to the locked position.

Li had warned him there was a phenomena known as rogue waves that might still topple a shuttle if one hit the vessel from the side. Topple it or damage it so badly it wouldn't matter if the landing jacks were still held. They would avoid the known areas where such giant waves were documented, but they also needed to subscribe to a commercial radar survey which watched for known patterns that sometimes predicted those waves and warned subscribers of their likely creation. It was only about 70% accurate, with false positives. But such a catastrophic event was well worth guarding against even at those odds. If such a rare event did happen it was the duty of the pilot to turn the ship stern to the wave. The tall superstructure at the rear was sufficient to break most such a waves in any ship made in the last twenty years, and should shield any shuttle on their deck.

There were all sorts of things they could do to customize the ship to be more efficient for their tasks. Modifying it to load and unload freighters transferring cargo to them was a big item, since it was designed to transfer things at dock. But he intended to start making money with it right away, not get carried away with being a perfectionist.

* * *

April scanned down the list of shows and articles her bots retrieved from Earth sources. She hadn't checked them in a couple days. Over time she'd edited the bots until they did a pretty good job of discarding things like documentaries that mentioned specific dates. Fiction was also a waste of her time usually, although a lot of anti-spacer propaganda was presented as fiction. Still, it didn't often tell her anything
new
.

She almost didn't examine one story, until she saw the key word count was just off scale. Looking at the title was usually sufficient to delete a good two thirds of the bot's other catches. On rare occasion she read the first paragraph or watched the first couple minutes of a video on fast forward before deleting it.

This wasn't fiction, it was a public channel on health issues. British supposedly, but sent to a lot of English speaking markets including India and North America. The 'expert' being interviewed was dressed in a white lab coat, and a very expensive tie, which would establish his credentials with most of his viewers. They refrained from overdoing his image with an obsolete stethoscope. For the deeper thinkers they went to the trouble of saying he was a molecular biologist, but said nothing about his career history except that he was a researcher associated with a Scottish hospital.

He was seated behind an improbably neat desk, which was another authority conferring image, and the man interviewing him was seated in a shell chair that pivoted. April found it distracting that he moved it back and forth. He had on a proper suit and tie, and had his legs crossed at the knee displaying a shiny hard leather lace up shoe only an Earthie would wear. They were both turned to the camera a little so they had to turn their heads toward each other.

April glanced at the text generated from voice recognition. It had quite a few more error marks than she was used to seeing. She went back to the video at the beginning and found out why the program struggled so, the man had a strong local accent. In fact it was so thick she went back to the text, even with the odd error it was necessary to ignore. She scrolled past the first few minutes of pleasantries and establishing his credentials, until they started saying something of substance as far as her interest.

"So, Dr. Carson, you were called as an expert witness for the crown because you understand the underlying basis of these so called life extension therapies?" the interviewer asked.

"Yes, I'm not a therapist, John. I deal with the numbers on a much more abstract level. I can look at a lab report and tell you much more about a fellow than staring at him all day sitting in his skivvies on an examination table. Appearances deceive and doctors sometimes fall into false conclusions and popular memes, just like lay people. Last century we had a hard time knocking the silly idea from doctor's heads that a 'glowing' tan was a sign of health. It's really a warning marker for skin cancer and when you see one it's time to ask where they got it, to see if they've been exposed to tropical disease and all sorts of nasty things associated with impoverished third worlders like TB and parasites."

"Mine was picked up golfing in Spain," John said, "looking at the back of his hand a little embarrassed like he'd never seen it before.

"And I assume you have the good sense to keep up the prophylactics that suppress Melanoma," Dr. Carson said. "The thing is, if I were looking for markers for that, or any number of problems it wouldn't be apparent to me if you'd had life extension therapy or not. A person so modified doesn't suddenly display an amazing spectrum of vibrant health. They are still subject to infection, injury and if they lose a finger or a hand to amputation they still have to have the same treatments to stimulate growth."

"But they do
look
younger don't they?" the newsman asked.

"Yes, which is all that matters to some vain people," Carson said disapprovingly. "I have no idea if the treatments do any damage to your mental health when applied to older persons. They
may
escape the sort of catastrophic side effects that the Germans saddled some of their young folks with trying to create prodigies. Many of those youngsters are now in mental hospitals as adults."

"Yes, the 'Wiz Kids'. John agreed. "That was pretty well documented at the time."

"I'm not a psychologist," Dr. Carson disclaimed, "but it must be hard to assess if an adult has an alteration in his personality from LET, since they have to be well outside the norm and a risk taker of questionable judgment, to seek this therapy as an adult."

"Kiss my butt, Doctor," April muttered at the screen.

"Indeed, that was the whole question of the case at law in which I consulted. If it was within the reasonable freedom of choice for our subjects to seek such therapy. Not that we'd offer it
here
," he said a bit indignantly. "But people travel to Italy and the Balkans, Laos and Japan. They have different standards for medical procedures, or China even, where I'm not sure they believe in any standards except that they'll take your money. Should we admit such people back into our county, and resume responsibility for their health in our own care system, in their now altered state?"

"Well, we know the court decided no," the newsman said. "I wonder though, doesn't the fact they look younger reflect that they are healthier in
some
way?"

"Bah! It's a scam," Dr. Carson said. "Those terrible gene modified pets they made, the PermaPups, and the others, the kittens that never matured. Does anybody think they were
healthier
for looking young? They looked young right up until a couple days before they died, then..." he made a graphic flopping motion with his hand.

"The truth is we have no solid evidence that these so called life extensions actually
extend
life," Carson insisted. "It's all theory and supposition and you are betting your health
now
against a possible longer life. Nobody is going to know if there is any increased life span until we see these people reach their eighties, nineties and see how many survive, and what the tradeoffs will be. Will they have more or less dementia? Will they still look pretty good and just suddenly die one day? We don't
know
. The biggest thing that people falsely think is that it's rejuvenation. Even the advocates of it don't say that, but if people have this false expectation we don't see it corrected either. I think the court came to entirely the correct decision to protect the public and our limited care capacity."

The rest of it was pretty much repetition. She cut the critical block out of the video to share with a few close friends. It was good to see
how
the Earth governments were suppressing the treatments. It amazed April that it worked. Nobody ever mentioned that when all the data on how her generation benefited or not from LET was gathered, one thing was certain. None of the people who
didn't
try it would be alive to benefit from that knowledge.

The other very amusing thing was that April had seen lots people with and without Life Extension Therapy, and witnessed them making the transition. She could tell from a quick look at someone's face if they'd had the full range of genetic modifications done past their twenties. The wrinkles and sags of middle age might be moderated, and somebody in their sixties might look like a healthy forty at best, but they never looked like a kid again. The newsman John was
heavily
gene mod at a glance, and a flaming hypocrite.

* * *

As soon as Kurt unbelted and stepped down from the open hopper, Monsieur Poincaré was waiting for him, said, "No need to go in and unsuit first. The site to show you is very close and then you won't have to put your suit on again until you go home tomorrow. I'll drop Miss Wrigley at the lock and she'll be assigned quarters next to yours and join you for breakfast."

They hadn't actually discussed this. In fact they hadn't spoken much at all on the flight. But Kurt was uncomfortable letting them be separated. He had noticed Deloris was armed, with a large holster on the outside of her suit, something he hadn't seen as often on the moon as on Home. That gave him an idea to raise an objection. He spoke up and hoped she wouldn't contradict him.

"Deloris is my pilot
and
security. She'd be remiss to leave me unescorted," Kurt insisted.

Poincaré nodded, but hesitated to speak. Likely it took him a second to adjust to the idea before he trusted himself to reply. "Ah, very well then, I'll call and dismiss her escort waiting at the lock. Fortunately we have extra seating in the jitney," he said, and invited them to the vehicle on which he'd arrived. It looked like a stretch golf cart with fat tires and an extra large sun shade.

Poincaré had a driver who remained seated and didn't speak with him. If he called he did so privately and on a different channel than he shared with them. The jitney, as he styled it, had six seats, all sized and comfortable for vacuum suits and room for luggage and gear.

In the shade Kurt cleared his faceplate to transparency and looked away from Poincaré toward Deloris. She too had her faceplate set clear. Kurt assumed she would know helmet talk and with a quick series of twitches and winks said:
Thanks for going along with that.