April (7 page)

She sat there thinking about meeting Art. It had been a new and unwelcome helpless feeling, when he had hesitated and turned back to her and she was embarrassed at her relief to be home behind a locked door. Knowing he had a pistol for a near certainty and she was defenseless, after getting such a bad feeling about him, was not something she wanted to experience again. When her dad showed her his pistol, the principle he had voiced was not she wasn't allowed a defense, but she was just not qualified to use that one.

She pursued the line of reasoning and considered a solution. Heather was just the person to tell her if it was practical, so she called. The call went through and had video also, but it showed a bunch of cables and pipes, sweeping around in a blur until Heather's face finally filled the screen. The way it was jiggling around told April she was holding her pad by hand. April was happy she wasn't one of those snobs, who made you deal with her pad's AI to talk to her, as if she were too busy and important to answer directly.

"April! Don't tell me you busted your new toy already!"

"No, no, I haven't even played with the scanner yet," April assured her, "but I want to talk to you about another job already, privately," she emphasized. "Are you open for dinner? You can come to my place if you want. We'd have privacy to talk here."

" I'd love to. I've never been to your place, but my mom would kill me. We had a big discussion about my not spending time with the family last night and she is having special company tonight and expects me to be here. But tomorrow Jeff and I are going to the construction gang's cafeteria for Thai food. They serve it on Tuesdays, Main this cycle and they don't mind regular station people if you go after the main rush is over. Why don't you go up there with us? And we can talk about anything you want. I want you to know Jeff better anyway, just as friends, even if we didn't do business."

"So, I won't be an unwanted third butting in?" April asked.

"No, really, we'd love to have you. And if we all sit and bounce ideas around, you will probably get a better widget. Are you coming?"

"OK and if for some reason I can't, I'll call you for sure," April promised.

"Good," Heather smiled, "and be sure to set the scanner out to run a bit," she instructed, as she signed off the call with her signature file -- she dissolved in a shower of glitter and a trill of a xylophone fading away.

April was a little hungry already; she got hungry even faster when she was stressed. But she felt uneasy to go back out to the cafeteria with Art wandering around the corridors. This was the first time she had ever felt unsafe to go anywhere in M3. She had seen all sorts of news shows about people Dirtside, who were afraid to go out at night or afraid to travel around their own town, but she never ever thought she would feel this way. It made her sad and the more she thought about it, it made her angry. But she also remembered the way he had stopped and looked back at her. Something in her reaction to the odor had shown and if he kept thinking on it, the same as she was doing, he might conclude she was a danger to him.

She didn't know what he could
do
to her. It would be pretty hard to shoot somebody and dispose of a body, even in a big habitat, unless you had a lot of help. But it was also supposed to be pretty hard to bring a gun into M3 and he would be the second person she knew who had managed the deed. In the end it sounded safer to stay in, until she got to talk to her dad.

Looking in the kitchenette's meager pantry, there was a can of stew she could have for lunch and some crudités from having company a few days ago. If she opened a new box of crackers it would do just fine. She got a full size fork from the drawer, instead of the plastic one on the can and punched in the dimple that made it self-heat. Then she searched for her headphones without spex, she preferred for music. They were lying on her bed and she scooped them up and put them on.

She put the scanner on the counter and told it, "Scanner connect to my earphones." The two talked to each other and established a protocol. The machine asked for a voice sample and she talked to it for almost a minute before it informed her it was enough and asked a password. Then when it activated April expected to hear Heather's own voice, but a commercial speech font said, "There are three active channels. They can be described for selection, or displayed graphically if you have spex available."

"How may they be selected?" April asked.

"Selection may be by frequency, type of modulation, content, signal strength, clarity, customary use, traffic level, direction, high stress voices and with accumulated data individual voices, languages, or similarity to previous transmissions. Multiple selection criteria can be prioritized in any order. A separate program can do a running surveillance to detect bugs retransmitting sound or com signals, real time or burst. Voice may be analyzed for probable truthfulness, stress level and gender," said the scanner.

"Define content."

"Content is voice, video, fax, data, code, burst, radar, carrier, encrypted, or combinations. Remember, when selecting, content may change during a continuous transmission." Apparently Jeff liked to leave short user hints in voice control. It was a fairly easy AI to deal with she decided. Some of them really irritated her and her friends couldn't understand why.

The stew was venting a little plume of fragrant steam and she touched the recessed finger pads to make the top peel open. It was bubbling along the outside edge. I'm gonna burn my mouth on this if I'm not careful, she thought and stirred it to make sure the center got heated too.

"Put on the clearest channel, with the most traffic, since I connected you to the earphones and listen in the background and advise me it you intercept messages containing April or Lewis," April requested and went to work cautiously on the stew.

"Not any real danger," said an Australian voice. April immediately knew who it was. He was one of the security men who actually patrolled in uniform on the corporate level, or down where the shuttle passengers were coming in. "She has some planters on the corridor and when she came out to water them -- well, someone had already done the job for her, so to speak. Unless they make a habit of it they probably will just fertilize the damn things, but the old bat is fit to be tied. It really offended her sense of propriety."

"Got any suspects, Sherlock?" asked a rich voice she had not heard before.

"Well, from where she was wiping down the wall I'd say our vandal is maybe eight to ten-years-old, male obviously, So that narrows it down to what? A dozen?"

"Yes," said the second voice. April liked how this one talked. He had control and sounded intelligent. "The computer says eleven boys in the right age range and one of them happens to live two doors down the corridor with the Wu family. A boy, eight years old, named H - E - W," he spelled it. "You say it like 'who' and with Chinese you say the surname first, so it is Wu Hew. No wonder the kid is angry. He probably gets all kinds of crap from the other kids about the name. Could you talk to Mom and Pop Wu and express concern, you know, Hew, might have a little grudge against the old lady for some reason and if they could just talk with him about it and smooth it out, we don't have to be involved at all?"

"Very 'punny' Chief," groaned the Aussie. "I will take a little stroll down there right now and have a word and maybe peer suspiciously at any little boys lurking about."

"Sounds good," said the Chief. "Don't be shy to call for back-up if you get in over your head. Out," he ended.

It was hard to giggle and eat stew at the same time. April was glad to hear crime was at its normal level on M3 and there were no running gun battles with company interns to listen to. She popped an olive in her mouth and went around the counter island to the com desk in the living room and opened the side door. Her dad had a feed for an outside antenna in the console, with a portable two way radio he could carry, or hook up here. April screwed the coax in the end of the scanner, set it out on top of the desk where it could talk easily with her phones and briefly instructed it to listen to external com traffic.

April continued to listen, switched signals and played with different features, until all the crudités were gone and she had cleaned up from her lunch.

"Audio off," she commanded and thought about it for a little bit. "Scanner listen to suit and ship channels and record any high stress voices, record any unusual signals not similar to prior transmissions. If a signal type accumulates six similar transmissions discard it as common. Do not record radar. Start a log to note what percentage of local traffic is encrypted." She was surprised by the silence. It was a lot for an AI to absorb without asking for clarification. Jeff and Heather really were meticulous programmers. "Scanner, do you have any port to sense laser light modulated to carry information, or used as lidar?"

"This unit is not equipped to sense optical signals. You are to be advised to consult the maker if I am unable to perform any request."

April felt good she had something to request, when she saw Heather. No use letting them think they had thought of everything. A fiber port and an external camera seemed a reasonable thing to request.

For some reason she wasn't comfortable, after Art, to close herself up in her room. It might be a bit before she got over her unease and back to normal, so she accessed her Japanese history class from the com desk in the living room. The seat was still set for her dad and she reset it for her preferences feeling it lower and flatten under her and get softer. April slid the cover back on the keyboard. It was almost impossible to do a full study session by voice, without having to key something in. She uncovered it and switched the keys, from the Japanese mode her dad had set to American English and turned the animation off. Images on the keys swimming around or flashing on the edge of her vision just irritated her. It was still too quiet in here too. She put on a little instrumental music and reset the wall screen her dad usually left on a still pic to a cam.

Flicking through the nature pix, she found a live feed of zebra grazing somewhere. She was getting behind the rest of the class in this course and got back into it, watching the professor's latest lecture and going through the other students' comments and questions. Her mom would be checking her progress with her classes when she came home soon and April didn't want to spoil her return with an immediate controversy.

She set her hand pad to the side, with the stocks she was holding streaming. If they traded up or down, the color change would catch her eye. Multitasking her lessons, the live screen and music, as well as the market quotes, felt about right. Less would be boring.

She figured Art wore an Earth style blazer to conceal his weapon. If her idea worked out with Heather, that was something she'd need. She thought she could accomplish it with a little more style for herself. While she was still at the com she did a search for costumes - capes and found a theatrical supply which carried them. She ordered several of them in various sizes and fabrics.

If she made gifts of them to the right people, they would be a common sight in no time. She arranged FedEx delivery. Every time she tried UPS they ripped her for some new fee, or they had the customs broker in their pocket to add charges.

A sudden flurry of activity caught her eye on the wall screen. She looked up just in time to see all the zebra exit the cam view, in a dusty desperate scramble. Behind them a sleek shape ripped through the coarse tan grass, almost the same color and too low to see clearly. Lion! she immediately guessed.

This is how I felt this morning with Art, she thought, watching the zebra scatter. I don't ever want to feel that way again. If I have to play the game at all, I want to be the lioness.

All the fatigue of the stressful day weighed on her at once, so she said, "Log-off,"  went in her room telling the room "lights out," and lay face down on her bed without even undressing. I'll just catch a little nap before supper, she thought and was asleep before she had drawn her second breath.

Chapter 6

April woke up with her face on a cold slobber spot. She rolled away disgusted and called the lights up. The screen clock said Tuesday, October 5, 2083 - 06:32. She stumbled into her bathroom, a little stunned from sleeping too long and peeled off the clothes she'd slept in. When she had a pile made, she kicked the whole thing outside the door. The entire tiny room became a shower stall with the door closed. It was small, but nonetheless, it was still an uncommon luxury on station, to have a private bath of any size. At first she soaped up in a warm mist, but ordered the shower cooler by degrees, until it was chill enough to be a little jarring before she cut the flow. That chased away the last lingering traces of the fogginess. Instead of an air blast she took a towel from storage and rubbed hard with the coarse material between her toes and behind her knees, the sensation invigorating.

April thought about her supper tonight with Heather and Jeff. She didn't want to wear sweats, even nice ones, like she did so often. Out of the shower she picked something nicer, black tights and a long belted black tunic with a hood.

When she left her room her dad was sitting at the com with a mug of coffee, working. It was a workday but he was in casual clothes, jeans and an Earth style print shirt. What she became sure of as she got closer and inspected her dad, was he had been up all night. There was stubble on his chin, droopiness around his eyes and the back of the shirt was all wrinkled from leaning back in the chair. He worked hard as director. They didn't allow him an assistant or secretary, using one Earthside by com instead, but pulling an all-nighter was unusual.

She walked around the back of the com desk to avoid the camera, got her own mug of coffee and a couple biscuit sandwiches started in the microwave to take the edge off her hunger. She pulled a chair over outside the camera range and started on the sandwiches, waiting to have a word before leaving. She let the spex run the updated news and market report she had tagged past her. He knew she was there, but it was their family's firm custom not to interrupt each other on the com.