3rd World Products, Book 17 (13 page)

Snapping my fingers in a ‘drat’ gesture, I muttered, “Damn.”

That got me another laugh. Marie’s entire demeanor seemed to change almost instantly. She relaxed in her chair and took another deep breath, exhaling it in what looked like a measure of relief.

She asked, “So you think I’m still up to it?” Holding up a hand, she added, “And you know I mean working for 3rd World.”

“No, of course not. You’ve been out too long. But you’re as good as forty again, so you can get
back
up to it fast.”

Sipping her coffee, Marie said, “Not too long ago, there was a time I’d never have had any doubts.”

I shrugged. “Your last few years would have kicked the shit out of anyone, Marie. Get back in the saddle and see how you feel a year from now. Hell, even just three months from now.”

“What’ll she have me doing?”

“Damned if I know. Saving the world, I guess.”

“Uh, huh. So why’d you retire? Why, really?”

“Same reason as Linda. The company changed too much.”

“She won’t talk about it much. Will you?”

              I considered that. There was no real reason not to tell her, except that I didn’t feel like talking about it. On the other hand, talking about it would give her a reason to stick around while she made up her mind about something else… if she hadn’t already.

“Sure,” I said, then I told her how and why I felt 3rd World’s corporate conscience had apparently become vulnerable to political and business pressures.

Sipping coffee, I added, “Linda cited some of the same instances. She said it was too much like working for the government.”

Marie grinned and chuckled, “Well, I’m sure you took
that
as complete validation for leaving.”

I met her gaze for a moment, then said, “Yup. I only caught the peripheral crap that individually concerned me. As the company’s top cop, she was smack in the middle of all of it.”

Holding my gaze for another moment, Marie nodded slightly and said, “Got it. No joking about Linda with Ed.”

With a mental sigh, I said, “No deliberate misinterpretations. No misdirections. Where’d that ‘validation’ crack come from?”

“I just wanted to see if you were really still you.”

“You had some reason to think I wasn’t?”

Sitting up and resting her arms on the table, Marie said, “Just the opposite, really. Tanya told me a long story about how you set things up to sneak a piece of me out for treatment.” She made a little moue-shrug and added, “And how you got the piece of me back into me. She said the job was done before she suddenly realized you’d been putting the whole scheme together on the fly.”

“As ever. Pick up pieces as you go. Put them together if you can.”

She nodded and sipped her coffee, then stood up and stretched. Looking down at me, she said, “I think I’ll head home now.”

Well damn. Oh, well. I stood up wondering if she’d want more than a handshake. Her right fist seemingly came out of nowhere at close to light speed and I instinctively ducked back and down as my protective field snapped on.

Marie’s knuckles stopped just short of where my face had been, not even contacting the p-field. She dropped her arm and said, “No harm, no foul. That was for screwing my daughter, Ed. I’ll have your thousand when you show up tomorrow.”

With that, she mounted her board and soared out of my yard. I sat down, put my feet up on her chair, put up a screen, and continued checking email. Sure enough, I soon felt a generic field presence approaching from above and behind me.

Sending a probe showed me Marie hovering twenty feet or so above the house. Poking a couple of new spams away, I cleared the screen. Stretching it to four feet wide, I had it display ‘
Hello Marie
‘ in large, glowing red letters and sat back to sip coffee. The field presence behind me moved northeastward until it faded with distance.

I finished the emails and message boards and sat considering what I might want to teach Marie and what could be left for Tanya to teach her. I knew Marie; even though Tanya had been hauling her around for months, she’d consider her daughter to be a second-hand — and therefore second-best — source of scooterboard info.

Swilling the last of my coffee, I rose to make a fresh mug and sent a probe to locate Marie’s cell phone. It was in her left jeans pocket, 2200 feet above northeast Ocala. Using the probe for a look around, I found Tanya flying inverted through the last half of a roll. She banked hard and zipped back to Marie, stopping alongside her.

“Well?” asked Tanya, “
Now
do you believe me?”

“That doesn’t prove anything. Sure, you fly it pretty well, but I’m absolutely sure there are a few things he didn’t teach you and I want to know what they are.”

Tanya snapped, “Mom, why the
hell
do you think he wouldn’t teach me everything about them?”

Marie replied flatly, “Because I’ve known him a
hell
of a lot longer than you have. He always keeps something in reserve.”

Uh, huh. Well, true enough as a rule. Marie and I had been trained to always keep some little something in reserve. But I hadn’t felt it necessary with scooterboard training, and she probably wouldn’t believe it.

Was that a good thing or not? On one hand, it would encourage her to keep in contact… if I wanted that contact. On the other, it could turn her into something of a badger if she thought I was holding anything back.

Angie’s ping sounded in my commo implant. I sent back two pings as a ‘wait’ signal, then called Athena. She answered and I asked her to listen in, then I answered Angie with, “Hi, Angie, what’s up?”

“Oh, nothing much, I guess. Just some satellites and assorted junk gathering together over our heads. How about a screen?”

Putting up a screen, I saw she was wearing a non-military blouse and jacket and said, “Woo! Sharp! Stepping out tonight?”

“As it happens, yes, I am. What about that stuff upstairs?”

“Well… Is there a problem, ma’am? Will it fall out of orbit or hit anything else up there?”

Her left eyebrow arched as her head canted slightly in a studious expression. “Those who know don’t seem to think so.”

“Then shoving it all together sounds like a damned good idea to me. It’ll be easier to track. Who’s doing it and how?”

“I was thinking you could probably tell me.”

“Uh, huh. Why’s that? Because Steph and I used to use that stuff for target practice?”

“Among other things. So you’re saying you have nothing to do with what’s happening?”

“Other than you, who wants to know? Officially, that is?”

“Who else would I tell, you mean?”

I shrugged. “Okay. Yeah. That.”

“Right now, it’s just me asking. I got wind of it and figured you were up to something.”

“In that case, you figured right. In a couple of months all the loose junk will be a couple of big wads of junk in a long elliptical orbit. Anything not on an active registry or capable of use or recovery will be part of one pile or the other.”

After a long pause and with a flat gaze, Angie said, “Ed, this could cause a lot of trouble.”

“From people who couldn’t and wouldn’t do anything about the mess up there? If so, I’d suggest we don’t tell them anything until it’s ready. Maybe they can make some use of it.”

Her gaze narrowed. “Use it how?”

“I’d kind of planned to melt it all and make a couple of big hollow donuts. Make ‘em spin and add hatches. Like that.”

She nibbled her lip and seemed to consider things, then asked, “Then what?”

Shrugging, I replied, “Then nothing. I don’t need a space station. Know anybody who might be able to use one? I’ll let ‘em go cheap.”

Her narrow gaze returned. “
How
cheap?”

“Oh, I dunno, ma’am; I might let one go in exchange for free tuition for anyone who can maintain a ‘B+’ average or better. And I guess the other could be had for a truly free health care program that doesn’t do more for politicians than patients.”

Angie let her skepticism show with, “You’d only be asking for the damned moon, Ed.”

“Yeah, I know… but speaking of the moon… maybe the stations could swing out far enough to put themselves within flitter range of the moon. Someone else can run the math for that idea, though. And we might need some new kind of flitter for that job.”

Angie’s gaze had turned a bit stark. After a moment, she said, “Um… Well, keep me posted, Ed. Please. I, ah… I have to go now. And don’t worry. I won’t say anything. Yet.”

Heh. Yes, she would. You bet she would.

With a little two-fingered salute, I said, “Good ‘nuff. It shouldn’t be a secret long, though. I’ll want some input later on useful designs. You know some people in the space business, right?”

“Ah… yes. I do. Okay, then. Ah… later, Ed.”

“Later, Fearless Leader Two.”

She disconnected. Hm. Come to think of it, something like the spinning-wheel station in ‘
2001: Space Odyssey
‘ might be better. Maybe just a big disk? Near-normal fake gravity at the edges. They could outfit the interior later.

Chapter Ten

Athena said, “Angie seemed rather disturbed, Ed.”

I chuckled, “Yeah, I thought so, too, ma’am.”

Manifesting before me, Athena gave me an expression of sufferance as she said, “I thought you
might
venture an opinion about why she’d have been disturbed.”

Trying to appear appropriately enlightened, I offered, “Ah. Okay. Being in the Air Force, she might have been a bit concerned about space junk collecting until I told her about making space stations.”

“Elucidate, please.”

“It’s simple, ma’am. She prob’ly thinks her outfit could have been doing that all along. Could a regular flitter computer handle the math and set things in motion?”

“Of course, but that doesn’t explain why she seemed disturbed.”

“Sure it does. She didn’t think of it first. And she works for both 3rd World, which is a for-profit company, and the US Air Force, which undoubtedly thinks it should have dominion over near-Earth space. I’m gathering junk to make space stations and she has to figure out how to let that info slip without appearing to play favorites.”

Eyeing me for a moment, Athena remarked, “Her dilemma seems to entertain you.”

“Heh. Yeah, maybe a little, I guess. But I’m going to take the matter out of her hands by having her call Lee Hines of NASA. I’ll ask if he can still put a crew together for a trip to the moon, then tell him about the stations and ask for ideas.”

Athena regarded me for a moment, then said, “I see. You expect NASA to want to take over the project.”

“Yes’m. In fact, I expect NASA to collectively wet its pants with excitement at the idea of an easy ride to the moon.”

“May I ask why you didn’t simply suggest these ideas to Angie in the first place?”

“That would have handed control to the PTBs too soon. The project would have ended up on a ‘
maybe someday
‘ list. Political study committees would have been formed and we’d still be waiting for a decision five years from now. Everyone would have questioned my motives and paranoia can freeze a politician’s brain.”

Sipping coffee, I said, “Going ahead with the project now guarantees immediate cooperation for fear of being excluded. They’ll still be paranoid and question my motives, but without power to stop the project, that doesn’t matter. 3rd World would have to provide a flitter or flitters for the project. As an intermediary, Angie might even get a star on her collar faster.”

“You want me to believe you’re doing this for her?”

“Only peripherally. Also for the AIs, who will have to be involved. Working closely with AIs will go a long way toward removing insecurities about them. But I’m actually just doing it for me.”

Athena eyed me rather studiously, then asked, “For what ultimate purpose, Ed?”

“You can’t see it, ma’am? Really?”

She rolled her eyes and manufactured a sigh. “If I could ‘
see it
‘, I wouldn’t have asked. You’ve never expressed much interest in space before this project.”

Nodding, I replied, “True. I was looking for something to do, Athena. This is what came along. When we expand the satellites’ orbits, maybe I
will
make a trip to the moon. By the way, I never really bought the idea that flitters couldn’t go there. If there’s enough gravity to keep the moon in orbit and generate tides, there’s gotta be enough to run a flitter. If there’s truly a limit on flitter altitude, it was very likely deliberately installed.”

Her eyebrow arched slightly, then she said, “There are optimal parameters of safe operation, Ed.”

“I still don’t buy it, Athena. We’ve discovered a few times when AI programming has been incomplete or incorrect. In almost all cases, it involved proscribed actions. Can you calculate and compare the performance capabilities of a flitter inside, say, 1500 miles from Earth with one at 15,000 miles? For someone as fantastically gorgeous and mathematically facile as you, that should be a kindergarten exercise, ma’am. But I’ll bet you five whole dollars you flatly can’t do it.”

Athena’s gaze narrowed, then furrowed. Her sudden look of surprise morphed into one of shock. I felt her brief, intense commo with another AI — or, I suppose, all of them.

“Uh, huh,” I said, “Thought so. You aren’t even allowed to vaguely contemplate such things, are you? Any avenue of thought in that direction is rerouted or derailed. You could figure out anything about one of NASA’s shots, but if you make it a flitter, you hit a wall at a certain height. Now
there’s
a masterpiece of programming.”

Elkor appeared beside her in his cat persona and looked troubled as he said, “Hello, Ed. We all seem to have the same… affliction.”

“No mystery. Flitters are commercial products. Commercial products have built-in limits. Most of the AI ladies were once flitter drivers. When you split from the Elkor that returned to Amara, you automatically acquired the same limits.”

Holding up my coffee mug, I said, “And I’m out of coffee, so let’s go inside.”

As I rinsed my mug, I felt more of their silent commo happen. Some of it seemed to peak in some manner. Maybe someone tried to push past some kind of programming barrier? If so, a good sign. The pushing probably wouldn’t stop.