April 2: Down to Earth (10 page)

The fellow who ran the place just held up two fingers, with an inquiring look on his face and she nodded enthusiastically. He only saw her every two or three weeks, but they had established her standard order was two cheeseburgers with everything, garlic fries and a big coffee. He turned his back and grabbed near a quarter kilo of ground sirloin in his hand and rough shaped it against his other palm. The sight of  bare hands against raw meat alone would have closed his doors forever Earthside, but a health department was one of those bureaucracies that most orbital dwellers were still deliberately avoiding. However the community was still small enough, that if anyone had doubted the cleanliness of his hands his doors would be quickly closed for lack of business anyway. April noted he wiped his hands on a disposable wet towlette from the dispenser, every time he turned back to cook. Not only that, but a lot of people now had a laser scanner in their com pads, that could detect offensive bacteria and quite a few were not shy to check everything they bought to eat. The roughed out patty went into a press grill with two heated platens and it squished the meat to the precise proper thickness and sizzled as it charred sear lines in the faces. He loaded a second press quickly and removed the first patty as soon as the second was started.

April had never gotten him to tell her his name. Whenever she asked he always said, "You'd never pronounce it right anyway. Just call me Cheesy. Everybody does."

The finishing touches involved sealing all the onions, mushrooms, olives and condiments, in a massive layer of cheese, that bound them to the patty and rendered the whole construction mechanically feasible in zero G. A real cheeseburger was as hard to make as a Sloppy Joe, so it didn't self destruct to a cloud of drifting parts in zero G. A proper Joe was held together by surface tension.

Cheesy capped the second burger with a beautiful golden toasted sesame seed bun and spun around on the elastic toe strap he used to locate himself at the grills and deposited the basket in front of her. He waited to pin the last burger through with a hefty toothpick, so he could make a comment on her cooking preference. When he slid the skewer home as a finishing touch, he said "Moooo!" as it pierced the patty.

"Oh good!" April shot back. "You finally got it rare enough."

"If it was any rarer, we might be able to resuscitate it," he assured her.

She took a huge bite and leaned way back on the stool. Hanging on with her toes under the grab bars and presenting both hands palm up to him in a big show, to forestall any conversation while she leisurely savored the first bite.

"Nothing should be that good you horrible, horrible man. Why won't you come to Home and open a nice place in spin there?"

"I like the spacer trade," he explained again, but he was smiling at her pleasure, behind a huge moustache, because he liked hearing how good his food was. "You don't have enough business outside of spin for me. Maybe when you guys get your act together and build a new station. Everybody keeps wondering when it's going to happen. If you don't hurry up, all the stable node points will be occupied and you'll be at an economic disadvantage in a less stable orbit."

Cheesy's economic analysis was so similar to what her business savvy brother was telling her, that she wondered again about his background. When she first came here, he wore a checkered cloth wound around his head Middle Eastern style. When she asked where he was from, he just said Persia. Last time she looked Persia wasn't on any maps, unless they were in history books. The headgear had switched one day with a baseball cap, that said "Larkin's Lunar Lines" in hot pink on gray, with a stylized rocket ship and moon. She didn't know if it was a gift, or if some crewman left it behind when he ate.

"Why don't we each kick in a trillion EM and get the ball rolling?" she suggested. April didn't have a trillion EuroMarks, anymore than he did, but if he knew how much closer she was than him, it would have shocked him.

He smiled back at her real big, "Will you take my check?"

"You bandit. You don't even know how many zeros to write for a trillion do you?"

"Hey, if you have to count zeros, you can't afford it."

April couldn't figure out if that was a misquote, or if he had coined a whole new saying.

It was no surprise, to see two young fellows in French military flight coveralls, with their flag and rank markings came in after April and sit, politely leaving a stool between them and her. They wore the sort of one piece padded garment crews in a big ship used in peace time. Too bulky to comfortably use as a suit liner, except in an emergency. But thick enough to pad against bumps in a crowded zero G environment and warm enough to allow running a cool ship. The crew of the
Happy Lewis
however, always wore p-suits when they left dock. Their cabin was so small a leak could drop them below breathable pressure in seconds. The nearest Frenchman hit the stool like a bird landing on a fence post, but the other was an obvious newbie. He grasped the rim of the seat, struggling to wrap his feet around the toe bars like his buddy, but floating away. His friend grabbed a pinch of fabric at the small of his back and hauled him down firmly. After studying how the other held on a bit he soon copied the technique. When he looked over and saw the bare laser pistol holstered on April, cross draw style, he was so startled he almost floated away again.

"Mon dieu. Est-cela permis?" he inquired, in hushed tones of his friend.

The experienced one laughed and leaned back to clear the space between April and his friend. "Say hello to my new crewman Paul for me, so he can tell his family how he met a real live pirate from Home and lived to tell the tale. If I may introduce myself also, I am John."

"Now be nice Monsieur. We did carry letters of marque and reprisal in the war, but we have this nice treaty with the North Americans now, so they get to keep New Las Vegas today, instead of it being my prize. But that doesn't mean I'm going to walk around their territory
naked
either," she assured him, laying her hand flat over her weapon to make clear what she meant.

The newbie looked at her gesture, but his eyes continued up from there and he was noting with approval her snug black outfit. She was just starting to get a little bit of a figure and she was as sleek as a cat in the outfit and knew it. A North American would have been ashamed or at least wary to inspect someone as young as April, indeed North America was so prudish now, that you could get arrested and interrogated for just a lingering look in a public place. She would have been offended soon at the inspection, if he hadn't had the grace to look away and actually blush when his eyes reached hers and he found himself caught out.

"Citizens of Home have rights of free passage and are entitled to follow their own law and custom transversing USNA territory," she explained. "That and a few other small things were imposed in the terms of their surrender.  For example, my cargo being loaded has been declared to Customs, so they know what's on board if we have a fire or something. The emergency crews would know if there were any hazardous materials. That serves everyone. But they can't impose tariffs, or tell me I can't take anything through. Just a few small privileges, someone else might not have."

"So the gun?" the newbie hesitated, struggling to phrase his question politely.

"It's my privilege and custom on Home, so it's the same crossing NA territory. Our law supersedes theirs where Home citizens are involved. It's not really a firearm either, it's a laser. Here, take a look."

He took it gingerly and had been in zero G long enough that he wiggled it back and forth to gauge its mass.

"Wow. It's really light."

"Yup, but it's a half gram lighter when you shoot out the power pack."

He thought about that a minute and offered it back by the stubby barrel. "I'd hate to have an accident, better take it back."

"Oh, you can't fire it. Give it a try."

He looked dubiously at her and asked Cheesy, "What's behind the bulkhead there?" pointing at the surface behind the grill.

"All the vastness of space, unless the damn moon is in the way again."

Satisfied, he pointed it at the wall and squeezed the trigger. A tinny little voice said, "You are not an authorized user. If you persist this device will self-destruct."

"It has a DNA reader in the handle, among other safeguards," April explained, licking the corner of her mouth. "Pistol, accept the current holder for target power only, activate visible designator from trigger pressure and end authorization in one hour. Cheesy, what you got for him to shoot?"

Cheesy took another ball of meat without comment and pitched it overhand at the stainless covered bulkhead behind his equipment. It hit with an audible ‘plop' and clung to the surface with a domed red face to them.

"Touch the trigger very, very, lightly and it will give you an aiming dot and then blast that meat," she instructed with a chuckle, enjoying the impromptu arcade.

He touched the trigger and then steered the little red dot on to the target and squeezed gently. It was obvious he had some experience shooting from the smooth control. The center of the sirloin turned brown and sizzled rather quickly, a tendril of steam drifting away. He was pleased with himself and made to pass the pistol back toward her, but his buddy reached and took it.

"Now, it won't accept me firing it either will it?" he asked.

"No. It'll read and reject your DNA."

"So, what if I keep trying and don't understand English, what? - Boom?"

"Try it and ask," she suggested.

He pointed it at the safe wall carefully she noticed approvingly and squeezed the trigger. The same warning was repeated, but then he told it. "Je ne comprends pas. Je ne parle pas anglais." The same little tinny voice repeated the warning in perfect Parisian French. That seemed to impress him more than the firepower and he passed it back with a grin.

Meanwhile, Cheesy had scrapped the ball off the wall and popped it in a grill. When the two Frenchmen ordered, she was relieved to see he made theirs from fresh, but he soon made the targeted burger up for himself and joined them.

"So, if you had a load of 500 Kilo' of cocaine, the USNA Customs would have to just let you slide right through and you'd declare it to them? Right?" he inquired, skeptically.

"Yes. I'd never accept a load of coke. I don't need a law to make me not deal crappy street drugs, but if I did there's not a thing they could do about it," she told them dead pan. "A serious breach of our treaty could put us back at war. I don't think they want that - yet."

"I'm glad you're friends with France." was all the near one, John could say and he received his burger from Cheesy and turned his attention to it. He seemed put off with her blunt willingness to use force.

The serving baskets Cheesy used were covered with a loose bright red checked cloth that was slit but pulled closed by an elastic band along the inside edge. That kept things from floating away. April had been reaching in with two fingers and snatching garlic fries out, but when she reached in with both hands and pulled a second burger out the Frenchmen were astonished.

"Where does it go?" the newbie protested.

"Hey, I haven't eaten in
hours
," April said in her defense. She leaned across and dabbed a little spot of mustard with her finger tip on the sullen one's neck and he stiffened, not sure what she was going to do and still unhappy with her, but too proud to flinch away.

She leaned closer still, legs almost straight from the toe bars to reach him, but slowly so as not to scare him and licked it off with a single slow lap of her tongue that trailed off behind his ear. He couldn't help an involuntary deep breath and a visible shudder. "I'm glad you're friends with Home too." she breathed in a warm stage whisper on his ear, "but you can be glad I'm not
really
ravenous," she said sweetly and play nipped the edge of his ear.

His friend hooted and drummed the counter a staccato roll with his hands flat. Cheesy had an old fashioned ships bell behind the counter, he rang when he got a tip and he gave that three good strikes, laughing. A year ago she'd have never have had the nerve to do such a thing. But traveling and dealing with port officials and businessmen, had given her new self confidence.

"My God, Paul," he said to his friend, flustered, face red, leaning away from April. "tell my family I was brave to the end."

"Oh, I'll describe your sad fate in careful detail to your mother," he promised too easily.

That seemed to restore the damaged civility to their dinner and they bantered about lighter things until she had to go. She beamed her payment off her pad to Cheesy, seventy-eight dollars NA, plus a ten buck tip. Cheesy came over and took her empty basket, but her surprised her by leaning across the counter and taking her head in both big hands and solemnly kissing her well to each side high on her cheeks. "You won't be back until the new year. You have a very good, safe new year and be careful out there," he commanded seriously. April had seen Middle Eastern men do that to each other, but she was touched he'd do such a comradely thing with her. She just hugged him around the shoulders which felt much more natural to her and assured him, "I'm always careful – don't you worry," and gathered her feet under her ready to jump for the door, but paused. "What ship are you from, so I'll know if I meet you out there?" she asked at the last moment of the Frenchmen. She was impressed they hadn't made fun of Cheesy's concern for her, after all the other banter.

"We're from
L' Arch de Ciel
. The Arc of Heaven," he translated, "a fine ship of the Republic out of Tahiti.  I am John and my friend is Paul. And you, what ship are you traveling on mademoiselle?"

"The
Happy Lewis
, out of Home as you've figured out. I'm April. It was nice meeting you John, Paul," she nodded at each and jumped for the door.

"The
Happy Lewis
?" the newbie John asked, suddenly interested. "Un navire de guerre," he acknowledged with respect in his voice - a warship. "If I had but known, we could have asked her about the ship and the crew before she left. I hear it's a tiny vessel for all its deadly reputation, so certainly she would know everyone aboard from even a short passage."