April 2: Down to Earth (3 page)

"Well, yeah," she admitted, defeated and changed the subject quickly. "So, I have a couple questions for you, but I really don't mean to coerce you to answer them because I'm a Lewis. Just for me, not anything to do with Home or the militia. If you want to tell me it's none of my business and to butt out, it's fine," she assured him.

He took a sip of coffee and nodded his agreement for her to continue on those terms.

"You're in the gene business, but I notice you don't try to pretty yourself up, so the customers are impressed with how you look. I mean, for most people it's a huge part of it. Maybe the most important part for some. They may want to live longer, but if you gave them the choice between living longer and looking good, I bet not a few would take the looks. So I'm wondering why? I saw you catch the lady's stuff off her tray yesterday morning and I know you have to have some alterations to be so fast. It has to be a real advantage to be that quick. Is that something you'd sell?"

"Well, yes. I intend to offer a number of mods eventually, but I'm rather cautious, waiting to see how the political landscape settles out here, before I make myself too conspicuous. Eventually I'd like to attract business from off station, but if there is a sudden movement to restrict such things, I'll be in a very bad situation. I've cut myself off from North America and I'm not sure where else I'd be welcome. I'll do some gene business eventually, but I'm not so broke I will worry about buying lunch for some time. I have some other small sources of income. You however, make two who've noticed this mod," he said with a grimace, that briefly replaced his happy face.

"After I made the mistake of moving too quickly, I went back up to get my bowl of oatmeal from your friend Ruby. She didn't
say
anything to me, but when she turned around she held it and the little pitcher of cream on a saucer well up off of the counter and just let go of both of both and turned away. I have to say she is
very
fast herself, for an unmodified person. She was turned fully, back to me, before they had fallen very far. By the time I caught it without spilling anything, she wasn't even watching. I thought at first she was testing me, but on thinking it over, she would have watched if it was a test. She was just
telling
me that she had noticed. I think that's just how her sense of humor works."

"Not much gets past Ruby. Her husband was our primary command pilot on the
Happy,
when we rescued the Singhs. Among other things she is a Doctor and professor of Medieval European Music and has military experience."

"She makes a wonderful Western omelet too," he added.

"Sometime have her make you an asparagus and mushroom omelet, with Monterey Jack  cheese," she suggested.

Abruptly her expression altered and she changed the subject as a thought hit her. "I bet you would be one tough sucker to shoot wouldn't you?" she asked, looking at him real hard. "You'd see the person reach their aim point and start to squeeze the trigger and  - zip - you'd not be there to be drilled. It would actually be
harder
to shoot you up close. Better to stand off down a corridor and hose the whole hall down with a continuous beam." She illustrated with a sweeping index finger.

He looked down at the finger of death sweeping over his breakfast, with considerable apprehension. "April, believe me, I understand and appreciate the survival traits you have. The same as you can appreciate a leopard in a nature video. But it's harder to look up in a tree and admire one hanging off a branch, looking down on you like it's reading the luncheon menu. You are a lovely young woman and so dangerous you don't look at someone and say ‘Can I take him?' You progress directly to ‘How?' But when you think about it, you unconsciously shift your weight to the left and cup your hand, poised like you are thinking through the motions to draw and burn the life out of me. I really think you need to learn not to telegraph these things, so I can enjoy my breakfast and not be sitting here considering ‘Could I possibly reach the door if I jump up to run and zig - zag fast enough?' it does not aid one's digestion."

"I'd think it would be more effective, as fast as you are, to close on me instead of run."

"You flatter me," he assured her, looked pointedly at the pebble textured handle sticking forward from her wide belt. "Whatever the grip is connected to, I don't want a close up experience with it."

"The aikuchi? It's a present from Genji Akira," April said, touching the hilt lightly. "He sent it as a gift after he won the Publishers and Editors award, with a piece which used some material about me. I suppose he was apologizing in a roundabout way, that he didn't ask permission to use his stringer's pix of me. He indicated this was a proper mate to a couple pieces my grandfather gave me. He thought it a bit easier to carry than a tanto."

"The Japanese writer? I didn't even know he'd won something. Would you care for some more coffee?" he offered, getting up with his own empty cup.

"Please."

When he returned he commented on the coffee, "Smells good." He took the small pad he favored and passed it over the cups as he had done when he sat down. You couldn't see the laser.

"You are checking for bacteria?" April inquired.

"Actually this one checks now for bacteria, viruses, drugs, poisons and pollutants."

"Nice. I didn't know they had gotten so much coverage in a pad plug-in. The coffee here is OK, but my friend Heather's mom Sylvia Anderson has me to dinner now and then and she has me appreciating a much better sort of coffee. She serves a very mild roast which isn't as bitter and it's the sort we buy now for our shipboard use. She's one of the few people here who really get serious about cooking. I'll introduce you if we get a chance. Now they have a
real
kitchen."

"April. You mentioned a Msr. Broutin. You don't seem the sort to drop names, but I have to ask, are you speaking of the Foreign Minister of France?"

"I don't think so. I thought he was some sort of art broker. I meet him at the lady's house I was speaking about, Sylvia, just before the war. From what he said over breakfast he was there to speak with my friend on behalf of the Treasurer of Lebanon. Nice, middle aged fellow - spoke English with almost no accent, just sort of softly inflected. A handsome fellow with a bit of a pointy nose and a little patch of gray at each temple and dressed like a million Euro. He had on one of those expensive handmade suits which hang just perfect around the collar," she demonstrated stroking both hand like she was smoothing lapels down, "even when he sat and the cuffs actually unbuttoned to fold back to wash. He had cuff links on I asked about and he made a present of them to me. I wear them all the time now. I should really get some more."

"For the Treasurer of Lebanon?" He seemed perplexed, tapping his pad. "Is this him?" he turned the little pad around and she had to look close to see the small screen.

"Well! I'll be," she was genuinely surprised, "it is him. He never mentioned he did any government work. But then why would he?" she shrugged. "He wasn't here for them; he was doing his friend a favor."

Jerry refrained from explaining how much some people delight in flaunting their position and power, at every turn. He suspected she would be disdainful of such pettiness.

Jerry stopped talking for a bit to do a search and kept pecking at the pad while stuffing his face. After a bit he admitted, "Ah, my mistake really. He was appointed
after
he was up here, but quite soon after the whole mess last year, when the previous Minister was sacked." His eyes narrowed slightly and he looked at her. "You wouldn't have had anything to do with that though, would you?" he asked suspiciously.

"No not, uh, explicitly," she denied automatically and could see Jerry purse his lips at the qualifier. She wondered now, if Broutin
had
turned the knowledge his visit gave him to some advantage. "He was nice. He warned me the North Americans would blockade us." She wanted desperately to get away from discussing politics and grasped for anything.

"The French have this cute custom of kissing," she started to relate with a smile, remembering how he took her hand and brushed her knuckles with his lips, but when she looked at the expression on his face, she cut it off and said, "No, never mind. I can tell you think I'm making things up."

"On the contrary, I don't think I've heard the half of it. How many other famous people do you know?" he asked directly.

"The most famous person I will ever know, is Jeff Singh," she said without hesitation.

He carefully considered how she phrased that and marked it as important to remember.

"He has ideas faster than they can be developed. If he just stopped thinking right now, I'm sure he has years of work just doing the lists he has on his pad. He showed me a module he is working on, to split carbon dioxide and return the oxygen to a suit and extract water vapor. When you have this on a suit you could survive until you starve. You may not be comfortable, but you could go two or three weeks and not suffocate. I asked what he was working on one evening and he sat and read a list of projects like that to me, for about a half hour. I honestly didn't understand maybe half of them. But every one was something that would be a major business and is needed. Nothing that is just a fad idea, that will run its course and blow over."

"A lot people have been trying to figure out if it is Heather Anderson, or you, who is Jeff's girl friend. Care to let me in on it, so I have the straight stuff instead of rumor and gossip?"

"People shouldn't worry about such things. I don't understand why they're even interested. We're all three business associates. Jeff and Heather worked together before me. But I know for a fact they both take anti-bonding medication, so they don't get distracted with romantic complications. But we're all three bound together in a lot deeper way anyway."

Our lives, our treasure, our honor, in friendship and loyalty
, April thought silently, with an inner surge of pride, remembering a toast, a solemn oath and an earnest hope for a nation that had come wonderfully true, but said nothing aloud. That story was way too private to share with anyone, even her grandpa. "If you look at the question, well, why shouldn't we
both
be his friend?"

He wanted to say people don't do that, but they do he knew, if not easily or often and he'd feel stupid to say otherwise. Still, he thought it would be a rarity if they were close without conflict or deception. Anti-bonding meds or no, he had seen even chaste same sex friendships destroyed, over refusing to share a friend. The very expression best-friend was singular. Not best friends. Maybe a mate
and
a best friend? But he had also seen people drive away a spouse's friends, from before their marriage… He realized he had stopped chewing and frozen up all conflicted unable to answer her.

He suddenly wondered if that was why
he
hadn't married, because he assumed it would limit whom he could have as friends.
How could such a young girl make him ask such disturbing questions about himself? April saved him from answering that he had no idea, by going on.

"So, how about your modification to reflexes, is it something I could buy?"

"You know I'm not a Medical Doctor don't you?" he asked carefully. "It's one of the big reasons I'm here, because I can pursue what I'm interested in without being hampered by studies and regulations which would slow me down. Back on Earth I'd be old and dead before I could accomplish anything. So everything I do will be experimental and there will be risks which are unacceptable to North American law and regulation."

"We're results oriented here. You can't be licensed, because we don't have such a thing yet. Don't know if we ever will. You must feel this mod is safe, or you wouldn't be carrying it in your own body."

"More than you can know," he said, surprised at her perception. "The reason I don't have many modifications is two-fold. One," he said lifting a thumb in the European manner, "it was safer in North America to be visibly lacking in any life extension, when my work was already suspect and two," he said lifting the index finger, "I plan to live a long time, so I don't want any modification done I am not sure I can undo later, if something better came along. I'm in good shape and there's no reason I can't wait and let the technology mature another twenty years or so, before I commit to any significant therapy. Since I'm not living down there, I can be a little more liberal with minor treatments which show. When I knew I was defecting, it was easy to convince myself to do this treatment, because I reasoned it could help me if I were on the run. I'd be harder to capture and much harder to shoot as you pointed out."

"I researched you a bit. You were involved with veterinary. Does your treatment use animal genes? I don't know how I'd feel about that, but I know a lot of people are squeamish about using them."

"The reason behind the prejudice, is people imagined because we don't know what all the genes express, if we added cat genes say, which altered the eye, we might be adding an unknown change. We might change personality for example and become a killer lacking in compassion like a cat with a mouse and far less human. It's sort of a modern version of the animist belief, that you take on some of the qualities of the animal when you eat it. And it has its basis in the same error - not understanding in detail how the process works at a molecular level,"

"Now it is true, in the very early days of gene mods, when we just looked for a marker, entire blocks of genes
were
moved to create a change, when it was not understood how all the instructions in the block were expressed. That fear might have had some basis in reality then. But it would be a far greater risk something far less subtle would be expressed wrong, like a change in an enzyme or hormone which would cause the person to be sick or die. Especially when they could not control the insertion point with any accuracy. They created quite a few problems with that shotgun approach, including inducing cancers."