April 2: Down to Earth (40 page)

"Hello April. I've been waiting to talk to you trying to think what I'm going to say and getting no closer to it and then we saw your interview with Kyrah Armstrong on CNN and Harrison trying to arrest you.. That made me realize how close we came to losing you again and I had to call, even if I'm not entirely sure what to say. I just don't know what to think about your brother. I feel like I might have forced his hand and I think other people here feel even stronger that I precipitated his action and that I'm somewhat to blame for his death. I admit I didn't like him. But I would have never plotted to remove him, like he did me, if he'd just continued doing business in an honorable way. How do you look at it? Do you want to work with me still, or do you blame me and want me to just go away?" He was obviously distraught and not his usual focused self.

April thought about it briefly. She didn't want to ramble on about it, like he was. "Eddie this is not just about you and Bob. He was doing me dirty too and planning ahead to cheat Jeff. None of the three of us had any desire to stop working with him, until
he
forced
our
hands, by being a greedy control freak. He wouldn't work
with
anyone. It had to be his way entirely."

"We'll never know what he did, to try to damage all of Home working with the USNA. I just don't see any way that explosion was innocent Eddie. They had to be trying to open the projector, or the drives, to set the self destruct off. We're down a ship now and Home needs you to push ahead with the next two ships and beyond, quickly. I was thinking on the way down here I am really not comfortable depending completely on others to land down here. So I think you should look into how we can get that capability too. I'm still working with you. If anyone else blames you, or me, or anybody but Bob, that's their problem. I walked away from the company and I had no idea who Bob's heirs were. I totally support you. We need those ships and more."

"We're building the
Home Again
and
Eddie's Scooter
as fast as we can, but there are some delays, because we're incorporating Jeff's solutions to the acceleration problem you posed."

"No kidding?" she said not trusting the security of their transmission to say anymore. "He came up with a better solution, than before I left?"

"You'll have to see when you get back. It's elegant," he assured her.

"Wow," was all April could say.

"One of those is your command if you want, or I'll start another if you want to stay with the
Happy,
until a new third generation ship can fly. As far as you bearing any responsibility for the
Home Boy
, you quit the company before your partner ever acted to cause its loss. Nobody in their right mind would connect you to it. It was entirely Bob."

"That's how I feel about you too," she said. "If you can finish the others quickly, enough Heather really needs the
Happy
for her Lunar venture. Just do what's possible for her. Call the
Happy
my nominal command, I won't be flying anything for awhile."

"April," he said changing his voice and looking serious, "I'm not sure it was a good idea to send you down there. We could not believe they'd have the gall to try to arrest you. Things are obviously even worse than we thought. Jon and your grandfather are speaking with President Wiggen about it. Just come back in one piece won't you? Don't take any more chances than you have to now, to finish your mission. Your grandpa is even more concerned about your safety, after losing your brother. And the damage that was done hitting Harrison's escorts and the Coast Guard Air Station, are driving the fringe groups that hate us further towards demanding action against us, not the other way. We don't think Wiggen has very good control of the situation."

"Thanks I'll try not to step in the lion's den now. We'll talk more when I come home," she promised and ended the call.

* * *

"My friend's are worried I'm pushing the opposition a little too hard," she admitted.

"I do believe, they thought arresting one lone teenage girl would probably be a little easier, than it turned out to be," Papa allowed. "If I were you, I'd become more concerned now, that they will try to just bump you off, by a method that will not expose them to as much risk as arresting you in public. I'd limit shopping, where you walk around exposed. And be careful driving around where you can be targeted in the truck, since its purchase will be in the public records. You might consider a Plain Jane car, to throw them off. Maybe turn it in after a couple days and get another."

"I'll do that, but I think it's time for me to move on to the mainland soon. I need to get the rest of my things from Frank and go. Are you going with me Adzusa, or is it too hot being with me now?"

Adzusa laughed at that. "If I was worried about the hot zone around you I'd have stopped hanging around you a year ago, when I shot the pics of you on Home. It got pretty hot out in the corridors then, with bullets and beams all over the place. But at least I got some pics out of it. How you going to the mainland? Commercial airline? They may look at it as a new chance to hassle you about carrying. They won't even give you a plastic fork anymore, in an airliner."

"I don't know," April admitted. "I could afford to charter a biz jet if I wanted." What do you think of that Papa-san?

He considered it gravely, with his lips pursed up. "If you do, take steps to hide who is renting it. A small plane with just a few passengers is a lot easier to conveniently ‘disappear', than a commercial airliner with a couple hundred people. And there just isn't anything available to rent, that is as fast as military, or has much defense ability, past a few flares and decoys to stop shoulder fired missiles, when you are taking off or landing. There are a few transonic small biz planes, but most are owned and very few are available to rent or lease. Even those only fly at Mach 1.6 to 1.8 or so. The military has lots of planes that can run those down. I'd feel safer on a public flight, bought and boarded at the last minute."

"I told Eddie we needed a lander capability. I guess whatever we make should have the ability to transport us around, once we're down here too," she speculated.

"If you just need to get down, you could use an old fashioned capsule with an ablative heat shield and a parachute. You could even land it at an airport if you wanted, as long as it wasn't too windy that day to blow you off course. They make parachutes you can steer, so that would be a possibility to deal with a mild breeze and still land pinpoint. But if you want something that will take off, you'll need a lifting shape, or a winged vehicle that can survive heating. If you have enough power you could do a powered decent of course. Nobody has tried to do a design for a long time that required that, but what I'm hearing is you might have enough power capacity now to do that."

April made some notes and questions on the whole idea, chatting with Papa about it and sent them off copied to Dave, Jeff and Eddie. Maybe they'd laugh at her, but she asked if a standard aircar could be modified with a Singh power plant to run the fans and a Singh powered drive that would do a powered descent, until there was enough air for the fans to bite. She sent that off and wondered again what Jeff had come up with for the acceleration.

The dinner dishes were cleared away, there were a few desserts laid out and Papa's young men hung around. She thought they were enjoying the inside privilege, of eating with the family. They both were confident enough to not feel the need to add to a conversation, just because they were there and had quietly conferred with each other a few times.

Chapter 37

April's pad chimed again and she frowned at it. She was tired and stressed and really didn't want to keep taking calls all evening. "I'm going to turn this thing off, to take voice mail pretty soon," she declared. She left the pad configured as it was, the bigger screen still folded open on the table and accepted the call, not setting down the desert she was working on, since it would melt.

The older lady on the screen was not familiar to April, but she noticed both Li and Akira, the other young man, sat bolt upright and had a mask of neutrality fall across their faces. You'd think they were on camera, but she know the pickup was only showing her, because she had it open in a small window, in the corner of the bigger screen.

Then the face clicked and April was almost as surprised as the other two. She just wasn't used to seeing President Wiggen in a bathrobe, without the formal makeup she normally wore and the elaborate settings they always used to emphasize her power. She wasn't sitting in the Oval Office. She was sitting on what looked like a fairly normal, if comfortable, sofa, with an iced drink in her hand.

"Ah, Miss Lewis, can we speak a moment?" she asked. The woman seemed seriously irritated. "Eat your ice cream," she added. "Though I don't know how you can enjoy it, after all the people you killed today. Don't they weigh on your conscience at all?"

"I'm finding it hard to feel very badly about that," she informed Wiggen, without any problem finding words. "I went to the CNN studios to
talk
with Preston Harrison and Kyrah Armstrong. The creep found he couldn't lie freely, like the despicable son of a bitch he was, so he moved straight away to using force. He didn't show any more talent for bullying than he did for lying. What exactly did you expect me to do when the man swore to kill my family and nation to my face and them tried to cut me off from contact with my people and arrest me? Would you just quietly let yourself be lead off to probable execution? Maybe you would. Maybe you'll get a chance to find out, because it doesn't look like a lot of them care for you, much better than me. I think Harrison would have been as delighted to stuff
your
butt in an aircar and whisk you off to a real rough interrogation and extended hospitality."

Wiggen started to say something and then stopped and looked thoughtful. She took a drink before she continued. "Yes, I imagine that would have made his day. There have been a few attempts at pretty much that exact scenario the last few months," she confided. "For all I know, Harrison might have been the source of one of them. Keeping the country stable and my hold on power, are not easy right now and for all that I'm one of the few that want to treat Home well, you're not making my job any easier Miss Lewis."

"Will you drop the Miss Lewis, thing please. Every time somebody calls me that, I feel like I'm caught up in a Victorian novel," she begged.

"And how shall you address me?" she asked. "Do you want to flaunt some egalitarian policy, by us being informal?"

"Would you please ask President Wiggen, if she would expand the conversation beyond you two, to allow me to address her also?" Papa-san asked.

"Who is that?" Wiggen demanded. "I didn't know we were sharing this conversation."

"You caught me having supper with my hosts," April informed her. "I've taken other calls and right now it's rather difficult for me to move around freely, because I got hurt in the fighting.  I didn't run off for privacy with my other calls either. I would assume you'd feel free to share this call with your friends and advisers, if you needed their take on it. Shouldn't I have the same privilege? She zoomed the camera angle out until Papa-san and Lin were included in the pickup range. "Ms. Wiggen, President of the United States of North America, my hosts Tetsuo and Lin Satos," she introduced them. "There is probably some diplomatic protocol I messed up and didn't use, but it isn't out of egalitarian stubbornness or disrespect. It's just I was never trained in all that silliness, any more than I know how to curtsey properly, or would know how to address the Queen of England or the Pope, in a manner satisfactory to all the flappers and toadies around them."

The President looked tired and sighed. "I suppose I am used to having everyone primed how to address me, before they get near. Right now I don't have many flappers and toadies around me. In fact I have two naval guards in opposite corners of the room, watching me, weapons in hand and maybe watching each other. They're afraid to sit outside in the hallway, because this has been a night of the long knives and I've probably had as many people killed tonight protecting me, as you killed protecting yourself."

"Then how can you sit and enjoy your drink, anymore than I can enjoy my ice cream?" April tossed back in her face.

"Because I'm a world weary old woman who's hardened to this ugliness and you're supposed to be a innocent young gir,l whose conscience would be offended at such things."

"If you will release me from my role playing part, I won't expect you to follow your script and we can move right past all the play acting," April offered. "What do you
want
to be called? Just tell me and we can move on to something more important. Ms. Wiggen? Mrs. Wiggen? Madame President? President Wiggen? I have no problem with any of them."

Wiggen seemed to be unexpectedly relaxing from April's offer. "So, what do you call your hosts there, who are older than you? she asked, seemingly amused now and willing to spar.

"Well, he started out suggesting Illustrious Lord or Benevolent Master," she remarked offhand and her host looked stricken that she remembered that, much less was telling it to the President of the USNA, "although I haven't heard any of the servants using those, but we sort of agreed on Papa-san being acceptable, since he didn't seem to like Hey-You. His wife here, though Mistress of the House, seems to be called Mother by everyone, but she offered me Lin to use. But then they have fed me at their table and sheltered me under their roof and offered advice how to deal with the locals and where to go to get everything from fish sandwiches to carpet tape. Papa-san even shot a drone out of the sky, that was to snoop on me. So I owe them a huge debt of gratitude, as I do their daughter Adzusa. I'd call them anything they asked and figure they earned it on top of owing respect for their age."

"I was told our drone showed you walking out of a convenience store and lifting a weapon to aim right at it, the instant before it was destroyed," Pres. Wiggen told her. "Sorry, but I have to pin that one on you."