April 4: A Different Perspective (24 page)

"Would you use the candle so the others can see how it works?"

He took the candle, held the button down on the side and the white smoke came out in a thin stream going right in the hole. The hole was so little you couldn't see it from two meters away, but when he moved the candle around the hole, the smoke went right to it from the entire circle.

"How are you going to patch it?" Jon prompted him.

"Oh the smallest is plenty," Malcolm said. "Want me to do it?" he checked for sure.

"Please."

He took the circular one, black and flexible, gripped the little ridge it had on the back and peeled the film off the front with the tab that hung out. One confident motion planted it flat over the pin-hole. He then used the candle all around the patch without being prompted. It hung in wisps without streaming. He took his finger off and waved his hand through the smoke to disperse it.

"Do any of you three want to try it?"

"I'd like to," Eric asked. "Just to feel how hard the patch is to peel and stuff."

"One hole coming up special order," Jon told him, grinning. Jon smiled a lot, but it didn't have that fakey quality so many adults had. He produced a tool from the back of the roll-along and positioned it away from the recent patch. There was a rubber cup protecting the business end of the tool and when he pressed a button they couldn't tell what happened underneath.

This hole seemed a little bigger and this time had a definite whistle. Eric did the candle thing very briefly because it was obvious. The new hole had a little sooty ring around it too so it was more visible. Eric grabbed the next bigger patch and ripped the cover off the adhesive. He planted it firmly, not tentatively, with one thrust. The candle showed it was a good patch. Eric was very satisfied.

"Who's an expert?" Jon asked, switching something in the back. "I got a big crack here, not a fiddling little hole. Who will save my delicate little butt from asphyxiation?" he pleaded. That got giggles. There wasn't any part of him obviously delicate in the least and it was just far enough on the edge of vulgarity to have an adult say
butt
that they were shocked, but enjoyed sharing the forbidden a little. Down below in North America it would be far worse.

"I can handle that," a boy about Eric's age said confidently.

"Ah, Barak," Jon said knowing him by name. "Go to it."

Barak  approached the panel with the candle. It weakly sucked smoke, but on a line a half meter long instead of a point. He took a marker from his pocket and made a mark at both ends of the invisible crack. He unhesitatingly took the foam and foamed an oval around the leak, then took the plastic sheet and doubled it over. He shook it out like shaking a tablecloth out and swung it smoothly to suck down flat on the foam. He brushed with his hand flat, from the center out to spread the foam out under the plastic and then lifted the double thickness he'd made and shot foam between the layers closing it and spread that again with his hand. Then he sprayed the entire perimeter in one motion.

"Masterful," Jon praised him. "I wish half the adults could patch like that. Two layers are of course, better than one. and the way you swished the sheet in from the side, he mimicked the motion. You looked like a matador trying to tease a bull. The sheet went down flat, with no big wrinkles, which is a plus."

"You might wonder why
you
need to be able to do this. If there is a
big
problem and my security people and the maintenance folks and a lot of other adults are all going to be running around fighting fires and patching
really big
leaks, then we will appreciate and need your help taking care of the little leaks like this."

"Thanks Jon. I'm glad we got everybody current on this. We're a little late going to lunch. Would you like to come along with us to lunch?"

"I'd enjoy that," Jon said. "And if anybody has any questions I'll leave the seat across from me open and you can come ask me," he offered.

* * *

At lunch Eric was very surprised to see his sister go over and sit opposite Jon. "Ah, what can I tell you M'lady?" Jon offered.

"Are you really bald, or do you shave your head every morning?" Lindsy asked. Faye looked stricken, but Jon laughed so hard he had to cover his mouth.

"Feel it and you tell me," he challenged.

Lindsy felt, tentatively at first and then hard, carefully back behind the ears and neck. "There isn't a little stubby bristle
anywhere
," she declared. "No way you could do it that carefully every time. You really are bald," she declared, surprised.

"You're right and now you have revealed one of the Mysteries of Home," he declared.

* * *

"Come on in" one of the goombas casually invited them in the suite the next morning. He seemed much recovered from his ordeals. Buscemi was in good spirits too, sitting back from an amble breakfast. There were five places. That was interesting. Mackay wasn't sure if Buscemi would eat with his lieutenants. He wasn't at all certain what the social order was like within crime families. Gunny assured him, in some interesting detail, that April's friend Eddie could tell him anything he wanted to know about La Cosa Nostra.

They decided to dress a little less aggressively this morning and picked lower profile under armor instead of the higher grade stuff that rode on top. Neither did they have long guns and although Hall had on the backpack auto-aiming gun, he'd thrown a light windbreaker over it and the snouts were laying curled on his shoulders like some strange necklace of black metal.

"I have some good news," Buscemi informed them. "I was able to obtain some help from local friends and my boys are packing now. They will have a fellow at the outgoing shuttle to collect all the hardware, so we don't need your services any longer."

"If that is your judgment. Certainly our contract can be terminated at will. We do know local custom and have zero G skills, but if you think you'll be OK without us we'll be going. If you'd just scan our fee to my pad we're done with each other."

"I'll send it around when I'm back to my business offices," Buscemi said, waving it away as unimportant. "Shortened to one day instead of three, of course."

"No. We are due the three days we contracted, even if you withdraw early. I insist," Mackay said with no particular rancor, but firmly.

The fellow who must be the head goomba looked so sad and shook his head. "You don't 'insist' with the Capo. It isn't
respectful
," he explained, spreading his palms like he was laying the matter before them to see.  

Mackay wasn't done talking yet, but the goomba to the left of Chen worried he might be and reached inside his jacket. Chen knew he wasn't going to offer them gum, so he proceeded on the assumption they would be taking them all down.

Chen suddenly had a polymer covered iron rod in his right hand, coincidentally the same length as his forearm. He swung it backhand without even looking to the right. He'd checked the distance to that fellow when they all stopped moving and knew where he was. It smacked him across the forehead with a surprisingly soft >POCK!<. He folded limp as an over-cooked noodle.

The fellow drawing the gun was by this time showing some wrist again and Chen swung over hand with a will. The wrist made a much more satisfying crunch and the gun fell to the floor. The silly boy leaned over trying to recover it left handed. Chen gave him an unhurried and restrained love tap above his ear, so he joined his friend on the floor.

The chief goomba was caught by the movement with his hands spread wide gesturing to make his point to Mackay. He was far too slow anyway, but that really left him in an awkward position to respond. By the time he had his hand on a pistol butt Gunny had stepped past Mackay and drawn and extended his Sig. It was cocked, with his finger inside the guard and jammed under the man's nose. He just pushed and walked him back against the bulkhead in three fast steps. He drew the pistol to the side and the man didn't even try to duck. He just closed his eyes and grimaced. Gunny backhanded him on the side of the head and there were three on the floor.

The juniormost goomba was the smartest: he had both palms showing, standing very still. Both the muzzles hanging over Hall's shoulders had come alive like startled snakes and were both pointing from each side directly at the fellow's nose.

The whole action had taken a little more than three seconds.

"Are dollars OK, or would you like EuroMarks?" Buscemi asked, fumbling with his pad, sweat beading up on his flushed face.

"Dollars are fine." Mackay swiped his com pad past the offered port and checked the total carefully. "A free word of advice," Mackay told the man mildly. "People on Home are different. There are very few sheep and victims to be found. I know a teenage boy on Home who has no military experience and you'd think he couldn't walk out to buy a sandwich without getting rolled, to look at him. The Chinese decided to steal one of his little space ships a month back. He dropped a fusion bomb on their spaceport rather than let them steal from him. Destroyed his ship and the main Chinese spaceport and most of a town of a million and a half people next to it. There's a crater there now five or six kilometers across. If they had not backed down, then I really worry how many more he would have send down on their heads," he explained.

"If you mess with Home you aren't setting yourself up to avoid windows the rest of your life. You'd  have to worry if they will find the house you are in and drop a Rod from God down the chimney, or if they know what neighborhood you are in, they might decide a ten-kiloton warhead is a sufficiently surgical strike. If you really, really, pissed them off, they might decide Lake Michigan needs new big Chicago Bay on the South end.

"Why haven't I heard that about China?" Buscemi reasonably asked. "Something that big should have been in the news." He was much braver now that Mackay was talking and it seemed he wouldn't be shot out of hand.

"I believe the Chinese found it embarrassing," Mackay explained. "If they publicly acknowledged it they lose face and all the more so if they are impotent to respond to it. Yet even those crazies are not stupid enough to find out how many quarter-billion megaton warheads they could absorb. I don't imagine the USNA wants that story on the news. It could make their people  realize their leaders retain power only because the same teenage boy hasn't decided to give them the same treatment as China."

"Yeah, yeah I can understand that. You look like you can't hold your territory, you're done."

"Go back to
your
territory," Mackay advised him. "You know how things work there and fit in. You don't understand things up here."

"You got the families here too," Buscemi objected.

"Yeah and if I have to do business with them I'll ask Eddie The Lip Persico how to deal with them. They may be in the same line of business you are, but they are spacers too."

"Persico! Why didn't you say you were connected to them?"

"Because I'm
not
. But I'm
Home
, that's enough he would speak respectfully with me."

Buscemi nodded, still uncertain of the full social dynamic. "OK, you and I, we're square, OK? We're quit of each other after today, capiche?"

"Agreed. We're done here guys," he told his crew. The last through the door was Holt. He turned his back on them, but the black muzzles at his shoulders turned to the rear and tracked on the them until the last sliver of doorway was closed.

Chapter 23

"Mom, we need to show you how to use the patch kit," Eric insisted. "It's here in the com console and we had a really good demonstration on it in school today."

"I'm glad for you, but I want to go to supper now. You can show me tomorrow when you're not in school."

"Promise mom?" Lindsy asked. "Eric is right about this. It's really important. We'll be home with you tonight and tomorrow, but we really need to show you before we go back to school."

Lindsy and Eric agreeing about something? Had cats and dogs formed a union? It was so strange she felt faintly threatened by it, like they might gang up on her.

"Yes, I promise, we'll come back home after breakfast and you can have as much of the morning as you need to show me. Satisfied?"

"Yes, thank you. We had the Head of Security in and he didn't just lecture. He had panels with leaky spots on them and we used real patches and tested them after we patched them."

"Oh my. That that sounds intense. Was it intimidating having the top cop at school?"

"Nah, he's really neat," Eric informed her. "He didn't act all stern with anybody. He's a whole lot less stuck up on his authority than my principal back home."

"Did he wear a uniform and a badge and gun?"

"He was just dressed in regular slacks and a dress shirt," Lindsy remembered. "No badge, I'd have remembered that." She scrunched her eyebrows up and thought on it. "He had one of those  Tasers, not a regular pistol, but I'm so used to seeing them on everybody now, I didn't think anything about it at the time. He laughs a lot and real easily."  

"He went over to the cafeteria with all of us and had lunch," Eric piped up.

"Did he have a lot of questions?" Linda asked warily.

"No, he had a lot of answers," Lindsy laughed. "He left the chair across from him open so if you had any questions you could go ask him."

"And I couldn't believe you had the nerve to ask that!" Eric said. For a miracle Lindsy didn't take offense at him, she just grinned devilishly.

"What, pray tell, did you ask?" their mom worried.

"She asked if he was really bald, or if he shaved his head every morning," Eric supplied.

"That's a
really
personal thing to ask," her mom said, horrified.

"I know. I wish I'd thought of it first," Eric admitted.

* * *

"I don't
want
the job," Everett Jones snarled at Hartug. "I do something actually useful. I keep these piece o' crap beer can rovers working. What of them we have
left
. If I try hard enough they get my friends back home alive. The administrators don't do anything satisfying and mostly sit around thinking too much and creating ways to interfere with the folks who are running things just fine."