April 8: It's Always Something (5 page)

Jeff requested what was left to sent to the YYR corporation they partnered with for spy bots. Perhaps they could find out something more from the remains. It was upsetting that the bot was more advanced than anything their rep, Natsume, was sharing with them.

Back at April's cubic they were both subdued. April made coffee and brought out brandy she hardly ever indulged in. She owned the bottle from before the move past the moon and it was still half full. It went directly in the coffee and Jeff didn't make a move or gesture to refuse it.

"It makes sense now it wasn't toxic," April decided, "But it was a good call to worry it might be," she allowed. "
Conservative
," she appended emphatically to show her approval.

"Tell me why," Jeff requested.

"Think on using such a snoop robot. It's one thing to plan its destruction if it is revealed, but it takes your planning to an entire different level of hostility and risk to just kill whoever finds it. It didn't come here straight from the airlock. That would be like shooting a shot blindly into the whole of Home and accepting the political consequences of hitting just anybody."

They sat and drank the coffee for a bit and she asked: "Don't you agree?"

"I'm not sure I do. Isn't that exactly what they did when we were in Low Earth Orbit and they fired a rail gun with a load of shot at us? They knew it was like firing a load of buckshot into a crowd, and they didn't really care who they hit. It feels like the same thing to me," Jeff said. "I just can't believe that they could build a bug so
small
. We haven't found a snooping mechanism for so long and all of a sudden – wow. If they get much smaller we won't be able to
see
them."

"Well, you showed how to find them," April pointed out. "We just need to automate it. Build a little roving army of...spider bots. I want one to move around my apartment and do what you just did. Compare the scenes of its previous rounds to what is here now and capture or destroy any infiltrators. You need to talk to Jon about allowing some into the wild to keep the whole habitat safe."

"Every time you set your pad down or throw your spex on your bed it will change the scene and confuse it," Jeff protested.

"Then make it smart. Make it to learn how common objects look from any angle. Or if there isn't enough room for that much processing internally let it have a link to an artificial stupid big enough to handle the questions for it," April insisted.

"It doesn't have to be as small as this one," Jeff said, pondering the problem. "Neither do I think I can make it fly and do everything else it needs to do too."

"No, of course not. Do you remember the little crabs we saw on vacation at the atoll? I don't care if they're this big," April said, holding her finger and thumb open, making an oval that might hold a chicken egg the long way.

"I can do that," Jeff decided. "With chameleon feet. I'll prototype a short run and then see what kind of bulk price YYR can give us. They might have some suggestions too."

"Good, because I may not be jumping up and down yelling, but I'm pissed off. I have no idea how long that creepy thing has been taking pix of my apartment. When Gunny isn't home I get out of the shower and come out naked sometimes to start coffee before going to get dressed. I can think of mornings I sat at the com console that way, because I saw a message notice flashing. I hate to think of some Earth perv seeing me like that in
close-up
. It makes me want to dress in the dark under my sheets," April said.

Jeff sighed. "Even that might not be safe with these and infrared..."

"Oh, great!" April said.

"But obscenity is in the eye of the beholder," Jeff pointed out.

"That was
exactly
my point," April said, finding no comfort there at all.

"Uh, yeah. I need one pretty badly for my office too," Jeff decided. "When I think of all the stuff I put up on our screens, and some little spy like that might be recording it all..."

"Good. It'll make you hurry," April said.

* * *

"You're an orbital construction worker?" the tall blond lady asked, distrustfully. It sounded so odd not to be called a beam dog or even less polite usage. She was holding his voucher between finger tips like it was unclean. It wouldn't surprise Kurt if she went back to the command deck and used a sani-wipe after boarding him. Nobody else had found him unlikely to be a beam dog. Kurt wasn't sure if she was the pilot or the number two from her uniform, but he was playing it straight and respectful. The fact she had six or seven centimeters on him and looked like she worked out with free weights when she wasn't flying spaceships helped keep him respectful too.

"Yes ma'am. I worked two tours pushing high iron. I thought I'd go home to Mobile Alabama where I have family, but the employment situation was impossible. I needed to go back to space badly enough I bought my own lift ticket," He said, nodding at the voucher in her hand. Maybe that would get him a little sympathy.

That got a reaction, but one of surprise. "This was expensive then," she said, waving it.

"Yes ma'am, it cost me five Solars. Damn near cleaned me out," he added, because suddenly he realized she might think he was good for a bribe.

"Five ounces of gold?" she asked, impressed.

"No ma'am. A Solar is just twenty five grams, not a Troy ounce. But it was a chunk of what I made on a full tour. I should have never come back down to Earth, and I won't make that mistake again."

She nodded, some of the hard edge gone now.

"Very well, we don't get many Mitsubishi workers lifting from Oslo. Mostly it is people going to the French hab or the European section of ISSII. Of course finding a ride in North America is even harder than Europe. We weren't bombarded, and we have far fewer people after the sickness."

"The airfare to Norway wasn't bad," Kurt admitted. "I'm just glad I didn't have to go to Japan or Australia. I'm sorry if somebody gave you a bad impression of beam dogs. They can be a rough bunch. They don't always treat each other very well either."

"The last one we had, the only one
I've
had, was wearing a t-shirt that would get him imprisoned in North America. I won't even repeat what it said about Earth. He also refused his anti-nausea pills and brought a
pizza
to eat on the way for lunch. I suspect he was still feeling the effects of too much alcohol, and he made unwelcome remarks on my pulchritude."

"I'm sorry," Kurt said again, "there's a time to comment on a lady's beauty and a time to remain silent." There, he very politely implied she was beautiful but also quite correct.

"Beam dogs work with death centimeters away all day long. It takes a little craziness, but they aren't always a joy to interact with socially," he admitted.

"Oh, he was closer to death than ever he knew, if he had any wit. I don't mind being told I'm lovely or asked out," she admitted, "but my copilot that day was my husband."

She smiled at her little joke and handed his lift ticket back to him. He forced a grin too.

"It works...sort of," April decided.

"The one solid indication it
works
would be finding another bug," Jeff insisted.

"Yes, but it found a raisin, or at least a grape that's been in the wild a long time, one of those tiny little buttons like Earth guys use to hold their shirt collars down, a nut, a couple things I think are pumpkin seeds, a single link from some kind of chain, and two page corners stapled together. That was just from sending it down the corridor last night and then again this morning."

Jeff cut into the seeds to make sure they were what they seemed, and looked at the little metallic ring. "I think that's what they call a jump ring, for jewelry making. It's probably gold."

"Keep it then," April offered. "I'd never throw gold away if it's big enough to see."

"Somebody probably broke a necklace and never found this piece, or even knew it was missing," Jeff decided. "I read they get more gold mining landfills in North America than some ore."

"Is Jon going to let you turn some bug hunters loose?" April asked.

"I've got him to agree to let us put two in the corridors outside your home and my office, after we have units inside. We're still talking. He wants them to stop at the pressure curtains at each end, and not enter any elevators, for now. I'm programming them to tuck their legs under themselves when they aren't moving so they don't look like so much like vermin themselves. He's afraid people really won't like them. I'm more scared people will actually smash them."

"People never value free stuff," April reminded him. "If you want them accepted put them up for public sale, and make them
expensive
."

"Of course," Jeff agreed. "We can always use the income."

* * *

Kurt hadn't been to ISSII before with any time to look around. He'd done a transfer through the station once before, but with only fifteen minutes between flights. He'd simply gone down the docking boom a couple ports and been able to do an early boarding to the other shuttle on count to leave.

This time through he had six hours to kill, not long enough to take a bunk even if he'd had the money to spare. He had a new found appreciation for keeping a low profile and controlling his mouth. He wanted to get back to Home and on to the moon without any further trouble or expense.

The docking boom had nowhere to wait. Kurt suspected just clipping on a take hold and trying to float there waiting for the other shuttle wouldn't work. Security types sat and fretted if someone loitered on their camera view without purposeful action. They tended to suspect a person must be up to no good. Besides, he'd need to use the toilet before the other shuttle was docked and accessible. He had little choice with six hours to kill but to go down to the spun sections.

The elevator had a guide showing the high gravity section as having businesses and administrative offices. If he could find a restaurant, he still had a few thousand North American dollars he could spend. People left you alone best when you were spending money. There hadn't been any point in trying to convert them back to Solars, unless he wanted to make some stranger laugh.

The business section was laid out to look much more like an Earth street, or at least a European one, than the narrower main corridor on Home. They had more fake architectural details hiding the structure and more plants and benches. There was even a cafe with tables outside under a totally unneeded canvas canopy. Unless they tried so hard for authenticity that they had sprinklers to simulate rainfall. The tables were behind a rail so he had to enter the cafe and ask to be seated outside. The street hadn't been that busy and there were only two other people at the tables. Kurt wondered why it was so dead.

His impression from the street was that it was a European cafe of some sort. The waiter, wrapped in a tight apron from the waist down, and long sleeved white shirt greeted him in some language he didn't know, but it wasn't French or German. It was much more flowing.

"Do you speak English?" Got an immediate switch to his language, without the resentment he'd encountered on occasion. The waiter had what he was pretty sure was a British accent to his English, but didn't make any cracks about Kurt's soft Southern drawl. The walk through the nearly empty restaurant left him sure the place was middle eastern if not exactly what sub-variety. There were a couple men at a table, but they were in the same white long sleeves and Kurt suspected they were other employees. There were brass work pieces, and some screens with city scenes, set up like windows that had minarets visible, but Kurt didn't know the region to recognize them.

"Would you care for some dinner?" the waiter asked. He seemed a little eager to Kurt. Maybe things were as slow as the lack of traffic in the street indicated.

"I have a few hours to kill until I catch the next shuttle for Home. I'd just like to have some coffee now while I check my messages and look at the news. I'll wait another hour or two to have dinner. I may be off your local clock, is it back shift right now?" Kurt inquired. "Should I order breakfast instead?" It certainly looked like the middle of the night by the lack of pedestrian traffic.

"Not at all, it's past prime lunch time, main shift local," the fellow informed him. "But we can accommodate whatever meal fits your time zone. If you've been here before, the lack of the usual...bustle, is due to most of the different national interest sections reducing personnel. With reduced supply and increased cost most of them have cut way back."

"Ah, thank you. It has been a good year since I've been through," Kurt admitted. He didn't volunteer how briefly he'd been aboard.

"Would you like your coffee as American brew or the middle eastern style?"

"The very thick coffee with Cardamom?" Kurt asked.

The waiter nodded and directed Kurt's view with eyes and a tilt of his head to another gentleman's table with a chased silver dallah and handled demitasse cup.

That was good, he could nurse that along for a lot longer than a regular cup.

"Please, I'd like that very much. Unsweetened, and if you put in other spices that's fine too."

The waiter gave him a smile that indicated he approved of that, and withdrew.

That killed another twenty minutes or a half hour just preparing it, which was to the good. Kurt laid his pad on the table and found zero messages waiting for him. That was a little disappointment. He'd told his sister he got away safely and thought she would at least acknowledge it. She hadn't seemed that torn up at his sudden departure. They were having some sort of drama fest she wouldn't detail between her room mates and herself that was distracting her.

The news programs were less depressing because they didn't apply to him so directly and personally as they did a week ago. He could tell the news feed on ISSII was not anywhere near as filtered as he'd gotten used to in Alabama. He'd been shocked at how different it was from Home, but he'd seen enough now to know how to read between the lines even in Alabama.

Kurt read what his search returned, and sat digesting it all, staring across the empty corridor at the opposite facade. The news put a deep frown on his face. He was out of that mess, but he still had his sister there. She seemed foolishly oblivious to how bad things could get to his mind. But she had zero interest in coming to Home even if he sent her a lift voucher in a year. He was trying to convince himself that he owed his uncle nothing after the cool reception he'd received, but he still cared.

Engrossed in his thoughts Kurt was staring unseeing, but suddenly was aware of a man was staring back. A slim blond fellow was exiting the offices right across from him. He had on an Earth style suit, a very nice one, which was unusual on a hab. He paused and scanned his surroundings. The fellow had a sleepy droopy eyed look, but when he found Kurt glaring at him he perked up.

Kurt was embarrassed to alarm the fellow. He looked down and tried to smooth his face a little. When he glanced up again the man was walking away toward the elevators, so no harm done, he dismissed him from mind.

The waiter brought his coffee, and poured a tiny splash in the bottom of the cup before going to attend another customer. It was boiling hot but such a short splash cooled quickly and it was delicious. He'd as much news as he could stomach and looked to see what was happening in sports. A lot of his Home workmates followed
real
football as they put it – soccer, so he tried to keep aware of what the important teams did. He still liked basketball, though he was far too compact to play it well himself.

"Mr. Bowman?" A carefully modulated voice called for his attention.

Kurt started a bit, and looked up. The blond fellow was leaning on the terrace railing, looking unnaturally relaxed.

"My apologies if I was rude," Kurt said. "I wasn't staring
at
you, my thoughts were far away, and I was more staring
through
you." About then his brain caught up with what he'd said, and he realized the man shouldn't know his name.

"That's the conclusion I quickly reached," the fellow said. "I checked the incoming passengers off the last shuttle to match your face and discover who you are. You're headed out on the next shuttle to Home and all your particulars match, so I realized you weren't here to cause me any harm."

"Yes sir. I'm just passing through and don't want to cause you any trouble," Kurt assured him.

"You aren't, but you are fresh from North America, aren't you? You might do me a service if you are inclined to do so. I was coming across to lunch when your gaze deterred me. May I buy you lunch and allow me to ask how you found things in North America?"

Free lunch? The man had no idea what a gift that was to him. "Sure, I'm happy to have some company. The news is too depressing to read more, and I have hours to fill before I can leave."

The fellow vaulted the rail, pivoting on one straight arm, with an ease that Kurt immediately noticed. He worked in zero G constantly with what amounted to a group of young athletes in prime condition. They moved with delicacy learned where a thoughtless movement could leave you with a crushed hand or a trapped finger. One didn't move like this man, without making a noise or having to readjust his expensive suit, unless you were extraordinarily strong and coordinated. He even sat opposite Kurt like...like a woman, Kurt realized with surprise. But there was nothing feminine about it. He'd just never thought before about how most men collapse gracelessly in their seat like a sack of potatoes.

His waiter almost beat the new fellow to the table with a cup and napkin. Kurt found out having him as a guest immediately upgraded them to a little silver platter with a few dates and little cookies on a paper doily. The waiter gave them both a splash of coffee and left.

"Why would you think me a danger?" Kurt asked.

"Oh, that's more about who I am than you. I'm Jan Hagen and I'm the security chief for this God forsaken pile of orbital junk. I could see you were North American, or trying to appear North American, and my relationship with the Norte Americanos has been tense of late." When Kurt just raised his eyebrows Jan elaborated. "Last year they had the temerity to snatch one of your countrymen off the very public corridor before us," he said, waving a hand to the way. "When they refused to hand him over we had to
take
him back from them. It was a huge bother let me tell you."

"And they are still sulking about it a year later? That seems childish," Kurt said.

"Well not
here
. They are petulant from afar since we put all of that former crew on a shuttle to dirt. They are sending note after diplomatic note demanding repairs and reparations. We did the basics to restore pressure to their section, because we wanted to be able to go in those spaces ourselves. Some of the damage was from the fellow they snatched, and it's hardly reasonable to expect he'd not object. If they want to make everything
pretty
again, and restore the few things that vacuum destroyed
they
can cover the expense. They brought the trouble entirely on themselves after all. They should be grateful we were so careful nobody died."

"Wow, I think that must have been right after I went back to Mobile. I can get around some of the blocking, but I never saw anything about that in the news feeds, not even what I could get repeated from European sources. There's something else...you should know I'm not a citizen of Home, so that guy wasn't my countryman strictly speaking. But I intend to fix that the next time I'm resident on Home."

"You see? That's the sort of thing I was hoping to hear first hand, how tight the censorship is working there. I have some sources I can ask, but it's always better to hear it yourself and have multiple sources. Would you mind if we order so it can be on the way while we talk?" Jan asked.

"No, please do. I'm not a picky eater, you can just order for me," Kurt volunteered.

"I always get whatever the special is," Jan said. "It has never disappointed and they don't repeat too often." Jan lifted a finger briefly and their waiter materialized at his elbow. Kurt was impressed. He usually had to crane his neck and wave to get a waiter to acknowledge his existence.

"Arash, my associate and I would like the special, and some extra of the garlic spread."