(A/N: 28 Oct 2008: Well, SAYS they fixed the upload problem. Why did it take them eight months?)
The Magical Bat 4.5: Bad Trip
#include stdDisclaimer.h: Batman, Catwoman, Alfred, Babs, Dick, Lucius Fox, and the others, are DC Comic's toys, as are John Stewart and the rest of the Lantern crew. Hogwarts, Albus, Minerva, the Weasleys and the others in the Potterverse belong to the fabulous JK Rowling. The Morton family is used with the permission of GITM. I'm just playing with their toys, and they'll be put back later. Everyone else, they're mine. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead is purely coincidental.
Copyright 2008 Kara Anne Kalel karanne AT gmail DOT com. All rights reserved. No money is made, and no infringement is implied or intended.
This is a sequel to my stories:
The Bat & the Cat, redux, The Magical Bat (I), Magical Bat: Road Trip (1.5), Magical Bat II, Magical Bat: Training Trip (2.5), Magical Bat III, Magical Bat: Business Trip (3.5), and Magical Bat IV.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
For disclaimers, please see above.
1-15 June, 2002
Saturday, June 1, 2002:
Corfu, Agios Georgios, room 26: 19:13 (GMT +2)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Mattie paid the cabbie, tipping him a couple Euros, and he drove off. She walked through the hotel, stopping at the desk to claim her room key, followed, as always, by Crystal.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Hey, Becky!" Mattie called into the bathroom, "Don't use all the hot water, okay? I want a shower before I hit the pool."
Crystal transformed as the shower cut off, catching Carson as he ran to her. Becky appeared as Mattie was removing her uniform, placing her katana and boot knives in the top dresser drawer and warding it. "Thanks, he's at that curious stage," she said, a towel wrapped around her, another on her hair.
"That would be bad," Crystal said as Carson gave his 'Aunt Mattie' a hug. "I'm going to scare up some more towels, anyone want something from the machine?"
Mattie gave her a couple of Euros from her bag, "A Diet Coke? if they have it, please. We'll get something to eat at the pool."
"You can come..." Becky started, but Crystal shook her head, "No, this is your adult, your family time. You go and have dinner, enjoy a few hours of not being a mum, Carson will be fine with Mattie and I at the pool." She summoned a room key, then waved at the dresser, "Get ready, you sure that you don't want a soda from the machine?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"You're a natural muzzer," a lady with a strong French accent said as Mattie watched Carson in the children's pool from where she sat on the edge. "You seem a bit young, though."
"First time in several months my boyfriend's family has been together, so we said we'd watch Carson while they got caught up," Mattie explained, sitting back and twisting open her bottle of Diet Coke?. The hotel sat on a slope, the pool area overlooked the lake and beyond it, the sun sinking into the Ionian Sea. Lights formed a delicate filigree of white around the shore, while masthead lights glowed on boats. "I had to be here for the Guard's graduation ceremony, and one of my, well, in-laws was graduating. How about you?"
"My twins, my babies, they are also graduating," the Frenchwoman said. She sighed, "They can fly the heavens, but as for me, I am too old."
Crystal snorted, and Mattie took a swallow before replying, "I gave a wedding present to a couple, she's in her seventies, he's about twice that." She twisted, "Albus is what, about 150 or so?" Crystal nodded, and she said, "No 'too old' here, ma'am." Carson came up, holding a plastic ball, and Mattie gently threw it a few yards away. He shrieked joyously and splashed off in the pool to retrieve it, and the lady said, "Your dog, he does not desire to play?"
"First, Crystal's a girl, and she's not a dog, she's a wolf," and she rubbed Crystal's ears, they flattened back and she moaned in pleasure, her tail sweeping back and forth. "Now I will admit she has her puppy-like moments. If you want to play fetch with Carson, I don't mind."
Crystal stood, stretching and then shook herself, then bounded into the pool, splashing everyone as the kids shrieked in delight. Carson awkwardly threw his ball, sitting down abruptly as he did so. The water was only a foot or so deep, so he clapped as Crystal nosed the ball in the air, balancing it on her nose, then flipping it back to him. Crouching, she half-submerged in the water, her tail up and sweeping back and forth, creating a minor current. Her eyes tracked the ball as he threw it to a playmate, a little girl in a red one-piece. Turning, she approached, blowing bubbles out her nose, as the girl threw it to another kid in keep-away. Crouching in the shallow pool, she turned, slowly stalking the ball as it got away from the kid. A parent handed it to his son, who shrieked and tossed it, it landing out of the pool. One of the waitresses tapped it with her foot, Mattie caught it and tossed it, it bounced off Crystal's hindquarters, and she proceeded to play 'where's the ball?', keeping it out of sight with her tail as she 'searched' for it.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"They look like they're having fun," one parent said, then reached over, offering his hand, "Larry Ullage, Detroit Free Press, Miss Wayne."
She accepted it, "I am on vacation, Mr. Ullage. Not for publication."
"So am I, Miss Wayne, so I'm good with that," he said, while the Frenchwoman said, "Oh, mon Dieu, la Reine elle-même!" (Oh, my God, the Queen herself!), then "Excusez-moi."
"Pas de problème, mais peut-être nous devrions nous en tenir avec l'anglais?" (No problem, but perhaps we should stick with English?) Mattie turned, "I do apologize. It's almost if I can speak French without an implant," and she grinned.
"It is a bit... formal, the choice of words," the Frenchwoman said. "My pardon, I am Madame de Cabrini, from Lyon. What implant do you speak of?"
"A translation implant," and she tapped her jaw. "A nice bit of Gal-tech, the size of a few grains of rice. Its implanted into your jaw, it lets you hear, speak and read different languages, including Trade, which looks like a cross between Arabic and Russian." She stole the ball from Crystal, passing it over to Carson, who flung it again. Mme. de Cabrini caught it, passing it to one of the kids. "Really cheap to license, too."
Mr. Ullage sighed and sat back, holding up his beer bottle, "Miss Wayne, I'd like to schedule an interview with you, tomorrow if possible, but for now, my hands are free of ink." He turned to explain to Mme. de Cabrini, "Print journalists like myself were once known as 'ink-stained wretches' when TV news was first becoming popular. We of course coined the phrase 'talking head' for our counterparts."
"I have no problem with that, Mr. Ullage," Mattie replied, taking a swallow of her own Diet Coke?. "I should mention that two of my relatives are journalists, and they haven't, ah, pulled their punches, so to speak when we've sat across a table." She grinned, "I'm planning on stopping by Metropolis on the way home, so you'll have a beat on the Daily Planet and my Aunt Lois."
"And her husband, Mr. Kent," he nodded in approval. "He started out at the Planet, it explains why you've kept your cool. Do you mind a few questions now, on background?"
"As long as you don't mind sharing," she motioned to the two or three other parents. "I'm sure that they'd like to know what their relatives are getting into, and we are here for Carson, so when he wears himself out, we're going in."
"On background," he said, then tossed the ball to the young boy, "This is the Carson from that terrorist incident in London?" Mattie nodded, then motioned to Crystal, "And my friend and guard-wolf, Crystal."
Mme. de Cabrini suddenly looked at the large canine, "A werewolf?" Sitting up, Crystal looked her in the eye and nodded, as Mattie added, "Lycanthropy is a very old medical condition, ma'am. One we've had partial success in breaking, and that some of my best friends also suffer from." There was a definite edge to her voice, and Mr. Ullage asked, "Miss Wayne, how far out have we gone?"
Mattie nodded, thankful for the change of subject as Crystal got out, shook down and walked to the side, then crouched next to Mme. de Cabrini. She offered her hand, "Hello, I'm Crystal. Would you like to talk?" They moved to the side as Mattie replied, "We've visited 112 worlds, we're in the process of establishing trade relations with eight at the moment. The furthest one, in terms of linear distance, is 3500 light years away. By convoy, that's 4200 light years, as it's not direct. Culturally..." she shrugged. "They range from feudal with bow and arrow to energy weapons and starships. One, we're considering opening up to colonization, but we're going to have to arrange things there, and do some preliminary biological testing. That one is in the Orion Nebula, so depending on convoy routing, between 1200 and 1500 light years."
He signaled to a waitress, ordering another beer, as a parent asked, "You said 'arrange things' and 'biological testing', Miss Wayne. Can you give some more information? I'd like to know what my son is going to face."
"First of all, our ships are crewed by experienced people, primarily retirees from the world's navies, and they have some form of Marine on them." He nodded as she continued, "It can be dangerous, there are pirates out there, but unlike the ones here on Earth, these try to capture the ship and crew, so they can sell them."
"I presume these are not movie pirates," Mr. Ullage said. "Nor are these like the pirates in Indonesia and Malaysia."
"The Terran pirates will try to kill you and steal your ship, these star-pirates will try to enslave you and steal your ship," Mattie said. "The most vulnerable time for a ship is between leaving the convoy, which has warships in escort, and entering the controlled space of a system. Depending on the astrography, that could be a few minutes or hours, or a day or so. That's one reason why we have our crews trained with small arms and body armor, so they can not only drive off any boarding attempt, if necessary they can take the fight to the enemy." She finished her bottle, and signaled the waitress, who brought another Diet Coke?. She cracked the top open, "Too many ships just surrender to the pirates, that's why we're using naval personnel, and we've had some successes too. So far," she knocked on the concrete, "we haven't lost a ship."
"It's still early," someone said.
"Yes, it is," Mattie said. "We've had our ships attacked by pirates, maybe we'll get the reputation not to mess with us," and gave a small smile. "The last attack was early last month, our ship beat off three pirates, blowing them apart with his energy cannon. He didn't have missiles, that's one of the things we're working on, an anti-ship missile and a proper warhead for it." She sat back, "A lot of problems with that, guidance heads, drive fields, range of the weapon..." Taking a drink, she added as she screwed the lid on, "Energy weapons are limited range, a few thousand kilometers," and she held up her hand, "Remember, we're talking about solar systems. If our ship is near Earth, and the pirates are near Jupiter, we need a missile that can engage them out there, not when they're orbiting the moon."
"What about a warhead, what about a nuke?"
"A nuke would work only if we could get it in physical contact with the enemy, otherwise all it's going to do is push it away," she replied. "We need something to penetrate the enemy's shields, and physically get inside the ship, and is cheap enough to manufacture in quantity. Something like the old battleship shells, get inside the target ship and explode." She shrugged, "My problem, although that's why we're trying to get gal-tech military designs. I have to assume that they suffer from the same problem that civilian gal-tech equipment has, they get to 'good enough' and stop."
Mr. Ullage waved at the waitress, as the other father did, and fresh beers were brought as Mattie continued, "Generally speaking," and she slid into the shallow water to hold Carson, "and there are exceptions, but generally once something is in wide enough usage to solve a general problem, any innovation stops. It's like shipping merchandise in steam locomotives, it will get there, and you'll spend a lot more time unloading the crates and barrels than a container. There's no real interest in overnight delivery, or using one container instead of six hundred crates. So any plans we have for that anti-ship missile are a starting point, not the end product." She examined Carson, "That means our conversation is over, this little boy needs to have his teeth brushed and go to bed. Good night, everyone."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Sunday, June 2, 2002:
Corfu, Agios Georgios, hotel dining room: 07:24 (GMT +2)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Good morning, Mr. Ullage," Mattie said as she got in line for the buffet.
He raised his plate as an excuse not to shake hands, "Miss Wayne, this is my wife Nancy, and you remember our daughter Amber from last night."
"I certainly do," she said, raising her own plate in return. "Mrs. Ullage, pleased to meet you," she replied as she took a roll. Smiling, she asked, "Didn't I take a salute from you yesterday?"
"You did," she replied with a grin.
"I thought the name was familiar. If I recall, you got tired of waiting for NASA?" The older woman nodded, and said, "To finally go where no one... well, you know."
"This isn't the Enterprise," Mattie said with a grin. "Although we have met with the Wookies, they're a wonderful people, but their planet is straight from the Jurassic." She picked up a sausage link and chomped it, then swallowed, "Where are you posted?"
"Initially, Mars to deploy satellites, then I'm hoping for Titan. What's the scuttlebutt I hear about Phobos?"
Mattie took some eggs, "Right now, we're doing a survey of it, with the possibility of establishing a base there. Once you get your comm satellites placed, then we can start dropping in a small colony there." She took a glass of orange juice, as Mr. Ullage asked, "Why a small colony? Why not more than one?"
"Primarily legal reasons," she replied, and finger-quoted, "The International Court has ruled that the planet Mars, also known as Ma'aleca'andra, is owned, in whole and in part, by the individual J'onn J'onzz, a citizen and native of Mars." She followed them at their invitation, "We've contracted with him for orbital rights, but not surface rights. We have to clean up our mess from all the failed probes and miscellaneous parts before we can colonize with more than a half-dozen people. So, the first thing you're going to do after placing the Martian version of GPS satellites is to launch survey balloons, we need to map the planet down to a centimeter resolution. That's what the small base is for, data collection and a pilot facility."
"Pilot facility sounds dangerous," Mr. Ullage objected.
"We've taken everything we can think of into account," Mattie replied. "Worst case, you've got the ambulance pod. Strap everyone in, hit the button, it launches you off the surface to rendezvous with, in this case, Phobos." She took a bite, chasing it with a sip of coffee.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Musing, "What still surprises me?" as she stacked her plates together, sweeping the crumbs with her napkin. Mattie looked up, "How much we've done, and the scale of some of the things we're doing." Dropping the crumbs from her hand onto a plate, she wiped her mouth one last time, then neatly folded her napkin as she thought. "Two years ago," she started, "Earth, the Terran system, had a partially-built space station in orbit, a few satellites orbiting Mars, and we had a few probes in the outer planets. The furthest any person had gone into space was a dozen men to the moon thirty years ago. Launching a satellite cost millions of dollars, and they had an operational lifetime limited by the fuel supply."
She nodded in gratitude as the waitress refilled her coffee and took away the dishes. She tapped the spoon as she fixed her coffee, plopping an ice cube in after tasting it. "Now," she continued, "we have research satellites orbiting each of the outer planets, we have the start of an asteroid mining and extraction operation, we have an FTL subspace communications network we're installing, instead of one space station in low orbit, we have..." she sat back to count, "several lunar facilities, a station and a platform in LEO, a GEO station, the space hotel at L1, which also serves as a control node, extraction facilities like smelters at L4, building slips and orbital docks at L5, a comm satellite at the moon's L2 position. Nothing at L3, though, Venus perturbs the orbit, but that's just in the space around the Earth and moon. The last I heard, we had close to four thousand people living in cislunar space, and it will go up from there."
Cradling her coffee, she took a sip, "Two years ago, the largest thing we had in orbit was the International Space Station, which was a few hundred meters long. Now, we've got orbital solar arrays that measure kilometers in one dimension, the eastern Mediterranean power sat is modular, it can go out to hundreds of kilometers, and instead of designing your own power and maneuvering systems for your satellite, you can lease space."
Mr. Ullage raised a hand, "Leasing space?"
"Sorry," she replied with a smile. "I don't think that's gotten much press. It's a satellite farm, if you want to call it that. It's a grid, each space is a hexagon a hundred meters on a side, and as our crews, actually this is a Greywolf project." She grinned, "Let me start over. Greywolf has a satellite maintenance and refurbishing project. They can contract with you to refuel and refurbish your dead, expensive satellite and place it back in a legal orbit, or they'll accept a quitclaim on it, and claim salvage rights. Now, that clears the sky of old satellites in graveyard orbits, but one other thing they're doing is a satellite farm."
"Originally, dear, the US and the Soviets just parked their satellites where they wanted," Nancy Ullage said. "Now, there's a traffic jam, they've had to allocate orbital slots to different countries."
"Now, countries without a space industry received slots they had no use for," Nancy said. "Countries like Greece. What a satellite farm does is sell shares in those orbital slots, and instead of one satellite per slot, you can have dozens in a frame. You design your satellite to draw power from the frame, you would lease space in the Greek farm for your satellite, and ship it to our spaceport in Ecuador. They take it up, install it in the correct frame, you do your diagnostics, and everyone's happy, and it costs a lot less. The Greek government has an income from something that they didn't use, they contract with Greywolf for maintenance, and you save an enormous amount of money over launching and replacing a satellite with a rocket."
"Having routine maintenance available also helps to lower your insurance, and having the satellite installed means you don't have to pay insurance, or at least as much, for launch failure," Mattie said. "Furthermore, we can link these farms together in a mesh arrangement, so a farm orbiting in GSO can communicate with lower farms in LEO, which saves in uplink and downlink costs." She took a sip of coffee, "Two years ago, we didn't have that. Now, we have a Caribbean test powersat that's a kilometer on the side, the one in the eastern Mediterranean that we're building is a hundred klicks on a side, and it has six available slots for power transmitters, and it's a data relay satellite." She looked up as Arthur came by, "Hey, there. You have a nice evening?" she asked as she took his hand.
"Yes, but you could have come."
"No, that was your time, Crystal and I were fine with Carson." She looked over, "I'm sorry, please excuse me. Arthur Morton, this is Nancy and Larry Ullage, he's with the Detroit Free Press, she's a former NASA person that just commissioned." Arthur leaned over the table to shake hands, then said, "Unless you had something planned, my mom and sisters wanted to know if you wanted to go shopping with them."
"The street market?" Crystal asked, and Arthur nodded. "I'll touch base with our police bloke, back in a tick."
"You're not going to go?" Larry asked. Arthur shuddered dramatically, "Thank you, no. Four sisters, mom, my future sister-in-law Misty, Mattie and Crystal?" That's eight, too much estrogen for me. I'm going to sit around the pool with Carson and the guys and take advantage of the fact that Greece doesn't have a minimum drinking age and try a beer or two."
"Don't get too sloshed, and Carson's in the kiddie pool," Mattie warned. "Did I tell you about my first hangover with Cassidy?"
"Just a couple," he said, raising his hands defensively. "I heard the story from Anne, no juice for me, thanks. My dad was wondering, though if you were going to put some of your photos on line. It would give you something to do on the flight. Anyway, come down to Hank and Misty's room with Carson, number 241, when you're ready."
"Mr. Morton, I'd like to arrange an interview with you, if I can," Mr. Ullage said.
Arthur shook his head, "Sorry. I don't do interviews, and this conversation is, um, what's the term?"
"'Not for publication', dear," Nancy said, and her husband gave her an irritated glance. "It was background material," he said. "What photos?"
"She's a shutterbug," Arthur said, giving Mattie's shoulder a squeeze.
"Remember, we're stopping by Metropolis on the way," Mattie reminded him. "Uncle Perry wanted us to stop by the Planet, and he wanted us to meet his wife, Alice. Aunt Lois dropped off a key, we can bunk with Uncle Clark while we're in town."
"Sounds good," he said. "Anyway, I need to get ready. Nice meeting you," and he nodded politely as he left.
"Okay, what's this about 'juice', and your first hangover?"
"Pareek't juice," she started, "It's an offworld drink, tastes a bit like cranberry, but it's got a kick like high-proof whiskey, at least with Terrans. Eridani III doesn't have a minimum drinking age, and I thought this was just regular fruit juice. It tasted good, and I was out with some friends..."
"And you got blotto..." Larry said with a laugh. "One of the great turning points in someone's life, your first drunk, and the first hangover."
"I wanted to die..." she remembered. "Gawd, how embarrassing. Can we change the subject?"
Larry chortled, "Of course, as long as you send me a link to your photos."
"I won't be back on planet until late August or so, e-mail me a copy of your article, please." She dug through her bag, extracting a business card for him. He extracted one from his wallet in trade, and said, "It's been a pleasure, Miss Wayne."
"Likewise, Mr. Ullage."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Sunday, June 2, 2002:
Corfu, Agios Georgios, hotel pool: 08:15 (GMT +2)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Arthur, the thing is," his older brother Hank said, "You're with Mattie. That means that, like it or not, you're going to social events with her, and alcohol will be served. That means you're going to need to learn how to drink socially."
"And to hold your liquor," his dad said. "It won't do to be an obnoxious drunk, but people will notice if you drink nothing but tea all evening, and that might blow any deal you're working on." He raised his hand, "Yes, it shouldn't, but in some situations, you need to look like you're drinking."
"Alcohol tastes horrible," Arthur replied, sitting in the kiddie pool and tossing a ball for Carson.
"It's an acquired taste," his dad agreed. He caught the ball and submerged it, making it pop up for his grandson. "However, different situations will require you sipping an occasional drink. Now, there are ways around this, it depends on how good of an actor you can be." He handed over a mixed drink. "Notice this drink. It looks like some version of scotch and soda. Notice that the color is a very pale gold, it fizzes, and there's several ice cubes. Take a sip."
Cautiously, he did so, rolling it around in his mouth. "Hmm."
"Now, to anyone looking at you, you're drinking scotch. What does it actually taste like?"
"Sour Coke?, but..."
"You're close," his dad said. "Coke? is a mixer, so the bar will have it. You tell the bartender you want a 'virgin' drink, let him build you one, a very light one, just enough to color it, with soda for fizz and ice, and then tip him."
"Decently, too," Hank said. "Twenty, thirty percent. When it gets watered down, you abandon it, and if you still need to walk around with a drink, you get another one."
His father handed over a beer bottle, "Another acquired taste, beer has more of a blue-collar atmosphere, or for a pub. With a bottle, you can just wet your lips with it, which is one reason to learn the import beers, especially in dark bottles, like bocks. Now, a cold beer on a hot day does taste really good, it's the kind of beer you might get draft," he picked up his own stein, "or when you're going out with your shipmates. This," he held up the stein, "is what's known as lager, or pilsner. As Americans, we have a reputation for weak beer, most of which is lager like Budweiser?. Notice the very pale gold color."
"Now this," his father held up another stein. "This is ale. Notice the darker, almost brownish color. Bock beer is darker lager, almost black in color, and is a seasonal beer, brewed for special occasions. I would suggest you find one or two good international beers, German or British, and stick with them." He handed it to his youngest son, who took a cautious sip.
"One thing you do need to learn is what your personal limit is, and you don't exceed that," Hank said. "No matter how much your buddies rib you. You also do not, under any circumstance, operate a motor vehicle when you've been drinking. That's why you have designated drivers, and you can always call a cab."
"Generally a bar will ignore cover charges for designated drivers, and comp their drinks," his dad said. "It costs them less to do that then their higher insurance if they get sued. You'll have some sort of wristband or pin for that."
"Moving on to wine," his dad said. "Usually a dinner drink, or a highbrow affair. Generally white for fish and chicken, red or rose for beef. It generally, but not always, has a higher alcohol content than beer. This, like draft beer, you're going to need to actually drink, but you can take your time, and make sure to eat with your drinks."
"Something more substantial than nachos or pub grub," Hank added, as he caught the ball that had gotten out of the pool. He tossed it to a little girl, and Carson chased after her. "No, you want chicken, or fish 'n' chips, or a burger and fries." He took a gulp of the lager, "Ignoring for the moment age, you and Mattie are on the golf course, and you're working a deal with a couple of Senators. What are you drinking?"
"I'm not," Arthur replied. "It affects my game."
"Yes, we're aware of that. However, you've noticed that Mattie isn't playing her best either, the Senators are three or four strokes ahead," his dad said. "This leads you to the conclusion that..."
"...she's throwing the game," his brother said, his beer in his hand. "You know Mattie much better than we do, but even I know she wouldn't do that unless there was a reason. So you pick the wrong club..."
"No, I wouldn't."
"Then you discuss that with Mattie ahead of time, so she can compensate. The thing is, son," his dad said, "you're going to be with the movers and shakers. Some of those people, like the Senators, you need to let them win on a small thing like golf, so you can win on something else. Yes, it's politics, it's a case of scratching backs. So what you do is get a bottle of beer, you dump that, and fill it with water. That gives you the appearance of drinking, son." He captured the ball for Carson again, popping it up from underwater, "Son, a lot of times in life, appearances matter more than reality."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Sunday, June 2, 2002:
Corfu, City of Corfu, old town street market: 09:11 (GMT +2)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Hmm..." Mattie mused, looking at an array of colorful scarves, "Fashion help, please!" she said.
"Who's it for?" Teela asked, putting her digital camera in her purse.
"My great-granddaughter, I'm thinking Christmas present, but the problem ..."
"Hello, what great-granddaughter?" Teela replied. "Have you and Arthur been doing something?"
"No, no, Cassidy hasn't been born yet," Mattie said, flipping through some scarves. "I have no idea what fashion will be like then, so I have to think of something, well, generic, y'know."
"Oh, Cassidy," Julie said. "Why didn't you say so?" She moved to a different pile, "How were you going to preserve it?"
"I was thinking a stasis spell," Mattie replied. "Professor McGonagall set a present aside for me last year, I have to assume she got it. Her birthday's March 15, so I should probably get something for that, too."
"Who's this for?" Becky asked, thanking another shopkeeper and moving closer. She put the package into a large mesh bag as Teela asked, "What's she look like?"
"Cassidy, my great-granddaughter," Mattie said. "Four hundred years from now. She visited a year or so ago..."
"Arthur's got a photo with her in it," Julie interrupted.
"Time travel?" Becky asked.
"It's a bit complicated," Mattie admitted.
"Everything's complicated with you," Julie teased.
"Anyway, I met one of my descendants, and I sent her a combination birthday and Christmas present last year through Professor McGonagall. Since I'm here, I thought I'd get something, tech is out, I have no idea what women's fashion will be like..."
"How old is she, height, coloring... y'know, the important details," Teela asked.
"Hmm. Cassidy is in her early twenties, fairly short haired blonde, about an inch or so taller than Becky, with a slim build and a bit more up top than she does," Mattie regarded the older girl. "She usually wore jumpsuits or jeans, I have no clue about skirt lengths. Look at Anne..."
"Anne's a different matter," Julie objected. "She's coming from the opposite direction, girls then didn't wear anything but long, floor length skirts. Anyway, let's think about substituting Becky for Cassidy." She regarded her older sister, doing some mental substitution, then turned back to the pile.
"How about..." Teela said, when there was a scream and the sound of running feet as a youth shoved his way past, a woman's purse clenched under his arm. Julie turned, wand coming out as Elena moved toward him, and Crystal moved toward his other side. Elena pivoted into a kick as Julie let a Jelly-legs jinx fly, and Crystal used 'Stupefy' on him. His legs went out from under him as he folded under Elena's kick, and he dropped unconscious.
"That purse just does not go with his jacket," Teela said judiciously, as Mattie, Crystal and Julie spun, Julie firing off a stunner at a young man who was reaching into Misty's bag. She caught the fringes of the spell as the local police arrived.
"(Good morning, officer)," Crystal said, using a translation spell. She showed her ID, "(I'm Crystal, with SO-1 from England, and we've got a purse-snatching and something else here with this Chinese fellow)," indicating the stunned young man who was clutching something in his hand. "(He was reaching into her purse. How may we assist you?)"
His eyes went wide as he recognized Mattie, "(Your Majesty, I...)."
"(Perhaps you should call for backup, and maybe your sergeant, or your lieutenant)," she suggested to the young officer, as the purse-owner arrived, a middle-aged Japanese woman. The officer grabbed his radio as Julie switched her translation spell, going to talk to the Japanese lady.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Sunday, June 2, 2002:
London, Adams home: 12:42 (GMT)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Right-o, son," Mr. Adams said from Charlie's bedroom door as he pulled off his tie. "You're not usually a church-goer, why today, and why did you set up an appointment with the Vicar?"
"It goes to the gold deck of cards I mentioned in an email," Charlie said, hanging up his church clothes. "I wanted to pass on to Vicar Sedgewick the name of Mattie's home town priest and his email, I got them from her Mum when I emailed her. I know they're Roman Catholic and we're Anglican, but that shouldn't matter too much." He undid his uncomfortable 'meeting' shoes, putting them away. He took a seat at his desk as his Pa sat on his bed, "If I remember, that was after she was rescued."
Charlie nodded, "The key bit is who rescued her, and from where, Pa. You may want a drink, I think I could use one for this tale."
"I have a bad feeling," his father said. "This is beyond being a wizard?"
Charlie nodded, "She was kidnapped by the Yank President, Luthor, and she was being held in their military prison, Leavenworth. You know they still have the death penalty?" Pa nodded, and Charlie continued, "That's where she was being held, unconscious on their military Death Row."
"Outrageous," his father said. "Held without charges, with common murderers." He looked at his son, "There's more? Who rescued her?"
Charlie took a deep breath, "You remember a year or so ago when her mum summoned demons to find her daughter? When she was sent back to the 14th century?"
"I wasn't happy with that," his father said. "Magic is one thing, but..."
"Apparently this time they didn't find her until an assassin under Luthor's orders was in the prison and ready to kill her, so her mum used a desperate measure," Charlie said carefully. "She used a... link to get someone there in time." His father eyed him, "More demons?"
"A bit different," Charlie admitted carefully. "They arrived back at Hogwarts with the Archangel Michael, Death, and..." he hesitated, "Lucifer himself."
His Pa looked at him carefully. "Lucifer. Satan. Her mum summoned the Prince of Darkness himself in order to rescue her daughter."
Charlie looked at his father. "Wouldn't you? To rescue me? The assassin had her gun aimed."
"If it were only my soul, I'd pay it and gladly to make sure you were safe, but it seems an extreme solution," his father said softly. "I see why you wanted to pass on to Vicar Sedgewick the information, and why you set up an appointment." He regarded his son, "What does this have to do with playing cards?"
"Mattie... she played poker with the devil for not only her soul, but her mum and brother's as well," Charlie said softly. "See why I didn't want to discuss this in email?" He chuckled, "The school's unofficial motto is: 'Don't fuck with Wayne,' and this is only going to enhance it. She beat the Devil at five-card draw with her mum's, her brother's, and her soul in the pot. Then she yelled, yelled at the Archangel Michael and Death herself, the Grim Reaper, when they tried to see her hand, because they hadn't paid to see it." He turned, and pulled a printout off his desk. "This is the email I sent to Mrs. Wayne, and her reply."
"That's where the gold playing cards are from," his father said, folding the printout in his hands without reading it. "What did Satan pay to see them?"
"A favor to be named later," Charlie said, "In conjunction with her great unknown purpose to build up the system and move people off planet..." He trailed off, then paled, "I think I've figured it out, and if I'm right," he swallowed, then looked at his father. "We need to look into moving ourselves, and I can see why she's keeping this secret." His father looked at his son, and saw... fear. Fear that he hadn't seen when he discussed demons or Satan himself. Charlie said, "I'll be seeing her in a week or so, I'll confirm my suspicions with her. For now," he took a deep breath, "I need to get my kit together for our bimble."
"I'm not sure you should go, now," his father said.
"Pa, I really think I need to go. I need to see this. I need to see what the galaxy is like."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Sunday, June 2, 2002:
London, The Leaky Cauldron: 13:53 (GMT)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"P'fessor Dumbledore, I need a bit of advice," Sprink said, pulling up a stool at the bar.
"Indeed?" Albus flipped his bar towel over his shoulder, "I was just about to enjoy a cuppa. Perhaps you would like to join me?" he asked the teenager. She nodded, and a saucer floated down, followed by a cup. A stream of tea appeared out of nowhere, and he raised an eyebrow. "Two sugars, please," and two sideways splashes appeared in the stream of tea. The stream redirected itself to his cuppa, as Sprink picked up her teacup, politely waiting for him. The tea cut itself off, and he picked his up, taking a sip and then asking, "Advice on what, my dear?"
Sprink drew her wand, casting a privacy charm, "First, d' you know about Mattie's Oan Ring?" Albus nodded, and she took another sip, "She forgot to pack a bit of jewelry, not her Oan Ring, but this was another, a memory crystal of some sort. Prolly from her uncle, Mr. Kent, which makes it..."
"Kryptonian," Albus said. "I've seen the ring Ms. Lane wears. Oval, looks like a diamond ring?" Sprink nodded, and exhaled. "When we were packing up, we found this ring, and somehow triggered it. It had a conversation..." she licked her lips, "... between P'fessor Snape and one of the Guardians of Oa. They were discussing the future, the near future, within maybe fifty years. Within his, P'fessor Snape's lifetime."
"And you heard this conversation," Albus asked, and Sprink nodded. "The thing is, we, my boyfriend Charlie an' I, found out something about Mattie and Arthur, and her visitor last year, Cassidy."
Albus thought for a minute, "Miss Yates, as I recall. A young blonde lady, from about four hundred years from now?" Sprink nodded. "We found out more about Cassidy than I think we should have." Albus raised his eyebrow, and Sprink said, "You must, must keep this in confidence, sir." He nodded, and she continued, "There is proof, stand-up-in-court proof, that Cassidy is related to both Mattie and, we think, Arthur Morton. Specifically, she's their great-granddaughter."
"Ah. I see."
"We don't think there's anything we can do about that, or even if Charlie and I should. But this with Professor Snape, well..."
"I believe your wisest course, my dear, is to simply let things go. If it distresses you, I can remove the associated memory, but it will leave a gap. Were you the only one to witness this?"
Shaking her head, "No, sir. Ami Bones and Connie Koslowski, in New York."
"With your consent, I will send an owl to Miss Bones, and if you would pass on Miss Koslowski's email address, I shall set up an appointment with her for counseling." A quill and bit of parchment appeared, and Sprink banished her privacy spell, "Thank you very much, sir," she said as she wrote. "It's a load off my mind."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Sunday, June 2, 2002:
Royston, Hertfordshire, Bones flat: 14:50 (GMT)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
The owl banked, landing in front of Ami and stuck out its foot. Leaning forward, she untied the message, and offered it a chip. It hooted and waited, eating the potato as she unrolled the note. "Hmm. Professor Dumbledore asks for the pleasure of my company to discuss 'an important concern' that was referred to him."
Her mother looked up from her case notes. "Albus always was cryptic," Amelia said, and sat back, regarding her youngest daughter. After two years in the Snake's Den, she could detect changes, Ami was far more subtle, withheld more information, and her chess game had improved. "I was planning on flooing in to the Cauldron tomorrow," she said. Her youngest nodded, "I'll join you," and stole one of her quills to write a reply to her owl. As she tied the note to the bird's leg, Amelia mentioned, "I hear there was a Grand Council this year."
The bird fluttered off, Ami replying, "Yes, I heard that also," while Susan looked up from her book, "What's a Grand Council?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Sunday, June 2, 2002:
Cambridge, MIT Housing: 18:11 (GMT -5)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Merritt Stewart, housemother and (sometime) gamekeeper to the insanity, stirred the huge pot of spaghetti over the charcoal fire. They had developed a tradition of having Sunday night spaghetti dinners, and while she had gotten into the habit of cooking for almost a hundred hungry students during the school term, and while there were twenty students that stayed over the summer term, she didn't see any reason to discontinue tradition. Hanging from the iron bar, two large pots, one of the traditional red beef sauce, the other the equally popular white clam sauce, 'blooped' as they bubbled over the fire. On the end, a smaller pot of vegetarian sauce bubbled for those who preferred it.
Kat wandered over, standing on the low brick wall of the barbecue pit to look at the sauces. As she gave them a stir, she said, "Y'know, Ms. Stewart, the British are coming next week. Karen seemed all right, but I'm wondering about her sister, and especially with Chantal."
"Yeah," Merritt said. "I'm wondering the same thing." Chantal Rivers, their acknowledged 'Queen of Pranks' was a blonde with a body that deserved a staple, blue eyes in a face that proclaimed her innocence, and an evil intelligence. She was something of a tomboy, but used her looks, intelligence, and devious nature to always have a perfect alibi. She carried a perfect 5.0 average in a triple major at one of the world's toughest schools, in addition to holding down a part-time job as a waitress.
"My ears are burning..." a honeyed voice said, and they turned. Chantal offered them each a beer, "You guys didn't hear me come in, did you?" Merritt shook her head, and Chantal said, "YES!" and pumped her fist, "My new muffler works!"
"Er, is it street legal?" Kat asked, but Chantal was standing on the barbecue pit's wall, leaning over and spooning the veggie sauce. She shrugged, it was her house-mate's motorcycle. "I dunno, y' think this needs something? Maybe cilantro?"
"Chantal," Merritt said, "I wanted to ask you a favor." The blonde made a 'Hmm?' sound, and Merritt sighed, "You know the two Brits are coming next week. They're going to be on the other side of the wall from you, and one of them, Anne..."
"The younger," Chantal replied, jumping down, sitting on the brick pit's wall, and saying, "From what I've found out, she's supposedly born in 1365. Now, that's either disinformation or they're playing with temporal mechanics across the Pond. Either way, she sounds interesting..."
Merritt shuddered, Chantal finding something 'interesting' gave you the same feeling the IRS did when they found your tax return 'interesting'. It was not good. She sat next to her blonde devil-child, and said, "I'm going to emphasize to you that you're not to prank her. Her sister told us that Anne's sense of moderation is weak, which means if you short-sheet her bed, you're likely to be hung naked by your feet on a street light, IF she didn't run you through with a sword."
"Why would I short-sheet her bed?" Chantal said with an angelic smile.
"Because she already has six patents on file, with three in peer review," Kat replied. "You've always been the top, and that's going to get under your skin. The fact that she's not only a physics nerd..."
"But Anne has a whole lot of financial and political horsepower behind her as well," Merritt said. "Starting with the President of MIT. She's got the Wayne power and billions behind her, girl. She rooms with the Queen of Space, for pity's sake, and she's going to have not only MI-5 bodyguards, but people that can arrest your blonde butt, like the city cops and the FBI. Please leave her alone."
"I just know we're going to be the best of friends..." Chantal chirped, then jumped to her feet and ran off. "Oh, gawd..." Kat moaned.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Sunday, June 2, 2002:
London, Spinner's End: 19:56 (GMT)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Really, Severus, it's not the end of the world," Bella said. "I'm already taking classes at muggle universities. I've adapted, and if I can, you can."
Severus Snape, Potions Master and Head of Slytherin, growled to himself as his... girlfriend? He wasn't quite sure, but Bellatrix Black, former Death Eater and mistress of the Cruciatus curse threw back her head and laughed, "Sevvy, dear, think it through. Five years after Voldemort is dead and rotting away somewhere, the wizarding job market for us is still tight, especially for the higher profile people like you and I. We managed to escape Azkaban, but we still need to eat, therefore, we look at the muggle market. That requires certification and college classes, medicine for me, education training for you. Let me tell you, the greatest challenge will be NOT hexing some arrogant professor, and you will have your colleagues from Hogwarts there for most of your classes."
"Except for Minerva," he grumbled.
"Minerva has already done this," she replied. "She also has to hold the school's wards. Now, what will you wear tomorrow, and don't tell me robes." She eyed him, "I think it might be worthwhile for us to pick up something besides black for you to wear."
"No!" he seethed. "If I must do this, I will wear what I wish."
"Suit yourself," she said, finishing her wine and standing. "Shall I meet you for lunch tomorrow? You do have my mobile number?"
"Yes..." he admitted. The blasted mobile phones were an incredibly useful gadget, although he was loath to admit it to anyone, especially Bella.
"Then I shall see you tomorrow," she said, strolling to the door. He rose to accompany her, holding the door as she walked past his garden gate and his wards, and apparated away.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Monday, June 3, 2002:
University of London, Institute of Education: 07:42 (GMT)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Ah, Severus, there you are!" Filius said happily, his feet swinging from the bench. "I did not see you on the Tube."
"Only at wandpoint will I use the Underground," he replied, as Filius held up his tea, "There's still time for you to get a take-away."
"Thank you, no," he replied, as Pomona said, "Oh, cheer up, Severus. Think of what you'll learn!"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Professor Knewell looked his newest class over, as usual it was a bit of a mixed bag. There were some unusual ones, though. A tiny little fellow with a full white mustache and beard, he couldn't have been more than four feet tall sat next to a tall, lanky fellow with long greasy black hair and a hooked nose, wearing all black. An absolutely huge fellow with a wild head of hair and equally wild beard wedged himself into a seat, then turned around in response to someone behind him. He nodded, got up and said something to a bloke next to him, who nodded and joined him at the back. The chair there creaked alarmingly as the petite Chinese girl who had sat behind him leaned to talk to her friend and giggled. Two women came in, one peeling off to speak to him.
"Good morning," she said. "I'm Callista Vector, and I wanted to let you know ahead of time that July first through fifth, I won't be able to make class."
"Thank you, Ms. Vector," he said as he made a note, "Any particular reason?"
"I'm Deputy Headmistress at Hogwarts, I'll need to hold the school's wards while Minerva's on her honeymoon," she replied casually. He looked at her, "...wards?"
"Yes, the school's defenses, I have to be physically present in the school." She regarded him, "You were notified of our attendance? We have to have muggle certification now." He blinked, and she added, "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry? Magic?"
"Oh. Yes, I'm sorry. I wasn't expecting you to..." He blinked, "What do you, err, teach, Ms. Vector?"
"Arithmancy," she said, "And now, for the school to qualify for the GCSE's, the other mathematics, like calculus and trig." She smiled, amused, "You were expecting a wart on my nose?"
"Err, well, you look so, well, normal. Are your colleagues here as well?"
She turned to look at the classroom, "Oh, yes, but Hagrid looks a little cramped. The large fellow in the back," she clarified.
The bell rang, and he said, "Here we go!" She moved off, taking the seat that the Hagrid fellow had, and he cleared his throat, "Good morning, everyone, and welcome. Let me get the roll, please." He flipped open the file folder, "Ms. Felicia Addams?" A hand waved, and he called, "Ms. Narcissa Black?" A tall, elegant blonde woman said "I am present," in a cultured voice, and he nodded, "Ms. Lara Croft?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Now then," he said, closing the roll, and checking his seating chart. "I'd like to go down the rows, find out what teaching experience you have in what. Let's start in the back, Mr. Potter, was it?"
"Er, yes, I'm Harry Potter, I teach DADA at Hogwarts." The Hagrid fellow leaned over, and he clarified, "Um, DADA is Defense Against the Dark Arts."
"Which you should have learned first," the tall blonde Ms. Black commented.
"I've done all right, Narcissa," he replied. "How's your husband, Lucille? Still a succubus?" She spun, drawing a thin piece of wood, and he was standing, right hand cupped, fingertips sparkling. Seemingly half the class was on their feet in a defensive stance, sticks in their hands. Professor Knewell rapped on his lectern, "Please be seated, everyone, and put away your, er, sticks."
"Wands," the large fellow Hagrid said in a thick West Country accent, putting away a pink umbrella. He cleared his throat, "Right, then. Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of the Keys and P'fessor o' Magical Creatures." Several people turned to look at him, and the fellow with the greasy hair turned, "You are not bringing anything 'interesting' in. That includes your overgrown lizard Norbert."
"I was thinkin' o' Fluffy, he gets lonely..."
"Er, just what is Fluffy?" some brave soul asked.
"Hagrid's pet hellhound," Ms. Black replied. "Fifteen feet at the shoulder, with three heads." She shifted in her chair, "Norbert, on the other hand, is a Norwegian Ridgeback dragon the size of one of those red two-level things on the road."
"It's called a Routemaster bus, Ms. Black. I presume that... Norbert, was it? That he breathes fire?"
"All proper dragons do," Mr. Hagrid said happily. "Ah, a sweet little lass, she's still got plenty o' growin' tae do. See, she's got a special gland in her head..."
"Thank you, Mr. Hagrid. Moving on, Ms. Kloves, was it?"
Ms. Kloves edged away from Hagrid, who beamed at her, and she said, "Stephanie Kloves, I'd like to teach preschool, right now I'm working at a child minders."
"That's wonderful, Ms. Kloves. Moving on," he looked at the next row down, and the woman said, "Felicia Addams, I..."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Lara Croft, and I know that we seem a bit... strange, but we're really normal folk. I teach Ancient Runes, and I like to travel. Until these classes came up, I was planning on Mongolia this summer."
"Why not someplace like, oh, Greece?" someone asked.
"Been there, done that, got the stela," she said with a smile.
"Right, then," a rather rumpled, sandy-haired fellow said. "I'm Remus Lupin, I teach History at Hogwarts, and I regret to say that I'll be out on the 24th and 25th of this month." He shrugged. "Full moon, you see."
"Don't tell me, a werewolf?" someone asked, and he sighed and nodded. "Yes." He turned to look across the aisle. "Severus?"
"Severus Snape. Potions Master," he snapped.
The short fellow with the white hair and beard squeaked happily, "Oh, it's my turn! Filius Flitwick, I'm the Charms Master at Hogwarts."
"Please tell me, Mr. Flitwick, what is a 'charm'?" a student asked.
"It's a spell that makes something behave un-naturally." He pointed his st... wand at the instructor's desk, and hair started to grow from it. He sat back, humming to himself, as the non-wizards stared, fascinated. A young woman turned around, "Mr. Flitwick, was it?" He smiled and nodded, "Can you, um, make it a different colour, like blue?"
"Certainly, my dear," he said happily, and flicked his wand. The hair changed to a pale blue, and he asked, "Tell us about you."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Professor Knewell set down his briefcase next to the stool in his local, and signaled to the bartender. He nodded, finished with his current customer, and set the Professor's usual on the bar. He turned away to serve another, and when he had turned about, the Professor was setting down his empty glass.
Raising his hand, the Professor signaled for another. As he poured a fresh ale, he said, "Classes are starting up, aren't they?"
"Oh, yes," the Professor replied. "Two more, please, this was one of those days."
Tom set them in front of the Professor, "Are you sure? You usually just have one, maybe two."
The Professor raised his half-full second pint, downing it and saying, "The wizarding school you heard of, Hogwarts? Their staff needs to be certified, and they are. But the Ministry also says they need to be licensed, and I've got them."
"Surely they're not that bad," Tom the barman asked. "They seemed to be decent blokes on the telly."
"Some of them are," he admitted, as the waitress came up to the bar. "Others are just plain weird. One of them grew hair on my desk!" He started on his third pint as the waitress departed, and a fellow got up from the bar, moving down and asking, "May I?" Without looking up, the Professor waved, and the fellow motioned, "One for the professor on me."
"Thank you, sir," and he turned around to see a familiar face... "Mr. Potter, isn't it?"
"It is," he allowed. "Would you like to join us, one teacher to another, and share a drink as well as a war story?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Monday, June 3, 2002:
Metropolis International Airport, Floo arrivals gate: 07:52 (GMT -5)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
The fire from Athens flared green, and Crystal stepped out, examining the area, then stepped aside as the fire flared again for Miss Wayne, and lastly for Mr. Morton. They stepped away from the fireplaces, and walked toward a bloke in uniform with a sign reading 'International Arrivals'.
"Good morning, and welcome to the United States," he said, running a wand over them. "Please enlarge any luggage, and I'll need to see your passports."
"Certainly, mate," Crystal replied, handing over her British passport and SO-1 identification. She enlarged her luggage from her bag, stepping through the scanner as he motioned.
"Thank you," he said, and Mattie stepped up for her examination, enlarging her baggage and putting it on the belt for the x-ray machine. "Welcome back, Ms. Wayne," he said, then motioned, "Next, please?" Arthur stepped up, was duly examined and welcomed, and the three of them collected and re-shrunk their bags. "Excuse, me," Arthur asked. "Where can we catch a cab?"
"Outside the main concourse," the TSA agent snapped. "I'm not a travel agent."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"...yes, mom, we're fine," Mattie said into her phone. "We're going to swing by the Planet, grab some lunch and do some shopping, then we'll get Arthur home." She listened, nodding a few times, adding, "I love you too, mom. See you in a day or so." She hit the kill switch, then held it up, "Want to call home?"
"They'll need to connect through New York," Crystal said. "Then a local fire, give them a few hours."
"You know, Crystal, you didn't have to come," Mattie began gently. "I'm not exactly helpless."
"I'm assigned to you," she replied. "They would have my head, and rightly, if I were to leave you."
"Crystal, I'm going on from here to Gotham, my hometown. It is not London."
"Only if you dismiss me," her bodyguard replied. "Besides, how bad could it be?" Arthur laughed hollowly, and stepped forward, "Taxi!"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Bloody big building," Crystal said, admiring the large lobby with its 1920's décor, and the Daily Planet logo, inset in bronze in the marble floor. "If you don't mind, I'll just freshen up..."
"Good idea," Mattie said. "Arthur, will you excuse us?" He nodded, and said, "I'll be in the coffee shop, the floo makes me thirsty."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Monday, June 3, 2002:
Boston, Logan International Airport: 08:02 (GMT -5)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
With a whine and a thumping jolt, the big Boeing touched down. Anne starting to get ready when one of the protective agents held out her hand. "Wait until the seatbelt sign is off, we're first off."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Dick Grayson waited with the dozen or so different cops, some wearing jackets marked 'FBI', 'US Customs' or 'US Secret Service', while others like himself were plainclothes and wore their badge. He sipped his coffee, the airline had opened up their first-class lounge to them. He turned to see airline personnel take up their positions to debark passengers, one of them called to the people waiting, "The aircraft has landed, it will be a few minutes. We thank you for flying El Al."
"Excuse me," one of the waiting relatives asked, "We haven't seen this kind of security before. What's going on?"
"VIP passengers, ma'am," one of the Shin Bet security agents answered. The grey haired woman raised her eyebrow, "Who is it, the Queen?"
"Not quite, mum," one of the MI-5 agents said in a Lancashire accent. "Arrowhead's chief scientist."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
The airline personnel had escorted Anne and her party off the plane first (to the annoyance of several other first-class passengers), and she was escorted into the small airport lounge where identities were established. Dick smiled at the two young Brits, informing them, "I hope you don't mind, but I have a wife and a week-old daughter at home, so I'm going to..."
"Bugger off?" Karen asked with a grin. "Bring them some flowers, mate, and let your wife know we thank her for letting us borrow you. Our regards to Miss Wayne and all that, now shoo," and she flicked her fingers. "G'wan, off with you now."
Anne had just gotten off her mobile, she asked, "Where doth Mattie be?"
"Metropolis, I believe," Dick said. "If you're sure now?"
"Thou hath discharged thy duty, Sir Richard," Anne said with a grin. "Prithee take thy steed and anon to thy hearth and home with our gratitude and best wishes."
Karen looked at her sister, "Oy, that's flowery even for you."
Anne concentrated, "I believe the 'modern' term woulds't be..." she paused, "Karker off, mate!" and several of the accompanying Brits stifled their laughter.
One said, "Bugger off, miss. The term would be 'Bugger off'." He twitched his head, "G'wan, mate. We got it covered. Don't forget the flowers unless y' want to sleep on the couch."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Monday, June 3, 2002:
Metropolis, GNN studios: 12:59:50 (GMT -5)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"... I have a collection of coffee mugs, one from every interview I've done. I need to get a company mug from each of you," Mattie warned the panelists with a grin, who chuckled as they put down their own mugs. The line producer said "We're live in five, four,...."
"Hello and welcome to GNN's Crossfire, I'm Clark Kent in Metropolis. With me in the studio today as panelists are reporters from the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, and the Daily Planet. As our guests today we have Mr. Donald Moss of Earth United!, and Ms. Mattie Wayne of Arrowhead Investments, Ltd." He shuffled a few papers that he used as a prop, "I would remind our home viewers that as a public service we are co-sponsored by Public Broadcasting and the Wayne Foundation, this is live, with no commercial interruptions." He turned slightly, "Mr. Peter Howard of the Miami Herald, your first question."
"Thank you, Mr. Kent. My question is to Mr. Moss, regarding..."
"She doesn't look like this bothers her at all," Arthur said from where he watched in the nearby green room. He reached out and grabbed a carrot stick from the deli tray to munch on.
"We know better," Crystal agreed, as Mattie said, "I would like to mention to the home viewers..."
"Excuse me, Ms. Wayne," Clark said, "Mr. Moss has the floor."
She blinked, "My apologies, Mr. Moss."
After he finished, Mr. Kent turned to her, "Ms. Wayne, I believe you had a comment?"
"Yes, and a question myself. I'd like to say that the sponsorship by the Wayne Foundation does not mean I have any form of editorial control. I didn't know who the panelists would be until five minutes before air, and I ask them not to throw me softball questions." She turned, "Mr. Moss, the last interview I shared with a member of a Green organization, such as yourself, I put a question to her I never heard an answer to."
"That would, of course, depend on the question," Donald Moss replied, to general chuckles. Mattie smiled slightly, "Certainly," and a visibly pregnant Lois Lane of the Daily Planet put down her own mug, "Which question is that, Ms. Wayne?"
"I think you were there, Ms. Lane," Mattie replied. "The question was regarding shipments of high-level nuclear waste to launch sites. The two most commonly used methods of getting any sort of cargo off the planet were rocket launch and lifting it off through our starport in Ecuador."
"I do remember that," Lois said, co-opting the question.
In the green room, Arthur chuckled nastily at the screen, and Crystal looked over at him. "Lois and Mattie are related, she's Mattie's Aunt, and the moderator, Mr. Kent, is married to Lois, so he's her Uncle. Lois Lane has an evil reputation as an interviewer, she gave Mattie her first training in interviews. But she has never played softball with Mattie in an interview, and Mr. Kent is no slouch either."
On the screen, Constanza Arroz of the Los Angeles Times leaned forward, "Let's talk nukes in space, Ms. Wayne. There is some concern with you having your own private navy."
"The Solar Guard is more like the Coast Guard," Mattie replied. "The heaviest unit we have on the drawing boards is a light cruiser, and we've just deployed two frigates, light units. Our concern in the system is the same as any organization like the Coast Guard, territorial integrity, enforcement of law, search and rescue, and the emplacement and maintenance of navigational aids. Your readers should be very familiar with the duties of the Coast Guard, our roles are similar."
"That's well and good, Ms. Wayne, but what about nukes?" Lois volleyed the question back.
"Let's separate this into two categories," Mattie replied, holding out one hand, then the other. "Nuclear power, fission, and nuclear weapons, fission or fusion." She turned slightly, "Now, most of the orbital works, stations, and so forth are in or near Earth orbit, which means we can use solar power. However, we run into the inverse-square law regarding power, which pretty much limits our use of solar power to Mars orbit."
"Back to nukes," she said. "In space, solar power is much less of a problem. However, for ships and satellites beyond Mars' orbit, you need literally acres of solar cells to power a clock-radio, which is not cost-effective. The alternative is some variant of nuclear power."
"And nuclear weapons?" Ms. Arroz asked.
"Quite honestly, I don't need them, and I'm much happier not having them," she replied. "Let's look at why not. First, if one of my crews is trying to stop a smuggler in a starship, and they set off a nuke next to the smuggler, all it's going to do is shove them around a bit. They might break the captain's teacup, but that's about it. You need to penetrate the ship's shields in order to do any damage. It's like firing at a tank. You need special weapons to penetrate the tank's hull and kill the crew. Right now, we're firing a pistol at a tank, which doesn't do a lot of good. We do have intelligence crews out there now looking for those ship-killer missiles, so we can reverse-engineer them to kill that tank, but as of right now, we don't have them."
"Being a former Army guy, I can appreciate that," Charles Rivers of the Chicago Tribune said. "However, the armor on a tank is not equally thick."
"True, and this is part of the R & D I've mentioned," Mattie replied. "Right now, the most vulnerable part of a ship is it's arse, pardon me, the stern." People chuckled, and Mattie grinned, "I think that will go on the blooper reel."
Taking another sip of coffee, she continued, "Two reasons for the stern. The main cargo hatch is there, and the drive coils are there, so what we need to do is trash those drive coils. Then we can send in the boarding party." She took another sip of coffee, "Several problems with that, the first is getting the weapon in place. I don't think people quite understand the distances involved. On Earth, the longest ranges are intercontinental, maybe eight thousand kilometers. In space, point-blank range is several times that, two hundred thousand kilometers. A long distance shot would be several hundred million kilometers, or from Earth to Jupiter."
She swiveled in her chair, "Second problem, in the Guard, we're concerned with pirates and smugglers, so there's no need for battleships and carriers. We see an unauthorized ship, they're going to be asked to heave to for inspection, just like the Coast Guard does with a suspicious fishing boat. However, if the suspected bad guy doesn't, we need to be able to engage him, knock out his engines and shields, then send in the boarding party." She swiveled again, coffee cup in hand, "So, we've got different weapon mixes. Our cruiser needs to be able to chase down and disable the bad guy's ship, so they need longer ranged missiles, as well as close in self defense weapons. The assault shuttle, on the other hand, is like a helicopter with troops. It needs self defense weapons, but its primary job is to deliver the Marines."
"So what would be knife-range?" Mr. Rivers asked.
"A few hundred kilometers, and the ship's missile ranges would be five AU or so. The problem we have there are the missiles themselves. Right now, the best drive coils we can produce for a missile are about 3,000 gees. We need about 15,000 gees, a much faster flight time, maneuverability, and a warhead that will penetrate to do some damage. We also need to have it locally produced, so we can do maintenance and upgrades on it, in addition to the security aspects of letting someone know about our defenses."
In the green room, Crystal said, "She seems so comfortable," and Arthur shook his head, "She doesn't like being on stage like this, she's the kind who likes to go barefoot."
"She doesn't show it, she looks like she's having fun."
Mr. Howard from the Miami Herald said, "In your interview with Larry Ullage of the Detroit Free Press, you had mentioned a possible colony. Can you give us more details on that?"
"Certainly, although any sort of possible settlement is several steps away," Mattie said. She swiveled in her seat, "First of all, the planet in question is in a binary system roughly 1200 light years from here. It's a water world... sorry, I mean the surface is habitable. It's not a desert planet. The star it orbits is a G5, and they have not one, but two asteroid belts, the inner one is from about .9 AU to 7 AU, so it's a huge one, the outer one is about the same size ours is, roughly two AU."
"I'm not an astronomer, Ms. Wayne," Mr. Howard said. "Can you restate that, please?"
She smiled, "Certainly. Earth orbits the sun at one Astronomical Unit, or AU, which is 93 million miles or about 150 million kilometers. Our asteroid belt is between Mars and Jupiter, so it's distance is at three to five AU or about 450 to 750 million kilometers. On this planet, which is called Windfall, it orbits a little bit closer at .8 AU or..."
"120 million kilometers," Mr. Kent said.
"Thank you," Mattie said. "Their star is a bit dimmer than ours. They don't have a large moon like we do, but they do have a very close, rich asset in their inner asteroid belt, which goes from .9 AU, or 135 million kilometers, to 7 AU, or..."
She paused to do mental math, and Mr. Kent said, "1050 million, or a shade over a billion kilometers." He shifted, "Ms. Wayne, in the interview you mentioned an existing failed colony. Why did it fail?"
"First of all, there are three colony sites we know of on Windfall. From what our Intelligence people there tell us, about seventy years ago, they suffered a devastating, sudden plague. It killed about seventy percent of the males overnight, the females seemed to be carriers." She held up a hand as they reacted to that, "The remaining site, which was a fishing village on an island at sea, survived by imposing an immediate quarantine, but they still got hit. As it stands now, they have a population of around two hundred thousand, of which thirty five thousand are male, and of the females, fifty thousand are slaves."
"Seventeen percent males, and thirty percent slave girls," Mr. Howard said. "What's the current status?"
"The last report I saw was dated late December. Regarding the Island site, the ship's surgeon had no reports of plague for at least twenty years. There are two sites on the main continent, one is on a small island in the mouth of the main river, the other is what we believe was the initial, primary colony site. That's up a river we've named the Danube, in the foothills of a mountain range." She swiveled in her seat again, "We sent a supply ship to our people at the Island site, but unfortunately it had to make an emergency landing at the River site. While it is going through a precautionary quarantine, the ship's surgeon has found no evidence of disease, however the site is deserted."
"What about the third site, I believe you said it was in the foothills?" Mr. Rivers asked.
"We haven't had anyone there yet," she replied. "The people from Island sent a shuttle about fifty or sixty years ago, it was apparently shot down by the local inhabitants, who were reported as 'feral'." She shrugged, "We really don't know more than that, the locals didn't follow up. However, since that seems to be the initial colony site, and it is alleged to have manufacturing capabilities as well as a large database of technology, we're interested in it."
"So let's move on," Ms. Lane said. "You don't need settlers to exploit the locals."
"First of all, Ms. Lane, any possible settlement (she emphasized the word) would be later." Mattie turned in her chair, "The first step is to gather information. Right now, we have an intelligence team there that is in pursuit of technology. They are not equipped or trained for any sort of investigation of this type, what we have is in the nature of background political and economic information."
"The information we would need, according to preliminary planning, would not only be on this disease, but on the environment. Now, our people have not had major problems regarding the local foods, one developed an allergy to a type of tea, another a slight mineral deficiency. With those minor exceptions, our people are reported in excellent health." She turned in her chair, "The current Island tech level is about 1940's vacuum tube, with animal-drawn carts. Somewhat rural, but that's understandable. They do have excellent, advanced ceramics tech, which we are interested in."
"That's all very nice, Ms. Wayne," Lois said. "How do you keep from exploiting the locals?"
"Exploiting is a slippery word, Ms. Lane," Mattie replied. "Before we trade with the locals, we need better information, not only on their strengths and weaknesses, but on the local environment. That's why we will be deploying a larger ship with two general missions." She held up her right hand, index finger out. "The first mission is to acquire better intelligence on the main Danube site in the foothills, so we'll be landing a team there. They'll determine the status of the site, and what happened to the original colonists."
Holding up a second finger, she said, "The second mission has two parts. The first is finding sites for research stations. Going by orbital scans, we're looking at some small islands where we can put in test fields of wheat, corn, rice and so forth. We also want to check Terran food animals, so there will be chickens, cows, pigs, goats, etc. We have issued a contract to several universities for preliminary designs for this, this is putting boots on the ground to survey the islands, find out about the water supply, drainage, winds, that kind of thing." She swiveled a bit, "The second part of that is to install automated monitoring equipment."
"What kind of automated monitors?" Mr. Moss asked.
"Air pressure, humidity, temperature, water salinity and so forth," Mattie replied. "The sites include tropical, seacoast, river and mountain locations, so the equivalent of Puerto Rico, Charleston, St. Louis, and Montana. We would put in a small Quonset hut with a satellite dish for communication and weather information. We also need to find out what kind of local wildlife there is. The consensus of opinion is to put in a water pump, probably wind powered, and a series of water pools, sized for the different kinds of critter. We can capture pictures of those on camera for the Environmental Impact Statement and upload them to our comm satellites."
"I was going to ask you about that," he said.
"The problem is that we have absolutely zero information beyond there's air to breathe, Mr. Moss. This isn't like putting something in a Terran site, where we have years of data, this is a completely virgin site. We can make assumptions, but that's all they are, assumptions. Something like that small Quonset hut in the middle of the woods, a bush airstrip of gravel and a concrete foundation for the hut will probably be as minimally invasive as we can make. We know that there's a daily morning rain shower at the lower latitudes, but almost nothing about the rest of the planet."
She shrugged, "We can guess based on orbital surveys, but we just don't know. For instance, it's a reasonable assumption that the local wildlife will drink water. We set up a water point for the wildlife, with some water tanks which overflow to keep the water fresh, there's enough native landscaping so the smaller ones can drink and hide from predators, and we point cameras, all very passive." She swiveled a bit, "We know there are saltwater fish species the locals catch for food, but nothing about freshwater species, and nothing about larger aquatic species, like sharks and whales."
"You mentioned agricultural stations," Mr. Moss said. "What about those?"
"The Island site is in an archipelago, like the Philippines or the Marianas, it's on one of the larger islands. What we're looking for is some isolated islands about five or ten square miles each, that the universities we contract with can plant test crops on. This way, we'll know if wheat or corn or rice collect any local bugs, and see how things like carrots and potatoes grow." Mattie turned and said, "With..."
"Tell us about how..." Ms. Lane started.
"Ms. Lane, Ms. Wayne has the floor," Mr. Kent said.
"Sorry," Lois said, and Mattie grinned, "Mr. Moss, I was just going to add that having several research sites gives us redundancy. If the island operated by a Taiwanese university has the same results as one operated by a German or Polish one, I think we can stand by those results. Ms. Lane?"
Lois smiled, "Ms. Wayne, I'm still wondering about your colonization plans, and how will you keep from exploiting the natives and the colonists?"
The other journalists chuckled as Mattie grinned, and replied, "It's hard to stop talking when it's a great subject. I apologize, Ms. Lane, but I'm clearly not following your question. Can you restate it, please?"
"Certainly," Lois said. "I'm defining 'exploit' by using a situation or a person in an unfair manner. By overworking or underpaying them, and getting a benefit from that situation."
"Ah, thank you," Mattie said, then tented her fingers, swinging back and forth in her chair. "If I follow you correctly, Ms. Lane, you're referring to labor law."
"In part," Lois said. "If you find a massive gold deposit on the Island site, and pay the ignorant farmer pennies on the dollar to mine it, what then?"
"It depends on the existing law. I'd certainly think that was some form of fraud. However, if the surveyor laid out the cash to do the survey, and there wasn't any sort of existing public information..." she shrugged. "I don't know. I'd let the courts thrash it out. It depends on what rights the farmer let go in his sale of mineral rights. All I can say is that in our existing orbital smelters, we go by core samples to mortgage the rock. That's like saying there's oil underneath your vegetable garden, you have to dig to find out for certain. I do appreciate the question, that's something we'll definitely have to look into."
Mattie swung in her chair, "Regarding the labor law, remember we are dealing with a slave state. Human rights groups define that as having more than twenty percent of your population as slave. When the Confederates did a census, they defined a slave as 'three-fifths' of a free person. We do know that there is no safety regulations for the workplace, we don't know if there's anything like a minimum wage or working hours. The day there is thirty hours long, as the planet rotates more slowly than Earth does. I can say that when we've hired locals, we've paid a living wage and done shifts."
She raised her hands, "As I've said, we need to resolve the issues I've mentioned, and then we need to do some negotiating with the locals. Remember, we have a lot of government involvement, if our people suddenly start to beat the help, it's going to get fixed quick. Does that help?" She swiveled in her seat, "We're far away from any sort of settlement or colonization, much less any sort of economic or political (she finger-quoted) 'exploiting' of them. We've got several problems to sort out first."
She held up her right hand's index finger, "First problem, the disease, is it still active, and if so, where? That's why we're going to put in those people from the World Health Organization." Holding up a second finger, "Environment. What's the weather like, and are there any microbes that can kill us? Are there bears in the woods?" A third finger went up, "Do we resuscitate the Danube site in the mountains, or do we start fresh somewhere else, and if so, where? Those are the scientific questions, the easy questions," and people chuckled. "I'd like to quote, 'When you deal with the lives of your people, you move slowly and carefully.' I'm just as impatient as anyone else, but this makes too much sense."
She turned, "Our experience so far with colonies has been here in this system, so we're feeling our way with this extra-solar situation. They have the advantage of a foundation of Terran international law, what the in-system colonies operate under is a contract of incorporation. They are essentially a business with our being a majority stockholder. They are in a progressive buy-out of our shares as they hit various milestones, with the settlers owning shares. They vote in whatever local law they feel they need in that colony."
"However, we don't have that foundation with an extra-solar colony, or the settlers. Therefore, a fourth finger (she held up all four) is the legal situation. Do we extend Terran international law to another solar system? Do we use the Interstellar Commercial Code, which is the closest thing to interstellar law? What about the Island site's Council of Elders? Now, they properly clamped a quarantine on the island under emergency law. However, they have since kept power as an oligarchy, a small handful of five people that have total power, long after the medical emergency passed. How do we deal with them? Do they have legal jurisdiction over the planet, or just their one site? If it's the entire planet because of their previous existence, then their civil and criminal laws would apply, which would mean the enslavement of any criminals. If it's just their one site, what do we put in, and what about extradition of our respective criminals?"
She swiveled in her chair again, "That means that if one of their slaves escapes from her master and lands in our colony, do we return her, knowing that her escape is a capital offense on the Island site and she'll be executed by slow torture? It also means that we would need to have a judicial slave market." She turned in her chair again, "If they only have jurisdiction over their own island, what do we do about extradition and stowaways? Where are the legal, and the moral limits?"
"So our colonists would have no rights is what you're saying," Ms. Lane replied.
"No. What I'm saying is we need to negotiate with the Island site's Council of Elders. They are an existing legal authority, what we need to do is determine how far their authority goes. Does it extend to the rest of the planet, or just a few miles off-shore? After that, we draw up contracts for the local settlement as a business unit. Any settlers would be stockholders in that business. Those settlers, as part of their buy-in contract would also agree to a list of rights and responsibilities." She put down her coffee mug and tented her fingers, "For instance, they would have the right to free speech and a free press, but they would also have the legal responsibility to vote in an election, which would include, by the way, 'None of the above'."
"That's something I wouldn't mind seeing on a ballot," Mr. Rivers said. "You mentioned benchmarks. What are some of those?"
"Each installation is a business," Mattie replied. "They operate under a contract, articles of incorporation. They have a balance of trade, the benchmarks are steps on the road to independence. For instance, the lunar colonies require ninety days supply of food, water and air in reserve, the idea being you have to be able to breathe before you vote. It progresses to having educational, medical, and other facilities like transportation in place and working."
"Let's choose an example," Mr. Howard asked. "You mentioned a 'Charleston' site."
"That's a working name, the location has a superficial resemblance to Charleston. It has a deep harbor, a river estuary with a nice sized island in the mouth, and if you follow rivers upstream, you come close to one of the major inland rivers, which we've named the Bug. Using modern equipment, you could dig some canals between the two, and have a nice trade route, like the Erie Canal."
"And the existing mountain site?" Ms. Arroz asked.
"We really don't know yet," Mattie said, and raised her hands. "That would be nice, the infrastructure is built. All we'd need to do is start up the generators, do some cleaning and plant new crops. It is reported to be the original manufacturing site. In six months or so the site could be functioning, but we just don't know what the status is yet."
"You mentioned a balance of payments," Mr. Kent said. "Explain that one, please."
"Arrowhead and the Guard are private companies, with significant government investment," Mattie replied. "We all have a bottom line. Initially, like any new location a business invests in, they won't make back what is put into it, the settlement is going to have a tough enough time putting food on the table. However, the orbital colonies we're building, and presumably this one also, have a Governor. The Governor's responsibilities are to provide civil government and emergency services like police, fire, and health care, but also to promote trade and business. He is the head of state."
Swiveling in her chair, "Let's assume that the Danube mountain site is like the River site. That site was evacuated, the lights were off, doors locked, everything neat and tidy. We have no idea where the people are." She waved a hand, "We're also going to assume that the doctors we're taking from the World Health Organization give us a clean bill of health, so we don't have to worry about disease. All we need to do is fire up the generators, do some cleaning, and plant crops. Now, all of this so far has put the settlement's balance sheet in the red, because those doctors and those seed crops cost money to buy and pay and ship. We're going to say that costs fifteen million."
She swiveled in her chair, "Another assumption is that manufacturing plans are still viable, and the equipment needed to do so is in good repair. Now, they've got that huge asteroid belt just overhead, so some of the first things I think they'd make would be spacecraft and mining equipment."
"Now, this is something I've said before about our own Belt. Let's assume that our brave settlers pick a common, one kilometer asteroid. That size makes up seventy percent of our asteroid belt, so it's a safe assumption here. That rock masses about two billion metric tons; two trillion kilos. Of those, ten percent, or 200 million metric tons, is pure iron. Another thirty million metric tons is high grade nickel, one and a half million metric tons of cobalt. Just to salt the mix, you've got several thousand metric tons of things like platinum, osmium, and rubidium, which run several thousand dollars a gram. Not a kilo, a gram. You've also got little things like gold and silver, and people have found rough diamonds the size of softballs." There were some low whistles, and Mattie smiled, "I've said before, if you want to make money, you go to the Belt."
"So, our Governor, let's pick a name, Dumas. Joseph Dumas knows this, and he not only licenses these designs to Arrowhead, he puts ten metric tons of osmium and five hundred metric tons of gold on deposit in the bank in Switzerland. Fifty one thousand kilos of twenty four carat metal. Are those Swiss bankers going to give him a good rate on the colony account?" She smiled, "Is water wet?"
"You don't simply drop a rock on the teller window," Mr. Kent pointed out.
"No, you don't. That's where I make my money, by providing a market for those lonely Belters to sell their rocks to, and a place to buy food and air. I provide credit, based on core samples, I built the orbital smelters and the refinery, there's no reason I can't do the same thing at Windfall. Now, it will take a while to work through that one kilometer asteroid, which gives an income stream. However, I also mentioned that the existing government on the Island site was..."
"Corrupt," Ms. Lane said. "Greedy oligarchs."
"What makes this pitiful, Ms. Lane, is that those greedy old men have based their island's economy on iron. That's like basing it on sand, I buy asteroid iron at L4 for eight dollars a metric ton. I can import iron, shipping it across twelve hundred light years, and it would cost me about ten dollars a metric ton." She dug into her pocket, and threw a few disks on the table, "Those are Windfall coins."
"They're poker chips," Mr. Rivers said, examining one, than another. "Even Vegas chips have different designs and serial numbers." He looked at Mattie dubiously, "All these have are different, I assume those are numbers in the middle." He looked at the coins more closely, "These are hand painted! You could turn these out in a garage by the bushel."
Mattie nodded, "Yes, those are numbers, and the only security measures we know of are fluorescent." She leaned forward to pick up a coin, "This is a ten sandur coin. It has vertical and horizontal stripes, ten of each, in two different colors. There is an organ in a particular species of fish that can be treated to fluoresce, as well as a plant fiber. Shops will have a scanner, basically a desktop black light, where coins can be checked, but that doesn't work in the farmer's market, there's no electricity. The last time they caught a counterfeiter, that's where he was passing the coins. However, he was fined, his slaves were hung, as they did the work. A little double standard in the law, there."
"I'm surprised they still have a functioning economy," he replied.
"Their underground economy is based on barter, which avoids both counterfeiting and taxes, any large purchase is done through checks in the Ministry bank. Since the Ministry gets a handling fee, they don't object, but the overall economic growth is restricted."
Ms. Arroz was examining the coins, shaking her head. "How do the ordinary people do it? How do you buy groceries?"
"You have to set up accounts everywhere, and do periodic billing, and therefore write checks," Mattie replied. "Because the Ministry gets their handling fee, on every official transaction, they don't care. What it limits is the um... spontaneity of the economy. It's like ordering a fifteen dollar delivery pizza, instead of simply giving the guy a twenty when he comes and telling him to 'keep it', you write a check for fifteen dollars. That extra five dollars isn't going into his pocket, so he's not going to spend it and boost the economy."
"The Council must have people who know what to do," Ms. Arroz said. "Just using different tints in the clay, and different shapes would work."
"Unfortunately, the Council of Elders have been kings of their hill for so long, they don't see a need," Mattie said. "I'm sure they have people that are telling them that, but there's no reason they have to listen, especially when the head of their Finance ministry is also the head of government."
"Rather set in their ways, it seems," Ms. Arroz said. "Why your imperial, colonial approach?"
"I'm more than willing to sit down across a table and negotiate with the Council as equals," Mattie said, spreading her hands. "We've compared the original legal code with the current one, and while there are some things we object to in the original, we're basically good with it. However, the Council has the attitude of 'my way or else', and change the rules, the laws to suit themselves at the drop of a hat. This means that I can play their rigged game by their rules, where they have all the advantages, or I use the 'big stick' and gunboat diplomacy. That's the way the Council expects me to counter them, but we're throwing them a curve by striking a middle ground, investing in a wide array of businesses, buying land, and generally stirring up their economy."
"Why do that?" Mr. Rivers asked. "It's still economic colonialism."
"Political, social and economic influence," she replied. "There's also the intelligence factor. If we invest in a tailor's shop, that not only allows more rapid business growth for the tailor, it also allows us to influence things like workplace safety, which is non-existent. We also gain intelligence by those workers gossiping, political influence, and economic leverage."
She tented her fingers, "The average small business owner isn't dumb. They know how to read the signs, even if their government wants to ignore it. They know who can shake the money tree in their direction, even though, by law, a female can only own a very small business, like a hot dog cart." She propped her chin on her fingers, and was silent for a moment. "On one hand, we do nothing, and let a group of old, greedy men continue to rob their society blind while ignoring the responsibilities they don't like, and don't want to deal with. On the other, we can invest, we can influence at the grass roots that society to gain needed social change. I'm not going to stand the Council against a wall, or put in a dictatorship. However, we all know that money talks, especially in a corrupt society. Need I say anything about lobbyists and campaign contributions?"
"No, we've all written extensively about that," Mr. Kent said.
"Now, I do try to be ethical, and play by the rules," Mattie said. "In this case, the rule is the open hand. We could simply buy off their entire government, but that wouldn't help people. What we're doing instead is a lot of investing in businesses and R & D. I mentioned they were advanced in ceramics, one business is a boat builder, only we're trying a ceramic catamaran, instead of a fiberglass one. It's a good investment for us, builds up the local tech, as well as the local economy. Being an island, wood is scarce and expensive, and the island is metal-poor. One thing we want is a good set of nautical charts, because our people think several of the islands would make great vacation resorts, they've even drawn up sketches."
She took another sip of coffee. "Let's get back to our Governor Dumas. He's got a pretty penny in his account, but it's not all profit. He has to buy things for the settlers with it. For instance, they need a big bulldozer. Governor Dumas has to find the best price, arrange to have it broken down, shipped to Ecuador, loaded on a ship going his way, and hopefully they don't run into pirates." (She rapped the table's wood.)
"Once in Windfall orbit, it has to be shuttled down to the settlers, reassembled correctly and tested, then some of the settlers need to be trained on both using it and repairing it. Governor Dumas also needs to buy fuel and parts and have them shipped out. That bulldozer is going to put a good sized dent in that account. However, if all they plan to use it for is leveling roads and clearing land, wouldn't a steel scraper on a wooden frame, pulled by draft animals be a heck of a lot cheaper?"
She took another sip, "Also, the Governor has to open a local office to represent the settlers. He has to hire not only a colony factor to represent them, but also administrative staff, an attorney on retainer, and probably a marketing guy, none of whom are cheap. He's also got to pray that they don't run off to Vegas and gamble away the colony's funds, because he's going to be 1200 light years away. He has to get back to Windfall, again hopefully dodging pirates, because he needs to stomp out those fires." She turned, "It's not all fun and games for our Governor or the settlers, and their survival is not guaranteed."
She cradled her coffee mug in her hands, "I apologize for the rather long-winded response. The settlers have to budget and spend wisely, just like anyone else. If their stock of seeds are contaminated, they need to replace it. If someone gets drunk and does target practice on their stud bull, they've got to replace it, and if they can't afford something else, too bad."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Ms. Wayne, you seem to have an obsession about the issue of slavery in the galaxy," Ms. Arroz said. "What can you tell us about it, leaving out the ethics and moral issues, please. We obviously don't have common ground with other civilizations about that."
"Treading a minefield, aren't we?" Mattie replied, then took a deep breath. "All right. Being as objective as I can, most civilizations that I am aware of use slavery as part of their criminal code. Instead of doing what we do, which is locking a criminal up or some form of parole, they will use a judicial collar, the one with alternating yellow and green lights, on their convicts. On some planets, the state retains ownership and leases the convict, while others they're sold outright, like any other slave. On Windfall, there is a variant of this, the Council retains ownership, leasing the slave. However, the convict is sentenced to their, or I should say HER collar for a certain number of years. Now, as this is similar to the chain gangs, and the convict does retain some rights, including the right to handle money and possess items, as well as to appeal the lessee, it does have a slightly better odor. I'm not endorsing it, however, I would prefer the institution be abolished."
"I see what you say," Ms. Arroz replied. "You mentioned 'her collar'."
"The criminal code is biased," she replied. "Let me give an example. As you all know, I'm a runner, I enjoy marathons. If I go running with my brother on the Island site, and we both forget our breath masks, he's fined, I'm collared, a twenty-year sentence. In addition, my 'owner' (she finger-quoted) can give me various drugs to produce multiple births. One out of three male infants survive, most female infants do. So of the four children I produce, three are female, and are thus born slave, and the male is free. This is a law that was known as 'mother's sin', and it took them years to have the Council of Elders overturn it, because Elder Taaman, who holds the Justice Ministry, made too much money from selling the daughters of slaves as slaves."
"Sounds like a wonderfully corrupt place," Ms. Lane said.
"Oh, yes," Mattie said. "Another small example. I mentioned that this was a rich system, with an enormous asteroid belt you could almost reach out and touch. I mentioned the Island colony's Council has based their currency on iron, instead of something we might use, like gold. Their primary concern is to line their pockets, and they've been getting away with it. They have, as I think I mentioned, one decrepit light cruiser that is permanently docked to a small space station. They are trading asteroid iron, as the island they're on is metal-poor, for air and food to the miners and the station. They paid our people for maintenance on their one shuttle, the first it has had for seventy years, and they tried to cheat us then." She smiled tightly, "Try running your car for seventy years with no oil changes or maintenance, see what shape it's in."
She picked up one of the Windfall coins from the table, and said, "As I mentioned, they've developed out of necessity a rather advanced ceramics tech. They have things like ceramic engines and biofuels. That's one thing I want to trade with them, but they also have a backup database of galactic tech. The planet's primary manufacturing center was the Danube mountain site. That's several hundred kilometers away."
"So why are we even bothering with the Council on the Island site?" Ms. Lane asked.
"It's a known quantity," Mattie replied. "We know the tech data is there, one of our intelligence agents got the plans for an inertial compensator from one of their techs, she was able to build it. However, in order to use it, we have to deal with the Council of Elders. Our spies have been busy there, but they're not going to deal with the Council." She smiled slightly, "That's my job."
She turned slightly, "On the other hand, the Danube site is reported to have not only the original databases, but also manufacturing facilities. Unfortunately, we don't know what condition they're in, a lot of that site is in the foothills of a mountain range, tucked underground. An orbital survey shows things like dams and landing fields, so once the doctors have declared the area safe, we're dropping in survey teams and civil engineers, as well as infantry troops for protection. One way or another, we'll get that data, and hopefully we'll be able to plant some colonists there to produce it."
"How many colonists, and what kind of skills would they need?"
"Obviously farmers, and the reports of existing tech are roughly 1940s. We want to use technology that the colonists can reproduce, and draft animals and vacuum tubes were in use through the late sixties in the US. That means radios and television broadcasts from a satellite, it doesn't mean cell phones. We don't want to put them in a position where some vital bit of equipment requires a part shipped in from off-planet. If there is some absolutely vital equipment, like a mainframe, we want to make sure that the colonists can either manufacture it, or will have both redundancy and spare parts."
She swiveled a bit, "That's part of what's given us an opening at the Island site, their computer mainframe is breaking down, they don't have spare parts, and the Elder in charge isn't concerned. What those IT guys are doing is a back door trade with us, parts for data."
She leaned forward, picking up her coffee mug again, "We don't want to be put in the same position, so our colony wouldn't have that vulnerability. If that means a waterwheel and hydro power, that's fine, but that also means we standardize. We have reports of each individual homestead on the Island site has different voltages, so we can install something like three phase 240 AC for a homestead site, which lets us put in things like electric lights and radios. That means that your wagon can have a small radio set with a battery into it, and a rectifier lets you charge the battery off the wall plug. Building anything like an electric grid is far, far down the road, and besides, the towers are ugly."
"So we've got draft animals and vacuum tubes," Mr. Moss said, nodding his head.
"Precisely," Mattie said. "As I said, sustainable technology for our colonists, a turbine and generator is a lot easier to build and fix than a fusion reactor, and they both produce electricity."
Mr. Rivers asked, "That's good, but what about things like public health?"
"That's where the healers and our Governor come in," Mattie replied. "Drinking water can be made safe with things like sand filters. They're simple enough to build, just a tank of sand and gravel that water slowly seeps through. You then use the filtered water for cooking and drinking, both for your colonists and their livestock, and we're using a design from the World Health Organization." She swiveled a bit, "For the general public, a vendor at the colony market would need a license to sell their produce, they would need to display it, and it doesn't matter if they're selling chicken, fish, or beans. If you want to buy someplace else, that's your responsibility."
"So how does our average citizen fit into this?" Ms. Arroz asked.
"The average citizen needs to have a skill that is useful to the colony," Mattie replied. "They would also need to be willing to go through some tough times and take in apprentices. You would need people that don't mind getting dirty, and who don't need a cell phone to live." There was a chuckle, and she continued, "About the only requirement I would put down for settlers would be bilingual in both English and Trade. A settler can either use an implant for Trade, or we can teach it, like people learn Japanese or Russian, in a classroom. With a vacuum tube radio, you can get news, music and weather reports, you have communications between different homesteads and the main sites."
"What kind of settlers would be required?"
Mattie grinned, "Look in the phone book. Everyone from attorneys and blacksmiths, carpenters and craftspeople, all kinds of farmers, fishermen and teachers, machinists and masons, potters and weavers, as well as their families; children, and they would need to take apprentices." She swiveled in her chair, "We're building a small town of a few thousand people. It's not all the people working in the factories, doing the manufacturing, but all the others in a town, and we can't forget the artists and musicians as well."
"Apprentices?" Mr. Moss asked.
"One reason to have apprentices is so that you can have people that can go on the road for deliveries and house calls. Blacksmiths and farriers for those draft animals to farmers taking produce to market; masons and electricians and machinists to doctors, veterinarians and dentists. A homestead might be the base for a traveling healer, who might be on the road ten days out of thirty, and who might serve as all three: doctor, dentist, and vet."
Ms. Arroz asked, "You mentioned a market. What can you tell us about that?"
"This isn't planned, but I think it would be a logical development," Mattie replied. "The settlement would designate a certain market area or bazaar. Maybe the town square becomes the market one day a week." She shrugged, "There might be some form of overhead cover, there would probably be electricity available. If I were to design it, I'd have two major sections where people can lease a stall, a 'produce' section for local farmers, and a 'services' section, for people like blacksmiths and cabinet makers."
She gestured, "The Governor, as part of his or her duties, would have a staff for weights and measures, so the consumers know the scales are accurate. The public health people would also license the farmer, so I know the chicken I buy is disease free." She swiveled in her chair, "In a bazaar, it's subdivided, so there's good competition, if I want to buy a kilo of beans, I can compare prices side by side, and I can see the little inspection sticker on the farmer's scale, so I know I'm getting an honest kilo."
"Now we've all been to farmer's markets, food isn't the only thing there. Clothing, textiles, furniture, whatever I might need including services are available. While I'm there, I can look at the displays, and if I like what I see, I can make arrangements with the shop owner or their apprentice. For instance, taxes might be coming due soon, so I would also stop by the accountant's booth and arrange to have her check my books."
Mr. Rivers said, "That certainly seems reasonable, but why not more advanced technology?"
"The idea goes back to the balance of payments for the colony, and for the individual businesses. At first, the colony is going to operate in the red, their imports are going to outweigh their exports. If the farmer's cat piddles on the accountant's laptop, it's going to be more expensive to replace than something like a pocket calculator." She grinned, "It's like buying something set up for the British electrical system in Phoenix. Yes, it's possible, but it has different plugs and voltages, so it has to be special ordered and shipped in, so it's going to cost more. A pocket calculator, on the other hand, uses a pair of AA batteries, which you can buy anywhere. So on my computer back at the farm, I'm going to burn the data files for my books to a CD, and make arrangements to get it to the accountant, probably dropping it off at next week's market."
"So when the accountant needs to visit, she gets in her car..."
"I don't think she'd use a car," Mattie said. "I would think she'd live in town, probably over her shop with her family and any apprentices. Most small towns would be fairly compact, so she could walk to anyone in town, like the butcher's shop."
"However, she may need to go visit my farm, so she needs to rent a vehicle. She walks three blocks to a livery stable and rents a buggy, or has one delivered by the stable's apprentice." She swiveled in her chair. "Why not a car, even an off-road one like a jeep, you ask. Let's say that car needs a part, an oil pan. By the way, I'm including things like fluids as parts. The roads are rough, it's possible. Now when that jeep was damaged, it leaked oil on the road, which is a pollutant, and now has to be cleaned up and replaced, but that oil pan has to be shipped twelve hundred light years."
"The local machinist or blacksmith couldn't weld a patch to that oil pan?" Ms. Arroz asked.
"Okay, bad example," Mattie admitted. "What I'm getting at is not only cleaning up that oil spill, but for the average settler, day-to-day life will probably not require sophisticated technology." She gestured, "When you write a story, you type it up and email it back to your paper. In the settlement, as one of the reporters for, say, a weekly paper or radio show, you might type it into a terminal to the newspaper's server, or on a typewriter." (The reporters shuddered.)
She grinned, "Email and that infrastructure might not exist, so you drop back to a more manual method, but you're still reporting the news. Parts for a laptop computer would need to be imported, as opposed to a terminal connected to the colony's mainframe. A vacuum tube can be made by that machinist to fix a radio, instead of importing a microchip to fix a circuit board. Getting back to transportation, while there may be a fire truck, the engine and transmission as well as the pumps would need to be simple enough to be locally repairable, as well as locally fueled. The farmer who needs to get his produce to market is not going to be that far away, maybe twenty miles or so. Ice chests on a wagon works just fine, even here. Look at how much ice a convenience store sells."
"Now, if our accountant's rented buggy throws a wheel, it can be repaired locally. The parts are locally fabricated, so the cost is less. She has a radio in the buggy, she calls in to the stable she rented it from, they make arrangements to get her going again. It's all locally sustainable technology, it does the job."
"A buggy or wagon also implies draft animals," Ms. Arroz said. "What kind of draft animals are there?"
She replied, "There are reports of two species of draft animal," she replied. "One is a fairly large, slow one known as a shonnen. Six legs, about five or six thousand pounds, like a large ox. The settlement might use a team of those with a scraper blade to level roads instead of shipping in that bulldozer."
"The other is something called a hexataur, they look like a centaur, with a horse's head, and are about five feet, or fifteen hands, at the withers. They seem to be opportunistic omnivores, so they'll eat a rat if they can catch it, otherwise they graze." She swiveled in her chair again, "I would think the shonnen would be used for plowing fields and anything where we would need a lot of power. On the other hand, a hexataur would be used like a light horse, for pulling buggies or light wagons, like a mail cart." She shrugged, "I don't know where either of them might be used in manufacturing, I would presume delivery services, but we can find out."
Mr. Kent said, "Thank you, Ms. Wayne, and let's go to some of the questions our viewers have sent us." A graphic flashed on the screen as he read, "Jared writes, 'Six legs? Woah!'"
"Six legs, or limbs, is fairly common, Jared," Mattie replied. "We've had people here, a recent one I saw in the Eunomia base was a meter high panther, four meters or so long, with an opposable thumb in her tail, her fur changed color with her mood." She swiveled, "The humanoid form is one, but not the only dominant form of intelligence in the galaxy. There are energy beings, group minds whose individuals look like cockroaches, dolphins, and I think everyone remembers the Wookies you saw last year on TV."
Mr. Kent nodded, "Jen in New York writes, "I'm a criminal attorney. What kind of legal code would be in place?" He added, "Excellent question."
"It is," Mattie replied. "When you travel, you're subject to local law, our problem here is the initial law for this settlement, this colony. For instance, you have civil law for things like consumer protection, weights and measures, and building codes. You also have criminal law, which defines the crimes and appropriate punishments."
She swiveled again in her seat, "Jen, the difficulty is which set of statutes apply. For instance, the original planetary law for Windfall was presumably copied from their homeworld, and subsequently modified for the Island site by the Council of Elders. In that modification, only males can hold real property over a certain monetary value, and they are the only ones that have a vote. In that criminal law, a male is usually fined, or for more serious crimes like murder, executed. They have gallows by the side of the road, at rest stops, so people can see and learn about their crime. A female would also hang for murder, but for other crimes is enslaved, the reason is to increase the birth rate, and the population." She snorted, "They have an interesting touch, the victim of a murder is placed in a glass-topped coffin below the gallows."
"On the other hand, we have in each of our local colonies a Governor, like our hypothetical Joseph Dumas. He is appointed initially, one of the benchmarks I've mentioned is his election by the local board, who each are elected and serve a fixed term. The colony provides for both prosecution and defense, and they trade off, so an attorney might prosecute one case and defend another before the board. For a high crime like murder, the Governor can accept the existing judge and jury's decision to execute and sign the death warrant, order another trial as an appeal, or commute the sentence to exile. He's the only one with High Justice, and like I've said, that's rather limited. Fortunately, we haven't had a High Justice case yet, although we have had a banishment back to Earth for a violent drunk."
Mattie leaned forward, "A colony can't really afford to lock up a criminal and let them rot. They need to give a fair trial, allow an appeal, and be done with it. For a Low Justice crime like robbery or battery, the case is heard before the board, but as I said, these are cases in the Terran system."
"How do we handle this hypothetical colony on Windfall? Which set of laws, or combination, gets put in place? How are they written, enacted, modified, and deleted? What about the vote? In the orbital colonies, you need to pass a citizenship test and be fifteen before you can vote. Is there a gender, or other form of bias?" She turned, "Jen, you said you're a criminal attorney. You know there are imbalances in the law, both civil and criminal. What procedures do we, as common citizens have to change the law?" She shrugged, "We haven't had to deal with too much crime on the stations, they still have small populations. Is stealing an apple from the market worth the gallows? Is it worth a collar, and for how long?" She shook her head, "It is an excellent question, and I would remind people that smiths and farmers aren't the only settlers we need. I would also remind the attorneys that we don't need laws written in fifty-dollar words."
Mr. Kent turned in his chair, "Marie in Wichita writes, 'How do I get to this colony? I'm a college student."
"Marie, it depends on what your degree is in," Mattie replied. "First of all, as I said, we are not accepting applications at this time for Windfall. We need to make sure it's safe, first. After that, you may need to sign on as an apprentice with someone. That would be a contract, but look into some of the skills and trades that Terran colonies used, and see how you fit. If you're a mechanical engineer, you might contract with a blacksmith, possibly as a machinist. If you're an electrical engineer, you might develop the radios and do the wiring for generators and pumps and windmills. If you have tools and equipment, you may be able to take out a mortgage on a homestead and set up your own shop." She turned, "Marie, I would suggest you keep an eye on Arrowhead's web site, but opening up a planet for settlement would be in the news."
"It certainly would," Mr. Kent said. "We're almost out of time, so our last question is: 'What's your bitch with slavery, it's cool,' written by a 'Master Bill' in Phoenix."
"Well, 'Bill'," Mattie started, "This isn't some sexual game, this is ownership of another person. You literally own that person, like you own a dog. You buy and sell, and modify, and you can kill that person, and they have no options, and there's no penalty. They're property, walking, talking, intelligent property, and if you decide that you're bored with them, you can sell them, or kill them, and nobody's going to say anything, because that slave isn't a person. She's a slave, an animal, quite possibly a bred animal, like you would buy a particular breed of dog or cat."
She turned to face the cameras, "On one of my trips, we went into a weapons shop, and they had a firing range. Instead of paper targets, they had live targets. Cheap slaves, who were bought to be shot to pieces by the customers. I have video of one young fellow, late teens or early twenties, who was on the range, dismembering his target slave, carefully, methodically, one finger joint at a time, and he wasn't unusual."
She was silent, "That video makes me puke. I can still smell that place, the coppery scent of blood, the tears on the slaves, about ten years old, as they were led in, and locked into place on a target. They were people, Bill, maybe fifteen feet away, and they were slaves. They were disposable, I wanted to kill the owner of that hell hole, but what I did is bought that slave on that firing line. I couldn't buy them all, when they brought her out to me, the shop slaves were tossing bloody bits of their sisters into a cart. An arm here, a foot there. That girl, that slave that I bought, is now in one of our resettlement villages, where she's in the process of being adopted." She leaned forward, "Now, Bill, if that's good for you, then I'm going to call you one sick, amoral bastard, and I don't give a damn that we're on network television. I spent a few hundred grams of tungsten to save a young girl's life, to buy a person. Fuck you, Bill."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"I want that email," Mattie said in the green room as her fingers stabbed into the cold cream. She removed her makeup savagely, while Arthur stood behind her, rubbing her shoulders.
"I can't give it to you," Clark said as he removed his own.
"This 'Bill' bloke needs looking into," Crystal said, and Clark nodded. "I agree, but you can't do it. It will be handled, my word on it."
"Okay," Mattie replied. "It might be interesting to have Diana pay him a visit," and Arthur chuckled, "You are pissed, aren't you? Will there be trouble for her cussing on network TV?"
Clark replied, "There's a seven second delay for that reason. Can I see that video you mentioned?"
Arthur looked up, "It's sickening, I've seen it. It's so... routine."
Mattie looked up, "Where's my laptop? I can copy it to you, but I'm asking you to keep it private."
"In the family," Lois said as she took her husband's place. "That's my word."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Oh, Ms. Wayne," Mr. Moss said as he walked by. "You were... exaggerating when you mentioned that video?"
"Oh, no," she replied as she stood, from where she had been leaning against the wall. "I've got a copy on my laptop, the only thing I'd ask you to do is keep the identities secret." She nodded at the door to the green room, "Mr. Kent and Ms. Lane are watching it now. If you want to see it, bring a bucket."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Oh. My. God," Ms. Arroz said as she opened the door to the green room where she had seen the video with the other journalists. "That's worse than I've seen in East LA. Where is that?"
"It's a tourist trap station around a contact binary, about eight hundred light years away," Mattie said as she entered. "We recorded that in a visit in late December," she added as Arthur and Crystal came in behind her.
Mr. Howard said, "Please tell me it's a fake. I can't believe anyone could do that. The kid, the shooter, he looked like my older son, and the girl, his target, like my youngest daughter." He held the plastic wastebasket again, pressing his stomach.
"I wish it was a fake," Arthur said. "The other woman is the astronomy instructor at Hogwarts, and the girl is who she's been trying to adopt." He gave a little snort, "Please respect their privacy, but the other fellow that you saw..."
"Standing port watch, that's my Uncle Eddie from Gotham," and Mr. Rivers said, "Oh, god, these are your relatives, your friends?" He looked over at Arthur, "Mr. Morton, isn't it? You've seen this?"
"My first trip out will be next week, when we leave for Eridani III," he said. "I'm not looking forward to it, but then again, it's something I have to do. We go from there to Windfall, where we play politics and economics, and some troops from the ship check out the other two sites."
"An interesting report on 'How I spent my summer vacation,' Mr. Rivers said.
"Actually, that homework is getting a couple of different plants," Mattie said, and jerked her head at Arthur, "This bum doesn't have to."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"I need a drink after seeing that," Crystal admitted as they walked away from the building. "It turns my stomach." She looked up at the screech of tires coming toward them, someone in a van pointing a long tube. Arthur shouted "GRENADE!" as someone called, "Wayne! This is from Marone!" and a grey cone flew toward them as the van exploded. She spun, reaching for him as Crystal leaped toward it, transforming on the fly.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Wayne," Detective Inspector Maggie Sawyer said, and she looked up. "I want to know what happened. I don't like people firing rockets in my streets."
"They were aiming at us," she replied, and Arthur said, "I heard something about 'Marone'."
"Your girlfriend has a price on her head," Sawyer said, sitting down in the small hospital waiting room. "Seven million by herself, or ten million with Benni Castellano. Where is she, by the way?"
"Tucked away in orbit around one of the four hundred billion stars in this galaxy," Mattie replied, sitting back and pulling the ice pack from her head. "Even if I told you which one, you'd need the stellar co-ordinates and transport. What about the shooters?"
"Stolen van, the back blast incinerated them," Sawyer replied. "They were stupid, and you're lucky, whoever cast that spell limited the damage, and your bodyguard took most of the blast."
"How is she?" Mattie asked. "They won't tell us or let us see her."
"Alive. I thought they'd be shipping her home in a small box with a sponge, but werewolves are apparently tougher than they look. The docs are still shaking their heads, but it looks like she'll pull through. She'll be here for a few months, though."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Monday, June 3, 2002:
New York City, Central Park: 14:42 (GMT -5)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Connie Koslowski waved, and the Cortez twins nodded. They lay out on a beach towel, soaking up the sun. Connie put down her cooler and a small radio, and was spreading out her own towel when the radio said:
'Breaking News: Metropolis. Assassination attempt on the Queen of Space, Mattie Wayne. Two reported dead, more as we have it.'
All three looked at each other, then Connie dug out her phone and told it, "Wayne, Helena". She waited a second, looking at each other, then Connie said, "Busy, no wonder. I... Hey, Mattie, it's Connie. I just heard about the attempt, what can you tell me?" She nodded, "Oh, okay. I'll tell my mom that. The Cortez twins are here in Central Park with me. Okay... okay... Yeah, that would go over well. Right, okay, bye." She looked up, "Metropolis PD doesn't want her to say anything more than she and Arthur are ok, bumps and bruises. They'll release a statement later."
"What would go over well?" Shaundra asked.
"Professor Hagrid wanted to know if she wanted Fluffy to keep her company, he's 'lonely' while the professors are in class." Connie rolled her eyes as Roshawn snorted. "I gotta call my mom..."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"So who is 'Fluffy'?" Detective Sawyer asked as she hung up. Mattie went to another call as Arthur replied, "The Magical Creatures professor at Hogwarts is a half-giant, and he likes what he refers to as 'interesting' creatures. Hippogriffs, dragons, unicorns... anyway, Fluffy is a hellhound he got from some guy in a bar, he has three heads and is about fifteen feet high at the shoulder."
"That would indeed be interesting," she replied as Mattie said, "I don't know, I'll ask." She looked up, waving the cell phone, "Press conference? Aunt Lois wants to know."
"Lois Lane?" Mattie nodded, and Detective Sawyer said, "I don't know. You two can duck out of it if you want, citing medical reasons."
Mattie shook her head, "Not unless it's legit. They need to see us, both of us, alive and well. We'll defer the questions to you, though." She waved the ice pack, "This doesn't count."
"Six o'clock, any changes we'll let her know," and Mattie nodded. "Aunt Lois?"
"Your first press conference?" Maggie asked Arthur, and he nodded sourly. "I hate them too, but you'd better get used to them, you won't be able to duck them all." She snorted, "Morton, you look like a decent kid. Couple of tricks, take a nap, then put some ice on your face before you go into makeup."
"Makeup?" he shuddered.
"It's not much, and you'll need it, you'll look like a malnourished ghost under the lights otherwise," Mattie said, putting down the cell phone. "I'll catch what questions I can, but this is primarily to show us as alive and healthy, it's the Detective's show. We'll get the hospital to change the bandage on your head before we air, we don't want it bloody. Remember, no matter what, keep your cool. Get one of the ice packs and keep it in your hands to remind you, keep it cool."
Her phone rang, and she looked at it, her eyebrows raising, "Yes, ma'am? No, Arthur and I are both okay, bumps and bruises. Our SO-1 bodyguard took most of the blast. No, she's a werewolf, so she'll be okay, but in the hospital for a while." She made writing motions, and Maggie Sawyer passed over her notepad. On a blank page, she wrote THE QUEEN !!! She continued, "I don't know, ma'am, Detective Inspector Sawyer is sitting next to me, she's from the Metropolis Police. Yes, ma'am," and handed the phone over.
"Yes, ma'am," Maggie said, "Right now it's scheduled for six pm local, that's eleven London... Err, sorry. Yes, ma'am, I'll be happy to keep them in the loop. Yes, ma'am, I surely will. Yes, ma'am, here he is," and she handed the phone to Arthur.
He took it gingerly, "Hello, ma'am?" He listened, nodding occasionally, then said, "Yes, ma'am, I certainly will. Were you briefed in by Lady Sarah on the Sisal project?" He nodded, "Yes, ma'am, but not in FTL, so there would be a lag of several days, as I understand it. It's... (he craned to look), two fifty-one by the clock here. Yes, ma'am. Would my parents be all right? Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am, I should be back there tomorrow sometime, we were going to bunk here with Mattie's aunt and uncle overnight." He grabbed the pen, scribbling down a phone number and an email that ended '.uk'. He tore the sheet off and the two under it that had visible impressions. "Yes, ma'am. Thank you and goodbye." He thumbed the kill switch, pushing the phone back across the desk at Mattie as he sat back in the chair, head back and eyes closed. "The Queen wants me to send her a daily report by email on our trip," he told the ceiling. "She's going to courier an encryption CD to me from the Chicago consulate."
"What is the Sisal project?" Detective Sawyer asked, and Mattie shook her head, "Sorry, need to know." Her phone rang, and she picked it up, switching to Spanish, "(Hello, Uncle Fidel! No, we're fine, just bumps and bruises. No, there will be a press conference about six eastern, the Metropolis PD will tell us what they know. No, Detective Sawyer is here with Arthur and I, I don't know if she speaks Spanish.)" She put her phone down, switching back to English and waving the phone, "Uncle Fidel in Havana. Do you speak Spanish, or should he use English?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Monday, June 3, 2002:
Metropolis, 1938 Sullivan Lane, #3D: 19:46 (GMT -5)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Be it ever so humble," Lois said, unlocking the door to their apartment. "Come on in and set a spell..."
"You, my dear, claim I'm full of corn?" Clark asked.
"Hey, who's from Kansas?" she asked, kicking off her shoes. She wiggled her stockinged feet, then waved them to the couch as Mattie extracted their luggage from her bag, enlarging it and removing the featherweight charms. Lois picked up the portable phone, tossing it to Arthur, "Phone home, ET."
"Who's hungry?" Clark asked, and Lois flopped on the couch, waving both arms. "Eating for two, here! Is spaghetti all right?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Hey, Teela!" Arthur said into the phone. "No, I'm safe here with Mattie's Aunt Lois and Uncle Clark. Sure, it's, um... (he read off the number), or you could call Mattie's cell. I'm expecting a delivery from the British Consulate. No, I'll talk about it tomorrow when I get there, about, um..."
"Whenever you want, Arthur," Clark said from the kitchen. "Noon," he told his sister. "Lois and Clark want to give me some pointers on press conferences, I screwed up this one."
"You didn't do too badly for your first one," Lois said from where she was setting the table. "You'll get better. We'll practice."
"I remember my first one," Mattie said as she emerged from the bedroom, barefoot and in shorts. "What can I do to help?"
"Tell me how it tastes," Clark asked, as Lois' cell rang. "Hi, Selina! No, Arthur's on the house line calling home. No, she's fine, Clark's teaching her his secret spaghetti sauce. Yeah, here she is..."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Tuesday, June 4, 2002:
Metropolis, 1938 Sullivan Lane, #3D: 05:53 (GMT -5)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Good morning, Arthur," Clark said as he stood before the bathroom mirror, a white towel around his waist. Arthur leaned in the partially open doorway and watched as Mr. Kent cupped a small metal disk in his right hand, pulled at his cheek with his left, and gazed into the disk. A thin tendril of smoke arose from his cheek, and he slowly moved his hand. "This is the slowest part of my morning," he confessed.
"I always did wonder how you shaved," Arthur said.
"I have to split my attention between the disk, which is Kryptonian hull metal, and the mirror." He tilted his chin up, and a wisp of smoke came from his nostril. "Nose hair that's been tickling," he said, picking up a washcloth, wetting it, then rubbing his face. He took a bit of lotion in his hand, put it on his face, then washed his hands and stepped back. "All yours, son."
"Thanks." Arthur unzipped his travel kit, "That lotion doesn't absorb, does it?"
"No, but Lois' sister Lucy got it for me, and I like the smell." He slotted the small disk into its place in the wall cabinet, mopped his hands with the damp washcloth, then said, "I'll leave you be, the ladies should be getting breakfast."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Clark is actually a better cook than I am," Lois confessed as she cracked eggs. "Farm upbringing, slopping the chickens and milking the hogs and all that." Mattie chuckled, taking a drink of her coffee as she sliced onions for breakfast while the hash browns simmered. "And of course, some of our guests have very specific diet requirements. I mean, Arthur Curry will just not eat any seafood, and J'onn is all cold food, nothing heated." She added a dash of milk and some spices to the eggs, commenting, "Very precise cuts, there."
"First year potions," Mattie replied. "The shape of the ingredients will sometimes affect the outcome of the potion, or the surface area. That's why when Professor Snape says 'cube the ingredients into three millimeter sections', he means cubes three millimeters on a face. Not four, and not two. When Julie and Bill started Hogwarts, we suggested they get measuring scales, and by second year, your eye is pretty calibrated." She dumped the onions in with the hash browns and gave them a quick stir, then took a slice of ham, eyed it, "That looks like about two millimeters thick," and started to cut, whistling something. "What gets me sometimes is converting between older measurements and metric. Stones to kilograms. I can't do it in my head like Arthur can," she commented as Lois started to beat the eggs with a fork.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Now, we both took a personal day," Lois said as Clark gathered the breakfast dishes. Another pot of coffee gurgled as Arthur sipped his tea, and Lois continued, "Arthur, as I said, you did all right for your first news conference, but you don't reveal personal information like 'my sister Elena', and Mattie, you need to develop a thicker skin, especially on that slavery issue."
"I've been wondering why you're so passionate about it," Clark said as he scrubbed the plates.
"When I was in the 14th century, I was kidnapped by a court wizard, who put a tapping collar on me, to drain my magic, and he branded me," she replied reluctantly. "I fought a wizard's duel with him, and defeated him because he didn't know what a machine gun was." She took a last slug of coffee, then rose to refill it, "I still have the brand," and turned to pull up her shorts on the left. "Wizarding clothing is painful to wear, it's a cursed brand, but I keep it as a reminder."
"Like you'd suddenly forget if you got it removed," Arthur mumbled.
Lois glanced at him, "Which explains the passion. You killed him in the duel?"
"No, I couldn't, I had to protect the timeline. I had to frighten the crap out of him, he was one of Professor Harry's ancestors. Every time I have DADA class, I have to remind myself that he's not his ancestor, because he looks like the other guy, and is about the same age." She poured coffee for Lois and herself (Clark shaking his head), "What have you found out about our slaver Bill?"
"This is not your concern," Clark said. "I want your word, and yours too, Arthur. We will investigate and go from there." Mattie reluctantly nodded, as did Arthur, and Clark said, "He's not in Phoenix, the IP address on the email is from downstate New York, specifically Poughkeepsie. I'm going to fly over it after I drop you off, Arthur, and if I feel it warranted, I'll ask the FBI to look into it. It could be someone who just wanted to yank your chain, and they succeeded." He looked over his glasses at his niece, "The First Amendment says 'Freedom of Speech', and that includes the right to be an idiot. No matter how much you may want to pound on him, we let the process work. Is that clear?"
"Yes," she ground out, and Arthur nodded, "Yes, sir."
"Good," he said, and took a last swallow of his coffee. Refilling his mug, he started a fresh pot, "Arthur, how's your tea?" He took a look, and stood to get a refill as Clark said, "Now, you two are linked in the public mind, which means you're going to need to develop a code between you. All couples do."
"For instance, if we're at a party, and I mention the word 'Springback' in a sentence to Clark, it means I want to leave," Lois said. "The degree of urgency is determined by an altitude word, 'Valley' means 'soon', 'Heights' is within the next five minutes."
"Bruce, may he rest in peace, said he did more business on the golf course than at a conference table," Clark said, straddling the end chair. He set his mug down, "He was proud of his lousy swing, even though the last time we played as a foursome, he was an excellent golfer. His actual handicap was two or three, as I recall, he just added ten or fifteen strokes. Now you two are young, and just starting out playing golf, which gives you an excuse."
"My dad mentioned this," Arthur said. "He also suggested I learn how to drink."
"Pareek't juice," Clark nodded. "Larry Ullage mentioned it in his article, I've got a bottle I'll give you." Lois leaned over and gently rapped Mattie's knuckles with a butter knife, "How dare you let him get a beat on me and the Planet?" she asked.
"Hey, you weren't there!" she replied, rapping back with her own butter knife. "I want to pick up a bottle for him." Clark reached over and held down both warring butter knives, "As I was about to say, Arthur, I agree with your father. You need to learn when to lose gracefully in pursuit of a higher goal, as well as how to drink, and how to fake it." There was a pause, and a small glass with about a quarter-inch of reddish fluid was sitting in front of Arthur. "That's Juice," Clark said. "Just for you to taste, the equivalent is about like an inch of whiskey."
"Import market," Lois said, as Arthur carefully sipped it, then put it down. "I see why you got blotto, it does taste good," he told Mattie. He took another sip, rolling it around in his mouth. "Will I get drunk?"
"Not while you're digesting," Clark said. "I'm going to fly you home, while Mattie and Lois go off. In any case, this applies to both golf, and to a lesser extent, tennis. You need to agree beforehand if you're going to..." He looked up, "Excuse me," and vanished, the newspapers and people's hair blowing.
"Superman problem," Lois said. "I was going to say 'Cheat', but he's such a boy scout. In talking to Professor Snape and the others, you learn to use the back doors in Slytherin, to stack the odds in your favor." She grinned at her niece, "Could you use an embedded journalist with your little trip? I'd love to get hold of the oligarchy."
"Sorry, they'd drop you off a pier. However, it is a very nice planet..." With a breeze, Clark returned, and Mattie finished, "...there's the possibility of a vacation resort."
Lois raised an eyebrow, and Clark said, "Apartment fire in Bangkok."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Fairly good intelligence," Lois said, and Mattie nodded. "We don't have professional spies there, we do have a lot of sneaky people like my Uncle Eddie, he really hated Daala."
"Minister of Finance and the Grand Councilor," Lois confirmed, checking her notes.
"That's right," her niece confirmed. "Now, since the economy there is based on iron, it's simple to go out, mine a few tons of asteroid iron, and deposit it in the bank. We then use that to speculate on land, do some investing, generate some churn, and buy partial ownership of different companies." She grinned, "They had a nice, stable, boring market, we're stirring things up."
"What kind of companies?" Clark asked.
"Primarily those in transportation and communications. We've invested heavily in ceramic engines, so we have a three-wheeled motorcycle as well as larger engines, we're using it for same-day and next-day delivery services. We also have an R & D center for things like ceramic and fiberglass boat hulls, we're paying farmers to grow certain crops for biofuels, and a couple of fish farms, which cover mines. We're also very generous in doing 'angel' investing of small businesses, and offering very good terms for both microfinance and venture capital." She sat back, cradling her coffee mug, "We have more capital available, we have a nice shark as our on-planet boss. The only major difficulty there is that she's female, and is thus not legally permitted to own a business. We're working around that with one of our captains, but he's not a trained economist."
"Ah-hah!" Arthur said. "That's why the Gringotts goblin connection."
"Yep," Mattie said. "Their law says the owner of a business must be male, that's it. Doesn't refer to species or citizenship or planet of birth or legal status, so theoretically we could put a male slave in there. He probably wouldn't be very effective, though, just because he was a slave."
"Hmm," Lois said. "Creeping tentacles..."
Mattie nodded, "Daala is trying to counter this, but he doesn't have the capital we do, and he's simply been pocketing the cash for so long, he doesn't really know how to invest. He's simply throwing some extra money at his own businesses, which might help short-term, but not in the long term. He's also been trying to block various ongoing projects of ours by withholding permits or supplies while requiring payment." She sing-songed, "Oh, we've got lawyers, so many lawyers..." and then grinned, "Which, of course, generates its own little economic boost. Think of a depressed small town trying to block a company like IBM that wants to build a plant. While there's an official weekly island newspaper, it's a fish-wrapper. The more accurate source of news is the network of gossiping slave girls, and the Council tried to block that by increasing the license fee to remove their gags."
"Which you countered some way, I'm sure," Clark said, sitting back and cradling his own cup of coffee. He regarded his niece, "Microlending for the license?"
"Probably," she replied. "That happened just before Uncle Eddie left in December. In any case, the population is literate in a form of sign language, and we sent a ship to install a Sisal transceiver."
"Which is?"
"A secret. Need to know," Arthur said.
"Still, they're blood, they're family," Mattie said. "Very, very secret. Hush-hush. We're still deploying this, understood?"
"Cross my heart," Lois said, and did so, then throwing away the imaginary key. Clark nodded, "Of course."
"Quantum resonance communication," his niece said simply, and Clark reared back slightly, "You got it to work?"
"To maintain the connection in FTL, yes, and we own all the rights." Lois raised her eyebrow as her niece grinned evilly. Arthur explained, "Essentially, email at interstellar distances." Lois regarded them, and Arthur said, "As opposed to sending a letter, which might take weeks or months to get there, this is instantaneous."
"However, the unit isn't installed yet," Mattie said. "Right now the transmission speed is about three hundred baud, so there's text e-mail, but we don't have the bandwidth for something like video. The ship we sent is on the right planet, but there were problems, and they're in quarantine."
"Ah..." Lois said, sitting back and regarding the younger couple, sipping her coffee, "Pool reporting?"
Arthur regarded the older couple over his own teacup, "You'd have to be muggle. Superman isn't there, and like Mattie said, the Elders are likely to drop anyone they don't like off a pier. We'll have some infantry there, but there's still a risk, Ms. Lane. I don't think they'd take too kindly to your usual style."
"You always have been rather aggressive, dear," Clark said. Lois raised her eyebrow, "I can't do puff pieces as well as you can. If we go, Superman should be seen here on Earth." She took a sip from her own coffee cup, "There are too many possibilities there to ignore things."
"Pre-cisely," Mattie said. "Not only military, but financial and trade nodes, warehousing, shipbuilding and repair. I'm not going to have it stopped by greedy old men who can't see beyond their own grasping hands, so I'm going to do some..." She grinned at her aunt, "...exploiting."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Tuesday, June 4, 2002:
Grandview Heights, Parkinson Circle: 12:00 (GMT -5)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Teela looked up from the backyard bench as Arthur walked up the drive, "Hey, you okay? How'd you get here?"
Arthur ignored the question, "I flew in, and I'm fine, just a minor cut and the ringing in my ears has gone away." he sat next to his sister, "What's going on?"
"Not much," she said, and grinned at him. She stuck her colored pencil behind her ear, shoving her omnipresent sketchpad to the side, and gestured to a fellow that was standing to the side, patiently waiting, "This fellow's from the British embassy, he got here just before you did."
"Consulate, actually," he said. "Sir George Lloyd, at your service. Mr. Morton, I presume?" Arthur nodded, "Might I have a word in private?" They moved over into the grass, where Arthur cast a privacy spell, and Teela eyed the driver. After a few minutes, Arthur dropped the spell, Sir Lloyd got into his car, and drove off.
Teela turned to her brother as he took his seat again, asking, "So what's the deal with you and the Queen? I mean the British one, not Mattie. Did you know she has a blog?"
"The Queen, or Mattie?"
"I should say both, but I know Mattie does. Julie emailed me the link, Mr. Paranoid." She waggled her eyebrows, "The Queen?"
"She wants a daily report on our trip, the disk is an encryption package," Arthur said, tapping the manila envelope. "Mattie has a blog? I'm surprised she has the time."
"She doesn't update it every day, but emailing the Queen? Cool. You've met her?"
Arthur snorted. "Oh, yeah, at the Halloween ball. She's a very nice older lady, a bit older than Mom, and she gets along like a house on fire with Mattie. Danced with her a couple times, too. Thank god I took dancing lessons so I didn't look like a total dork."
"Good," Teela nodded in approval, then flipped her sketchbook closed and cased her pencil. "Your sisters have taught you well, though you are a relatively hopeless male, young Padawan Morton."
"Bugger off," he replied with a grin.
"I thought you didn't believe in cell phones," she replied.
"This one is..." he hesitated, "... a special case."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Oy there," Bill said, then looked at his older brother, "I am talking like a Brit."
"It's contagious," Arthur said. "I just told Teela to 'Bugger off.' Where's Mattie's blog?"
"Here, called 'Queen of Space'. She hasn't updated today, but she did yesterday." He got up, pushing his laptop over. Arthur started at the beginning of the month, noting that several months were archived, and read the posts and the comments from the first of June.
1 June 2002
Well, we start a new month today, bright and shiny. We graduate our first class of middies for the Guard from Corfu. It's a beautiful island, and my motel room (what, you thought I stayed in the penthouse?) It's a second-floor (or for the Brits reading this, first floor) room for three and Carson. He's a sweet kid, really, and he's tickling my maternal instincts.
Corfu. Greek island, looks kinda like a backwards '7'. The Greeks turned over one of their old military bases to us in the middle of the island, part of their contribution to the Guard. We're already discussing expansion, this first class taught us a lot. It's kinda weird to give and take salutes, though.
Letters, I got letters! Well, not really, comments. Close enuf.
Comments:
SunflowerAZ, hey there! I'd like to come out there, but right now my schedule is booked so tight, and I've got to go off-planet soon. Y'know, if we can get this problem resolved with the US gub'mint, I'd love to meet y'all.
Tomcat, sorry, I'm taken. Ring on the finger, mate. Sorry. He's a great guy, and I don't see a need or reason to change.
Technochik: Thanks for the birthday wishes. Woo-hoo! (Dances around the motel room.) Y'know, my roomies, who are some very, very smart girls, still haven't managed to prank me on my birthday, and yes, I know at least two of them read this blog (ghod knows why!).
Diet Coke. I need caffiene. Coffee or the Diet.
2 June, 2002
Another day, another interview. Don't get me wrong, the guy was great, his wife was fantastic, and their daughter was adorable. At least he didnt try to get me to reveal The Secrets of the Universe. (Big clue, here. The answer's 42. Bring your towel.)
See, I do have a sense of humor. Or humour, depending on how you want to spel it. Anyway, as I mentioned, I'm here with all the In-laws (to be). A lot of them hadn't seen each other for months and months, so Crystal (my bodyguard, although she's more of a big sister) and I agreed to watch Carson, who's three. This was last night, so while they're having a family reunion over dinner, Crystal and I are off to the kiddy pool. (I received a nice compliment: I was told I was a 'natural mother', and the lady hadn't even recognized me!) Carson went and chased around a couple of playmates and a ball whilst we spake unto length with several of the parental units thereunto. A little informal, but still an interview. I don't mind doing them, but I get the same questions all the time! I will therefore put down a public wager. I'll donate a thousand pounds (or equivalent) to the charity of their choice for an original question. Excluding relatives, co-workers, and schoolmates.
So, after the young-un got all wore out, we got him into his jammies. Aunt Mattie and Aunt Crystal told him a bedtime story (made-up ones are the bestest), then when his mum got in, we hit the sack.
This morning was a breakfast interview, and one question I had only been asked twice before: what surprised me. Excellent question! In the span of what, 18 months or so, we've gone from a half-built space station to thousands of people living and working in space. We have colonies on the moon and in orbit. What will happen in six months? A year? Five years? Who knows?
Comments:
SlythieWolf, thanks, I was wondering where that was. Squeeze the sides for five seconds to erase.
3 June, 2002
I have a weird life, and I can hear you (all 4,260 who have bookmarked this blog) agreeing with me. Let's face it, I am not a normal high school kid (and would you be reading this if I were?). Instead of worrying about an algebra test, I sweat alien invasions. Instead of trying out for the track team or the cheer leading squad, I have people trying to kill me.
Ah, regular high school would be boring. Still... GO KNIGHTS!!
Okay, the Gotham Girl is out for the moment. I did find things funny (in a somewhat dark way) yesterday. I went with the female in-laws to the town market to do a bit of shopping, a bit of haggling is so much fun and I only spent a couple hundred Euros. The guys didn't want to go – too much estrogen, they said. They hung out and watched Carson and did... I dunno. Guy stuff, I guess.
Guys, you can pause the reading here. Girly stuff ahead.
Anyway, I was having problems picking out a Christmas/birthday gift for a relative. Very long, complex story (see above), I didn't know about fashions when she was (see above), so I was looking at scarves. I figure that's a useful present, box it up, yada, yada. Purse-snatcher makes an attempt on another tourist, and I didn't do a thing! I was so shocked, I didn't have to. Advantages of having a bodyguard and police escort. It was entertaining, in a way, everyone's so shocked that The Queen Of Space (cue ominous bass sound effects) would do something so normal as shop. Hello? I get dressed like everyone else, y'know!
Okay, guys, you can come back, the girly stuff is done. Guys? Guys? Sheesh, watching the game. What is it with guys and sports? Don't get me wrong, I've played touch football, I run marathons, I don't mind getting dirty and sweaty... Mind OUT of the gutter, please.
Comments:
Technochik: My dorm at school is just like what you might have at university. There's six of us girls, there's an attached bathroom with a decent sized shower, and four sinks. Two of them have a board across with a teamaker and a coffee pot plugged into the wall. The rest of it, beds, desk, dresser. It's a stone room, underground, so it's cold in winter. (The school is in an old castle.) There's a fireplace for heating, the OFSTED school inspection lady didn't find too many things weird, at least that I know of.
Arthur snorted to himself, and shoved the laptop aside. He had to think on his own comments, he didn't want to post under Bill's login (5mileBadger), he had to think of a good login.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Tuesday, June 4, 2002:
Gotham, Archie Goodwin International Airport: 13:03 (GMT -5)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Selina waited outside the hidden floo terminal. International arrivals took longer, but Minerva had sworn by these two. She looked up as two figures came out, arguing over something, and stepped forward. "Good afternoon, and welcome to Gotham City," she said with a faint smile. "I'm Selina Wayne."
The twenty-something young woman with shocking pink hair offered her hand, "Tonks. Just Tonks, please. I hate my given name." The older man grunted, eying Selina, who turned to him. "They call me Mad-eye."
"Because you're a paranoid git who hexes his dustbins," Tonks said, and grinned at Selina, while his left eye, replaced with an artificial magical eye revolved disturbingly. He was missing chunks of his nose and right lower leg, replaced with a peg leg, which thumped when he walked. He waved his walking stick at the younger woman, snapping "I'm alive to do it!"
"Yes..." Selina said, wondering privately about Mr. Moody. Still, she would go with Minerva's recommendations for now. "You do know that Mattie will be traveling off-planet in the near future?" she asked.
"Looking forward to it!" Tonks said cheerfully, while Moody grunted. She tried one more time, "You are aware that Gotham City is rather more dangerous than London?"
"Oy, how bad could it be?" Tonks replied.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Julio waited in the parking garage, hearing the clipping sound of some broads heels. He grinned as he saw a dame in her mid-thirties, black hair, expensive dress, with something that made a thumping sound. 'Wheeled suitcase,' he thought. With a few quick hand signals, he deployed the rest of the gang, and stepped out, grinning. He smirked when he saw the two with her, a punk younger sister with pink hair, jeans, and a t-shirt for a band called 'Weird Sisters'. The older dude didn't even bother him, artificial eye, peg leg, looked like a washed-up war vet. "Hey, mama, hand over the cash, we'll let you live."
"Oh, really?" Rich Bitch replied coolly. "I only see... eight of you. Why don't you shuffle along back to kindergarten? You don't want to miss your afternoon cookies."
Julio had to give her props, she had some stones. He flicked out a butterfly, and took a step forward, "Why don' we start wi' your little sister? I bet I can make her scream real pretty." He raised an eyebrow when the sister snorted, "Right-o, you bloody twit. You an' what army?" His arm shot out, Mama spun and twisted, and the whole thing went straight to hell.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Ugggh..." he said, looking up at a Gotham cop who was holding smelling salts under his nose. He looked down, and struggled, "Where the fuck are my clothes?" he demanded.
"That's how we found you," the cop said, hauling him to his feet. "Naked and bound to the retaining wall." There was a shriek, and he turned to see Gina, one of the two girls in his gang being handcuffed as other cops cut ropes binding... he couldn't see who, but they were all naked, like the cop said. "What the fuck?" he asked.
"You ran into Mrs. Wayne's wizarding bodyguards," the cop said. "Now, you know how this dance is played, you want your rights in English or Spanish?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"So where is Miss Wayne?" Tonks asked as the station wagon pulled into the drive of an absolutely bloody huge estate.
"She's visiting Oswald," Mrs. Wayne replied. "She has a business arrangement with him, he puts his limo and driver at her disposal when she's in town." She cranked the window down, punching a number into a keypad on a pole, and the gate clanked and started to move. "Ozzie, Mr. Cobblepot, runs one of the underworld organizations."
"And you let your daughter go off, unprotected, to see some criminal?" Mr. Moody demanded. Mrs. Wayne put the car in motion again as she replied, "Of course, she's perfectly safe. There's a business relationship." As she drove, she added, "I'll show you where your rooms are, they're just down the hall from ours. Don't forget, we get up early for our morning workouts."
"My sister let me know how Miss Wayne liked to exercise," Tonks said. "We could use a bit of time in the gym," she added with a glance at Moody.
"Oh, we start with a run on the track," Mrs. Wayne said. "Don't worry, it's secure, it's around the border of the estate. Eight kilometers, then two hours of free weights and full-contact sparring, then we grab a shower and have breakfast."
"Eight kilometers..." Tonks said nervously.
"That's the length of the track," Mrs. Wayne replied cheerfully, parking the car in an underground garage. "Tomorrow's Wednesday, so we do three laps. Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays are three laps, Tuesday and Thursdays are two laps, and on weekends we kick back and take it easy with only one lap. At least Tomas and I do, Mattie does two laps and only an hour of sparring." She turned off the engine, "Let me introduce you to our house elves."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Wednesday, June 5, 2002:
Gotham City, Cresswell Academy, room 46: 13:30 (GMT -5)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
The bell rang, signaling the start of afternoon classes, and Olivia Reynolds rapped on the lectern. "Ladies, you know what the bell means!" she called, and the chatter died down as much as it ever did. She quickly took attendance, then flipped the file folder closed. She walked back and forth, then said, "We are expecting a special guest for this class, Miss Wayne has agreed to come talk to us." She eyed the door, "I'm a little surprised she isn't here already, she's known for being punctual." She heard a thumping noise, then a hand appeared, rapping on the frosted glass of the door. Mrs. Reynolds went to the door and had a quiet conversation, then two people entered with her. One was an older man with a peg leg, the other a young woman wearing a conservative skirted suit with vibrant pink hair. The man appropriated a stool, sitting with his back to the wall in the front, while the woman moved to the back of the room, perching on a table.
Mattie smirked from a seat in the back row. She had snuck in with other students, a notice-me-not spell on her. She tapped herself with her wand, canceling the spell, and replied, "When you get detentions for being even ten seconds late, you learn to be punctual." Ms. Reynolds' eyes jerked to her, and Mattie gave a small wave as her neighbors jerked around to stare at her. Standing, she walked forward, dressed in her Hogwarts uniform, which blended in enough with the Cresswell girls' uniforms that she didn't stand out. Standing at the front of the class, she set her bag down, saying, "Hi. I'm Mattie Wayne, and these are my bodyguards, Mr. Moody and Ms. Tonks."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"So how did you get in without our seeing you?" Ms. Reynolds asked.
"First, we've checked in with the office," Mattie replied, pulling her lanyard off her neck and giving the pass to the teacher. "What I used was called a 'notice-me-not' spell. It renders you unimportant, you're seen, but you fly beneath the radar, so to speak."
"I need that," Annalisa Ford said in a stage whisper.
Mattie shook her head, "That wouldn't help you, if someone has a perimeter spell going. It tells you where everyone around you is for five or ten meters. The problem with it is that in a crowd, it can get very confusing, especially when you're trying to keep track of friends, enemies and neutrals." She smiled, then continued, "You can use a disillusionment spell, which makes you transparent, not really invisible, or an invisibility cloak, which is made from the hair of the demiguise." She pulled up her bag, and extracted a thick, heavy book with a belt looped around it. Holding it up, they read, The Monster Book of Monsters on the front. Setting it on the teacher's desk, they watched as it moved about on its own, discovering the new environment. Mattie continued, "A demiguise is a ape-like creature who evades capture by turning invisible. The problem with an invisibility cloak, or a disillusionment spell, is that you can still be felt, smelled, and heard, all of which require additional spells."
"So what's a kelpie?" Ms. Reynolds asked. "You mentioned it in the first reply, when you said you'd probably be eaten by a kelpie."
Miss Wayne paused for a bit, thinking, then said, "Sorry, I was joking a bit. The Loch Ness Monster is a Kelpie, basically an aquatic monster, but their mouth isn't big enough for a person," and she held up a hand, "No, I haven't seen Nessie." She gestured to the book, which was now sitting quietly (for the most part) on the desk, making small grunting noises. "Look it up."
"A book that grunts," Ms. Reynolds said, stretching out a hand. The book snuffled a bit, but lay still. She undid the belt buckle, and it flipped open with a roar, startling her, it bounced off the floor, moving about the classroom to the shrieks of the students. Mattie grinned, then summoned the book as it was stalking Annalisa with a quick 'Accio Monster Book!'.
"There's a trick to this book," she said, as it was thrashing about in her arms. Holding it closed, she ran a hand down the spine. It quietly lay where she put it, flipped open to 'Demiguise'. "Okay, I've had my fun," she said, turning at a rap on the door. Quickly, she drew her wand and tapped herself, vanishing from sight as an officious male voice asked, "Ms. Reynolds?"
"Yes, Mr. Wainwright?" Olivia replied, and a skinny, balding man entered. He eyed Mr. Moody, who loomed menacingly, a thin wand in his hand. "I heard screaming, Ms. Reynolds. That's not proper behavior for Cresswell ladies. Is there anything wrong?"
"No, Mr. Wainwright. We're fine, we were discussing politics and it became a bit heated," she lied.
"Interest in politics is all well and good," he declared. "You were expecting Miss Wayne, have you seen her yet? She's checked in at the office with..." he eyed Moody nervously, "...her bodyguards, I'd like to discuss a campaign contribution with her." He adjusted his suit coat. "As you know, I'm running for Congress, I'm certain she would like to contribute the maximum amount." Moody growled, spinning his wand in his hand.
"I don't know where she is, Mr. Wainwright. I'll pass on your message," Olivia promised. "We'll keep it down."
"I can't ask for more from a Cresswell class," he said, turning to leave. Olivia dutifully followed, closing the door and drawing the window blinds as Moody resumed his seat. She turned, "Miss Wayne?"
She appeared, and Olivia jumped a bit, "He's just like I remembered him," with a sour face.
She boosted herself to sit on the desk, adding, "I so wanted to prank him, but I didn't want it to come back on you guys. I hate the officious bureaucratic types, and I don't get involved in local politics."
"Smarmy git," Tonks said from the back of the class, and Mattie said, "No donation."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Gawd, I am so jealous," Annalisa said, and Mattie asked, "Of what? Magic? It's a recessive gene, on average about one in a thousand can do it." She held up her wand, "Yes, this is the one that Grand Mage Merlin repaired on telly. It cost me about $1500 new," and she tossed it to Annalisa. "Pass it around, and give it a wave. If sparks come out, you've got the gene." She continued, "Magic, and money, is a tool, nothing more. It's what you do with those tools in life that make you what you are. You are not locked into your fate, any more than I am. I chose to start Arrowhead. I chose to start the Solar Guard, in both cases I was solving a problem." She indicated her wand, moving around the classroom. "Magic works on planets, not on places like space stations, because it requires natural gravity. Two of my favorite professors got married, they'll be muggles on board my station, because magic doesn't work there. That's a problem for them, but then again, they're used to flying." She looked at Tonks, "Albus and Minerva," she clarified. "When will you..."
"Moony has cold feet, but I'll bring him 'round," she said with a grin. "At least I finally got a ring out of him."
She looked around, "Anyone get sparks yet? I haven't seen any."
"What's it like, living in space?" someone asked.
"Depends on where you're living, although there's one constant," Mattie replied. "You're in a suit, because you need to be, and they're a pain in the butt to get into." She looked around, "If you've ever worn anything like latex, you need to put talcum powder on as a lubricant. Same thing. There's a zipper up the back, and women have three personal connectors (she gestured at her skirt), which you can figure out." The class tittered, and she smiled. "Advantages and disadvantages to the suit. There's a small tank you strap on, you wear over your butt. That's where your... (she cleared her throat), bio-matter goes, a four liter capacity. Low-fiber diet, because the bio-matter is pumped, so you pump out your tank a few times a day. The preferable time to do that is when you're in vacuum, as there's no odor."
"I can imagine," Olivia said. "What else?"
"The suits cost around $5000, and are made in Taiwan," she said. "The suits hug your body, which means concave areas like your armpits bulge out unless you put a small bladder there. For women, especially those of us with a decent bust, you have to support your boobs, which means a vacuum bra." She grinned, "However, I made sure these were front-close." The girls grinned and laughed, and Olivia asked, "Why would you need one?"
"To prevent damage to the tissues," Mattie replied. "The suit compresses you to maintain pressure, it's like wearing a turtleneck full bodysuit. Without the bra, it's like strapping them down, or wearing a too-small sport bra, but you're wearing it twenty-four seven. Not only is it uncomfortable, it causes physical damage. You perspire in the suit, which is how you're cooled, it sublimates against the vacuum."
"Wouldn't you stink?"
She shook her head, "Bacteria don't survive. You can either build in bladders to the suit, or a simpler solution is just to add the bra." She lifted her left arm and gestured, "It's a flat cloth tape, you simply specify your size, in centimeters of course. No shoulder straps, and a soft cotton cup." She shifted where she sat on the desk, adding, "They are currently custom suits, when you're fit you're laser-measured, which means you can't pig out and get fat. You get plenty of exercise working in space, there's also zero-gee handball and tennis courts." She grinned, "Now, I'm not a big tennis fan, but if you think about playing in zero-gee, the ball, and the players, can go anywhere in three dimensions."
"I don't know if that would be positive or negative," Ms. Reynolds said. "What else can you tell us?"
"Let's see," she mused. "You don't have to worry about pads or tampons, you can't shave your legs or pits in a suit. Actually shaving is a problem we don't have an elegant solution for yet," she admitted. "A lot of the guys, and several girls, will simply shave their heads and use a padded cap. Hair is a problem in zero-gee, if it's long it sticks out, like an afro, which is a problem with getting a pressure seal on your helmet. Depending on your diet, it might be conductive, which can create shorts and maintenance problems with equipment. Right now, we're using shaving gel and hair clippers with a vacuum hose, but then you have to capture the gel and the clippings, and you don't get all of it." She looked around, "Anyone like to tinker? There's a project for you. For now, what people on the platforms are doing every few months is going to one of the stations, L1, L4, or L5, and seeing a barber to shave their heads and beards. The problem is that it's an eight hour flight each way, which burns a day off, so there's a lot of schedule shuffling."
Someone raised their hand, "Is it really true, there's no period?"
"IF you go past the moon for a month," Miss Wayne reminded them. "I haven't had one for months, so there are definite advantages to being female in space," she grinned. "Females on average mass fifteen to twenty percent less than males, which is what life support is figured for. Therefore, having more females means you have that much more of a life support reserve, which is one reason we're pitching to women, at least when we get the tourism fully ramped up. So go see the Belt, see the planets." She slapped her hand, "I'm sorry, I knew I was forgetting something, my slide show." She put on this bored, deadpan voice. "This is Ceres. Ceres has a diameter of 915 kilometers. It is primarily composed of water and ammonia ices. It has an escape velocity..." and she slumped to the side with a snore.
Grinning, she sat back up, "My first year history teacher was named Binns. You talk about deadly boring..." Tonks and Moody snorted in agreement, and someone obligingly said, "How boring was he?"
"He was so boring, he was dead!" and tapped a quick rim shot on the desk. "Seriously, he was a ghost, he died sometime in the late 14th century, and just kept right on going. I don't think he even went to his own funeral. When he took attendance, it was for students that had died about 1850. People either caught up on their sleep, or did homework in his class, because he never noticed. He used the same test for six hundred years, so of course everyone got perfect scores in his class."
"Who's teaching it now?" Olivia asked.
"Professor Lupin, who's much better. He has to take a couple days off around the full moons, but that's ok. It's a great class, he's a natural teacher, but he does have that lycanthropy problem." Mattie grinned at Tonks.
"You have a werewolf teaching History?"
"And doing a great job. Really, he looks like anyone else, at least in the 'rumpled professor' category." She flashed another grin at Tonks, "You're working on that, I know," and the pink-haired Auror smirked in reply.
One of the girls turned to look at Tonks, "He's your boyfriend? A werewolf?"
"My sister is, too, an' she rooms wi' the Queen here," she replied, and morphed to imitate Sprink, then Remus. "He says he's too old, too poor, and too dangerous, but that's bollocks," she said, shifting back to her natural form. "A werewolf is just like anyone else, they've just got this rather nasty disease."
Mattie cleared her throat, "Let's get back to space. Next question?"
"What are the platforms like, versus the stations?"
"If you're on one of the platforms, like LEO or GEO, it's something like a submarine. Aluminum compartments, plumbing overhead, they're both in zero-gee. Personal quarters there are small, about twice the size of a walk-in closet, because you can use all the cubage."
"Cubage?" Olivia asked.
Mattie nodded, and gestured at the room. "Here, you're thinking TWO dimensionally, because you're in a gravity field. On a platform, or on a ship, you think THREE dimensionally, because you can store stuff on the 'walls' and 'ceiling' (she finger-quoted), and let me tell you, sleeping in zero gee is very comfortable." She gestured at the wall, "Think about it. When you go to bed here, you lay on a mattress, which takes up a lot of area. There, you're in your suit, some people use a sleeping bag for psychological reasons, others don't. Either way, you sleep in a hammock, which simply keeps you in one place while you sleep. That hammock doesn't have to be on the 'floor' (she finger-quoted again), it could be on a 'wall' or the 'ceiling'. To make your bed, you roll up the hammock. No alarm clock to hit, the computer calls you, or chimes, whatever you set. There are people that don't even bother to use a hammock, they just use a lanyard to keep from drifting." She shifted again, "Each person's room has a terminal, so you can do things like email, you just float in front of it. The mouse is magnetized, by the way."
"I can see having a LEO station, but why another?" someone asked.
"There's actually two others, the GEO station, which is in synchronous orbit, and the NIMBY platform, where the nuclear material goes," Mattie replied, raising a hand. "We have a Canadian company doing satellite repair and refurbishment, they're out of Toronto. That office handles all the legal details about each satellite, who owns it, paying for repairs, that kind of thing. Their LEO office handles the low orbit satellites, like comm satellites, the GEO office handles the higher orbits, like weather satellites. Someone doesn't want the satellite any more, they get a quitclaim and take it apart for recycling. A lot of them are perfectly usable, they just ran out of fuel."
"What's NIMBY?"
"It stands for 'Not In My Back Yard', Mattie replied. "It's a remotely operated platform, orbiting in LEO at about 250 miles, and it takes high level waste, like fuel rods." Ms. Reynolds accepted the wand from a student, returning it to Mattie as she continued, "Something I didn't know, a reactor only burns about five percent of the fuel in a rod, the rest is poisoned by the process, so about every eighteen months, you take the old fuel out and put in the new fuel."
"That's stupid," someone said.
"That's politics," Mattie said. "Now, if you think about it, the logical thing to do would be to recondition the fuel rod. What actually happens in the US is that the old rod is stored, and when the politicians stop arguing, it will be shipped to Yucca Mountain, where it will be stored for half a million years." Shaking her head, "There are two reasons given, the US doesn't have a way to recycle the fuel, and they're concerned about terrorism. Well, we don't have a way to recycle it because the government shut down our only plant, and if we bury it, the terrorists can't build a bomb." She sighed, "The plant in upstate New York was shut down by President Carter, and terrorists can't use spent nuclear fuel to build a bomb, because they'd have to recondition it first."
"What about Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl?"
"First, who knows how a light water reactor works?" she asked. One girl raised a hand, "Doesn't the reactor heat water that generates power?"
"Close," Mattie replied. "The reactor's water supply goes through a heat exchanger with another water line, which drives a turbine to generate power. The radioactive water never touches the power system. The problem with using water is that, while it's cheap, it becomes radioactive and corrodes plumbing, which is also weakened by neutron bombardment. Now both TMI and Chernobyl were light water reactors, which is not what we're using, we're using helium gas. Both TMI and Chernobyl were caused by human error," she continued. "Chernobyl had untrained operators and a poor design. That's a management fault, it was compounded by the Soviets keeping secrets. Three Mile Island, on the other hand, had poor maintenance on a valve, and let the reactor core be exposed. Now, TMI didn't have the roof blown off, but it did vent steam."
"So how are your systems different?" Ms. Reynolds asked.
"First, I don't touch the fuel rods until they get to the NIMBY platform," she replied. "The British, or the Canadians, Germans, Japanese or Russians send their fuel up to the platform. They handle security and shipping up to that point, which I think we can trust them with." She smiled faintly. "Now, for security reasons, I won't go into details, but this is all under remote control... Yes?"
"What if, like, a terrorist tried to make the platform like, fall down?" Several students laughed out loud, and the girl blushed. Mattie waved her wand, and shot off sparks.
"It's a good question," she replied in support, and the girl blushed. "First of all, the platform's in low orbit, so if we completely ignored it for a few years, it would de-orbit." She raised a hand, "Why not put it in a higher orbit, you were going to ask?" she asked another quiet girl, who nodded. "It's a compromise. The shuttle, the less expensive rockets can reach LEO easily. That's about two hundred miles up. If you want to go higher, you need a bigger, more expensive rocket, or for the shuttle, a kick-motor out of the cargo bay. Remember, we've got that gravity well to climb, and I'm a small business. My partners can use an anti-grav lifter, so their costs are much less." She grinned, "Once it's on my platform, I send it on its way to the moon. Now, to answer the question. The LEO platforms, and the other satellites, are above most, but not all, of the atmosphere. You therefore have drag, like a parachute, pulling you down. You therefore have motors to keep boosting you up, and they also keep the platform pointing the right way."
"So, let's say that one of the remote operators doesn't secure a load properly." She cleared her throat, "By the way, these things are the size of railroad tank cars. What happens?"
"Nothing," Annalisa said, and she grinned at Ms. Reynolds expression. "It just floats away. What, you thought I was just a dumb jock?"
"Don't you love busting stereotypes?" Mattie agreed, and said in a different voice, "Go play with your dollies, little girl..." She growled, and said "That's why I like what I get to do sometimes, deflate blow-hards. There's this one planet..."
"Does that mean I get a reward?" Annalisa asked with a grin. Mattie leaned over, digging in her bag, then tossed the redhead a coin that flashed in the air. "That's a wizarding sickle, it's silver, there are 17 sickles to a galleon, so the face value is about twenty-five cents. The metal content is worth more."
"Silver..."
"Go have it assayed," Mattie said. "Anyway, to answer the question, for whatever reason the load got loose. It has a transponder on it, that's a requirement of the UN's Atomic Energy Committee. Strictly speaking, it enters a very slow fall, but practically, you're right. Someone goes out, snags it, and returns it to the platform." She pointed at the original girl, "Why doesn't it drop like a rock?"
"Because..." someone started, and she was waved down. "Here's a hint. I was just talking about the platforms, and drag..." and Mattie leaned forward, waiting. "You can do it. Changing orbits requires delta-v, you've heard of this..."
"Don't be a dumb blonde ..." someone coached. "If it takes a rocket to go up..."
"It would take a rocket to go down?" she squeaked.
"If you want to aim it, I'll take that," Mattie said, and tossed another coin. The blonde fumbled, missing it, someone passed it to her. "When something like the shuttle de-orbits, it has to aim for a particular slot, a re-entry corridor. Too low, they burn up, too high, they bounce off. So, a terrorist has a target, let's make it a nice, big one, like New York City. They want to create a big dirty bomb, so they're going to sneak onboard the NIMBY platform and drop it on New York. They must hate the Yankees," she said with a grin. "What are the problems?" She pointed to a hand.
"It's not designed for it," someone said.
"Excellent," Mattie said, and tossed another coin. "Physically, it's a big aluminum frame with a chicken wire base, a hundred meters square, with some robot arms at each corner. There are some solar panels, and rockets, actually ion thrusters, at the corners. To survive re-entry, something has to be streamlined, aerodynamic." She held up another coin, "Next?"
"Any terrorist would die of radiation," someone said, and got a coin tossed to her. She squealed, and Mattie said, "Assuming they got past the military security, inside a steel container, with an air supply and some way to survive boost and cut themselves out, they're sitting on high level nuclear fuel. They're going to be puking their guts out within a few hours, and dead inside a day. Not very effective. Next?"
"You would have to aim anything," someone said, and she got a coin. "You have to compute a re-entry trajectory, it doesn't drop straight down. NASA has to aim the shuttle to land in Florida, and you have to make mid-course corrections. If a terrorist were able to do that, it could be shot down. Anyone else?"
"It doesn't have to be nuclear," someone said, and Mattie looked at her. "Go on," she said softly. The girl sat up, then looked at her, "You're the Queen of Space," she said. "All you need to do is drop a rock."
Mattie regarded her, "Congratulations, you're the first person to say that. What's my motivation?" she asked quietly.
"Someone pisses you off?"
"Lots of people have done that," she replied softly in the suddenly quiet classroom. "That still doesn't mean I commit mass murder." She regarded the other girl, "You've got balls, you're talking about a weapon of mass destruction. You've just compared me to Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot, and to my face."
Moody growled, and someone said, "Way to go, idiot."
"Power corrupts," she replied, licking her lips and glancing at Moody. "How are you different?"
"I've been arrested, imprisoned and tortured by various governments, including the American," Mattie said, and someone sucked in their breath. "I've had professional assassins hunting me, friends and relatives kidnapped, tortured and killed. Marone has a price on my head, seven large, and two days ago someone fired an RPG at me in Metropolis. It's downright dangerous to know me." She gestured at Moody, "That's why I have bodyguards." Her green eyes bored into the other girl's. "When French terrorists killed a friend of mine in London, did I destroy Paris? When Luthor kidnapped me, killing a relative in the process, did I destroy Washington?"
"You overthrew their governments," someone said, and she shook her head. "People say that, I know. Luthor's out of office, but the Constitution is in force. I ask you again, what's my motivation? Why would I kill millions of people?"
"Um..."
"You're saying I'm some sort of dictator. If I was, would I be here?" she asked. Continuing, she said, "Totalitarian governments are either an iron fist, like North Korea or Stalin's Russia, or they are so bureaucratic that nothing gets done. With an iron fist, if you fail, you're shot, so nothing gets done without written permission. The problem there is that nobody except the bigwigs dares to step the tiniest bit out of line, because they don't want to be shot. Mainland China has a one-child policy. What if your kid gets hit by a bus on the way to school? You've had your child. Another one is denied, so if you get pregnant again, the kid is aborted. Too bad."
She continued, "In a central, planned economy, you're set a quota, of a hundred widgets to produce every day. If you don't, you don't get paid, and you don't eat. You manage to do seventy. If you're honest, you and your family starve, so you lie and say you did your hundred widgets. Your boss knows this, but he's in the same spot, so he lies, and on up the chain. Pricing is the same way, it's artificial. The state says that a liter of milk sells for ten cents. The actual cost might be five cents, or fifty cents, but you the consumer will pay ten cents. That means someone, somewhere is losing money."
Annalisa said softly, "Price supports." Mattie turned, regarding the redhead, "You're just full of surprises. Excellent!" and threw another coin. "Explain them."
"The government pays someone to do something, or they'll buy your product at a certain price," she said. "A farmer's cost to produce that liter of milk might be seven cents, but the government says 'I'll buy that at fifteen cents a liter.' So how are you different?"
"I won't kill you for asking embarrassing questions," she replied. "The Honorable Senator Whats-her-name comes to visit, and one of you asks her a really embarrassing question." She looked over the class, "Like I'm sure some of you would like to ask me. The Senator wouldn't answer, and would make sure your life was ruined. I get asked tough questions on a regular basis. Who here has seen one of my press conferences on telly?" Several hands were raised, and she pointed, "Ask."
"Have you... done the deed yet?" several girls giggled.
"No," Mattie replied. "I'm Catholic, and while I did spend the night with Arthur on top of a tower when he gave me this ring (she waggled her fingers), no 'deeds' were involved. Father Tim at St. Marks was relieved to know that." She pointed, "Ask."
"What is your bra size?"
"32 D." She pointed again. "Ask."
"Would you like to rule the world?"
The class seemed to hold its breath as she said, "No. It would be an enormous headache. Now, I will say there are things I'd like to change, like anyone else, but some things seem to work out better without the iron fist. I'll help people if they ask, but it's generally safest to assume people know what they're doing." She looked at Ms. Reynolds, "You've been quiet, you don't have a question for me?"
"How would you set up a government?" she asked.
"I've got a template for that on Arrowhead's web server, although it is buried kind of deep. It's under 'Administration', and it's essentially a contract, articles of incorporation." She motioned to the teacher's computer, "May I?"
"Certainly," she replied, and unlocked it. Mattie moved around, jumping on the Internet and going to Arrowhead's server. She logged in, and started looking for it, when someone asked, "What's 'Project Mixcoatl'?"
"Eh?" She looked up, and the overhead projector was showing the 'Notes' directory she was currently in. Ms. Reynolds said, "Oops, sorry!" and picked up a remote, turning off the projector. She eyed Ms. Reynolds, then said, "I keep notes on various projects, there's no way I could keep all the details in my head."
"There were a lot of projects..." someone mentioned.
"Arrowhead's an R&D company," Miss Wayne replied, then said, "Ah-hah! Found it!" She typed a bit more, then asked, "Type in your email, please," and stepped back. She looked at the class with a grin, "What would an Evil Overlord (she finger-quoted) do here?"
Annalisa smirked, "Boiling oil?" she asked.
"I don't know..." she said, and counted heads. "That's an awful lot of chips to eat. After all, the oil's hot, might as well use it for something tasty..." She grinned evilly and asked Ms. Reynolds, "I know. Will you have this lot again next year?"
"I think so, although things might change."
"Cool." She grinned, "You won't hear the Senator say 'Cool'. Summer homework for them," and people groaned. "Let's say that you are all residents of one of the settlements on the moon, like Grimaldi. The way I see it, my responsibility as your 'landlord' (she finger-quoted) is to provide basic services to sustain life, after that, it's your job. By the way, you have to pass an examination and contribute to my community, starting at age fifteen, when you vote."
"Now that's an interesting idea," Olivia said. "How do you contribute?"
"It's been called 'enforced volunteerism'," she replied. "Each person has a certain quota per year of hours they must contribute to the community. It's a sliding scale, like a tax, the poor can't do all of it in community hours, the wealthy can't simply write a check. That means that I'm going to be pulling weeds in a community flowerbed right alongside someone that's on community support. That lets you network and build up your contacts."
"Interesting..."
"And if you're a politician, like our Senator, that gives the people a way to measure just how much you actually do get out and meet the people. Let's say the Senator has been assessed 100 hours of community service per year. That's not much, about two hours a week, while her opponent puts in a thousand, that's twenty hours a week. Which of the two candidates is more likely to be in touch with you, citizen Jane Doe?" She looked around, "The Portmaster's office provides basic services. If you lose your job, you can get basic shelter, food, water, air and comms through them. It's basic survival, anything fancier you have to pay for."
She waved her hand, "Anyway, benchmarks. They're things like population level, reserves of supplies like food, then we move into medical care and education. The thing is, space is too big for one person to rule any sort of empire and grow the economy. My best way to colonize space, especially as a private business, is to make sure everyone makes a profit. That way, the pie keeps getting bigger. I'm not stupid enough to think mine is the best, or the only way." She looked around the room, "You belong to a cult that believes everyone should paint themselves purple and eat only dandelions, because that is the One True Way? That's fine, I'll be more than happy to sell you a rock in the Belt and the equipment you need to live. I'm going to cash your check, first, of course."
People grinned, and she continued, "So, once again, I ask, what is my motivation? Money? Power? A desire to rule the world?" she asked softly. "Let's take them in order. Money is a tool. After a certain point, you can't spend it fast enough. If I saw a $100 bill on the sidewalk, I would lose money to stop and pick it up. Let's try power. How do we define this? You've pissed me off, do I simply shout 'Off with her head!' and throw you in my dungeon? Hey, I've been to the Tower of London," and she grinned.
People chuckled, somewhat nervously, and Annalisa smirked, "Kill her off, they say."
"Na, a live hostage is more useful than a corpse," Mattie replied. "At least that's what the Evil Overlord lists tell me," and she grinned, wagging a finger. "Hey, I do my homework!"
"What about the last one, wanting to rule the world?"
"Oy, the paperwork!" she complained. "No, I think I answered this. However, I will probably need to do this on another planet."
"Why there?" Ms. Reynolds asked. "This is a social studies class, after all."
Miss Wayne nodded, "Good question, let me brief you. The planet's known as Windfall," she replied. "It's roughly 1500 light years away, in the Orion Nebula, and is a lost colony world. Their parent world, and much of their population, was killed off by a plague about seventy years ago. Why do we care, you ask." She hopped down from the desk, and started to walk back and forth. "One reason is that they allegedly have a large database of alien tech, but they don't have the facilities for manufacture. We, on the other hand, have a large capacity, but no plans, especially for military hardware. What we do have is reverse-engineered. Assuming these plans exist, it would save us quite a bit of time."
"Why don't they make it, and export it?" someone asked.
"Excellent question," Mattie replied. "The plague I mentioned spread off the mainland colony, where their factories were, the one island off shore was a data backup location, primarily a fishing port with some small farms." She drew with her wand, "Windfall is primarily an ocean world, orbits about .8 AU, so it's a warm world, with lots of islands. The port I mentioned is on the largest island, about fifty by 150 kilometers. People that have been there report that it's a beautiful world, it would probably make a nice resort location. Think Hawaii or Puerto Rico without the tourist traps."
With a swipe of her wand, the image was gone. "The plague that hit was a nasty one. It passed by body fluids, the females were the primary carriers, the males the primary victims. You kiss your husband or sons goodnight and wake up next to the corpse," and people shuddered. "They took preventive measures, but they still lost seventy percent of their population, and the other islands, and the population on the mainland. They are, I think understandably, terrified of another outbreak. This allowed the island's Council of Elders to seize power, and they've done a pretty good job of keeping it." She took another few steps, "The population is primarily female, over eighty percent. There are about thirty three thousand males in a total population of about 200,000. The Council has arranged things to use the guilt the female population still feels to arrange things their way. Male property owners are the only ones with a vote, females cannot own property over a certain value. The criminal code is oriented to increase the population, and includes both the death penalty and judicial, term slavery."
"What do you mean?"
"The criminal code for much of the galaxy is based on slaves," she explained. "Break the law, you're sentenced to a judicial collar, one of the ones with green and yellow lights, and sold off like any other slave. Where Windfall differs, at least in theory, is that if a female forgets her breath mask, she's sentenced to a twenty-year collar, a male is fined. After twenty years, you're freed. With Windfall, those slaves belong to the government, and are leased, along with some basic rights. However, if you, a slave, have a kid, that kid is a slave for the rest of her life. For that reason, another twenty-six percent of the population, some fifty thousand, are slave girls." She leaned back against the desk, "The birthrate is skewed, too. Mostly female, only about one in three male children survive."
"So you've got this island paradise..." someone said.
"Paradise if you're a local male," she said, then corrected herself. "Sorry, some of the men there seem okay, according to reports. But if I, a female, go running with my brother, and both of us forget our breath masks, he's fined and I'm collared. What's more, I can then be raped, and any kids sold off as slaves, so you can see why I want to adjust the government a bit. In addition, the island's metal poor, the economy is based on iron, which people buy from the government, because there isn't really any other source. The tech is a mixture of steam and wind power, with some things like arc furnaces and animal transportation, using this huge, six-legged ox called a shonnen. It's bigger than a rhino. They are way ahead of us on ceramics, they have things like ceramic diesel engines."
"Six legs?"
"Oh, yeah," she grinned. "That seems to be fairly common. We had one here a while ago that looked like a six legged multicolored panther with steel teeth and claws. Her fur changed according to her mood, apparently. She was a comm officer on a liner, there's lots of different people out there." She boosted herself on the desk again, "So that's a quick overview of Windfall. What's my plan?" She turned to Ms. Reynolds, "Want to assign homework for summer school?" People groaned, and Mattie grinned, "Hey, I've got summer homework too. It's simple: What would you do in my place to get those plans? I have a plan, and I know what my Intelligence people say. What's your plan?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"So, who here likes making money?" Mattie said cheerfully, and everyone raised their hands, including her own. She turned, looking at Ms. Reynolds, and raised her eyebrow. "You don't? Someone's making what they want? Oy, veh, I'll talk to the boss," and Olivia raised her hand with a little smile. She got a nod of approval, "I was worried there for a minute. Don't do that again, my heart, you know." This got a chuckle out of the class, and she waved her wand, drawing the word MONEY = in fire in midair. "What is the study of money? How it moves, what influences it, all that kind of wonderful stuff." With her wand, she wrote under the other word, ECONOMICS.
"Yeah, the dismal science," she said. "You need a CFO, people. A Chief Financial Officer, preferably one that loves golf. I tell you, I've learned more about money, and how to use it on the back nine from my Scottish CFO than I ever learned from a book, which is really a pity. Question?"
"What about your running? Did you run in the London Marathon in April?"
"That's a full marathon, forty-two kilometers. I ran a half-marathon this past October. In order to do a full marathon you need to run at least sixty kilometers a week, and I just don't have the time, so I'm doing halves. Good question," and another coin was tossed. "Back to money. Who likes beef here, a nice juicy steak?" Quite a few hands went up, and she said, "On each of the stations, we have a herd of milk goats. Why not dairy cattle? Who can tell me?"
"They're more expensive than goats?"
"True," another coin was tossed. "A dairy cow weighs six to nine hundred kilos, or 1300 to 1900 pounds. It will only produce milk after calving, and only for a few months, then you have to inseminate them again, produce another calf, etc." She shook her head, "It's not cost-effective for our population. For milk we can have goats, and also lots of different types of beans for the calcium. Beans we can use the whole plant, because we can feed our poultry the stalks and so forth. Everyone with me so far?"
A hand went up, "Why are rockets so expensive?"
Mattie grinned, "Great question," and threw another coin. "When rockets were first developed in World War Two by the Germans, their 'customer' was the military. After the war, the US captured most, but not all of the German scientists and their equipment. Once again, the customer was the government. Now, this is in contrast to the way the airlines developed, for the civilian market after World War One. Then, the government had all these surplus planes, so they sold them off for a song. There were also prizes offered, like Lindberg's flight across the Atlantic. That developed into the private aviation industry, Boeing, Lockheed, Fairchild, and all those." She used her wand to write 'Airlines = commercial' and 'Rockets = government'. "Now, government has never needed to keep costs down, to show a profit. A private business does, however. If I don't have a profit, or can forecast one, I don't get investors, and I go out of business. That's what the French government was trying to do in March by exposing the wizarding world, a hostile takeover." She grinned, "They did it wrong. Anyway, the rocket manufacturers have a couple ways to make a profit with government sales. They over engineer and over test everything, use short production runs, and have cost-plus accounting."
Annalisa chuckled, and Mattie tossed her a coin, "Which one you want to explain?"
"Two more," and she got the coins. "It starts with 'cost plus'. Their costs are paid back by the government, plus a percentage for their profit. So they'll specify titanium when aluminum would work, use high level testing when they don't need to, only build a few at a time, and over staff everything." She grinned, "It's like being paid by the hour to mow your lawn. You're going to do it really slowly, instead of for an even twenty dollars."
"And it's all perfectly legal," Mattie said. "We ran into this flight-qualifying our ground-to-orbit shuttles. While we over-engineered the safety and environmental systems, we used existing, proven hardware and installed them into existing airframes that had already been flight qualified. That way we didn't have to pay for each of them again, just that combination. When an air or space carrier like DHL contracts to buy equipment, they're going to pay a fixed price. The manufacturer is the one that has to hold down costs to make a profit."
"All right, moving on, there are three basic economic models, net loss, net gain, and zero-sum. A slot machine is a net loss model, casinos love them, because they're guaranteed a profit. There is a reason they're called a 'one armed bandit', folks. Another is a lottery, because the odds of your winning are so high. Yeah, you might win a five dollar scratch off, but you spend eight or ten bucks to do it. Another is government, because it's guaranteed to get it's share, no matter what. Even if you declare bankruptcy, they're still first in line with they're hand out."
"Zero sum is next, and this is the model that the chicken-little folks are using. There is a fixed amount of something, oil, poker chips, or food, it doesn't matter. The way to make a profit is to take it from someone else." She boosted herself onto the desk again, "Let's say we're in a poker championship. There's a million dollars on the table among us, and for me to walk away with that million, I have to play better, and defeat you, bankrupt you. Now, you might do it to me, but whoever wins, that million is all there is." She looked around the room, "In general, this is the model the galactic economy uses, because you have to look pretty hard to find something that's just a little better. Let me give an example, the skin suit. Ours are an evolutionary design from the old 'Michelin Man' Apollo suits, a Gal-Tech suit looks similar to ours, only it can change color and it doesn't need a backpack. However, they cost about $75,000 to our $5000, and we're already revising our technology. There's no need to pay fifteen times as much for most of our people. The people in Taiwan are already working on things like microtanks, right now the limits are the oxygen supply and figuring out the gloves."
"Gloves?"
"Yeah," and she held up a hand, "There's a surprising amount of hand work in vacuum, especially on things like satellites that were never intended to be serviced. Who here has stuck their hand in dry ice?" She looked around, "That's frozen carbon dioxide, and it's warmer than space. Space is really, really cold, folks. You've got to keep the hand warm, maintain pressure, and do actual work, like turning wrenches." She held up her hand for display, "We maintain pressure by using a thicker rubber glove, like surgeons use, then a thin cotton glove, and a heater glove. On a short lanyard we use good old fashioned mittens, which also have a heater. That's another one for the tinkerers among you, get something that we can use and will stand up to both liquid nitrogen and the concrete test. That's building a concrete-block wall with the gloves on."
"Why are you asking about tinkering?" a petite blonde asked, and Mattie stared. "Are you thinking 'I'm a girl, I don't know anything about that?' she asked.
"Don't buy into that stereotype," someone said. "You don't have to know how to take apart an engine..."
"Thank you," Mattie said. "Let me tell you about Misty. She's Hank's fiancée, he's Arthur's older brother. She's in college for Chemical Engineering, so she's a pretty smart person. On her first trip into space, she fixed a problem we had, saving a man's life in the process." She looked around the room, "On the moon, one of the people we had cracked his helmet. You lose pressure, you've got ten seconds, that's it, to save your life. He had a cracked helmet and was half an hour from the ship. We got him back in time, but she came up with a simple backup." She looked around again, "We installed a clear plastic bag inside each helmet. You crack your helmet, it will maintain pressure long enough for you to get inside. She patented it, we licensed it and it's already saved several lives. She's made enough from that, she can pay for a really nice wedding anywhere she wants, although she's got standing invitations for Moscow, Cracow, and Havana. That's what I mean by tinkering, it doesn't have to be a new warp drive, it just has to solve the problem."
"Anyway, as I was saying, the galactic economy has been stagnant for hundreds of thousands of years because in general, it gets to 'good enough' and stops. If there's further innovation, it's not brought to market, it's not given a chance to improve unless it's in a very select area. It's like the fabled 200 mpg carburetor, it's supposed to be out there, but nobody's ever seen one. Have airplanes improved since the 1920's, have automobiles?" She looked around the room. "The galactic economy is essentially stuck with the Model T. It gets the job done, AND THAT'S IT."
"Everyone still with me?" She looked around, "Cool. The chicken-little people are saying 'There's only so much oil, then we run out, and everyone starves to death in the dark and cold.' I say that even if it's true, oil is not the only energy source. We have an absolutely free energy source only a few hundred kilometers away," and she pointed straight up. "Average of 1350 watts per square meter in GEO. Now, I will be totally up front with you, and say there are two times a year, for about ninety minutes each, that a powersat doesn't receive power, and those are the equinoxes. It's a matter of orbital mechanics, but you know about it well in advance, so you bring on a few backup generators." She shrugged, "It happens around midnight, so there's a lesser demand." She hopped off the desk and slapped it. "This desk is about a square meter. In orbit, it gets 1350 watts, on the ground it gets between 300 and 800 watts. That's your power budget. Now, a modern solar panel has an efficiency of twenty percent. Who's got a calculator handy? Twenty percent of 1350..."
"270 watts," someone replied.
"Thank you," Mattie replied. "We'll get to the cost of building the system in a minute. Now, the powersat is a kilometer wide and long, or a million square meters. Therefore, the usable power from the solar cells is 270 watts times a million, or 270 megawatts." Mattie pointed her wand, writing '270 MW' in midair.
"How does that compare with other power plants?" a slightly chubby blonde asked.
"The Grand Coulee Dam in Washington, the biggest power plant in the US, is rated for over twenty times that," Mattie admitted while pointing at the floating numbers. "That makes mine look pretty small, but remember, this is a test satellite. We built this one to work the bugs out with and test procedures. The production units could be much larger."
"Getting back to that 1350 watts per square meter. We're turning 270 of it into electricity, and figure to lose 80 watts per square meter for things like transmission losses. That leaves a thousand watts. We can lose them, and dissipate them as heat, or we can be smart business people and find a way to use them. We do that by using solar thermal, which is thirty percent efficient, which means how much?"
"Three hundred megawatts," the girl with the calculator answered.
"You got it. Mind you, just because we have that energy available doesn't mean we currently have uses for it. We have to make sure the uses we do find don't interfere with the rest of the plant. But still, the original source of energy is free, any excess heat we can either use in space or just radiate away. The energy comes to us, with oil or coal, you have to pay for it and have it delivered, and you have both heat and pollution to worry about." She clapped her hands, "Let's see how much we get on the ground. Microwaves have a very high transmission efficiency, up to 90 percent. Of that 270 megawatts, we get?"
"243 megawatts," calculator girl replied before asking, "What about the receiving antenna and the environment?"
"Cheap," Mattie replied. "Wires on poles, a circle seven kilometers in diameter, so about the size of a small airport. You can plant vegetables or graze cows under it. You do need to have a small building for the various gauges and whatnot, but that's a concrete block building fifteen feet square with a tin roof. For buying the land, permits, fencing, taxes, and so forth, figure ten million for all that. Cuba's figures were different, a command economy, they used eminent domain. For us, we'll figure ten million bucks. The heat stays in space, and the airliners swerve around the beam, even though they don't really have to. There's been something like forty years of environmental studies."
She clapped her hands, "Now, let's pay for this baby. Our revenue is the 243 megawatts from the solar panels, and the 300 megawatts from solar thermal. Now, our expensive stuff is the electronics, the panels and beams are made of lunar or Belt materials, so we're going to say $1.80 a watt for our construction costs, including the receiving antenna costs. Now, orbital iron and silicon are really cheap," Mattie said, "you amortize your costs over time, in this case twenty years."
"For a Belter, supplies and the mortgage on your ship are your high costs, to sell an iron asteroid to me, you sell it on the futures market. You mount some thrusters on them, calculate the orbit, and boost. God and orbital mechanics deliver them, and you'll know to the minute when if nothing breaks down while you're boosting. Your fuel for that is water, you sell futures based on your core samples. You also sell your mining produce, but that's on the spot market, so the prices are going to fluctuate. You buy this satellite from me with a twenty year mortgage, because you amortize over a twenty year period with very low maintenance costs. There is some weathering from the solar wind, so you have to perform maintenance on the panels about every five years, which is the rate NASA uses. That's dismounting it, annealing the surface, and remounting it. Tedious, but that's why you have robots. So, you're paying me five cents per kilowatt hour, how much am I making?"
"Those numbers sound awful low," the math girl objected, and punched her calculator. "543 megawatts, which is 543,000 kilowatt hours, at... ninety percent efficiency, you said?" Mattie nodded, suggesting, "Why don't you do costs first?"
"All right, but I'm going to do this on the board," and walked up, writing her numbers. "Five hundred forty three million, times a dollar eighty, is nine hundred seventy seven million, four hundred thousand." She redid the math, then said, "You amortize over twenty years, so you divide, and get forty eight million, eight hundred seventy thousand dollars a year."
Someone whistled, and Mattie shrugged, "It's a utility. You should properly amortize over fifty years, and if it was a hydroelectric dam I would. This is new-to-us technology, so we figured conservatively, for twenty years. Now, that's my cost. What about revenue over twenty years?"
Moving to another part of the board, she wrote, 543,000 kw/h, times ninety percent efficiency, equals 488,700 kw/hours. Talking to herself, she said, "... at five cents a kilowatt hour, that's twenty four thousand, four hundred thirty five dollars an hour revenue, times twenty four hours is five hundred eighty six thousand, four hundred forty dollars per day, times..."
"Three hundred sixty five and a quarter days in a year," Ms. Reynolds said, and her student punched numbers, then whistled as she wrote $214,197,210.00 per year.
"We've got that time in the equinox that service isn't available," Mattie said. "Figure ninety-nine percent uptime." More numbers were punched, and a new number was written: $212,055,237.90.
"That's my revenue," Mattie said. "A nickel per kilowatt hour is fairly cheap, which is what you're paying me. Now, let's figure my profit margin, which is revenue minus costs per year."
The math girl was re-checking her numbers, then she wrote:
$212,055,237.90 revenue
-$ 48,870,000.00 costs
$163,185,237.90 gross profit
"Looks like a lot of money, and it is," Mattie said. "The only thing that makes the numbers work is lunar and asteroid material, if I had to launch steel beams from Earth, I couldn't afford it. Now, I'm taking that hundred and sixty large, and I'm investing it back into the business, because I have to pay for things like space stations and orbital smelters. What's my profit percentage?"
"Seventy seven percent," she answered.
"So this is my cash cow, my sixty-watt light bulb. However, I have other expenses, like the stations that aren't paying their way. The modeling won't cover expenses until the transportation and tourism sectors get built up, and to do that, I need a greater volume," Mattie said. "What other costs are there?"
"Oversight. Somebody has to keep an eye on everything on the station and on the ground," Annalisa replied. "Make sure everything stays pointed in the right direction."
"You have a guide laser on the roof of the rectenna building," Mattie said. "Goes off center, beam shuts off, it has to stay aligned."
"You have to build the rectenna and keep it in good repair," another girl said.
"Remember that ninety percent of the rectenna is wires on poles," Mattie said. "The rest is just assorted meters and transformers, you want a little overpressure on amperage so that it flows out to the grid. You also have to buy the land, about the same area as a small airport, erect fences, put in a dirt road. We figured ten million for that, which is built into the $1.80 per watt cost."
"Taxes."
"Government," Mattie replied with a grin. "Varies enormously, but it won't effect the costs a whole lot. What else?"
"Backup facilities," someone said, while Annalisa added, "Security."
"Backup facilities would be if someone cuts a high voltage line, which would come under security," Mattie said. "To get to the transmitter, you'd have to fly up to GSO, and we would notice that. That's really all I can say about security. Anything else?" She looked around and grinned, "Now, this is the net-gain method. You're forgetting the benefits of orbital construction. My material costs and manufacturing energy costs are essentially free, my labor costs are higher because my union crews are getting hazard pay. These union steelworkers sit and watch monitor screens, they very rarely have to go out to service their construction bots. They've got a sweet job and they know it, which is why I don't have labor problems. I can afford to pay them that, and have extremely strict safety standards. Furthermore, I can pay higher rates than terrestrial for things like iron, because the miner's major costs are servicing the loan on his ship and transportation. They go out, find an asteroid with iron, and start to tunnel through it while they stay in their ship and watch. They get bored, but that's not my problem. Every so often, they fly back, sell their ore, party at L5, resupply and go back out. Everyone makes money, because the pie just keeps getting bigger."
"Another example, please," Annalisa said, leaning forward intently.
"Okay, there's an older fellow at L4. He's a World War Two vet, bad left leg and arm from the Battle of Kursk. One of the benefits my people get is some free legal time. He came up with a nifty idea for a coffee mug, he glued a small magnet on the bottom, a screw-ring on top, and a nipple type cap. He's selling them as 'Genuine Space Mugs' to the tourists we're starting to get, and it's such a simple design people are kicking themselves. He used his legal time to file a patent in Berlin, which is enforceable, his costs are low, and he's making a very nice little profit on that."
"I don't quite follow," Olivia said. "What's so special about a coffee mug?"
"It keeps your coffee where you want it," Mattie said. "In zero-gee, fluids form a perfect sphere, and go where they will because of air currents, which creates a problem with electrical equipment. You need gravity to keep fluids in, or something else." She gestured, "A zero-gee coffee maker looks like an espresso machine, you program it for your beverage-of-choice, it burps it out, you cover your mug and go on your way. The magnet on the bottom simply keeps it on the console you're working on. The tourist mugs are black, a white picture with the phrase 'Someone went to L1, and all I got was this stupid mug!'"
"Classic schmaltz," Olivia said, and the bell rang. "I'd like to thank Miss Wayne and her colleagues from coming by."
"Ms. Reynolds, can I ask a favor? Can you return our passes, and we'll sneak out with the rest."
"And avoid Mr. Wainwright?" Olivia said with a smile, "Of course, I think the number 27 bus goes by Bristol."
"That's ok," Mattie replied with a grin. "We have... alternate transportation."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Thursday, June 6, 2002:
Gotham City, Wayne Manor: 04:56 (GMT -5)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"C'mon, Tonks, you can do it," Mattie said. "You're halfway there, only another four kilometers."
"I'm dying..." she said.
"Okay," Mattie replied, as the pink-haired Auror collapsed, sitting on the track. "I'll tell Sprink that..."
"You'll tell her nothing," Tonks said, struggling to her feet. "I'll be dammed that she's doing something I can't," she told the younger witch, who was jogging in place. "G'wan with you, but tomorrow I bring my bloody broom."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Thursday, June 6, 2002:
London, British Library, main entrance: 09:59 (GMT)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Edward!" Aurora held out her hands, and Eddie Nigma took them. "My dear, you're looking well," he said, then turned, crouching and holding out a hand, "As are you, my dear. My name is Edward Nigma, and you are?"
"Mis... mum has been calling me Emma," the rescued slave girl said shyly. "Is that acceptable, Master?"
"Now, what did we say about using 'Master' and 'Mistress'?" Aurora asked.
"It is not the action of a free female," Emma quoted, and dug into the pocket of her jeans, holding out a coin to Edward. He accepted it, looking up at Aurora. She moved to a bench, and adjusted Emma's jacket, "We made an agreement, every time she used the term, she would pay me a penny. She's down from about thirty pence a day to four so far today. That's one for you." She turned Emma, "Now I have to pop off to class, I'm already running late. Edward needs to look some things up, and you, young lady" (she tapped Emma's nose), "need to work on your schooling also." Aurora looked up at Edward, "You have my mobile number?" He nodded, "She's a very obedient girl, and very bright too. Unfortunately, her basics are limited. I'd suggest getting a private reading room, she has a habit of confusing Trade and English. Right now we're working on algebra, she has some work pages to get through." She leaned forward to kiss Emma's forehead. "Any preferences for dinner tonight?"
"If Emma does all her pages, why don't we let her choose?" Eddie asked. "I need to study for my engineer's examinations. Call my cell when you get out of class, about what, five or so?" Aurora nodded, and disappeared with a 'pop'. Eddie adjusted the bag on Emma's shoulder, then his own, and offered his hand. "Come, my dear. Let us go explore the mysteries of algebra."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Edward looked up at the tapping on the glass, and smiled. He waved, and Aurora entered with another young woman. "Edward, this is Callista Vector, she teaches Arithmancy and is Hogwarts' Deputy Headmistress."
He stood, offering his hand, "How do you do?" he said with a smile, and offered a seat. The ladies sat, and he raised an eyebrow, "I thought you were going to call."
"Your mobile was off," she said, then turned, "How is Emma doing?"
"I do apologize," he said. "This young lady is an excellent student," he replied. "While we haven't gotten through all her pages, we do have a solid understanding of linear equations, and a working knowledge of exponents. I foresee quadratic equations in the next few days." Callista looked up from Emma's pages with approval, "You're not using a calculator?"
"She won't learn it that way, all she'll learn is to push buttons," Edward said disdainfully. "Paper is cheap, as is pencil lead. Also, not one penny, so I think we can safely let Emma choose dinner tonight. She has earned it."
"Excellent," Aurora said, and the young girl blushed. "Thank you, mum," she said softly. She looked up, "Spaghetti?" she asked timidly.
"At the flat, or eating out?" Callista asked, "We're sharing rent on a flat, London is a bloody expensive town."
"Yes, I am staying temporarily in Miss Wayne's townhouse until I find a place of my own," he said, then looked at Emma, "If the ladies do not object, we could eat in, I am already tired of take-out."
"Then we need to pop by Sainsbury's for the ingredients," Aurora said. Eddie rose, "I need to get a library card and check my books out, then. Ten minutes?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"The key to a good meal," Eddie told Emma, "is that it should not only nourish the body, but also the soul. Now, I must know, do you have any food restrictions, any allergies?"
"No," she replied. "What do you mean, nourish the soul?"
"My dear, we get into metaphysics and philosophy there. Suffice it to say that you should feel good about what you have accomplished. You have done well today, you have learned, but one does not learn only during certain hours. Life is not only mathematics, it is art. Let us start, as you would with a building, with a solid foundation. Once that is in place, we can build upon it."
Emma looked confused. "There are containers of red sauce there. Why not use them?"
Eddie knelt, so he was looking her in the eye, "My dear, it is the difference between replicator food, and something that is fresh. Fresh not only tastes better, it allows you to grow by experimenting, to see what works and what does not." He tapped her forehead, "We are different people. My duty to you is to teach you, so that you can learn, grow, and teach others, as part of your duty. What I like may not be what you like, but how will we know until we try, hmm?" He stood, and offered his hand, "I shall show you tonight a simple vegetable sauce which you may then experiment and grow with. You will undoubtedly take a different path but that is a good thing. Come, let me show you how to pick fresh vegetables."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"That's right, chop the tomatoes," Eddie said to Aurora. He turned to Emma, "You want to cut the garlic very finely, because it will be easier to crush them later. You use a glass cutting board because a wooden board, like Aurora is using, will absorb the odors and you'll be smelling them later."
The young girl leaned forward, sniffing, "I like it, it smells nice."
"The finer you cut, or crush then, the stronger the taste," Eddie said. "However, some people do not like a strong taste, so you use a moderate approach." He caught Callista's grin, who saluted him with her wine glass. "You can always add to your own serving later," he added. Glancing at the blonde witch, he said, "Those who kibitz, clean."
"No worries," she replied, sipping her wine. "That should be enough garlic, y' think?"
"Yes," he agreed after giving a judicious nod. "Put the mashed garlic in the oil to cook, and the remaining cloves," he clarified. "The small sections. Place them in a plastic bag" (he handed her a small bag), "with some water from the tap, enough to cover them, but not fill the bag. Leave a space to vent, and put them in the freezer for later use." While Emma did so, Eddie checked the garlic, "Come take a look, see the nice browned color? Add the tomatoes, please, when they are almost done we add the cream..."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Friday, June 7, 2002:
London, Parkinson Construction: 10:00 (GMT)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Edward stood as a young woman entered the conference room with a fellow and an older lady. "Mr. Nigma? I'm Pansy Parkinson," the young woman said. "This is Mr. Oliver from our engineering department, and Ms. Hardy from HR, won't you please be seated?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Now, Mr. Nigma, I understand you need to be re-licensed as an engineer," Pansy said. "Ms. Wayne said..."
"Excuse me," Eddie interrupted. "I do not take charity. If Ms. Wayne asked you to hire me, then I must bid you good day."
"Mr. Nigma," Pansy said sharply. "Ms. Wayne asked me to interview you. She did not pull strings to hire you. She did say that you had had a spot of legal trouble, which had caused the forfeiture of your existing licenses. Depending on the legal issues, which we shall check on, we may or may not tender you an offer. That is the extent of the 'charity' (she finger-quoted). Now, shall we proceed?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Interesting..." Mr. Oliver mused as he regarded the sketch on the legal pad. "Most interesting, certainly a way to think outside the box." He sat back and regarded the American, "How much travel are you up to?"
"I would prefer to stay in London," Eddie replied stiffly. "I went off planet for the Guard for several months, it was rather traumatic. In addition, I am dating a young lady teacher who is trying to adopt one of the refugee slaves, I cannot abridge that responsibility. The young girl in question is waiting in the lobby."
"Hmm," Pansy said. "If we can accommodate her, would you be willing to consider Phobos, in Mars' orbit?"
"No further, and only for a week or so, until her school starts back up in September."
"Which school is the young lady teaching at?" Ms. Hardy asked.
"I believe it's called 'Hogwarts'," Eddie said, and Pansy sat up. "I went there. Who's the teacher?"
"Ms. Sinestra."
"Oh, I know Aurora," Pansy said with a grin. "We're housemates. I presume you have no objections to a background check, Mr. Nigma?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Friday, June 7, 2002:
Gotham City, Wayne Manor, gymnasium: 17:05 (GMT -5)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"I think I've seen enough," Selina said. "Mr. Moody, Ms. Tonks, I don't know why Minerva recommended you two as bodyguards, but you are not suited for this duty."
"Take away your wands, you're helpless," Mattie said, and with a quick 'Expelliarmus!' they were disarmed. "I'm going off planet, and you can't use magic for two reasons. First, it doesn't work in space, you have to be on a planet. That means if pirates try to board us, you're useless."
"Second, if you do try to use magic on a planet, it's going to paint you, and everyone you're with as a target in big, glowing, neon colors. Only a Zarroj, a wizard, does magic, you see, and those are mythical beings. Having an actual, live Zarroj, especially a breed-able one in your collar, is worth a fortune. They will do anything it takes to capture you alive." She tossed their wands back, "In addition, it puts Earth itself at risk, because they're going to backtrack you to see if there are any more. That means a hostile invasion, and we're not ready to stand anything like that off." She stood and stretched, "A bodyguard should be invisible, and I don't mean literally. They have to blend in, and Tonks, neon colored hair with a skirted suit doesn't do it. You get a barely-passing grade. You drew far too much attention when we went camera shopping today."
Selina said, "Mr. Moody, you stood out for a different reason. You're eye revolving is somewhat sickening, your peg leg is noisy, and your constant shouting is annoying. You also need to bathe more. Didn't you talk to Madame Pomfrey about getting your eye and leg regrown?"
"Don't have the time," he snapped.
"I'll offer you a dip in the med-tank, if you can spare a week or two, we'll see about regenerating them. However," Mattie said, "You're both staying here. Hagrid, quite frankly, would be more useful as a bullet sponge."
"If you would like to stay and coach Tomas, you can," Selina said, nodding to her adoptive son. "Otherwise, we'll take you to the airport, you can catch tomorrow's flight to London. You're fired."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Saturday, June 8, 2002:
Gotham City, Clock Tower: 13:02 (GMT -5)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Hey, guys, come on in!" Dick said, stepping aside for Selina, Mattie and Tomas. "Babs is feeding the young'un, she'll be out in a minute. Can I get you anything?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Well, hello, Miss Mary Elizabeth," Mattie said softly to the baby as she rocked her gently side-to-side. "I'm your Aunt Mattie, and I'm sure we'll get along just famously..." Mary Elizabeth considered this, scrunched up her face, then coughed, and Dick snorted in laughter. Mattie raised the baby so her face was level with hers, and said, still softly, "Why, Miss Mary Elizabeth, even if you disagree with me, you don't have to spit up all over a fifty Euro silk blouse..." Mary Elizabeth wrinkled her nose and sneezed, and Tomas came over, a towel already over his shoulder and another one in his hand for Mattie. He held out his arms, "Buenas tardes, Seniorita Mary Elizabeth. Soy tu tío Tomás. ?Por qué no hablamos de cosas mientras Tía Mattie limpia su blusa?" (Good afternoon, Miss Mary Elizabeth. I am your Uncle Tomas. Why don't we discuss things while Aunt Mattie cleans her blouse?)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Saturday, June 8, 2002:
London, Tonks home: 16:51 (GMT)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Oy," Tonks said as she came through the kitchen door. Her sister looked up from her book, "I thought you were in the States with Mattie."
"Got fired," she replied, slumping down in the nearest chair. Her mum floated over some tea, and she mumbled, "Thanks." She sighed heavily, "I rated as 'barely passing', they said I stood out too much, and I was helpless without m' wand." Taking a sip of tea, she added, "The exercise they do! Merlin! A twenty kilometer run every day, then weights, and THEN they fight each other? They're barmy!"
Her pa set his tea down, "Nymphy," Ted asked. "Be objective. Were they right?" His eldest daughter closed her eyes and nodded, "I feel like a failure," she whispered.
"And will you learn from this?" her mother Andromeda said. Nymphadora nodded again, and Sprink put her tea down and walked around the table to give her sister a hug. She held her at arm's length, and said, "Want to come with me? I need to do some shopping, and we can sign you up for muggle martial arts. They're dead useful, you know, and maybe the Ministry will pay for them."
"What I feel like is a good cry," Tonks admitted. "I'll come, let me change into some comfy clothes, out of the suit."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"What's with the crisps?" Tonks asked her sister as she loaded boxes into the Costco™ trolly.
"You think I'm going without my crisps, you're barmy," she replied. "Off to fetch my tea," she announced. "You think I'm living on fizzy drinks like Mattie?" She blinked, then said, "Sorry."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Saturday, June 8, 2002:
Grandview Heights, Parkinson Circle: 17:32 (GMT -5)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"And just what do you think you're doing, young man?"
Arthur looked up at his mother, "Making lasagna," he replied calmly. "A couple little tricks I learned from Mrs. Potter at school." Elena swooped in, putting a wine glass in her mother's hand, "Sit, mom. Take a load off." She steered her mom to a chair at the kitchen table as Arthur waved his wand over the deep dish pasta.
Arthur added, "Besides, tomorrow's Elena's birthday, but we've got to get down to Ecuador on an early fire. We figured we could eat; then open presents." He added to his sister, "One's kinda from Mattie too."
"What's from Mattie?" Teela asked, coming in the kitchen. She headed for the oven, and Arthur slapped her hand away. "No peeking. Besides, since I can't be here for Mom's birthday, you're part of her present."
"If I said something, it wouldn't be a surprise, now would it?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Oh, my... a twenty gig iPod? These aren't released yet!" Elena said.
"Not for another month, but there are advantages to having a girlfriend who is a Japanese noble," Arthur admitted. "Normally, I would have waited, but with the scheduling the way it is..." he shrugged. "I figure you're going to have time to kill while you're on the flight deck of a shuttle..." Elena launched herself at him, "Oh, this is so cool!" He looked at his mom, who smiled in approval.
"Open the other one," Bill said. "This is from Julie, Teela and myself."
Elena ripped open the package, seeing a stack of CD's. "Oh, cool," she said. "I don't think I've heard of the 'Weird Sisters', though."
"They're a wizarding band," Julie said. "They all are. Your tastes are so eclectic, we got suggestions from everyone at school." She glanced at Teela, "Take a look at the back of the one on the bottom, the 'Cauldron Melters', the artist."
"It's... 'Teela Jandrova'," and Elena looked at her sister. "You..."
"Me..." Teela said, buffing her fingernails. "Several of them, really. Grandview Music, Ltd. A fine alternative label, featuring the best of..." she was tackled by her sister, Arthur raising his tea-mug and said softly, "Happy birthday, mom."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Sunday, June 9, 2002:
Heathrow, International Floo Departure: 08:05 (GMT)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"So. You're set."
"Yes, pa. I've gone over my checklist, I've got everything." Charlie took a deep breath, "I'm ready."
"Take care, son," and swept him into a tight hug. "If your mum were alive..."
"I know, pa. I know." Charlie took a deep breath, hugged his father one last time, then said, "I've got to go." Reluctantly, his father released him, and Charlie took another deep breath, then turned and walked to the gate.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Sunday, June 9, 2002:
Quito, Ecuador, International Floo Arrivals: 10:23 (GMT -5)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
The fire turned green, and Arthur turned, watching Mattie step out and dust herself off. He waved at her from his place in the Customs line as Elena looked over her shoulder. Two places ahead, Sprink turned with a grin, "Oy, no cuts. Back o' the line."
"Yes, ma'am," Mattie said with a grin. "Going on up?"
Sprink moved into place with the Customs bloke, who said, "Senorita, the next shuttle is not until 13:00. You have time to visit our markets."
"And pay duty on those items," Arthur observed.
"Si, senor," the Customs fellow said with a grin.
Sprink yawned, "'M sorry. I'm still on London time. What about breakfast?" The Customs fellow returned her passport, "Welcome to Ecuador, senorita. There is an excellent restaurant in the center concourse." As Sprink moved on, he asked Elena, "Seniorita, you are next, por favor?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Putting her finger across her lips in the universal 'silence' gesture, Sprink crept up on a dozing Charlie, who was dressed in a white Greywolf jumpsuit like hers. He slumped in a seat, his luggage strapped to a trolley next to him. She slid in next to him, and started to play with his hair, getting very close. He mumbled something, and she leaned forward to kiss him, whispering, "Charlie... Oh, Charlie, they've called your flight..."
He mumbled something about 'Mum' in return, and she shoved him, "Oy, Charlie, I'm not your mum!"
"And we're all so very glad about that," Arthur said dryly as Charlie woke up. "How long have you been here?"
"Um..." He bolted up, "I bloody have missed my flight!"
"Time zones, Charlie," Mattie replied, sitting across from him. Arthur said, "Excuse me, I think I recognize someone," and left to walk across the concourse. Mattie pulled out her new Nikon D-100 and attached a lens, firing off a few frames. Charlie grinned, pulling out his own Canon. He turned as a young woman asked, "That's your guy Morton, isn't it?"
Mattie turned around, "Pansy! Welcome to Ecuador, won't you join us? Yeah, that's Arthur, and this is his sister Elena," and she waggled her left hand.
"No worries, Wayne, bit young for my taste. Catching the 13:00 flight?" Pansy wore a jumpsuit like they did, only hers was a navy color, with her name embroidered on the left breast, and a white panel on the back that said, 'Parkinson Construction'. Her own luggage trolley had a vacuum helmet as well as a well-used hard hat, she wore knee boots that had seen some rough times. She clearly went out in the field and got dirty.
Arthur shouldered some of the luggage, and walked with the younger boy over to meet them. "Guys, this is Mike Myers, a neighbor of mine. He's the pilot of our ship going out Helium mining on Uranus, my dad, Hank and Misty aren't here yet." Elena grabbed some of the luggage and set it with theirs.
"We've got time, you can hang with us," Mattie said. "Mike, Elena, Pansy..." and she introduced everyone.
"I'm feeling peckish," Sprink said. "When's the last time you ate, Mike? Our shout." The kid shook, "No, that's okay, I'll be fine..."
"Mike," Mattie said, leaning toward him, "Really, we don't mind." She reached out, tilting up his chin and looked in his eyes for a moment, "You don't have much cash and you're thousands of miles from home. I'd be scared, too," she said softly. "You're neighbors to family, that makes you almost-family." She chucked him gently on the chin, "Don't worry, we got your back. First thing you're going to do is call home, then you're going to eat, and I'll take care of getting you to L5 and make sure you have a roof over your head."
"Got the first part," Arthur said, pulling out his new mobile phone.
Charlie leaned forward, "Mike, mate, you need a luggage cart, and you've got enough snacks and film and whatnot?"
"I've got a camera!" Mike replied, pulling out an inexpensive one. Mattie dug into her bag, "Mike, you're on the trip of a lifetime, you're visiting The Outer Planets, not Disney. Take my backup camera, Arthur, make sure he has batteries and the largest memory card the shop has."
"I'm not taking your camera," he said stubbornly.
"Mike, I have one," and she held up her Nikon. "That's my backup, and it's a loaner. You can get it back to Arthur later, okay?" She mouthed 'credit card'? to Arthur, who shook his head, tapping his wallet, then he reached over and took the small Olympus. He gently slapped Mike's shoulders. "C'mon, Mike. I'll explain how the Mattie system works," he said as they walked off.
"Why is he down here without cash?" Pansy snarled, and Sprink said, "We'll find out," as Mattie took a few steps to dial her own mobile. "L5 Stationmaster's office, please. This is Ms. Wayne."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"We're back..." Arthur announced. "We couldn't get hold of Mike's folks, the line was busy. I called Mom, Teela is going to run across the street, we'll try again later. Apparently Dad, Misty and Hank got hung up in Paris on some travel snafu with their flight, Mom will let them know."
"Good," Pansy said. "Now then, Mr. Myers, was it?" Mike nodded, "You're going to eat, because you won't get another chance between GEO station, where we part, and L5, which is several hours flight."
"Where we part?" Mike asked.
"We said we had your back, mate," Charlie said. "You run with us to GEO, we're going on to Eunomia, your ship is at L5." He leaned forward, "The shuttle leaves here at 13:00, but we're five hours behind London, which is when the stations keep time, so in that half an hour or so, you're going from lunch to dinner at 18:00, when you'll eat again. The transfer shuttle isn't pressurized," Charlie continued, leaning forward, "No pretty stews in miniskirts..." and Sprink swatted him.
"Call your folks from the station before you leave," Mattie said. "I've made arrangements with Mr. Cheung, he's the Stationmaster at L5." She leaned forward, "His family is from Taiwan, I think he's got ten or twelve kids, so I hope you like real, authentic Chinese food, cause you're bunking with them until Mr. Morton catches up." She passed over a scribbled-on folded paper napkin with her business card, and Mike stuck it in his pocket.
"Now Mike," Sprink stood up, "Let's go line our stomachs. My shout, mate." They wandered off to the cafeteria, and Charlie leaned forward, "Why is he broke, mate?"
Arthur finger-quoted, "'Entry and transit fees' and that kind of thing," he replied. "He had about five dollars left after that, he didn't feel like he had any choice, by himself..."
"Right-o," Pansy said, peeled bills off a wad, "Walkabout dosh, fifty quid, match it," and dropped it on Mike's suitcase. Arthur dropped five twenty-dollar bills and waved off Elena, Charlie dropped five twenty-pound notes, "Including Sprink," he said, and Mattie dropped five ten-Euro bills. Arthur collected it, "Thanks, guys."
"Family, Morton, Family," Pansy said. "Let's eat, shall we?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Pansy had a strong (but quiet), word with the restaurant manager, which resulted in a sudden upgrade in the quality of the food. Mike didn't realize that his glass of milk kept refilling itself, as did his bowl of chicken and rice soup (courtesy of Sprink's wand). He was too busy talking on Arthur's new mobile phone to family in Columbus.
"Thanks, everyone," he said, then felt a weight in his jacket pocket, and pulled out the cash. "Um, I can't accept..."
"Yes, you will accept the loan, Mr. Myers," Pansy said, leaning forward. "Our repayment terms are that you help out, in some way, someone else. You pay it forward, Mr. Myers. Is that clear?" Mike blinked, then said, "Yes, ma'am." An overhead speaker came to life, "Greywolf Flight 239 to GEO station, first call for boarding..."
"That's us," Charlie said, and started to put things back together.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"An 18:00 flight up to GEO, London time, then a transfer to a shuttle going out to Eunomia, which should put us there about... when?" Arthur asked.
"Docking, paperwork, about eight hours," Sprink said, "That means in our cabins on base about... 02:00 London, so..." She yawned. "When is this meeting?"
"Room's booked from 08:00 to 12:00, probably won't be that long," Mattie said, and yawned herself. "You've got me doing it now." She nodded at Elena, who was catnapping next to her brother. "She's got the right idea."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Okay, Mike, this is Senor Gonzalez, he's the Stationmaster here at GEO." Mike had recovered enough balance to shake hands. Mattie continued, "Your flight to L5 leaves... when?"
"Fifty-three minutes, Senorita Wayne," he replied, and sniffed. "Unlike el francés (the French), we can be on time."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Hey, O Queen of Space," Elena twisted around in her seat. "Make a note, next revision of the suits, external jack for the helmet speakers." She waved her new iPod and Mattie said, "Duly noted, but you should put it in the suggestion box." She grinned when Pansy said, "I'll bite. Where is it?"
"Mercury," and Pansy laughed. "Filters out the bad ideas," she said.
"Of course," Mattie said. She grinned, "Elena, check out some of the garage bands in the stations. One I like is called 'Gleaming Slag', they're out of L4."
"And there's one at L5 called 'Banging Steel'," Pansy said. A lady tisked from behind them, "Isn't there any good old fashioned music? Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra..."
"Actually, there is, ma'am," Mattie shifted to look behind her. "Last I heard, there was a nightclub act at the Holiday Inn that played music from the Thirties through the Sixties. Electronic keyboard, though. Can you imagine what the freight on a grand piano would be?"
"I can just imagine," she said, and extended her hand, "Gladys Knight, I'm sorry to say no relation."
"Hello, Mrs. Knight, I'm Mattie Wayne," and she managed to work her hand back to touch fingertips. "Sorry, this isn't a first class seating."
"That's quite all right, dear." She looked through her helmet, "Has anyone ever told you that you look like that young woman in the news?" Pansy leaned forward, cackling as Mattie said, with a straight face, "I get that a lot, but would she be sitting in a converted beach chair?"
"No, I'm sure she wouldn't," Mrs. Knight said, and Pansy howled. "Is your friend all right?"
"Yes, she's British, you know, reserved, stiff upper lip and all that," and Sprink started to giggle. "Carries a brolly all the time in case it rains..." and Charlie started to crack up. "Considered World War Two a 'minor tiff with that Hitler chap'..."
"Well, I'm certainly glad you're there to keep an eye on them," Mrs. Knight said.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Monday, June 10, 2002:
15 Eunomia, Conference room #8: 08:15 (GMT)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Pansy took her assigned place along the table, at the head Wayne was dressed in a black jumpsuit with a yellow turtleneck under. She had a name strip, white on black that simply said, 'WAYNE', with light purple collar points. Opposite her, Morton had a similar jumpsuit, his labeled 'MORTON, A.' with a red turtleneck and no collar points. Across from her, a middle-aged Japanese fellow wore a navy jumpsuit similar to hers, 'KOMATSU' was his name strip, he wore three gold collar points with a thick gold bar above it. To his left were two other Captains, a petite Asian woman wearing a white jumpsuit similar to Tonks and Adams', her strip said 'ALVAREZ', while a bearlike Russian in a Black Guard jumpsuit claimed 'SENYAVIN'. To Captain Komatsu's left was a fellow wearing woodland fatigues named 'GRUBER', while two sisters wore black Guard jumpsuits, each with 'DE GALAIS, L.', and finally, in black was one of the most attractive young men she had seen in a while, 'KOSA'. She told herself firmly, 'Down, girl. He looks like a Veela.'.
Wayne stood, rapping her knuckles. "Thank you for coming. We've got quite a bit to go over, this is the final departure briefing. Please take one and pass it down. This is a secure document, please sign and return the NDA. Does anyone need a pen?" she asked, handing a stack of folders and sliding a box of pens to the younger Tonks sister on her left. Wayne took a cloth bag, writing on it with a Sharpie™ marker. "Each witch and wizard, please take a bag and write your name on it, I'll get to it in a minute." She passed it to her left, "Now then, introductions. Representing Greywolf, Ms. Tonks, Mr. Adams to her left (Charlie raised his hand). To his left is Ms. Parkinson from Parkinson Construction." (She raised her hand.)
"Across from Ms. Tonks, to my right is Captain Senyavin of the McCoy. To his right is Captain Alvarez (the petite Filipino raised her hand), who will be commanding the ship we're buying for Greywolf. To her right is Captain Komatsu (who raised his hand), commanding the construction vessel Parkinson will be buying. To his right is Hauptmann Gruber, who is in overall command of the infantry, each of the three ships will have a squad of about twenty or so men. Across from him, the blond fellow is Mr. Kosa, he and the two de Galais sisters are the wizards covered as comm specialists. Finally, at the end of the table is Arthur Morton, and the disk is the remote for Mr. Pennyworth, who is the AI that is installed in the McCoy." She grinned, "Got all that?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Turning the remote for the hologram on, it appeared above the table, showing a star chart with green and red dots connected by a thin yellow line. "This is our course, we will be leaving the Terran system, the green dot, and traveling to the Eridani system, which is the first blue triangle. You'll notice it's fairly close, but this will allow you to get your feet wet on another planet."
She allowed them to study the diagram for a moment, before touching the remote to show an overhead view of an island. "This is Eridani's Prime port. You'll notice it is on an island, spacers are discouraged from leaving it. I must apologize for the overcrowding on board our ship, we are carrying three full crews. However, it will be temporary, as transit time to Eridani III is only about half an hour, but working in and landing will probably take half the day." She took a sip from her water glass, "Once we have arrived, we anticipate a stay of about three to four days. Spacers generally do not leave the Port area, and you will need to be visibly armed. This is why you have been issued body armor, and will be carrying a shotgun." She raised a sword, "The katana is mine, by the way. The idea is 'an armed society is a polite society', but if you get into a fight, let the infantryman you're partnered with run things. Think more along the lines of 'bar brawl' than 'Shootout on Main Street.'"
Taking another sip of water, she continued, "This brings up a general problem with our wizards, and the reason for the cloth bags. Wizards are known as 'Zarroj', plural 'Zarroji', because Zarrox is a known magical world. The natives of the planet Zarrox are essentially hermits, monks, very peaceful, and they don't go out in the galaxy. They haven't seen the need, but they have, very thoroughly, kicked the asses of the last fools that tried to invade them. The Guardians do not consider them a threat."
She cleared her throat, "However, another magical world, Ysmault, decided to do a little conquering using both magic and technology, and the Guardians of Oa decided they were a threat." She smiled thinly, "Possibly because their supreme leader was just a little crazier than Voldemort or Hitler. The Guardians sent a lot of their Green Lanterns out, the planet was sterilized by orbital bombardment, and any surviving Ysmaulti were hunted down and exterminated, although not by the Lanterns themselves. That was on the far side of the galaxy, about fifty thousand years ago, we'll see the supernovae in another thirty thousand years." She let them consider this, "We do not wish to be seen as any sort of threat to the Guardians of Oa. We must be mice, hiding in the walls, and one way to be noticed by the cat, the Guardians, is to perform magic."
"How does this tie into our mission?" Pansy asked.
"Remember, the Guardians of Oa consider magic a threat, and have continued to stomp on magic users, and since they are powerful enough to extinguish a star with a snap of their fingers" (she snapped hers), "we don't want to let them know we're around. The first part of the problem is that a live, breed-able Zarroj is worth a lot of money in the slave markets. If word gets around that you're a Zarroj, you and your shipmates are going to be hunted like rats."
She stood, leaning forward on the table, "The second part of this is that Zarroj, that witch or wizard, will be backtracked to Earth; we had a hard enough time holding off the Imperix invasion, we cannot hold off both hostile fleets AND some genocidal Guardians of Oa." She looked down the table, "We have to hide our abilities, a simple, unthinking 'accio' in a market can doom us."
"A summoning charm?" Mr. Kosa said. "I don't believe you."
"Fine. Stay. You are still bound by the non-disclosure agreement, please leave your briefing materials here. Your security clearance is revoked, please catch the next flight back to Earth." She waited, silent, as he stared at her, then stood, making his way out.
Mr. Adams asked, "Wasn't that a little..."
"Harsh? I don't think so. His bruised ego versus the lives of six billion people?" She shook her head, "No, to remove that reflexive, unconscious spell-casting desire from all of us, I'm going to ask you to place all, and I do mean all, wands and other wizarding kit and place it in the bags. Those will be in the possession of your ship's Captain."
"Pardon," one of the de Galais sisters asked, "How are we to perform our duties without our magic?"
"Good question," Mattie replied. "After we purchase the other two ships, the McCoy will shuttle up the transfer racks. They are installed in the Captain's cabin with the other computer equipment, the major point there is to make certain they do not lose power. In flight, your duties are to make certain the charms are operational, and to top off the operation potion if necessary. Aside from that, they are very low maintenance, a fairly low orbit is required for gravity, those specifications are in your documentation. You're there primarily to re-cast the charms if required and otherwise to serve as the ship's comm officer." She turned to face the three Captains, "Whichever ship will be going back to Earth in late August, I'll serve as a temporary comm officer so you won't be short-handed."
"Brief me in," Pansy said. "I'm going to be on the ship anyway, I can help out and stand a watch, if that's agreeable," she asked. Captain Komatsu nodded, "Most agreeable, and thank you." She turned, "I assume self-defense would be muggle?"
"Yes, your magic requires natural gravity to function, so it would only be good on a planet or large moon," Arthur said. "I'm sure you can feel how much weaker yours is here, the natural gravity is supplemented by artificial gravity."
"What does it feel like, your magic?" Captain Alvarez asked.
"For me, normally it's a warm, tingly feeling when I hold my wand," Charlie said. "Here, I can tell it's there, but just barely." He drew his wand, pointed it and said, 'Accio biro!' and the pen barely stirred. "Normally, that would have flown into my hand." He glanced at Mattie, "I can see her point, though. Doing something like that in a street market would be sure to draw attention, as opposed to simply reaching for it." He stood, starting to pull equipment from various hiding places, and the other wizards followed suit.
When the Captains had the bags of wizarding equipment on the table in front of them, Wayne said, "As we've said, you'll be muggles in space and on stations, so in the event of a pirate trying to board, you'll be under the command of your ship's Captain and infantry Feldwebel."
"What are the odds of that?" Pansy asked.
"Decent," Mattie replied. "We've had half a dozen of our ships attacked by pirates, one was boarded, they fought off the pirates. This is why our Captains are experienced naval personnel. Captain Alvarez was one of the training officers of the Philippine Navy. Our window of vulnerability is when we leave the convoy and have to cross open space. Our destination is in the middle of the Orion Nebula, which can be compared to an archipelago. We're lucky to get Captain Alvarez, we're looking for small unit experience and what's called 'brown water' and 'green water' tactics."
"In rivers, close to shore," Gloria Alvarez explained. "We don't fight submarines and carrier groups, we fight patrol boats and frigates. That's why we'll be training."
"Excellent," Captain Senyavin said. "I served with the Red Banner Fleet, a blue-water navy. I hope to learn quite a bit from you, Captain."
"In addition," Hauptmann Gruber said, "We have designs and replication patterns for airlock defenses against boarding parties." He grinned slightly, "For example, claymore mines in a high-oxygen atmosphere should work very nicely, and we will also be training. One cannot have too much training."
"This brings up two other points," Wayne said. "First, we have been recognized as a government by the D'hee'wal, which means we can legally carry mil-spec shipboard weaponry. We will be refitting with those. Secondly, each ship will be getting two training chairs. These are virtual reality chairs, and should we have any personnel with Enhancement, they can simply 'jack in'." She grimaced and tapped the side of her head.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Wayne continued, "As I said, we'll be buying two additional ships, a general cargo ship, non-atmospheric which will go to Captain Alvarez and Greywolf Transport. The second ship will be a specialized construction ship, which will go to Captain Komatsu and Parkinson Construction. We will have some fresh midshipmen from the Guard we'll divide up as shuttle pilots, this will be their snotty cruise."
"Snotty?" Pansy asked, and Captain Komatsu replied, "Their first cruise, they are very young, very inexperienced. Their first cruise under real-life conditions." The Japanese officer smiled slightly, "I remember mine, we shall make theirs memorable."
"My sister Elena is one of them," Arthur said. "I don't want to be on the same ship..."
"We shall arrange it, Mr. Morton," Captain Senyavin said. "Please continue, Ms. Wayne."
"Thank you," she replied. "Two recommendations. First, we need to load up on Fuel, primarily for use here in the Terran system. We only have 2200 kilos or thereabouts, so if you can overstock, it would be appreciated." She keyed the holographic map again, moving the blue dot to the second small arrowhead, "Second, Eridani is a class seven system, we're going to buy the ships, leave there, join a convoy for Tosul, which is a higher, class five system. We'll refit the weapons there, buy any equipment or supplies necessary, and join another convoy when ready. We estimate about a week there, while the ships are being fitted, we're going to look into a suitable building for a trade embassy."
"Why not buy the ships in Tosul?" Pansy asked.
"It's about a week or so transit time," Mattie replied. "While you're all wonderful people, I don't want to live in your laps that long." People chuckled as she continued, "Once the work is finished, we leave Tosul, bound for Mangione." She indicated a blue arrowhead that was off the yellow line. "They're a class four system, that leg is about three hundred light years." She moved the blue dot on the yellow course track. "Once we get to here, we leave the convoy, entering the Orion Nebula. This is the most dangerous part of the trip," and she keyed the remote for the holographic display. "If you notice, our course track is an upward curve. With three ships, we should be safe enough, but a single ship is likely to get jumped in here by pirates, because we have to move slowly. About a day later, we should arrive at Secundus, Windfall's star system. Any questions so far?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"What are the assignments?" one of the de Galais sisters asked. Mattie looked down at her notes, "Lise, or Lumi?"
"I am Lumi," she answered.
"Thank you," Ms. Wayne replied. "You will be working as comm officers with equipment that is rated 'Terran wizard only'. What this allows you to do is send text email across interstellar distances." They didn't look impressed, and Charlie said, "That's a big deal, nobody else can do it. It gives us instantaneous communications between ships and planets."
"Outside of jump space, FTL shipping," Arthur said. "You have to be in normal space, and the equipment cannot lose power for even an instant. Everyone else has to send a letter, which can take weeks to get there."
"It's like sending email from London to Tokyo in a few seconds, versus a letter in the 1800's," Mattie added. "Then, you had to have a ship cross the Atlantic, around the Horn, and cross the Pacific. It could take months."
"Hmm," Captain Alvarez said. "Interesting..."
"Very," Captain Senyavin said. "What about security?"
"It's a direct link between stations, we have a station in London and another one here on Eunomia," Mattie said. "The equipment is not tappable, but we're using automatic encryption. The equipment synchronizes time with the Royal Observatory in London, part of the bridge display has the date and time in London." She swiveled in her chair, "Each installation is issued a CD with the public encryption keys for London and the other installations. Either you or Captain Alvarez, as part of the secure cargo on your regular shipping routes would update and issue disks as part of your normal visits to different installations. That's how we can find out and respond to situations so quickly." She gestured at Charlie, "Mr. Adams, as part of his duties, will be making an installation and training video, which will of course be highly restricted. His cover duties, which are legitimate, are to compile the video from the small cameras we'll wear on our walkabouts into information on each location; do's and don'ts."
"I expect to be doing quite a bit of traveling between sites," Charlie said with a grin.
"A ship's boat," Hauptmann Gruber said. "You'll probably be with me, Herr Adams. Once we reach the planet, what then?"
"Once all three ships are there, we will play it by ear," Ms. Wayne said. "We're going to drop a dozen of our comm satellites into orbit, these are both GPS and data relay, as well as some weather satellites. Once that's done, we'll drop in the medical team and their equipment." She indicated the briefing folder, "The most current data we have for that site is a good fifty years old. Based on the orbital scans, we've got a preliminary camp layout for you. That's suggested, modify as you see fit. We've got field fortifications, those big two meter tall vertical sandbags."
"Hescos," he identified them. "Good, those should be adequate. I do intend to borrow civil engineers and their equipment, and I notice you've got diesel equipment. What about fuel?"
"We have two tanks of diesel in forty foot containers, the Island locals also produce biodiesel and other biofuels," Mattie replied, and swiveled in her chair, "It's the Hauptmann's call who goes dirt-side, the locals were reported as 'feral', and they shot down a shuttle."
"Joy, a hot LZ," Hauptmann Gruber said. He flipped through his briefing packet and grunted. "TO & E, good."
Mattie said. "They may be feral, they could all be dead. We just don't know. We will be getting at least one assault shuttle capable of water landings in case we need to do a Dunkirk. However, once that is resolved and the medics have hopefully (she rapped the table), made a clean pronouncement, they're going to pack up and move to the other two sites while we drop in some prefab buildings and environmental monitoring stations. Twelve to fifteen of those, we're going to scatter those across the continent. So, Captain Alvarez, Hauptmann Gruber, it depends on you. We've got some Russian personnel carriers if it is a hot LZ, we don't think the locals have anything heavier than bows and arrows, maybe some old hunting rifles."
The Hauptmann grunted in thought. "This plague, it seems to be airborne?"
"So far as we know," Mattie replied. "The base store has additional NBC gear if you feel you need it. I'd limit the amount of people dirt-side as much as we can."
He tapped his pen on the table. "I want to get started on those defenses as quickly as possible."
Ms. Wayne nodded. "Your decision. We've got 5000 meters of two meter high cylinders packed in forty-foot containers, A/C units with heaters if it happens to be snowing, a backhoe loader for the sand bags..." She shrugged, "Our scheduled departure is Friday morning, if there's something you absolutely need to have, let us know."
"So far, I don't see anything critical," Hauptmann Gruber said, looking through his packet. He looked up, "Fraulein Parkinson, Captain Alvarez, are you available for a breakfast meeting after this?" The two women looked at each other and nodded.
"Good," Mattie said. "For the rest of you, we have a supply depot if you need BDU's or other uniforms or combat boots, which they do have in women's sizes. Woodland pattern. The ship's armory is stocked with shotguns, side arms and ammo sufficient for all three crews. We also have additional supplies, I notice that Ms. Tonks brought along a large supply of potato chips." There was a few chuckles, and Ms. Wayne grinned. "I brought along a good supply of Diet Coke™, myself." She looked down the table, "Are there any questions?" People looked back and forth, she then rapped her knuckles, "Meeting adjourned, good luck to all of us, and I'll see you on Friday at 05:00 in Bay 35."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Look nice, mind if I wear them out?" Mattie asked the sales guy. He was cute, wearing the blue golf shirt and tan slacks of the Swedish logistics contractor. She admired her new boots, and covertly, Olaf, the sales guy. The boots were black, with a rough-cut finish and a thick sole and steel-tipped toes, with a top half way up her calf. Olaf was thin, with well-kept shoulder-length blond hair. She asked him as she handed over her AMEX card, "Do you know how long the cafeteria serves breakfast?"
"Should be all day, ma'am," Olaf replied, giving her a second glance as well as she boxed up her other shoes. "If you'll excuse me, this will just be a minute."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Crowded today, may I join you?" she asked the table of black jump-suited women. One of them turned, "Yeah, sure," then took another look and blinked. "Ma'am..."
"Sit down, I don't bite," Mattie said, putting her briefing documents to the side, on top of her boxed shoes. The girl looked at the binder, stamped 'TOP SECRET' in red then offered a weak "Ma'am..."
"You can tell me, though, if the two girls in your section got their collar lights turned off," Mattie asked, putting a dab of apple jelly on a bite of toast. She chased it with a gulp of milk, as the girl replied, "I don't think so, ma'am. They're still on the waiting list."
"We need to jump the line for them, then," she replied, taking a bite of her eggs.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Hey, Elena," Arthur said. "Mind if I join you?"
"Arthur?" she asked, then saw his briefing binder, with the big red 'TOP SECRET' on the cover. "Are you, I don't know, pulling strings for me?"
"Not intentionally, and not unless you specifically ask," he said, putting down his cafeteria tray. "I can't sit with my sister?"
"Well, um, sorry..." she mumbled. "Did you check on the money transfer?"
"Yep," he replied, fixing his tea. "Two hundred kilos of tungsten for each of us through Gringotts." He gestured in the vague direction of the ships, "I'll transfer the actual metal when we board, they're still loading cargo. Separate accounts at Lantern Bank?"
"You're better informed," she said, then added, "It's going to be awkward having us both on the same ship," she mentioned.
"I know," he said, cutting his ham into strips. "It shouldn't be that long, though. A few hours, maybe a day or so. I did ask that we be on separate ships, Captain Senyavin said he'd take care of it." He popped the bite of ham and eggs into his mouth and chewed. "If this is replicated food, it's not bad," he admitted. "Almost as good as Hogwarts," he considered.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Ms. Tonks," Captain Alvarez said, putting her tray down. "Let's talk logistics and ships."
She swallowed her bite of scone, washing it down with tea. "Right-o. I'm jolly glad we can use bigger guns. I've been looking into inventory and shipping, 'cause Mattie, Ms. Wayne, is looking at Phobos as a supply port."
"All very well," Gloria said, flipping open her own notebook. "If this communication system works as advertised, I can see it giving us an enormous advantage." She drew two circles, connecting them with a line on the legal pad, "We have Tosul over here, Mangione here." Below that, she wrote '300 ly' and then said, "What's the convoy speed?"
"Five an hour, I think she said," Sprink replied.
"Sixty hours, plus getting into and out of the system and load time, figure four days each way," Gloria said, writing '4 days' under the line. She took a sip of her tea, "As I understand it, the way it's being done now, someone on Tosul wants something from Mangione, they send a letter to their agent, who negotiates the deal, sends a letter back with the details, it's approved, back and forth. At four days each way, it could take a month to work out the details before the order is actually shipped, and from what I understand, it's break-bulk shipping."
"Now this I understand," Sprink said. "Goes back to World War Two, shipping individual crates and barrels instead of on a pallet or in a container." She took a sip of her own tea, "Not only does it take longer to load and unload, you don't move as much material."
"And with us, we charge freight to ship it, so the more we move, the more we make," Charlie added.
"Don't forget dock fees and stevedore rates," Gloria said. "Even if you're using slaves as stevedores, you may not pay them a salary, but you've still got to buy them, feed them, and give them medical care, and you've still got dock fees. Because break-bulk is slower, your ships spend more time in port, paying money, than out carrying cargo and making money. A forklift may cost the same as a slave, but if the cargo is palletized, it can carry more, for longer hours, so it pays for itself quicker."
Charlie and Sprink nodded as Gloria continued, "With our system, they send an email through us to Mangione, back and forth, but it might take a few hours, a day at most. They set up payment arrangements, I think Lantern Bank is the only true interstellar bank?" They nodded, and she crunched on some bacon, "They set up letters of credit and whatnot through Lantern, Mangione processes the purchase order." She arranged a sausage patty, "Now, the basic unit in international trade is a 'pallet load' – what fits on a standard 40" x 48" pallet. Doesn't matter what it is, it could be boxes of shoes or 200 liter drums of fish oil." She arranged two patties side by side, bordered by two strips of bacon. "A cargo container is eight feet wide inside, so two pallets fit nicely, and they stack with a forklift. Four barrels of fish oil to a pallet, stretch wrapped. Say it takes another day for the barrels to be delivered to our Mangione facility, we palletize and wrap them, shuttle it up to our ship with the other cargo, and leave for Tosul. Two days for that, four days for transit, a day for offloading, another for Customs. Eight days, we call the Tosul client, 'Pick up your shipment,' or we deliver for a fee." She took a bite of her eggs, "Eight days, versus a month."
"What if the Tosul client only wants one barrel?" Charlie asked.
"We ship one barrel, but it costs him more per barrel than to ship four," Gloria said. "That's his decision, probably based on shelf life. Pressurized, or specific environments would cost more, as would livestock, and we simply don't ship slaves. Period." She cradled her tea in her hands, "The combination of efficiency and communications gives us a decided advantage."
"What if the client doesn't pick his stuff up?" Sprink asked.
"He's already paid for it through Lantern, we give him something like thirty days to make arrangements, then sell it at auction to cover our costs." Gloria shrugged, "That's his problem. Our problem is breaking into this market, and the easiest way I can think of is to offer the first shipment free."
"We buy it?"
"No, we eat the first shipment's fees," Charlie said. "Like cocaine, the first taste is free..." and he grinned at Gloria.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Saturday, June 15, 2002:
15 Eunomia, Bay #35: 05:02 (GMT)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Marsden matting? Why do you want that?"
"Steel matting for decking, roads, landing pads," Gruber replied. "Not the material itself, Fraulein Wayne, the replicator patterns. Marsden matting is simply a convenient name for it. No, an industrial replicator will be far more useful to us..."
"We can also use matting with reinforced concrete," Pansy said, then looked up as the ship trembled, ever so slightly. "Here we go..."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Saturday, June 15, 2002:
Eridani space, approach queue: 06:27 (GMT)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"(Madame Wayne, a moment please?)" Mattie heard the soft French request as she was crossing the McCoy's mess deck. A former ambulance ship, the up-rated life support plant was supporting close to four times the normal crew complement.
There were three ship's crews, a twenty-person detachment from the WHO, a company of infantry (which would be split into three squads), and another dozen or so random specialists including geologists and an intelligence team. Close to 150 people lounged around and waited, the ship's mess was popular. Across the room, Mattie could see at least six card games going, as well as people sleeping, reading paperbacks, listening to music and of course, simply eating or having a cuppa.
"(What can I do for you?)" she replied in French, taking a seat, putting down her cup of coffee along with her assorted briefing folders. She smiled, "(I'm sorry, but I'm still having trouble telling you two apart.)"
"(Perhaps this will help, Madame Wayne,)" one girl replied. "(I, Lise, prefer hoops,)" and she brushed her hair back, "(while my sister Lumi prefers studs.)"
"(Now that we have the fashion discussion out of the way,)" Mattie said, "(What can we do for you?)"
"(We have a problem...)" Lise admitted. "(Our father... well, our mother...)"
"(Whom you met at the pool, with the young boy. She was most impressed with you...)"
Mattie decided to stop the dancing around. "(Yes, I remember her, please give her my regards. Your father is on an extended holiday in the Pyrenees, courtesy of DGSE.)" She leaned forward, "(Now the question is, what do we do?)" She looked up, switching languages, "(Piotr, a minute? You've won your bet.)"
"(Excellent!)" a pleasant young fellow said, dropping into an empty seat and putting his tea on the table. Lumi blinked, "(How... you knew...)"
"(Of course we knew,)" Piotr said in French. "(I am a professional.)" He turned to Mattie, "(When things are safe, you and your Arthur will have a drink or two with us. You still have much to learn.)" He picked up his tea, regarding the two rather nervous French girls. "(You think DGSE is the only agency trying to infiltrate us, to learn our secrets? Non,)" he said. "(CIA, with their wider ethnic background has had an easier time, but the Chinese MSS is still prowling around. Guard Intelligence, especially the 'Five' personnel like myself from KGB or BND have our own experience in this game of chess.)" He took a sip, "(Enough shoptalk, you are what we in the trade refer to as 'unwilling dupes'.)" He looked at them across the mug of tea, "(Regarding you two, your security is simple, you simply stay on your ships, and continue to send your personal emails home. Your mother and father are a different matter. We have two choices there.)"
He took a sip of tea, then set the mug down. "(The first option is the easiest. You simply do as you have been asked, reporting through your code to your mother. We would of course control what you report, as you will be on separate ships, it is natural that you would email each other as well. This allows us disinformation, similar to the British compromise of the German spy network in the Great Patriotic War. However, it does leave your parents in the control of DGSE.)"
"(I thought that when you overthrew the government, things would be different,)" Lumi said to Mattie.
Piotr snorted, but said nothing regarding that. "(The second option would be to extract your mother and father from their mountain hideaway, and hide them. I would prefer not to do this, there is a greater risk not only to them, but we also lose that channel and burn agents in DGSE. We would also be forced to 'discover' your activities as spies.)" He leaned forward, "(Please rest assured, in the event you choose the first option, should there be risk to your parents, they would be extracted and set up someplace comfortable. It is only good business to do so.)"
"(We do have trade missions on different planets,)" Mattie said, still in French. "(New identities, biosculpt and so forth, in order for DGSE to find them, they would need to know which of the four hundred billion stars they were posted to, the exact stellar coordinates, and obtain transportation.)" She leaned back, taking a sip of coffee, regarding the two Frenchwomen. "(Once the current difficulty is resolved, we should be leaving Eridani in three days or so. We'll expect your decision before then.)"
"What is the difficulty, I thought we should have landed by now," Piotr asked in English.
"A small ship had part of its' cargo break loose and killed some of the crew. They were carrying an exotic animal, an eight meter polar bear, and it got out of its cage and is roaming around the ship," Mattie replied.
"Why don't they just reduce the oxygen?" Piotr asked. "The creature would fall asleep soon enough."
"Apparently they can't get to the engineering section to do that, it's in the crew compartment. The cargo is destined for some rich collector with a private zoo," Mattie said. "Hauptmann Gruber is looking into going across and seeing if he can tranquilize it so they can re-cage it and deliver it." She raised her hands, "Not my call, but because the ship can't maneuver, it's got the inbound and outbound queues messed up. Anyway, that's why we haven't landed yet."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Saturday, June 15, 2002:
Eridani space, approach queue: 07:19 (GMT)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Ach, that's a big one," Hans Gruber told himself as the enormous beast wheeled and snarled at him. He threw a flash-bang, and the bear lunged up for it, and as he did, Hans shot him in the only vulnerable point, the top of his throat.
The tranquilizer darts sank in, yellow blood appearing on the white fur, and Hans shot a few more for good measure. The beast snarled again, took a step, then thudded to the deck in the frosty air. Waiting a minute, Hans emerged from his very basic cover, tranquilizer gun aimed, then motioned to his hosts, "I think you'll be all right. Want some help re-caging him?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Saturday, June 15, 2002:
L5 docks, Olentangy: 07:58 (GMT)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
***Brinnng*** "Hello?"
"Hi, mom! I'm just calling to let you know we're about to leave," Mike said from his place on the flight deck. "I wanted to let you know I love you all."
"Oh, my baby..." she sniffled. "I was so worried when you were by yourself..."
"Mom, it turned out OK, and if you could go over and thank Mrs. Morton again..." Mike turned, looking over his shoulder, then adjusted his headset, "Mom, I think Mr. Morton's on the phone with her now. Look, I've got to go, we want to leave exactly on time." There was a little catch in his voice, "We'll... I'll be fine, mom. I love you..."
"Love you too, baby..." and with another sniffle, the connection was broken.
There was silence on the flight deck, until Bill Morton cleared his throat, "I miss them too. Ready, Mike?"
"Ready, sir," he replied. "Standing by for separation burn in three, two, one..." Mike pushed a button, holding it, and precisely on time, the Olentangy cleared the dock.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Saturday, June 15, 2002:
Cambridge, MIT housing, barbecue pit: 11:46 (GMT -5)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"...y'see," Chantal said, fishing three more beers out of the cooler, and popping the tops off with her thumbs, "I gotta do good. I come from this little hick (she burped), coal mining town in West-by-god-Virginia, and I swear to god that I do not want to live like my sister (she turned politely and belched over the hot coals in the pit), with six screaming kids and a high school education. I gotta do good." She took a pull on the fresh beer, "An' if that means working a crappy job with men leering at m' boobies, then tha' what I'll do." She took another pull at the bottle, "Your turn."
"I was born in 1365," Anne said, taking a pull from her own beer bottle. "Thou may'st remember the Black Death? I hast relatives die from it. I can'st remember sewing my youngest brother Joseph into a sheet, and lev..." (she hiccuped) "...levitating him into his tomb, and bricking it over." She was silent, they heard the squeaking of the chain drive, rotating the meat over the coals. "I doth remember thinking that my life, my future, was as cast in stone, that I would'st be married off, to produce enough children that hopefully some would'st survive, and that was my lot in life. Aye, that I was't fortunate indeed to be educated beyond what girls ordinarily received, and that I would'st take full advantage o' this opportunity to learn."
"I feel so... blessed in comparison," Karen said.
"Thou doth be," Anne replied. "Still, I am profoundly grateful that thou has't taken me into thy family, despite my odd ways to thee," and she grinned. "How doth the chicken fare?"
"Let me look..." Karen said, jumping up, as Chantal asked, "What are you working on?"
"'Tis a def... defen... (hic) mil'try." Anne said. "We doth be concerned with def... controlling ships coming in and out." Turning to a fresh page of her notebook, she drew a crude diagram of the solar system (her quill only wobbling a little), adding, "We doth not desire them in the inner system, but outside the ab... absteroid belt."
"Abstroitly," Chantal replied with a grin. "How do ships come in?" She gestured with her hands, "Above or below the ecil-liptic?"
"Both," Anne replied, fetching fresh beer. "Show me how you..."
"Put your thumbs there," Chantal leaned forward as Karen watched over her sister's shoulder, arranging Anne's fingers. "Then push up!"
The caps popped off, they cheered, clicked bottles together and drank, Anne remarking, "'Tis no such thing as useless knowledge."
"Absobibly," Chantal agreed.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"So the ships come through a tunnel," Chantal said, "all mark... marked up with boys," and she giggled.
"Aye," Anne agreed. "The problem doth be produc... (hic) producing the mines in subficient quan... quan... numbers. We need billibions of them."
"No, you don't," Chantal disagreed. "You need people to think you have them." She weaved slightly, holding up her hamburger and her beer bottle, and moved the two around. "A ship comes in, a bob tells them to stay in the tunnel, otherwise they go boom. If they don't, if they leave the tunnel, a second bob-bob-bob yells at them, an' the subspace thing tracks them."
"G'wan," Anne said, sipping at her own beer.
"Y' wanna capture Mr. Pirate," Chantal said. "Not blow him into ittle-bitty pieces. So he's crossed th' line an' ignored two warnings. Y' vector some mines in on him, tha' he'll detect. If he goes chicken brak-brak-brak an' goes back across th' line, tha' good. Don' have ta kill nobody, an' you have shombody talk ta' him later."
"If he doth not be brak-brak chicken? If he doth decide to run for it?"
"Either way, tha' good," Chantal said. "If he leaves, he's gonna tell all his little pirate buddies that we've got a minefield, an' tha' good. If he tries ta come in, he's gonna go slow, cause he's in a minefield, an' y' intercept him wi' some mines." She took a last gulp of beer, and looked owlishly down the bottle. One of the watching (and listening) FBI agents set fresh bottles out, and Karen popped the tops with her thumbs. Chantal waved her bottle in thanks, continuing, "I saw Wayne's interview th' other day, wi' tha' dishy Kent guy. She mentioned drive coils, all y' gotta do is short out those coils wi' something conductive an' then blow the hull." She took a drink, "Whass the hull made of?"
"Steel alloy," Anne replied, weaving slightly. "'Tis only case-hardened, the main defense doth be the shields, and doth need a powerful explosive there." She gestured in air, "What we hath been working on, once produc... man... problems in making it." She picked up a gnawed-over ear of corn, pulling off a kernel, "'Tis this size," and popped it in her mouth.
"How big a boom-boom?" Chantal slurred.
"Thou must have a pure vacuum," Anne declared. "'Tis why we are building production on Farside." She weaved a bit, "Quark (hic) is a good boom boom. Shisty mega-booms boom-boom."
"Anne!" Karen said. "Ishn't tha' a secret?"
"Shhhhh!" Anne said, finger across her lips. An MI-6 agent and an FBI agent edged out to the street, where phones were dialed.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Agent Perkins, sir," the FBI agent said tersely. "Sorry to bother you on a weekend, but we have news about Arrowhead and the Guard. They're working on a minefield in the Kuiper Belt... no, sir, that's outside Neptune's orbit. No sir, it doesn't sound like they want foreign ships inside the asteroid belt. No, sir. No, the girl didn't say anything about nukes. They're using something with quarks. No, sir, that's a sub-atomic particle. Yes, sir, apparently they have production problems, they need a perfect vacuum." He listened, "No, sir, on the Farside of the moon. I would presume underground, sir." He listened, "No, sir, as I said, it's not a nuke. Not. A. Nuke, sir. (He rolled his eyes.) Sir, I have no idea how CIA can penetrate their operation, if they haven't already. No, sir, we'd have to use their transportation network. Sir, unless you can authorize restarting the Apollo program, that's the only way to get there. No, sir, much smaller. No, sir, she pulled a kernel of corn off an ear. About the size of a pea, sir. Yes, sir." He took a breath and held it, "Sixty megatons."
He held the phone away from his ear for a minute. "Sir? Sir? SIR! Yes, sir, calm down. No, sir, we got her drunk. Sir, think this through. I would strongly advise against an arrest. Sir, she hasn't done anything! Sir, I'm sure Wayne has contingency plans for that. No, sir, all they would need is a thermos bottle. As I said, sir, we would need to restart the Apollo program. No, sir, out of Ecuador, a day or so to get there."
He listened to his boss for a moment, then said, "Sir, I would strongly suggest making Wayne happy. No, sir, her psych profile agrees with her statements, she does not like to kill." He waited, "Sir, you might want to re-read the profile in Wayne's file. No, sir, I doubt that she would, she would regard it as murder, it would horrify her. Only if she regarded it as her duty, or if we spill blood, which we already have, sir. No, sir, I doubt very much she trusts us, look..." he waited, "...sir, look at the precautions she's taken with Bundy's safety. I'm certain she's made other preparations that we don't know about."
He listened to his boss again, "Sir, she's a bit of an idealist, she expects people to keep their word. No, I'm certain she knows what realpolitik is, she's had some excellent tutors. No, sir, she regards it as a contract, you negotiate and then you sign, and you live up to the contract." He waited again, "Sir, look at things from her perspective. Her mother country has kidnapped, imprisoned and tried to kill her, and has killed someone she considered a blood relative. Would you trust the US Government in that situation?" He waited again, "Sir, I'm just suggesting we do a little fence-mending. She's said publicly that she wants to contract with US companies and universities, but she's not going to bend on that. Two things, sir. First, pass that damned treaty through the Senate. Isn't it stonewalled in committee, sir? Then I suggest leaning on a few Senators to make sure it passes by a veto-proof margin. I have no idea, sir, but I'm not a physicist, it could be something she learned off-world."
He waited again, "Aside from whatever pork gets tacked onto it, it won't even cost us anything." He rolled his eyes, "No, sir, I would NOT tell the Senators about that. Because it will leak, and it will just piss her off. Sir, if you piss her off enough, we know she's already overthrown at least one government. No, sir, I'm not talking about the French, although I wouldn't be surprised she had a hand in that." He listened, "The second thing is Cuba. She's tight with Fidel, by all reports. Well, then, sir, I would respectfully suggest that SECSTATE hop on a plane and fly down to Havana to negotiate a deal with him. Well, we do it with the Red Chinese and the Vietnamese, why not the Cubans?" He waited a minute, "Sir, then we put in a rider to an appropriations bill that cancels out those parts of Helms-Burton and Torricelli Acts. Sir, to put it baldly, which is more important, keeping a few thousand Cuban agitators with a forty-year old grudge happy, or someone like Wayne happy, that can turn Miami into glass?"
Once again, he held the phone away, brought it close, then waited again. "No, sir, I don't think she would, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper to keep her happy." He waited again, "Sir, think it through. She doesn't have to use them. She can drop a rock, and after this administration tried to kill her, and did kill her uncle, I'm amazed she hasn't. Ten kilotons is the figure I've heard. No, that would definitely break a few windows in the DC area." He waited a minute, "Yes, sir. Yes, sir. No, sir, we'll keep an eye on her. Yes, sir. Have a nice day." He thumbed the kill switch, muttered, "Idiot!" and turned to face his British counterpart. "Orders?"
"Protect the national asset. Yours?"
"Observe and report. No arrests, thank god." He took a few steps and tapped a wooden telephone pole twice.
"Agreed," the MI-6 bloke said, touching the same pole. "I could use a drink myself, after that little bombshell."
"Hopefully not literally," the FBI agent said. "Do you think Wayne's likely to drop... something?"
"Not according to our profiling," 'Six' replied. "She's a chess player, as well as, from what I've heard, a bloody good poker player. She's said she wants you Yanks in the Arrowhead coalition, why haven't you yet?"
"Politicians," was the sardonic reply. "Pork for the home district, it's been stuck in committee."
"Lovely, 'Veritas in Vino'," 'Six' replied, and gestured. "Shall we?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"So..." Chantal asked later. "Get something useful?"
"Yes," an FBI agent said. "Don't worry about your sister. Charges dropped, justifiable homicide, self defense from her husband."
"She gets a clean slate?"
The older woman nodded. "We'll even throw in witness relocation."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Saturday, June 15, 2002:
Eridani space, orbital queue, McCoy: 13:18 (GMT)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Thank you for calling us, it is our good fortune that you noticed our ship on the arrivals board," Captain Senyavin said.
"Credit should properly go to Mr. MacDonald," Captain Watson replied from the Scythe. "You have received our daily reports whilst we were on Windfall and the other planets."
People looked at each other along the table, when Mattie cleared her throat, "We received some reports, yes, but certainly not daily ones." She reached down to pull open her datapadd, paging through it, "The last one I have from you regards an attempted takeover by a Mr. Markos, none since then."
"Mr. MacDonald?" Captain Watson asked. Frank's image in a window frowned, "Sir, I sent them out, and I have receipts for all of them."
"Automated, or live receipts, Mr. MacDonald?" Piotr asked, adding, "I am Guard Counter-Intelligence."
"Automated on all of them, sir, and additional manual receipts from some of them, sir. I figured that some of the watch officers didn't bother, the automated ones were good enough." He paged through his own display, nodding to himself.
"We have a bit of a mystery, then," Piotr said. "Mr. MacDonald, if you would be so kind as to touch base, privately, with a colleague of mine on Eunomia, Alex Rapp, and say that I, Piotr, referred you."
"I will do that, sir, would you like me to forward my messages to you?"
"Please do so, Mr. MacDonald," Captain Senyavin asked.
Arthur leaned forward, "Excuse me, but Piotr, would it be of use to have Lady Sarah, from the Oversight Board involved?"
He thought for a moment, "Yes, it might. If you could have her discreetly touch base with my friend?"
Arthur nodded, "I will, and I apologize for interrupting, Captain, I thought that might be useful."
"If it helps to clarify this communications shortfall, it is agreeable, Mr. Morton," the burly Russian captain said. "In the interim, please give us a short report on what has been happening..."
Watson nodded, "We left Eunomia in early April, with some of the Spider agents disguised as slave girls..."
"One moment, please," Gloria Alvarez said, leaning forward. "Spider agents? Disguised as slave girls?" She looked down the table, "Anyone know about that?"
"I didn't," Mattie said. "A brief background, please, Captain."
"Yes..." Watson 'harrumphed' to himself, "In brief, the Spider project is designed to..."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Saturday, June 15, 2002:
Eridani space, outbound, Scythe: 12:28 (GMT)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Thank you for staying over your watch, Mr. MacDonald," Captain Watson said. "Do you wish to stand down, or see us home?"
"Sir, if I might have five minutes, I'd like tae check on m' girl. She was usin' th' teachin' chair this watch, then I'd like tae see her home."
"Very well, Mr. MacDonald, it will take us that long at least to clear the system. Helm, if you would, please?"
"Yes, master," 22809 said with a grin from the helm.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Saturday, June 15, 2002:
Terran space, inbound, Scythe: 13:31 (GMT)
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Master, we're picking up a buoy," 22809 said.
"Let's hear it, then," Captain Watson said. The girl flipped a switch, and they heard a young woman's voice in Trade:
"Warning, do not deviate from marked flight path in system. Other areas are off limits, Arrowhead Investments, Ltd. will not be held liable for destruction and death of ship, crew and cargo. Warning, do not deviate from marked..."
"Seems fairly clear," the Captain said. "Do not deviate, my dear, and proceed on."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Scythe, we have you on approach," the collared girl said on the screen. Captain Watson leaned forward, "My dear, please look up code yellow 25 gamma."
"Yes, master," the girl replied, keying her computer. She nodded to herself, "Master, I am to place you in the secure section, and the J-2 officer needs to see you. Accommodations are available, how many will you require?"
Watson harrumphed, "Total of fifteen, three singles, six doubles."
"Yes, master," the girl replied. "Please transfer helm to docking control. You are assigned..." she looked at her console, "Bay twelve in the secure section. Security will meet you, please don't leave your ship until they clear you."
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
Watson harrumphed, the security blokes were getting obnoxious. He re-entered his ship, going to the common room. Mr. MacDonald had the crew assembled, waiting for him.
"Very well, welcome to the Terran system and Eunomia base. There are fifteen of us, we have arranged for six double cabins for all of you, and three singles for myself, Ms. Woosan, and Mr. MacDonald. As you know, slavery is illegal in this system, but not on this ship, which carries a different registration. Therefore, what we shall be doing is this." He nodded to Frank, who started to pass around a basket. "The necklaces contain, in a glass tube, your collar's control chip and the key to your belt, if applicable. Ms. Diijon is not included, she already possesses these items. Please take yours and pass it on." He waited, sipping his tea until the empty basket came back around.
"Thank you. For the ladies in a common collar, what shall happen is this. In a few minutes, you will take a step off the cargo ramp, where I, as master of the Scythe, shall declare you surplus to ship's need. Ms. Diijon will give you your title, and I shall wish you the best." He held up his hand. "The ladies in a judicial collar will also be declared surplus, and will also receive title to themselves, and my best wishes. The three of us will then escort you to your quarters, we ask you to stay in them for three days, with no other contact than ours."
"Why, master?" 22007 asked.
"I will tell you, m'dear," Watson said, then took a sip of tea. "After three days, you will all go before the court here, in two separate groups. The common-collar ladies will petition the court for their freedom, which will be granted, along with a kilo of tungsten." He raised a hand, "This is not a lot of money, nor will your collar be deactivated or your belt removed, however there are quite a few freed females here, and on our home world in that situation. There is a waiting list here for that procedure, you may join it whilst you seek employment, or may consider the offer I shall make you."
"Offer, master?"
"Yes, we have a resettlement programme for rescued slaves, this allows them to be adopted into a family, go to school... some of the younger ladies might wish to do so. Once you are at that point, the Scythe will offer you a contract position, as crew, paid Guild rates to an account here."
He swiveled in his chair, "The ladies with judicial collars are different, you will individually go before a judge, explain why you received that collar, and what your punishment is. Should the judge decide to annul your conviction, you will receive a chip, we shall then change you to a common collar. Should the judge not annul your conviction, they will pronounce a sentence duration that we would impose for that crime. We shall then change your collar to expire at that point, and revert to a common collar. In either case, should you have a common collar, you may also petition for your freedom, as discussed."
J'lan leaned forward, "Master, I was convicted of heresy, freed, then Markos, and I was re-collared..."
"Heresy is not a crime here, m'dear, you may speak to a judge if you wish."
"Master, I was convicted of tax fraud," 'Mac' said.
Watson raised his hand, "I am not the judge. Let us say that you committed a crime for which we would sentence you to... ten years. You have worn a judicial collar for eight. We would program your collar and implant to expire your judicial collar in an additional two years, at which point you would wear a common collar."
"What is the offer you are making, master?" 22007 asked.
He tented his fingers, "As you may know, the Scythe is an intelligence ship, we are tasked with supplying various installations. As the ship is registered as a slave ship, should you choose this, to the galaxy at large, you will be a crew-slave, owned by the ship. To us, you will be a paid, free shipmate who happens to wear the ship's collar."
47283 looked at Pamela, then said, "Master, to clarify, I would be a free, contracted shipmate, paid Guild rates, but have the appearance of wearing the ship's collar." She mused, "Why wait the three days?"
"You are declared as Surplus to Need, but you are not yet free," Watson said. "Therefore, another ship may claim you as their slave, and if the ship is registered outside this system, you would belong to them. This is why we have the waiting period, if at the end of that period you are unclaimed, you may then appear before the court."
"There's a wait tae get on the court's calendar," Frank said. "At least three days, so it works out. Then we walk y' tae the court, y' make y' case tae the judge, an' we go from there."
"As I am Enhanced, I would be wearing a collar in any event," Bones said. "By wearing the ship's collar, I gain the protection through the ICC against slave theft, and I am paid and regarded as a free female." She asked Watson, "The court knows of the ship's purpose?"
"They do. Should we have a guest aboard, you would need to..."
"Play a slave," Pamela said. "This is why you were insistent on our gaining names?"
"Partially," Watson replied. "'Names are also easier to remember." He stood up, "Mr. MacDonald, Ms. Diijon, Ms. Woosan and I shall wait for you on the cargo ramp for you to discuss this," and he exited.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"What do you think?" 'Mac' asked. "It sounds too good to be true," she admitted.
"They are rather vehemently against slavery," 74001 said. "I was recollared when I had training software installed, this was not their fault. They have offered to have it removed, to free me when I wish, I just..." she shuddered. "It was not a pleasant experience."
"I remember that," J'lan said. "Frank blamed himself, and I don't see how he could. They were willing to go up against the Slaver's Guild for that, they see owning a slave as immoral."
"Which explains their earlier attitude toward me," Pamela said, adding, "I was a slaver myself."
"You were lost to the Source until you helped us with Markos," J'lan said. "There's still some carry-over feeling about that with Mistress Sandra."
"I collared her, it's personal," Pamela admitted. She looked at the younger girls, "What do you think? A home, a family, school... At your age, I would think it attractive."
"Somewhat..." 22809 said. "I admit, a month ago I would never have dreamed I'd have this conversation, I'd be slave for the rest of my life. But... I like these Terrans. I'm a person, not a collar to them."
"I know," 22416 agreed. "I can remember my Inspection slave hoping I could get a dark collar." She tugged at hers, "I said I'd keep my master's secrets, any one have problems with keeping our ship's?"
"No," Mac said. "I want to visit their home world, but even if I leave, I keep their secrets. As you said, I'm a person, not a collar to them, and they need me."
"How long is leave?" J'lan said. "Frank said this is the start of their summer season, I'd like to see more of it, and what the people are really like."
"That's a good idea," Pamela said. "See what they are really like, then sign on the ship." She looked around, "Anything else before we see the Captain?"
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***
"Master," Pamela said, addressing the Captain. "Your slaves had a few questions before we leave the ship."
"Certainly," he replied.
"First, master, we'd like to see your home world before making our decisions, but even if we decide against returning, we keep our ship's secrets." He nodded, and she continued, "Second, we'd like to know how long leave is, and financing, master."
Frank looked at Watson, "I dinnae know aboot you, sir, my family has a farm in Scotland. We dinnae have that much guest space, though."
"Master Frank," J'lan said. "We'll be happy with your barn, as long as it's out of the weather."
"Lassie," Frank replied, "Barns are f' animals an' machines, y' be neither."
Watson harrumphed. "We should have a month of leave, we can arrange travel documents. I shall look into an advance on wages should you decide to sign with the ship. If you make another decision, the funds would need to be paid back, of course, and I have a townhouse in London. Only good for six or so."
"I know people wanted tae talk tae Mac, let me see what I can arrange there," Frank said. "One, did y' go an' get everyone's basic skills tested wi' th' teachin' machine?"
"Let me get that information for you, master," and she disappeared back inside the ship as Pamela asked, "Master, do you need help unloading cargo?"
"That is arranged, m'dear, but thank you. Any other questions?" The girls looked at each other, then Watson said, "Please line up, we shall declare you, then stand next to Mr. MacDonald and Ms. Woosan." He looked at his datapadd, "47283, let's start with you." The petite, magenta-skinned slave stood in front of him, "Slave 47283, as Master of the Scythe, I declare you excess to ship's needs. Please return all ship's property and depart the ship immediately."
"Yes, master," she replied, pulling off the ship's tunic she wore, folding it and tossing it aside. She re-arranged the necklace with her control chip, fluffing out her hair, then took a step to stand in front of Diijon. "I have returned all ship's property, mistress, and am ready to depart the ship."
"The title to your collar, slave," she replied, signing her datapadd, and ejecting the chip. The slave replied, "Thank you, mistress," and took a step off the ship, standing next to Frank, who gave her a quick hug as she bounced a bit for joy. Mac joined her in a minute, the two girls squealing in joy, then group-hugging Frank.
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***