April 3: The Middle of Nowhere (40 page)

"I'm sure it could be used to coat statuary or
something
," Heather agreed, helpfully.

"At least it doesn't build up on the lens," he said searching like her for some plus.

"Not at that power density it won't. How about backing off the face so the plasma has time to cool before it reaches the boring machine?" Heather suggested.

"I'm already so far back we are losing almost a minute every cycle to back off, shatter the face, roll forward and scoop up the debris, back up to shoot again."

"I bet the composition of the vapor that condenses on the face of the machine is different than the grit that falls at the base of the tunnel face," Heather predicted. "Let's have it analyzed for chemical composition. If it is doing some of the separation for us it's a feature not a bug."

"I could seal the tunnel up once the machine is in far enough to install a lock behind it," he thought aloud. "It would mean removing the debris in batches again instead of a continuous process. But the gaseous buildup might mitigate the plating effect. And the gasses might be worth harvesting in themselves."

"Let's collect some and see what we have," Heather agreed.

* * *

"Mr. Crawford? You are served," the young man informed him dropping a rather thick portfolio in his lap.

When they told him he had a visit from a lawyer he expected it to be a USNA prosecutor or someone appointed to defend him. This didn't seem to be either. "Briefly, what matter does this deal with?" James asked confused. "I've never heard of someone already in custody being served like this."

"This doesn't have anything to do with any USNA case against you," the fellow said with a savage smile. "I have no knowledge of that. Indeed the USNA is a co-defendant to the charges against you, administrator Loesher, his head of security and several administrators on Earth and their department heads as well as NASA and the civil service administrators and executives up to and including the President."

"For what? What is the accusation?"

"That you held thirty-seven members of four extended family groups including two children in involuntary servitude. Conspired in a criminal enterprise to deny them civil rights, freedom of movement, property rights for the basics of survival and freedom of expression under color of authority by both civil and misapplied military law and administration under terms of both your own Constitution and the United Nations resolution on human rights and dignity. The suite before the World Court asks to include others still held at Armstrong under the same oppression not able to speak to their own situation. They ask an injunction to stop action and relief and punitive judgment."

"Oh. I suspect Col. Loesher is dead," he told the man.

"Yes, it has not been confirmed yet, but it is reported the entire expeditionary force was wiped out to the man." That didn't seem to bother him especially.

"I will need to get a lawyer to make a reply to this and for whatever my own country is holding me. They haven't notified me yet
why
I'm being held." It finally penetrated that he was in trouble. How could that have happened when he always did just what he was told? He looked again at the man and it finally hit him. "They're going to throw me under the bus, aren't they?"

* * *

It surprised Huian when the taxi didn't go downtown to a big bank building in Bago. Instead they drove out into the suburbs and even past some plantations with rows of trees. She had no idea what sort they were, except obviously cultivated in orderly rows. The compound they stopped at had an actual gate house and her husband identified himself and was treated with courtesy. Their driver was escorted with them, but he was seated on the porch with a cool drink of some sort. They were taken inside and she was separated from her husband. He gave a very small nod to her that it was nothing to worry about.

She was still worried about the children, the hotel provided a nanny to supervise them for the day but she was still uncomfortable. It was a grand glorious hotel, with a suite she'd have been happy to live in forever. But she didn't
know
them.

The TV news in the hotel suite this morning had said the party chairman had died of a heart attack. Huian had expressed surprise. "Does anyone die of a heart attack anymore?" she asked.

Her husband had made a pistol of his finger and thumb and said it depended on how big a hole the heart attack made. She found that disturbing too.

The woman who escorted her to another  room sat her at a table and joined her. When she called for servants to open the screens to the courtyard garden and bring refreshments she realized this was not a menial, but a member of the household. A closer examination of the fineness of the woman's clothing and the rich color of high karat gold jewelry made her chide herself for not being more observant.

A very young girl, twelve or thirteen, came in with a tall slender silver pot of tea and a tray of cookies, sesame covered, dusted crescents and something plain looking. She suspected they were the source of the liquorice odor. The young woman surprised her by speaking neither Arabic, of which she knew only a few words, or Chinese, but English. "It is between meal times for us, but you have been traveling and might be off schedule. If you would like a plate of sandwiches or something more substantial tell us please."

"Thank you, but no. We had a breakfast in our hotel room and I was quite satisfied. My husband has only recently included me in any of his, activities. I don't know the name of the banker he is speaking with, but may I assume you are a member of his household?"

"Banker? I suppose that would translate well. Investment advisor, business broker, insurance underwriter, yes he is very close to many of these expressions. I am impressed you are being taken into his confidence for business matters. I am the daughter of his second wife and none of his three wives need concern themselves with any matters of business."

"We live very differently and I mean no criticism by that," Huian was quick to say. "I'd have no idea how to adjust to your world. I suspect however I'm about to be uprooted and make just as big an adjustment, if different."

Chen came in just then, holding a heavy carry-on and hesitating like he was not certain what to do. He pulled out a chair and sat down. "We have some changes of plan," he told her. "I am informed I am singled out for a particular object lesson for other agents and dare not proceed to the east as that is what they expect." Part of the reason was that his wife and children had proved impossible to arrest, helping others escape and killing the very official in charge of rounding them up. But he decided not to lay the burden of that on her right now. After all, she only did exactly what he'd told her.

"We shall go west and seek to lift from the European area, possibly Crete or the Canary Islands. I had thought to stay on Earth for a time, but that looks inadvisable now."

"Would you help my wife with her garments and adjusting this carrier to her body?" he requested of the young woman. He withdrew a vest-like shape that appeared to be body armor, but with maybe a hundred tiny pockets.

"It would be my pleasure. Help yourself,"  she waved at the refreshments, "and call out for anything else you need." She smiled at Huian and led her by hand out a side door.

* * *

To someone who saw April in a news video like the war footage from the
Happy Lewis
her brother sold to the BBC, or the footage Adzusa sent to her boss of April blazing away with laser fire in the corridors of home, or her own footage of shooting Preston Harrison and his thugs, she must seem like a terrible publicity hound seeking the camera. Truth was she'd be very happy to stay in the background and encourage others. In her own mind she hated speaking up. She had a dread of making a fool of herself in public, but when push came to shove she'd speak up if the alternative was worse. She had been forced to speak up in the first assembly of Home or they would have treated her like a little kid and marginalized her. She never got hostile unless she was directly threatened. Preston Harrison had sworn to her face he would destroy Home and kill all her friends and family. What did any rational person
expect
when you made those sort of promises? All this sort of thing could be avoided if people just didn't push her into a corner and disrespect her.

She really didn't want to look bad in public. She'd be just as happy as could be if the public was unaware of her at all. She refused to look at a couple online sites that promoted her 'look' to teenagers as a fashion style. But she
did
have just a few people whose opinion of her mattered a great deal more to her than any public perception. Her grandpa, Heather, Eddie and Jon. Her father and friends Ruby and Easy. Even Dr. Ames or Jelly as he liked to be called and her Earth hosts the Santos now. She especially didn't want to look silly to Jeff, because she suspected he was so much smarter than her he had to be patient and wait for her to catch up with what he had figured out months ago. Not that that wasn't true of most people and him, but she still didn't like it. She wasn't even as brave as Heather in telling him not to soar off in flights of fancy and first prove out the smaller projects before deciding to move planets whose orbit didn't suit him.

Unfortunately when she had suggested they might start a bank she had no idea it would lead to Jeff suggesting she needed to become familiar with economics. She dove into understanding it with the same direct push she had applied to fomenting a revolution or obtaining her orbit to orbit pilot's certification. It appeared to her after some examination that the whole system was actually over due for a down-turn, slump, recession, depression, panic or whatever they wanted to call the next big financial belly flop.

She'd have never seen it if Jeff hadn't motivated her to look into it. Life was good on Home, or anywhere else in orbit for that matter. There was no shortage of work, the food was good. People lived in cramped quarters, but they were thoughtfully decorated, comfortably designed cramped quarters. There was no pollution or commuting problems. No blackouts or tornados or wildfires or mudslides. No mosquitoes or cockroaches and very little disease that was slowly getting worse on Earth every year. She never worried about getting mugged for her pocket money or somebody breaking in their cubic and stealing their flat screen.

Even if they had cause, it was their own fault there was a shortage of building materials. They had after all shot up all the North American production facilities to make such exotic items as shuttle tires and laser gyroscopes. It took a long time to rebuild the special tooling and begin production again. Other countries were picking up the slack faster than North America was rebuilding.

What she saw now after her research was that things were not nearly so rosy down below. Wages had not kept up with prices for five years now and the trend was accelerating. Personal debt was getting out of hand. Defaults on credit had been rising for seven years. Prices of materials were up not just here, but down below too, yet wholesale prices were down and companies were running tighter margins. Despite all that stock prices were up against all rational expectations.

The talking heads on the news services right now had only good things to say about the economy. When she looked at the archives of newspapers in the 1930s it was the same thing. Their spox all were full of joy and encouragement all the way through the long slide down into the Great Depression. Come the next Big Slump in the 2010s they had declared the recession over and recovery, visualized as green shoots, in progress for years as it continued to get worse. The public could be fooled for a limited time by propping things up with borrowed money. Then for an even shorter time by simply printing money when nobody would lend any more.

Obviously the media and government spox were lying shills or fools. It was terrible when being a honest fool was the less repugnant accusation to level at someone. This sort of major crash seemed to happen with a period that approximated the high side of the human lifespan. It definitely was time again. It would be really, really nice if Life Extension Therapy broke that cycle, she thought.

The investment money flooding Home from Earth seemed a good thing to her when Eddie and Jeff told her about it. Now it seemed to her it was money fleeing for a safe haven by those smart enough to have already seen what she had just figured out.

She felt she had to report back that she had looked into it as Jeff had asked, but she was really uncomfortable telling him the conclusions she'd come to. It wasn't just reporting the general familiarization she had expected, her views had become sharply predictive. If she was wrong it was going to be hugely embarrassing.

She'd have
never
had the nerve to say anything to someone who had years of effort in studying economics. Who was she to go against what all these experts were saying? But none of her people had that formal training. She decided to run her ideas past her grandfather first. He had become close to Jeff working with him and familiar with his thinking. As his only granddaughter she was pretty sure he'd forgive almost any silly thing she said and just chuckle and kindly correct her rather than dismiss her as a fool. He was back temporarily from the moon and she wanted to have breakfast with him and hear about the lunar project anyway.

After explaining her research over pancakes she concluded. "So I think things are going to get tough for folks down below pretty soon. I'm still not sure what that is going to mean for us. There was no orbital population last time there was a big Depression. What do you think?"

"I thought that was a possibility twenty years ago. I was pretty sure it was a dead certainty three years ago," he admitted. "It was definitely a part of why I stayed her after helping build the place and bought a cubic and wanted my family here."

"Then why didn't you say anything to me?" she asked surprised.

"Would you have been interested?" he asked her.

She thought back, three years ago was a long time at her age, to what she was doing. What her brother was involving her in for his projects, her classes and things her mom had her doing, including visiting her grandparents in Australia. Money and work was not a very big part of her life at all back then. "No, I would have nodded politely and wondered what any of that had to do with me," she admitted.