Allotropes (an Ell Donsaii story #8) (7 page)

Ell sighed, “Let me explain later, OK?”

The waitress arrived with their dinners which forestalled further questions.

While they ate Ell asked, “Are you wanting your family to know about… the other me?”

Shan nodded.

“Can they keep a secret?”

“Yeah, in fact they’re keeping a secret about one of our family members at present.”

“Really? What kind of secret?”

Shan grinned, “Well, now, if I were to tell you that, we wouldn’t be very good at keeping secrets would we?”

Ell
laughed, “I guess not. Do you think they could keep my secret with the same degree of confidence?”

“I’d make them promise to hold it to that degree before I told them.”

Ell tilted her head, “I guess that’s good enough for me. Who do you want to tell?”

“Just Mom
, Dad and my two sisters.”

“I can live with that.”

After dinner Kristen headed back to her home in Morehead City and “Raquel” went
with her fiancé to the little house Shan and Ryan rented. When they stepped into the apartment Ryan said, “Hey guys.” He was sitting at the small dining table eating chili directly out of a small frying pan.

Shan said, “That chili straight out of a can?”

Ryan snorted, “Nope! You can see for yourself I put it in ‘dis here fryin’ pan and done heat it up.”

“Well, I’d like to say thanks for acting so low class, it keeps me from worrying about you
making any time with Raquel.”

“Oh, you can put your mind at ease. I’ve given up on Raquel
. She’s exhibited the poor taste required to get engaged to you. Nope, I’ve set my sights on her boss.”

“Her boss?”

“Oh, yeah. Workin’ with Donsaii on my neurotrodes and that prosthetic hand—I’ve realized I’m in love.” He waggled his eyebrows. “It’s just a matter of time before Ell realizes she loves me too.”

A smile started spreading across Shan’s face.

Ell grabbed Shan’s arm and started pulling him back towards his room. “Shan and I need to talk.” As they turned into the little hall to Shan’s room she said back over her shoulder to Ryan, “Good luck with that ‘tangled web’ you’re weaving.”

As Ell closed Shan’s door, Ryan
called out, “Raquel, you’re pretty hot, but
no one
holds a candle to Donsaii.” He muttered, “I just have to figure out how to make my move.”

As Ell shoved Shan onto his bed he snorted, “That’s rich! First he’s trying to steal ‘Raquel’ from me, now he’s setting his sights on Ell?!”

“Oh, he was never
serious
about stealing Raquel.”

Shan put his arms around her and pulled her tight, “Couldn’t blame him if he was. It’d just show he had amazing taste.”

“He’s a nice guy. I just wish he’d go for Bridget. She really likes him.”

“Really?”

“Um hmm.” Ell said snuggling her head into Shan’s shoulder.

“Raquel, is it OK if I tell him that? He thinks she’s pissed at him.”

“No kidding?” Ell said. She appreciated how careful Shan was to always use her “Raquel” name when she was done up as Raquel. He didn’t ever want to mix up and call her the wrong name in public. “Sure, tell Ryan… It’d be nice if they got together.”

After a pause Shan said, “So, are you going to explain that stuff about your Gram posing as your ‘rich grandmother’? ‘Pretending’ she’s rich isn’t going to fly my relatives out to the island.”

Ell sighed, “We could have her charter a plane to fly everyone there.”

“Oh, why didn’t I think of that?” He raised his eyebrows as if surprised, “Oh, maybe because we’d
still
have to come up with the money to charter a plane. Charters are pretty expensive Raquel.”

“Um, Shan…”

As the silence drew out, Shan pulled his head back to look down at her. “Hey, what aren’t you telling me? Is your grandmother
actually
rich?”

“Well, kinda.”

“Really?” Shan’s brow furrowed. “All the news I saw about you guys back in your Olympic days implied that your family was poor. Where’d the money come from?”

In a small voice Ell said, “From me.”

“Huh?! Where’d
you
get the money? Wait a minute,” his eyes narrowed, “how much are they paying you out there at D5R?”

“Shan,” she almost whispered, “I
own
D5R.”

“Get out!” he snorted, “Why is there a board of directors then?”

Ell shrugged, “There isn’t. I just pretend that there’s a board so no one’ll realize
I’m
the one making all the decisions.”

“Raquel…” he tilted his head, “Where’s all this money coming from? I don’t see you doing any endorsements?”

“I patented the PGR chips.”

“Really? How come no one knows that?”

“My name’s on the patent so it isn’t hidden. But, at my request, PGR plays it down so people just don’t seem to realize it. When they figure that out, they don’t seem to realize how much it’s worth.”

Shan frowned, “They don’t charge
all that much for those chips.”

“But they sell a
lot
of them. They aren’t just connecting your AI to your HUD you know. They connect almost
everything
that moves data over any distance.” She shrugged, “Our planet’s had a tremendous reduction in radio emissions over the past three years.”

Shan’s gaze drifted up to the ceiling, “Wait, so, I’ve got a new chip from my HUD to my AI, and one from my AI to the net…”

“And you probably have a PGR hub connecting all your screens to your AI and to the net.”

“And, if I get a new car, it’ll probably have a PGR connection.”

Ell snorted softly, “
New
cars have 20-100 PGRs. Why stretch data cables when chips are so reliable? Even counting the billions of very poor on the planet who don’t have
any
chips, PGR Comm has been selling an average of two PGRs for every person on this planet the past couple years.”

“Wait, if there’s 6-7 billion people on the planet… you’re saying they’re selling about 13 billion chips a year?”

She shrugged, “Close enough.”

“And they sell them for…?”

“6-7$ each, on average.”

“And you get?”

“12%”

Shan’s eyes went distant, then widened, “Ten billion dollars a year?”

She gave a tiny shrug, “Close enough for right now. That’ll drop off in a while when everyone starts to have as many PGRs as they need. They don’t break very often.” After a pause she said, “Or it might go up if a lot more uses are found for them.”

“You’ve
got
to be kidding!”

Ell gave a tiny headshake.

“Wait…
and
you own D5R? I guess you founded it with money from the chips?”

Ell nodded.

“No other stockholders?’

“Oh, sure. The employees own shares, 2% of D5R and almost 20% of some of
D5R’s subsidiaries.”

“And ET Resources has got to be making money from that asteroid they’re mining.”

Ell nodded, “Since we’ve got waldoes out there running the ore gathering and crushing operation it’s become a lot more functional. It’s actually just begun to make money. But it’s a
lot
more money than I had expected.”

“And from those solar heating and cooling sources they have parked near the sun and out in deep space?”

Ell nodded again. “Not just heating and cooling. More and more electrical power generation is coming from hot solar tubes. A lot of the power plants near the coasts make steam from salt water, then ‘cool tube’ condense the steam into fresh water. They sell the water too.”

“And you’re getting revenue from those too?”

She shrugged, “Not a big percentage, but it adds up.”

“Oh, and the ports themselves. Does D5R have the patent on those too?”

“Well…”

Shan tilted his head and raised an eyebrow.

“I guess,” she said with a sigh, “it’s my patent.”

“Oh my God. Are you… the wealthiest person in the world?”

“Oh, no!”

“Not yet?”

Ell shrugged, granting that it was only a matter of time.

Shan stared at her for a while then whispered,
“So why are you hanging out with a schlep like me?”

Ell sniggered and moved closer to put her head on his shoulder and an arm around him. “‘Cause, I like my schleps
smart
.”

Shan leaned his head back to look down into her eyes, “No, really. Why aren’t you off cruising the world with the glitterati?”

She stuck out her lower lip, “Don’ wanna.” Then she gave him a serious look “Really… why would I do that? What I love best is figuring things out. Working out the math for the 5
th
dimension. Getting ports to work. Inventing new stuff. Using them to save the space station and stop a comet. I think it’s something like the way other people enjoy solving a crossword puzzle, though word puzzles aren’t my thing. But I don’t have any desire to do the kinds of things that most rich people seem to like to do. I
would
kind of like to travel around and see some of the world sometime though.” She glanced away, “What do you want to do with your life?”

Shan didn’t say anything for a moment, then snorted gently. “An hour ago, I would have said, ‘take care of you.’ But now I figure you could
hire
that done. Being your ‘kept’ man kinda sticks in my craw though.”

Quietly, Ell said, “I don’t want you to be my ‘kept man” either. I’m
so
proud of what you’ve done already. I truly hope you’re going to continue doing those kinds of things.”

His eyes widened, “What
I’ve
done?”

“Figuring out how 5D math applied to galactic distances and the dark matter-energy problem. Designing the software for John’s new hand.”

Shan laughed, “With the first, I didn’t even understand what I had… ‘til you explained it to me. The second—really any math and software jockey could have done.”

Ell shrugged her free shoulder, “The first, no one else but you even
noticed
, despite it being out there for years. As for the second, I agree a lot of programmers
could
have done it, given a lot of time. Not many could design such an elegant and effective interface or underlying program. Practically none of them could have done it so quickly. Really Shan, it was a work of art.”

Shan’s head sank back against the pillow, “Well, if the WWW wants to marry me, I’m certainly not turning it down.”

“WWW?”

“World’s wealthiest woman.”

Ell snorted, then turned serious, “Remember you’re marrying ‘not rich Raquel.’ Who’s planning on leading an ordinary life, and raising some ordinary kids, in an ordinary family, in that ordinary little house we’re buying.”

Shan stared at her for a bit then said in a husky voice, “Yeah, and I’m OK with that too… That’s what I signed on for and I’m happier than anyone in the world with that decision…” After a moment he shrugged, “I’ll talk to my
Mom and Dad about how many people they want to invite to the wedding.”

***

Ell, Emma and Shan met at Ell’s house. Ell and Emma drove there from work. Shan had dropped by their new house to move in a few things and then snuck over through the tunnel. Querlak was asleep. Ell put a graph up on the screen, “Spectroscopic analysis of the little fragment Sigwald chipped off the rimwall shows almost pure carbon. I showed the results to an expert who said that the other elements are almost certainly just surface contaminants.”

Emma frowned, “But is it graphene?”

Ell shrugged, “Graphene or nanotubes or some other form of pure carbon that we haven’t discovered yet.”

Shan
frowned, “Our people can’t tell its structure?”

“Not from spectroscopic analysis.”

“Why don’t you ask them to use something else?”

“To do that we’d have to bring a sample back here to earth.”

Shan frowned, “You haven’t done that yet?”

“
Nothing
from other life bearing worlds comes back to earth. We don’t want to import pathogens. We sterilize everything we send the other way to protect the sigmas.”

He shrugged, “Just sterilize things you bring back from there.”

“What if
they
have a pathogen that can survive
our
sterilization techniques?”

Shan’s eyes widened slightly but he said nothing.

“Have you asked Querlak what it’s made of?” Emma asked. They were communicating fairly well with the alien by now. The three of them were taking turns running Sigwald. Rotating who interfaced, let them keep up with the alien’s six hour sleeping, eleven hour waking cycle fairly well.