April 5: A Depth of Understanding (6 page)

Eddie behind them muttered an indiscreet, "Oh, shit."

"That's easy for you to say with armed security standing behind you."

"Hey, I'm standing back watching," Gunny pointed out. He even took his hand off the rail and showed his empty palms to the guy before taking a grip again. "I'm supposed to deal with criminals and assassins, if she wants to duel that's her's to see to."

"You're crazy if you think I'll duel with you, nobody does that anymore."

"Indeed, I'm sorry to be the second person to advise you of local custom," her grandfather said, "but if you refuse to meet her she will post notice and you will be permanently expelled and barred from Home. The matter has come up before and is well established by the Assembly. Are you certain you want to kill this man?" he asked April as an aside.

"No, I just want a little respect. But what other way do I have to get it? I refuse to just brawl here with him until he yields and if I had struck back at him when he pushed me it would have drawn in the other fellow and then maybe some of our group. I won't have them laying hands on me and bringing their Earth Think into Home corridors until it's like living on the slum ball."

The musician Amos jerked like he was slapped at slum ball. "Joe, you handle yourself better in no gravity, would you grab that wrapper for me, please? I'll at least give Ms. Lewis that much satisfaction."

"Thank you," April was quick to acknowledge.

"Would you consider letting the matter slide with my man?"

"I'm sorry,
no
."

"Ron, I won't urge you to do anything either way. I've been happy with your service. If you don't want to apologize I'll pay your early passage off Home. If Joe wants to go with you I'll find other security locally or do without." Amos appeared more concerned than upset. He took his recovered wrapper from Joe and stashed it in a pocket.

Ron looked back and forth between them frowning. He took a deep breath. "I apologize for bumping you. I'll try to not do it again. If I do please understand it's just clumsiness in zero G. I'd really appreciate your assurance you won't hold it against my client, since it's true, I don't know local customs."

"Not at all, it was strictly between us and as far as I am concerned it is like it never happened now. Let's start with a clean slate," she proposed.

Ron gave a tilt of his head that was almost a bow, acknowledging it and kept his mouth shut. He went out front of Amos, to be away from April, trading places with Joe without any consultation. Joe picked up on it and fell back, so they weren't totally clueless.

At the elevator Amos stood waiting with his brow furrowed. "Might I offer to take you to dinner sometime soon, by way of further apology and to ask you more about Home?"

"I've been looking forward to going to go to dinner at the Fox and Hare tomorrow. If you'd like to join us at 1900 hours come along. It's a private social club and they won't present a bill to our table, but you are welcome to join us as my guest."

"Should I leave my security?"

"Whatever you wish. It's a small place so they may need to sit at an adjoining table, but they'll be close enough to watch you. I suggest you go see Zach at the Chandlery near the cafeteria and get spex like your guys have," she said, touching hers. "They make getting around, like finding the club, a lot easier. Can you come Gramps?"

"I wouldn't miss it, but after dinner I'd like to be excused to go off to the poker room."

"What sort of poker?" Amos asked, interested.

"Oh, it's just a friendly local game," April's grandfather explained. "Usually a fifty-hundred spread with a pot limit raise. If you suggest a bigger game with thousand dollar ante or more you
may
get enough guys to have a game, but most of them are going to beg off and have their own."

"That sounds interesting. Do you have to be a member to play?"

"You can be my guest if you want to play. We're not too stuck up to take your money."

"Ain't that the truth," Eddie grumbled.

April was surprised. Not that Eddie would play, but that he would lose.

Chapter 5

The next morning at breakfast April thanked Gunny again for supporting her at ISSII.

"It wasn't so much supporting you personally, as I agree we can't let the Norte Americanos slide back into ignoring treaty provisions and limiting travel to Home. They will just keep picking away at it if we let them. We can't spare the funds or personnel to put an observer at every USNA exit point. It might precipitate another war to try. So it's really up to all of Home's citizens to object, if they see somebody trying to detain a Home traveler."

"I'm going to address that next Assembly," April vowed. "Not to ask a vote, or suggest  anyone be obligated, but just make an advisory announcement."

"Not everybody has the nerve or ability to get in the face of customs agents. I saw the necessity of that. However, taking such a hard line with the guard later was more than was necessary. That was twice in a day you put yourself on the line, at risk. If you keep that up the odds
will
catch up with you. I think the second incident was more a matter of temper than principal."

"You're right, what can I say?"

"That's sufficient. I was glad you didn't call out Amos though. He is well known down below and even if you were technically correct on custom, I think it would have been bad publicity. So far your image has been pretty positive with the common Earthies. If the politicians and security people who hate you, well, there is a huge public undercurrent against them too."

"Yes, I keep hearing that, but I don't
see
it."

Gunny shrugged. "It's hard to explain if you haven't lived there. They may be evil, but they aren't stupid. The ways they have to control people have been carefully refined, especially the last hundred years. Most Earthies, not just North Americans, don't see any hope of getting public support if they openly oppose their government, so they don't speak out publicly. While the governments have been quietly perfecting repression, the people have invented all sorts of ways to resist. There is much more sabotage, wrecking, than is admitted. That gives some an outlet for their frustrations without open rebellion.
I
never saw any advantage to rebellion. I guess I was part of the repression, since I kept Wiggen safe."

"I saw a little passive resistance in Tonga. Mr. Helu who sold me the tapas wouldn't take an electronic transfer. I'm sure he won't report the sale. But about Wiggen, she was an advantage for us for a long time. She was moderate enough not to want to attack us, when everyone else was just arguing how to time our destruction. So what you were doing helped us at the time."

"I'm still not sure we are far enough away to not be a target," Gunny worried. "When Home was attacked last year and your dad acted to move us out here toward L2, it seemed a long way away compared to Earth filling half our sky. But Earth is still there even if it looks more like a marble now. It still isn't just another pinpoint in the heavens. I'm glad actually the halo orbit lets us monitor the Earth traffic directly. If we were ever tucked in all the way behind the moon I'd worry it was possible to do a sneak attack on us and we might not see them coming until they came over the lunar horizon."

"Being in line of sight lets Jeff have direct command of his weapons. I'm more comfortable with that than working through relays," April admitted.

"I was there you know," Gunny said lifting an eyebrow. "So I know you and Heather have the control codes too, not just Jeff, unless he took them back and you didn't tell me?"

"No," April said, embarrassed. "I just figure if they get used Jeff will do so long before Heather or I would release them."

She looked at Gunny distressed and he was smart enough to keep silent when she was so visibly thinking something over hard.

"Jeff has some real issues from when he had to bomb the Jiuquan spaceport," April revealed. "Not that he wouldn't do it again, because once they had captured his ship there really wasn't any other choice but to destroy it. If the Chinese had been given time to take her apart and reverse engineer everything we'd all be dead by now without a doubt. But he really had no idea the yield on that weapon would be enough to take out the adjoining town too. He wasn't faking that. He
might
have been able to destroy it beyond any data recovery with the lighter warheads we had, but he just couldn't take the chance with Home's survival when he had one big enough to vaporize the whole area. If they'd started taking items off the ship and dispersing them quickly it might have made a limited strike futile."

"What do you mean, issues?"

"He sits and has crying jags. He has bad dreams. I finally got him to get some medication to help the PTS before we went down on vacation. I think taking a break helped too, but he is not like some of the Earthies paint him, indifferently depraved, like is the qualifier in most Earth law for a murderer. If anything he is too smart and only too aware of all the innocent individuals harmed."

"Is he safe to retain control of his systems?" Gunny asked, frowning.

"Would you want somebody holding them who
wouldn't
be bothered by using them?"

Gunny nodded reluctant agreement. "OK, I agree he shows more character by entertaining doubts than thinking himself above error. Sometimes there simply are no
good
choices and you have to chose what seems the least bad at the moment and go with it."

Across the cafeteria at the order counter the fellow Matt Wilson and his two kids were getting breakfast. April called them to Gunny's attention with a tilt of her head and a raised eyebrow. "You mind if I call them over?"

"Not at all. Those kids didn't argue in the shuttle when I told them to go strap in, I would expect a lot of Earth kids to balk when a stranger started giving them orders. I was impressed."

Matt herded the two little ones ahead of him. When they all had their trays he turned to the seating. April waved and invited them to the chairs opposite her and Gunny with a sweep of her hand. He nodded and started their way with no hesitation, so he must not think her a trigger happy lunatic.

"Miss Lewis, Mr. Tindal," he said formally.

"Gunny is fine."

"And I'm happy with April."

"Thank you, for myself, but my children are trained to address older people respectfully."

"I wouldn't think to sabotage that," Gunny agreed.

"This is Iaan and Jenifer," their father introduced them.

"Welcome to Home," April said, looking at the kids to make sure they knew they were included in the greeting. "Are you visiting or immigrating?" she directed at the father.

"Immigrating, if I can manage it."

"We have a labor shortage, so you should be able to find something."

"I'm hoping to not have to look for a job. I'm a writer and circumstances are such now in North America that most of what I'd earn would go to my ex-wife for the rest of my career, so I had no real future there. It wasn't the best of times to leave either, but I came to realize it would never be a better time to leave, so I bit the bullet and did it."

"And yet you retain the children, despite having the minority of the income. I'd have expected your wife to pay child support," Gunny said. It sounded like a question though.

"At the time I had
no
income. But my quitting my job to write full time was the reason my wife divorced me, although it was at her father's urging. What can I tell you? It was California, with a female judge, very good lawyers hired with her father's money and the kids were not something that fit her proposed new life. She spoke frankly about that in front of the kids, so it's far too late to shield them from that."

"Giving her two thirds of any royalties I earned was to punish me for quitting my job as an insurance adjuster and doing what I wanted. They all assumed that I expected to live off her father's money and when my first three books sold really well it wasn't just unwelcome, it pissed them off. Her dad sees all writers, poets, musicians and artists as lazy leeches avoiding honest work, unless they have been dead long enough to satisfy him. Bach, Hemingway, or Paul McCartney for example, all get a free pass from him."

April and Gunny were stunned to silence for a bit. That he'd speak so bluntly in front of his children did say they'd heard it all before, or worse. And they didn't so much as twitch at hearing it again. Finally April worked up the courage to ask, "What does your father-in-law do that he can be so disdainful of creative people?"

"Ah, interesting question. He's a lawyer too, but not the sort that does divorces, he does corporate law dealings with finance and things like mergers. Things society
needs,
to his mind."

"Home doesn't
have
lawyers," April told him.

Matt was sipping coffee. He dropped the cup long enough to say, "The horror!" sarcastically and went on with his breakfast.

April was trying to think what that would do to a child and their lifelong attitudes to hear they were unwanted and see their custodial parent attacked. She frequently thought Earthies were barking mad, but this was a new level. Her mother was sometimes distant and seemed to favor her brother , but she'd never outright rejected April. She'd have asked other questions, but the two kids sitting there listening still made her not want to offend their sensibilities further. So she changed the subject.

"We have at least one writer I know, Ben Patsitsas, who writes mysteries."

"Sure, I've read some of his stuff. I liked it."

"There's a bunch of guys, some retired, some self employed. Most mornings, a bit later, there will be a cluster of them sitting close to the coffee. There might be three or a dozen, any given day. I don't recognize your name though. What do you write?"

"I write romances, so far they have all been historical romances, but you wouldn't recognize my work because I write as Molly Wilson."

Jenifer looked up from her pancakes and smiled. "It's lots of fun to tell your teacher your dad is Molly Wilson." Her brother nodded amused agreement. "Especially when she's a big fan."