Lee looked in the door and wasn’t sure she had the right place. She double-checked her pad and the address was right. The office door was propped open with a large complicated hunk of metal with a big crack in it. She had no idea what the purpose of it could have been but it obviously was abused past any future use.
The lights were out and there was no service counter. A desk held three monitors all displaying something. One seemed to be the page of a catalog, another a page of Derf text, and the center a lovely Derf with a dark coat grasping the top rail of a fence while stretching, with visible claws, and smiling. Did Derf do cheesecake? Lee suspected that’s what it was. A side table held a huge espresso machine and a two-liter mug that displayed no evidence of ever being washed. Besides the desk stool, there was a huge upholstered sofa. She’d never seen one for Derf anywhere before. The door into the shop was a little bigger than normal Derf doors. It could easily pass a small ground car.
“Hello? Anybody home?” Lee called in Derf and then English.
“You have an abominable accent,” somebody called back from the shop. They had precise diction but sounded like they were speaking down a pipe or tunnel.
“I grew up speaking Derf as soon as I could talk,” Lee objected. “Do you always insult your customers?”
“Not the Derf. That was fine. I bet you learned English from an American.”
“Yes, my parents were from North America. I have no need to apologize for that. They had the good sense to leave. You have an accent to my ear. If you’re just going to yell insults from the other room I’ll go away.”
“Oh, very well. It takes a bit to wiggle out of this airframe. Hold on while I extricate myself. I don’t want to get hung up on something pointy and hurt myself, or worse, break something.”
The aircraft visible through the door was a shell with no doors or seats in the cockpit. It started shaking. Slowly two legs and then an enormous furry butt squirmed into sight with each shake of the airframe, until the mechanic could roll upright. He still barely fit in the cockpit sitting with his head bent down. He swung both legs out the doorless opening and started stripping elbow-length plastic gloves off all four arms. Lee thought about how much worse fur would be to clean of grease and oil. Long gloves and a leather apron made sense.
“I should hire a little thing like you. You’d get to the back of that tail boom without needing to be winched out. Someday I’m going to get stuck in one of these and nobody will find me for days.”
“You couldn’t afford me. Why don’t you have a helper anyway?” Lee asked.
“They all quit on me. The last one didn’t last a full day before I hurt his tender feelings. I just pointed out it’s bad business to kill your customers. It not only hurts repeat business but pretty soon others notice if there is a pattern of your planes augering into the ground. The bloody fool couldn’t find the right part, so he was going to use a cheap hardware store bolt and washer for a rated application between dissimilar metals in a corrosive environment.”
“Salt spray mist? A coastal environment near the beach?” Lee asked. “Or maybe around volcanic vents?” she guessed.
“Why yes. You’re not an idiot,” he said, shocked to discover that. “A plane based at a small island airport with surf upwind no matter which way the wind is blowing.”
“I’m not rated for aircraft but I can hum the tune and do a few steps for servicing planetary shuttles. You never know what kind of environment you may drop into on a strange planet. They can all find a way to kill you a long way from home.”
“Ah, the rings,” he said, looking closer and seeing her voyage rings in her ears. “My short customary name is Alonso if you’d care to use that.
“My short customary name is Lee if you like.”
He stopped peeling the last glove off and stared at her surprised. “And what is your long-form name? I’ve never known a human to claim one.”
“I’m the First daughter of the Third love son of the Four Hundred-Seventy Third First Mother of Red Tree, by the Hero of the Chain Bound Lands, Second line of the shorthaired folk, of Gordon - Lee Anderson, and Voice for the Mothers of Red Tree by their word.”
“Oh, that Lee. Crud, I really can’t afford to hire you,” Alonso said disappointed. He got up and came into the office, sitting down on the sofa hard. He made an inviting sweep of his hand to the other end but Lee took the stool as easier to mount.
“The compliment you’d consider it is still appreciated. Who is Alonso? Some pioneer of Human aviation?” Lee guessed.
“No, he was a chess Grand Master. You’d never know about him if you aren’t infected with the obsession. I rather like a few of the games he played.”
“I played with my father and never won so it discouraged me. I think you have to have some hope that you will eventually win a game to enjoy it,” Lee said.
“Darling, North America’s best played four-dimensional non-Newtonian chess across star systems, with ships for game pieces against Gordon, and got their butts whipped.” He wove his true hands in a complex tangle in the air to illustrate. “There’s no shame in losing a lesser game to him. What could possibly bring you to see me?”
“I’m told you build sports planes and can work on aircars,” Lee said.
“I’ve adapted some Earth designs to fit our needs,” Alonso admitted. “The difference in body mass makes it challenging. A nice six-seat Human plane makes a passable two-seat craft for Derf, or you can scale up smaller designs to an extent. I sometimes use a different wing profile or a local engine design. Changes that would horrify a Human regulatory agency and yank it right out of certification. We have no such thing to impede us, fortunately.
“There aren’t a lot of winged private aircraft and they are all hand-built. Nobody has set up a line to build one design. The market just doesn’t exist for it. I don’t seek aircar work much. The designs are pretty much straightforward copies of Human designs with very little change. The Derf capable models are just the freight versions.”
“Would you consider building a custom aircar chassis for me? A two Derf and two Human, or a four Human capable car, with any combo of seating. Fully pressurized and high altitude capable. Good visibility, rough field capable, and a ballistic safety parachute. I don’t have the thrust capacity of the power plants yet so this is just talking right now. I don’t even have a sketch on a napkin level of design.”
“What sort of budget, and could I build it in parallel with my other work so I still have other customers and a business when it’s done?” Alonso asked.
“No deadlines. But it has to be right. And if we have to saw it in half or start over because it isn’t right and we aren’t happy with it when it flies, we do that. Cost-plus. Whatever plus you can add and still look me in the eye after is fine. I’m not poor. I just got through building a private starship not that long ago. One hopes this won’t be quite that expensive.”
Alonso got this far away look. “If you swap two Derf from the front seats to the back seats that’s potentially a three-ton shift of mass a meter and a half to the rear. The only way you’d accommodate that and keep it stable in hover would be to have the engine pods not just pivot but shift fore and aft as much. Better to have them swing a bit more, say two full meters in case luggage or fuel movement is altering the center of gravity.
“It will be inherently unstable and fly by computer of course. It will have to have strain gauges on the engine booms and read the loading on the ground, so it knows which end to lift first and pivot the engine configuration each time before it throttles up to full power.” He stuck an arm out each way hand around an imaginary engine pod, and pivoted them smoothly before he lifted. It was handy having four arms to demonstrate it properly.
“See, you have it half-way designed in your head already,” Lee said. “Think a low cabin edge and a huge canopy for visibility. It can be a fixed canopy if you give me a hatch behind the cabin. A door on the cabin proper would give us an airlock too.”
Alonso opened his mouth to ask what kind of an aircar needed an airlock, and then thought better of it. “I’ll do some sketches. We’ll see if we can work together.”
“May I pay a retainer?” Lee offered. “Do you want to give me your bank name and I’ll pay whatever you bill me to your accounts?”
“Maybe later if we make a contract. Give me a token out of your pocket today, or I understand the Human custom is to shake hands.”
“I’ll do both,” Lee agreed. She crossed to him, shook his true hand and left a coin in it. “I’m in the Old Hotel if you want to contact me. Thanks,” she said and left.
Alonso looked at the coin, curious. It had a space station on it. He spoke English better than he read it, but recognized twenty-five grams. It must be gold but he’d never held a gold coin before. He had no idea what it was worth in the Ceres silver dollars he knew.
* * *
The hotel seated Xerxes on a floor pad and Jan got a regular chair. That put both their heads on a comfortable level to chat. The establishment seemed to have everything under control and well thought out. They had no trouble with plates and utensils appropriate to each of them. Indeed, his seemed to be actual silver, and the china and stemware could have been from Earth if he hadn’t known what that would cost.
He wasn’t the only Human in the room and nobody had taken any note of it when he entered. The menus were on paper held in a heavy card stock folder. That was rather quaint. Most developed nations on Earth had outlawed that sort of menu along with a lot of other potential disease vectors. They weren’t even plastic coated to make sanitizing them cheap and easy. A code square in the bottom corner invited you to scan for other languages if you weren’t able to use Derf or English.
“My menu doesn’t have any prices,” Xerxes said confused.
“I’m a guest of the hotel so I believe they are assuming you are my guest,” Jan said. “It’s rather old-fashioned. Don’t concern yourself with it. Just order what you like.”
What he liked turned out to be two petite hams. Jan would have called them picnic hams. A glazed sweet potatoes casserole covered with a local nut, a whole grilled pineapple, and a sweet wine over ice. Jan wondered if other Derf favored everything being so sweet?
Jan got a stacked pastrami and corned beef sandwich on a crusty roll, with Swiss cheese and what they described as deli dressing. The waiter only seemed surprised and a bit flustered when he asked for bottled water. Apparently, that wasn’t a big item locally. He wasn’t sure if the local water supply was sanitary for Humans and didn’t want to insult them by asking. He got coffee instead. That should be hot enough to be safe. The hot and crunchy platter got him a warning from the waiter that Humans often found it too spicy. He promised he’d eat around anything he found too hot. They brought it immediately as an appetizer and it was wonderful. A big scoop of kimchi was surrounded by sour cucumber pickle chunks, something similar to a radish, cherry tomatoes, and a ring of red, yellow, and black peppers. A loaf of something he’d call pumpernickel and a block of butter appeared unasked and sat on his side of the table.
“What do you do when you aren’t playing the guide with foreigners?” Jan asked when he had made a first-round sampling of his appetizer.
Xerxes blinked rapidly betraying surprise when Jan nibbled a black pepper.
“I’m a college student. I have very flexible classes except for some that require on-site instruction. I’m still living at home with family but I need to support myself and pay tuition, so I go to one of the day job services whenever I can. This is nice today because my uncle found you for me. I don’t have to pay a fee for the job service,” Xerxes said.
“What are you studying?” Jan wondered.
“Forestry management. Last season I went with a group and learned how to top a tree off, drop it without damaging the trunk or killing anyone, and how to move it to the sawmill or move a portable mill to it.”
“That sounds more like a lumberjack than a manager to me,” Jan remarked.
“How could I possibly manage workers if I have no idea what their job entails? I’d never have their respect, and would probably tell them to do something stupid.”
“That sounds entirely reasonable to me,” Jan agreed.
“I’m very likely going to work for a startup company that intends to make plywood. Humans here complain endlessly that they don’t have plywood to use for all sorts of things and go on about how handy it is.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t invent plywood well before other things I see,” Jan said.
“Oh, it was known,” Xerxes said. “It’s just it was laid up by hand for things like a base on which to build a shield or a very fancy sort of turned bowl that is a regional art form. What we don’t have is cheap mechanically made plywood in standard sizes and thicknesses with different modern glues and wide facings without seams. The roofers and boat makers alone are looking forward to having it available.”
“You can make some rather nice furniture with it,” Jan said. “I’d encourage you to look that up. It can be steamed and pressed into curves and shapes and retain that.”
“I’ll certainly look that up,” Xerxes said around some ham.
“Jan Hagen,” a voice said. “Do they know what they’ve let in?”
Jan twisted and looked over his shoulder. Mel Wainwright was standing, fists on hips giving him a dramatic scowl.
“They will if you blab it all over the place in your outside voice,” Jan said. “Derf have very sensitive hearing. Sit down and shove something in your pie hole if it will abate the noise,” Jan offered. Their waiter looked a question at Jan with his hand on a chair at a vacant table but didn’t move to bring it until he got a slight nod. He was going to have to leave that fellow a very nice tip.
“I thought I beat most of the mob down here. Has the mass stampede started already then?” Jan inquired.
“I’ll have you know I was here yesterday. I bribed and blackmailed old man Larkin into taking me to Derfhome station on his shuttle way ahead of the maddening crowd.”
“You bribed him and blackmailed him?” Jan asked.
“You have to apply pressure at every point to get him to agree to anything,” Mel said. “The man is very difficult. I offered an exorbitant fee to be taken along because I knew he’d be the first to launch when he had a half-liter of fuel margin, then, when he refused, I had to threaten to go around asking the other shuttle owners to take me as soon as they were in range to launch. He didn’t want me giving them the idea so he not very graciously allowed me along for only twice what I offered. He complained my mass made him lose five minutes on his planned launch time.”
“So, he still beat everybody there? That figures,” Jan said.
“Yes, when they finally do timidly launch and arrive, they will find he tied up a big chunk of the available dockage in long-term leases,” Mel said. “I don’t think the natives realize the income disparity and he got relative bargains. I did the same tying up a few suites in the hotel with long-term contracts for some clients. It won’t take them long to wise up.”
“No, it won’t with one native sitting at the table taking everything in. But then I told you they have very good hearing. Half the room probably could quote you verbatim.”
Mel looked at Xerxes uncertainly and got a carnivore’s smile that would have intimidated a lesser man.
“I didn’t mean to interfere with your deal,” Mel apologized.
“He’s just my local guide, hired as a day worker. I’m going to have him drive me around the city and point things out and answer questions. You can come along if you wish. In fairness, you should pay him too,” Jan suggested.
“You agreeable to showing both of us the sights and having to listen to us exchange insults and lies?” Mel asked him.
“It would be my pleasure,” Xerxes assured him. “I’m already benefiting from working for Mr. Hagen. My rate is five dollars Ceres a day or part day.”
“Wow, that is a bargain,” Mel said. “Count me in.”
Neither Jan nor Xerxes betrayed the least reaction on their faces, but Jan decided he was never going to play poker with Xerxes.
* * *
Dakota and Heather were discussing reorganizing the cabbage mines. With the trio of habitats gone there was suddenly no market for fresh greens, cut flowers, or prospects of a ready market for other staples already started, with a longer time to harvest.
“We can set up to freeze-dry easy enough. We have free vacuum. The trick will be to recover most of the water and not let it sublimate,” Dakota said. “If we need to transport it in bulk that will make it easy to do so.”
The com console pinged once and displayed a flashing light. Not the highest priority, but they weren’t engaged in anything time-critical. Dakota looked a question and Heather nodded.
It was a search robot that returned a hit on the BBC reporter, Wayne Howe.
“That’s interesting. I thought he was afraid to quote you,” Dakota said.
“Go ahead. Run the video,” Heather said.
It turned out the entire segment was a recording of the domestic dispute between John Zimmerman and Kayla Orley.
They watched, although they knew the story and Dakota commented over it. “Well, he figured out how to recover some sort of a story for the expense of coming here,” Dakota said. “It must be a slow news day.”
“Nah, he was already on the Moon for something else,” Heather said. “He was here too fast to have lifted and got here over the Idaho bombardment.”
They watched until both litigants presented their case and then the segment ended abruptly. He didn’t show Heather’s judgment. Rather, he provided commentary on how women and by implication all minorities were as badly treated on the Moon as in most unenlightened Earth nations. Heather and Dakota looked at each other.
“He deliberately abused my hospitality to present my justice as non-existent and the culture of our kingdom as toxic,” Heather said.
Dakota just nodded, afraid to say anything. She’d sort of suggested allowing the interview in the first place. That seemed a bad idea suddenly.
“I’ve never made a ruling about the duel. Suddenly it seems a good idea but sadly when the person to whom I wish to apply it is far away. He’d never return if I challenged him,” Heather said.
“No, he’d just twist it again to make you look bad to Earth eyes,” Dakota agreed. “They are very good at that, just like you expressed to him and the lady reporter.”
“Oh, yes… I tell you what. Simply release the full video record of that discussion, the case between John and Kayla, and my ruling on their case as one continuous video.”
Dakota smiled. “Including the segment where he said he could never go home.”
“Yes. I don’t think anybody will play the whole thing. They have the public trained to such a short attention span they’d all tune out. But they can cut whatever segments they wish. He was rather emphatic,” Heather said. “I think his bosses will see all of it.”
“Very much so. I don’t think the way he put that will be very acceptable to his superiors. It may never reach much of the public but yeah, the right people will see it.”
“Good, that’s exactly what I hoped,” Heather said. She seemed happier.
* * *
Lee ordered a picnic lunch from the hotel restaurant for two Humans, two Derf, and two Badger. She wanted variety and to have enough for sure. If it was too much, they could take some home. The cooler was big enough to be awkward so the hotel had a kitchen worker carry it to her car when it came. She called ahead to Born. He met her at the car and tucked the cooler under one elbow to walk her in, all chatty today.
“What’s this?” Lee asked. There was a new piece of machinery hanging in a cradle still sitting on the shipping skid with the cover freshly removed and to the side. It was a plate with a hole pattern on top and something complicated hanging underneath.
“That is a standard grapple post like on a space station. The drive will bolt on the plate with a cover over it, and the nose grapple on your ship will grab on the part hanging down.”
Lee squatted down and inspected the hard pin in a yoke. There were tapered flats on each side of the yoke that would engage similar flats in the nose of her ship. The claw that grabbed the pin would pull the flats into tension against each other, locking it in three dimensions. “So that’s what it looks like from the side. I’ve never seen one, except for head-on from the nose camera. I wonder if I can persuade Jeff to come along for a test flight?”
“I believe he is expecting that,” Musical said. “He suggested sending your ship on a few short hops and back to you remotely from one of his vessels. They used a drone in their early testing but they didn’t know near as much as we do now.
“Good. I’ll confirm that with him later. I doubt you are going to get this together today. Let’s have a bite and then I’ll sit and watch you assemble it. If you talk about what you are doing, I’ll try to stay quiet and not interrupt,” Lee promised.
She did try, and even made some notes of questions to ask later and took some pix, but she couldn’t help but interrupt a few times. By supper time she was ready to go home and reminded both of them they had no deadline and would benefit from going to supper and a good night’s sleep. They said they’d eat some of the leftover lunch and go home at a decent hour. She didn’t believe it for a minute.
* * *
Jan and Mel were in the front seats of the auto-car and Xerxes in the back, with the seats folded down, occupying the full width. He was hunched forward with his head between the Humans and true arms braced on their seatbacks.
“What do you think of the way traffic is handled?” Jan asked Mel with a broad sweep of the hand that encompassed everything.
“I love it,” Mel said in a heartfelt tone. “I got here before the mob yesterday and got a regular manual car. I let it run on auto for a while and just observed. Once I saw what everybody did, I switched to manual and made much better time.”
“I was afraid to try it cold with no instruction. I suppose I could have looked up the rules on the local net, but I was happy to have Xerxes bring a car from the city,” Jan admitted.
“It makes all kinds of sense. I just hated stop signs and stop lights in Earth traffic. This is like an endless chain of roundabouts except nobody slows down all timid and hesitant. I quickly saw that the auto-cars like this always yield if there is any doubt who has the lead. If you speed up instead of yield all the auto-cars will defer to you and most of the manual drivers. You can just rip like hell if you don’t mind a little lateral acceleration.”
“Oh, one of those,” Xerxes said slightly behind their ears.
“And what happens if the other fellow doesn’t yield?” Jan asked.
“Skreeee…. Thud!” Xerxes said high pitch tapering to a low rumble that dropped off below Human audibility. The onomatopoeia was self-explanatory. You could practically see the wreck unfold in your mind’s eye.
“Well yeah, if you’re stubborn,” Mel agreed. “But the brakes on these cars are really good and if all else fails they have no curbs and the landscaping always seems to be set back a bit.”
“Always walk along the concave side of the curve,” Xerxes warned them.
“I’m curious. You said you’re going into forest management, but you picked an ancient Human king for your short name. Does that indicate a secondary interest?” Jan asked.
“No, that’s just a custom. I picked it because I like how it sounds.”
“I suppose Paul Bunyan is a mouthful,” Mel quipped.
Xerxes didn’t say anything but leaned back to check his pad.
* * *
“It looks like an invasion,” April said in the lobby the next day.
“Did anybody stay on Home?” Jeff wondered.
“There can’t be that many even if they ran the shuttles as fast as they can turn them around. But I see three people I know and the other Homies stand out like a sore thumb.”
Jeff nodded. “Even if you go straight from auto-car to hotel the sidewalks are going to tear up footies in short order. Did they think the planet was carpeted?”
“A lot of these people haven’t set foot on dirt in decades. Some of them have never been on a planet,” April said. “The local stores don’t serve that big of a Human market. I bet they sell out of boots and shoes before the end of the day. We missed a chance to corner the market. Socks too,” she added.
“Look at that,” Jeff said, pointing.
There was an easel with a physical board, not a monitor, set where one had to walk around it between the door and check-in desk. It said “NO VACANCIES” in neat hand-drawn letters.
“Some of it is pent up demand. It hasn’t been safe to take a vacation on Earth for ages. People miss walking under an open sky and wandering along a beach. The ocean is only about fifty kilometers that-a-way,” April pointed. “If there is a road down there a lot of this crowd will go down to take a look soon if not today. After a week or two, a lot of them will head back up to Home.”
“I don’t know,” Jeff said, frowning. “A fair number of them are suddenly unemployed. It’s going to be cheaper to live down here than on Home. Fresh food will have to be lifted and it’s going to cost more than they are used to getting it from the Moon. Some are going to want to find jobs and stay here.”
“There are always a few who can never save anything and will have to find something down here quickly. If they liquidate their cubic to get funds there may be a nice wave of properties for sale at decent prices,” April speculated.
“I’m on that,” Jeff said, pulling his tablet out and punching in the preset for his real estate lady. It was no surprise she had a queue waiting to talk to her. With a little luck, she was tied up with sellers instead of buyers smarter and quicker than them. He left a text message to use her discretion to buy anything for them she considered below market. If he waited and tried to micro-manage her, somebody would get in ahead of them.