The building in which the Earth lawyers, King and Burnstein, had offices was an odd mix of Human custom and traditional Derf architecture that wasn’t seen much yet. The idea of combining residential and commercial space was common, as was office space on a shop or plant. Splitting the use of a large building between many offices had never taken hold because large businesses that existed to handle data and shuffle paper didn’t exist. Neither did vast bureaucracies or government agencies for military or regulatory oversight.
The building was perched high on the hillside with a small parking lot on the uphill side. A single row of spaces served since most people would be using car services. The building was long and thin because all the offices had a view over the river valley holding Derfhome.
“This is nicer than my bank,” Xerxes said. “How can they possibly afford this?”
“If their business is like most Earth law firms, they only have a portion of the building,” Mel said. “That’s a very common arrangement.”
“I bet it is mostly Human businesses then,” Xerxes predicted. “I’d never feel comfortable sharing a building with unrelated businesses. Excuse me if it offends but it seems low class.”
“Don’t be shy to tell me things like that,” Mel said. “Learning the Derf way of looking at things is exactly why I hired you. But we’re dealing with Humans here so just hold the car.”
As he expected, the guide to the occupants in the lobby bore out Xerxes' prediction. There was a clear majority of Human names and English business names on the directory. The lobby went straight through to a glass wall three stories high with a wonderful view. There was no elevator but Derf width stairs went up to a balcony on both sides and down to a lower level with a bridge at the middle entry and upper level. Somebody was bright enough to split the stairs into half steps for Humans that Derf could take two at a time. King and Burnstein were on the walk-in level.
“I don’t know the market, but this is nice,” Mel said. “There just isn’t that much trade to this world to support expensive consultation services. At least before we arrived. How can they afford this?” It didn’t seem a rhetorical question at all, as Mel addressed it directly to Jan with a piercing gaze.
Jan gave an indifferent shrug. Everything about him was low-key.
“You can ask quite directly. That often works rather than dancing around it.”
“I might,” Mel said. He made it sound like a threat.
The office had glass doors with handles and their names in gold leaf on the right door. With no entry pad or screen, it seemed an invitation to come in. The door was unlocked when Mel tried it but he stopped just inside, uncomfortable to go further until he called out.
There were a couple of leather library chairs and big leather sofas to the left, turned toward each other for talking but all favoring the window wall and view. They were all sized for Humans so that indicated their expected clientele. The window was framed by a couple of big frilly plants like ferns and an antique telescope on a tripod was available to examine the town below.
“Come in,” a voice insisted, and an arm stuck out from behind one of the chairs to wave them in. They were halfway to the setting before the fellow extricated himself from the depths of the chair to turn and greet them. His eyes went to Jan first, lingering, and to Mel like an afterthought.
“I’m Mel Wainwright,” Mel said forcing his attention to remain on him by offering his hand. “I’d like to talk about your services and possibly retain you. I am contracted to several Homies who intend to have some sort of a permanent presence on Derfhome even if they may move on if Home doesn’t stay here. I’m looking to provide secure residences and services so I need to come up to speed quickly. Derfhome will be a brief stay for some, a retreat and planetary vacation home, or a commercial site and market for others.”
“You look familiar to me,” King allowed. “But I know your associate. Are you partners or is he one of your clients?”
“I’m his customer. He’s my security escort. You haven’t looked me up in your spex?”
“I’m not very skilled at doing extensive searches on my spex and hiding it,” King admitted. “I don’t multi-task well and I think a lot of people who claim to be able to are fooling themselves. I’d rather not offend my customers by seeming distracted and not giving them my full attention. Some of them may assume I’m doing other business rather than attending to their needs. Give me a moment now and I’ll get that out of the way.”
It wasn’t that long, perhaps a full minute before he returned his attention to them. Mel took the opportunity to look at Jan who made a small affirmative nod without eye contact.
“OK. You were administrative supervisor over President Wiggen’s residential security, supervisor during her presidency,” King said. “I wouldn’t have bet either way, whether Jan Hagen might have hired you for security instead of the other way around.”
“I’ve never been one to do hands-on security,” Mel disclaimed. “Oddly, Jan claims the same. But I did remove President Wiggen from the White House when it was attacked.”
“That sounds pretty hands-on to me,” King said.
Mel shrugged. “One does what one must. I wasn’t entirely sure all my people were reliable. I had hidden assets none of them knew about, and if you get right down to it, I was rescuing myself as much as her. I’m sure I was on the target list of those coming for her. Is that going to be a problem working for me that I thwarted factions that may still be represented in the current North American government?”
“Not at all. They probably won’t know we are doing business. We are their source to monitor public events and contracts on Derfhome. I sincerely doubt it’s important enough to have redundancy. If anyone brings it up, we’ll just say we are spying on you. I’m sure we can find some mutually agreeable tidbit to feed them about you that is safe for everyone.”
Mel’s eyebrows shot up. “You readily admit you work for North America? How can you do that and not be yanked back home immediately?”
“Do you think we’re going to report our cover is blown?” King asked. “We have a good thing going here. We have a nice safe posting with no risk anyone is going to shoot us in the head or pack explosives in our car service rental as might happen in more adversarial environments. Who we work for is an open secret among the local agencies. We know each other by name. I’ve been told they are happy to know us and keep an eye on us. You have to understand, it isn’t even illegal to be a spy here. The Mothers have never thought to make a law against it. They’d probably think such a law silly. They sensibly seem to avoid making laws they know will just be ignored. If we were recalled they would have to discover who replaced us and learn everything about them from scratch. If a problem arises, we can give our counterparts a call and figure something out before our masters make one or the other of us do something stupid.”
Jan Hagen smiled and nodded his agreement.
“We have little to investigate or report we can’t get off the public net and summarize in a few hours every morning. With a little luck, we can stay here until retirement age and retain both personal assets and an ongoing business. Life Extension Therapy is becoming available here and both of us will be able to afford it when we choose to buy it. That isn’t an option back home. We contrived to make our position here secure. Even though USNA dollars aren’t what they used to be, we have managed to get most of our support transferred to local control. Who knows, we may even be able to do that with our retirement pay if things stay stable long enough.”
“How did you manage that?” Jan inquired. “I managed that by getting my pay routed to a Swiss bank. It must be more difficult with North American funds.”
“Doing any significant cash transfer would be hard and raise all sorts of red flags,” King said. “But if I order fifty kilos of chocolate and a gross of medium cotton t-shirts at a time on our accounts, it flies right by the tripwires. It’s all gravy at this point so it becomes a game, finding ways to convert funds. When they first sent us out here, we were given carte blanc to buy a safe house to avoid the uncertainty of sending support funds regularly. They didn’t really know real estate values and were used to getting horrible rates of exchange, so we bought this building in my name and have been collecting the rents ever since. It covers our expenses and then some nicely, with no way for them to claw it back.
“One always finds loose assets doing fieldwork,” Jan agreed. “Good job.”
Sam Burnstein came in the door just then and showed no surprise at their guests.
“There’s a Derf sitting racking up time in a rental in the parking lot,” Sam said. “Is he surveilling us? Should I go offer him coffee and a snack and see who employs him? He isn’t near sneaky enough to be a private investigator and I thought everyone else knew us.”
“He’s ours,” Mel admitted. “He’s not any sort of professional at all, just a native guide. Ignore him because we don’t want him knowing our business or yours.”
“OK, you’re Homies then,” Sam figured out, “even though you don’t look the part. I just saw a bunch of them in town and they are all dressed strangely and have on ballet slippers that will be in shreds before the end of the day.”
“We’re former Earthies and Home transplants,” Jan said. “Figure that we never went totally native. I dressed conservatively by habit to be less visible, perhaps it backfired in the present circumstances.”
“Yeah, a clown suit would have blended better than a one-ounce Italian suit and half-ounce bespoke Spanish shoes. You sure are pretty though,” Sam allowed. “I have entire outfits worth less than that tie.”
“Sam makes a hobby of being able to discern one’s origins and station in life from one’s dress. He is surprisingly accurate, even with Fargoers, and he’s never been there.”
“Accurate indeed,” Jan admitted. “But the suit was bought in Singapore, where the Italian tailors will fit you much cheaper than at home and the tie is a Hermes.”
“New spooks too?” Sam inquired.
“Close enough. Security professionals of slightly different flavors,” Mel said.
“We’re thrilled to have Home here,” Sam said. “We’ve been building a consultancy here but there just hasn’t been enough traffic to make it a very big practice. It’s a gift from the heavens.”
“We pretty much concluded that,” Mel admitted.
“You hiring us?” Sam asked directly.
“That is what we were working our way around to with your partner,” Mel said. “We have yet to understand what services you offer. I was told your bank will do things here that expand the envelope way beyond what any Earth bank will do. Yet there are things I hesitate to ask and areas I may not wish to bring to their attention.”
“Oh true,” Sam agreed. “Some things we do are very mundane. We know what sort of contracts the Derf will accept and what will be rejected. Their standards are different than Earth's custom. We can help you word them correctly. Oddly, one of the most difficult things to buy on Derfhome is insurance. You can ask your bank to issue a policy, but the sort they feel comfortable writing is much narrower than Earth companies. They regard personal life insurance with suspicion. They don’t have enough people wanting to buy insurance to be able to apply statistics and have valid actuarial tables.
“If you wish a business insured against loss and disaster your bank may take that as a sign you don’t have confidence in the soundness of the venture. Since contracts are a public matter your insurance policy tells everyone much more about your business than some people like to reveal.”
“And how do you get around that?” Mel asked.
“Banks here tend to serve a particular trade. We know how to write a proposal and which bank will entertain such an agreement. There are a couple of banks that serve the clans. They tend to be very conservative but they will take risks that are unlikely to apply to widely scattered clan territories. A bank serving ranchers and farmers tend to have customers in a small enough geographic area that weather disasters would apply to all of their customers and are thus too great a risk. A bank for merchants may accept a certain amount of exposure for weather damage but cap it and refuse any more, over a certain arbitrary ceiling. We know which is which.”
“We can also guide you to several Fargone businesses that will insure almost anything if they find the odds attractive. There are also a few Human insurers who will pool risk even in other star systems,” King added.
“Lloyd’s I’d wager,” Jan said.
“Yes, that’s one, and interesting that you’d phrase it that way,” Bill King said. Some of our Fargoer sources would simply be regarded as bookies on Earth, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t very sophisticated about calculating odds and they have the assets to be safe counter-parties. One we’ve used runs an actual casino, but they will take both sides of a bet, writing one policy to cover you for untimely death, and another to protect you against outliving your retirement assets.”
“That might be dangerous with Life Extension Therapy,” Mel pointed out.
“You can be sure there would be exclusions written,” Sam said. “The Derf also are not nearly as security conscious as Humans with their data systems and automated services. We can mine a great deal of information from them indirectly.”
If they were extracting data the owners weren’t aware they were providing, Jan took that to mean they were effectively hackers too, even if the systems were leaky.
“If you were financing a starship, you might not want your bank to be handling the details of arming it,” King said. “At some point, they might worry your level of physical protection indicated you intended to take it in harm’s way very aggressively. We know who to direct you to on Fargone or New Japan to handle those sorts of details discreeteley without a Derfhome contract.”
“To go back to something. You said your status as intelligence agents is an open secret on Derfhome. Does that mean you know others in the trade? That would be useful information to us,” Mel said.
“But much too dangerous for us to supply,” King said. “That could lead to our status being reported back home in retaliation.”
“Then other Earth agencies are active here,” Jan concluded.
“Of course!” King said, surprised he’d think otherwise. “I’ll give you this much for free. The Third Mother of Red Tree is the one who directs their intelligence operations. Mostly using their military personnel. If you want more, ask the Moon Queen’s people on planet, or Lee Anderson if she’ll speak to you. They can tell you who all the players are but they’ll expect you to share information back to them, not just coin.”
“I spoke with the peers, Lewis and Singh yesterday,” Mel said. “They recommended a bank but I didn’t know enough then to ask a lot of other questions that I would now.”
“You have their ear and you’d bother with us?” King asked. “If you want our services, I can offer them to you for a modest retainer, if you share the things you get from them that you judge may affect us.”
“I may owe them a higher loyalty than you. I’m reluctant to put myself in that position.”
“If something is that dire, just tell us to abandon our post and run for our lives,” King said. “We have several contingencies to remove ourselves rather than be removed.”
“You would, wouldn’t you? I tell you what. For somewhat limited service between us, and avoiding mentioning my name back to Earth. I’ll pay you a solar a year for such minor advice as you mentioned and introductions. I may have Jan here call for me.”
“I’ll state minor advice and introductions on our public contract. That will rouse little attention or worry. The more so for its brevity.” King said.
Mel gave King his contact information, produced a solar, and flipped it to King.
“That finishes us up then,” he said rising to leave.
“He’s at the Old Hotel?” Sam said when his partner shared the contact. “There’s a lot of traffic there but I’m going to expand my surveillance of the hotel and car service traffic there. If he’s living there, probably other important Homies will be in residence too.”
“Some of them his clients,” King warned. “Don’t work at cross purposes to our new customer.”
When Sam looked at him askance, he elaborated.
“I mean, don’t get caught at it.”
Bill was kind enough not to say, again.
In the hallway, Jan had a question.
“You named me as a continuing contact. Do you intend to extend my day contract?”
“No, but they don’t have to know that,” Mel said. “Consider it a tip. You have access to them if you should ever need it. They would have wanted a separate contract for you and I’m not entirely sure they are going to earn out that solar.”
“Thank you, boss.”
* * *
“Were they what you expected?” Xerxes asked when Jan and Mel returned.
“Yes, they may prove useful,” Mel said. “Let’s loop through the south side of town going back to see some different areas.”
“OK,” Xerxes said, instructing the car. “Did you figure out how they can afford such nice offices?” he persisted.
“They own the building,” Mel said turning his face full on and giving him Xerxes a different enough look that the Derf could tell he was provoking a new reaction he hadn’t seen before. “They’re into a lot more than their advertising would suggest.”
Xerxes didn’t look satisfied by that, but sensed Mel didn’t like all the questions.
“When we go back across the river, note the bridge,” Xerxes said. “It’s pre-contact stonework but only five hundred years old. It’s a good example of Derf engineering.”
“How did they pay for it?” Jan asked.
“Tolls, our car company will pay to cross it and it will be covered in our charges,” Xerxes said.
“I imagine it is long paid for,” Mel guessed.
“Yes, and very low maintenance. I believe the English idiom is that it’s all gravy now.”
* * *
“My Lady, we were able to run the small unit in a sturdier frame with no mishaps. We have a good solid thrust reading and I captured a video of the run which I’m attaching.”
An icon for the file appeared in the corner of her screen.
“Born, who told you to call me your Lady? I’m not nobility and I don’t require that.”
“My… Lee, I’m not sure who I heard using that, but it just felt right.”
“Just use Lee, please. If we have a special relationship that is fine. I very much appreciate both of you. But others will probably pick up the habit if they think it is something required, and that despite not having any close relationship. We’ll just keep our affinity both ways something private, OK?”
“Certainly. The reading was just under sixteen thousand Newtons. I’m confident of five percent accuracy. Musical suggests we can boost performance without retesting by closing up the gap from rotor to housing and deepening the clearance off the rotor edge. The prototype people are offering a design for a lightweight housing and a lighter rotor. The design numbers say it should be close to two-hundred ten kilograms. If you want to wait a couple of weeks for special order electric motors to be made for you at Fargone, we can shave that down to a hundred eighty kilograms. They will be significantly more expensive wound with silver wire. I wouldn’t recommend superconductors for a high-speed motor. They have catastrophic failure modes.”
“Safely?” Lee demanded. “That seems awfully light. Do they know this is a life-critical application? Not some industrial machine that if it busts and has to sit a week waiting for repairs it’s no biggie?”
“Indeed, it has a good safety factor. Design and materials just get better all the time. I’m constantly impressed too. Are you still interested in producing four working units without waiting for more design improvements? We’re so early in the design cycle that in a couple of years it will probably look quaint. I’m sure we can make incremental improvements if you want to wait and let us refine it a bit.”
Lee looked at the guesstimates Alonso made for a composite airframe, added allowance for avionics, and ultra-light seating. The excess thrust would more than work, it would give decent enough performance for an aircar, especially at higher altitudes.
“Please, I very much want four and a spare for a proof-of-concept prototype,” Lee said. “I’m not willing to wait for incremental improvements, I want to own the first. The guy I hired to build an aircar chassis has astonished me with how light it can be made. It benefits from the same advances in materials. In a couple of years, we can build another and donate this one to a museum. The weight savings for the motors sound worth the short wait. If the silver is expensive, it will be there at the end of the service life to scrap out, won’t it?”
“Then I’ll release them to the Fargone motor shop to start fabricating,” Born agreed.
“I reviewed my meeting with Jeff Singh and our written agreement. I conclude we agreed to share all gravity tech, even if unrelated to the superluminal drive. We will be sharing this thruster phenomenon with them, but I’m not in any hurry to do so before we have had a chance to gather more information about it. Is that agreeable with you or do you feel it’s dishonest not to make an immediate report?”
“I made no treaty with anybody,” Born said. “I work for you. I’m happy to help you fulfill your agreement with him as you see it, on any schedule you please. I believe the English idiom for this is that it’s above my pay grade.
“Then for right now, we’ll keep it private,” Lee said. “I’ll talk to you again soon.
“She’s going to fit them on an aircar,” Born told Musical after the call ended. “I thought they’d be for her ship or some other space application. I’m surprised.”
“I’m not,” Musical said. “That’s exactly what I expected. She won’t put one in her ship until we have improved them quite a bit. This is just a toy for fun.”
“Some toy at this much expense,” Born said.
“The rich are different than you and me,” Musical said. “They have more money.”
Born looked a question at him. It sounded like Musical was quoting someone, but he stopped and just shook his head.
* * *
“Here are the size, weight, and performance numbers for the lift pods I’ll be mounting, with the plate size, bolt pattern, and wiring connections,” Lee told Alonso.
She had it printed out for him, with a sticky-faced memory chip stuck on the first page.
“Sea level performance?” he asked skeptically. “It will fall off quickly at altitude you know. Turbine or battery? If the weight is to be kept acceptable you aren’t going to have battery range for anything but around the city. Any turbine that can produce that much thrust is going to be a fuel guzzler throttled back to cruise power. I know you are rich but a polywell fusion reactor is just too bulky for an aircar. A ducted turboprop will likely be your best compromise. Do you want it redesigned as a lifting body to extend the range? It would be hard to do that with the low sill and bubble canopy you want.”
“There are numbers in the spec sheet for current draw,” Lee showed him with her finger. “These will be constant thrust units and it won’t fall off at higher altitude. The electrical power unit will be novel too. Something new on the market out of New Japan. It’s a fusion reactor but a high-pressure coating of bucky tubes on a sintered platinum group alloy core. It runs hot too. You have to feed it fuel on standby or use battery power to restart it if you let it cool down.”
“I figured that was just auxiliary power usage. That wouldn’t be too bad a draw even with batteries. Don’t even tell me what that New Japan power unit costs,” Alonso said. He spread a big hand on his chest like it might make him go down in cardiac arrest.
Lee was impressed he’d picked up that Human gesture.
“There’s still a whole lot you aren’t telling me,” Alonso complained. “If you have some kind of magic motors that can do that, I want to buy some for myself.”
His wrinkled-up snout said it was sarcasm, not sincere belief.
Lee thought about it a little. She basically liked Alonso. His crude nature and crusty lack of respect for most everybody could be excused since plenty of people were idiots of both species, but it was irritating her today. She could lose him as an asset if she took offense.
“I will give you the Derfhome franchise on them for aviation,” Lee offered, “if you continue to give me preferential treatment in design and fabrication as you are able.”
His muzzle smoothed out and he looked amazed.
“This is no-shit real? This is going to be fun to build. I’d offer you a marriage contract to get one of these.”
Lee laughed. “I can’t imagine you married. Not even to another Derf.”
“Tried that, twice. They both lasted about as long as my shop assistants,” he admitted.
* * *
“Besides the new people, all our old contacts keep adding new associations,” Sam complained. “I may have to hand this over to a program to track and alert me to new ones instead of trying to keep it all in my head. It won’t fit in a Venn that isn’t a mess or a spider web of contact lines. The Foys seem intent on meeting everyone in town and Singh and Lewis are meeting people who were never on my radar. Lee is meeting some fellow at an aircraft shop I’ve never heard of before. For a Derf, there is almost no information about him but his public contracts are very high value. A lot of them are complicated swaps for service and materials instead of cash. Derf don’t have to avoid taxes so that’s unusual in a high-end business. There’s also like a huge black hole there that must be filled with cash trades that have no public contract.”
“I wouldn’t expect we’re the only ones who find ways not to post what they are doing on the public net,” King said.
“No, but if they have any reason to do that, then they are much more worth investigating,” Sam said.