April 2: Down to Earth (19 page)

"You
polled
people about remembering me?" she asked, starting to get irritated.

"No, no we just bought generic polls, that ask people about a whole list of people in the news the last year and you tested way up there on the list," he assured her. "People use them to decide who to ask to help sell ground cars or whatever. I'd have been afraid to commission an actual survey about you alone, because that might tell somebody we intend to use your celebrity. And what is really helpful, is even people that don't like Home at all, still responded favorably to you as an individual."

"This is horrible," April muttered. "I have no desire to be a public figure."

"But you are, whether you want to be or not. Especially among the young people. So what I'm going to say worries me as your grandpa, but I see it as one of our few options. I think you should go down and take a vacation in North America and rub their noses in the rights we demanded in their surrender. They need reminded they lost. You should travel without permits, wear your pistol and go to clubs and parks, where you'll cause a fuss and create problems. I shouldn't try too hard to have kind words for the politicos and I wouldn't let them bustle you off out of sight, with the pretense it is special treatment. When you get interviewed and you will, don't smooth over you fought in the war. Nobody has to be ashamed of it and you can publicly, just matter of fact, tell of sinking aircraft carriers and destroying bases, that they are trying to keep from the public. It will create a real problems for them. We don't care if you even reveal the Great San Diego earthquake was a miscalculation. After all we didn't do it on purpose. If I did it they'd just arrest my butt and nobody would care. If they do it to a young, popular girl it looks horrible."

"Wouldn't they deny what I say?"

"Yes, they will, but it's against the law to mechanically verify the truth of what someone is saying in North America right now, unless you have their permission. If it wasn't, there wouldn't be a politician alive who could make a speech. So my suggestion is, to
invite
them to verify everything you say with analyzing software. All the newsies have it and use it. They just can't say what it told them. And if anyone contradicts you, point out they don't have the courage to allow their own statements to be run through the test."

"Are you sure anyone will be interested? I won't be telling them anything fifty others couldn't tell them. There
are
some things I'd like to do down there, such as to go to the Air and Space Museum, but I always figured it would be too big a hassle to do. I'm not even sure I could afford it. I have all kinds of things going on to do up here." April related to him her agreement with Heather, to help grab Lunar real estate.

"Things are cheap dirtside. You can stay in a nice hotel, for what an eight hour sleep shift in a hot slot drawer costs up here. We all kicked in money to fund it. We thought we could probably get folks to fund an official embassy in Washington, that wouldn't help us at all, but didn't want to ask the general population of Home for what looks like your private vacation, even though we think it will do much more good. All your friends kicked in. Even Ruby and Easy gave travel vouchers for your flights."

"We would have come up with about five million Euro, but Eddie has gotten filthy rich in the markets while building his ships. He insisted on giving twenty-five million. We actually tried to talk him out of it. We thought you'd object to taking that much. But he pointed out it might avert a war and if we do go to war we will probably bombard all the things off the map, that his wealth is based on. A lot of his stocks and securities would be worthless. So he considers it an investment. He swears it is less than twenty percent of what he is worth too. He's talking about financing another habitat himself, so I believe him. If anything he probably fudged a hair on that, to cover up how much he really has and I bet it is closer to five percent of what he's worth," he confided.

"What he said specifically, is you should flaunt it, that the North Americans respect money almost as much as military power, so make them aware how much wealth Home has. The newsies paint our wealth as unfair, but honestly, almost nobody would turn down a chance to share in it. Eddie recommended buying a vacation home outright and shopping so the gossip columns carry it. In fact he said if you need more, just call him up and he'd transfer it. Now with these two," he said tapping the letter, "you'll have something else to get you in the news. Just try not to get your little butt shot off."

"If I do, will you work with Heather instead of me, to get her land company going?"

"Sure. I'll do whatever she needs. I'll even go to Luna myself, if I need to. Deal?"

April thought a minute. Their appeal to her by name was strong, but she also resented being put on the spot. It smelled of a set-up, that they'd taken up a collection before talking to her and it was sort of an imposition, but a tremendous compliment too.

"Yeah, I'll go. But I think I'll get that gene mod from Jerry before I go," she said.

"Then get your pad out and I'll beam you what we have collected. It's about thirty million EM and you can convert it, or move it around, or spread it among accounts. Whatever you want. It's yours and you use it however you feel is best. If you have any left over when you come back, it's yours for the risks you're taking.

That evening she got a call from Jon.

"Which hat you got on tonight?" she asked, seeing his serious expression.

He fumbled around his bald head like he was feeling it.

"I suppose it is my Ambassador's hat. I was thinking about you going dirtside. If you want, I can delegate some of my authority to you – give you the protection of diplomatic status and write a letter about it, so they have less ability to hassle you."

"But if I do that, how will my going down help the next citizen of Home who has to cross USNA territory and can't claim diplomatic status? They can disown any courtesy they show me, as being a special case, not broad treaty rights," April suggested. "You don't intend to issue papers to every Home citizen going dirtside do you?"

Jon looked abstracted for a moment, like it was worth considering.

"No, I don't suppose we could get away with that."

"Then I think I'll pass on that, but thanks for worrying about me," April told him.

"I do. Be careful down there," he begged.

Chapter 14

April was enjoying a few days being at home, without a flight. After her last nerve racking trip to NLV she got an invitation from Ruby and Easy, for dinner at their place and that was today. She had never eaten Easy's cooking. Peeling open rations in zero G did not qualify as cooking, even if you did slop hot sauce on it to gag it down.

But she met Easy first at the North gate, to have a game of zero G hand ball, before going over. It was a bit different than North American rules. The serve line ran all the way around four walls of the court and the far wall was four meters square, but twice that deep from the serve line. You had to wear footies as well as gloves and could use your feet too of course. It was nice to be able to play again. The court had been shut down for awhile when they were bringing the Rock back, because the owner of the court, Jim, was the one who rode the rock back until it was in a stable trailing orbit behind Home.

Perhaps stable was too much to claim. It would require an occasional nudge and the distance between it and Home varied a little from day to day, but it stayed pretty much on the same track as Home. A bonus was anything that came at Home from behind had to pass the Rock and the militia was using that fact with the owner’s blessings, to set up a missile battery on the asteroid. Jim's function had been pretty much to ride along, to make sure nobody waited until it was almost back to Earth and hopped on saying it was abandoned and claiming salvage. Her dad had talked to her the other day about that. He felt they needed a treaty everyone would sign onto, affirming that if public notice was given that a mass was property in transit and not abandoned that it would be the equivalent of cattle rustling to grab it. So Jim's career as a Rock sitter was probably doomed.

But his current job was good for him. Everybody seemed to like Jim. He had a medical problem with his bones that made low G a necessity. In fact, if he went through to the South dockage to ride a shuttle to another habitat he had to take the center route. He couldn't take the spin in the outer rings and he sure couldn't take a ride down to Earth. The ride up had almost killed him when he was much younger.

When April showed up at his desk for their reservation, she was struck with how much he looked like the new merchant, who had opened the general merchandise store near the cafeteria. They both were compact and had the same slightly off proportions because of a bigger head. But Jim had that bloated look from zero G, that drugs could not entirely eliminate. He had a paper book open on the counter, with a hefty rubber band stretched across it to keep it flat, but he was looking at some paper money with visible skepticism, usually reserved for Yuan. It was a bunch of Tongan notes and the top one was an old frayed bill in a sort of rose color, that said two Pa ‘anga.

"You been getting any of these?" he asked and handed the note to her. It had a watermark on one end and a portrait of a very serious heavy duty dude on the other. He was in a fancy uniform with a stand up collar, but he had that no neck sort of look, that said you didn't want to arm wrestle this guy. April turned the note over and it had a picture of some ladies working on what had to be some kind of rug or mat on the ground, in front of a thatched hut and palm trees. It said National Reserve Bank of Tonga in English along the top.

"Yeah, I've seen a few of them. You'll probably see a lot more, because Tongan flagged vessels are doing our supply run and the Japanese seem content to leave it that way."

"Do you know which way this currency is running? Is the exchange tending up, or should I dump ‘em?"

"You'll have to go online and look Jim, but long term, maybe the next two or three years, I think you very well might see Tonga's fortunes improve dramatically," April confided to him. "Just keep it to yourself that I told you. It's not a sure thing."

"Thanks April," Jim said smiling big. He had a set of chompers you couldn't believe, when he bared them in a big smile. "I have to start saving my money again. That new guy, Ames, was in to play and was talking to me when the Tongan lady went in to play, after his singles. He asked a whole bunch of questions about my bone disease and I had to admit, I have kind of given up following the research for the last six or seven years, because they didn't seem to have any treatments on the horizon. He wants to look into it and see if something couldn't be done for me. Wouldn't that be a hoot? Do you know, he has run through about the top half dozen handball players on Home? And when he played today, they wanted the cameras relaying his match to a party running, over at the animal house. I guess they had forty or so construction workers watching the big screen there, while they had off shift lunch. The iron workers all think they have such superior zero G skills, they can't believe a Grounder that just recently came up here could whip ‘em at handball. But a lot of money changed hands and each time the odds are favoring the doc better as he whips ‘em. I'm no fool, I bet on him today before they all wise up."

April didn't know if she approved of that or not. She suspected Dr. Ames must bet heavily on himself. So he shouldn't be hurting for cash flow, waiting for the gene business to pick up. She suddenly realized she would have to decide what was fair and not, when she had the same ability.

Jim took her bills. She gave him USNA dollars and he was probably relieved after the Tongan notes, that she didn't try to unload Brazilian money or something on him. He didn't take transfer, just cash. Easy had gone into the court ahead of her.

"April, you've always been straight with me, just like your granddad. Can I ask you something confidential and not have you talk it around?" He looked unusually serious.

"Absolutely Jim. I do know how to keep a secret."

"Am I repulsive? I mean do you think if I asked a normal woman out, she'd be offended?"

"Normal as compared to what? Because your bones break easy?"

"No. I'm a dwarf. I mean I'm a pretty big dwarf and I don't have the extreme proportions, but I'm still a dwarf. I'm a hundred and fifty seven centimeters long, but only cause I got in zero G soon enough and pretty much stay here. Otherwise, I'd be shrinking every time I had a little fracture. When Dr. Ames was in here and the Tongan lady left after paying, he gave me this long warbling whistle and said, ‘Well, are you going to ask her out?' I said ‘What are you talking about? Are you out of your mind?" He said "Jim, the lady begged you to tell her where you go to eat and leaned across the counter smiling and batting her lovely eye lashes at you and told you her life history." He imitated her voice with a husky, - "Hi I'm Peggy. Who are you? You cute little fellow you." – 'You ignored her hitting on you about as hard as she could without risking prosecution for sexual harassment and you were a crab with her. That was your cue to ask her to dinner foolish boy. I may be able to do something about your bone density, but I don't know where to start to work on the other density," he said - tapping his head. "I told him if she likes dwarfs she must be some kind of pervert. He said that may be, but if she had a thing for bald guys, he would accept that from a happy Polynesian goddess and not examine it too closely. It was very confusing," he concluded.

"Jim, you are about six inches shorter than me."

"Yeah?" he said.

"If I wanted to date somebody six inches taller than me, it wouldn't matter at all. So why would six inches shorter bother me? But it don't matter because your just a little too old for me, to feel comfortable dating and some spark just isn't there. But it isn't for most of the guys I meet, so that doesn't mean anything. I'm just not ready to date anyone I know. But I'm with Dr. Ames. It looks a little like you are determined not to be happy. Give it a chance, OK?"