Invaders (a sequel to Vaz, Tiona and Disc) (3 page)

Harlan sat staring, trying to figure out the catch. Clarice finally said, “Lisanne, that sounds wonderful. Thank you
so
much.”

Harlan turned to Clarice and said, “What if she reneges on the deal after one year? We’d have geared ourselves up and bought equipment, but suddenly have nothing to do with all of it?”

Clarice looked stricken at Harlan’s suspicious tone, but Lisanne just shrugged, “Write up a contract. Put in a penalty clause that’ll make you whole if we pull out on you.”

Harlan narrowed his eyes, “How can you afford to do this?!”

“We’ve got a lot of money, so money isn’t an issue from our viewpoint. But we do need a place to live where my husband can see a long ways in every direction. A farm seems perfect for that, but… it’ll need to be maintained and we don’t want to do that.”

“Okay,” Harlan said slowly, still trying to comprehend what the catch was. “I’ll write up a contract and come over in a few days to talk it over with you and your husband?”

“Oh, he won’t want to talk about the contract. He’d be just as happy if I just hired a landscaper to grow an enormous lawn, but Ms. Roper here was telling me how you really wanted to farm more land so it seemed like this could be a win-win deal for both of us?”

“But still, surely he’s going to want to
look
at the contract?”

Lisanne shook her head, “He’s… not a very sociable person. The fewer people he has to talk to, the happier he’ll be.”

After Roper left with their new neighbor, Harlan turned to Clarice, “Any deal that seems too good to be true,
is
too good to be true.”

She grinned up at him, “That’s an
old
quote. I’ll give you another. ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’”

Harlan snorted, “I still think we’d better get a lawyer to look at whatever contract we draw up.”

***

Reven looked up as Eddie, her oldest friend, skidded to a stop beside her. Stepping off his board, he slouched down beside her on the wall, “Your parents buy the farm next door?”

Reven had been chewing her lip and staring into the distance. She glanced at Eddie and said, “No. But the people that did buy it are going to let us farm it.”

Eddie frowned, “Is that good or bad?”

“Good… I think.”

Having spent about as much time as he ever did on something serious, Eddie said, “Hey, you know what I was thinking?”

Distractedly, Reven said, “What?”

“What if…” Eddie trailed off, apparently thinking hard about something.

“What if what?” Reven asked

“What if, instead of wheels on the front and back of our boards, we had those new thruster discs?”

Reven snorted, “You wantin’ to fly out to the asteroids or something?”

“No!” Eddie said, as if offended, “Maybe skim along just above the ground, like we do on our wheels but… without wheels. Or, even up in the air! Not flying, like high or anything, but… still…
flying
!”

“Oh!” Reven said, her eyes lighting up, “That
would
be cool! Like surfing… in the sky!” She frowned thoughtfully for a moment, “
Can
you buy those discs?”

“I don’t know, let’s see.” Eddie started talking to his AI.

With Eddie’s eyes focused on his HUD (Heads Up Display) the conversation was over so Reven started talking to her own AI. After a couple of minutes with his AI, Eddie turned back to her, “I can’t find them for sale, can you?”

Reven shrugged, “They’re
really
new tech. I found articles about how they’re going to put them in airplanes and cars, but nothing about just selling the thrusters. Maybe someday?”

Eddie looked bummed, “Crap. Oh well, flying cars will be pretty cool too.” He jumped up and stepped onto his board, leaning forward and hitting his accelerator hard enough that the back wheel squeaked, “Beat you to the center.”

Reven tossed down her board and jumped on as well, “If you do, it’ll only be because you took a cheater’s start!”

Several years later…

***

Nolan’s AI chimed. It was just an incoming message and, normally, he would have waited to look at all of his messages later. But lately he’d been learning what the term “at loose ends” meant.

He had his PhD. It seemed silly to apply to be a NASA astronaut as he’d once intended, after all, he’d been the second person on Mars. Actually, it seemed silly to apply for
any
job—his patent for precipitating multi-monolayer graphene was bringing in far more money than he could spend.

Tiona’s life seemed a veritable whirlwind of thruster licensing negotiations, missions here and there around the solar system, work with the engineers at GSI as she and others constantly found and refined new uses for the thrusters—essentially the life you’d expect an active CTO to have. Sure, she called him sometimes when she was going to go someplace exotic and do something exciting, but Nolan spent far too much time doing… absolutely nothing.

He’d started playing golf for God’s sake. Once upon a time he’d thought golf to be the world’s biggest waste of time, now he found himself playing it just because of that.

He’d bought his parents a bigger house.

He’d bought an even bigger house for himself.

Being rich wasn’t nearly as cool as he’d always thought it would be.

I’ve got to get a life!
he thought for the umpteenth time.

Which brought them back to his message,
Which is probably someone else wanting to help me spend my money,
he thought disgustedly as he glanced at his HUD.

It was from Aaron, one of the guys he’d known as a grad student in physics. It said, “Got my PhD! Party Friday night! Be there!” The location and time followed. Nolan and Aaron hadn’t been good friends, but they’d known one another well enough.

And, of course, Nolan had
nothing
to do that Friday night.

***

Reven was bumping along on the big wheeled board that she rode on their farm. The ground was rough enough that, even with the larger wheels, she couldn’t go very fast.

It beat walking though.

Old Bessie, one of their dairy cows, was a bovine genius. At least, she was a genius at getting through fences. Milking and watching over their small dairy herd was Reven’s chore. Her dad or the hands took care of most of the heavy stuff, like feeding and mucking, but when Bessie escaped, it was Reven’s job to find her and bring her back.

Bessie hadn’t been in her usual haunts so Reven was heading over toward the Gettnors’ land. She suspected Bessie might have headed for one of the alfalfa fields over there. Or, just gone out to roam. Reven had the feeling that Bessie just liked to get out and see the world. Reven thought that if Bessie wasn’t—like all dairy cattle—always hungry, she wouldn’t stop to eat and Reven would never have a chance to catch her.

Something shot up into the air in front of Reven! She shifted her weight way back on the board, engaging its regenerative brakes and bringing it to a halt.

A disc! About 10 inches in diameter, it just
floated
there about six feet in the air, barely off to the side of the rutted dirt road Reven had been following. She immediately recognized that it had to be one of the thruster discs that had been in the news. Ford was putting them in cars and Boeing was putting them in aircraft. GSI had been using huge discs to build a habitat in low Earth orbit. Politicians were going crazy trying to decide how to regulate them.

But Reven had no idea that they could be so small, or that any ordinary people had access to them yet!
What’s this thing doing just floating here? And why did it pop up just as I was coming along?
She leaned forward on her board so that it would move a little closer. The board wasn’t very stable at a low speed, but somehow she felt like the disc would be frightened away if she approached rapidly—like an animal or something.

As she got closer she sensed that it was pivoting, then realized that the reason she could tell it was pivoting was because it had a camera lens on the central hub beneath it. The disc was turning to keep the lens pointed at her.
That seems a little creepy
. A little shiver ran over her and she suppressed a sudden urge to flee. Then she remembered just how much she and Eddie had wanted some thruster discs to mount on their boards a couple of years ago.

Eddie’d gotten distant recently. He’d been spending a lot of time with Kate and that’d been breaking Reven’s heart. Unlike Reven, Kate wore skirts, shoes with heels and make up. Eddie'd been Reven’s friend for years and she just didn’t know what’d happened. But Kate didn’t seem to like Reven and so Reven hardly ever saw Eddie anymore. Seeing the disc, Reven couldn’t help but wonder whether getting access to some thrusters might give her a way to spend more time with her old friend again. And somebody here
must
have a way to get some of the thrusters.

Deciding
not
to be freaked out, she smiled and gave the camera a wave. Stepping off her board, she walked right up to the hovering disc. However, when she got too close, it backed away from her.

Deciding it must be a remotely piloted drone of some kind, she started looking around for the person flying it. She was quite a bit closer to the Gettnors’ house than she’d realized, but she couldn’t see anyone. With all the sheds gone and only low crops planted near the house, the only place someone could be hiding would be in or behind the house or the barn.

Reven looked back at the disc. Its lens was still pointing at her and she realized that whoever was flying it wouldn’t necessarily need to be able to see her directly, they could see her just fine through that camera
. It probably picks up audio too,
she thought. “Hello?” she said.

The disc continued floating there without any reaction to her greeting. After a minute, she tried again, “Hello? Mr. Gettnor? Ms. Gettnor?” Reven knew Ms. Gettnor pretty well because Ms. Gettnor and Reven’s mom had gotten to be good friends. However, Reven hadn’t
ever
met Ms. Gettnor’s husband. Her mom thought the Gettnors were pretty wonderful because they let Reven’s dad farm their land for free, but she and Ms. Gettnor seemed like they would have been chums anyway.

After staring at her for another few seconds, the disc suddenly dropped until it was only about six inches off the ground and zipped away toward the barn, moving very fast. Shooting around the corner of the barn it disappeared.

The missing dairy cow forgotten, Reven got back on her board. She leaned forward and the board accelerated down the path to a spot where she was able to turn left off the rutted road. She had to slow even more as her board rolled over some rough spots, but then she came to the big flat grassy area where the Gettnors’ had the construction crews dig the ground up before they moved in. With some surprise, Reven realized the ground there was really smooth. She wondered what they’d done to the ground there to make their lawn so flat and
why
they would’ve gone to so much trouble. She’d never even seen anyone out on what had to be almost a half an acre of turf. Well, except for her dad who regularly mowed the big expanse of grass for them.

Reven leaned forward to speed across the big lawn, tilting her feet a little to make big, fun swoopy curves. She arrived at the barn without anybody coming out to greet her so she rolled up to the corner the disc had disappeared around and stopped. She toed her board up and leaned it against the corner. She eyed the big barn door, noticing that it seemed to fit much more tightly than any barn door she’d ever seen. It certainly had a lot snugger fit than the door on Reven’s family barn

Reven looked around, still seeing no one. She poked her head around the corner and saw an ordinary man-sized door. Her eyebrows lifted as she saw a large doggie door in the wall next to it. A doggie door, she noted, about the right size for the disc.

Reven pursed her lips as she wondered whether she should go to the house. If she hadn’t seen the disc go around the corner here… Ms. Gettnor was friendly and Reven would feel comfortable talking to her, but she had a feeling that Ms. Gettnor would distract her with some cookies, talk to her for a while and send her on her way without ever explaining the disc to her. Steeling her nerve, Reven knocked on the barn’s human sized door.

Nothing happened. Reven stood chewing her lip and staring at the door for a couple of minutes. She kept thinking that the polite thing to do would be to go to the house, but not wanting to. She knocked and waited a couple more times.

She’d just given up and turned away towards the house when the door opened behind her. A strange looking man in baggy shapeless clothing stood in the doorway. He was bald. Then Reven realized he didn’t even have eyebrows. Reven glanced at his arms and saw no hair there either. “Mr. Gettnor?” she said brightly.

He nodded expressionlessly. It wasn’t until his eyes rose to meet hers for a fraction of a second, then dropped back down that she realized that he hadn’t been looking at her.

Reven waited a beat for him to say something more. When he didn’t, she said, “Hi, I’m Reven Davis from next door.” When the man still didn’t say anything, she elaborated, “My dad farms your land?” After a pause, she continued, “Your wife and my mom are good friends.”

He blinked, then after a moment said, “Hello Reven, it’s good to meet you.”

There wasn’t much inflection to his speech and Reven had the distinct feeling that he’d only said something because he knew she expected him to. The entire interaction was making her feel weird, but she couldn’t decide whether she’d been rude by invading his privacy or he was being rude by… she wasn’t quite sure how to describe his rudeness, but it seemed like he should say a little more, or at least smile and look her in the eye. “Um, I’m really, uh, interested in thruster discs.” She paused a moment thinking that he would say something, but when he didn’t, she continued, “I assume that disc that came over and looked at me is one of yours? It’s really cool!”

Mr. Gettnor’s expression seemed to change, though Reven wasn’t quite sure how. His face didn’t seem really to have moved much, but she suddenly felt like he’d been wondering how to get rid of her, but now was interested in what she had to say. Nonetheless, he didn’t say or ask anything.

“I was wondering how you got a thruster disc?” Reven said, feeling like she was babbling. “My friend Eddie Scott and I used to have big plans for when they were finally available. We wanted to put discs under our boards so we could ‘surf the air.’”

Mr. Gettnor blinked again. His blinks seemed just a little slow and Reven had the feeling that they marked a little disjunction in his thinking. After a moment, he said, “Surf the air?”

“Yeah,” she said getting a little excited that he might be interested. “Like my board here,” she said, reaching around the corner and grabbing it from where it was leaned up against the barn. Seeing him stare at it like he’d never seen one before, she dropped it onto its wheels and stepped up onto it without making it roll. “It’s got those high-powered A7 batteries in the board and motors in the wheels.”

Mr. Gettnor was staring at her as she stood on it. Hesitantly, he said, “Why doesn’t it fall over?”

Reven looked down, “You mean because it’s only got one wheel in the front and one wheel in the back?”

He nodded.

“The board’s suspended below the level of the wheel hubs, so that makes it pretty stable. And once it’s rolling, it’s stable like a bicycle is. When it’s stationary like this, it
is
kind of hard to stand on it without tipping, but I’ve been riding these things for years, so I’m pretty good at it.”

“Oh,” was all he said, but Reven had the impression that he’d suddenly and
fully
comprehended how it all worked.

“I don’t see a controller. Do you tell your AI to accelerate and decelerate it?”

“Oh, no,” Reven said. To accelerate I shift my weight forward and to decelerate or reverse, I lean my weight toward the back wheel. The board’s AI can tell where my weight is from the relative pressure on the two wheels and it accelerates or decelerates in response to that.”

Mr. Gettnor tilted his head slightly, then said, “How do you turn it from side to side?”

“The wheels are mounted so they turn when the board tilts. It’s pretty hard at first, but you get the hang of it after a while. Would you like to try it?”

Gettnor looked surprised. “No,” he said, not exactly emphatically, but Reven had the feeling that he’d just expressed himself more forcefully than he usually did. She realized he hadn’t taken his eyes off the board since she brought it around the corner. It gave her the impression he was much more interested in the device than the person he was talking to. Speaking slowly, he asked, “If you put thruster discs under the board… how were you planning to control them?”

Reven’s eyes leapt to his face, thinking that he was probably teasing her, but he was still staring down at the board. Deciding that he must be serious, she said, “Um, I haven’t given it a lot of thought. I guess… that if you wanted it to work pretty much like the boards do now, traveling just a few inches over the ground, you could…” She looked up at him again, “I don’t really know enough about how they work. How
does
the disc you have fly so close to the ground?”