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CHAPTER 18

“Hey,” Jason said, shaking his first guest’s hand. “Jason Graham. Welcome to Brandywine Foods.”

It was taking a while to get Brandywine’s set up and the Twelve Bravo Fuel Mine negotiations were going nowhere. So, he’d decided to stick his nose in and invite the other large unit holders to lunch. A real fresh-food, cooked lunch.

But he was using the Brandywine offices for the lunch meeting.

“Ryan Phillips,” Phillips said, looking him over along with the room.

Tim had decided to lean in to Brandywine being about food. The interior of the reception area was now dotted with pictures of wild animals and plants with example foods from them. There were pictures of wild mushrooms in their settings with other pictures under them of bushels of the same wild mushrooms then cooked in a skillet. Bison and buffalo and then cuts of meat on a grill. Shrimp runs, piles of fresh shrimp and more piles of boiled. Fish, fruits, the greens they were starting to collect—the room was permeated with images of food.

“I hope that offer of lunch wasn’t joking,” Phillips said. He was tall and slender with brown hair and eyes. “This room is making me hungry.”

“Already prepared and in stasis,” Jason said, grinning.

“All this is . . . ?”

“All this is collected on the planet by our harvest teams,” Jason said. “And brought back to the station. Right now, we only sell semicommercial. Food is shipped by the case, minimum. And only raw. We’re in the process of building an event space and possibly later a restaurant.”

“Fresh food is pretty rare . . . ” Phillips said as the outer door dilated.

“Am I in the right place?”

The speaker was a woman with black hair and a slender build. Jason recognized her as Eowyn De Wever.

“Ms. De Wever,” Jason said, shaking her hand as well. “Welcome to Brandywine Foods. Jason Graham. And this is Ryan Phillips.”

“We’ve met,” De Wever said, smiling tightly. “Ryan.”

“Eowyn,” Phillips said, also smiling tightly.

“I take it your parents were Tolkien fans?” Jason asked.

“How’d you guess?” Eowyn said, grimacing.

“If you really hated it, why not change it?” Jason asked, furrowing his brow.

“I don’t, really,” Eowyn said. “I like Tolkien, too. But I probably should have thought of the issues of going into IT. Then there was the fact that I used to cosplay. But I preferred anime and superhero. Then people would find out my name was Eowyn and . . . It’s like it hammered me into a mold I was supposed to live, you know? And there I go oversharing again.”

“My dad made the Great Santini look gentle, kind and wishy-washy,” Jason said, shrugging. “We all have to live with the life we’re given. What about you, Mr. Phillips? Also a science fiction and fantasy fan?”

“Not really,” Phillips said with an edge in his voice. “I was a vice president with Amoco before the Transfer.”

“Where’d you go to school?” Jason asked.

“University of Texas and he has a master’s in business from the Wharton School of Business,” Eowyn said archly. “That’s the University of Pennsylvania. A very prestigious school!”

“At least I have an MBA,” Phillips snapped. “Not a gaming degree.”

“It’s not a degree in gaming, you moron . . . ” Eowyn snapped back.

“Okay,” Jason said, holding up his hands. “I haven’t been involved in these discussions because I’ve been a little busy fighting crocodiles. But . . . if we could table this until we’ve got some real food in our stomachs, maaaybe we can come to some agreement . . . ”

“This the right place?”

Eduard Klima was bearded and heavy-set with brown hair and blue eyes. He was also Czech, the only non-North American among the top unit holders in Twelve Bravo.

“The right place,” Jason said, introducing himself.

“Have these two gone at it yet?” Klima asked, making a face.

“Oh, yeah,” Jason said. “We’re only waiting on Ms. Bellinger. Perhaps we could move to the conference room. There’s appetizers.”

Jason led the way to the conference room and opened up one of the waiting stasis cases. Besides five places laid out, there were also small plates laid out to the side.

“Skewers of wild mushrooms and wild onions,” Jason said, laying the tray out by the small plates. “Woodfire grilled. Drinks? We have a rather questionable white wine, not a vintage I know, some decent beers and a selection of Brandywine’s Finest Forgery liquors.”

“Brandywine’s . . . what?” Eowyn asked, taking a skewer and popping a mushroom into her mouth. “Oh, that’s good. What? And I’ll try the white.”

“Brandywine’s Finest Forgery,” Jason said, pouring a glass of white wine and handing it to Eowyn. “Our team of expert counterfeiters are using basic ethanol along with an array of artificial and natural flavorings to fake fine liquor. It was illegal on Earth but it’s a bit more libertarian here. Mister Phillips? The Finest Forgery Lucullan? Guaranteed to taste old enough to date.”

“Seriously,” Phillips said but it was around a mouthful of mushroom. “These are really good. What are they?”

“Bellerophon Shiitake, I believe,” Jason said. “Most of the mushroom species we’ve found are not native to earth. They’ve evolved.”

He poured a glass of dark liquor and handed it to Phillips.

“Seriously. Try it. I’d favor your thoughts. Mr. Klima?”

“You mentioned beer,” Klima said with a thick Slavic accent. “Anything decent?”

“To a Czech?” Jason asked, shrugging. “I can hope.”

He pulled out one of the microbrewery oatmeal stouts and poured it in a glass.

“Try it?” he said as the door opened.

“Sorry I’m late. Data said I should have taken the left turn at Albuquerque.”

Mary Claire Bellinger was short with a muscular build, blonde hair and bright green eyes.

“Oh, that smells heavenly,” she said, inhaling then grabbing a skewer.

“Shall we be seated?” Jason asked.

* * *

“You don’t understand business!” Phillips snapped. He’d maybe had a bit too much Brandywine’s Finest.

“I know somebody who has a stick up their ass!” De Wever replied. And wine.

The lunch had gone . . . sporadically well and occasionally wrong. The problem was choosing management and they hadn’t even gotten that far. If one individual held more than seven percent of an item that was defined by units, they could call a vote of the unit holders on matters like forming a board. Jason’s control of Spaceship Four and Carbon Converter Charlie were examples. A few other people had managed similar control of some facilities.

But the fuel mine had sixteen million discrete “owners.” And absent a single owner with holdings above seven percent, it required twelve percent agreement.

And nobody, not even Jason, was listening to the alerts on votes or trades.

Jewel had done the math. It took a computer. It would require around eight hundred thousand people to listen to the alerts and agree to vote on a board. Any of them could propose someone for the board. They didn’t even have a size for the board.

No board, no leadership. No leadership, no agreements on who would be allowed to lease and operate the fuel mine. No operating company, no fuel.

De Wever and Phillips were two personalities that were never going to get along. Phillips was a credentialist who felt the people who should be making the decisions were people who were experienced at and trained in making those decisions.

De Wever had had problems with men telling her she didn’t really “fit in” for most of her career and resented it. But she also was smart as a whip. Probably smarter than Phillips, who was no idiot. Problem was, she knew it and would use it to needle Phillips. One way was to point out that of the four of them, Phillips held the fewest units. Which meant he’d been slow off the mark.

Klima and Bellinger mostly sat the battle out but enjoyed the food.

“Whoa, whoa,” Jason said, holding up his hands for the fifth time. “Phillips is right.”

“What?” Eowyn snapped. “You’re taking his side?”

“I’m not taking anyone’s side,” Jason said. “My sole intent here is to get the fuel mine up and going. I really don’t care one whit how. But he has a point. People inside the big business world do know details and intricacies that aren’t well understood by people outside big business. It’s not all golfing, an old-boy’s-club and insider dealing. What’s the depreciation on a fuel mine?”

“I . . . ” Eowyn said. “No clue.”

“Nor do you know how to calculate it,” Phillips snapped.

“He’s also wrong,” Jason said.

“How?” Phillips snapped.

“The bottom line of all business is people,” Jason said soothingly. “People are the biggest risk in any business venture. Yes?”

“Yes,” Phillips said, listening for once.

“The problem for traditional business is that the unit holders are a large number of people who have no clue what’s going on,” Jason said. “That, right there, is a major risk. And traditional business is mostly about reducing risk. That is a primary area of training and experience. Reduce costs, reduce risk.”

“And there’s a problem with that?” Phillips said, a touch angrily.

“There’s no way to calculate the risks,” Jason said, shrugging. “Zero. Zip. There are sixteen million, less a bit, holders of units in Twelve Bravo. This group represents less than one percent of that ownership. Tomorrow, someone might figure out a way to gain a much larger share. No idea how, but that’s the risk. So even if some agreement can be come to, tomorrow that agreement might be moot. That risk is incalculable. So are all the other risks.

“You can calculate depreciation on a fuel mine, you say? We don’t even have a firm grasp on how the technology works. It will take a physicist to explain to engineers to explain to finance people what the lifespan of the various parts are before depreciation can be calculated. It might break a week after we’ve gotten it up and going. There might be an expensive part that breaks on a weekly basis . . . ”

“I find that unlikely,” Phillips said, frowning.

“But can you eliminate it as a risk?” Jason asked. “No, you can’t. Because nobody knows. So that’s where you’re right and where you’re wrong. The value of the experience and training of traditional businesspeople, such as yourself, is their ability and experience at calculating risk to the last penny and eliminating every possible risk. This is a serious statement: Eowyn knows exactly as much about the risks of the mine as you do. As I do. As any of us do. Which does not, to make it clear to Eowyn, invalidate the value of a Wharton degree.”

“I never said it was useless,” Eowyn said. “But . . . ”

“But it’s not the utility it had as a vice president of Amoco,” Jason pointed out. “It has a value in this discussion. In the details. But the real problem is people. As in: Nobody wants to hear about their units. There’s too damned many of them!”

“With that I’ll one hundred percent agree,” Phillips said with an aggrieved sigh. “Did those robot idiots really have to give ownership of everything to five hundred million people?”

“How else?” Klima said. “I’m from Eastern Europe. I know how people were screwed over by privatization. By making it illegal to trade units for cash, it prevents oligarchs from stealing everything!”

“We, somehow, have to get twelve percent of sixteen million people to agree to at least a board to elect leadership,” Jason said, shrugging. “Together we control less than one percent. And even we can’t agree. So, if we’re going to have any chance of getting the twelve percent onboard, we’re going to have to agree on something. We agree that everyone’s got too many units and it’s a pain. Can we agree lunch was good?”

“Lunch was very good,” Mary Claire said, grinning. “You could bribe people with food.”

“Sixteen million,” Jason said. “Everyone who checked either held onto their shares or added immediately. Everyone else has turned off their alerts for unit trades. The station is going to need fuel within six months. If we can’t form a board, the gubmint is probably going to step in. It might come to that. So, we need to figure out how to get twelve percent of the ownership to listen.”

“Good luck,” Mary Claire said.

* * *

“I got a notification today,” Mabel said.

Her words jerked Cade out of his irritated reverie. They stood at the planting beds site, and Cade stared at the dirt strewn across the floor. When word had got out that Cade Oldham liked planting cabbage and carrots, people had begun to come to him to sell their flowerbeds. He’d tried to trade and retrade as necessary, to keep all his beds in one place, and he’d mostly succeeded.

So, he’d grown to eight and then twelve and eventually to the point where he owned all the planting beds in this park. The locals had taken to calling the park “Cade’s Farm,” which only felt to Cade like a knife twisted in his back.

This morning, someone had kicked dirt out of several of the beds. It happened from time to time. Cade wondered if he could explain what he was doing to President Dewalt and get the right to put up flexmet fences to keep people out.

He’d already inquired, and determined that there was no way to acquire the playground at the center of Cade’s Farm. The playground attracted children, and, frankly, it was probably children who kept messing with Cade’s planting beds.

“What notification?” he mumbled. He could get a cot and sleep on the Farm, keep an eye on it himself.

“I was notified that I volunteered to be on the first colony ship.”

Something in Mabel’s voice made Cade wary. He tore his eyes away from the dirt. “Yes. Under the new homesteading law, we get a bigger plot the earlier we’re willing to go down. I’m still trying to get us down on these onesie-twosie flights, but I figured I’d reserve us a place on the first major ship, just in case.”

“There are only five hundred million people,” Mabel said, “most of them not farmers. Seems like there should be plenty of land.”

“I think so,” Cade agreed. “We definitely want our choice, to get the best land, don’t we?”

Mabel’s face suggested that maybe she didn’t.

“You know Richter, from church,” Cade said. “He says he’s up for the farming, but not interested in being a pioneer. He doesn’t want to go first. Of course, that’s why the first colonists get the biggest land grants, because they’re taking more risk. Going down when the animals are wildest and the fields aren’t plowed and there’s no infrastructure. But maybe we want to go down later. It would probably still be enough land for us, and less roughing it.”

Mabel had come out with Cade to weed, and the grubby gardening gloves on her hands, now balled into fists, made her look like a boxer.

“Is that what we want?” she asked.

“I feel like I’m missing a point here,” Cade said. “Maybe you should tell me what we want.”

“So that’s how it works,” Mabel said. “One of us decides for all of us. And we take turns who’s the decider.”

“Got it.” Cade bowed his head. “Sorry. I can withdraw the application. Sooner or later, we’ll have to go down, but we don’t have to be in the first wave. Or the second, or whatever. We’ll go when you want to.”

“What do you want, Cade?”

Cade frowned. “Well, I thought we’d go early.”

“Forget about that.” Mabel pressed in close to him, which was disconcerting. She was so young. “Forget about the timing of going down to the planet, that’s the least of it. What do you want?”

Cade’s arms fell to his sides. “I just want everyone to be happy.”

She punched him in the chest. When he didn’t respond, she punched him twice more.

“What the hell do you want, Cade Oldham? I’m your wife, but you don’t touch me. You can barely bring yourself to look at me. Our son has become a delinquent, and you just let him run wild. What do you want?”

Cade took a deep breath.

“I want my muscles back. I want to stand on land I own—land my grandfather farmed—and see it breathe and grow. I want to meet my neighbor at the post office in town and talk about the weather. I want to eat corn on the cob under an open sky. I want to look at my pastor, and not see a kid. I want to look at myself in the mirror, and not see a kid. I want to . . . ”

“You want to look at your wife,” she said. “And not see a kid.”

“It feels wrong.” His face was numb.

“You know,” she said softly, “I’m stronger and more flexible than I have been in decades. You might really enjoy that.”

“I just . . . ” Cade shrugged. “I’m not ready.”

* * *

“So, this time you want me to punch it out at twenty thousand feet,” Tom said. He was in his ship, as usual. There was a living area onboard. “Not just treetop.”

“Yes,” Jason said. “Now, I’m going to be up front. I’m not willing to test this on people. Yet. You’ll be carrying myself and the guy who’s going to be working the project. I’ll be heading back aboard. The real experiment is whether the conexes will land at the designated DZ without significant human input. Just AI and the onboard tractor.”

“I’ve never done a cargo drop,” Tom said then shrugged. “But, what the hell. It’s your cargo. No liability at all?”

“None,” Jason said. “We take full financial responsibility.”

Tim and Kevin had been so uncertain about that, he’d agreed to use his own capital. He had enough.

The company was growing. Three-day training courses had seventeen projects working already, forty more in planning and they’d had to find new warehouse space. Ships were bringing up more and more fresh food, money was rolling in and Tim had, reluctantly, agreed to a small dividend payment.

That was what was paying for the experiment. He’d admitted that it had nothing to do with Brandywine per se. The company would repay him normal drop costs if it worked.

If it worked.

“I’ll try most things once,” Tom said. “More times if it’s a good idea.”

“We’re about to find out,” Jason said.

* * *

“I’m not jumping this, right?” Bobby said, looking through the down viewscreens. “It’s a long way down . . . ”

Bobby West was a “big-bore gun nut” by his own description. He’d completed training, such as it was, and was taking in a “survey and exploit” package to a pinewood area in Europa. It was Europan midspring and the weather was good. A front had gone through but projected winds weren’t bad. Might be a bit chilly on the ground but Bobby was from Wisconsin and prepared.

For the environment. Not to jump.

“Some HALO gear . . . and some HALO training,” he continued, referring to High Altitude Low Opening parachute insertion. “Aaand I’d still say no.”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Jason said.

“Computer says this is the right drop point based on winds aloft,” Tom said.

“Green light,” Jason replied.

“Eject,” Tom ordered.

The ship swung around to view the dropping cargo. It was visibly tearing itself apart, the flexmet extending and stretching the conexes into weird shapes.

“Jewel!” Jason said.

“We’re slowing it down,” Jewel said. “This stuff is not exactly aerodynamic and we’re having to learn, too. Just hang on.”

The cargo stabilized and the ship continued to follow it down.

“Since we couldn’t drop as fast as planned, we’re going to need the ship’s tractors to help get it to the drop zone,” Jewel said after a moment. “We probably should have practiced from a lower altitude.”

“But it’s doable,” Jason said.

“If you want to do it in quantity, we’re going to have to do several more experiments,” Jewel said. “And if you want to do it to humans in stasis, you’re going to need multiple tests.”

“You’re going to be dropping us that way?” Bobby said.

“Probably not,” Jason said. “It’s for something else. But in stasis you really can drop anything.”


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