Vaz 4: Invaders Read online

  ***

  Vaz had his arms crossed the over his chest and stared out the front windshield unhappily. “Why are we driving way up here?”

  The car slowed, then turned left off the main road onto a little lane. Deciding she couldn’t put off telling Vaz where they were going any longer, Lisanne said, “You remember how you wanted to have more room around our house so that we could be safe?”

  He turned toward her, puzzlement in his eyes. “Yeah?”

  “You were going to do it by buying the houses around us in our neighborhood so you could put an electronic monitoring system on their grounds.”

  Vaz shrugged irritably, “Yeah. We can afford it. Besides, I can use their basements for research space.”

  Lisanne said, “Sure, but all those buildings… They’d provide hidden pathways between them where people coming after us could sneak in.” Lisanne hoped that was true. She didn’t really know much about defending your property and wondered whether the surrounding homes could serve as some kind of protective wall against invaders instead. It didn’t seem like that was possible to her, since they all had quite a bit of space between them.

  “I’d put monitors to watch the areas between them,” Vaz said.

  Their car was pulling up to a farmhouse. “But suppose,” Lisanne said, “we lived in a building on some open land where you could see a long ways in most directions.”

  Giving her a surprised look, Vaz said, “Tear down the houses?”

  “No,” Lisanne said patiently. “Like here,” she waved a hand around.

  Vaz suddenly got rigid like he did when he was really uncomfortable, “You mean, if we moved?!”

  Soothingly, Lisanne said, “Up here we wouldn’t really even have neighbors.” She paused a moment to let that sink in, then calmly continued, “You could go outside without running into anyone… The approaches to the house would be open and easy to monitor… It’d be peaceful…”

  For a moment Vaz looked around at the open fields and Lisanne thought he might be drawn into her vision, but then he set his chin and turned his eyes back down to the floorboards, “But I wouldn’t have the surrounding homes’ basements to put research stuff into.”

  Despite a flash of irritation, Lisanne had the car pull ahead. When it had she said, “But you’d have this huge barn,” she said waving at the enormous building. “It’d hold a couple of saucers. “She waved to the right at a cluster of smaller buildings, “Plus, you’d have all these outbuildings.”

  Vaz looked up at the additional buildings, a little gleam coming in his eyes. Nonetheless, he said, “They block our line of sight for monitoring approaches just like the neighborhood buildings do.”

  Lisanne shrugged, “So, tear them down and build underground. No one will object to that out here, but I think the city will complain if you tear down a bunch of homes in our neighborhood. It’s at least against the homeowners’ association rules.” She paused for a second, then brought out her ultimate weapon, “You might even have to present at some kind of city Council meeting about why you’re buying up all the houses around you.” She didn’t really think he’d have to do something like that, after all he could hire a lawyer to do it in his place, but Lisanne figured that talking in front of a group had to be Vaz’s worst nightmare. The very possibility that he might have to do it might let her get her way.

  Vaz simply sat staring straight ahead at the barn. Lisanne wasn’t sure whether it was mulish sullenness, or deep thought. After a bit, she said, “Do you want to get out and look at the barn?” She’d thought about asking him if he wanted to look at the house, but knew he didn’t really care about where he slept and ate. What he cared about was where he’d be doing his beloved research.

  A few seconds passed, then Vaz said, “Okay.” He opened the door of the car and got out.

  ***

  Harlan Davis looked up at the real estate agent’s car as it bumped up his driveway. To no one in particular, he said, “God I hope this is good news.” He was barely making a profit farming the land he had. When the farm next door came up for sale after old man Grandy died, Harlan and his wife had decided they needed to either buy Grandy’s farm or sell their own. He wouldn’t need much more equipment to farm both parcels and the extra labor he’d need would be something he could hire seasonally. The problem was that the cost of land had gotten so high. He calculated he’d only make a small amount more profit after paying the mortgage on the new land. That was, if he could get them to take an offer which was substantially less than the Grandy estate was asking.

  Harlan’s young daughter Reven, who’d been helping him, gave him a smile and pronounced herself certain that the sale would go through. Harlan gave her an uncertain pat on the shoulder and said, “Hope you’re right.” He started walking toward the vehicle as it pulled to a stop. Glancing toward the house he saw his wife Clarice come out the door.

  The real estate agent, Kathy Roper, got out of the car and gave Harlan and amused look. “I’ve got some bad news and some good news,” she began, “I think you might like the good news though.”

  “They accepted the offer?” Harlan said hopefully.

  Kathy shook her head, “Sorry. No, they got an offer for the full price from a real estate developer in Raleigh. Then he got outbid by a private individual who’s actually paying the Grandy’s 10 percent more than they asked.”

  Harlan’s heart sank. By his calculations the breakeven point for him had been about 92 percent of the asking price. If he paid more than that, he’d essentially be working harder to lose money, at least until the mortgage was paid off. Besides, he didn’t think the bank would loan him that much. Saying, “Son of a bitch!” he turned and looked off toward his fields, not wanting anyone to see his eyes.

  Tentatively, Clarice said, “You said there was some good news?”

  Roper said, somewhat uncertainly, “Well, yes, I think it’s good news. The new owners say they’d like someone to farm the land still. They say they don’t want it to lie fallow or become overgrown. I thought maybe you’d be interested in that?”

  “I’m supposed to be some kind of hired hand then!” Harlan said, embarrassed to hear the rough emotional edge in his voice. He prided himself on having control of his emotions.

  “Well, I’m not sure,” Roper said. “I had the impression you’d farm it pretty much how you liked, but Ms. Gettnor’s here in the car. She’s hoping to talk to you about how you might work it out, if you’re interested?”

  Harlan turned and realized the car had a passenger who hadn’t gotten out as yet. He didn’t really want to talk to her, but Clarice was already saying, “Well sure, why don’t we all go inside and talk over some lemonade?”

  Damn Clarice, Harlan thought, she’d be sociable with the devil himself. He tried to remind himself that she negotiated better than he did, probably because she was sociable.

  About 15 minutes later they were all gathered around the table in the Davis’ farmhouse. Clarice had poured them all some lemonade while Reven had passed out cookies. Clarice and this Ms. Gettnor, Lisanne she wanted to be called, were chattering on as happily as if they were old friends while Roper looked on approvingly. Harlan sat at his place at the head of the table saying little and trying not to scowl as dread filled him. We’re going to get screwed, he thought morosely. He started to wonder what they could sell their farm for and whether it would be enough to set themselves up on a bigger farm further from Raleigh.

  “So, Lisanne, you’re not wanting to farm the land yourselves?” Clarice asked.

  “Oh, no. We need a home with open fields around it for… various reasons. Our… current plan is to remodel the house and the barn. We’d get rid of the sheds.” She glanced at Harlan and Clarice, “Maybe you could use them?”

  Harlan grunted, worrying that he was about to get gouged, “They’re not worth much.”

  “Oh, we aren’t trying to sell them. We’d have to send them to the recyclers, but if you have use for them you’re welcome to them.”
She paused as if she just had another thought, “They’ve got some farm equipment in them that we can’t use either. You’d be welcome to that as well.”

  Harlan blinked. The woman must have no idea how much some of that equipment was worth. Getting it for free would be quite a coup.

  To Harlan’s horror, Clarice put a hand on the woman’s wrist and said, “Oh, no Lisanne. That equipment would be worth a pretty penny. You don’t want to be giving it away.”

  Lisanne shrugged, “We have no use for it. Just as well go to you. Hopefully it would contribute to our being good neighbors.”

  Clarice stubbornly shook her head and gave her a sad look, “We wouldn’t be good neighbors anymore, once you realized how much you could have sold it for.”

  Lisanne said, “Perhaps it could serve as an inducement in my nefarious plan to get you guys to farm our land?”

  Trying to keep the suspicion out of his voice, Harlan said, “And how much are you going to charge us to farm your land?”

  “Oh,” Lisanne said covering her mouth as if slightly embarrassed. “I was thinking I’d have to pay you to farm it.” She frowned, “Would you be willing to do it for free?”

  Stunned, Harlan looked at the others gathered around the table as if expecting someone to start laughing. Then a suspicion formed, “Not if you’re intending to keep all the income from the crops!”

  “Oh, no! You could have the income. All we want is for the fields immediately adjacent to the house to be… low? What I’m trying to say is that whatever you decided to grow in those fields shouldn’t be more than a couple of feet high?”

  Harlan blinked. Is she crazy? he wondered. “So, what you’re suggesting is that we would farm the land, sell the crops, and keep the income. And…” he frowned in puzzlement as he tried to understand, “what you’d get out of the deal would be…?”

  “A nice view out our windows, or something like that anyway. Maybe we’d object to some crops you might grow if we didn’t like the way they looked. I’m not sure, but we wouldn’t ask you to take them out right away, just not grow them the next year.”

  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!”

  The Story

  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 n
ight.

  ***

  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.