April 6: And What Goes Around (19 page)

"Ah, you
do
understand then" Natsume said relieved. "I was struggling for a way to
politely bring that to your attention. I brought a video for you to see. This
is on the roof of a facility which relays USNA space traffic data. There was a
problem with the air conditioning unit and a maintenance worker went up to work
on it. He propped the access door to the stairs open with his tool box and was
getting a screwdriver out of it. Watch." He turned his pad to them.

The fellow had on
a blue jumpsuit with a name tag and a utility belt. He took the screwdriver and
headed for the nearest big square air conditioning unit. When he was only three
or four steps away a couple shiny dots, sunlight flashing off their tiny wings,
zipped through the air behind him converging on the door. Two turned into a
dozen in a heartbeat and several spun away wings locked and dead to fall to the
rooftop. By the time he took another step there were fifty and he stopped and
turned because there was a pop – pop – pop and tiny flashes of light. Each
little flash left a puff of grey smoke.

He rushed back
towards the open doorway to close it, but there was a thick cloud of tiny motes
like a bee swarm and a fusillade of flashes like a fireworks barrage. He threw
his arms up to protect his face and stumbled backwards falling. The wrecked
fliers were a half-circle rug of debris in front of the contested doorway, then
a multi-rotor drone as big as a serving platter swooped in and cut a swath
through the cloud, scattering dead spy bots in every direction.

Right behind it
was another drone almost as large, which overtook and crashed into the first
from behind. They both crashed tangled together, parts and pieces flying, and
the fuel from one was a flaming smear across the roof. The other was electric,
but it's batteries shorted in a flash that was eye searing.

As quickly as it
started it was over. The mechanic sat  up and pulled a phone from his belt. The
camera feed continued until two firemen and other security rushed from the open
doorway, feet crunching on a carpet of tiny dead machines. The electrical fire
was almost out anyway, but they doused it with some sort of fog that finished
it off.

"Well, that
wasn't subtle," Jeff admitted.

"Were either
of those big drones yours?" Natsume asked.

"No, we use a
sort of carrier for a group of bots to get them to an isolated objective. But
it isn't an old fashioned drone with rotors like those. It looks more like a
puffy stadium seat that the bots latch on and push. It isn't powered
itself," Jeff said, demonstrating the size with his hands.

"What is the
advantage then?" Natsume asked curious.

"Well it is a
lifting shape made of a very thin plastic film inflated with hydrogen and about
ninety eight percent of the inside surface coated with graphene monomolecular
film to limit leakage. It lets the bots make headway on about twenty percent of
the power they need for their normal free flight mode. When they get near their
objective the bots all drop off together and the hydrogen is ignited. The
plastic film has an accelerant incorporated and doesn't leave much of the bag
after burning. Just a few tiny soft plastic balls covered with soot. "

"The bag has
negative buoyancy to support the bots?"

"No, well... it
has about two grams negative buoyancy
before
the bots are docked. Not
enough to support even one. But it requires only about two meters a second forward
motion to generate enough lift to stay level."

"You have a
design group for things like this?" Natsume asked.

Jeff looked
amused. "April here suggested floating them in on balloons from upwind. I
knew winds can be hard to predict, so I just refined it to let it steer toward
the target. It won't run upwind against any sort of a serious breeze, but it
will cut sideways across the wind flow to line up on the objective. We can
anticipate the general wind direction unless they start classifying weather reports.
It took about four hours one afternoon to design and we had a company that
makes advertising novelties die cut them for us. We do the final seal and
install the inflation device.

Jeff looked at
Natsume with sudden suspicion... "Are you here to ask us to back off?
Because those little exploding bots were not ours either. Ours lock on and
physically restrain the others from flying, or the new ones will zap the enemy
bots with a discharging capacitor. I admit I have a tiny shaped charge designed
using a binary propellant. And one that squirts a quick hardening adhesive that
immobilizes the opposition. But we haven't deployed those yet.
We
didn't
create that spectacle on the rooftop."

"Not at all.
We want to pursue a partnership arrangement where you provide designs for
arming our bots against others bots, and we in turn provide more advanced
models coming to market to you at a favorable price," Natsume proposed.

"Make sure we
are not obligated to provide designs for attacking people directly," April
said.

"Oh no! In
fact we wouldn't want to be associated with you if you have such a program,"
Natsume objected. "That would violate Japanese law quite clearly."

"Only in my
mind," Jeff assured him. "But it would be so easy
somebody
is
going to do it. I hope you realize that. I'd be surprised if a government or
two don't have custom designs sitting assembled but unused for assassination.
But once they are used it will be hard to cover up."

"We
don't
do bio-warfare either," April said, firmly.

"We are in
agreement on that. I don't think either of us wants the back-lash of horror
such use would create. There would be no justifying it, regardless of the
legalities," Natsume said.

"With one
exception," April surprised him by saying.

"What would
that be?" Natsume asked, warily.

"We are looking
to when a small drone," April showed a softball size with her hands,
"could follow you around and loiter above and behind you for hours acting
as a bodyguard. If such a device was strictly protective in nature and not the
aggressor I believe people would accept it."

"I don't
think we have a power source small enough to do that yet. And I doubt it will
be available for some years," Natsume predicted.

"Oh, we
already have the power source. That's not the problem," Jeff told him.
"We can't make it
quiet
enough that it isn't irritating to have
following you around. It's just loud enough to make you raise your voice when
you are trying to have a normal conversation with someone."

"The
miserable thing sounds like a cheap hair dryer!" April said plainly.

"Indeed. That
just makes me want to enlist you more. May I show you an example of what we'd
be supplying you if you decide to partner with us?" Natsume asked. He
pulled a small plastic vial from his pocket.

This time it was
Jeff that looked around the room uncertain. "Do you have firm control of
them?"

"They are
fail-safed many ways," Natsume assured him. He unfolded a paper napkin and
poured the contents of the vial in the middle. It looked like a pile of pills,
or the orzo pasta Heather's mom put in soup. They laid there and didn't do
anything until he put the vial away. Then they saw he was moving his eyes to
invoke some programming on his spex.

The pile stirred
as if the table were vibrating and the pieces got fuzzy, extending little stubs
too tiny to see without a magnifier. Likely wings, perhaps legs or landing
struts depending on your usage.

"Do they
fly
?"
April asked Natsume.

"Yes, they
don't walk well at all. Give me a moment to do it so they don't go every which
way." After a bit they started to align themselves in a circle from the
center out. When they lifted they were all orbiting a center point like a
little hurricane with an eye. There were in a single layer disk of about a
dozen tracks and the bots in one track were staggered from the tracks next to
it. They maintained fairly good discipline for separation, staying four or five
millimeters from the machine ahead and behind. The whole thing turned clockwise
looking down on it, and rippled slightly as it made adjustments. The was a
barely audible noise like a long sigh.

"Can they
maintain orientation in zero G?" April wondered, recalling her
conversation with Jeff.

"I'm... not
sure. That's an interesting question."

"It might be
a minor market for you, not worth the investment," April admitted.

"After we
became aware of your efforts to add accessories,
enhance
the bots as you
say, we tried doing the same ourselves. Other players are of course doing the
same thing, but our bots simply did not survive as well as yours. We already
had a twenty man team committed and looked at the potential expense to improve
them sufficiently. It makes more sense to ally with you if you are interested.
I have a document from our legal department if you wish to examine it and give
us a decision," Natsume said.

"That may be
a problem. We do business much differently up here. We don't have a court
system with lawyers. Any contract dispute would have to be taken before the
entire Assembly and they have only agreed to hear two so far. They sent a
couple others away and basically told them to grow up or set a duel. How many
pages are in your proposal?" Jeff asked.

"I'm not
sure," Natsume said, looking distressed. He turned his pad back to him and
searched. "Four hundred and thirty two pages."

"Do you
really think I am going to waste a day of my life reading a bunch of
legalese?" Jeff asked. "If it has that many pages I can already tell
you what it says: We don't want to be responsible for anything but
you
are.
It will be phrased to mean anything you want it to mean. If we don't agree we
will both have to pay thousands of billable hours to lawyers, to put it before
a judge who doesn't really understand our business, and will render a bad
decision that probably won't make either of us happy."

"No executive
would
read
it. He'd refer it to his legal department for approval,"
Natsume said.

"We don't
have
a legal department. We don't regard business partners as disposable here like
on Earth. If you have a problem with having your space ship built you work it
out with your contractor or the other half dozen folks in that business will be
afraid to take a job from you. Works the other way too. If you get a reputation
for being a hard guy with your customers it takes an astonishingly short time
for you not to
have
any customers."

"That simply
wouldn't work on Earth. The legal system
is
adversarial and it follows
that contracts and
adjudication when they fail have to be
prepared for the reality of that," Natsume said.

"Or
to put it another way you have to assume the other guy is going to screw you
every chance he gets, and his lawyers will encourage it because that's why they
are paid and exist," Jeff said. "No, put what you want in a single
page contract, two pages at
most
, and simply mean what you say. If we
are at odds later it should be so simple it is obvious who is not meeting their
obligations. Put it in plain English not formal legal terms."

"Or
Japanese," April interjected in that language. "So simple
I
can understand it."

"Oh,
if you wish to create an addendum in Japanese for technical details I'm
proficient and understand those sort of Japanese terms. I just can't order in a
restaurant or make casual social conversation," Jeff allowed.

That
seemed to bother Natsume more than the strange business arrangements. "I
suppose I can consult with my company and return if they can agree to such an
arrangement. What if it is
not
possible?" he wondered.

"Then
this never happened as far as we are concerned. If you consider it a falling
out and don't want to sell to us anymore we'll seek other suppliers or make
them ourselves. Or... we can just go on as we have been. But if you want to
stay and send a sealed message by courier back to your company I can have that
delivered to their hand in two days. I don't have any
lawyers
but we have
plenty of people who do security work and... collect information for us. You
didn't think the drones and bots were the only source of intelligence we have
did you?" Jeff asked.

"No,
and one of the reasons we considered this... deal, is we never found one of
your machines trying to penetrate
our
facilities."

"People
will buy your bots and then try to use them against you?" April asked,
incredulous.

"All
the time," Natsume assured her.

"
Earthies
,"
April said disgusted. Natsume didn't seem to take that too badly.

After
quietly eating for awhile with no more conversation April assumed this was a
dead deal. Instead Natsume visibly finished by pushing his tray away, and
looked at them.

"I
shall have a message composed to my superiors in about an hour. Do you have any
preference on what media I send it?"

"No.
Paper, data drive, it doesn't matter. Our man will take it directly from your
hand to whomever you designate. There won't be any intermediaries," Jeff
promised. "Nor will we snoop, on my word. Oh, and if those are production
bots you showed us, not prototypes, I'd like you to leave them for us. How many
did you have there?"

"There
are two hundred in that sample. That's quite satisfactory," Natsume said, giving
them a bow that was somewhere between eastern and Western manners. He left
without further discussion.