21 The odds of being forced to engage in bribery approach unity

Lily was so glad she hadn't decided to cheap out and just hired workers directly on a project like this; she could see running herd on them was somewhat of a full-time job, which was one of the reasons, beyond his building expertise, that Mr Tombs had a thriving business.

In the morning, before the work crew arrived, she managed to scrounge up enough radioactive water so that everyone could have a quick shower in her high-pressure shower stall, which she set up in a shower on the first floor. After that, however, they had to go outside and use the facilities like they were still in the stone age, with the exception that they at least had a fair supply of toilet paper.

She honestly had no idea where toilet paper came from in this universe, except that merchants could sell it to you, and it wasn't that expensive. If Mr ROB ensured that there was some kind of automated T.P. factory still running after two hundred years just so she could plausibly have access to it, then she would take back every negative thing she said about him. There were some indignities that were more difficult to stomach than others.

However, the lack of a supply of water, radioactive or not, was going to be a problem she would have to solve rather quickly. She was pretty sure that D.C., in her past life, received fresh water from the Potomac river mostly, which was treated before being pumped into the D.C. water system.

There was a water tower just a couple of blocks south of her, but it clearly wasn't providing the area with any water. Lily could see the outline of two others, one close to what she thought the centre of Megaton was and one to the northwest. Was it only the water tower in her area not functioning?

Lily, then, squinted in the direction of the east. The Potomac river was over three miles away; it wasn't exactly a project she could start without a brigade from the Army Corps of Engineers at her command and twelve months to do it.

That didn't mean that the Maryland/Virginia area did not have aquafers; she was pretty sure if she drilled a hundred meters down, she would definitely find water. As that was likely how places like Vaults had access to potable water, and if the water in Vault 108 told her anything, it was that the water there was still radioactive if less than what was expected from river water.

Ideas for high-speed drilling rigs entered her head, a combination of a traditional cantilevered pipe drill, utilizing a combination of a lonsdaleite drilling head and lasers to quickly chew and break up rock and earth. It was feasible, but it would take months. Also, she was somewhat large crane poor presently, and she did not see any cranes on the skyline that she could rent, either.

Lily shook her head, a town like this had to be getting a steady water supply, even if it was unhealthy, or everyone would be dead already. Even if everyone was somehow expected to purify their own water, they still had to have water to cleanse.

A cistern on her own building's roof would be a possibility and was a likely construction goal even after she achieved some manner of water access, but how would she fill it? It did not rain sufficiently for that to be an option, and it was a chore that was beyond being reasonable for her Apprentice; as for herself, she would definitely not be willing to cart up hundreds of litres to the roof every day.

Maybe Lily's part of town was worse than she thought; if so, she would aggressively gentrify it even if she had to do it at gunpoint, if only so she could flush toilets again.

Lily needed intelligence about her present demesne, and the best place to get it was from a local. Thankfully she had a local who was familiar with construction projects walking through her door, trailing a couple of dozen men. She quickly gave a command to the Protectrons to reduce their alert state so as not to try to interdict the men. Lily stepped over to the closest Protectron and gave it a quiet order to descend down to the basement and guard the entrance, shooting anyone that wasn't Lily, Alice or her siblings so as to both protect them and her technology. She'd have to make sure these men realized that area was strictly restricted.

She could hear one of the workers yell, surprised, "Holy hell, are those Protectrons?" One of the other men jabbed him in the ribs with an elbow to shut him up.

Lily blinked, were they really so rare? She did not believe so; in fact, she had priced out a single Protectron at about 1,000 caps of value, about the same as a suit of powered armour, although who would sell either? So, perhaps, they were somewhat scarce. Again she found herself realizing how fortunate it was that she befriended the Mechanist. He had dozens of Protectrons assembled and parts for dozens more.

Perhaps she could buy some disassembled Protectrons from him regularly and slowly repair them? Lily would like to have six to ten Protectron units if her clinic turned into the small hospital she was hoping it would.

"Mr Tombs, good morning," Lily greeted the man cordially as she oversaw one of the Protectrons carefully managing to walk down the stairs. 'Good,' she was worried it would trip and fall down the stairs as they were a bit top-heavy.

Mr Tombs smiled, "It is a good morning! I've got a job for a couple of weeks, so it is always a good morning when I have gainful employment for my boys."

Lily smiled; he seemed to be a good man. "You have the run of the place, except for the basement -- anyone going into the basement and past the locked door will be shot, so please ensure your boys are aware of the restricted area and the automated lethal response if they trespass it. Once you get a moment after you get things underway, if I might have your ear as I have some questions about Megaton, specifically this part of it."

If this were her past life, there would be all manners of OSHA violations inherent in that statement, but all Mr Tombs did was yell, "Ya'hear that, boys? Don't go down into the basement unless you want that Protectron to shove its laser up your ass!"

Lily smiled. This was much more like when she lived in the ancap space habitats for a decade or two; nobody really cares what you did there, and ventilating a person's sleeve for trespassing was almost a given. So long as you didn't slag their cortical stack and Really Kill them, people wouldn't even get that worked up over it.

Lily watched Tombs direct his men in a methodical manner for about twenty minutes, staying well out of their way, before the man finally walked over to her, "Got a few minutes, now. What do you wanna know, Doctor?"

"Yes, thank you. How does Megaton get a water supply? I mean, just regular irradiated water; I assume everyone needs to buy or purify their own potable water," Lily asked curiously.

Mr Tombs rubbed the back of his neck, "Ah, yes. Wells, mainly. The nukes sure did a number on the Washington Aquaduct, let me tell you. You can see it busted up dozens of places in certain places. But this was the nation's capital, and many important places dug their own wells. The founders of Megaton found one and dug two more themselves before all of their heavy equipment more or less went the dodo. The water and sewage utilities are a right mess. None of the water lines are interconnected, so you can't get water service 'cept from that one pump."

He then turned towards the south, although they were still indoors, "You probably saw the water tower just a few blocks away. This building and the ten blocks around it would be a pretty good property iffen there was power to run the pumping station, and great if it had some electricity go along with it."

He shook his head, "Entirety of Megaton is run off a 5MW Lite GeoThermal power pack that was drilled three or four kloms underneath some old rich bastards private bomb shelter, not that it ended up doing him any good. But there are rolling blackouts and brownouts some days as it is; it was one of the main reasons this neighbourhood was disconnected when it was mostly abandoned. Sorry about that, by the way."

Lily took in all he had to say but then tilted her head to the side, "That's better than I was expected but worse than I was hoping. But, why are you apologizing?"

He chuckled wryly, "Well, I may have been the mayor 'round these parts maybe ten years ago when we made the decision to disconnect this neighbourhood off the municipal utilities. I reckon it didn't do much good for my re-election chances, but it really was what needed to be done. The founders were a mite optimistic when they fenced off so much area after Vault 101 told them to take a hike. The city had to seize a lot of the property around here and compensate everyone who was living here, who mostly moved to the north or south parts of town."

Lily felt her scalp tingle. She was already connected with the Good Ole' Boy network, even if he was either retired or on the outs politically! She was glad she didn't go with the first contractor she talked to, who seemed to be only interested in looking down her blouse and giving her the run around about anticipated costs and timeframes.

She considered her current position in Megaton. She was still very assailable, with only two Protectrons and an automated machine gun to protect her. It might take thirty or forty lives, but she could be attacked successfully if the party was serious enough about it. How much did she trust her instincts about this Tombs fellow?

Lily would risk it, "Say, Mr Tombs. I have a potential business opportunity, but it would require you to have a lot of discretion, at least at first, until we're in a position to unveil it. But it would have the potential to be quite lucrative and secure me, the best Doctor in at least a thousand kilometres, to open a small hospital in town for the foreseeable future?"

The man blinked at her, "You got a pretty good opinion of your own skills there, Doctor St. Claire." To which Lily just nodded, "Yes, I do. And I assure you it is, if anything, understated."

That caused Mr Tombs to just chuckle, "Well, you got me curious. I ain't gonna commit to anything, 'cept I could keep what you tell me to myself."

Lily nodded, "I am not just a medical doctor, although that is my focus. I am also one of the better scientists in many areas. Maybe a few people in the Brotherhood or Enclave are better than me at power systems, and I'm sure there are hundreds still alive that know more than me about high-energy plasma, but my medical technology requires a lot of power, so I have been forced to adapt. One of my inventions is a mostly portable, practical fusion electric generator." She let him make his own mental connections to the possibilities that might entail.

His eyebrows rose up to the top of his bald head, and he glanced around as if making sure nobody could overhear their conversation, "How much electricity could such a generator produce?"

Lily made a waffling hand motion, "I have it running in the basement, and right now, no more than about two forty kilowatts. If we could build a proper water-based cooling system, it probably would need to be in a building all its own, I could easily see it producing over four megawatts continuously, but I would probably need at least half of that myself. I'm pretty sure I could devise a pretty efficient coolant loop for it, too, but it would still go through about a hundred or two hundred litres of water a day, which we could capture for purified water. We could always increase that as much as we want, but it would be a real pain dealing with the radioactive solids that it would generate unless you know some ghouls that need a job? What would you do if that, hypothetically, was possible?"

Lily was taking a risk here, but at the same time, she was quite ready to kill this Mr Tombs if it looked like he was going to take advantage of her. Preferably not in front of all of his workers, but old men had heart attacks all the time. It would significantly impact the timetable for her plans and might alienate some part of whatever form of the elite that Megaton had, so it was definitely plan zed, for her.

The general contractor cum ex-mayor was quiet for a bit before he smiled slightly, "I think I would buy a bunch of the properties on this side of the wall from the city before they knew how valuable they were gonna get. The current mayor hates my guts anyway, the bastard." Okay, maybe killing him WOULDN'T alienate the power structure here, but she still would like to avoid doing so.

Lily chuckled slightly, and she had been considering doing the same. The middle-aged man nodded then, "You can expect I'd be very interested in that business opportunity, and I definitely won't let a word of it slip. I don't think you'd be in any danger like you're thinking physically, but we'd both be in danger financially as there is no way they'd sell us an inch at any price we'd like to pay, and we'd have to settle on just becoming rich selling power and water, instead of becoming richer than Croesus, selling water, power and rent!"

Lily's gaze snapped to the old man, and she narrowed her eyes before she could catch herself, but only for a second before she put a gentle smile back on her face. This man wasn't simple at all! Croesus, the fabled wealthiest man on Earth and King of Lydia circa 600 B.C. was an even more obscure historical reference than when she mentioned Asclepius to Sarah Lyons.

He raised an eyebrow, which made it obvious he noticed Lily's momentary reaction. So she probably couldn't play it off. Instead, Lily chuckled, "Not many people would recognize, much less use the name of a three-thousand-year-old dead Turkish king. I know this is incredibly hypocritical of me, but could you perhaps enlighten me on the source of your education? I do apologize again for my hypocrisy as I have no desire to talk about my own past, but there are some organizations I'd rather not have anything to do with that might still be active around the nation's former capital."

Now his eyebrows rose just as far as they went when she mentioned her generator, "Ahaha, I don't know that I've ever had anyone recognize that reference. That was something my pa always said, and I have to admit it came with me. I knew he was a king, but not precisely the when and where of it. But, yeah, I do suppose I have a better education than the average person round here, but you needn't worry, little lass. And this ain't really a secret, neither, so I don't mind telling you. You know how I mentioned that rich bastard's personal bomb shelter and how it didn't help him? Well, it did help his son and his son's family. Which was my grandpa maybe six or seven generations back?"

He grinned, before continuing, "They came out of their little personal vault maybe ten years after the bombs dropped, it wasn't really built or designed to be a self-sustaining environment like the Vault-Tec vaults, and they would have run out of food. They found a small but somewhat thriving community amongst them, and they were one of the founders of what became Megaton. The family ended up selling the vault and its generator to the city a hundred years or more ago, but we kept all the computers and databanks, which included quite a lot of books and even some audio and film recordings. Enough to ensure their descendants were well educated, at least. Now, I'm mighty curious about you, but I suppose I won't push a young woman travelling through the wasteland mostly alone, perhaps running from something? So long as nobody will be landing a Vertibird on my head in the middle of the night, they won't, will they?"

Lily chuckled and shook her head, "No. My past doesn't include either the Brotherhood or the Enclave, and I don't think anyone else has an Air Force these days besides them."

Tombs nodded his head, "Well, that's good enough for me. We should sit down and hammer out an agreement, but let us agree in principle to work together. I do believe you are going to need a lot more capital than you have spent thus far to build a power station like you're talking about, not to mention needing to scavenge or buy all the large transformers and what have you. So, let's say your contribution is your technology and expertise, and mine is my money and expertise in buildin' things."

Lily nodded, "That's what I was thinking, precisely. How do you think we should split this venture?"

He rubbed the back of his neck again, "Hmmm... I ain't looking to really take advantage of you here. Fifty to you and thirty to me."

Lily blinked, "What about the last twenty per cent?" To which he scowled, "The chances that we are gonna have to fucking bribe some assholes are damn near a hundred per cent. I'll try real hard to keep it at ten per cent or less, and then I'd like to hold ten per cent in escrow for the people we hire to work for us. They'll get a dividend each year in addition to their salaries; what do you think about that?"

Lily chuckled, "If this was the 2070s I would've had to denounce you as a commie, probably, for that. But I like the idea, and it'll keep the workers well motivated and their interest in their job sharp and personal. Plus, it isn't that much, and we'd still retain the voting interest in those shares, I presume?" To which he nodded, "I may have a bleeding heart, but I ain't about to appoint a workers representative to board or nothing, not that we really even run ventures like that anymore around here."

Lily was expecting to have to go back and forth on the percentage, but it seemed fair to her. Plus, she intended to effectively control all parts of the venture in any case, regardless of what ownership split there was. Lily stuck her hand out and tried to affect a southern drawl, "I reckon, pardner, that you got yourself a deal."

'Why are there so many southern-sounding gentlemen in the ruins of Virginia and Maryland, anyway?!' Lily wondered while shaking the bald man's hand.