Free April by Mackey Chandler

sandwiches, waiting to have a word before leaving. She let the spex run the updated news and market report she had tagged past her. He knew she was there, but it was their family's firm custom not to interrupt each other on the com.
    He ended abruptly as usual and blanked the screen. When he pivoted around to give her his full attention, he laced his hands behind his neck and leaned back in the chair. He was a slight man, economical with his motions like so many spacers, trained to think before moving and so given to small moments of stillness between his movements. He was one of the few men she thought of as graceful. His hair was a darker version of hers, with speckles of gray and no longer a match for the newly youthful face beneath it.
    But his eyes were older than anything else, speaking of hard experience no medicine was going to remove.
    "I'm was asked to offer you a job by my section head," he said, looking amused, "but I already declined to allow it, so it's moot except as a compliment to you."
    "Wow, I was spending the money in my mind, as soon as you said job and then >whap< you knocked it right down. What section? Housekeeping again?"
    "No," he smiled ruefully at her guess, "Mrs. Morgan knows you'll go around picking up litter, even if she doesn't pay you, so where's the incentive to waste money on what you will do for free? I'm afraid we are talking about Jon Davis, my new Security Chief. I'm not ready to OK you working in something so hazardous quite yet."
    "Is this the Art thing?" she asked, excited at some news. "Did you find out anything about him at all?"
    "Oh, we found out a few things about this young man, but we have more questions now than when we started. The big news is you seem to have spooked him to flight, so he's not even in M3 anymore. So there is no immediate risk, unless he left something unpleasant behind. Since it doesn't seem to be an emergency anymore, we were waiting for you to wake up. I assured him you would be much sharper if we allowed you to sleep. If we call him up now there are a few questions he has been saving for you," he suggested.
    "Uh, there's something maybe you should know before we talk to Jon, in case you want me to be careful what I say," April offered.
    Her dad's expression just stayed completely neutral.
    She went on. "The reason this fellow scared me so badly and I warned you he might be armed, was because when he put his pad away he flapped his jacket open," she said, demonstrating with her hands, "I smelled the same stuff you use to clean your gun, the Hoppe's #9. I've never smelled anything else like it, so I'm sure that's what it was. Is that something you'd want me to mention to Jon?"
    "When I put Jon in charge of Security, I expressed my good opinion of him by trusting him with our lives. Not the Company with its rules, or whatever law reaches here, but for him personally to protect the people of M3, including us, from harm. I told him it was his only really important job, before all the silly little rules about who's allowed to sell cookies, or how many can live in a unit," her father explained.
    "You don't have to hide anything to protect me. I'll let you choose how much to volunteer and how much to make him ask, because the issue is much more important than covering up some minor indiscretion of mine." He brought his hands down from behind his neck and smiled at her. "Ready?"
    With a shock, April realized there was no patronizing look, or diminutive kiddy name. He was treating her as she had always wanted. Not as an equal, she didn't think herself equal, but as an adult, with some respect. She replied, "Yes, Father."
    The formal tone caught his ear. She hadn't called him anything but Dad in a long time. But the only acknowledgment was a briefly raised eyebrow. Her dad zoomed the com camera out to cover both of them and made the connection.
    Jon answered from his residence. He was wearing a white dress shirt. By contrast he was so black beside the bright white,