She smiles cleverly, like she's about to reveal a big secret, then frowns, and settles into something more neutral. "Okay so, the classic thing you might expect here is to do a Dr. Evil, and threaten to blow up US government satellites unless they pay us one billion dollars." The last three words are said in a particular manner, as though she's making a reference. She glances at April for a moment to see how that landed, then shakes her head and continues. "But that's a really good way to turn Saint Genevieve into a smoking crater. A stupid villain does that kind of blackmail, and ends up dead. A smart villain offers a service." 

"The service of...?"

"We have a select clientele who, for an annual retainer fee..." She trails off. "Governments and other organizations pay us money to be allowed access to our satellite blasting services. Not to actually blow them up, but for the knowledge that they could blow them up. If they wanted to." 

"...but, like, multiple governments. So, what, war profiteering? In the abstract, because apparently nobody's using it?"

"Nobody's using it because we have subscriptions from direct competitors," Morrison says. "And we have standing orders from most of our clients to take down their competitors' satellites in retaliation if their competitors use our services to take down their satellites. And the clients all know about each other having subscriptions with us. They can't actually tell us to do anything without losing their own satellites, and they also can't stop subscribing to us because if they do they'll be vulnerable to everyone else."

"This is a stupid way for the world to be but that's fine, I already knew the world was stupid. So, what, your business model is you invent shit like this and then get everyone to buy into it so no one can afford to piss you off and they're all paying you for the privilege of participating in this bullshit situation?"

"It's not us they have to worry about pissing off," Morrison says. "We're an entirely neutral party here. It's their competitors that they have to worry about. But otherwise, yes, a lot of our income comes from inventing stuff like this and having everyone else buy into it. And we didn't even pay for the research and development, US Department of Agriculture did, via the Mayland-Gibson subcontracting agreement. We developed the tech at no cost to us, we own the underlying patents for the rainmaking but give MG an exclusive license for that particular use, and now we have a subscription model that requires us to do nothing other than to keep this one iteration of the technology in nominally working order. And that's how a bunch of the shit we we do here works, at a high level." 

"I would argue that they'd be idiots not to worry about pissing off the people they are paying to keep their balls in a vice. But sure. I bet you make a lot of money that way."

"Last year Olivier Consultants, which is the company your uncle filtered these sorts of retainers through, took in sixty-eight million from satellite technology consulting services. Unless you're asking about how much money this sort of thing earns in general, which is a bit of a more complicated--" 

Her phone rings. "Sorry," she says, and picks it up. "Go," she says into the microphone.

After a minute or so of listening to the phone, Morrison turns around, looking up at the sky. "Yes, all right, I see it," she says. 

April might have some difficulty finding what Morrison is looking at, but if she listens carefully she can hear the distant whine of an engine. 

Morrison hangs up the phone and looks at April. "We need to head back," she says. "Come on." 

"Yeah? What's up?"

"We're about to perform another one of our specialties," she says. "And this one..." she trails off and sighs. "Sometimes various organizations, usually clandestine, want to fake the deaths of one of their members. One of our services is identity destruction and reconstruction, one we're rather good at, as the funeral you went to may have indicated. Usually this is also a way for these organizations to pass us information under the table, so I have to be there for the interrogation. You should come along too, they might have something to say to you too, given the timing." 

"...sure."

"We've captured a CIA agent," Williams informs the three of them, once they've arrived back at the office building they recently left. "He just parachuted in. Landed in the island center. I use the term 'landed' advisedly, as his chute got caught in some palm trees. Not one of our more difficult captures." 

Hoo boy. Why is this her life.

"Oh good," Morrison says. "I was hoping it would be CIA. Hopefully they have some intel for us on who killed their agent." She turns to April. "Shall we get started?" 

"I don't know what you're looking at me for, I don't know how this shit's supposed to work."

"That's fair," she says. "I'll probably be doing most of the interrogation anyways." She pauses for a moment. "Also, just to be clear. The CIA knows most of the things we can do. After all, the US government is one of our biggest subscribers. But we keep some things to ourselves, either because they're not ready to share yet, or more importantly, we keep them secret to keep our competitive advantage." She tilts her head in the direction of Pippi. 

"Yeah. Okay."

"Okay cool. Feel free to hang back and let me do most of the talking."

Morrison leads them the rest of the way to a conference room, one that looks nearly identical to the one April had her initial orientation in, except in this one there are no cat keyboards. 

There's a man sitting near the end of the table, on the younger side of middle aged, with an unremarkable face and features. He's wearing camo fatigues, and has a glass of water in front of him, which is still mostly full. 

Pippi has been doing a lot of walking today. She hops up on a chair, then onto the table, finds a warm spot, and curls up, closing one eye and squinting with the other. 

"I see you've sent your best interrogator to question me," the man says, smirking a little in the cat's direction, clearly joking, "but she won't get me to crack."

"Trust me," Morrison replies, "If she wants you to crack, you'd be spilling all your secrets in moments." She pulls out her phone, pulling up an app. "Ready to verify?"