Quarter Share

by Nathan Lowell

  I blushed. “Um, no, sar. We were just discussing it in the pantry this morning.”

  Mr. Maxwell swiveled back to Pip. “Your assessment of Margary, Mr. Carstairs?”

  Pip got a faraway look and started reciting as if he were reading off the inside of his own forehead. “Margary Station supports asteroid mining and ore refining operations. Proximity to raw materials attracted a branch of the Manchester Yards. High demand goods include quality foodstuffs, particularly frozen fish and canned vegetables since none of the direct jumps to Margary led to ports that export those goods. Luxury liquors, and explicit entertainment are also in demand. The shipyard provides a ready market for electronics, astronics, and engineering control systems and components because, while the raw ship manufacturing components are readily available in-system, the specialized clean rooms required to fab the guts of their ships are not.”

  “What are we carrying to Margary, Mr. Carstairs?”

  “We, sar? You mean the Lois or as part of the ship’s stores scheme?”

  “Both.”

  “Manifests for the Lois list four containers of machine parts, presumably for the new ship that Manchester is building, along with a container of paper goods and textiles. We’re scheduled to pick up two containers of rare earths bound for the smelters in Margary.” Pip rattled off the list without looking at his notes. “Stores trades are not final yet, but I think we’ll hold about a third of the cobia fillets and half the banapods for downstream trading. We also are planning on trading some of the cobia for extra coffee. Sarabanda Dark’s wholesale prices are low on Gugara right now. We don’t normally stock that in stores because it’s usually so expensive, but it would make an excellent trading stock and help break up the routine of only serving Djartmo Arabasti.” He seemed to surface as if from a kind of trance and added, “Sar,” to his recitation.

  “I see.” Mr. Maxwell swiveled his gaze to Cookie, who merely shrugged a what-can-I-say sort of shrug. He swiveled back to Pip. “And your assessment for private trading?”

  “I’m trying to find something we can buy in Gugara for the inbound run. I’ve had to start from scratch there because of my recent setback.”

  Mr. Maxwell just nodded.

  “The key to private trade on Margary is the uncut precious and semi-precious stones.”

  “Explain, Mr. Carstairs.”

  “The asteroid miners frequently come across deposits of stones while prospecting and extracting the raw ore. The deposits are too small and infrequent to make it worthwhile for any of the normal precious mineral cartels to set up there. So the miners collect and trade them for booze, porn, and other recreational goods. There’s a lively market on Margary Station that the authorities ignore because it helps keep the miners occupied and happy. For us, it’s a good place because we can buy as much or as little as we can afford. If we manage to find something to sell there while we’re in Gugara, good. That gives us more capital for buying up stones in Margary. But even if we don’t, we’ll have cash to buy a small number of stones which will serve to re-stock our trade goods for when we go to St. Cloud Orbital after that.”

  “I see. It’s too bad you haven’t given this much thought.” A wry smile accompanied Mr. Maxwell’s comments. “This we you keep referring to is…?”

  Pip didn’t respond immediately so I raised my hand. “That would be me, sar. Pip’s going to help me get started. With our pooled resources for cash and mass we have more options and I get to learn the ropes.”

  Mr. Maxwell nodded once as if in confirmation. Obviously, he’d worked that much out for himself. He turned back to our boss. “Are you in on this unbridled capitalism, Cookie?”

  “No, sar. I don’t trade anymore. My creds are invested with a broker on Stamar, and that’s good enough for me. Cooking takes up too much time.”

  Mr. Maxwell turned to stare silently at Pip for almost a full tick. “Mr. Carstairs, would you consider playing a game with me?”

  “A game, sar?”

  “A game, Mr. Carstairs. Use your research database and propose for me one container’s worth of mixed cargo. Assuming an empty container is available in Gugara, what would you put in it to take to Margary?”

  Pip slid into his calculating mode. “Budget parameters, sar?”

  Mr. Maxwell considered for a moment. “Give me minimum required investment and maximum potential profit.”

  “So cheapest full container and maximum probable return, sar?”

  “Precisely, Mr. Carstairs.”

  “Aye, aye, sar. Let me see what I can do. I’ll have a preliminary by midwatch. But our best information will be at the jump point beacon. We can adjust at that point, if that would be acceptable, sar?”

  “Quite acceptable, Mr. Carstairs. Thank you. One more thing, gentlemen.” Mr. Maxwell swiveled his steely gaze in my direction. “Mr. Wang, please see to it that Mr. Carstairs passes the cargo handler exam in six days.”

  “Aye, aye, sar,” I answered briskly. There didn’t seem to be an option.

  Cookie had that funny look on his face. The one he gets when he’s trying not to laugh. Pip just looked like he was choking on something.

  Mr. Maxwell nodded one last time and left the galley.

  I turned to Cookie. “Is it just me or does he seem to be spending a lot of time here lately?”

  Chapter 14

  Darbat System

  2351-October-26

  After Mr. Maxwell’s little visit, we finished cleaning up the lunch service. Pip started the cargo analysis and I went back to studying for my engineman exam. I knew when he finished his empty-container exercise for Mr. Maxwell, he’d be leaning on me to get him ready for the cargo test. Having been through that material several times, the cargo exam didn’t worry me, but the engineering test did. I’d spent so much time with the instructional materials, I found I could practically recreate them from memory. The practice exams went pretty well, but I still missed about five percent of the answers. I hoped that would be good enough.

  At 16:00 I headed back to the galley to help set up the dinner service. Pip and Cookie looked up from the portable when I came in, and stowed it when they realized the time. Dinner included some of the new stores and it went pretty well. The crew appreciated the variety in the menu and it didn’t hurt that Cookie had a great granapple crisp with vanilla ice cream for dessert.

  While we were serving, I nudged Pip. “So? How’s it going?”

  He shrugged. “Okay, I think. I should be done with another stan’s work, but I’ll be ready for a work out and a sauna.”

  “Oh yeah, I’m with ya there. Tell you what. You finish your container and I’ll clean up tonight. With any luck, we’ll be done at the same time and we can hit the gym.”

  He shot me a grateful look. “Thanks, Ish. That’ll help. I was a bit ambitious when I promised the results by midwatch. That’s a lot of mass. And there’s one other little distraction.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The manifest shows an empty container on the Gugara to Margary run.”

  I froze in place for a moment and shot him a quick look. “Will he…?”

  Pip shrugged. “Dunno.”

  When we secured the dinner mess, I shooed Pip off to the computer and started tearing down the serving line and making the galley shipshape. The process was so familiar by then that I could do it on autopilot. I found my mind wandering back to the cargo and engineering exams. I’m a good test-taker, but this new context gave me more than a few butterflies. Before long I found myself chanting, “Filter the water and scrub the air down,” under my breath. It was one of those things that once you get it in your head, you can’t get it out. I found myself sweeping to the rhythm. It drove me crazy but I couldn’t shake it.

  “There!” Pip’s sudden outburst from his corner of the galley startled me.

  “Done?” I stowed the broom and looked in his direction.

  Pip nodded. “Yup. Now, I need to go work out.” He downloaded his planning files and sent the
m off to Mr. Maxwell. “Only a twenty percent best case margin projection, but we typically run a twelve to fifteen percent margin. And that’s the least cost filled scenario. The gross margin goes down in the maximum probable return, but the actual profit triples.”

  “How does that work?” I asked as he stowed the portable and we headed out of the galley. “How can we make more profit with a lower margin?”

  “Easy. Which would you rather have? Ten percent of a hundred creds or one percent of a million?”

  I sighed. “Of course. Sometimes my own stupidity astonishes me.”

  “Yeah, well, you haven’t failed the cargo handler test twice, either.” He sounded miserable.

  “What? You failed the test?”

  He nodded, his mouth screwed into a grimace. “Twice.”

  “But the content isn’t that hard.”

  “For you. I’m not good at tests.”

  His bitter words caused a sinking feeling in my stomach, but I didn’t say anything while we changed up and went out into the gym. My mind had finally stopped repeating the doggerel about the filters and scrubbers but had gained a new chant, perhaps better suited to the situation. “I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble…”

  Later that evening we got together on the mess deck with our tablets, and I walked him through the cargo handler instructional materials. “But I’ve been through all this.” He pushed the tablet away.

  “I know, but you’ve also failed the test.”

  “Twice.” He reminded me.

  “Okay, twice. So you’re going to go over it again, then take the sample test and we’ll keep doing that until you get it right.”

  It took less than two stans to get through the material together. “You don’t seem to be having any trouble with this.”

  He shrugged. “It’s not the information. I practically grew up on a cargo deck.”

  “Okay, well, let’s do the practice exam and see how it comes out.”

  We settled in and I breezed through the test in a few ticks. I’d done them so often, they began to look familiar to me. It approached the level of silliness. When I got to the end, I’d gotten a perfect score again.

  Pip, on the other hand, dithered over his tablet, checking, un-checking, and re-checking responses. He appeared to have no idea what he was doing. He finally finished and sighed. He turned his tablet so I could see his score: thirty-five percent.

  “But you know this stuff,” I said with dismay.

  He nodded miserably. “I just can’t take tests. Something in my brain shuts off as soon as I start anything remotely like a quiz or examination.”

  The chronometer clicked over to 23:00 so we headed back to the berthing area and bunked down. The chanting in my head got louder. “I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble…” I kinda wished the filter and scrubber thing would come back. It didn’t seem so ominous.

  The next day went by in a blur. Time was getting short. During our afternoon break, I sat Pip down and watched him take the test again. Once more, he picked, un-picked, and re-picked his responses. There didn’t seem to be any kind of pattern to it. It was almost like he chose them at random. He did better, forty percent, but still not good enough to pass. I thought he might actually have scored better using a random number generator. We both sighed and headed back to the galley to set up for dinner.

  After clean up, Pip started to pull out his tablet again, but I stopped him. “Come on, Pip. You need a work out more than you need to beat yourself with that tablet further.”

  “But the test is just a few days away.”

  I sighed. “I know, but that’s not helping. You know the stuff. It’s the testing itself that’s killing you. More studying won’t fix that.”

  “So what are we going to do?” He didn’t seem like the same cocky spacer I’d come to know. There was something desperate and sad about him.

  “I don’t know, but there has to be something. Lemme think on it.”

  We changed up and I headed up to the track and started pounding out my frustration. The I’m–in-trouble mantra beating out in time with my foot falls. Four laps later, Rhon Scham caught up with me and nodded a silent greeting. We ran together for three more laps before she spoke. “Wanna talk about it?”

  I looked over at her, startled. “About what?”

  “Whatever has you so distracted.”

  “What makes you think I’m distracted?”

  She nodded downward. “You’re not wearing running shoes. You’re either really distracted or just felt the need to tenderize your feet up here.”

  I barked a single laugh and realized that she was right. My feet were beginning to get a bit tender from the rough grit that made up the track’s surface, but it wasn’t really that bad. We approached the top of the ladder so I slowed and stopped.

  Rhon stopped with me. “Well?”

  “It’s the ratings tests. Mr. Maxwell has ordered me to make sure Pip passes the cargo handler exam.”

  “Aren’t you taking it, too?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, and it doesn’t seem like it’s that hard. Not compared to the engineman one.”

  “So, what’s the problem?”

  “Pip’s failed it twice.”

  “Third time’s the charm.”

  I just looked at her. “Maybe, but, Rhon, the instructional materials for that test are dead simple. There’s nothing tricky or difficult about it. If you can memorize a few facts, you should be able to pass it.”

  “I’d heard that. Food handler is the same way.” After a tick she said, “Maybe he just has a poor memory?”

  I shook my head. “No. Pip has a lot of issues, but memorization isn’t one of them. We’ve been going over the material together and he hasn’t been able to beat a score of forty percent. It’s like he starts the test and his brain turns off.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe he can’t read well. He could ask for an oral exam.”

  I blinked. “Oral exam?”

  “Sure. It’s an old tradition but it’s still in The Handbook. Back in olden days, sailors weren’t known for their academic prowess. The standard way to move up in rank was to demonstrate their knowledge by performing various tasks.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “There’s a set of hands-on exercises that the Training Officer can do for each test instead of taking the tablet-and-stylus version. It’s not common because the tablet-and-stylus is just so much easier to deal with, but it’s still there.”

  “Thanks. That might just be the answer.”

  I headed down to the sauna where Pip found me a few minutes later. He still looked glum. The steam made the soles of my feet sting but I didn’t say anything to Pip. I wanted to talk to Mr. von Ickles first.

  For the next few days, Pip and I struggled with the testing materials, quizzing each other as we served on the mess line or cleaned up afterward. I began to be a bit more optimistic because he answered correctly almost all the time when we were drilling each other informally like that. My conversation with Mr. von Ickles had gone well and I felt considerably less panicked by the time test day rolled around.

  It’s a kind of misnomer to call it test day. They were really test days. Each division had its own. Some of the tests were rather lengthy, especially as you moved up the ranks. Traditionally the first one was engineering, then deck, steward, and cargo was last. Cookie and Pip shooed me out of the galley right after breakfast and I reported to the ship’s office. I was the only one taking the engineman examination and Mr. von Ickles sat me right down to begin.

  One of the reasons I’m so good at taking tests is that my brain goes into a kind of fast-motion and time slows around me. When I start any kind of formal test, the world fades away and I’m not really aware of anything except the flow of the test. I always thought it was kinda weird, but the results were usually good so I didn’t complain.

  The engineman test was no exception. When I put down the stylus, it had only seemed like a few ticks, but the chr
ono showed that almost a full stan had passed.

  Mr. von Ickles shook my hand. “Congratulations, Mr. Wang. I’ll add the engineman rating to your jacket this afternoon.” He smiled and showed me the grade. Ninety-two percent. I’d only needed an eighty to pass.

  “What about cargo, sar?”

  He smiled and winked. “It’s under control.”

  Cookie and Pip congratulated me when I returned to the galley to help set up for lunch, but I couldn’t help think there was a certain desperate look in Pip’s eye. The lunch activities soon left no more time for worry and Pip and I both threw ourselves into the day’s work as if it would erase our fears. I was cautiously optimistic based on my conversation with Mr. von Ickles, but I hadn’t said anything to Pip about it. I didn’t know how to broach the subject and I was still worried that it wasn’t going to work and that I’d, somehow, let Pip down. After that I’d have to face Mr. Maxwell, but for some reason he didn’t seem so bad when compared to failing my friend.

  Inevitably, we got through the next couple of days. The night before the cargo exam Pip started to pull out his tablet, I stopped him.

  “Not tonight. By now you either know the material or you don’t—and you do. Beating yourself up won’t change that.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “Not really, but it’s still true. Let’s get in a good workout, take a nice sauna and hit the bunk early. A good night’s sleep will do as much for you as anything.”

  “Like I’ll be able to sleep.”

  I tried to distract him. “Any feedback from Mr. Maxwell on your container load?”

  He shook his head. “Naw, but I wouldn’t really expect it. We’ll need to revise it when we hit the jump point and grab the beacon data. That’s still a couple of weeks out.”

  I nodded and we headed for the gym.

  The morning mess went off like clockwork. Cookie planned an easy-to-clean-up-after menu for breakfast so we would make it to the test on time. Many people wished us luck on their way through the line. It surprised me how many knew and genuinely seemed to care. We finished serving, cleared away, and I even had time to make an extra urn of coffee. All the while, Pip seemed to get more and more agitated. He did his best to hide it, but he kept dropping things, like thirty-liter stainless steel pots. Cookie wished us luck and sent us off at the appointed time.