A Liaden Universe® Constellation, Volume 4

by Sharon Lee

  He rose, and bowed contrition.

  “I will,” he said, “try to . . . improve your opinion of me, Pilot.”

  “There’s a worthy goal,” she said lightly, and left him.

  VI

  They had set up their table on the hiring side of the Trade Hall on Dameeth, and had seen a suitably brisk business. There were some, so it seemed to Fer Gun, who altered their course to avoid when they saw the “Tree-and-Dragon Affiliate” card. That was well enough, in his opinion. It was no small thing, as he knew, to partner with Clan Korval. Such a partnership was more likely than not to change one’s life, which was all very well for those like Fer Gun pen’Uldra, whose situation could only be changed for the better. Those who were satisfied with their lives, though—they did well to plot a course wide of Korval.

  They had given five data-sticks, and collected three for review, which they would most assuredly do that evening on return to the ship. He had a favorite among the three, an elder trader with a steady air. Traveling with Chi yos’Phelium had taught him the value of a steady and knowledgeable elder. A new captain on a new route certainly would need all the steadiness and experience he could amass.

  He scanned the room. It was edging toward the end of the day, and the hall was thinning. Those crewing the tables at either side of them were packing up to leave, their conversation all about dinner, and a glass or two of wine to aid the process of decision.

  Indeed, he was on the edge of suggesting to Chi that they remove to review what they had collected, when a movement at the entrance to the hall drew his eye.

  A trader had entered, walking with purpose down the line of hiring tables. She was tall, and wide-shouldered; her hair a smooth and glossy brown. Her clothes were respectable without being ostentatious, as had a few of the early applicants. Her single jewel was a garnet ring—which told the universe that she was a full Trader.

  She paused at a table five up from theirs and spoke to the hiring crew. A Terran crew as it happened, and it seemed to him that she spoke that language easily, switching seamlessly to Trade when one of those behind the table put a question to her thus.

  There seemed some interest on both sides, and, indeed, she did leave a stick with them before taking her leave and moving once more down the row.

  She was near enough now that he could see her face—round, and amiable, and pale. Terran herself, then, he thought, with a sharp stab of regret. That might not be so well. The two Terrans they had spoken to on the day had been capable enough in their own language, which he was in the process of Learning, himself, but utterly at a loss in Liaden, and neither proficient in hand-talk.

  She passed on, and raised her eyes to look past those who were done for the day, and read the sign on their table.

  Her eyes were the color of the Tree’s leaves, seen through morning mist. They widened somewhat, and he expected her to pass them by.

  She surprised him, however, and quickened her pace until she stood before their table.

  She bowed the bow of introduction, and straightened to address them, her face smooth and properly Liaden.

  “Pilots. I am Karil Danac-Joenz, Trader, lately serving aboard Argost. I am interested in learning your requirements. Perhaps we might benefit each other.”

  Gods, her Liaden was better than his. Fer Gun managed to keep his countenance, though it took him too long to find his voice, and Chi spoke first, in Terran.

  “Trader Danac-Joenz, well-met. We offer a new route which will require fine-tuning, a new captain and crew, and an older small trader. Are you up for a challenge?”

  The trader grinned, in that moment utterly Terran.

  “Pilot, if I weren’t a fool for challenge, I wouldn’t have become a trader, over all the objections of my family, who wanted a calm life for me.”

  Chi inclined her head, and spoke next in Trade.

  “You are under contract. When will you be at liberty?”

  “My contract with Argost expires in two months Standard. The captain has a standing arrangement with an affiliated Line, and an appropriate trader has just recently finished out his contract. As matters stand at the moment, I will be set down at Boert’ani Station. That may be adjusted, of course.”

  “It is possible that our interests may align,” Chi said, back into Liaden, but less formal, closer to his own most comfortable dialect. “May we offer a key?”

  “I receive your key with pleasure,” Karil Danac-Joenz said, her dock-side bearing an odd Terran inflection, but perfectly intelligible to his ear. “May I offer my own key?”

  Chi glanced to him, and back to the trader.

  “I am Chi yos’Phelium, representing Korval’s interests in this set-up period. This—” she half-bowed in his direction— “is Captain Fer Gun pen’Uldra, who will be regular on the route.”

  Trader Danac-Joenz turned to him and bowed.

  “Captain—” the Liaden word.

  “Trader,” he answered, in his poor Terran. “I am pleased to accept your key.”

  She put it on the table before him with dispatch—Liaden manners, again. She had handed her key directly to the Terran recruiter, five tables up.

  He inclined his head, and on a hunch added the hand-sign for well-met.

  “I’m pleased to meet you, too,” she said her fluid Terran, her fingers answering well-met, with just the right emphasis to convey, also, agreed.

  • • • • • •

  The three resumes they had gathered were surely worthy, Chi thought, watching the crowd thin. Since she had the benefit of Petrella’s notes, she knew to a whisker precisely how worthy. One at least would serve Comet well and honorably, though the raising up of a new captain might try her somewhat.

  It would do, she thought, if nothing else presented, and the hour for presenting was growing late. They might take another day here at Dameeth—the schedule was that loose—to see if something more promising arrived on the morrow. On the other hand, there was no certainty that tomorrow would produce any more interesting choices.

  She felt Fer Gun shift in the chair next to her. He was about to suggest that they strike their table and retire to the ship, to study what they had gained. Not an unreasonable suggestion, yet something other than the weight of her belly kept her in her own seat, waiting—

  There was a stir at the doorway, and a trader, short for a Terran, tall for a Liaden, moved down the line of tables, deliberately, scanning each in turn. She strolled past the two big-ship tables, with a Terran smile and a nod, and paused at the table which represented the Lazarus Line, which had a long-Loop in need of a trader.

  That conversation went well, sticks were exchanged, and the trader moved on, past the empty table, and that being dismantled. She raised her head, read their sign, and glanced to Fer Gun.

  Her eyes widened; her lips parted slightly.

  Well, now; this was interesting.

  The trader stepped forward and introduced herself, and Chi drew a careful breath. She recognized the name, from Petrella’s notes.

  Interesting; nearly an original. Contracted three years to Argost, and has achieved wonders, despite the limits placed upon her. Possibly Korval will want her, after she’s tempered a bit more.

  Tempering, thought Chi. Surely it would do the trader no harm, if Korval took active part in her tempering?

  Fer Gun had lost the use of his tongue, she noted; first contact was hers to make.

  She smiled, therefore, wide and Terran.

  “Trader Danac-Joenz,” she said cheerfully; “well-met.”

  VII

  “Station master assigns us inner ring twelfth quadrant.”

  “Got it,” Fer Gun answered.

  Copilot was riding comm, which is how they had worked out the board between them. In addition, she had a good eye for a likely berth, and the in-ring at twelve was about as likely as they could get, coming in to Boert’ani Station.

  Their pick-up here was personnel, in particular, Trader Karil Danac-Joenz.

  He was
still . . . not entirely certain how Karil Danac-Joenz had come to be their first choice for Comet’s trader. She was young, she was Terran—well, she had been born into the Terran population on a world that supposed itself Liaden, and was therefore what Chi was pleased to call cross-cultured. She was well-spoken in three languages and in hand-talk, was Trader Danac-Joenz. He had liked her, but—the last seven months had taught him the value of having an older and more experienced crewmate to draw upon. And thus he had settled upon Trader Losan vey’Norember, experienced, sober, and very able to advise a new and, despite all his best efforts, ever-to-remain-foolish pilot-captain.

  Chi, however, had seen benefit in Trader Danac-Joenz’s ease in two cultures, and presented as uniquely useful that the trader held both a five-year trade key from TerraTrade and wore the garnet of a Liaden trader.

  It had been Chi’s opinion that a new route wanted youth and flexibility.

  “Old heads tend to be hard heads,” she said. “A young captain and a young trader grow together into a team, plan routes and expansions between them; get to know each other’s minds. Where you’ll want older heads, if I may be so bold, Captain Fer Gun, will be on your copilot and your engineer. And if it were up to me, I’d hire general crew with multiple areas of expertise, rather than just muscle, but you’ll suit yourself, of course.”

  He valued Chi’s opinion, and so set himself to compare the resumes of both contenders.

  And in the records, he saw Chi’s point. The elder trader was surely elder, her list of accomplishments, as one might expect, many times longer than that of the younger trader. But the list of her contacts had been static for years, and the rate of gain for new was . . . slow. Very slow, indeed.

  Trader Danac-Joenz, on the other hand, had to develop markets and contacts precisely because she was new. Further, those markets she had developed remained with her, even as she added to her contacts and expanded her areas of expertise.

  And that was how Karil Danac-Joenz had come to receive their offer first, and had accepted it on the spot.

  It had been, Fer Gun told himself, his decision, based on Chi’s recommendations. Chi’s experience.

  He only hoped it worked out as she had foretold.

  He would, Fer Gun thought, sending a glance over to second chair, miss his copilot, her bossy ways and her encyclopedic knowledge of ships, trade routes, goods, and human persons. More, he would miss her humor, and her patience, and her generosity in bed—oh, he had learned much, this trip, and not merely the ship, and the names of those to whom she introduced him as her business partner, and proper business manners. She had said at the start that she would be generous, and she had more than kept her promise.

  Boert’ani Station was their next-to-last stop. Take on the trader, that was one thing; take on a small cargo bound for Lytaxin.

  Chi had kin at Lytaxin, and she was under some obligation to show them her belly. That weighed on her, as even he could see; weighed on her enough that he had broached the notion of arranging for another ship to take Lytaxin’s small cargo, so she might spare herself at least that burden of propriety.

  She had smiled, and kissed his cheek, as if they were true kin and not merely contracted.

  “But you know, it must be done. All the forms must be observed for this child; and if I make any misstep, it must be in the direction of Too High.”

  That was just melant’i games and High House spite, so far as he’d been able to determine, which had made him glad to be so insignificant, and sorry that she must bear with such nonsense, when she must have a care for the babe on his own account. Surely, this had been no good time for her to take up the frustrating hobby of polishing rough pilots, but she had never stinted him.

  Navcomp pinged, and he looked to his boards to find that the approach to their berth had arrived from the station master’s office.

  “Course received,” he said quietly, fingers moving; “locked in.”

  He glanced over to the second board.

  “End of shift, Pilot?” he asked—a broad hint; “I’ll take her in.”

  “Glutton,” Chi said cheerfully. She rose, carefully, though without strain, from her chair. They kept ship’s gravity a trifle light so that there would be no strain; that had been his idea. She had noticed, of course—Chi yos’Phelium noticed everything—but beyond a raised eyebrow had made no comment, which he took to mean light grav might remain.

  “Tea, Captain?” she asked him. “A board-snack?”

  “Both would be welcome,” he said. “I thank you.”

  “Copilot’s duty,” she said lightly.

  That was proper enough. Still, he might have felt a pang, that she was required to perform such small tasks for him, had she not regaled him with tales of her time as a Scout, and confessed that this trip to establish him had benefit to her, as well.

  “Far better for me to be here, where things are so much more straightforward and sensible, than negotiating the gathers, and the melant’i games, and turning the attempted strikes against Kareen, poor child.”

  Kareen, had not, he thought, cared much for him. Not that she hadn’t a full pod of good reasons to dislike him, not least because he was the instrument by which she would be denied what ought to have been her proper place in her clan. Having been the less-than-able among his own kin, he felt a sympathy for Kareen, but possessed nowhere near the address necessary to express such a thing to her.

  And, really, they were not that much alike, when he thought more deeply upon it. He was a barely-lettered pilot from a clan which was no higher than it should be, his failing a lack of imagination in the matter of extortion.

  Kareen, on the other hand, was a brilliant scholar, gifted in the field of social science, valuable to her clan as he was not—would never be. It was merely that she was not a pilot, and so, by Korval’s own law, she could not stand delm.

  “Well,” Chi had said, one evening as they lay together in bed, sated and in a mood to tell over history. “It is a difficulty with charters made so long ago. We ought, perhaps, to modernize ourselves, but we have obligations every bit as ancient, and so we abide.”

  She had smiled as he recalled it, wistfully, and murmured.

  “Perhaps someday there will be no reason for the delm of Korval to be a master-class pilot. But that day will not, I think, dawn within my lifetime.”

  The child they had made, then, had best be a pilot, capable of mastering Jump at the very least, else Clan Korval would undergo a change—a small change, so it would seem on its face. yos’Galan would ascend to the primary Line, and yos’Phelium would fall into the subordinate place.

  It was plain to him . . . say it was plain to him now, having had his eyes opened somewhat to nuance by close association with the most complicated mind he had yet met—that the possibility of yos’Phelium failing troubled her.

  “Those who came before you ought to have seen the clan-house full of pilots,” he said to her, which was surely an impertinence, but she had merely given him a wry smile.

  “We were more plentiful before we became embroiled in intemperate politics, and three of our delms came mad—two with the notion that yos’Phelium’s connection to the old universe made us a blight upon this one, and far better that the Line died out.”

  “Do you hold with that?” he asked, not believing it of her.

  “How can I believe us to be utterly evil?” she answered, whimsical as she was when she did not care to answer a question too closely. “And, you know, it is not the loss of precedence which I care for, but that we will lose our wings. From the very first, we were pilots, and to fail of being pilots, ever again—perhaps it were best that the Line die out.”

  That had been too melancholy for pillow-talk, and he had set himself to bring her into a happier frame of mind, which he flattered himself he had done.

  And he hoped, that for once in his life, he had been apt.

  The proximity sensor beeped at him, then, and he looked to his screens, fingers already moving across
the board, making minute adjustments, dancing with the station, and made a wager with himself that he would dock her tight on the first attempt.

  • • • • • •

  He won his wager handsomely, sliding into dock with no slightest bobble. He refused station air, and the list of dockside services. Station would know that they were short-dockers, Chi not having been likely to have omitted that detail in negotiating their space. Still, he supposed they had to ask, on the chance that the PIC was an idiot, or the ship had a surplus of funds. Their bad luck that the pilot had lately graduated from idiot to half-wit, and ship’s funds were adequate for the necessities, without running to luxury.

  Details settled, he opened the port directory, meaning to place a call to cor’Wellin Warehousing, and arrange delivery of the cargo bound for Lytaxin.

  Before he could open an outgoing line, though, the comm lit green—call incoming.

  He touched the switch.

  “Comet.”

  “Good spin, Comet,” said a light, cheerful voice, speaking Liaden in the mode between comrades, “this is Karil Danac-Joenz. Do I speak with Pilot pen’Uldra?”

  “Trader, you do,” he said, meeting her in Comrade. “I hope you are well.”

  “Well, but bored—you cannot imagine how much!” she told him. “The market here is dismal and the trade floors—as Boert’ani Station acts as my host, I will say only that the trade floors are bland in the extreme. There. We need never speak of it again.”

  His lips twitched.

  “Will you come aboard, then? I warn you that we are also bland, sitting at dock as we do.”

  “But that is an affliction which will soon be remedied, will it not?” she said, and before he could answer, swept on, “Yes, Pilot, I would very much like to come aboard. May I? Soon?”

  “Yes,” he said. “What is your direction? I have a delivery to arrange, but then I will come for you. Have you much luggage?”