To Fire Called (A Seeker's Tale From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 2)

by Nathan Lowell

  I’d tried on the jeans and didn’t like the way they fit considering I was going to be hanging out with the rich and famous. I pulled out a pair of black silk pants with a crease sharp enough to scrape paint. I didn’t remember where I got them but I always felt like a million wearing them. Instead of a polo shirt, I went with the pullover I got the last time I was shopping with Stacey Arellone. Pale gray with a subtle pattern and a mock turtle collar. Stacey always said I looked like a holo star in it. A pair of polished boots and I was ready to roll.

  Pip looked at me from the door, tilting his head to the left and then the right. “Yeah. That’ll do,” he said at last. He wore a pair of gray slacks, a burgundy pullover, and some pointy-toed boots I’d never seen before. His silver earring glinted in the light of the overhead.

  “So much for jeans and a polo shirt,” I said.

  “Yeah, yeah. All right. Shall we go?” he asked.

  I slipped my tablet into a pocket in my trousers and waved him on. “Sooner started. Sooner done.”

  “You’re going to be a joy to be with tonight, aren’t you?”

  I grinned at him. “I hope to exceed your expectati—”

  He smacked me in the shoulder.

  I was still laughing when we went through the lock.

  The venue—I’d hardly call it a restaurant—looked about like I’d expect. The whole promenade facade had been replaced with brushed steel plates from deck to overhead. They looked like they might withstand a meteor strike. The entry, by comparison, featured a matched pair of chubby cupids in what looked like marble but were probably something like styrene plastic. Instead of looking at each other over the entrance, they faced away from each other, posed wing-to-wing, apparently ready to pace off a duel to the death with their little recurved bows. The actual door part of the entrance consisted of a pair of armorglass panels stained a rich, royal purple.

  I leaned over to Pip and lowered my voice. “I’d give it three cheddars.”

  He looked at me like I’d spoken to him in ancient Greek. “What?”

  I nodded at the entrance where, even unfashionably early as we were, the beautiful people already gathered.

  “I don’t know you,” he said.

  “When we get done here, let’s go around to the other side of the promenade.”

  He frowned at me, his eyes blinking rapidly. “What’s on the other side of the promenade?”

  “I’m not sure. I just have a hunch. Come on. It’ll do you good to get off the ship for a bit.”

  He grimaced but we’d come to the head of the line where a suavely coiffed bouncer ruined the lines of his tasteful short-sleeved purple pullover by wearing a gauche nylon shoulder holster with what looked like a plastic replica needler in it—all in matching aubergine. He held up a ham masquerading as a fist and stopped us before we could step on the industrial grade purple door mat. “Do you have an invitation, sirs?” His tone and body language clearly gave the message that, of course, we did not.

  Pip pulled it out and handed it to the gorilla.

  “Phillip Carstairs?” The man seemed perplexed.

  “Yes? How might I help you, my good man?” Pip asked.

  “Then who’s this guy?” He nodded at me without ruffling a single curl on his head.

  “My plus one, of course.”

  The man looked over our heads at the muttering beautiful people behind us.

  “He’s your date?”

  “Actually, he’s my captain, but that’s neither here nor there. You’ve asked for my invitation. I have presented said invitation and correctly identified my companion as my plus one. Is there some other requirement? Identification, perhaps? A quick call to Simon?”

  His eyes got large. “I couldn’t interrupt Mr. Aubergin—”

  Pip pulled out his tablet. “That’s fine. I can. Don’t you fret your pretty little head about it.”

  The bouncer thrust the invite back into Pip’s hand and stepped out of the door. “Enjoy your evening, Mr. Carstairs.”

  “Thank you, Reginald. My regards to your au pair.”

  We breezed through like we owned the place and wondered who left the doors open.

  “Don’t tell me you have a file on him,” I said after we’d cleared the clutter of slow moving freights at the door.

  “Oh, heavens, no. Only the important people.”

  “You had me worried.”

  “I ran Aubergine’s employee roster this afternoon. He’s Reginald Alexander. Twenty-eight. Former Mr. Jett. Sleeping with his au pair, one Heidi Baxter from Diurnia, when his spouse is away on business, which is four out of every five weeks.” He looked at me with one of his little “ain’t I cute” smiles. “You’re catching flies now?”

  I closed my mouth and swallowed.

  Pip snagged a couple of champagne flutes from one of the circulating waitstaff. He thrust one at me. “Here. Try not to spill it on yourself.” He took a sip and began a slow meander along the passage, examining the various art installations, sipping his champagne, and—I hated to admit it—fitting in.

  The image of the Clipper Ship Lager–swilling Phillip Carstairs sipping delicately from what appeared to be a real crystal champagne flute made me smile. I followed along in his wake. The art itself struck me as vaguely pretentious, like a twenty-something trying too hard to be an artiste.

  We found ourselves in front of a rather large painting mounted under modest spotlights. As nearly as I could tell it looked like about ten square yards of untreated, white canvas with a single red fingerprint squarely in the center.

  “Is it white or gray, do you suppose?” I asked.

  Pip pursed his lips and tilted his head, obviously considering his answer.

  A young woman, looking nearly emaciated in a simple shift of unbleached muslin, stood beside me and answered. “White, of course,” she said. “The symbolism. Unmistakable.” One long, knobby finger toyed with a stray ringlet over her left ear while she sipped from the flute in her right hand.

  “I believe you’re correct, my dear,” Pip said. “The single red touch of man bringing death to the universe.”

  It was one of those moments when your brain goes ‘zip’ and everything looks wrong for just a moment while you find your balance again. I did my best not to stagger.

  “Are you the artist?” Pip asked.

  She gazed up at the canvas. “Ah. No.” She sighed. “Perhaps someday I can capture something as striking, as visceral. For now?” She shrugged one bony shoulder. “I can only admire.” With another heartfelt sigh, she drifted along the passage, her shift wafting in the breeze of her languid passing.

  I looked into the glass and back at Pip. “What the hell is in this?”

  “Just champagne, I think,” he said with a shrug. “The psychotropics are probably aerosol.”

  “I have to admit, I’m impressed. You studied art criticism?” I turned back to look up at the canvas again.

  “I studied the signage,” he said, looking down at the small, black and white label at the bottom edge of the installation.

  “The Death Of The Universe.”

  He shrugged. “It’s a gift.”

  I looked up at it again. “Can you imagine Erik James doing something like this?”

  Pip stared up, his head turning this way and that as if perhaps measuring the canvas with his eyes. “If he did, we’d probably feel something.” He turned and followed the bony waif deeper into the gallery.

  I granted him the point and sauntered along in his wake. The evening was proving to be full of surprises.

  We’d gone three steps into the next gallery when a fleshy man wearing too much gold jewelry and an impeccably tailored suit in purple velvet made an entrance from the other end and stood, poised for just a few heartbeats too long, for his public to admire.

  Polite applause spattered around the room, followed by a murmur of quiet admiration.

  “Simon Aubergine, I presume,” I said, looking at Pip.

  “The man. The legend. Th
e client.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “The client. He’s the one we’re here to meet.”

  “No, I got that. Aerosol psychotropics?”

  Pip shrugged. “Are they bothering you?”

  “It’s odd,” I said.

  Pip snickered. “You have no idea. It’ll pass when we get out into fresh air again. Just don’t make any life-changing decisions while you’re here.”

  “Like signing up to transport a can of beer-making materials?”

  “I was thinking more about buying a painting,” Pip said. “This stuff is dreadful.”

  A robust young man wearing an aubergine loincloth and two quarts of cooking oil stood near-by, his massive shoulders being caressed by an appreciative audience. I could smell the warm oil wafting from his pecs. It smelled like a cheap canola that had been too long in the can. He shot us a nasty glance. His audience didn’t seem to have heard.

  “You might keep your voice down a bit,” I said.

  “Or I might not.” Pip shrugged. “Depends.”

  Aubergine swanned through the adoring crowd, following some serpentine path only he saw.

  Pip sighed and walked up to one of the many plinths in this hall of sculpture. He strolled around the sculpture once, twice, and on his third time around caught my eye. “Brilliant, isn’t it?”

  I blinked a couple of times to peel some of the grimy feeling off my eyeballs and followed Pip around the display, trying to make out what we were looking at. “It looks like a bolt,” I said, leaning close to Pip and keeping my voice low.

  “It is a bolt. I’d say a sixteen millimeter by one. Probably twelve centimeters long.” He leaned in to look closely. “Threaded backward.”

  “Why does it have two nuts?” I asked.

  Pip’s head swiveled in my direction. “Seriously?”

  I shrugged.

  “We may need to get you out of here,” he said. “The—uh—atmosphere isn’t doing you any favors.”

  Aubergine appeared beside Pip, emerging from the crowd like a magician’s trick rabbit without benefit of a hat. “Carstairs, my dear boy. You made it after all,” he said.

  “Amazing show, Simon. Simply amazing.” Pip clasped his hands together in front of his chest. “How do you find such talents?”

  Simon ran a pudgy digit up the side of his nose and winked. “Trade secrets, dear boy. Trade secrets.” He turned his piggy eyes in my direction. “You must be the famous Captain Wang,” he said.

  I gave him credit for getting the pronunciation right. “Must I?”

  “Ah, modest as well,” Simon said. “The man who invented the Starliner Cruises and then disappeared with his billions? Famous seems hardly sufficient.”

  I started to correct him when Pip stepped in front of me. “You’ll have to pardon Captain Wang. He’s had rather a blow recently and isn’t quite himself.”

  “Really? Who am I?” I asked.

  Pip motored on over me. “Did we catch you at a bad time, Simon?”

  Simon took Pip’s arm and they wandered off across the gallery, seemingly engrossed in their conversation so completely that no one else was in the room. I glanced around and realized that other than the three of us, only a half dozen other people actually were in the room. A couple of them stood near the exits carefully not watching us. I pondered, very briefly, where everybody had gone but the enigmatic bolt drew my eye again. Standing proudly upright, hexed knob on top and balanced on the narrow end. Two large nuts threaded onto the base. I marveled at the engineering and wondered how the artist had carved not only the threads backward but had tapped two hunks of machine steel backward as well.

  The small brass plaque on the base identified the piece as “Erector Set.”

  Standing back from the piece, I sipped my champagne and pondered.

  Pip stepped up beside me and joined me in contemplation. “You’re finding this interesting?” he asked.

  “It’s most curious,” I said. “Why screwed backward?”

  Pip bit his lip and studied the piece for several moments before speaking. “A mystery for the ages,” he said. “We’ll probably never know.” He nodded at the exit. “Come on, Ishmael. Let’s find some fresh air and some food. I’m getting a tad peckish. Aren’t you?”

  “Excellent idea. I thought we were going to eat here.”

  Pip grimaced and shook his head. “I saw the buffet. Nothing I’d want to eat. Little nibbles of nothing and all at the wrong temperatures.”

  “In that case, yes, by all means. Our cargo?”

  “Handled,” he said. “We’ll pick up the can tomorrow. I’ll explain the details when we get back to the ship.”

  I glanced around. We’d entered a gallery with many more people in it. I nodded. “Wise choice, I think.”

  “You have no idea,” Pip said and pulled me toward the door.

  We stepped out of the gallery into the cool, refreshing air of the promenade. Reginald still guarded the door, and the line of beautiful people snaked down the promenade toward the lift.

  “You were going to show me something on the other side of the promenade,” Pip said.

  “Indeed. Indeed.” We started to walk around the orbital core. The cool air felt lovely on my face and after only a few steps I felt quite revived. “It was stuffy in there, wasn’t it?” I asked.

  “A bit, perhaps, yes.” Pip looked over at me. “Are you feeling any better?”

  I took several deep breaths of the cool, refreshing air. “Yes. Quite. My head’s beginning to clear.”

  “You had me going there for a while.”

  I looked at him. “Had you going?”

  We continued our stroll and he didn’t speak for several ticks, just bit his lower lip and glanced my way occasionally.

  After we had covered maybe a quarter of the promenade he looked away from me and asked, “So what do you remember about our little visit?”

  “Reginald somebody who’s sleeping with his au pair,” I said.

  “Keep going,” he said.

  Slowly, at first, then with greater speed, the evening replayed itself in my mind. “The aerosol,” I said.

  Pip nodded and shrugged. He chewed his lower lip and his eyes fairly danced in his skull.

  “You let me in there without any warning or preparation?”

  “I told you about it,” he said.

  I stopped in mid stride and shoved him up against the bulkhead. “Not until I was already half-gassed.”

  Pip smiled at me. “Easy, big guy. You’re still half-gassed and I apologize. I should have given you the antidote, too.”

  I ground my teeth together to keep from screaming. “There was an antidote?” The words came out in a hiss so angry I almost didn’t recognize my own voice.

  Pip shrugged. “Of course.”

  I leaned my head back and took a couple of deep breaths so I didn’t have to see his face. I was afraid I’d punch it in. “I’m still half-gassed,” I said to the overhead.

  “Yeah. It’s almost over and I’m truly sorry, my friend. I had no idea you’d get hit so hard, so fast.”

  I took a few more deep breaths, blowing them out from my diaphragm. With each breath, I felt more normal. More like myself. Less like some rampaging idiot. I swung around and propped my back against the solid bulkhead, pumping slow even breaths in and out of my lungs.

  The evening played out in my head again. I started laughing.

  “You all right?” Pip asked. I heard worry in his voice for the first time.

  I managed to stop laughing long enough to gasp, “Yeah. I think so.” I took a few more deep breaths and shook my head, hilarity finally under control. “If you ever do that to me again, I swear I will drop you out of the nearest airlock.”

  He grinned. “Fair deal. For what it’s worth, I really am sorry. That was a cheap trick.”

  “That doesn’t even begin to cover it,” I said.

  “It doesn’t, but maybe this will make it up to you.”

  I looked a
t him.

  “Three hundred million,” he said.

  “Three hundred million what?”

  “Credits.”

  I felt my knees weaken and had to push to prop them up. “That’s our take?”

  He nodded. “One can. Three hundred million.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  “We only have to deliver it to Mel’s Place within eight weeks.”

  “It’ll take us four to get out of Jett’s gravity well,” I said.

  “You remember Margary?”

  “Sure, what’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Their orbital was on the outer edge of the system.”

  I realized then what he was getting at. “They’re a mining station in the Deep Dark?”

  “They’re almost into the Burleson limit. With any luck we’ll jump right into their front door.”

  “That’s not as good as it sounds. We’ll still need to match orbits.”

  “Yeah. We’d need a good navigator,” Pip said. “Somebody who can plot a course to the gates of hell and back again.”

  “Do you think Reed can handle that?” I asked.

  Pip stared at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Take a few more deep breaths and replay this conversation.”

  “One of these days, I swear I’m going to strangle you.”

  “Before or after you drop me out the nearest airlock?” he asked, grinning like it was all one big joke.

  I closed my eyes and sagged against the bulkhead. “Al.”

  “Al,” he said. “Good chance for her to pass on her skills to Reed.”

  I took another deep breath and pushed off the bulkhead. “Come on. I want to see if my hunch was right.” I continued on around the promenade, Pip running a few steps to catch up with me.

  We didn’t have to walk much farther. We came to the display windows of crystal clear armorglass. Behind them, pale cream and gray bands highlighted sculptures and paintings, tapestries and fiber art. I followed the curve of the promenade around, drawn by a new wonder at each step. We got to the closed and darkened entry. A simple sign above the door featured a single word in flowing script. “Christine’s.”

  Pip looked up at the sign and then back at me.

  “Yeah. It’s hers,” I said.