The Crystal Variation

by Sharon Lee

  He shook the offered hand. “Jethri Gobelyn, off Gobelyn’s Market.”

  “Pleasure. Market’s a solid ship—Arin still senior trader?”

  Jethri blinked. The routes being as they were, there were still some who had missed news of Arin Gobelyn’s death. This man didn’t seem quite old enough to have been one of his father’s contemporaries, but . . .

  “Paitor’s senior,” he told Sirge Milton steadily. “Arin died ten Standards back.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” the man said seriously. “I was just a ‘prentice, but he impressed me real favorable.” He took a drink of ale, eyes wandering back to the ship-board. “Damn’,” he said, not quite under his breath, then laughed a little and looked at Jethri. “Let this be a lesson to you—stay liquid. Think I’d know that by now.” Another laugh.

  Jethri had a sip of beer. “But,” he said, though it was none of his business, “what happened?”

  For a moment, he thought the other wouldn’t answer. He drank ale, frowning at the board, then seemed to collect himself and flashed Jethri a quick grin.

  “Couple things. First, I was approached for a closed buy-in on—futures.” He shrugged. “You understand I can’t be specific. But the guarantee was four-on-one and—well, the lodgings was paid ‘til I shipped and I had plenty on my tab at the Trade Bar, so I sunk all my serious cash into the future.”

  Jethri frowned. A four-on-one return on speculation? It was possible—the crewtapes told of astonishing fortunes made Port-side, now and then—but not likely. To invest all liquid assets into such a venture—

  Sirge Milton held up a hand. “Now, I know you’re thinking exactly what I thought when the thing was put to me—four-on-one’s ‘way outta line. But the gig turns on a Liaden Master Trader’s say-so, and I figured that was good enough for me.” He finished his ale and put the glass down, waving at the barkeeper.

  “Short of it is, I’m cash-poor til tomorrow midday, when the pay-off’s guaranteed. And this morning, I came across as sweet a deal as you’d care to see—and I know just who’ll want it, to my profit. A kais holds the lot—and me with three ten-bits in pocket. Stork was going to front the cash, and earn half the profit, fair enough. But the rush-money and the bonus was brighter.” He shook his head. “So, Jethri Gobelyn, you can learn from my mistake—and I’m hopeful I’ll do the same.”

  “Four-on-one,” Jethri said, mind a-buzz with the circumstance, so he forgot he was just a ‘prentice, talking to a full trader. “Do you have a paper with the guarantee spelled out?”

  “I got better than that,” Sirge Milton said. “I got his card.” He turned his head, smiling at the bartender. “Thanks, Nance.”

  “No problem,” she returned. “You got a Liaden’s card? Really? Can I see?”

  The man looked uneasy. “It’s not the kind of thing you flash around.”

  “Aw, c’mon, Sirge—I never seen one.”

  Jethri could appreciate her curiosity: he was half agog, himself. A Liaden’s card was as good as his name, and a Liaden’s name, according to great-grand-captain Larance, was his dearest possession.

  “Well,” Sirge said. He glanced around, but the other patrons seemed well-involved in their own various businesses. “OK.”

  He reached into his pouch, pulled out an out-of-date Combine trading key—the SY 1118 color was red, according to the chart on the back of his door; blue-and-white was last year’s short-term color—along with a short handful of coins and a cargo-head socket wrench. Finally, with a satisfied grunt, he fingered out a flat, creamy rectangle.

  He held up it face up between the three of them, his hands cupping it like was a rare stone that he didn’t want nobody else to see.

  “Ooh,” Nance said. “What’s it say?”

  Jethri frowned at the lettering. It was a more ornate form of the Liaden alphabet he had laboriously taught himself off the library files, but not at all unreadable.

  “Norn ven’Deelin,” he said, hoping he had the pronunciation of the name right. “Master of Trade.”

  “Right you are,” said Sirge, nodding. “You’ll go far, I’m sure, friend Jethri! And this here—” he rubbed his thumb over the graphic of a rabbit silhouetted against a full moon— “is the sign for his Clan. Ixin.”

  “Oh,” Nance said again, then turned to answer a hail from up-bar. Sirge slipped the card away and Jethri took another sip of beer, mind racing. A four-on-one return, guaranteed by a Master Trader? It was possible. Jethri had seen the rabbit-and-moon sign on a land-barge that very day. And Sirge Milton was going to collect tomorrow mid-day. Jethri thought he was beginning to see a way to buy into a bit of profit, himself.

  “I have a kais to lend,” he said, setting the schooner aside.

  Sirge Milton shook his head. “Nah—I appreciate it, Jethri, but I don’t take loans. Bad business.”

  Which, Jethri acknowledged, was exactly what his uncle would say. He nodded, hoping his face didn’t show how excited he felt.

  “I understand. But you have collateral. How ‘bout if I buy Stork’s share of your Port-deal, pay-off tomorrow mid-day, after you collect from Master ven’Deelin?”

  “Not the way I like to do business,” Sirge said slowly.

  Jethri took a careful breath. “We can write an agreement,” he said.

  The other brightened. “We can, can’t we? Make it all legal and binding. Sure, why not?” He took a swallow of ale and grinned. “Got paper?”

  “NO, MA’AM,” Jethri said, some hours later, and as respectfully as he could, while giving his mother glare-for-glare. “I’m in no way trying to captain this ship. I just want to know if the final papers are signed with Digger.” His jaw muscles felt tight and he tried to relax them—to make his face trading-bland. “I think the ship owes me that information. At least that.”

  “Think we can do better for you,” his mother the captain surmised, her mouth a straight, hard line of displeasure. “All right, boy. No, the final papers aren’t signed. We’ll catch up with Digger ‘tween here and Kinaveral and do the legal then.” She tipped her head, sarcastically civil. “That OK by you?”

  Jethri held onto his temper, barely. His mother’s mood was never happy, dirt-side. He wondered, briefly, how she was going to survive a whole year world-bound, while the Market was rebuilt.

  “I don’t want to ship on Digger,” he said, keeping his voice just factual. He sighed. “Please, ma’am—there’s got to be another ship willing to take me.”

  She stared at him until he heard his heart thudding in his ears. Then she sighed in her turn, and spun the chair so she faced the screens, showing him profile.

  “You want another ship,” she said, and she didn’t sound mad, anymore. “You find it.”

  DAY 34

  Standard Year 1118

  Ynsolt’i Port

  Zeroground Pub

  “NO CALLS FOR Jethri Gobelyn? No message from Sirge Milton?”

  The barkeeper on-shift today at the Zeroground Pub was maybe a Standard Jethri’s elder. He was also twelve inches taller and out massed him by a factor of two. He shook his head, setting the six titanium rings in his left ear to chiming, and sighed, none too patient. “Kid, I told you. No calls. No message. No package. No Milton. No nothing, kid. Got it?”

  Jethri swallowed, hard, the fractin hot against his palm. “Got it.”

  “Great,” said the barkeep. “You wanna beer or you wanna clear out so a paying customer can have a stool?”

  “Merebeer, please,” he said, slipping a bit across the counter. The keeper swept up the coin, went up-bar, drew a glass, and slid it down the polished surface with a will. Jethri put out a hand—the mug smacked into his palm, stinging. Carefully, he eased away from the not-exactly-overcrowded counter and took his drink to the back.

  He was on the approach to trouble. Dodging his senior, sliding off-ship without the captain’s aye—approaching trouble, right enough, but not quite established in orbit. Khat was inventive—he trusted her to cover him for another h
our, by which time he had better be on-ship, cash in hand and looking to show Uncle Paitor the whole.

  And Sirge Milton was late.

  A man, Jethri reasoned, slipping into a booth and setting his beer down, might well be late for a meeting. A man might even, with good reason, be an hour late for that same meeting. But a man could call the place named and leave a message for the one who was set to meet him.

  Which Sirge Milton hadn’t done, nor sent a courier with a package containing Jethri’s payout, neither.

  So, something must’ve come up. Business. Sirge Milton seemed a busy man. Jethri opened his pouch and pulled out the agreement they’d written yesterday, sitting at this very back booth, with Nance the bartender as witness.

  Carefully, he smoothed the paper, read over the guarantee of payment. Two kais was a higher buy-out than he had asked for, but Sirge had insisted, saying the profit would cover it, not to mention his ‘expectations.’ There was even a paragraph about being paid in the event that Sirge’s sure buyer was out of cash, citing the debt owed Sirge Milton, Trader, by Norn ven’Deelin, Master of Trade, as security.

  It had all seemed clear enough yesterday afternoon, but Jethri thought now that he should have asked Sirge to take him around to his supplier, or at least listed the name and location of the supplier on the paper.

  He had a sip of beer, but it tasted flat and he pushed the glass away. The door to the bar slid open, admitting a noisy gaggle of Terrans. Jethri looked up, eagerly, but Sirge was not among them. Sighing, he frowned down at the paper, trying to figure out a next move that didn’t put him on the receiving end of one of his uncle’s furious scolds.

  Norn ven’Deelin, Master of Trade . . . The name looked odd, written out in Terran, approximating spelling across two alphabets that didn’t precisely match, edge-on-edge. Norn ven’Deelin, who had given his card—his name—into Sirge Milton’s keeping. Jethri blinked. Norn ven’Deelin, he thought, would very likely know how to get in touch with a person he held in such high esteem. With luck, he’d be inclined to share that information with a polite-talking ‘prentice.

  If he wasn’t inclined . . . Jethri folded his paper away and got out of the booth, leaving the beer behind. No use borrowing trouble, he told himself.

  IT WAS LATE, but still day-Port, when he found the right office. At least, he thought, pausing across the street and staring at that damned bunny silhouetted against the big yellow moon, he hoped it was the right office. He was tired from walking miles in gravity, hot, gritty—but worse than any of that, he was scared. Norn ven’Deelin’s office—if this was at last his office—was well into the Liaden side of Port.

  Not that there was properly a Terran side, Ynsolt’i being a Liaden world. But there were portions where Terrans were tolerated as a necessary evil attending galactic trade, and where a body caught the notion that maybe Terrans were cut some extra length of line, in regard to what might be seen as insult.

  Standing across from the door, which might, after all, be the right one, Jethri did consider turning around, trudging back to the Market and taking the licks he’d traded for.

  Except he’d traded for profit to the ship, and he was going to collect it. That, at least, he would show his senior and his captain, though he had long since stopped thinking that profit would buy him pardon.

  Jethri sighed. There was dust all over his good trading clothes. He brushed himself off as well as he could, and looked across the street. It came to him that the rabbit on Clan Ixin’s sign wasn’t so much howling at that moon, as laughing its fool head off.

  Thinking so, he crossed the street, wiped his boots on the mat, slid his fractin manfully out of his palm and into his public pocket, and pushed the door open.

  The office behind the door was airy and bright, and Jethri was abruptly glad that he had dressed in trading clothes, dusty as they now were. This place was high-class—a body could smell profit in the subtly fragrant air, see it in the floor covering and the real wooden chairs.

  The man sitting behind the carved center console was as elegant as the room: crisp-cut yellow hair, bland and beardless Liaden face, a vest embroidered with the moon-and-rabbit worn over a salt-white silken shirt. He looked up from his work screen as the door opened, eyebrows lifting in what Jethri had no trouble reading as astonishment.

  “Good-day to you, young sir.” The man’s voice was soft, his Trade only lightly tinged with accent.

  “Good-day, honored sir.” Jethri moved forward slowly, taking care to keep his hands in sight. Three steps from the console, he stopped and bowed, as low as he could manage without falling on his head.

  “Jethri Gobelyn, apprentice trader, Gobelyn’s Market.” He straightened and met the bland blue eyes squarely. “I am come to call upon the Honored Norn ven’Deelin.”

  “Ah.” The man folded his hands neatly upon the console. “I regret it is necessary that you acquaint me more nearly with your business, Jethri Gobelyn.”

  Jethri bowed again, not so deep this time, and waited til he was upright to begin the telling.

  “I am in search of a man—a Terran,” he added, half-amazed to hear no quaver in his voice— “named Sirge Milton, who owes me a sum of money. It was in my mind that the Honored ven’Deelin might be willing to put me in touch with this man.”

  The Liaden frowned. “Forgive me, Jethri Gobelyn, but how came such a notion into your mind?”

  Jethri took a breath. “Sirge Milton had the Honored ven’Deelin’s card in pledge of—”

  The Liaden held up a hand, and Jethri gulped to a stop, feeling a little gone around the knees.

  “Hold.” A Terran would have smiled to show there was no threat. Liadens didn’t smile, at least, not at Terrans, but this one exerted himself to incline his head an inch.

  “If you please,” he said. “I must ask if you are certain that it was the Honored ven’Deelin’s own card.”

  “I—the name was plainly written, sir. I read it myself. And the sigil was the same, the very moon-and-rabbit you yourself wear.”

  “I regret.” The Liaden stood, bowed and beckoned, all in one fluid movement. “This falls beyond my area of authority. If you please, young sir, follow me.” The blue eyes met his, as if the Liaden had somehow heard his dismay at being thus directed deeper into alien territory. “House courtesy, Jethri Gobelyn. You receive no danger here.”

  Which made it plain enough, to Jethri’s mind, that refusing to follow would be an insult. He swallowed, his breath going short on him, the Market suddenly seeming very far away.

  The yellow-haired Liaden was waiting, his smooth, pretty face uncommunicative. Jethri bowed slightly and walked forward as calmly as trembling knees allowed. The Liaden led him down a short hallway, past two closed rooms, and bowed him across the threshold of the third, open.

  “Be at ease,” the Liaden said from the threshold. “I will apprise the master trader of your errand.” He hesitated, then extended a hand, palm up. “It is well, Jethri Gobelyn. The House is vigilant on your behalf.” He was gone on that, the door sliding silently closed behind him.

  This room was smaller than the antechamber, though slightly bigger than the Market’s common room, the shelves set at heights he had to believe handy for Liadens. Jethri stood for a couple minutes, eyes closed, doing cube roots in his head until his heartbeat slowed down and the panic had eased back to a vague feeling of sickness in his gut.

  Opening his eyes, he went over to the shelves on the right, half-trained eye running over the bric-a-brac, wondering if that was really a piece of Sofleg porcelain and, if so, what it was doing set naked out on a shelf, as if it were a common pottery bowl.

  The door whispered behind him, and he spun to face a Liaden woman dressed in dark trousers and a garnet-colored shirt. Her hair was short and gray, her eyebrows straight and black. She stepped energetically into the center of the room as the door slid closed behind her, and bowed with precision, right palm flat against her chest.

  “Norn ven’Deelin,” she stated in
a clear, level voice. “Clan Ixin.”

  Jethri felt the blood go to ice in his veins.

  Before him, Norn ven’Deelin straightened and slanted a bright black glance into his face. “You discover me a dismay,” she observed, in heavily accented Terran. “Say why, do.”

  He managed to breathe, managed to bow. “Honored Ma’am, I—I’ve just learned the depth of my own folly.”

  “So young, yet made so wise!” She brought her hands together in a gentle clap, the amethyst ring on her right hand throwing light off its facets like purple lightning. “Speak on, young Jethri. I would drink of your wisdom.”

  He bit his lip. “Ma’am, the—person—I came here to find—told me Norn ven’Deelin was—was male.”

  “Ah. But Liaden names are difficult, I am learning, for those of Terran Code. Possible it is that your friend achieved honest error, occasioned by null-acquaintance with myself.”

  “I’m certain that’s the case, Honored,” Jethri said carefully, trying to feel his way toward a path that would win him free, with no insult to the trader, and extricate Sirge Milton from a junior’s hopeless muddle.

  “I—my friend—did know the person I mistakenly believed yourself to be well enough to have lent money on a portweek investment. The—error—is all my own. Likely there is another Norn ven’Deelin in Port, and I foolishly—”

  A tiny hand rose, palm out, to stop him. “Be assured, Jethri Gobelyn. Of Norn ven’Deelin there is one. This one.”

  He had, Jethri thought, been afraid of that. Hastily, he tried to shuffle possibilities. Had Sirge Milton dealt with a go-between authorized to hand over his employer’s card? Had—

  “My assistant,” said Norn ven’Deelin, “discloses to me a tale of wondering obfusion. I am understanding that you are in possession of one of my cards?”

  Her assistant, Jethri thought, with a sudden sharpening of his wits on the matter at hand, had told her no such thing. She was trying to throw him off-balance, and startle him into revealing a weakness. She was, in fact, trading. Jethri ground his teeth and made his face smooth.