by Sharon Lee
“Not exactly about her,” she admitted slowly. “I’m in the spot, though, and the job means I gotta think ahead in case the call’s mine. Not an order, but I’d appreciate it if you can give me some stats from our last fifty or a hundred Jumps. Didn’t want be setting up the search with Iza right there, since it wasn’t immediate need stuff, and besides, not sure I have that in a searchable base. Trade stats, kind of, but might have a bearing on security, too. And you’ll have to give me a better lecture on what Arin was doing with his theory and his connections, if you can.”
“We have time,” he said, finally letting their shared eye contact go in favor of looking at the one screen that showed local space with course and shipping overlays rather than contacts, trade offers, and search lists.
* * *
Whatever he saw in that screen, it mostly kept his attention while he talked in a quiet monotone with the occasional flicker of a glance in her direction to make sure she wasn’t asleep. Since she’d asked, Khat just listened.
“Pretty basic really, once you remember two things. First is that Arin and his kin, they’d been around a long time. A long time. And chances are that Arin’d been around longer than I knew—he was older than me and never quite looked it, but they come from a long-lived bunch”—here he took a look in her direction before talking at the wall again, quieter, like he didn’t want his voice to carry down the passageway.
“So I figure Grig and Arin both got long view on us; if Grig claims forty-five Standards I’m guessing he’s got twice that and more, same as Arin had that many and some more, too. Understand me—this is not entirely a guess: Iza did a bunch of research a little late, just after Arin come back from a long run of commissioner business with a barely born kid he claimed as his. Not the kind of thing someone who married partly for love wants to hear, I’m guessing—well, it didn’t take a lot of research then to see that Arin been married twice before, and the first time he’d been married they called him thirty Standards old and she’d thought she’d met him when he was thirty-three—’cept there was at least three of his claimed git out there working as pilots already . . .”
Khat nodded at his glance—some of this had seeped in over the years, but—
“So that’s aside your point, but astride mine: these Tomas brothers and their cousins, they’d been right slick traders and dealers and spaceship types for a lot of years, but never what I’d call family of our likes—us being Gobelyn and Karter and Turnavitch and well, you know the names, because we’ve been loopers for a few hundred years, and so have they.
“The thing is that these Tomas folks been there at the fringes, being a little too ahead of things sometimes, and a little too knowing, and always did have a yen—including when Arin come along—to deal in just about any old-time or Before thing what was come across.
“What you’ll want to do, in part, ’cause now you’re officially in the line, is to look at at the logs and the Gobelyn bloodlines as way back as you don’t get bored by it. I’ve got a database of every place this ship set down and most of the contact info . . .”
Khat sat up a little straighter. “Then you already have the analysis of how often we deal at mostly Liaden ports, and how often we come into Liaden space and . . .”
“I do. Arin made a study of that, like he made a study of a lot of stuff. That’s why he was rousing the loopers to set things good, because he could see the Liadens coming in and he could see—and predict somewhat—about another problem, one that was face front and nobody wanted to talk about it.”
“Good,” she said, “so we have Arin’s plan on competing and I . . .”
“Let’s not get there yet, lass,” Paitor said, “because there’s a lot of philosophy between here and there, and some history, too. I don’t have a full copy of that plan, and if Grig does he’s got it against Iza’s orders. Why not tell me in detail about the charts and numbers you need, and I’ll trim ’em out and get ’em in your direction.”
She nodded. “Right, then. I need that history that shows every time in the last half century the Market has come into a Terran port where there was a Liaden ship on port. I’m guessing there must be a way of doing that. If that takes going into the logs or something, I can do that part. I want how often, where, and if there was more than one Liaden Ship at the same time. If we can pull some larger database that’ll show our regular routes and when Liaden—”
Paitor raised his hand for stop.
“Khat—I told you. Arin did that. You were too young probably to listen, but he did that and I have some of it. What I don’t have, I guess Grig’s got anyhow, or can tell us who still does. If he won’t tell, Wilde Toad had some of it before they went down, and I so expect their cousins on Nubella, Nubella Run, and Balrog have some. We’re not alone in this, you know.”
She looked at him with a sudden dread.
“Iza don’t put that information on her boards. I mean, maybe we ought to be running with notifications, and charting these things. There’s got to be something here that . . .”
Paitor sighed, and stood up.
“Here’s where there’s a problem, Khat. There’s a couple ways of looking at this, and we’re flying on a ship with captain and mission that says our job’s pretty clear. We fly our loop and we take what comes our way and we live on it. How it is, how it’s been, how it will be.”
She nodded.
“Iza’s set that way, I know.”
He looked away, letting his eyes wander the screen, letting them catch the changing infostreams offered and available, seeing the ships he knew from experience were dropping into a queue for one of the stations, seeing others that were off to do private transactions away from the eyes and probes of the planet-bound. Gathering himself, he made the hand-sign of apology, and faced her squarely.
“What’s happening is that there are changes, though, and Iza’s pretty plans aren’t going to work. There’s some that see what’s coming, and some that won’t see, and a dozen sides to each and a couple of major philosophies.”
He paused again, let the phrases find themselves.
“Cris, he’s been on the side of sister Iza, mostly. He did a brave thing to give that chair up to you, and I honor him for it. Else I pity him.”
Khat stiffened involuntarily, preparing to defend her elder—
“Can’t do it that way, Khat. This isn’t just about your comfort. See, the Tomas contingent and their uncle, they got ideas that they see what’s coming—and Iza wouldn’t hear it, wouldn’t see it was a problem for us, seeing that it’s a problem fourteen years out or forty years out or a hundred and forty or five hundred and forty.
“What Arin said all along, was that the Commission could do this proper, and keep the looper ship’s running their courses—and us loopers staying in trade with a few changes here and there, and maybe, just maybe, get a leg up on the Liadens and whoever else. Me, I’m on the ‘here and there’ side, myself. But then the Befores started being trouble, and Arin’s uncle said they had to be picked up and studied and collected before something bad happened. Really bad.
“Me, I didn’t see that. Damn fractins didn’t seem to hurt no one, and the other stuff—the handholds and minipods—it was mostly one-offs, as far as I could see. I heard that if you wanted it bad enough there was timonium in those things, but it wasn’t hardly recoverable and it was mostly at end of usable half-life.”
He fluttered his hands then, the is as is sign, fact are facts.
“So the thing is that Cris has always lined up with Iza, thinking this scheme of changing how we do business—of changing how everyone does business—that it don’t make sense. She does think we can maybe do better in the way of ships, and she and Arin, they threw their marriage portions together on a project some of the other loopers went in on. The Wilde’s did, and we did, and all the branches of DeNobli . . . supposed to be a small shipyard doing research. The Commission was with the deal for a while, too, but then it turned out there were a lot of politics going on, a
lot of sneak, and people trying to take the project over, take it back to some idea of building really big ships to just rival the Liadens lock to lock.”
Paitor shook his head. “So everything fell back to this research shipyard and then Iza had Jethri to deal with, and found out about the age discrepancies. And found out that Arin wasn’t talking about exactly where the shipyard was, either.
“Arin’s Uncle, he never came out and made full-scale pitches—he just allowed things to be known. Saw him once, but he wasn’t one to be seen except when he wanted to be. Hard to find images, hard to find descriptions. Never was quite the person to come out with what he wanted.
“One thing Iza’s research did was confirm that however old Arin and Grig are, there’s been an Uncle, someone everybody called Uncle, anyhow, in that line since before records got coordinated. Always an Uncle. Always had his own ship or two. Always.”
Paitor turned and fixed her gaze with his. “Centuries, we’re talking, and not just a couple of them either, looks like. Family resemblance between Arin and the Uncle, I say, and Jethri a twin of his dad.”
Paitor nodded at her hand motion, which was a simple confirm.
“Oh yes, a twin as much as a son. Iza saw it, finally, and we saw it. Cris knows it. Got to be damn plain, actually!
“Iza—well, you heard her, and you saw her: don’t want nothing to do with Jethri and threw him off the ship because he was looking and sounding more like Arin every single shift. Hearing him on the all-call was enough to make me shiver, he sounded so much alike. She’s not taking any chances with who Grig’s kid’s gonna be.”
Khat nodded, managed to interject: “But all these records—what’s being ignored? Facts is facts!”
Paitor agreed with a nod: “Facts is. Like Jethri is a fact. And the fact is that Arin did some computing. He wanted to disagree with that Uncle of his and he put together a little computing engine—using some of those fractins and racks he was collecting—and he and Jethri talked it all over . . . well, that might not be to the point. What are you after, Khat?”
She pushed herself flat against the chairback, finding the local traffic screen just as interesting as Paitor had moments before, seeing that the chair was more comfortable and more secure than the ones they replaced, no matter the color . . .
“I’m just seeing how much we know about these Liaden—let’s call it incursions—into our trade space. Are they coming in groups, or just one or two? Is it like the Combine, is their trade guild pushing it, or is that they’ve got such competition that the short-on-fuels have got to share orbits with us?”
Paitor shook his head. “Too much to get from one set of figures, do you think? But I think Jethri’s new trader has the right of it: we’re all doing more trading and we’re sort of equalizing what we want and what we need. It was one thing when everyone was working just to get ships in space and just to get the stations up, trying to set defense—and it’s something else now that some of that’s maturing. And you’re right—there are going to be areas where we’re going to be seeing more of the Liadens. We’re reaching for more of the same resources, and we’re smart to see where there’s already signs of overlapped interest.”
He looked this time at the ceiling, where there was a vent, and around it a few odds and ends of a child’s artwork. Jethri’s artwork, a ring around the vent, with a design of fractins he’d traced around and then colored in, with connections showing here and there, and a pile of fractins with cracks and bad edges sketched off to the sides. The refurb crew must’ve left it for wanted decoration, Khat thought; and then thought that she’d’ve missed it, if it’d been painted over.
Pointing to it he went on: “See, the other thing is we probably had a lot more of that information available. Heck, we just shipped a bunch of it off, I’m thinking. You know, Arin talked to Jethri as hard as he could on account of Iza ignoring the kid; talked to him like he was an adult from right young. He had Jethri with a kid’s board, had him running those trade routes Iza’s so peeved about, talked to him about technical stuff—the boy has a grounding in value versus worth versus cost versus utility. He knows stuff he doesn’t even know he knows!”
Paitor fiddled with his chair controls a moment, using the short break to say Jethri’s name a couple of times with a shake of the head before turning his full attention back to her.
“Me, I was ready to let him loose, call him second trader and give him a real podshare for himself—but then Iza’s spooked about all of it, and she wouldn’t open the books, wouldn’t open Arin’s stuff, didn’t want to see what was in there, just wanted it away. Not sure what she spaced—I gotta think there was stuff he only shared with her! So what you shipped to Jethri could be a treasure, for all I know, but Iza didn’t want to know! And the boy would’ve been as good as Arin, likely, if he’d had his training. As is, I’d be having us run Jethri’s route next time around, Khat—that’s why Iza was pushing so hard to let him go. Just luck he got himself out of doing stinks and hauling rocks.”
A ship bell sounded Dyk’s attention call for the kitchen, and Khat rose, touching wrist to show that was her reminder call.
Paitor went on for a moment: “When you get a shot, we’ll try to close in on all this. I’ll pull what I have together and see if I can’t include it in an upgrade to the trade-side charts you get. May have to run it in over a few sessions so Iza won’t feel pushed . . .”
Khat nodded and gave a wry smile.
“Thanks Paitor. I’m not trying to make a run around Iza but . . .”
Paitor stood and waved her out the door.
“Looks to me like your brother Cris has an idea we need change, and knows he can’t quite stand the blast pressure himself. The ship’s been upgraded so we’ve got to upgrade the information side. I’m willing to see the work done, seeing I didn’t get enough of it done to keep Jethri onboard. And it seems to me staying in touch with Jeth—and maybe talking one to one sometime, seems to me that might get us some answers, too.”
Khat sighed as she nodded and took her exit cue. Thing was she’d long realized that Jethri was going to be a key; the boy’d been faunching after her something fierce there the last trip around—likely just hormones, but something she’d rather be sure was cured before she got too many messages off in his direction. Cris had been a trifle put out by the fact that she genuinely liked Jethri—and that she’d made a big effort to keep up commlinks with him when Iza’d been trying her best to split the kid from the ship.
“Will do what I can there, Trade side, do what I can. Thanks for the ’view.”
Chapter Ten
Keravath’s Second Cabin, in Jump
Jethri stretched and yawned, his hand just touching the sliding storage on either side, and if he reached he could tangle his hands in the shock-webbed sleep net that kept sleepers in place against sudden sidewise accelerations. Under way, with gravity, it rolled down from the ceiling. He’d gotten the quick tour, knew what the lights meant and which ones he might want on or off, played with the airflow, looked at the instruments . . .
The Scout had apologized for the size of the bunk, but it was a private bunk and space, and very nearly qualified as a room—he could actually undress and change without laying clothes on top each other—and for all that, it was a working ship, everything was newer looking than he was used to on the Market, even if the measures were a little closer, being sized for Liadens.
There were a couple dials and measures he’d need to figure out . . . but there, the Market had local gauges all over the place and most meant nothing anymore—or might now that the ship was refitted—because other than O2 and overpressure, Iza hadn’t thought most of it needed much more than autochecking, nor had her mother before her. The problem wasn’t guessing if they were working, but what they meant, since not only were they marked in Liaden, they were Scout-abbreviated as well.
The fixtures were clean and smooth, the walls had just enough padding to be useful in a problem. He wasn’t expecting to be
treated like a guest, anyhow. Elthoria’s luxury was just that—luxury—and he knew it.
He’d spent the run up to Jump learning, and then they’d sat and done a recheck on the emergency procedures and snacked, with the Scout surprising him by sharing a robust cup of ’mite with him—and then the Scout had left him alone on the bridge and taken a short nap to try to catch up on his rest, leaving Jethri on proper shipwatch for the first time in his life.
The external screens showed a dull green, not because they were off, but because that’s how the sensors showed the confusion that was Jump. That was adjustable, of course. Iza tuned her screens on the Market to black; apparently Grig and Arin had flown with a foggy blue, and Elthoria’s choice was to overlay the view with a cycling imitation starfield that was supposedly the view from above Liad’s Solcintra Port. On that ship they gave extra points—that’d be melant’i—for having extra knowledge, so this run could do bonus for him if he’d get out of his own way.
* * *
Shipwatch. He’d never been in the crew order for it on the Market, and on Elthoria shipwatch was a crew of expert pilots and crew. In theory he’d draw a backup watch every hundred days or so—but that theory hadn’t come to pass since his training took precedence.
Most of shipwatch was automatics—the Scout had been clear on that. His board, such as it was, was basically set to sound alarms, and those—while in Jump—all dealing with internal conditions. Jump being in progress there was nothing he could do to unJump them or to bring them out ahead of time—the Jump would proceed.
What he was to be watching for were any of the numerous failures that could happen while in Jump, but rarely did. Too much or too little oxygen, for example, or an explosion in some onboard storage tank. Jethri winced at that—there’d been two children close to his age, kids he’d met, who died on a looper ship when the refrigeration system messed up and froze them into a compartment they were cleaning while the adults were all partying during a long Jump.
