Trade Secret

by Sharon Lee

  Well, that wasn’t an issue now—as far as he knew there was no major refrigeration system on this ship, and certainly no pod supports to watch. So mostly what he did was pay attention to the cycle, and study, practicing the what-if of arriving somewhere with no other pilot on board, and then drifting into a bigger what-if of traveling wherever in the universe he wanted, with no one else in charge of his destinations.

  From distant memory he pulled the names of waystops he and his father had talked about, and what he recalled from Trade N Traipse; he set up a trade loop on one of the mapping screens. He’d designed a loop for himself while very young; that’d amused his father and Grig—heck, they encouraged him to do it!

  Some of the stops were selected for his own interests—like a place that had an annual King of the Cakes Festival, and another that was supposed to be the Fractin Capital of the Quadrant. Dyk had added one or two. That all said, Dyk was a food-dreamer and he’d go anyplace where there was a lot of food choice, and Seeli’d played along, adding one world where each town made its own beer—no one was allowed to transport it across borders! That had hit his funny bones as a kid—he usually shopped beer sips from person to person as a kid, and had turned out to be a good judge between good beer and barely acceptable before he was half-tall. It was an ability he had to keep close on some ports, where kids weren’t permitted, but he could tell one from another, even from sniffing.

  Balfour’d been on his Loop, and it thrilled him in an odd way that the four backup Jumps on his “try to calculate this ahead of time” project were all from that list. The Scout likely knew that the ship’s measure on all of them were half-dozen or more Standards dated, so that meant that his recalculates were to help there . . .

  That gave him something better to do than staring at screens that refreshed and told him the same thing every thirty-six seconds, the only change so far the calendar updates and arrival countdown. The pressure fluctuations that showed, he knew now, was the ship tracking his breathing, and he’d have to ask then where the medical tracking was. Likely as all get-out that the ship was catching itself a base of his heart rate, blood pressure, perspiration rates and temperature flux—he’d listened long and hard and perhaps harder than his father and Grig knew, about how the small ships and single ships had backup and warning and such that the Market ought to consider putting in . . .

  He thought back, recognized some writing from the room gauges. Indeed! His personal oxygen history was available here, and so was the Scout’s. Board One and Board Two signals were clear—and there was room on the charts for a couple more. Likewise, the ship had him read in as a temp Board Two, so unless he declared emergency there was a lot of ship stuff he couldn’t run, though the Scout had made it clear he could get at any of the piloting manuals and star charts he wanted to.

  The Scout, Jethri noted, looked to use less oxygen and run at a lower pulse rate than he did—but of course the Scout was sleeping. That other—ah, that chart was likely blood oxygenation levels and there they seemed to be pegged, and—

  He laughed gently and out loud, and the rates shifted with him. He wondered if the Scout would be able to tell when he was dreaming, just from such stuff and recognized a related gauge that also was marked to Board Two, and another. The last was all zeros but for the skinniest touch of pink, while the corresponding gauge for Board One looked to be blocked into segments of different colors. He tried breathing fast, and stood, jumped into a run in place and set other numbers on his side moving . . .

  The one with the pink sliver moved not at all, but he exercised for awhile anyway, at first missing the running machine on Elthoria, and the views, and Gaenor and . . . several of his numbers rose, but he ran in place for a while more, counting steps. He’d never been the only one awake on a starship before, and he wondered how long it would be before he’d sleep with someone else, anyway.

  Eventually, his exercises and his reminiscences through, he opened the files, checked to be sure his board was as neutral as could be, and read up on piloting until he was relieved for breakfast.

  Chapter Eleven

  Wynhael, Sater System, Orbit

  Wynhael’s journey around the Sater System had been very quiet so far and Bar Jan chel’Gaibin was just as pleased as could be, the histrionics of their last frontier planetfall still close to mind. The other ships of their band were scattered for the nonce, with Wynhael’s play in this system a meeting in person with one of his mother’s contacts.

  His mother was settled into her travel routine of sleeping according to Liad’s time, claiming it was far more natural than ship-time. He didn’t gainsay it since it also gave him free time in the trade office and among the databanks. He’d found the keylogger and fed it a substitute made up from some of his recent trade days; he’d also made sure his shadow of her secret file was being triple-saved.

  This morning—ship-time—he’d roused himself for a good solo breakfast and dressed with care, unsure of the day’s schedule and unwilling to appear less than fully aware of his proper High House melant’i. His mother pushed at his readiness to have his own trade vessel and if he could not move her out of the way, he must be prepared to take charge of his own affairs until he could.

  Also on the schedule was an early examination of some odd message files he’d stumbled over. They could be mere technical reportage and if so his lack of depth in that area of files wouldn’t matter, else he might have to bring yet one more staffer under his sway, and he knew he was approaching a maximum in that regard—a dangerous maximum. If Rinork became concerned, she could have him bond-contracted as well as Tan Sim, showing a fair face to the Council of Clans and none to either of her trader children.

  On ship he was not wearing the heavier duty safety vest, but he and his man knew where it was at all times, just as they both knew it wasn’t a mere safety vest but high-grade armor.

  His man’s man also kept after him on his exercises, and on his daily weapons and defense training—a happenstance he wasn’t sharing with the coconspirators when they met on port. Khana vo’Daran knew well where his loyalty sat, since Lord chel’Gaibin’s firm plan would catapult him and his clan to first servers sooner and faster than hoping he caught the eye and interest of Rinork-in-place. Vo’Daran had grown up with him, being a mere fifteen years his elder, and his melant’i was set.

  The movement on the trade screen showed him soundless points of light entering and exiting—he had no interest in the casual chatter of spacers, be they Liaden or Terran—and it was live, to have something to look at from time to time that was not just painted wall. The screen showed what he knew to be true: the bulk of the travel here was Terran.

  The sound of the door slide operating had him touch his near screen to a text screen dealing with the shipping cost of multipod quantities of locally processed, compressed, freeze-dried, powdered, dehydrated onion juices—a happy specialty of the Sater System!—but rather than his man, with a tray of morning tea, it was Rinork herself, his mother, quick-dressed and not yet fully combed or jeweled.

  He rose and bowed to the delm, as he did every day on the first sighting of his mother—it was all that was proper, after all. She acknowledged it briefly, careless steps placing her in a spot to look over the text he’d been looking at.

  “Bah. Imagine that I find you at work with real things instead of your precious decanter collecting—or have you already bought the auction lots offered at Curnby House?”

  “Here? Actual Liaden decanters?”

  Rinork’s heir chel’Gaibin wasn’t sure which was more surprising, his mother’s arrival or the news that he might have missed an auction . . .

  She laughed at him. “Yes, there’s a listing. One would have to see it in person, I gather—an expert like yourself—and we may not have time for it. If you like I’ll send the details, I forget me why I have not yet already.”

  He fumed to have her in his work area, pleased to have reacted promptly and unpleased that he’d not thought to do such a search hi
mself. It would not, after all, have been the first time Liaden rarities had made their way to the Terran side of things, some Terrans were willing to spend absurd amounts to be seen as sophisticated. As for him, he’d gotten himself interested in decanters while researching containers he might use to smuggle bellaquesa. Addicted to the drug? No, nor interested in becoming that way. Addicted to the decanters from fourth century? Yes, of course. Decanters!

  “While you work so diligently, I have been called from my sleep; our courier ship is lately arrived. Perhaps you were not expecting it?”

  The heir acknowledged the truth of that, dread building. He’d seen her work before and heard amusement there. He let his hands add secure layers over his work, the while watching his mother’s eyes, avidly scanning the large screen.

  “There!”

  She pointed to the name tag just recently formed on a ship dot well distant. The clear and sensible readability of Tyrka amid the alien lettering of the Terran ships made it welcome.

  He had no sense of the actual distance from the plotted points, but it appeared on the very edge of the local screen, which meant a day or even three or four, before the ship could do more than beam or radio information to them.

  “That’s some time away, my delm,” he said, having little practical idea of how far it was but knowing that it was far from the coplanetary orbit they shared with a dozen other tradeships around the paired planets. “Have you more information?”

  “Yes,” she said, “I do. There’s movement on several fronts, including that of my other son. As for the most important news, the arrival of the courier here tells me that we shall be taking action soon on the ship side of this—but which action? I cannot say until the information is in hand—indeed we shall wait until we have a direct report. That may be tomorrow, even if we bribe control.

  “In the meanwhile, I shall breakfast, and you will tell me if we shall be shipping pods of”—here she sniffed exaggeratedly—“onion powder to our next port! So, walk with me, and please, close all the files when you go rooting about, if you would. I’ll wait.”

  The dread in his gut was only mildly relieved that the delm moved closer to the scan board, as if seeing in reality the distant courier, while he did as ordered.

  * * *

  The courier stood before them, her bow exquisite almost to the point of irony. Bar Jan knew the courier’s background but wasn’t cowed by it—there were enough former Scouts in the wild that meeting one was not entirely rare. That this one, Rand yos’Belin, was a private courier and not a Scout any longer was due to her voluntary resignation in the face of multiple investigations over her continued flouting of rules and regulations.

  This amused Bar Jan, having heard from vo’Daran since childhood that the strength in the Scout was sometimes thought to be their extreme flexibility in interpreting rules in their own behalf.

  The comely Courier yos’Belin was yet loose upon the star lanes because she’d retained both her Scout pilot rating and her independent ways upon release from the Scouts. Her marriageability was less important than her pilot’s income to her clan’s increase, and her unwillingness to bend to Liad’s ordinary social codes was considered “Scoutish,” though few who met her would hesitate to call her rude—just not to her face.

  All was smoothness at the moment.

  “The dispatch from our friends on the Council of Clans shows the Council disinclined to study the trade situation as a group. Indeed, there is a reluctance to encourage any joint study which might permit our overwhelming trade and technical superiority to confront Terran trade plans directly. Ixin’s approach is flamboyant—just treat them as equal! Korval, meanwhile, has enough equipment and builds yet another shipyard, so that the trading interests in the Council fear banding together against this rumored Terran strategy lest Korval subsume the effort and own all the trade!”

  The courier divested herself of various infokeys and file cubes as she spoke, and added several folded pieces of hardcopy printouts from inner pockets as well. These items, of course, went to Rinork, and while she was perusing them, Bar Jan realized that the courier was perhaps studying him as carefully as he was studying her. He bowed very slightly in acknowledgment, as she did in return, smiling primly.

  Well then! His mother’s travels and the required secrecy had kept him rather chaste other than an occasional therapeutic rubdown, but if the courier might be about for a while he was sure she would be within the ambit of security.

  “Here, Bar Jan, you will look these over and return them to me. Korval runs ships or proxies on many of the routes that we do, and the names you see here, afraid of losing ground to Korval, may help us with our goal, if we can but offer them slivers and shares from what we shall control. By the time you are making marriages for the clan—within forty years—Korval will be as much in our hand as the rest of these, and pleased to pay well to marry to Rinork!”

  Bar Jan bowed to this as he received the sheets, hoping that in fact his marriage-planning days would arrive much sooner than that. Once his mother was out of his way he would take a much firmer control of these matters. Much firmer!

  The notes were copies of notes taken in hand at committee meeting, and the names were all of them known to him, and oddly, all of them in his debt book for one or another offenses. Most were there for their lack of consideration of his proper melant’i—but, that too could be solved faster once his mother was . . . elsewhere.

  His mother moved on to the reader, and yet Bar Jan felt looked upon—and indeed, the courier was watching still, he saw, and he was glad he’d dressed well this morning. He often preferred his women to have longer hair, but the courier’s hair was neat and tidy, and she had none of the barbarous slashes and designs the Terran ship people carved into their heads.

  Her eyes, he noted, were a very deep blue.

  Yes, he must be prepared to take charge of his own affairs!

  * * *

  The courier, it became obvious, was far more than courier. His mother’s previous description of her duties was perhaps incomplete. He wondered, hearing the phrasing carefully, if in fact she knew as much and maybe more than the ship captains his mother’d inveigled into the scheme. It almost seemed as if she guided the plan more than the other captains, and her assumptions of familiarity—she’d somehow become “Rand” in conversation rather than “Pilot”—showed his mother’s willingness to grant her such terms.

  Rinork moved them through tea and then to a longer session where Rinork shared strategy and tactics over their next step with the pilot, allowing Bar Jan to ask questions and give opinions. Yet, as the melant’i of discussion showed, it was yos’Belin who was aiming discussion toward the end of the meeting, and it seemed it was she, rather than Rinork, who was expanding his entry into planning.

  The courier’s biggest concern: “Therinfel’s understanding of urgency is not firm. More, the information flow when information is present is more circular than it ought to be, which is to say that the application of talk and thought to raw information is time-consuming while the filter of consideration adjusts and even consumes facts. Scouts train against such habits. The captains in your association perhaps have not the same training.

  “In particular this has been costly in two arenas. In one, your heir”—here the bow to Bar Jan was particularly fine—“was underinformed of the risk of personal attack and the difficulties of recovering melant’i in the case of such an attack—just as he was undersupported. The result is a world where your influence will require bribes and time to be brought to the proper level. These are recoverable, but the delay might convince Therinfel’s party that they have more influence than they ought.”

  Bar Jan bowed in agreement to this, ruefully seeing that, yes, this was easily both a personal affront to him and one to his mother, and thus a danger to all of them. His debt book was not lacking in that regard . . .

  Here the courier faced Rinork herself more than Bar Jan, speaking in a quieter voice as if there were any concern o
f being overheard, here in Rinork’s own sanctum.

  “The other arena is that of obtaining the plan we are assured exists, of which we have overheard discussions. No less than eleven Terran ships, comprising portions of four family groups, are known to have copies of this plan, while potentially dozens more have been treated to discussions of it. That the material has been successfully eradicated from the files of the Commission’s archives indicates a cabal of some potency. This plan, as we have heard it described, this manifesto, was presented to several dozen commissioners and their aides Standards ago.

  “That I know of it was a matter of timing and placement, and indeed, I shall admit, the failure of my supervisors to pursue, it increased the speed with which I parted from the organization. Liad must not permit Terrans the opportunity to expand so easily, nor permit them to keep our natural advantages minimized through secrecy.

  “But here, we have—”

  She stopped, an insistent tone bringing Rinork to her feet. Then the delm touched buttons in reply, holding hand to ward, and turning away, not only from the courier, but from Bar Jan. She spoke in hushed tones, then turned to the courier with a bow of request.

  “Incoming is a ship bearing a person I must, quite like yourself, speak to directly and confidentially. Alas, they profess most acute timing issues and I assure you that it is through no disrespect to yourself that I feel they must not be put off. Might I offer you the full courtesies of our ship, just as if we were comfortably at home, that I may spend several hours . . . no, better in fact, let me call this our evening, offer you dinner and a room. The three of us can continue our current meeting in the morning, likely more informed than we are even now.”

  The formal Scout bowed a pretty bow of thanks, and of acceptance.

  Rinork briefly returned to her confidential message, and then turned away, offering to Bar Jan, “My son, please allow housekeeping to know of this change of plans, and also, procure for yourself and our guest a fine dinner—surely our work today deserves it—while I prepare for this conference. You shall host dinner, and on the morning shift I will do the same for breakfast. It is fortuitous indeed that we can be so flexible! You may draw from the deepest cellar, my son!”