Shooting the Rift - eARC

by Alex Stewart

  “Problem?” Clio asked, in tones of polite enquiry. Preoccupied, I hadn’t noticed her approach, or taken much notice of the flicker of message traffic in her datasphere.

  “Apparently my money isn’t good enough,” I said, relieved to have her support, but concerned for her safety. None of the other Guilders in the place seemed inclined to get involved, which didn’t surprise me, as there wasn’t anything immediately apparent in it for them, and the Leaguers outnumbered them by at least two to one.

  “Guilders’ money’s good everywhere,” Clio said, in a brittle tone.

  “If he really is one.” The barman wasn’t about to let it go. “He talks like a Commonwealther.”

  “I just told you he’s a Guilder. Where he was from before that doesn’t count.”

  “So you say.” The tone was still skeptical. Clio’s jaw clenched, and her face flushed; I wasn’t entirely sure, but I thought I heard a collective, sharp inhalation from the other Guilders scattered around the bar.

  Before Clio could formulate a reply, the tavern door shivered on its hinges, admitting a blast of cool, damp air. Rolf ducked through, followed by his wife, who nodded an affable greeting to the room in general as she straightened up.

  “Sorry we’re late.” The two of them strolled to the bar, affecting not to notice the little drama going on there, although I had no doubt that Clio had already let them know precisely what was happening. Lena smiled down at Clio and I. “The sidewalks were a little crowded.”

  “Did we miss much?” Rolf added. The two men flanking me were suddenly a great deal further away.

  “Just the first round,” I said. “And a debate about snacks.”

  “And this piece of sewage calling me a liar,” Clio added, with a venomous glare at the barman. Rolf and Lena narrowed their eyes, and loomed forward.

  “I never said that.” The words began to tumble over one another. “Wouldn’t doubt a Guilder’s word, no one would. Just a small misunderstanding.”

  “Which I’m sure you’re eager to make amends for,” Rolf prompted.

  “Absolutely.” The fellow wilted even more, if that were possible. He turned to Clio. “Profound apologies, milady.”

  It was probably the honorific that did it—the frown left her face, and she nodded judiciously, biting her lower lip to suppress a smile. “No harm done.”

  “Your drinks.” The barman pushed them across the counter. “And something for your friends. No charge.”

  “That’s very decent of you,” I said, exaggerating my Commonwealth accent just enough to rub it in. I raised my voice, so it carried to the corners of the room. “Guilders drink free tonight.”

  “I didn’t mean—” The barman looked horrified, no doubt calculating the financial loss he was about to incur.

  “I know,” I said quietly, with a meaningful nod at Rolf and Lena. “But you’re not about to make a Guilder break his word in front of his friends, are you? That never ends well.”

  “Of course not.” Idiot as he was, he wasn’t that much of one.

  Clio took my arm. With her free hand she indicated our shipmates, the rest of the Guilders closing on the bar counter, and a handful of others hurrying onto the premises as the word spread. “Looks like you got your party after all,” she said.

  “Looks like I did,” I agreed, although neither of us seemed all that happy about it.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  In which I receive some unsolicited advice.

  I can’t honestly remember much about the rest of that evening, although I’m pretty sure the bar was still crowded with Guilders when Clio and I staggered out of a cab onto the Stacked Deck’s cradle platform a couple of hours before dawn. Needless to say I’d not been tempted to start playing with this one’s guidance system—with my reaction time seriously impeded, the automated systems had been welcome to do all the hard work. I’d half expected Rennau to still be lurking in the hatchway, but there was no sign of him—which probably meant he was asleep. At least I hoped so, after keeping his daughter out most of the night.

  “That’s what I call a welcoming drink.” Clio stumbled against the cab’s door sill as she disembarked, and I grabbed her by reflex, fearful of the vertiginous plunge into the darkness only a few feet away. Certain it was now unoccupied, the sled rose, turned, and dropped away into the depths, to become a blinking mote among the innumerable other metallic fireflies streaming around the cradles.

  “Careful.” I half steered, half carried her a few paces back from the abyss, our progress illuminated by the floodlights spaced around the platform. Drones were still buzzing around the Eddie Fitz, a few hundred yards away, disgorging crate after crate into her holds, and I found myself wondering idly what they contained before dismissing the thought. No point in becoming fixated with the wretched barge.

  “Um, you can put me down now. If you like.” I suddenly became aware that Clio was still pressed to my chest, and loosened my hold. Even so, she seemed to take a few seconds to peel away.

  “I’m sorry. I just thought you might . . .”

  “Fall. Yes.” She looked at me appraisingly. “And we wouldn’t want that. Would we?”

  “God no.” I pictured the ground so far below. “That would be . . .”

  “Messy.”

  “Very.”

  “Night, then.” Clio waved a slightly unsteady hand in farewell, and made her way to the open hatch in a moderately straight line.

  “Quite an evening you two seem to have had.” Remington strolled out of the shadows, his hands in his pockets. I started, feeling unaccountably guilty, as though I’d been caught sneaking home after visiting a girl Mother thought was “unsuitable.” (Not something that had happened very often, and I’d usually been able to lie my way out of it, citing a training session: which hadn’t been so far from the truth, come to think of it, since vigorous physical exercise had almost certainly featured somewhere among the evening’s diversions.)

  “You heard about that,” I said, trying to gauge just how much trouble I was in, if any. I certainly didn’t recall any mention of a curfew, although I suppose in the excitement of setting off for my first bout of shore leave, I might have missed something.

  “Me, and every other Guilder in the hemisphere. Word gets around fast when there are free drinks involved.” He leaned against a nearby stanchion. “Besides, Rolf and Lena got back a short while ago. I got the details from them.”

  “Oh,” I said. “But there weren’t any, really. Details, I mean.”

  “Sounds like you handled it well,” Remington said, to my complete surprise. “It’ll be a long time before any dirtwalker dregs talk back to a Guilder round here. Hitting a Numarkuteer in the pocket’s the best way to get his attention, believe me.”

  “He deserved it,” I said, letting a little of my suppressed anger seep out. “Mouthing off to Clio like that.”

  “Clio, was it?” Remington said, with a wry half smile. “Way I heard it, he was having a go at you.”

  “I can take care of myself,” I said.

  "So can she." The skipper pulled a hip flask from his pocket, and took a swallow. "And if she does, you'd better make sure you're on the same side." He proffered the flask. "Nightcap? Helps keep the cold out.

  I shrugged, and took it. Why not? I thought. I’d already drunk so much another mouthful or two wouldn’t make a lot of difference. “Thanks.” I took a tentative swallow, and found it full of a mellow local spirit I hadn’t quite caught the name of earlier in the evening. Lena had tried to tell me, but by that point the bar had become so crowded that it had been almost impossible to make out anything being said to me, even without the alcohol in my system adding its own contribution to the fog.

  “Better get some sleep,” Remington advised, retrieving the flask. “It’s going to be a busy morning.”

  “Is it?” I followed him inside the ship, our footsteps echoing as we entered the packed hold, weaving our way in between the towering crates towards the central stairwell. “A
re we starting to unload the cargo?”

  “Most of us.” Remington turned, apparently trying to gauge my reaction. “But I’m off to meet one of the local brokers, and find a new one. You’re coming too.”

  “Am I?” I was too surprised to say any more.

  Remington nodded. “In the light of this evening’s escapade, it’s probably best I keep an eye on you, at least until you look more like an old hand. Besides, it’ll be useful experience.”

  “Right,” I said. “Thanks.”

  The skipper grinned. “Thank me in the morning, when the hangover cuts in.” He sent a clock reading to my ‘sphere, the local time adjusted to the one we kept aboard ship. “You’ve got about five hours to sleep it off.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  In which I unexpectedly renew a previous acquaintance.

  In the event, I had far less than five hours rest: stray thoughts kept colliding like icebergs, and when I did manage to fall asleep at last it was in fitful, dream-haunted snatches, punctuated by trips to the head to relieve my aching bladder. When I finally gave it up as a bad job, rolled my pounding head off the pillow, and staggered down to the galley, it was scant comfort to find that most of my shipmates seemed hardly better off than I was.

  “Drink this,” Sowerby said, handing me a mug full of something which looked and smelled as though it had just leaked from a pipe somewhere on the lower decks.

  I took it, in a hand that hardly trembled at all. “What is it?”

  “Better you don’t ask,” Remington told me cheerfully, sitting down next to the engineer with a plate full of bacon and eggs, which, to my hypersensitive stomach, hardly smelled any better than Sowerby’s mug full of glop.

  “If you don’t want it, I do.” Clio lurched in looking even worse than I felt, grabbed the beverage, and downed it in one, not even pausing for breath. She pulled a nauseated expression as she put the mug down on the tabletop, waited expectantly for a heartbeat or two, then visibly relaxed. So, I noticed, did everyone else in the immediate vicinity. My puzzlement must have shown on my face, because as she sat down next to me, she explained. “If you’re going to throw up, it’ll be in the first couple of seconds.”

  “Lovely,” I said, resolving to stick to my habitual hangover diet of toast and black coffee. But Remington had other ideas.

  “Drink it,” he said, handing me another mug of the stuff. “I want you sharp this morning.” He looked me up and down, thoughtfully. “Or at least not tripping over your own tongue.”

  “Aye aye, skipper.” The sarcasm was, perhaps, unwarranted, but you have to remember I wasn’t exactly at my most chipper. Following Clio’s example, I gulped it down before the gag reflex had a chance to kick in; though I have to admit it did its best, trotting up panting as soon as the thick sludge had disappeared down my gullet. It wasn’t the taste so much, although that was foul enough, but the texture, and the way it seemed to wriggle on the way down.

  I held my breath, waiting to feel it on the way up again, but to my relief it stayed put, gradually filling my stomach with a warm, contented glow, as though I’d just finished a satisfying meal. Even the drumming in my temples seemed to quieten a little, and my eyes felt slightly less as though someone had spent the night diligently filling the sockets with sand.

  “Feel any better?” Sowerby asked, and I nodded reflexively, without feeling as though the floor was shifting beneath my feet for the first time that morning.

  “Much,” I admitted, to my honest surprise. Even Remington’s breakfast seemed less nauseating than it had done, although I wasn’t sure I wanted to tackle a similar plateful myself.

  The engineer nodded. “It’ll soak up the toxins. Couple of hours and you’ll feel like a new man.”

  “I quite liked the old one,” Clio said, and grinned at me, with more than a trace of her old insouciance. “He certainly knew how to show a girl a good time.”

  “Did he?” Rennau asked, appearing at my elbow with a similar breakfast to the Captain, although augmented with a thick slice of black pudding and a couple of pieces of fried bread, glistening with fat. My newly pacified stomach thought about rebelling again, decided it couldn’t be bothered, and subsided into quiescence. He regarded me thoughtfully. “You seem to have a Guilder’s knack of twisting trouble your way, I’ll say that for you.”

  “Thanks,” I said, unsure if it had been meant as a compliment, but determined to take it as one. I smiled at Clio. “I’ve had a good mentor.”

  “I’m sure you have,” Rennau said, eyeing me narrowly, before moving to a less crowded table.

  By the time Remington and I set off into town I was feeling almost normal, apart from the faint echoes of a headache, and a persistent fluttering in my inner ear, which left me concentrating a little harder than usual on the business of maintaining my balance. Even our cab’s typically erratic maneuvering did little to affect my equanimity, although that might have been helped by its relatively sedate progress compared to the wild ride I’d been on the night before. The weather had improved, too, which probably went some of the way towards lightening my mood, the cloud cover moderating to a blanket of white and lighter gray, through which a faint haze of sunlight seeped in intermittent patches.

  To my relief, Remington seemed disinclined to conversation, spending most of the journey meshed-in, and dealing with messages. As he was connecting to the wider datascape through the cab’s node I could quite easily have eavesdropped, but decided not to; for all I knew he was waiting for me to try it, and although I’d only promised not to muck around with the node on the Stacked Deck he might not see it quite like that. After all, I was a Guilder now, and my word was supposed to be a sacred trust.

  “Here’s where we’re going,” Remington said at last, punting the data over to my ‘sphere. I glanced at it, noting the position on the city map—not too far from the area Clio had taken me to the previous night. That made sense—most of the brokerages would be close to the docks, where the cargoes they traded came and went, and the skippers of the ships they dealt with could find them easily. “Farland Freight Forwarding.” I tried to keep my expression neutral, although this was an unexpected development I meant to take full advantage of. All right, by now I’d managed to convince myself there was nothing particularly sinister in the presence of the Eddie Fitz, but I could at least mention it to Mallow, and ask him to pass the information on to Aunt Jenny. She might notice signs of a wider pattern that was invisible to me, and it would show her I hadn’t yet gone sufficiently Guilder to neglect the commission she’d given me. “They’re small, but they get cargoes from all over.”

  Which, thanks to my earlier researches, I already knew. As well as Numarkut and Avalon, they had offices in a couple of the neighboring systems, and even handled cargoes bound for a few of the nearer League worlds. If we got one of those next, there was no telling what I might be able to ferret out within the borders of the League itself; although I tried not to get my hopes up too much. Remington would go with whatever he could make the most money on, and I was sure Farland wasn’t the only firm of brokers he was talking to.

  “Sounds good for us,” I said, doing my best to project naive enthusiasm.

  The city looked different in daylight, though no less crowded, a steady stream of vehicles moving above, below, and around us in all directions. It was more colorful than it had seemed the previous night, when I’d seen it washed out by the artificial lighting and the haze of water droplets hanging in the air, many of the buildings turning out to be faced in subtle pastel washes which had merely seemed drab in the rain. The warehousing district was even busier than before, laden cargo sleds arriving and departing every second or two, and the cab slowed to a crawl for a while before rising into a clearer lane, skimming over a few of the lower-lying rooftops as it did so; to my surprise, most of them were filled with neatly laid-out gardens. From directly above, the city would look like a patchwork of smallholdings, arranged in an unusually regular pattern.

  “Are they
ornamental, or for food crops?” I asked, and Remington shrugged.

  “Depends on the owners. Either way, this is Numarkut; no one’s going to grow anything they can’t sell to someone.”

  “Of course.” That went without saying. The cab skimmed a roof full of grape vines, startling a small flock of chickens scratching around their roots, and dived back into the traffic stream.

  “Here will do,” Remington said, a couple of blocks from our eventual destination, and the cab pulled over, dropping to the sidewalk in a quieter side street, over which the backs of two huge storage facilities loomed. “Bit of fresh air to help clear your head before we get there.”

  “Right,” I agreed, clambering out while he fed coins into the payment slot, and taking a deep breath of the nearest equivalent to fresh air the city had to offer. The tang of ozone from the passing traffic sliced into my sinuses, scattering the residual headache, and I swayed a little on my feet, feeling faintly light-headed.

  Remington looked at me critically. “If you’re not up for this . . .”

  “Of course I am,” I said. I took another deep breath, and set off with a purposeful stride, which elicited a small smile from Remington.

  “Oh, you look raring to go.”

  Once we’d passed the blank walls of the warehouses, we found ourselves in what was clearly a business district. Almost every door we passed was graced by a polished metal plaque, or something meant to look like one, although the mixture of architectural styles was even more eclectic than the one I’d noted on my first visit to the city the night before. Some appeared to be old town houses, abandoned as the well-heeled began to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the wellsprings of their wealth, others newer, purpose-built temples of commerce, proclaiming their tenants’ material success by outdoing their neighbors in either blocky functionalism or garish over-ostentation, according to taste (or lack of it). The cafes and food stalls scattered amongst them were pale shadows of their exuberant counterparts in the area I’d visited with Clio, being not so much a place to enjoy a meal with friends as a necessary refueling stop for the battalions of clerks infesting the surrounding buildings like termites swarming through a collection of mounds.