by Timothy Zahn
Chen smiled cynically. "No, of course not. That's all right—you go ahead and tell your people whatever you have to."
"You're no longer a threat," Peter went on, "because we are no longer where you can find us."
The smile remained, but Chen's eyes narrowed. "And what's that supposed to mean?"
"It means that your idea of using speakers and music to call the Star Spirits worked quite well," he told her. "We've had four sessions in the past two days, and are now a considerable distance from the spot you first directed Captain Smith to."
Chen threw me a dagger-edged glance. "And you think that's all it takes to hide from the Chen-Mellis family?" she bit out. "You have no concept whatsoever of the scope of our resources."
"None of your resources will do you any good," Peter said. "Not only do you not know where to look for us, you also don't have anything to look for. Those wonderful ion-capture engines you covet so much have been shut down."
A muscle in Chen's cheek twitched. "You can't keep them off forever," she pointed out. "Not if you ever want to get anywhere. You'll have to decelerate sometime."
"True," Peter said with a shrug. "But we're in no particular hurry. Besides, by the time we begin our deceleration, you won't have even the faintest idea where to look for us."
"Perhaps," Chen said, her voice calmer than I would have expected under the circumstances. "But I'd warn you against the mistake of underestimating us."
"You're welcome to try," Peter said. "Still, I'd warn you against making any promises to your cousins just yet. Captain Smith tells me the Chen-Mellis family has a reputation for vindictiveness when they don't get what they've been promised."
Chen looked at me again. "Captain Smith will soon be a position to find out about that first hand."
"I don't think so," Peter said, shaking his head. "There is one final condition for your release: that you leave Captain Smith, his transport, and his crew strictly alone. No reprisals, no revenge, nothing."
Chen cocked her head. "An interesting demand. And if I decide to ignore it, what do you intend to do? Smother me with moral outrage?"
"Actually, we have a somewhat more effective demonstration prepared," Peter told her. "I'm told you were on your way to Parex when you diverted the Sergei Rock to come here. Do you know anything about that world?"
"It's the dregs of the backwater," Chen said, not bothering to conceal her contempt. "One city, a few small towns, and the rest just farms and useless alien wilderness."
"I doubt that it's quite that bad," Peter said. "It surely must have its own unique charms. Regardless, you'll have plenty of time to find out."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that once you reach Parex, you won't be allowed to leave for a few weeks," Peter said quietly. "Or had you forgotten we're able to talk to the Star Spirits?"
Chen had her expression under good control, but there was no way for her to stop the blood from draining from her face. "You're bluffing," she said.
"It's already done," Peter told her gravely. "Once you reach Parex, the Star Spirits will refuse to wrap any transport that you're aboard."
Her eyes darted to me, as if seeking evidence that this was some elaborate trick. "I don't believe you," she snarled defiantly. "You can't have talked to that many flapblacks. Besides, they're aliens—they can't possibly recognize individual human beings."
"I don't expect you to take my word for it," Peter said. "By all means, try it for yourself."
His forehead darkened. "And as you do, I suggest you consider all of the implications of this demonstration. The Star Spirits see everything that happens in deep space; and we of the Freedom's Peace are in continual contact with them.
Just because we're multiple light-years away doesn't mean we're out of touch, or that we can't call further retribution down on you. On you, or on the entire Chen-Mellis family."
For a long moment, Chen held that gaze unflinchingly. Then, almost reluctantly, she dropped her eyes. "Fine," she growled. "I'll play your game." She turned a
glare on me. "Besides, I don't have to lift a finger to drop Smith down the sewer. The TransShipMint Corporation will be handing out all the revenge I could ever want."
I swallowed hard, trying not to let it show. I still had the money card she'd given me; but after paying off all the cargo and penalty clauses from this trip, I'd be lucky to clear the seventy thousand neumarks she'd originally promised me. Unless I could track down that hundred thirty thousand she'd ghosted out of my account—
"And if I were you I wouldn't count on digging up your bankroll in time,"
Chen said, reading my face despite my best efforts. "I'm the only one who can retrieve it... and according to His Highness here, I'm going to be stuck on Parex for a few weeks."
She looked at Peter. "Unless, of course, you want to call off your little demonstration. If not, he's going to prison."
Peter looked at me. "Captain?"
I shook my head. It was, we all knew, her one last chance to manipulate me, and I wasn't in any mood to be manipulated. "I appreciate the offer, Ms. Chen," I said. "But I think you need King Peter's object lesson. I'll take my chances with TransShipMint."
The cheek muscle twitched again. "Fine," she said. "I'll do my few weeks on Parex; you can do your ten years in prison. We'll see which of us gets the last laugh."
She waved a hand impatiently. "If you're finished with your threats, I'd like to get going. I have a life back in the Expansion, Smith here has charges of embezzlement to face; and you of course have some serious cowering to do." "We are indeed finished," Peter confirmed with a nod. "Farewell, Miss Chen."
The ten-hour trip back to Parex was very quiet. Chen stayed in the passenger cabin with the hatchway sealed the whole time, while Jimmy, Rhonda, and I spent most of our time at our respective stations. Only Bilko took any advantage at all of the dayroom. He reported it as being pretty lonely in there.
The intended recipients of the cargo we'd left behind on the Freedom's Peace were not at all happy with the Sergei Rock's empty cargo hold. I think Chen was hoping they would press charges, but application of the assets on her cash card—along with a little smooth talking on Bilko's part—got them sufficiently calmed down. It did, however, leave us with only sixty thousand neumarks, a far cry from the two hundred thousand TransShipMint was going to want in the next couple of weeks.
We were on Parex for about twenty hours, catching up on sleep, getting our next cargo aboard, and wading through the heavier-than-usual stack of paperwork.
During that time, Chen tried twice to sneak off the planet. Both times, the transports were forced to return after an hour's worth of trying failed to get them a flapblack wrap.
By the time we buttoned up the rumors about her were just beginning to be heard, and as we headed for deep space I found myself wondering if she would be able to find passage on a transport even after her internal exile was over.
To my lack of surprise, I discovered I didn't really much care. "Hi," Rhonda's voice came from the dayroom door. "Got a minute?"
I looked up in mild surprise, deciding to pass on the obvious retort that when TransShipMint got done with me I would have all the time in the world. "Sure,"
I said instead, waving her toward one of the other chairs at the table. "You come here often?"
"Hardly ever," she said, sidling over to the indicated chair and sitting down.
Her left hand, I noticed, had stayed out of sight behind her the whole way, as if she was hiding something behind her back. "But I wanted to talk, and this seemed a good time to do it."
"Sure," I nodded. "What about?"
She nodded down at the reader on the table in front of me. "Working out how to pay off the TransShipMint Corporation?"
"Trying to work it out," I said, sighing. "Really just going through the motions. There's just no way I can raise that kind of money that fast."
"There was one," she reminded me. "I hear Chen offered to unbury your other account if you'd get Peter to
let her off the hook with the flapblacks." She cocked her head slightly. "I wanted you to know I was very impressed that you turned her down. So was Jimmy, by the way."
I snorted. "Thanks, but impressing the two of you was pretty far down on my reasons list. We needed to scare her, and scare her good, or we'd have had her and the whole Chen-Mellis family hanging over our heads for the rest of what would have probably been depressingly brief lives. This way... well, at least we all have a chance of living through it." "Assuming self-preservation outweighs her sense of vengeance," Rhonda pointed out soberly. "And assuming she doesn't figure out what's actually happening."
"I don't think there's any chance of her doing that," I said. "She doesn't even know about the InReds, let alone how they interact with younger flapblacks."
Rhonda shivered. "I guess it just feels too much like a magician's trick," she said. "Peter creates the illusion that a whole galaxy worth of the flapblacks are deliberately and actively snubbing her; when really all it is is a single Ancient InRed who's been persuaded to hang around her whenever she leaves the planet. It just seems so fragile, somehow."
"Only because you know how the trick's being performed," I pointed out. "And because you know that it would only work on a world like Parex where there's a
single spaceport and no more than one ship leaving at any given time." I shrugged. "Frankly, if there's any magic in this it's that Peter was able to persuade one of the InReds to cooperate this way in the first place."
"Yes," Rhonda murmured. "It's rather sad, really, having to spend its last few weeks of life sitting on Chen instead of getting to listen to the Freedom's Peace's music."
I smiled. "Oh, I don't know. You didn't see what they did to Chen during her last day in prison. Where were you, by the way?"
"I was working out a deal with Suzenne," Rhonda said, frowning. "What did they do to her?"
"Nothing much," I said, frowning at her in turn. This was the first I'd heard of any deal. "They just played one of the InRed's favorite melodies over and over again on her cell's speaker system. Knowing how my mind does things, I figure that tune will be spinning around her mind for at least the next month. What deal?"
"Oh, that's nasty," Rhonda said. "Brilliantly nasty. Gives the Ancient something to listen to, and probably helps him identify her, too. Your idea?"
"Peter's," I said. "What deal?"
"Oh, it wasn't anything much," she said casually. "You remember how much Suzenne liked my beadwork? Well, I sold her my entire stock. Beads, hoops, pattern lists, fasteners, needles, thread, looms, finished items—the works."
"Congratulations," I said, feeling obscurely disappointed. After all of that buildup, I had expected more of a payoff. "She'll be a big hit at their next formal concert."
"I think so," Rhonda agreed. "She was already talking about getting one of the fabricators retasked to making a fresh supply of beads."
"Sounds great," I said, frowning. Rhonda, I suddenly noticed, still had a twinkle in her eye and seemed to be fighting hard to keep from grinning. "So OK, let's have it."
"Have what?" she asked, clearly determined to drag it out a little more.
"The big punch line," I said. "What did she do, offer you a 50 percent commission or something?"
"No, of course not," she said. "How in the worlds would I collect on something like that, anyway? No, I insisted on cash."
Her hand finally came around from behind her back, and I saw now that she was holding a small wooden box like the kind Bilko kept his poker chips in. "And that's exactly how she paid," she concluded. "With cash." I frowned down at the box. It was one of Bilko's poker containers, all right.
Clearly, there was something significant here I was missing. "OK," I said.
"Cash. So?"
Rhonda rolled her eyes. "Cash, Jake. The only kind of cash they use on the Freedom's Peace...?"
And with a sudden jolt I had it. Cash.
Reaching over, I unlatched the lid and flipped it up. And there they were, neatly stacked in the velvet padding: a triple row of shiny golden coins.
United Jovian Habitat dollars, one hundred thirty years old each. A currency that hadn't been minted since the Habitats were reabsorbed by Earth over a century ago.
I looked up again at Rhonda. "How many do you have?" I asked, my voice quavering slightly.
"Enough," she said quietly. "I checked a couple of numismatic files on Parex, and it looks like they'll pull in somewhere between a hundred fifty and three hundred thousand neumarks." Reaching across the table, she pushed the box a few centimeters toward me. "They're yours."
There are times in every man's life when pride demands he argue. Far past the end of my financial rope, I knew this wasn't one of them. "Thank you," I said.
"You're welcome," she said. "For all our faults, we're a pretty good crew. It would be a shame to break a team like this up."
I smiled wryly. "Even Jimmy and his youthful impertinences?"
"Listen, buddy, those youthful impertinences stood up with you against a member of the Chen-Mellis family," she reminded me tartly. "And whether he's willing to admit it or not, I think your moral stand back on the Freedom's Peace impressed him a lot."
"I suppose," I said noncommittally. Still, I had to admit in turn that Jimmy's willingness to accept my judgment had impressed me, as well.
Not that I was willing to admit it out loud, of course. Not yet, anyway.
"Still, it's sort of a pain. The problem with moral leadership is that you have to keep being moral for it to do any good. I liked it better when I could get what I wanted by yelling at him."
"Yeah, right," she said, patting my hand in a distinctly sarcastic fashion.
"Don't worry, though—I'm sure you'll be able to handle it."
She smiled slyly. "I, on the other hand, being a lowly engineer, have no need of leadership of any sort, moral or otherwise." She tapped a fingernail against the box of coins. "And I'll tell you right now I intend to take utterly shameless advantage of you over this."
"Ah," I said, scooting my chair over to the cooler. "So, what, you want me to serve you a drink?"
"That's a start," she purred. "And then we're going to sit here together, all nice and cozy, and I'm going to tell you all about the wonderful new engines you're going to buy for me."
"Point Man," copyright © 1987 by Timothy Zahn. First published in New Destinies, vol. 1.
"Hitmen—See Murderers," copyright © 1991 by Timothy Zahn. First published in Amazing Stories, June 1991.
"The Broccoli Factor," copyright © 1990 by Timothy Zahn. First published in Analog, February 1990.
"The Art of War," Copyright © 1997 by Timothy Zahn. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1997.
"The Play's the Thing," Copyright © 1997 by Timothy Zahn. First published in Analog, February 1997.
"Star Song," Copyright © 1997 by Timothy Zahn. First published in Analog, July/August 1997.
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