Trade Secret (eARC)

by Sharon Lee

  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.

  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 recognizeda 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 p
lace 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.