Trade Secret (eARC)

by Sharon Lee

  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 himself. 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 her 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 flaunting 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 ver
y 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. TThese 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 of 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!"

  *

  The deepest cellar was an honor indeed--those were rare bottles of Rinork's favorites, not the best they owned, but certainly the best they cared to travel with. And though technically her son might draw on any of them at will, it was not really the case, as they both knew.

  He sighed, taking rein on his impulse and managing not to order of the cha'Ravia with its reputation as spirited wine fit for extremely quiet dinners. That it was said to be an aphrodisiac, well, he knew very well the times his mother ordered it. But the yos'Postal, that was also a fine wine for quiet moments, and of subtle palate as well. Being somewhat rarer, it might well have convincing qualities of its own.

  *

  They Jumped, did Wynhael, almost two Standard days later, after pushing the ship's meteor shields as they rose through the wide rocky belt to achieve an outgoing orbit above the ecliptic to arrive at the shortest runout possible. Rinork's second confidential visitor, taxied in from the local trade guild, was gone by the time breakfast was served. Courier Pilot Rand yos'Belin, however, remained with the ship until the final runout was laid in, dropping her vessel away and out of the Jump-effect range with a bone-breaking acceleration to permit the trader's final numbers verified and safe.

  The exhilarated Bar Jan stood on bridge in the aftermath of the Jump, his mother long retired to her stateroom. Screen seven still held the frozen image of the courier ship at cast-off, an image he'd requested be taken. It was, truly, a beautiful ship for a spacer, with no offsetting pods or pyloned add-ons to mar the symmetry of the thing. Most spaceships lacked the look of speed that her ship had, the look of purpose--

  No matter if the crew felt he was exhibiting unusual tenderness for the moment, for surely there was an understanding that he'd spent several shifts with the pilot, his man called to deliver meals and wine for two and nothing more.

  "Our destination--how long before we broach optical space there?"

  The navigator being closest, the response was rapid. "Nearly eight Standard days, lord."

  "And a courier, would it take so long?"

  There was some confusion as to who should answer, but again the navigator was closest.

  "Much depends upon the willingness of a pilot to take pressure and discomfort, lord. It is what courier ships do, after all. An ordinary courier ship and a tradeship ought to arrive within a few percent of each other for the transfer stage, but courier acceleration and deceleration are superior to trade ships. Departing from the same rest orbit at the same time, aiming at the same rest orbit in another system, one might assume a courier to have a half-day to a day advantage based on in-system traversal."

  Bar Jan considered the statement, feeling several layers of stealthy evasion . . . and what issues might require such?

  "Am I to believe then that the ship in the viewscreen is not an ordinary courier?"

  Among the bridge crew, a hush as they realized their subtleties had failed them.

  "Captain?" Bar Jan dared challenge the seated senior pilot. "Is the ship that was docked with us not an ordinary courier?"

  The captain rose from his command couch after handing several duties to his minions, and moved to stand beside Bar Jan, the while staring at the ship.

  "My lord, that is the case. To begin with, an 'ordinary' courier would have to be available to be bought from a standard shipyard or ship line, to any with the cash. The ship on view here is not so usual as that. The ship on view here--I would suggest that the major difference between this ship and a top-of-the-line Scout courier are the markings, my lord."

  Still levels.

  "So Scout couriers are as divided as regular ships into ordinary and extraordi
nary?"

  "Yes, they are. Any high quality pilot might fly a Scout courier, this I know from the Scout pilots I know. The top of the line--those I gather are matched very closely to the pilot . . ."

  "I see. Extraordinary Scout pilots are given extraordinary ships to fly."

  "Yes, that is close to the case, as I can see it. Certainly a pilot of proper melant'i will be well aware of the 'too much ship' problem when it comes to accepting captaincy. One must be comfortable with the capabilities of the vessel, and of their own understandings of those capabilities."

  They stared together at the ship on-screen, Bar Jan struggling to recall what ships he might have noticed as Scout ships over time. He'd never felt the piloting urge, nor wanted to be more than Rinork Himself, nor had much beyond pod-carrying capacity and the melant'i of a ship's principal trader. Traders were what marked a ship, and a firm; it was traders who had rank to him, and some even outranked him, either by clanhouse or ring. Since his own needs were sometimes flexible, being aware of the melant'i of a trader was far more important than purity.

  Pilots, now, pilots he'd always considered as employees, bought and paid for, employed at will, dismissed at will, and though sometimes entrusted with confidential information, replaceable.

  Yet his recent investigations had shown him that he'd perhaps undervalued pilots, that in fact it could be that pilots could move events if given the opportunity.

  "And the scouts? Do they publish ratings of their pilots as insurance pools or shipping cartels might?"

  The captain laughed, short and sharp.

  "The Scouts do not publish such a list, to my knowledge, but piloting is as much an art as a trade, with the artists showing most at the edges of size and at the top edge of ship value.