Trade Secret (eARC)

by Sharon Lee

  The keepers of the secret looked between themselves several seconds before Brabahm spoke. "Plan is to do that, when the time is right." Jethri looked at the pair of them, nodded. "What you've been saying here is that this whole thing's something that Arin Gobelyn came up with and that it's just as much my birthright as anything else he might have left me--commissioner rings or loose change or my name. So I'll read what he left me. Then I'll tell you what I think. I'll tell Freza straight up what I think. And you tell me if you'll keep a man from grabbing his birthright, won't you?"

  Freza, standing, agreed. "You'll see why we've been keeping it secret, Jethri. You will!"

  With a grimace Brabham half-rose, unsnapping a side pocket and handing her a multiridged mechanical key. She took it in her fist, nodded first to him and then to Jethri, the nod becoming a head shake indicating which way they'd go from here. As he followed, Jethri heard the ex-pilot changing the topic.

  "Scout, you'll get your Second Board back in a few minutes. Meanwhile, I'd like to talk to you about that protocol you're using to snatch comm traffic. . . ."

  *

  A slide key admitted them to a small storage room with a ladder in it--in space it would be a zero-G area and the boxes and hardware lock-strapped in place over head would be easily accessible. Here it was less so, local gravity holding sway with as it did, which sent the pair of them clambering up the ladder and jumping across a gap to pick their way between sets of replacement pipes and mountings and thence to a large panel full of tools they had to walk between. Freza stationed herself at one end and gestured for Jethri to the other, and then she gestured again, which sent him to his knees as she went to hers, and she reached into a recess, pulling hard--

  Snap!

  Jethri found the corresponding recess, which wasn't easy at all, and pulled the handle he found there, to be rewarded with a similar snap and the sound of a small alert buzzer.

  "Good. Lift your end . . ."

  Jethri did as directed and the panel, hinged on the long side, opened to reveal a capacious well, fairly full of interesting bundles wrapped in radar-absorbing cloth and boxes marked with digit-and-letter combinations but nothing else.

  "Come on in!"

  She scrambled over the bundles, and he did the same, ending up in a half-crawl when he reached her as she was tugging one of the bundles loose.

  "Here we go, Jeth," she said, kneeling within a couple hand spans of him--and placed a key into a cubby safe still lower into the well, a key which went in easily and turned with a quiet snick.

  The lighting wasn't good, but within were a few small boxes. Freza pulled one out, and unfolded it wordlessly, displaying how to unfold it into--a personal reader to be worn on the face like minigoggles. He took it, and it was made so that it hung on the ears and nose. Low enough not to obstruct vision if he was looking straight ahead, but able to be glanced down into . . .

  "Nothing in it!"

  He felt the earslides for controls--

  "Good," she said. "Not activated to you yet."

  She pulled a similar device from her own pocket, then, and he saw it meshed somehow with her ear cuffs when she put it on. Her reader drifted on her face and then he realized it was matching itself to her face color, that the section over her filigree tattoo was taking on the blue beneath it.

  "Fold it back up, Jeth, and hold it like so, between any two fingers you choose on the left hand and right hand. Don't have to be thumb and forefinger, but remember which ones they are. The little blue decoration goes toward the front, that ought to be on the right, and the red one on the left.

  "Yes, good. I'm going to ask you to squeeze pretty hard at my count of three, and keep squeezing about the same strength without shifting things around for about ten seconds. Once you do that, you'll put it on immediately. Got it?"

  Freza looked at him over the reader she was wearing and smiled. "Here's your count!"

  Following directions meant he couldn't exactly see what she was doing, but the activation went just as she said, a glance down showing him a starfield image blooming until it filled his vision--and the glance away took it away. He recognized something of it--so he looked back.

  Yes, it was the spiral arm where the seventeen planets were located, and as he watched, the image zoomed through and close-up, enticingly familiar.

  "It'll feel odd the first few times you use it, if you haven't used one before, but you get used to it. Tap the left arm and your book goes on, tap the right and it pauses--hold them both in and you'll have a menu."

  He glanced at the menu, saw a face very much like his own, only a little older, and with an air of competence he only wished he could feel.

  "Hello."

  A voice he knew was in his head then, and he startled where he knelt, nearly losing the reader as he looked about. "Oh!"

  Yes, he did know that voice . . . and suddenly missed it amazingly. He'd never had a chance to say goodbye, never had the chance to--He realized he was staring at Arin Gobelyn's image.

  "I'm Commissioner Arin Gobelyn. Welcome to a discussion of long-term trading potentials I hope you'll be interested in becoming part of."

  "Oh!" he said it again, eyes wide in the dimness, the image becoming that of his father standing in front of exactly the image that hung on-screen. It was eerily like looking at a video of himself playing at fancy dress--

  In the background someone was talking . . .

  "Jeth? I'm sorry, I should have."

  On the reader: "We're facing an unprecedented cloud of gas and dust, a cloud which must change trade routings and practices in this part of the spiral arm for centuries. An early simulation showed the potential to leverage this situation into a long-term trade policy of utility to all of us--and our descendants. I have prepared four short sessions on my proposal, including an introduction and overview of the basic concept, brief studies of several regions where the concept could be implemented within our lifetime and within current technical constraints, and a policy discussion of why even partial implementation might assist greatly in the inevitable, and I hope peaceful, merging of expanding trade streams which lies before us."

  "Jethri! Just . . ."

  He looked up at Freza through eyes brimming with tears. Iza had never shared anything like this, and he'd not thought about it, but his father had studied and traveled and worked and left records and he'd never seen them!

  Looking up and away stopped the voice of his father, stopped the motion on-screen, let Freza's "Hold, Jethri!" come through.

  Freza had moved closer to him by now and had her hand palm up, barely an arm's length away from him.

  He took a deep breath, nodded, laughed, wiped away the tears.

  "Surprised, that's all," he said, realizing that his chest was tight and that he really needed to center himself and get back to the Scout and go deal with the rest of the problems the universe had for him now and not stupidly muddle learning with . . .

  "I have to tell you that most of what we have is written. No voice, and the pictures and images and graphs, you'll have to eyeball them. Those lectures, they were what he was doing when he went to meetings, and what he could share for people to take to discussion groups. I really do owe you--I should have told you!"

  He shook his head, sniffed, pulled the reader off his face and folded it.

  Freza reached out and squeezed his hand, then reached into the cubby and gave him a pouch.

  "You can wear that, if you want. I carry mine--but even if you got mine you couldn't read it. My unit's set for me; your unit's been set for you--tuned for you is more like it--it won't even turn on for me now unless I do a bunch of stuff with my controls, and I have a master unit. Take it off your face and no one else can read it . . . and if your eyes aren't on it, it couldn't be removed. The sound--I don't know, that's not something others can hear, either. It goes right to the nerves, I think. I'm told that folks that're almost deaf can hear this well!"

  "This isn't Old Tech though, I mean . . ."

  "
It isn't."

  Jethri took the pouch, leaned back away from Freza with a start, too willing to lean into her.

  "Jeth, we're fine. Tell me that--tell me you're not angry!"

  He took his time sealing the reader into the pouch, threaded the pouch lead around his belt and slipped it down beside his hip, inside the fabric of his pants.

  He took a very deep breath then and looked at her, seeing--Freza, taking off her reader, touching her ear, concern writ in the lines of her face that he didn't normally see.

  "I'm angry," he told her, "but not at you. You--you I'm glad for. No matter what the books says, I'm glad to have it. I'm mad because so much of him was hidden from me for so long!"

  Jethri saw her nod, and reach a hand to him again--but in the midst of the action she showed stop again, then signaled a hurry, hand at ear level.

  "Chatter from down the row--one level down. Looks like there's a parade again, Jeth--we better go see what's up!"

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Port Chavvy

  "You set, are you, Pilot?" Brabham asked when Jethri came back.

  "He's infected you, has he?" Jethri heard himself say, realized he was still unsettled. Meanwhile, the Scout went bland, but Brabham laughed.

  "Happens you carry a key to the door, I hear, and we've heard twicet that Keravath has this Jethri person sitting second. That's you. Take your honors where you get 'em, just like your punishments."

  Jethri bowed, hitting the precise edge of honor to the wise, a touch of honor to the aged, and a full helping of acceptance of honor given.

  The elder laughed again, and was echoed by the Scout. Brabham offered, "That'd be a tall orbit to fall from, I guess. I'll take it."

  "Be seated and we'll see what we can all learn!"

  Freza squeezed by him and they sat in the same places, with fresh mugs of 'mite passed to both of them. The storeroom had been cold, he realized, and the warmth of the 'mite and of Freza was much welcome.

  In truth, there wasn't much to be seen from their crowded staff room, even with the viewscreen unlimbered. The feed they had were people's faces on other ships. They weren't taking a live video feed from Cruikshank's crew since the dockside crew wasn't currently equipped. Instead they were getting voice reports as relayed and interpreted by the crew, and since the Cruikshank wasn't much more than a scheduled shuttle back and forth from here to Vincza, they weren't as used to Liadens to be able to tell what they were looking at. Short pilots--yeah, they could see that, dressed with their jackets and working clothes. They could see what must be crew clothes, and a couple wearing boss duds. Could be traders, could be tourists.

  What was apparent though was that they were intent, once again, on being conspicuously present, walking three and sometimes four wide, taking to the center of things so that everyone passing had to take a skinny path, and people getting passed from behind found themselves squeezed to the outside and up against equipment boxes and benches.

  "There--down the stairs again," came the report.

  "It does look like a patrol, the way they are marching on the tick of the clock, doesn't it?" This from Brabham, who'd brought up a screen to show off the timing.

  "Or an exercise program," suggested the Scout, "or even working off demerits, or testing boots, or making room while work on their ships goes forth. It might be anything. In fact, if you hadn't already had these unsolicited requests from them, I'd dismiss it."

  The Scout bowed to Jethri, and then to Freza.

  "I admire your interest in remaining below the notice of record keepers. At the same time I am a pilot with a ship here, and a mission, and both are potentially affected by this situation. Has the required transaction taken place?"

  Though Freza said, "Yes," after glancing to him, Jethri bowed a more formal affirmation, adding in Terran, "We may go as soon as we wish. Balrog will do as it needs."

  Freza leaned forward, patting Jethri's hand.

  "Balrog will be fine. I'll walk you down--and once you're in and set, then I'll walk on by the security office and ask them to take a look at the situation--how's that?"

  The Scout kept his face neutral, but bowed to Brabham, and rose as Jethri did.

  "Local custom," he said. "I thank you for your time and the grace of your table."

  "We know your faces, both of you," said the old pilot from his seat. "Wherever we meet, we'll be looking to have you visit!"

  *

  It had seemed like a good idea, getting on the way, with Paitor's "Best path to done is through begun" a guide for Jethri. They'd taken leave, Freza's quick weapons check not unnoticed by Jethri or the Scout, and headed out as soon as the pack from Wynhael was said to be moving away again.

  "Better slow--we may want to wander back . . . they've turned at the stairs, left someone at the elevate."

  That was Freza, voice low, listening to her comm set.

  Jethri moved his hands in that query action motion he'd picked up from the Scout. There were voices ahead and the Scout signed pause.

  By then, though, they'd been spotted.

  Jethri heard the sentences; they were annoying, and loud enough at first to be just above polite conversation, spoken in awkward Trade, voices rising somewhat in pitch but more in volume as the group approached, effectively closing the walk to others with their meandering.

  "But there, my friends, is an excellent example of what trade guided by proper traders and Master Traders might do for the galaxy." At least he didn't point with his finger, thought Jethri, though the chin jab was obviously meant for him. "Wearing clothes of a Liaden cut, why, that one there may be permitted into the company of traders and delms. I've heard reports that none other than Parvet sig'Flava was seen flitting about him, can you believe--but there, there's always rumor that offers much that might challenge even one so insatiable as sig'Flava."

  The return banter of his troop was not all in Trade and the Liaden side of it carried.

  "Lately, of course, he has been seen . . . frolicking in the company of Terrans, where he then cruelly bent the melant'i of a member of a minor clan who had not the sense to see opportunity when it was presented to her. So there, you see who he chooses now, returning to the glory of a wandering . . ."

  Jethri's ears burned so hard he let the words go by and he was afraid the color of his anger might spread to his face. It was just such a thing a bully might use to start a port brawl anywhere, and here, where Freza'd shown him as favored to the docksiders it might serve, anyway. There were plenty of them about, and some of them not at all finicky about watching a fight, or even joining in, after months of a space route.

  The group slowed even more, coming out to an even dozen of them to Jethri's quick scan, and he knew he was doing what the Scout had mentioned before: he was looking at the risks, knowing the while that the two most dangerous were those in the fanciest clothes--Rinork's son and his lieutenant. If Rinork had let him loose with this crew it was likely a sign her son's pushing had her permission to go forward.

  "We needn't take them in a frontal assault, my Second," said the Scout with a trace of amusement in his tone. "The three of us may simply move to the side. We can move aside."

  "Then we do that," said Jethri, "to the left."

  Jethri'd already started in that direction but the bulk of the oncoming group was changing direction too, angling to that portion of the walk.

  "Jeth, maybe now we call the proctors and get them to walk us through," suggested Freza. "We can just turn about . . ."

  But that was becoming less possible because the docksiders were standing away from their chairs and beers now, whether to rally around Freza and her friends or just to watch a scuffle wasn't obvious. Perhaps the proctors were even now on their way, Jethri began to hope.

  "It will be hard, my friends," went on Rinork's heir, "to ignore these three who approach, even though we all know that Rinork and Ixin do not meet, for come full on us now is the new son of the House, this man who relies on men met in back hallways to tutor him
in his bows."

  There was murmur from his backers and one as well from the forming crowd of onlookers.

  "Perhaps he and his pilot will be kind enough to the remove himself from our path and return with their painted doxy to some place out of the way of . . ."

  "I see and I hear the delm's heir," Jethri called out in Trade, his voice much firmer than he felt. "It is in the nature of spaceports that ways are tight, and we shall merely pass by, knowing each that the other was present and acted properly."

  With a bow recognizing the import of Delm Rinork's heir, Jethri signaled that he would move aside, the while fuming that he shouldn't push on the affront to Freza, nor even on something as distantly in his melant'i as the description he had heard of sig'Flava, which in a Liaden port he might have. "Pass, please. In all honor, pass."

  "So, artificial Ixin, do you mean to play as if you are civilized these days?"

  Now stopped and with the weight of the wall behind him--he preferred that to the side that was railed and overlooking the interior atrium--Jethri bowed again.

  Multiple challenges there, but Jethri was trying to let them pass, even as Freza was talking to someone who wasn't him in a quiet voice, saying, "Alert crew, Balrog, and pass the word. Jethri's trying to let 'em slide by though . . ."

  "Please, pass, Bar Jan chel'Gaibin, you and all of your company. We shall report it as a calm passage to Ixin herself."

  Bar Jan signaled stop to his group, and they did so, all but Bar Jan himself: he came closer.

  "Oh, Ixin is the key, is it? I should be impressed that you'll say pleasant things about me to Ixin? And what about the other family you have? You seem to have far too many sides to cry to; does Ixin also adopt all of the Gobelyns from their House ship Gobelyn's Market?"

  All of this was delivered in such an oratorical manner, with pauses and postures and flourishes, that Jethri wondered if it had been practiced in front of a mirror the way he'd practiced his own bows.