Jimmy rolled that around in his head a little. “You got the logs?”
McCord nodded. “Filed with HR.”
“You think there’s a connection?” Jimmy asked.
“That’s the hell of it,” McCord said, shifting his weight back and forth. “I can’t see what it might be. It might be one of those weird correlations without causation. Coincidence.”
“They happen,” Jimmy said.
“They do,” McCord said. “This could be one of them. I just don’t know.”
“And that makes you nervous.”
“That makes me nervous and now you’re here asking about the women shamans.” He shook his head and looked down at the street. “If something’s up, I’d like to know about it before it boils over.”
Jimmy patted the man on his shoulder. “You and me both, Steve. That’s why I want to talk with Monty.”
McCord looked up. “You really think he has an answer?”
“He’s the only lead I got. If he doesn’t know the answer, maybe he knows somebody who does.”
“Somebody like Annette Nelsen?” McCord asked.
“The thought had occurred to me. Yeah.”
“You want me to talk to her?”
“No. This is my school to fish. You have enough on your plate as the company man in a town full of women shamans.”
McCord didn’t answer that, just rolled his tongue around in his mouth as if he wanted to.
“Turn left at the pier and follow the water?” Jimmy asked.
McCord nodded. “Want me to come with ya?”
Jimmy shook his head. “I got it. No witnesses might be best.”
McCord snorted. “You don’t know Monty.”
Jimmy offered a grin. “With that kind of buildup, I’m looking forward to making his acquaintance.”
McCord nodded and headed back up the street toward his office. “Good luck with that,” he said.
* * *
Jimmy followed the foot trail and found the stone cottage nestled into the rocky headland just over the crest of the ridge. A long curving beach stretched out to the east where another rocky point bracketed the far end.
A man wearing heavy boots, loose pants that flapped around his legs in the wind, and a ratty-looking coat stood at the foot of the path staring up at Jimmy. “You’re a long way from home,” he said. His shaggy white mane blew into his face but he didn’t seem to notice.
Jimmy nodded and picked his way down the far side. “Some things you just have to do in person.” He offered a hand. “I take it you’re Monty?”
The man looked at Jimmy’s hand for a heartbeat before grasping it, his grip solid and his skin rough. “I am. You’re Pirano.”
“Yes,” Jimmy said. “I’ve come—”
“I know why you’ve come,” Monty said, cutting him off. “Come in. I’ll make some tea and we can chat.” He led the way into the cottage, ducking under the low lintel. “Watch your head.” He tossed a heavy kettle onto a burner—clattering it across the metal burner and flicking the gas on with a thumb. “Jus’ be a tick or two.” He nodded at the kitchen table. “Take a load off.” He started pulling sticks and shells from the pockets of his coat, stacking them on the counter.
Jimmy took a seat and waited, his hands folded over each other on the smooth surface.
“You’re not going to ask how I know?” Monty asked.
“No,” Jimmy said. “Should I?”
Monty shrugged his coat off and hung it on a peg inside the door. “Not necessarily. It’s a small planet.” He busied himself with a stained teapot and tea, flicking a timer beside the burner. “Wondered how long it would be before you got around to finding me.”
“I’m a little slow off the mark sometimes,” Jimmy said.
The kettle came up to boil. Monty sloshed a little hot water into the pot, sluiced it around, and dumped it out. He stuck the loaded infuser into the pot and filled it with boiling water. “How strong you like it?” Monty asked.
“Not a fan of weak tea,” Jimmy said.
“You prefer coffee,” Monty said.
“I do, but I’m not a purist.”
“Need anything in your tea? Milk. Sugar.” Monty gave him a half-smile over one shoulder while he keyed a timer. “Whiskey?”
The question surprised a laugh out of Jimmy and he shook his head. “Black is fine.”
Monty pulled a pair of white china mugs from a cupboard and placed them beside the pot. He surveyed his handiwork and nodded, apparently satisfied. He turned, leaned against the counter and crossed his arms. “So you want to know about McIlheny?”
Jimmy shook his head. “No,” he said.
Monty’s bushy white eyebrows climbed up his weathered forehead. “No?”
“No,” Jimmy said. “I want to know where all the women shamans are.”
Monty frowned. He opened his mouth as if to speak but the timer dinged and he turned to pour the tea. “That the company line?” he asked, half turning his head to speak over his shoulder.
“Not exactly.”
Monty took the took cups to the table, placing Jimmy’s in front of him and taking a chair. “What then, exactly?”
“McIlheny is the second in two stanyers,” Jimmy said.
“Yep.”
“Davis last stanyer. That’s way above average in terms of challenges,” Jimmy said.
“You fight this often enough that you have an average?” Monty lifted his mug in a mocking toast. “I’m still listening.”
Jimmy took a sip of his tea. The smoky bite of pine rolled across his tongue. “About every decade or so, somebody challenges the rule,” he said, placing the cup back on the table and curling his hands around the warm ceramic. “Davis was a little early. Now McIlheny.”
Monty took a noisy slurp from his mug and nodded. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“Flanagan sent me.”
Monty nodded. “Figured. Asshole.”
“No love lost, I take it?” Jimmy said.
“He’s got his head so far up his butt, he has to breathe through his navel. There are no shamans except the sons of shamans. You carve or you’re not a shaman. If he thinks you’ve got the gift, he’ll bend space-time for you but if not, you can piss into the wind.” He took a swig of tea, rolling it around as if to wash the taste of his words from his mouth.
“Why’d he send me here?” Jimmy asked.
“He didn’t tell you?”
Jimmy shook his head.
“Just his way of crapping in my sandbox.”
“How so?”
Monty leaned back in his chair. “How did my name come up?”
“I wanted to know where all the women shamans were. He said to come here. You’re the shaman. Seemed a logical place to start asking questions.”
Monty’s lips pressed together and he frowned. “Company says there are no women shamans.”
Jimmy took a sip and nodded. “Funny thing about that. You know how many shamans there are on St. Cloud?”
“Men?” Monty asked.
Jimmy shrugged. “Are there any others?”
“No,” Monty said, looking down into his mug. “Something over a thousand. I don’t know how many exactly.”
“Flanagan says around four thousand. Personnel agrees with him.”
Monty looked up, his eyes widened. “That’s ... unexpected. Four thousand?”
Jimmy nodded.
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“Maybe nothing, but it got me thinking.”
“About ...?”
Jimmy took another sip. “The population of St. Cloud is forty-seven percent male.”
Monty blinked several times. “I would have thought it was closer to fifty-fifty.”
“Nope. A few more women than men born and they tend to live longer.”
Monty leaned forward again, resting his elbows on the table. “Any idea why?”
Jimmy shook his head. “More women than men deckhands. More women than men have capt
ain’s tickets. More women than men in administrative roles. Not a lot more but it’s not fifty-fifty.”
Monty’s gaze focused somewhere in the distance. “Same risk factors. Just live longer.”
“Yeah. Births are slightly closer to fifty-fifty. Almost forty-nine percent male.”
Monty took a sip of tea and stared at the tabletop. “What’s that got to do with me? Or McIlheny?”
“Well,” Jimmy said, drawing the syllable out. “Stands to reason, doesn’t it? Women have a little more than half the jobs in every category on the planet. Except one.”
“Shamans,” Monty said.
“Yeah. That’s what got me thinking I was looking through the wrong lens.”
“What way?” Monty asked, looking up at Jimmy.
“I was getting worried about the increase in the number of challenges.”
Monty nodded.
“I should have been wondering where the thousands of women who have the gift are and why more of them weren’t filing grievances.” He took a sip of tea. “When I asked Flanagan, he sent me here.”
Monty sighed. “Why do you want to know?”
“Because I’m trying to get ahead of the problem with home office.”
“They complaining?”
“Yes,” Jimmy said. “And I know the Ole Man. Too much grit in the gears and he’s going to want to wash it out.”
“And the grievances are the grit?”
Jimmy nodded. “Costs nothing to file a grievance. Costs us a lot to handle them.”
The hint of a smile flickered across Monty’s mouth and danced in his pale green eyes. “How is that my problem?”
Jimmy shook his head. “It’s my problem. It’ll get to be your problem if they decide to rescind the shaman clause in the contract.”
Monty stiffened. “Rescind?”
“Yeah. Fastest way to remove the grievances is to remove the rule.”
“Fastest way is to let women be shamans,” Monty said.
Jimmy snorted. “That’s not the way home office thinks. You know we’re the only CPJCT system that allows nondependent residents on-world?”
Monty shook his head. “I didn’t know. You sure? The Western Annex is pretty big.”
The question took Jimmy by surprise and he frowned into his mug. “No,” he said. “I’m not sure. It’s just the story I’ve gotten.” He looked up. “You know of any examples to the contrary?”
“No,” Monty said. “I’ve lived on St. Cloud my whole life. It never occurred to me to ask.”
“I’ll look into it,” Jimmy said. “I wouldn’t put it past them to blow smoke up my skirt.”
Monty’s eyes widened.
“Don’t look so surprised,” Jimmy said. “I grew up here, too. What home office believes and what actually happens aren’t always in alignment.”
“I’m just surprised you admit it.”
Jimmy laughed. “I try not to make the mistake of believing the world is how I want it to be.”
Monty took another slurp of his tea. “I don’t know how many women there are,” he said, putting the mug down with a quiet thump.
“But you know there are some.”
Monty nodded. “I do.”
“Is every woman in Troy Harbor a shaman?” Jimmy asked.
Monty laughed. “Hardly.” He shook his head. “Some, sure. All? No. Most of them are just what you’d expect. Deckhands. Skippers. Dependents.”
“Annette Nelsen?” Jimmy asked.
Monty gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Maybe.”
“Eunice Winston?”
A brief smile flickered over Monty’s face. “Honestly, I’m not sure. She seems to have the gift at times. Others?” He shook his head. “I’m not always sure I have the gift. How can I be certain about somebody else?”
Jimmy finished off the tea in his mug. “Would it surprise you to learn that there are thousands of women with the gift?”
Monty hunched over his mug and stared into it for a few heartbeats. “Yes,” he said. “It would surprise me to learn that there were thousands of men who have the gift. The real gift.” He looked up at Jimmy. “The title? Yeah. Sons of shamans are shamans. Not all of the fathers had the gift to begin with. It doesn’t breed true and not all sons get it. Some get the title and feel the calling. A few thrive. Most?” He grimaced and shook his head. “Most are just going through the motions.”
“Is that a bad thing?” Jimmy asked.
“I don’t know,” Monty said. “Seriously. It’s something I think about a lot. I got no answers.”
“But you think there are women shamans?” Jimmy asked.
Monty nodded. “I know there are.”
“You the real deal?”
Monty chuckled. “Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s not like I can wave my hands and make magic happen.”
“What would you do if you weren’t a shaman?” Jimmy asked.
Monty frowned, his gaze turned inward. “I don’t know. Never gave it much thought.”
“What does a shaman do?” Jimmy asked. “Besides walking the beach and carving whelkies.”
“You serious?” Monty asked, staring at Jimmy, his head turned a bit to one side.
Jimmy laughed. “I know what I think shamans do.” He shrugged. “That’s on me.”
“Flanagan never gave you the spiel?”
Jimmy shook his head. “All I get from Flanagan is the politics. Seems like you’re a contentious lot among yourselves.”
“Well, probably more truth to that than I’d like to admit but it’s human nature, isn’t it? Get a bunch of people in the same place and they’re going to try to sort themselves out, one way or another.”
“Probably so.”
“I see the same things around the fishing crews. Factory workers,” Monty said. “You can’t tell me your village reps are all in agreement all the time.”
Jimmy laughed again. “No. That’s true. I think it helps that there’s only one rep per village. They don’t have anybody to compete with.” He paused. “Same with shamans, isn’t it?”
“Well, there’s only one per village. If that. There are still places where there’s no shaman.”
Jimmy nodded. “That much I knew.”
“Still have jockeying for position. Villages with cottages are in higher demand. Some men aren’t cut out for a life of service and just want to stir the pot. Gives them something to do.”
“Truth,” Jimmy said. “Same with reps. At least with reps we have some control. We can deal with anybody who likes stirring the pot more than they like turning a profit.”
Monty finished off his tea and pursed his lips. “You’re being pretty forthcoming for the head of the company.”
“You expected I’d dance around in the bushes?”
Monty frowned a bit. “I guess I didn’t know what to expect.”
“I’m not giving out any company secrets. I never was one for varnishing truth. It works better if it’s not so smooth and easily dealt with.”
“That endear you to home office?” Monty asked, a grin twisting his lips to the side of his face.
Jimmy chuckled. “Not so much, no. That’s not my worry. I don’t think the Ole Man would let them get rid of me for telling the truth. Not making quota? Maybe. Truth? No.” Jimmy stood and offered his hand again. “Thanks for taking the time. And for the tea.”
Monty rose and shook his hand. “Always happy to speak to the man in charge.”
“If there’s anything you need, let me know,” Jimmy said.
“Anything?” Monty asked.
Jimmy laughed. “Well. Within reason.”
“Whose reason? Yours or mine?”
Jimmy shook his head. “Not playing that game. If you need something, ask. I might say yes, might say no. How’s that?”
Monty nodded. “That’s fair. Thank you.”
Jimmy headed for the door, but before he stepped outside Monte spoke.
“One thing.”
Jimmy turned.
“I think you’re overlooking one important question.”
“Which is?” Jimmy asked.
“Well, son of a shaman is a shaman, right?”
Jimmy nodded.
“Which came first?” Monty asked. “Chicken or the egg?”
Jimmy paused. “Good question,” he said.
“I thought so. Mind your head.”
Jimmy ducked at the last minute and slipped under the lintel.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Potter's Landing: October 3, 2344
THE PILOT CIRCLED THE village a couple of times, giving Jimmy a bird’s eye view of the place.
“Where would you like me to put down, Jimmy?” Eddie asked. “Village green or the beach?”
“Can you land on the green? It looks level enough.”
The pilot nodded and the flitter eased over the grassy square between buildings. “I’m being as gentle as I can, Jimmy.”
“Can’t be helped. Do what you need to.”
The heavy flyer settled onto the grass and the pilot killed the lifters. The vehicle settled a little more toward the starboard side than the port. “Not exactly built for it,” Eddie said.
“We stable enough?” Jimmy asked.
“Should be, but it’s going to leave a dent.”
Jimmy nodded and pulled the door latch. He stepped down on the lawn, looking around.
“Oy! What you think you’re about?”
Jimmy turned to see an older woman in a jumpsuit stalking across the grass, fists clenched and fire in her eyes. “Good morning,” Jimmy said.
“I asked you a question, bucko. What’s the idea of putting this noisy beast on my lawn?”
Jimmy held up his hands, palm out. “Sorry. I didn’t know. Where do flitters usually land here?”
She marched up to him, getting right up into his face. “Flitters do not land here.” She enunciated every word, biting each of them off succinctly.
“I understand. We’d be happy to move it if you’ll just tell me where to put it.”
“Stuff it where the sun don’t shine, ya twit. Who do you think you are, flittering in here on a quiet morning? Digging up my lawn and waking the dead with your racket?”
“Sorry,” Jimmy said, trying to edge his hand up between them. “I’m Jimmy Pirano. You are?”
Cape Grace Page 12
