The City and the Ship

by Anne McCaffrey

  "Wait a minute," she said, hunching forward in her seat. "I was under surveillance? What for?"

  "Why you were being watched is irrelevant, Ms. Simeon. What you chose to do about it is."

  Oh it's Ms. now is it, you clabber-faced oaf! What happened to Captain Simeon?

  "I think it's very relevant," she said aloud. "I demand to know why you were spying on me!"

  "I'll have Station Security send you a report," Dyson said through bared teeth. "However, in regard to the matter in hand . . ."

  "I did not take any unauthorized space walk!"

  "Then how do you explain that you were not seen leaving your ship, but were observed returning?"

  "Maybe I can walk through walls."

  "Heh, heh. How very clever. And how do you explain being found outside the very lock shown in the recording, with your suit in your arms?"

  "I was taking my suit to get the seals checked."

  "And being in the corridor outside the lock?"

  "I got lost."

  "The Bureau finds it reasonable to fine you for this incident. And as you aren't a station resident, I have plenary authority. Unauthorized breaches of hull security are a serious matter."

  They were. Spacers took pressure integrity even more seriously than Bethelites took fresh water. Joat felt a small twinge of guilt; she hadn't really endangered the Station's atmosphere . . . but if it ever got to a jury, they wouldn't be amused. At all.

  Joat smacked both palms on the sides of the console and leaned forward menacingly.

  "I protest!"

  Dyson regarded her coolly. "That is certainly your right, Ms. Simeon. New Destinies is well supplied with lawyers who are specialists in dealing with the Bureau. I suggest that you avail yourself of their services, if you feel you can afford it—after paying the fine, that is. In the meantime, the fine will be registered against your ship and will be due in forty days."

  Joat glared. "What's the fine?" she growled.

  "Thirty thousand credits."

  Joat's eyes snapped wide. Alvec gasped, and Joseph grunted in the background like a man belly-punched.

  "You're crazy! No way can you justify a fine like that!"

  "Shall we double it?" The man's features grinned like a shark for an instant, then went friendly-bland again.

  She gave a shaky little laugh.

  "What is this? Some kind of shake-down? You can't possibly hope to get away with this."

  "Double it again. It's you that's trying to get away with something, Ms. Simeon. I'm simply doing my job and I'm fairly confident that I can get away with that. You now owe New Destinies one hundred and twenty thousand credits. I think you should stop talking before you owe us the value of the station itself. Don't you?"

  Joat closed her mouth with an effort. This had gotten way out of hand. She sat still for a moment, feeling pale and shaky. What if CenSec refused to answer for this debt? She could lose her ship. They would refuse to pay it. Ten thousand she could have gotten out of them via Bros, and enjoyed him squirming on the Treasury's pin. A hundred and twenty thousand they'd refuse out of hand.

  What can I do? Sue Central Worlds Security?

  "Now you mentioned protesting the fine, didn't you?" Dyson asked pleasantry.

  Joat nodded vigorously.

  "Well, unfortunately the only date we have open for a hearing is sixty days from now. Also in that case we'd have to impound your ship. And since the fine is due in forty days, well, that would mean that your ship would probably already have been auctioned off by the time your case came up. Do you want to think about it? You have five days to protest the fine." He gazed at her blandly.

  "Yes," she said. She found it hard to talk. "I . . . I could lose my ship?"

  "Yesss, you certainly could. In fact, I'd be extremely surprised if you didn't." Dyson stared out of the screen at her, his hands folded neatly before him. He smiled again, the same friendly, honest-looking smile.

  She thought of her remaining mortgage.

  I'll be ruined, she thought desperately. I'll be a slave to the bank, working off a debt on something I don't even own. She pictured years of work under someone else's command with nothing to show for it but a slowly diminishing debt.

  "You should have thought of that before you went out your hatch, Ms. Simeon," Dyson said, as he disconnected the automatic recording device.

  "And before you opened your big mouth. And claimed an acquaintance you didn't have!" He cut the transmission with a decisive snap.

  * * *

  Dyson sat back, a satisfied sneer on his face. I enjoyed that! he thought. It wasn't every day that you got your own back with the blessings of Central Worlds Security.

  He grinned as he recalled the look of sick horror on her pretty face. It's moments like these that make life worthwhile, Dyson mused.

  The fine wouldn't stick, of course. In fact he wasn't even supposed to register more than a minimal fine. Ah, but what if the good Captain checks? he wondered as he entered the astronomical fine. I can always erase it later. He sat back again. If they tell me to.

  He chuckled. Life is good!

  * * *

  Joat just stared at the blank screen for a moment, frozen in shock. "Ooops," she said.

  Alvec cleared his throat. "I know what ooops means," he said. "It means, I screwed the pooch. Boss, you got something you wanna tell me?"

  Joat opened her mouth, and then looked over at Joseph. He lifted his brows, and she nodded.

  "Captain Simeon-Hap has arranged to visit Station Rohan," he began. "On urgent business."

  Alvec choked on a mouthful of coffee. "That jackal's nest?"

  Joseph nodded. "Exactly, my friend. A normal trading and freight-charter trip would appear suspicious; honest traders try to avoid Rohan. So, she—we—needed a plausible reason to take high-freight but, shall we say, questionable cargo on a run to a . . . questionable location."

  "Jeeeze, Boss, how do you get into these things?" He shook his head in wonder. "I've never heard of a fine like that for such a piddly little infraction."

  "Some piddly little bureaucrat in Health and Immigration named Dilton tried to shake me down when we came in, and I dropped Graf Dyson's name, pretended that I was a friend of his. Evidently Dilton checked up on it and now Dyson's leaning on me."

  "How can this guy get away with that?"

  "In this case, Alvec, it's timing," Rand said. "Before a hearing there is no opportunity to work off the debt, after the ship is taken, Joat will have neither the leisure nor the credits to file suit."

  "And," Joseph put in, "our business is too urgent to delay. We cannot afford to tie ourselves up in a bureaucratic . . . process," he finished for want of a better word. He had one actually, but he would not utter it in front of Joat.

  "I didn't think that it would be wise to claim acquaintance with him, Joat," Rand scolded. "Why did you risk it?"

  "At the time," she said tiredly, "I never expected a petty crook to be so smart . . . or so efficiently vindictive."

  "You didn't study the matter. You acted impulsively."

  "Rand," she said, "shut up or I'll punch your lights out."

  "I don't like the smuggling thing, Boss," Alvec said. "It's like a drug for some people. They get started for the profit and they get hooked on the excitement." He shook his head.

  "I think I've got enough excitement right now to supply me for a lifetime, Al. And now I actually need the damn credits. No way CenSec is gonna spring for a hundred and twenty thousand. You could buy a corvette for that, used."

  She brushed her hair back off her face and then flung herself back in her chair, gripping the armrests until her fingers turned white. "I'm gonna need something good," she said grimly.

  "Joat, my friend, calm yourself," Joseph said. "Certainly the outrageous size of this fine will ensure that your troubles become known quickly. We will hardly need to exert ourselves to make our desperation convincing. Indeed, rather than having to seek someone out, they may approach you. And," he held
up one finger, "Central Worlds has enough influence and authority to get this cruel fine reduced to something reasonable. Send a message to Mr. Sperin, and doubtless he will see to it."

  "You're probably right, Joe." She gave him a weak smile and turned to Alvec: "Feel up to a pub crawl? Best way I know of making yourself available for an approach."

  "Let me ask Rose where would be a good place to start," Alvec offered. "She might know some places."

  "Where did you meet her?" Joat asked.

  "Ah . . ." Alvec flushed. "The Station personals column."

  * * *

  "Rimrunners," Rose said. "Rimrunners would be a good place, up near the North Quadrant. But any bar in the same general neighborhood will probably do. They're all crooked as a Phelobite's elbow up there."

  Joat studied the bed-sitting room behind Rose. It was fairly large for a Stationer; Rose was evidently a mid-level tech in a gas-refining outfit, and spent a fair amount of time out-of-habitat. The wall behind her was a slightly blurry holo taken over the flared bows of a scoopship, with the gas-giant filling the entire forward quadrant; Looking at it made Joat's piloting reflexes scream vector up! until she had to glance away.

  "You need some help on this, honey?" Rose asked Alvec.

  He shook his head. "Ship's business, darlin'. But thanks." He blew her a kiss and turned off the view-screen.

  Maybe we should take her up on that, Joat thought. From the look of her, she'd be a good friend to have behind you in a fight.

  No. That wouldn't be fair. Rose hadn't gotten them into this mess. Speaking of fair . . .

  "Maybe you should take Rose out to dinner while Joe and I scope out Rimrunners," she said hopefully. "It's not like anything grudly is going to come down."

  Alvec stood, stretched on to his toes and came down in a posture of relaxed alertness.

  "You don't know nothin' about this stuff, Boss."

  "And you do?"

  Alvec looked down at his feet. "Yeah, some."

  Joat studied him. Alvec had a mysterious past. He didn't talk about it and she paid him the courtesy of not asking, appreciating the fact that he returned the favor.

  So we both have things we're happier not talking about, she thought. That might be a bit of a handicap now; they were probably both assuming a degree of naiveté in the other that wasn't justified. I'd better take him at his word.

  She'd always had the feeling that at one time he might have been master of his own ship. His competence, his knowledge and the high rank of many of his friends argued for the idea. But whatever happened had left him quite content to be Joat's crew.

  She shrugged.

  "Yeah, well, I'm not doing so well on my own, so maybe you'd better come along. Between you, you and Joe should be able to keep me from making things worse."

  "Your faith alarms me, my friend," Joseph said with a laugh. "But I shall do my best to earn it."

  Alvec gave Joseph a long, considering look.

  Joat laughed. The two men looked at her. "We're all of us bundles of surprises, aren't we?" she said, and linked her arms through theirs. "Let's get going."

  * * *

  How did they do it? Joat wondered. How did they manage to make a place that was built at the same time as everything else on this station look this dilapidated?

  North Quarter was reasonable enough on its outskirts, comfortable low- to middle-income housing and the modest shops that catered to that group. It was the people that signaled the change as much as anything else. As you got closer to the unspun docking sections the clothes got plainer and grubbier, or more spectacularly flashy. Joat found her fingers curling instinctively around the hilt of her vibroknife where it was tucked into its charging sheath in the right sleeve of her overalls. It was a small movement, nearly undetectable . . . but half the people on the corridor moved a little farther aside when she did it. Which said something about their perceptions, even now in night-cycle, when the overhead ambients were turned down to let the shopfront glowers and holes shine by contrast.

  This is the sort of place Uncle used to stop. Before he'd lost her in a card game when she was about seven. She felt her shoulders hunch, her face tighten. Her body remembered those years; the feral child was still there, hiding inside the skin of the civilized young woman.

  The professionals were out, too. Down here they didn't just saunter; you got detailed propositions. Complete with anatomical details so lurid that she blinked.

  "What you said about my succumbing to soft living would seem to be true, Joat," Joseph whispered in her ear. "I, who grew up on the docks of Keriss, find myself embarrassed!"

  Joat grinned at him. "At least you don't smell of cop."

  The Bethelite nodded. "In Keriss too we could always smell a thief-taker," he said. "Still, I remember a little more discretion from the Daughters of Joy."

  "Don't be embarrassed," she said. "This bunch're way saltier than average. They're beginning to get to me too."

  Alvec leered. "Y'oughta be storing this stuff up for use on Rohan. New Destinies is a deacon's convention next to that."

  "Do you speak as one who knows?" Joseph asked, his voice cool. Alvec bristled.

  "Tell me something," Joat said. "Why is it that men—even smart ones—are dumb as iridium ingots while they're settling who's big bull baboon?"

  Alvec snorted. Joseph raised his eyebrows—a habit he'd picked up from Amos—and chuckled. "Women are more subtle about it," he admitted. "I will try not to leap, gibber, or scratch my armpits too often in your presence, saiyda."

  The Rimrunner was an Earth-style bar with furniture that only accommodated the humanoid form. The windows were one-way, opaque on the outside, with colorful advertisements for liquor flashing across the dirty black surface. Inside they gave a clear, if not clean, view of the street.

  They made their way to an empty table, covertly studying the other patrons, who studied them in turn. Some of the men and women sitting at the tables or standing at the bar were sleazy-gaudy like most of the crowd outside; there were a few in conservative business jumpsuits, a few too well dressed, and a number in spacers coveralls. Those looked neater. You couldn't be messy on a vehicle with boost, not really. Not if you wanted to live.

  A bored and blowzy waitress slouched over and took their order. When she'd returned with their drinks and departed with an air of never planning to return, they sat quietly and sipped grimly for awhile. Conversation had died when they walked in, and was slow to revive. Most eyes were on the holo over the bar—an act showing surprising gymnastic skill, among other things—with occasional darts in their direction.

  Finally, Joat leaned towards her crew and murmured: "So, Al, is there something we do? Talk to the bartender, put a note on the bulletin board, walk around shouting we want to smuggle, or what?"

  "Someone'll come over," he murmured. "They're just checkin' us out."

  They sat a little longer and Joat began to drum her fingers on the table. Two of them had sticky ends from a film of something on the surface.

  "That's it," she said finally, putting her hands flat on the tabletop to push herself to her feet "I don't really want to do this anyway—"

  A pale, thin-faced man with dark hair and a neatly trimmed beard was suddenly at her elbow. He wore a black jumpsuit with flared sleeves, which might be hiding anything.

  "You're, uh, Captain Simeon-Hap, aren't you?" he asked quietly.

  Three pairs of eyes bored into the stranger as he reversed the empty chair at their table and laid an open messager on the surface, sitting with his arms resting on the chairback.

  "Mind if I join you?" he asked.

  Joat shook her head. "You already have," she pointed out.

  "Word is you've fallen on interesting times," he said, and smiled. Like the rest of him, the smile was thin and vicious-looking. "As in the curse."

  She raised her brows. "Word gets around fast."

  "Is it true?"

  She sighed. "Yeah. It's true." She smiled in her turn, tight and contr
olled and dangerous. "We're gonna drink the money we have left."

  Something invisible relaxed in the thin man's posture. "No need. Let me buy you a round." He looked pointedly at Joseph and Alvec. "Would you guys mind placing the order? Lisha will bring ours over to us, but you'll probably prefer to drink yours at the bar."

  They looked at Joat, and rose at her nod. Joat could sense their reluctance, but they were both too experienced to queer her pitch. Nobody would want to book space with a captain who couldn't command her crew; particularly not people who wanted to be sure that their cargo got to its destination without inspection.

  When Al and Joseph reached the bar they leaned against it, putting their weight on their elbows as if they were completing a journey of a thousand miles and their feet hurt.

  "What'll it be, gents?"

  "Arrack?" Joseph asked hopefully.

  The bartender shook his head. "We got gin, we got whisky, we got beer . . ."

  "Earth beer?" Alvec asked straightening.

  "Four kinds," the bartender named them.

  Alvec slapped Joseph's arm with the back of his hand

  "Ya gotta try this stuff," he said. "You're gonna love it!"

  Joseph looked skeptical but nodded.

  "Two," he said. He looked briefly in Joat's direction.

  "Don't worry," Alvec said. "It's nothin' she can't handle."

  Joseph sighed. "Yes, no doubt you are right. Still . . ." He shook his head. Then he looked around, as though really noticing the bar for the first time.

  "It is amazing," he said, "Except for the signs, this tavern could be on Bethel. It is like any number of places on the docks where I grew up."

  "Yeah," Alvec sighed nostalgically. "Me too. I think they invented a place like this back on Earth, and they've been shippin' them out wholesale from the same factory ever since."

  * * *

  "C.O.D.?" Joat asked in disbelief. "You expect me to ship this cash on delivery?"

  "Captain, smuggling is like any other business. There has to be an element of trust or nothing can happen." He smiled his thin smile again, showing a sliver of teeth. "For example, we're trusting you not to fly off somewhere and sell the cargo."

  You're trusting that I know what happens to people who try to stiff the Organization, she thought. The criminal equivalent of the Better Business Bureau wasn't a formal league, but it did have a strong, working joint policy on welchers.