Beltrunner

by O’Brien, Sean

  Starcher regarded him. “Hrm. So, I imagine you need more, huh? Listen, I told you before, I can’t—”

  “Nope. Don’t need more. I’ve come to pay you back a little.” Collier smiled.

  Starcher raised his eyebrows. “No shit? You made a strike?”

  “You could say that.”

  Starcher’s eyebrows collapsed. “Hold on … what do you mean?” He put both his hands in front of him, as if to deflect bad news. “Col, what did you do?”

  “Jesus, Barn, easy. I made a strike. A strange one, but I made one. I have the eighty thousand you lent me last time.”

  Starcher glanced at his workstation and tapped a few panels. “Eighty thousand, three ninety-three. Interest.”

  “Fine. I’ve got it.” Collier opened his sleeve pouch and withdrew his credcard.

  “A joke? Is that what this is?”

  “No joke. I told you — I made a strike.” He handed Starcher the credcard. “Go ahead. Transfer the funds. I’ve already authorized Sancho to release the money to you.”

  Starcher took the card carefully, as if it were a vial of botulism. He inserted it into his machine and watched the display. “Sancho’s asking for your confirmation,” he said.

  “Go ahead, Sancho. Eighty thousand, three ninety-three. Transfer authorized,” Collier called to the computer.

  He heard Sancho over Starcher’s speakers. “Aye aye, Skipper. Transfer complete.”

  Starcher confirmed the transfer on his own screen, then looked back at Collier. “You weren’t kidding. You really got it. How come you didn’t just arrange the transfer from Dulcinea?”

  Collier put his hands behind his head. “I figured you might want to do it personally. It’s been so long since I paid you back I thought it merited special treatment.”

  “That’s true. So, what’d you find? You said it was ‘sort of’ a strike?”

  “Yeah. I don’t want to go into detail, but I found a … well, a vein of P that will not run out for a long time. A really long time.”

  Starcher smiled. “Well, good for you! About time good luck came your way. Only…” his smile faded, “You came back to pay me? How are you going to make sure no one steals your find?”

  “They can’t steal it. It’s complicated, but believe me. I will be able to pay you back in full in a very short time.”

  “That’s great news. I don’t mind telling you, I didn’t like the idea of taking Dulcinea away from you.”

  Collier’s hands came back in front of him and he leaned forward. “Would you have?”

  “I would have had to, Col. Yeah, I would have.”

  There was a momentary silence between the two men, and when Starcher broke it, he did so too loudly.

  “So, you’re headed back out? To mine the rest of it, I assume?”

  “Yeah,” Collier drawled.

  Again, Starcher’s eyebrows narrowed. “You’re making this too mysterious, Col. I’m glad to have the eighty thousand back—”

  “Eighty thousand, three-ninety three. Interest,” Collier said, a faint hint of hardness in his voice.

  “Yeah … but you still have an existing balance nearing a million. Just under nine hundred sixty thousand, now. You say you found a rich vein, but you’re acting like—”

  Collier threw his hands up. “For God’s sake, Barn, what do you want? I gave you your eighty thousand plus interest, and told you I can get the rest. Do you care where it comes from?” He leaned forward as far as the tether would allow, face first.

  Starcher leaned forward in turn, but spoke softly. “Yeah, actually, I do. I don’t want to be getting money from you ‘jacking a liner to the Jovians or Mars or something. I don’t want to get the money from you runnin’ Calibans to Luna as part of the Terran Supremacy. I don’t want—”

  “You were fine with me joining up with a corp and paying you back that way,” Collier said.

  “How do you figure they’re the same, huh? Being a Jack the same as working for a corp to you?”

  “You know how I think, Barn. Let’s leave it there. I’m not turning Jack, I’m not running Calibans, I’m not into the changeling farms. I have a legitimate find, and it will pay you back.” He tore the tether away and rose. “I thought that’s all you’d care about.”

  Starcher looked hurt. “Why’d I keep shelling out metal for you? You think all you were was an investment to me? Jesus, Col, I kept lending to you way after anyone else would have. You think MarsBank would have kept saying, ‘Gee, Captain South, you just keep taking our money, sure it’ll come back soon.’ You were the stupidest risk I ever took.”

  Collier stopped in the entryway. “Yeah? Then why’d you do it?”

  “Because you made me believe, that’s why. Every goddamn time you came in here, you made me believe. Not just in you, but in the whole idea. You always thought that between us, I was the one calling the shots, the one with the power. You never got it. It was always you. I just had the money. You had the life.”

  Collier turned. He stared at Starcher, who suddenly appeared very small and pale. He was a delicate man, but did not have the advantage of grace or refinement that often went with delicacy. He was simply fragile.

  “Yeah. Well, I’ll be able to pay you back. Soon. I’ll be in touch,” Collier said, his voice hoarse. Starcher’s naked emotion had taken him by surprise, and he even resented the other man’s outburst for the confusion it stirred up in himself.

  He floatwalked around the quadrangle’s outer ring, trusting his body to find a suitable destination while he thought about the encounter. What had he expected from Starcher? He had always relied on the moneylender’s good nature and timidity for more and more loans, but did he honestly expect that there were no other aspects to the man? For the first real time, he thought about what truly motivated Starcher and why he had been so willing to continue loaning him money. Was it what he had said, that Collier had made him believe? Hell, he didn’t always believe in himself, so how could Starcher?

  The crowded quadrangle suddenly seemed a lonely place. He stopped moving and brought himself up against the inner railing. There were scores of people floating about, most in the various colors of the corporate concerns, some white-clad Solarites here and there, and the occasional brown of a Ceres Authority officer. But he didn’t know any of them. He had imposed upon himself an exile among crowds. In the thirty-one years he had been a Belter, he hadn’t really known anyone.

  Except Isa.

  He thought he had known her. But the image of the message she had left for him overwrote any narrative he thought he had created with her.

  Col,

  I can’t stay anymore. We’re not the same, and we don’t want the same things. You say you want what I want, but we both know that’s not true. What I need you can’t or won’t provide.

  You’re a dreamer, Col…

  “Damn it,” he said softly to himself. He was sitting on the biggest find in the history of the Belt, maybe even in the history of the system, and all he could think about was some woman who was almost certainly not thinking of him.

  “Sancho,” he said into his throat mic.

  “Here, Skipper.”

  “Anything to report?”

  “Nope. All quiet here. Money transfer went well, I take it? Mr. Starcher was pleased?”

  Collier ignored the question. “Nothing from what’s-his-name, the guy we sold the platinum to?”

  “Mr. Kein Go. No, nothing from him. I guess he was finally satisfied with the metal.”

  “Good. I’m going to stay down here for a little bit. Let me know if anything happens.”

  “Will do. Enjoy yourself, Skipper.”

  “Thanks,” Collier signed off. He felt a little better. Better enough to start heading to the Trojan Point.

  The shitbum who had evidently staked out a place in front of the bar w
as still there, snoozing loudly and stinking up the throughway. Collier tossed him a few ‘ridium and entered the Point. It was again empty, save for Phil, who looked up at him and nodded slightly.

  “Gimme some Eight,” Collier said.

  “It’s third gen stuff,” Phil said as he reached for a pouch.

  “No, I mean, gimme some Eight. Real Eight.”

  Phil stopped in mid-motion. “I don’t have a lot of that left. You know how much it costs?”

  Collier flipped a three-cm iridium coin in the air, watched Phil watching it.

  “Okay. Whatever you say, Col.”

  Phil had to go digging for it, but he produced a squeeze bag and reached for a flask. He emptied the contents of the bag into the flask and carefully pushed it toward Collier. “There you go. Make a strike?”

  “Yeah,” Collier said. He eyed the flask for a moment, then deftly tipped it back.

  He wasn’t sure what he had expected: although he had had third-gen Tank Eight, he had always wanted to taste some of the original stuff, just to see how it compared. It was not disappointing, but neither was it a wholly different experience. It was … better, but not so much so that the new stuff would forever taste like swill to him.

  “What do you think?” Phil asked.

  “Good. Not that much of an improvement, though.”

  Phil frowned. “You’ve got no taste, Col.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You drink too much third gen, you can’t appreciate originals anymore, that’s your problem. You can’t taste pure stuff like it should be.”

  Collier tilted his head back and laughed. Even the single glass of Eight had had an intoxicating effect on him, and he allowed himself to laugh at Phil’s comment. “Phil, I think I know what purity is. Better than you ever could.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah. Keep your original Tank Eight. It’s not worth the price. I’ll take some of your third-gen stuff.”

  Phil refilled his flask and shrugged. “You’re the boss.”

  After emptying that flask, Collier spun the empty on the bartop for a few moments. “Hey, Phil, how long you been here?”

  “Where?”

  “In Ceres. How long has the Point been here?”

  “Oh. Uh, I don’t know, exactly. I guess ten years, give or take a few months. I built it when the Authority started drilling for commercial space. It’s one of the first establishments built here. Well, the first one not directly for mining concerns.”

  “I get you. So you’re one of the originals.”

  “You could say that.”

  “You came all the way out here from … where’d you come from, originally?”

  “I’m an earthworm, originally.”

  “All the way from Earth just to open a bar on Ceres?”

  Phil snorted. “No, I didn’t come here for that. I was a rock hound. Like you, actually.”

  “What happened?”

  “I made a big strike. Mostly palladium, some osmium. I cashed in, sold what little equity I had in my ship, and started this place.”

  Collier pushed the flask over to Phil and indicated he wanted a refill. Phil obliged.

  “Why? Why’d you stop mining?” Collier asked, then downed the drink.

  “I made it, that’s why. Isn’t that what everyone’s here to do? Make it big, then get out of the business?”

  “I don’t know if everyone is here for that,” Collier said, taking care with his words. He was noticing the effect of the three drinks. He warned himself to not say too much. “But then, why’d you stay here? Why not go back to Earth with your money, or Mars, or something?”

  Phil looked pained. “So I can talk to whoreson idiots like you, I guess. ‘Scuse me,” he added, and greeted some patrons who had just come in.

  Collier watched him as he served the newcomers. His words didn’t fit his actions. If he had gone into the mining game to make it big, why did he stick around once he had? Something kept him here — it wasn’t the return to Earth: the medicos on Ganymede had long since solved the problems weightlessness wreaked on the human body. And to look at it, the Trojan Point was not a going concern anymore. What kept Phil here?

  His musings were interrupted by a voice behind him. “Captain South of the Dulcinea?”

  He turned around, too rapidly. He had to steady himself against the bar rail. Two brown-suited Authority officers stood in the bar, the closer male officer looking at Collier’s vacc suit with amusement while his partner stood an arm’s length away, her right hand resting casually on her belted sidearm.

  “Yeah. What’s up?”

  “There’s been a slight issue with your last P sale. If—”

  Collier snorted roughly. “Can’t be. It was pure. More pure than Phil’s Tank Eight stuff.”

  “Right. But we still need you to come with us, please. We can clear this up and you can go back to…” the man looked with slight disdain around the Point, “whatever you were doing.”

  “An’ what happens if I say no?”

  The Authority man sighed. “Look, buddy, is there a way we can just get this done and over with? If you haven’t done anything wrong, you should have no problem coming with me and clearing this up.”

  Collier eyed the officer. “That’s not the point. It’s the principle. I shouldn’t have to prove I didn’t do anything wrong.” He spoke as precisely as the Tank Eight in him would allow.

  “Right, it’s the principle,” the officer repeated blandly. “How about this: I agree with you. I really do. It’s just,” the officer looked at his partner quickly, then back to Collier. “I got my instructions. If we go back to the station without you, that’ll look bad for us. Now why would you want to make trouble for me, huh? Let’s be friendly about this, what do you say?”

  Collier stared at the man. He was fairly certain the officer was just using whatever tactic he thought would work, and that he didn’t give a shit about Collier’s principles — it was just another way to get him to go along. Maybe if that didn’t work, he’d get nasty. Collier didn’t want to sit in an Authority lockup for a day while the e-budsman sorted through his case, so he shrugged and allowed himself to be escorted to the Authority station.

  He hadn’t been to the lower levels in ages, since he had last renewed his license in person four years ago. The Ceres Authority had not been particularly busy in that time: there were only a few new tunnels and warrens as far as he remembered. Brown-suited officials floated here and there in the station, but for all their uniforms and aura of professionalism, Collier was not impressed. The Authority was a standing joke among rock hounds — “the most misnamed outfit in the system” they were known as. No one who had been a rock hound for more than a year took the Charter seriously anymore, since most of it had been amended and weakened in favor of corporate interests. And the parts that had not been modified were largely ignored.

  Still, Collier saw no need to stir up trouble, so he waited patiently at a vertical tether until whomever wanted to see him arrived.

  She was a startlingly pretty woman from far away. She approached Collier and her beauty faded as she got closer. It wasn’t only that lines and wrinkles and age spots came into focus. She carried her shoulders hunched, even in microgravity, as if she were being pressed down on by some great weight. Her hair, styled in an old-fashioned bob, revealed streaks of flaccid grey hiding under its outer layer. When she introduced herself, her voice betrayed a past musicality that was now all but gone.

  “Captain South, I’m Lora Fletcher. Thank you for coming in.” She waited politely for him to respond.

  “You’re welcome,” Collier said, with only a bit of irony.

  Fletcher looked his vacc suit up and down. “You don’t trust the Authority to keep atmosphere on Ceres?”

  “It’s just an old habit,” Collier said.

  Fle
tcher smiled slightly. “Now, you made a transaction with a Mr. Kein Go not long ago. You sold him just under ten kilograms of platinum. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “He asked us to confirm the purity of the sale.”

  “I didn’t know you guys did that,” Collier interrupted.

  Fletcher’s eyes smiled, and Collier saw the remains of the radiant woman she must once have been. “It’s still part of the Charter. But between you and me, we rarely uphold it. Usually, the request is sent off to an assay corporation and the whole thing is done privately. For money, of course. But I, myself, still like to think the Charter is worth something.”

  “Good for you,” Collier mumbled.

  Fletcher looked sad for half a second, then continued crisply. “He had accused you of plating the sample, but our tests quickly confirmed that the platinum you sold him was clean.”

  “Like I said it was.”

  Fletcher stared at him searchingly for a long moment, then finally said, “Are you going to make me say it?”

  Collier snorted and grinned despite himself. The lady had some style. But it was still not worth risking the truth if Fletcher still somehow didn’t know. He shrugged and said, “I’d hate to take away your pleasure.”

  Fletcher sighed. “The platinum was completely pure. No admixture of any other trace elements. I’ve been assured by some independent experts that this is impossible.”

  Collier shrugged again.

  Fletcher tilted her head upward for a quick moment, as if to ask for strength from above, and then, in a single breath, said, “The metal was too pure, and we also know you didn’t use an Authority extractor and don’t have one on board your ship, the Dulcinea.”

  “Nice work,” Collier growled.

  “So, let me just ask you directly, Captain — how and where did you come across ten kilograms of completely pure platinum?”

  Now it was Collier’s turn to sigh. “All right. You seem like a nice lady. I won’t play games anymore. You’re right: it’s completely pure. It’s not a trick, either. It’ll stay pure and you or Go or whomever can use the P just fine. I have a … method, shall we say, of obtaining pure platinum. But here’s the catch,” he said, lowering his voice. Fletcher had not reacted to his speech, nor did she change expression when Collier lowered his tone. “It’s proprietary. Like a trade secret. I don’t know much, but I know that the Authority can’t force someone to reveal a trade secret.”