by Sharon Lee
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 book 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.
In Liaden, chel’Gaibin added a short phrase Jethri’s ears caught, and so did the Scout’s—none of the other Terran watchers knew the words but they got the venom of “Hift osti skant!”—which in Terran became, more or less, “Honor flees what touches you!”
“You must clarify all of this, Jeth Ree.” He pronounced the name as if it were both Liaden and a cuss word, as far as Jethri could see—and no doubt so could the Scout and other Liadens as well. The errors were no errors; instead it was a pile of insult upon insult, establishing an almost unsupportable amount of Balance due.
“From what sides to gather your melant’i, Oh Trader? That you dare to be seen in public with a disfigured woman? That you travel to ports that don’t recognize a Master Trader’s ring? How can you defend your place when you have blood kin”—and that was not in Trade, but in Terran as if the insults were studied indeed!—“blood kin, willing to strike someone in the face—in the face, false Ixin—without warning or provocation? That Balance is worth more than the other one she did not pay, but worry not, it is not forgot and is writ in bold, and I keep close accounts. I will see my accounts Balanced.”
“He wishes you to challenge him, Second. I would not advise you to do so . . .” The Scout’s words went by barely noticed, with Jethri reviewing the number and depth of the insults inflicted so far, most of them egregious enough singly to require a major Balancing and together—
“Your catalog must sur
ely be incomplete,” Jethri started, his mouth working before his mind fully caught up, “for you have yet to discuss my clumsiness, my infelicity of language, and my ongoing partnership with a valued member of your own clan.”
The barely permitted sneer on the man’s face gave way to a flash of startlement. Could it be, thought Jethri, that Tan Sim’s arrangements would be unremarked? Or was it merely considered trivial?
The Liaden trader gave a small laugh and a short bow of acknowledgment. “But I have already discussed that, have I not? The absolute failure of your joint puppy-plays at bowing were brought to your attention the last time we spoke, before Rinork as well as Ixin!”
Jethri plunged ahead—“We went beyond that, and so he has my name to call upon! I continue to favor him, to wish him well, as he was well the last time I saw him.”
“What foolishness! Your efforts to influence the boy are of little moment. He can hardly own his own clothes much less a pod after the end of his current voyage—there’s a penalty for nonperformance, and it will come first from his stipends and then from his private funds. He is broken, does he but know it, and if you have partnered, well may he draw you under too!”
Jethri sighed hard, almost too hard to his own mind, put his hand up to signal pause . . .
“But there, we have spoken of the one we have most in common, and find that he is alive to both of us yet. Now we might declare that we’ve noticed each other on port.” Jethri made an encompassing motion with his arm, including the entire Liaden contingent.
“Your time and that of your companions is surely more valuable than mine, and I beg you to pass on that you need not be seen talking overlong with one you admire so little. Forgive me for keeping you.”
His motion continued, and with a sweeping gesture he showed Bar Jan an open path, only somewhat littered by the curious Terran docksiders, who assisted by backing out the way themselves, emulating his sweeping arms.
Jethri heard Freza’s suppressed laugh and her muttered, “Sorry, Jeth,” but by then Bar Jan’s face had gone past bland to jaw-throb as he saw the growing crowd exaggerating and repeating Jethri’s gesture.