by Sarah Zettel
His face was blank as a ship’s hull, reflecting her own anger right back at her, but giving away nothing of its own. He knew he could keep pushing her. He knew she would do almost anything before she had to break her sister’s heart and tell her what, exactly, Marcus Tully had turned into. That fact had nagged badly at Al Shei for years.
“Tully,” she said softly. “You don’t get it. As long as you continue to play the lone rebel, the ship is mine, because you have already crossed the line. I can take it away any time I want. Your petty temper tantrums have already taken your freedom. I’m trying to give it back to you. Your freedom, and my sister’s.” She got up and walked away without looking back.
Something hard collided with her back, sending her stumbling against an empty table. She caught herself with both hands, gasping at the sudden pain.
“Oh, sorry,” said a man’s bland voice. “I didn’t see a person there. I thought it was just a pile of rags and shit.”
Al Shei pulled herself upright and turned around slowly to face the chestnut-skinned, auburn-haired, totally unshaven, can-gerbil.
She drew herself up to her full height. “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the Prophet of Allah.” Reciting the first pillar of Islam loudly was her standard tactic. Bigots seldom knew how to reply to a declaration of faith as a response to an insult. During the Slow Burn, when the fires were cooling and the survivors were starting their own wars, thousands of Muslims turned from their religion to save their lives. Al Shei’s family had remained unmoved. Drawing on those generations of pride gave her the strength she needed to stand up to the bigotry that still dogged Islam.
The gerbil sneered, and for a minute she thought he was going to spit, but he just turned and shouldered his way out through the crowd.
Burn-brain, thought Al Shei after him. Some people had never let up. A Muslim named Faraq Hakiem started the Fast Burn. Never mind that he was Khurdish and she was an Arab from Dubai and that three hundred years had passed since the last ashes had cooled; she wore the veil, and that was enough for those who thought there was still something to be settled. Al Shei suddenly felt very much in need of a shower.
A flash of pink drifted past the corner of her eye and Al Shei looked involuntarily towards it. A blob of yellow floated down and was nabbed out of the air by a quick brown hand and replaced with a scrap of emerald green. The green was nabbed and replaced by the pink. The scene cleared up and Al Shei realized she was looking at Dobbs juggling silky scarves; snatching them out of the air as they fell and replacing them into the cascade so they could fall again. The Fool had a ridiculously intense expression on her face; grab, drop, drop, grab. She saw Al Shei staring and blushed a deep umber.
“Sorry, Boss,” she said with a twisted grin. “Dropped my napkin, and I can’t… ” drop, grab, drop. “ps. Darn it… ”
Al Shei felt a chuckle well up out of her throat and she let it go. Dobbs grinned back, snatched all her scarves out of the air and gave her little flourishing bow from her seat.
“Your contract says you don’t come on duty until tomorrow.” Al Shei watched, bemused, as Dobbs stuffed the colored scarves into her fist.
“At times discretion should be thrown aside and with the foolish, we should play fools.” Dobbs opened her fist, and, as Al Shei expected, the scarves were completely gone.
It was ridiculous and showy and simplistic, but Al Shei found herself smiling anyway. The filthy feeling lifted itself off her skin.
“See you tomorrow, Boss.” Dobbs looked down at her meal total printed out on the table top. Her eyes bulged in their sockets. She let her head fall back until she was staring at the ceiling, opened her mouth and broke into song. “Let’s vary piracy… with a little burglary!”
Al Shei froze. The tune Dobbs sang was the same one Tully had been whistling. “What is that?”
Dobbs smile was a little puzzled. “Don’t share your partner’s taste in music, Boss? That’s from the Pirates of Penzance, a comic show from before the Fast Burn… ”
Al Shei stared across the cafe at Tully, who in turn was staring at his drink. She briefly considered going back there and demanding once again to be told what was going on.
Which will get me exactly nowhere. Aware that her newest employee was staring at her, but not caring, Al Shei strode back across the lobby. Her stomach had tightened itself into a knot when she heard Dobbs sing out the words to Tully’s tune, and every second it stayed tight she became more convinced that she was right. This time Marcus Tully was doing more than worming corporate secrets out of secured networks and shunting them to public arenas. It would be just like him to find a way to brag about it in public.
Back in the Henry V business module, Al Shei passed right by the bank outlet and went straight into the communications room. Unlike the bank with its open desks, this room was a honeycomb of enclosed booths for private conversations. Al Shei found an empty booth and stepped inside. There was barely enough room for her to stand beside the chair as she jacked her pen into the socket beside the doorway. The booth’s system acknowledged her as a registered station customer with a positive balance on her accounts and shut the door.
She could have just sent a packet, but she wanted to say her suspicions out loud and hear a response to them from the person she trusted above all others. She also could have done this from the Pasadena and saved herself the cost of the booth rental, but Davis was probably still not done with his inspection. The last thing she wanted was the Lennox inspector overhearing what she had to say now.
Al Shei lowered herself into the stiff chair and faced the view screen that filled the wall in front of her. She slid the desktop into her lap and checked the credit in her communications account. She stared at it a moment, running through sample conversations in her head before deciding there was enough. With a series of careful commands, she opened a fast-time channel to Earth, Dubai City, Bala House, for Asil Tamruc.
Fast-time communications were not effected by gravitational stress as drastically as fast-time flight. A fast-time message could travel most of the way to the Moon before it had to be translated into speed-of-light signals. The problem with fast-time communication was the cost. The signals had to be boosted, refocused, and redirected every few light years, which required a vast network of both un-manned repeater satellites, and manned space stations. There was a single FTL network between Earth and Settled Space; the Intersystem Banking Network. It had been established by a financial conglomerate that was quick to realize that such a network would mean a stable medium of exchange between Earth and the new worlds. They did let independent users send messages across their crowded lines, but they charged the worth of a first-born child for it. Because of that astronomical price, ships like the Pasadena had a ready business transporting data from place to place.
Since Al Shei’s family owned one of the largest financial institutions on Earth, Al Shei could have easily had her fast-time communications fees “overlooked,” or paid by Uncle Ahmet, but her ethics forbade the first, and her pride forbade the second.
The desktop displayed the message CONNECTING, and ticked off both seconds and available credit. After two minutes and an appreciable chunk of the account, the view screen came alive and Al Shei’s husband, Asil Tamruc, smiled at her from the tidy nest that was his office.
It had been ten years since she met Asil, eight since they’d married, and his smile still made her heart pound.
“Hello, Beloved,” he said easily. Even across the vast distance that separated them, she could see the cheerful light in his dark eyes. He knew, of course, that only a serious matter would make her lay out the amounts required for a fast-time call. Despite that, his whole body was relaxed, and his long, expressive face was set in an attitude of gentle humor.
How did such a man become an accountant? thought Al Shei, as she had almost every day since she met him.
“Hello, Beloved.” Al Shei allowed herself a brief smile at the sight of her husband. “There’s trouble, I’
m afraid.”
When the signal reached him, Asil straightened up just a little, not alarmed, but alert. “What kind?”
“Marcus Tully.” She told him about the note from Resit, her uninformative conversation with Tully, and the additional spin Dobbs had added to it. She sat back and waited for her words to reach him.
Asil’s sigh puffed out his cheeks. “Well, I’d say there’s no doubt he’s been up to something. But I don’t understand why you think it’s more than the usual. It’s a suggestive song, certainly, but he always has had a taste for cultural arcana.”
“I know, I know.” Al Shei shrugged her shoulders. “It’s more a feeling than anything else, Asil. I just think it might be a good idea if you traced where Tully’s money came from this last run. We may need to cover ourselves.”
“Then I will.” He pulled out his pen and made a note on the desktop in front of him. He glanced up at her, and there was quiet mischief in his eyes. “You could have sent me a text message with all of this, Katmer. I’d have had it in two hours.”
She pulled herself up and put a tone of injured dignity into her voice. “Perhaps I wished to speak to my husband. Surely this is my right.”
His smile warmed and Al Shei felt her heart begin to melt. “Surely it is.”
“Tell the children I love them,” she whispered. “And know full well that I love you.”
“I will.” He reached out and pressed his fingertips against the view screen. “And I do.”
Al Shei copied his gesture, pressing her fingertips against his and imagining it was the warmth of his hand she felt, not the cool glass of the screen.
“Salam, Beloved,” he said softly.
“Salam.” Al Shei cut the connection. The view screen faded to black.
She sat where she was for a moment, staring at the blank screen. At last, she dropped her pen into her pocket and stood up.
Whatever happened has already happened, she told herself as she left the booth. It’s time to face what’s still to come.
Dobbs watched her new employer walk away from the cafe and with a small smile of her own. The Fool pulled her scarves out of her sleeve, folded them up neatly and stowed them in her pocket. The Guild’s profile, as usual, was proving entirely accurate. Al Shei was a determined woman with a strong sense of herself and her goals, but not without a sense of humor. Of course, people without humor or empathy seldom hired Fools, except when certain certifications or ratings required them. Dobbs had found herself a little worried that Al Shei hadn’t known she’d been contracted.
Well, every assignment has its own challenges.
She took out her pen and wrote out a credit draft on the table top, adding her thumbprint as authorization. The table checked her writing and print and added the words ACCOUNT SETTLED before it absorbed the text. Dobbs considered the blank surface for a moment and drew a simplistic smiling face before she tucked her pen away.
Marcus Tully was still sitting at his table, swirling the dregs of his drink around the bulb and watching the way the waves rose and fell in the station’s spin gravity. The report on him had been cursory, since he wasn’t an active part of the crew she’d be working with. He’d been an independent shipper for ten years, dry-docked for at least a third of that time for lack of work before he’d married Ruqaiyya Al Shei. After his partner had been arrested for attempted financial mis-dealings, Tully had invited Ruqaiyya’s sister, Katmer Al Shei, to become his new partner in the Pasadena Corp. to share the expenses and risks of operating an independent mail packet ship.
He’d apparently benefited from both the marriage and the partnership. He managed to stay constantly employed, even though the rating for him and the crews he assembled was one to two ranks lower than those Al Shei put together. But judging from the pitch and timbre of Al Shei’s voice when she talked to him, there was something serious going on and that it was affecting Dobbs’ new employer. Add that to her abrupt reaction when she’d found out what he had been whistling, and it would take a greener Fool than Dobbs to miss the fact that something was seriously wrong.
Need to plug in and find out what’s what. Dobbs got up and left the cafe.
The lobby was crowded, but she threaded an easy path between the trickles of patrons. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the bigoted station worker who had slammed into Al Shei. People like him were commonly called “gerbils” because they spent their time running around inside wheel-shaped space stations. They could become be acerbic, opinionated and develop pretty crude senses of humor.
Dobbs darted around into his field of vision.
“It’s you!” she shouted. “I knew it was you!” She slapped her hand against her forehead. “Holy sun and stars, I cannot believe they let you in here, you wart-brained, six-toed, fractured excuse for a corpse’s ass!”
The gerbil looked around confused, as members of the passing crowd slowed down to stare.
“Who could’ve thought they’d let you just walk around in here!” Dobbs spread her hands out and appealed to the crows. “I can’t believe it! Can you believe it?” she demanded of a woman in a bright red sari. “Him! The ugly, twisted, burn-brain! They let him just… ”
“Damp it down, Sister!” shouted the gerbil. “Who are you?”
Dobbs gave him a look of utter incredulity. “You mean you don’t know me?”
“No!” The gerbil stabbed a finger at her. “And I’ll lay any money you don’t know me!”
“Oh!” Dobbs covered her mouth with her hand and let her eyes go wide. “You have to know somebody in order to insult them! I’m sorry.” She gave him an apologetic grin. “See, you got me confused when you assaulted a total stranger back there.”
His eyes blazed and his big, calloused hand rose.
“Master Evelyn Dobbs.” She drew herself up to her full height. “Intersystem Guild of Fools.”
They stood there like that for a moment, then the gerbil, anger burning in his eyes, lowered his hand.
Fools could not be touched, by anybody. If he committed assault, the Guild would register his name and no crew that he worked on would be able to hire a professional Fool. There were a lot more gerbils than there were Fools. If the Guild black-balled him, he would never be able to work a first-class ship or station again.
He could, of course, report her and she’d have to take the backlash. The Guild had very strict guidelines about the proper use of casual clowning.
But he just gave her a look that could have blistered paint as he turned and shouldered his way through the gathering crowd.
Whistling, Dobbs left the hotel in the exact opposite direction.
Despite the fact that Guild scale pay was generous by shipper standards, a full room in the luxury hotel was more than Dobbs wanted to pay out for just the few days that she’d be on-station. Instead, she had berthed herself in what the advertising referred to as a “traditional, economical, Tokyo-style cabin.” That meant it was a private bunk with all the boards and terminals within arm’s reach on the walls. It included a stowage area for her baggage and access to the showers.
Her rented bed was two modules over and three levels up. All the modules in this section were dedicated to public business, which meant they were all crowded. Dobbs theorized that shippers spent so much time in space with the same people that they looked for excuses to get out and meet with someone new. As a result, there was a great deal of face-to-face business done here, even though Port Oberon had excellent video and holo-projection facilities.
Only some of the space was cut off into the normal wedge-shaped rooms for private, or semi-private negotiations. The rest was opened up, much like tapes Dobbs had seen of ancient flea markets. Sound-dampening panels took the place of canvas awnings. Patrons could order food in bulk or as individual meals. They could acquire tailored uniforms or personal clothes, or any service that could be transported between two points. Some shops took up three and four levels and had their own staircases zig-zagging up the sides of their private walls. An open me
dical lobby fronted the passage to the hospital. A couple of people in bright white med-tech coveralls marshalled a drone-gurney through the sterile-sealed doors. She got an impression of severely bruised skin and clotted blood and winced. If they were still bringing the victims in, that alarm she’d heard earlier had produced a lot of injuries. She knew that Port Oberon had a full-scale bio-garden, but she wondered how far it was going to be able to provide for the people who would now need new eyes and eardrums, and maybe even lungs.
Dobbs shoved the grisly thoughts away and stepped nimbly between the crowds and knots and flowing waves of people. Her small size facilitated freedom of movement as she flitted from one clear spot to another. For her, it was like a game of tag with empty floor space as “it,” and if anyone was laughing at her as she darted past them, then she was just putting in a little overtime.
Dobbs spotted an empty square foot of carpeting and jumped into it, planting both feet firmly on the floor. She looked up to see a tall, thin, pale man step abruptly away from the wall. She slid sideways just in time to avoid the collision, pressing her back against a wall of order terminals for C-Stacks Inc.
“And if they say one word, one, about the budget, that’s it, I’m done!” the pale man shouted at the terminals. He glowered down at Dobbs and she saw bright blue eyes, and instantly got the feeling that he wasn’t looking at her.
“You’d think,” he thundered, “that they’d ask! That there’d be a meeting! But no it’s just Lipinski we’ve got a packet and you have to fit it in the hold!”
Dobbs dropped to the deck, rolled into a fetal position, and shook.
Above her, there was a long moment of silence.
“Are you okay?” he asked finally.
“Are you done yelling?”
“I think so.”
“Then I think I’m okay.” Dobbs somersaulted backwards and came up on her knees.
“You’re a Fool,” he said quietly.
“And you’re Rurik Lipinski, Communications Chief for the Pasadena.” She tightened her muscles and leapt to her feet. A small twinge told her she shouldn’t be trying that move in full gravity anymore today. “I didn’t expect to meet you until tomorrow.”