by Sharon Lee
* * * * *
Their time away from the ship was not officially leave, but Semimodo’s parting hope that they would avail themselves of the station’s amenities, coupled with Clarence’s known tendency to wander toward anything resembling a shopping opportunity, meant that Kara was unsurprised when his hand-sign suggested they turn right rather than taking the lift directly to the docks.
If it was a direction chosen at random, it was stereotypical for crew just in. Just around the corner they found quiet bars and carts with prepacked snacks and finger foods, boards advertising crashpads by the quarter shift—and not two hundred paces in, Kara caught a glimpse.
“We are being followed.” She spoke low, in Liaden.
Clarence remained visibly absorbed by the sights, watching, as he usually was, for specialty baked items, breads, spices.
“Yes? Is it we or is it you?”
Kara sighed. “I don’t know.”
She pointed at a displayed specialty dish that she doubted she would ever be hungry enough to eat.
“How can something made of spun sugar be a rarity?” she asked in overbright Terran.
Clarence leaned close, apparently to get a better view of this item, and she continued in quiet Liaden.
“He is very clumsy for someone who moves so well.”
Clarence nodded and pointed to another item in the same display.
“One should know the play before one acts it,” he said, also in Liaden, and despite her irritation, Kara very nearly laughed. Instead, she bent her head slightly.
“Indeed,” she said solemnly. “Guruki’s deathbed scene is full of sense and nuance, do you agree? Do I find a devotee of her work?”
Clarence did laugh, but quietly.
“I am caught out,” he murmured. “In my former position, I was often given tickets to the plays. Entertainment cries out for exploitation!”
She seized this opportunity to scan behind them. Yes, there.
“Certainly,” she said to Clarence, “one cannot help but admire act three of A Clan of Mysterious Melant’i. It is a classic.” She sighed. “I suppose the nubiantil doesn’t realize that I find his height conspicuous.”
“Young sweet thing?” Clarence did a translation on the fly and chuckled, cocking his head to the right.
Kara followed him, and he slowed his pace to match hers. There was sufficient traffic in the hall that Liaden might be overheard and call unwanted attention to them.
“He’s got some cute if you like the style, I guess,” Clarence continued, in dubious Terran. “Low on sense, though. Don’t think anybody on board would appreciate him much, not even Grakow.”
Again, Kara did not laugh, but it was a near thing. She glanced at the shop they were passing and held up her hand. Clarence obligingly stopped.
“Let us go in here and I will buy us a loaf of that round bread, with the ingredients listed. It reminds me of something I miss from home—from Eylot. Once the pathfinders are set on their way, I will add a tray of chekin seed to the ’ponics mix. It will go well, I think, with some of your loaves, and you may not know it.” She glanced over Clarence’s shoulder.
“There he goes—beyond us. Ah! He thinks we may have gone into that bar. I wonder how long he will watch it.”
“Long enough for us to buy your loaf and walk soft back to the ship,” Clarence said, waving her toward the shop’s door.
She paused a moment more, thinking about Intern Eidalec, then looked up at Clarence.
“My clan no longer keeps a book of Balances, but he tempts me to begin one.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Bechimo
Bridge
“Well, sure it can be done. But that don’t mean it ought to be done!”
Kara sighed. Upon their return to Bechimo, they had reported to Theo; then, as the promised draft contract had not yet arrived from Veep Semimodo, Kara sat down in third seat and opened her files.
As she had recalled, there was a protocol for releasing pods for which there were no codes in hand—but Clarence, who ought to have been delighted to hear it, was arguing again.
And pacing again, too.
“Well, why shouldn’t it be done?” Theo asked reasonably, from second chair. Win Ton, in first, had his head down and his eyes on his screens, where he was, so he had said, devising a piloting test for Joyita.
Clarence turned to face Theo.
“Do you—do we—want it to get about that Bechimo has a touch with breaking a pod?”
Theo blinked. “If the contract—”
Clarence held up his hand.
“No, no, lassie. You’re too innocent to be a captain, no offense intended. I’m speaking from experience here. I know we can break the pod loose. Used to be a fair hand at it myself, though it got to be I hired an expert when the work had to be done. Melant’i, that was. And breaking a pod loose from its rightful ship is close enough to piracy. Even if there’s ways—which I’m not arguing—good ships and well-behaved captains pretend they’ve got no idea.”
Kara sighed. Hevelin was sharing her seat, demanding to know…something, which was distracting her from the matter at hand.
“Hush,” she said to the norbear. “I need to speak with Clarence.”
Surprisingly, Hevelin hushed, though he did not leave her side. Clarence spun on his heel to face her.
“Listening,” he said.
“At school we—Theo and I—had a cargo master teaching one course. He’d retired after fifty years in space, he said. Therny Chirs, his name was, and he was Terran. A very blunt, unsubtle man, so you would think from his lectures. Then, come the tests you would understand just how subtle he was.
“As much as he spoke to the importance of properly filled-out paperwork, and the necessity of obeying rules and regulations, he also spoke to those times when the rules must be…circumvented.
“He taught that we needed to know the difference between law and rule, rule and custom. And he said that it was vital to know the difference between possible, useful, practical, and fatal.”
She pointed at her screen.
“Here I have the practical procedure for loosing Primadonna’s pod. Certainly, then, such an action is possible. It would be useful to accomplish this as soon as possible.”
“And fatal to the ship’s reputation, if we’re the ones who do the deed,” Clarence finished grimly.
Kara frowned at him.
“Professor Chirs also warned us that the closer we got to a cargo’s destination, the more important it was that the most recent waypoint’s credentials and tracking be clear. If I go into this pod’s externals and open it, those are going to show—it’s not a pod we own and it isn’t a pod that Hugglelans owns—”
“My point!” Clarence interrupted. “There’s already enough talk about this ship without the scuttle getting around that the engineer’s able and willing to hotshot a pod. You heard them at the meeting. Excuses all around, and politics, too. They want us to remove that pod, and they were pushing it at us as fast as they could dance. There’s something under the deal they think might burn them and they’d rather it was us instead.”
“So,” said Theo. “If the local yard won’t remove the pod, and we—” she wrinkled her nose, “ought not remove it—and you make a good point, Clarence. We don’t need any more rumors around this ship! If the pod can’t come loose from Primadonna, then there’s nothing to transship and no deal. We might as well call Veep Semimodo and tell him not to bother sending over the contract.”
“Now, now, not so fast, Captain,” Clarence said. “There’s no harm at looking the offer over, and it might be we can make them so desperate they will get a tech over from their yard to do the needful. Then Kara can watch it done in real time, to back up what she has from theory. There’s your possible, useful, and practical test right there. Let somebody else do it and we’ll avoid the fatal.”
Kara looked to Theo, who was frowning at the pirated screen feed of Primadonna. Motion on that image caught he
r eye—
“Theo!”
“It’s back again,” Theo said, turning her chair around with a shrug. “Just a drone. Bechimo’s been tracking it. So far, it’s just been looking at us.”
She rose suddenly and danced a step or two of a relaxation sequence.
“All right. We haven’t signed anything yet. We haven’t even seen the draft contract. We’ll wait for that and see what they’re offering. If Clarence thinks he can manipulate them into removing the pod themselves—they guaranteed delivery, didn’t they? There must be penalties if they don’t deliver, so they might be getting worried about that…”
Hevelin murbled, loudly, with an overtone of complaint.
Theo frowned.
“What’s he saying?”
Kara moved her shoulders.
“I am not certain I have it all. No, perhaps I do. I think Hevelin is excited because he thinks he’s met—or maybe someone he knows has met—Professor Chirs. I see him from Hevelin, but younger—much younger—than when we knew him, Theo. The location…I’m not certain, but there is another norbear present. I think not Podesta, but…they could have met. Hevelin thinks there’s something important about this.”
Theo nodded.
“Remind me about that. For the moment, the pod—we’ll wait for the contract, but it might just be that Rig Tranza would be willing to give us a release code. Which is another reason for me to see him—”
She held a hand up, palm out, toward Clarence.
“But, there’s good reasons why I shouldn’t leave the ship. So, Clarence will go see Rig. From what I hear about that intern, I think it’s best if Kara doesn’t go.”
Kara glanced up sharply—and withheld her comment. It was prudent to avoid trouble, even the possibility of trouble.
“Clarence will go,” Theo continued. “In fact, Clarence and Win Ton will go. Kara, please explain to Win Ton what you understand about the technique for unlocking the pod from Primadonna and the best way for us to relock it securely. Then, if he’ll talk about it at all, we’ll find out what Rig Tranza thinks.”
“Yes, Captain,” she said.
“Yes, Captain,” said Clarence.
Win Ton looked up from his screen, and inclined his head.
“Yes, Captain.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Minot Station
Transient Crew Cabins
The short-term accommodations and ready rooms were close by. Not quite so near as Primadonna herself, which was scarcely a hundred steps from their own berth, but only that hundred steps on dock level, down a single level, and fifty paces back toward Bechimo. Not by any means an arduous journey.
Nor did they encounter any trouble as they walked. Win Ton had not himself expected any trouble dockside. In his experience, dockside trouble was found in restless crowds running between strange shifts.
There had been trouble of sorts at the ship, with arguments presented by both Bechimo and Joyita once Theo heard out what they’d learned regarding Rig Tranza’s situation—and were still learning. Unprecedented: Theo called for a private conference between herself and the ship’s AIs.
In the wake of that conference, Clarence and he were required to check arms and to each accept a personal locator. They were also each given a Terran kilobit coin. Win Ton had been dubious, but Clarence had raised no objection to carrying one, though they were large and showed easily on metal detectors.
Theo had seen his frown and nodded.
“I’d give you a cantra for just in case, but there’s no proof this place accepts cantra as money.”
Then came the dangerous items.
“You’re sure on this, Theo?” Clarence asked.
Theo was serious. In fact, she was adamant.
“I am. They’ll go to dust if you overtwist them. If Rig’s not interested, that’s what you’ll do. If you get stopped by…anybody, that’s what you’ll do.”
“And elsewise, we’re carrying info that we don’t know so we can’t repeat it?” Clarence was not a happy man, Win Ton saw. Well, and neither was he.
Theo frowned.
“Do you want me to do this? It would be much easier, and I was set to go, but my exec wouldn’t hear of it. So, call it an order.”
Clarence bowed his head, caught, as the saying went, on his own hook.
“Yes, Captain,” he said, and Win Ton said likewise.
* * *
The itinerant pilots’ short-stay quarters were at the end of a shadeless antiseptic swipe-clean passage of indeterminate color. The door opened when Clarence touched the plate, and they entered, going left into what proved to be a small, largely empty automated cafeteria.
The sole occupant of this cheerless room was a large Terran, who looked up when Clarence said they were looking for Rig Tranza.
“That’ll be me,” he said with a nod. “Pardon the crush, Pilots, right? You got here at a good time, though. One of the outgoing pilots did me good; took my letter and sprang for a ’fresher run for me and my clothes. C’mon, sit down and be comfortable! Welcome.”
He spoke loudly, did the large star pilot, and shrugged his way into a corner of the room as if he had a dozen visitors, rather than two.
He wore a clean khaki shirt, with TRANZA in Terran script over the Hugglelans logo and, as if he’d seen Win Ton’s glance, he said, “You know who I am, right? Come lookin’ for me by name. There’s only one abandoned pilot here on this station and that’s Rig Tranza. You can ignore the ’lans part of this”—he tapped his chest—“’cause right now I’m on station ration.”
He pointed at a small table and benches.
“Sit, sit. I been doing a lot of that, so let me lean just here, if you don’t mind.”
His hands went from massive, meaningless movement to tightly controlled hand-sign: survey system sound plus video behind me, his fingers said, while aloud he continued, loud and affable, “I do thank you for taking time out from a busy day.”
Win Ton bowed and sat at the table indicated. Clarence, however, stepped up to Tranza, offered and shook his hand, even patted him on his arm as if they were kin or intimate friends. Something transpired there that Win Ton didn’t fully see, some signal passed…
“Any port in a storm, that’s a saying, isn’t it?” Tranza said, patting Clarence’s arm in turn and releasing his hand. “But I’m not quite into storm yet. This is more like sunspots ’round the rim.”
“Understood, Pilot, understood.”
The two large pilots parted, measuring each other. Tranza was younger by more than a dozen years, but no youth; alert, yet showing a profound weariness in the lines of his face.
Clarence took a seat at the table, and Tranza went on.
“I get borrowed and side information here—get to see the arrivals. There it was, large as you like it—Bechimo, Laughing Cat. Theo Waitley, Owner and Pilot! And not a courier, neither, but a capable, decent-size ship, and a couple of pilots to run backup, too. Knew she had it in her!”
He held up a hand, reaching to his back pocket with the other.
“Just a second, right?”
From the pocket came a small, flat device Win Ton recognized as a local receiver. Tranza tapped it on and music flowed; not loud, but noticeable. The pilot leaned carefully against the wall and sighed. A fluctuating beat with a persistent undertone—perhaps bells or voices—settled over the constant whisper from the air vent like a blanket.
“Hope you all don’t mind a little music…helps take the hiss out of the air. Sorry it isn’t anything civilized or got any choice at all; all my music’s on the ship and this is the only feed I can get that’s not all advertisements for stuff I can’t afford to buy even if I wanted it.”
Win Ton doubted the music could cover their entire conversation, but he hand-signed is perfect, do.
“By all means, by all means,” Clarence said heartily. “Theo told us you was one for music!”
Tranza sketched a salute, his grin wan.
“So tell me,” he said, “
how you like running an old ship? Looks in good shape—must have some quirks though, right?”
Clarence laughed.
“Show me a ship and I’ll find you some quirks. Gotta tell you, though—one of the best close-in handling ships I ever handled. Else, has some comm and view stuff newer ships could use, but pilots got out of the habit of. Beside that, I got Theo in first seat, and she makes everything look smooth.”
Tranza nodded and spread his hands in question.
“So, right. Did Theo send you?”
“Did. Sends regrets she can’t come herself.”
As he spoke, Clarence leaned in, quick hands sliding through affirmative with hints of special research info that Win Ton couldn’t be certain that the other pilot picked up.
Clarence was continuing, still in that cheerful, hearty voice, “Unnerstan, I’d’ve prolly stopped by on mine ownself’s interest, if you know what I mean. I been on a lot of docks, and I’m always looking to find out what’s really happened when there’s been a hoorah. Half cat, máthair swore it. Other hand, Theo wanted to get your side to this. Is it contract issues? Flight time?”
Tranza sighed.
“No, nothing like that. Was just like this, see, Pilots…”
The tale he produced was as near to what they had seen in the port news as made no difference. He spoke clearly and to the point—which Win Ton admired—adding details, as well as some unlikely ancestors into his account of the rogue copilot, before he began to account his own errors.
“Tell you what, Pilots—always let your instincts into your decisions, always! A boss brought me that one, with better credentials than Theo came with. Well, I felt something was a tad off, but—really prefer not to run entirely solo. And I’d had a bit of a tiff with that boss not long ago, so I thought maybe I should go with. Clear I was right, and a damn fool not to refuse him!”
Win Ton bowed, acknowledging the correctness of a statement tempered with experience in proving it.
“Got that,” Clarence said with a nod. “That’s how I ended up as exec on Bechimo. Got an offer from the captain on short notice; she’d got advice from a source she trusted. All of it instinct, I guess. Took a look at the ship and the flight deck and I was in—but there, the choice was plain, right there in front of me. Been some interesting times since, but I wouldn’t have skipped them.”