Balance of Trade

by Sharon Lee

  Paitor smiled like he only half wanted to, and lifted the bottle in two hands, like it was treasure.

  "If I may do the honors here," he said, holding the bottle out so Jethri could read the label. "This here's Genuine Smooth Blusharie. Been with us since the day you was born. Arin picked it up, see? Since the captain drinks a meaner line than this, bottle was just gathering dust in the locker, and we figured we'd better make use of it before someone who don't really 'preciate it drinks it by mistake."

  He smiled again, more like he meant it this time, and twisted the seal. There was a crackle as it gave way, and sharp pop a moment later, as the cork come out. Grig held the cups out, carefully, one after the other, and Paitor filled each with gem-colored liquid.

  When they were each holding a cup and the bottle was recorked and stowed next to Grig on the bunk, Paitor cleared his throat.

  * * *

  "NOW, JETHRI," he said, talking slow, "I know you heard a lot of advice from me over your years and you probably got right tired of it—" Grig snorted a laugh and Jethri nodded in rueful agreement, holding his cup carefully—"but there's just a little bit more you got to hear. First is this: Don't never gulp Blusharie, whether it's smooth or whether it's not. If it ain't smooth, gulping it will knock you off your pins so hard you'll think you had a code red collision. If it is smooth, you'll be wasting one of the rare joys of this life and didn't deserve to have it."

  Paitor lifted his cup and Grig, his. Jethri lifted his, looking from one lifelong familiar face to another, seeing nothing but a concentration on the moment.

  "To Jethri Gobelyn, free hand!"

  "Long may he trade!" Grig added, and he and Paitor clinked their cups together, Jethri joining them a second late. He looked into the amber depths of the liquid, and sipped himself a tiny sip.

  It all but took his breath, that sip, leaving a smooth tartness on his tongue and a tingling at the back of his throat. Fiery and mellow at once—

  He noticed that he was being watched, and had a second sip, smiling.

  "It's not like ale or beer at all!"

  Grig laughed, low and comfortable. "No, not at all."

  "So there, Jethri, that's some advice for you, and a secret, of a kind," said Paitor, sipping at his own cup. "There's traders all over the Combine who got no idea where to get this or why they'd want to. But you find yourself someone who fancies himself a knowing drinker, and you can get yourself a customer for life."

  Jethri nodded, remembering the silver cord on his pocket, with the name of the vintage and the cellar stamped on the seal.

  "'Course, there's more to life than Smooth Blusharie, too," Paitor said after another gentle sip. "So, what we got to tell you, is—there's things you gotta know."

  His latest sip of Smooth Blusharie heavy on his tongue, Jethri looked up into Paitor's face, noting that it had changed again, from sadly serious to trading-bland, and sat up straight on his stool.

  "All families have their secrets," Paitor said slowly. "This ship and this family're no different'n most. Thing is, sometimes not all secrets get shared around so good, and some things that should've been kept so secret they're forgot get talked about too much." He took a short sip from his cup. "One of the things that might've been kept secret but wasn't, was how you wasn't expected."

  Jethri looked down into his cup, biting his lip, and figured this was a good time to have another sip.

  "Now," Paitor went on, still talking slow and deliberate. "What likely was kept secret was what Arin and Iza were doing together in the first place, seein' as some would call—and did call—them a mismatch from ignition to flare out."

  What was this? Seeli, his source of all information about his parents, had never hinted that there'd been any trouble between Iza and Arin. All the trouble had come later, with Jethri.

  "What it was, see, Jethri," his uncle was saying, "is that the Gobelyn side goes back a long way in the Combine. Gobelyns was founding members of the Combine—and part of the trade teams before that. An' even before the trade teams, Gobelyns was ship folk."

  Jethri frowned. "That's no secret, Uncle. The tapes. . . "

  Grig snorted, and had a sip of the Smooth. His face was hooded; closed, like he was misdirecting a buyer around a defect. Paitor looked across to him.

  "Your turn now?" he asked, real quiet.

  Grig shook his head. "No, sir—and I'm damned if that ain't another secret been kept! But, no. Go on."

  After a minute, Paitor nodded, and sipped and leaned over to gently shake the bottle.

  "That's fine, then," he murmured. "A glass to talk on and a glass to clear it."

  "We'll do it," Grig said, nodding, too, with his face still a study in grim. "Really."

  "Right. We will." Paitor took a hard breath. "So, Jethri, the way it was—Arin come along about the time the Gobelyns was set to call precedence at a shipowner meeting. Timing was bad, you might say, it being right near the time when the internal power-shift went from ship-base to world-base. The Combine had got so big, it owned pieces of planets, big and small, not to mention controlling shares in a good many grounder corps, and its interest shifted from securing the trade-lanes to protecting its investments. Which meant that the ships and shipowners who'd founded the Combine and built it strong wasn't in charge no more.

  "So, anyway, they'd called an owners' meeting there on Caratunk, and the Gobelyns had the backin' they needed. That's when Arin showed up with the word that the owners' meeting had been downgraded from rule-making to advisory, by a twenty-seven to three commissioner vote. Now understand, Arin come from trade background too, but he'd started real young gettin' formal educated. Spent years on-planet—went to college planet-side, went to University, took history courses, took pilot courses, took trading and economics—and so when that vote came up, he was one of the three commissioners on the losing end."

  Jethri blinked, cup half-way to his lips, Smooth Blusharie forgotten in blank astonishment.

  "My father was a commissioner?"

  Grig laughed, short and sharp.

  "Not once he got out to Caratunk he wasn't," Paitor answered, sparing a quick glare for the lanky man on the bunk. "Left his vote card right there on the table, grabbed up his money, his collections, and his co-pilot, and quit on the spot. Figured the best way to help the owners an' preserve the routes was to be out with us. And so he did that."

  "Finish your sip, boy," Grig instructed, taking one of his own. Jethri followed suit. He'd met a commissioner once, when he was young—

  * * *

  "RIGHT," SAID PAITOR, "you might remember the ship was busy once. Lots of folks comin' by when we was in port, lots of talk, presents for the youngers. . . Even though Arin wasn't a commissioner no more, him knowing how the systems worked, Combine and planet-side—the owners, they come to him for advice, for planning out how to maybe not rely so heavy on Combine contacts and Combine contracts."

  "But it stopped. After . . . the accident." Jethri could vaguely remember a day when they were in port and Arin got called away—as he so often did—and then the ship was locked down, and his mother screamed and—

  "It was a bad time. Thought we'd lose your mother too. Blamed herself for lettin' him go, like there was some way she could have stopped him."

  "But see, your dad, he was from old stock, too. Not ship-folk; not 'til later. They was kinda roamers—archaeologists, philosophers, librarians. . . Had strange ideas, some of 'em. Figured us Terrans had been around a longer time than we got the history for, that Terra—what they call the homeworld—is maybe the third or fourth Terra we've called home in sequence. Some other—"

  "Paitor. . . " Grig's voice was low and warning. Jethri froze on his stool; he'd never heard long, easy-going Grig so much as sharp, never mind out-'n-out menacing.

  "Your turn then," Paitor said, after a pause. He lifted his cup.

  "My turn," Grig said, and sighed. He leaned forward on the bunk, looking hard into Jethri's face.

  * * *

  "YOU
KNOW I was your father's co-pilot. We were cousins, yeah, but more than that in someways, 'cause we had the same mentor when we was growing up, and we both got involved in what Paitor calls useless politicking and we thought was more than that. A lot more than that. Now thing is, your mam, and her-side of the cousins, like the Golds—they're Loopers. Know what that is?"

  Jethri nodded. "I know what it is. But I don't like to hear the captain—"

  Grig held up a hand, fingers wagging in the hand-talk equivalent of "pipe down."

  "Tell me what it is before you get riled."

  My last night on ship and I draw a history quiz, Jethri thought, irritated. He had a sip of Smooth to take the edge of his temper, and looked back to Grig.

  "Loopers is backwards. Don't want to come out to the bigger ports, only want to deal with smaller planets, and places where they don't have to deal with regs or with. . . "

  Grig flicked a couple fingers—"stop," that was.

  "Part right and part wrong. See, Loopers comes from an article in the Combine charter which was writ awhile back and got pretty popular—probably have five copies of in the records on-board here if you know where to look. The idea came from the fact that most ship-folk believe in following a loop of travel—pretty often it's a closed loop. And some Looper families, they've been on ship for a hundred Standards, maybe, and everybody onboard knows that month seventeen of the trip means they're putting into so-and-so port to pick up fresh 'runion concentrate.

  "Fact is, 'way back when this was all first worked out, the idea was that every route would be a Loop, with some Loops intersecting others, for transshipping and such.

  "Now, I think you know, and I think I know, and I think Paitor knows, that's nonsense. This closed system stuff only works so long—and as long—as the economy of most of the ports in the Loop're expanding. Everybody does their bit, nobody introduces no major changes—then your Loop's stable and everybody profits. Now, though, just speaking of changes, we got Liadens, who got no interest in our expanding system—they got their own systems and routes to care about. Then you got some of the planets putting their own ships into the mix without knowing history, nor caring. So now you got instability and running a Loop ain't such a good notion no more. You got the trading families losing out to the planets, and the Combine—well, buying up all them shares and corporations cost money, which means we pay more taxes and fees, not less. 'Cause the Combine, see, it can't let the ships go altogether, though we're getting troublesome; it needs to keep a certain control, exercise a certain authority, and bleed us 'til we—"

  Next to Jethri, Paitor coughed. Grig jerked to halt and rubbed a hand over his head.

  "Right," he said. "Sorry." He sipped, and sighed lightly.

  "So, where was I? Trade theory, eh? Say f'rinstance that you, Jethri Ship-Owner, want to live off the smaller ports and set yourself up a pretty good Loop. Sooner or later the good business is going to shift, and your Loop'll be worth less to the ship. You end up like Gold Digger, runnin' stones from place to place and maybe something odd on the side to make weight.

  "What Arin saw was that the contract runs was the money runs. You go hub-to-hub, you don't ship empty; if conditions change—you can adapt; you ain't tied to the Loop.

  "Arin had a good eye for basic contracts, and the ones he fixed up for the Market are just now needing adjustment. That's why this is a great time for the overhaul—your mam's on course, there. And you—you're in a spot to be big news. 'prentice trader on a Liaden ship? Studying under a master trader? You not only got a shot to own a ship, boy. Unless I read her wrong, that master trader is seeing you as—kind of like a commissioner 'tween Liaden interests and Terran."

  Jethri blinked. "I don't—"

  Grig glanced at Paitor, then back to Jethri.

  "Let it go then," he said. "Learn your lessons, do good—for yourself and for your name." He moved a hand, apologetic-like. "There's one more thing, and then we can finish up this nice stuff and let you get some sleep." He took a breath, nodded to himself.

  "There are secrets in all families. That's a phrase. You meet someone else who believes, who knows, they'll get that phrase to you. You don't know nothing but there's a secret, and that's all you have to know, now. But put that in your backbrain—there are secrets in all families. It might serve you; it might not. Course you're charting, who knows?"

  Jethri was frowning in earnest now, his cup empty and his thought process just a little slow with the Smooth.

  "But—what does it mean? What happens if somebody—"

  Grig held up his hand. "You'll know what'll happen if it ever does. What it means. . . It means that there's some stuff, here and there around the galaxy left over from the time of the Old War—the big war, like Khat tells about in stories. It means that your lucky fractin, there, that's not a game piece, no matter how many rules for playing with 'em we all seen—it's a Fractional Mosaic Memory Module—and nobody exactly knows what they're for." He looked at Paitor. "Though Arin thought he had an idea."

  Paitor grunted. "Arin had ideas. Nothin' truer said."

  Grig ran his hand over his head and produced a grin. "Paitor ain't a believer," he said to Jethri, and sat back, looking thoughtful.

  "Listen," he said, "'cause I'll tell you this once, and it might sound like ol' Grig, he's gone a little space-wise. But just listen, and remember—be aware, that's all. Paitor don't want to hear this again—didn't want to hear it the first time, I'm bettin'—but him and me—we agreed you need a place to work from; information that Iza don't want you to have." He paused.

  "These fractins, now—they're Old Tech. Really old tech. Way we figured it, they was old tech when the big war started. And the thing is—we can't duplicate them."

  Jethri stared, and it did occur to him that maybe Grig had started his drinking before the Blusharie. The big war—the Old War—well, there'd been one, that much was sure; most of the Befores you'd come up with, they was pieces from the war—or from what folks called the war, but could've been some other event. Jethri'd read arguments for and against had there been or had there not been a war, as part of history studies. And the idea of a tech that old that couldn't be duplicated today. . .

  "What kind of tech?" he asked Grig. "And why can't we copy it?"

  "Good questions, both, and I'd be a happier man if I had an answer for either. What I can tell you is—if that fractin of yours is one of the real ones—one of the old ones—it's got a tiny bit of timonium in there. You can find that from the outside because of the neutrinos—and all the real ones ever scanned had its own bit of timonium. Something else you find is that there's structure inside—they ain't just poured plastic or something. Try to do a close scan, though, maybe get a looksee at the shape of that structure, and what happens? Zap! Fried fractin. The timonium picks up the energy and gives off a couple million neutrinos and some beta and gamma rays—and there's nothing left but slagged clay. Try to peel it? You can't; same deal."

  Jethri took of sip of his dwindling drink, trying to get his mind around the idea that there was tech hundreds of Standards old that couldn't be cracked and duplicated.

  "As I say," Grig said, soft-like, "Paitor ain't a believer. What him, and Iza and a whole lot of other folks who're perfectly sane, like maybe I'm not on the subject, nor Arin neither—what they think is that the Old War wasn't nearly as big as others of us believe. They don't believe that war was fought with fractins, and about fractins. Arin thought that; and he had studies—records of archeological digs, old docs—to back him. He could map out where fractins was found, where the big caches were, show how they related to other Before caches—and when the finds started to favor the counterfeits over the real thing." He sighed.

  "So, see, this just ain't our family secret. Some of the earlier studies—they went missing. Stolen. Arin said some people got worried about what would happen if Loopers and ship owners got interested in Befores as more than a sometime high-profit oddity. If they started looking for Old Tech, and figured out h
ow to make 'em work.

  "Arin didn't necessarily think we should make these fractins work—but he thought we should know what they did—and how. In case of need. Then, he got an analysis—"

  Grig sipped, and sat for a long couple heartbeats, staring down into his cup.

  "You know what half-life is, right?" He asked, looking up.

  Jethri rolled his eyes, and Paitor laughed. Grig sighed.

  "Right. Given the half-life of that timonium, Arin figured them for about eighteen hundred Standards old. Won't be long—say ten Standards, for some of the earlier ones; maybe a hundred for the latest ones—before the timonium's too weak to power—whatever it powers. Might be they'll just go inert, and anybody's who's interested can just take one, or five, or five hundred apart and take a peek inside.

  "Arin, now. Arin figured fractins was maybe memory—warship, library, and computer, all rolled into one, including guidance and plans. That's what Arin thought. And it's what he wanted you to know. Iza and the Golds and all them other sane folks, they think they don't need to know. They say, only a fool borrows trouble, when there's so much around that's free. Me? I think you ought to know what your father thought, and I think you ought to keep your eyes and your mind open. I don't know that you particularly need to talk to any Liadens about it—but you'll make that call, if and when you have to."