by Jay Allan
Margary Station: 2352-January-13
Pip got up with me in the morning and helped set up for breakfast. We still had the issue of how many buckles to buy and we needed something else to take to St. Cloud for trade goods.
Cookie smiled when I stepped into the galley. “Good morning, young Ishmael. Your day off went well, I presume? I heard you visited the mushroom caves?”
“Morning, Cookie. Yes, very well, thank you. And, the caves were quite interesting.”
“Well, you’ll find today’s menu on your tablet. Can I trust you to handle breakfast solo this morning? I have some business ashore myself.”
Pip and I looked at each other. Cookie was leaving the ship?
I nodded. “No problem, my pleasure.”
“Thank you, young Ishmael, I’ve set the bread to rise but if you could get the biscuits and pie crusts…?”
“Of course, of course.”
He gave me an odd little bow and left the galley. Pip and I looked at each other. “Solo?” Pip raised an eyebrow.
I shrugged. “Not like there’s anything on this menu I haven’t done a hundred times already.”
“True. And in port it’s slow, especially in the morning.”
“To tell ya the truth, it makes me feel better that he’s going ashore.”
Pip looked at me quizzically.
“Well, I’m not sure he hasn’t gone ashore in the evening, because he doesn’t talk about what he does. But I bet it has been ages since he’s gotten off this ship. I think his card game takes up a lot of his spare time.”
Pip nodded. “Yeah, me, too.”
“The never-going-ashore thing makes him seem a little…I don’t know…unnatural. This is better especially since we really don’t have enough to keep both of us busy.”
“Amen, brother. So, can I get an omelet? Lots of mushrooms and extra cheese, please.”
I chucked a towel at him. “Yeah, sure, if you’ll make the coffee for a change.”
A few ticks later we settled on the mess deck to eat. I had the biscuits baking and was ready to make omelets for anybody who wanted one. It was early yet and I had time to enjoy the fruits of my omelet pan.
“So, how many buckles?” I asked Pip.
He shrugged. “We have ten belts, we should take at least that many to match. Should we pick up some extras?”
“They’re excellent work, and not that much mass. If you get them for ten creds each, and they’re all in the two hundred gram range, that’s five per kilo. We’d burn two kilos for the first ten. What if we doubled it, how much would that be?”
Pip answered instantly, “Two hundred to three hundred depending on the price.”
“We’ve got three kilocreds…” We looked at each other and grinned in disbelief. “…but I don’t want to tie up all the cash if we don’t have a good cargo.”
“We only have about twelve kilos of available mass allotment between us, I think, maybe as many as fifteen. With twenty buckles, we’re down to around eight with some room for anything we might spot that’s small. We could get maybe forty additional buckles,” Pip rattled off in quick succession.
“But we’d be betting the farm in terms of mass,” I pointed out.
“Two things—no, three things left to consider.”
I raised my eyebrows in question.
He ticked them off on his fingers. “First, we’re almost certain to clear the first two kilos and the weight of the belts because those ten will evaporate on St. Cloud. Second, we don’t have a line on any other cargo. Third, the mass is only a problem if we find something we really want to buy.”
“Good points. What about St. Cloud?”
“Nice place.” Pip got the dreamy look and went into his recitation mode. “It’s one of the more established systems in the sector, owned jointly by a farming and a fishing company. The surface is about sixty percent ocean and the landmass is mostly divided into three continents. One is almost a continuous flat plain, one is mountainous, and the smallest island is near the southern pole. We’re picking up containers of grain, fish, mutton, and wool. We’re dropping machine parts and communications equipment.”
“Farmers, fishermen, and shepherds,” I summed up.
Pip blinked until his eyes focused on me again. “Yeah, sounds about right.”
“What’s with the wool? Is it raw or textiles?”
He pulled up the manifests on his tablet. “Bales. It could be either.”
“What’s the value?”
He grinned. “You’re good. Looks like bulk wool. I shoulda caught that.”
“You’re rubbing off on me. If you were living up in the mountains with a bunch of sheep, what would you do with your spare time? Besides the obvious.”
“Try to keep warm. I’d spin wool. You think the companies would let the herders keep some of it?”
“I’m pretty sure they would find ways to keep at least the odds and ends, perhaps buy it back from the company at wholesale, that kind of thing. Just like I bet they eat a lot of mutton and fish.”
Pip smiled. “Does that suggest anything to you?”
“Yeah. Let’s see if you can find a good deal on powdered dye.”
“Really?”
I nodded. “Primary colors like red, blue, yellow, maybe even black.”
“Why dye?” Pip asked, frowning in puzzlement.
“Well, sheep are almost always white. It just makes sense that a bit of color would make their goods sell better.”
“You think on a crooked path, my friend. I like that.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m right. I feel like I’m missing something.”
“What?”
“I dunno. But something.”
The entire environmental crew came in for breakfast and I had to get back to work. Pip waved as he left and I slipped into serving mode. Anyway, I had to get the biscuits out of the oven.
As expected, the pace on the mess deck was slow and spotty. I got the bread punched down around midmorning and set it to second proof. Cleanup was easy and I even got a nice mushroom-barley soup going. Mr. Maxwell stopped by for coffee a couple of times and nodded to me without speaking. I found some unbaked cobblers in the walk-in and slid them into the ovens so they’d be ready for lunch. Even though I didn’t get a morning break, I confess it felt kinda nice pottering about the galley. I could see what Cookie enjoyed about it.
Around 1100, just as I was setting up the lunch buffet, Cookie bipped me to let me know he’d be there by noon and I felt a little disappointed. I was beginning to anticipate doing lunch solo as well and the idea appealed to me for some odd reason.
I had a lot of time to think about St. Cloud, too, in the back of my brain. I was having second thoughts about the dye idea. I was coming to the conclusion that we should just go ahead and buy up buckles for about half of the available remaining mass. That would leave some wiggle room in case they didn’t move, and give us something to sell beyond just the ten buckled belts. Something wasn’t quite right, but I just let it percolate.
The lunch set up went off without a hitch and Cookie breezed in just before noon. “Thank you, young Ishmael. Sometimes you just have to get out and about. I feel much better and you’ve done an excellent job.” He patted me on the shoulder.
“My pleasure, Cookie. It was fun.” I brought him up to speed on the lunch status.
Just before lunch prep was over, Pip breezed into the galley with a smug look. “I found the dyes.”
“Did you buy any?”
He shook his head and helped himself to a bowl of soup. “I found that thing you were missing.”
“What was it?”
“The dyes I found here came from the Erehwon Dyeworks on St. Cloud.”
We laughed. “That’s what I was missing. I bet they have roots and berries and such to dye their own wool.”
Pip shook his head. “Snails.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, apparently when processed they yield a really rich purple. There’s
also a red and a black version. That’s in addition to the plant-based dyes.”
“So, what do we take?”
Pip shrugged. “We play it safe or we play it out. We’re out of here tomorrow afternoon. Whatever we get, we have to buy it today. Safe, we go with just the ten buckles, or maybe just a few more. Or we can fill up the mass with buckles and hope they like them as much there as we do here.”
I sighed. “You know, neither of those really appeals to me. What we need is something small that we can buy a lot of cheaply here that we can sell there at twice the price without costing an arm and a leg.”
Pip got a funny look then and fished in his pocket. “Like these?” He tossed three smooth stones onto the table. There were both flattened and round stones in natural looking, circular shapes. One looked like quartz with a silvery mineral threaded delicately through it. The second one was a rich blue that looked like the stone on Beverly’s belt buckle so it was probably lapis. The last one was a lustrous black with a fine texture showing through the polish. None of them was more than three centimeters across. Each had a hole bored widthwise through the top. They looked like the accent stones on Neubert’s necklaces. I picked up one and didn’t want to put it down. The stone slid smoothly under my fingers as I rubbed it.
“Where’d you find these?”
“A guy back in the gem aisle had a booth. Just him and a couple of buckets full. They were three for a cred and I liked the way they felt.”
“How many of them do you think it would take to mass a kilo?”
Pip grinned. “A lot. These three averaged ten grams each.”
“Can you find him again? Because I think you found something here.”
“Yeah, how many do we want?”
“Let’s go with the ten buckles for the belts, twenty buckles extra. That leaves us, what? About six kilos?”
Pip nodded. “Something like that.”
“Two kilos of these would work out to about two hundred of them. The actual income isn’t very large but the margin is potentially pretty big.”
Pip shrugged. “Let’s go all six kilos. It’s not going to take that many creds so if we get stuck and need the mass we can just toss ‘em.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said excitedly. “Let’s do it.”
Pip nodded and headed back out to finish the trading.
With Cookie back in the galley and lunch all ready, there wasn’t much for me to do and I had the afternoon cleanup done almost as soon as lunch ended. Cookie planned a spicy beefalo dish for dinner and he began humming as he puttered around the galley. I pulled up a stool and watched for a time but he waved me off. “Go, young Ishmael. You didn’t get a break this morning, and I can certainly handle making a small batch of this by myself.” He smiled at me, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Thank you again for doing such an excellent job with the morning duty.”
“My pleasure, Cookie. I’m glad you got some time in port. Any time I can help like that, you know I’m always willing.”
“You’re a good shipmate, young Ishmael. Lois is happy to have you aboard.”
“I try, Cookie. I’m going for a run and a sauna then.”
He pursed his lips in question. “No environmental this afternoon?”
I shook my head. “I’ve taken enough of their time lately.”
Cookie chuckled. “I heard—sludge duty.”
“And algae! Don’t forget the algae.”
He laughed and waved as I left him humming over his sizzling beefalo.
I ran three extra laps beyond my normal workout. My wind had gotten much better and the extra exertion felt good. The showers sluiced off the grime and I had the sauna to myself. It felt odd. I enjoyed not having to share, but it seemed empty without the good-natured banter that usually filled the room along with the steam. Afterward I stretched out in my bunk and went back to reading up on being a steward. The quarterly exams were just a few weeks off.
* * *
At 1600 I went back to the mess deck to help Cookie set up the dinner buffet. I could smell the spiced beefalo all the way from the berthing area and it made me drool. I suspected the dinner turnout would be better than usual. I was right. About halfway through, Pip showed up wearing his shipsuit and a big grin. We didn’t have time to talk until we’d secured from dinner, but he came to help me clean up after.
Cookie eyed his jaunty grin. “Judging from your smile, your trading went well.”
Pip grinned even wider. “Very well, indeed.” He turned to me. “Ingo gave us thirty buckles all at ten, so three hundred creds and just under six kilos. There’s some serious upside potential there. The rock guy was surprised that we’d want to buy them by the kilo, but he had a ton of them so he was happy to unload some. He gave me as many as I wanted for five creds a kilo. I bought the six we agreed to.”
I blinked, trying to do the math in my head. “You got about six hundred of them for thirty creds?”
He nodded. “Twenty per cred. The total upside is nothing to write home about, but even at a cred a piece on St. Cloud, the margins are huge.”
“I’ll take six hundred creds. That’s more than the salary and share I got for the Margary leg.”
“Yeah, but you have to split it with me. Even so it’s really good.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Margary System: 2352-January-15
We pulled out of Margary right on time. The captain scheduled it for just after dinner, so we didn’t have to make bento-boxes. Always thinking, Cookie called the captain and offered to distribute coffee and cookies at 2100. That was about halfway through the evolution and a lot of bleary-eyed spacers who’d celebrated port-side until the last possible tick appreciated the pick-me-up.
Around 2230 we set the normal watch and I could almost hear Lois sigh as we settled into the familiar routine of sailing between the stars. It didn’t often strike me, this romantic notion that we were out here in our little ship spreading our sails to catch the solar wind, but when it did I remembered a snatch of ancient poetry that my mother used to recite to me. It was a kind of lullaby she used when tucking me in. “I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky. And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,” I mumbled to myself as I drifted off to sleep.
* * *
Pip and I convened what we called a steering committee on the first day out of Margary and invited Beverly, Diane, Francis, Rhon, and Biddy. We agreed that the finances should come as part of a sales fee, and most liked the one-percent capped at ten creds. Biddy wanted the cap at twenty and Francis wanted five because he only wanted to cover expenses, and not build up reserves. In the end, we decided on ten because it provided some contingency funding and we didn’t really know how much we’d need as startup. Diane provided the deciding argument. “You’ll have less opposition if you decide to reduce the rate than if you try to raise it.” Nobody had anything to dispute that so we left it at ten.
Over the next few days we kept having meetings figuring our way through all the various problems that could arise. The stickiest issue was the idea of consignment. Beverly brought the idea up about two days out of Margary. “What if somebody has stuff to sell, but doesn’t want to sit around the booth? If we’re going to be there anyway, could we have an arrangement to sell for them? Maybe take a flat percentage for doing it?”
Rhon objected, “But we’re doing the work and they’re getting the benefit.”
We threw different ideas around including reduced fees for working the booth or an hourly stipend. That last idea wasn’t popular because it increased overhead without assuring revenue. We still had a lot to work out.
It seemed we’d barely got underway when suddenly we were at the St. Cloud jump point. We were still stymied over consignments, but we all agreed that we probably should find some kind of solution. I knew from my brief experience on Margary that we needed some kind of system of coverage so the booth would be available the whole time. It was important that this obligation should car
ry some benefit to those doing the work. My time selling had been fun, but if we were going to do this as a regular thing, I didn’t want to be stuck doing it all the time and I didn’t think anybody else would want that either.
We’d no sooner secured from navigation stations in the afternoon when my tablet bipped with a request from the captain to meet with her, “at your earliest convenience.” I had been on the ship long enough to learn that the phrase was officer-speak for, “get your butt over here.” Pip had a similar message so we hustled to her cabin.
When we entered we found the captain, Mr. Maxwell, and Mr. Cotton seated around her small conference table. The captain indicated empty seats. “Sit, gentlemen. It’s time we talked.”
For my part, I was a bit nervous. I’d been eager to talk over our plans with her. I felt like we were on the right course but wanted to get the captain's opinion. Seeing the first mate and cargo chief made me think I was about to find out more than I'd bargained for. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Pip licking his lips and he kept wiping his palms on the sides of his shipsuit.
We took the indicated chairs and waited.
The captain started right in. “So, gentlemen, how was the flea market?”
I glanced at Pip. He nodded so I started first. “Well, Captain. You saw our first day’s efforts and, in spite of being somewhat unprepared—” Pip snorted quietly, but I ignored him and continued, “we did really well. We traveled in pairs and the people who participated that first day were very satisfied.”
Pip picked up the story. “I took the second day along with three other crew and we all sold out of our trade goods. Ms. Sham and Ms. Murphy both indicated that they were pleased with the outcomes.”
The captain nodded. “And the third and fourth day?”
Pip motioned for me to answer that one. “We didn’t have any more goods to sell and since we weren’t aware of any other crew members who needed the booth, it went empty those days. Instead we used the time to research and purchase items for St. Cloud.”
Mr. Maxwell spoke quietly, “That included visiting a mushroom processing facility?”
I tried to keep my voice flat when I replied, “Yes, sar.”