Finity's End

Chapter 24

Boreale was a day from docking. Champlain was just coming into final approach, an hour from dock.

JR looked at the information while he drank down the nutrient pack and assessed damage. There was one piece of information he wanted, and it was delayed, pending. Charlie would check on the Old Man. Meanwhile he knew his two problems were there ahead of him, but not that much ahead, not so far ahead that they could have made extensive arrangements.

He meditated ordering a high-speed run-in that would put them at dock not long after the two ships in question.

It would also focus intense attention on them, at all levels of Esperance structure, and might impinge on negotiations to come. Foul up the Old Man’s job and he’d hear about it.

He ordered the first and second V-dump, which removed that possibility—and followed approach regulations for a major starstation.

Please God the Old Man was all right. He got down another nutri-pack.

A message from Charlie came through, welcome and feared at once. “He’s complaining,” Charlie said. “Says he’s getting dressed. Madison says he should stay put.”

He gave a little laugh, he, sitting on the bridge and waiting for Alan to relieve him. Their plans had them saving first and second shift in reserve throughout the run-in. Third and fourth were going to work in that edge-of-waking way bridge crew sat ready during jump, and Vickie was going to be at Helm on dock. That meant long shifts, but it also meant the Old Man was going to get maximum rest during their approach.

So would Madison, whose feelings in this shift of personnel were also involved. Madison had gone on the protected list right along with the Old Man, and while Madison hadn’t quite complained about Alan’s and Francie’s ganging up to take all those shifts, Madison hadn’t realized officially that he was being coddled.

“Tell the Old Man there’s not a pan in the galley out of place, and Boreale will be thinking about our presence on her tail as a major Alliance caution flag. She won’t innovate policy. Isn’t that the rule?”

“Don’t quote me my own advisements!” the Old Man’s voice broke in: that com-panel on his desk reached anything it wanted to. Of course the Old Man had been shadowing his decisions.

Then, quietly, “Not a pan out of place, indeed, Jamie. Good job.”

“Thank you, captain, sir,” JR said calmly, then advised Com 2 to activate the intercom, because it was time. The live intercom blinked an advisory Channel 1 in the corner of his screen.

“The ship is stable,” he began then, the age-old advisory of things rightfully in their places and the ship on course for a peaceful several days.

Routine settled over the ship. Fletcher would never have credited how comforting that could feel—just the routine of meals in the galley, and himself and the junior-juniors stuck with a modified laundry-duty, a stack they couldn’t hope to work their way through in the four days, while senior-juniors drew the draining and cleaning of spoiled tanks in Jake’s domain—not an enviable assignment. Meanwhile the flash-clean was going at a steady rate, since they had the senior-seniors’ dress uniforms on priority for meetings that meant the future of the Alliance and a diminution of Mazian’s options.

He’d never imagined that a button-push on a laundry machine could be important to war and peace in the universe, but it was the personal determination of the junior-junior crew that their captains were going into those all-important station conferences in immaculate, impressive dress.

They had to run up to A deck to collect senior laundry: all of A deck was so busy with clean-up after their run that senior staff had no time for personal jobs. Linda and Vince did most of the errands: Jeremy for his part wanted to stay in the working part of the laundry and not work the counter.

“No,” Fletcher said to that idea. “You go out there, you work, you smile, you say hello, you behave as your charming self and you don’t flinch.”

“They think I’m a jerk!” Jeremy protested.

“We know you’re not. You know you’re not. Get out there, meet people, and look as if you aren’t.”

Jeremy wasn’t happy. Sue and Connor showed up to check in bed linen, the one item they were running for the crew as a whole, and Jeremy ducked the encounter.

Fletcher went out and checked the cousins off their list, and Jeremy showed up after they were gone.

“You can’t do that,” Fletcher said. “You can’t flinch. Yes, you’re on the outs. I’ve been on the outs. They’ve been on the outs. It happens. People get over it if you don’t look like a target.”

“They’re all talking about me.”

“Probably they’re talking about their upcoming liberty, if you want the honest truth. Don’t flinch. They forget, and it was an accident, for God’s sake. It wasn’t like you stole it.”

Jeremy moped off to the area with the machines, a maneuver, Fletcher said to himself in some annoyance, to have him doing the consoling, when, no, it wasn’t a theft, and, no, losing it wasn’t entirely Jeremy’s fault.

Irreplaceable, in the one sense, that it was from Satin’s hand; but entirely replaceable, in another. He’d begun to understand what the stick was worth—which he suspected now was absolutely nothing at all, in Satin’s mind: the stick was as replaceable as everything else downers made. You lost it? she would say—any downer would say, in a world full of sticks and stones and feathers. I find more, Melody would say.

No downer would have fought over it, that was the truth he finally, belatedly, remembered. Fighting was a human decision, to protect what was a human memory, a human value set on Satin’s gift. It was certain Satin herself never would fight over it, nor had ever meant contention and anger to be a part of her gift to him.

In that single thought—he had everything she was. He had everything Melody and Patch were.

And he suddenly had answers, in this strange moment standing in a ship’s laundry, for why he’d not been able to stay there, forever dreaming dreams with downers. Satin had sent him back to the sky, and into a human heaven where human reasons operated. She might not know why someone in some sleepover would steal her gift, but a downer would be dismayed and bewildered that humans fought over it.

But—but—this was the one downer who’d gone to space, who’d set her stamp on the whole current arrangement of hisa and human affairs. This was the downer who’d dealt with researchers and administrators and Elene Quen. She knew the environment she sent him to. She’d seen war, and been appalled.

So maybe she wouldn’t be as surprised as he thought that it had come to fighting.

Maybe, he thought, that evening in the mess hall, when he and Jeremy were in line ahead of Chad and Connor, maybe humans had to fight. It might be as human a behavior as a walk in spring was a downer one. It might be human process, to fight until, like Jeremy, like him, like Chad, they just wore out their resentments and found themselves exhausted.

So he’d only done what other humans did. But a human who knew downers never should have fought over Satin’s gift. He most of all should have known better—and hadn’t refrained. It certainly proved one point Satin had made to him—that he really was a wretched downer, and that he was bound to be the human he was born to be, sooner or later.

And it showed him something else, too. Downers left the spirit sticks at points of remembrance, at Watcher-sites, on graves. Rain washed them, and time destroyed them—and downers, he now remembered, didn’t feel a need to renew the old ones. So they weren’t ever designed to be permanent. He had the sudden notion if he were bringing one to Satin, he could make one of a metal rod, a handful of gaudy, stupid station-pins, and a little nylon cord. She’d think it represented humans very well, and that it was, indeed, a human memory, persistent as the steel humans used.

In his mind’s eye he could imagine her taking it very solemnly at such a meeting, very respecting of his gift. He imagined her setting it in the earth at the foot of Mana-tari-so, and he imagined it enduring the rains as long as a steel rod could stand. Downers would see it, and those who remembered would remember, and as long as some remembered, they would teach. That was all it was. It was a memory. Just a memory.

And no one could ever steal that, or harm it.

No one but him.

He’d been wrong in everything he’d done. He’d waked up knowing the simple truth this time, but he’d still been too blind to see it. He’d felt Bianca’s kiss, it was so real. And that had been sweet, and sad, and human, so distracting he hadn’t been thinking about hisa memories. And that was an answer in itself.

Silly Fetcher, he heard Melody say to him. He knew now what he was too smart to know before, when he’d set all the value on physical wood and stone.

Silly Fetcher, he could hear Melody say to him. Silly you.

He sleepwalked his way through the line, ended up setting his tray beside Vince’s, with Jeremy setting his down, too, across from him.

Chad and Connor were just at the hot table at the moment. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing, remembering keenly that he wasn’t a downer and that those he dealt with weren’t—but he waited until he saw Chad and Connor sit near Nike and Ashley.

Then, to Jeremy’s, “Where are you going, Fletcher?” he got up, left his tray, and went over two rows of tables.

He sat down opposite Chad, next to Connor. “I owe you an apology,” he said, “from way before the stick disappeared. I took things wrong. That doesn’t require you to say anything, or do anything, but I’m saying in front of Connor here and the rest of the family, I’m sorry, shouldn’t have done that, I overreacted. You were justified and I was wrong. I said it the far side of jump, and I’m still of that opinion. That’s all.”

Chad stared at him. Chad had a square, unexpressive face. It was easy to take it for sullen. Chad didn’t change at all, or encourage any further word. So he got up and left and went back to the table with Vince and Linda and Jeremy.

“What’d you say to him?” Jeremy wanted to know.

It was daunting, to have a pack of twelve-year-olds hanging on your moves. But some things they needed to see happen in order to know they ought to happen among reasonable adults. “I apologized,” he said.

“What’d he say?” Linda wanted to know.

“He didn’t say anything. But he heard me. People who heard me accuse him heard it. That’s what counts.”

Jeremy had a glum look.

“Chad’s an ass,” Vince said.

“Well, I was another,” Fletcher said. “We can all be asses now and again. Just so we don’t make a career of it.—Cheer up. Think about liberty. Think about cheerful things, like going to the local sights. Like going to a tape shop. Getting some more tapes.”

“My others got stolen,” Jeremy said in a dark tone.

“Well, don’t we have money coming?”

“We might,” Vince said. “They said we were supposed to have some every liberty. And we didn’t get anything at Voyager.”

“Ask JR,” Linda said. “He’s a captain now.”

“I might do that,” Fletcher said.

But Jeremy didn’t rise to the mood. He just ate his supper.

That evening in rec he lost to Linda at vid-games, twice.

Won one, and then Jeremy decided to go back to the cabin and go to sleep.

That was a problem, Fletcher said to himself. That was a real problem. He was beginning to get mad about it.

“Am I supposed to entertain you every second, or what?” he asked Jeremy when he trailed him back. He caught him sitting on his bunk, and stood over him, deliberately looming. “I’ve done my best!”

“I’m not in a good mood, all right?”

“Fine. Fine! First you lose the stick and now I’m supposed to cheer you up about it, and every time I try, you sulk. I don’t know what game we’re playing here, but I could get tired of it just real soon.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Why don’t I what?”

“Go bunk by yourself. I was by myself before. I can be, again. Screw it!”

“Oh, now it’s broken and we don’t want it anymore. You’re being a spoiled brat, Jeremy. You owe me, but you want me to make it all right for you. Well, screw that! I’m staying.”

Jeremy had a teary-eyed look worked up—and looked at him as if he’d grown two heads.

“Why?”

“Because, that’s why! Because! I live here!”

Jeremy didn’t say anything as Fletcher went to his bunk and threw himself down to sit. And stare.

“I didn’t mean to do it,” Jeremy muttered.

“Yeah, you mentioned that. Fact is, you didn’t do it, some skuz at Mariner did it. So forget it! I’m trying to forget it, the whole ship is trying to forget it and you won’t let anybody try another topic. You’re being a bore, Jeremy.—Want to play cards?”

“No.”

Fletcher got out the deck anyway. “I figure losing the stick is at least a hundred hours. You better win it back.”

Resignation: “So I owe you a hundred hours.”

“Yeah, and Linda beat you twice tonight, because you gave up. Give up again? Is this the guy I moved in with? Is this the guy who wants to be Helm 1 someday?”

“No.” Jeremy squirmed to the edge of his bunk, in reach of the cards. Fletcher switched bunks, and dealt.

Jeremy beat him. It wasn’t quite contrived, but it was extremely convenient that it turned out that way.

Esperance Station—a prosperous station, in its huge size, its traffic of skimmers and tenders about a fair number of ships at dock.

Among which, count Boreale, which had sent them no message, and Champlain, which had sat at dock for days during their slow approach, and because of which, yesterday during the dog watch of alterday, Esperance Legal Affairs had sent them notification of legal action pending against them.

Champlain was suing them and suing Boreale, claiming harassment and threats.

Handling the approach to Esperance docking as the captain of the watch, JR reviewed the list of ships in dock. There were twenty ships, of which three were Union, two smaller ships and Boreale; five were Unionside merchanters… ships signatory to Union, and registered with Union ports. All were Family ships, still, and four of them, Gray Lady, Chelsea, Ming Tien, and Scottish Rose, had chosen to believe Union’s promise that their status would never change: they were honest merchanters who’d simply found Union offers of lower tariffs and safe ports attractive and who’d believed Union’s promise of continued tolerance of private ownership of their ships. JR personally didn’t believe it; nor did most merchanters in space, but some had believed it, and some merchanters had been working across the Line from before the War and considered Union ports their home ports.

Those four ships were no problem. Neither were the three Union ships. They had no vote. Union would dictate to them.

But the fifth of the Unionside merchanters, Wayfarer, was a ship working for the Alliance while under Union papers: a spy, no less, no more, and they had to be careful not to betray that fact.

There was, of course, Champlain, also a spy, but on Mazian’s side—unless it was by remote chance Union’s; or even, and least likely, Earth’s—that was number eight.

Nine through eighteen were small Alliance traders, limited in scope: Lightrunner, Celestial, Royal, Queen of Sheba, and Cairo; Southern Cross, St. Joseph, Amazonia, Brunswick Belle, and Gazelle. Nineteen and twenty were Andromeda and Santo Domingo, long-haulers, plying the run between Pell and Esperance, and on to Earth. Those two were natural allies, and a piece of luck, at a station where they already had a charge pending from a hostile ship, not to mention a hostile administration.

Those two had likely been carrying luxury goods, having the reach to have been at ports where they could obtain them; and they would be a little glad, perhaps, that they’d sold their cargoes before Finity’s cargo hit the market, as that cargo was doing now, electronically. Madison was in charge of market-tracking.

“Final rotation,” Helm announced calmly. They were on course toward a mathematically precise touch at a moving station rim.

“Proceed,” JR said, committing them to Helm’s judgment. They were going in. Lawyers with papers would be waiting on the dockside. Madelaine had papers prepared as well, countersuing Champlain for legal harassment.

Welcome, JR thought, to the captaincy and its responsibilities. He hadn’t asked the other captains whether to launch a counter-suit. He simply knew they didn’t accept such things tamely, he’d called Madelaine, found that she’d already been composing the papers; and the Old Man hadn’t stepped in.

He didn’t go, this time, to take his place in the rowdy gathering of cousins awaiting the docking touch in the assembly area. Bucklin would be there. Bucklin would be in charge of the assembly area setup before dock and its breakdown after, and Bucklin would be overseeing all the things that he’d overseen.

That meant Bucklin wouldn’t be at his ear with commentary, or the usual jokes, or sympathy, even when Bucklin found free time enough to be up here shadowing command. Bucklin wouldn’t observe him for instruction, not generally. Bucklin would concentrate his observation on Madison, ideally, and learn from the best.

It was a lonely feeling he had, in Bucklin’s assignment elsewhere. It always would be, until Bucklin found his own way to A deck. And the price of that, Madison’s retirement, neither of them would want

He sat, useless, once he’d given Helm the go-ahead. He sat through the advisement of takehold, when crew would be making their way to the assembly area, to stand together, wait together.

He had one critical bit of business, and that was turning up computer-handled and optimum: the passenger ring started its spin-down as the takehold sounded, preparing to lock down just before the touch at the docking cone. It was another chance to rearrange the galley pans if that went short; and to break bones and damage the mag-lev interface if it went long. He saw it, felt it, as for a moment they were null-g in the ring.

Gliding in under Vickie’s steady hand and lightning reflexes. From 10mps to 5, down to .5, .2, .02.

Touch. Bang. Clang.

Machinery the size of a sleepover suite engaged and drew them into synch with the station.

Docking crews would scramble to move in the gantry and match up the lines, to a set of connectors on the probe that were not the same for every ship, last vestige of a scramble of innovation and refitting. Things were changing, but they changed slowly. Always, with machinery that functioned for centuries, it worked till it broke, and change came when it could come.

He sent a Commend to Helm. Vickie wouldn’t talk for a few minutes. Helm did that to a human being. She wasn’t in phase with the universe right now, and Helm 4 would literally walk her and Helm 2 off the ship after Helm 3 shut down the boards.

“Thank you, one and all,” he said to the bridge crew, and got up, hearing Com making the routine announcements, sending the heads of sections off to customs.

“First shift captain,” he intercommed Madison. “Legal Affairs will meet you at the airlock with appropriate papers.” That was reasonably routine, but the papers in question were a countersuit, responding to papers they’d already received electronically. He punched another personal page. “Blue, this is JR. Are we going to have any customs troubles?”

“None yet,” the reply came back to him.

Meanwhile the Purser flashed the advisement of a bloc of rooms engaged at the luxury Xanadu, which, the Purser advised him, put them in with Boreale and with Santo Domingo.

He keyed accept and trusted the Purser to advise Com to advise the crew.

Meanwhile the docking crew was engaging lines and Engineering was watching the connections as thumps came from the bow. The access tube linked on with a clang.

The most of the crew would be getting ready to move, right below them. When he finished here, which would be perhaps another hour if there were no glitches, he would take the lift down to A deck. He would live with his pocket-com, sleep aboard, fill out endless reports. He’d have no chance to hobnob with the juniors in the bar, and he’d ride no more vid-rides in the amusement shops on any station, ever. Chase young spacer-femmes in some bar? Not a captain of Finity’s End.

He looked forward to the negotiations as the only chance he’d have this so-called liberty to have a little time with Bucklin, maybe coffee and doughnuts in some side conference room, an interlude to meetings the importance of which far outweighed any regrets on the fourth captain’s part that he wouldn’t sit and talk for hours to his age-mates.

Paul, who’d gone to senior crew before him, was in third shift. Paul had taken two ports and six jumps to quit turning up among the juniors down on A deck, as if he were still forlornly hoping for something to span the gap from where he was to where he’d been. But it had felt awkward, an undermining of his authority as new officer over the juniors. He remembered how uncomfortable Paul had made him. He wouldn’t do that to Bucklin.

He had access to every message in the ship, if he wanted a sample, ranging from Jeff’s query of the schedule for first meal after undock, two weeks from now, to the intercom exchange between Madison and Alan regarding the negotiations meeting schedule.

Customs didn’t hold them up, as they had feared might happen for days if Esperance administration wanted to delay the meetings. Crew was exiting on schedule. The lawsuit came in, the lawsuit went out. They’d arrived at 1040h mainday, right near midday, and before judges had gone to lunch. That had proved useful.

They sold their cargo. The voyage was profitable. They’d move the crates out of the cabins next watch. They’d need two cargo shifts, counting that the crates had to be moved by hand on floors that were, by now, stairs, as the pop-up treads enabled industrious A and B deck crew to access areas of the ship that otherwise would go inaccessible when the ring locked.

They’d handle that offloading with regular crew, no extras needed, and the cargo hands would still get their five-day total liberty before they had to load again for Pell.

All such things crossed his attention, as something he had to remember if plans changed without notice. As they well could here.

He received notifications of systems status. No senior captain came to advise him of procedures. Shut-down of systems saved energy and protected equipment, and there was a sequence to the shut-downs. He was a little slower than the more senior captains, because he was looking to the operations list. But he knew that, of the hundred-odd systems that had to go to bed for the next few weeks, they were safed, set, and ready for their wake-up when Finity next powered up.

Then he dismissed all but the ops watch, which would rotate by three-day sets. They never left Finity without onboard monitoring.

No one said good job. No one frowned. He was relieved no one came running up with an objection of something left undone. He knew things backward and forward, and could have done the shut-down by rote. But he didn’t take that risk. And wouldn’t, until nerves were no longer a factor.

He walked to the small lift that gave bridge access and took it down to ops, where it let out.

He saw that ops was up and functioning, gave over the ship to the senior cousin in charge—it happened to be Molly—and walked out to the cold, metallic air of Esperance dockside and the expected row of neon lights the other side of the customs checkpoint, among the very last to pick up his baggage—intending to do it himself, though he had regularly done that duty for the Old Man, when they weren’t as short of biddable juniors as they were.

“No,” Bucklin said, being in charge, now, of the senior-juniors handling crew baggage. “Wayne’s already taken it and checked you into your room.”

“Understood,” he said. Bucklin had handled it. Commenting on it would admit he’d thought about it and not relied on Bucklin’s finding a way to double-up someone’s duty. So there was no thank-you. What he longed to do was arrange a meeting of the old gang in the sleepover bar in the off-shift, so they could talk over things and get signals straight the way they’d always done. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t even attend what Bucklin might have set up. “First meeting with the stationmaster,” he said, “is in three hours. You’ll be there.”

“Yes, sir,” Bucklin said—as happy, JR said to himself, to have gotten his new job done as he was to have gotten through the shut-down checklist unscathed. “Want a personal escort to the sleepover?”

“Wouldn’t turn it down.”

“Finish up,” Bucklin said to Lyra, his lieutenant, now, and the two of them, like before their recent transformation, took a walk through customs and onto docks where the neon signs were bright and elaborate and the sound of music floated out of bars and restaurants.

Esperance in all its prosperous glory. Garish neon warred against the dark in the high reaches of the dockside. Gantries leaned just a little in the curvature of perspectives, and the white lights of spots, like suns floating in darkness, blazed from the gantry tops.

“Fancy place,” he said.

“Not quite up to Pell’s standard,” Bucklin said, and didn’t ask what JR figured was the foremost question in Bucklin’s thoughts: how it felt to sit the chair for real. But he didn’t ask Bucklin how the juniors reacted, either.

Not his business any longer.

The meetings in which the Old Man was going to read the rules to the stationmaster of Esperance, those were his business. That he had a voice in that process was a very sobering consideration, and itself a good reason to follow protocols meticulously. Every nuance of their behavior, even now, might be under station observation, what with lawyers and station administrators looking for ways to keep Esperance doing exactly what Esperance had been doing—balancing between Union and Pell.

As some ships might be dubious where their advantage was—or where it might be a month from now.

Someone had urged Champlain to sue. It was unlikely that a ship of Champlain’s character—a rough and tumble lot—would have organized it on their own. Someone had pulled Champlain in on a short tether, and risked exposure of that association. Possibly Champlain itself had gotten scared of the enemies she’d gained—and put pressure on someone in this port for protection.

Protect us or we’ll talk.

Or, conversely, someone wanted to stall and hinder Finity’s approach to the station authorities: sue Finity or they’d get no protection from their stationside contacts.

Madelaine was going to shadow the negotiations this time: the ship’s chief lawyer, not at the table, but definitely following every move.

“Berth 2,” Bucklin said as they walked. “And Champlain is 14.”

“Not far enough,” JR said. “We need a guard on the sleep-over, not obtrusive, but we can’t risk an incident—and they may try us—maybe to plant something, maybe to start an incident.”

“I’ve put out a caution,” Bucklin said.

“No question you would. Damn, I’m missing you guys.”

“Feels empty across the corridor.”

He gave a breath of a laugh. “I lived through docking. I’m jumpy as hell.”

“Don’t blame you for that. How’s the Old Man?”

Sober question. All-important question. “Last I saw he was doing all right.” He hadn’t told Bucklin about the Old Man’s rejuv failing. He thought about doing it now. But he’d been told that on a need-to-know, and Bucklin wasn’t on a need-to-know. If it had involved a second captain’s health, yes. But it didn’t.

“Hard voyage,” Bucklin said, not knowing that deadly fact. “At his age, it’s got to wear on him.”

He didn’t elaborate. They reached the sleepover frontage. He thought of ways he could talk to Bucklin, if Bucklin played sometime aide and orderly. It wasn’t the way he’d have preferred it.

It was the way things were going to be.

Walking through Xanadu was like walking through the heart of a jewel, lights constantly changing, most surfaces reflecting. It impressed the junior-juniors no end. It impressed Fletcher.

So did the suite—an arrangement like Voyager with all of the junior-juniors in one, but this time with enough beds. The bed in the central room was as huge as the one at Mariner. The two adjacent bedrooms were almost as elaborate. Colors changed on all the walls constantly. One wall of the main room was bubbles rising through real water, like bubbly wine.

Linda had, of course, to squat down by the base of the wall and try to see where the bubbles came from.

“Let’s go on the docks,” Jeremy said, and Fletcher was glad to hear the impatience in Jeremy. The kid was getting over it. Liberty was casting its spell over the junior-juniors, luring them with vid parlors and dessert bars and every blandishment ever designed to part a spacer from his cash. Vid-games had become important again, and the universe was back in order.

“There’s a vid zoo,” Linda said, from her examination of bubble production. “A walk-through. It’s educational. There’s tigers and dinosaurs and zebras.”

“Where’d you hear that?” Vince wanted to know.

“I looked it up while some people were lazing around.”

“The hell,” Vince said.

The bickering was actually pleasant to the ears. “Let’s go downstairs,” Fletcher suggested, and instantly there were takers.

It took four hours to set up the initial meeting, that of ship’s officers with station officials. Station Legal Affairs said it didn’t want the station administrators to meet with a ship under accusation… that it would constitute a legal impropriety.

The Old Man suggested the station officials could refuse to meet with a ship under accusation, but they’d damn well better arrange a meeting for an Alliance mission. Immediately.

Sitting aboard the ship, in lower deck ops, along with the other four captains, with the beep and tick of cargo monitoring the only action on the boards, JR. watched and listened to that exchange, on which Wayne ran courier. The Old Man was perfectly unflappable, pleasant to every cousin and nephew and niece around him. That was a bad sign for the opposition.

The Old Man dictated a message for Boreale, too, one to be hand-carried, a fact which said how much the Old Man relied on the security of station communication systems, even the secured lines, and all prudent officers took note of it. JR wrote the message down and printed it; and Wayne ran that one, too, while Tom B. ran courier for Madelaine’s office back and forth in an exchange with Esperance Legal to which JR was not privy.

The message to Boreale was simple. The suit is harassment and will not stand. We will vigorously oppose it and defend you in the same matter. We will hope for your attendance at one of our final meetings with ship captains at a time mutually agreeable, and hope also for your support of the pertinent treaty provisions with your own local offices.

What came back was:

We cannot of course speak for Union authorities, but we stand with you against the lawsuit. We also hold that, in accordance with both Union immunity and Alliance law, our deck is sovereign territory.

The latter sentence was complete irony. It was James Robert’s own hard-won provision in international law and the reason of the War in the first place; and Boreale was invoking it to prevent Esperance station personnel from entering their ship to search for records—as Finity held to the same right.

But Union held to no such thing within its own territory with ships signatory to Union.

“They stand with us,” Madison muttered when he heard the answer. “One could even hope they were on our side when they took out after Champlain and started this legal mess.”

“But dare we notice that station hasn’t charged Boreale?” Francie said. “They’re very careful of Union feelings at this port.”

“Noticed that,” Alan said. “Question is, how high does Boreale’s captain rank over whoever’s in the Union Trade Bureau offices here. I think that Boreale has the edge in rank, barring special instructions.”

“I don’t take Boreale’s turning up at Mariner total coincidence,” James Robert said, breaking a long silence, and JR paid close attention, but as the least informed, he’d kept quiet.

Not coincidence. “So,” he ventured, “what was the carrier doing at Tripoint?”

“Mallory’s business,” Madison said. “We think that Mazianni operations have shifted from Sol fringes to a new area the other side of Viking. We thought there’d be something more Boreale’s size sitting there observing. We got a carrier and then Boreale’s presence at Mariner. And a Mazianni ship running for Esperance, the complete opposite direction, when taking out for Tripoint would have thrown it right into the arms of that carrier.”

He hadn’t thought of Champlain’s alternative course. Blind spot. Major blind spot. He was chagrinned.

“So it ran this direction.”

“Its chances were better with us. That carrier would have had it, no question, Boreale wanted it but couldn’t catch it, Boreale wanted them alive.”

It would be a source of information, one that Union science could probe with no messiness of courts, at least in the autonomy of the Union military operating in what was technically a war zone.

Maybe we should let them, was the unethical thought that raced next through his mind. Maybe we play too much by the law and that’s why this has dragged on for twenty years.

No. That wasn’t correct. Their playing by the law was exactly what this whole mission was about. Their playing by the law was the only thing that got the cooperation of hundreds of independent merchanters, who otherwise would have supported Mazian with supply at least intermittently and brought him back from the political dead the moment things grew chancy. The result would have been another, far deadlier war, with the whole human future at risk.

Cancel that thought.

“Various interests at Esperance aren’t willing to see Champlain answering close questions,” Francie said. “That’s my bet.”

“It’s mine, too,” Madison said. “I think it’s a very good bet. Champlain was dead if it had gone to Tripoint. It knew what was waiting there. It might stay alive if it ran this direction and threatened its own business partners. They’re here. On Esperance. At least one strong anchor for the whole Mazianni supply network is right here… the contraband, the smuggling, the illicit trade in rejuv, the whole thing. The other leak is probably Viking; but Viking isn’t our problem. Esperance is.”

It made sense. It finally made sense, how the web was structured. And what the gateway was for the high-priced goods to reach the paying markets, at Cyteen. Cyteen officials didn’t like it. But they still drank their Scotch, not looking closely enough at whether it came via a legitimate merchanter or whether it meant rejuv and biologicals were getting to Earth, to the wellspring of all that was human, in trade for supply for Mazian’s war machine.

The other captains discussed technical matters. The new one was just filling out the holes in his understanding of what they were doing, and why they were doing it, and why certain Cyteen factions would support them and certain ones wouldn’t. Some Cyteeners were defending their world. Others were making money.

Say that also about the position of Esperance in this affair. It had existed by playing Union against Alliance, supporting and not supporting Mazian. It was what the Old Man had said at Voyager: Mazian was essential… in this case, to Esperance. Maybe even to them… because without him, Union would have had Esperance, and the Alliance would have gone down Union’s gullet. As it was, Union would let Esperance slip firmly into the Alliance in return for secure borders—secure from a threat Union itself was helping fund simply because Union had an appetite for what their sole planet didn’t produce.

Like lifestuff that wasn’t poisonous, or otherwise deadly. Cyteen had made a great matter over its rebellion from what was Earthlike; Cyteen wielded genetics like a weapon; but when it came to creature comforts, Cyteen, just like some this side of the Line, didn’t look too closely at the label.

Like Pell, he thought. Like Pell, and its dinosaurs and sugar drinks scantly removed from where thousands had died. People forgot. People were human and didn’t look too closely at what didn’t look harmful. No single person’s little purchase of black-market coffee could affect the universe.

That was the dream people had, that little things were ignorable on a cosmic scale.

Wind blew through virtual foliage. Moist air brushed the skin. It wasn’t one of those sims that you wore a suit to experience. You wore ordinary clothes, and just put on disposable contacts. And walked.

And climbed. And walked some more. It might have been Downbelow, but it was too green. They walked over soft ground, and around trees, following a hand-rope.

A tiger was resting in the undergrowth. It stood up, huge, and real, right down to the details of its whiskers and the expression in its eyes.

Vince yelped, and the virtual cat jumped, spat, and retreated, staring at them.

Fletcher had to calm his own nerves and slow his own pulse. “Don’t move,” he said. “Stand still.”

The tiger rumbled with threat. The tail-tip moved, and muscles stayed knotted beneath the striped fur. The place smelled of damp, and rot, and animal.

“It’s really real,” Linda said.

“Does a pretty good job,” Fletcher said. The junior-juniors clustered around him; and his own planet-trained nerves were in an uproar.

They edged past. The tiger followed them with a slow turning of its head.

A strange animal bolted away, brown, four-footed. The tiger bounded across the trail in front of them.

“Damn!” Jeremy said.

Fletcher concurred. They’d had a children’s version and a thrills version of the zoo, and he began to know where he classified himself.

Or maybe too much immediacy and too much threat had made them all jumpy.

They walked out of the exhibit with rattled nerves and went through the gift shop, spending money all the way.

Four hours to set up the meeting and then another hour while station officials drifted in from various appointments, in their own good time. Alan and Francie took charge and kept, contrarily, claiming that the senior captain was on his way. On his way… for another hour and a half.

“Just sit there,” Francie advised JR. “Just sit and be pleasant. Keep them wondering.”

So he took his place at the table beside Alan, and provoked stares from a long table occupied by grim-faced station authorities and minor Alliance officials.

“Fifth captain,” Alan introduced him. “James Robert Neihart, Jr.”

JR returned the shocked glances, and suddenly, in possession of the conference table, knew how hard that information had hit. These people hadn’t known he existed two seconds ago—another Captain James Robert, under tutelage of the first.

Now titled with the captaincy, at a time when, just perhaps, they’d been thinking the famous captain couldn’t last much longer and that they knew his successors.

Now they knew nothing.

“Gentlemen,” JR said. “Ladies. My pleasure.”

There was a moment of paralysis. That was the only way to describe it. They didn’t know what to do with him. They didn’t know what his position was, how much he knew, or why. In short, what they thought they knew had changed.

“We,” the first-shift stationmaster said, trying to seize hold of what had no handles, “we weren’t informed. Is it recent, this fifth captaincy? We hope it doesn’t signal a crisis in the captain’s health.”

Vile man, JR thought. He’d never found a person snake so described on sight. And, completely, coldly deadpan, he made his reply as close a copy of the Old Man as he could muster.

“We aren’t our apparent ages. Recent in whose terms, sir?”

Conversation-stopper. Implied offense—within the difference between spacer perceptions and stationer perceptions.

And he’d asked a question. It hung in the charged air waiting for an answer as a dozen faces down the long table hoped not to be asked, themselves, directly.

There was one gesture the senior captain had made his own. JR consciously smiled the Old Man’s dead-eyed, perfunctory smile. And at least the two seniormost stationers looked far from comfortable.

“There is a succession,” JR dropped into that silence. He’d thought he’d be terrified, sitting at this table. He’d thought he’d conceive not a word to say. Maybe it was folly that took him to the threshold of real negotiations, knowing that the Old Man’s arrival might be further delayed. It might be dangerous folly. But the Old Man had taught him. “There always was a succession. It’s our way to shadow our seniors, so there’s no transition. There never will be a transition. But Mazian can’t say the same. They went on rejuv back during the War—to ensure no births. Those ships have no succession.” A second, deliberate smile. “We left only one of our children ashore. And at Pell we got him back. Another Fletcher Neihart, as happens. Looks seventeen. Unlike me, he is.”

For a moment the air in the room seemed dead still, and heavy. There was no way for them to figure his real age. The face they were looking at was a boy’s face. But now they knew he wasn’t.

Then a set of steps sounded in the hall outside. A good many of them. The Old Man was arriving with his escort.

He was aware of body language, his own, constantly, another of the Old Man’s lessons. He deliberately mirrored calm assurance, to their scarcely restrained consternation, and when Alan and Francie rose in respect to the Old Man and Madison coming into the room, so did he. Four of those at the conference table, in their confusion, rose, too.

“So you’ve met the younger James Robert,” James Robert, Sr. said, and JR would personally lay odds someone’s pocket-com had been live and the feed going to the Old Man for the last few minutes. “A pleasure to reach Esperance. I was just in communication with the Union Trade Bureau. Very encouraging.” James Robert sat down as they all resumed their seats. “Delighted to be here,” James Robert said, opening his folder. He looked good, he looked rested, not a hair out of place and the dark eyes that remained so lively in a sere, enigmatic mask swept over the conspiratory powers of Esperance with not a hint of doubt, not of himself, not of the Alliance, not of the force he represented.

“Welcome to Esperance,” the senior stationmaster said.

Thank you.” James Robert let him get not a word further. “Thank you all for rearranging your schedules. You’ve doubtless received partial reports on the trade situation and the pirate threat. I’ve just come from the edges of Earth space, and from consultation with our Union allies on matters of security and trade, and on the changing nature of the pirate activity hereabouts.” This, to a station that fancied its own private agreements with Union: it suggested Union shifting positions: it suggested things changing; and JR very much suspected the Old Man was going to follow that theme straight as a shot to the heart of Esperance objections.

There were cautions out, in the instructions from Bucklin. Champlain being in port. The crew was supposed to confine themselves to Blue Dock, and to go in groups constantly, in civ clothing. Fletcher wore his brown sweater. So did Jeremy, and now Linda said she wanted one.

“We can all have the same sweaters,” Linda said.

“The idea,” Fletcher objected, “is that civvies look different.”

“So we look different,” Linda said.

He was doubtful that Linda comprehended the idea at all. Linda understood unity, not uniqueness. Linda wanted a sweater. Then Vince did. The notion that they should look like a unit appealed to them, and protests that they might as well put on ship’s colors fell on deaf ears. So they shopped. Found exactly the right sweaters, which the juniors insisted on putting on in the shop.

Next door to the clothing store was a pin and patch shop, a necessity. Esperance patches and pins were in evidence, along with patches and pins from all over… but the ones from Earth and the ones from Cyteen were the rarities, priced accordingly.

It was obligatory to acquire pins or patches, for a first trip to a station, and the junior-juniors, getting into the spirit of the merchanter and trading idea, traded spare pins from Sol for theirs and then bought an extravagant number of extras. The merchant was happy.

Then Vince fished up a Jupiter from his pocket and got a cash sale.

A first-timer to everything, however, had to buy, and Fletcher bought a couple of high-quality Esperance pins. One for luck, Linda urged him, and at least one for trade.

Then he bought another, telling himself he’d… maybe… give it to Bianca when he got back to Pell. She’d like it, he thought. At least she’d know he’d thought of her, at the very last star of civilized space.

It was a fairly rare pin. Worth a bit, back at Pell.

Hell, he thought, after he’d left the shop… after he was walking the dockside with a trio of ebullient juniors… well, two, and an unnaturally glum Jeremy, who sulked because nobody wanted to go look for an Esperance snow globe, which Jeremy said he’d seen once, and wanted.

“They had one at the pin shop,” Linda said.

“Not the same,” Jeremy said sourly. “I know what I want, all right?”

“Tomorrow,” Fletcher said. “There’s a whole two weeks here, for God’s sake.”

“Tomorrow morning,” Jeremy said.

“Deal.” He should have gotten a pin for the Wilsons. He didn’t think the Wilsons would know what it was worth, and any pin would do… but he could get one before he left, anyway. They’d be bound to drift past another shop, in two weeks confined to Blue Sector.

Bianca, though, might know what a pin like that represented. She knew a lot of odd things. If she didn’t know, at least she wanted to know. That was what he’d liked most about her.

And at Esperance, he finally realized he missed her. Missed her, at least, in the way of missing a friend, after all the uproar of almost-love and maybe-love and the feeling of desertion he’d felt, being ripped loose from everything.

So she’d talked to Nunn. He would have, too, in her situation. He’d been angry, he’d been hurt. He hadn’t been able to be sure what he felt about her, just specifically about her, until he’d had been this long on Finity and into the hurry and hustle of a sprawling family that made him mad, and swept him in, and spun him about, and fought with him and said, like Jeremy beside him, like all the juniors and the seniors, Fletcher, don’t go…

Maybe he’d had an acute attack of hormones on Downbelow. He was in doubt now, after this many temper-cooling jumps, about the reality of all he’d ever felt. He’d been from nowhere in particular. Now he was someone, from somewhere. But all the distance that had intervened and all the change in his own understandings hadn’t altered the fact that he’d liked Bianca a lot.

Maybe the hormone part came back if you got close again. Maybe when they met they’d resurrect all of it, and be in love again—

He missed her—he knew that.

But there was less and less they had to tie them together. She hadn’t seen the sights he’d seen. She was locked into the circular cycles of a planet and its seasons. She hadn’t flung off the ties of a gravity well and skimmed the interface faster than the mind could imagine, living out of time with the rest of the human species. She hadn’t stood in an arch of water on Mariner and watched fish the size of human beings swim above her head.

He had so, so much to tell her when they met.

If they ever met.

He’d have to mail her the pin. He couldn’t go back to the Program. He’d fractured all the rules. He’d lost that for himself, in the perverse way he had of destroying situations he knew he was about to be ripped out of and taken away from. Especially if you almost loved them, you broke them, so you didn’t have them to regret. Sometimes you broke them just in case.

That was what he’d always done. He could see that now, too… how he always managed the fight, always provoked the blowup, so he could say he’d left them, and not the other way around. He had that definitely in common with Jeremy: the quick flare of anger, the intense passion of total involvement—followed by angry denial, total rejection. Go ahead. Move out. Don’t speak to me.

Silly Fetcher. He could hear Melody saying it, when he’d been too kid-like stupid even for her downer patience.

Silly Jeremy, he wished he knew how to say. Silly Jeremy. Be happy. Cheer up.

Change, to a prosperous station, was a frightening prospect.

Change and new information meant that those here who thought they knew how the universe was stacked might not know what was in their own future.

Change in the Alliance and Union relationship might abrogate agreements on which Esperance seemed secure. They stalled. They argued about minutiae. There was a long stall regarding an alleged irregularity in the customs papers. That evaporated. Then they discussed the order of the official agenda for an hour.

Madison was ready to blow. The Old Man smiled benignly, seated at the table, while the Esperance stationmaster absented himself to consult with aides.

And came back after a half hour absence, and finally took his seat

“The legal problems,” the stationmaster said then.

“Third on the agenda,” Alan said.

“We cannot talk and discuss matters pertinent to a pending suit…”

“Third,” Alan said.

“We’re vastly disturbed,” the Esperance stationmaster insisted, “by what seems high-handed procedure regarding a ship against which no charges have been made, sir. I want the answer to one question. One question, sir.”

“Not one question,” Madison said. “As agreed in the agenda.”

“We can not agree to this order. We can’t talk beyond a pending suit. We wish to move for a meeting after the court has ruled.”

“You can have that, with Finity’s trade officer. In the meantime… you’re not meeting with Finity’s trade officer.”

Madison, at his inflammatory best. JR tucked his chin down and listened to the shots fly.

“I cannot accept Alliance credentials from a ship in violation of Alliance guarantees.”

“This is Alliance business, which you may not challenge, sir.”

“I ask one question. One question. On what authority do you pursue a ship into inhabited space?”

“What ship?” James Robert asked, interrupting his idle sketching on the conference notepad—looking for that moment as if he had no clue at all, as if he’d been in total lapse for the last few minutes, and JR’s heart plummeted. Is he ill? the thought came to him.

Outrage mustered itself instantly on the other side. Outrage perfectly staged. “Champlain, captain.”

James Robert looked at Madison on one side, and at Francie, Alan, and him, on the other. Blinked. “Wasn’t that ship docked when we entered system?”

“Final approach to dock, sir,” JR said, and all of a sudden knew the Old Man had been far from oblivious. “As we came into system. Days ahead of us.”

“And what was its last port?”

“Mariner.”

“While our last port was Voyager.” It was dead-on focus the Old Man turned on the Esperance officials. “Hardly hot pursuit. They’d passed Voyager-Esperance before we got to that point. Our black-box feed will have the latest Voyager data. Theirs won’t. Ours will have an official caution from Mariner on their behavior. Theirs won’t reflect that. They undocked before we or Boreale left Mariner. Seems a case of flight where no man pursueth, stationmaster. Boreale might have had a dispute with them we know nothing of. We didn’t chase them in. And I invite anyone with doubts to examine the black-box record Esperance now has from the instant we docked. It will show exactly the facts as I’ve given them, including a stop at Voyager.”

Bravo, JR thought, and watched the expressions of station officials deeply divided, he began to perceive, between pro-Union and pro-Alliance sentiments… and those who simply wanted to go on playing both ends against the middle. And unless he missed his guess the stationmaster hadn’t accessed their records yet to know where they’d been. Careless, in a man leveling charges.

Careless and impromptu.

“But a military ship can access a black box on its technical level,” the stationmaster said. “And your turnaround at Voyager must have set a record, Captain Neihart, if you stopped there.”

That man was their problem. William Oser-Hayes. There was the chief source of the venom. JR wanted to rise from the table and wipe the look from the man’s face.

The Old Man did no such thing. “Necessarily,” the Old Man said calmly “The military does have read-access. And can delete information. But black boxes… and you may check this with your technical experts, do show the effects of military access. Ours wasn’t accessed. Check it with your technical experts.”

“Experts provided by Pell.”

Oh, the political mire was getting deeper and deeper. Now it was all a plot from Pell. And the Old Man was playing cards from a hand they had far rather have reserved for court, for the lawsuit. It gave their legal opposition a forecast of the defense they had against the charges, even if it was a very good defense—an unbreakable defense in a port where the judiciary was honest.

The way in which certain members of the conference looked happier when the Old Man seemed to win a point indicated they were not facing a monolithic administration and that there was sentiment on Finity’s side. But the fact that Oser-Hayes did all the talking and that all the ones who looked happy when Oser-Hayes seemed to score sat higher up the table indicated to him that they had a serious problem—one that might well infect the judiciary on this station. That the attack from the opposition had come from the Esperance judiciary and not from, say, the Board of Trade or the other regulatory agencies clearly indicated that the judiciary was their enemies’ best shot, the branch most malleable to their hands.

Not a fair court, JR said to himself. The legal deck was stacked, and they might lose the suit even if the other side was a no-show and the evidence was overwhelming. That they’d bullied their way into this meeting indicated Oser-Hayes wasn’t absolute in his power, that he regarded some appearances, and had to use some window-dressing with some of his power base to avoid them bolting his camp.

He was learning, hand over fist, that precisely at the moments one wanted to rise out of one’s seat and choke the life out of the opposition, one had to focus down tightly and calmly and select arguments the same careful way a surgeon selected instruments. Oser-Hayes was no fool: he meant to provoke the choke-him reaction, which might get the Old Man to make a tactical error—if the Old Man weren’t one of the canniest negotiators alive. One time Oser-Hayes had thought he was dealing with a drowsing elder statesman a little out of the current of things: one time the Old Man had let him stumble into it, and start the meeting. They were into the agenda, after balking for hours. A parliamentary turn would see them handle it, and revert back to the top of the list before Oser-Hayes could think how to avert it.

They were talking. They had accomplished that much.

But this talk of technical experts provided by Pell as a source of suspicion… this talk of deliberate sabotage by agents from the capital of the Alliance—as if the Alliance government and Alliance-certified technicians would likelier be the source of misinformation and duplicity, not some scruffy freighter running cargo in the shadow market and most probably spying for Mazian—that was a complete reversal of logic. The black boxes on which the network that ran the Alliance depended were of course suspect in Oser-Hayes’ followers’ minds; the word of Champlain against them was of course enough to stall negotiations and tangle them up in the issue of universal conspiracy, which Oser-Hayes insisted on discussing.

Whatever the Old Man’s blood pressure was doing at the moment, there was no sign of it on his face. And the Old Man came back with perfect calm.

“Would you prefer those experts provided by Union, sir? I don’t think we can access them. But Boreale can certainly attest every move we’ve made. And the next ship arriving in this port from the Mariner vector will most assuredly reflect exactly the same information, as surely the stationmaster of Esperance knows as well as any ship’s captain—unless, of course, our technical experts have gotten in and altered the main computers on Mariner, then accomplished the same with seamless perfection on Voyager in ways that would withstand cross-comparison for all future ship-calls at any station in the Alliance—”

“Sufficient time to have gotten signatures on documents is all you need.”

“Ah. Is that your fear?”

“Apprehension.”

“Apprehension. Well, in respect of your prudent apprehensions, we have the precise case number that will pull up previous complaints on Champlain, including those that will have different origins and dates than any ship-call we’ve made. To save your technicians, I’m sure, weeks of painstaking effort…”

Weeks only if the technicians meant to stall.

“That is something our military status can do somewhat more efficiently: access case numbers. In this case, the last stamp of access on the complaint itself will be the court at Mariner.”

Hours of meeting and they hadn’t even gotten to the agenda. In that sense, William Oser-Hayes was making all the political capital he could, and JR wagered with himself that behind the scenes Oser-Hayes had people working the records, excavating things with which they could be ambushed, burying them at least beyond access within this port, although the very next ship to call at the station would dump a load of information which would restore the missing files.

The Old Man hadn’t mentioned the fact, but a military ship had the means to take a fast access of a station’s black-box system. JR remembered that suddenly in the light of the local resistance. Finity under his command had taken such a snapshot when they’d come in, a draw-down of station records and navigational information exactly as they’d been at the moment of their docking.

It was a convenience, only, in these tamer days. Any ship that had recently left the station for other space contained the same information, regularly uploaded on leaving one station to download at the next. It was the getting of the information immediately on arrival that was the military prerogative… because a military ship might be called to action on an emergency basis, in which event it might not have the ten or so minutes it took to receive the total update. They’d drawn a feed when they came in; and they’d draw another any time they liked. Again, military prerogative, useless to ordinary civilian ships, which couldn’t read their own black boxes: most people didn’t routinely think about it, although he was relatively sure it was no secret from station administrators that military craft did that.

At the next rest break, he passed an order to Bucklin on his own and without consulting the other captains. “Store the on-dock black-box information in the secondary box. Do a simultaneous back-up to safe-cube. Have you got that?”

“Yessir.”

“Second step. Take a daily feed from station, at the same time. Run a data comparison. Every day.”

They were alone, in the foyer of the meeting area, and Bucklin had with him a piece of electronics very hostile to bugs.

“You think they’re going to fix station records!” Bucklin asked.

“I think it’s remotely possible. Any change in archived files, I want the appropriate section leader notified and given a copy. If they try to change history or wipe a record, I want to know it. This is all a quiet matter. This Oser-Hayes is no fool. He could be doubling from Union—and Union itself has factions that might be counter to Boreale’s faction.”

“Tangled-er and tangled-er.”

“Very much so. Some faction or corporation on Cyteen Station might want Esperance to break out of the Alliance; Boreale won’t act on its own; and it’s very likely the Cyteen military will back us and the trade agreement with Pell. The result is in their interest. Their trading interests won’t universally like it. Their station-folk will. It’s far from settled, and my personal guess would be that Cyteen’s military would like it to be a done deal before Cyteen’s more complex factions find out about it: it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve acted to pre-empt their own legal process. I think Cyteen military, like that carrier back at Tripoint, wants us to get this agreement through. But Oser-Hayes doesn’t.”

Bucklin nodded. “I’ll relay that. I’ll sub in Wayne here till I get back.”

It was the first decision, JR reflected, as he watched Bucklin go to the door and call Wayne back, the first administrative decision he’d made in his new-made captaincy—one which might duplicate what someone had already ordered, but if it did, the more senior captain’s instructions would take precedence. If it conflicted, he would hear an objection. He didn’t think he’d hear one over the extravagant expense of one-write safe-cubes, which themselves were admissible in court. In the meanwhile, if that information wasn’t being collected, he wanted it. The facts were vulnerable to technicians, if to no one else, and Oser-Hayes might have cast aspersions on the honesty of the Pell-trained technicians who maintained the black-box system on Esperance, but it didn’t mean Oser-Hayes might not subvert one tech to do something about damning evidence. Like financial records.

The tone in which Oser-Hayes said Pell made it likely that distrust of the central government and of Pell was a driving force in Esperance politics.

Distrust of this place, this station, this administration was becoming his.

They’d been to the vid zoo. They’d seen all the holo-sharks at the Lagoon. That was two major amusements down on the first day.

They went to supper, in the moderately posh Lagoon, which Linda and Jeremy had both wanted, where colored lights made the place look as if they were underwater, and a sign advised that the same disposable contact lenses they’d used in the exhibit would display Wonders of the Mystic Lagoon, purchasable for a day’s wages if you hadn’t brought your own.

The junior-juniors were tired. Fletcher wanted the bubble-tub back in the sleepover. In his opinion it was time to go back to the Xanadu and settle in for the night. It was well past main-dark and the dockside, which never slept, had gone over to the rougher side of its existence: neon a bit more in evidence, the music louder, the level of alcohol in the passersby just that much higher.

But Jeremy moped along the displays, and wanted to stay on dockside a little longer. “I’m not sleepy,” he said.

“Well, I’m ready to go back,” Vince said

“We’ve got two weeks here,” Fletcher reminded them. “We agreed. Shopping tomorrow. After breakfast.”

“There’s this shop—” Jeremy said, and dived off to a curio shop on the row they walked, a crowded little place with curiosities and souvenirs on every shelf.

There were plastic replicas of Cyteen life. There were expensive plastic-encased flowers and insects from Earth. There were packets of seeds done up with pots. Grow them in your cabin and be surprised at the carnivorous flowers.

He didn’t think he wanted one of those.

They looked. They looked at truly tasteless things, and walked off the fullness of the supper on a stroll during which Jeremy ran them into every hole-in-the-wall shop on the row.

The kids bought some silly things, finger-traps, a device older than civilization, Fletcher was willing to bet. A plastic shark. Jeremy bought a cheap ball-bearing puzzle, another device that defied time. The kid was cheering up.

Good for that, Fletcher said to himself. It was worth an extra hour walking back to the sleepover if it gave Jeremy something to do besides jitter and fret.

The meeting lurched and stonewalled its way toward an adjournment for the night, the main topic as yet not on the table, and neither side satisfied… except in the fact that nothing notably budged. Aides might have carried the details forward during alterday, but there was nothing substantive to work on.

There was, by now, however, a safe-cube or two making sure that if Oser-Hayes had altered data in a record supposed to be sacrosanct, they had a record of before and after. JR was able to get to Madison without witnesses, and under security, after the meeting had broken up and while Francie and a team of discreetly armed security was making sure the Old Man, walking ahead of them, reached the chosen restaurant without crises.

“I’ve ordered analysis and safe-storage of station feed, then and now,” he said, “Daily. Bucklin’s gone to Gerald, called back personnel off leave.”

“Good,” Madison said, and by the thoughtful expression Madison shot him then, no one else had ordered it. And Madison didn’t fault his consumption of multi-thousand credit cubes or the holding of the computer security staff off a well-earned liberty. “Good move. Cube?”

“Yessir.” The sirs still came naturally. “Yes. I know what it costs. But—”

“Run an analysis. I want to know the outcome. It would be stupid of the man. But then—he’s not the brightest light in the Alliance. He might think the next passing ship would patch his little problem and no one would be the wiser. Between you and me, the system has safeguards against that kind of thing. A Pell-certified tech, under duress, would alter records quite cheerfully.”

“Knowing there’d be traces.”

“Knowing that, yes. That’s an ears-only, not even for Bucklin.Yet.”

“I well imagine.”

They walked, he and Madison together, with security hindmost, along with Alan. The restaurant wasn’t far, one of those quiet, pricey affairs the Old Man favored, randomly selected from half a dozen near the conference area.

First time in his life, JR thought, he might have gotten up even with the captains he shadowed.

“Dinner,” Madison said, “and then no rest for you and Francie and Alan. I have messages I want carried.”

The destination made sense. Immediately.

“We can’t make headway with this station,” Madison said. “So we go to the captains first. This station is begging for confrontation. They won’t like it. But I think two ships will go with us without an argument. Don’t plan on sleep tonight.”

He was supposed to approach another captain? He was supposed to carry out this end of the proposition?

It was one thing to talk in conference with the Old Man as certain back-up. It was another to walk onto another deck to persuade an independent merchanter to strong-arm a station-master tomorrow. Things could blow up. He could set negotiations back on a single failure to read signals. Or give the wrong captain information that could end up back in Oser-Hayes’ hands, or hardening merchanter attitudes against them.

But he couldn’t say no. That wasn’t why they’d pushed him ahead in rank.

If they were late-night shopping, Vince wanted a tape store. They visited that, and Vince bought two tapes. Thirty minutes, in that operation, and it was high time, Fletcher decided, to get over-active junior-juniors back to the sleepover before Linda had her way and talked him into another sugared drink that would have them awake till the small hours.

“No,” Fletcher said, to that idea.

Then Jeremy took interest in yet another curio shop, not yet sated with plastic snakes and seeds and little mineral curiosities. “Just one more,” Jeremy said. “Just one more.”

If it made Jeremy happy. If it got them back to the sleep-over with everyone in a good mood.

This one was higher class, one of those kind of shops that was open during mainday and every other alterday, alterday traffic tending to lower-priced goods and cheaper amusements. The door opened to a melodious chime, advising the idle shopkeeper of visitors, and a portly man appeared. Justly dubious of junior-juniors in his shop, that was clear.

“Just window-shopping,” Fletcher said, and the man continued to watch them; but he seemed a little easier in the realization of an older individual in charge of the rowdy junior traffic.

“Decadent,” Linda said, looking around. “Really decadent stuff.”

The word almost applied. There were plastic-encased bouquets, and mineral specimens, a pretty lot of crystals, and some truly odd geologic curiosities in a case that drew Fletcher’s eye despite his determination to keep ubiquitous junior-junior elbows from knocking into vases and very pricey carvings in the tight quarters.

Out of Viking’s mines, the label said, regarding the lot of specimens in the case, and the price said they were probably real—a crystal-encrusted ball, brilliant blue, on the top shelf; a polished specimen of iridescent webby stuff in matrix on the next shelf.

And, extravagantly expensive, and marked museum quality, a polished natural specimen on the next shelf, labeled Ammonnite, from Earth, North America. Fletcher’s study told him it was probably real.

Real, and disturbing to find it here.

He was looking at that, when he became aware Jeremy was talking to the shopkeeper, wanting something from another cabinet. He didn’t know what, in this place, Jeremy could possibly afford.

But he was amazed to see what the shopkeeper took out and laid on the counter at Jeremy’s request.

Artifacts. Pieces of pottery.

“Earth,” the shopkeeper said. “Tribal art. Three thousand years old. Bet you never saw anything like this.”

Fletcher stopped breathing. He wasn’t sure spacer kids understood what they were seeing.

But a native cultures specialist did. And a native cultures specialist knew the laws that said these specimens definitely weren’t supposed to be here.

“Real, are they?” Fletcher asked, going over to look, but not to touch.

“Certificate of authenticity. Anyone you know a collector?”

He almost remarked, Mediterranean. But a spacer wasn’t supposed to know that kind of detail.

“Got any downer stuff?” Jeremy piped up.

That got an apprehensive denial, a shake of the head, a wavering of the eyes.

Fletcher understood Jeremy’s interest in curio shops the instant he heard the word downer in Jeremy’s mouth. He bridged the moment’s awkwardness with a dismissive wave toward the Old Earth pottery and a flip of his hand toward the rest of the shop. “I always had a curiosity,” he said, playing Jeremy’s game, knowing suddenly exactly what was behind Jeremy’s new enthusiasm for curio shops and the other two junior-juniors’ uncharacteristic support of his interest in shops where they couldn’t afford the merchandise. “I read a lot about the downers. No market for the pottery. But I’ve got a market for downer stuff.”

The shopkeeper shook his head. “That’s illegal stuff.”

Fletcher drew a slow breath, considered the kids, Jeremy, the situation. “Say I come back later.”

“Maybe.” The shopkeeper went back to the back of the shop, took a card from the wall, brought it back and wrote a number on it.

“Here.”

Fletcher took the card, looked at it, saw a phone number, and a logo. “Is that where?”

“Maybe.” The shopkeeper’s eyes went to the kids, and back again.

“They’re my legs,” Fletcher said, the language of the underworld of Pell docks. “You want that market, I can make it, no question. You in?”

“See the man,” the shopkeeper said “Not me. No way.”

“Understood.” Fletcher slipped the card into his pocket

“Specialties,” the shopkeeper said.

“Loud and clear.” Fletcher shoved at Linda’s shoulder, and got her and the other two juniors into motion.

Jeremy gave him a sidelong look as they cleared the frontage, walking along a noisy dockside of neon light and small shops and sleepovers.

“Clever kid,” Fletcher said. He’d had no idea the track Jeremy had been on, clearly, in his sudden interest in curio shops.

“I said we’d get it back,” Jeremy said.

“We?”

“I mean we.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no? We’re on to where there’s downer stuff! This is where that guy will sell it off clear to Cyteen!”

“I mean this is illegal stuff. I mean these people will kill you. All of you! This is serious, you three. It’s not a game.”

“We know that,” Jeremy said in a tone that chilled his blood. Jeremy, Fletcher suddenly thought, who’d grown up in war. Linda and Vince, who had. All of them knew what risk was. Knew that people died. Knew how they died, very vividly.

“Champlain’s in port,” Vince said. “So’s the thief.”

“So?” Fletcher said. “They might not sell it here. Not on the open market.”

“Bet they do,” Linda said. “I bet Jeremy’s right.”

“I don’t care if he’s right.” He’d been maneuvered all day long by three clever kids. Or by one clever kid, granted Vince and Linda might not have suspected a thing until it was clear to all of them what Jeremy was after. “This isn’t like searching the ship. Look, we tell JR. He’ll tell the Old Man and the police can give the shop a walk-through.” It sounded stupid once he was saying it. The police wouldn’t find it. He knew a dozen dodges himself. He knew how shopkeepers who were fencing contraband hid their illegal goods.

“We can just sort of walk in there and find out,” Jeremy said. “We’re in civvies, right? Who’s to know? And then we can know where to point the cops. I mean, hell, we’re just kids walking around looking at the stuff. We won’t do anything. We can find out, Fletcher. Us. Ourselves.”

It was tempting—to know what had happened to Satin’s gift, and to get justice on the lowlife that had pilfered it. They could even create a trail that could give Finity a way to come at Champlain, who had the nerve to sue them: that word was out even to the junior-juniors. He’d lay odds the crewman’s thieving had been personal, pocket-lining habit, nothing Champlain’s captain even knew about—just the regular activity of a shipful of bad habits, all lining their pockets at any opportunity. The thief had been after money, ID’s, tapes, anything he could filch; and the lowlife by total chance had hit the jackpot of a lifetime in Jeremy’s room. Sell the hisa stick, here, in a port a lot looser than Pell, a port where curios were pricey and labeled with museum quality?

Jeremy was right. It was a pipeline straight to Cyteen, for pottery that shop wasn’t supposed to have—he guessed so, at least. Maybe for plants and biologicals illegal to have. Maybe the trade was going both ways, smuggling rejuv out to Earth, rejuv and no knowing what: Cyteen’s expertise in biologicals of all sorts was more than legend—and Cyteen biologicals were anathema in the Downbelow study programs—something they feared more than they did the easy temptation to humans to introduce Earth organisms, which at least had grown up in an ecosystem instead of being engineered for Cyteen, specifically to replace native Cyteen microbes. He’d become aware how great a fear there’d been, especially among scientists on Pell during the War, that Cyteen, outgunned and outmaneuvered in space by the Fleet, would use biologics as a way of destroying Downbelow. Or Earth. They hadn’t; but now they were spreading on the illicit route. Every scientist concerned with planets knew that.

And it immeasurably offended him that Satin’s gift might become currency in a trade that, after all the other hazards humans had brought the hisa, posed the deadliest threat of all.

Go walk with Great Sun?

Take a hisa memory into space? What could Satin remember, but a world that trade aimed to destroy for no other reason than profit and convenience?

He looked at the address of the card they’d gotten. It was in Blue. It was in the best part of Blue, right in the five hundreds. They were standing at a shop in the threes. Finity was docked at Blue 2, Boreale at Blue 5, and Champlain at 14. Being in charge of junior-junior security—he’d made it his business to look at the boards and know that information.

“Come on,” Jeremy said. “We can at least know.”

They’d had the entire ship in an uproar, looking for what wasn’t aboard; and what Jeremy had known wasn’t aboard. Now Jeremy argued for finding out where the hisa stick really was.

And maybe that in itself was a good thing for the whole ship. Maybe Finity officers could do something personally to get it back, as the kids could have a part in finding it, and maybe then the whole ship could settle things within itself.

Maybe he could settle things in himself, then. Maybe he could find a means not to destroy one more situation for himself, and to get the stick back, so he’d not have to spend a life wondering what Cyteen shop had bought a hisa memory… and to whom it might have sold it, a curiosity, to hang on some wall

“All right,” he said, suddenly resolved. “We take a look. Only a look. It’s not for us to do anything about it. We can at least look and see whether that guy back there is putting us on. Which he probably is. Do you hear me?”

“Yessir,” Jeremy said, the most fervent yessir he’d heard out of Jeremy in weeks.

“Yessir,” Vince said, and Linda bobbed her head.

“Behave,” he said severely, and took the troops toward the five hundreds.