The Reaches

52

Venus

The personnel bridge shocked against the hull of the Peaches. The featherboat rocked and chattered as the tube's lip tried to grip the hot ceramic around the roof hatch. A hiss indicated the Betaport staff was purging the bridge even though they didn't have a good seal yet.

"Boy, they're in a hurry for us!" Dole said with a chuckle. "When Customs sent our manifest down from orbit, that got some action, didn't it?"

"What do you figure the value is, Captain?" Jeude asked. "All those chips-"

He gestured, careful both because he wore a hard suit in anticipation of landing and because of the featherboat's packed interior. They'd skimped on rations for the return voyage in order to find space for more crated microchips.

"I never saw so many, just here. And the Dalriada, it's as full as we are for all she's so much bigger."

Ricimer looked at Gregg and raised an eyebrow.

Rather than quote a figure in Venerian consols, Gregg said, "I'd estimate the value of our cargo is in the order of half or two-thirds of the planetary budget, Jeude."

His mouth quirked in something like a smile. It was amusing to be asked to be an accountant again. It was amazing to realize that he was still an accountant, a part of him. Humans were like panels of stained glass, each colored segment partitioned from the others by impassable black bars.

"Of course," he added, still an accountant, "the quantity of chips we're bringing is great enough that they'll depress the value of the class on the market if they're all released at the same time."

"They will be," Ricimer said, his eyes on the future beyond the Peaches' hatch. "To build more starships for Venus, to give them the best controls and optics as they've already got the best hulls and crews."

He looked at his men. "The best crews God ever gave a captain in His service," he said.

"What'll a personal share be then, Mr. Gregg?" Lightbody asked. His right hand absently stroked his breastplate, beneath which he carried his pocket Bible. "Ah-for a sailor, I mean, is all."

"If they let us keep it," Stampfer said. "You know how the gentlemen do-begging your pardon, Mr. Gregg, I don't mean you. But it may mean a war, and it may be they don't want that."

"It was a war on fucking Biruta, wasn't it?" Jeude said. "Nobody cared about that but the widows!"

"I cared," Gregg said without emphasis. And at the end, Henry Carstensen cared; though perhaps not for long.

"Well, we all cared," Jeude said, "and all Betaport cared. But the gent-the people in Ishtar City, they let it go by."

He gave Gregg a pleading look. "The governor, she won't give our cargo back, will she, sir?"

Gregg looked at Ricimer, who shrugged. Gregg smiled coldly and said, "No, Jeude, she won't. Her own share's too great, and the value to the planet's industrial capacity is too great. Pleyal's government will threaten, and they'll sue for recovery. . but they'll have to sue in our courts, and I doubt they can even prove ownership."

Ricimer looked surprised.

Gregg laughed. "You're too innocent to be a merchant, Piet," he said.

He rapped a case with his armored knuckles. "How much of this do you think was properly manifested on Umber-and so subject to Federation taxes and customs? My guess is ten percent. A quarter at the outside. And they'll play hell getting proper documentation on that."

"And our share, Mr. Gregg?" Lightbody repeated.

"Enough to buy a tavern in Betaport," Gregg said. "Enough to buy a third share in a boat like the Peaches, if that's what you want to do."

Enough to stay drunk for a month, with the best friends of any man on Venus during that month. Lightbody might not be the one to spend his share that way, but you can't always guess how a man would act until he had the consols in his hands.

"I want to go out with the cap'n again," Dole said. "And you, Mr. Gregg."

Gregg gripped the back of the bosun's hand and squeezed it.

"Open your hatch," a voice crackled on the intercom. The featherboat's ceramic hull didn't form a Faraday cage the way a metal vessel's did, but sulphur compounds baked on during the descent through Venus' atmosphere were conductive enough to diffuse even short-range radio communications. "Captain Ricimer and Mr. Gregg are to proceed to the personnel lock, where an escort is waiting."

"Hey, the royal treatment!" Jeude crowed as he reached for one of the undogging levers. "Not just coming in like the cargo, we aren't."

"We" would do just that, enter Betaport when the landing pit cooled enough for machinery to haul the Peaches into a storage dock. Jeude thought of his officers as representing all the crew.

In a manner of speaking, he could be right.

Gregg started to lock down his faceshield. Ricimer put out a hand. "I think the tube will be bearable without that," he said. "Not comfortable, but bearable for a short time."

"Sure," Gregg said.

Positive pressure in the personnel bridge rammed a blast of air into the Peaches when the hatch unsealed. The influx must have started out cool and pure, but at this end of the tube the hot reek made Gregg sneeze and his eyes water.

The crewmen didn't seem to be affected. Gregg noticed that none of them had bothered to close up, as they could have done.

Ricimer murmured something to Guillermo and climbed into the bridge. He extended a hand that Gregg refused. An upward pull would stress his guts the wrong way.

A crewman pushed from behind, welcome help.

The two men walked along the slightly resilient surface of the personnel bridge. With their faceshields up they could talk without using radio intercom, but at first neither of them spoke.

"I don't suppose they understand," Ricimer said. "Do you think they do, Stephen?"

"That Governor Halys could find her life a lot simpler if she handed a couple of high-ranking scapegoats to the Federation for trial?" Gregg said. "No, I doubt it."

He snorted. "As Stampfer implied, sailors don't think the way gentlemen do. And rulers. But I don't think she'd bother throwing the men to Pleyal as well."

"It'll go on, what we've started," Ricimer said. The sidewalls of the tube had a faint red glow, but there was a white light-source at the distant end. "When they see, when all Venus sees the wealth out there, there'll be no keeping us back from the stars. This time it won't be a single empire that shatters into another Collapse. Man will have the stars!"

Gregg would have chuckled, but his throat caught in the harsh atmosphere. "You don't have to preach to me, Piet," he said when he'd hacked his voice clear again.

Ricimer looked at him. "What do you believe in, Stephen?" he asked.

Gregg looked back. He lifted a hand to wipe his eyes and remembered that he wore armored gauntlets. "I believe," he said, "that when I'm-the way I get. That I can hit anything I aim at. Anything."

Ricimer nodded, sad-eyed. "And God?" he asked. "Do you believe in God?"

"Not the way you do, Piet," Gregg said flatly. Time was too short to spend it in lies.

"Yes," Ricimer said. "But almost as much as I believe in God, Stephen, I believe in the stars. And I believe He means mankind to have the stars."

Gregg laughed and broke into wheezing coughs again. He bent to lessen the strain on his wound.

His friend put out an arm to steady him. Their armored hands locked. "I believe in you, Piet," Gregg said at last. "That's been enough this far."

They'd reached the personnel lock set into one panel of the huge cargo doors. Ricimer pushed the latchplate.

The portal slid sideways. The men waiting for them within the main lock wore hard suits of black ceramic: members of the Governor's Guard. Their visors were down. They weren't armed, but there were six of them.

"This way, please, gentlemen," said a voice on the intercom. A guard gestured to the inner lock as the other portal sealed again. "Precede us, if you will."

The guards were anonymous in their armor. They weren't normally stationed in Betaport, but there'd been plenty of time since the Peaches and Dalriada made Venus orbit to send a contingent from the capital.

Piet Ricimer straightened. "It was really worth it, Stephen," he said. "Please believe that."

"It was worth it for me," Gregg said. His eyes were still watering from the sulphur in the boarding tube.

A guard touched the door latch. The portal slid open. Gregg stepped through behind Ricimer.

Three more guards stood to either side of the lock. Beyond them, Dock Street was full of people: citizens of Betaport, factors from Beta Regio and even farther, and a large contingent of brilliantly-garbed court officials.

In the midst of the court officials was a small woman. Stephen Gregg could barely make her out because of his tears and the bodies of twelve more of her black-armored guards.

They were cheering. The whole crowd was cheering, every soul of them.