Lisa shrugged. "They could come to the power station with me," she suggested. "We could put twice as much energy into the flywheel that way."
"Thanks, but no," Gavra smiled. "Your girls have served their time on boredom duty. We'll just give them a free day."
Lisa nodded and made her way back to her own table. The Eights—most of them at least halfway finished with their food—seemed more subdued than usual, enough so that she wondered if Sheelah had taken advantage of her absence to clue them in on her mood. In a way it made things worse; she remembered vividly a couple of the "evergrouch" preteens she'd been terrified of as a young girl. I will not become like that, she told herself fiercely, and made a supreme effort to smile at the others before starting to eat. The underlying feeling of tension remained, though. Hurrying through her breakfast, she set her tray on the conveyor and got out.
But harsh moods had never been able to get a solid hold on her, and this time, fortunately, was no exception. Somewhere en route to the west power station her depression vanished into the brilliant June sunshine as she and her chattering Sevens soared high above the rooftops, the younger ones engaging in the sort of free-form tag forbidden inside the hive buildings. Watching them play—feeling the wind in her hair as Barona's buildings rolled beneath them—it was somehow impossible to truly believe she would ever lose her teekay. She chose, at least for the moment, to ignore the quiet voice of logic within her.
Lisa hadn't been to any of Barona's three power stations since she was eight, but the place was no less intimidating now that she was older and bigger. The main room's two massive flywheels, in particular, were still sort of frightening—she could still remember nightmares she'd had where one of them broke loose and she couldn't move to get out of the way....
Giving her head a sharp shake, she put the memory out of her mind. "Let's sit over here, shall we?" she said to her crew, indicating a spot a dozen meters from the flat side of their assigned flywheel. "Everybody bring a chair over and let's get busy."
The task was accomplished with a good deal more noise and banging of chairs than was necessary, but Lisa knew enough to be patient. "All right," she said when they were finally settled. "What would you like to do first?"
"See a movie," one of the boys spoke up promptly.
"Oh, you like movies, do you?" Lisa asked, her eye on the gauge set into the flywheel's housing. The rotational speed, which had been dropping slowly as its energy was turned into electricity, was now holding steady as the kids began teeking. Still lower than the power station people liked to have it, but Lisa knew they'd be able to catch up later. "What sort of movie would you like?"
"Monsters!" the boy exclaimed.
"Can't we sing instead?" a girl spoke up. "Or see a movie about real animals?"
"Yeah," another seconded. "Those monster movies are dumb."
"Tell you what," Lisa said. "Let's start with something different and save the movies and singing for later. We'll take turns telling stories, okay? They can be as scary as you want," she added as the boy who'd voted for monster movies opened his mouth to object. He closed it again, and a gleam came into his eye.
Leaning back, Lisa stifled a satisfied smile. She'd never yet seen a round of storytelling that couldn't hold a work crew's attention for at least an hour... and she would still have the movies and singing to fall back on. "Okay, who's ready to start?"
Three hands shot up. Lisa picked one and settled down to listen as the girl launched into a story about three dragonmites and a batling, a story Lisa remembered hearing on the story tapes several years ago. The other kids obviously hadn't heard it, though; they sat in absorbed silence, only the flywheel's rotation gauge showing that they were still doing their job. Across the room, she noted, the flickering light of a projector showed that the group at the second flywheel had already started a movie, though the picture itself—projected against the flywheel's spinning surface—was invisible from where she sat. He'll learn, she thought a bit smugly, eyeing the preteen in charge of the other crew. About an hour after lunch they'll be bouncing off the ceiling with boredom—and he won't have anything in reserve to keep them quiet.
Glancing once at her watch, Lisa returned her attention to the girl's story and began to plan what they would do next.
Chapter 2
The young man was small and thin and very nervous. Wrapped in a sailor's jersey a size too big for him and with a cap jammed down to eyebrow level, he looked strangely like an eight-year-old dressed in an older kid's clothes. Stanford Tirrell almost smiled at that image; but there really wasn't anything funny about all of this. Keeping his peripheral vision on the piles of crates and equipment lying around the dock, he stepped away from the security gate and walked out to meet the young man.
"Mr. Potter?" the other asked as Tirrell approached. His voice made Tirrell revise his age estimate downward. The sailor couldn't be over twenty-four—barely old enough to be out of school—and the fact that he'd clearly been sailing for a while implied he'd dropped out early. Tirrell felt a surge of pity for him... but he had a job to do.
"Yeah," he said gruffly in answer to the other's query. "What'ya got for me?"
The sailor locked eyes with him for an instant before switching his gaze to somewhere in the vicinity of Tirrell's left cheek. "Raellian whiskey—but remember, you gotta pay what you said, 'cause if my usual buyer finds out—"
"Relax," Tirrell cut him off. "I got the money right here." He tapped his coat pocket and nodded over the sailor's shoulder at the weathered freighter rocking gently alongside its moorings a hundred meters away, its logo and number only barely legible. "The stuff still aboard or did you off-load already?"
"Aboard. Gimme the money and I'll tell you where."
Silently, Tirrell pulled out the envelope and handed it over. The sailor produced a long-bladed knife from somewhere and slit the envelope open with a quick flick of his wrist. Reaching in, he leafed through the bills, his lips moving as he counted.
"It's all there," Tirrell growled, wanting to get this over with. "Where's the merchandise?"
The sailor stuffed the envelope into his hip sporran; with a brief hesitation the knife likewise vanished. "Starboard hold, third locker," he muttered. "The back comes off—use a knife on the water sealant and push the bottom; it swings back. The stuff's in the ballast space behind and below, in six mesh bags."
"How do I get aboard?" Tirrell asked. "Is there someone who knows enough to look the other way?"
"No—there's just me." The sailor was backing away, clearly anxious to fade back into Ridge Harbor's dockyard community. "How you get aboard is your problem. I just get the stuff through customs."
"True," Tirrell agreed, reaching into his pocket again. "And I'm afraid that's going to cost you."
Something in Tirrell's voice must have tipped him off, because the sailor was running full-tilt for the security gate before Tirrell even got his ID badge clear of the pocket. Sighing, Tirrell put a finger in his mouth and gave a trilling whistle. If his trusty righthand was where he was supposed to be...
The sailor increased his speed—and suddenly screamed in panic as his feet left the ground. For another second his legs pumped madly, in a cartoon-like pantomime of flight, before abruptly giving up. Hanging motionlessly, thirty centimeters off the ground, he looked like a marionette with invisible strings. Farther ahead, drifting from his concealment near the fence, a grinning preteen appeared, making gift-wrapping motions with his hands as he flew over the gate. Breaking into a jog, Tirrell headed for the dangling prisoner, reaching him the same time the preteen did.