The junior-juniors weren’t going to handle their own money, not even the 20 c cash chits: he’d dole it out at need, and he was very confident the local finger artists couldn’t score on him. He almost hoped they did try, on certain others of the crew, notably Chad and Sue; he was confident at least the con artists would flock. Pick-pockets. Short-changers, even at the legitimate credit exchangers. Credit clerks would deal straight for stationers they knew were going to be there tomorrow, and who’d surely be back to complain if they got the wrong change. Spacers in civvies they might be just a little inclined to deal straight with… in case they were stationers after all. Spacers in dock flash and wearing their patches were a clear target for the exchange clerks; and God help spacers at any counter who might be just a little drunk, and whose board calls were imminent. Crooks of all sorts knew just as well as station administration did which ships were imminently outbound. When a ship was scheduled outbound, the predators clustered to work last moment mayhem.
He checked in at the desk, in this posh spacer accommodation that didn’t at all look like the den of iniquity stationer youngsters dreamed of. Blue and dusky purple, soft colors, neon in evidence but subdued. There was a sailing ship motif and an antique satellite sculpture levelled above a bronze ship on a bronze sea, the Pioneer’s logo, which was also on the counter. A sign said, We will gladly sell you logo items at cost at the desk.
“Can we go to the vid-games before supper?” Jeremy asked.
“Maybe.” He distributed keys. They had, for the duration, private rooms, an unexpected bonus.
He also had a pocket-com. So did the juniors. There were three stories in this hostel, all within what a station called level 9. The junior-juniors and he all had third floor rooms, and this time they had locks.
He shepherded the noisy threesome upstairs via the lift, sent them to the rooms, with their keys, to unpack and settle in and knock at his door when they were done.
It was the fanciest place he’d ever visited. He opened the door on his own quarters, and if the ship was crowded, the sleepover was a palace, a huge living space, a bedroom separate from that, a desk, vid built-ins, a bath a man could drown in.
He knew that Mariner was new since the War, but this was beyond his dreams. Two weeks in this place. Endless vid-games, trips to see the sights.
He suffered a moment of panic, thinking about the money Madelaine had given him, and everything really necessary already being paid for—
And then thinking about the ship, and home, and the hard, cold chairs in the police station, and the tight, small apartment his mother had died in, in tangled sheets, down the short hall from a scummy little kitchen where they’d had breakfast the last morning and where he’d been looking for sandwiches… but she hadn’t made any…
He sat down on the arm of an overstuffed chair and looked around him in a kind of stunned paralysis, his duffle with the sock for an ID dumped on immaculate, expensive carpet at his feet. This kind of luxury was what she’d been used to.
He saw the barracks beds of the men’s dorm, down at the Base. He heard the wind outside, saw the trees swaying and sighing in the storm the night before he’d left…
Came a different thunder. The kids knocked at the door, all three wanting to go play games.
“God bless,” Jeremy said, casting his own look around.
“Are they all like this?” he asked. “Are your rooms this big? This fancy?”
“About half this,” Jeremy said “Kind of spooky, isn’t it? Like you really want to belt in at night.”
He had to be amused. “Stations don’t brake.”
“Yeah, stupid,” Linda said. “If this place ever braked there’d be stuff everywhere.”
“Pell did, once,” Jeremy said. “So did this place. It totally wrecked.”
“In the War,” Fletcher said. “They didn’t brake. They went unstable. There’s a difference.”
“Shut up, shut up,” Linda said, and shoved Jeremy with both hands. “Don’t get technical. He’ll be like JR, and we’ll have to look it up!”
He was moved to amusement. And a sense that, yes, he could be the villain and log them all with assignments.
But he wouldn’t have liked it when he’d been anticipating a holiday, and if he hadn’t forgiven Chad for the hazing, he didn’t count it against Jeremy, who’d have to be included in any time-log he might be moved to make against Vince and Linda.
“So what do you want to do?” he asked the expectant threesome, and got back the expected list: Vids. Games. Shopping. And from Jeremy, over Linda’s protests, the aquarium.
He laid down the schedule for the next three days, pending change from on high, and distress turned to overexcitement. “Settle down,” he had to say, to save the furniture.
The Pioneer was a comfortable lodgings—good restaurant, good bar—game parlor to keep the junior-juniors occupied at all hours, which was no longer JR’s concern.
Well… not officially his concern.
He was mirroring Francie this stop. That meant that whatever Francie did—Captain Frances Atchison Neihart—he did, mirrored the duties, the set-ups, everything. He didn’t bother Francie with asking how he’d performed. He just ran ops on his handheld just as if it were real, and, by sometime trips out to the ship, checked the outcome against Francie’s real decisions. Every piece of information regarding crew affairs that Francie got, he got. Every page that called Francie away from a quiet lunch, he also got. Every meeting with traders that Francie set up, he set up in shadow, with calls that went no further than his personal scheduler, without ever calling ship’s-com on the unsecured public system or betraying Finity’s dealings to outsiders who might have a commercial interest in them, he continually checked his own performance against a posted captain’s.
It was occasionally humbling. The fact that he’d been in a noisy bar and hadn’t felt the pocket-com summon Francie to an alterday decision on a buy/no-buy that would have cost the ship 50,000 if he’d been in charge… that was embarrassing.
Occasionally it was satisfying: he’d been able to flash Francie real data on a suddenly incoming ship out of Viking that had a bearing on commodities prices. That had made 24,000 c.
And it was just as often baffling. He’d never done real trade. Madison and Hayes, their commodities specialist, had schooled him for years on the actual market theoreticals he’d not paid adequate attention to, in his concentration on the intelligence of ship movements they also provided. But the market now became important. He usually didn’t lose money in his tracking of his picked and imaginary trades, but he wasn’t in Hayes’ class, and didn’t have Madison’s grasp of economics. Madison enjoyed it. The Old Man enjoyed it. He tried to persuade himself he’d learn to.
Anything you were motivated to buy came from somebody equally convinced it was time to sell. That was one mock-expensive thing he’d learned at Sol. And a good thing his buys were all theoretical.
But trade was not the only activity senior crew was conducting. He first began to suspect something else was going on, by reason of the unprecedented set of messages Francie was getting from the Old Man. Meeting at 0400h/m; meeting at 0800. Meeting not with cargo officers, but with various captains of various other ships, at the same time Madison and Alan were holding similar meetings. The Old Man had been socializing with the stationmaster, very much as the Old Man had done at Pell… but more surprisingly so. The Old Man had a historical relationship with Elene Quen. It would have been remarkable if they hadn’t met.