There was a prolonged silence, in which Elene felt a chill in the constantly cycling air, the slow dance of stars about the room.
“If we should back this ship of yours,” James Robert said, “—let’s have a clear understanding… you’re not talking about going back to space yourself. We couldn’t show that much favoritism. This is an act of principle you’re proposing. Do I understand that?”
They were far too old in this to be fools. There’d been a time when she’d planned to stand fast on the name of her ship, on another Estelle .
“Let the Council name the ship. There are competent, reliable crew begging for a berth. But my daughter will go to space.”
“We could back that,” James Robert said; and granted in that simple willingness to talk that they were suddenly beyond initial negotiations. “We need you where you are.”
“My daughter will contribute her station-share,” she opened the next round, half-sure now of Neihart’s support, because beyond that one point granted, all else was inevitable, the whole cascade of debate among spacers—and the agreement won the necessary outcome, in Union’s backing off the building of merchant ships. All, that was, if they could get Alliance united and agreed , God help them, on a single program. Her daughter’s station-share, millions, when no other stranded spacer could come up with thousands, would make her owner-operator. Not pilot, but policy-maker, “Can I count on you in Council?”
“I’ll hear more about it.”
James Robert was a trader first and foremost. And talk ran on to agreement and dwindled to inconsequentials clear to the bottom of the second bottle.
James Robert, champion of merchanters against station governments, would use his bully pulpit with other merchanters. She would use hers with Pell Station, The immoveable negatives miraculously stood a chance of moving. An end to the smuggling and black market that, dire thought, might be supplying Mazian?
It was possible that that flow of goods added up, somehow, to enough leakage of goods through the system to be significant. They’d operated on the theory it was Sol doing it; or that there were secret bases, supply dumps they had yet to find.
But if there was a supply flow that they could cut off—then, then Mazian would start suffering.
If they could have supply or non-supply to Mazian as a club to wield, keep Union worried about a Mazianni resurgence if they threatened to collapse Alliance trade, and if somehow by hook or by crook James Robert could get the fractious merchanter captains in line one more time… it was a house of cards, precariously balanced, but if they could do all that, they could argue with Union to back off their construction of their own merchant fleet.
And that would create safe routes for new, tariff-paying merchanters, while employing the shipyards of Pell, which would be the key argument to move the industrial interests of Pell to agree to lower the tariffs and dock charges that would increase merchanter profit and sweeten the deal…
It all fell miraculously in line, and her skin felt the fever-chill of almost miracles. She’d invited James Robert and his fellow captains here to talk urgently about the future. They’d come here equally eager to talk and to deal, at this hinge-point of change in the universe,
And because she was here to put forward her requirements, she had everything. Everything, because it was sane and it was right to build more ships, and it was in everyone’s best interests.
Even Earth’s, in the long run, because it was good for the peace. They could have their prosperity —if James Robert was right. They could gain everything.
Then James Robert said:
“There’s one sticking-point. The old problem. The lawsuit.”
She hadn’t utterly forgotten. She’d even been prepared to have it float to the surface early in the dinner—but not now, not on the edge of agreement. It was Damon’s department, Legal Affairs. And her stomach was moderately in a knot. “Francesca’s case.”
“Third time,” James Robert said moderately, “third time we’ve tried to settle the matter with Pell. We sue, you counter-sue. Your bursar, I’m sure some clerk in your office, just sent us a bill for a station-share.”
“You’re joking,” Elene said.
“As we sent you one. I’m sure it will eventually cross your desk.”
It hadn’t yet. She was completely appalled. Her fingers, locked on Damon’s, clenched, begging silence. She was sure Damon was disturbed at the impropriety.
But James Robert was far too canny a man directly to suggest a linkage.
“A very basic question of merchanter sovereignty,” James Robert said “I’m sure our own Legal Affairs office made the point to yours some seven years ago that we are prepared to go to court,—which with other matters at hand, is a very untimely flare-up of an issue that should have been settled. We do not owe Pell Station any station-share. We will not pay living expenses. We will pay Francesca’s medical bills. That is my statement.” A wave of James Robert’s hand, a dismissal. “Just so you know there’s no ill will.”
A ship-share of Finity’s End was an immense amount of money—and so was a station-share on Pell. Francesca Neihart had run up medical bills, living expenses. So had her son.
“The boy is a year from his majority,” Damon said.
“And seven years older than the last time we sued. We’re in the middle of cargo purchase. But here we are, with what seven years ago was a simple wash: your debt for our debt. Now we’re dealing with real money, fourteen point five million credits of real money, which you will not see, I assure you in a very friendly way, and which your courts will not attach, or freeze, because we will sue the bloody clothes off you—so to speak.”
James Robert did not bluff.
“The boy,” Damon said, “is a ward of Pell courts.”
Madison cleared his throat, in what became a very long silence. The Konstantins were also known for stubbornness.
“He is our citizen,” James Robert said. “And we no longer operate in harm’s way. I believe that was the exact objection of the court in prior years. We cannot afford to debate this particular issue, Konstantin. Not at this particular moment. Yet on principle, we will sue.”
Damon, who’d never contradict his wife in the midst of negotiations—Damon viewed the concept of law in lieu of God; and Damon was going to hit the overhead when they got home tonight. Elene could feel it in the rock-hard tension of his hand, his sharp, almost painful squeeze on her fingers. No children in a war zone, the Children’s Court had held, in spite of the fact that there were children on every family merchanter ship out in space. The Children’s Court had its hands on one of those children and in a paralysis of anguish over the War one judge and her own husband’s office wouldn’t let that child go. But in those critical words, no longer operate in harm’s way , the advocacy system, the judiciary, which couldn’t resolve its technical issues over Francesca Neihart’s son because the court-appointed social workers and psychiatrists wouldn’t agree, had just had its point answered.
Fletcher Robert Neihart had always been caught in the gears. It wasn’t the boy’s fault that elements in Pell’s administration resented being a trailing appendage to the Merchanter Alliance, and some noisy few fools even thought that Pell should assess merchant ships to see whether they were fit for children. It was a ridiculous position, one that would have collapsed the whole merchanter trade network and collapsed civilization with it—but they were issue-oriented thinkers.
To complicate matters, years ago some clever child advocate in the legal office had thought it a fine argument to claim a station-share and sue Finity during wartime on the boy’s behalf. In further bureaucratic idiocy, filing said claim with the court thereafter had made no difference after that that 14.5 million credits was a figure that never had existed, in or in any official assessment of actual debt. Once that sum had gotten onto the documents, politicians and bursars alike afraid to take the responsibility of forgiving a fourteen-million-credit debt. So it was in the court records, and it would persist until someone somewhere signed papers in settlement.