“It’s a talking point,” the stationmaster said “If Pell agrees on a universal ten. If the black market stops. If Union agrees on the same percentage.”
“We believe we can negotiate that point. They don’t want a resurgence of raids. And they’re worried about what’s getting onto the market. The luxury trade is sending biologicals right back down the pipeline, right to Earth. Surprisingly, Cyteen shares one thing with us: the belief that the motherworld, as our genetic wellspring, should be sacrosanct . In that regard, and in what it takes to cut Mazian off cold, we will have their cooperation. The fact that they may harbor notions of cutting harder deals after we eliminate Mazian as a threat means that we have two jobs to do, one of which is to strengthen, not weaken, our weakest and slowest ships. This proposal of ours answers both needs.”
They were listening. JR stood unmoving during discussion. He saw, from his vantage, Bucklin, who stood guard outside the meeting room, talking with Thomas B., who’d arrived with some news. Thomas B. left.
Then he saw Bucklin signal him, a fast set of hand-signals that said, in the way of spacers who sometimes worked in difficult environments, Talk, Urgent, Official.
He made his way around the edge of the room, and outside.
“Champlainers were in the Pioneer last watch,” Bucklin said. “And Champlain’s on the boards for depart in two hours. Alan just found it out.”
“God.”Their security was breached and the perpetrators were headed out toward a dark point of their next route. Armed and hostile perpetrators. “Where were they?”
“Came in with Belize . Spent the night and left this morning. Belize’s captain doesn’t know. They didn’t have access to the ID we got from customs.”
“Damn.” They’d used their military credentials to get official records on the Champlain and China Clipper crews. Belize couldn’t do that. And even knowing hadn’t enabled them to spot everybody that came and went, any more than they could go about warning other ships about ships that hadn’t committed any actual crime. “Just last watch, you’re sure.”
“Best I know, yes. Alan’s handling it. And they’re outbound; they went up on the boards in the last thirty minutes. Apparently it was two of the Champlainers, sleeping over with one Belize crew, on her invitation.”
“Some party.” He cast a look back through the glass where the meeting was still going on, still at a delicate point. It wasn’t a time to disturb the Old Man and Madison. It wasn’t a time to confront the Belize senior captain, who’d helped support their proposals, among others. “I suppose it’s too much to ask that the Belizer remembers exactly what he told them, or what they discussed.”
“She. And no, by what seems, she thinks there were two and she thinks they never left the room.”
Belize was a lively ship, say that for them.
“Can’t interrupt right now,” he said, “but five’ll get you ten we get an early board call. We might overjump that tub if we got moving. Let them stare down our guns.” He had his back to the windows to preclude lip-reading and didn’t want to create more distraction than his extended receipt of some message from Bucklin might have done already. “I’d better get back in there,” he said. “Nothing we can do from here. Where’s Tom gone?”
“Just passing the word about. Alan’s orders.”
“We’ll go on boarding call. Just watch.”
He went back into the meeting, took up a quiet, confident stance a little nearer the door.
Belize had had a particularly hard run from Tripoint, and a mechanical that had risked their lives getting in. To the Belize family’s delight, they’d sold their cargo right off the dock, the problem had turned out to be a relatively inexpensive module, and he had every sympathy for the Belizers’ desire to celebrate, in a sleepover far fancier than they ordinarily afforded. They’d lodged their juniors at the more junior-friendly Newton, and hadn’t remotely expected youngsters in a fancy lodging like the Pioneer. That was easily sorted out, and they weren’t bad people. The adult and randy Belizers, however, had proceeded to drink the bar dry, and gone down the row, looking for assignations the hour they’d docked—some of Finity ’s own had cheerfully taken them up on the offer. They’d been quieter neighbors since the first night, goodnaturedly gullible as they were, and now, damn! one of them had taken up with a ship their own captain had put the avoid sign on.
Meanwhile the Belize senior captain had had a very cordial session with the Old Man of Finity’s End , and word was that bottles from Finity ’s cargo, duly tariffed and taxed, were making their way to various ships. If spies were taking notes of the number of captains who got together in a shifting combination of venues, they must have a full-time occupation; what worried him, and what he was sure would worry the Old Man, was the likelihood that Belize’s internal security was as lax as its concept of restricted residency.
If the Belize captain had talked too much to his own crew, some of their business could have gotten into that sleepover room last night and right into the ears of curious Champlainers.
Who now were outbound.
It had to be a successful stay on dockside, Fletcher said to himself: Jeremy had a stomachache and all of them had run out of money. Here they were, standing in line for customs three days earlier than their scheduled board call, a moving line. Customs was just waving them through.
Their loading must have gone faster than estimated. And Fletcher was relatively proud of himself. He’d had the pocket-com switch in the right position; he’d gotten the call, figured out the complexities of the pocket-com to be able to key in an acknowledgement that they were coming, and gotten the juniors to the dock with no more delay than a modest and reasonable request from Jeremy to make a last-minute dive into a shop near the Pioneer to get a music tape he’d been eyeing. And some candy.
So Jeremy wasn’t so sick as to forswear future sweets.
And instead of the slow-moving clearance of passports in their exit, they advanced through customs at a walk, flashed the passport through the reader on the counter, only observed by a single customs agent, tossed their duffles uninspected onto the moving cargo belt for loading, and walked up the ramp to the access tube, where for brief periods the airlock stood open at both ends to let groups of them walk through.
“They are in a hurry,” Linda said when she saw that.
“New Old Rules,” Vince said. “Maybe they’re going to do that after this. No more lines.”
“We’ve got a security alert,” a senior cousin behind them said, breath frosting in the chill of the yellow, ribbed access.
“About what?” Jeremy asked.
“Just a ship we don’t like. But we’re not going out alone.” The cousin ruffled Jeremy’s hair and Jeremy did the time immemorial wince and flinch. “No need to worry.”