“We’re not too far behind that,” Diane pointed out. “How is this all going to work?”
“I’m not entirely sure and just doing what I’m told. They’re working on a replacement for me and I’m supposed to stick here until they find one. Mr. Maxwell seemed to think that wasn’t going to be too difficult.”
Brill paused from her soup and said, “St. Cloud is a good place for picking up quarter shares because working on mommy’s sheep ranch or daddy’s fishing boat isn’t all that much fun. Like all company planets, there is not a lot of options down there.”
“Amen to that,” I added. I started on a company planet and knew only too well how limited the prospects could be. If not for the Lois’s arrival at Neris, I would have been deported at my own expense after my mother died. “So, what has to happen to make this as smooth a transition as possible?”
Brill finished her soup and sighed in satisfaction. “Cookie makes the best soups in the galaxy.” Focusing on the question at hand, she replied, “We need to get you transferred over to engineering berthing to free up the deck bunk space for the greenie.”
It took me a moment to realize that by greenie she did not mean me. After being the junior member of the crew for six months, I looked forward to relinquishing that particular title. “What’s involved?” I asked.
Diane answered, “Oh, that’s nothing. Just go over to engineering berthing and claim an empty bunk and locker. Then move your stuff in. Strip the linens off your old bunk and reset the palm lock on your locker when you’re done with it.”
Brill concurred, “That’s about it. We’ll update the ship’s records when you officially transfer to the section.” She stood up and cleared her dishes. “Speaking of which, I need to get back and finish the paperwork.”
“Thanks, Brill,” I told her.
She just smiled and gave a little wave before heading off in the direction of environmental.
“Ish?” Diane said softly. “I…um…I’m sorry for the nasty comment earlier.”
“What nasty comment?” I asked.
“About getting somebody who doesn’t know anything.”
“Oh, that. Are you still upset now that you know who the greenie really is?”
She shook her head. “No! I’m delighted. I was just afraid we’d get somebody who wouldn’t fit in.”
“Are you sure?” I pressed. “I know I don’t have anything close to Gregor’s experience.”
“Don’t count on that. You already have a better feel for it than Gregor ever will.”
“Maybe, but—the bottom line is that the department is losing a spec three and getting an ordinary engineman. You’re gonna have to babysit me for a while.”
“Of course, but you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. None of us ever thought about using sludge for anything but terraforming material. I think you’re gonna liven things up down there in Foggy Bottom.”
“Foggy Bottom?” I chuckled.
“Yeah. It’s what Francis calls the section. It’s so humid all the time and so deep in the ship. It’s practically a swamp already. All we need are some frogs.”
“Lemme work on my ribbit,” I told her and we both laughed.
“Mr. Wang?” Cookie called from the galley door. “I could use your help…”
With a small wave, I left Diane with the lunch she had neglected while we talked over the changes ahead of us. Cookie needed help dishing up granapple cobbler and ice cream for dessert. Lunch wound down in good order after that, and by 13:00, Cookie and I started the after-lunch cleaning.
Pip came back to help with lunch clean-up and filled me in on the status of our trades. “The belts and buckles we brought all sold at good prices. Even the spare buckles did well because there are so many leather goods here.”
“Excellent! What about the stones?” My voice echoed from inside the big kettle that I was cleaning.
“I think we’ve moved close to three hundred of them at anywhere from two to three creds a piece. Your idea of buying that spool of leather thong material and threading them to make necklaces was pure genius!”
I remembered that first morning when we set up as the McKendrick Mercantile Cooperative, the booth across from us was selling raw leathers in various shapes. The guy had spools of narrow leather thong and I bought fifty meters for five creds. Pip and I acquired several kilos of smoothly polished semi-precious stones on Margary, our previous port of call. Each one was pendant sized and bored with a small hole widthwise through the top. The leather thongs fit perfectly. We originally hoped to get a cred a piece, but we ended up selling them for two and three times that depending on the stone. “Will we have any left to take on to Dunsany Roads?” I asked.
Pip smirked. “We aren’t selling any today and a lot will depend on whether either of us gets liberty tomorrow.”
I grimaced. “Oh, yeah. Forgot.”
“It’s not that big of a problem. They’ll sell just as well, if not better, at Dunsany,” Pip said.
“Any idea what we’ve made so far?”
He pulled out his tablet and started figuring. “Between the belts, the buckles, and the three hundred stones we’ve cleared about seventeen hundred creds. Not as good as Margary, but nothing to sneeze at.”
I nearly dropped the bowl I was rinsing out. “You mean we have almost five kilocreds from private trading just from Margary and here?”
He nodded. “Not a bad start, eh?”
Our salary and share allotment only amounted to about three hundred and fifty creds for the same period so we were making about eight times our salary in this part-time venture between ports. The amount staggered me.
“How’s the co-op doing?” I asked as I finished up with the dishes and moved to get a broom while I worked to control my excitement.
“Francis has it covered today, and Biddy is watching the booth tomorrow. We probably won’t get a good settlement on the final numbers until after pull out, but as of last night, nine of the seventeen people who took part have sold out of their stuff. Gregor’s squabble happened as we were packing up to leave so that didn’t affect any sales really. We only needed to make sixty-four creds to cover the booth cost for the whole trip and we had over a hundred creds as of last night with some big consignments going up today. I think each of the managers will end up with at least fifty creds and the co-op will make about two hundred, depending on how today is going and what happens tomorrow.”
I just shook my head and kept sweeping. “I never expected in my wildest dreams that this would work out so well. Back on Margary when I said, ‘Let’s rent a booth.’ It never occurred to me that we’d be at this point so fast.”
“No kidding,” Pip heartily agreed.
“How are the stores trading going? We all set for Dunsany Roads?”
“Yeah, we had that pretty well ironed out before we docked. The ship trades are all taken care of in advance and that includes the cargo containers as well as ships stores. We’re not in port long enough to be able to mess around with deals on the ground after we arrive. Except for little things here and there like Cookie was mentioning.”
A sudden thought crossed my mind. “I’m gonna miss watching Cookie come up with all those dishes using the lamb.”
Pip laughed. “Maybe, but if I know him, you’ll be able to smell it cooking all the way down in environmental.”
Remembering the way his spicy beefalo filled the ship with a rich, savory aroma, I was pretty sure Pip was right about that.
“The only trade items not settled yet are the ones for Mr. Maxwell’s empty container and our own private trading stock.” Pip scowled at the thought.
The empty container was a little game that the First Mate had been playing with Pip since we left Gugara. He had asked Pip to give his best recommendations for what to put in a hypothetical empty container based on a trade analysis of the pair of ports involved. Of course, what started out as a hypothetical empty container soon became six hundred metric tons of cargo that had contributed more than two hundred kilocreds to the ship’s profit pool.