He surprised me. “You have a good memory. You must see hundreds of people a day!”
“True but none of them want to buy bulk batik and take it off-station.” He turned to Pip then and held out his hand. “You must be Carstairs?”
“Well I don’t have to be, but I am.” He shook the offered hand. “Call me Pip.”
I wandered around looking over the goods while Pip dickered with Chuck. He bought about twenty kilos of fabric and Chuck bundled it into two ten-kilo packages for us to carry. Pip surprised me by pulling a folded duffel out of his hip pocket and sliding both packages into it. “We can trade off carrying,” he told me with a grin.
“Twenty kilos is going to get heavy fast.”
“Are you planning on shopping some more?” he asked with an arched eyebrow.
“Well I thought that since we’re here, we might look about. See if there’s anything else that strikes our fancy.”
Chuck overheard us and offered, “You can leave the duffel here if you like. Just slide it under that table over there and pick it up before closing.”
I thanked him while Pip stowed the bag.
As we left the booth, he looked at me curiously. “Is there something you’re looking for?”
“Yeah, trade goods for Betrus. Something different. Low mass, high value.”
He slugged me in the shoulder and laughed. “No, I mean is there something in particular?”
I shrugged. “Booths open and close every day. There may be something here that I like as much as the batik. We have mass to spare yet, don’t we?”
“Yeah, at least another twenty. When you make spec three we’re going to be up to our armpits in mass allotment.”
“We’ll have to shop with the grav pallet.”
“That’s a good idea,” he said with total seriousness. “If we either shop on days when the co-op isn’t setting up, like today, or we plan to take our stuff over to the booth, they can take it back to the ship.”
“Well, that also assumes we keep buying single large lots. With more mass allotment we can diversify a bit.”
“True. The batik is great though. Nice find.”
We sauntered along the aisles. “Thanks. It’s funny because I spotted it just after I complained to Brill that everything looked the same. Then we came around the corner and there was all this brightly colored fabric.”
“After you’ve been to about three of these places, you begin to see the stuff that’s in all of them. What amazed me was that you picked out Drus Martin’s belts. That was a real find.”
“You found the stones. I think we’re even there. I wish we had another five kilos of those.”
He laughed loudly. “I think we’d have saturated the market here.”
“Maybe but we’re leaving for Betrus tomorrow.”
I pulled out my tablet then and checked the ship statuses. It listed MarDuch as ENR Bink under the status. I slipped the tablet back into my pocket and turned my head to put my nose near my collar so I could smell her scent again and a muffled sound escaped my lips.
Pip patted me on the shoulder in sympathy. “Yeah, I understand, but it’s a small galaxy. You’ll see her again.”
“Thanks, but I was looking at that!”
He turned his head to see where I was looking and made a little sound of his own. “Those are spectacular.”
We hurried over to the booth and started talking to a tiny woman with almond-shaped eyes who introduced herself as Ping Fa Hwa. She had the most amazing collection of prints I had ever seen. I recognized the stylized form from some that I had seen in the gallery at the University of Neris. She had landscapes, birds, seascapes, and even some flowers.
“Did you make all these yourself?” I asked her.
“Oh, no. I am only selling them for our co-op.”
Pip looked at me and started laughing. Ping looked confused until I said, “We’re in a co-op, too. We know what it’s like.”
“What can you tell me about these prints?” Pip asked, his eyes distractedly scanning the brightly colored artworks.
She launched into a detailed sales pitch, so I left Pip to close the deal. I heard enough to learn that the prints were made on a kind of native parchment made from the local linen and cotton. The artists printed the images using a silk screen reproduction and each was a limited edition. She pointed out the small numbers in the bottom corners of each print next to the artist’s signature. Most of the prints were runs of a hundred or less because, she said, the reproduction process eventually degraded the screens. I didn’t know if that was true or not, but it sounded good. It didn’t really matter. The artwork was stunning.
The prices were likewise stunning, and I began to think that the price Sarah got for our shaman-blessed stones was less a miracle of salesmanship and more a factor of the local economy. Still, Pip bought ten prints for a kilocred and Ping slipped them into a large flat envelop of heavy parchment. The whole thing weighed less than a kilo.
As we walked back to pick up the duffel bag of batik fabric, Pip commented, “Of course, if we keep buying things like this, our mass allotments will be moot.”
I laughed.
It was a struggle but we got it all back to the Lois in time for dinner.
***
At dinner we ran into a bunch of people including Brill, Beverly, Diane, Arvid, Mitch, Tabitha, and Sean. It seemed like half the crew was aboard but getting ready to go out. There was a feeling that I had never had as a day worker in the galley. I do not think Pip caught it, but the sense of the flow of time across the watches was almost tangible. Diane was actually on watch and would be stuck on the ship overnight. Francis had already gone. I would relieve Diane in just under twelve stans. The mood was definitely last chance and spirits ran high. As we broke up from dinner, we reached the general consensus to gather at the lock at 20:00 and all head to Jump! together. Even Pip was going.
As we broke up, Brill said, “Well, you guys be careful, okay?”
“What do you mean?” I asked her. “You’ll be there to keep an eye on us, won’t you?”
She shook her head. “I’m bushed. I’m going to stay aboard tonight, I think.”
Behind her Diane was shaking her head in a vigorous no and making pulling motions with her hands. It was all I could do not to laugh.
“Come on, B,” I pleaded. “Just come have a drink and a dance maybe. We’ll have a few laughs and come back early. Pip and I both have morning duty.”
Diane started nodding yes, just as vigorously.
Brill dithered a little but eventually relented. Before she headed out to get changed, I asked, “Oh, could you do me a favor?”
“What? I’m already doing you one just by going!” She smiled when she said it.
“You remember the outfit you wore up to Chez Henri’s? The red jacket with the tab collars? Black slacks?”
“Of course, I don’t have that many clothes.”
“Wear that.”
“Isn’t that kinda dressy for a few drinks at Jump?” Her eyes narrowed.
I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. Do you think so, Diane?”
Diane piped up with, “No, I think it would be perfect.”
Brill laughed at the obviousness of our behavior and waved over her shoulder as she set off to change.
At 20:00 she showed up in the red jacket and she still looked like a Valkyrie to me.
We all checked out together which must have driven David ben Dour crazy as he tried to process the group of us all at once. Brill, Bev, and I stepped out of the lock and waited for the rest to get checked out.
Bev just shook her head and snickered softly. “I don’t remember the last time this many of us went out at once.”