He shook his head slowly. “No, I don’t. Hard as it may be to believe, I’ve never made any I know of.”
“Smart, at least”
“Survival.—Reilly: if I sign those papers, I’m telling you— there’s one captain on Lucy, and I’m it.”
‘There’s nothing in those papers that says anything to the contrary.”
He drank a long mouthful of the beer. “We get a witness on this?”
That’s the deal. Station offices.”
He nodded slowly. “Let’s go do it, then.”
It made him less than comfortable, to go again into station offices, to confront the dockmaster’s agents and turn in the applications that challenged station to do its worst. The documents went from counter to desk behind the counter, and finally to one of the officials in the offices beyond—a call finally into that office, where they stood while a man looked at the papers.
“How long—” Sandor made himself ask, against all instincts to the contrary. “How long to process those and get the seal clear? I’d like to start hunting cargo.”
An official frown. “No way of knowing.”
“Well,” Allison said, “there’s already a routing application in.”
A lift of the brows, and a frown after. None too happy, this official. “Customs office,” he said, punching in on the com console. “I have Lucy’s Stevens in with forms.”
And after the answer, another shunting to an interior office, more questions and more forms.
Nature of cargo, they asked. Information pending acquisition, Sandor answered, in his own element. He filled the rest out, looped some blanks, letting station departments chase each other through the maze. Clear was a condition of mind, a zone in which he had not yet learned to function.
Legitimate, he kept telling himself. These were real papers he was applying for. Honest papers. In the wrong name, and under a false ID, and that was the stain on matters: but real papers all the same.
They walked out of the customs office toward the exchange, and when he got to that somewhat busier desk, to stand in line with others including spacers with onstation cards to apply for… Allison snagged his arm and drew him over to the reception desk for more inner offices.
“Sir?” the secretary asked, blinking a little at his out at the elbows look and the silvery company he kept.
Embarrassed, Sandor searched for the appropriate papers. “Got a fund transfer and an account to open.”
“That’s Wyatt’s?” Everyone knew his business. It threw him off his stride. He put the loan papers on the desk.
“No,” he said, “that’s an independent deal.”
“Dublin has an account with Wyatt’s.” Allison leapt into the fray. “This is a loan between Lucy and Dublin. The ship is collateral. Captain Stevens hopes to straighten it up with his own combine, but as it is, Dublin will cover any transfer of funds that may be necessary: escrow will rest on Pell.”
“What sum are we talking about?”
“Five hundred thousand for starters.”
“I’ll advise Mr. Dee.”
“Thank you,” Allison said with a touch of smugness, and settled into a waiting area chair. Sandor sat down beside her, wiped a touch of sweat from his temples, crossed his ankles, leaned back, willed one muscle after another to relax. “You let me do the talking, will you?” he asked her.
“You take it slow. I know what I’m doing.”
His fingers felt numb. A lot of him did. Clear, he thought again. There was something wrong with such a run of luck. Ships that tossed off half a million as if it were pocket change—rattled his nerves. He felt a moment of panic, as if some dark cloud were swallowing him up, conning him into debts and ambition more than he could handle. He had no place in this office. It was like stringing jumps and accumulating velocity without dump—there was a point past which no ship could handle what it could acquire.
“Captain.” The secretary had come back. “Mr. Dee will see you.”
He stood up. Allison put her hand on his back, urging him, intended for comfort, perhaps, but it felt like a fatal shove.
He walked, and Allison went behind him. He met the smallish man in his office… a wise, wrinkled face, dark almond eyes that went to the heart of him and peeled away the layers. So, well, one sat down like a man and filled out the forms and above all else tried not to look the nervousness he felt.
“You’ll have claims from WSC,” Dee advised him.
“Minor,” Allison said.
Again a stab of those dark, fathomless eyes. An elderly finger indicated the appropriate line and he signed.
“There we go,” Allison said, approving it. He shook hands with the banker and realized himself a respectable if mortgaged citizen. Allison shook hands with Dee and Dee showed them to the outer office in person. They were someone. He was. He felt himself hollow centered and scared with a different kind of fear than the belly-gripping kind he lived in onstations: with a knowledgeable, too-late kind of dread, of having done something he never should have done, a long time back, when he had walked into a bar on Viking and tried to buy a Dubliner a drink.
“You come,” Allison said as they walked out empty of their bundle of applications, with a set of brand new credit cards and clear ship’s papers in exchange. “Let’s get some of the outfitting done. I don’t know what you’re carrying in ship’s stores. Blast, I’ll be glad to get that customs lock off and have a look at her.”
“Got some frozen stuff. I outfitted pretty fair for a solo operation at Viking.”
“We’ve got five. What’s our dunnage allotment?”
“I really don’t think that’s a problem.”
“Accommodations?”
“Cabins 2.5 meters by 4. That’s locker and shower and bunk.”
“Sleep vertical, do you?”
“Lockers are under and over the bunk.”
“Private?”
“Private as you like.”
“Nice. Good as Dublin, if you like to know.”
He considered that and expanded a bit. “If you have extra— there’s always space to put it. Storage is never that tight.”
“Beautiful.—Hey.” She flagged one of the ped-carriers that ran the docks, a flatbed with poles, hopped on: Sandor followed, put his own card in the slot as it whisked them along the station ring with delirious ease. He had never ridden a carrier; never felt he could afford the luxury, when his legs could save the expense. All his life he had walked on the docks of stations, and he watched the lights and the shops blur past, still numb in the profusion of experience. “Off!” someone would sing out, and the driver would stop the thing just long enough for someone to step down. “Off!” Allison called, and they stepped off on white dock, in the face of a large pressure-window and a fancy logo saying WILSON, and in finer print, SUPPLIER. It was all white and silver and black inside. He swore softly, and let Allison lead him into the place by the hand.
Displays everywhere. Clothing down one aisle, thermals and working clothes and liners and some of them in fancy colors, flash the like of which was finding its way onto docksides on the bodies of those who could afford it New stuff. All of it. He looked at the price on a pair of boots and it was 150. He grabbed Allison by the arm.
“They’re thieves in here. Look at that. Look, this isn’t my class. Lucy outfits from warehouses. Or dockside.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know what you’re used to, but we’re not going to eat seconds all the way and we’re not using cut-rate stuff. You don’t get class treatment on dockside if you don’t have a little flash. And we’ll not be dressing down, thank you; so deaden your nerves, Stevens, and buy yourself some camouflage so you don’t stand out among your crew.”