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.”
He looked up the aisle at clothes he could not by any stretch of the imagination see himself wearing, stuffed his hands in his pockets. The lining on the right one was twice resewn. “You wear that silver stuff into Lucy’s crawlspaces, will you? You fit yourselves out for work, Reilly.”
“There’s dockside and there’s work. Find something you like, hear me?”
He studied the aisle, nothing on racks, no searching this stuff for burn-holes and bad seams. One asked, and they hunted it out of computerized inventory. “So I get myself the likes of yours,” he muttered, thinking he would never carry it well. “That satisfy you?”
“Good enough. What kind of entertainment system does she carry?”
“Deck of cards,” he muttered. “We can buy a fresh one.”
She swore. “You have to have a tape rig.”
“Mariner-built Delta system.”
“Lord, a converter, then. We’ll bring our own tapes and buy some new.”
“I can’t afford-”
“Basic amenities. I’m telling you, you want class crew, you have to rig out. What about bedding?”
“Got plenty of that. Going to have to stock up on lifesupport goods and some filters and detergents and swabs—before we get to extravagances. I’d like to put a backup on some switches and systems that aren’t carrying any right now.”
A roll of Allison’s dark eyes in his direction, stark dismay.
‘Two of them on the main board,” he added, the plain truth.
“Make a list. This place can get them.”
“Will. Going to be nice, isn’t it, knowing there’s a failsafe?”
He walked down the aisle alone, looking at the clothes. And all about him, over the tops of the counters, were other displays… personal goods, bedding, dishes, tapes and games, utility goods, cabinets, ship’s furnishings, interior hardware, recycling goods, tools, bins, medical supplies, computer softwares. Music whispered through his senses. He turned about him and stared, lost in the glitter of the displays he had never given more than a passing glance to—had never come in a place like this, where his kind of finances could get a man accused of theft.