I thought about that as I rinsed the pot. “I don’t know that I can, but I’ll try.”
“Good. Now, what specialty do you think you’d like to pursue?”
“Specialty?”
“Ishmael, you could be an excellent cook, but I’m afraid if you took that path your talents would be wasted. You need to consider all possibilities. Engineering, perhaps? Environmental? Maybe you’d like to become a deck officer or cargo specialist?”
“Wait, Cookie, you’re going too fast for me.” I waved a soapy hand in the air to stop him. “Why would I want to do one of those things? Can’t I just be a cook?”
Cookie smiled and gave a little shrug. “How you spend the time is, of course, up to you. As for cooking, it’s my life and I love it. My pleasure comes from creating the best meals I can and making life more pleasant for the crew. You would make an excellent cook, Ishmael.” He paused and considered me with pursed lips for a heartbeat. “But I suspect you would find that it loses its challenge rapidly.”
“You might be right but I’m not even certain what the other choices are.”
“Look in your handbook, young Ishmael and consider that your feet are already on a path. It might be wiser to select a branch before one is thrust upon you by circumstance.” With that, he strolled out of the galley.
I stood there considering his words and he startled me by poking his head back through the door. “And we’re out of coffee out here. Please brew a new pot before you go.” With a playful grin and a wink he left once more.
Chapter 6
Neris System
2351-September-16
Pip was the closest thing to a friend I’d had since Angela Markova. It was weird. I’d only known him a couple of weeks. Granted, they were long weeks and we’d been working together almost non-stop every day. In many ways it felt like he’d taken me under his wing, but he also seemed-I don’t know-adrift might be a good word. After Cookie’s visit I had a hard time looking at Pip the same way. Of course that same conversation also made me look at Cookie differently. He was taking the role of a wise uncle. I shied away from the notion of father since I wasn’t terribly sure what that really meant. As for Pip, he became the rascally younger brother and Uncle Cookie had made him my problem.
Day nine out of Neris and I stayed late to help Pip clean up and to talk. The galley was the only place we had that approached any level of privacy, and even there we were interrupted by people dropping in at odd hours to grab a cookie, make a sandwich, or ask me to brew another urn of coffee. Cookie’s discussion weighed on me all day and Pip noticed as he started in as soon as Cookie had left for his card game.
“Okay, Ish. What gives?”
I knew better than to play dumb, but I didn’t want to confront this particular problem head on, either. “The walls are really starting to close in. There’s no privacy. We work, sleep, work, sleep, work, sleep…it just doesn’t end. Not to mention that every time I turn around there’s somebody looking for more coffee.”
Pip grinned mischievously. “I warned ya about that. You’re the caffeine god now and it comes with a terrible price.”
I knew he was teasing, sort of. “Yes, I know, but you’re in your second stanyer…I’m barely into my second week. How do you cope?”
“Ishmael, my boy, it’s all about the journey. In this business, you never get there, wherever there is, so you better enjoy the trip. As an allegory for life, I kinda like it.”
I looked at him, perhaps a bit strangely. It was so unlike Pip, I wondered who he was channeling.
He looked a bit embarrassed and gave a half shrug. “I got that from the second mate on the Duchamp. Just before she threatened to put me ashore on Arghon.”
I laughed. “So you were a troublemaker.”
“Let’s just say, I got off on the wrong foot with that crew. The Duchamp had just put into Arghon and the Lois came in right behind it. Word got around the docks that there was a woman on the Lois who wanted to get into environmental but there weren’t any openings. By that time I had a miserable reputation and I really was afraid they were going to strand me. Alvarez, she was the second mate on the Duchamp, talked to Mr. Maxwell, and I gladly traded my space there for the opening in the mess here.”
“Wow, luck was in your pocket that day, huh?”
He chuckled. “So it would seem. I never did find out why Mr. Maxwell was willing to take the trade, but that enjoy-the-ride speech was the last thing Alvarez told me before she kicked me out of the lock. It stuck with me. I’ve fit in better here, certainly. It feels more like I belong. But I think part of it is because I have taken a different approach and enjoying the ride, as it were.”
I nodded and we worked on the pans in comfortable silence for a time.
“Cookie was here last night.” I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye.
“That’s odd. What’d he want?”
“Odd isn’t the half of it. He wanted me to select a specialty to pursue.”
Pip snickered. “Great gods and small piscatorials, you haven’t been here a month and he’s already planning your future?”
I shrugged and handed him a pot to dry and stow. “More like, he’s afraid I’m gonna get bored as a cook and I need to be working on my next step now so I’ll be ready when the opportunity comes.”
Pip nodded and gave me a rueful grin. “Yeah, he’s always after me to pursue something, too.”
“So…?”
“So, what?” He looked at me blankly.
“What are you pursuing?”
He looked a little sheepish. “Promise you won’t laugh?”
I crossed my heart, leaving wet, soapy smears on my shipsuit.
He glanced over his shoulder before lowering his voice to a whisper. “Trade.”
“What’s that mean? You’re going for cargo master?”
“Shh, keep it down. No, I’m running some smaller deals of my own.”
“You’re what?”
He looked over his shoulder at the door before continuing. “I’m picking up goods in one port and selling them at the next. Private cargo. Everybody’s allowed to do it. It’s in The Handbook, section fourteen. So long as you stay within your mass quota and don’t break any Confederation regulations, you can bring almost anything you want aboard including trade goods.”
I looked at him, dumbfounded.
“It’s true. You can look it up.”
“I believe you. It just never occurred to me.”
He grinned. “Almost everybody does it to some degree. I’m just a little more serious about it than most.”
“Then why the big secret?” He had me glancing over my shoulder as well.
He looked at me exasperated. “What do you think got me off on the wrong foot on the Duchamp?”
I shrugged. “I figured it was the scrubber incident.”
He shook his head. “No, that was just the set up. When they found out I was serious about private trading, they started making fun of me. They teased me because I kept bragging about making a killing with private trade with just a quarter share’s mass allotment. I think they figured if I was too green to know about pull out I must be clueless about trade as well. It didn’t take long before I was a laughing stock.” He stowed a tray under the counter. “The more I tried to explain, the worse it got.”
I stacked the last pot in the drying rack and rinsed out the deep sink. “Yeah, I guess I can see that.”
Pip looked miserable. “It made my life difficult. Somebody was always ragging on me about what I had for trade goods and laughing at the things I brought aboard.” He sighed and looked a bit sheepish. “It sounds pretty petty now, but it was miserable to live through.”