“Where you going?”
Should she tell him? She hadn’t planned to tell anyone here, and buy her ticket on the Station. “Back home for a bit,” she said. “Rockhouse.”
“Mmm. Got money?”
“Some.”
“If you’re in a hurry—a friend of hers, y’know, is a friend of ours—might be there’s a fellow could help you.”
“Tell me,” Brun said, trying not to sound too eager.
“Private shuttle,” the clerk said. “Over at E-bay.” He pointed at a wall, beyond which was presumably E-bay. “I’ll tell him you’re coming,” the clerk said. Which assumed she would. But otherwise she’d just have to sleep on the floor waiting for the regular shuttle. Brun smiled her thanks, retrieved her duffle from the locker, and walked out again.
E-bay was neither bay nor hangar, but a large angled parking slot off the shuttle runway. On it was something that looked too small to be a shuttle. It looked, in fact, like one of the training planes Ronnie and George flew in the Royals. Its hatch was propped open, and someone stooped by it, tossing bundles inside. Brun walked closer, more uncertain the closer she got. The locals tended toward casual dress and behavior, but the young man in scuffed coveralls with shabby boots and a dirty scarf around his neck looked worse than Cecelia’s grooms. He glanced up as she came nearer.
“You’re that girl’s been over at the lady’s—you brought her, right?”
“Yes.” No use denying what eager gossips had spread.
“She better?” He had bright black eyes, and rumpled black hair.
“Much better,” Brun said.
“She sent you?” The eyes had intelligence, and some real concern for Cecelia. Brun wondered why.
“Uh . . . sort of, yes.”
“I’m going up. Then on to Caskar, if that’s any use.” Brun wasn’t sure, and she’d left the schedule in the truck. Her helplessness must have showed, because he sighed and explained. “Caskar—eight days—gets you a bigger port. Should be something going through each way within a few days. Here most everything’s going to Romney.”
“I noticed,” she said, but couldn’t help a doubtful look at the shuttle. Travel in that for eight days. He interpreted that look correctly.
“She’s little, but she’s stout. Get us there safely. If you don’t mind it being a bit rough.”
“No—no, that’s fine. How much?”
“Well . . . say . . . eight hundred?” That was ridiculously low; she started to say something and he was already talking. “I hate to say that, but see, I can’t afford the fuel myself. Not right now. I know it’s for the lady, but . . .”
“No, that’s fine,” Brun said. “I thought it would be more. Look—why not a round thousand?” He wouldn’t take more than the eight hundred, and had her insert the cube herself.
“That way you know I didn’t cheat you. Now—they’ll release the fuel . . .”
In the end she had to help him drag the fuel hoses over and start the pumps. The little ship held an astonishing load of fuel; Brun wondered if it would get off the ground once it started. Inside, she hardly had room to turn around.
“You fly?” the young man asked.
“A little.” Her Rockhouse and Sirialis licenses would be no good here; each world regulated its own pilots since the differences in atmospheres, gravity, and weather made specific knowledge necessary.
“Just sit there, then, and keep an eye out.” The copilot’s seat, up in the needle nose of the shuttle, gave her a great view of the ground going past as they trundled along the runway. It seemed they had gone a mile or more, and she was wondering if they’d ever get airspeed, when the vibration of the gear died away and they were airborne. With a suddenness she did not expect from the long run, the young man tipped up the nose, did something to the controls, and the craft acted like a real shuttle, shoving her back in her seat for long minutes as the sky darkened from light blue to royal to midnight.
“No . . . traffic control?” Brun asked, aware that she had asked this question in another context only a few hours before.
“Nah . . . not enough traffic.” The shuttle had minimal scans, she noticed. Minimal everything. “Do you really need to stop at the Station?” he went on. “I’d just as soon go straight on over—save us a few hours.”
“Fine.” Brun looked out the little port to see stars beginning to show as they reached the fringes of atmosphere. She could hardly believe she was riding in something like this, with someone whose name she didn’t even know yet, to go into deep space and spend eight days . . . she was terrified. She was blissfully happy.
“I’m Brun, by the way.” That seemed to have been right; he turned to grin at her and held out a calloused hand.
“I’m Cory. Stefan Orinder’s son. The lady helped my dad out a lot when he arrived. Just let me set up the course, here, and get the autopilot locked in . . .”
Eight days later, Brun debarked at Caskar Station in the same outfit she’d started in. Cory’s ship had no shower, although it did have a functioning toilet. Mostly functioning. She had had plenty of food (sandwiches, soup, tinned stew) and half as much sleep as she needed, because she stood watch with Cory. She knew all about Cory’s family, three generations backwards and out to third cousins by marriage, and why his family would do anything for Lady Cecelia, including forget that she herself had ever existed and taken a ride on Cory’s ship. She knew it would be an insult to tuck an extra two hundred credits into one of the cabinets, but she promised to tell Cecelia who had helped her.
Her first stop on Caskar Station was a public restroom, where she paid for a hot shower and sudsed herself thoroughly. She dumped her clothes in a washer and called up the status board on the restroom screen. Ah. A passenger ship headed for Greenland (which she knew from Cory’s tutoring was more—or-less the way she wanted to go) would be in the next day. She called up its schedule. Twelve days to Greenland, six more to Okkerland, ten to Baskome. At Baskome she could get direct service to Rockhouse Major, no stops, on a major carrier. That looked good, except that the ship from here got there one day late, and the next Rockhouse connection wasn’t for sixteen days. Damn.
Here she couldn’t use Cecelia’s influence . . . but—she looked at herself in the restroom mirror—maybe she could use her own. Or her wits. After all, even after these months, they might be looking for Lord Thornbuckle’s daughter. She didn’t want to lead them to Lady Cecelia. Not yet, not until she’d had another competency hearing, and regained her legal identity. Wits, then.
The status board showed five ships at this much busier Station. None were scheduled passenger ships, but Cory had explained that many freighters, scheduled and unscheduled, carried a few passengers. The big shipping firms had the better accommodations, but were pickier about who they took; the smaller firms—or owner-operator tramp freighters—would take anyone but an obvious criminal, especially if he or she were willing to do some of the less favored chores aboard.
Ten hours later, Brun was aboard the Bucclos Success, shoveling manure. Though most livestock was shipped as frozen embryos, some travelled “whole,” in its mature state. Such a ship was known to crews as a “shit shoveler” for obvious reasons. The oversized environmental system had been built to handle the bulk and nitrogen load, but someone had to get the stuff from the animal pens into the system. A human and a shovel worked as efficiently as anything else, especially when valuable animals had to be coddled. Brun’s stable experience got her the job—and a free berth.
A third of the cargo was horses, heavy drafters. Another third was hybrid cattlopes, their long straight horns cut short and tipped with bulky foam knobs for shipment. The rest were mixed medium and smalclass="underline" eight pens of dairy goats, seven of does and one of bucks; sixteen pens of sheep; fifty-eight cages of pedigreed rabbits, some of them carrying embryos of other species; sixty cages of small fowl and thirty cages of large. Brun had expected to be put to work with the horses, but as casual labor she was assigned wherever there was need. She learned to mix feed for goats and sheep, hose down the cattlope pens, change waterers and feeders for rabbits and birds. For sixteen days, she spent twelve-hour shifts caring for noisy demanding smelly critters, and eight hours of her shift off sound asleep in her surprisingly comfortable bunk.