“You sure about that, Fadar?” Torrash pointed at the now empty tin of honeynuts in the outer bay. “That Mr. Monkey Man bribed the stevedores, and you know we can’t get a darn thing done without the stevedores. They’ll be putting aquarium cars on the lines with potted banana trees and gorillas in them if I insist on granting all the cetacean requests and none of the simians’.”
“They were good snacks.” Shelthara acknowledged. “You don’t suppose he’ll drop by with some more if we expedite, do you?”
That earned him the snarl he’d expected.
“No one bribes the TTE in this office!”
“Of course not.” Shelthara didn’t point out the sugar crystals on Torrash’s shirtfront. “Just wondering is all, Boss. Very tasty they were, very tasty.”
Torrash snapped his fingers, coming to a decision. “I’ll give ’em the Uromathian slots. That’s enough space for both of ’em for the moment.”
“And when the Uromathian troops show up?” Shelthara asked.
“Thirty-two percent!” Torrash slapped the table. “I had plans and loading documents all worked out, and their last troop train mustered with only thirty-two percent of the scheduled load out.”
“They’ll have to be coming later though, right?” Shelthara did insist on bringing up the human issues behind the headaches in Torrash’s life. The trains planned for Uromathian units and their supplies hadn’t been light because someone packed exceptionally well. They’d been light because the units had been so badly understrength, and the ones who had reported had been equipped but not particularly well supplied. It’d surely play hell with the Sharonan Empire’s military logistics down-chain, but for the moment, Torrash had made the best of it and slotted in available cars of Ternathian Army supplies to make up weight for what the assigned engines could pull.
The Windlord arriving with yesterday’s Uromathian troop transport concerned Torrash. The man had clearly expected to meet up with more men and supplies here at Larakesh. It’d been all Torrash could do to convince him to keep to his transport time and go with the assigned engine at least as far as Haysam. At least a Windlord was senior enough to understand the value of keeping the logistics lines as smooth as they could be when subjected to volumes of transport so much greater than the portal could easily manage. Of course, there was the little matter that the Uromathian commander in question had expected more troops. If their logistical planning was so bad their own officers didn’t know what was really on its way…
Portals were a chokepoint-as simple as that-and Larakesh’s portal was the Sharona side of the most developed and populous Sharonan universe at the top of the long chain. Everyone knew that-or damned well ought to-and it bothered Torrash that the man’s reaction to missing troops had been a desire to turn straight around and head back to his corner of the Uromathian Empire with all the troops he did have instead of proceeding to the reporting location.
The Larakesh track was red-hot for the duration of the war, as far as Torrash was concerned, and he wasn’t about to let track be wasted on deadheading.
One of TTE’s stevedores-Ratatello Dolphar-beat a fist against the door to get their attention and then stuck his head in.
“Thought you’d want to know, the Voicenet just announced the election results. We’ve got us a parliament to go with our empire now. Gorda’s got a list of all the reps if you want to see. He’s going to paste it up on the staff board. But let’s see. Fadar, you’re from New Farnal right? You’ve got Kinlafia for the House of Talents, just like they said. And, Boss man, you’ve got Ruftuu. There’s a whole group of them, the newly elected I mean, talking about forming a caucus and passing a bunch of statutes to get the supply situation for the war going more smooth-like.”
“About time,” Torrash grunted.
“Damn sure, Stationmaster.” Dolphar agreed. “Know what I’d like to see is more of that chan Rahool character. You see the size of the arms on that guy?” He patted his own, far from insignificant biceps. “I felt like I was a new kid having my first day on the job again when he shook hands all gingerly-like.”
Shelthara laughed. “Now you know what we little office workers suffer through all the time. Women at the bars offering to hold our mugs for us ’cause our toothpick arms look too scrawny to lift ’em.”
“Right.” The stationmaster shook his head. Shelthara had a natural charm and never seemed to lack for female companionship. It was a source of continual amazement to the stevedore crews that the freight manager managed to do so well for himself with such a thin physique. “And excellent taste in trail food had nothing to do with the simian ambassador’s charm did it?”
“Hey now.” Dolphar objected. “He didn’t try to give us liquor like the more mercantilist types do. That chan Rahool’s a working man. He understood all about regs, and staying clearheaded while working the track. In fact he’s a veteran too! Might even be returning to active service with the war, for all you know.”
“Doubt it,” said Shelthara. “Looked too old to me.”
The three men exchanged a moment of understanding that cut across their work divisions. All of them were too old for enlistment, though Shelthara might be able to get in with the help of a recruitment officer’s blind eye, so Shelthara was the one who volunteered the next tidbit.
“The guy said he wasn’t much of a Voice, if you can believe it. Darn fortunate to be able to communicate across species lines and happy to have the simian ambassadorship, he said.” Shelthara nodded to Dolphar. “Did he warn you he thought chimps would want to help with loading?”
“He might of said something like that. I sent him off with one of my loading crews. Said he spent the day with ’em lifting as much as anybody and asking questions the whole while. He’s a quick study. He’ll do plenty fine.”
“You can’t draft an ambassador.” Torrash glared warningly at his senior day shift stevedore. “Don’t even try.”
Dolphar laughed. “Don’t worry, Bossman. I won’t try to impress anyone who can hold his own with gorillas. I know my limits.”
The glint in the man’s eyes hinted to Torrash and Shelthara both that Dolphar knew no such thing, but that at least his efforts to recruit the simian ambassador when next he came through wouldn’t be physical. Rumor had it that the stevedores had already taken the ambassador out drinking after shift in an effort to get him to join the crews and found his tolerance far exceeded their own.
“Did your boys talk to the cetacean ambassador too?”
“Yup,” said Dolphar. “That job’s going to be tough. The port haulers are doing most of the work setting up the aquarium cars for us. Talked to my cousin at Port-of-Larakesh about that, but the lady’d already worked it out with him. Very efficient. Not so friendly as the simian, but I figure she’s got her reasons to be glum.”
They nodded. Everyone knew the story of Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr, and while they didn’t all know Cetacean Ambassador Shalassar Brintal-Kolmayr, no one had failed to make the connection once they’d heard her full name and seen the family resemblance.
A triumphant train whistle cut through their conversation, and they all paused a moment to savor it. It was 3:05 pm, and that was the steam blast of a Paladin-the mammoth workhorse engine of the TTE-set to begin her straight transit from Larakesh through the New Sharona portals direct to the Haysam coast city of Cejyo. She’d reach the enormous seaport in eighteen hours and twenty minutes, arriving at 9:25 am on the dot. Trains were a beautiful thing.
When the whistle from the departing ten thousand-ton haul cut off at the portal boundary, Torrash turned back to the two men.
“Think this Parliament will be a help for the war? That they’ll actually do anything that makes sense or that it’ll just be people making decisions about stuff they don’t really understand?”