She'd been particularly fond of ancient history, even if the subject had no relevance to her eventual employment.
"Why should tramp freighter crews sneer at the same practices that stood the dynasties of Europe in good stead?" she asked. "To this day, I think the Rothschilds still set the standard, when it comes to inbreeding."
Blomqvist frowned. "Who's Europe? And I thought the name of that dog breed was Rotweiler."
"Never mind, Gansükh." She leaned over him, studying the screen. "Cargo . . . nothing unusual. Freight brokerage . . . okay, nothing odd there."
Blomqvist made a face. "I thought Pyramid Shipping Services was one of those outfits serving the seccy trade."
"It is. And your point being . . . ?"
He said nothing, but the sour look on his face remained. Normally, Trimm would have let it go. But she really was getting tired of Blomqvist's attitudes—and, looked at the right way, you could even argue she was just doing her job by straightening out the slob. Technically, she was Blomqvist's "senior partner," but in the real world she was his superior. And if he didn't realize that, he'd soon be getting a rude education.
"And what would you prefer?" she demanded. "That we insist the sutler trade be serviced by the Jessyk Combine? No—better yet! Maybe we should have Kwiatkowski & Adeyeme handle it."
Blomqvist grimaced. Kwiatkowski & Adeyeme Galactic Freight, one of the biggest shipping corporations operating out of Mesa, was notorious among System Guard officers for being a royal pain in the ass to deal with. Worse than Jessyk, even though they didn't have nearly as much influence with the General Board.
Still, they had enough. The quip among experienced customs agents was that any finding of an irregularity by a K&A freighter guaranteed at least fifteen hours of hearings—and, if people had still been using paper, the slaughter of a medium-sized forest. As it was, untold trillions of electrons would soon be subject to terminal ennui.
She straightened up. "Just take my word for it. Everyone's better off leaving the ragtag and bobtail seccy trade to the gypsies. Easier for everybody, especially us. The only important thing—check this for me too, if you would—is how long the Hali Sowle is requesting orbit space."
Blomqvist pulled up yet another screen. "Anywhere up to sixteen T-days, it looks like."
Trimm frowned. That was a littleunusual. Not unheard of, by any means, but still out of the ordinary. Most gypsies wanted to be in and out of Mesan orbit as fast as possible. Not because the Mesan trade gave them any moral qualms, but simply because they weren't making money unless they were hauling freight somewhere.
"What reason do they give?" she asked.
"They say they're waiting for a shipment of jewelry coming from Ghatotkacha. That's a planet . . ." he squinted at the screen, trying to find the data.
"It's the second planet of Epsilon Virgo, over in Gupta Sector," said Trimm. The request for such a long orbital stay made sense, now. Gupta Sector was rather isolated and the only easy access to the big markets of the League was through the Visigoth Junction. Given the notorious fussiness of Visigoth's customs service, any freighter captain with half a brain who needed to spend idle time in orbit waiting for a shipment to arrive would choose to do so at the Mesan end of the terminus.
Gupta Sector was known for its jewelry, and jewelry was one of the high value freight items that a freighter would be willing to wait for. Provided . . .
"Send them a message, Gansükh. I want to see the financial details of their contract of carriage. Certified data only, mind you. We're not taking their word for it."
From the frown on his face, it was obvious that Blomqvist didn't understand why she wanted that information.
"For your continuing education, young man. The financial section of their contract of carriage should tell us who's paying for their lost time in orbit. The shipper of origin? Or it could even be the jewelers themselves. Or the final customer, or their broker. Or . . ."
His face cleared. "I get it. Or maybe they're eating the cost themselves. In which case . . ."
"In which case," E.D. said grimly, "were sending a pinnace over there with orders to fire if they don't allow a squad of armored cops aboard to search that vessel stem to stern. There's no way a legitimate gypsy would agree to swallow the cost of spending that much time in orbit, twiddling their thumbs."
"What's a stem?" he asked, as he sent the instructions to the Hali Sowle. "I thought it was part of a plant. So why would it be connected to a starship?"
Since he couldn't see her face, she let her eyes roll. At least she'd only have to put up with the ignoramus for another three days before the shifts were restructured. If she got lucky, she might even be partnered next time with Steve Lund. Now, there was a man with whom you could have an intelligent conversation. He had a good sense of humor, too.
"Never mind, Gansükh. It's just a figure of speech."
She sometimes thought that for Gansükh Blomqvist, the whole damn universe outside of his immediate and narrow range of interests was a figure of speech. Oh, well. She reminded herself, not for the first time, that every hour she spent bored by Blomqvist's company piled up just as much in the way of pay, benefits and retirement credit as any other hour on the job.
"And there it is, Ganny," said Andrew Artlett admiringly. "Just like you predicted. How do you know these things, anyway?"
Elfride Margarete Butre smiled, but gave no answer. That was because the answer would have been heart-breaking for her. She knew the many things she did which almost none of her descendants and relatives did, for the simple reason that she'd had a full life prior to being stranded on Parmley Station—where most of them had spent their entire lives there.
For some considerable part of that pre-Station life, she and her husband had been very successful freight brokers. That was how they'd amassed their initial small fortune, which Michael Parmley had then parlayed into a much larger fortune playing the Centauri stock exchange—and then blown the whole thing trying to launch a freight company that could compete with the big boys in the lucrative Core trade.
She'd loved her husband, sure enough. But there hadn't been a day go by since his death decades earlier, that she hadn't cursed his shade. Michael Parmley hadn't had a malicious bone in his body—but he hadn't had a very responsible one either. An inveterate gambler, he'd lost three fortunes already before he completely bankrupted himself and his kin building the station.
And, in doing so, condemned at least one entire generation of his extended family to lives that were distorted by isolation and would surely end in early graves. Ganny knew full well—had known for years, now—that the day would inexorably come, assuming she survived herself, when she would be grieving at the death of her beloved great-nephew Andrew Artlett. He'd die of old age—while his great-aunt still had perhaps a century of life ahead of her.
"Never mind, Andrew. It's a long story. Make sure you send the financial records within ten minutes—but not too much before then. They won't expect a tramp freighter in orbit to be all that alert."
He nodded. "And how long do we stay?"
"Until the freighter from Gupta brings us the goods. If they time it right, they'll arrive two or three days before our deadline here in orbit runs out. It'll take less than a day for customs to check everything. Then we're on our way to Palmetto, just as our—completely legitimate—papers say we are. A quick swap of the jewels on Palmetto for a cargo of sutler goods, and we're back again. That shouldn't take more than two weeks. By then, we'll have established our bona fides with Mesan customs, and we should be able to get permission to stay in orbit for up to thirty T-days."