Balance of Trade (13 page)

HE RAN HIS CARD through the reader; the screen flashed blue, and the door to the Trade Bar swung open before him.

Valid and verified
, he thought, grinning, and then remembered to put on his trading face—polite, non-committal, and supposedly unreadable; it wasn't much, set against your usual Liaden's ungiving mask. Still, grinning out loud in a place crammed with folks who just didn't couldn't be polite. And polite was all he had.

What hit him first were the similarities to the Terran Trade Bars he'd been in with Uncle Paitor or Cris or Dyk. The high-info screens were set well up on one wall, showing list after list: ships in dock; traders on duty; goods at offer, stationside; goods at offer, dockside; goods sought. The exchange rates were missing, which made him blink until he realized that everybody on this station was buying in cantra and kais.

The milling of bodies seemingly at random around the various stations—that was familiar too—and even the sound—lots of voices, talking at once, maybe a little louder than needful.

But then the differences—damn near everybody was shorter than him, dressed in bright colors, and soft leather boots. Jewelry gleamed on ears, hands, throats. Not a few wore a weapon, holstered, on their belts. For the most, they walked flat, like born mud-grubbers, and not like honest spacers at all. And the slightly too loud voices were saying things in a quick, liquid language which his ear couldn't begin to sort.

He found himself a corner where two booths abutted, and settled back out of the general press to study the screens. Stationside goods at offer tended toward art stuffs and information—reasonable. The longest list by far, though, was for indenture—folks looking to buy their way off-station, maybe all the way back to Liad, by selling out years of their lives. By Jethri's count, there were forty-eight contracts offered, from sixteen years to thirty-four, from general labor to fine craftsperson.

"Well, what do we find ourselves here?" a woman's voice asked, too close and too loud, her Trade almost unintelligible. "I do believe it's a Terran, Vil Jon."

Jethri moved, but she was blocking his exit, and the man moving up at her hail was going to box him in proper.

"A Terran?" the man—Vil Jon—repeated. "Now what would a Terran be doing in the Trade Bar?" He looked up into Jethri's face, eyes hard and blue. "Well, Terran? Who let you in here?"

Jethri met his eyes, trying with everything in him to keep his face smooth, polite and non-committal.

"The door let me in, sir. My ship card was accepted by the reader."

"It has a card," the woman said, as if the man hadn't heard. "Now, what ship in dock keeps tame Terrans."

The man glanced over his shoulder at the boards. "There's
Intovish
, from Vanthachal. They keep some odd customs, local." He looked back at Jethri. "What ship, Terran?"

He considered it. After all, his ship was no secret. On Terran ground, asking for someone's ship was a common courtesy. From these two, though, it seemed a threat—or a challenge in a game he had no hope of understanding.

"
Elthoria
," he said, soft and polite as he knew how. "Sir."

"
Elthoria
?" The woman exchanged a long glance with her mate, who moved his shoulders, pensive-like.

"Could be it's bound for Solcintra Zoo," he said.

"Could be it's gotten hold of a card it shouldn't have," the woman returned, sharply. She held out her hand. "Come, Terran. Let us see your ship card."

And that, Jethri thought, was that. He was threatened, cornered and outnumbered, but he was damned if he was going to meekly hand his card over to this pair of port hustlers.

"No, ma'am," he said, and jumped forward.

The grav was light—he jumped a fair distance, knocking the woman aside as gentle as he could, out of reach before the man thought to try and grab him.

Having once jumped, Jethri stayed in motion, moving quick through the crowded room. He met a few startled glances, but took care not to jostle anybody, and very soon gained the door. It was, he thought, time to get back to his ship.

THEY KNEW THE station better than him—of course they did. They turned him back, hall by hall, crowding him toward the Concourse, cutting him off from the docks and his ship.

In desperation, he went down three floors, hit the hall beyond the lift doors running and had broken for the outer ring before he heard them behind him, calling "Terran, Terran! You cannot elude us, Terran!"

That might be so, Jethri thought, laboring hard now, light grav or not. He had a plan in his mind, though, and if this was the hall as he remembered it from the guide book's map of danger zones. . . 

He flashed past a blue sign, the Liaden letters going by too fast for his eye to catch, but he recognized the symbol from the map, and began to think that this might work.

The hall took a hard left, like he remembered it from the map, and there was the emergency tunnel at end of it, gaping black and cold.

"Terran!" The woman's voice was suddenly shrill. "Wait! We will not hurt you!"

Right
, Jethri thought, the tunnel one long stride away. He hit it running, felt the twist inside his ear that meant he had gone from one gravitational state to another—

He jumped.

Somewhere behind him, a woman screamed. Jethri fell, slow-motion, saw a safety pole, slapped it and changed trajectory, shooting under the lip of the floor above, anchoring himself with a foot hooked 'neath a beam.

The woman was talking in Liaden now, still shrill and way too loud. The man answered sharply, and then shouted out, in pidgin, "Terran! Where are you?"

Like he was going to answer. Jethri concentrated on breathing slow and quiet.

They didn't wait all that long; he heard the sound of their footsteps, walking fast, then the sound of the lift doors working.

After that, he didn't hear anything else.

He made himself sit there for a full twenty-eighth by the Liaden timepiece on his wrist, then eased out of hiding. A quick kick against the side of the chute sent him angling upward. He caught the edge of the floor as he shot past and did a back flip into the tunnel. He snatched a ring, righted himself, and skated for the hall.

A Liaden man in a black leather jacket was leaning against the wall opposite the tunnel.

Jethri froze.

The Liaden nodded easily, almost Terran-like.

"Well done," he said, and it was ground-based Terran he was talking, but Terran all the same. "I commend you upon a well-thought-out and competently executed maneuver."

"Thanks." Jethri said, thinking he could scramble, go over the edge again, make for the next level up, or down. . . 

The Liaden held up a hand, palm out. "Acquit me of any intent to harm you. Indeed, it is concern for your welfare which finds me here, in a cold hallway at the far edge of nowhere, when I am promised to dinner with friends."

Jethri sighed. "You see I'm fine. Go to dinner."

The Liaden outright
laughed
, and straightened away from the wall.

"Oh, excellent! To the point, I agree." He waved down the hall vaguely, as if he could see through walls, and so could Jethri "Come, be a little gracious. I hear you are from
Elthoria
, over on Dock Six, is that so?"

Jethri nodded, warily. "Yes."

"Delightful. As it happens, I treasure an acquaintance with Norn ven'Deelin which has too long languished unrenewed. Allow me to escort you to your ship."

Jethri stood, feeling the glare building and not even trying to stop it. The man in the jacket
tsk'd
.

"Come now. Even a lad of your obvious resource will find it difficult to outrun a Scout on this station. At least allow me to know that
Elthoria
is on Dock Six. Also—forgive me for introducing a painful subject—I must point out that your late companions will no doubt have called in an anonymous accident report. If you wish to avoid awkward questions from the Watch, you would be well-advised to put yourself in my hands."

Maybe it was the Terran. Maybe it was the laugh, or the man's easy and factual way. Whatever, Jethri allowed that he trusted this one as much as he hadn't trusted the pair who had been chasing him. Further down the hall, a lift chimed—and that decided it.

"OK," he agreed, and the man smiled.

"Not a moment too soon," He said, and stepped around the edge of the wall he'd been leaning against.

"This way, young sir. Quickly."

HIS GUIDE SET A brisk pace through the service corridors, his footsteps no more than whispers.

Jethri, walking considerably more noisy behind him, had time to appreciate that he was at this man's mercy; and the likelihood that his murdered body could lie in one of the numerous, dark repair bays they passed for days before anyone thought to look. . . 

"Do not sell your master trader short, young sir," the man ahead of him said. "I can understand that you might be having second thoughts about myself—a stranger and a Scout, together! Who knows what such a fellow might do? But never doubt Norn ven'Deelin."

Apparently it wasn't just his face that was found too readable, Jethri thought sourly, but his footsteps, too. Still, he forced himself to chew over what the man had said, and produced a question.

"What's a Scout?"

Two steps ahead, the Liaden turned to face him, continuing to walk backward, which he seemed to find just as simple as going face-first, and put his hand, palm flat, against his chest.

"I am a Scout, child. In particular: Scout Captain Jan Rek ter'Astin, presently assigned to the outpost contained in this space station."

Jethri considered him. "You're a soldier, then?"

Scout Captain ter'Astin laughed again, and turned face forward without breaking stride.

"No, innocent, I am not a soldier. The Scouts are . . .  are—an exploratory corps. And to hear some, we are more trouble than we are worth, constant meddlers that we are—Ah, here is our lift! After you, young sir."

It looked an ordinary enough lift, Jethri thought, as the door slid away. And what choice did he have, anyway? He was certainly lost, and had no guide but this man who laughed like a Terran and walked as loose and light as a spacer.

He stepped into the lift, the Scout came after, punched a quick series of buttons, and relaxed bonelessly against the wall.

"I don't wish to be forward," he said, slipping his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "But I wonder if you have a name."

"Jethri Gobelyn."

"Ah, is it so? Are you kin to Arin Gobelyn?"

Jethri turned and stared, shock no doubt plain on his face, for the Scout brought his right hand out of his pocket and raised it in his small gesture of peace.

"Forgive me if I have offended. I am not expert in the matter of Terran naming customs, I fear."

Jethri shook his head. "I'm Arin Gobelyn's son," he said, trying to shake away the shock, as he stared into the Scout's easy, unreadable face. "My mother never told me he had any Liaden . . . connections."

"Nor should she have done so. My acquaintance with Arin Gobelyn was unfortunately curtailed by his death."

Jethri blinked. "You were at the explosion?"

"Alas, no. Or at least, not immediately. I was one of the Port rescue team sent to clean up after the explosion. We arrived to find that an impromptu rescue effort was already underway. The Terran ship crews, they reacted well and with purpose. Your father—he was as a giant. He went back into that building twice, and brought out injured persons. Was it three or five that he carried or guided out? The years blur the memory, I fear. The third time, however. . . " He moved his shoulders. "The third time, he handed his rescue off to the medics, and paused, perhaps to recruit his strength. Behind him, the building collapsed as the inner roof beams gave way sequentially—throwing out debris and smoke with enormous energy.

"When the dust cleared, I was down, your father was down—everyone in a two-square radius was down. After I had recovered my wits, I crawled over to your father. The wreckage was afire, of course, and I believe I had some foolish notion of trying to drag him further from the flames. As it happens, there was no need. A blade of wood as long as I am had pierced him. We had nothing to repair such a wound, and in any case it was too late. I doubt he knew that he had been killed." Another ripple of black-clad shoulders.

"So, I only knew him as a man of courage and good heart, who spent his life so that others might live." The Scout inclined his head, suddenly and entirely Liaden.

"You are fortunate in your kin, Jethri Gobelyn."

Jethri swallowed around the hard spot in his throat. He'd only known that his father had died when the warehouse had collapsed. The rest of this. . . 

"Thank you," he said, huskily. "I hadn't known the—the story of my father's death."

"Ah. Then I am pleased to be of service."

The lift chimed, and the Scout straightened, hands coming out of his pockets. He waved Jethri forward.

"Come, this will be our stop."

"Our stop" looked like nothing more than a plain metal square with a door at one end. Jethri stepped out of the lift, and to one side.

The Scout strolled past, very much at his leisure, put his palm against the door and walked through.

Jethri followed—and found himself on Dock Six, practically at the foot of
Elthoria's
ramp. Despite it all, he grinned, then remembered and bowed to the Scout.

"Thank you. I think I can make it from here."

"Doubtless you can," the Scout said agreeably. "But recall my ambition to renew my acquaintance with Norn ven'Deelin." He moved forward with his loose, easy stride that was much quicker than it looked. Jethri stretched his legs and caught up with him just as he turned toward the ramp. . . startling the young replacement doc-checker into a flabbergasted, "Wait, you!"

The Scout barely turned his head. "Official Scout business," he said briskly and went up the ramp at a spanking pace, Jethri panting at his heels.

At the top, a shadow shifted. Jethri looked up and saw Pen Rel coming quickly down toward them—and just as suddenly braking, eyebrows raised high.