Finity's End - a Union-Alliance Novel (60 page)

The tone in which Oser-Hayes said
Pell
made it likely that distrust of the central government and of Pell was a driving force in Esperance politics.

Distrust of this place, this station, this administration was becoming his.

They'd been to the vid zoo. They'd seen all the holo-sharks at the Lagoon. That was two major amusements down on the first day.

They went to supper, in the moderately posh Lagoon, which Linda and Jeremy had both wanted, where colored lights made the place look as if they were underwater, and a sign advised that the same disposable contact lenses they'd used in the exhibit would display Wonders of the Mystic Lagoon, purchasable for a day's wages if you hadn't brought your own.

The junior-juniors were tired. Fletcher wanted the bubble-tub back in the sleepover. In his opinion it was time to go back to the Xanadu and settle in for the night. It was well past main-dark and the dockside, which never slept, had gone over to the rougher side of its existence: neon a bit more in evidence, the music louder, the level of alcohol in the passersby just that much higher.

But Jeremy moped along the displays, and wanted to stay on dockside a little longer. "I'm not sleepy," he said.

"Well,
I'm
ready to go back," Vince said

"We've got two weeks here," Fletcher reminded them. "We agreed. Shopping tomorrow. After breakfast."

"There's this shop—" Jeremy said, and dived off to a curio shop on the row they walked, a crowded little place with curiosities and souvenirs on every shelf.

There were plastic replicas of Cyteen life. There were expensive plastic-encased flowers and insects from Earth. There were packets of seeds done up with pots. Grow them in your cabin and be surprised at the carnivorous flowers.

He didn't think he wanted one of those.

They looked. They looked at truly tasteless things, and walked off the fullness of the supper on a stroll during which Jeremy ran them into every hole-in-the-wall shop on the row.

The kids bought some silly things, finger-traps, a device older than civilization, Fletcher was willing to bet. A plastic shark. Jeremy bought a cheap ball-bearing puzzle, another device that defied time. The kid was cheering up.

Good for that, Fletcher said to himself. It was worth an extra hour walking back to the sleepover if it gave Jeremy something to do besides jitter and fret.

The meeting lurched and stonewalled its way toward an adjournment for the night, the main topic as yet not on the table, and neither side satisfied… except in the fact that nothing notably budged. Aides might have carried the details forward during alterday, but there was nothing substantive to work on.

There was, by now, however, a safe-cube or two making sure that if Oser-Hayes had altered data in a record supposed to be sacrosanct, they had a record of before and after. JR was able to get to Madison without witnesses, and under security, after the meeting had broken up and while Francie and a team of discreetly armed security was making sure the Old Man, walking ahead of them, reached the chosen restaurant without crises.

"I've ordered analysis and safe-storage of station feed, then and now," he said, "Daily. Bucklin's gone to Gerald, called back personnel off leave."

"Good," Madison said, and by the thoughtful expression Madison shot him then, no one else had ordered it. And Madison didn't fault his consumption of multi-thousand credit cubes or the holding of the computer security staff off a well-earned liberty. "Good move. Cube?"

"Yessir." The
sirs
still came naturally. "Yes. I know what it costs. But—"

"Run an analysis. I want to know the outcome. It would be stupid of the man. But then—he's not the brightest light in the Alliance. He might think the next passing ship would patch his little problem and no one would be the wiser. Between you and me, the system has safeguards against that kind of thing. A Pell-certified tech, under duress, would alter records quite cheerfully."

"Knowing there'd be traces."

"Knowing that, yes. That's an ears-only, not even for Bucklin.Yet"

"I well imagine."

They walked, he and Madison together, with security hindmost, along with Alan. The restaurant wasn't far, one of those quiet, pricey affairs the Old Man favored, randomly selected from half a dozen near the conference area.

First time in his life, JR thought, he might have gotten up even with the captains he shadowed.

"Dinner," Madison said, "and then no rest for you and Francie and Alan. I have messages I want carried."

The destination made sense. Immediately.

"We can't make headway with this station," Madison said. "So we go to the captains first. This station is begging for confrontation. They won't like it. But I think two ships will go with us without an argument. Don't plan on sleep tonight."

He
was supposed to approach another captain?
He
was supposed to carry out this end of the proposition?

It was one thing to talk in conference with the Old Man as certain back-up. It was another to walk onto another deck to persuade an independent merchanter to strong-arm a station-master tomorrow. Things could blow up. He could set negotiations back on a single failure to read signals. Or give the wrong captain information that could end up back in Oser-Hayes' hands, or hardening merchanter attitudes against them.

But he couldn't say no. That wasn't why they'd pushed him ahead in rank.

If they were late-night shopping, Vince wanted a tape store. They visited that, and Vince bought two tapes. Thirty minutes, in that operation, and it was high time, Fletcher decided, to get over-active junior-juniors back to the sleepover before Linda had her way and talked him into another sugared drink that would have them awake till the small hours.

"No," Fletcher said, to that idea.

Then Jeremy took interest in yet another curio shop, not yet sated with plastic snakes and seeds and little mineral curiosities. "Just one more," Jeremy said. "Just one more. "

If it made Jeremy happy. If it got them back to the sleep-over with everyone in a good mood.

This one was higher class, one of those kind of shops that was open during mainday and every other alterday, alterday traffic tending to lower-priced goods and cheaper amusements. The door opened to a melodious chime, advising the idle shopkeeper of visitors, and a portly man appeared. Justly dubious of junior-juniors in his shop, that was clear.

"Just window-shopping," Fletcher said, and the man continued to watch them; but he seemed a little easier in the realization of an older individual in charge of the rowdy junior traffic.

"Decadent," Linda said, looking around. "Really decadent stuff."

The word almost applied. There were plastic-encased bouquets, and mineral specimens, a pretty lot of crystals, and some truly odd geologic curiosities in a case that drew Fletcher's eye despite his determination to keep ubiquitous junior-junior elbows from knocking into vases and very pricey carvings in the tight quarters.

Out of Viking's mines, the label said, regarding the lot of specimens in the case, and the price said they were probably real-a crystal-encrusted ball, brilliant blue, on the top shelf; a polished specimen of iridescent webby stuff in matrix on the next shelf.

And, extravagantly expensive, and marked
museum quality
, a polished natural specimen on the next shelf, labeled Ammonnite, from Earth, North America. Fletcher's study told him it was probably real.

Real, and disturbing to find it here.

He was looking at that, when he became aware Jeremy was talking to the shopkeeper, wanting something from another cabinet. He didn't know what, in this place, Jeremy could possibly afford.

But he was amazed to see what the shopkeeper took out and laid on the counter at Jeremy's request.

Artifacts. Pieces of pottery.

"Earth," the shopkeeper said. "Tribal art. Three thousand years old. Bet you never saw anything like this."

Fletcher stopped breathing. He wasn't sure spacer kids understood what they were seeing.

But a native cultures specialist did. And a native cultures specialist knew the laws that said these specimens definitely weren't supposed to be here.

"Real, are they?" Fletcher asked, going over to look, but not to touch.

"Certificate of authenticity. Anyone you know a collector?"

He almost remarked,
Mediterranean
. But a spacer wasn't supposed to know that kind of detail.

"Got any downer stuff?" Jeremy piped up.

That got an apprehensive denial, a shake of the head, a wavering of the eyes.

Fletcher understood Jeremy's interest in curio shops the instant he heard the word
downer
in Jeremy's mouth. He bridged the moment's awkwardness with a dismissive wave toward the Old Earth pottery and a flip of his hand toward the rest of the shop. "I always had a curiosity," he said, playing Jeremy's game, knowing suddenly
exactly
what was behind Jeremy's new enthusiasm for curio shops and the other two junior-juniors' uncharacteristic support of his interest in shops where they couldn't afford the merchandise. "I read a lot about the downers. No market for the pottery. But I've got a market for downer stuff."

The shopkeeper shook his head. "That's illegal stuff."

Fletcher drew a slow breath, considered the kids, Jeremy, the situation. "Say I come back later."

"Maybe." The shopkeeper went back to the back of the shop, took a card from the wall, brought it back and wrote a number on it.

"Here."

Fletcher took the card, looked at it, saw a phone number, and a logo. "Is that where?"

"Maybe." The shopkeeper's eyes went to the kids, and back again.

"They're my legs," Fletcher said, the language of the underworld of Pell docks. "You want that market, I can make it, no question. You in?"

"See the man," the shopkeeper said "Not me. No way."

"Understood." Fletcher slipped the card into his pocket

"Specialties," the shopkeeper said.

"Loud and clear." Fletcher shoved at Linda's shoulder, and got her and the other two juniors into motion.

Jeremy gave him a sidelong look as they cleared the frontage, walking along a noisy dockside of neon light and small shops and sleepovers.

"Clever kid," Fletcher said. He'd had no idea the track Jeremy had been on, clearly, in his sudden interest in curio shops.

"I said we'd get it back," Jeremy said.

"We?"

"I mean we."

"No."

"What do you mean,
no
? We're on to where there's downer stuff! This is where that guy will sell it off clear to Cyteen!"

"I mean this is illegal stuff. I mean these people will
kill
you. All of you! This is serious, you three. It's not a game."

"We know that," Jeremy said in a tone that chilled his blood. Jeremy, Fletcher suddenly thought, who'd grown up in war. Linda and Vince, who had. All of them knew what risk was. Knew that people died. Knew
how
they died, very vividly.

"
Champlain's
in port," Vince said. "So's the thief."

"So?" Fletcher said. "They might not sell it here. Not on the open market."

"Bet they do," Linda said. "I bet Jeremy's right."

"I don't care if he's right." He'd been maneuvered all day long by three clever kids. Or by one clever kid, granted Vince and Linda might not have suspected a thing until it was clear to all of them what Jeremy was after. "This isn't like searching the ship. Look, we tell JR. He'll tell the Old Man and the police can give the shop a walk-through." It sounded stupid once he was saying it. The police wouldn't find it. He knew a dozen dodges himself. He knew how shopkeepers who were fencing contraband hid their illegal goods.

"We can just sort of walk in there and find out," Jeremy said. "We're in civvies, right? Who's to know? And then we can know where to point the cops. I mean, hell, we're just kids walking around looking at the stuff. We won't do anything. We can
find out
, Fletcher. Us. Ourselves."

It was tempting—to know what had happened to Satin's gift, and to get justice on the lowlife that had pilfered it. They could even create a trail that could give
Finity
a way to come at
Champlain
, who had the nerve to sue them:
that
word was out even to the junior-juniors. He'd lay odds the crewman's thieving had been personal, pocket-lining habit, nothing
Champlain's
captain even knew about—just the regular activity of a shipful of bad habits, all lining their pockets at any opportunity. The thief had been after money, ID's, tapes, anything he could filch; and the lowlife by total chance had hit the jackpot of a lifetime in Jeremy's room. Sell the hisa stick, here, in a port a lot looser than Pell, a port where curios were pricey and labeled with
museum quality
?

Jeremy was right. It was a pipeline straight to Cyteen, for pottery that shop wasn't supposed to have—he guessed so, at least. Maybe for plants and biologicals illegal to have. Maybe the trade was going both ways, smuggling rejuv out to Earth, rejuv and no knowing what: Cyteen's expertise in biologicals of all sorts was more than legend—and Cyteen biologicals were anathema in the Downbelow study programs—something they feared more than they did the easy temptation to humans to introduce Earth organisms, which at least had grown up in an ecosystem instead of being engineered for Cyteen, specifically to replace native Cyteen microbes. He'd become aware how great a fear there'd been, especially among scientists on Pell during the War, that Cyteen, outgunned and outmaneuvered in space by the Fleet, would use biologics as a way of destroying Downbelow. Or Earth. They hadn't; but now they were spreading on the illicit route. Every scientist concerned with planets knew that.

And it immeasurably offended him that Satin's gift might become currency in a trade that, after all the other hazards humans had brought the hisa, posed the deadliest threat of all.

Go walk with Great Sun?

Take a hisa memory into space? What could Satin remember, but a world that trade aimed to destroy for no other reason than profit and convenience?

He looked at the address of the card they'd gotten. It was in Blue. It was in the best part of Blue, right in the five hundreds. They were standing at a shop in the threes.
Finity
was docked at Blue 2,
Boreale
at Blue 5, and
Champlain
at 14. Being in charge of junior-junior security—he'd made it his business to look at the boards and know that information.

"Come on," Jeremy said. "We can at least
know
."

They'd had the entire ship in an uproar, looking for what wasn't aboard; and what Jeremy had known wasn't aboard. Now Jeremy argued for finding out where the hisa stick really was.

And maybe that in itself was a good thing for the whole ship. Maybe
Finity
officers could do something personally to get it back, as the kids could have a part in finding it, and maybe then the whole ship could settle things within itself.

Maybe
he
could settle things in himself, then. Maybe he could find a means not to destroy one more situation for himself, and to get the stick back, so he'd not have to spend a life wondering what Cyteen shop had bought a hisa memory… and to whom it might have sold it, a curiosity, to hang on some wall

"All right," he said, suddenly resolved. "We take a look. Only a look. It's not for us to do anything about it. We can at least look and see whether that guy back there is putting us on. Which he probably is. Do you hear me?"

"Yessir," Jeremy said, the most fervent
yessir
he'd heard out of Jeremy in weeks.

"Yessir," Vince said, and Linda bobbed her head.

"Behave," he said severely, and took the troops toward the five hundreds.