Owner's Share (Trader's Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper) (17 page)

“Put on some civvies, Ms. Arellone, and nothing too obvious in terms of cutlery, please?”

She grinned and headed for her room while I sighed and went back to mine to finish dressing for dinner.

I hadn’t had a decent suit in stanyers, and still had the datachip engraved with Henri Roubaille’s initial on it in my grav trunk, but in all my travels had not yet found his like. Instead of civvies, I chose my dress uniform. Granted it wasn’t as stylish as, say a Roubaille or even a Bresheau, but it was better than off the rack, and it fit well.

On an orbital, dress blues wouldn’t stand out, and they were always in fashion. I finished dressing and reached for the shiny new stars, but on a whim, dug in the top of my grav trunk and pulled out a pair of old, well-worn ones. They weren’t polished to a high sheen, nor were they pristine. One star had a point that wasn’t quite all there. They’d belonged to Fredi deGrut’s grandfather, and he’d handed them down to her in the hope that she’d make captain one day. She had, and she passed them on to me when she retired. I admired the dull glow reflected from the surface of the old metal. In less than a tick, I fastened them to my collar tabs and, after one last check in the mirror, went out to meet Ms. Arellone in the sitting room.

“You’re wearing that?” she asked.

“What’s wrong with it?”

She sighed. “You’re right, but you need to get some better clothing. You’ll be able to afford it soon.”

Stung by her words, I shot back, “I can afford it now, but I can’t find a decent tailor!”

For her part, I couldn’t fault Ms. Arellone’s choice of dress. A close fitting black leather jacket over a shockingly white men’s oxford shirt and a pair of jeans tucked into a stylish pair of black boots with a collection of straps, chains, and metal buckles.

“Do I pass, Captain?” she asked with a lilt to her voice.

“Sorry, yes. Very nice, actually.”

She blinked, obviously surprised by my approval.

At 1950 we headed for the lift. “Do you have a book? Something to entertain yourself with?” I asked as we left the lobby of the Lagrange Point.

“I’ll be fine, Skipper, and I can’t watch your back while I’m reading a book, so relax.” She murmured her response in a way that surprised me. It was loud enough for me to hear, but I doubt anybody more than five meters away even realized she’d spoken.

I sighed and didn’t respond, instead leading the way to the lift and riding up the two decks to Marcel’s. As we came around the promenade, and saw the facade of the restaurant, Ms. Arellone grinned up at me. “Have a nice time, Skipper. I’ll just join the boys across the way.”

With that cryptic remark, she peeled off and walked along the inside curve of the promenade, idly window shopping as she went, pacing my progress around the curve of the orbital. As we got up to where the restaurant’s front opened to the public I saw that not quite directly across the way, a small bistro served an eclectic collection of people at a counter, and on small tables set up like a sidewalk cafe. I didn’t take time to really look, but while there were some older people enjoying the ambiance, most of the patrons were either shockingly chic or dressed in conservative suits. The suits surprised me until I realized that every one of them reminded me of Kurt. I snickered to myself a little. I wasn’t very surprised to see Ms. Arellone sidle up to a table where one of the shockingly chic young men sat and help herself to a chair—one where she had a clear view of the door to Marcel’s and both directions along the promenade.

The maitre d greeted me with an appropriately supercilious arch of the eyebrow.

“Maloney?” I asked.

The eyebrow retracted at the name. He consulted his list ostentatiously—a paper list with names hand written on it. I knew he didn’t actually look at it, because I spotted the name, even upside down and across the top of the desk. It was on the other side of the page from where he slid one long, immaculately manicured finger along. I wondered if he could actually read, or if he were merely well trained.

“Yes. Of course.” He turned and walked into the restaurant without watching to see if I’d follow. “Right this way, Captain.”

I followed, but slowly, strolling through the restaurant and observing the clothing the men wore. The maître d’ stopped at a booth with a curved banquet behind a half-oval table. He turned with a flourish expecting me to be on his heels, and exhibiting a flash of exasperation when he had to wait for me to catch up.

“Your party, Captain.” He bit off the words and flounced away without waiting to see if I recognized anybody at the table or not.

Kirsten Kingsley flashed me a smile from the backside of the booth. “Captain, so nice of you to join us. Please have a seat.” She indicated a place at the end of the banquet beside a rather attractive woman, perhaps in her late twenties, and dressed in a simple, camel colored suit.

“Thank you, Ms. Kingsley,” I said with a smile, and nodding slightly.

“Kirsten, please. We’re among friends here tonight.” She smiled around at her dining companions. “Across from you, Veronica Dalmati.”

“Charmed, madam,” I started to get up but she impatiently waved me back to my seat.

“Sit, dear boy. We’ll shake hands later if you like.”

I didn’t remember the last time somebody called me ‘dear boy’ but the woman was certainly qualified. She wore a smartly tailored pinstripe business suit in charcoal gray wool over a cream colored blouse. Her sharp green eyes peered from beneath snowy brows, and her lips pursed in a suppressed smile. No one would mistake her for a kindly grandmother, although I suspected she’d be fun to play cards with.

Ms. Kingsley continued. “Next to her, this distinguished looking gentleman is William Simpson.”

I nodded to him, and he nodded back. “Captain,” he said in acknowledgment. Another centenarian, if I had to guess. Bald as an egg and dressed in rumpled tweed with a knit tie the likes of which I hadn’t seen since I’d left Neris; he had that air of
professor emeritus
about him.

“Dr. Simpson?” I hazarded.

His eyebrows twitched in surprise. “A half century ago, Captain. The tweed gave it away?” He had a pleasant smile that actually reached his eyes.

Kirsten looked surprised. “Willie? You’re a doctor? All these years and I never knew?”

He reached over with one rather spindly hand and patted her forearm. “No reason you should, Kirsten. I haven’t used the title since before you were born, I suspect.”

He inclined his head to me in a kind of wry salute. “And can you guess my field, Captain?”

I narrowed my eyes in concentration, squinting as if looking back through the years. “I’d guess...economics?”

“Close enough,” he grinned. “Intuition?”

“We’re known by the company we keep, sir.” I glanced around the table.

His laugh was a hoarse whisper but he nodded. “Indeed, Captain, indeed.”

Kirsten had a strange look on her face when I looked to her for the next introduction but she continued playing the mistress of ceremonies role by turning to the woman beside me. Before Kirsten could speak, the woman turned a carefully blank face to me and said, “Perhaps you can guess who I am, Captain.”

Her softly tailored suit looked like cashmere, but it was the eyes that gave her away.

“You have your father’s eyes, Ms. Maloney.”

“You seem pretty sure of yourself, Captain Wang.”

I considered it. Kirsten’s face told me I was right, and the couple across from us watched with an eagerness that bordered on fascination.

“Situational awareness, Ms. Maloney.”

One perfectly formed eyebrow arched briefly before reverting to a position of affected disinterest. “Situational awareness, Captain?”

“If this meeting is what I believe it is, and our charming dinner companions are who I believe them to be, then the only person left is you.”

“Are you always this arrogant, Captain?”

“No, actually, I’ve got the arrogance out on home trial this week. If I like it, I get to keep it. If not, I revert to simple boorishness.”

I hoped I looked confident and not merely arrogant. The elderly pair across the table had to be investors that Kirsten had rounded up, and impressing them would be the point of the dinner. The heir was my test.

The waiter interrupted our brittle standoff, and we placed orders all around. I ordered a braised beefalo dish with fresh carrots and a sautéed potato base. Veronica ordered a chicken dish that came with a light colored sauce, served over steamed rice. Dr. Simpson ordered a pork chop with extra apple sauce, while Kirsten and Christine both ordered grilled fish.

The meal started with a light soup, and carried through a vast collection of possible desserts, none of which I had room for.

Over the course of the meal, I learned a great deal about Ms. Dalmati and her collection of late husbands, something of Dr. Simpson, and almost nothing of Christine Maloney, other than she was severely piqued, and I didn’t need to be a mind reader to guess the cause.

What I didn’t learn was what the manipulative Ms. Kingsley had in mind.

When the last of the plates had been cleared, I thought we’d get down to business. I was surprised when the party, in fact, broke up.

Ms. Dalmati started the exodus. “Kirsten, my dear, it was lovely. Thank you for inviting me.” She slid sideways off the bench to stand beside of the table.

I stood and offered my hand. “It was nice meeting you, Ms. Dalmati.”

“Call me, Roni, dear boy. Ms. Dalmati makes me feel like I’m somebody’s grandmother.”

The acerbic Dr. Simpson piped up. “You’re several somebody’s great grandmother, Roni. Stop flirting.” His jibe was offered in good humor, and Ms. Dalmati returned a very un-grandmotherly hand gesture and a sparkling smile in return.

Kirsten seemed a bit shocked, but Dr. Simpson pursed his lips and blew her a kiss before extricating himself from the seat, and stepping up beside her. Age had bowed him a bit, but he didn’t seem overly discommoded by it. As he cleared the edge of the table he offered his hand to me as well.

“Thank you for a most entertaining evening, Captain.”

“Thank you, sir. It was my distinct pleasure.” Oddly, it was. I really liked the rascally old couple, and it came to me that they
were
a couple as they stood there.

“Kiss ass,” he muttered, but he smiled. I’m not sure anybody else at the table heard it as Ms. Dalmati was reaching over to speak to Christine Maloney. He patted my shoulder in a decidedly avuncular manner and added, “Come see me tomorrow at my office. We’ll talk turkey.”

“Your office, sir?”

He frowned and then pulled a card out of his side pocket and pressed it into my hand. “My office.” He winked at me and stepped up to offer his farewells to Ms. Maloney as well, before taking Ms. Dalmati by the arm and leading her off between the tables.

Christine Maloney took advantage of the open bench to make good her own escape. Standing she frowned at Kirsten and said, “Keep me informed, Kirsten.” She looked at me and sighed before striding off between the tables.

Kirsten sat on the far side of the table, her head shaking back and forth and a worried frown on her face. She saw me looking and immediately brightened her expression. “That went well.”

I barked a laugh so loud that people at the next table looked up in annoyance.

She covered her mouth with a hand, and I thought she was stifling a giggle or two of her own.

“Wanna talk about it?” I asked.

“Yes, but not here.” She slid out of the booth, standing and stretching.

We wandered outside, and I saw Ms. Arellone had amassed a collection of pretty young things at the table with her. She saw me come out of the restaurant with Kirsten and frowned. I gave her a little shake of the head, and the frown deepened.

Kirsten and I strolled very slowly along the promenade, and, after a few moments, she glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. “You did pretty well.”

“Thanks. Only pretty well?”

“Yes. The mentalist act in the beginning made you look a bit like a know-it-all, but you worked through it.”

“Thanks for putting me on the spot,” I muttered.

“I wasn’t sure who I’d manage to convince to show up. I wasn’t even sure Christine would be there.” She gave me another glance. “She’s pretty angry about the whole situation.”

“I don’t blame her.”

“You don’t?”

“No! How would you feel if your millionaire father hung your inheritance on enforced servitude for a year.”

“Billionaire,” she corrected.

“Even worse.”

“Why enforced servitude?” she asked.

“What would you call it? She has to take a job she doesn’t want in an environment she doesn’t care about for a pay check that’s smaller than the interest on her last dividend check.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

“But how else is she going to learn about how a clipper works?”

“That’s not what I’m supposed to teach her.”

“It’s not?”

I shook my head. “If it were, she’d be on a ship to Port Newmar right now.”

Kirsten digested that for a time, staring blankly into the window of a high end jewelry shop. “Then what are you supposed to teach her?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure.”

She shot me a withering stare. “You said you knew.”

“I said I think I know. Big difference.”

She shrugged and continued walking. I fell into step with her. “What do you think?”

“Well at first it I thought it was to give her a taste for the distances that we’re talking about here. Hauling freight is a lot more than just pick it up here, and drop it off there. It’s a long, cold, dark walk home if things go wrong, and whoever has the helm on your enterprise needs to have a good grasp of that.”

She considered that for a bit. “That actually sounds pretty good.” She thought about that for a moment before looking up at me. “You don’t think that’s it?”

“Well, can’t hurt, but no. I think it’s more fundamental, if a bit clichéd.”

“Okay, now you’ve got me really curious.”

“I think it’s respect.”

Kirsten stopped in mid stride and turned to me. “Respect? What? For herself?” She shook her head. “Trust me, that’s one woman who is perfectly comfortable in her own skin.”