The smell of burnt wood mingled with more exotic smells from the stored goods that had caught fire in several warehouses. The flames shooting out of the doomed buildings had been tremendous, even Lalonde’s rain had taken hours to extinguish them.
Yuri had milled around watching along with the rest of the rioters last night, mesmerized with the destruction. The flames had lit something inside him, something that felt joyful at the sight of a young terrified Ivet reduced to a bloody chunk of unrecognizable meat beneath the crowd’s clubs. He had yelled encouragement until his throat was hoarse.
“Age?” the sheriff asked.
“Twenty,” Yuri lied. He was seventeen, but he already had a reasonable beard. He crossed his fingers, hoping it would be enough. There were over two hundred people waiting behind him, all wanting their chance now the sheriffs had started recruiting again.
The sheriff glanced up from his processor block. “Sure you are. You ever used a weapon, son?”
“I eat chikrows every week, shoot them myself. I know how to move around in the jungle OK. And I got Randolf, trained him all by myself, he’s an ace baiter, knows how to fight, knows how to hunt. He’ll be a big help upriver, you get two of us for the price of one.”
The sheriff leant forwards slightly, peering over the edge of the table.
Randolf bared his stained fangs. “Killl Ivezss,” the beast snarled.
“OK,” the sheriff grunted. “You willing to take orders? We don’t need people who aren’t prepared to work in a team.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Reckon you might, at that. You got a change of clothes?”
Grinning, Yuri twisted round to show him the canvas duffle bag slung over his shoulder; his laser rifle was strapped to it.
The sheriff picked a vermilion-coloured deputy’s badge from the pile beside his processor block. “There you go. Get yourself down to the Swithland and find a bunk. We’ll swear you in officially once we’re underway. And muzzle that bloody sayce, I don’t want him chewing up colonists before we get there.”
Yuri rubbed the black scales between Randolf’s battered ears. “Don’t you worry about old Randolf, he ain’t going to hurt no one, not till I tell him to.”
“Next!” the sheriff called.
Yuri Wilkin settled his hat firmly on his head, and headed for the sun-drenched harbour outside, a song in his heart and mayhem in mind.
“Gods, I’ve seen some rough planets in my time, Joshua,” Ashly Hanson said. “But this one takes the biscuit. There isn’t even anyone at the spaceport who wanted to buy copies of Jezzibella’s MF album, let alone a black-market distribution net.” He took a drink of juice from his long glass, it was a purplish liquid with plenty of ice bobbing around, some aboriginal fruit. The pilot never touched alcohol while the Lady Macbeth was docked to a station or in a parking orbit.
Joshua sipped his glass of bitter, which was warm and carried a punch almost as strong as some spirits he’d tasted. At least it had a decent head.
The pub they were drinking in was called the Crashed Dumper, a wooden barnlike structure at the end of the road that linked the spaceport with Durringham. Various time-expired spaceplane components were fastened up against the walls, the most prominent a compressor fan from one of the McBoeings that took up most of the end wall, with a couple of the fat blades buckled from a bird impact. The pub was used by spaceport staff along with the pilots and starship crews. It was, allegedly, one of the classier pubs in Durringham.
If this was refinement, Joshua didn’t like to think what the rest of the city’s hostelries must be like.
“I’ve been on worse,” Warlow growled. The bass harmonics set up vibrations on the surface of the brightlime in his bulbous brandy glass.
“Where?” Ashly demanded.
Joshua ignored them. This was their second day in Durringham, and he was starting to worry. The day Ashly had flown them down there had been some sort of riot next to the river. Everything had shut down, shops, warehouses, government offices. Spaceport procedures had been minimal, but then he suspected they were always like that on Lalonde. Ashly was right, this was one massively primitive colony. Today had been little better; the Governor’s industrial secretary had put him in touch with a Durringham timber merchant. The address turned out to be a small office down near the waterfront. Closed, naturally. Enquiries had eventually traced the owner, Mr Purcell, to a nearby pub. He assured Joshua a thousand tonnes of mayope was no problem. “You can’t give it away down here, we’ve got stocks backlogged halfway up the Juliffe.” He quoted a price of thirty-five thousand fuseodollars inclusive, and promised deliveries could start to the spaceport tomorrow. The wood was a ridiculous price, but Joshua didn’t argue. He even paid a two thousand fuseodollar deposit.
Joshua, Ashly, and Warlow had gone back to the spaceport on their hired power bikes (and the rental charge on those was bloody legalized robbery) to try to arrange for a McBoeing charter to ship the wood up to Lady Mac.
That had taken the rest of the day, and another three thousand fuseodollars in bribe money.
It wasn’t the money which bothered him particularly; even taking Lalonde’s necessary lubrication into account the mayope was only a small percentage of the cost of a Norfolk flight. Joshua was used to datavised deals, and instant access to anybody he wanted via the local communication net. On Lalonde, where there was no net, and few people with neural nanonics, he was beginning to feel out of his depth.
When he had ridden back into town in the late afternoon to find Mr Purcell and confirm they had a McBoeing lined up, the timber merchant was nowhere to be found. Joshua retreated to the Crashed Dumper in a dark mood. He wasn’t at all sure the mayope would even turn up tomorrow; and they had to leave in six days to stand any chance of securing a cargo of Norfolk Tears from a roseyard merchant. Six days, and he didn’t have any alternative to mayope. It had seemed such a good idea.
He took another gulp of his bitter. The pub was filling up as the spaceport staff came off shift. Over in one corner an audio block was playing a ballad which some of the customers were singing along to. Large fans spun listlessly overhead, trying to circulate some of the humid air.
“Captain Calvert?”
Joshua looked up.
Marie Skibbow was dressed in a tight-fitting sleeveless green stretch blouse, and a short pleated black skirt. Her thick hair was neatly plaited. She was carrying a circular tray loaded with empty glasses.
“Now this is what I call improved service,” Ashly said brightly.
“That’s me,” Joshua said. Jesus, but she had tremendous legs. Nice face too, ever so slightly wiser than her age.
“I understand you’re looking for a cargo of mayope, is that right?” Marie asked.
“Does everybody in town know?” Joshua asked.
“Just about. A visit from an independent trader starship isn’t exactly common around here. If we weren’t having all this trouble with the Quallheim Counties and the anti-Ivet riots you’d be the most gossiped over item in Durringham.”
“I see.”
“Can I join you?”
“Sure.” He pushed out one of the vacant chairs. People had tended to avoid their table, it was one of the reasons he’d brought Warlow down.
Only someone who was stoned out of his brain would try and tangle with the amount of boosted muscle the old cosmonik packed into his giant frame.
Marie sat down and fixed Joshua with an uncompromising gaze. “Would you be interested in taking on an extra crew-member?”
“You?” Joshua asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you have neural nanonics?”
“No.”
“Then, I’m sorry, but the answer’s no. I have a full complement anyway.”
“How much do you charge for a trip?”
“Where to?”
“Wherever you’re going next.”
“If we can acquire a cargo of mayope, I’m going to Norfolk. I’d charge you thirty thousand fuseodollars
for passage in zero-tau, more if you wanted a cabin. Starflight isn’t cheap.”
Marie’s air of sophisticated confidence faltered slightly. “Yes, I know.”
“You want to leave pretty badly?” Ashly asked sympathetically.
She dropped her gaze and nodded. “Wouldn’t you? I lived on Earth until last year. I hate it here, I’m not staying no matter what it costs. I want civilization.”
“Earth,” Ashly mused whimsically. “Lord, I haven’t been there for a couple of centuries. Wouldn’t call it particularly civilized even back then.”
“He’s a time hopper,” Joshua explained as Marie gave the pilot a confused look. “And if you hate this place as much as you say, then Norfolk isn’t where you want to go either. It’s strictly a pastoral planet. They have a policy of minimal technological usage, and the government enforces it pretty rigorously from what I hear. Sorry.”
She gave a small shrug. “I never thought it would be that easy.”
“The idea of signing on with a ship is a good one,” Ashly said. “But you really need neural nanonics before a captain will consider you.”
“Yes, I know, I’m saving up for a set.”
Joshua put on a neutral expression. “Good.”
Marie actually laughed, he was being so careful not to hurt her feelings.
“You think I waitress for a living? That I’m a dumb waster girl saving up tips and dreaming of better days?”
“Er ... no.”
“I waitress here in the evenings because it’s the place the starship crews come. This way I get to hear of any openings before the rest of Durringham. And yes there are the tips, too, every little helps. But for real money I bought myself a secretarial job at the Kulu Embassy, in their Commercial Office.”
“Bought a job?” Warlow rumbled. His sculpted dark-yellow face was incapable of expression, but the voice booming from his chest diaphragm carried a heavy query. People turned to look as he drowned out the ballad.
“Of course. You think they give away a gig like that? The embassy pays its staff in Kulu pounds.” It was the second hardest currency in the Confederation after fuseodollars. “That’s where I’m going to get the money to pay for my neural nanonics.”
“Ah, now I see.” Joshua raised his glass in salute. He admired the girl’s toughness—almost as much as he admired her figure.
“That, or the deputy ambassador’s son might get me off,” Marie said quietly. “He’s twenty-two, and he likes me a lot. If we married then obviously I’d go back to Kulu with him once his father’s tour was over.”
Ashly grinned and knocked back some of his fruit juice. A suspect grumble emerged from Warlow’s chest.
Marie gave Joshua a questioning glance. “So. Do you still want your mayope, Captain?”
“You think you can get me some?”
“Like I said, I work in the Commercial Office. And I’m good at it, too,” she said fiercely. “I know more about this town’s economic structure than my boss. You’re buying your cargo from Dodd Purcell, right?”
“Yes,” Joshua said cautiously.
“Thought so; he’s the nephew of the governor’s industrial secretary. Dodd Purcell is a complete screwup, but he’s a good partner for his uncle. All official tenders for timber go through the company he owns, except it’s actually his uncle’s, and all it consists of is an office down at the port. They don’t actually own a yard, or even any timber. The LDC pays through the nose, but nobody queries it because no lower quotes ever make it past the industrial secretary’s office. All that happens is Purcell contracts a real lumberyard to supply whatever project the LDC is paying for; they do all the work while he and uncle cream off thirty per cent. No effort, and all profit.”
Warlow’s chair creaked alarmed protests as his bulk shifted round. He tilted the brandy glass to his mouth aperture, the brightlime surged out, almost sucked down into his inlet nozzle. “Smart bastards.”
“Jesus,” Joshua said. “And I’ll bet the price goes up tomorrow.”
“I expect so,” Marie said. “And then again the day after, then it will become a rush order to meet your deadline, so you’ll have to pay a surcharge.”
Joshua put his empty glass down on the stained table. “All right, you win. What’s your counter-offer?”
“You are paying Purcell thirty-five thousand fuseodollars, which is about thirty per cent over the odds. I’m offering to put you in touch with a lumber-yard direct, they’ll supply the wood at the market rate, and you pay me five per cent of the difference.”
“Suppose we just go to a lumber-yard direct now you’ve told us what’s happening?” Ashly asked.
Marie smiled sweetly. “Which one? Are you going back to the Governor’s industrial secretary for a list? Once you’ve picked one, do you know if it was burnt down in the riots? Where is it, and how do you get to it? Parts of this town are very unhealthy for visitors, especially after the riots. Does it have that much mayope in stock or is the owner stringing you along? What are you going to use to transport it out to the spaceport? And how much time can you spend sorting all that out? Even a relatively honest lumber-yard owner is going to catch on that you’ve got a deadline once you start fretting because you haven’t got permits and procedures smoothed out in advance. I mean, God, it took you almost a day to hire a McBoeing. Bet you didn’t buy energy for it either, they’ll hit you for that tomorrow. And when they scent blood it’ll be Purcell all over again.”
Joshua held up a warning hand to Ashly. Nobody at the spaceport had mentioned energy for the McBoeing. Jesus! On a normal planet it would be part of the charter; and of course he couldn’t use his neural nanonics to access the contract and run a legal program check because his copy of the fucking thing was printed out on paper. Paper, for Christ’s sake. “I’ll deal with you,” he told Marie. “But I only pay on delivery to orbit, and that includes your fee. So you’re going to have to clear all those obstacles you mentioned out of our way, because I don’t pay a single fuseodollar once those six days are up.”
She stuck out her hand, and after a moment’s hesitation Joshua shook.
“We’re sleeping in my spaceplane, seeing as how it has the only functional air-conditioner on the entire planet,” he told her. “I want you there at seven o’clock tomorrow morning ready to take us to this lumber-yard of yours.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” She stood and picked up her tray.
Joshua pulled a wad of Lalonde francs from his jacket pocket and peeled a few off. “We’ll have the same again, and have a large one yourself. I think you’ve just earned it.”
Marie plucked the notes from him and stuffed them in a side pocket on her skirt. She gave them all a ludicrously sassy twitch with her backside as she walked off to the bar.
Ashly watched her go with a lugubrious expression, then drained his juice in one gulp. “God help that ambassador’s son.”
Darcy and Lori spent the day after the riots preparing for their trip.
There was Kelven Solanki to brief on the situation, and their eagles Abraham and Catlin to take out of zero-tau, equipment to make ready.
Above all, they had to find transport. The harbour-master’s office had been damaged in the riot, so there was no list available of the boats in dock. In the afternoon they sent the eagles skimming over the polyp rings searching for something they could use.
<
> Darcy asked. Abraham was turning lazy circles over harbour seven, his enhanced retinas providing an uncluttered image of the boats moored up against the quays.
<> Lori exclaimed in dismay.
<>
<>
<>
The port still hadn’t recovered from the riot when they made their way down to harbour seven first thing the next morning. Huge piles of ashes which used to be buildings were still radiating heat from their smouldering cores, giving off thin streamers of acrid smoke. Long runnels of mushed ashes
meandered away from their bases, sluiced out by the rain; they had coagulated under the morning sunlight, looking like damp lava flows.
Gangs of workers were raking through the piles with long mayope poles, searching for anything salvageable. They passed one ruined transients’ warehouse where a stack of cargo-pods had been pulled from the gutted remains, the warped composite resembling surrealistic sculptures. Darcy watched a forlorn family prise open a badly contorted marsupium shell with deep scorch marks on the oyster-coloured casing. The infant quadruped had been roasted in its chemical sleep, reduced to a shrivelled black mummy. Darcy couldn’t even tell what species it was.
Lori had to turn away from the empty-faced colonists scrabbling at the pods’ distorted lids, shiny new ship-suits smeared with dirt and sweat.
They had come to Lalonde with such high hopes, and now they were faced with utter ruin before they’d even been given a chance at a life.
<> she said.
<> Darcy replied. <>
<> she said sorrowfully. The afternoon and evening of the riot there had been a steady stream of people walking past the Ward Molecular warehouse carrying pods and cartons of equipment they had looted.
They walked round harbour seven until they came to the quay where the Coogan was moored. The ageing tramp trader was in a dilapidated state, with holes in its cabin roof and a long gash in the wood up at the prow where it had struck some snag. Len Buchannan had only just managed to get out of the harbour ahead of the rioters, flinging planks from the cabin walls into the furnace hopper in his desperation.
Gail Buchannan was sitting in her usual place outside the galley doorway, coolie hat shading her sweating face, a kitchen knife almost engulfed by her huge hand. She was chopping some long vegetable root, slices falling into a pewter-coloured pan at her feet. Her eyes fastened shrewdly on Darcy and Lori as they stepped onto the decking. “You again. Len! Len, get yourself out here, we’ve got visitors. Now, Len!”