She slowed down, feeling the slight difference in the way her foot hit the ground, noticing the odd quality of the light, and the smells . . . What was that? A gust of wind lifted her cape and the smell grew stronger. Not unpleasant or pleasant, just enticingly different.
The street they were on curved to the right and ended at a tangle of buildings beyond which stretched an undulating surface of dirty yellow water. In the distance, she could see the dark ragged line of another shore. She called up her infovisor: it was an ocean . . . or rather, this was a bay, and the ocean lay off to the right somewhere. The Greater Ocean, on their maps. Ships carried cargo on that water, just as on Slotter Key; she eyed them as she walked along the street that paralleled the docks. Big ones, little ones, in a bewildering variety of designs: high at the prow with low, rounded sterns, high at both ends with a straight low section in the middle . . . she had no idea which design was meant for which service. Would the escort?
“What kinds of cargoes do they carry?” she asked.
“Lot of it’s wood,” he said. “Over there, it’s the mills—behind them, the forest still. Food and fiber, too, from the farmland away east of here. Riverboats come down with ores and such from the mountains.”
“What kind of local transport organization?”
“There’s the Amalgamated Transport Trust—that’s a group of shipping companies, agree on rates and that kind of thing.”
She had already looked that up and was again a little surprised at herself for checking up on the escort service.
Across the pavement on the shoreside were tall blank-fronted buildings—obvious warehouses—bearing names and logos which meant, to this world, much what Vatta Transport meant to hers. Tall doors stood open; she toyed with the idea of going in and introducing herself to a manager or two, but the ships were too interesting. She could do that tomorrow if a data search suggested it might be profitable. She came back in time to dress for dinner.
Dinner at the legation was almost as elaborate as the fanciest dinners at home. The consul had invited several government officials to dine with them; Ky was very glad she’d worn one of the formal outfits her mother had insisted on.
“You’re very young, aren’t you, to captain an interstellar ship?” asked the wife of someone in the Waterways Commission. The implant, loaded with information the consul provided, handed her the names: Cateros, Sylis and Max.
“Fairly young, yes,” Ky said.
“I wouldn’t let my daughter go out there, so dangerous, don’t you agree, Max?” The woman laid a hand on her husband’s sleeve; he turned abruptly.
“What? Sanna? Ridiculous.” He smiled briefly at Ky. “Not at all the same, Captain Vatta. You have been trained to this life for most of yours, no doubt.” He didn’t wait for her answer before going on. “And what do you think of our homeworld, Captain? We’re still in the early stages of development, but already the waterways form a fine transportation network.”
“It’s lovely,” Ky said. “I haven’t seen much of it yet.”
“But you did see the harbor today. Quite roomy. As development proceeds, we’ll need all that space.”
“If it doesn’t silt up,” said someone down the table. Ky queried her infochip: Samfer Wellin, Minister of Agriculture.
“It won’t silt up,” Minister Cateros said. “My engineers assure me that the scour of the Big Yellow will continue to keep it cleaned out.” He glared down the table and the Minister of Agriculture subsided, then opened another topic.
“Captain Vatta, I understand you’re going to be talking to the EDs about importing some machinery for us . . .”
Clearly Belinta was not a world given to keeping secrets. Ky just managed not to glance at the Slotter Key consul. Had he been the source, or was it the talkative customs official? “I was told up on your station that equipment you’d ordered had not been delivered, and was urgently needed,” she said.
“That’s true. Was supposed to come last year and didn’t. We need it badly; we’re points below projections on production because of it—”
“That’s not your department, Wellin. Your job is getting the most out of what we’ve already got.” Minister Cateros seemed to puff up like a bullfrog. Ky looked down at her plate. She didn’t need a teaching tape to know that the men were rivals, and that Cateros thought he outranked Wellin.
“I can’t plow fields with polo ponies,” Wellin said. He stabbed a slice of roast as if it were Cateros. “If we’d imported heavy stock as originally ordered—”
“They’d be stuck in the muck up there,” Cateros said. “You just have to get the job done, Wellin . . .”
“Do you play polo?” Cateros’ wife asked Ky with a desperate smile.
The men stopped and stared at her.
Ky shook her head. “No. I do ride, but I’ve never played polo. Not formally anyway.”
“Not formally? What does that mean?” Cateros sounded grumpy still.
“Oh, my brothers and I had read about the game, so we sneaked some brooms out of the pantry, and tried it.”
“You grew up on a planet?” asked Wellin’s wife. “There was room for horses?”
“Oh yes,” Ky said. She wondered if the woman thought all spacer crews grew up on ships. “Slotter Key has plenty of room . . . where I live, many people ride.” Always be ready to talk about any neutral topic, her father had said. You never know what it might be, but be ready.
“You should come to a match while you’re here,” Cateros said. “You can use our box.”
“Thank you,” Ky said. “I don’t know how much time I’ll have.”
“There’s a match day after tomorrow on the City grounds. If you don’t have an appointment.”
“Thank you,” Ky said again.
“I’ll see you have my number,” Cateros said. He looked at the ornate timepiece on the wall. “Good heavens, it’s late. We’re due at Erol’s wedding rehearsal, Sylis. We must go—you will excuse us,” he said to the consul. They both stood, as did Sylis, looking confused. The others all stood, until Cateros and his wife had left. Then, in a straggle, the other Belintans excused themselves, leaving Ky facing the consul across a cluttered table.
“That went well,” the consul said.
“Really?” Ky said. “They seemed angry to me.”
“They hate each other, but I got them to come and sit through most of a meal together. Captain Vatta, if you can possibly stand it, please go watch that polo match. I’m sorry to say that I simply can’t make head or tail of it, but you have a clue. Perhaps that will loosen Cateros up a little, and be a chink in their armor.”
“I can try,” Ky said. She could, she supposed, watch a polo game and make polite conversation.
“Good. I have transmitted a letter for you to the Economic Development Bureau, and here’s a hard copy for you to take tomorrow. Your appointment with the Assistant Minister for Procurement is at eight local time: that’s midmorning to these people. He’s supposedly going to arrange additional appointments for you. Let me know if he doesn’t.”
Garsin Renfro, the Assistant Minister for Procurement, was a tall, thin man with the long face Ky had begun to think of as Belinta-normal. “Can you really get us that machinery?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Ky said. “But very likely.”
“How long would it take?”
“Where had you found it before?”
This led to a long explanation of the process, starting with bid requests sent out to a dozen manufacturers and proceeding at glacial pace through every detail of what had happened. Ky kept wanting to interrupt, but made herself listen. Her father had always said no one could tell which detail would make trade and profit . . . but she was fairly sure none of these would.
“So . . . you were happy with the quality of the bid samples from FarmPower and Pioneer Agriculture Supply, and FarmPower had a closer outlet?”
“That’s right. Actually five suppliers met the quality standards. But FarmPower gave us
the best overall deal, and they charged shipping only from Sabine. We ordered shipping by fastest scheduled carrier, and that was Pavrati; they come in every sixty days.” He looked at her as if she might object; Ky smiled.
“That’s understandable, if you had an urgent need.”
“We did—we do.” He shifted in his chair. “I won’t—I can’t—burden you with all that’s involved, but this delay has cost us . . .”
“Of course,” Ky murmured. “Now—your government’s contract with Pavrati. Was it exclusive?”
“No. The Board isn’t authorized to make such deals. But they were the next, on the schedule. I spoke to the Pavrati captain myself; he assured me they could pick up the machinery on their way outbound, from Sabine, and just store it until they came back. We’d hoped to have it sooner—that another ship could pick it up on the way in—but he said no, they stop at Sabine after Belinta, not before. But he would be back in about one hundred twenty days, he said, and that was well within our parameters.”
“So when he came back . . .”
“He didn’t come back,” the man said sourly. “The next Pavrati ship wasn’t the right one, and we knew that. We didn’t even ask. Then no Pavrati ship came for another one hundred twenty days, twice as long as usual. We’d queried, of course, but they had no explanation. When that one arrived, it didn’t have our machinery, or any explanation. It wasn’t the same ship, or the same captain, and he knew nothing about our shipment. We’d asked FarmPower in Sabine if the goods had been picked up, and they’d assured us they had. So at least the captain hadn’t spent our credit on fancy clothes.” For a moment the man’s gaze rested on Ky’s formal captain’s cloak, as if it were encrusted with precious gems.
“That must have been very confusing,” Ky said.
“Confusing and infuriating. FarmPower claimed they’d delivered our goods to the ship we specified, and they had no further responsibility. Pavrati, when we finally got a reply from them, said that taking goods aboard outbound and carrying them on the long legs of the circuit would result in storage charges in addition to shipping charges, whereas we had prepaid only base shipping from Sabine to Belinta. They tried to charge us for the balance right then and there, said it should have been prepaid. And besides, they said, the ship had never arrived at its next stop and was listed missing.”
“Insurance?” Ky asked.
He glared at her as if she had just insulted him. “Insurance! Do you have any idea what insurance charges are for a cargo like that? We’re a young colony; we don’t have money to throw around. Of course we had some insurance. But not full value. The insurance company won’t settle until we can give a cause for nondelivery, and for that we need a statement from Pavrati. They say they won’t sign it until we pay what we owe for storage, and we aren’t going to pay for storage and shipping of goods that never arrived.”
“I see,” Ky said. “And you want someone to bring a new order?” She had never been to Sabine; she wasn’t entirely sure what the standard routing was, whether Vatta had regular service there.
“Yes,” the man said. “But we aren’t paying first this time—it’s pay on delivery.”
“Our policy,” Ky said, “requires at least a deposit on account. You’re asking me to change my schedule—”
“We’re not going to be cheated again!” the man said. “You Slotter Key pirates—”
Ky put up her hand. “A moment. Vatta Transport, Ltd., are not pirates; we are licensed, bonded transporters.”
“It’s all the same,” the man said. “Take our money, and for nothing—”
“Has anything consigned to Vatta ever failed to reach its destination here?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Then—” Don’t blame us because you didn’t have sense enough to hire us was hardly tactful. “Not all firms are alike,” Ky said instead. “Vatta Transport is sorry that you have not been served well by another firm, and that this incident has damaged the image of Slotter Key businesses.”
“I suppose it’s not actually your fault,” the man said. “But we’re so far out—”
Which wasn’t Ky’s fault. Was this the time to push for a mutually agreeable solution?
“What do you think happened to the Pavrati ship?” the man asked.
“I don’t know,” Ky said. “They could have had a drive failure—”
“Drive failure! You mean—that happens?”
“Yes,” Ky said. “Usually going into or coming out of FTL space. Any little bit of debris in the jump lane can cause that much damage—it’s why we only travel to places with a decent traffic control crew. Or they might have collided with something bigger—” Leaving a dangerous smear of debris on the mapped routes. “Piracy you mentioned—they could have been intercepted somewhere—”
“But surely Pavrati would have told us about any of that—”
“No,” Ky said. “In the first place, they may not know what it is yet, and in the second place they won’t want it known, lest someone else profit by the knowledge.”
“Seems ridiculous,” the man said. “They should at least tell our insurance company . . .”
“If they know, yes. But when a ship disappears . . . space is big and ships are small.”
“Ships really do disappear . . . they’re not lying about that?”
“Ships can,” Ky said. Across her mind ran the list of Vatta Transport, Ltd.’s disappearances. They had a good record, the result of prudence, hard work, and another dollop of prudence on top. The spaceways, her father had said when she first mentioned the Academy, offer risk enough.
“Well, then . . .” His voice firmed. “Your consul tells me you have the authority to decide if you want this contract. As I said, we aren’t going to pay in advance this time. What are your rates?”
“We have no consignments for Sabine,” Ky said. “Nothing we can sell there.” She had tried to find something in the cargo for Lastway that would sell on Sabine, but nothing fit. “And you have no consignments, either, do you?”
“No. We’ve never had exports to Sabine.”
“Well, then. That means it’s a dry run over, and a paying cargo back. If we’re not getting an advance, that means a surcharge for the extra distance—”
He scowled.
“Think about it,” Ky said. “You want us to go out of our way, without profit on one leg; if we know we’re going somewhere, we carry cargo there, and that means we only need to charge each shipper for the distance their cargo actually travels. Now, have you asked for bidders again, or are you planning to buy from FarmPower?”
“Well . . . no.”
“Well, then,” Ky said. “Let me suggest this . . .”
The haggling continued for hours, with breaks for refreshments, but in the end she had what she thought was an acceptable deal. She had missed the polo match, but she didn’t much care.
CHAPTER FIVE
The closer she came to the station, the more reluctant she felt to tell her crew, her experienced baby-sitting crew, about her bright idea and the contract she’d signed. What would they think? Would they insist on telling her father? She was the captain. She had to approve all communications. Would that stop them?
Gary Tobai met her at dockside. “How’d it go?”
“I need to talk to you,” Ky said. “You and Quincy, anyway.”
“Trouble?”
“No. My office, when you can.”
“Now works for me,” he said, dashing her hope that she could have a few minutes to think up how to say it. “I’ll get someone on dock watch, and call Quincy—ten minutes?”
“Fine,” Ky said. She went quickly to her quarters and tried to organize her thoughts. Quincy and Gary appeared long before she felt ready.
“So . . . what is it?” Quincy asked as she came in. The tone said “What have you done now, youngster, and how hard is it going to be to fix it?”
“We have a contract,” Ky said.
“A contract. You mean—another contract? You do
remember the assignment is to take this ship to Lastway and scrap her . . .”
“Yes, I remember. But trade and profit is trade and profit. Belinta was our only time-defined delivery. The goods for Leonora and Lastway are all spec. This is a profit run.”
Quincy’s mouth tightened. “How much?” Gary asked. “And what do we have to do to get it?”
Ky explained about the Pavrati failure to deliver a prepaid order, and the Economic Development Bureau’s urgent desire for agricultural machinery before their attempt to open the Hamil Valley to farm settlements failed.
“And the profit,” she said, ignoring the twitch in Gary’s cheek, “is enough—with the profit we can reasonably expect from the sale of our Lastway trade goods—to do a refit at some reasonable yard, enough to bring her up to spec.” Or almost.
“Hmmmm.” Quincy looked down. Ky couldn’t read her expression.
“Payment or profit?” Gary asked.
“Profit,” Ky said. She tensed, knowing the next question.
“So how much is the advance?”
“Well . . . actually . . . they’ll pay on delivery. They paid Pavrati in advance, and the manufacturer in advance, and they don’t trust us.”
“So . . . you’re talking a spec run, and . . . do we have to pay for the merchandise?”
“Yes,” Ky said. “But it’s hard goods; if they don’t cough up, we can sell it somewhere else. And we get a residual, the rights to any insurance settlement.”
Quincy let out a stifled sound and buried her face in her hands.
“What?” Ky said. “It’s not that bad an idea . . .”
Quincy looked up; tears rolled down her face, and her shoulders shook. She was laughing, Ky realized, laughing so hard she couldn’t speak.
Gary, when she glanced at him, was grinning. “Ky, Ky, Ky. We wondered how long it would take.”
“How long what would take?”
“You. So prim, so proper, so very earnest—” He chuckled, and shook his head. “I knew it wouldn’t last. It never does.”