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Chapter 25

DUNSANY ROADS ORBITAL
2352-APRIL-19

My tablet bipped me awake just after 12:00. Overnight watch had been low-key. Francis ribbed me good-naturedly about Al, but he seemed a bit groggy when he relieved me. I wondered if he had been out too late himself. I rolled out and hit the san for a quick shower before I zipped into a shipsuit.

Sarah was on duty in the galley. I thought she looked a little less pinched, but that might have been just a projection on my part. She and Cookie smiled and waved but they were still arguing about pastry dough and I didn’t interrupt. Lunch was a very nice fish and pasta dish. I was not sure if it was the last of the cobia fillets or some of the munta from St. Cloud. Whatever else it might have been, delicious came first on the list.

Pip came in dressed in civvies already as I settled down to eat. “You’ve already been out this morning?”

He grabbed a coffee and sat across from me. “Yeah, I went up and scoped out yarns. I saw Sean and Tabitha up there, so I suspect they’ll come back with more crochet materials. At this point they need more hooks, too, I think. They’re doing so well I’m sure there are others who will start up with them. Sean should charge for lessons.”

I laughed. “Or get royalties on the pieces.”

We sat there for a couple of ticks while I dug into the fish and pasta. I was hungrier than I thought.

Pip was not very talkative. I usually relied on him to carry the conversation. “You okay?” I asked him.

“Yeah, sure.” He gave a half-hearted shrug that made me doubt him.

I realized he wore the white stone under his shirt. “Nice stone.”

“Thanks,” he said, looking down. “It was a gift from a friend. It’s a lucky stone—blessed by a St. Cloud shaman.”

I grinned at him and he smiled back.

“You gonna finish eating one of these days so we can go shopping?” he asked.

Leaving the ship with Pip felt odd. The last time we had been off the ship together was when he had brought me aboard seven months before. My brain kept sliding sideways whenever I saw him walking beside me. I was so used to walking with one or more of the women. We cruised up to the flea market and headed right for the batik booth.

“Ah, Ishmael!” Chuck said as I came up to the booth.

He surprised me. “You have a good memory. You must see hundreds of people a day!”

“True but none of them want to buy bulk batik and take it off-station.” He turned to Pip then and held out his hand. “You must be Carstairs?”

“Well I don’t have to be, but I am.” He shook the offered hand. “Call me Pip.”

I wandered around looking over the goods while Pip dickered with Chuck. He bought about twenty kilos of fabric and Chuck bundled it into two ten-kilo packages for us to carry. Pip surprised me by pulling a folded duffel out of his hip pocket and sliding both packages into it. “We can trade off carrying,” he told me with a grin.

“Twenty kilos is going to get heavy fast.”

“Are you planning on shopping some more?” he asked with an arched eyebrow.

“Well I thought that since we’re here, we might look about. See if there’s anything else that strikes our fancy.”

Chuck overheard us and offered, “You can leave the duffel here if you like. Just slide it under that table over there and pick it up before closing.”

I thanked him while Pip stowed the bag.

As we left the booth, he looked at me curiously. “Is there something you’re looking for?”

“Yeah, trade goods for Betrus. Something different. Low mass, high value.”

He slugged me in the shoulder and laughed. “No, I mean is there something in particular?”

I shrugged. “Booths open and close every day. There may be something here that I like as much as the batik. We have mass to spare yet, don’t we?”

“Yeah, at least another twenty. When you make spec three we’re going to be up to our armpits in mass allotment.”

“We’ll have to shop with the grav pallet.”

“That’s a good idea,” he said with total seriousness. “If we either shop on days when the co-op isn’t setting up, like today, or we plan to take our stuff over to the booth, they can take it back to the ship.”

“Well, that also assumes we keep buying single large lots. With more mass allotment we can diversify a bit.”

“True. The batik is great though. Nice find.”

We sauntered along the aisles. “Thanks. It’s funny because I spotted it just after I complained to Brill that everything looked the same. Then we came around the corner and there was all this brightly colored fabric.”

“After you’ve been to about three of these places, you begin to see the stuff that’s in all of them. What amazed me was that you picked out Drus Martin’s belts. That was a real find.”

“You found the stones. I think we’re even there. I wish we had another five kilos of those.”

He laughed loudly. “I think we’d have saturated the market here.”

“Maybe but we’re leaving for Betrus tomorrow.”

I pulled out my tablet then and checked the ship statuses. It listed
MarDuch
as
ENR Bink
under the status. I slipped the tablet back into my pocket and turned my head to put my nose near my collar so I could smell her scent again and a muffled sound escaped my lips.

Pip patted me on the shoulder in sympathy. “Yeah, I understand, but it’s a small galaxy. You’ll see her again.”

“Thanks, but I was looking at that!”

He turned his head to see where I was looking and made a little sound of his own. “Those are spectacular.”

We hurried over to the booth and started talking to a tiny woman with almond-shaped eyes who introduced herself as Ping Fa Hwa. She had the most amazing collection of prints I had ever seen. I recognized the stylized form from some that I had seen in the gallery at the University of Neris. She had landscapes, birds, seascapes, and even some flowers.

“Did you make all these yourself?” I asked her.

“Oh, no. I am only selling them for our co-op.”

Pip looked at me and started laughing. Ping looked confused until I said, “We’re in a co-op, too. We know what it’s like.”

“What can you tell me about these prints?” Pip asked, his eyes distractedly scanning the brightly colored artworks.

She launched into a detailed sales pitch, so I left Pip to close the deal. I heard enough to learn that the prints were made on a kind of native parchment made from the local linen and cotton. The artists printed the images using a silk screen reproduction and each was a limited edition. She pointed out the small numbers in the bottom corners of each print next to the artist’s signature. Most of the prints were runs of a hundred or less because, she said, the reproduction process eventually degraded the screens. I didn’t know if that was true or not, but it sounded good. It didn’t really matter. The artwork was stunning.

The prices were likewise stunning, and I began to think that the price Sarah got for our shaman-blessed stones was less a miracle of salesmanship and more a factor of the local economy. Still, Pip bought ten prints for a kilocred and Ping slipped them into a large flat envelop of heavy parchment. The whole thing weighed less than a kilo.

As we walked back to pick up the duffel bag of batik fabric, Pip commented, “Of course, if we keep buying things like this, our mass allotments will be moot.”

I laughed.

It was a struggle but we got it all back to the
Lois
in time for dinner.

***

At dinner we ran into a bunch of people including Brill, Beverly, Diane, Arvid, Mitch, Tabitha, and Sean. It seemed like half the crew was aboard but getting ready to go out. There was a feeling that I had never had as a day worker in the galley. I do not think Pip caught it, but the sense of the flow of time across the watches was almost tangible. Diane was actually on watch and would be stuck on the ship overnight. Francis had already gone. I would relieve Diane in just under twelve stans. The mood was definitely
last chance
and spirits ran high. As we broke up from dinner, we reached the general consensus to gather at the lock at 20:00 and all head to Jump! together. Even Pip was going.

As we broke up, Brill said, “Well, you guys be careful, okay?”

“What do you mean?” I asked her. “You’ll be there to keep an eye on us, won’t you?”

She shook her head. “I’m bushed. I’m going to stay aboard tonight, I think.”

Behind her Diane was shaking her head in a vigorous
no
and making pulling motions with her hands. It was all I could do not to laugh.

“Come on, B,” I pleaded. “Just come have a drink and a dance maybe. We’ll have a few laughs and come back early. Pip and I both have morning duty.”

Diane started nodding
yes
, just as vigorously.

Brill dithered a little but eventually relented. Before she headed out to get changed, I asked, “Oh, could you do me a favor?”

“What? I’m already doing you one just by going!” She smiled when she said it.

“You remember the outfit you wore up to Chez Henri’s? The red jacket with the tab collars? Black slacks?”

“Of course, I don’t have that many clothes.”

“Wear that.”

“Isn’t that kinda dressy for a few drinks at Jump?” Her eyes narrowed.

I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. Do you think so, Diane?”

Diane piped up with, “No, I think it would be perfect.”

Brill laughed at the obviousness of our behavior and waved over her shoulder as she set off to change.

At 20:00 she showed up in the red jacket and she still looked like a Valkyrie to me.

We all checked out together which must have driven David ben Dour crazy as he tried to process the group of us all at once. Brill, Bev, and I stepped out of the lock and waited for the rest to get checked out.

Bev just shook her head and snickered softly. “I don’t remember the last time this many of us went out at once.”

“You know what it is?” Brill said to Bev over my head.

“What?”

“Him.” She jerked a thumb in my direction. “They wanna see what he does next.”

I held up my hands in surrender. “Whoa! I got the duty in the morning. I’m just going for a couple of drinks and then I’m coming home and going to bed.”

Brill made one of her
mmm-hmm
sounds.

Beverly just grinned at nothing in particular.

I looked up at Brill and realized she did not have a necklace on. Her throat and upper chest were spectacular on their own, but I thought it could use something to focus attention. I reached back and untied the leather thong and stripped off my green stone.

“Come down here!” I told her.

Bev and I were both astonished when she did just that, leaning down so I could tie the thong around her neck. It took me a couple of tries, but I finally got it where I thought it would do the most good.

“Is this one of the stones you got on Margary?” she asked, reaching up to touch it with her fingertips.

“Yup,” I said. It was about all I could say because it was stunning. The rawness of the leather and the simplicity of the green stone centered just below her collarbone was like a target. The green stone and the red jacket played off each other making each color look just that little bit richer for being together.

“It’s still warm. “You’ve been wearing it all day?”

“Yeah,” I said.

Bev winked at me.

Finally everybody got off the ship and we headed for the lift. Bev and I took up station on either side of Brill. Bev in her leathers, looked like she would eat the next three men alive and they would love every bite. Brill had on her red jacket, while I sported my pink shirt and olive coat. We formed up in a kind of parade formation with some of the crew ahead and some behind. I spotted Rebecca Saltzman out front walking with Mitch Fitzroy. I never appreciated Rebecca’s ability to really slink. The genetic legacy of heavy-G did not seem to bother her stride one bit and I appreciated it in detail for several moments. I looked over my shoulder and saw Tabitha had her own little escort flotilla bringing up the rear with Sean on one side and Arvid on the other. All three of them looked like they were locked and loaded. Whoever that trio tangoed with was in for a hell of a dance. I started counting heads and realized we had almost half the crew in that one group.

I laughed softly.

“What?” Brill asked without looking down.

“Talk about your extended family,” I said.

Beverly chimed in with, “I was thinking dysfunctional, myself. I think every one of us is crazed.”

“Dysfunctional, no. Crazed, definitely. Every last one of us,” I told her.

We managed to get everybody on the big lift and went down in a single group. When the doors opened to the heat and moisture of the oh-two deck, we streamed off the lift in a herd. The corridors were not crowded. It was still relatively early, but the groups of people who were there parted in front of us and we sailed past.

When we got to Jump! the group broke up into table-sized bunches, some people choosing to pull tables together, others simply settling in threes and fours. The waitresses were kept hopping for a few ticks while everybody got drinks and the evening began to ramp up. Pip sat with Bev, Brill and me at a four-top and I looked around to see if I could see anybody familiar.

Brill leaned over to me and said, “The
Hedley
is getting underway in a couple of stans. Al’s not here.”

“Yeah, I know. I looked it up earlier. The
Sigler
left, too, so I’m safe from whats-his-name.” I winked at her. “I’m just getting a feel for the room.”

Pip laughed. “A feel for the room? You planning on moving in?”

“No, I just wanna see how the people are grouping up.”

Brill didn’t look comfortable and I asked, “Are you okay?”

She shrugged. “I don’t do well on these last night outings. Everybody seems so desperate.” She laughed self-consciously.

I looked at Bev who gave me a little shrug.

I turned back to Brill and said, “Do something for me?”

She barked a short laugh. “You mean something else? I’m already out, wearing the clothes you asked for, and I’ve got your stone around my neck. What more do you want?”