Trading in Danger (5 page)

“Checks out,” the medic said finally. “Any problems at your end?”

Ky blinked at him. They both knew—because she was sending it—that she was seeing him with a vibrating pink halo, and they also knew this was a transient visual phenomenon common to implant insertions, like the other sensory auras she was having—the smell of freshly ground pepper, the echo effect to all sounds. It would be gone after a good night’s sleep, during which time the implant and her biological brain would have some kind of serious discussion without her consciousness around to kibitz. “No problems,” Ky said, aloud this time.

“Good. Call me at once if you experience sensory auras tomorrow, or any difficulties with coordination, balance, after one hour from now. My recommendation is that you go to sleep as soon as you can.”

“I will,” Ky said. Her father took her back to the main house, where she staggered only a couple of times going down the hall to her room. She remembered her first insertion experience very clearly; she had been seven, getting a child’s school expansion kit, and she had insisted that her balance wasn’t affected, she didn’t need to lie down and take a nap… all the way to the ground when she fell off the pony. I’m fine, she’d said, lying on the ground and looking up at a pony hazed in a supernatural golden glow, its wings waving gently in the breeze. My pony has wings, she’d said. No one had believed her. She’d woken from that nap with a bruise on her rump and her brothers prancing around the room waving their arms, pretending to be flying ponies.

Enhanced memory was one side effect of implants and their insertion. She pulled off her clothes, put on a gown, turned off the light, and lay down.

She had been sure she wouldn’t sleep, but the moment her head hit the pillow, she was out. She woke, remembering no dreams, at first disoriented because sunlight played on the opposite wall from the garden window in her room—and she expected instead the cold dim light of a winter dawn in the capital. Misery hit her again, and she rolled over, burying her face in the pillow. Her career. Her hopes. Her friends. Hal… he wouldn’t even know what happened. She hadn’t actually started crying when something landed with a thump on her back.

“Rise and shine, lazybones,” came her brother’s voice. “You’ve got to hit the books.”

Ky rolled out of bed, threw the offending roll of towels back at her brother—wet, he must have just come in from swimming—and stalked into the ’fresher with as much dignity as possible. Her implant offered the time, the temperature, the humidity, water temperature of the ’fresher, her own pulse and respiration if she wanted it. She didn’t. She ate a hasty breakfast in a corner of the kitchen, and then settled down to the pile of data cubes her father had left for her to read. Everything there was to know about
Glennys Jones
, about the route she was to take, everything she needed to know about the Vatta Transport codes. At intervals her attention drifted to her disgrace, but she yanked it back to the matter at hand. She could not think about it… any of it… without going to pieces. If she was to be a cargo ship captain, she had better things to do than feel sorry for herself. The implant fed her accessory information whenever she asked. She was deep in the revised space regulations applicable to licensed carriers Class C and below when her father and brother came home for lunch.

“How’s it going?” her father asked.

“These are done,” Ky said, pointing to that stack. “I’m into space regs. Why on earth did they restrict Class Bs from carrying nutrient components? Seems to me that’s what they’re ideally suited for.”

“Politics,” San said. “But I’m not supposed to say that.”

Her father gave San a look. “P & L,” he said. “They’ve moved into nutrient component production, over onChelsea. They transport the stuff very efficiently in purpose-built Class Ds; they’re just protecting their investment.”

“Closing out competitors, both producers and shippers,” San said.

“San.”

“They’re our competitors; I don’t see why we can’t be plainspoken at least at home,” San said.

“They’re also our friends. You might have married the girl—”

“Not me,” San said.

Ky watched this interchange with interest. San arguing with her father? That was new.

“Lunch,” her father said firmly, leading the way to the veranda. At midday, it was shady, breezy, scented with roses and jasmine. Her mother didn’t appear. She often skipped lunch with the family. Ky wasn’t hungry—she’d done nothing all morning but read—but she picked at a salad. Her father frowned at her. “You should get out a little,Ky.If you don’t eat, your mother will pester me.”

“I need to finish these,” Ky said.

“Not today. I didn’t think you’d be half so far along. Take the afternoon off.”

Two hours later, Ky lay stretched on a towel by the pool. An hour’s swim had worked out kinks she hadn’t realized she had, and now she dozed in the warm shade. Her father had been right. She had needed the break.

“Kylara Vatta, what do you think you’re doing?” That voice, harsh as a parrot’s cry, nearly sent her rolling into the pool in a defensive maneuver.Aunt Gracie Lane.Aunt Gracie Lane, who disapproved of idleness at any time, and also had strong views on appropriate bathing costume. “Anyone could see you!”

Anyone who was a member of the family, or a guest. Possibly a lascivious gardener peeking over the wall of the pool enclosure, but certainly no one else.

“I’m resting after swimming, Aunt Gracie,” Ky said.

“You’re lazing about doing nothing useful,” Aunt Gracie said. “Get some proper clothes on and get busy. You’re supposed to be helping your mother arrange your wardrobe.”

Her mother, just coming to the pool behind Aunt Gracie, shrugged.

“Yes, Aunt Gracie,” Ky said, scrambling to her knees with the towel clutched to her.

“I would have thought the Academy would teach you some discipline, but clearly… I suppose that’s why you quit.”

Too many things wrong with that to argue. Ky held the towel between her and Aunt Gracie’s disapproval, and sidled around, pricking herself on one of the gardenia bushes, to back gingerly toward the house. The moment Aunt Gracie transferred her gaze to something else, she whipped the towel all the way around her and scuttled for the veranda. Some things never changed.

Clad in slacks and shirt, she emerged from her room to hear Aunt Gracie’s voice down the hall. “—do something about that girl, Myris, you’ll be sorry! I can’t believe you and Gerard are actually letting her go off alone, unsupervised—”

Ky thought of running away, sneaking out through her window, but Aunt Gracie would certainly have something to say about that, too. It was going to be a very long four days. Three point threeeight, her implant said.

Most of the ordering could be done remotely. The next day Ky flew the single-seat herself toHarborTownwhere Bond Tailoring’s senior fitter checked her mother’s measurements and admitted that they’d been correct. Ky picked out ship boots, dock boots, formal and informal shoes for nonbusiness wear. Despite her mother’s complaints about her shape, she was close enough to stock measurements that only slight alterations would fit her for most things. The captain’s tunic, however, had to be custom-made.

“Still, that cuts a day off our estimate,” the fitter said. “Only four items. We’ll have them tomorrow evening.”

“What time?”

“Oh, you should plan on picking them up the next day,” the fitter said. “Just in case.”

Ky left the shop with her footwear, stopped by Amerson’s for some personal items her mother didn’t need to know about. If she was going to be off on her own alone, and not under military discipline, she could choose the lotions and scents
she
preferred, ignoring her mother’s ideas of appropriateness. Her crew would just have to put up with it. Then she walked back up the street to catch the shuttle to the airport. She was back home by lunch… or rather, back at the home airfield. She stopped by the office to tell her father when the clothes would be ready.

“Gracie’s on the warpath about you,” her father said.

“I know.”

“You might want to do your bookwork here today,” he said. He didn’t quite twinkle at her, but there was an edge of humor in his voice.

“Thank you,” she said. “Where’s an empty workstation?”

“San’s off checking yield in the young plantations; you can use his office. Don’t answer the phone.”

Ky dumped her shoes and boots in the corner of San’s office, and pulled up more of the data she needed on his station. Facts flowed into her mind: the history of the
Glennys Jones
, details of her last trip through maintenance, background information on the crew, details of the contract. She hardly moved until her father opened the door to tell her it was time for dinner.

“I’m not sure what Gracie’s got in mind for you, Kylara, but you probably should come back here tomorrow. Or just go out. You won’t have a chance to snorkle or ride again for a long time.”

“Would that be all right?” Ky asked.

“You’ve been working hard. I’m sure you can decide how much more work you need to do. Take the day if you feel like it.”

Ky dreaded the thought of dinner, but Aunt Gracie, her mother told her, had retired to her room with a headache. Ky thought about a late swim in the pool, but remembered in time that the guest room had a clear view of the pool, and sound carried over water. Instead, she rummaged in her closet and found her snorkling gear, then linked her implant to the home library’s marine database for an instant to download whatever she might need.

Early the next morning, she was down at the shore shortly after dawn, squinting into the light to check the buoys supporting the protective nets that kept out the larger marine predators. How long had it been since she had a day to herself, a day free to do whatever she wanted? She couldn’t remember—years, anyway. Every brief vacation from the Academy had been filled with duties—courtesy calls on this or that family member, dinners, parties, required shopping trips. Now the day stretched before her, empty as the beach itself.

Little waves slid meekly up onto the sand, leaving interlocking arcs of wet behind them; squirts of water revealed the hiding places of burrowing clams. Ky struggled into her wet suit, clipped on her safety beacon, put on gloves and flippers, and almost fell on her nose when she started toward the water and caught a flipper in the sand.

Once in the water, she moved slowly out to the first of the broad, knobbly coral heads, where she knew she’d find a flurry of brilliantly colored small fish. Her implant gave her the names. A black-tooth undulated into her view; she turned to face it. It retreated to deeper water, then dove into the sandy bottom, fluffing sand over itself. Her implant marked that location; she would be careful not to step on it.

She had set the timer for two hours; when the implant beeped, she stroked back to shallow water, then stood up. She felt heavier; she always hated coming out of the water once she was in. Her father had used that as a metaphor for growing up, leaving the easy support of a family and carrying her own weight, but she resented his lecture. Unless it meant you could drown in your support system, and this day she simply wanted to enjoy the beauty.

She looked again at the lagoon, and thought about the rest of the day. She could saddle a horse and ride out through the plantation, or… she could stay here. She queried her implant. Aunt Gracie was on the move. All the horses were in use. Half-annoyed and half-relieved, Ky waded back into the water and let herself rest on its buoyancy. She wasn’t hungry, and the suit had its own water supply system. When she tired of the water, she pulled herself back up to the beach, to the shade under the trees, scooped out a hollow in the sand, and took a nap. She woke to the turquoise and pink sky of evening, and stared a long time at the colors as they deepened before she turned her back on them to head for the house.

“I made this just for you,” Aunt Gracie said at breakfast the morning Ky was leaving. She handed over a gaily decorated sack. Ky almost dropped it when she took it; it must weigh, she thought, five or six kilos.

She looked in. There, swathed in bright-colored flowery wrapping paper, were the unmistakable shapes of three of Aunt Gracie’s special fruit-spice cakes. Aunt Gracie beamed at her.

“You’ll be gone a long time, and I always say that a taste of home is the best thing to cure homesickness…”

Aunt Gracie’s fruit-spice cakes were, without doubt, the densest mass of flavorless, tooth-breaking pseudofoodstuff in the galaxy. She produced them at intervals, for birthdays and holidays, and the family disposed of them discreetly as soon as she was out of sight. Even a sliver of Aunt Gracie’s product left Ky with a day or so of gastric uneasiness.

“Uh… thanks,” Ky said. She could always leave them under her bed as insect repellent blocks… she’d done that with the ones Aunt Gracie had given her each year to take to the Academy.

“I know how rushed it can be, when people leave on a long assignment,” Aunt Gracie went on. “So let’s just let Jeannine put them in the car for you right this minute…”

San made a sound; Ky looked at him, and his lips were folded tight but his eyes danced mischief.

“Thank you,” Ky said again. She handed the sack to the maid and resigned herself to dumping Aunt Gracie’s creations into some unsuspecting trash container on the way to her command. She was not going to spend five kilos of her personal baggage allowance on inedible crud.

She finished her juice, and made her escape—not without kissing that withered old cheek—to the car, where her father waited to drive her to the airfield.

“If you’re planning to dump it somewhere,” he said without reference, “don’t do it in sight of anyone who might, by any conceivable means, know anyone who knows us. Your aunt Gracie’s connections are legendary. The only reason she doesn’t know the whole truth about your resignation is that it’s a state secret. But she suspects, and she’ll worm it out of someone inside another week, I’m sure. I don’t want to have to deal with her if she finds out you’ve tossed her cakes in the trash; it was bad enough when she found out you’d been leaving them under your bed.”

“How did she find that out?” Ky asked.

“Bribed the staff, I shouldn’t doubt,” her father said sourly. “But look at it this way. Anything is a commodity to someone. In a very large universe, your aunt Gracie’s cannonballs may be someone else’s favorite underwear.”

Ky snorted, surprised into a laugh for the first time since her private disaster.

“Courage, Ky,” he said, as he stopped the car and leaned over to give her a kiss. “You’ve got what you need to start a good life. Go.”

Gaspard was waiting on the apron. “You look better,” he said, as he looked up from checking the oil. “So, what did the family do for you?”

“I’m taking
Glennys Jones
to the scrapyard,” Ky said. She took her duffel from old George and slung it into the baggage compartment. “It will keep me out of the public eye.” The boring start to a dull, boring career as a truck driver in space, she did not say. She looped the tie-downs around the two bags, and slammed the door shut, latching it carefully.

“And give you a chance to show your talents,” Gaspard said. He went on with the preflight check while she looked around, trying to fill her memory with the home she would not see for months, maybe years. Maybe ever again, space being what it was, and life being less certain than she’d thought the last time she left.

“Well… assuming I have any.” What talents did it take to captain an experienced crew on a boring one-way run? Now if she could figure out a way to avoid scrapping the ship and surprise the family with a great triumph of trading…

“Don’t fish, Ky; it doesn’t become you.”

“Right. And we shall hope I don’t exercise my talent for leaping in to help…”

“At least not until you’re a little more experienced,” Gaspard said. “Though you could help me, if you would, by agreeing to copilot on the way in. There’s some serious weather between us and the mainland.” She had seen the satellite images; a cold front nosing under the warm sea air and lifting clouds to towering heights.

“Of course.”

“Good, then. Let’s be going. That front’s going to toss us around some.”

Ky climbed into the copilot’s seat, and concentrated on her part of the checklist as they finished preflight and started the engines.

The first hour in the air, retracing her recent flight home, was almost pure sightseeing. The colors of the water, changing with depth, with the shadows of clouds… the reefs… the various islands. Puffy cumulus clouds arrayed in rows along the wind’s path, all white and innocent… but ahead, a line of taller clouds, their ramparts denser. Ky had no time to brood, as she helped Gaspard ease the plane through the front’s turbulence, and only the navigation instruments could have told where they were.

The city lay under dense clouds spitting cold rain, just as it had been when she left. At least here there was little turbulence, and landing offered no problems. Gaspard turned onto the ramp that led to the private terminal, and then again to reach the Vatta hangars.

“Good job, Ky,” he said, when he’d handed her down from the wing. “You’ll be fine with old
Glennys
. Shouldn’t wonder if you don’t start your own private fleet with her or something.”

Ky started. Was she that predictable?

“Have to start somewhere, after all,” he said cheerfully, and winked. Then he turned back to the mechanic who had come out to greet him.

Her first task, she thought, was getting rid of Aunt Gracie’s cakes. She hadn’t asked Gaspard to let her toss them out into the sea—Gaspard might be her friend, but he might also be one of Aunt Gracie’s spies. At no point in the route from the airfield to the shuttle field was she alone and in reach of a disposal chute. The five kilos dragged at her arm. She had to carry them herself to have the chance to lose them… but a woman in a Vatta Transport captain’s uniform carrying a bright flower-patterned bag, obviously heavy, would be noticed and remembered. Blast Aunt Gracie!

Vatta captains, she had been told, did not ride commercial shuttles to orbit. At least not here, where Vatta maintained its own small fleet of surface-to-orbit transport. As a captain, she had her own tiny compartment, outfitted as a workstation, with stowage for her duffel in the same compartment. She remembered her first trip alone to the orbital station, when she’d been thirteen and headed for three months as the lowest of apprentices on
Turbot
. She’d been crammed into crew seating with four other family apprentices (each going to a different ship) and fifteen regular crew, and she’d been stiff, as well as scared, by the time they arrived.

This was much better. She spent the time reviewing crew information, committing faces and names to her implant’s perfect memory. At the Vatta orbital station, she debarked ahead of the rest, and caught the first tram outbound for the docks. She had given up on Aunt Gracie’s cakes for now; she turned them over to the Vatta handler along with the rest of her luggage. It would reappear in her cabin aboard. All she had in hand was the tidy little captain’s case, with its datalinks, command wand, and orders. She tried to sneak up on
Glennys
without being spotted, but Vatta security was far too good for that. She had an escort all the way from the Vatta gates to the boarding platform, and when she got there, Gary Tobai left off polishing the Vatta family seal on the rail and turned to her.

“Well, if it isn’t the newest captain in Vatta Fleet.” He grinned at her, but Ky thought she detected a bite to his tone. “Mouth got you in trouble again, did it?”

“All I said was…” Ky shut her mouth and shook her head at him. “If you know that much, you know I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Wrong? No. Wrong way to do something right, maybe. I thought you were supposed to be our white hope with the military.”

“I thought so, too. So when I found something that needed to be fixed—”

“You jumped in and fixed it. I understand that, but you could have anticipated it would cause trouble.”

“I was trying to avoid trouble.” Should she even explain how convoluted the right procedures were, and why she’d chosen to work through contacts the family had given her? No. He wanted to condescend, so he would, no matter what she said.

“You were not bred to avoid trouble,” Tobai said. “Your family takes it on, shakes it like a dog shaking a rat, and tosses it to one side.” His voice softened. “As you did, Captain.”

Captain. He had actually called her
Captain
. She pushed aside the rest of what he’d said. “So, now that I have a ship, what can you tell me about her?”

He scowled. “You haven’t looked at the listing?”

Ky closed her eyes and recited. “
Glennys Jones
, three hundred meters overall length, 200 meters beam, keel plate laid in Bramley’s yards eighty-seven years ago, refitted in ’04 and ’38, drives replaced in ’43 with expanded cruising range, fully loaded to one hundred seventy-nine days, or two hundred fifteen days empty and crewed. She has two main cargo holds, three auxiliary holds, and no autoloading capability. The largest container that will fit through the main cargo hatch is three meters by two point seven meters, and standard access now is three by four, which limits her pretty much to specialty cargo. She can’t take loose bulk cargo like grain, another limitation. She’s been used to haul perishables, but on her last trip the refrigerating system broke down, and Vatta had to pay the shipper for the goods as well as a penalty for nondelivery, and insurance didn’t cover it all. The company’s out seven hundred thousand credits. Repair of the refrigeration system would cost another five hundred thousand, so Ships decided to use her for base-supply runs and sell her for scrap when her inspection ran out.”