Finity's End - a Union-Alliance Novel (61 page)

Arnason Imports, Ltd. was the name of the shop, not one of those on the front row, which Fletcher had rather expected, but one of those tucked into a nook toward the rear of a maintenance recess between another import company and a jeweler's. It wasn't a bad address. But it wasn't a shop of the quality that the address might have indicated, either, and Fletcher had second thoughts about the junior-juniors, the hour—which meant an area less trafficked than it would have been in mainday. The jeweler's was closed. The other business was open, but it had a sign saying No Retail.

"Not real prosperous," he said, with flashes on the dock-sides of his ill-spent youth. "Just go slow." Jeremy was tending to get ahead of him. "Listen, you. I want it understood. No smart moves here. Believe me."

"Yessir," Jeremy said, bounced on the balls of his feet in that nervous way he had, and charged ahead.

There was no surety the stick was even in the shop. "Calm
down
," Fletcher snapped, and the kids assumed a far quieter disposition. Jeremy was still first through the door, setting off a buzzer, no melodious bell.

A man stood up from behind a desk all but overwhelmed by stacks of oddments, boxes, masks, statuary, shelves with crystal specimens, more of the plastic bouquets, fiber mats and dried plants, dried fish, one truly large one mounted on a board. There was a whole mounted animal with horns, at which Vince exclaimed, "Wild," and Linda looked appalled.

Jeremy was on to the display cabinets like a junior whirlwind, looking under counters, into cabinets.

"Wild," Vince said again.

It was impressive. But the man at the counter was on his way to panic.

Fletcher whipped out the card and laid it on the table. "You came recommended," he said. "Man said you had a good stock."

"Best this side of Cyteen," the man said. "Mr…"

"James," he improvised, the fastest name to any Neihart tongue. But then he remembered the Family name problem, and settled fast on what he knew was a Unionside ship. "Off
Boreale
."

"
Union
."

"Out of Cyteen. Just doing a little business, here and there, got a few contacts. Man asked me to, you know, pick him up a couple of good items at our turnaround point. He's government." He'd heard about Cyteen officials on the take. It was rumored, at least, on Pell docks. "I'm looking."

"Got any downer stuff?" Jeremy blurted out.

"The kid's crazy about downers," Fletcher said, at that nervous dart of the eyes, and the man darted a glance back. "What I'm interested in is just the unusual. The shop that referred us here, you know, said you might have some back-room stock."

"There's the warehouse." Cagey answers. Saying nothing.

"Not interested in what you can see elsewhere. The man gives me money on account, I'm not bringing him junk, you know what I mean?"

"What price range are you interested in?"

"Say my captain knows. Say that kind of finance. Not interested in running contraband, understand. Just the unique piece. No boxes of stuff. Seen enough woven mats to last me. Stuff's junk. Get those damn bugs in it and it falls apart."

It was a piece of truth, something somebody who was dealing in downer goods would know. If a mat was smuggled and not passed through sterilization, microfauna came in the reeds. Destruction of whole illicit collections had resulted.

"No fools here. We irradiate everything."

"Show me," he said, and shot the kids a be-still look.

The man went to the back door, and left it open while he rummaged just the other side of the door.

He's got something
, Jeremy lip-sent, exaggerated enough to read across a station dock, and he lip-sent back,
Shut up
.

The man came back with several bundles. Unrolled mats, weavings, old ones. Fletcher's heart beat fast. He knew which band had produced them.

He managed to brush idle fingertips across the simple pattern and look bored.

Another mat unrolled.

And Satin's stick landed atop it, unfolded out of tissue.

"God." From the back of Fletcher's elbow, Jeremy eeled past Vince and picked it up, held it up to the light.

"Careful!" the man said.

"Jeremy," Fletcher said severely, and willed the boy quiet, his own heart beating hard. He took the artifact from Jeremy's hand. "Looks genuine."

"Riverside culture, maybe Wartime. A lot of stuff got up here then."

When Mazian's forces occupied the planet and took what they damn well pleased.

"I'd believe it," he said easily. He'd dealt in pilfered goods. Never this class of article.
Price
might be the giveaway of an amateur. "What's your valuation?"

"Oh, you've done this before."

"I said."

"You come in here with kids…"

"Good cover." He shrugged. "Say I could probably meet this. Customs is my problem."

"I'll arrange which agent. If you meet the price."

This man was going to arrange which customs agent dealt with
Boreale
. This was no small-time operator. And he'd believed the
Boreale
business.

"So…" he said carefully. "What are we talking about in exchange?"

"Sixty thousand."

"Fifty."

"Sixty firm. This isn't Green."

"Fifty-five."

"Fifty-nine and that's the bottom."

"Fifty-nine's fine, but I've got arrangements to make." He was faking it He had no idea how transactions like this regularly passed, and he dreaded any move, any helpful word from the junior-juniors crowded up against the counter on either side of him.

"Arrangements are easy." The man reached for a paper invoice book. "You arrange your captain does a bulk buy, Earth origin export I'll give you a certificate. It'll be included." The man scribbled on the paper, tore it off, handed it to him. "That's the total price. It's in there. You see that clears the bank. It'll be in the crate."

He wasn't such a fool as to trust the system. He gave the man a doubting look. "Got to talk to my captain, understand."

"The deal's not done till that payment's in the account. Anybody comes in here, he could buy it if he meets the price."

Oldest sales push in the book. In Babylon, they must have used it. He gave the man the eye.

"You get an offer, you go right ahead," he said. "Takes time to get things set up. Can I reach you mainday?"

"Ask for Laz. My nephew does days. He'll find me."

"Got it." Figure that a place like this had the owner working alterday. Fletcher pocketed the slip of paper, collected the junior-juniors, and left.

They walked out of sight of the door before Jeremy's patience fractured.

"Let's get the cops!"

"Wait a minute!" He grabbed Jeremy's shirt, stopping a rush to justice. "This isn't a short-change job. This is major." Jeremy squirmed to be free and he tightened his grip. "You think this guy doesn't have a deal with the cops?"

Jeremy stopped struggling.

"We're going to do exactly what we told him we'd do. We're going to go to our ship's captains and see what they think."

"They're in meetings," Vince said.

"So we find Bucklin or somebody and see if we can get word to them. You just calm down and let's get back to the sleepover. They'll show up there. It was a smart idea, looking in the curio shops. We've got the facts. Let's just use our heads."

"Yessir," Jeremy said, rubbing his arm.

He'd probably grabbed too hard. He was sorry about that. He patted Jeremy on the back and the lot of them walked back toward the twos, toward the gathering-place of
Boreale
crew and
Finity
crew alike, with their packages and their information.

Found it and found a whole lot else, Fletcher was thinking. He knew operations like this only by what he'd heard by rumor and by his study in planetary cultures. If shops like this existed on Pell, they existed on a far smaller scale.

The warehouse behind the shop, that was likely something to behold. And his instincts reminded him that no local authority had done anything about it. Point two, the man talked confidently about handling customs. About an elaborate system of invoices and cargo packed as what it wasn't.

All of that said the system was well-organized, didn't fear the law much so long as he put on a good appearance for the honest officials that might contact the product on its way out, and that cops on the docks didn't stray into that shop. All his instincts from his own days on the rough side of the docks said that the man was doing what he did fairly well out in the open. There were more curio shops here than anywhere he'd seen, and he'd bet none of them bore very close inspection.

Ordinary theft didn't shock him. He knew that went on. This, however, the traffic in planet-produced goods, and the stripping of planets of irreplaceable artifacts, artwork, human history and downer faith… this was foul.

And dangerous. Slipping goods past the systems designed to stop it, also happened to slip them past all the safeguards that detected small lifeforms, and transferred biological materials into places they might, yes, die because they were foreign. But they might not, too.

Satin's gift had come into hands like that. Satin's gift had
found
a system like this. Mazian as an enemy… yes. He was in favor of that. But he wanted something done about this trade, which didn't engage interest on an international level the way something did that involved guns.

They were worried about Cyteen using genetic warfare… but they smuggled stuff like this.

He brought his small troop into the Xanadu's lobby and looked for officers.

There was Lyra.

"Got to talk to you," he said. Keeping the junior-juniors quiet until they could get Lyra to a quiet and private area near the bar was difficult but he managed it, and Lyra looked at him with brow furrowed.

"What is this?"

"We found the stick," he said.

Lyra looked blank a moment.

"In a curio shop," Jeremy said, because he wasn't going fast enough. Jeremy fairly vibrated with nerves. Linda and Vince were bobbing and restraining themselves with utmost difficulty. "They're smugglers," Vince said. "They have a whole back warehouse full of stuff."

"This isn't a joke, right?"

"No joke," Fletcher said. "Each stick is unique as a fingerprint. I know this one. We tracked it down. We're absolutely sure. They offered me a deal on it, sixty thousand and a fake cargo invoice, arranged through the captain."

"Through the Old Man?"

"I said I was from
Boreale
."

Lyra looked flummoxed and halfway amused. "This is a good one.—What in hell were you doing out searching with the junior-juniors?"

"It was us tracked it down!" Jeremy said in his defense. "We figured the skuz thief would sell it here, so we just checked the curios, and when we said downer stuff, they sent us to this shop, Blue 512, just right across from
Boreale
! Isn't that a kick?"

"You get to quarters," Lyra said. "You leave this to older crew, junior-junior.—Fletcher, I'll get this information to Bucklin. The captains are at supper. Or were." She checked her watch. "I'll see if I can call Bucklin."

"Yes'm," Fletcher said. "Tell him I can ID the stick, if they need that. Meanwhile we're going to go upstairs."

"Game parlor!" Linda cried.

"Room!" Jeremy voted. "So we can hear when they call."

"Room," Fletcher said, and to forestall protests from Linda and Vince: "The first-run vid, and lunch at the Lagoon tomorrow. Move."

The protocols of which ship to contact first and by what rank officer were sticky in the extreme. It was a case of insult those most disposed to be your allies or flatter those most likely to be your opposition, and the Old Man simply phoned a complete mixed bag from the pricey restaurant and wanted to meet their senior captains for drinks.

They held an impromptu high-level strategy meeting in the tiny banquet room of one of Esperance's fanciest restaurants, next to the bar, and security ranged from
Finity
crew in silver and immaculate
Santo Domingo
crew in dark greens, to the polychrome non-regulation of
Scottish Rose
and
Celestial
, and finally to the tasteful blues of
Chelsea
and the blue-greens of
Boreale
.

They started out the drinking and the meeting with those captains and solved the protocol problem with each of the captains there calling someone and inviting them for drinks… on a massive tab.

JR paced himself with the alcohol, and hobnobbed and good-fellowed his way around the room. The restaurant had planned to close, and a staggering bribe from
Finity
said it didn't. The crowd milled, socialized, Madison and the Old Man holding court at this table and that, and secondary captains began to arrive in numbers that spilled out of the banquet room and into the bar. Then the small restaurant. It was Alliance captains, it was Family ships hauling for Union, it was Union
Boreale
, whose reputation for strait-laced probity and cloned-man humorlessness dissolved in multiple bottles and a wit that had the
Celestial
and
Santo Domingo
captains alike wiping their eyes, red-faced.

Notably,
Champlain's
captains didn't get an invitation. "I'll bet my next year of liberties
Champlain's
well aware," JR said to Bucklin, who was part of security. "I wouldn't put it past their station friends to try to slip a ringer onto the wait staff. Certainly they're not getting any sleep this watch."

"I'll see if we can find out from the waiters if anybody's suspect in that department," Bucklin said.

Meanwhile JR brushed up against Madelaine, who'd also shown up. Madelaine and Blue both were having a good time.

"No few legal offices here," Madelaine informed him, among other tidbits. "That chap over there with the mustache, that's
Santo Domingo
. Old friends."

The ships' lawyers were getting together, frightening thought, mixing throughout the bar and restaurant.

Oser-Hayes figured in a number of conversations. So did the infamous lawsuit, as ship captains from both sides of the War wanted to know the progress of the action against Mazian, and as war stories and reminiscences were the bulk of the conversation.

Those, and the information someone had now let slip, that Pell and Mariner had come to terms with Union and that the old Hinder Star routes might see another rebirth via Esperance, which the local stationmaster was resisting.

The party now, with several new arrivals, outgrew the banquet room
and
the bar, and the talk now regarded profits that could be made on a new Earth route using Esperance as well as Mariner-Pell—except for the resistance of the Esperance administration, which was doing everything it could to hang on to a failing status quo.

The entire list of ships docked at Esperance, except
Champlain
, was represented in the restaurant and bar, and JR circulated along with the rest, called on to give the straight story about the lawsuit until he'd lost track of the times he'd told it, asked about the captaincy on
Finity's End
and the Old Man's health until he'd lost track of that subject, too. There was genuine concern about Captain James Robert, genuine interest in a young captain who carried the name.

"
Finity's
best kept secret," a woman said, shaking his hand. "Pleased to meet you." And proceeded to introduce him to half
Celestial
's senior crew. They were no longer just the captains present. In the way of spacer gatherings, it had spread to include several ranks down.

He edged around a group of senior officers and found Wayne, who'd just gotten back from dockside. Wayne gave him a slip of paper, said it was a security matter, and that required a trip over to one of the few lights in the room to read the note.

It was from Lyra.

The item we were searching the skin for has turned up in a shop in Blue. Instructions?

Damn, he thought. He couldn't detach Bucklin. They had a security need here as great as there was possible to have in this end of space.

But he signaled Wayne and took Wayne and the note out to the area where Bucklin and far more senior officers were standing watch.

He showed it to Bucklin, but he went on to show it to Tom R., who was in charge of security. "The hisa artifact that went missing at Mariner," he said quietly. "We've found it here.
Champlain
crew is the juniors' bet. No one's taken any action. I just got this."

"Madelaine should see this. So should the Old Man."

It seemed a good idea. Security rated the matter as above their heads, and he tended to agree. He dismissed Wayne back to Lyra to say they were working on the problem, and wove his way back through the dimly lit room toward Madelaine.

"The artifact," he said, "here, in a shop.
Champlain
, most likely."

"Oh, that's interesting," Madelaine said in a predatory way. "Absolute identification?"

"I don't know," he had to say. "But nothing hisa belongs in any shop here."

"Where's Fletcher?" Madelaine asked.

"I don't know that, either." All of a sudden he very much wanted to know that answer, wished he'd sent Wayne after that information, and it was almost worth chasing Wayne down to make sure. But Wayne had left, almost certainly, the room was crowded, and his mission was to the Old Man himself.

"Sir." He came up at the Old Man's shoulder. "A word. A brief word."

"Back in a moment." The Old Man rose carefully, left the table and the conversation with several old acquaintances, and moved into a dark corner where, by the nature of the party, there was privacy.

"What's the problem?" the Old Man asked

"The juniors have found the hisa artifact in a shop in Blue. I don't know who found it, I don't know how we know that's the one, but that's the initial information."

"That's very interesting," the Old Man said, exactly as Madelaine had said.

"I thought you'd want to know. That's all."

"Keep it quiet for now. We'll talk. Tell them on no account talk to the police."

"Yessir," he said "I'll send a courier back." One of the seniors in security, was his intention as he let the Old Man get back to his table and his conversation, but he made it no farther than the next table when Madison snagged him to know what that had been.

He shouldn't have sent Wayne back. He should have held him to serve as a messenger… mistake he'd not have made if he'd used his head.

He went to Bucklin, who had a pocket-com. "Call Lyra. Tell her no action. None."

"Yessir," Bucklin said, and made the call on the instant, noise and all.

That
was handled, and wouldn't blow up. He went to Tom, the senior security chief present, and ordered a courier back to the Xanadu.

"I want to keep an eye on things," he said. "If somehow someone saw someone and got nervous, I don't want junior-juniors on the docks. It's already a bad idea, just with the meeting here."

"Yessir," Tom said.

He shouldn't have interfered in Bucklin's domain without asking Bucklin what he'd done. It was a kneejerk reaction, to have given that last order, involving junior crew. He wasn't pleased he'd done it; orders from too many levels were a guaranteed way to foul a situation up; and he went back to Bucklin and pulled
him
into a corner.

"I just ordered juniormost crew off the docks," he said. "Shouldn't have. Sorry."

"Beat you to it an hour ago," Bucklin said with the ghost of a smile. "Captain, sir."