Gibraltar Sun (33 page)

“I understand.”

“Current plans are to depart as soon as you have filled our first order.”

“That will take three more days, as I have told you. The equipment we require for squeezing out the juice is being modified.”

“I remember,” Mark replied. “That doesn’t leave us with sufficient time for the scholar to complete his work.”

“We could purchase a copy of their database,” Tanamara said, right on cue. “I could work on it during the voyage home without delaying your damned schedule!”

“WHAT?” Mark screamed, overacting for the alien’s sake. “Do you have any idea how much that would cost?”

The two of them glowered at one another until CanVisTal stepped in. “Is it my understanding that the scholar would like to copy our planetary database and study it at his leisure?”

“It’s out of the question,” Mark said stubbornly.

“Perhaps the cost would not be as great as you think,” the Ranta trade representative said. “Since we are going to be in the
vasa
winemaking business together, I may be able to talk to our Keeper of the Data and discuss a special price… say three parts out of twelve less in exchange for the data, to be compensated by a one part in twelve increase in the price you will pay for
vasa
.”

The hook having been neatly set, Mark made a show of considering the offer, then reluctantly said, “It would help us update our own pitiful excuse for a database. All we would need are the standard public files. I see no need to pay for your lists of annual crop totals and other useless information.”

“Of course,” CanVisTal said. “However, it may be more difficult to extract the data you do not need than it will be to include them, but adjust the price as though they were not there.”

“Very well,” Mark said. “If you will give me your estimate, I will make a decision before we leave. Scholar, you may have your way this time, but don’t ever ask me for this sort of thing again.”

“I will ask the Keeper of the Data for his price tonight, and you shall have it in the morning.”

“That will be acceptable,” Mark replied grudgingly, while inside, his heart began to pound. Hopefully, the Ranta did not have a bio sensor focused on him at the moment, or else they would wonder at his excitement at getting back to the haggling over the price of red berry juice.

Chapter Thirty Three

As Broan Avenger
Blood Oath
accelerated away from Holsto in the Bestafal System, Ship Commander Pas-Tek flapped his ears to show his exasperation. He had thought Modat was bad, with its boiling mud baths and atmosphere that stank of sulfur. Holsto was worse. The sandstorms were unending, the result of the planet lying on its side as it orbited its star.

His arrival there had corresponded with the height of summer in the northern hemisphere, when Holsto had its north pole pointed directly at the system primary. The scorching of the polar region caused all of the ice there to melt. Conversely, the southern polar ice cap now covered one-third of the planet. In half a revolution of Holsto about its star, the situation would be reversed.

This alternating imbalance drove ferocious storms and a continuous strong wind that picked up sand and dust in the Great Northern Desert and dumped its load on the strip cities huddled on both sides of the equator.

None of this would have mattered had his superiors allowed him to communicate with the locals from space. However, the policy of Those Who Rule was that a ship commander on messenger duty must assume orbit and travel to the surface where he could deliver the council’s message to the local rulers in person. The rule was an ancient one first promulgated in response to a planetary rebellion that had been laid at the snout of an absentee Master.

Those who served the council must never miss an opportunity to demonstrate the power of the Race to their subservients.

This meant that Pas-Tek’s fur had been burned, frozen, and sand blasted on the various planets this mission required him to visit. Yet, despite his desire to return home to his mate and cubs, he still had Etnarii, Sasta, and Desh to visit before he could warp orbit for home.

Luckily, Etnarii was a much more pleasant world than the one he had just come from. It was a bit cold for his kind, but he would take that over sulfur smell or blowing sand any time.

As he draped himself over the resting rack in his cabin, his private hatch alarm sounded. Grumbling, he ordered the unwelcome visitor to enter.

As expected, Saton, his sailing master, passed through the hatch and made the sign of obeisance.

“Yes?” he asked the Ventan. “Can’t you see that I am resting after the ordeal of washing all the sand from my fur?”

“Apologies, Commander, but I have a maintenance item for you.”

“What has broken now?”

The jump generator timing circuit is a few twelfths of a micro-octave out of calibration.”

“Will it get us through the next jump?”

“It will, but possibly not through the one after that.”

“We are scheduled to put in at Pastol when we get to the Etnarii system. You and the engineers can recalibrate while I am down on the planet.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Let me know when we approach the Etnarii gate. With the timing circuits questionable, I want to be in the control center when we jump.”

“I will, Master,” the Ventan said before withdrawing from his cabin.

Now then, where was he? It seemed to Pas-Tek that he had been about to fall asleep. Despite his active mind, he was sufficiently tired that it shouldn’t take long to surrender the cares of command for a few hours.

As he closed his eyes, he listened to the thrum of
Blood Oath
’s engines. Everything sounded normal. However, timing circuit problems were best not left for the next scheduled maintenance. His race had excellent hearing, but long before a timing problem became audible, it would cause the engines to explode as soon as the generators began building energy in the jump field.

“Now
that
would be the perfect ending for this mission,” he thought to himself. Of course, having one’s ship explode in a stargate was the single excuse Those Who Rule would accept for failing to complete his mission.

But only if he died in the explosion.

#

Mark Rykand was agitated. It had been two days since CanVisTal had promised to get him a quote on a copy of the Pastol Planetary Database. The trade representative, who had previously hovered over them like a mother hen with her newly hatched brood, had been strangely absent. Mark’s sense of anticipation built to the point where his mind was racing through the possible “what might have gone wrong” scenarios.

The problem was that he could not show any overt interest in the database. To the Ranta, he must appear unconcerned, even a little hostile to the idea of spending hard earned value on a scholar’s enthusiasms. Outwardly, his only interest must be the procurement of a sufficient sample of
vasa
juice to take home to Troje.

That process, too, was going slowly. It seemed that the average
vasa
berry only produced a few milliliters of fruit juice, and therefore, the process required a lot of berries.

One would think that the Ranta would have an efficient method for harvesting the berries, but one would be wrong. The Ranta ate the cabbage part of the
setei
plant and usually discarded the berries.

Mark sympathized. He had once been in Arizona, where he pulled the ripe fruit off a prickly pear cactus and popped it into his mouth. That was when he discovered the small spines that dot the skin of the red, bottle-shaped fruit. He made his discovery when one lodged in the roof of his mouth. His guide, recognizing what had happened, broke down laughing. Later he explained that it was necessary to remove the spines before consuming the succulent fruit.

Compounding the raw material problem was the fact that most
setei
plants had not yet reached the reproductive stage, and therefore, lacked
vasa
berries. It would be several months, CanVisTal explained, before they would reach the prime harvest season.

It seemed to Mark that even the gods were attempting to thwart him. Feigning great interest in the red liquid, he had consumed a sizeable quantity of the juice over the last several days.
Vasa
juice was tasty enough that it might actually be saleable on Earth; that is, if he were really interested in it as a product, and if there weren’t a year-long voyage between Pastol and home.

If they couldn’t sell it as a wine, they could certainly use it as a laxative. That, at least, was the effect it had on him. Despite this, Lisa’s discovery of the red berries had been a stroke of luck. Their cover story would have worn thin had they not found a product they could convincingly claim to be tasty.

His foul musings were interrupted when his wife stuck her head around the corner of the partitioned cubicle and said, “CanVisTal is here to see you.”

“About damned time,” he muttered, making sure to do so in Standard rather than trade talk. It would not have done to have the locals know how much exasperation these delays were causing him.

“Greetings, Markel Sinth,” CanVisTal boomed as Lisa led him into Mark’s humble office.

“What news of my
vasa
juice?”

“We nearly have the quantity of berries that we require, and will deliver them in three days.”

“Excellent. We are running late, so if you will have them delivered to my landing boat, we will take our departure as soon as they are onboard.”

“There is the matter of payment,” the trade representative replied.

“Yes, there is always that. We agreed that for this lot of juice, we will pay you two Vithian power units, one Gorthian reformer, and a dozen of those small zinc statues from my home world. I will have my pilot return to the ship to obtain payment.”

“That would be good,” CanVisTal replied. “There is also the matter of the planetary database.”

“Oh, yes,” Mark replied, feeling his throat constrict around the words from tension. “I had almost forgotten. How much?”

“Sixty four power units, twelve reformers, and six verifiers.”

Mark didn’t have to feign anger as he exploded in protest. The price was ridiculous, not the least because
New Hope
didn’t carry that many power units in its fake cargo hold. He told CanVisTal that, explaining that in their long voyage, they had stopped many places and exchanged what he sought for other commodities.

“Credit can be arranged,” the trade representative said.

Mark smiled inwardly, and the negotiations began. It took more than an hour, but eventually a price was agreed upon. They would provide the Ranta with a dozen power units in addition to the ones they owed for the
vasa
juice, plus all of the reformers they had aboard
New Hope
(not that he admitted as much to CanVisTal). For the remainder of the debt, he agreed to have what he owed aboard the first bulk carrier that came to Pastol for concentrated
vasa
juice. No power units, no
vasa
.

“Can the database be ready when you deliver the juice?” Mark asked.

“Most certainly,” CanVisTal said.

“Then I will send my pilot to orbit to pick up the goods.”

“We will have the juice at this facility three sunrises from now.”

Mark rose and stuck out his hand. “A custom of my people.” He showed the Rasta how to shake hands, finishing with, “This is the way we seal a bargain.”

CanVisTal turned to leave. Just as he did so, Mark’s communicator beeped. Surprised, he plucked it from his belt and pressed the message button.

“Mark?” Captain Harris’s voice issued from the hidden speaker.

“Yes.”

“Are you alone?” Harris asked. With a start, Mark realized that he was speaking Standard.

“Not quite. I have the Ranta trade representative with me.”

The captain was curt. “Get rid of him and call me back.”

“Why?”

“We’ve got trouble. Harris out.”

#

Pas-Tek lounged at his control station aboard
Blood Oath
and watched his mostly Gorthian crew go about their business. The Gorthians were competent spacers, having had interplanetary travel long before the Race discovered them on a small world circling a blue-white giant of a star. As a result, their bullet-shaped heads had eyes half the diameter of Pas-Tek’s own. Their vision extended to shorter wavelengths than did his, which made much of their artwork unintelligible to him. He just couldn’t see in the ultraviolet shades of color.

“Gate just coming into range now, Ship Commander,” his sensor operator announced.

“Very well. How are the timing circuits?” he asked into his intercom.

“Holding steady, Ship Commander,” his chief engineer’s unseen voice responded. “There should be no difficulty this jump.”

“Are you certain, Engineer? We don’t want to spread pieces of our ship all over the gate.”

“We are within safe parameters, Commander, if barely.”

“Very well. We can’t stay here.” In truth, of course, he would have preferred to stay in the Gasak system, the local Subsector capital. There was a large population of the Race here, diversions, comfortable quarters in which to lounge and breathe fresh air.

Instead they were about to jump through one of Gasak’s half dozen gates to the cul-de-sac system of Etnarii, with its boring farmers and endless talk about the weather and crops. He had never been to the backwater farm planet before, but he had talked with ship commanders who had. None of them spoke well of the place, although he reminded himself, it was still better than the last few planets he had visited.

“You may approach the gate, Sailing Master!”

Saton acknowledged the order from the astrogator’s station and began programming their approach. It was possible to transit a stargate at high speed, but such maneuvers were not done save for combat situations.

The gate was a small target in a big universe, and nothing would ruin a mission quite like colliding with one. In addition to destroying his ship, a collision would put the gate out of commission. In a big system like Gasak, that would not be a problem. The accident would be noted immediately and steps taken to repair or replace the gate. In a backwater like Etnarii, it would be a catastrophe. The place had so little traffic that it might be cycles before anyone knew that the link was down.