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“Oh,” I said.

The forms themselves were easy and I did not have anything to put into the embargo locker. Still, I could tell we were in for a rather different experience on Dunsany Roads than our other ports. Pip went for his afternoon run and I headed down to deck berthing to see how the crochet work was coming.

Sean had taught Sarah and Tabitha how to crochet. Tabitha only really needed a refresher because she had done simple lace tatting as a girl. Sarah knew the theory, but had never held a hook before. They had been at it about a week by the time we docked and I was shocked to see how much they had done. Sean, of course, had almost finished his afghans and supervised the shawl work. I found the three of them in Sean’s quad, Sean and Tabitha sat on opposite ends of Sean’s bunk and Sarah occupied the lower bunk across from them. Sean was working on his sixth—and last—afghan.

They seemed cozy, all settled in and surrounded by their yarn and talking softly together. Sarah looked as comfortable as I had ever seen her, and Sean looked pleased to have Tabitha nearby. They had not talked about the arrangement when in the sauna so I wondered if they were keeping the project quiet for some reason. Tabitha kept up the queen bee posture when in the sauna, but I thought she and Sean had an easiness between them while they crocheted that I did not really see in the gym.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Great!” Sarah answered without looking up. “This is my third and I think it’s going to be the best one.” She held it up then for me to admire.

“Wow, that looks excellent!” I told her and it did.

Tabitha added, “I’m on my fifth, but I think she’s beginning to catch up to me with those young fingers,” she joked.

That startled me. Somehow I had the idea that Sarah was actually older than Tabitha, but that was probably just because of how she had been when she first came aboard.

“So? What do you think of this as a way to pass the time underway?” I asked.

“This is fun,” Sarah said. “I can take my hook and a ball of yarn up into my bunk in the evening and get all cozy and think about the money I’m making.”

“I’m dreaming these silly patterns,” Tabitha said. “I close my eyes and I can see them in my sleep.” They all chuckled at that. “But I like it.” She sighed. “Takes me back to when I was a kid.”

“So? How much yarn do you need to hold you over to Betrus?”

Sean looked at me speculatively. “Seriously?”

“You’ve burned through twelve skeins in a week. That’s almost two a day and we’ve got almost fifty days to Betrus. We don’t have a hundred skeins left anymore.”

Tabitha looked at me out of the corner of her eye and asked, “How much would you charge to sell us the remaining stock?”

I shrugged. “Talk to Pip. How much you thinking?”

“I’ll give you two hundred fifty for the hundred skeins and take the mass onto my allotment right now. That’ll give us the stock we need for our crochet work and you’ll get your mass allotment cleared along with a nice profit on the deal without having to do anything,” she rattled off.

“Talk to Pip,” I said again. “He’s the money man. I just find the deals. That would take us out of the picture on the shawl deal, but that’s okay with me. I only wanted to find some way to leverage our investment.”

“Thanks, Ish. This was a really good idea,” Sean said. “It’s a lot more fun as a group.”

I checked the chrono and realized I still had two stans before dinner, so I pulled out the spec two environmental materials and ran through a practice test. Brill had been drilling me on watch for the last week, so I was getting a much better handle on it and a lot faster than I would have expected. The test went smoothly and when I finished, the score popped up—eight-five. Enough to pass, but the real tests were tougher so I needed to do better. I went back through the test and started digging out the questions I had missed. With a mid-watch coming, I had some time to study before I would see Brill the next afternoon.

I began to think that Francis had actually done me a favor.

***

I had the morning watch the day we were scheduled to dock at Dunsany Roads so I asked Brill, “Hey, boss? How do we handle watch standing while we’re docked?”

“Well, we pretty much do things the same way as underway, except the watches are a lot longer and a lot looser. Basically, twelves and twenty-fours. With the three of you, that’s twelve on and twenty-four off. We change at 06:00 and 18:00 same as the rest of the ship. By convention, the senior watch stander picks which section he wants and so on down the line. You’re junior so you get what’s left. Different divisions have different requirements but that’s what we do.”

“Wow.” I looked around the section area trying to image being in here for twelve stans at a stretch.

As if reading my mind, Brill said, “You don’t have to stay in the section all that time. The ASIC’s don’t run when we’re docked and running on station power, so you won’t have to deal with that every few ticks. Anytime you want to leave, just slave your tablet and the console will relay any problems to you. You still need to do the VSI once per watch, but that’s still less than normal. We just need to time the last one so it occurs within six hours of pullout.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“It’s quiet everywhere on the ship when we’re docked so hanging out here isn’t that big a deal. Just don’t fall asleep. You can do pretty much anything you can do with your tablet in your hand. That rules out sauna and shower, but if you want to go up to the mess deck, or even hang out in berthing, you can do that if you like.”

“So, I can study?”

“Yup. How’s that going?”

“I took a practice test the other day and got an eighty-five, so it’s climbing. I need to go over the thermal conduction and capacity sections again. I keep reversing hot and cold in my head.”

“Remember that we’re not talking about temperature there but energy levels. Takes more going up than coming down. The temperature is an artifact—an indirect measurement—of the energy level in the fluid. All the transfer on conduction and capacity are based directly on energy, not the abstraction that temperature provides.”

“Oh, that’s what that meant,” I said as one rather confusing passage in the material came back to me. “Thanks.”

“So, enough shop talk. What are you gonna do ashore?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “What do watch standers do ashore?”

“Hmm. We’ll have to find something a little more exciting than dinner for this trip to celebrate your new position, won’t we?”

Suddenly, I remembered Bresheu. “Hey, clothes.”

“What?”

“Remember Bresheu gave me a data chip with his initial on it? I’m supposed to find his friend here. What was that name? Some French guy.” I was scrambling through my head trying to replay the conversation with Bresheu. “I’m supposed to have thought about who I am so I can pick out clothes.” The name that Bresheu had given me hung tantalizingly out of reach in the back of my head.

“You can’t go,” Brill said.

“What?”

“Well by yourself that is. We’ll take you.”

“Who’ll take me? What are you talking about?”

“Ishmael Horatio Wang, if you’re gonna go pick out clothes, at a real shop, and spend real credits then you cannot be allowed to go alone.”

“Oh, no? Why not? Is there some Confederation thingy?”

“Um, yeah, that’s it. It’s a Confederation rule. All men have to take at least one woman with them when they shop for clothes.”

“That’s kinda hard on single guys, isn’t it?”

She considered and shook her head. “Not the good ones. The trick for them is figuring out which woman to take.”

“Henri!” I exclaimed.

“Henri?”

“That’s the guy’s name…the one I’m suppose to see. Henri Roo-something.”

“Henri Roubaille?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Henri Roubaille.”

“He gave you an introduction to Henri Roubaille?” she sounded amazed, incredulous.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, we are so going shopping,” she crowed.

“Who we?” I asked beginning to get suspicious.

“Hmm, good question. Who wouldn’t want to go to Chez Henri? Diane will kill me if we don’t take her. Me, of course, you’re not going without me. Oh, and Beverly, if we can swing the watches. Rhon Scham would be good, too, and I owe Jillian a favor for Arghon.”

“Wait! Jillian?” I asked. “The only Jillian I know is the second mate!”

“Yeah, that’s her.”

“You want me to take the second mate with me clothes shopping?”

“This isn’t the mall, stooge! We’re talking about Chez Henri!” she exclaimed with a grin.

“Okay, what is Chez Henri? Why is this such a big deal? It’s just a tailor shop.”

“Oh, no. Not a tailor shop. This is way beyond a tailor shop.”

“If it’s not a tailor shop, what is it?”

She laughed. “You really don’t know?”

“How would I know? My mother bought my last set of civvies. What I know about clothes is that cotton wrinkles easily.”

“Oh, we are gonna have so much fun with you,” she said and I confess, that might have been the first time she really scared me.

***

Docking at a Confederation port did not seem any different from the others. We went to navigation detail just before 15:00. Diane had the afternoon watch so she stayed on duty, but Francis and I had to report just the same.

When we got settled, Brill came out of her office and said, “Okay, people. Time to pick your watches. We should be docked at 18:00 so first section will get the duty. If it’s earlier than 18:00 when we secure the nav detail, whoever picks first watch has to fill in the difference. Agreed?”

Since I did not have a lot of choice, I just nodded. Diane and Francis agreed as well. It did not really matter in the long run.

“Francis?” Brill asked.

“Second,” he said.

“Diane?”

“Third,” she said.

“Okay, Ish, that leaves you with first.”

I just nodded. “Okay, by me.”

“Take the pad and go curl up on the floor of my office,” she told me. “You had the morning watch and you’ll be awake all night. Try to get a little nap in while we’re maneuvering.”

I did not think it was likely that I would sleep, but she closed the door and when I laid down, I nodded off. It was not a sound sleep, but it was probably better than nothing. I had gotten a good sleep the night before so I was not too worried.

***

Brill opened the door and said, “Ish? Rise and shine.”

I clambered up off the floor, dragged the pad out with me, and threw it in the locker. The chrono said 17:45. “We’re here?” I asked trying to get my brain re-engaged.

“Yup. Just secured from nav detail.”

I yawned and my brain popped a little. I relieved Diane and slaved my tablet to the console. Francis was already gone. Diane and Brill were looking at me in a way that I found a bit disconcerting.

Brill said, “Tomorrow when you get off watch, grab some sleep. We’ll come at 13:00 to take you ashore.”

Diane had a smile that I could only classify as predatory.

“Take me where ashore?” I asked warily.

“To fulfill your promise to Bresheu, of course. To visit Henri Roubaille,” Brill replied. “We’ll want to do it early in our stay so that if he needs to do any adjustments there’ll be time before we have to leave.”

“Now, wait,” I said. “This is all well and good and I appreciate you guys helping me stay out of trouble with the Confederation authorities by shopping with me, but this guy sounds expensive. Can I afford him?”

Diane answered, “I doesn’t cost anything to shop. If he doesn’t have anything you can afford, then you just don’t buy it.”

“True,” I agreed. “That makes a certain amount of sense.” The whole business made me uneasy.

Brill suggested, “Ish, why don’t you go get something to eat. Diane and I will hold down the fort here until you get back.”

“Thanks, I need coffee in the worst way.”

As I headed out the door, Diane asked Brill about the Confederation authorities but I was too groggy to pay attention. Naps do that to me sometimes. I was afraid it might be a long night.

***

When I went back to environmental, I took a fresh mug of coffee with me. Diane had gone, but Brill was sitting at the console. “You didn’t have to wait,” I told her, indicating my tablet.

“No problem, Ish. I’m going to grab some supper in a tick. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

I nodded. “The food helped perk me up and I can always wander around the ship.”

“How’re you doing on the spec two materials?”

“Really good. I’m still not confident that I could pass the real exam, but I’m getting mid-to-high eighties on the practices. That’s probably good enough, but I want to go over that fluid thermodynamics section a couple more times.”

She stood then and shook out her legs one at a time. “You’ll have plenty of time.”

“So? We’re going to see Henri tomorrow afternoon? Who all is going?”

“Diane, Bev, you and me.” I was relieved they had not bothered the second mate, Ms. Avril.

“Jillian has the duty tomorrow, or she would have come. That’s too bad, because I think she’d have had a great time.”

Secretly, I was not sure how much fun I was going to have but I was grateful to the watch standing gods for delivering me from officers.

“How’re you doing with Francis?” she asked.

“Okay, as far as I know. He’s been friendly enough. I don’t think there’s any residual animosity for tricking him or anything.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of how you are relating to him. He played a nasty little trick on you and those cracks about you and Diane were completely uncalled for.”

I shrugged. “Wind through the sails, boss. The tablet thing was just stupidity on my part. I can’t imagine why I never noticed. Ultimately, he probably did me a favor because I doubt that I’d be getting ready for the spec two exam if I hadn’t spent a month banging my head against spec one.”

“That’s true enough. You’d be ready for spec three though.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. In the end, it’s irrelevant. As for the Diane thing, he was right about that. I am too easy to tease about women. Maybe having my face rubbed in it so badly helped me, too.”