In Ashes Born (A Seeker's Tale From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) (36 page)

“We’re lawyered up?”

“Close enough. Meeting in fifteen ticks on oh-one.”

Al came back from her reconnoiter and shook her head. “It’s not a thousand. Maybe three hundred. More than this morning, and orbital security is looking really thin.”

“You’ve been on a Barbell before, right?”

“Skipper, I’ve been on just about everything before.”

“We’re off to the lawyer. Check out your stateroom and see what you need to be able to move in. With crew coming in tomorrow, I’d really like to get everybody moved in because leaving the ship unattended overnight is getting too risky.”

“Agreed. See ya when you get back.”

We scooted through the lock and waved to the waiting crowd as we passed. It was rather a lot of people. I began to get a little nervous about what might happen if we had to turn them down.

We got onto the lift without anybody trying to kiss me or hug me or ask me any questions, a blessing I felt most grateful for.

“You all right, Ish?” Pip asked. “You’re looking a little stressed.”

“What do you think will happen when we tell those people we can’t give them a tour?”

“If it’s not our fault?”

“How do we convince them of that?”

“Let’s see what the lawyer says before we borrow trouble, huh?” he said.

I took a deep breath and blew it out as the lift doors opened. Clipper captains were supposed to be unflappable. I put my best flap forward and stepped out into the swirl of the oh-one deck.

The oh-one deck was mostly ship support businesses, but those included accountants, lawyers, and brokers as well as some of the freight company branch offices and CPJCT and Union offices.

“It’s this way, I think,” Pip said and headed off to starboard.

Four doors down we stopped at the offices of Singer and Gouge, Corporate and Business.

“We seeing Singer or Gouge?” I asked.

“No idea. Maybe both. Maybe neither.” Pip pushed the door open and I followed him in.

“Yes? Can I help you?”

The receptionist wore a tasteful pinstripe suit with a pressed silk shirt and an old-fashioned bow tie. I’d seen pictures but never one in person. Luckily Pip wasn’t so distracted by our host’s sartorial splendor.

“I’m Carstairs. This is Wang. We’ve an appointment with somebody.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Carstairs. Mr. Singer will see you immediately.” A buzzing door called us inward.

Mr. Singer rose from behind a half acre of polished wood to come around and shake our hands. “Gentlemen. It’s wonderful to meet you. I’ve been watching you on the viddie for the last couple of days and I must say I admire your panache, Captain. It’s not every one who can think so well on his feet and handle a crowd so adroitly. Please, sit. Sit.”

Pip and I plunged into some overly soft chairs while Singer perched a butt cheek on the edge of his desk.

“Thank you, Mr. Singer—”

“Barry, please.”

“Thank you, Barry. I’m just fumbling around trying not to cause a riot. Which is why we’re here.”

“Yes, Mr. Carstairs said something about difficulty with the Orbital Management Office and a permit?”

Pip sat forward. “Somebody claiming to be from the Orbital Management Office visited us to tell us we couldn’t give tours of the ship without a permit. Further, it takes a month to get said permit, and they probably wouldn’t grant it anyway.”

“Sounds perfectly normal so far. How can I help you?”

I glanced at Pip at the same time he looked at me.

“How do we get around this permit problem?”

He smiled and clapped his hands together. “You don’t, of course.”

“We don’t?” Pip asked.

“Of course not.”

“How can we give tours of the ship then?”

Singer pursed his lips and steepled his fingers in front of his mouth, frowning and nodding as if trying to decide which legal remedy we might make best use of. Eventually he lowered his hands. “The only way would be for one of you, probably both of you, to be arrested and charged for holding an exhibition without a permit. You might be able to have as many as a half dozen people on tour before that happened. The unfortunate side effect might be that the Orbital Management Office would be within its legal purview to confiscate the exhibit—in this case, your ship—and dispose of it as they deem appropriate. Generally that would mean selling it at auction.”

“I see,” Pip said.

“Good! I’m glad we have that out of the way. Now. How can I help you gentlemen?”

“We’ve got something like three hundred people camped outside our ship. They’re expecting a tour. How do we deal with getting them on and off the ship without running afoul of the Orbital Management Office? What if we don’t charge admission?” I asked.

Singer went through his deep rumination process again while Pip and I fidgeted in the too-soft chairs. Eventually he emerged from his mental cocoon with a smile. “No, that would still be an exhibition with the same likely result. If you decide to do that, my advice is charge a very high price for the tickets in order to pay your legal fees.”

“How do I get three hundred people on my ship without having to pay legal fees?” I asked. The man frustrated me way too much with as little coffee as I had in me.

Singer gave the matter a great deal of thought before responding. “I can only think of two ways,” he said.

Pip leaned forward and so did I.

“First, if they book passage for a voyage. Your ship is licensed to carry passengers?”

“No,” I said.

He sighed. “Then the only other way is hire them as crew.”

Pip clawed his way up out of the chair and took Singer’s hand in both of his, pumping it vigorously while I tried to climb back to my feet. It took me two tries but I made it.

“Thank you, Mr. Singer—Barry. You’ve been most enlightening and I’m sure we’ll have no further problems with the Orbital Management Office,” he said. “We’ll just show ourselves out, won’t we, Captain?”

“Thank you, Barry. Most enlightening.”

I followed Pip out the door, past the reception desk.

“Oh, Mr. Carstairs?” the receptionist called before we got out the door.

Pip turned. “Yes?”

“A matter of your bill?”

“Of course.” Pip returned to the desk and thumbed an invoice before following me back onto the oh-one deck.

“That was enlightening,” Pip said. “Not really useful in terms of resolving the problem but enlightening.”

“How so?”

“He charges by the minute.”

“So the contemplative silences?”

“That would be my guess, but he did shed some important light, if not significant assistance.”

“Do I need to beat it out of you or will you freely share this enlightenment?”

“You might consider some anger management therapy, Captain,” he said, giving me a baleful gaze from under his bushy white eyebrows. “I don’t remember you being so prone to violence in the past.”

“I was never so worried that I might be blamed for a riot before.”

“There is that,” Pip said. “We learned that Powers wasn’t spinning something out of whole cloth just for us. Singer knew of previous cases and how they disposed of the offending exhibits. This bears all the earmarks of a class one, blue-ribbon snarl of red tape.”

“How do we straighten it out?”

“Generally by oiling the gears of government that turn so slowly, but that was the really enlightening part. We don’t. We can’t give the exhibition. No tours. If a little oil on the right gear had been an option, Mr. Thinkie would have offered to be the first gear.”

“So what do we do? I really don’t want to go back and tell those people we can’t take them on a tour.”

Pip chewed his lip as we got back on the lift. I punched oh-two.

He blinked at me. “Not back to the dock?”

“Not without coffee.”

“Good plan,” he said. “What was the name of that reporter with the hover-cam this morning?”

“Madeline something. Madeline Marzipan?” I shook my head. “That’s not right.” I tried to replay it in my head, but without coffee all I could think of was coffee. “Why?”

“If we can’t take them on the tour, maybe we take the tour to them,” he said.

“It’s something.”

“Particularly if we get a recording of Powers explaining why we can’t do it.”

“Might take some of the sting out.”

We stepped through the door at Cackleberries and my brain seized up with the smell of coffee. I didn’t remember anything else until I got back into the lift with a cup of life cradled in my hands and the warm steam caressing my nose.

“We need to do something about your habit, Ish.”

“Getting in over my head?” I asked.

“That, too, but I was thinking about the coffee problem.”

“I don’t have a problem. I can quit any time I want.”

He grinned. “Uh huh.”

“Marsport,” I said.

“Marsport?”

“Madeline Marsport. Breakall News Forty-Two.”

“You sure?”

“No, but it’s a start.”

Chapter Thirty-Six
Breakall Orbital:
2374, August 9

We got back to the ship just a little before 1000, which gave us four stans to solve the problem before the bomb of humanity went off outside the lock. Again we waved at the crowd as we passed. So far, they still smiled and waved back. Most of them sat on the cold metal, propped up against the bulkhead. Some had tablets out. Some were reading. A couple were playing games. One guy was going up and down the line selling coffee and juice, and a woman had a tray of cookies.

“Ah, the entrepreneurial spirit at work,” I said.

Pip chuckled. “There’s probably a kid selling his service as a place holder while they go to the head.”

“I wouldn’t have thought of that.”

“You’ve had a lot on your mind, Skipper.”

“We need to get Marsport down here,” I said as I keyed the lock.

Pip held up a hand. “Wait. I feel something.” He pressed an index finger against each temple, eyes pressed closed, his face scrunched in concentration. “Yes. It’s becoming clearer now.”

“What the—?”

He straightened, eyes wide, and clapped his hands. “Your wish is my command, Captain.” He bowed much to the delight of the first people in line.

“Did you put a little something extra in your coffee?” I asked.

He shook his head and extended an arm to point. “Voilà. Ms. Madeline Marsport.” He grinned. “You gotta admit, I’m good.”

“Timing is everything,” I said and waved Ms. Marsport over.

“Good morning, Captain. Mr. Carstairs, is it?” She offered a hand to shake.

“Yes. Yes, it is.” He shook the offered hand, then pointed to the hover-cam above her head. “Could you secure that for a few moments while we have a chat?”

She looked to me before looking back at Pip. “Chat about what?”

“We’ve got a bit of an exclusive story for you, but we’d like to discuss it first before we fire up the presses.”

At the word exclusive, the red tattletale on the camera went out and the cam dropped into her outstretched hand. She tucked it into a pouch at her side and smiled. “I’m listening.”

“Step into my office, would you?” Pip extended a hand toward the lock in invitation.

She picked her way up the ramp as if it might fold underneath her at any moment. Pip and I followed and I slapped the close key. She gave a little start when the lock began moving.

“So, here’s the deal,” Pip said. “We’ve got a problem and we think you can help us. In return for that help, we’ll give you a story that nobody else can get.”

“Details?” she said, eyes sharp and skeptical.

“OMO says no tours,” Pip said.

Her eyes went wide. “They’re gonna go nuts.”

“You see our problem?”

She nodded. “What do you need?”

“David S. Powers. You know him?”

“Davy Docket? Sure. Everybody knows him.”

“Can you record him saying we can’t give the tour because we don’t have a permit? That if we do, we lose the ship?”

“That’s easy. He’s a one-button interview.”

“One button? On your cam?” Pip asked.

She shot him an impatient glance. “On my blouse.” She looked back and forth between us for a heartbeat or two. “What else?”

“News isn’t an exhibition, Ms. Marsport. It’s the public’s right to know. We have the man who led the salvage team that returned the ship and its unfortunate—late—crew to Breakall Orbital. He can walk you through the tragedy. Show you the stains on the deck. We give your holo cam a tour of the ship and you publish it for everybody to see. ”

I coughed.

“All right. Maybe not the stains on the deck,” Pip said.

Her eyes had gone round and her jaw hinged open. “Mother of dragons,” she said, her voice barely audible over the sound of the blowers. “Who?”

I held up a hand. “Uh. Me.”

Her expression was one of those comical takes you see on holos that you know can’t possibly be real. Hers was.

“You can check the records, Ms. Marsport,” I said. “I was only first mate then, but it was me.”

“How soon do you want Powers?” she asked.

“You’ll do it?” Pip asked.

“Do it? Are you kidding me?” She shook her head. “How many of my clothes do I need to take off? I’d record naked for this story.” She reached for her blouse.

“No, no! Please. No,” I said.