Owner's Share (Trader's Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper) (56 page)

“Oh, you get plenty of notice,” Ms. Arellone said with a sly smile. “What about that blow up with what’s his name? The art critic?”

“Oh, Simon?” She gave her head a little shake. “Yes, well, Simon is a drama queen in his own right. Personally, I think his career was flagging so he picked a fight with me in public.”

“I never did figure out what it was about. The newsies never actually said, did they? Something about some artist’s show you were putting on, and he thought it was some kind of put up deal?”

“He accused me of sleeping with the artist so he’d show in my gallery.” Ms. Maloney saw my bemused look and took pity on me. “A year ago last November, I think it was...” She looked at Ms. Arellone who nodded in confirmation. “I hung a show of works by Anthonio Velasquez Romero in my gallery on Jett. It was a big show, and Romero is a big fish for an operator like me to get.” She shrugged. “Simon Aubergine is the self-appointed savior of the art world in our benighted corner of the galaxy, and every so often he goes on a tear. He thought the only way I could get Romero to do a show with me on Jett, of all places, was to sleep with him.”

Ms. Arellone was dying to ask the obvious question, but I was proud of her for refraining. “You got a lot of attention for that. Seems like every time I looked, you were in the newsies, and being accused of sleeping with somebody.”

Ms. Maloney made a wry face. “Yeah. That got old after a time.” She sighed and her mouth twisted into a crooked smile. “Still, I should probably thank Simon.”

“Why’s that?” Ms. Arellone asked.

“Without all his yelling about it, the show might have been a horrible failure. As it was, we sold out the entire gallery in about a month. Not just Romero’s work but everything I had. I even brought stuff out of storage, and had artists taking the shuttle up from the planet with more work to sell.” She laughed quietly. “And I managed to get the newsies quashed, when it was over. They mostly leave me alone now.”

“What’d you do?”

“I leaked a photo of me walking with my father anonymously. Some poor gullible newsie ran it with the headline ‘Gallery Girl Likes Older Men!’” She shrugged. “I gave the article to my father and let him handle it.”

Ms. Arellone and I both laughed, and the light dancing in Ms. Maloney’s eyes intrigued me.

By then we’d all eaten about as much as we wanted, and by silent consensus, rose and took care of the dishes and left over food.

“Will you be comfortable alone in the ship, Ms. Maloney?” I asked.

She gave a little shrug. “Of course, Captain. Why not?”

“I thought you might like to go ashore? See a little of Ten Volt?”

“You’ve got a chore to do, Captain, and I’ve got supplies coming from the chandlery.” She shook her head. “No, I’ll stay here and get this taken care of, but if the offer’s still good later, maybe we can get some dinner? I wouldn’t say no to a meal I didn’t have to cook or clean up after.”

I snorted a low laugh at her tone. “I know exactly what you mean, Ms. Maloney, and let’s plan on that.” I turned to Ms. Arellone. “You ready to guard my body, Ms. Arellone?”

“You’re taking this much too lightly, Skipper. When you were nobody, it was one thing but you’re getting more attention now.” She sighed and shook her head. “I need just a moment to freshen up. Don’t leave without me.” She ducked out into the passage, and headed for her compartment.

I sighed, and looked back at Ms. Maloney. “How do you deal with bodyguards?”

She shook her head. “Not well, I confess, Captain. If DST weren’t paying for mine, I wouldn’t have one, I’ll tell you that.”

“Why are they paying?” I asked. “I mean what are we being guarded against? This all seems so unnecessary.”

She shrugged. “I think—probably most of the time—it is. Once you become a public figure, though, it only takes getting tied up in one hysterical mob to appreciate somebody having your back.”

“I supposed, but wouldn’t having a friend along do as well?”

She shrugged. “Maybe, Captain, but ...” She paused, and looked at me under lowered brows. “How many friends do you have who you’d trust to watch your back right now?”

My response must have shown in my face because she said, “Yeah. Me, too, Captain. Me, too.”

Ms. Arellone came to the door of the galley and stopped, waiting for me to join her.

I nodded to Ms. Maloney. “See you in a few then.”

I followed Ms. Arellone down the ladder and off the ship, sealing the lock behind us. The chill of the docks, and the lunchtime conversation, made me to begin paying closer attention to the people around us.

As a clipper ship captain, one gets used to a certain amount of recognition. I always said I could recognize a captain, whether he or she were in uniform or not. I hadn’t been a captain all that long, but I learned to recognize it—the flash in the eyes when you walked by a spacer. Since I mostly went around the orbital in shipsuit and showing rank, it wasn’t so surprising. What I noticed as we walked to the CPJCT office was something else. It was more than “Oh, that’s a captain.” and more like, “I know him.”

“Do these people seem a little different to you, Ms. Arellone?”

“A bit too familiar with your face, Skipper?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so, too. I wonder if there’s been more press, sar.”

“Well, the playboy flyboy picture was bad enough.”

She snorted but we kept moving. In relatively few ticks we were at CPJCT, and I presented myself and my credentials to the functionary.

“One moment, Captain. I’ll put up your records.”

“Thank you.”

After a moment, she turned to me. “How can I help you, Captain Wang.”

“I’m looking for my small craft steward endorsement. I passed the test on Welliver. They told me it would be applied to my records electronically, and I could pick up the physical copy here on arrival.”

She looked into her terminal and frowned. Tapping a few keys, she pursed her lips and nodded. “Yes, I see the record of your exam, that you passed, and that the request went to Diurnia’s Central Registry for processing on January 13th.” She tapped a few more keys and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Captain, but they do not seem to have responded yet.” She looked over the counter at me apologetically.

“And according to my understanding, I cannot book paying passengers on my vessel until that response comes through.”

“That is correct, Captain. It does take a while for the forms to go through. Seven to ten days is just an estimate, and we are a long way out. If they routed it back to...” she paused to look back at the screen, “Welliver, it might have been delayed a few days.”

“There’s no way to tell where it is in the process, or whether it might show up anytime in the next few days?”

She shrugged. “I’m sorry, there isn’t, Captain. I can send a query to them but it’s likely to be three days before we get an answer back. It could catch up to you by then.” She smiled encouragingly. “It could be in transit now, and show up in your box any minute.”

“Or not for a week?” I asked.

She grimaced and nodded. “Unfortunately so, Captain. How long will you be on Ten Volt?”

“I was hoping to leave on the second.”

She shrugged helplessly. “There’s not much I can do, Captain. I’ll keep an eye open. If it arrives, I’ll forward it to you immediately.”

I sighed. “Thanks. I appreciate your looking.” I would have appreciated her finding even more, but the wheels sometimes grind slowly, and often grind slowest when you are caught in them.

We left the office and Ms. Arellone looked to me. “Ship,” I said. “I need to find more cargo.”

“Can you fill the compartments with cargo, Captain?”

I thought about it as we headed for the lift. “I could if it weren’t crated up, Ms. Arellone.” I had an odd thought. “I wonder how much of the fleamarket we could buy.”

She laughed at the idea, and I saw a couple of people look up at her laugh, but then focus on me. It began to feel a little creepy.

We made it back to the ship without incident, and I intended to retire to my cabin to deal with logs, cargo, and crew issues. The chief still hadn’t read my message—at least the receipt hadn’t returned. For a guy who was just going out to stretch his legs, he had been gone an awfully long time. But when we stepped back aboard, the green funk was stronger. I knew the scrubbers would degrade pretty rapidly.

“Do you smell that, Ms. Arellone?”

“Yes, sar. What is it?”

“Scrubbers need their filters replaced. I sent a note to the chief but he hasn’t responded.”

“Can you fix them, Skipper?”

“I think so, Ms. Arellone, but not before I put on an old shipsuit. It gets messy, and I’d just as soon not mess up one of my better ones.”

She snickered. “Don’t blame you a bit, sar. You need a hand with anything?”

I shook my head. “No, thank you, Ms. Arellone. I can handle this one.”

“Okay, sar.” She headed for the ladder up to deck one, and I stopped by the cabin for a change of clothing before heading for the spares closet.

On the way I tried to remember what I knew about cartridge-filtered scrubbers. One thing that stood out was that you really did not want the whole rack to be the same age if you could avoid it. The cartridge filters had an effectiveness curve where they were most effective in the middle of their duty cycle, so wise engineers cycled through cartridges, swapping out the oldest—and least effective—and replacing a few at a time so they weren’t all brand new like we’d been forced to do when the array failed entirely. Rotating them it helped spread the load, and improved the overall scrubber’s performance profile over time by smoothing it out.

When I got to the scrubber, I pulled the casing off, and found the same mess I’d seen before, only worse. The whole looked ready for a catastrophic failure.

I dropped the casing on the deck, and went back for a trash tote and some fresh filters. After that it was an easy matter to swap out half the dying filters for four fresh ones. The new filters should stabilize the older ones, although the chief would need to swap out the older ones before we got to jump. I refastened the casing, pushed the loaded trash tote back to the bulkhead, and latched it down before heading to the cabin, a shower, and another fresh shipsuit.

I began to wonder if he had run into some trouble ashore. I couldn’t imagine any bodyguard worth his salt would be mugged, but there were other things that could happen—accidents, illness, legalities. My mind steered away from “hostile action” as a possibility.

After I got cleaned up, just for reference, I pinged Mr. Herring with a meaningless status update confirming we’d be getting underway at 1500 on February 2nd. I included the return receipt with that message, and noted that it was not quite 1400. If I didn’t get a receipt back from him, I might assume that it was something with the system, and I immediately began worrying that I’d munged up the upgrade.

I took a deep breath, and started digging into the systems diagnostics, looking for the right tests to run when my tablet bipped. I looked down and saw the receipt from Mr. Herring. I frowned. The chief was beginning to irk me.

Under the circumstances there wasn’t much I could do except wait him out. I couldn’t really report him missing until he’d been gone for a full day, and he was a grown man. With a sigh, I pushed the chief out of my mind for the moment, and focused on the list of priority cargoes bound for Diurnia.

Chapter Forty-Nine
Ten Volt Orbital:
2373-January-30

By the time 1700 rolled around I had snagged another half-dozen small priorities for Diurnia. The onesy-twosy containers totaled thirty-eight, and promised a substantial payout for an on-time delivery. It might not total as much as the priority we earned for delivering Dr. Leyman’s equipment on time, but it was still nothing to drop out the lock. With a couple more days of diligent sifting, I might actually manage to fill the hold. I considered recalling Mr. Herring and turning him loose on it, but discarded the idea.

I stood up from my console and stretched my arms over my head to get blood moving through my body. I found some civvies, something dressy but low-key enough to wear almost anywhere without feeling over or under dressed. The shop on Diurnia really did have good clothing. I pondered the news about a mythical tailor lurking in the upper reaches of the orbital, and thought perhaps I’d pay a call with M. Roubaille’s introduction when we got back.

Dressed and feeling a tad peckish, I crossed to the mess deck to find Ms. Arellone and Ms. Maloney waiting. Ms. Arellone wore her black leather jacket with studs and chains over a shock-white blouse. The collar stood up and she wore it unbuttoned almost to impropriety. A stylishly embroidered pair of jeans, and something that looked like combat boots on her feet, finished the outfit. On her short stature, the look was harder than it might have seemed on somebody taller. The leather and metal looked like armor. By comparison, Ms. Maloney wore a black wool bolero jacket over a cranberry dress with a square neck and a skirt that fell just below her knees. Sensible pumps in black with flashes of red at the tips of the heels and toes finished the outfit. A silk scarf, artfully knotted at her throat stood in for jewelry that she most definitely did not need.