Vince yelped, and the virtual cat jumped, spat, and retreated, staring at them.
Fletcher had to calm his own nerves and slow his own pulse. “Don’t move,” he said. “Stand still.”
The tiger rumbled with threat. The tail-tip moved, and muscles stayed knotted beneath the striped fur. The place smelled of damp, and rot, and animal.
“It’s really real,” Linda said.
“Does a pretty good job,” Fletcher said. The junior-juniors clustered around him; and his own planet-trained nerves were in an uproar.
They edged past. The tiger followed them with a slow turning of its head.
A strange animal bolted away, brown, four-footed. The tiger bounded across the trail in front of them.
“Damn!” Jeremy said.
Fletcher concurred. They’d had a children’s version and a thrills version of the zoo, and he began to know where he classified himself.
Or maybe too much immediacy and too much threat had made them all jumpy.
They walked out of the exhibit with rattled nerves and went through the gift shop, spending money all the way.
Four hours to set up the meeting and then another hour while station officials drifted in from various appointments, in their own good time. Alan and Francie took charge and kept, contrarily, claiming that the senior captain was on his way. On his way… for another hour and a half.
“Just sit there,” Francie advised JR. “Just sit and be pleasant. Keep them wondering.”
So he took his place at the table beside Alan, and provoked stares from a long table occupied by grim-faced station authorities and minor Alliance officials.
“Fifth captain,” Alan introduced him. “James Robert Neihart, Jr.”
JR returned the shocked glances, and suddenly, in possession of the conference table, knew how hard that information had hit. These people hadn’t known he existed two seconds ago— another Captain James Robert, under tutelage of the first.
Now titled with the captaincy, at a time when, just perhaps, they’d been thinking the famous captain couldn’t last much longer and that they knew his successors.
Now they knew nothing.
“Gentlemen,” JR said. “Ladies. My pleasure.”
There was a moment of paralysis. That was the only way to describe it. They didn’t know what to do with him. They didn’t know what his position was, how much he knew, or why . In short, what they thought they knew had changed.
“We,” the first-shift stationmaster said, trying to seize hold of what had no handles, “we weren’t informed. Is it recent, this fifth captaincy? We hope it doesn’t signal a crisis in the captain’s health.”
Vile man, JR thought. He’d never found a person snake so described on sight. And, completely, coldly deadpan, he made his reply as close a copy of the Old Man as he could muster.
“We aren’t our apparent ages. Recent in whose terms, sir?”
Conversation-stopper. Implied offense—within the difference between spacer perceptions and stationer perceptions.
And he’d asked a question. It hung in the charged air waiting for an answer as a dozen faces down the long table hoped not to be asked, themselves, directly.
There was one gesture the senior captain had made his own. JR consciously smiled the Old Man’s dead-eyed, perfunctory smile. And at least the two seniormost stationers looked far from comfortable.
“There is a succession,” JR dropped into that silence. He’d thought he’d be terrified, sitting at this table. He’d thought he’d conceive not a word to say. Maybe it was folly that took him to the threshold of real negotiations, knowing that the Old Man’s arrival might be further delayed. It might be dangerous folly. But the Old Man had taught him. “There always was a succession. It’s our way to shadow our seniors, so there’s no transition. There never will be a transition. But Mazian can’t say the same. They went on rejuv back during the War—to ensure no births. Those ships have no succession.” A second, deliberate smile. “We left only one of our children ashore. And at Pell we got him back. Another Fletcher Neihart, as happens. Looks seventeen. Unlike me, he is.”
For a moment the air in the room seemed dead still, and heavy. There was no way for them to figure his real age. The face they were looking at was a boy’s face. But now they knew he wasn’t.
Then a set of steps sounded in the hall outside. A good many of them. The Old Man was arriving with his escort.
He was aware of body language, his own, constantly, another of the Old Man’s lessons. He deliberately mirrored calm assurance, to their scarcely restrained consternation, and when Alan and Francie rose in respect to the Old Man and Madison coming into the room, so did he. Four of those at the conference table, in their confusion, rose, too.
“So you’ve met the younger James Robert,” James Robert, Sr. said, and JR would personally lay odds someone’s pocket-com had been live and the feed going to the Old Man for the last few minutes. “A pleasure to reach Esperance. I was just in communication with the Union Trade Bureau. Very encouraging.” James Robert sat down as they all resumed their seats. “Delighted to be here,” James Robert said, opening his folder. He looked good, he looked rested, not a hair out of place and the dark eyes that remained so lively in a sere, enigmatic mask swept over the conspiratory powers of Esperance with not a hint of doubt, not of himself, not of the Alliance, not of the force he represented.
“Welcome to Esperance,” the senior stationmaster said.
Thank you.” James Robert let him get not a word further. “Thank you all for rearranging your schedules. You’ve doubtless received partial reports on the trade situation and the pirate threat. I’ve just come from the edges of Earth space, and from consultation with our Union allies on matters of security and trade, and on the changing nature of the pirate activity hereabouts.” This, to a station that fancied its own private agreements with Union: it suggested Union shifting positions: it suggested things changing; and JR very much suspected the Old Man was going to follow that theme straight as a shot to the heart of Esperance objections.
There were cautions out, in the instructions from Bucklin. Champlain being in port. The crew was supposed to confine themselves to Blue Dock, and to go in groups constantly, in civ clothing. Fletcher wore his brown sweater. So did Jeremy, and now Linda said she wanted one.
“We can all have the same sweaters,” Linda said.
“The idea,” Fletcher objected, “is that civvies look different .”
“So we look different,” Linda said.
He was doubtful that Linda comprehended the idea at all. Linda understood unity, not uniqueness. Linda wanted a sweater. Then Vince did. The notion that they should look like a unit appealed to them, and protests that they might as well put on ship’s colors fell on deaf ears. So they shopped. Found exactly the right sweaters, which the juniors insisted on putting on in the shop.
Next door to the clothing store was a pin and patch shop, a necessity. Esperance patches and pins were in evidence, along with patches and pins from all over… but the ones from Earth and the ones from Cyteen were the rarities, priced accordingly.
It was obligatory to acquire pins or patches, for a first trip to a station, and the junior-juniors, getting into the spirit of the merchanter and trading idea, traded spare pins from Sol for theirs and then bought an extravagant number of extras. The merchant was happy.
Then Vince fished up a Jupiter from his pocket and got a cash sale.
A first-timer to everything, however, had to buy, and Fletcher bought a couple of high-quality Esperance pins. One for luck, Linda urged him, and at least one for trade.
Then he bought another, telling himself he’d… maybe… give it to Bianca when he got back to Pell. She’d like it, he thought. At least she’d know he’d thought of her, at the very last star of civilized space.