Bucklin nodded. “I’ll relay that. I’ll sub in Wayne here till I get back.”
It was the first decision, JR reflected, as he watched Bucklin go to the door and call Wayne back, the first administrative decision he’d made in his new-made captaincy—one which might duplicate what someone had already ordered, but if it did, the more senior captain’s instructions would take precedence. If it conflicted, he would hear an objection. He didn’t think he’d hear one over the extravagant expense of one-write safe-cubes, which themselves were admissible in court. In the meanwhile, if that information wasn’t being collected, he wanted it. The facts were vulnerable to technicians, if to no one else, and Oser-Hayes might have cast aspersions on the honesty of the Pell-trained technicians who maintained the black-box system on Esperance, but it didn’t mean Oser-Hayes might not subvert one tech to do something about damning evidence. Like financial records.
The tone in which Oser-Hayes said Pell made it likely that distrust of the central government and of Pell was a driving force in Esperance politics.
Distrust of this place, this station, this administration was becoming his.
They’d been to the vid zoo. They’d seen all the holo-sharks at the Lagoon. That was two major amusements down on the first day.
They went to supper, in the moderately posh Lagoon, which Linda and Jeremy had both wanted, where colored lights made the place look as if they were underwater, and a sign advised that the same disposable contact lenses they’d used in the exhibit would display Wonders of the Mystic Lagoon, purchasable for a day’s wages if you hadn’t brought your own.
The junior-juniors were tired. Fletcher wanted the bubble-tub back in the sleepover. In his opinion it was time to go back to the Xanadu and settle in for the night. It was well past main-dark and the dockside, which never slept, had gone over to the rougher side of its existence: neon a bit more in evidence, the music louder, the level of alcohol in the passersby just that much higher.
But Jeremy moped along the displays, and wanted to stay on dockside a little longer. “I’m not sleepy,” he said.
“Well, I’m ready to go back,” Vince said
“We’ve got two weeks here,” Fletcher reminded them. “We agreed. Shopping tomorrow. After breakfast.”
“There’s this shop—” Jeremy said, and dived off to a curio shop on the row they walked, a crowded little place with curiosities and souvenirs on every shelf.
There were plastic replicas of Cyteen life. There were expensive plastic-encased flowers and insects from Earth. There were packets of seeds done up with pots. Grow them in your cabin and be surprised at the carnivorous flowers.
He didn’t think he wanted one of those.
They looked. They looked at truly tasteless things, and walked off the fullness of the supper on a stroll during which Jeremy ran them into every hole-in-the-wall shop on the row.
The kids bought some silly things, finger-traps, a device older than civilization, Fletcher was willing to bet. A plastic shark. Jeremy bought a cheap ball-bearing puzzle, another device that defied time. The kid was cheering up.
Good for that, Fletcher said to himself. It was worth an extra hour walking back to the sleepover if it gave Jeremy something to do besides jitter and fret.
The meeting lurched and stonewalled its way toward an adjournment for the night, the main topic as yet not on the table, and neither side satisfied… except in the fact that nothing notably budged. Aides might have carried the details forward during alterday, but there was nothing substantive to work on.
There was, by now, however, a safe-cube or two making sure that if Oser-Hayes had altered data in a record supposed to be sacrosanct, they had a record of before and after. JR was able to get to Madison without witnesses, and under security, after the meeting had broken up and while Francie and a team of discreetly armed security was making sure the Old Man, walking ahead of them, reached the chosen restaurant without crises.
“I’ve ordered analysis and safe-storage of station feed, then and now,” he said, “Daily. Bucklin’s gone to Gerald, called back personnel off leave.”
“Good,” Madison said, and by the thoughtful expression Madison shot him then, no one else had ordered it. And Madison didn’t fault his consumption of multi-thousand credit cubes or the holding of the computer security staff off a well-earned liberty. “Good move. Cube?”
“Yessir.” The sirs still came naturally. “Yes. I know what it costs. But—”
“Run an analysis. I want to know the outcome. It would be stupid of the man. But then—he’s not the brightest light in the Alliance. He might think the next passing ship would patch his little problem and no one would be the wiser. Between you and me, the system has safeguards against that kind of thing. A Pell-certified tech, under duress, would alter records quite cheerfully.”
“Knowing there’d be traces.”
“Knowing that, yes. That’s an ears-only, not even for Bucklin.Yet.”
“I well imagine.”
They walked, he and Madison together, with security hindmost, along with Alan. The restaurant wasn’t far, one of those quiet, pricey affairs the Old Man favored, randomly selected from half a dozen near the conference area.
First time in his life, JR thought, he might have gotten up even with the captains he shadowed.
“Dinner,” Madison said, “and then no rest for you and Francie and Alan. I have messages I want carried.”
The destination made sense. Immediately.
“We can’t make headway with this station,” Madison said. “So we go to the captains first. This station is begging for confrontation. They won’t like it. But I think two ships will go with us without an argument. Don’t plan on sleep tonight.”
He was supposed to approach another captain? He was supposed to carry out this end of the proposition?
It was one thing to talk in conference with the Old Man as certain back-up. It was another to walk onto another deck to persuade an independent merchanter to strong-arm a station-master tomorrow. Things could blow up. He could set negotiations back on a single failure to read signals. Or give the wrong captain information that could end up back in Oser-Hayes’ hands, or hardening merchanter attitudes against them.
But he couldn’t say no. That wasn’t why they’d pushed him ahead in rank.
If they were late-night shopping, Vince wanted a tape store. They visited that, and Vince bought two tapes. Thirty minutes, in that operation, and it was high time, Fletcher decided, to get over-active junior-juniors back to the sleepover before Linda had her way and talked him into another sugared drink that would have them awake till the small hours.
“No,” Fletcher said, to that idea.
Then Jeremy took interest in yet another curio shop, not yet sated with plastic snakes and seeds and little mineral curiosities. “Just one more,” Jeremy said. “Just one more.”
If it made Jeremy happy. If it got them back to the sleep-over with everyone in a good mood.
This one was higher class, one of those kind of shops that was open during mainday and every other alterday, alterday traffic tending to lower-priced goods and cheaper amusements. The door opened to a melodious chime, advising the idle shopkeeper of visitors, and a portly man appeared. Justly dubious of junior-juniors in his shop, that was clear.
“Just window-shopping,” Fletcher said, and the man continued to watch them; but he seemed a little easier in the realization of an older individual in charge of the rowdy junior traffic.