“Intercom to Dobbs,” she said to the wall.
After a moment, the Fool’s voice came through. “Dobbs here, Boss.” Al Shei could still hear a faint “ching-ching” in the background.
“I’d like to see you in my cabin, ‘Dama Fool. Immediately.”
The “ching-ching” silenced. “On my way, Boss.”
“Intercom to close.” Al Shei pictured Dobbs setting her spring carefully into one of her multiple pockets, sealing it thoughtfully, and then taking the stairs two at a time.
In less than three minutes, a knock sounded on the cabin hatch. Dobbs breezed in and bowed elaborately.
“At your service, ‘Dama Al Shei,” she said as the door shut behind her. She folded herself up to sit cross-legged on the floor. “What may your Fool do for you?”
“She may tell me how much she overheard,” said Al Shei.
Dobbs laid her hand on her breast and screwed a wounded look onto her mobile face. “Eavesdropping? Me? I am hurt, I am outraged, I am…” Al Shei didn’t let her eyes flicker. Dobbs lowered her hand. “Potentially out of a job,” she finished.
Al Shei tugged at her tunic sleeve. “I only heard the hatch cycle once. You must have been on the stairs when we started talking.”
Dobbs looked up and for the first time, Al Shei saw her wearing an absolutely straight face. “Have to watch that,” she said. “As to what I heard, I heard all of it.” She spread her hands. “If you’re worried I’m going to use it as a matter for joking…”
Al Shei shook her head abruptly. “That kind of fool, I know you are not.” Her English became awkward as old, uncomfortable memories tugged at her for attention and she wished she could drop into Arabic.
Al Shei fiddled with her sleeve for a minute, then let her hand fall away.
“For the life of me, I still don’t know why my sister fell in love with Marcus Tully, but she did. But because I understood what it was like to want something that most of the family disapproved of, I never tried to talk her out of the marriage.
“It took awhile to patch things up, with our grandmothers and uncles, but Ruqaiyya’s always been good at that.” Al Shei paused, remembering her younger sister standing at the low supper table with her head bowed and her hands folded in a completely demure and humble attitude, yet, somehow, at the same time managing to deliver a lecture on family loyalty to Uncle Ahmet of all people. Name of God, how she’d admired Ruqaiyya’s nerve!
“I was working a passenger shuttle at the time. Earth, the Moon, Mars and back again. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t what I wanted. Asil and I were already saving to build our own ship, but even on a Chief’s salary, it was going to be slow going. I was starting to think little Vashti would be at University before we had enough.
“Then, about two years after her marriage to Tully, Ruqaiyya came to see me, at Port Armstrong, no less. She had a business proposal from Marcus, who, she said, was nervous about sounding me out.”
Ruqaiyya had been so earnest as they’d talked over bulbs of thick, sweet, coffee. She’d told Al Shei at length how Marcus admired her skill, her practicality, the way Al Shei and Asil had arranged their disparate lives to make their marriage a warm, working, reality.
Al Shei had looked at the reflection of the overhead lights in her coffee and felt ashamed at herself for wondering what all this was leading up to. She’d felt even worse when she asked.
Al Shei cleared her throat. “Ruqaiyya told me that Marcus’ business partner had defaulted on his obligations at Phobos Point, leaving Marcus holding the bag, and the Pasadena, which he couldn’t afford to operate solo. He wanted to ask me to go in on a time-share arrangement with him, but he knew, she said, that I didn’t think much of his business sense…” Al Shei waved the rest of the sentence away.
“Ruqaiyya knew I’d been looking for this kind of chance for years. She knew I couldn’t take the kind of ties that crewing a corporate ship lays on you, and she knew how un-holy expensive independent shipping is. Merciful Allah.” She gave a short, mirthless laugh. “One little mistake and you can keep a whole hundred-wafer stack at the Bank busy tallying your deficits.
“Ruqaiyya also knew that, in spite of myself, I was already drooling of the idea of being my own Chief Engineer.
“So, I promised I’d talk to Tully and I sent her home. Then, I got on the wire to Phobos Point security to find out what had really happened to Tully’s partner. Not,” she added quickly as Dobbs’ right eyebrow raised a single centimeter, “that I thought Ruqaiyya had lied, but I was very willing to believe that Tully hadn’t told her the whole truth.”
She’d sat at the board for hours, dealing impatiently with the realities of negotiating a bureaucracy over a real-time link with a four-minute delay.
“What I found out, eventually, was that Tully’s partner had tried to crack the Intersystem Bank Network and divert a whole load of bond sale data to a friend of his, using Pasadena’s catch-and-drop facilities to do it. There were traces on the try before it was even halfway started. Of course, all they pointed to was Pasadena, not the actual cracker.
“Tully turned his partner in to save his skin, and to keep the thing from blowing up so big that his in-laws got notified, or, worse, so that some far-sighted security team decided to warn their compatriots in Settled Space to keep an eye on Marcus Tully.” She shook her head again. “That would really put a lock on his future plans.
“I took leave from the shuttle. I went home and spent a week talking the whole thing over with Asil. Then, I went to Tully and laid down my conditions.
“Asil would be our chief accountant. Tully could hire someone to keep tabs on him if he wanted to, but all the money would go through Asil. Each partner would have the ship a maximum of eight months and would have complete control over whatever profits they made during that time. They’d also have complete responsibility for any new debts they managed to incur. Our crews would be separate. Our logs would be separate, and if he was ever officially charged with breaking anybody’s laws, the Pasadena was mine.” She sighed at the memory of Tully’s eyes. Despite their bright blue color, they’d seemed dark then, as though he was a cornered rat looking for a way out that didn’t exist.
“After he agreed to all that, and agreed to have it recorded and sealed,” Al Shei ran her hand along the smooth desk top, “I said to him ‘don’t ever forget what you did to your partner, because I’d do the same to you, in a picosecond.’
“I thought it would hold him down,” she murmured to the wall over Dobbs shoulder. “I thought that and the fact that he knew I’d tell Ruqaiyya if I found out anything that was a grade one fire hazard, would keep him from trying anything irredeemably stupid. Apparently, I was wrong.”
“Pray forgive your humble Fool.” The unwavering look in her eyes made a joke of her subservient tone. “But why do you choose to honor her with this confidence?”
“I wanted to see if it still sounded like it made sense,” said Al Shei. “If I had missed anything when I set this deal up.”
Dobbs licked her lips thoughtfully. “Do you know about Nasrudine?”
Al Shei smiled. “Once there was and there was not, the wise fool Nasrudine,” she recited. “One day, Nasrudine came to a friend of his and said ‘Congratulate me! I am a father!’ ‘Congratulations!’ said his friend. ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ ‘Why yes,’ said Nasrudine. ‘How did you know?’”
Dobbs chuckled. “Another time Nasrudine was selling donkeys. He would go to market every Friday with a fine donkey which he would sell at an outrageously low price. Finally, one of the donkey merchants came up to him and said ‘Nasrudine, how are you doing this? I force the haymakers to give me fodder for free. I make my slaves work without pay, and still I cannot sell my donkeys as cheaply as you sell yours.’