“You’ve got that planned too.”
“Because I know this kind of economics, if you don’t. We’re not talking about dockside trading. We’re talking about running full and being where trade can build.”
“We get backing that way,” Deirdre said. “Eventually we schedule to catch Dublin’s Pell loop and funnel Sol goods into Union territory; and that’s big profit. Dublin’s not doing a total act of charity.”
“They’ll cut our throats. Alliance traders. Locals won’t stand for that.”
“Stop thinking like a marginer,” Allison said. “You’re linked to the Dublin operation. They won’t touch us the way they won’t touch Dublin herself. And after one run, we’ll be local. We’ll have Alliance paper.”
“And I take what deals Dublin offers.”
“Fair deals.”
He thought about it a moment, avoiding the sight of Curran Reilly, took a drink of wine. “Hinder Stars,” he said, thinking that if there was a place least likely for his record to catch up to him it had to be that, the forgotten Earthward stations. Sol goods, expensive for their mass. Rarities and luxuries. “So Dublin wants a trade link.”
“Believe it,” Allison said. “Both sides of the Line are interested… Pell, absolutely; Union, in keeping the flow of trade across the Line. You think Union wants Pell and Sol in bed together alone? No. Union’s supporting Unionside merchanters that want to trade across the Line; and there’s nothing that says we can’t set up an operation on this side.”
“We.”
“Any way you like it. You needed the bailout. And we saw the advantage. You. We. You and the lot of us on Lucy can develop a new loop that’s going to pay.”
He thought about it again, excited in spite of himself. “You plan to stay on—how long?”
“We don’t necessarily plan to go back. It’s like I said… too far to the posted ranks. We’re coming to stay.”
He nodded slowly. “All right,” he said, even including Curran in that “All right, I’ll take your deal. And the lot of you.—What about charts?”
“Got that arranged,” Curran said. “No problem with that.”
“From what I know,” Allison said, “we’re going to have a double jump to Venture and a double to Bryant’s.”
“Lonely out that direction.”
“Pell’s got some sort of security out that way.”
“Patrol?”
“They don’t say. They just put out they’ve got it watched.”
“Comforting.” He doubted it all. It was likely bluff. Or Pell was that determined to keep the Sol link open.
He looked up again, at the strangers who looked to share with him, to come onto Lucy’s deck—permanent company. So they were not all what he would have chosen. But with a Curran came a Deirdre, whose broad, cheerful self he liked on sight; and Neill Reilly, who had said little of anything and who seemed set in the background by all the others—They were Family, like any other, the rough and the smooth together. He had not known that kind of closeness… not since Ross. He wanted it, and Allison, with a yearning that welled up in his throat and behind his eyes and throughout. And it was his. It came with the wealth, the luck he still could not imagine. But it was real. It was all about him. He made himself relax, limb by limb, up to the shoulders, looked across the table at his acquired crew and felt something knotted up inside unsnarl itself.
And when dinner was done, down to a fancy fruit dessert, when they had drunk as much as merchanters were apt to drink on liberty—they found things to laugh at, Dubliner anecdotes, tales on each other. He laughed and wiped his eyes, as he had not done in longer than he had forgotten.
The bill was his: he took it without flinching, gave a tip to the waiter—left a happy man in their wake and strolled out into the chill air of the dockside with his flock of Dubliners.
“Go to the offices,” he suggested, “see if we can’t get the lock off my ship.”
“Let’s,” Allison agreed. “Is it past alterdawn? We can get something done.”
“Get a ped-carrier,” Deirdre said.
“Walk,” said Neill. “We might be sober when we get there.”
They walked, along the busy docks, past Lucy’s barriered berth, weaving a good deal less when they had covered all of green dock, sweating a bit when they had come into blue, and near the customs offices.
But he came differently this time, in company, with the knowledge of Dublin’s lawyer behind them, and papers on file that put him in the right. He walked up to the desk and faced the official with a plain request, brought out the papers. “I need the lock off,” he said. “We seem to have everything else straightened away but that.”
“Ah,” the official said. “Captain Stevens.”
“Can we get it taken care of?”
The official produced a sealed envelope, passed it over.
“What’s this?”
“I’ve no idea, sir. I’m told it relates to the hold order.”
He was conscious of the others at his back—refused to look at them, tore open the seal on the message slip and read it once before it sank in. “Report blue dock number three,” he read it, looking back at Allison then. “AS Norway, Signy Mallory commanding.”
Curran swore. “Mallory,” Allison said, and it might as well have been an oath. “On Pell?”
“Arrived two hours ago,” the official said, a roll of the eyes toward the clock. “The message is half an hour old.”
“What’s the military doing in this?” Curran asked. “Those papers are clear.”
“I don’t know, sir,” the official said. “Answering ought to clear it up.”
The fear was back, familiar as an old suit of clothes. “I’d better get out there and take care of this,” Sandor said. “I don’t see there’s any reason for you to go.”
They walked out with him, that much at least, back out onto the dock facing the military ships… the schedule boards showed it plainly: NORWAY, the third berth down occupied now, conspicuously alight. He looked at the Dubliners, at worried faces and Curran’s scowl.
“Don’t know how long this may take,” he said. “Allison, maybe I’d better call you after I get back to the sleepover. Maybe you’d better go on back to Dublin”
“No,” Allison said. “If you don’t get out of there fairly soon, we’ll be calling some legal help. They don’t bluff us.”
That was some comfort. He looked at the rest of them, who showed no inclination to take any different course. Nodded then, thrust his hands into his pockets, crumpling the message in the right
He prepared arguments, countercharges, mustered the same indignation he had used on authorities before. It was all he knew how to do.
But it was hard to keep the bluff intact walking up to the lighted access of Norway, where uniformed troops—these were troops, far different from any stationside militia—took him in charge and searched him. They were rejuved, a great number of these men and women—old enough to have fought in the war, silver-haired and some of them marked with scars no stationsider would have had to wear. They were not rough with him in their searching, but they were more thorough than the police had been. They frightened him, the way that ship out there frightened him, behind that cheerful lighted access, a huge carrier bristling with armaments, a Company ship, from another age. They brought him toward the ramp that led up into the access. And standing in the accessway… Talley, grim and waiting for him.