“Yes.”
“Tell him to catch the damn freighter.” Santerese vanished again.
Heikki grinned in spite of herself, and turned her attention to the screen. She tied herself into the Loop’s central communications system—Corsell maintained quarters and a message-service subscription on EP5 —and left Santerese’s message, then closed down her station and returned to the main room. Santerese looked up from her half-filled carryall with a preoccupied smile.
“Have you seen my breather?”
“In the far wall?” Without waiting for a response, Heikki crossed to the storage wall, and pressed the hidden catches. The mask lay with the rest of their underwater gear, and she handed it and the thin pressure suit to Santerese.
“Thanks.” Santerese fitted both items into her case, and sat back on her heels, frowning a little.
“Have you made arrangements for deep-dive stuff yet?” Heikki asked.
“I thought I would talk to Jorge personally, on my way to the Axis,” Santerese answered. “I already reserved a minibell, but for a ten-day from now. I just hope he can supply me.”
“There’s one good thing about this,” Heikki said, after a moment. “You might be able to join me on Iadara after all.”
“That’s true, isn’t it?” Santerese pushed herself to her feet and reached for the carryall. “Damn, we were going to go over the figures—”
“It’s all right,” Heikki said, and bit back a laugh. “Don’t worry about it, Marshallin, I can handle it.”
Santerese had the grace to look somewhat embarrassed. “I know, doll. Sorry.”
“I’ll contact you through the company of Pleasaunce if the bid goes through,” Heikki went on, “and we can make plans from there.”
“All right.” Santerese slung the carryall across her shoulder, and glanced around for a final time. “I think that’s everything I need. Let me know what happens with Lo-Moth.”
She started toward the suite’s main door, a small woman in a severely tailored day suit, the weight of the carryall balanced against one rounded hip. The narrow skirt, slit for walking, showed a glimpse of brown thigh. She had her hand on the latchplate when Heikki said, “Marshallin?” There was a note of laughter in her voice.
“Oh, God.” Santerese turned back, half laughing, half embarrassed. They embraced, not quickly, and Santerese said again, “Let me know about the bid.”
“I will,” Heikki answered. “Be careful.”
“You, too,” Santerese answered, and released her hold, reaching again for the latch.
Heikki stood for a moment after the door had closed behind her, trying to marshall her own thoughts. The Pleasaunce job was well under control, despite the inevitable chaos of the hurried departure; it was up to her to bring in the Lo-Moth bid. Sighing a little, she returned to the workroom, her fingers busy on the remote.
Sound returned to the media wall, the newsreader’s voice rising above the rest of the noise. Heikki listened with half an ear as she settled herself back at the workstation, and emptied that window as soon as she had heard enough to satisfy herself that the Loop was not on the verge of any major catastrophe. She replaced the newsreader’s vacuously handsome face with tables of shipping charges, and turned her attention to the screen in front of her. If she was to meet with Lo-Moth’s representative this afternoon, she would need to have a rough bid in hand.
As she had told Santerese the night before, she would want local help for this job, people who knew the back country as she could not. A guide and a local pilot, she thought, and Jock Nkosi, if he’ll take the job. Full union rates for him, of course, and three-quarters for the locals—no reason to be stingy there—plus a hazard clause to add forty percent of scale if we find evidence of sabotage. Djuro, as usual, would have his choice of union rates or a percentage of the profit.
She ran her hand across the shadowscreen, watching images flicker past on the monitor. Once she had found the file she wanted, she turned back to the keyboard, her fingers dancing across the controls. An instant later, a map of Iadara’s eastern hemisphere sprang to life on the screens, the scattered settlements traced in red, the terrain indicated by ghostly washes of color. She studied that for a moment, one finger idly tracing the most likely flight path across the shadowscreen. On the monitor, a green line appeared, moving with her hand. It crossed the thick jungle that edged the central massif: not promising terrain for a search. She eyed it a moment longer, then flattened her palm against the shadowscreen. The line vanished.
It was also not country to be crossed in lighter-than-air craft—as witness the accident itself, she added, with a grim smile. They would want a good scout-flyer, one of the sturdy, long-range machines that were common on Iadara, and then, if they found anything, a heavy-lift powercraft to land by the wreckage. From the look of the land, it would be a week’s search at the very least, and who knew how long to recover wreckage… , So, she thought, her fingers busy again on the keyboard, three weeks’ pay at the least, plus option, rental for the aircraft, and then maybe for a jungle crawler if we do find it, plus food and fuel…. She glanced thoughtfully at the charts on the media wall, then filled in numbers. Forty-three thousand pounds-of-account—we’ll call it K45 to be sure, she thought, and made the adjustments. I wonder, can I get poa these days, or will we have to take the local scrip, and worry about the exchanges? In the old days, everything had been calculated in a private corporate currency, with all the problems that entailed. But that was twenty years ago, she told herself. There’s no harm in asking for poa.
She looked at her figures again, head tilted slightly to one side, then touched keys, transferring the rough figures to her standard bid form. She made a few final changes, then dumped the completed bid to a datasquare, at the same time reserving a copy for herself. The diskprinter whirred softly, and extruded a neatly labeled square. Heikki left it in the bin, and ran her hand across the shadowscreen, shifting nets until she was tied into the Exchange Point’s main mail system. In the confusion, Santerese had forgotten to tell her partner where Lo-Moth was, and where they were to meet. On the whole, not surprising, Heikki thought, and keyed first her mailcode and then the codes listed for Lo-Moth’s main office.
The screen shifted to the search pattern. Heikki leaned back in her chair, fully expecting to receive the usual white-screen “engaged” signal, and a request that she leave a message. Instead, the contact lights flashed, and a dark woman, her face painted in a severe geometric mask, appeared on the screen.
“Dam’ Heikki? Could you hold one moment, please?”
“Certainly,” Heikki answered, by reflex, too taken aback by the old-fashioned courtesies to do anything more.
“Thank you,” the woman said, and vanished. The screen shifted to a started holding pattern, soft swirls of green and blue, then, almost before the pattern had fully formed, vanished again.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Dam’ Heikki. How may I help you?”
Heikki studied the woman for an instant. In the twenty years she’d been in salvage, no corporation, large or small, had ever showed Heikki/Santerese this much courtesy. They must want something very badly, Heikki thought, but said aloud, “I’m calling to confirm my appointment. With Ser Mikelis.”
The woman glanced down at a lapboard. “Yes, Dam’ Heikki, I can confirm that, for fourteen hundred. Our offices are in Pod 2, business suite 273. I can have an escort waiting on your arrival, if you’d like.” It was less an offer than a command.
“That will be fine,” Heikki said, achieving a proper boredom with an effort, and cut the connection. She sat staring at the empty screen for a long moment, her coffee forgotten on the table beside her. This is not the way the corporations deal with the independents, she thought again. They had my name, my mailcode, not just the personal contact code, on their hot list, pulled it out of the automatic answering queue and gave it to a human being to deal with. And that, she added silently, is when I start to worry.