“Why? I may be stuck eating it until we get home, but I don’t have to start right away.”
“Don’t be an idiot.” Gerard pinched off another crumb and held it out. Stavros took it, sniffed at it cautiously, then laid the crumb on his tongue.
“You’re right, it’s not so bad… in fact it’s even… oh, my…”
“See what I mean?”
Stavros worked his tongue around in his mouth. “It’s better than CraigsHollow. It’s much better.” He grinned. “Gerry, whatever was in the Gumbone that did this, however it did it—”
“Just sitting in the canister with the CraigsHollow for five days—”
“I wonder what it would do with other cheeses. If they tasted like this, we could make a fortune. We could start a new business—”
If they’d had cheese to try it on. If it worked on other cheeses.
“I don’t see how we can sell anything made with it,” Gerard said. “It’s a food product—we have to show provenance. We don’t have the Gumbone on the manifest at all—it was all supposed to be CraigsHollow. We can’t sell the CraigsHollow itself because the label’s degraded—”
“We could manufacture our own label.” Stavros broke off another crumb and put it in his mouth. “Dear heavens. This is… incredible. Or maybe we just eat it all and die in ecstasy.” Stavros reached for another crumb and Gerard slapped his hand away.
“Stop it. Profit first, if it’s possible. The problem is, we have nothing on the manifest… no provenance. And we don’t have a license for food production. No certifications—” Gerard had spent hours studying the Uniform Commercial Code, in hopes of finding exactly the right cargo to make their private stake.
“I wonder how picky Corland is about certificates,” Stavros said. “I’ll bet if they had a taste of this, they’d ignore the rules and pay… double what they were offering for CraigsHollow alone. There’s got to be some way we can sell it.”
“There’s always forgery,” Gerard said, half-joking. “If we could find a label we could copy—”
“Too easy to check up on us, unfortunately. It must’ve been great in the days before ansibles. Desperate rogues like us could get away with anything, just by skipping a few light years.” Stavros grinned again. “Think of our esteemed founder. But in these civilized days, I suppose we must not ruin the reputation of the firm. And these look entirely too much like CraigsHollow Premium—same shape, same color, same weight. Probably would test much the same, barring the flavor. Anyone can find out we were carrying some.” He smacked his lips. “I could eat a whole wheel of this stuff… I wonder if it’s really addictive or just that good.”
“Well… you mentioned other cheeses. If we could treat some other cheese… maybe mix some of this in with it,” Gerard said. “For instance, back home… there’s that place where Aunt Grace buys party supplies. Cheese rolls, cheese balls… roll it in chopped tik nuts and… What’s that herb, the one she puts in sausage? Those things are expensive.”
Stavros frowned. “I don’t remember, but I think I know what you mean. Use the CraigsHollow as a base, or the Gumbone?”
“I’m thinking Gumbone as an additive. Everyone thinks it’s worthless; nobody else is carrying it. We—well, the family—could have a monopoly on it, at least for awhile. If we take it home—”
“But we don’t know it works with anything else. CraigsHollow is unique, that’s why it has such a name.”
“We’ll be at Allray in four hours. Three hours to unload the consignment, three to load whatever you snag to replace it; we can be on our way in less than a day, even counting time for customs and such. There’ll be cheeses for sale in dockside markets—we don’t need high-quality cheese, just something edible, to test it on.”
“Using what for money? You spent our personal allowance back on Gum; we’re not allowed to use corporate funds, remember?” Stavros looked just as angry as when they’d first found the Gumbone where the CraigsHollow Premium should have been.
Gerard remembered now… they were probationary captain and cargomaster on this voyage. Only those with permanent appointments could tap into Vatta funds for trade capital. “Arnie might—” he said.
Stavros shook his head. “No. Only the captain and cargomaster can do it.”
Gerard slouched deeper into the chair. “Well… there’s got to be something we can sell to get some money.” He thought through his own possessions: nothing worth much that he hadn’t already sold off. “What about the early-delivery bonus? We’re getting that, aren’t we?”
“Goes to the company. We are well and truly in it to the earlobes, Gerry.”
“Wait—that sapphire ring you bought for Helen—what about that?”
“You want me to sell Helen’s engagement ring? You’re crazy!”
“You can get her another—you’re not actually engaged yet.”
“I am not selling Helen’s engagement ring,” Stavros said, every centimeter the outraged lover. “I picked it out specially. She loves sapphires; they match her eyes. And I could afford a much better ring at Placer B than back home—”
“She won’t mind,” Gerard said. Stavros lunged at him; Gerard dodged around the navigation console and kept talking. “She won’t mind not having a ring nearly as much as she’d mind having you in disgrace, not getting your permanent status for another year, if ever.”
Stavros paused, scowling.
“I’m serious,” Gerard said. “We’ve got to do something to fix this mess, and it’s going to take both of us.”
“He’s right, Captain,” said Collins, the duty pilot, who had ignored them until now. Gerard glanced at him.
Stavros transferred his scowl to the pilot, then took a huge breath and let it out slowly. “All right. All right. We are partners; I understand. But the moment—the moment—we have a profit, I’m taking it and replacing this ring. Helen knows I’m going to her family when we get back—” For a moment his eyes unfocused, then he gave Gerard a sharp look. “And I’m buying the cheese this time,” Stavros said.
“You can’t,” Gerard said. “You need to stay aboard if we’re doing a short turnaround; you’ll be arguing for a departure slot. Send Arnie. He’s experienced.”
Stavros nodded. “Fine. The ring’s in my cabin, second drawer on the left, in a little red leather box. You take it to him.”
Immediately after they cleared the Customs & Immigration docking, Gerard took over the unloading of the consigned cargo while Arnie headed off with orders to sell the ring and buy cheap, but non-smelly cheese, nuts, and herbs.
Then Stavros, wearing his best uniform and his captain’s cape, came down to dockside, where Gerard had just finished the offloading and certification of the consigned cargo. “Trouble,” he said, before Gerard could ask. “Arnie’s been arrested. They claim he tried to cheat a jeweler.”
“What?”
Stavros muttered something Gerard couldn’t understand.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear that.”
Stavros grimaced. “I said, they said the ring was a fake. They weren’t real sapphires. Arnie insisted they were, the jeweler called the police, the police took him and the ring—”
“But Stav—surely you checked—”
“Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say it.” Stavros shook his head and lowered his voice again. “It was a reputable store. At least, it looked like a reputable store. I checked the directory, all the things Father told us to look at.”
“Could the store here be lying?”
“I don’t know. What I know is that Arnie’s in custody, the ring is in custody, they’re bringing in an independent appraiser to determine if it’s a fake or not, and no matter what the result, we’re facing a delay, extra costs that will have to go on the company account because we can’t pay them, and gods know what else.”