He took another gulp of his bitter. The pub was filling up as the spaceport staff came off shift. Over in one corner an audio block was playing a ballad which some of the customers were singing along to. Large fans spun listlessly overhead, trying to circulate some of the humid air.
“Captain Calvert?”
Joshua looked up.
Marie Skibbow was dressed in a tight-fitting sleeveless green stretch blouse, and a short pleated black skirt. Her thick hair was neatly plaited. She was carrying a circular tray loaded with empty glasses.
“Now this is what I call improved service,” Ashly said brightly.
“That’s me,” Joshua said. Jesus, but she had tremendous legs. Nice face too, ever so slightly wiser than her age.
“I understand you’re looking for a cargo of mayope, is that right?” Marie asked.
“Does everybody in town know?” Joshua asked.
“Just about. A visit from an independent trader starship isn’t exactly common around here. If we weren’t having all this trouble with the Quallheim Counties and the anti-Ivet riots you’d be the most gossiped over item in Durringham.”
“I see.”
“Can I join you?”
“Sure.” He pushed out one of the vacant chairs. People had tended to avoid their table, it was one of the reasons he’d brought Warlow down. Only someone who was stoned out of his brain would try and tangle with the amount of boosted muscle the old cosmonik packed into his giant frame.
Marie sat down and fixed Joshua with an uncompromising gaze. “Would you be interested in taking on an extra crew-member?”
“You?” Joshua asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you have neural nanonics?”
“No.”
“Then, I’m sorry, but the answer’s no. I have a full complement anyway.”
“How much do you charge for a trip?”
“Where to?”
“Wherever you’re going next.”
“If we can acquire a cargo of mayope, I’m going to Norfolk. I’d charge you thirty thousand fuseodollars for passage in zero-tau, more if you wanted a cabin. Starflight isn’t cheap.”
Marie’s air of sophisticated confidence faltered slightly. “Yes, I know.”
“You want to leave pretty badly?” Ashly asked sympathetically.
She dropped her gaze and nodded. “Wouldn’t you? I lived on Earth until last year. I hate it here, I’m not staying no matter what it costs. I want civilization.”
“Earth,” Ashly mused whimsically. “Lord, I haven’t been there for a couple of centuries. Wouldn’t call it particularly civilized even back then.”
“He’s a time hopper,” Joshua explained as Marie gave the pilot a confused look. “And if you hate this place as much as you say, then Norfolk isn’t where you want to go either. It’s strictly a pastoral planet. They have a policy of minimal technological usage, and the government enforces it pretty rigorously from what I hear. Sorry.”
She gave a small shrug. “I never thought it would be that easy.”
“The idea of signing on with a ship is a good one,” Ashly said. “But you really need neural nanonics before a captain will consider you.”
“Yes, I know, I’m saving up for a set.”
Joshua put on a neutral expression. “Good.”
Marie actually laughed, he was being so careful not to hurt her feelings. “You think I waitress for a living? That I’m a dumb waster girl saving up tips and dreaming of better days?”
“Er . . . no.”
“I waitress here in the evenings because it’s the place the starship crews come. This way I get to hear of any openings before the rest of Durringham. And yes there are the tips, too, every little helps. But for real money I bought myself a secretarial job at the Kulu Embassy, in their Commercial Office.”
“Bought a job?” Warlow rumbled. His sculpted dark-yellow face was incapable of expression, but the voice booming from his chest diaphragm carried a heavy query. People turned to look as he drowned out the ballad.
“Of course. You think they give away a gig like that? The embassy pays its staff in Kulu pounds.” It was the second hardest currency in the Confederation after fuseodollars. “That’s where I’m going to get the money to pay for my neural nanonics.”
“Ah, now I see.” Joshua raised his glass in salute. He admired the girl’s toughness—almost as much as he admired her figure.
“That, or the deputy ambassador’s son might get me off,” Marie said quietly. “He’s twenty-two, and he likes me a lot. If we married then obviously I’d go back to Kulu with him once his father’s tour was over.”
Ashly grinned and knocked back some of his fruit juice. A suspect grumble emerged from Warlow’s chest.
Marie gave Joshua a questioning glance. “So. Do you still want your mayope, Captain?”
“You think you can get me some?”
“Like I said, I work in the Commercial Office. And I’m good at it, too,” she said fiercely. “I know more about this town’s economic structure than my boss. You’re buying your cargo from Dodd Purcell, right?”
“Yes,” Joshua said cautiously.
“Thought so; he’s the nephew of the governor’s industrial secretary. Dodd Purcell is a complete screwup, but he’s a good partner for his uncle. All official tenders for timber go through the company he owns, except it’s actually his uncle’s, and all it consists of is an office down at the port. They don’t actually own a yard, or even any timber. The LDC pays through the nose, but nobody queries it because no lower quotes ever make it past the industrial secretary’s office. All that happens is Purcell contracts a real lumberyard to supply whatever project the LDC is paying for; they do all the work while he and uncle cream off thirty per cent. No effort, and all profit.”
Warlow’s chair creaked alarmed protests as his bulk shifted round. He tilted the brandy glass to his mouth aperture, the brightlime surged out, almost sucked down into his inlet nozzle. “Smart bastards.”
“Jesus,” Joshua said. “And I’ll bet the price goes up tomorrow.”
“I expect so,” Marie said. “And then again the day after, then it will become a rush order to meet your deadline, so you’ll have to pay a surcharge.”
Joshua put his empty glass down on the stained table. “All right, you win. What’s your counter-offer?”
“You are paying Purcell thirty-five thousand fuseodollars, which is about thirty per cent over the odds. I’m offering to put you in touch with a lumber-yard direct, they’ll supply the wood at the market rate, and you pay me five per cent of the difference.”
“Suppose we just go to a lumber-yard direct now you’ve told us what’s happening?” Ashly asked.
Marie smiled sweetly. “Which one? Are you going back to the Governor’s industrial secretary for a list? Once you’ve picked one, do you know if it was burnt down in the riots? Where is it, and how do you get to it? Parts of this town are very unhealthy for visitors, especially after the riots. Does it have that much mayope in stock or is the owner stringing you along? What are you going to use to transport it out to the spaceport? And how much time can you spend sorting all that out? Even a relatively honest lumber-yard owner is going to catch on that you’ve got a deadline once you start fretting because you haven’t got permits and procedures smoothed out in advance. I mean, God, it took you almost a day to hire a McBoeing. Bet you didn’t buy energy for it either, they’ll hit you for that tomorrow. And when they scent blood it’ll be Purcell all over again.”
Joshua held up a warning hand to Ashly. Nobody at the spaceport had mentioned energy for the McBoeing. Jesus! On a normal planet it would be part of the charter; and of course he couldn’t use his neural nanonics to access the contract and run a legal program check because his copy of the fucking thing was printed out on paper. Paper , for Christ’s sake. “I’ll deal with you,” he told Marie. “But I only pay on delivery to orbit, and that includes your fee. So you’re going to have to clear all those obstacles you mentioned out of our way, because I don’t pay a single fuseodollar once those six days are up.”