"Point of sale. Email. Computers for everyone. Interactive television, IP phones, and internet." Kerry ticked off things on her fingers.
"On here? You surely are joking."
"Nope." Dar went over to Kerry and leaned her arm on the smaller woman's shoulder. "I'm not. We've been asked by your company to put that," she indicated the wall, "in here. Now, if you don't want to give up this space, you need to get together and decide where you want to put our stuff."
"Oh, my god." The woman put her hand on her head. "This is insanity. I have to go." She turned and left.
Kerry and Dar exchanged glances, and then they both looked at Tally.
"Internet?" Tally's eyebrows quirked up. "Really?"
"Now, here's a guy with the right priorities." Kerry chuckled. "C'mon, Dar. Let me show you the rest of it."
Dar stepped carefully over a piece of rotted, rolled up carpet as she followed them out, suspecting the rest of the tour was only going to roll rapidly downhill.
"SO THAT'S IT." Kerry stood on the very back deck of the boat alone with Dar after their tour. It was dark now, and the less than soothing cantaloupe colored lights of the pier lit everything around them and washed the stars almost clean out of the sky. "What do you think?"
Dar cautiously tested the railing before she leaned against it. "I think it's going to be a Mongolian cluster fuck." She replied, crossing her arms. "No matter how we do it there isn't enough space." She ticked off a finger. "Enough cableways..." She ticked another finger. "Or enough patience in my body to deal with all these frustrated sea dogs who make my father look liberal."
"Hmm? Kerry joined her at the rail and looked over. The salt water lapped gently at the rusting metal, making little swirling sucking noises as it curled around a jagged edge. "So. What are you saying that we don't do it?"
Dar exhaled heavily.
"Dar, nothing says everything we do has to be easy." Kerry poked her gently. "It's a challenge. Isn't that what you told me sometime forever ago?"
"Yeah, I know." Dar grimaced wryly. "C'mon. Let's go home."
Kerry followed her as Dar led the way around the back of the ship toward the gangway. It was dark on the exterior with only a few of the windows lit from within here on the upper decks.
A cruise ship moved past in the channel and the ship rocked slightly in its wake. The creaks and groans from the old structure were not in any way comforting, and Kerry wondered in her heart if Dar wasn't really right after all.
Was there a point to all this? Could Quest really be meaning to take these old hulks and put them back in service with modern customers that are used to every sophistication?
Kerry turned her head and regarded the passing modern cruise liner. It was all glass and shiny metal, as far from their poor, rusting hull as could be. Four or five decks taller, and half again the width of the ship she was on, the differences were so striking she had to wonder in truth what the hell they were thinking.
She shook her head a little as they walked off the ship giving the guard a nod as they traded the gentle motion of the ship for the stillness of the concrete walkway. "I don't know." Kerry pointed at the cracks she'd noticed on the way in. "I think that ship's in better shape than this pier."
Dar inspected the cracks, then walked to the railing and jumped up and down several times experimentally.
"Dar!" Kerry squawked.
Dar chuckled, and moved on. "Relax," she said. "There's rebar all in there. It's not going..." Dar paused, and went to the rail again, leaning against it as she watched the pier below. "Ah."
Kerry went to her side and peered past her shoulder. "Oh ho." She recognized Shari's form pacing on the concrete outside their ship. "Should we say something?"
"Nu uh." Dar drew back into the shadows of the walkway and pulled Kerry with her. They stood in silence as their nemesis strolled along the side of the ship examining it.
"Dar?" Kerry whispered.
"Mm?" Dar put an arm around her, resting her cheek against Kerry's head.
"Does the fact I want to shove her in front of Majesty of the Seas over there mean I'm going to hell?" Kerry wondered. "What's she up to, just checking the boat out?"
"Ship," Dar said. "Yeah, not much else she can do from down there. Hatch is closed." She pointed at the hull. "Maybe she's seeing what we got versus what they got?"
As if to confirm it, Shari reached the end of the pier, then she turned and wandered back, apparently losing interest in the vessel. Dar and Kerry turned and walked along even with her unseen in the shadows until Shari passed the end of the ship and they were at the end of the walkway.
Shari stopped and looked back, putting her hands on her hips before shaking her head and continuing on down the pier toward the ship Telegenics had been assigned. By freak chance, it was in the slip right behind theirs, and Dar wondered suddenly if they hadn't been spotted on the aft deck while they were talking.
But why would Shari bother to come out on the docks for that? Dar dismissed the idea, and steered Kerry back through the doors toward the escalator. It still wasn't working so they plodded down it in amiable silence, their footsteps alerting the guard stationed at the office below.
"Hello?" The guard came out into the area at the end of the escalator, one hand on his hip.
"Just us." Dar waved a hand at him. "Roberts and Stuart causing trouble as usual."
The man's hand dropped and he smiled, returning the wave. "Oh, hi ma'am's," he said, obviously relieved. "Sorry, forgot you were up there." He waited for them to get down to his level. "I've had some of the crew out there try to get in, trying to get free phone calls, I guess."
Kerry patted the guard on the shoulder as she walked past. "Hang in there," she said. "We'll get something a little better set up for you guys soon. This is pretty Antarctic."
The man went back to his metal folding chair and sat down picking up his book and opening it. "No problem, ma'am. We'll survive."
Dar and Kerry walked through the outer room toward the front doors the silence of the big building broken only by their footsteps and the air conditioning units cycling on. "This is a pretty grungy place to have people go on a luxurious cruise ship, huh?" Kerry commented.
"Eh. No worse than most of the airport." Dar shrugged, pushing open the outer door and holding it for Kerry to pass through.
It was very dark outside and they both paused as several shadowy figures near the edge of the building stirred and looked their way as they came out. There were trees next to the pier doors, and the area apparently appealed to the homeless who were camped beneath them.
Kerry's heartbeat picked up slightly, but the men merely turned back around and continued their conversation not interested in them at all. She felt a little irritated at herself for the assumption of bad intent and acknowledged she had a way to go to erase her upbringing.
It was odd, those little unconscious biases that poked up from time to time. She liked to think of herself as a fair minded person, but she'd found that sometimes she just hadn't had the right experiences to be able to take away things picked up from so many years of living in the family environment she had.
It bothered her. She'd realized when she'd worked with the girls at the church that their lives were, to a large extent, alien to hers and she wondered just how much in touch with them she'd really been.
"Ker?"
Dar's voice startled her. Kerry looked quickly up to find the scattered moonlight reflecting off Dar's pale eyes. "Yeees?"
"You got quiet."
"Just thinking." Kerry sighed. "Long day."
Dar stuck her hands in her pockets. "Well, I offered not to come down here," she said. "Only made it longer, and I doubt I helped your plan any."