“We’re not screwed.” Ah, the certainty of youth. If she hadn’t been so angry with herself, Rahel might have laughed at his grim earnestness. “Nadder won’t bother arming herself against us, Proctor Tovin. It’s not like we re some sort of legal authority—were a private corporation that’s taken on an investigative task because nobody else cares about it. Even if you’d gotten past the contact today, we would still have had to prove wrong doing on Nadder’s part before the legal net would make a move.”
But now they couldn’t even do that. “She’s never going to let an Ark proctor on the same station with her again.” Rahel tugged the ball from between Toad’s teeth and slung it down the aisle somewhat harder than before.
“Then we’ll just send somebody else.”
The apprentice’s words poked her like an electric shock. Ignoring Toad’s happy snarlings when the dog returned with her fresh-killed ball, Rahel swung to face the comlink and Paval’s startled blink. “What did you say?”
He shrugged uncertainly, as though not trusting whatever verbal trap he’d unwittingly stumbled into. “Noah’s Ark has money. Surely we can hire someone not affiliated with the Ark to go in and make the purchase for us. Once we’ve got the merchandise and the manifest, we can press the cops to at least open up an investigation.” He brought one hand up to touch the edge of his screen when she jumped to her feet and Toad began barking with excitement. “This is a setback, Proctor Tovin, not the end of the world.”
Not even much of a setback, if she made good use of her options. She kicked Toad’s ball farther down the aisle, then snatched up a blue-and-green print jacket to shrug on over her khaki Noah’s Ark bush shirt. “I should have thought of this from the beginning!”
“Proctor Tovin?” Paval’s voice echoed slightly in the empty cockpit behind her. “You’re off visual. Are you going somewhere?”
She jumped back up the stairs to lean over the comlink and smile down into his anxious face. “Junior, I’m going out to buy some Terran animals.” She chuckled wickedly before punching off the channel. “I’ll give you a call when the setback’s over.”
“I want something Terran,” she told them. “Something big and Terran. Price isn’t an object, and size isn’t a problem. Just get me something living, and make sure it’s authentic.”
That was part of the brilliance of her plan. By sending her agents off with such a specific—yet broad—requisition, Rahel could almost certify they’d return with one of the high-demand “glamour animals”—a lion, or an orca, or maybe even a gorilla. Something of the romantic, frightening nature that appealed to people who fancied they could “own” animals, rather than just live with them. Nadder was certain to have a wide selection of such genomes available. Rahel, meanwhile, would be able to tell with a look if what she’d purchased was Terran without having to wade through the snails and toads and spiders who weren’t in her area of expertise.
“Arrange for payment through whatever third party makes you happy—I don’t want Noah’s Ark’s name showing up anywhere. And no matter what else happens, no matter who asks, don’t say anything to anyone about the details of this transaction. This has to be completely private. Do you understand?”
They’d just stared at her in unreadable silence, then turned and ghosted off toward center station in a cloud of brilliant ringing.
She’d expected them back within the hour.
Instead, morning crept into afternoon, she turned down two ’link calls from Noah’s Ark, and Toad went to the bathroom in the airlock. After that, Rahel took the puppy outside to chase her ball up and down among the maintenance sleds, then sat under the jumpship’s landing gear until Toad found gnawing on her ball too much effort to maintain. Groaning with contentment, the puppy fell asleep with her head hanging over Rahel’s knee and her tongue peeking out between her teeth.
Rahel followed Toad into sleep less than three hours later. Sitting up in her bunk with half-read downloads strewn across her lap and Toad draped over her ankles, she noticed when a simple figure reference made absolutely no sense to her conscious mind. So she sighed, closed her eyes, and tipped her head back against the bulkhead for just a moment’s respite.
Something jerked her back into wakefulness what seemed like only an instant later. “What?” She bolted upright in the bed, scattering downloads everywhere. “What is it?” Toad stretched with a grumble, but didn’t awaken.
“There are seven beings requesting entry at the main airlock,” the ship informed her. Rahel liked this jumpship’s voice—helpfully female without being obsequious. “Shall I admit them, or do you wish to escort them manually?”
Seven? Good God, please don’t let them have bought her an elephant! She squirmed hurriedly out from under Toad and the rest of the downloads. “Do they have any cargo with them?”
“They have a livestock shipping crate. I cannot see inside it.”
Good enough—and better than she thought she’d get after leaving Nadder’s berth this morning. Padding stocking-footed through the ship’s empty corridor, Rahel called up the lights as she went. She skidded to a stop at the airlock and slid aside first one, then the other hatch to face the small crowd and their shiny, steelsided shipping crate.
One of the duacs sneezed and leaned over to lick its neighbor’s ear.
For some reason, when the ship reported seven beings waiting outside her jumpship airlock, Rahel hadn’t expected four of them to be duacs. And she’d rather hoped at least one of them would be dhaktu. Glancing between the three mazhet ringing the crate, she raised eyebrows to the puce and violet figure she assumed to be Ayr. The mazhet looked back at her with emotionless patience.
“You got the Terran animal I commissioned?” Rahel nodded toward the crate without taking her eyes off the aliens. The crate didn’t seem as large as she’d hoped for—only about three meters deep, and not even as tall as her shoulder.
Ayr dipped its chin to touch its chest once, quite deliberately.
“And I don’t suppose any of you has a dhaktu up his sleeve?”
This time they all only stared at her, and Rahel had to scrub at her eyes to keep from laughing with weary frustration. “No, of course not. All right…” She stepped aside and waved them through the airlock. “Bring it in here.”
The green and aqua mazhet on the left flicked one spidery hand across the top of the crate, then Ayr and the mazhet in yellow, salmon, and pink applied gentle pressure along both sides to glide the metal box forward. Rahel couldn’t see that it rose above the decking, but it slid forward as easily as hot oil on ice, even clearing the hatchway without appearing to lift up over the edge. The duacs stirred themselves in no discernible order and followed the mazhet inside.
Toad sat blearily in the middle of the main compartment, watching Rahel and the mazhet maneuver the crate through the open hatchway. Even when the duacs clustered around to nudge at her with their blunt noses, all Toad did was lean against the nearest one and sigh sleepily. The duac twitched one ear flat to its skull and glared at the puppy. Its three companions sank to their haunches a respectful distance away.
“I want to have a look at this thing before we finalize our transaction.” Rahel trotted away from the mazhet long enough to retrieve the snooze pistol she’d left lying on the flight panel. “It’s not that I don’t trust you—it’s Nadder I expect to play some tricks. Now, if you’ll let me—”