Thunderstorm and some of his staff were counting small circuit boards through the plastic of a storage pouch. They stopped to give the respectful greeting to the humans, but went back to their examination. Bisman's face crimsoned with suppressed fury over the whole situation. Mirina thought he might go into an apoplectic fit. She was annoyed, too, at the nonchalance this character showed.
"There must be thirty Thelerie here," Bisman said furiously, shouldering past them. More natives were winging in at every moment, landing at a remove from the scatter of merchandise and loping forward curiously. "What happened to security?"
"Thunderstorm can't control every centimeter of this planet," Mirina said, reasonably, glancing back over her shoulder at the Space Sayas. He looked very nervous, and she patted the air in a calming gesture toward him. "I can't believe this stranger's here all alone."
"Fool evidently has no fear," Bisman said. "Can you believe it? He landed on a strange world and set up shop, never thinking anybody might take a shot at him!"
"There's probably some sophisticated armaments in his ship," Mirina speculated, glancing around. She spotted it at last, and wondered how she had missed it. It stood tall and pure of shape in a niche formed by the natural rock wall at the edge of the plateau, like a classical statue in an alcove. "What a beauty!"
Bisman glanced up in the direction she pointed, and whistled as he made a mental estimate.
"There's money behind him," he said, at last. "We ought to be able to help ourselves to some of it."
"You're Keff?" Bisman asked.
"Who wants to know?" Keff said, stacking white enameled plates. The servo came over and took them away from him with a touch of impatience that was all Carialle's. He let go of the piece of hull and straightened up to greet his new "customer."
His eyes were a vivid blue in the pink-cheeked face. Mirina realized with a shock how attractive he was, and unconsciously thrust out one hip and put a hand on it. Keff grinned at her. Abashed, she stood up straight, folding her arms across her chest.
"Hot day, isn't it, friends?" Keff asked.
"You don't seem surprised to see other human beings," she said.
Keff laughed. "When I landed, these nice people addressed me in my own language," he said. "It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that they've known human people for a long, long time. They didn't get the language from tapes. There were chairs in that building over yonder, though none of the locals can sit on them. And your friend here," he pointed to Thunderstorm, "uses colloquialisms."
"Colloq…?" Bisman waved away the unfamiliar word. "So what if he does? If they're in good working order, who cares?" Though Mirina could tell it was costing him something of an effort, he put out a hand to the stranger. "This is Mirina Don. I'm Aldon Bisman."
"Thought it was Fisman," Keff said exasperatingly. "That's what the locals called you. Just call me Keff." He was so damned cheerful, Mirina thought, she might like to strangle him herself. Then he turned the intense blue gaze on her, and she felt her cheeks flame with red. He was very, very attractive. He looked her up and down, with a quick, insouciant flick of those eyes. She should have been offended, but instead, she threw back her hair and raised her chin in defiance. He gave her a grin of approval.
"Damned Thelerie can't say their damned b's," Bisman said. "When are you moving on?"
"When I've finished doing business," Keff said. He straightened up and looked Bisman in the eye. He might have been several inches shorter than the raider, but Mirina, with the eye of long experience, thought he'd be a match for him. The way Keff stood so naturally on the balls of his feet instead of flat on the soles suggested he lived unarmed combat. Formidable, attractive… and smack in the middle of the Melange's patch. She had to remember that. He was an intruder. He represented the outside world. It spelled the end of the Thelerie's sheltered existence, and she couldn't have that.
"What kind of goods do you have here?" Mirina asked.
"Oh, see for yourself. I sell a lot of things. I do a rather good line on state-of-the-art spaceship parts, right out of the heart of the CW," Keff said. Mirina exchanged a glance with Bisman, and saw the light of greed in his eyes. And small wonder, too, with that array on the ground.
"Looks like you have a whole spaceship spread out here," Bisman said, conversationally.
Keff laughed again, but a little nervously. "When you pick things up here and there, they accumulate," he said.
"Good guess," Carialle said, auditing the conversation from four hundred meters away. "Good thing he hasn't got the Cridi's skill for abstract puzzle-solving, or he'd see for sure! I'm glad your new design doesn't look like the old ships, Narrow Leg, or these folks would have spotted the resemblance in an instant. Can't have that."
Narrow Leg sat on the console in front of the biggest screentank. In Carialle's protective atmosphere, he and the others were able to move around, free of their travel globes. They watched the screens around the main cabin that were not obscured by the shipbuilder's person.
"I do not like having my ship all to pieces on the ground," he said, wringing his big hands together as on the screen Mirina kicked some of the components. "Do not touch that, silly human!" he wailed shrilly. "That is a delicate power regulator!"
"This stuff is junk," the woman said, turning over a brand-new engine accelerator valve still covered with protective lubricant. "I'll give you fifty credits for it, no more."
"No, thank you," the unseen Keff said, blithely, his hand taking the component away from her and setting it delicately on the top of a servo, who spirited it away. "It's worth a lot more than that."
"Oh, yes? How do you expect me to make a profit on it if I pay you more?" Mirina asked. The woman turned to watch the robot whisk the accelerator valve to the end of a row and set it down on a rickety folding table.
"Aren't we greedy?" Carialle commented.
"I don't expect you to make a profit on it; I expect me to make a profit on it," Keff's voice said. "I expect you to use it. I prefer to serve the end-user. If you don't want it, someone else will."
She shrugged. "It's junk. Who else would?"
Narrow Leg's black eyes bulged until Carialle thought they would pop.
"How dare she denigrate the components of my ship! They are perfect! I rejected eight to the power of six of that valve before choosing that one! It was the product of ten to the power of sixteen calculations and designs!" His voice rose into almost inaudible registers.
"It's a bargaining ploy," Big Eyes said, floating over from her perch on the round table to try to calm her father. She put a gentle hand on his shoulder, and he shook it off irately. "You exist in the rarefied waters of science too much. You should come to the bazaar, and dig through the mud with me some time. Then you would hear worse than this."
"Bah." Narrow Leg was not appeased. He turned to Carialle's frog image on the near bulkhead. "What if they take some of our parts away?"
"We have many spares," Gap Tooth called to him.
"They are all out there, mains and spares," Narrow Leg gestured angrily.
Big Voice was clearly amused to see his old adversary discomfitted for once. With a tiny flick of his fingers, he drew just enough power from Carialle's engines to glide up from the weight bench and over where the shipbuilder was sitting.
"Keff will protect your ship parts," he said.
"And if he cannot?" Narrow Leg demanded, glaring upward. "How do you expect to get home?"