Dinner at the legation was almost as elaborate as the fanciest dinners at home. The consul had invited several government officials to dine with them; Ky was very glad she’d worn one of the formal outfits her mother had insisted on.
“You’re very young, aren’t you, to captain an interstellar ship?” asked the wife of someone in the Waterways Commission. The implant, loaded with information the consul provided, handed her the names: Cateros, Sylis and Max.
“Fairly young, yes,” Ky said.
“I wouldn’t let my daughter go out there, so dangerous, don’t you agree, Max?” The woman laid a hand on her husband’s sleeve; he turned abruptly.
“What? Sanna? Ridiculous.” He smiled briefly atKy.“Not at all the same, Captain Vatta. You have been trained to this life for most of yours, no doubt.” He didn’t wait for her answer before going on. “And what do you think of our homeworld, Captain? We’re still in the early stages of development, but already the waterways form a fine transportation network.”
“It’s lovely,” Ky said. “I haven’t seen much of it yet.”
“But you did see the harbor today. Quite roomy. As development proceeds, we’ll need all that space.”
“If it doesn’t silt up,” said someone down the table. Ky queried her infochip: Samfer Wellin, Minister of Agriculture.
“It won’t silt up,” Minister Cateros said. “My engineers assure me that the scour of the Big Yellow will continue to keep it cleaned out.” He glared down the table and the Minister of Agriculture subsided, then opened another topic.
“Captain Vatta, I understand you’re going to be talking to the EDs about importing some machinery for us…”
Clearly Belinta was not a world given to keeping secrets. Ky just managed not to glance at the Slotter Key consul. Had he been the source, or was it the talkative customs official? “I was told up on your station that equipment you’d ordered had not been delivered, and was urgently needed,” she said.
“That’s true. Was supposed to come last year and didn’t. We need it badly; we’re points below projections on production because of it—”
“That’s not your department, Wellin. Your job is getting the most out of what we’ve already got.” Minister Cateros seemed to puff up like a bullfrog. Ky looked down at her plate. She didn’t need a teaching tape to know that the men were rivals, and that Cateros thought he outranked Wellin.
“I can’t plow fields with polo ponies,” Wellin said. He stabbed a slice of roast as if it were Cateros. “If we’d imported heavy stock as originally ordered—”
“They’d be stuck in the muck up there,” Cateros said. “You just have to get the job done, Wellin…”
“Do you play polo?” Cateros’ wife asked Ky with a desperate smile.
The men stopped and stared at her.
Ky shook her head. “No. I do ride, but I’ve never played polo. Not formally anyway.”
“Not formally? What does that mean?” Cateros sounded grumpy still.
“Oh, my brothers and I had read about the game, so we sneaked some brooms out of the pantry, and tried it.”
“You grew up on a planet?” asked Wellin’s wife. “There was room for horses?”
“Oh yes,” Ky said. She wondered if the woman thought all spacer crews grew up on ships. “Slotter Key has plenty of room… where I live, many people ride.” Always be ready to talk about any neutral topic, her father had said. You never know what it might be, but be ready.
“You should come to a match while you’re here,” Cateros said. “You can use our box.”
“Thank you,” Ky said. “I don’t know how much time I’ll have.”
“There’s a match day after tomorrow on the City grounds. If you don’t have an appointment.”
“Thank you,” Ky said again.
“I’ll see you have my number,” Cateros said. He looked at the ornate timepiece on the wall. “Good heavens, it’s late. We’re due at Erol’s wedding rehearsal, Sylis. We must go—you will excuse us,” he said to the consul. They both stood, as did Sylis, looking confused. The others all stood, until Cateros and his wife had left. Then, in a straggle, the other Belintans excused themselves, leaving Ky facing the consul across a cluttered table.
“That went well,” the consul said.
“Really?” Ky said. “They seemed angry to me.”
“They hate each other, but I got them to come and sit through most of a meal together. Captain Vatta, if you can possibly stand it, please go watch that polo match. I’m sorry to say that I simply can’t make head or tail of it, but you have a clue. Perhaps that will loosen Cateros up a little, and be a chink in their armor.”
“I can try,” Ky said. She could, she supposed, watch a polo game and make polite conversation.
“Good. I have transmitted a letter for you to the Economic Development Bureau, and here’s a hard copy for you to take tomorrow. Your appointment with the Assistant Minister for Procurement is at eight local time: that’s midmorning to these people. He’s supposedly going to arrange additional appointments for you. Let me know if he doesn’t.”
Garsin Renfro, the Assistant Minister for Procurement, was a tall, thin man with the long face Ky had begun to think of as Belinta-normal. “Can you really get us that machinery?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Ky said. “But very likely.”
“How long would it take?”
“Where had you found it before?”
This led to a long explanation of the process, starting with bid requests sent out to a dozen manufacturers and proceeding at glacial pace through every detail of what had happened. Ky kept wanting to interrupt, but made herself listen. Her father had always said no one could tell which detail would make trade and profit… but she was fairly sure none of these would.
“So… you were happy with the quality of the bid samples from FarmPower and Pioneer Agriculture Supply, and FarmPower had a closer outlet?”
“That’s right. Actually five suppliers met the quality standards. But FarmPower gave us the best overall deal, and they charged shipping only from Sabine. We ordered shipping by fastest scheduled carrier, and that was Pavrati; they come in every sixty days.” He looked at her as if she might object; Ky smiled.
“That’s understandable, if you had an urgent need.”
“We did—we do.” He shifted in his chair. “I won’t—I can’t—burden you with all that’s involved, but this delay has cost us…”
“Of course,” Ky murmured. “Now—your government’s contract with Pavrati. Was it exclusive?”
“No. The Board isn’t authorized to make such deals. But they were the next, on the schedule. I spoke to the Pavrati captain myself; he assured me they could pick up the machinery on their way outbound, from Sabine, and just store it until they came back. We’d hoped to have it sooner—that another ship could pick it up on the way in—but he said no, they stop at Sabine after Belinta, not before. But he would be back in about one hundred twenty days, he said, and that was well within our parameters.”
“So when he came back…”
“He didn’t come back,” the man said sourly. “The next Pavrati ship wasn’t the right one, and we knew that. We didn’t even ask. Then no Pavrati ship came for another one hundred twenty days, twice as long as usual. We’d queried, of course, but they had no explanation. When that one arrived, it didn’t have our machinery, or any explanation. It wasn’t the same ship, or the same captain, and he knew nothing about our shipment. We’d asked FarmPower in Sabine if the goods had been picked up, and they’d assured us they had. So at least the captain hadn’t spent our credit on fancy clothes.” For a moment the man’s gaze rested on Ky’s formal captain’s cloak, as if it were encrusted with precious gems.
“That must have been very confusing,” Ky said.