But Sprite couldn’t catch them. The gods of physics afforded no chance to one freighter to overtake another with Corinthian’s head start—unless Sprite was running empty, with outright nothing in the holds when she went into hyperspace.
Tell the Family they were going back to Viking empty? That, having cleared one chancy low-mass, high-value deal at Pell, for which they’d had to dip into bank reserves, they were going to throw away everything they’d just gained at enormous risk—and run empty back to Viking-via-Tripoint?
No way. No way in hell. She could muster the votes against Mischa on the matter of the Pell run, because she could threaten the sure economic disaster of her quitting, against the promise of profit. She couldn’t get anywhere in a vote by demanding a disaster.
She swallowed a mouthful of ice-melt and vodka and did a different-criteria search through the market.
Pell… was the gateway to Earth. To arts. To culture.
Books. Zero mass. Vids. Software. Distribution licenses. Always high-priced because ships bid on them. But ships only bid so much, usually scooping up what they could get without a fight, because it was a chancy market, riding local fads, and the willingness of some station-side promoter to take it off your hands where you were going… so if you were willing to gamble big that you knew tastes where it was going… ordinarily you could get it, the info-market being quiet, low-tension, not subject to big bids from ships that better understood the market for frozen foods and machine parts.
She took out her stylus, punched the keys you couldn’t accidentally access with bare fingers, and money moved.
Data moved.
Data flooded into Sprite’s black-box info-storage. Permits, licenses. Credit. Text. Images. Patents. Two solid hours, while she sipped fruit-juice and vodka, of high-speed input—in which the info-market accelerated, picked up interest on some items—then hyped into a wild surge of activity.
She traded back some books, some vids, snapped up rights less useful to ships that didn’t reach deep in Union territory: license to reproduce at Union ports and points further, exclusive rights down routes reachable from Unionside—prices ballooned as ships bid to get a speculative commodity they regularly dabbled in, rights they routinely bid on, ships and stationside interests battling each other for what somebody unknown was going for in huge quantities. The whole info-market soared as station-side speculators and automatic trading programs saw a rising price and a limited availability and went for it. Feeding frenzy set in, sent prices crazy. She sat it out for fifteen minutes and sipped her drink while the market computers registered a flurry of trades.
Four ships and one publishing house released major holdings to profit-take on the market, she grabbed it all and resold, bought hand and fist on the panic, and the market dropped and rose and ticked into stability as the regulators slammed the lid on.
She keyed Sprite for departure at m2330h, then, scant time to get the Dee Imports cans offloaded and get the tanks filled.
After which, she turned on her pocket-corn and told Mischa they were in count for departure in under twenty-four hours, beep everybody who was out.
“Marie, “ Mischa said calmly, “where are you?” Less calmly: “—Are you in some bar?”
“Noisy? I said 24 hours, Mischa, do you copy? We’re bought up. We’re going. I’ve made a profit just sitting here and logged us for departure. You can check the schedule board.”
“Marie. We aren’t loaded. “
“Zero-mass. Publishing rights. Tons of publishing rights. We’re bought and loaded. It’s in Sprite’s databanks right now, didn’t you notice that little light flicker? Every cent we have in credit. It’s time-critical and I suggest we pull out the second the tanks are filled.”
“Damn you! Get your ass back on this ship, Marie! Dump that infoshit back on the market, resell and get our money back! You’re not pulling this!”
“Mischa, sweet, we’ve made money, as stands. There’s been a modest little trade war in the last few hours and the market’s gone under regulatory controls, now. There’s really no way to make anything short-term under a regulatory, you know that. If we sell now, we sell at a loss. So we’d better make that schedule, Mischa. Dear. It’ll work.”
“This is going to a vote, Marie. Your post is going to a vote!”
“I’ll call yours to one, too, sweet. Think about it. I’ve made us money in this port. I’ll make us money where we’re going.”
“And where’s that? What area’s this damn infodump valid for?”
Mischa’s grammar was going.
“Marie?”
“Cyteen, via Viking, via hell, brother. It’s what we have to do. And speed counts. Trust me.”
—ii—
WAVES UPON WAVES, SCARY climb into nothing and nowhere.
Hand brushed Tom’s brow. Voice, ever so far, whispered to him.
His heart started beating too fast. Colors flared and ran like dyes across his vision. It was Saby he was with. Saby’s bed. He could feel her presence by him.
Feel the hovering presence, too, then a change in pitch of the surface he lay on. A finger brushed his cheek.
“You hear me, Tommy? No good shamming, I know you do.”
“Leave me alone,” he tried to say.
“Person’s truly sorry, Tommy-lad. “ For a while the touch went away, and came back again. The universe quaked. Ran colors. Tilted.
“Stop it, dammit. Saby’s. Saby’s place, here.”
“Yeah, sorry, Tommy-person. Didn’t come to devil you. Came to be sure you were all right. “ Air whispered against his forehead. A touch followed. “Gets lonely, in the dark. Gets cold. You know it. They don’t. You doing all right?”
“Yeah.”
“My fault you waked. Sex’ll do it sometimes.—And hell if I wanted Christian to ship you out to Earth—selfish me. I tried my best to warn you, Tommy-person, short of all the trouble you had. Tried to make you hear me. But you went out with him all the same. And now look. Saby’s got you. I lost out again.”
He felt the loneliness, and the cold. Then… just felt/ smelled/saw the colors a while. And vast, terrifying silence. He tried to move, then. He couldn’t feel things. Couldn’t tell up from down. He leaned into space, flinched back toward solid limits, and thought he was falling.
Arms were there. Caught him. Hands showed him where level was. “Tommy-person,” a voice said. “Sillyass. Easy. Easy. You took the trank. It’s still in your system, and I can’t watch you all the time. Break your silly neck, you will, or your nose. Lie still. Lie still. Enjoy it. Go with it… like sex… you got to go with it. You got to like it.—Deep breath. The willies will stop.”
He lay still—he thought he was lying down, Saby lying near him, but whether it was light or dark didn’t seem relevant to his eyes. He saw, somehow, or something like. The brain kept shifting things around or the walls truly ran in streams of color. Things just were. Couldn’t see Capella, then shivered at a strangeness as her hand met his body.
“Where were you?” he tried to ask.
“Upside, mostly,” Capella said. “The bridge. Everybody’s cold, everybody’s still. Don’t worry, I won’t touch you, just a sit-a-while, just a voice.”
“Yeah,” he said. He thought he could see and feel her, then, sitting on the edge of the bed, elbows on her knees, depressing the mattress.