Merchanter's Luck

No. Maybe not such a good idea to invoke that particular reason unless he had to. Unsettled state of affairs was close enough.

And with luck, they had not found the cache in the hold at all; with luck, he could pay his dock charges and get out of here with some show of trying to arrange cargo. Best not to contact the black market here: they were likely to check him closer going out than coming in. But he could change Lucy’s name again, out at Tripoint—could risk a blown ship or a cut throat and do some nullpoint trading, sans customs, sans police, lying off at some place like Wesson’s and waiting for some ship that might be willing to trade with a freelancer, and better yet, some other marginer who might deal in forged paper. Risky business. Riskier still… with the military stirring about. An operation to tighten loopholes in which piracy was possible—also tightened loopholes in which marginers survived.

Union and Alliance in cooperation. He had never foreseen that. He swallowed the last of the dry sandwich, wadded the wrapper and thrust it back into his pocket, spacer’s reflex. The section seal was ahead, the office section, the military dock where militia were even more in evidence. He watched the overhead signs to find his way, finally located the customs office adjunct to the Dock Authority, halfway down the dock, and walked through the door. It was getting close to mainday. A line of applicants stood inside, spacers and ships’ officers with their own difficulties. A sign advised a separate window, a different procedure for ship clearance. He fished his papers out of his pocket and presented them at the appropriate window, and the young woman looked him in the eyes and glanced down again at the ID and Lucy’s faked papers. “Captain Stevens. There’s a call in for you.”

It started his heart to pounding; any anomaly would, in places such as this. “What ship?”

“Just a moment, sir.” She left the counter, took the papers with her. Terror verged on panic. He would have bolted, perhaps, with the papers-No. He would not. With the security seal on Lucy there was no way. A long counter, a bored clutch of clerks and business as usual, separated him from his title to Lucy, and making a row about it would draw attention. He leaned there, locked his hands on the counter to brace himself in his studied weariness and exasperation, hoping, still dimly hoping, that it was Allison Reilly with a parting message—(but she would not, never would, wanting no co

The official came back. His heart leapt up again. He leaned there trying to look put upon. “I’m really pretty tired,” he said. “I’d like to get that message later if I could.” That was what he should have said in the first place. That he finally thought of it encouraged him. But she looked beyond his shoulder at someone who had come up behind him, and that little shift of the eyes warned him. He turned about, facing station police.

It was not the scenario he had pla

Perhaps his face was white. He felt himself sweating. “It’s alterday.”

“Yes, sir. Will you come?”

“Is something out of order?”

“I don’t know, sir. I’m just asked to bring you to the offices.”

“Well, look, I’ll get up there in a minute. I need to settle something here with customs.”

“My orders are to bring you now. If you would, sir.”

“Look, they’ve got my papers tangled up here.—Ma’am, if I could have my papers back—” He turned belly to the counter again, expecting a heavy hand and cuffs on the instant. He tried, all the same, and the woman handed him the papers, which he started to put into his inside breast pocket. The officer stopped that reach with a grip on his wrist, patted his coat with a small deft movement even those standing closest might have missed, patted the other two pockets as well. “That’s all right, sir,” the officer said. “If you’ll come along now.”

He put the papers in his pocket, left the counter and went. The policeman laid no hand on him, simply walked beside him. But there was no escaping on Pell.

“This way.” The officer showed him not to the main elevators in the niner corridor, but to a service elevator on the dock. Other police waited there, holding the door open.

“I think I have a right to know what this is about,” Sandor protested, not sure that Union rights applied here at all, this side of the Line.

“We don’t know,” the officer in charge said, and put him into the lift with the other police, closed the door behind. “Sir.”

The lift whisked them up with a knee-buckling force, two, four, six, eight levels. Sandor put his hands toward his pockets, nervous habit, remembered and did it anyway, carefully. The door opened and let them out into a carpeted corridor, and one of the police took a sca

“That’s fine,” the officer said then, letting him go. “Pardon, sir.”

Maybe he had rights this violated. He was not sure. He let them take his arm and guide him down the corridor, a corporation kind of hall, carpeted in natural fiber, with bizarre carvings on the walls. The place daunted him, being full of wealth, and somewhere so far from Lucy he had no idea how to get back. Perhaps it was the shock of the strung-together jumps he had made getting here; maybe it was something else. His mind was not working as it ought; or it lacked possibilities to work on. His hands and feet chilled as if he were operating in a kind of shock. He was threadbare and shabby and as out of place here as he would be in Dublin’s fine corridors. Lost. There was money here that normally ignored nuisances his size, and somehow the thought of arguing a three thousand credit account in a place like this that dealt in millions-One of the police strode ahead and opened a door with a key card, let them into an office where a militia guard stood with a large, ugly gun at his side; and two more station security officers, and a man at a desk who might be a secretary or a clerk.

“Go on in,” that one said, and pushed a button at the desk con-sole. The militiaman opened the farther door and Sandor hesitated when the police did not bid to move. “Go on,” the officer said, and he went, far from confident, down an entry corridor into a large room with a U-shaped table.

All its places were filled, mostly by stationers silver-haired with rejuv; but there were exceptions. The woman centermost was one, a handsome woman in an expensive green suit; and next to her was another, a militia officer in blue, a pale blond man with bleak pale eyes.

“Papers,” the woman in the center said. He reached into his pocket and handed them to a security agent on duty in the room, who walked to the head of the U and handed them to her. She unfolded them in front of her and gave them a cursory scrutiny.

“Why am I here?” Sandor ventured, not loud, not aggressive. But it had never seemed good to back up much either. They just asked me to come up here. They didn’t say why.”

She passed the papers to the militia officer beside her. She looked up again, hands folded in front of her. “Elene Quen-Konstantin,” she identified herself, “dockmaster of Pell.” And he recalled then what was told about this woman, who had defied a Union fleet. He swallowed his bluffs unspoken, taking her measure. ‘There’s been some question about your operation, Captain Stevens. We’re understandably a little anxious here. We have statements by some merchanters that you’re under ban at Mariner, under a different name. On unspecified charges. This is hearsay. You don’t have to answer the questions. But we’re going to have to run a check. We’re quite careful here. We have to be, under circumstances I’m sure I don’t have to lay out for you. Your combine will be reimbursed for any unwarranted delays and likewise your housing and your dock charges will be at Pell’s expense during the inquiry. Unless, of course, something should turn up to substantiate the charges.”