Merchanter's Luck

And then, because he had never liked ru

She rested with her elbow on the bar, looking as if she belonged; and he had no cover left, not with her recognizing him, a man with a no-Name patch on his sleeve and no way to claim coincidence in being in this place. He had never felt so naked in his life, not even in front of station police with faked papers.

“Buy you a drink?” he asked, the depth of his originality.

She was—maybe—-the middle range of twenty. She bar-hopped alone with that shamrock on her sleeve, and she was safe to do that: no one rolled a Dubliner in a sleepover and pla

She motioned to the stool beside hers and he came and eased onto it with a vast numbness in the middle of him and a cold sweat on his palms. He looked up nervously at the barkeeper who arrived and looked narrowly at him. Your choice,” Sandor said to A. Reilly, and she lifted the glass she had mostly finished. Two,” he managed to say then, and the bartender went off.

Two of that, he was thinking, might be expensive. They might be the most expensive drinks he had ever bought, if a bad bar bill brought questions down on the rest of his currently shaky finances. He looked into A. Reilly’s midnight eyes with a genuine desperation, and the thought occurred to him that being arrested would be only slightly worse than admitting to poverty in the Dubliner’s presence.

“Lucy,” she read his patch aloud, tilting her head to see the side of his arm. “Insystemer?”

“No,” he said, a hot flush rising to his face. His indignation won him at least a momentary lift of her hand and deprecation of the question she had asked, because a jumpship was far and away a different class of operation from the insystem haulers and miners. In that sense at least, Lucy and Dublin were on the same scale.

“Where are you based, then?” she asked, either mercy-killing the silence or being sensibly cautious in her barside contacts. “Here?”

“Wyatt’s,” he said. The barkeeper returned with two drinks and hesitated, giving him the kind of look which said he would like to see a credit chit if it were him alone, but the barman slid a thoughtful eye over the shamrock patch and moved off in silence. Sandor took both glasses and pushed the one toward A. Reilly, who was on the last of her first.

“Thanks,” she said. He limited his swallow to less than he wanted, hoping to make it last, and to slow her down, because they laid down more in tips in this place than he spent on meals.

And desperately he tried to think of some casual question to ask of her in return. He could not, because everyone knew where Dublin was based and asking more sounded like snoopery, from someone like himself.

“You in for long?” she asked.

Three days.” He pounced on the question with relief. “Going to fill the tanks and take on cargo. Going on to Fargone from here. I don’t have a big ship, but she’s mine, free and clear. I’m getting a little ahead these days. Trying to take on crew here.”

“Oh.” A small, flat oh. It was apprehension what class he was.

“I’m legitimate. I just had some bad luck up till now. You don’t know of any honest longjumpers beached here, do you?”

She shook her head, still with that look in her eyes, wary of her uninvited drinking partner. Sometimes such uncrewed ships and such approaches by strangers in bars meant pirate spies; and even huge Dublin had them to fear. He saw it building, foresaw an appeal to authorities who would jump fast when a Dubliner yelled hazard. There were fleet officers drinking at a nearby table. Security was heavy out on the docks, with rumors of an operation against the pirates; but others said it had to do with Pell, or inter zone disputes, or they were checking smuggling. He smiled desperately.

“Pirates,” he said. “Long time back… My family’s all dead; and my hired crew ran on me and near robbed me blind, one time and the other. You know what you can hire off the docks. It’s not safe. But I haven’t got a choice.”

“Oh,” she said, but it was a better oh than the last, indeterminate. A frown edged with sympathy, and hazardous curiosity. “No, I don’t know. Sometimes we get people wanting to sign on as temporaries, but we don’t take them, and we haven’t had any at Viking that I’ve heard of. Sony. If station registry doesn’t list them—

“I wouldn’t take locals,” he said, and then tried the truth. “No, I would, if it got me out on schedule. Anyway, Lucy’s mine, and I was out hunting prospects, not—”

“You rate me a prospect?”

She was laughing at him. That was at least better than suspicion. He gri

She laughed outright and his heart beat the harder, because he knew what game she was playing at the moment. It was merchanters’ oldest game of all but trade itself, and the fact that she joined the maneuvering in good humor brought him a sweating flush of hope. He took a second sip of the forgotten glass and she took a healthy drain on her second. “Lost your crew here?” she asked. “You can’t have gotten in alone.”

“Yes. Lost him here. He’d been in hospital; he hired on for passage, and caught his ship here, so that was it.” He drank and watched in dismay as she waved at someone she knew, an inconspicuous wave at a dark-bearded man who drifted in from the doorway and lingered a moment beside them.

“All right?” that one asked.

“All right,” she said. He was another Dubliner, older, grim. The shamrock and stars were plain on his sleeve, and he carried a collar stripe. Sandor sat still under that dark-eyed, unloving scrutiny, his face tautened in what was not quite a smile. The older man lingered, just long enough to warn; and walked on out the door.

Sandor stared after him, turned slightly in his seat to do so, still ruffled—turned back again with the feeling that A. Reilly would be amused at his discomfiture. She was.

She took the second drink down a third. Her cheeks were looking flushed. “What kind of hauling is your Lucy? General?”

“Very.”

“You don’t ask many questions.”

‘What does the A. stand for?”

“Allison. What’s the E.?”

“Edward.”

“Not Ed.”

“Ed, if you like.”

“Captain.”

“And crew.”

She seemed amused, finished the drink and tapped a long, peach-lacquered fingernail against the glass, making a gentle ringing. The barkeeper showed up. I’ll stay with the same,” she said, and when he left, looked up with a tilt of her head at Sandor. “I mixed that and wine on Cyteen once and nearly missed my ship.”

“They don’t taste strong,” he said, and with a sinking heart cast a glance at the bartender who was mixing up another small glass of expensive froth… and second one for him, which was a foul trick, and one they could pull in a place like this.

“Love them,” she said when the bartender came back and set both down. She picked up hers and sipped. “A local delicacy, just on Viking and Pell. You come all the way from Wyatt’s, do you? That’s quite a distance for a smallish ship. What combine is that? I didn’t hear you say.”

“WSC.” He was close to panic, what with the bill and the questions which were hitting into areas he wanted left alone. Misery churned in his stomach which the frothy drink did nothing to comfort. “I run margin, wherever there’s room for a carrier. I’m close to independent. But Dublin fairly well runs her own combine, doesn’t she? You go the whole circle. That’s independent.” He talked nonsense, to drag the question back to Dublin, back to her, staring into her eyes and suspecting that all this was at his expense, that some kind of high sign had just been passed between her and her bearded kinsman who had strayed through the door and out again. Possibly someone was waiting outside to start trouble. Or she was going to have her amusement as far as frustrated him and walk off, leaving him the bill. He was soberer after this one more drink than he had been when he came in here, excepting a certain numbness in his fingers, and while she looked no less beautiful, his desire was cooled by that sobriety, and by a certain wry amusement which persisted in her expression. He put on a good face, as he would do with a curious customs agent or a dock-side dealer who meant to bluff his price down. He gri