Finity's End

“Well, I’m ready to go back,” Vince said

“We’ve got two weeks here,” Fletcher reminded them. “We agreed. Shopping tomorrow. After breakfast.”

“There’s this shop—” Jeremy said, and dived off to a curio shop on the row they walked, a crowded little place with curiosities and souvenirs on every shelf.

There were plastic replicas of Cyteen life. There were expensive plastic-encased flowers and insects from Earth. There were packets of seeds done up with pots. Grow them in your cabin and be surprised at the carnivorous flowers.

He didn’t think he wanted one of those.

They looked. They looked at truly tasteless things, and walked off the fullness of the supper on a stroll during which Jeremy ran them into every hole-in-the-wall shop on the row.

The kids bought some silly things, finger-traps, a device older than civilization, Fletcher was willing to bet. A plastic shark. Jeremy bought a cheap ball-bearing puzzle, another device that defied time. The kid was cheering up.

Good for that, Fletcher said to himself. It was worth an extra hour walking back to the sleepover if it gave Jeremy something to do besides jitter and fret.

The meeting lurched and stonewalled its way toward an adjournment for the night, the main topic as yet not on the table, and neither side satisfied… except in the fact that nothing notably budged. Aides might have carried the details forward during alterday, but there was nothing substantive to work on.

There was, by now, however, a safe-cube or two making sure that if Oser-Hayes had altered data in a record supposed to be sacrosanct, they had a record of before and after. JR was able to get to Madison without witnesses, and under security, after the meeting had broken up and while Francie and a team of discreetly armed security was making sure the Old Man, walking ahead of them, reached the chosen restaurant without crises.

“I’ve ordered analysis and safe-storage of station feed, then and now,” he said, “Daily. Bucklin’s gone to Gerald, called back perso

“Good,” Madison said, and by the thoughtful expression Madison shot him then, no one else had ordered it. And Madison didn’t fault his consumption of multi-thousand credit cubes or the holding of the computer security staff off a well-earned liberty. “Good move. Cube?”

“Yessir.” The sirs still came naturally. “Yes. I know what it costs. But—”

“Run an analysis. I want to know the outcome. It would be stupid of the man. But then—he’s not the brightest light in the Alliance. He might think the next passing ship would patch his little problem and no one would be the wiser. Between you and me, the system has safeguards against that kind of thing. A Pell-certified tech, under duress, would alter records quite cheerfully.”

“Knowing there’d be traces.”

“Knowing that, yes. That’s an ears-only, not even for Bucklin.Yet.”

“I well imagine.”

They walked, he and Madison together, with security hindmost, along with Alan. The restaurant wasn’t far, one of those quiet, pricey affairs the Old Man favored, randomly selected from half a dozen near the conference area.

First time in his life, JR thought, he might have gotten up even with the captains he shadowed.

“Di

The destination made sense. Immediately.

“We can’t make headway with this station,” Madison said. “So we go to the captains first. This station is begging for confrontation. They won’t like it. But I think two ships will go with us without an argument. Don’t plan on sleep tonight.”

He was supposed to approach another captain? He was supposed to carry out this end of the proposition?

It was one thing to talk in conference with the Old Man as certain back-up. It was another to walk onto another deck to persuade an independent merchanter to strong-arm a station-master tomorrow. Things could blow up. He could set negotiations back on a single failure to read signals. Or give the wrong captain information that could end up back in Oser-Hayes’ hands, or hardening merchanter attitudes against them.

But he couldn’t say no. That wasn’t why they’d pushed him ahead in rank.

If they were late-night shopping, Vince wanted a tape store. They visited that, and Vince bought two tapes. Thirty minutes, in that operation, and it was high time, Fletcher decided, to get over-active junior-juniors back to the sleepover before Linda had her way and talked him into another sugared drink that would have them awake till the small hours.

“No,” Fletcher said, to that idea.

Then Jeremy took interest in yet another curio shop, not yet sated with plastic snakes and seeds and little mineral curiosities. “Just one more,” Jeremy said. “Just one more.”

If it made Jeremy happy. If it got them back to the sleep-over with everyone in a good mood.

This one was higher class, one of those kind of shops that was open during mainday and every other alterday, alterday traffic tending to lower-priced goods and cheaper amusements. The door opened to a melodious chime, advising the idle shopkeeper of visitors, and a portly man appeared. Justly dubious of junior-juniors in his shop, that was clear.

“Just window-shopping,” Fletcher said, and the man continued to watch them; but he seemed a little easier in the realization of an older individual in charge of the rowdy junior traffic.

“Decadent,” Linda said, looking around. “Really decadent stuff.”

The word almost applied. There were plastic-encased bouquets, and mineral specimens, a pretty lot of crystals, and some truly odd geologic curiosities in a case that drew Fletcher’s eye despite his determination to keep ubiquitous junior-junior elbows from knocking into vases and very pricey carvings in the tight quarters.

Out of Viking’s mines, the label said, regarding the lot of specimens in the case, and the price said they were probably real—a crystal-encrusted ball, brilliant blue, on the top shelf; a polished specimen of iridescent webby stuff in matrix on the next shelf.

And, extravagantly expensive, and marked museum quality , a polished natural specimen on the next shelf, labeled Ammo

Real, and disturbing to find it here.

He was looking at that, when he became aware Jeremy was talking to the shopkeeper, wanting something from another cabinet. He didn’t know what, in this place, Jeremy could possibly afford.

But he was amazed to see what the shopkeeper took out and laid on the counter at Jeremy’s request.

Artifacts. Pieces of pottery.

“Earth,” the shopkeeper said. “Tribal art. Three thousand years old. Bet you never saw anything like this.”

Fletcher stopped breathing. He wasn’t sure spacer kids understood what they were seeing.

But a native cultures specialist did. And a native cultures specialist knew the laws that said these specimens definitely weren’t supposed to be here.

“Real, are they?” Fletcher asked, going over to look, but not to touch.

“Certificate of authenticity. Anyone you know a collector?”

He almost remarked, Mediterranean . But a spacer wasn’t supposed to know that kind of detail.

“Got any downer stuff?” Jeremy piped up.

That got an apprehensive denial, a shake of the head, a wavering of the eyes.

Fletcher understood Jeremy’s interest in curio shops the instant he heard the word downer in Jeremy’s mouth. He bridged the moment’s awkwardness with a dismissive wave toward the Old Earth pottery and a flip of his hand toward the rest of the shop. “I always had a curiosity,” he said, playing Jeremy’s game, knowing suddenly exactly what was behind Jeremy’s new enthusiasm for curio shops and the other two junior-juniors’ uncharacteristic support of his interest in shops where they couldn’t afford the merchandise. “I read a lot about the downers. No market for the pottery. But I’ve got a market for downer stuff.”