Finity's End

The shopkeeper shook his head. “That’s illegal stuff.”

Fletcher drew a slow breath, considered the kids, Jeremy, the situation. “Say I come back later.”

“Maybe.” The shopkeeper went back to the back of the shop, took a card from the wall, brought it back and wrote a number on it.

“Here.”

Fletcher took the card, looked at it, saw a phone number, and a logo. “Is that where?”

“Maybe.” The shopkeeper’s eyes went to the kids, and back again.

“They’re my legs,” Fletcher said, the language of the underworld of Pell docks. “You want that market, I can make it, no question. You in?”

“See the man,” the shopkeeper said “Not me. No way.”

“Understood.” Fletcher slipped the card into his pocket

“Specialties,” the shopkeeper said.

“Loud and clear.” Fletcher shoved at Linda’s shoulder, and got her and the other two juniors into motion.

Jeremy gave him a sidelong look as they cleared the frontage, walking along a noisy dockside of neon light and small shops and sleepovers.

“Clever kid,” Fletcher said. He’d had no idea the track Jeremy had been on, clearly, in his sudden interest in curio shops.

“I said we’d get it back,” Jeremy said.

“We?”

“I mean we.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no ? We’re on to where there’s downer stuff! This is where that guy will sell it off clear to Cyteen!”

“I mean this is illegal stuff. I mean these people will kill you. All of you! This is serious, you three. It’s not a game.”

“We know that,” Jeremy said in a tone that chilled his blood. Jeremy, Fletcher suddenly thought, who’d grown up in war. Linda and Vince, who had. All of them knew what risk was. Knew that people died. Knew how they died, very vividly.

“ Champlain’s in port,” Vince said. “So’s the thief.”

“So?” Fletcher said. “They might not sell it here. Not on the open market.”

“Bet they do,” Linda said. “I bet Jeremy’s right.”

“I don’t care if he’s right.” He’d been maneuvered all day long by three clever kids. Or by one clever kid, granted Vince and Linda might not have suspected a thing until it was clear to all of them what Jeremy was after. “This isn’t like searching the ship. Look, we tell JR. He’ll tell the Old Man and the police can give the shop a walk-through.” It sounded stupid once he was saying it. The police wouldn’t find it. He knew a dozen dodges himself. He knew how shopkeepers who were fencing contraband hid their illegal goods.

“We can just sort of walk in there and find out,” Jeremy said. “We’re in civvies, right? Who’s to know? And then we can know where to point the cops. I mean, hell, we’re just kids walking around looking at the stuff. We won’t do anything. We can find out , Fletcher. Us. Ourselves.”

It was tempting—to know what had happened to Satin’s gift, and to get justice on the lowlife that had pilfered it. They could even create a trail that could give Finity a way to come at Champlain , who had the nerve to sue them: that word was out even to the junior-juniors. He’d lay odds the crewman’s thieving had been personal, pocket-lining habit, nothing Champlain’s captain even knew about—just the regular activity of a shipful of bad habits, all lining their pockets at any opportunity. The thief had been after money, ID’s, tapes, anything he could filch; and the lowlife by total chance had hit the jackpot of a lifetime in Jeremy’s room. Sell the hisa stick, here, in a port a lot looser than Pell, a port where curios were pricey and labeled with museum quality ?

Jeremy was right. It was a pipeline straight to Cyteen, for pottery that shop wasn’t supposed to have—he guessed so, at least. Maybe for plants and biologicals illegal to have. Maybe the trade was going both ways, smuggling rejuv out to Earth, rejuv and no knowing what: Cyteen’s expertise in biologicals of all sorts was more than legend—and Cyteen biologicals were anathema in the Downbelow study programs—something they feared more than they did the easy temptation to humans to introduce Earth organisms, which at least had grown up in an ecosystem instead of being engineered for Cyteen, specifically to replace native Cyteen microbes. He’d become aware how great a fear there’d been, especially among scientists on Pell during the War, that Cyteen, outgu

And it immeasurably offended him that Satin’s gift might become currency in a trade that, after all the other hazards humans had brought the hisa, posed the deadliest threat of all.

Go walk with Great Sun?

Take a hisa memory into space? What could Satin remember, but a world that trade aimed to destroy for no other reason than profit and convenience?

He looked at the address of the card they’d gotten. It was in Blue. It was in the best part of Blue, right in the five hundreds. They were standing at a shop in the threes. Finity was docked at Blue 2, Boreale at Blue 5, and Champlain at 14. Being in charge of junior-junior security—he’d made it his business to look at the boards and know that information.

“Come on,” Jeremy said. “We can at least know .”

They’d had the entire ship in an uproar, looking for what wasn’t aboard; and what Jeremy had known wasn’t aboard. Now Jeremy argued for finding out where the hisa stick really was.

And maybe that in itself was a good thing for the whole ship. Maybe Finity officers could do something personally to get it back, as the kids could have a part in finding it, and maybe then the whole ship could settle things within itself.

Maybe he could settle things in himself, then. Maybe he could find a means not to destroy one more situation for himself, and to get the stick back, so he’d not have to spend a life wondering what Cyteen shop had bought a hisa memory… and to whom it might have sold it, a curiosity, to hang on some wall

“All right,” he said, suddenly resolved. “We take a look. Only a look. It’s not for us to do anything about it. We can at least look and see whether that guy back there is putting us on. Which he probably is. Do you hear me?”

“Yessir,” Jeremy said, the most fervent yessir he’d heard out of Jeremy in weeks.

“Yessir,” Vince said, and Linda bobbed her head.

“Behave,” he said severely, and took the troops toward the five hundreds.

Chapter 25

Arnason Imports, Ltd. was the name of the shop, not one of those on the front row, which Fletcher had rather expected, but one of those tucked into a nook toward the rear of a maintenance recess between another import company and a jeweler’s. It wasn’t a bad address. But it wasn’t a shop of the quality that the address might have indicated, either, and Fletcher had second thoughts about the junior-juniors, the hour—which meant an area less trafficked than it would have been in mainday. The jeweler’s was closed. The other business was open, but it had a sign saying No Retail.

“Not real prosperous,” he said, with flashes on the dock-sides of his ill-spent youth. “Just go slow.” Jeremy was tending to get ahead of him. “Listen, you. I want it understood. No smart moves here. Believe me.”

“Yessir,” Jeremy said, bounced on the balls of his feet in that nervous way he had, and charged ahead.

There was no surety the stick was even in the shop. “Calm down ,” Fletcher snapped, and the kids assumed a far quieter disposition. Jeremy was still first through the door, setting off a buzzer, no melodious bell.