Finity's End

Satin’s gift had come into hands like that. Satin’s gift had found a system like this. Mazian as an enemy… yes. He was in favor of that. But he wanted something done about this trade, which didn’t engage interest on an international level the way something did that involved guns.

They were worried about Cyteen using genetic warfare… but they smuggled stuff like this.

He brought his small troop into the Xanadu’s lobby and looked for officers.

There was Lyra.

“Got to talk to you,” he said. Keeping the junior-juniors quiet until they could get Lyra to a quiet and private area near the bar was difficult but he managed it, and Lyra looked at him with brow furrowed.

“What is this?”

“We found the stick,” he said.

Lyra looked blank a moment.

“In a curio shop,” Jeremy said, because he wasn’t going fast enough. Jeremy fairly vibrated with nerves. Linda and Vince were bobbing and restraining themselves with utmost difficulty. “They’re smugglers,” Vince said. “They have a whole back warehouse full of stuff.”

“This isn’t a joke, right?”

“No joke,” Fletcher said. “Each stick is unique as a fingerprint. I know this one. We tracked it down. We’re absolutely sure. They offered me a deal on it, sixty thousand and a fake cargo invoice, arranged through the captain.”

“ Through the Old Man? ”

“I said I was from Boreale .”

Lyra looked flummoxed and halfway amused. “This is a good one.—What in hell were you doing out searching with the junior-juniors?”

“It was us tracked it down!” Jeremy said in his defense. “We figured the skuz thief would sell it here, so we just checked the curios, and when we said downer stuff, they sent us to this shop, Blue 512, just right across from Boreale ! Isn’t that a kick?”

“You get to quarters,” Lyra said. “You leave this to older crew, junior-junior.—Fletcher, I’ll get this information to Bucklin. The captains are at supper. Or were.” She checked her watch. “I’ll see if I can call Bucklin.”

“Yes’m,” Fletcher said. “Tell him I can ID the stick, if they need that. Meanwhile we’re going to go upstairs.”

“Game parlor!” Linda cried.

“Room!” Jeremy voted. “So we can hear when they call.”

“Room,” Fletcher said, and to forestall protests from Linda and Vince: “The first-run vid, and lunch at the Lagoon tomorrow. Move.”

The protocols of which ship to contact first and by what rank officer were sticky in the extreme. It was a case of insult those most disposed to be your allies or flatter those most likely to be your opposition, and the Old Man simply phoned a complete mixed bag from the pricey restaurant and wanted to meet their senior captains for drinks.

They held an impromptu high-level strategy meeting in the tiny banquet room of one of Esperance’s fanciest restaurants, next to the bar, and security ranged from Finity crew in silver and immaculate Santo Domingo crew in dark greens, to the polychrome non-regulation of Scottish Rose and Celestial , and finally to the tasteful blues of Chelsea and the blue-greens of Boreale .

They started out the drinking and the meeting with those captains and solved the protocol problem with each of the captains there calling someone and inviting them for drinks… on a massive tab.

JR paced himself with the alcohol, and hobnobbed and good-fellowed his way around the room. The restaurant had pla

Notably, Champlain’s captains didn’t get an invitation. “I’ll bet my next year of liberties Champlain’s well aware,” JR said to Bucklin, who was part of security. “I wouldn’t put it past their station friends to try to slip a ringer onto the wait staff. Certainly they’re not getting any sleep this watch.”

“I’ll see if we can find out from the waiters if anybody’s suspect in that department,” Bucklin said.

Meanwhile JR brushed up against Madelaine, who’d also shown up. Madelaine and Blue both were having a good time.

“No few legal offices here,” Madelaine informed him, among other tidbits. “That chap over there with the mustache, that’s Santo Domingo . Old friends.”

The ships’ lawyers were getting together, frightening thought, mixing throughout the bar and restaurant.

Oser-Hayes figured in a number of conversations. So did the infamous lawsuit, as ship captains from both sides of the War wanted to know the progress of the action against Mazian, and as war stories and reminiscences were the bulk of the conversation.

Those, and the information someone had now let slip, that Pell and Mariner had come to terms with Union and that the old Hinder Star routes might see another rebirth via Esperance, which the local stationmaster was resisting.

The party now, with several new arrivals, outgrew the banquet room and the bar, and the talk now regarded profits that could be made on a new Earth route using Esperance as well as Mariner-Pell—except for the resistance of the Esperance administration, which was doing everything it could to hang on to a failing status quo.

The entire list of ships docked at Esperance, except Champlain , was represented in the restaurant and bar, and JR circulated along with the rest, called on to give the straight story about the lawsuit until he’d lost track of the times he’d told it, asked about the captaincy on Finity’s End and the Old Man’s health until he’d lost track of that subject, too. There was genuine concern about Captain James Robert, genuine interest in a young captain who carried the name.

“ Finity ’s best kept secret,” a woman said, shaking his hand. “Pleased to meet you.” And proceeded to introduce him to half Celestial ’s senior crew. They were no longer just the captains present. In the way of spacer gatherings, it had spread to include several ranks down.

He edged around a group of senior officers and found Wayne, who’d just gotten back from dockside. Wayne gave him a slip of paper, said it was a security matter, and that required a trip over to one of the few lights in the room to read the note.

It was from Lyra.

The item we were searching the skin for has turned up in a shop in Blue. Instructions?

Damn, he thought. He couldn’t detach Bucklin. They had a security need here as great as there was possible to have in this end of space.

But he signaled Wayne and took Wayne and the note out to the area where Bucklin and far more senior officers were standing watch.

He showed it to Bucklin, but he went on to show it to Tom R., who was in charge of security. “The hisa artifact that went missing at Mariner,” he said quietly. “We’ve found it here. Champlain crew is the juniors’ bet. No one’s taken any action. I just got this.”

“Madelaine should see this. So should the Old Man.”

It seemed a good idea. Security rated the matter as above their heads, and he tended to agree. He dismissed Wayne back to Lyra to say they were working on the problem, and wove his way back through the dimly lit room toward Madelaine.