Finity's End

“The artifact,” he said, “here, in a shop. Champlain , most likely.”

“Oh, that’s interesting,” Madelaine said in a predatory way. “Absolute identification?”

“I don’t know,” he had to say. “But nothing hisa belongs in any shop here.”

“Where’s Fletcher?” Madelaine asked.

“I don’t know that, either.” All of a sudden he very much wanted to know that answer, wished he’d sent Wayne after that information, and it was almost worth chasing Wayne down to make sure. But Wayne had left, almost certainly, the room was crowded, and his mission was to the Old Man himself.

“Sir.” He came up at the Old Man’s shoulder. “A word. A brief word.”

“Back in a moment.” The Old Man rose carefully, left the table and the conversation with several old acquaintances, and moved into a dark corner where, by the nature of the party, there was privacy.

“What’s the problem?” the Old Man asked

“The juniors have found the hisa artifact in a shop in Blue. I don’t know who found it, I don’t know how we know that’s the one, but that’s the initial information.”

“That’s very interesting,” the Old Man said, exactly as Madelaine had said.

“I thought you’d want to know. That’s all.”

“Keep it quiet for now. We’ll talk. Tell them on no account talk to the police.”

“Yessir,” he said “I’ll send a courier back.” One of the seniors in security, was his intention as he let the Old Man get back to his table and his conversation, but he made it no farther than the next table when Madison snagged him to know what that had been.

He shouldn’t have sent Wayne back. He should have held him to serve as a messenger… mistake he’d not have made if he’d used his head.

He went to Bucklin, who had a pocket-com. “Call Lyra. Tell her no action. None.”

“Yessir,” Bucklin said, and made the call on the instant, noise and all.

That was handled, and wouldn’t blow up. He went to Tom, the senior security chief present, and ordered a courier back to the Xanadu.

“I want to keep an eye on things,” he said. “If somehow someone saw someone and got nervous, I don’t want junior-juniors on the docks. It’s already a bad idea, just with the meeting here.”

“Yessir,” Tom said.

He shouldn’t have interfered in Bucklin’s domain without asking Bucklin what he’d done. It was a kneejerk reaction, to have given that last order, involving junior crew. He wasn’t pleased he’d done it; orders from too many levels were a guaranteed way to foul a situation up; and he went back to Bucklin and pulled him into a corner.

“I just ordered juniormost crew off the docks,” he said. “Shouldn’t have. Sorry.”

“Beat you to it an hour ago,” Bucklin said with the ghost of a smile. “Captain, sir.”

They’d watched vid, waiting for a phone call. They’d played cards, waiting for a phone call.

“They’ve got to do something,” Jeremy said. “I bet Lyra didn’t even find anybody.”

“She’ll tell them when she can get hold of them,” Fletcher said, on the last of a bad hand. “They’re talking war and peace, here. It’s not like they can break off and go chasing after an illegal art dealer.”

“Maybe we ought to put in a call to Legal,” Vince said. “Madelaine could get a warrant and get that place locked down until they search it.”

Vince had a touching faith in the law. Fletcher didn’t. But it was late to argue the point. Linda had made two stupid plays, sheer exhaustion, and was still trying. He himself was done for, with the hand he was holding.

Vince calmly did for all of them.

“ That’s where all the cards were hiding,” Linda said in disgust.

“Got you,” Vince said. “Want to play again?”

They were playing at the table in the main room of the suite. Fletcher gathered up cards. “I think it’s time to turn in. We don’t know what we’ll be into, tomorrow. We’d better get some sleep.”

There were grumbles, the evening ritual, but only halfhearted ones. Jeremy was glum, and hindmost in quitting the table.

“Jeremy,” Fletcher said, “it’s not the stick that matters. We know. We found it. If something happens, that’s bad, but it’s not the end of everything. You hear what I’m saying? Cheer up. We’ll do what we can tomorrow, and if we get it back we’ll celebrate and go to the Lagoon for supper. There’s two weeks of liberty. We’ve got time.”

“Yessir,” Jeremy said faintly, and went off to bed with Vince. Exhausted. They all were. They’d stayed up far later than usual, after a day in which they’d ricocheted all over Blue Sector, to every amusement the rules allowed, and now they were faced with repeats of the notable things to do, leaving him nothing with which to bribe the juniors into good behavior.

It was possible the rules might ease a little and let them spill over into Green, particularly if Champlain pulled out—he thought that if he were the captain of Champlain , he’d want to pull out very early, before, say, Finity’s End and Boreale finished their business; and that if he were in that unenviable position, he’d want to take a route that didn’t lay along Finity ’s route. Champlain wasn’t a big ship, by what he understood, and what it could do was probably limited.

So he could sleep, tonight, secure in the knowledge they’d answered the burning question what had happened to Satin’s stick. He didn’t want to think what could happen to it; and from the early hope that perhaps it would be something the captains could handle expeditiously, now he was looking to the more reasonable hope there would be some kind of legal action. The alterday courts were for drunks and petty disputes. The mainday courts were where you’d start if you had a serious matter.

But even so, he’d told the kids the truth: war and peace was at issue, and artifact smuggling was down on the list somewhere below cargo-loading and refueling and Champlain’s next port and current behavior.

He undressed, settled into a truly luxurious bed, ordered the automated lights to dark, and shut his eyes.

Tomorrow, maybe.

Or maybe they’d work quietly, behind the scenes, and come down on that shop with some sort of warrant before they left. It was disappointing to kids, who believed in justice and instant results, two mutually exclusive things, as the Rules of the Universe usually operated, and he didn’t want them to lose their natural expectation of justice somehow working… but it wasn’t a reasonable hope in light of everything else that was going on.

Other Finity staff were tired, too. And if they’d hit the pillows the way he had, the deep dark was just too easy to fall into.

Dark and then the gray of hisa cloud.

The view along Old River’s shores didn’t change. But Old River changed by the instant.

So did he, standing on that bank and watching the wind in the leaves. He and Old River both changed. So did the wind. And leaves fell and leaves grew and trees lived and died. The view wasn’t the same. It just looked that way. And the young man who stood there, like the river that flowed past the banks, wasn’t the same. He just looked that way.

He wanted Satin to know he’d tried. He wanted to know whether Melody and Patch were having a baby… and just wondering that, he saw a darkness in the v of a fallen log and the hill above him, a dark place, a comfortable place, for downers.

He knew who lived there. It was a dream, he knew it was a dream, and he knew that its facts were suspect as the instantaneity of its scene-changes, but he was relatively sure what he saw, and who he knew was there.

In this dream it was months and months since he’d left. Half a year. And in the swift hurtling of worlds around stars and stars around the heart of the galaxy and galaxies through the universe… a certain time had passed, in the microcosm of that living world. He had fallen out of time, but Melody and Patch lived to a planet’s turning and the more and less of Old River’s flowing, and the lights and darks of the clouds above. For them, time moved faster, and a baby was growing, a new baby that wasn’t him.