Finity's End

Oser-Hayes hadn’t wanted a general meeting, involving the ships’ captains… yet.

He had one.

JR settled at the end of the Finity delegation, knowing each and every face at the meeting, this time, every captain that had been at that convocation, every station officer that had been at the court.

There was a notable exception: Champlain was in the process of leaving Esperance. The station wouldn’t—legally couldn’t—prosecute a spacer whose captain chose to defend him, but they wouldn’t allow that ship to dock, either.

Wayne poured water. Bucklin was standing watch at the door.

JR sat easily, cheerful in the foreknowledge of the captains’ agreement to the terms of the Pell agreement. He sat easily as the Old Man with perfect self-assurance laid the hisa stick on the white table-cloth… a weathered, battered stick worth far more than the statuary outside or the furnishings of the room.

In this case it was worth Champlain’s reputation, Finity ’s vindication, and a serious example of the Esperance administration’s mounting legal problems. There were rumblings of discontent with Oser-Hayes’ administration on a great many fronts, not only among spacers who’d broken up a little of the docks in the general discontent, but among stationers who’d known bribes were being passed to let certain businesses run wide open and in contravention of the law.

And others, who’d known there was something not too savory operating in the courts, the customs offices, the police department, and the tax commission. Name it, and somewhere, somehow, money had opened and shut doors on Esperance.

Nothing had ever united all the offended elements before. Now Oser-Hayes hoped there wouldn’t be a vote of confidence… before they could get the Pell trade agreement finalized.

No, the police had not opposed a unified gathering of ship’s captains, officers of the Merchanters’ Alliance, and a warrant had fairly flown out of the judge’s office, enabling a very interesting search of Arnason Imports and a series of arrests of Arnason owners anxious to prove they weren’t the only company engaged in illicit trade.

The station news service and the trendy coffee shops were abuzz with official reports and delicious unofficial rumor.

They had an entire smuggling network exposed, not a harmless one, but a conduit for stolen goods reaching all sorts of places… stolen artwork, artifacts, weapons, rejuv and pharmaceuticals including biologicals. Esperance had had something for everyone—including war surplus arms that were listed as recyclables. What they’d found in two weeks at Esperance was a veritable black-market treasure trove… and what they’d dismantled wasn’t going to be back in operation the moment the current set of merchanters pulled out.

Finity’s End had an agreement with its brother merchanters to pass the word, the total files, the archives on Esperance, and for one ship to stay in dock until it had gotten agreements from the next ship to arrive that it would linger at Esperance dock—free of excess charges, of course—to pass the word in turn.

In short, there was a great deal of shakeout in a very short time, a pace of change that stationers found stu

Yes, Oser-Hayes would have liked a four-, six-week delay. Oser-Hayes would have spun things out for months and years if it had involved station law, with injunctions, stays, postponements, court orders and all ma

Not with the Alliance legal system on a two-week push.

And amid all the smooth textures and simple pearl gray and black of a modern conference room, amid all the modern flash and glitter of spacers and the smooth, expensive fashion of the stationmaster and his aides… a thing indisputably organic, hard-used, hand-made of substances mysterious to space-dwellers. Simple things, Fletcher had said, who’d been on a world. Wood. Feather. Fiber.

Small, planet-made miracles.

“This,” Captain James Robert said, with his hand on the hisa artifact, “this is the artifact that led us to the problem. Not very large. Not very elaborate. But important to one of my crew. It was a gift from Satin… Tam-utsa-pitan is her name, in her language. But Satin… to us humans. She sent it. A wish for peace. That’s what we’ve come here to find, if you please.

“And in that sense,” the Old Man said, “more than humans sit at this table. Understand: we never could explain the War to the hisa, when the one who sent this asked what it all meant. Peace may be an easier concept for them. Hard for us to find. But, courtesy of the Finity crewman who lent this to our conference, consider this the living witness of the other intelligent species swept up in the events of our time. It’ll lie here, while we try to find an answer and sign a simple piece of paper that can clear reputations—”

Oh, watch Oser-Hayes’ expression when the Old Man held out that possibility: restoration, amnesty. A cleared name and a new chance to be immaculate. Damn sure Oser-Hayes knew the details of all the operations that had ever run. There might be nobody better to clean them up than a newly empowered convert to economic orthodoxy.

“Meanwhile,” the Old Man said with a deep, assured calm, that voice that took the tumbling emotions of a situation and settled things to quiet, “meanwhile an old hisa’s sitting beneath her sky waiting for that answer. And her peace is that much closer, in this place. I think we’ll find it this time—at least among ourselves.”

“The whole damn dock, Fletcher. Holes everywhere, a dozen ships emptied out…”

Chad exaggerated. Chad had that small tendency. But the court had just met, on the business of inciting a riot. It was vividly in memory.

“Fletcher came charging in there,” Jeremy said, perched on the edge of the chair, his whole body aquiver. “They all had guns and Fletcher just lit into them with his bare hands!”

“Mild exaggeration,” Fletcher said in an undertone. “You’ll make me ridiculous . Hear me?”

Henley’s Soft-bar was the venue. The station repair crews were patching the last leaks in the station’s water and ventilation systems, rendering the name Arnason Imports highly unpopular among two residency blocs of very rich stationers who’d had their water cut off; and the man they’d found with two broken legs and a broken arm in the depths of the tu

Jeremy was sitting on Fletcher’s right, Linda and Vince on his left. The headlines on the station news above the adjacent liquor bar were full of investigations and charges of which Finity’s End was officially, today, judged i

In celebration of that fact, the juniors of Finity’s End owned a large table in Henley’s. Bucklin and Wayne were on duty. They’d come in later. But meanwhile it was on JR’s tab. So was the rest of the liberty, unlimited ticket to ride, as of this morning.

A round of soft drinks later, Madelaine showed up, in silvers, and patted Fletcher on the shoulder. “Told you how they’d rule,” Madelaine said, and pressed a kiss on Fletcher’s ear, to the laughter of the table.

But Fletcher didn’t flinch. He caught Madelaine’s hand and squeezed it, turning in his chair, looking into Madelaine’s eyes. Madelaine the dragon. Madelaine, who’d led the effort in court.

“Grandmother,” he said, and amended that, stationer-style: “Great-gran. You’re a damn good lawyer. Sit down. Have a sip. JR’s buying.”