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  She took a sip of wine and a bite of fish. “You mean like, ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?’” she asked with a giggle.

  “Sorta. Why is it that a highly trained and talented individual like yourself is working as a spacer?” I asked. “Seriously. You’ve got a master’s degree in environmental sciences, right?”

  “Good memory,” she commented. “What do you think I should be doing instead?”

  “I dunno. It’s just that I kind of wound up in space as a last resort. You must have had plenty of other options.”

  She sipped her wine and glanced around the room as if considering how much to tell me. I waited her out. Finally, she seemed to make a decision and put her glass back on the table. “You saw how people reacted earlier,” she said softly. “I’ve been tall since I was ten. High school was hell. The university was only marginally better. I graduated with a degree in biology and then just went on to grad school. I dunno, maybe I was hiding, but I didn’t feel ready to venture out in the world yet. Anyway, while I was there I learned about closed ecologies…like ships and stations. I got interested in it. I got my first quarter share about six or seven stanyers ago—on the mess deck like you did.”

  “Why mess deck? Couldn’t you have gone directly into environmental?”

  She shook her head with a little shrug. “It was the first open berth I could get. I used that to get my foot in the door and then took the spec three test for environmental.”

  “So you jumped the engineering ratings?” I prompted.

  She nodded. “With my background, the spec three test was pretty easy. I never did have to learn about engine oil and propulsion systems.”

  I figured she left out a lot, but I did not press. “Have you always been on the Lois?”

  “Mercy, no!” She laughed. “The Lois is my third ship. I’ve been with her for about four stanyers. Before that I was on the William Hedley—a thirty-kiloton ore hauler that regularly makes the run from here to Diurnia. I started on the Soyokaze. She was a fast packet that made the run of Confederation systems carrying VIPs and light cargo. I made my rating there, but they did not have an open spec three slot. The Hedley did so I took that and got some experience under my belt.” She stopped for a moment, staring at some distant, unseen point. “When the berth opened on the Lois, I was ready for a change, so I moved over here as spec three and worked up to spec one by skipping again.”

  “That master’s degree came in handy,” I commented.

  “Mr. Kelley is always after me to go into the officer corps. With a degree already, it’s relatively easy. They have a special program at the merchant academy for people with experience and degrees.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Well, I’d have to be a general engineering officer. Spec one is as high as I can go and stay in environmental. I like what I do and moving up, just for the sake of being an officer, isn’t something I’m interested in.”

  “I can see that. But don’t you feel like—I don’t know—like you’ve maxed out?”

  “Never. There’s always something new to learn. Recently I heard about this screwy idea to mix used algae matrix and sludge.” Her eyes danced over the rim of her glass as she took a sip.

  We finished eating and the waiter cleared our dishes away. I had a cup of coffee for dessert, but Brill ordered a decadent looking chocolate something. While sipping reflectively, I remembered my bag with the sculptures in it. The heron was right on top, wrapped in the bit of folded cloth and secured with a red string. I reached down to get it.

  “I hope you don’t mind…” I started to say as I pulled it out. When I looked across the table, I found Brill holding out her hand as well. She also held a small object wrapped in a bit of folded cloth and secured with a red string.

  “Welcome to the section, Ish,” she said offering the present to me. When she saw what I had brought up in my hand we both laughed. “Oh, that’s too funny!” she said.

  “I was going to say, I hope you don’t mind that I went back and got you a figure, but it seems that I wasn’t the only one that took a detour on the way to the head.”

  We traded bundles and I waited for her to open hers first. “They were so spectacular, I couldn’t resist,” she said. “I was looking for something small that wouldn’t mass a lot.”

  “I’m touched,” I told her, weighing it in my hand and trying to think what it might be.

  She pulled the string and carefully unrolled the cloth revealing the heron. “I thought so,” she said, wrapping her long fingers around it and holding it to her chest. “It was gone when I went back. You already had it, didn’t you?”

  “Yup. I have no idea what you picked for me, though. I don’t remember any that stood out in particular.” I cast my mind back trying to think of all the figures I saw, but there were so many of them.

  “Actually, it wasn’t on the table,” she said. “When I went back, the old man pulled it out of a box and handed it to me. It was weird, but it was perfect so…”

  “It’s not a whale, is it?” I asked.

  “Open it and see.”

  I pulled the string and unwrapped it. A perfectly formed dolphin lay in the folds of cloth. The dark purple shell of its heart gleamed in the light of the restaurant. I stroked the grain with the tip of a finger and felt the smooth surface slide almost sensuously over my skin.

  “Wow,” was all I could get out of my mouth.

  “Do you like it?”

  I nodded and looked at her. “Thank you. I don’t know what else to say. I’m…flabbergasted.”

  She carefully re-wrapped her heron, tying the string securely before slipping into the inside pocket of her jacket. “How strange we both went back to the same booth.” She laughed. “But you didn’t need to do that, Ishmael.”

  “Well, I really wanted to. You’ve gone out of your way to make me feel at home in the section and helped me so much when I was studying for my engineman rating. When I saw that heron in your hand, I knew it belonged to you. I was really surprised when you put it back.”

  Brill gave her head a little shake. “I don’t usually go in for small bits of this and that, but this—” She patted the pocket. “Is something very different, and I’ll treasure it. Thank you. I think that’s the first time anybody has ever given me a gift for hiring them.”

  I re-wrapped my dolphin and tucked it safely into my jacket just as the waiter came back with the tab. It felt odd, but good, to be paying. I was shocked at the amount—forty creds—but then I remembered how much Pip and I had made with our trading. I added a generous tip, and we headed back to the ship.

  When we got back, I automatically went to my old locker in deck berthing and I was surprised to find it empty. I chuckled and headed to engineering. “I wonder how often I’ll do that,” I said to myself.

  It took only a few ticks to get out of my civvies and into my shipsuit. I pulled the wrapped dolphin out of my jacket and transferred it to my pocket. The chrono said 21:00 so I headed to the gym to see if I could catch Pip. He was just coming out of the showers. “Hey! Did you buy anything good? I got those digitals. They looked great.”

  “The yarn looks like the best bet,” I told him. “I bought a few skeins as samples to show you. Sean says it’s good stuff and I trust his judgment. He bought something like five kilos of the stuff himself.”

  Pip slid into his shipsuit and we headed for engineering berthing. “What about the dyes?” he asked.

  “I dunno. Brill was with me and we talked about it. We both came to the conclusion that the appeal would be limited, so I’m not sure how appealing it would be as a trade good.”

  “What about buying some for the empty container?” he asked. “Do you think dye would be good for that?”

  “It doesn’t mass much so that would be a lot of dye. I don’t know if you could get enough to make it worthwhile…or even if it would sell. Don’t they have dyes on Dunsany?”

  Pip pulled out his tablet. “Let me look i
nto that. Dunsany has a lot of textile processing. They might have dyes but they could value something in particular, like the purple or red they make here out of the snails.” He made a note.

  “Did I send you a digital of the little sculptures?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. What little sculptures?”

  “There was this strange guy with just a table. No sign or anything. The table was covered with these spectacular little wooden sculptures. Birds, fish, that kind of thing, all of them were carved out of some kind of local driftwood.” I pulled the dolphin from my pocket and unwrapped it to show him.

  He stared at it for at least two ticks but made no move to touch it or pick it up. “What is it?” he asked finally.

  “It’s a dolphin.”

  “No, I know that, doofus!” He grinned at me. “But what is it? Some kinda local voodoo?”

  “Funny you should ask. That’s what I thought when I saw them. If you see the guy, you’ll think so even more. He was…strange.”

  “How much?”

  “Really strange.”

  He snorted. “No, how much were the sculptures?”

  “Oh, that. Ten creds.”

  “What did he start at?”

  “Ten creds. It wasn’t negotiable.”

  “Odd.” He paused and ran a finger over the end of his nose in thought. “I would have started at fifty for these. Are all of them this good?”

  “Oh, yeah. I bought ten more for trade goods on a whim. They weigh almost nothing and it seemed like a good investment of a hundred creds.”

  Pip nodded thoughtfully. “Interesting. What’s the inlay work?”

  “He said it was a bit of shell from the beach, but whatever it is, every piece I saw was inlaid perfectly, just like this one.”

  “How many of these do you think we should take? Even if he won’t haggle on the price, ten creds seems like a pretty low price for something of this quality. And it’s light enough that we could hold onto them even if they didn’t sell on Dunsany.”

  “I bought ten—well, eleven actually. I gave one to Brill as a thank you gift for hiring me.”

  “So you have nine more besides this one?” he asked absently, still examining it but not touching.

  “No, ten. Brill gave this to me.”

  He looked at me with one raised eyebrow. “I hope that’s not the local engagement ritual or anything. Could be awkward to be married to the section chief.”

  I laughed uncomfortably and probably blushed. “I don’t think so.”

  Mercifully, Pip did not press the matter. “So how many should we get?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve got a hundred creds into them now. You wanna pick up ten of your own?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Lemme think about it. So hey, what’s with the tailor booth?”

  “Oh, that was the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Bresheu is amazing and he runs the booth like it’s an orchestra and he’s the conductor. He snaps his fingers and whatever he wants is immediately taken care of.”

  “Sounds impressive.”

  “You have to see it to believe it.”

  “Did he have anything you liked?”

  “Nothing that fit me,” I said.

  Chapter 5

  ST. CLOUD ORBITAL

  2352-FEBRUARY-19

  I left Pip going over his notes and looking into dye for Dunsany. I was tired, and it was already late, but I needed to release some of the tension that had been building all day, so I headed for the gym. After a dozen laps on the track, I baked myself in the sauna and let the day just slip away. I felt strange. When I first came aboard, I knew as little about mess duty then, as I did about working in environmental now. Perhaps less, because when I interviewed with the captain back on Neris, I did not even know what job I was applying for. The only thing I was pretty sure about was that it was likely to be dirty, boring, and unpleasant. It turned out to be none of those and I smiled to myself remembering my early weeks aboard and thinking about how much things had changed.

  Way back in the beginning, I remembered Cookie telling me that I should consider what path I wanted to take before I found myself being forced down one not of my own choosing. The captain had given me a choice. I could have stayed on the mess deck, except of course, I could not. Somehow, though, I did not feel like I was being forced. At least not like the way I was when I needed to get off Neris. It just seemed as if Lois needed me to move to environmental and that made the other options irrelevant.

  That thought must have been bothering me, because once I came to the realization, I suddenly felt as if a weight had been lifted. I headed for the showers then to my bunk. I had the duty in the morning and it could possibly be the last day I woke as a member of the Steward Division.

  When I got back to the berthing area, I discovered that Rebecca Saltzman, a spec three in the power section, was one of my new bunkies. She was sprawled in the lower across from me. Rebecca was obviously from a heavy-G planet. Where Brill was tall and willowy, Rebecca was short and powerful. She looked like she could bench press a shuttle craft, but she also had a delicate and angelic face—heart-shaped with what my mother would have called good structure. Rebecca also had the most amazingly sexy voice—halfway between a guttural purr and a growl. It was not some affectation but rather an artifact of her high-G home planet. She also had a liquid laugh that could turn heads at twenty meters. I liked Rebecca, but I did not know her that well—other than seeing her on the mess line.

  “Hey!” she said with a smile when she saw me come in. “I wondered if that was your gear up there. I saw you up at the booth with Brill and heard you’d transferred into the division.”

  “Yup. That okay?” I asked, nodding toward my bunk.

  “You bet. You don’t snore do you?”

  I laughed. “I don’t know, but Pip’s never complained about it.”

  “Well, if he hasn’t complained, you’re probably okay,” she said with mock ruefulness.

  “Who’s in here?” I asked indicating the lower under mine. It was the only other bunk taken in the quad.

  “Mitch. You know him? Fitzroy—machinist over in propulsion?”

  “Medium height, brown hair, about twenty-five?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that’s him. Of course, that also describes about half the men on the ship. Whatever happened to tall, dark, and handsome as a description?”

  We laughed and I realized that everything was going to be okay.

  ***

  Morning routine was typical for port duty. Sean Grishan, the duty watch stander, managed to find me in my new bunk. Everybody aboard knew of the crew changes in the works, of course. The details were still up in the air, but we all knew the ship would leave St. Cloud with a new hand. As I showered and got ready for work, I wondered if there had been the same air of quiet anticipation just before I had joined the ship in Neris. I pushed that thought away and beat feet for the galley.

  By the time I got there, Cookie had already started setting the bread, and I kicked into prep mode. Starting with coffee, I moved to biscuits and finished at the omelet station. I pulled out some of the dried mushrooms we had gotten on Margary and put them in a little warm water to loosen them up. Then I diced some onion and grated a bit of cheese. All the ingredients went into small bowls that Cookie or I could draw from when we started making the omelets.

  “So, young Ishmael,” Cookie spoke at last, “today may be our last time working together. How does it feel?”

  “Strange. This has been my home for the last six months and now I kinda feel like I’m moving out.”

  “You have accomplished much here, and you will accomplish more I am certain.” He finished rolling up the loaves and covered them with clean towels to proof. Most of them would be sandwich bread by the time the day was out. Cookie surprised me then by taking a plate and going to the customer side of the omelet station. “I wonder, Ishmael, if I might trouble you for an omelet,” he said wit
h a smile. “Could I have one with mushrooms, cheese, and perhaps some ham?”

  I gaped for a moment in surprise. “My pleasure, Cookie. You like your omelets a bit loose, right?”

  “Just so, Ishmael. Just so.”

  Before long the morning watch came in and I took care of them while Cookie enjoyed his meal on the mess deck.

  Pip showed up near the end of breakfast. “Good morning! It seemed strange to find your bunk empty.”

  “No stranger than waking up in engineering was for me, I bet. You want an omelet?”

  “No thanks. I just came down for coffee and a pastry. I told Biddy I’d help her set up the booth this morning. We’ve already covered our fees for this trip, so I’ll probably take some more of the stones up and set them out while I’m there. This afternoon I’m going to go looking for that statue guy and the yarn people you talked with yesterday.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got it planned out pretty well. What did you learn about the dyes?”

  “Well not surprisingly, Dunsany has a lot of textiles. They process a lot of the wool from here, and they grow cotton and flax locally. They have some local dyes—mostly plant based—and I was right about the red, purple, and black dyes. They do buy them from here and they’re pretty highly valued. I don’t know how much production is available. If we could get a container load, we could probably sell it.”

  “You’re thinking about Mr. Maxwell’s empty container?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, but I don’t have a line on commercial quantities, so I don’t know. What we can get easily here in container loads is wool, rice, and frozen fish, but the margins are really small on those items. I’ve already recommended that we go ahead and load one container with raw wool. We’re already taking three containers as part of a scheduled shipment and adding one on spec isn’t really very expensive.”

  “Well, for our stuff, I’ll contribute the extra ten kilos I’m getting for moving up to half share, and you’ve got all our joint funds still, so whatever you find at the flea market is fine by me. I’m not going to get back up there before we get underway.”