Balance of Trade (32 page)

"Indeed, a gentleman should know his cards and be able to play a polite game." She fixed the twins in her eye, one after the other. "Mark me, token wagers only. And all may practice the art of graceful loss."

"Yes, Aunt Stafeli," said Meicha.

"Yes, Aunt Stafeli," said Miandra.

"Yes, ma'am," said Jethri, though he'd been taught not to show temper for losing by kin years his elder in the subtle art of poker.

"What do you want to know?"

"Everything," said Meicha, comprehensively, while Miandra continued to shuffle, with a thoughtful look directed downward at the dancing cards.

"I would like to know how the kin groups sustain themselves," she said slowly.

"Sustain themselves? Well, there's ship life support, for air, temp and—"

Meicha laughed. Miandra didn't, though she did stop shuffling and raise her face to frown up at him.

"That was not at all funny," she said sternly.

"I—" he began, meaning to say he was sorry, though he didn't know, quite, what he should be sorry for, except that she was mad at him. His brain refused to pitch up the proper phrase, though, and after a moment's floundering he produced, "I am sad that you are angry with me."

"She's not so angry that you must be sad for it," Meicha said, matter-of-factly. "Only answer her question sensibly and she will be appeased."

"But you see, I don't understand why my previous answer was . . . annoying. We
do
sustain ourselves via ship's life support. If something else was meant by the question, then I don't know how to unravel it."

There was a small silence, then Meicha spoke again.

"He
is
a stranger to our tongue, sister. Recall Aunt Stafeli? We are only to speak to him in Liaden, and in proper mode and
melant'i
, to aid and speed his learning."

Miandra sighed and put the cards face down on the table. "Well enough. Then he must learn idiom." She raised her hand and pointed a finger at Jethri's nose, sharply enough that he pulled back.

"An inquiry into how the kin group sustains itself is an inquiry into genetics," she said, still tending toward the stern. "What I wish to know is how your kin group maintains its genetic health."

Maintains its . . .  Oh. Jethri cleared his throat, thinking that his Liaden, improved as it was by constant use, might not be up to this. Good enough for Lady Maarilex to set rules on the twins for the betterment of his understanding, but nobody had drawn any lines for him about what was and wasn't considered proper topics of conversations between himself and two of the house's precious youngers.

"Is he shy?" Meicha inquired of her sister.

"Hush! Let him order his thoughts."

Right. Well, nothing for it but to tell the thing straight out and hope they took it for the strange custom of folk not their own—which, come to think, it would be.

"There are . . . arrangements between ships," he said slowly. "Sometimes, those. My older brother, Cris, came from an arrangement with
Perry's Promenade
. Seeli—my sister—she came out of a—a
shivary
, we call it. That's like a big party, when a lot of ships get together and there's parties and—and—" He couldn't put his tongue to a phrase that meant the polite of "sleeping around," but it turned out he didn't have to—Miandra knew exactly what he was on course for.

"Ah. Then your sister Seeli is as we are—Festival get and children of the house entire." She smiled, as if the translation comforted her, and looked over to Meicha. "See you, sister? It is not so different from the usual way of things. One child of contract and one from Festival—the genes mix nicely, I think."

"It would seem so," her sister agreed, unusually serious. "And you, Jethri? Were you contracted—or joyous accident?"

Well,
there
was the question that had formed his life, now, wasn't it? He shrugged and looked down at the table—real wood, and smooth under his palm, showing stains here and there, and the marks of glasses, set down wet.

"Unhappy accident, call it," he said to the table. "My parents were married, but my mother wasn't looking for any more children. Which is how I happened to be the extra, and available to 'prentice with Master ven'Deelin."

"The third child is produced from a lifemating," Miandra summed up. "It is well. And your cousins?"

He looked up. "My cousins? Well, see, the Gobelyn's are a wide family. We've got cousins on—I don't know how many ships. A couple dozen, I'd say, some small, none bigger than the
Market
, though. We're the mainline. Anyhow, we share around between us to keep the ships full. The extras—they take berths on other ships, and eventually they're . . . " He frowned after the word. ". . . assimilated."

"So." Miandra smiled and put her hand over his. "We are not so brutal of our 'extras', but perhaps we have the luxury of room. Certainly, there are those who go off on the far-trade and return home once every dozen Standards—if so often. Your foster mother is one such, to hear Aunt Stafeli tell the tale. But, in all, it seems as if your customs match ours closely, and are not so strange at all." This was accompanied by a hard stare at Meicha, who moved her shoulders, to Jethri's eye, discomfited.

"But," he asked her, "what did you think?"

"Oh, she had some notion that the Terran ships used the old technology to keep their crews ever young," Miandra said. "Aunt Stafeli says she reads too many adventure stories."

"You read them, too!" Meicha cried, visibly stung.

"Well, but I'm not such a dolt as to
believe
them!"

Meicha pouted. "Terrans trade in old tech—Vandale said so."

"Yes, but the old tech mostly doesn't work," Jethri pointed out. "The curiosity trade gets it, and sometimes the scholars."

"Vandale said that, too," Miandra said.

"And Pan Dir said that there is still some old tech in the out-beyond that
does
work!" her twin snapped, with a fair sitting-down approximation of stamping her foot.

"If you want to know what I think," Jethri said, feeling like he'd better do his possible to finish the subject before the matter came to blows. "I think that Pan Dir likes to tell stories. My cousin Khat's exactly the same way."

There was a pause as Meicha and Miandra traded glances.

"There's that," Meicha said at last, and, "True," agreed Miandra.

Jethri sighed and reached for the cards, sitting forgotten by her hand.

"I thought you two were going to win my fortune from me."

That
made them both laugh, and Meicha snatched the deck from him and began to shuffle with a will.

"I hear a challenge, sister!"

"As I do! Deal the cards!"

"OOF!"

The weight hit him right dead center, and Jethri jackknifed from sound asleep to sitting up, staring blearily down into a pair of pale green eyes.

"You!" He gasped. Flinx blinked his eyes in acknowledgment.

"Might let a man get his rest," Jethri complained, easing back down to the pillows. Flinx stayed where he was, two ton paws bearing Jethri's stomach right down onto his spine.

He yawned and turned his head to look at the clock. Not enough time to go back to sleep, even if the adrenaline would let him. Stupid cat had jumped on his stomach yesterday morning, at just this hour. And the morning before that. He was starting to wonder if the animal could tell time.

Down-body, Flinx began to purr, and shift his weight from one considerable front foot to the other—and repeat. He did
that
every morning, too. The twins swore that the purring and the foot-shifting—kneading, they called it—were signs of goodwill. Jethri just wondered why, if the cat liked him so much, he didn't let him sleep.

He sighed. The house crew tended to take Master ven'Deelin's view that he was fortunate to have fallen under Flinx' attention. What the cat got out of it, Jethri couldn't say, unless it was making notes for a paper on xenobiology.

Flinx had upped the volume on the purrs, and was pushing a little harder with his feet; the tips of his claws pierced skin and Jethri was off the pillows again with a yell.

"Hey!"

Startled, the cat kicked with his back feet, twisted and was gone, hitting the floor with a solid thump.

"Mud!" He flung to the edge of the bed, and peered over, half afraid he'd find the animal with a broken leg or—

Flinx was standing on four sturdy legs at the edge of the rug, his back to the bed. He looked over his shoulder—accusingly, to Jethri's eye.

"I'm sorry," he said, settling his head onto his crooked arm and letting the other arm dangle over the edge of the bed. "I don't like to be scratched, though."

There was a pause, as if Flinx was considering the merit of his apology. Then, he turned and ambled back to the bed, extending his head to stroke a whiskery cheek along Jethri's dangling fingers.

"Thanks." Carefully, he slipped his fingers under the cat's chin and moved them in the skritching pattern Meicha had shown him. Flinx immediately began to purr, loud and deep.

Jethri smiled and skritched some more. Flinx moved his head, obviously directing the finger action to his right cheek, and then to the top of his head, all the while purring.

Well
, Jethri thought drowsily, fingers moving at a far distance,
what a relaxing sound.

Across the room, the alarm chimed.

Flinx skittered out from under his hand a heartbeat before he snapped upright out of his doze.

Sighing, he rubbed his hand over his head, frowning at the lengthening strands, and swung out of bed.

Shower, breakfast, tailor—that was the first part of his day. Then an afternoon with Ren Lar. Pruning vines, it was today. After that, he was to join the twins with their dancing instructor, Lady Maarilex being of the opinion that a gentleman should show well on the floor, and then supper.

Supper done, he could retire to the library with the list of books the twins' tutor had produced for him—history books, mostly, and a bunch of marked-out sections of a three-volume set titled,
The Code of Proper Conduct
.

"Busy day," he said to the empty room, and headed for the shower.

COMPARE BANTH PORT to Kinaveral and Kinaveral came to look like the garden spot of the universe, Khat thought, throwing her duffle over one shoulder and heading across the wind-scoured tarmac. She had her goggles polarized, and her head down, much good it did. The constant hot wind was supersaturated with sand particles, stuff so fine it sifted through any join, clogged the nose, filled the mouth, and sank through the pores. Nose plugs helped some. So did keeping your mouth shut. Other than that, it was walk fast and hope the pilots' crash was climate controlled.

After a couple Standards of walking bent against the wind, she came to a service tunnel. Her body broke the sensor beam, the door irised open, and she ducked inside, barely ahead of the door closing.

Inside the tunnel, the light was dim and slightly pink. Khat pushed the goggles up onto her forehead, took a good, deep lungful of filtered air—and started to cough; deep, wracking spasms that left an acid taste in her mouth, overlaying the taste of the sand.

Eventually, she was coughed out and able to take some notice of her surroundings. A hatch closet built into the right wall of the tunnel said "drinking water" in Terran, which she could read fine, and, underneath, the written pidgin for the same—a stylized drawing of a jug—for them as couldn't read Terran.

The taste in her mouth wasn't getting much better. Khat stepped over and inserted her thumb into the latch. Inside the closet were a couple dozen sealed billy bottles carrying the same bilingual message. She snagged a bottle, slapped the door shut and popped the seal, taking a short, careful swallow, then another, and so on until the bottle was empty.

Feeling more or less human, she slid the billy into the wall recycler, and looked about her.

There were arrows painted in flourescent green on the floor, and the words, "Banth Port Admin," the Admin part repeated in pidgin, which was apparently her direction, whether she was going there or not. Though, as it happened, she was Admin bound.

She pulled the goggles off her forehead and snapped them onto her belt, taking another deliberately deep breath of filtered air. No coughing this time, which she took as a smile from the gods, even as she shook her head. She had some sympathy for the 'hands who would eventually be unloading her cargo, and shuddered with the memory of the constant dust storm, heat and battering white light of the world outside.

Granted, most Grounders're glitched in the think-box
, she thought, setting her feet on the green arrow and walking on,
but a body'd think even a Grounder would know better than Banth.

Khat sighed. Well, now she knew why Kinaveral Admin had put such a nice bonus on this job—and now she knew better than to take another flight to Banth.

"Live 'n learn," she said, and her voice sounded as gritty as her face felt, despite the water. "You live long enough, Khatelane, an' someday you might turn up smart."

"THERE! NOW WE SEE a son of a High House in his proper estate!" Sun Eli pen'Jerad was pleased with himself and his handiwork, and Jethri supposed he had a right. Himself, he'd thought the trading coat and silk shirts provided by
Elthoria
plenty fancy enough and hadn't aspired to anything in the way of collar ruffles so high they tickled the tips of his ears, or belled sleeves that reached all the way to his fingertips. Then there were the trousers—tighter than his own skin and not near as comfortable—and over them both a long, and pocketless, black vest.

"Very good," Lady Maarilex said, from her chair, Flinx asleep on her lap. "Do you not think so, young Jethri?"

He sighed. "Ma'am, I think the work is fine, but the sleeves are too long and the trousers too tight."

Mr. pen'Jerad made an outraged noise. Lady Maarilex raised a hand.

"These things you mention are the current fashion, and not open to negotiation. We all bow to fashion and rush to do her bidding. How else should we show ourselves to be a people of worth?"