Balance of Trade (33 page)

Jethri looked at her. "Is that a joke, ma'am?"

"Hah. Progress. Some bits, yes. Discover which bits and we shall have progress, indeed. In the meanwhile, we are pleased with Master pen'Jerad's efforts on behalf of evening clothes. Of your kindness, young Jethri, model for me the calling clothes."

Calling clothes weren't quite so confining, though they still showed a serious deficiency in the pocket department. The trousers were looser, the cream colored jacket roomy, the shirt dark blue, with an open collar and no ruffles anywhere. They were close enough to trading clothes to be manageable, and Jethri stepped out into the main room and made his bow to the seated matriarch.

"These please you, eh? And well they should. The jacket hangs well, despite what would seem to be too much breadth of shoulder. Well done, Sun Eli."

The tailor bowed. "That you find my work adequate is all that I desire," he murmured. "However, I must object—the shoulders are not too wide, but balance the rest of the form admirably. It is a balanced shape, and pleasing, taken on its own. It is when we measure it against the accepted standard of beauty that we must find the shoulders too wide, the legs too long, the chest too deep."

"Do you say so?" She raised a hand and motioned Jethri to turn, slowly, which he did, liking the feel of the silk against his skin and the way the jacket hugged his shoulders, too wide or not.

"No, I believe you are correct, Sun Eli. Taken in the context of himself alone, there is a certain pleasant symmetry." Jethri's turn brought him 'round to face her again and he stopped, hands deliberately loose at his sides.

"So tell me, young Jethri, shall you be a beauty?"

And that
had
to be a joke, given the general Gobelyn face and form. He bowed, very slightly.

"I expect that I will look much as my father did, ma'am, and I never did hear that he was above plain."

Surprisingly, she inclined her head. "Well said, and honest, too." She looked into his eyes and smiled, very slightly. "We must teach you better. However, there are still the day clothes to inspect, if you would do me the honor?"

THE TUNNEL WIDENED, and widened some more, and by the third widening it was a large round room, crowded with desks and chairs and people and equipment—and that was Banth Admin.

Khat stopped her steady forward slog and blinked, something bemused by all the activity, and scouting the room by eye, looking for her contact point.

The desks were on platforms a little higher than floor level, and each one had a sign on the front of it, spelling out its official station name in Terran and pidgin. Some of the signs weren't so easy to spot, on account of the people wandering around, apparently in search of
their
contact points. Lot of long-spacers in the mix, which she'd expected. Good number of Liadens, too, which surprised her. This close to the Edge, there was bound to be a couple working, looking for advantage, but to see so many. . . 

"Edge is widenin' out again," Khat muttered. "Pretty soon, won't be nothing to edge."

She considered the crowd, rising up on her toes to count the Liadens, and filing that number away for Paitor's interest, on the far side of the trip. Might she'd head down to the Trade Bar, after a shower and a change, and scope out the ship names.

Right now, though, she was after Intake Station. Sooner she had her papers stamped and her cargo in line for off-load, the sooner she could hit the pilots' crash and have that shower.

After a time, it occurred to her that the only thing craning around the crowd was getting her was a cricked neck, and she settled the duffle and charted a course into the deeps of the room.

Up and down the rows she cruised, careful not to bump into anybody, Liaden or Terran, being not wishful of starting either a fistfight or a Balance. Admin crew was solidly Terran, sitting their stations calm enough, for all each one was busy.

Intake was on the third row, which made sense, Khat thought sarcastically. There were only two in line ahead of her—yellow-haired Liaden traders, looking enough alike to be mother and son. The boy was apparently determined on giving the clerk a difficult life experience. As Khat came to rest behind them, he was leaning over the desk, waving a sheaf of papers too close to the woman's face and talking, loud and non-stop, in Liaden, which was just stupid. Anybody who came to the Edge to trade ought to at least speak the pidgin.

And if the pidgin's too nasty for your mouth
, Khat thought at the boy's expensively jacketed back,
you'd have done better to stay home and tend your knitting.

In the meantime, his voice had risen and he was leaning closer over the desk, the wild-waving sheaf of papers now an active danger. Khat took a step forward, meaning to haul him back to a respectful distance, but the clerk had her own ideas.

"Security!" She yelled, and simultaneously hit a yellow button embedded in the plastic desktop.

The boy paused in his harangue, like he was puzzled by her reaction, the papers wilting in his hand.

"Peliche," Khat said helpfully, that being the pidgin for 'cop.'

He sent her an active glare over his shoulder, in the space of which time his mother stepped forward, hands moving in a pretty rippling motion, apparently meant to be soothing.

"Your pardon," she said to the clerk in heavily accented, but perfectly understandable pidgin. "We have cargo to be off-loaded. There is urgency. We must proceed with quickness."

The clerk's mouth thinned, but she answered civil enough. "I will need to see the manifests. As I said to this trader," a nod of the head indicated the boy, "since the manifests are written in Liaden, the cargo must be inventoried before it is off-loaded. Admin provides inventory-takers. There is a fee for this service."

The Liaden woman inclined her head. "What is the price of this fee?"

"Fifteen Combines the quarter-clock," the clerk said.

Now, that's steep
, thought Khat, touching the zip-pocket where her own manifest rode, snug, safe, and printed out in plain, good Terran.
No wonder the boy's in a snit.

His mam, though, she just bowed her head again and said, cool as if it weren't no money at all, "That is acceptable. Please produce these inventory-takers at once."

That cargo better be guaranteed profit
, thought Khat, darkly.

The clerk reached for her keypad, and then looked up, annoyed for all to see, as a big guy in standard blues came striding toward her station.

"You call Security?" he demanded, hand on his stun-gun.

The clerk shrugged, eyes on her schedule screen. "Took your time."

His face, broad in all directions and unshaven on the south side, reddened. "I'm coverin' the whole floor by myself."

She glanced up at him, then back to the screen. The two Liadens were frankly staring.

"Sorry to bother you," the clerk said, in clear dismissal.

The cop stood for a couple heartbeats, giving a fair impression of a man who'd welcome a chance to put his fist authoritatively against somebody else's chin. He glared at the Liadens, daring them to start something. The woman touched the boy's arm and the two of them turned back to the clerk, the boy rolling his sheaf of papers into a tube, which Khat thought might have been nerves.

Finally, the cop turned and strode off into the crowd. The clerk slid a piece of paper out of her printer and handed it to the Liaden woman.

"The inspectors will be waiting for you at the security station in Access Tunnel Three. Give them this paper and follow their instructions. The red arrows are your guide to Access Tunnel Three."

"Yes," the woman said, folding the paper into her sleeve. She turned, her boy with her, and Khat was briefly caught in the cold stare of two pair of blue eyes, before they separated to walk around her—boy to the right, mam to the left.

Khat let go a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding and stepped up to the desk, pulling her papers out of the zip-pocket.

"Disaster shift?" she asked the clerk, crew-to-crew.

The clerk took the manifest. "Be nice if it was that calm," she said, unfolding the papers. "Let's take a look at what you got here. . . "

ESCAPED AT LAST into his own clothes from
Elthoria
, he slipped into the kitchen and wheedled an off-hours lunch from Mrs. tor'Beli, the cook.

"For the vines today, are you?" She asked, handing him a plate so full of eatables that he had to hold it in both hands for fear of losing some of the contents.

"Yes ma'am," he said politely, guiding his plate over to the table and setting it down.

"Be sure you have a hat and a pair of heavy gloves out of the locker before you go out," she said, placing a glass of grape juice on the table next to his plate. "Summer is still before us, but the sun is high enough to burn, and the vines not as weak as they might appear."

"Yes, ma'am," he said again. She returned to the counter where she was enthusiastically reducing a square of dough into a long, flat sheet, with the help of a wooden roller. Jethri nibbled from his plate as he looked around the kitchen, with its multiple prep tables, and its profusion of pots, pans and exotic gadgets.
Dyk would love this
, he thought, and gulped as tears rose up in his eyes.

C'mon, kid, what's up?
He said to himself sharply.
You crying over Dyk?

Well, in point of fact, he thought, surreptitiously using his napkin to blot his eyes, he
was
crying over Dyk—or at least crying over the fact that Dyk would never see this place, that would have given him so much pleasure. . . 

"You had best hurry, young ven'Deelin," the cook called over her shoulder. "Ren Lar Maarilex puts the vines before his
own
lunch, much less yours."

He grinned, and sniffled, and put serious attention on his plate, which was very soon empty, and drained his glass. Pushing back from the table, he looked around for the dishwasher. . . 

"Leave them," Mrs. tor'Beli said, "and betake yourself to the wine room—at a run, if you are wise."

"Yes, ma'am," he said for a third time, pushing in the chair. "Thank you, ma'am."

"Hurry!" she responded, and to please her he left at a pace, stretching his legs.

Outside of the kitchen, he kept moving, taking a right into the hall the twins had shown him, and arrived handily at the door to the wine room. It opened to his palm, and he clattered down the stairs, through the vestibule and tapped the code into the keypad set in the wall next to the ancient wooden door.

The lock
snicked
, and he worked the old metal latch. The door was slow on its metal hinges, and he put some shoulder into hurrying it along, stepping into the wine room proper only a little out of breath and scarcely mussed at all.

Ren Lar was not at his accustomed place at the lab table. Instead, there was Graem, busy with the drops and the calibrator. She glanced up as he entered, and frowned.

"The master's gone to the vineyard; he said that you're to find him on the north side."

Late
, Jethri thought, and sighed, before remembering to incline his head. "Thank you, I will. Before I go, can you tell me where I might draw a hat and a pair of gloves?"

She jerked her head to the left, her attention already back with her calibrations. "Locker over there. Take shears, too."

"Thank you," he said again and moved to the locker indicated.

A few minutes later, wide brimmed hat jammed onto his head, too-small leather gloves on his hands as best he could get them, and shears gripped firmly in his right hand, he left the wineroom by the side doors and entered the vineyard.

No one was waiting for him, in the yard, and there were no signs to tell him which way to go. He considered, briefly, returning to the cellar and asking Graem for directions, but—no, blast it. He was tired of depending on the directions and help-outs of the various members of the household, like he was a younger—and a particularly backward younger, at that.

There had to be a way to figure out which way to go. If he put his thought on it, he ought to be able to locate north. He remembered reading a story once, where someone lost on a planet discovered his direction by observing which way a stream ran—not that there were any streams in his sight.

"And not that it would work, anyway," he grumbled to himself. "Meicha isn't the only one who reads too many stories, I guess."

He shifted his shears from his right hand to his left, pushed his hat up off his forehead and frowned around him. You'd think there'd
be
signs, he thought. What if somebody got turned around and didn't have a navigation device?

Navigation device
.

He slapped his pockets, found what he wanted in the right leg and pulled it out. The mirrored black face grayed, displaying swirls, like clouds, or kicked-up dust, then cleared, showing the old, almost-forgotten icons along the top and bottom of a quartered screen.

Jethri frowned down into it, trying to put sense to symbols he hadn't seen for ten Standards—and suddenly, he
did
remember, the memory seating itself so hard that the inside of his head fair vibrated with the snap.

The icons at the top—those were detail buttons; the ones at the bottom indicated direction, while the quartered screen was meant to be read left-right/down-up, with the first square representing planetary north.

He touched a direction icon, and touched the north square. The screen changed, and now he was looking at a vid of the yard he was standing in, with a blue line superimposed over the image, shooting off to the left.

Making sure of his grip on the shears, he moved left, one eye on the screen and one eye on the treacherous dirt underfoot.

The next thing he'd do, Jethri thought some while later, would be to puzzle out if the device had a
distance
indicator. He'd walked a goodly distance, by his reckoning, along a dirt path crossing long corridors of wire fencing, against which bare wooden sticks leaned, dead vines like tentacles sprouting from their heads. It was an eerie landscape, and the vines just tall enough that he couldn't see around them, and sufficiently complicated to the eye that there was no need to look up at the unfettered sky. He did look the length of each corridor as he crossed it, and saw not one living thing. The birds, which sang outside his window, and in Meicha and Miandra's favorite garden, were silent, here in the vineyard—or maybe they preferred other circumstances.