Double Share (24 page)

Ms. Jaxton was just leaving the bridge, and I saw her color rise. I just shrugged. “I don’t screw with crew,” I told him and walked across the bridge to the ladder.

“That’s a shame,” he shouted so that I heard him as I descended the ladder. “That D’Heng is one hot little hoochie.” I was glad that Juliett was ahead of me on the ladder, and I could keep her moving downward.

Her face and neck, already red, went to scarlet as her temper rose. She turned to start back up the ladder, but I had my hands on both rails. She would need to go through me.

“Words, Juliett, just words. Hateful, ignorant, and spiteful though they may be. Just words,” I told her.

“He can’t say that stuff!”

“He can and he did, but we don’t need to sink to his level. He’s trying to goad me into fighting, so he has an excuse to haul me up on charges. If he can’t get me, he’d be happy to have you.”

“He’s—” she started to say.

“He’s the first mate,” I said calmly. “It behooves us to remember that and treat the office with respect.”

She looked at me as if I’d stabbed her.

“I know,” I told her. “But I’m not that kind of person, and I don’t think you are, either.”

She stared at me for another few heartbeats and the tension slumped out of her.

“This isn’t fair, sar.”

“Fair is a weak term. There’s a better construct for this situation, I think.”

I waited for her to bite.

Finally she asked, “Which is?”

I continued down the ladder, forcing her to step off the bottom step. She turned and frowned at me.

“On my old ship, the
Lois McKendrick
, we had a saying. ‘Trust Lois.’”

“Sar, you did pass your psych eval, right?”

“Barely,” I admitted. “They were concerned that I might be too sane to be an officer at first, but I convinced them I was psychotic enough.”

“But trust the ship?” she asked.

“Well, not exactly, the ship,” I said. See, everybody on the
Lois
had a kind of belief in the ship’s spirit, its pooka. So we believed in the spirit of the ship, which taken as an abstract is like saying you believe in fairies, I realize. In reality, we believed in each other. We always knew that somebody on the ship would have whatever would be needed to take care of whatever problem we faced, and that when the time came, that person would do whatever was needed.”

“The pooka?” She had an incredulous look on her face, like she’d just heard the most fantastical story ever and wanted it to be real, “Wasn’t that risky, sar?”

I shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe, but the key element was that while we all trusted
Lois
, we kept in mind that when the time came, we each needed to do our part. And often, that meant getting off your butt and making something happen.”

“Like cleaning the mess deck?” she asked.

“Precisely,” I agreed. “I changed algae matrices in the environmental section in my off watches and helped make sludge cakes.”

“Eeeww. Wasn’t that nasty?”

“Not really. Smelly at times, sure, but it needed doing…besides with the right company, even dirty work—like cleaning the mess deck—can be fun.”

“You’re not saying ‘Trust Billy’ are you, sar?”

That stopped me cold.
Could I trust Billy?

She saw the indecision in my eyes, and I had to be honest. “I don’t know, Juliett. My training and experience says yes, but given what I know about what’s happening on this ship, I have to confess, the idea never entered my mind until you just suggested it.”

“Sar, are you sure you passed your psych eval?”

“Yes,” I said with a smile. “Lemme think about that trusting Billy part. There’s a terrible power in belief.” I looked at her for a moment, thinking hard. “Have you ever heard of South Coast shamans?”

“I don’t get out much, sar,” she said, shaking her head.

“Never mind.”

“Sar, you’re a little bit spooky at times.”

“I’m improving then, Ms. Jaxton. I used to be really spooky
all
the time.”

“I haven’t known you that long, sar. May I reserve judgment?”

“Yes, Ms. Jaxton, you may.” I chuckled, then turned and headed down the passage. “Good night, Ms. Jaxton.”

“Good night, sar, and watch out for Billy.”

I was still chuckling as I let myself into my stateroom. On a whim, I dug into the bottom of my grav trunk and pulled out a small cloth bag. I tossed it onto my bunk while I stripped down to ship tee and boxers. I was starting my twenty-four stans off and that meant I could sleep in if I wanted. After the last watch cycle, I was ready for a good sleep and crawled gratefully into my bunk to start the first stages of what felt like might turn into a real long nap. But before I settled, I opened the bag and pulled out seven individual bundles of cloth tied off with string. I unwrapped and examined each, weighing them in my hand for a moment before carefully re-wrapping and re-tying the strings. I put them all back in the bag, and slipped the bundle under my pillow rather than get up again.

It was one of those perfect times. The temperature was just right. The sheets were cool and crisp on my skin but warmed as I felt the tension drain from my body. I rolled onto my side, glanced at the chrono glowing on the bulkhead: 00:42, and let my eyes close. The darkness flowed up around me and pulled me down.

When the darkness finally receded, the chrono read 11:54. I blinked stupidly at it. In the dimness of my stateroom it was the only focus. The numbers flipped to 11:55 and a couple of heartbeats later I heard Arletta close the door of her stateroom. I heard her rummaging around. The numbers flipped to 11:56 and I heard her go into the head and run water in the sink.

It was the running water that did it. I could have lain there, maybe drifted off again, but she ran the water and I knew that I needed to get up—traitorous bladder. Still it wasn’t urgent. Yet.

Yawning and scratching, I rounded up fresh boxers and tee shirt, retrieved the bag of whelkies from under my pillow, and put them carefully back in the bottom of my grav trunk. I did the tug-pull-pull-tug-flip to my bunk. It wouldn’t have passed muster at the academy, but it was good enough for shipboard.

I heard the water turn off and then a tap-tap on my door. Releasing the latch I swung it open, just as another yawn grabbed me. “Sorry, I haven’t quite woken up yet.”

She looked at me with a quizzical expression. “You’re just getting up?”

I nodded and blinked. My eyes were still a little bleary and I needed to use the head. “It’s my twenty four,” I said in mild protest. “I needed some beauty sleep.”

She nodded sympathetically. “I can understand that. Mine’s tomorrow and I’m so ready you can’t imagine.”

“Oh, I can believe it, and we aren’t even half way there yet.”

“Don’t start counting now,” she told me with a bitter chuckle.

“I know. I know. We still have a long way to go.”

The trip was scheduled for sixty-two standard days. We’d been under way a little more than ten, so we had barely begun, and it was too soon to start thinking about how much was left.

“And speaking of long way to go…?” I said.

She took the hint with a slightly embarrassed little smile and backed out into her own stateroom. “Walk me to lunch, spacer?” she asked with a mock vamp expression on her face.

“Sure, lemme just get a shower and some clothes on,” I said with a smile of my own.

She grinned, spoiling the vamp-look she had working, and closed the door to the head on her side.

It didn’t take long for me to do the needful, including a fast shower and shave. I slipped into my room and closed the head door behind me, latching it while I tossed on the fresh clothing.

Fredi was just finishing up something on her tablet when we stepped into the wardroom. She was already halfway through a cup of coffee and smiled a welcome as we stepped in.

“Hello, Fredi, what’s new in cargo?” I asked.

She never talked about her work. Not surprising, I supposed, but if she were one of Captain Giggone’s cadets then there had to be a story hiding somewhere.

She shrugged and said, “It’s all in the can.”

It was a cargo joke. All cargo jokes were like that.

“Doesn’t this get boring, for you?” Arletta asked. “I mean, there’s not a lot to do once we get that can strapped on, and even before. You don’t get to pick the cargoes. You don’t really get to do anything fun, do you?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Being cargo chief on a bulk hauler isn’t really all that taxing, no. These bar bell designs like the
Billy
are made to take advantage of the regulation loophole on ship length. I’m surprised they haven’t made spherical ships, frankly,” she added with a soft chuckle.

“Loophole?” I asked.

“Normally, any ship carrying over a hundred and fifty metric kilotons needs both a cargo chief and a first. About twenty stanyers ago, they put a loophole in the regulations to allow bulk haulers under a hundred and fifty meters in length to get by with just a chief.
Billy’s
only one forty so, I’m the only member of the cargo division.”

“Yes, but do you have any fun?” Arletta asked again.

“Not as much as I used to,” she said with a little sigh. “But then, a few more trips and I can retire. I’m young yet, and I think I’d like to take up being a cargo broker.”

I tried to control the expression on my face. I don’t know how well I did with it. Fredi looked like the oldest spacer I’d ever seen. As I looked at her, though, I realized that she wasn’t really all that old, just frail. I couldn’t imagine her horsing an anti-grav pallet full of canned goods around, but then again, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a cargo officer horse a pallet full of anything around. That’s why they had crew.

“What do you need to be a broker?” I asked.

“Contacts, mostly, and a sharp eye.”

Mel came in just then and smiled fondly at Fredi. “Talking about being a broker?”

“Yes, and don’t be an old poop,” she shot back with a fond smile of her own. “They asked. I’m answering. That’s all.”

Mel winked at Arletta and me as she passed behind Fredi on the way to her chair.

“Do you need a license or something?” I asked in order to keep Fredi talking. It was the most animated I’d seen her since coming aboard.

She shook her head. “No. You need to register and get bonded with the CPJCT but that’s really only to get your name on the broker registry. After that, you have to cultivate your contacts on the planet and with the shippers, then trade and keep trading.”

Penny Davies came in with the lunches then, and we all tucked in. It still wasn’t as good as Cookie used to make, but as baked mouta went, it wasn’t bad.

Over coffee Mel said, “So, I understand you’re holding classes on the mess deck this afternoon, Ishmael?”

I looked up at her and the surprise must have been on my face because she grinned. “I am?”

Arletta said, “That’s what Ulla told me too.” She said it with a lilt in her voice that made me suspect that she hid a smirk behind her coffee cup.

I sighed and asked, “Did she say what time I’m supposed to be holding these classes?”

Mel answered, “14:00”

I looked back and forth between them. “How is it you both happen to know this?”

Arletta shrugged. “When Charlotte D’Heng told Ulla that you’d be willing to hold classes on the mess deck—”

“Wait, she said what?”

“Charlotte said that you had problems with people cluttering up the bridge while you were on watch so you’d hold classes in the mess deck instead.”

“Oh,” I said.

Fredi and Mel were doing the “I’m so innocent” face across the table at me. Fredi’s reaction didn’t concern me, but Mel was the officer in charge of the largest division on the ship. With propulsion, power, grav, and environmental, her division made up more than half the ship’s crew.

“What I said was that the bridge was a work space, and when we were on watch we shouldn’t have the area filled up with people who weren’t required to be there.” I pointed out in what I hoped was a reasonable voice.

“Yes,” Arletta agreed, “and then you said you’d be willing to hold classes on the mess deck in the afternoons instead.”

I closed my eyes, trying to remember what I’d said, exactly. “I’m pretty sure I only agreed to answer questions for a little while. That’s hardly what I’d call
holding classes
.”

Fredi and Mel looked at each other and shrugged. “I don’t know…” Fredi said.

“Sounds kinda like it to me,” Mel finished.

“And how many people know about this little party?” I asked, becoming concerned.

Well, to be honest I’d been concerned all along. It was just rising to the level of near-panic by then.

Arletta said, “All of them, I think.” She looked to Mel.

Mel looked at the overhead as if considering a careful response.

“Yes,” she agreed after a couple of heartbeats. “I think all of them.”

“Well, only people on the ship,” Fredi pointed out. “Not everybody everywhere. We’re just talking locally.”

“Thank you, Ms. DeGrut for that clarification.” I raised my cup in mock toast.

She returned the toast with her own mug and said, “Most welcome, Ishmael. Feel free to come to me any time.”