Quarter Share: A Trader's Tale from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper (14 page)

Pip cast one last look at me as he followed Mr. Cotton out. I gave him an encouraging smile and a thumbs up.

Mr. von Ickles cleared his throat. “If you’re ready, Mr. Wang…?”

“Oh sorry, sar. Yes, sar. And thank you, sar.”

“Don’t thank me yet, Ish. He still has to pass.” He spoke quietly and sat me down with a tablet and stylus. “And so do you.” He proceeded to give me the same instructions as the previous exam and as he did, my brain slipped into its hyper-test mode.

This test was actually a lot harder than I expected. The materials were largely the same as in
The Handbook
, but there were some interesting twists in the presentation of the problems. Working with Pip had given me a lot of practice. When I finished Mr. von Ickles was smiling.

“Nicely done, Mr. Wang.” He pulled up the scoring display to show a perfect score.

“This wasn’t as easy as I was led to believe.”

He nodded and grinned. “Several people have said that.”

“Pip’s not back?”

Mr. von Ickles just shook his head. “No, I don’t expect him for a bit yet. But you’re free to go. I’ll update your jacket this afternoon.”

“Thanks again, sar—whatever happens.”

He nodded and patted me on the shoulder. “You’re a good shipmate, Mr. Wang. Don’t worry. I think you’ll be surprised by what Mr. Cotton and Mr. Carstairs are up to.”

I headed back to the galley and helped Cookie get lunch going. It was almost a full stan later when Pip showed up, looking a bit bedraggled, but optimistic. Unfortunately, it was almost time for lunch service by then and we didn’t get a chance to compare notes beyond a hurried, “How’d it go?”

I was surprised to learn that he wasn’t sure. “Mr. Cotton said he had to report to Mr. von Ickles before he would release the results. I don’t know.” He shrugged.

He wasn’t surprised to learn that I’d passed. “Brain boy,” he teased.

Whatever the outcome, testing was all over for another quarter and we got on with the business at hand. Lunch went off without a hitch, as always. Cookie had gone overboard with the dessert course. Apparently being alone in the galley all morning had inspired him to bake cakes. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought he was nervous for us. Suddenly, lunch and clean up were over and we all just stood there for a tick, looking at each other everybody carefully not saying, “Now what?” I half expected Mr. Maxwell to show up, but he didn’t.

Finally, Cookie broke the silence. “You’ve both worked very hard, and I’m proud of you, no matter how it turns out for Pip. As for you, young Ishmael, congratulations, and I’m confident you’ll be a credit to any department regardless of the ship.”

It hadn’t really sunk in that I’d actually passed two tests and that I was eligible to move up when a berth came available. I was so worried about Pip and the trading schemes that I hadn’t really thought about it. I felt rather dazed, truth be told. “I’m not going anywhere right away, Cookie.” I smiled at him.

He nodded and grinned back. “I know, but you’ve earned the ratings and that’s an accomplishment to be proud of.”

Pip just looked concerned.

When we headed out for the afternoon break, I asked again, “So? How’d it go?”

“I told you. I don’t know. Mr. Cotton didn’t say anything at the end. Just told me he’d be reporting to Mr. von Ickles and then dismissed me.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound ominous.” I tried to sound convincing, but I’m not that good a liar. “What did you do? You were gone a long time.”

“Really? Just over two stans?”

I nodded. “I was done with my test in about half that time. Where were you?”

“Mr. Cotton took me out to the spine. We crawled in and out of containers. He kept asking me questions about this, that, and the other thing. I found one cargo strap that wasn’t secured properly. We pottered about down there for quite a while talking about tankage, which we don’t have much of here, and about the proper distribution of mass.”

“You got into tankage and mass distribution?”

Pip nodded. “He’s really easy to talk to. We talked about lots of stuff that wasn’t on the practice exams. Actually, now that I think of it, very few of the questions he asked seemed to be from the handler practices that we did.”

I chuckled. “As much trouble as you were having with those tests, I’d be surprised if you even knew what was in them.”

He grinned ruefully. “There’s that.”

“Well, we can make ourselves miserable waiting or we can go see Mr. von Ickles and ask. All he can say is no, right?”

Pip didn’t look terribly excited by the prospect but I dragged him down to the office. The door stood open and Mr. von Ickles sat at his desk tapping away on his tablet. He looked up as we entered.

“Gentlemen, how can I help you?”

Pip stepped forward. “Well, sar, I was wondering if Mr. Cotton had had a chance to talk to you yet, sar. About my test this morning?”

“Why, yes, Mr. Carstairs, he has.”

Mr. von Ickles waited one long tick without saying anything else and I wondered if Pip would faint.

Finally, Pip started to speak, but had to stop and clear his throat. “Please tell me, Mr. von Ickles. How did I do?”

“I was just placing the notation in your jacket, Mr. Carstairs. Congratulations for passing the cargoman exam.”

Pip gaped. “Thank you, sar. But, sar? I…um…you mean cargo handler, don’t you?”

Mr. von Ickles made a great show of being confused but I could see the edges of his mouth turning up ever so slightly. “Well, let me double check. I have the report from Mr. Cotton here someplace.” He muttered that last as if to himself but loud enough that we could both hear clearly.

Pip shot me a worried glance but I carefully kept my face blank.

Finally, Mr. von Ickles found what he was looking for and pulled up a report on the screen. “Yes, here it is. Oh, you’re right. You were testing for cargo handler, weren’t you?”

Pip nodded. “Yes, sar.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Carstairs.” Mr. von Ickles consulted the report again and I could feel Pip collapsing inside. “You seem to have skipped handler altogether and gone straight to cargoman. Mr. Cotton was quite explicit and very enthusiastic about your qualifications.” He turned to Pip with a huge smile on his face. “Congratulations on your new rating, Mr. Carstairs. You seem to have qualified as cargoman.”

I yelped and started pounding him on the back, laughing and shaking his hand. Mr. von Ickles held out his as well and Pip shook it dazedly. “But—”

“It’s true.” Mr. von Ickles smiled at him. “Sure, it’s most common for ratings to work up from quarter, to half, to full share, but the reality is that you can try for any rating any time you think you can pass it. You don’t have to take them in order. If you can pass the test, you can have the rating.”

“And I passed?” he asked again, still dazed.

Mr. von Ickles chuckled. “Passed? You got full marks.” He turned the screen so we could see. “Mr. Cotton is not an easy man to please, either, I can assure you. If he says you’re rated as cargoman, I am not going to argue.”

Behind us, I heard Mr. Maxwell’s too familiar voice. “And neither am I.”

We turned to see him leaning against the doorframe. “Nicely done, Mr. Carstairs. And thank you, Mr. Wang, well done.”

“Thank you, sar,” Pip and I spoke more or less in unison.

“Now, don’t you gentlemen have anything better to do than clutter up the ship’s office?”

We beat a hasty retreat, heading for the berthing area, both of us giddy with relief. Halfway there, Pip stopped and slugged me in the arm. “You knew!” he said while laughing.

“I didn’t know. Although when you said you’d talked about tankage and mass distribution, I had a suspicion.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s not on the handler exam, it’s on cargoman. When Mr. von Ickles started getting cute with the results, I got another little nudge. If you hadn’t passed he’d have been a lot more…I don’t know…straightforward about it. He’s not the kind who’d torture you like that. If you’d failed, I suspect he’d have said something when we stepped into the office. It’s not like a hundred people took the cargo exams today.”

“But why did Mr. Cotton give me the test? Why didn’t Mr. von Ickles just sit me down beside you?”

“Gee, I don’t know.” I never was that good a liar.

Chapter 15

Darbat Jump
2351-November-09

Two days later, just after lunch, we had another drill. This one was lifeboat but this time I was prepared. When the pingity-pingity-pingity alarm sounded, I knew where I was going and that I would be getting into a pod.

By the time the announcement came,
“THIS IS A DRILL. THIS IS A DRILL. ABANDON SHIP. ABANDON SHIP. ALL HANDS TO LIFEBOAT STATIONS. ALL HANDS TO LIFEBOAT STATIONS. THIS IS A DRILL. THIS IS A DRILL.”
I was halfway to the gym, which occupied the boat deck. I lined up with the other crew assigned to boat four, including Diane Ardele from the environmental section and Tabitha Rondita who had the bunk on the other side of the partition from mine. We spent about a tick getting everybody accounted for, before the boat supervisor, Second Mate Jillian Avril, opened the hatch and we all climbed aboard and strapped down. I had one bad moment when Ms. Avril closed the hatch, strapped down, and then punched the big red launch button. Nothing happened and I realized that the safety locks were still engaged and that she had only registered our readiness with the bridge crew supervising the exercise.

We sat there in the dimly lit boat for about five ticks and performed the required inventories of supplies and materials that we found listed on plastic covered cards. When we finished the inventory, Ms. Avril thumbed a communicator button on the bulkhead and reported, “Boat four, completed.”

Two ticks later the communicator chimed and we all clambered out of the boats and lined back up on deck. With everybody out of the boats and the hatches secured, the announcement sounded,
“NOW SECURE FROM LIFEBOAT DRILL. SECURE FROM LIFEBOAT DRILL.”

The captain’s announcement followed almost immediately,
“This is the captain speaking. Very well done, ladies and gentlemen. You set a new ship’s record of under eight ticks to get the ship evacuated in good order. It’s not something we ever want to do, but it’s gratifying to know we could if we needed to. Thank you, all. Excellent work. Carry on.”

***

We settled back into the familiar routine for the run to the jump point. I wouldn’t have to worry about studying for a while. I knew I had to go back to it eventually, but the roller coaster of the previous couple of weeks left me a bit dazed. I could only imagine how Pip felt.

Twenty-six standays out of Darbat we hit the jump point. For the three days leading up to it, Pip had been chewing on the bulkheads waiting for market data updates from the beacon. He’d no sooner siphoned the data dump off to the portable when we had to go to transition stations and deal with the jump. I thought he was going to come out of his skin in the ten ticks before we finally secured and he could fine-tune his stores deals and double check the data he’d used to fill up Mr. Maxwell’s container. I don’t think he’d been that keyed-up over taking the cargo exam. We still didn’t know for sure whether Mr. Maxwell would really fill a container with Pip’s manifest or not. The possibility that he might drove us mad.

Pip and Cookie fretted over the stores deals, endlessly debating how much of what to sell, and what to keep for Margary. They’d get into cyclical discussions where one would say something and the other would argue him around until they were both on opposite sides from their original positions, and still not in agreement. Whenever they got going, I went to the gym and ran a few laps. Eventually they hashed it out, but it took them almost a week after transition to reach a final agreement.

Of course, as soon as they got it settled, Mr. Maxwell came down to the galley.

“Mr. Carstairs, I have some new parameters for you. I assume you have the latest data from the jump point beacon?”

“Yes, sar, I’ve made some minor modifications to that manifest based on the current market situation. The problem is that our data on Margary is dated. A lot will have happened by the time we get there.”

Mr. Maxwell twisted his mouth into a wry grin. “Still, we must do the best we can, eh? You have a budget of ten kilocreds. Give me maximum probable return.”

Pip was already sliding away behind his eyes, already calculating. “Aye, aye, sar.”

I shrugged and headed for the gym. Pip caught up with me before I’d gotten out of the changing room.

“What do you think, Ish? Is he going to fill a container?”

“I don’t know. You’re the cargo expert. Tell me this. If you give him a hypothetical load, how accurate are the projected outcomes?”

Pip shrugged. “Not certain at all. We can project until we’re blue, but you only know for sure once you deliver the cargo. Until then, all you’re doing is guessing.”

I nodded. “That’s what I thought. How often do we have empty containers?”

Pip considered the question for half a tick. “Most of the time there’s at least one. Our cargo assignments come from home office and they’re scheduling a lot of freight. With seventy-two containers to schedule, it’s hard to get a full ship all the time, or even most of the time.”

I nodded again. “Okay, so that leaves the creds. Where would Mr. Maxwell get ten kilocreds?”

He shrugged. “Dunno. Ship’s discretionary funds probably.”

“What about the captain?”

He looked surprised. “What about her?”

“Would she have the money?”

“Personally? Possibly, but she can’t make that kind of deal. She’s limited by mass just like everyone else. Captains have a large allotment but a container is six hundred metric tons. No captain has that much.” Pip shook his head. “No, the only way we can do this without running up against company regs is if it is part of the regular cargo.”

“Okay, so how does that work? You just got done saying cargo assignments come from the home office. And that the captain can’t take on a container full of private trade goods.”

“That’s what I meant by
discretionary funds
. Each ship has the ability to obtain cargoes on the spot to maximize their own load. The ship has funds to permit the buying and selling of cargo on speculation in addition to the straight freight-for-hire contracts setup by headquarters. The ship’s Cargo Division usually handles that. The share amount in our pay really comes mostly from that. The more speculation we do, and, of course, the more successful it is, the bigger the share becomes.”

“And if we lose on the deals, the share shrinks?”

“A share is, technically, a share of the profit—no profit, no share. The company gets the owner’s share on all freight. The skipper gets the captain’s share. Those are standard percentages. In our case, Federated takes a twenty percent share. They have various contract arrangements with the captains but typically, they get a ten-percentage share. The rest is put into a pot, carved up, and allocated based on the number of crew and the total number of shares represented.”

Pip was good at this math, but I fell far behind his explanation. “Wait. Give me an example.”

Pip stopped and thought for a moment. “Okay, say, after this run into Gugara, the ship has a profit of a thousand credits. The company gets two hundred the captain gets one hundred. The remaining seven hundred is divided up by the crew shares. So, if you’re full share, you get a full allocation of however much the crew share turns out to be.”

“Yeah, but what’s a crew share?”

“We have forty crew, if all of them are full share, then we divide the seven hundred by forty and everybody gets an extra seventeen creds or so.”

“But we’re not all full share.”

“Yeah, but you can add up all the ratings and figure out how many full shares there are. In practice, all the officers and some of the department heads are double share. You and I are quarter share. So, you add up all the ratings for all the crew and say the total is fifty. Divide the seven hundred by fifty and a share is about twelve creds. You and I, at quarter share get three each. The half share people get six. The full share people get twelve. The double share people get twenty-four—”

“Okay, I get it. What about this stores scheme you have with Cookie? It’s not part of the normal freight arrangement, is it?”

“Correct, but remember that share is from profit. The galley is an expense. If we can reduce that expense, then the profit gets bigger and there’s more to share.”

I finally began to get a glimmer of what he was talking about. “Got it. I think. But how much can you do really? Are ship’s stores really that big a part of the expense?”

“Depreciation is probably the largest accounting item that comes out. These ships are expensive and their operational lifetime is relatively long, but they’re depreciated over thirty stanyers. So, we basically have to cover about one thirtieth of the cost of a new ship every stanyer. The next largest is salary and benefits, followed by insurance. The ship’s stores are next, I think. I can tell you we spend about five hundred creds a week on foodstuff.”

The number surprised me, but I don’t know why. Twenty-kilo buckets of coffee were expensive and we used a lot of them when we were underway. “So, how much will you be taking off the expenses?”

Pip shook his head. “I won’t know until we get a final settlement, but we’re shooting for a twenty percent reduction in costs over a stanyer. It’s not a lot, on the grand scheme of things, but it would amount to something over five kilocreds added to the shared profit for the stanyer.”

“That sounds like a lot to me.”

“Well, the share pool for the last stanyer was about a hundred kilocreds, so we’re talking about increasing it by about five percent. Nothing to sneeze at, certainly, but the real benefit is that we can get better meals out of it.”

“How? I mean, I know Cookie explained it to Mr. Maxwell, sorta, but how does this work?”

Pip grinned. “We buy low and sell high.”

I slugged him in the arm. “Try again.”

“Okay, look, the most expensive foods are the fresh ones because they have a short shelf life. Typically we can’t afford them, but they really make a difference in the quality of the meals. Frozen foods are cheap. Canned and processed foods are somewhere in the middle.”

I nodded for him to continue.

“Look at coffee. We use the Arabasti because it’s readily available, of a relatively good quality, and frankly, pretty cheap. Thanks to your magic touch, the crew has gotten to like it a lot better.” He grinned at me to make sure I caught the teasing before he continued, “As a trade good it’s not much use. Everybody has it and it’s usually consistently priced from place to place. Sarabanda Dark, on the other hand, has a more volatile market price. It’s limited in range because it’s only grown on Gugara. The price fluctuates a lot based on availability and it is generally considered a better grade of coffee. Normally, it’s too expensive and so we don’t buy it.”

“I suspect that’s just snob appeal, but if it’s more expensive won’t that drive our operating costs up?”

“Yes, if we were planning on drinking it. But we’re buying it to trade for things that are even more expensive.”

“You are making my head hurt on purpose, aren’t you?”

He laughed. “What we’re doing is converting creds into trade goods that are worth more as goods than the creds would be. We’re doing that two ways. First, a bumper crop of Sarabanda Dark is letting us buy it for fifteen creds. Normally, it would cost twenty. But more importantly, we’re taking it someplace where that same bucket would normally be worth thirty creds. We’ve taken what is usually a ten cred profit and made it fifteen. That’s a fifty percent increase because the price of Sarabanda happens to be low just now. It makes a good deal even better.

“If we buy a hundred buckets, it costs a kilocred and a half. When we sell it for thirty creds it gives us three kilocreds. We get back the original kilocred and a half that we paid to begin with and an additional kilocred and a half. We can use that additional cred to reduce cost or we can buy something like fresh fruit for pies, or some other ingredients that our stores budget wouldn’t usually allow. We’ve taken idle creds and made them work for the ship.”

“Why isn’t everybody doing this?”

“I’m sure many are. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. For us, since we’re going to Margary anyway, we get the transportation basically for nothing. We have the surplus capacity to carry the goods we need to trade and a limited number of creds to invest. What we need to do is build up our stock of trade goods so that where ever we go, we have something extra that’s worth more to the people there than it is to us. Almost everybody has something they don’t want that we can buy cheap. In Gugara this trip, it’s Sarabanda Dark. Next time, it might be beefalo steaks. Sarabanda Dark should be worth more on Margary, but not as much as it would be on St. Cloud because that is farther away. We’ll need to sell some of it at Margary Station and use the creds we make to buy something that’s cheap there but more expensive on St. Cloud.”

“Margary has no planetary system. They import all their food.”

“Actually, that’s not true, but it’s a commonly held belief.”

“What? They have planets?”

“Well, yes, they have two gas giants, but that’s not what I meant. They don’t import all their food, most but not all. They do grow some.”

“What?”

Pip just smiled. “Wait and see, Ishmael, old son. Wait and see.”