ONE
Jethri Gobelyn ven’Deelin, Second Trader on Elthoria, out of Solcintra, Liad, felt the gravity change and the pressure shift in the same step. Frenol was efficient about such matters, supplying no more air nor gravity than required to incoming ships without being miserly about it. The walk through the portal allowed ship over-pressure to be expended, while at the same time inviting wandering particles from onboard to settle quickly to the lightly charged grids ramping into the station side.
Jethri was not alone leaving Elthoria; crew mates bustled around him on the ramp, rushing off to market shifts or to scout for prizes and bargains. If they were quick, they might shop before all the merchants registered that a new ship was arrived and raised prices for the
occasion. The bargain-hunters hit the decking first, followed not too closely by knots of two, four, six—comrades with joint pleasure in their plans, eager, but not hasty.
They, too, achieved Frenol’s deck before the second trader, who was walking alone, as he often did on port. There was, after all, no need to rush. His legs were long, and, if Protocol Master tel’Ondor was to be believed, there was his dignity to preserve.
He gained the first air well speedily enough, a space tall and wide, more formal than the dock sides and more crowded. He paused for a moment just aside the arch, to consider the signage and the traffic, and to consult the map in his head.
Elthoria was fresh in from Seybol, on the heavily Liaden front rim, where the new fashions from the homeworld itself had only just arrived. Since a trader must be seen to be prosperous and current, Jethri had new clothes, in the first stare of fashion.
In fact, he noticed that he was the recipient of actual stares from more than one passing pedestrian—which was not unusual in the Liaden markets, where he stood at least half a head taller than nearly anybody. Here on Frenol, it was more likely the clothes than the height.
Though there was the height, too, he thought wryly. The fashion whimsy of the season was that all footwear be given a rigorously measured big-toe of extra height, and the second trader had not been permitted to sidestep this.
So, with a plush purple stripe exactly the width of the tailor’s math stick across the right shoulder of his new yellow coat, and added height for all that he was not short even among Terrans, Jethri was noticeable as he stood in a designated rest circle, overlooking what seemed to be a market day crowd at full-tide.
His experienced trader’s eye noted this one and that moving casually toward himself, seeing a young, well-dressed, gormless, and inexperienced person just off a trade ship, who was likely full in the spending pocket as well. Time to get moving again, he thought.
But there, the map in his head matched the signs, and he swung away from the wall and into the crowd. His stride was long, and strong for a ship-born ex-Looper, and Jethri soon put the hopeful pickpockets behind, as he headed not for the joys and pressures of a bedding station or souvenir parlor but for the business-as-usual comfort of one of the Trade Bars. He’d not been to Frenol before but the formal Liaden Trade Bar was not, as might be assumed from his position as second trader on a Liaden ship, first on his list. Today he sought news of kin and, truth be told, kind. The Envidaria was more than a minor part of his life these days, and he might as well see what the word was on the docks.
Frenol wasn’t, exactly, a Liaden port, nor was it, exactly, a Terran port. It was closer to the big shipping lanes and farther from the usual routes of Loop ships. Loopers were for the most part Terran or equivalent mixed crew and their ships were, as Arin Gobelyn had known
well, generally smaller and older than the Liaden tradeships dominating the main routes. And as the newer, larger Liaden ships needed the newer, larger berths, here on Frenol Elthoria was comfortably docked on the expansive New Market Wing of the station, while Practical Al’s Trade Bar was on the far side of the Grande Esplanade, down in what was called Old Main Line, since it hadn’t been main line for handfuls of decades.
The walk down-station did Jethri good, letting him stretch his legs with a will while seeing new sights—and the sights were worth seeing, though he doubted he’d be free to pursue any of them, given the fact that Master Trader Norn ven’Deelin, coincidentally his foster-mother, was to meet with Master Trader pin’Aker on the morrow. Given the general tendency of Master Trader ven’Deelin to orchestrate surprising situations, and use all of the pieces on her board—Jethri supposed he would be included—somehow.
He was approaching Frenol’s more Terran district. Not only were the store fronts gaudier, and the come-on music louder, but the scents were different. That made his spacer’s clean-air instincts leery—he’d spent far too much of his time on Gobelyn’s Market doing Stinks to have this much odor poured at him without imagining what the filters must look like after a shift! He didn’t doubt that the local merchants cheated on air exchange rules to flood the aisles and halls with the hints of oil and baked goods not usually found on the Liaden side, much less on long haul trade ships. Too, the under-scent near some locations openly
hinted at vya, chocolate, and alcohol, all far too forward to be wafted about near the Grande Esplanade, where tender teas and fine pastries might be on offer.
The hall narrowed, narrowed again, kinked to the left, and opened into a space nearly as large as the Grande Esplanade, and three times as crowded. People were taller; their voices louder; their finery, while fine, tending more toward comfort than elegance.
Jethri kept moving in the crowd, squaring his shoulders so as to look bigger, which a Liaden would never do. Here, though, the trick worked; people stepped out of his way, when they could, and he was hardly jostled at all. He began to believe that his fancy new coat might survive this adventure.
Jethri had first heard about Practical Al’s as the youngest and least-wanted mainline Gobelyn on the Market. His father had been trying to convince Captain Iza to plot a course to Frenol, for some reason now lost to time. In the end, the captain had declined to deviate from the Loop, but before she had, Arin and Grig had plied her with data describing the station, and hinting at the profits to be made.
The file featuring Practical Al’s Trade Bar had caught Jethri’s young imagination, and he had promised himself right then that, when he was captain of his own ship, he’d take himself to Frenol and have a meal at Practical Al’s, the oldest continuously run station-based Trade Bar in the Raifling Sector. The file had included pictures of the place—several of the ornate
clock set over the wide entrance, which counted the Terran seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years that had passed since the bar’s opening. The place itself—
Was right there; he recognized it immediately, though it was larger than he had imagined, reaching almost to the hall’s vaulted roof. It had apparently caught the imagination of many beyond Jethri Gobelyn. The approach was surging with people. Looking around, Jethri saw that there was a nerligig dancing on a raised platform at what might be the entrance to the bar’s business zone, which had drawn its own admiring crowd.
Practical Al’s, Open All Hours Three Centuries and Counting read the sign above the clock.
Jethri scouted out a path around the nerligig and its adherents, hoping against fading hope that there might actually be a quiet table within the bar itself, a place to get a near-beer or a quiet glass of wine. A place to order food that was more in the Terran way, which he’d lately found himself missing, though no one could fault the food provided to Elthoria’s crew.
There! His eye traced a path taken by a number of people, which swept around the margin of the nerligig’s crowd, and snaked back toward the front entrance. Jethri was soon one of their number.
The line moved reasonably well, and the entrance was in sight, when the crowd bunched, separated, and swirled, perhaps because among the taller Terrans was a golden-
haired Liaden doing an excellent job of not being stepped on by gawkers.
Within the confusion an elegant bow was swept, fine-tuned with nuance. No offense taken, no offense meant, please choose your route with…
While the finesse of the bow was perhaps lost on the pair of Terrans now detouring around the display with nods and semi-smiles, Jethri was all admiration, the moreso when he felt a jolt of recognition—
The polite Liaden, deserted by his partners in chaos, made no ill-timed straightening that might have been misread by someone glancing back, but finished the bow in detail as if all eyes were still on him, paused for a breath and—
“An excellent summation of the melant’i of the situation, all in good will!” Jethri called out, his use of Comrade mode in Liaden likely to mask his own Terran identity to those around.
A bland face turned toward him, rapidly recast to an acceptably pleased public face as he was recognized in turn.
They rushed together, careful of the march of other necessities about them, producing a playful series of bows as they closed the distance and finally clasped hands.
“But Tan Sim, how are you here, my partner?”
“To surprise, naturally. And you? Was Elthoria not to arrive tomorrow?”
Jethri broke into his Terran trader grin, pitching his voice lower as he leaned confidentially toward Tan Sim.
“That was the plan before it was decided that I should continue to amass board-time and the piloting of Elthoria was given to me. I got us here too quickly, and pleased everyone by arriving in one piece.” He produced an entirely false expression of wondering regret.
“Who knew that Elthoria is not meant to Jump like a Scout ship?”
Tan Sim sputtered, and Jethri saw the laughter in him.
Their clasped hands were a warmth between them, and they were an awkward impediment to the swirl of the crowd.
“We should move,” Tan Sim murmured.
“Before we’re trampled,” Jethri agreed.
Unclasping hands, they turned as one toward Practical Al’s. There were several doors to choose from, the largest at deck level, another at the top of a ramp, and a third, three steps below the deck.
“We seem to be one mind in two bodies!” Jethri said lightly. “You choose the portal and the floor. I will choose the table and—” He looked up to the large sign spelling out Terran foodstuffs—“‘the grub!’”
“I spoke in jest,” admitted Tan Sim, “when I said we meant to surprise. What we meant to do was earn a bonus, due to my shrewd trading contacts.” He smiled a nearly Terran smile. “Also, I wished to have a useful layover here. It happens that Frenol’s yards are superior to those at our previous port. So, we have earned our bonus, for delivering in good time the package entrusted to us by Master Trader pin’Aker. In the meanwhile, the ship undergoes scheduled maintenance, while the trader goes about looking for goods that will draw favorable attention at the South Axis Congress. For I tell you with no shame, Jethri, I am much more skilled at trade than I am at lift-shifting.”
Jethri grinned.
“I might have overstated my piloting skill,” he admitted. “Elthoria’s departure from Seybol was clear from break-dock to Jump-point. This put us well ahead of schedule, with an uncomfortably early arrival at Frenol forecast.
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