I shrugged. “Maybe,” I told her idly as I finished my scan through the various status readouts. “Or maybe we just believe in the magic. Maybe we just let the icon represent the ideal which gives us a physical manifestation of an intangible.”
She laughed her bubbly laugh. “I don’t even know what you just said.”
I had to replay the sound of my voice in my ears to remember, then I laughed, too. “Sorry, one of the themes that Mom was always talking about. How ideas are often represented by objects.”
She held up her fox and let the light wash over it. “What do you think these are representations of?”
“Dunno. Maybe we apply a personal meaning to each one. That the meanings you and I apply aren’t the same as Sarah applies to hers.”
“You gave Sarah one?” she asked, surprised.
“No, she got one from her village shaman. A raven. The differences in style are obvious, but the representation is spectacular in its own way.”
“You gave one to Bev, though, didn’t you?” It was a statement more than question.
“Yeah, just now.”
“What’s hers?”
“A wolf.”
“Yes, that is fitting.”
She headed back toward the hatch. “Well, I’m off. I wanna grab some dinner and a nap before I head out.”
“Hot date?”
“Well, I can hope.” She grinned wickedly. “I can hope.”
“Good hunting! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” I said, inadvertently repeating the little catch phrase my mom and I shared when one of us had gone out.
She laughed and stopped with her hand on the hatch. “What wouldn’t you do?”
The events of the previous day spooled out delightfully in my brain, and I laughed. “Apparently not much!”
“Good for you,” she said. She started out again but stopped once more and asked, “What did you give Alvarez?”
“A falcon.”
She nodded. “Good choice.”
With a final little wave, she slipped out of the hatch, and I settled down to review the logs and check the maintenance schedule.
Chapter 24
DUNSANY ROADS ORBITAL
2352-APRIL-18
At about 18:30, I slaved my tablet to the console and headed up to the mess deck. Pip waited for me with a big grin on his face. It did not seem possible that he would be so pleased just because of the digitals I sent him. I loaded up a plate with Cookie’s spicy beefalo and rice. There were some green beans, too, and I added a big pile of them. My body musta been telling me it needed the vitamins or something. I thought Pip was gonna turn himself inside out before I made it over to him.
“What’s got you all in a tizzy?” I asked. “Are you that excited about the batik? I brought some samples.”
“No, those are good but you will not believe this.”
“How do you know?” I asked with a chuckle. “You haven’t told me yet.”
“Last night, I was in my rack reading. After cleanup, Sarah shows up and settles into her bunk with the shawl work.” I could tell it was going to be a long story so I ate slowly. “She’s getting darn good, but anyway she’s sitting there and crocheting her little fingers off. We talked about the booth and how well she did and so forth. She said she had a great time, but sold all her stuff and was looking forward to Betrus when she’d have more things to sell.”
“Sounds like a new convert to the trading lifestyle.”
“She’s still not quite in the same plane of existence with us, sometimes, but everybody is really good with her and many actually wait for her. She’s got more grit than me, I’ll tell ya that.”
I just continued eating. He was having too much fun to hurry him and I knew he would tell me what had him so excited—eventually.
“So, anyway, I asked her, if she was looking forward to selling her shawls or just selling. She giggled and said she had so much fun she wished she could just sell stuff. I asked her, ‘Doesn’t it bother you being in that crowd of people all day?’ She said no because when she was behind the table it was sorta like she was in the galley. Because people were coming to her, she felt in control.”
I began to have second thoughts about whether he actually would get to the point of this story, but I did not have anything else to do, so I did not interrupt.
“So, I knew we had that pile of stones in the locker. I also knew neither of us was going to get up there to sell ’em so I asked if she wanted to do it for us. I offered her booth commission on any she sold. I didn’t figure it would amount to much, and I was pretty sure you wouldn’t mind.” He stopped there and looked at me like it had been a question.
I was a little slow in noticing the pause, but said, “No, not at all. I was wondering just this afternoon about how we were going to deal with them.”
“What I meant is, do you mind that I offered her the commission? Ten percent?”
I shook my head. “Of course not, how much did she wind up with? Fifty creds?”
“Try four hundred.”
I do not think I could have been more surprised if he had hit me with the omelet pan. I blinked slowly in confusion. “She made four hundred creds in commission? In one day?”
He nodded with that big old grin plastered across his face. I knew he was telling me the truth but I could not quite process it. “But at ten percent she had to have sold,” and I lowered my voice to keep from screaming, “four thousand creds in a day? Less than a day, because I was up there with Brill around 15:00 and she wasn’t there then.”
Pip’s eyes dance in glee. “Yup.”
“Okay, you got my attention. Now back up and gimme the details.”
“You know how we thought there were about two hundred fifty or three hundred of them left? It was more like four hundred. The smaller ones kept falling to the bottom. In the end she sold just over four hundred of them in about six stans.”
“Gods, Pip, that’s about one a tic! For six stans?”
He just grinned, his head bobbing frantically in agreement.
The math fell into place then, too, and I practically yelled, “She got ten creds each!”
“Yeah, somehow. I have no idea how. I gave her the stones and leather stock last night and showed her how we were letting people buy the stones and then hack a piece of thong off the spool? Apparently she stayed up late and put a thong on every stone. She had some nice knot work to keep them together too. I saw them before she headed up to the flea with Rhon and the others. They looked good.”
“But ten creds a piece? You were getting five at the most.”
“When Rhon brought the pallet back, I asked her what was going on. Apparently our Miss Krugg is some kind
