done already?”
“Yeah, you know what port-side mess is like.” He had the look on his face that told me he had been there for a while.
“Well, I need to get back to environmental,” I told him. “Wanna walk as far as the gym?”
He followed me out of the berthing area and then grabbed my arm. “What in the name of Venus’s hairy palms was that all about?”
“What?”
“That mumbo jumbo with the stones.”
“She’s come a long way, but she’s still healing.”
“No kidding!” he said. “So why are you encouraging her.”
“What? Why am I encouraging her to heal?”
“No! Why are you encouraging her in her delusion?”
“What delusion?”
“All this shaman stuff. First the whelkies, now the stones.”
“Well, the whelkies are real. I have one in my pocket. And she did bless the stones.”
“But none of that is any more magical than I am.”
“What makes you think you’re not magical?”
That stopped him for a few heartbeats.
“Are you going soft in the head on me, Ish?” he asked with genuine concern.
“Well, maybe. But I remember the story you told me about when you came aboard.”
“Yeah. So what? They traded me for Murdock.”
“And once you came aboard, things began to turn around for you.”
“That’s true, but I don’t see what that has to do with Sarah being a shaman and all this magic crap.”
“Why do you think things started changing when you got here?”
“I don’t know. I got a better attitude maybe. People were nicer here.”
“Or maybe they just believed in you,” I told him quietly. I noticed I still had the stones in my hand and I thrust the white one into his. “Here, lucky stone, blessed by a St. Cloud shaman. Wear it in good health.”
I left him standing there gaping at me as turned and headed back to environmental. As I walked, I tied the green one around my neck and let it slide down inside my shipsuit. You never know.
Chapter 25
DUNSANY ROADS ORBITAL
2352-APRIL-19
My tablet bipped me awake just after 12:00. Overnight watch had been low-key. Francis ribbed me good- naturedly about Al but he seemed a bit groggy when he relieved me and I wondered if he had been out too late himself. I rolled out and hit the san for a quick shower before I zipped into a shipsuit.
Sarah was on duty in the galley. I thought she looked a little less pinched, but that might have been just a projection on my part. She and Cookie smiled and waved but they were still arguing about pastry dough and I didn’t interrupt. Lunch was a very nice fish and pasta dish. I was not sure if it was the last of the cobia fillets or some of the munta from St. Cloud. Whatever else it might have been, delicious came first on the list.
Pip came in dressed in civvies already as I settled down to eat. “You’ve already been out this morning?”
He grabbed a coffee and sat across from me. “Yeah, I went up and scoped out yarns. I saw Sean and Tabitha up there, so I suspect they’ll come back with more crochet materials. At this point they need more hooks, too, I think. They’re doing so well I’m sure there are others who will start up with them. Sean should charge for lessons.”
I laughed. “Or get royalties on the pieces.”
We sat there for a couple of ticks while I dug into the fish and pasta. I was hungrier than I thought.
Pip was not very talkative. I usually relied on him to carry the conversation. “You okay?” I asked him.
“Yeah, sure.” He gave a half-hearted shrug that made me doubt him.
I realized he wore the white stone under his shirt. “Nice stone.”
“Thanks,” he said, looking down. “It was a gift from a friend. It’s a lucky stone—blessed by a St. Cloud shaman.”
I grinned at him and he smiled back.
“You gonna finish eating one of these days so we can go shopping?” he asked.
Leaving the ship with Pip felt odd. The last time we had been off the ship together was when he had brought me aboard seven months before. My brain kept sliding sideways whenever I saw him walking beside me. I was so used to walking with one or more of the women. We cruised up to the flea market and headed right for the batik booth.
“Ah, Ishmael!” Chuck said as I came up to the booth.
He surprised me. “You have a good memory. You must see hundreds of people a day!”
“True but none of them want to buy bulk batik and take it off-station.” He turned to Pip then and held out his hand. “You must be Carstairs?”
“Well I don’t have to be, but I am.” He shook the offered hand. “Call me Pip.”
I wandered around looking over the goods while Pip dickered with Chuck. He bought about twenty kilos of fabric and Chuck bundled it into two ten-kilo packages for us to carry. Pip surprised me by pulling a folded duffel out of his hip pocket and sliding both packages into it. “We can trade off carrying,” he told me with a grin.
“Twenty kilos is going to get heavy fast.”
“Are you planning on shopping some more?” he asked with an arched eyebrow.
“Well I thought that since we’re here, we might look about. See if there’s anything else that strikes our fancy.”
Chuck overheard us and offered, “You can leave the duffel here if you like. Just slide it under that table over there and pick it up before closing.”
I thanked him while Pip stowed the bag.
As we left the booth, he looked at me curiously. “Is there something you’re looking for?”
“Yeah, trade goods for Betrus. Something different. Low mass, high value.”
He slugged me in the shoulder and laughed. “No, I mean is there something in particular?”
I shrugged. “Booths open and close every day. There may be something here that I like as much as the batik. We have mass to spare yet, don’t we?”
“Yeah, at least another twenty. When you make spec three we’re going to be up to our armpits in mass allotment.”
“We’ll have to shop with the grav pallet.”
“That’s a good idea,” he said with total seriousness. “If we either shop on days when the co-op isn’t setting up, like today, or we plan to take our stuff over to the booth, they can take it back to the ship.”
“Well, that also assumes we keep buying single large lots. With more mass allotment we can diversify a bit.”
“True. The batik is great though. Nice find.”
We sauntered along the aisles. “Thanks. It’s funny because I spotted it just after I complained to Brill that everything looked the same. Then we came around the corner and there was all this brightly colored fabric.”
“After you’ve been to about three of these places, you begin to see the stuff that’s in all of them. What
