to her near closing and told her I wanted to buy a bunch to take off-planet for trade and asked for a wholesale price. We haggled for a while until the market closed. I helped her pack up and push her grav-pallet while we continued to barter.” Pip paused to chuckle. “She’s a salty old bird, but I’ve gotta give ya credit, you know quality goods when you see them, Ishmael, old boy. At one point, I mentioned that you and Bev had bought eight each yesterday. I forget how it came up. Something about the price she could take before her husband would beat her or something.”
I snorted. “She used that same line on us.”
“Anyway, she stops and says, ‘Butchy looking fem? Black leathers and an attitude with a skinny boy toy in tow?’”
I groaned because Pip was enjoying this way too much.
“I told her, ‘Yeah, that’s them.’ By then we’re at her storage locker on level five and she opens it up to move the bench in for the night. My gods, Ish, that place was stuffed with belts. She points out like three bales rolled up against the bulkhead. There had to be three or four hundred of them. She says, ‘For the woman and her boy I will do this. Pick any eighty, and I’ll let you have them for four hundred, final offer, but you have to take them off- station.’”
“Wow, that’s incredible. But wait, I thought you said you got eighty-one?”
He nodded. “I did. While I was picking out the belts, and you probably know as well as I do that there wasn’t a bad one in the bunch, she was busy at her bench. I didn’t think too much about it. I was busy pulling out different versions and trying to keep track of how many I had selected. All the while I wished I had enough money to take them all, and the aroma of leather made my head spin. It was amazing.” Pip talked so fast, I thought he might tangle his tongue and strangle himself.
“So anyway, after about a quarter stan, I gave up trying to pick and choose and just started adding at random until I had eighty and we signed the chits and transferred the funds. That was so much less nerve-wracking than dealing with cash. So, I’m bundling up the belts to bring back when she hands me the one that she had been working on. ‘Your friend, he was a nice boy,’ she says as she gives it to me. ‘This is for him,’ she says.”
Pip pulled a single belt from the bunch and handed it to me. It was exquisite. Expertly crafted premium leather with an ivy vine pattern running the full length. I’d never seen anything quite so beautiful. Looking closer I could see some lettering in the middle of the vines in an ornate script that blended with the curves of the vines and leaves it read, “Boy Toy”.
Pip was killing himself with laughter, but I didn’t care. The belt was beautiful and she’d made it just for me.
“Wait,” I said, “you got eighty belts for four hundred creds?”
He nodded.
“That’s just five creds each!”
He nodded again. “Yup.” He grinned obviously inordinately proud of himself.
“What if we can’t sell ’em on Margary?”
He shrugged. “I hope we don’t sell them all. We’ll need to let a few go to get some capital, but these are going to be worth a fortune on St. Cloud.”
I stood there dumbfounded while leaning on my bunk, turning the supple leather over and over in my hands. My fingers traced the textures that the old woman, Drus, had pressed into it.
After a few ticks I remembered something. “What about the rugs and robes idea? I saw some of those at the flea market and you’re right about the mass, although they were nice. The fur was much softer than I’d expected.”
“I added them to the list for the empty container. They took up the last of the cash and the final mass allotments almost perfectly. I still believe they’re the right cargo for Margary and thought the ship may as well get some advantage from them.”
“You think he’s actually going to do it?” He knew I referred to Mr. Maxwell.
Pip shook his head. “No, I doubt it. That’s a lot of creds to gamble on the advice of someone of my rank.”
I nodded. “Makes sense. Maybe it’s a trial. See what you can come up with, but not actually follow through. As you said, that’s a lot of creds.”
“I’m relieved actually. If he’d done it and it went badly, I’d feel really guilty about reducing share.”
“Yeah, but the flip side is that if it goes empty, it doesn’t contribute anything.”
Pip shrugged. “True, but we already have a lot riding on this leg, our belts, the extra stores, if there was also a container that I picked. Man, that’s a lot for one lowly attendant to take responsibility for.” He grinned but I thought his smile looked a little wistful at the edges.
Chapter 19
Gugara Orbital
2351-December-13
The next morning we left Gugara en route to Margary. To mark the occasion, Cookie brought out a bucket of the Sarabanda Dark and I made one urn with it when we set the normal watch. He even had those little signs on chains like you see in coffee bars, one read, “Djartmo Arabasti” and the other, “Sarabanda Dark.” He laughed in delight when I hung them on the valves.
It was a short trip, twenty-one standays out to the Burleson limit, but Margary Station was only seven more on the other side. Durations are dictated by the placement of the system’s primary station in relation to the system’s center of gravitational mass. We had to get far enough out of the system's gravity well to allow the jump drives to bend space. The calculations were complicated and based on the ship's mass, the system's mass, the power rating on the drives, the distance we planned to jump, and I wasn't sure what else. In effect, it meant we needed to sail right out to the edge of the Deep Dark.
Every system has a limited sphere where planets can support life. This habitable zone exists as a spherical shell around the primary star. Its location depends on the size and temperature of the star, but that area is usually deep in the system’s gravity well where the jump drives can’t operate. Normally, an orbital holds a geostationary orbit over a habitable planet, which means there is a long transit time between it and the jump point, twenty to thirty days was not uncommon.
Margary was an exception because there is no suitable planet in the habitable zone. Margary Station is out on the edge of the system because it orbits the star. The bulk of the population live in an asteroid belt just outside the orbit of the second of two gas giant planets and the station was positioned to serve them. We didn’t have to claw all the way into the gravity well to get there or out again. As a result the run from Gugara to Margary was a short one.
We were all in good spirits on the way out of Gugara. I felt relaxed and refreshed after my short excursions on the orbital, and enjoyed the new tasks in the galley working with Cookie. I found myself excited to start the food handler exam and thought about trying the ordinary spacer test as well. Pip still celebrated his deal on the belts and occasionally ribbed me with comments about boy toy, although never when Beverly was around. The stores accounting hadn’t been included on the trip into Gugara but the savings would be factored into the shares when we got to Margary. The total didn’t amount to much, but every little bit helped.
The second day out of Gugara, Pip looked up the Sarabanda Dark prices in Margary, trying to get a feel for whether they were rising or falling. Coffee is one of those volatile markets that operates as much on emotion as fact and he worried that reports of the bumper crop might drive the price down in Margary. The short run between the two systems counted against us on that score because it meant that information and goods moved easily between them. I was sweeping out the galley when Pip gave a strangled cry, “Aphrodite’s flimsy nighty!”
He startled me so much that I dropped the broom and turned. He was pointing at his tablet his mouth gaping in disbelief. I crossed to him so I could see what was wrong and saw that the spare container wasn’t empty any longer. We pulled up its contents and found it filled with the exact list of items that Pip had given to Mr. Maxwell.
Cookie came to look over our shoulders and simply gave a little, “Hmm,” before wandering off.
