The Reaches

'Why are you making this offer, Mister Gregg?' Sarah Blythe said. She wasn't quite able to hide the unintended challenge.

'My uncle is Benjamin Gregg,' Stephen said in a mildly bantering tone. 'Gregg of Weyston, Weyston Trading. Uncle Ben would disown me if I turned down a business opportunity like this when it dropped in my lap. And there's also. .'

Stephen looked at Captain Sarah Blythe, feeling the sadness at what so easily might have been: Stephen Gregg, merchant. Stephen Gregg, managing partner in Weyston Trading by now, though Uncle Ben wasn't the sort to give up titular control while life was in him.

'There's also the fact that I said I'd make amends for my boorishness,' he went on, rubbing his cheek where she'd hit him.

Blythe snorted. 'I'd say running those three off put the debt on my side of the ledger,' she said, nodding dismissively toward Factor Richards, glimpsed across the room.

'I said that was a pleasure,' Stephen repeated. 'God help me, but it was.'

'Very well,' Blythe said. 'My hand on the bargain then, Mister Gregg.'

Her grip was firm, but her palms were sweating. If she had not been nervous, that would have meant she didn't understand what had been going on.

'I'll talk to Calaccio about the survey,' she went on. 'He's the primary noteholder. Ishtar Chandlery, you know.'

Stephen nodded. 'I'll get one of Uncle Ben's people and tell him to contact Calaccio,' he said. 'Oh, and if you'll ask Calaccio to turn over the vessel's full supply and maintenance logs to my representative, I'll get to work at once on my end. And let me take care of Duneen.'

'I should hit men more often,' Blythe said with a straight face.

'If they behave the way I did, you should indeed,' Stephen replied.

Blenrott, beaming with the success of the affair he was hosting, turned from a group of courtiers and caught Stephen's eye. Stephen gave him a full bow.

'On Thursday,' Stephen said in a voice that Blythe leaned closer to hear, 'I'll attend Factor Blenrott's levee. My presence will make his peers think he stands a meter taller; which is stupid, but it's the truth nonetheless.'

'I think my friend Mister Gregg can best supply those estimates,' Piet said in tones pitched to carry across the five meters of conversation separating the two of them.

'Duty calls,' Stephen said, gesturing with his left hand but looking directly at Blythe for the first time since he'd driven away the bankers. 'Blenrott's affair will be excruciatingly dull,' he went on in the same soft voice as he'd used when he discussed their host before. 'That's good. I believe a person should be punished for acting badly. It makes it unlikely that he'll do that particular thing again.'

Stephen bowed to the woman and returned to where Piet needed him for a discussion of share percentages.

ISHTAR CITY, VENUS

August 13, Year 26

0317 hours, Venus time

Marcus Blythe opened the street door cautiously, but he dropped his walking stick with a loud clatter before he managed to close the door behind him. He froze.

'It's all right, Dad,' Sal said. 'I'm up working, so you haven't bothered me.'

'Ah,' said Marcus. He turned around and saw his daughter seated at the table in the common room of the suite. He'd thought the light was on merely to guide him back to his bed as usual. 'Ah.'

'Do you need. .' Sal asked.

'No, I'm quite all right,' Marcus said in a tone of injured innocence. He bent carefully to retrieve his stick, fumbling it several times in the process. That was as much his arthritis-twisted hands as the drink, though. In truth, he wasn't drunk by his standards or those of the Old Port District more generally. 'I was out toasting the success of our new venture with a few friends, you see.'

He began to tremble. Sal rose quickly from her seat, bumping the table and disarranging the array of small parts on it. 'Dad?' she said.

'No, I'm all right!' Marcus said with a touch of the fire appropriate to a space captain and shipowner; rarely heard since he became a cripple who spent his time drinking with other has-beens.

Sal put her arms around her father anyway, holding him close. There were tears at the corners of his eyes. Marcus wasn't an old man, but to himself-not to her, never to her-he was a useless one.

'Is it really going to happen, Sallie?' he said.

Sal used the bandanna with which she secured her hair in private to dab at the tears. 'I don't think Mister Gregg lies about things, Dad,' she said.' I don't think he could imagine a reason he'd want to. Now, if you're really all right, why don't you wash up before you go to bed? I've changed your sheets-and not before time.'

'Yes, I'll do that,' Marcus agreed humbly. He didn't move for a moment. 'It. . Sallie, it's so hard to believe that my own daughter is in partnership with Stephen Gregg. Mister Stephen Gregg!'

'Yeah,' Sal said. 'It is very hard to believe.'

She hadn't let herself feel anything. She didn't know what she even ought to feel. Elation? Fear? There was reason enough for those and any number of other emotions; she just didn't know what was right.

'It means we'll be rich, you know, Sal,' he said. 'When I was young I thought-well, you're young, you know. But-'

'I don't know that we're going to be rich,' Sal said, almost completely concealing her nervous irritation at hearing her father tempt fate. 'All we have is a chance, a chance to recoup our losses on the last voyage.'

'Oh, it's better than that, girl!' Marcus said, irritated in turn at having his hopes discounted. 'Why, Gregg is Captain Ricimer's right-hand man! Gregg's cut his way to a dozen fortunes in the Reaches. You think he's not going to make sure this latest investment doesn't turn a profit too? A profit in a rich gentleman's terms!'

Sal swallowed. 'I know that Mister Gregg is a skillful businessman, Dad,' she said. 'I just don't want you to get your hopes up. Would you like a hand to the corner?'

The bathhouse was at the junction with the main corridor three doors down.

'And I want you to know,' Marcus bumbled on, 'that nobody thinks the less of you for. . what you've done. Your mother was a good woman at heart, a truly loving wife while we were together, and-'

'Dad, shut up,' Sal said in a voice like a dragon's. 'You're drunk and you don't know what you're saying.'

She turned her father around in a curt movement better suited for shifting furniture and opened the door for him. Men were shouting at one another in slurred anger somewhere in the night, but they could have been blocks away. When there weren't crowds of pedestrians to absorb sound, it echoed long distances in the underground corridors of the older Venerian settlements.

'I'm not drunk!' Marcus protested feebly. 'Sallie, what did I-'

'Sweat all the booze out of you before you come back here!' Sal said. 'In the future, don't tell foolish lies to your drunken friends, and especially don't tell them to me!'

Puzzled, shocked completely sober, Marcus Blythe stumbled into the street. 'Sallie, I'm sorry for-' he called.

She slammed the door on the last of his words and stood trembling against the inside of the panel for a moment. Were they all saying that she was Gregg's mistress? If her father said it to her face, then they probably were.

Sal sighed. It didn't matter. Most folk assumed the only use for a woman on a starship was to service the sexual needs of the crew. She'd lived with that all her life, so she could live with this too.

She sat down at the table and began to sort the parts into groups by subassemblies. She'd tacked a high- intensity lamp to the wall to work by. Its glare made her eyes sting; she switched it off and rubbed her forehead, swearing softly at nothing she could put a clear name to.

After a moment Sal turned the light back on. She dipped the copper bristles in solvent and resumed brushing the rust off the sear.