Michael Flynn - The January Dancer

Hugh made the rounds of the traders’ clubs near Port Èlfiuji in the Mercantile Loop, where he engaged in idle chatter over light snacks and strong drinks. Merchants, he found, came in three sorts. First, there were the fat, confident ones, comfortable in their wealth, who enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh and for whom no contract was so dry or so technical that it could not provide an occasion of sin. The second sort, more vulpine, were those on the make. They were all in the air, for all their wealth was in the venture itself, and their first failure would be their last. Since “Ringbao” lacked the standing to speak with the “merchant princes,” and the “paper tigers” could spare no time to speak with him, he sought out the third sort.

These were the “reps,” and gossip was their stock in trade. They came to buy and sell—mostly to sell—but they also knew when and how to turn off and simply chat with chance-met strangers. Not that selling was ever far from their minds, but men and women of their school believed that “establishing a relationship” was the key to selling, and they never blew another off as of no account. “You never can tell,” they would tell one another, “when a shabby stranger might prove a wealthy customer.”

Krinth was outside the immediate region, off to the Galactic West, where the suns packed closer and the night cast shadows, and so as a rep for “Tol Benlever,” Ringbao attracted considerable interest. What had Krinth to offer that might sell dearly here? What did Krinth desire that might be bought cheaply here? Hugh had been thoroughly prepped by Greystroke and what he didn’t know, his implant told him; and what his implant didn’t know, he simply made up.

“I hear it’s dangerous out there,” said a rep for a Gladiola firm that made entertainment simulations, “and a man’s life isn’t worth a demi-ducat.”

“No more dangerous than it is here,” Hugh replied, seeing an opening. “On Jehovah, I heard that some planet out that way had been attacked by barbarians.”

He was sitting in a high, wing-backed chair, facing three other reps around a low table of hors d’oeuvres. A woman representing Obisham MC, and feeling very good about herself for having already met her quota, said, “New Eireann, I was told.”

“The bandits, they came outta the Cynthia,” added a thin man with a Megranomic accent.

“There,” said Hugh, “you see. I heard Die Bold itself was scouted by a fleet of warships no more than four, five metric weeks ago.”

“When was that in local time?” asked the Obisham rep. “Waiter, how long are four metric weeks here?”

The man replenishing the tray of cold meats and cheese shook his head. “Please, got no head numbers, missy, please. I ask.”

“Terrans,” the woman said as the man scampered away. Hugh wasn’t sure what she meant by that. It wasn’t as if she’d known the conversion factors.

“For all I know,” he said, “that fleet is still around, maybe waiting for a fat merchant to waylay. Think they’re the same bunch as hit New Eireann?”

The thin man waved a hand, which held a wedge of some dark, grainy sausage impaled on a wooden pick. “Naw,” he said. “Them Cynthians is more disciplined than that bunch was. Couple of the ships fired on each other, can y’ believe it! I was inbound transfer at the Giantess when they passed through. And didn’t that startle the traffic folks up yonder! Die Bold’s JPCG cutters—that’s Joint Planetary Coast Guard, babe,” he added to the Obisham rep—“they can take the price of a raid out of your hide, so mostly the pirates lay off the Old Planets. But still, JPCG was taken by surprise, and didn’t like it one stinkin’ bit.”

“If the fleet’s not still lurking up in the coopers,” Hugh said, “where’d it go?”

Shrug complemented shrug.

“I think it broke up,” the fourth man said. He was a man of ruddy, almost orange complexion, and wore his hair lime-white and pulled into spikes, a fashion popular on Bangtop-Burgenland, although he himself repped for Izzard and Associates out of the Lesser Hanse. “I heard that some ships took the Long March down to the Cynthia, some took the Piccadilly to Friesing’s World, and the rest went the other way round the ring to Old ’Saken.”

“Was the winners heighed for Old ’Saken,” the thin man said.

“Didn’t one stay behind?” the woman asked.

“One of its officers, I heard,” said the Gladiolan. “A Gat. He asked for asylum or something.”

“If it please, missy,” said the waiter, who had returned. He looked at a sheet of scratch paper on which some figures had been scrawled. “Is four metric weeks one- punkt -six case doozydays. Which be thirty-eight days straight up.” He bobbed several times and scuttled off.

“Doozydays,” said the Gladiola man. “Why can’t the Old Planets use metric days like everyone else?”

The Megranomer grinned at him. “Why cain’t the rest of the Periphery use doozydays? Twelve makes more sense than ten. More divisible, d’ye see.”

The woman for Obisham Interstellar frowned. “What did he mean—‘thirty-eight days straight up ’?”

Hugh hid a grin. The waiter had meant Terran days, but he saw no reason to enlighten his chance companions.

The Fudir had not been to the Corner of Èlfiuji in many years and found that he did not know it as well as he once had. The patois was a little different; and the smells and foods and noises, a trifle exotic. Much depended on the mix of ethnicities that had been settled here during the Great Cleansing. There was more wealth here than on Jehovah and the people moved with less of the edginess that marked the Jehovan Corner. Yet one hand knows the other and a few grips were enough to gain him access to the Brotherhood’s clubhouse where he met with Fendy Jackson.

“Had I known thou wert coming, Br’er Fudir,” the man said, “I had prepared a finer welcome.” He was tall, with a vulpine face and a wiry beard that covered all and fell to his chest. “How fareth our sister, the Memsahb of far Jehovah?”

“She doth well, Fendy.” The Fudir and his host sat on soft hassocks in a richly carpeted room draped in gossamer curtains of red, gold, and black. To the side, a servant prepared tea and a bowl of chickpea paste. “And happy she was to see the back of me.”

Fendy Jackson struck his breast with his fist. “May her loss be my gain. What service dost thou ask of our fellowship, Br’er Fudir? What hath brought thee to my miserable porch?”

“A complex story, I fear me. But at the end of it lieth the Earth, free once more.”

The Fendy paused with his teacup half raised to his lips, and the servant, too, in the act of handing a second cup to the Fudir. “Is’t so?” the Fendy asked. “A tale long told, but with no such ending yet. But there stood once a city there that it is in me to visit. It is an obligation that my grandfather’s grandfather longed to meet. How might we see such an end?”

“It is a matter of utmost delicacy that must be plucked from any number of grasping fingers. Thou knowest the story of the Twisting Stone? There may float a bean of truth in the pot of legend.”

“‘The man one day older is a man one day wiser.’ The prehumans left much behind them, though more in fancy than in fact.”

“Thou hazardest nought. I risk the search. If nought lieth at the end of it, how art thou diminished?”

The Fendy considered these words while he tore off a piece of bread, dipped it in the hummus, and handed it to the Fudir. “How might our brothers and sisters aid thee?”

“There is a man,” the Fudir said around the mouthful. “In himself, he is nothing. But some few weeks ago a fleet passed through Die Bold. Seven ships, we believe. Perhaps eight. They fought. Who they were and where they went are matters of interest. But it is said that one ship remained behind, or perhaps only this man; and him, we seek.”