Melissa Scott - Shadow Man

“I know.” Warreven wrapped his hands around the jug, looked at it for a long moment. “The ghost ranas—on the way back from seeing Temelathe last night, a band of them broke in the window of my rover. Fisk—the man driving—got a nasty cut from the glass, and I ended up spending the night in a Harborside bar. And then I had to go to the mosstaas with him—no luck there, of course, but at least the complaint was filed.”

“Jesus,” Tatian said. “Are you all right?”

Warreven smiled again. “Fine—tired, but fine. And Fisk is all right, too. There was a medic there, an off-worlder, who took care of him.”

“Glad to hear it,” Tatian said. A player, he added mentally, automatically, but that doesn’t make him any less competent.

“There is something you should know,” Warreven said. “Before we sign, I mean. The Most Important Man wants me to, well, I suppose revise is the word, our contract, and he’s prepared to make it as hard as possible for you to go on doing business here if I, if you, don’t.”

Tatian looked down at his desktop, at the screens scattered beneath the opaque surface. The profit projections lay on top, Mats’ shipping report beside it—they had export permits and starcrates for the most valuable goods, and Mats was reporting that the indigenous Export Control Office was asking only a few hundred concord dollars in extra “fees” to process the remaining permits—and he shook his head slowly. “So far, we haven’t had any trouble. And we always pay our way. What’s the problem?”

“Reiss,” Warreven said. “Or, more precisely, this case of ours, Destany and ’Aukai.”

Tatian snorted. After all the effort he’d gone to—after the chances he was taking, standing up to the IDCA, risking NAPD’s hard-won position on Hara—to be told that Warreven was backing out was too much. Warreven tilted 3er head to one side.

“I don’t intend to change my position,” 3e said. Ȝe laughed then, sounding genuinely amused. “I don’t like being threatened, and anyway, it’s not like I had any desire to run for seraaliste next year. I still want Reiss’s statement, and as far as I’m concerned it’s still part of the price. But I thought I owed you the warning.”

“Why?”

Warreven blinked. “I prefer to do business when people understand all the risks. Besides, I like you.”

“Thanks. But I meant, why stand up to Temelathe, especially now? Why does this case matter so much?” Tatian shrugged. “Look, I don’t want to be rude, but there are a couple of cases like this every year. Can’t you wait for the next one, if you want to make a point?”

Warreven looked away. The thick braid of 3er hair fell forward over 3er shoulder, and 3e worried at its end, twisting it between long fingers. The gesture seemed strangely familiar, and then Tatian remembered the woman he had been involved with on Joshua, long-limbed, long-haired Kaysa, who had done just that whenever she was nervous about something. It was no wonder he found Warreven attractive; 3e shared some of her tricks of movement and gesture.

“The truth?” 3e said, and let 3er braid fall back into place. “A lot of reasons, I suppose. I’m tired of waiting—after all, there’s never going to be a good time, by definition, right? And it’s not right. All Destany wants is to be with zher lover, that shouldn’t be this difficult.”

Tatian blinked, startled to hear the off-world pronoun, however badly pronounced, and Warreven sighed again.

“And on top of that, I don’t like ’Aukai. I’ve never liked ’Aukai. So I don’t want to give up on her case. And Tendlathe isn’t Speaker yet, no matter what he thinks he is. So, I’m telling you now, Reiss’s statement stays part of the bargain. If you don’t want to take the risk—if you can’t afford to stay in the game—” Ȝe spread 3er hands. “That’s your choice, of course.”

But you lose the harvest surplus . Tatian looked down at his screens again, at the numbers spread across the multiple files. Masani had already given δer opinion; the final choice was, as always, up to him. The numbers are too good, the profit’s too high to lose, he thought. If it’s a real problem, δ e can transfer me next year, that ought to satisfy Temelathe—and I can’t say I’d be that sorry to get off this crazy planet …. He stopped then, remembering Masani’s words: “ I spent eight local years explaining myself ,’ δe had said, but it was more than that, more that no one, not the IDCA and Col- Com, not the indigenes, had been able to see δer as δerself. That was the other factor in the equation, the joker in the pack. The system, trade, the whole bizarre two-gendered Haran worldview, was simply wrong; Warreven was right, the IDCA spent too much time trying to manage trade, and not enough time facing the implications of the system they were trying to control. If they really wanted to deal with HIVs, they could spend more of their time and effort looking for whatever it was that gave Harans their immunity. “I don’t see any reason to change my plans,” he said. “Reiss has said he wants to testify. As long as that holds true, I’ll back him.”

“Thanks,” Warreven said softly, and then straightened, pushing the disks across the desktop. “Shall we get on with it, then?”

Tatian nodded, and ran his hand over the shadowscreen to bring the proper window to the surface. At the same time, the blockwriter whined to life, and he slipped the first disk into the reader’s slot. There were no changes to the contracts—they had been straightforward enough; it had only been Reiss’s testimony that made things complicated—but Warreven read through the last drafts a final time, head bowed over 3er screen. Then 3e nodded, and scrawled 3er name across the touchscreen, then added the codes that confirmed both 3er identity and 3er authority as seraaliste . The blockwriter whined again, copying the file and then sealing the disk, and Tatian allowed himself a sigh of relief. It was good to have them signed—good not to have to keep making and unmaking his decisions, good to be committed to this one. He said aloud, “I understand some of your offering is already in port?”

Warreven nodded, tipped 3er head to one side, the corners of 3er mouth turning up in 3er familiar almost smile. “I suppose you’d like to look at samples.”

“I would.”

“I thought you might,” Warreven said. “I spoke to our captain, he’ll be expecting us.”

They took the company rover over to Harborside, left it parked on Dock Row in an empty lot beside one of the bars. It was open, and Warreven spoke briefly to the manager, a thin, worried-looking woman, before coming back to join Tatian. “She says it should be safe there, even with a company mark.”

Warreven sounded less than certain, and Tatian sighed, thinking of his budget if he had to get the rover repaired. Still, his predecessor had bought the rover on-planet; it wouldn’t be impossible to replace, he thought, and turned to look across the roofs of the Embankment to the docks below. The clouds had burned off, and the afternoon was unusually clear. Sea and sky were blue, flecked here and there with white, and the pale wood and stone of the Gran’quai itself seemed to glow in the harsh sun- light. The market in the foreground was almost empty, only the food sellers and a few vendors with carts snugged up to the power points on the southern perimeter; the rest of the stalls were empty, just painted white lines marking their divisions. The rana band was still there, though, still dancing on its makeshift stage— only two drummers now, and a woman who held a flute—as was the audience. That was larger than Tatian had remembered, maybe fifty or sixty people, most of them wearing the bright ribbons that Warreven had said meant they were members of the band. There were dockworkers on the edge of the group, conspicuous in their faded, practical clothes, and more were watching from the Gran’quai itself.