Melissa Scott: Mighty Good Road

She shook herself then, slipping the data lens back into the belt pocket, and touched more keys to close the terminal and retrieve her access card. The cubicle door swung open, plastic fading again to transparence. The florid man was still waiting for a cubicle, his face prim with disapproval. Heikki hid a grin, and started down the Upper Concourse, still heading away from the station axis. It would be almost five hours, by the exchange points’ standard time, before she could board the train that would take her to Exchange Point Seven, and there was no point, she added silently, in spending that time in the station’s common waiting rooms.

A few meters further along the concourse, a sign flashed invitingly above a General Infoservices multiboard. Heikki paused, glancing over the charges engraved on the plate beside the tiny numeric keyboard—as on most exchange points, the basic locator service was free, but further inquiries were assessed at an increasingly exorbitant rate—then fished her data lens out of her pocket. After a moment’s thought, she twisted the bezel to the Explorers’ Club’s standard setting, and held the five-centimeter-thick cylinder over the multiboard’s screen. Within the charmed circle of the lens, the chaos of colors and shapes vanished, to be replaced by the Club’s greeting and the location of its nearest members’ lounge. As she had hoped, it was on this level of the concourse, perhaps a quarter-hour’s walk from the multiboard. She slipped the lens back into her pocket and turned away, unconsciously lengthening her stride. The disapproving glance of a dark woman in a maroon corporate uniform reminded her that she was no longer on a Precinct world, and she shortened her step to something more appropriate for the exchange points.

The Club lounge was a small place, a sort of alcove off the main walkway that not even dim lighting and carefully sited distortion units could make spacious. There was, however, a bar and an autokitchen, and the two dozen tables were arranged around a four-seater newsvendor. It was not particularly crowded, only a few men and women tucked into the corner tables, barricaded behind their printed flimsysheets. Heikki slipped her membership card through the sensor gate, and seated herself at the empty newsvendor. There were some new options available—a general fiction listing, for one—but she ignored that, and punched in the personal codesequence that would give her a customized precis of the day’s news. The machine murmured to itself for what seemed an interminable time, then spat sheet after sheet of closely spaced print. At the same moment, the service charge appeared discreetly in the corner of the screen. Heikki winced, but tore off the last flimsy, and headed for a table by the wall. An order pad was set into the polished surface. She touched the keys that would bring her a ‘salatha gin—a sequence so familiar she hardly looked at the pad—and settled back to scan the flimsies.

Nothing much was happening on the political scene, either in the Loop or in the Precincts, and she lifted the sheets to allow the Club’s human waiter to set the tall glass in front of her. The Loop’s Southern Extension was accusing the Northern Extension of more than usually Byzantine dealings in the bidding for the new FTL depot; there had been Precincter riots on Bacchus; there was trouble between neo-barb incomer-workers and the eco-fundamentalist settlers on Hauser, in the Tenth Precinct—but that particular problem had been simmering for the past three years, standard. Neither side was likely to listen to reason at this late date.

Heikki sighed, and made a note to put Hauser on her personal watch list when she got back to EP7: it was not a place to be accepting work, just now.

The technical news and markets were more interesting, including an article culled from a scholarly journal describing the exhumation of an ancient Lunar waste-disposal site. Heikki had advised on several similar projects, though always in-atmosphere, and read through the article attentively, noting technique. The next article was culled from an unfamiliar source, the Terentine Argus of Precinct Six, with a screaming headline, Local Business Under Siege from Off-world Magnate; Insiders Baffled. Heikki stared for a moment at the glaring type, wondering what had possessed the compiler to slip this piece of trash into her file, and then saw the first line of the story. Local salvage proprietors Foursquare confirmed today that they are the object of a breach-of-contract suit by the Iadara-based crysticulture firm Lo-Moth, following Foursquare’s refusal to complete its search for the LTA craft lost on Iadara eight months ago.

Heikki’s eyebrows rose. Salvage proprietors did not break contract even with mid-rank firms like Lo-Moth; or rather, she amended grimly, one broke a contract in the full knowledge that one was also breaking one’s career and company. Something must have gone very wrong, to force Foursquare to give up like that…. She skimmed quickly through the article, but it said nothing more about the reasons for the breach, concentrating instead on the suit and the possible legal consequences for Foursquare. The dateline on the article was nearly two weeks old.

The final flimsysheet was less than half full, and contained only a single entry. Lo-Moth of Iadara announced today the settlement of its dispute with Foursquare, salvage proprietors, Terentia, in exchange for all data collected by Foursquare during the term of its employment. Lo-Moth is presently accepting bids (licensed proprietors only) for completion of the project abandoned by Foursquare.

“Holy shit,” Heikki said aloud, and winced as the red light flashed above the orderpad. A moment later, numbers streamed across the little screen: the Club’s monitor program assessed a fine of ten poa for immodest language. Heikki made a face, but pressed the acknowledgement button silently.

“Oh, dear, Heikki,” a too-familiar voice said, and a second, equally familiar voice added, “Slip of the tongue?”

Heikki looked up slowly, allowing herself a slight, lopsided smile. Piers Xiang and Odde Engels, known without much fondness as the Siamese twins, smiled down at her, the expression particularly at odds with Engels’ hard-edged blondness.

“What’s up?” she said in return, and did not offer them a chair.

To her surprise, however, the two men lingered, Xiang’s green eyes flickering sideways in what might have been a reproving glance. “I see you’ve seen the news,” he said, in the clipped Havenite accent he’d never been able to erase.

“Which news?” Heikki asked warily.

“About Lo-Moth.” Xiang paused, round face suddenly serious. “May we join you, Heikki?”

Exchange point etiquette required that she say yes— though ‘pointer etiquette also decreed that the question should never have been asked. Heikki hid her annoyance, and gestured to the chairs that stood opposite. “Make free.”

“We heard you spent time on Iadara,” Engels said. He did not reach for the orderpad, and Heikki did not offer it to him.

“Staa, Eng,” Xiang murmured. To Heikki, he said, “I assume you and the Marshallin will be bidding?”

“I only just heard about the opening,” Heikki said. “We haven’t spoken.”

“It is, from all accounts, an excellent opportunity,” Xiang said.

Heikki hid a sigh, recognizing both the ploy and her own imminent capitulation. “I haven’t seen much about the job,” she said aloud, “but Iadara, now. It’s an interesting planet.”

Xiang leaned forward a little, folding his hands neatly on the tabletop. In that position, he looked rather like a young and somewhat naive monk of some ascetic sect. Heikki, who had seen the act before, eyed him with concealed dislike. “Lo-Moth lost a lighter-than-air craft that was carrying some important research cargo, on a flight over the—I gather unsettled—interior. The locator beam went off the air, and the crash beacon did not fire. Lo-Moth is, not unreasonably, curious.”