Sarah Zettel: Fool's War

Al Shei froze. The tune Dobbs sang was the same one Tully had been whistling. “What is that?”

Dobbs smile was a little puzzled. “Don’t share your partner’s taste in music, Boss? That’s from the Pirates of Penzance, a comic show from before the Fast Burn… ”

Al Shei stared across the cafe at Tully, who in turn was staring at his drink. She briefly considered going back there and demanding once again to be told what was going on.

Which will get me exactly nowhere. Aware that her newest employee was staring at her, but not caring, Al Shei strode back across the lobby. Her stomach had tightened itself into a knot when she heard Dobbs sing out the words to Tully’s tune, and every second it stayed tight she became more convinced that she was right. This time Marcus Tully was doing more than worming corporate secrets out of secured networks and shunting them to public arenas. It would be just like him to find a way to brag about it in public.

Back in the Henry V business module, Al Shei passed right by the bank outlet and went straight into the communications room. Unlike the bank with its open desks, this room was a honeycomb of enclosed booths for private conversations. Al Shei found an empty booth and stepped inside. There was barely enough room for her to stand beside the chair as she jacked her pen into the socket beside the doorway. The booth’s system acknowledged her as a registered station customer with a positive balance on her accounts and shut the door.

She could have just sent a packet, but she wanted to say her suspicions out loud and hear a response to them from the person she trusted above all others. She also could have done this from the Pasadena and saved herself the cost of the booth rental, but Davis was probably still not done with his inspection. The last thing she wanted was the Lennox inspector overhearing what she had to say now.

Al Shei lowered herself into the stiff chair and faced the view screen that filled the wall in front of her. She slid the desktop into her lap and checked the credit in her communications account. She stared at it a moment, running through sample conversations in her head before deciding there was enough. With a series of careful commands, she opened a fast-time channel to Earth, Dubai City, Bala House, for Asil Tamruc.

Fast-time communications were not effected by gravitational stress as drastically as fast-time flight. A fast-time message could travel most of the way to the Moon before it had to be translated into speed-of-light signals. The problem with fast-time communication was the cost. The signals had to be boosted, refocused, and redirected every few light years, which required a vast network of both un-manned repeater satellites, and manned space stations. There was a single FTL network between Earth and Settled Space; the Intersystem Banking Network. It had been established by a financial conglomerate that was quick to realize that such a network would mean a stable medium of exchange between Earth and the new worlds. They did let independent users send messages across their crowded lines, but they charged the worth of a first-born child for it. Because of that astronomical price, ships like the Pasadena had a ready business transporting data from place to place.

Since Al Shei’s family owned one of the largest financial institutions on Earth, Al Shei could have easily had her fast-time communications fees “overlooked,” or paid by Uncle Ahmet, but her ethics forbade the first, and her pride forbade the second.

The desktop displayed the message CONNECTING, and ticked off both seconds and available credit. After two minutes and an appreciable chunk of the account, the view screen came alive and Al Shei’s husband, Asil Tamruc, smiled at her from the tidy nest that was his office.

It had been ten years since she met Asil, eight since they’d married, and his smile still made her heart pound.

“Hello, Beloved,” he said easily. Even across the vast distance that separated them, she could see the cheerful light in his dark eyes. He knew, of course, that only a serious matter would make her lay out the amounts required for a fast-time call. Despite that, his whole body was relaxed, and his long, expressive face was set in an attitude of gentle humor.

How did such a man become an accountant? thought Al Shei, as she had almost every day since she met him.

“Hello, Beloved.” Al Shei allowed herself a brief smile at the sight of her husband. “There’s trouble, I’m afraid.”

When the signal reached him, Asil straightened up just a little, not alarmed, but alert. “What kind?”

“Marcus Tully.” She told him about the note from Resit, her uninformative conversation with Tully, and the additional spin Dobbs had added to it. She sat back and waited for her words to reach him.

Asil’s sigh puffed out his cheeks. “Well, I’d say there’s no doubt he’s been up to something. But I don’t understand why you think it’s more than the usual. It’s a suggestive song, certainly, but he always has had a taste for cultural arcana.”

“I know, I know.” Al Shei shrugged her shoulders. “It’s more a feeling than anything else, Asil. I just think it might be a good idea if you traced where Tully’s money came from this last run. We may need to cover ourselves.”

“Then I will.” He pulled out his pen and made a note on the desktop in front of him. He glanced up at her, and there was quiet mischief in his eyes. “You could have sent me a text message with all of this, Katmer. I’d have had it in two hours.”

She pulled herself up and put a tone of injured dignity into her voice. “Perhaps I wished to speak to my husband. Surely this is my right.”

His smile warmed and Al Shei felt her heart begin to melt. “Surely it is.”

“Tell the children I love them,” she whispered. “And know full well that I love you.”

“I will.” He reached out and pressed his fingertips against the view screen. “And I do.”

Al Shei copied his gesture, pressing her fingertips against his and imagining it was the warmth of his hand she felt, not the cool glass of the screen.

“ Salam , Beloved,” he said softly.

“ Salam .” Al Shei cut the connection. The view screen faded to black.

She sat where she was for a moment, staring at the blank screen. At last, she dropped her pen into her pocket and stood up.

Whatever happened has already happened , she told herself as she left the booth. It’s time to face what’s still to come .

Dobbs watched her new employer walk away from the cafe and with a small smile of her own. The Fool pulled her scarves out of her sleeve, folded them up neatly and stowed them in her pocket. The Guild’s profile, as usual, was proving entirely accurate. Al Shei was a determined woman with a strong sense of herself and her goals, but not without a sense of humor. Of course, people without humor or empathy seldom hired Fools, except when certain certifications or ratings required them. Dobbs had found herself a little worried that Al Shei hadn’t known she’d been contracted.

Well, every assignment has its own challenges.

She took out her pen and wrote out a credit draft on the table top, adding her thumbprint as authorization. The table checked her writing and print and added the words ACCOUNT SETTLED before it absorbed the text. Dobbs considered the blank surface for a moment and drew a simplistic smiling face before she tucked her pen away.

Marcus Tully was still sitting at his table, swirling the dregs of his drink around the bulb and watching the way the waves rose and fell in the station’s spin gravity. The report on him had been cursory, since he wasn’t an active part of the crew she’d be working with. He’d been an independent shipper for ten years, dry-docked for at least a third of that time for lack of work before he’d married Ruqaiyya Al Shei. After his partner had been arrested for attempted financial mis-dealings, Tully had invited Ruqaiyya’s sister, Katmer Al Shei, to become his new partner in the Pasadena Corp. to share the expenses and risks of operating an independent mail packet ship.