Элизабет Мун - Moon Flights

Gerard glowered. “Not my turn. Baris should have—”

“You sell them?” the sales agent said.

“Ship rations? No, of course not. Traditional food.”

Gerard, watching this, admired, Stavros’s tone of voice.

“But—but I must taste that—”

“If you want to,” Stavros said, sounding puzzled. “Gerry, cut him off a piece.” To the sales agent he said, “It’s just a cheese spread thing.”

Gerard sliced off a corner and put it on a plate. The sales agent took it eagerly, eyes alight. His eyes widened when the flavors developed in his mouth. “You—you don’t export this?”

“Wouldn’t be profitable,” Gerard said. “Labor-intensive, expensive to make.”

“Really…” The rep looked at the roll on the table. “That’s—it’s quite good. There might be a market for something like that.”

“But it’s our rations,” Gerard said. He cut off a lump, pressed it on a ship’s biscuit with his thumb, and took a bite. The rep shuddered slightly, but his eyes shifted back to the table. “Besides,” Gerard said, around the mélange of flavors in his mouth, “it’s not licensed provender. You wouldn’t want to buy something with no provenance.”

The man’s hand twitched. Stavros cut off a slice for himself, spreading it onto the round of biscuit with a knife, as a captain should. “Go ahead,” he said to the rep. “Help yourself. I always did say Auntie Grace made the best—”

Gerard nearly choked on the last of the biscuit.

“A relative made this?”

“Yes,” Stavros said, draped in honesty. Gerard admired his skill even more. That statement was true in all senses, but yet, in the conversational context, it was a plain lie.

“She makes fruitcake too,” Stavros went on. “And sausage.” He nodded at the sausage, which had indeed been a gift from Aunt Grace, but they had no idea if she’d made it herself.

“She’s a cook?”

Gerard inhaled a crumb the wrong way and had to cough.

“Not exactly,” Stavros said. “It’s more of a hobby with her. But she’s good at it, isn’t she?”

“If her fruitcake’s as good as this cheese—” The sales agent cut himself another slice. “Look, Captain, we’re hosting a summit conference between—well, I can’t give the names. Hostile powers, let’s say. It’s very, very secret.”

Gerard was tempted to tell him it was no secret on the docks; the loaders had talked about it as the cargo came off. Santanians and Berklundians. If they went to war and started throwing munitions at each other, four useful trade routes would be yellow-tagged for years, until someone cleared all the mess away. Instead, he licked the cheese off his fingers, playing hick to the hilt.

The sales agent went on. “We are tasked—I am tasked—with providing the food. It’s politically inexpedient that they know where the food is from—trade agreements on produce are a major source of the hostility. Something like this—something unique—is exactly what I need. Of course it would have to pass analytical tests, including testing against their allergen panels—”

“Allergen panels?” Gerard asked, as if he’d never heard of them.

“Oh, yes. Our guests provide us with a complete panel of any known allergies, with detailed specifications of the allergens, so we can ensure that nothing they come in contact with will cause them distress.” The rep cut himself yet another slice of the cheese roll, this time spreading it thickly on a ship’s biscuit. “But you’re eating it, and I’m eating it, and my implant’s not flagged it yet. Now—are all the ingredients from your homeworld? Slotter Key, is it, or is that just the ship’s registry?

“No, some ingredients are imported to our homeworld,” Stavros said. “Each family has its own recipes, you understand. For instance, Aunt Grace uses a small amount of CraigsHollow cheese in the mix. And if she runs short of rutter cheese, she uses whatever light cheese is available. We’re not primarily a dairy supplier.”

Aunt Grace would skin Stavros alive, Gerard thought, if she ever found out about this. And she would find out, because she found out everything.

The rep’s expression of gustatorial bliss mixed with intense cunning suggested the source of his next question. “Supposing I were willing to buy such a food product. Without a license of course I could not pay premium prices… how much could you supply?”

Stavros shot a glance at Gerard. “Well… I don’t know. We’d have to be able to resupply here, and your prices are awfully high—”

“What about a straight trade, then? Kilo for kilo? This stuff is good, but surely you’re tired of it by now.”

“Oh, we never get tired of good cheese,” Gerard said. “Would you get tired of this?” His implant rolled the figures past him. If they even-traded cheese rolls for Corland’s high-priced foodstuffs, they could sell those somewhere else and still make a profit. Corland’s station inventory included flash-frozen bloodbeast filets, Turnoy tigerfish steaks, spices from at least twenty worlds.

“Straight trade. No paperwork. If it passes our toxicology tests that’s all that really matters. Private-label it.”

“I don’t know,” Stavros said. “I don’t want to get in trouble with your food safety inspectors.”

“Look—110% by weight premium. Really. How much—”

“Well… ” Stavros looked at Gerard; Gerard shrugged as if he didn’t care. “I guess we could let you have—how much have we got left, Gerry?”

“A couple gross,” Gerard said. “We could let them have ten or twenty rolls and still get home before we ran out.”

“You have over two hundred—come on, you can survive part of one voyage without it, surely. I could use all that—”

“Crew’s not going to like it,” Gerard said. “But it’s up to you, Captain.”

“It’s irregular,” Stavros said, as if that were a problem. “But I guess… if you can guarantee we won’t get in trouble with the authorities…”

“No problem,” the rep said. He cut himself another slice. “No problem at all. I’ll put it in writing. Special import, traditional native food of… Slotter Key, wasn’t it?” Stavros nodded. “And listen—if you can get people to jump through the hoops and set up for export, I guarantee it’d be a profitable product…”

“I don’t know,” Stavros said. “We’re just a transport company really.”

“We’ll need to rewrap it all,” Gerard said. “You know how it is—” he indicated the wrapper, where the words Not For Sale still showed on the uncut end of the roll. That had been another of Baris’s bright ideas. “I suppose you have plain dairy-quality wrap on the station—”

“How soon?”

How long would it take to make up that many cheese rolls if everyone pitched in? The biggest mixer in the galley had a capacity of only 3 kilos of cheese. That would make six half-kilo cheese logs… Gerard ran the calculations, the number of batches, the time it would take to mix in the right amount of flavoring, shape them, roll them in nuts and herbs, wrap and label them. Add a few hours for the inevitable problems. “Day after tomorrow,” Gerard said. “If we get the wrapping today. We’ll have to be careful not to knock off any of the seasonings.”

“I could have that done for you.”

Stavros shook his head. “No—nothing can leave this ship with Not For Sale on it… an inspector couldn’t ignore that.”

“Oh. Of course.”

They had the signed contract within the next hour, and an hour after that, Baris returned to the ship with two rolls of dairy-quality food-product wrap. Gerard had already cleared out the galley and dining area to make a workstation. Someone had started the big mixer in the galley, and two batches sat in bowls ready to shape, with bowls of chopped nuts and herbs ready to go.