Elizabeth Moon - Change of Command

“And who is that when it’s at home?” It sounded like nothing he’d ever heard of. Natural men? What did they do, run around naked and eat raw fish?

“My guess is it’s some of those bloodthirsty lot who hung around with Admiral Lepescu. Remember the bald man who got blind drunk and wanted to show us trophies that time, after the fight in the bar? And what Kaim told us?”

“Lepescu’s dead,” Goonar said.

“Meanness isn’t, just because one mean man dies.” Basil shifted his shoulders restlessly. “I wonder if Kaim’s all right, or if he’s mixed up in this some way.”

“He’d have told us . . . family . . .”

“Can you see real conspirators confiding in Kaim? He’s so sure he can’t be fooled, he’s like the man holding his wallet and showing pickpockets where it is. I’d hate to have a Terakian involved, even by accident.”

“I’m more concerned about the rest of the family. Mutiny in Fleet’s going to play hob with shipping schedules, ours included. Things were unsettled enough before.”

“Which is why I woke you up. We’re playing skip—the-loop with the Terakian Harvest , and Laisa says we’re almost in tightbeam range.”

“We don’t have to tube over, do we?” Goonar asked. He hated ship-to-ship transfer tubes worse than being woken out of a sound sleep.

“No. Or rather, you don’t; I do. But they want to talk to you.”

Goonar groaned, but rolled out of the bunk, and rubbed his head vigorously. He was not any good fresh out of sleep; he could have smacked Basil just for looking so brisk and awake.

On the bridge of Flavor , Laisa grinned at him. “Exciting times, Goonar.”

“I never prayed for excitement,” he growled. He just wanted to live his life in peace, he thought, holding the memory of dinner around the table on Caskadar . . . the mellow lamplight, the smell of the food, the children’s sweet piping voices. He sighed, and linked in to Harvest ’s com officer.

“Your analysis, Goonar?”

How was he supposed to have an analysis when he was barely awake? Yet though he could barely speak, he could feel the little rolls moving in his brain, the numbers flickering past, faster and faster.

“What’s your cargo?”

“Class D. Tungsten shell casings in the number four hold, conformable explosives in number three, the rest unremarkable.”

“All of it.” They never wanted to tell you all of it, but it was the little things which might turn a profit projection on its head.

“High-fashion software to eight destinations, plumbing supplies—plastic joints, mostly, but also some flapper valves, and a gross of solar-powered pumps, a cube of stuffed dates, and two bales of synthesilk, undyed.”

Goonar knew from experience that the dates and the synthesilk wouldn’t be on the manifest. Crew’s personal possessions, not for sale . . . except at a profit. “Fine—and your destinations and route?”

That came in a long string, directly into his deskcomp.

He looked at it and let the little gears and rollers in his head have their way. Then, just as Basil—suited up—waved at him from the bridge entrance, he had it.

“Xavier.”

“What? That’s not on our list at all!”

“I know . . . but I’ll bet they need your Class D, and they’re listed as a priority destination in the Fleet directive of last week. Nobody wants to go out there.”

“Neither do I!”

“Yes, you do. It’s a long way in the wrong direction from Copper Mountain. Nothing to attract mutineers: no ships to grab, no weapons factories to raid, no rich commerce to prey on. There’s a Fleet presence, but after what happened, it’ll be the most loyal crews they have. It’s an ag world, livestock breeders, minimal hard-goods manufacturing. Also Xavier’s still rebuilding—they’ll take the plumbing supplies, too. They use a lot of synthesilk, and they have their own dyers. After that go to Rotterdam; they’re also agricultural, and they have a little cross-trade with Xavier.”

“What about the high-fashion software? It’s only salable in a skinny window.”

“Tube it to us, and I’ll send it on by the next one we meet, when things are more settled.”

“If they ever are. Fine, then. Godspeed.”

At Chinglin Station, the censorious commander found orders taking him in one direction, while his very relieved companions had orders directing them to other ships. Barin and Esmay took the opportunity to stop by a dessert stand in the concourse that led from civilian docking lounges to the Fleet gate where they were to join the R.S.S. Rosa Gloria . They had less than two hours of time alone, with “alone” defined generously, but it was a great improvement on a suite full of Serranos or the watchful eye of the major.

“It’s like Rondin and Gillian,” Esmay said, swinging her feet against the counter. She felt like a child, sitting on this tall stool and spooning up ice cream. “Old family quarrels and all.”

“You mean Romeo and Juliet,” Barin said. “Shakespeare, very old.”

“No, I don’t,” Esmay said. “I mean Rondin and Gillian. Who are Romeo and Juliet?”

“You must have heard of it; maybe the names changed in your version. Montagues and Capulets, traditional enemies. Duels and banishment and finally they died.”

“No, they didn’t.”

“Yes, they did. She took a potion that made her look dead, and he thought she was dead, and killed himself, and then she found him and killed herself.” Barin took another spoonful of ice cream. “Tragic but stupid. He could have asked a doctor, though my teacher said they didn’t have doctors back when the story was first told.”

“Not Rondin,” Esmay said. “I met him.”

Barin stared. “You’re talking about real people?”

“Of course. Rondin Escandera and Gillian Portobello. Their fathers had quarrelled years before, and forbade them to marry.”

“Why?”

“The quarrel? I don’t know. I never heard, being a girl. I think my father knew, though. It was all very exciting . . . Rondin rode across our land to get to Gillian, because her father had sent her to my great-grandmother to wash Rondin out of her head, he said. That’s where I met her; I was a child, and she was a young woman. Then one night Rondin came and she went out the window.”

“How did he know where she’d gone?”

“Everyone knew—her father made no secret of it.”

“Was she beautiful?”

“Oh, Barin, I was nine . . . ten, maybe. I knew nothing about beauty. She was a grownup who talked to me, that’s all I knew.”

“So what happened?”

“Oh, her father came and yelled at my father, and wanted to yell at my great-grandmother; my grandfather and uncle yelled at him—there was a lot of yelling, and I hid out in my room most of the time, so no one would ask me any awkward questions.”

“Ask you —what did you know?”

Esmay grinned. “I was the one who’d carried the messages back and forth. Nobody paid much attention to a scrawny nine-year-old who was already known to be fond of walking the hills alone. Gillian was nice to me; I’d have done more for her than carry a note a few miles. And I knew where they’d gone. My great-grandmother tried to talk Gillian out of it, said it would be a disgrace for them both, but finally gave them permission to live far in the south, on our land, as—there is no word, in this language, but—they are under Suiza protection, but also under Suiza law. They do not own the land.”

“Are they happy?”

“I don’t know. After the yelling died down, I heard no more about them. But my point was that we are like that, our families opposed to our marriage, and we also must choose to lose our familes or each other.”