FOUR
Jethri quick-read everything on the databar in two hours, then took a break. He put his day-clothes to be cleaned, put the fractin in the jewel-box with his necklace, his father’s ring, and his South Axis Congress and Trade Fair ID tag. He paused in the act of removing pin’Aker’s whimsical trader’s ring, and decided to keep it. Who knew but that he might need backup when he hit the databar again, for a close-read?
A quick shower soothed him; putting on simple ship togs with flat pockets a pure relief after the hours of dealing with multiple comms, back-up comms, ID cards, business cards, info cards…
He hit the galley for a mug of ’mite, and returned to his desk, flipping back to the beginning of Freza’s data. He sighed. It was dense stuff, all right, but it was well-organized, and meticulously cross-referenced. He ought to be able to finish a close reading, with note-taking, in three hours.
He opened the first file, gathered himself to read—closed his eyes, had a swallow of ’mite and sighed.
“Well,” he said to the empty office. “Maybe four hours.”
He’d been working steadily, taking notes, checking the meanings of technical words and clauses, when a chance phrasing reminded him of the language Malu and Vally spoke between themselves, and he opened a side search.
After some traces and leaps of ingenuity, he thought that magiestro might be Elsvair dialect for minister, and he could trace komercisto to commissary and from there make the leap to commissioner. Which were at least consistent with each other and with a mistaken assumption that he was at the congress as a commissioner or deputy.
The confusing word was kohno, which wasn’t spelled close to what it had sounded like, and, while meaning many things to many people, had no bearing on his melant’i, even a melant’i mistaken. In some places a kohno was a military officer, a person of some melant’i and import. However, in some back world locations kohno was an honor given, or willfully assumed—the sources weren’t entirely clear—by someone who owned property or was otherwise acknowledged as being a leader. And just to confuse the docking even more, kohno was sometimes offered as an honorific by someone who didn’t want to besmirch the melant’i of a worthy person. Unfortunately, as with any number of casual honorifics, the opportunity for ironic use was wide.
So! Did the crew of Elsvair intend kohno as their little joke, or were they trying to let him know that they understood he had a different and deeper melant’i than the average spacer he’d been pretending to be when he first met them? He’d need to get clear on which it was, going forward, he supposed.
He closed the side search and went back to Freza’s files.
The timeline presented was ambitious; in fact portions of the various proposals had been taken from the Envidaria itself, though modified for new arrangements and necessities. Using current Loops and trade schedules, acknowledging the existence and growing importance of Tradedesk, suggesting that perhaps Liaden Scouts might be asked for assistance on the science side and that the Pilot’s Guild certify reports of Jump anomaly as being essential sharing rather than proprietary information…
That last was going to be difficult, Jethri thought, since it basically asked ship captains to rate the effectiveness of their drives and Struven units, the accuracy of their scans, even their tendency to purposefully offset Jump points to favor their ship’s peculiar spins.
He remembered a long-ago conversation between Cris and Khat, when Cris had come back from helping some cousins who’d gotten short a pilot. Turned out the cousin’s ship tumbled bad when it came out of Jump, while the Market only produced a modest spin that had long been corrected for in her ’quations. It hadn’t meant much to him at the time; he’d only heard ’cause he’d been on Stinks, like he always was, and so usually everybody just talked like he wasn’t there.
But it turned out that the tendency of some ships to leave Jump with spins or tumbles they’d not had on entering, and the fact that not all ships came into the location the ’quations aimed them for, but spread over a larger region of space—was important. Arin had known it was important, and the Envidaria emphasized the need to share info from ships and pilots, info that might have given a pilot and a trader an advantage in time and efficiency—private info—so it could be studied, and Dust Warnings added to the latest maps and directories.
That was going to be a hard sell. Jethri sighed. Almost all of it was a hard sell, and for a couple breaths he wished he’d decided otherwise on releasing the Envidaria into wide space.
And, then—there were the planets and stations that depended on their regular ships, and the ships that depended on bringing trade to those same planets and stations, not to mention the ships that would be lost for lack of good info.
Sighing, Jethri reached for his mug, and found it empty. He shook his head, frowned at the screens.
The sounds of ship-on-port were in the background, the extra vibrations, the additional notes of messages being received and sent locally, even the low ding of the annunciator telling the ship someone had something to deliver. Crew was taking care of that; the flowers had given way to personal cards of invitation to so many meals he’d have to eat nonstop for a Standard to do them all justice. He’d need to write notes, of course, but for this while, the cards could rest in the basket in the foyer.
He flipped back to the timeline. Two Standard Years, the Envidaria Team wanted from him, to stand as ambassador and do his best to save ships, planets, and lives, while finding a new and profitable route for Genchi, possibly finding time to take a test for master trader, and whatever else the master traders had in mind…
It was all a bit overwhelming.
“You’re thinking too far out, Jeth,” he muttered, and made an adjustment to the screen, so that only the timeline for the pre-congress was visible. He pulled up the list of committee meetings and seminars he was scheduled to attend in order to explain the Envidaria, the Dust, the need for all Loopers to join, not just those who supplied the Seventeen Worlds. The Dust would move on to threaten other systems, that was certain. The protocols, supports, and contacts they were building for the Seventeen Worlds were going to be needed again and again, adjusted for each new situation, though the framework would stay pretty much the same.
The list of items he was obligated to attend as speaker or presenter—that’s a lot of meetings, he thought, reading the descriptions. Along about the third one, he realized that, though there were a lot of meetings, each one was limited to thirty people. That was good—he couldn’t see himself down front in a room that held hundreds, trying to explain the whole business to a faceless sea.
A small group, he’d be able to see faces, adjust for the audience. He might even know some attendees, or at least their ships. He could make himself clear to thirty people, even if one of them was Mac Gold. He could make them understand why they needed to do more than fly their Loops and tend their business, and why the future was counting on them to join in.
He made some notes on hard copy, a habit he’d picked up from Scout ter’Astin, who’d pointed out that while “erased” digital notes could be recovered or shared if someone had the proper equipment, the same was not true of fiber products reduced to ash and molecules in any standard recycling unit. Since he didn’t want directional notes to himself to make it into digital formats where he might inadvertently add them to shared information, this was a good start.
He sighed, and realized that his nerves were—fizzing. It was like the feeling he got when his fractin was on alert—but his fractin was in his jewel-box, in his cabin.
“Think close in,” he told himself. “Remember what Brabham said—pace yourself.”
He made some more notes, sketching in some ideas. The best way to convince people to buy something was to be open and clear—or as Master ven’Deelin would occasionally say, apparently serious, though lately he’d begun to wonder about that—“A trader is made of window glass, my son, transparent to every eye.”
He sighed, and looked at his mug again. It was still empty.
Things were, he reflected, speeding up for real.
And if he was going to be up to speed, he’d better get some sleep. He’d gotten used to Freza beside him, just that quick, and he had a doubt that he would sleep, without her, but a man had to try.
Sighing, he saved his files, turned off the comm, and went to bed.