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FOURTEEN

Trader jen’Vornin was before him in the suite, though he’d cut the question and answer session ruthlessly short, and excused himself with scant courtesy from those who had tried to buttonhole him after the presentation was done.

“Urgent bidness,” was his excuse, and it was sufficient, as it would have been at a gathering of Liaden traders. He arrived at the SeventeenW suite barely breathless, and only five minutes past the hour.

Stepping into the private parlor, he made certain the door was locked and showed the “in use” flag before he bowed contrition.

“Trader, pray forgive my tardiness.”

She considered him, head tipped to one side, as if he were a particularly interesting length of cloth. Then, with great precision, she bowed, trader-to-trader, and straightened, frowning.

“We should perhaps,” she said, “take a moment to learn each other a little better, if you will indulge me, Trader.”

“Certainly, Trader. Familiarity can only improve trade, so my master taught me.”

“Ah, did she so? Well, it was never said that the Rabbit bred fools.” She brought her hands together in a sharp clap, and smiled when Jethri did not start, but merely turned upon her a look of grave inquiry.

“Truly, you are a work, Trader ven’Deelin—and here we arrive at my topic. Understand, I beg, that I am not High House Liaden. Indeed, I have been given to know that we who Departed are no longer Liaden. That is a question for the scholars of the Code, as would be the question, should your master be so maladroit as to ever allow it to be asked, of your precise standing within Ixin. These are not matters that need concern us. We meet as traders. We may, if you deem it useful, proceed upon our business in Trade. If you prefer to continue in Liaden, please know that my mode diverges considerably from that which is taught to the children of Ixin and Midys. I am plain-spoken—painfully so—and I do not play melant’i games for either advantage or blood.”

She paused. Jethri waited. She inclined, very slightly, from the waist.

“To be clear, I take no offense, that a trader deep in his own business has made time to see only one of the many who desire the gift of his time and expertise.”

Jethri barely stopped himself from bowing. Instead, he produced an incline to match hers, and a smile broader than Liaden, more subtle than Looper.

“I understand, Trader. Thank you for your frankness and clarity. I would choose to go forward in Liaden, as the mercantile mode is more nimble than Trade.”

“I agree,” said Trader jen’Vornin, and waved at the table, set up for a meeting, with tea, tablets and screens. “Let us begin.”


“Already, the Dust limits our ability to trade. Ships come out of Jump half a system distant from their calculated entry points. Worse—Rose of Roella Jumped for a system that is well-known to us, and—bounced back. Understand me, Trader, she could not enter the system at all.”

Trader jen’Vornin paused to sip tea.

“At another of our usual ports, we were unable to navigate the currents well enough to gain a parking orbit. There, we dropped the cargo in nets for the in-system ships to fetch down to the planet. These disruptions have been introduced by the leading edges of Dust. How will we serve our worlds once we are truly engulfed?”

Trader jen’Vornin took a hard breath and bowed her head, visibly calming herself.

“Your pardon, Trader.”

“I would be frantic myself, in such a situation,” Jethri said. “In fact, we’ve had other reports of the hazards of navigation. Yours is the first I’ve heard of a ship being thrown back to the original Jump point, but at this gathering alone, I’ve heard numerous accounts of ships falling out of Jump well short of their destination.”

He paused, frowning down into his tea.

“There have been reports for some time of Looper ships arriving at the correct system, but somewhat distant from the expected point of entry. The thought had been—because Looper ships are of varying condition, many quite old, their Struven units in need of tuning or replacement, their navigation computers—idiosyncratic, if not actively argumentative…”

Trader jen’Vornin laughed softly, and Jethri smiled.

“Yes. In any case, it was the wisdom of our pilots and navigators to place the burden of error upon ship systems, and ways were found to route around known glitches. In some cases, ship systems are surely to blame, but in others—we were perhaps seeing a forerunner of Dust effect.”

He sipped tea.

“We have found that the larger ships are experiencing more navigation problems even in low-Dust situations. Elthoria and Barskalee have experienced entry errors and early departure from Jump, while the small tradeships report no such difficulties.”

He tipped his head.

“I suppose I should say yet. These effects you report—do they consistently trouble large ships and small?”

“There you hit the crux, Trader. Our tradeships are of a size, the routes designed to accommodate both ships and ports served. Understand that the ancestors removed, perhaps not wisely, to an—interesting—area of space. They planned very well for conditions as they were, and when they Departed, they did so in ships of a particular structure and capacity. Our shipyards build to a template, and in truth, we build few, being more focused on maintaining the fleet we have.”

She raised a hand.

“It is a static system, and a master trader would chide us. Indeed, I have seen the need for expansion, and have designed several small side routes, as a base for what I dreamed might become a larger route, in future. But that is a mere diversion. First, we must feed our worlds and keep our people—the tradeships are necessary to survival on some of our worlds, while merely feeding comfort on others.”

“I understand,” Jethri said. He frowned, hearing Bory in memory’s ear, maybe not so patiently explaining the Combine’s new scheme to Desty Gold: “Each family ship will be writing contract with their big ship connection…”

He blinked.

“Trader?” murmured Trader jen’Vornin. “Have you thought of something?”

Jethri smiled at her. “As obvious as that? My master would hide her face. But yes. I have thought of something.”

He glanced at the clock, and shook his head.

“Very quickly, for our time is almost spent—how if your ships had smaller ships, less distressed by the Dust, to take your cargo on the final leg to the port?”

The trader leaned forward. “That would be a boon, for now. As the Dust increases—”

“We can’t know that the solution will hold in the face of changing conditions,” Jethri agreed. “But as a beginning?”

“As a beginning, it sounds very well. However, I must point out that the Scouts will not turn their hands to such work.”

It was humor, Jethri thought, and grinned.

“We need not trouble the Scouts. There are Looper ships which will be in need of work, given the Combine’s new arrangements, and the movement of the Dust. There is opportunity for alliance, and mutual benefit.”

“I like this in principle,” Trader jen’Vornin said slowly. “Can it be made to work, practically? I speak of cultural differences now, Trader.”

“I understand, and here I apply the wisdom of my cousin Khat, a pilot. She has it as a life certainty that one cannot know, until one tries.”

“Hah.”

Jethri pushed his chair back.

“Trader, time presses on me. Let us meet again, after the Replenishment. In fact, let all of us meet together then, to share our progress.”

“I will arrange it,” Trader jen’Vornin said, rising also. She bowed.

“Trader ven’Deelin. It has been a pleasure to sit at work with you. I have hope, now, and for that, I thank you.”


Jethri slid into the aisle seat next to Freza.

“What’d I miss?”

“Intros and warm-up speeches,” she whispered back. “How’d it go with Trader jen’Vornin?”

“Trader’s got a real problem, but I think we’re seeing a route forward. After this, all three work groups are meeting back at the SeventeenW suite. Working lunch—” He squinted. “Dinner? You got time? We’ll be wanting you.”

“I’ll come. You want Brabham?”

“More heads we got on this, the better, is what I’m thinking,” Jethri answered.

She nodded and pulled out her tablet. “He’s down over there, sitting with the rest of the commissioners. I’ll send a message.”

While she worked with the tablet, Jethri looked for “down over there,” locating Brabham’s spare form between a taller bald man dressed like a dirt-sider, and a shorter woman wearing what looked like a ship-jacket, her dark hair in a Looper buzz, and a gold hoop in one ear.

Brabham raised his hand without looking around, and Freza made a satisfied sound.

“He’ll be coming along, after.”

“Good,” Jethri said. “How was—”

“Hold it,” Freza interrupted. “Here comes the big show.”

In fact, there was some rustling and shifting “down over there,” and then a big man got out into the aisle and headed for the stage. He was dressed for portside, with a jacket open over a sweater and a scarf wrapped loose around his throat. His boots were shiny, which was one giveaway that he was only dressing the part—the luxurious hair was another, and the Combine logo on the jacket was a third.

Still, Jethri thought, it was a good effort.

A woman dressed in dirt-side bidness clothes stepped up to the front of the stage, and touched the button on her collar.

“Gentlefolks, we’ve come to what past congresses have called Replenishment. That’s when we fill vacancies in the Commissariat, and replenish our guiding body. We have a tradition of having Commissioners name their replacements, and it is a fine thing, worked for a long time. But as you know and I know, sometimes events sneak up on us and folks don’t get to name their follow-on. In those cases, we have to arrange that ourselves.

“This time we’ll combine Replenishment with Initiation, so everything can go smoother and faster for us all. In this time and place the pre-congress will end and the congress will simultaneously open. And here’s Commissariat Executive Director Bory Borygard, a veteran of a half dozen congresses, at least, come to guide us to safe docking!”

She turned to watch Bory stride across the stage, both hands raised over his head, acknowledging cheers and clapping from the audience.

Freza was clapping, so Jethri did, not hard, and not long, just enough, so he judged, to show goodwill.

Bory reached the woman, and leaned down, so she could fix a button onto his sweater. They shook hands, and she walked to the back of the stage. Bory walked to the front of the stage, grinned into the ongoing noise, raised his hands, and moved them—cool jets. Cool jets.

That only got him more noise, with whistles joining the general racket.

Up on the stage, Bory shook his head, raised a hand to touch the button on his sweater, and boomed with a bravado and working port accent he didn’t come by honestly.

“Finish it up on your own time! We got some serious bidness to deal with, here, and soon’s it’s done, we can call end o’shift and have ourselfs a beer!”

A renewed shout went up. Jethri took a breath. Cool fingers closed around his wrist, and warm breath moved against his ear as Freza whispered.

“Hey, now, Jeth, you wouldn’t wanna ruin the party, would you?”

“Might be inneresting,” he answered and smiled when she laughed soft.

“It’ll finish soon,” she promised. “I wonder who he’s got—Yeah—there. Over on the right side, ’bout a quarter way up the rows. There’s his cheer-on, right on cue!”

Jethri looked over to the right just as a woman in battered port clothes leapt to her feet and shouted.

“Hey! I dunno about you lot, but I want my beer! Everybody just cool jets, and let the man talk!”

That got some laughter, and a round of hoots, and then, amazingly, the noise did die down. Jethri looked around, trying to see if there were proctors going down the rows, but didn’t spot any. By the time he looked back to where the woman had risen, she was gone, and Bory was standing on stage, hands in pockets, grinning, until it was so quiet you could’ve heard a micrometeor tick a scratch in a windscreen.

“All part o’the show,” Freza whispered.

“Show.” Jethri turned his head, distaste for the proceedings plain on his face, but she briefly put her fingers across his lips before settling back into her chair with a hint of smile.

Jethri sighed and did the same, his smile for hers.

“All right, now. Like you just heard Director Mauriline say, we’re here and official at Replenishment, which is some couple of things all at the same time.

“Firstly, it’s closing ceremonies for the pre-congress. Tomorrow morning, we’ll have opening ceremonies for the South Axis Congress. You could say that the pre-congress is where we all talk to each other about what we want the Combine and TerraTrade to be doing for the next four standards, and maybe for four or eight after that.

“The congress is where we get to work, and line everything up formal so that the work we’ve decided to be most important gets done.”

He paused, looking out over the room, and nodded like he’d just heard a question.

“Now, you heard me say we. That’s because we’re a representative body. Commissioners are drawn from the membership, from us. It’s not them and you. It’s us. We’re doing this work, for the good of us all.

“And that brings me to the second thing this meeting is: We don’t want to leave ourselves a mess to clean up before we can get to work. We want to be sure that we can get right to bidness when our congress opens for work tomorrow. We don’t want to waste time getting set up. We want to sit down at the board, and get right on the route.”

There was a brief cheer here. Bory shook his head, and the noise subsided.

“So, what we gotta do for ourselves, is we gotta make sure that there’s enough of us to do the work that’s gotta get done. That means putting some of us into empty seats. Just like you replenish supplies in hydroponics, and we gotta do that with what makes us work, and that’s people! It comes to happen that this time, we’re six short of a good working congress.”

A mutter ran through the room at that, and Jethri sighed. Six seats to fill? He remembered his father talking to Grig about procedures and voting, nominations and cross-nominations. Such things commonly took hours, if not whole days.

“Now, I know what you’re thinking,” Bory said. “You’re thinking that to do this right is gonna take some serious time. Maybe you heard stories about procedural voting that covered days. In that case, you’ll be glad to hear that the seating of commissioners has been streamlined.”

He flashed a grin around the room.

“I want my beer, too, don’t I?”

Laughter. Jethri shot a look to Freza, eyebrows up, but she was watching the stage.

“So, here’s what we do, to make sure there’s enough of us tomorrow to do the work, and we don’t die of thirst. Me and the other commissioners on the nomination committee have had our ears open during the pre-conference, and whenever we heard that this one or that one of us would make a fine commissioner, or had ideas worth looking at, we took note. We met just today and compared our notes, and we got the names of six hard workers who want to make a difference for us going forward.”

He paused to take a breath.

“So, how this goes is that I’ll call out the names, one by one, and those people will come up here to join me. Anybody who objects has until they get up onto this stage with me to shout out. If there’s no objections, then we got a commissioner, right then, with full rights to do what a commissioner does. We do this six times, and then we get our reward. We’ll be Replenished and Initiated!”

Another pause to look around the room.

“Anybody not clear on this?”

The room was as quiet as vacuum.

Jethri sat, riveted.

“All right! Let’s get this done, shipmates!”

The room roared, and under cover of the noise, Jethri leaned to Freza. “They’re going to let the Combine choose six commissioners.”

Freza nodded. “Been moving toward that way for a while now. Brabham remembers when it changed—it’d’ve been after Arin resigned.”

“I don’t see any questions,” Bory said from the stage. “There’s one more thing you need to do, and that’s to be quiet. We gotta be able to hear if anybody objects, so save your applause until all the commissioners are standing up here with me! Last call for questions—anybody?”

The room was silent. Bory nodded.

“Looks like we all understand each other!” Bory called. “First name! Gert Dare of Dare’s Challenge!”

There was a shocked flutter from the left side, back, as a stocky woman with grey hair got down the row, and into the aisle. She walked to the stage in utter silence, climbed the ramp and came to stand next to Bory.

“Congratulations, Gert,” Bory said. “You’re a commissioner. See that you do good work for us.”

Gert grinned and bobbed, and at Bory’s direction went a few steps to the rear so as not to block the path of the next commissioner, who was—

“Desty Gold of Gold Digger!”

Jethri twitched. Freza put her hand on his arm, pressing hard.

“Shhh… Take it easy, Jeth.”

He swallowed, closed his eyes, and accessed one of the exercises Scout ter’Astin had taught him that imposed calm.

When he opened his eyes again, there were four new commissioners standing on the stage with Bory, and the fifth walking down the aisle. He’d missed their names and their ships, but Freza would know, and she’d make sure he knew.

Bory congratulated the fifth commissioner, and asked her to step back with the others. He paused for a heartbeat, then, looking down at the stage, like a man considering what he should do next. Slowly, he came forward to the very edge of the stage and looked soberly out over the room.

“I know I said we were going to get to our beers quick,” he said, his voice quieter now, “but I’m going to ask you to be patient with me, because this next commissioner—it’s a…special…honor to be able to name this next commissioner to work for us, and I’d like you to know why.”

He looked out over the room.

“Some of you here might remember Arin Tomas, who married onto Gobelyn’s Market. Arin worked for us for a lot of years—good work, far-seeing work. It was my good fortune to work with him, to learn from him. I considered him a friend.”

Bory paused again, head bent. Nobody in the room breathed. Jethri didn’t, though he stiffened in his chair, and Freza’s hand pressed harder on his arm.

“I’m not going to bore you with ancient history. Just say that Arin found a difference of opinion with us, and he quit working with us and for us. That hurt. It hurts still. I blame myself, thinking I should have come up with some way to make it right, to bring him back working for us, but I never did. Then, there was an emergency, and Arin was right there with the rescue team—you see, right? He was helping us, still! Well, that was where he took his final Jump, and there wasn’t any making it up from there. I’d failed us, and him, and me.”

“Jeth?” Freza whispered.

“Right here,” he answered, easing forward in his chair. Commissioner. Bory was about to name him a commissioner, fulfill his dreams of following his father. He looked down at his hands, his trade ring on one hand; his father’s commissioner ring on the other. It was—overwhelming.

He sought calm, heard the words in his head.

Commissioner Jethri!

He twisted the ring on his hand, knowing he wanted to hear that said, even as doubt washed out from his backbrain.

It would be so good to hear.

But did it serve trade?

He blinked, and through the roaring in his ears heard Bory’s voice ring out.

“So, that’s why—why I’m honored to call out the name of new commissioner Jethri Gobelyn ven’Deelin, off of Genchi!”

Jethri got to his feet, stepped out into the aisle, turned, and held his hand out to Freza.

She stared, eyes narrowed, rose slowly, stepped out beside him and took his hand.

Somebody whistled. Somebody else stamped their feet. Somebody else said, “Quiet, please. The floor is open only for objections.”

There were no objections.

Jethri and Freza went up the ramp, and walked across the stage. Freza let go of his hand before he reached Bory, who snatched him into a show-off hug, and then set him back.

“Commissioner,” the big man said, his voice sounding choked. “I’m proud.”

Jethri resisted the temptation to smooth his coat, and produced a modest smile as he peered out into the crowd, recruiting himself with the ghost of the bow accepting honor, the ghost of a nod of acknowledgment.

“I wonder if I could say a few words,” he said. “If the people can wait another minute for their beers.”

Bory smiled, and turned around.

“Commissioner Gobelyn would like to talk to you. Are there any objection?”

Silence.

Bory nodded, reached to his sweater and detached the button. He leaned forward and attached it to the lapel of Jethri’s trade coat.

He stepped back and bowed, just slightly, and moved his hand, showing Jethri the way to the front of the stage.

“Commissioner,” he said. “You’ve got the floor.”


Jethri looked out over the room. Hundreds of people, here and there a face that looked generally familiar. Right in the center was a cluster of Golds, grinning and elbowing each other. Over to the left, another cluster—Wildes, he thought, by the hair. Right in front, he looked down at the rows of commissioners, faces as neutral as any Liaden, and Brabham looking almost sleepy. Over to the right, sitting with a chair empty on either side, a very familiar face. Might’ve been his father, except his father was dead. Back, and up toward the top of the room, he saw Bry Sen sitting in a row with the Roella Delegation, Chiv, Tranh, and Law-Jaw Pocono Ventrella.

The room—rustled, which was people wanting their beers.

Jethri smiled, and he bowed, as one honored. He straightened with both arms outstretched, letting everybody get a good look at him: the Terran standing tall in a good Liaden trade coat, made especially to fit him.

“I want to say particular thanks to all of you, new commissioners and old, the Combine directors, and the nomination committee,” he said. “I’ll be keeping this short. We’ve all been workin’ hard these last couple days, and we deserve a down-shift. I just want to say that—like Bory told you, my father was a commissioner. Put a lot of his life, and his passion into the job. He believed in trade going forth, he believed in routes, and Loops, and families; he believed in us serving our ports, and keeping the trust on both sides.”

He paused in absolute silence. The air in the room—tingled, and Jethri thought he felt the hair on his head stir.

“For most of my life, I wanted to be like my father. Work the Loop, improve the trade.” He took a breath. “Serve as a commissioner.”

That got a spatter of applause from the commissioners down front, and Jethri smiled.

“Yeah, I dreamed of being a commissioner like Arin,” he said, raising his hand. “And I got his ring right here on my hand, to remind me of that dream.”

The applause was louder this time, more widespread. Jethri ducked his head, and waited for the noise to subside. Uncle Yuri, he saw from the side of his eye, was leaning forward slightly; Brabham’s head was cocked to one side.

“Now, dreams—sometimes you grow out of them, sometimes they grow out of you—and sometimes a new dream rises up and says, you’re the one—work with me, serve trade, and honor, the Loops and the families, ship-side and dirt-side. And that’s what happened to me.

“I still want to be a commissioner—sure I do!—and work for all of us, like Bory said. But there’s this new way of working for us all—the Envidaria—seeing it in place and working for all of us—that’s my priority in a way that it can’t be a commissioner’s priority, nor the Combine’s or even TerraTrade.”

Jethri felt the air shift behind him, glanced down at the front row, and saw Brabham lift a shoulder.

Finish it up, he told himself, and leaned forward, like he was talking personally to every person in the hall.

“So, here’s my first dream fulfilled. I’m a commissioner, with all the rights of a commissioner, including that traditional right to name the replacement to my chair—which is what I’m doing right now.”

He turned and beckoned. Freza stepped up to join him at the front of the stage, and he took her hand to raise it high.

“Freza DeNobli of Balrog! She’s been workin’ for us near all her life. She learned at Commissioner Brabham DeNobli’s knee, stood as his assistant. Every Looper here knows the DeNoblis, and you know she’ll work for all of us!”

The room exploded into cheers and shouts, clapping, whistles, and stamping.

Jethri released Freza, pulled off his father’s ring, and held it high.

The noise abated—slightly.

“Commissioner DeNobli,” Jethri said, taking Freza’s hand again. “Do us proud!”

He slipped the ring onto her finger.


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