TWO
“And you have to spend the station scrip before we leave, because there’s a good-through date,” Squithy finished, while Klay turned his new wallet over in his hands, looking at the windows and rubbing his fingers over Dulcimer’s sigil and his name.
“That’s fine,” he said, and looked up at her with a smile. “That’s real fine, Squith, thank you.”
“I liked doing it,” she said. “And getting you a wallet made it seem think-forward to get one for me, too, for when I have something to put in it.” She pulled hers out, and opened it, showing him the first window. “Besides my crew card, I mean.”
“You ought to get a draw, Squith,” Klay said slowly.
“Dulsey said maybe Tranh will think of that, now I’ve been upgraded.”
He kind of half-smiled.
“If Dulsey said that, I’m pretty sure Tranh’s going to remember real soon. In the meantime, here—” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the chip he’d let her use today. “Let’s get this transferred over to you, yourself, so you got something to keep your crew card company. Bad luck for a wallet to be empty, wasn’t that it?”
“Bad luck to buy an empty wallet,” Squithy said, remembering the engineer with his maybe-Sight.
“Well, the theory holds,” Klay said. “When your good-through money ages out, your wallet’ll be empty. Can’t risk that. Here, put your thumb right there in the center.”
Squithy hesitated, because that would make her the owner of the chip and the credits on it, but Klay wanted her to do it; she could tell it would make him happy if she did, and it would, she thought, be something to have real credit of her own.
She reached out and pushed her thumb in the center of the chip.
“That’s it!” Klay sounded glad. “Next time you go out on port, you can spend your own.”
Squithy smiled, picked up her wallet and put the chip carefully away in a window.
“Dulsey and me’re gonna take the tour of A Level,” she told Klay. “I’ll buy my own ticket.”
“And a snack for you and Dulsey, if you want,” Klay said.
She hadn’t thought of that, either, but it would be right, she told herself, to buy Dulsey a treat, and…fun to share it with her.
It had been fun to bring the striped box of dough squares back to Dulcimer and put it in the galley for everybody to find and choose one. Some of the squares were sweet, and some were savory, and some were spicy. Falmer’d been surprised by her first taste of a spicy square, and she’d been careful to choose one with sugar on top for her second.
She’d been worried that there wouldn’t be any left for Klay, and there’d only been three left when he came into the galley—one of each.
“Those are for you,” she’d told him, when he sat down at the table with her.
“Yeah? Don’t you want any?”
“I already had mine,” she said, and he’d nodded and tried the savory one first, and while he ate it, she’d told him about the shopping trip, and when he’d done, she’d given him his new wallet, and the credit chip.
Now, he took a bite out of the spicy square, his eyebrows going up, and the tips of his ears getting red.
“That’s—something,” he said, his voice whispery. “Might go good with some water.”
“I’ll get it,” Squithy said, and jumped up, getting water for both of them and coming back to the table.
“I didn’t like the spicy ones much, either,” she said.
“They take some getting used to, is all,” Klay answered, and finished the rest of the square, followed by a big swallow of water.
“So, Squith, you gotta know this. There’s gonna be a meeting after dinner. That’ll be the captain and the traders and the first classes. That’s you and Falmer and Susrim left out. It’s a security thing, and the word comes from the captain and both traders.”
Squithy got cold.
“They’re deciding about the norbears,” she said, breathless, and feeling like maybe she should start counting—but no, this was important. If they were going to decide about the norbears without her…
She felt them, then, as if from a distance; a sense of sorrow and determination fading even as she felt them.
“Is Dulsey going to be at the meeting?” she demanded. Klay shook his head.
“Crew meeting, and anyhow Dulsey’s gone. Saw her out the hatch myself just before I came in to find you.”
She bit her lip.
“Klay—”
“Squith, I’ll be in the meeting, right? If there’s anything where you’re needed to translate for them, I’ll push for them to call you. But, see, it’s not just norbears we’ll be talking about—and they’re talking themselves, you felt it, didn’t you?”
“I did,” she said quietly, and took a deep breath. “I just don’t like not knowing.”
“Won’t be much knowing at first,” Klay said. “There’s a ladder of things that have to happen. First, we got to all agree that we’ve got a good offer from Crystal, and if we don’t, what could we ask for to make it good. Now, me, I think we’ve got a good offer, best we’ll get, considering, and I’ll vote that way. The norbears—well, you know Tranh wants them gone. They amuse Rusko, but not so much he’ll go against Tranh to keep ’em. Thing is that the norbears are themselves, like Dulsey says, so they get to decide do they want to come to terms with Crystal, and if they do, will they all go, or some stay? They’re coming back to us, once Crystal’s finished with their project, Dulsey’s not moving on that, though Tranh might try once more. Problem is, we’re not even. Dulcimer needs Crystal more than Crystal needs Dulcimer.” He paused, and looked into the box.
“I’m not sure I can eat that one all by myself. Share?”
Squithy smiled. “Sure.”
He picked up the square and broke it in half, giving her one.
“Crystal don’t even need the norbears, is my reading, though Dulsey thinks they might be useful for whatever it is. Big difference between useful and necessary, and if Tranh pushes too hard, she can just as easy leave them on the table, like they say. And if the norbears decide to stay with Dulcimer, then that’s what’ll happen, no questions there.”
Squithy chewed the sweet dough thoughtfully.
“Do you think they’re going to turn it down—the norbears?”
He shrugged.
“Hard to know what to think, there. I’m getting that they don’t want to go away from what’s known and safe and at the same time, they want to see new things.” He grinned. “We’re not the only ones going to be talking long tonight.”
She finished her sweet and took a drink of water.
“You said you think Dulsey’s deal is good,” she said. “What’s everybody else think?”
“That’s why we gotta talk. There’s two sides to every trade, see. Crystal’s made their offers, and now Dulcimer’s got to decide if it’s good, or if we want something other than what’s offered, or more of it, or less. Then Dulsey’s got to think about is it worth it to Crystal to alter the original offer. What I think…” He paused. “I think nobody—Crystal, us, or the norbears—will get exactly what they want, but close enough to agree. And that’ll be a problem, sort of.”
She’d nodded him on and his smile was honest, like his voice. He wasn’t trying to fool her, or make her think things were better or different than they were.
“So, what I’m getting from the norbears is that some’ll stay with Dulcimer, and some’ll go. They gotta decide who goes, who stays. Whoever stays, and I think Tranh might stick at this, and Susrim won’t like it one bit, will be alt-crew, that’s the third side of the trade, but if they’re themselves, then they can’t be passengers; gotta be crew. And whoever goes, we’ll be missing friends, but the ones who stay, they’ll be missing family.”
“But we’ll be here.”
“Thing is, as much as they live with us, we’re not their family and they’re not yours or mine. Patel wouldn’t take that for real anyway, and you know that’s true. Me and you…we got different connections to them, warm, but not family.”
Squithy sipped her water.
“I tried to explain crew rank to Mitsy, and I’m not sure it got through,” she said slowly. “And there’s something else, Klay. I’m worried…”
She stopped, wondering if she should tell him, but it was Klay, and he wouldn’t laugh at her.
“What’s worrying you?” he asked.
She took a deep breath and met his eyes.
“I’m worried, with the norbears gone, that I’ll—I’ll go back to how I was, counting to not be confused; slow, and a trouble for everybody.” She felt her eyes filling with tears. “I don’t want that.”
“Hey.” Klay touched her hand where it was on the table. “We’ll still have some norbears, remember? And you know what I think?”
She blinked at him.
“What?”
“I think you was out of true, and the norbears got you on-course, however they did, and you won’t drift, now.”
She caught her breath.
“You really think that?”
“I do,” said Klay stoutly. “You ask Oki what she thinks. And there’s another thing I think, too.”
His voice sounded different, sad, maybe, but his eyes didn’t look sad, and he didn’t move his hand from hers. It felt nice, so she didn’t pull away.
“I think that you and me, we’re maybe working our way into something special. I’m glad of it, but there might be problems, too.”
So, it just wasn’t her feeling warm about Klay? He felt it, too? That made her feel warmer, somehow, and she thought she ought to tell him, but instead, she said, “If I think about you, or if I say your name, Mitsy shows me your face, but there’s mine right there with you, and when she shows me feeding them, there’s this…echo that’s you, right with me. They know it, what you said, about us being special. And, you know what else? If Mitsy thinks of Tranh, there’s Rusko right there with him, the same way, and Rusko echoes Tranh.”
“I’ve seen it, all of it,” Klay said. “That’s how they work, the norbears. They connect to each other, and they have lists, or lines of support. I see me in there, and you, and Mitsy and Ditsy, and some of the rest. So, that’s something we’re part of that we gotta watch.”
She nodded, and thought she might lean forward, just a little, and put her lips against his cheek. He’d like that, she thought—
“Crew meeting, one half hour,” Rusko’s voice came out of the comm. “Crew meeting, one half hour.”
Klay sighed, and took his hand off of hers.
“Well, that’s me. Listen, Squith, when there’s time—maybe when Susrim takes his liberty tomorrow, we can talk more, ’kay?”
She nodded. People didn’t always remember when they promised to talk to her, but that was changed now, and it was especially changed with Klay.
“I’ll like that,” she said, “to talk more.”
“Good.” He stood up and smiled down at her.
“It was a good thing you brought those tasties back. It’s gonna be a long meeting, and we’ll be running on paste ’n crackers and ’mite.”
Then he was gone.
Squithy sighed, and finished off her water, then kept sitting at the table, thinking. Thinking about Klay, and how she’d almost put her lips against his cheek, and how he’d glanced back at her as he left the galley, as if he knew what she’d almost done. That was good, she told herself. That was better than good, it was fine.
She got up, and put the cups to be washed, cleaned the table, folded up the box and put it in the recycler, paying close attention to what she was doing, and wiping the table twice. Definitely, she was not counting, or fixating; she was doing things that needed to be done, and making sure they were done right.
Definitely, she was not thinking about all the decisions that were about to be made without her being a part of the deciding, when whatever was decided might change everything…
Just when everything had gotten so much better than it ever had been.