“Gone when we got here,” Padur said. “And Padur was here before Nam. Rumor is they just boarded ship and took out of here. I won’t bet on any holdouts, but by my experience, they’d Phase if they had to hide: they wouldn’t do it.”
“Which ship took them? Where?”
“The general staff, on Pakkitak, to Meetpoint via Hoas. A rumor—a rumor about certain ones going to Kita on Ko ‘juit .”
One kifish ship. One mahen ship, to Kita Point. Not unheard of, for stsho to use either species’ transportation. But Padur said it: it was rumor. Everything they knew, was a report they had from the mahendo’sat, namely from the Personage and from Ana-kehnandian.
“We’ve got to find Atli-lyen-tlas. We have a package with that address. Hear anything on that score?”
“The ambassador?” Kaury Narn said. “That gtst excellency and one of the staffers went with the mahen ship.”
“How sure are your sources?”
“Market gossip, no more, no less.” Kaury twitched her ring-heavy ears and settled back, arms folded. “Which means nothing. And if I knew anything else that bears on it, I’d be quick to tell you. I don’t know.”
Information appearing without source, in a hotbed of gossip both true and false, in a market that sailed and fell on rumors and accusations and public perceptions. Wonderful.
“We’re outbound tomorrow,” Padur said. “Fueling in the next watch. You’re on to Kita, then?”
“Not willingly. Certainly not where I’d like to go. If you do run across my aunt’s track—“
“I’ll pass it on what’s happened, where you’ve gone.” Small movements, twitches of the ears, shiftings in the chairs, said that two busy captains were anxious to get back to work: news was welcome, but sparser than they had hoped, and it threatened none of their clan interests.
This captain was the same—at least busy and anxious to get back to the market reports—to safeguard her clan interests. Their on again, off again entry into Urtur market and the (by now) famous encounter in the customs office, had sent the prices of goods in their hold up and down, up and down, and (more than one could play that game) she had had Chihin and Tiar buying current entertainment, fine-grade composites supplies, grain, and a handful of mahen luxuries on the market, saying, if asked, that the Legacy might just go on to Kita to sell its load. Which was an honest possibility—until she had gotten a fair offer and a fair buy option.
Not that she’d have deceived other hani captains: they’d already concluded their deals before the Legacy’?, cargo hit the boards; besides that they were coming from the other direction, with different goods; and one being in process of loading and one set for un-dock, already in countdown.
Dirty tricks on the mahen traders and the handful of kif in port, but traders who relied solely on the rumors that ran the docks were asking for surprises; and those who asked what all of a certain species seemed to be acting on, and how they were selling and buying learned far more. It was the way the game was played, that was all, a stsho game from top to bottom.
Except they had a direct barter offer on the methane load, gods rot the luck: that was the trouble with dealing with the methane docks—they too often wanted to barter, you couldn’t always handle what they wanted to give and you couldn’t talk to a matrix brain to explain your constraints.
Hani, thank the gods, were much more straightforward.
“What’s the situation at Meetpoint?” Padur asked on the way to the airlock.
“Chancy. You want my opinion, if I weren’t carrying what I’m carrying, for a rate I can’t tell you, I’d do a turn-around at Hoas back for here. Something’s going on with the stsho, you’ve guessed that the same as I have, and I don’t have the least idea what, but it would keep me out of Meetpoint if I wasn’t paid real, real well. Possibly the administration there is in some kind of crisis. Possibly the crisis is here. Possibly …” The idea occurred to her on the spot, and she might have censored it, but these were allied captains, of nominally friendly clans. “Possibly it could be a crisis much further into stsho territory. And someone wiser than I am should consider that possibility. I’ve no way to get a message anywhere, except by you.”