Pity. It’d have been a hair easier if the proper cabin-holders were the people holding the cabin at present . . . but if they were all easy, Trident Starlines wouldn’t need people like Ran Colville to back up the Empress’s stewards.
Ran aimed his transceiver link toward the IR head above the doorjamb. The Sadek family stared at him: the husband stiff, as though he faced a firing squad; the wife fierce, the children obviously frightened . . . and the infant gurgled again.
“Colville to Bridge,” Ran said. “Project a First Class occupancy plan through my reader.”
“Do you remember on Matson’s Home, how the government made me a colonel after the rebels ambushed the sight-seeing train and I potted a few of them just to keep us from being shot?” Wade said. “Heaven knows, I didn’t care anything about their politics.”
The Empress’s controlling artificial intelligence obediently shunted data through deck-conduction radio to Ran’s hologram projector. The lens system couldn’t handle a double spread, so it switched rapidly between the A and B levels.
All the cabins in both arrays were coded red, occupied.
“Oh, for pity’s sake!” Ran snapped. “Bridge, give me a list of empty cabins. The whole ship isn’t full.”
“Be fair, Dickie,” Belgeddes was saying. The two men were clearly playing out a well-practiced skit. “The general was going to make you a captain until he threw his arms around you and you knocked him down because you weren’t sure of just what he had in mind. Then he made you a colonel.”
“The whole ship is not full,” the AI replied tartly. “All the First Class cabins are occupied, however—as the plan I projected at your request clearly shows.”
“Why on earth are—”Ran began; and stopped himself, because it was the wrong thing to worry about when he had a real problem to solve.
The artificial intelligence answered the half-spoken question anyway. “A Szgranian noblewoman has taken a block of sixty-four cabins and the Wu-Ti Suite, for herself and her entourage,” it said. A long row on A Deck, starboard outboard—the rank of cabins directly beneath 8241, in fact—glowed yellow, then returned to red highlighting.
“All right,” Ran said, “tell me what is open.”
Cabin Class was a ring of accommodations amidships. They were designed for multiple occupancy by strangers, with two pairs of bunk beds in each room and relatively spartan facilities otherwise. There were only 204 places in Cabin. The real purpose of the class was to provide a physical separation of First Class and the packed mass of Third Class passengers further aft. Some people who could afford First preferred Cabin, however, because the very small number of passengers traveling together fostered friendliness and camaraderie.
There were about a dozen empty bunks, scattered throughout the Cabin Class area.
“Right,” Ran said. “Bridge, clear me compartments four-thirty-two and four-thirty-four. Assign them to the Sadek party, six persons, in place of the eight-two-four-one assignment made in error.”
“Passengers already assigned aren’t going to like moving,” one of the stewards said, ostensibly to his fellow.
“Berths in Cabin Class are assigned in accordance with the company’s pleasure,” Ran responded sharply. “If you mean that some stewards have already pocketed bribes for arranging lower bunks for people who’ll have to move to top ones—that sounds like a personal problem to me.”
“We will not move!” Mr. Sadek cried. “Our ticket is correct!”
“Sir,” Ran said, “you have a valid ticket, and responsibility for the error rests with Trident Starlines. But there was an error, and—”
“You say our ticket is correct and you say that the fault is yours!” Sadek said. His eldest daughter edged closer to her mother, and the two-year-old boy began to cry. “Racism is the only reason that you move us and not them!”
Ran looked at the smaller man, considered his next words and their possible side effects—and spoke the flat truth anyway. “No sir,” he said. “I said your ticket is valid, but it’s not correct.”
He took a deep breath. “And I said Trident is responsible for the error . . . but as for what actually happened, I’d guess you knew the Empress was fully booked, but you got a friend at Golconda Travel Agency—”the issuing agency on the Sadeks’ ticket”—to cut you a ticket through their Ain al-Mahdi office where the data base hadn’t been updated. If necessary, I’ll see to it that the company reviews its arrangements with Golconda—”