Ripley laughed, unoffended. “I can afford to be unpleasant. You can’t.” He belched. “okay, Kit, I’ll tell you about the gate if I see a thousand up front.”
”A hundred, tops.”
They fell to serious haggling. Kit finally agreed to pay Ripley five hundred. The scout dug out his log and downloaded a file, then passed the disk over. “There it is. Enjoy.”
”Thanks,” Kit said dryly, passing back a check for five hundred.
”Better not bounce,” Ripley said, tacking on a grin at the last moment.
”Watch your mouth,” Malcolm growled.
”It’s all right, Malcolm. Ripley can’t help being abrasive any more than a monkey can help having fleas. Come on, let’s see if I got my money’s worth.”
They left Ripley chuckling as he folded up Kit’s check and stuffed it into his wallet.
The file contained very little information. Ripley had gone through the gate and logged for location and time: thirty-two degrees east longitude by twenty-six degrees south latitude, late September of 1542. “There’s a small Portuguese trading settlement about two miles north of the gate on Delagoa Bay, Mozambique. A number of native tribal groups in the region are split between Swazi and Shona dialects.
”I see some Moslem influence from contact with Islamic traders, but not much. Relations between the indigenous peoples and the Portuguese is hostile at best. There is absolutely nothing of value to be found in this settlement. Delagoa Bay is merely a stopover to take on fresh water and food supplies for Portuguese ships headed to India. From what I’ve been able to gather, the Jesuits didn’t even leave a mission here when Francis Xavier stopped in 1541. My conclusion is that this is an utterly worthless string not warranting further exploration.”