"So, why are you here when you could be with your husband and kids on the Barca Roja?"

"I needed some s.p.a.ce. Working for the family can be a little claustrophobic at times. Besides, my daughter wanted to see what it was like working on a corporate carrier." She shrugged. "It just worked out. We'll probably head back when our contracts are up."

"Your daughter?" I asked.

"Yeah, my daughter."

Pip had finished fixing Jennifer's breakfast by then and they both sat down with us.

"Morning, Mom," Jennifer said, and gave Salina a little peck on the cheek.

Pip must have seen the look on my face. "What? You didn't know?"

Jennifer looked around and asked, "What's going on?"

Salina smiled. "I think our young Mr. w.a.n.g here is getting an education in s.p.a.cer life."

Jennifer turned to me. "You're not a s.p.a.cer?"

"My mom was a lit professor. The Lois is my first ship."

"You've got to be kidding?"

Pip shook his head. "Nope, he's serious."

Salina looked up from her plate. "He thought all ships were like the Lois until he saw Pip's aunt and uncle's ship last night."

"You have family in-port, Pip?" Jennifer asked. "How nice!"

Her comment wasn't any kind of oh-my-G.o.d-that-is-so-amazing nice. It was more like nice haircut nice.

Pip grumbled, "Yeah, well." But he didn't offer anything more.

"What ship?" Jennifer asked.

Pip sighed. "Bad Penny, eight tonner out of Deeb."

"Oh cool, one of the Unwin-eight hulls?" Jennifer asked.

"No, Manchester-built Damien."

"Ooh, fast ship! Is there any more darberry jam?"

Pip got up to fetch a jar of jam while Salina continued to be amused over her coffee cup and Jennifer dug into her sausage and eggs.

"You've done pretty well for a land-rat," Jennifer commented, looking up from her plate. "You always wanted to run away to s.p.a.ce?"

"Actually, I had to get off planet or be deported when my mother died," I said.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know." She looked to her mother-my gooey gray matter was still trying to absorb that one, her mother-for support.

"Thanks, but it's okay. It's been almost a stanyer now. It was a shock, and I've had to adapt fast."

Salina smiled. "You've done very well for yourself, Ishmael. I'm sure she would have been proud of you." She reached over and patted the back of my hand. I almost teared up right there at the table.

I kept my head down and said, "Thanks," into my coffee cup.

Luckily Pip came back with the jam and we got distracted.

"Is everybody aboard a s.p.a.cer?" I asked, trying to get back on even footing.

"I think you and Sarah are the only two people aboard who don't come from some kind of s.p.a.cer family," Salina said.

"Francis," Pip added. "He was a scientist."

"Okay, and Francis. There's probably a few more."

"You're kidding!" I said.

She shrugged. "Who do you think isn't s.p.a.cer born? Besides you three?"

I had never considered the question before. "Bev?" I asked.

"Her parents are members of a merchanter co-op running the Siren to St. Cloud loop. Her mother is first mate and her father works systems, I think."

"Brill?"

"Her father runs an orbital somewhere. I forget which system, but she'll tell you if you ask. Her mother is third mate on one of the system shuttles there."

"Rebecca Saltzman?"

"Are you kidding?" Pip asked.

"What?"

"The Saltzman's are one of the oldest trading families in the business. I think they have a fleet almost as big as Federated Freight's now and every single crewman is family."

"Why is she here then?"

"You never worked for family, have you?" he asked with a bitter little smile.

"The whole crew?"

Salina shrugged. "Well, except for you, Sarah, and Francis. There's probably a few more that I don't know about. It's not like I pay that much attention. It's just not that big a deal. Most of us just have some connection in the business. It's how it works."

Jennifer asked, "If you'd never wanted to be a s.p.a.cer, how'd you get here?"

"Jennifer?" Salina said in that rising-tone-warning.

"What?" She said. "I'm just asking."

"It's okay. My mother was killed in a flitter crash. The company was going to deport me because I didn't have enough creds to buy pa.s.sage off planet and I couldn't stay without being an employee. I didn't want to be a marine, so I went to the Union Hall on Neris and waited for a quarter-share berth."

"Somebody musta liked you."

I shrugged. "The manager said I reminded her of her nephew." I shot a quick glance at Pip, who was studying the inside of his coffee mug. "She helped me pack a duffel and when the Lois came in and unloaded what's his name last year, I got his slot."

"And the rest is history," Pip said. I think he was trying to break it up before any more of his family tree got dragged into the story. Or that his parents thought he was starting his third year at the academy.

Chapter Twenty-Five.

Niol Orbital

2352-August-17

Bev had introduced me to shopping at the flea market. I still carried a mental image of her in black leather pants and matching jacket with what looked like an aluminum pullover under it. When I met her at the lock, she wore the leathers-she always wore the leathers-but that day she had a pale yellow blouse under it. With her military buzz cut hairstyle and four kilos of surgical steel piercings, the touch of yellow made her seem as feminine as I had ever seen her. Not that she could ever be mistaken for a man. There was never any doubt that she was female to the core, but this was nice too.

She was still an intimidating figure. She moved with a dangerous grace and fluidity that wasn't just for show. She didn't carry any weapons, but. I had seen her sparring with some of the other crew, so I was pretty sure she didn't need any.

She smiled after I looked her over. "Are you almost done drooling?"

"No, but let's go shopping. I got a lot of ma.s.s to fill!"

She laughed and we headed up to level nine and the flea market. "What are we looking for?"

"Wood, textiles, maybe even some stone. Umber is a water planet and I want either something land-based or reminiscent of land, I think. Whatever it is, it needs to be high quality."

"Good point. No sense dragging c.r.a.p from one system to another."

I couldn't believe how good it felt to be walking with her again-just being with her. I liked moving along in her bubble as people in our path slipped by to either side. Some stopped to look back at her. Of course, walking a step behind gave me an excellent view as well.

She looked over her shoulder and said, "If you don't stop watching my b.u.t.t and start looking for goods, this is going to be a waste of time."

"Speak for yourself!" I teased, but I stepped up beside her. It pleased me when people looked back and forth between us and smiled.

I was not inspired by the flea market. We saw lots of kitschy handicrafts-stencil work on plain canvas, studs and stones in fabric goods, the usual collection of mediocre artwork. Niol was a manufacturing hub specializing in machine parts for the secondary spares market. There was not a lot of ancillary contribution to the flea market trade from the fabrication shops on planet. Bev and I must have browsed for over a stan, and I began to get discouraged.

"You'd think with the forests down below, we'd see some kind of wooden toys or something, wouldn't you?" I asked.

"Not necessarily."

A demon stepped in our path suddenly, and I saw a blur of black leather that stopped a centimeter from the nose of a mask. The woman wearing the mask froze and gave a little squeak. I didn't blame her. I felt like squeaking myself.

"I'm so sorry," Bev said, stepping back and dropping her hands to her sides. "Your mask startled me and it was just a reflex."

The woman pulled off the mask and said, "Oh no, I'm sorry. I should know better than to startle people like that."

She had a whole booth full of marvelous masks-everything from elegant dominoes, to faces of animals, as well as abstracts. Some were merely decorative and others were fully functional. I snapped digitals and flashed them to Pip while we talked to her. She was more than happy to discuss wholesale pricing so long as we were taking them out of the system. Beverly and I both bought several as samples and just to have. We confirmed that she would be around for a few days so we could come back later and arrange for a bulk purchase.

"I have bundles of them down in my storage cube," she said. "I'd love to unload some of them. Everybody here's seen them and, in this business, it always has to be something new." She had a most delightful giggle and she used it to good effect.

Three booths later we came upon a silk carp. The vendor was a tall, slender woman. and she had the carps hung all around her booth. As we walked up to them, I laughed because Bev had no idea what they were.

"They're like wind socks," I said. "You hang them out to catch the wind and on a really windy day, they look like they're swimming."

"Not a lot of wind on a ship," she pointed out. "Or orbital for that matter."

"But there is on the ocean."

The woman's name was Estelle and she created the carp from remnants of cloth that she bought by the bundle. The st.i.tching was lovely and the colors ranged from monochromatic reds and blues to explosions of orange, black, and gold. They ran in varying lengths from about a meter to three giant ones that were over four meters long. Each came with a sewn in harness in the mouth and had a short lead with a swivel clip for attaching it to the main flying line.

"We used to have one of these when I was a kid," I told Bev.

"I never lived on a planet long enough to really get used to it," she said. It was the first personal piece of information I could remember her sharing. We lived so much in the "right now" for the stanyer I had been aboard that neither the past nor our future had come into the discussion.

Again I took digitals for Pip but Estelle had no interest in any kind of bulk trade deal. Her entire stock was in the booth. Still she had a lot of them, even after Bev and I bought a few. I actually considered sticking one to the wall above my bunk just to dress up the s.p.a.ce a bit, they were that nice. We found out that she, too, would be around for a couple of days but needed to leave the orbital and get back down to the surface soon.

We wandered about looking at things for a couple more stans but, of all the stuff we saw, the masks and carps were the only two that had the kind of unique quality that I looked for in trade goods.

As we left the sales floor, Bev surprised me by stepping close enough to take my arm and walk hip-to-hip. "I wish I could bottle your nose for trade goods, Ish. I'd love to can it or something. You sure can pick 'em."

"Naw," I said, too fl.u.s.tered from hot leather against my outer thigh to be very cogent. "I just look for things that are different."

"So do I, but the difference is you find it," she said. "I'd have walked right past these carp."

"Well, I knew what they were and they're perfect for sale on Umber. I wonder if I can get Sarah to bless them," I added.

Bev laughed. "Only if you let her sell them. I swear that woman is a selling machine!"

I laughed with her and we walked in silence for a while.

"Are you okay now?" I asked her without looking down.

"Yeah," she murmured. "I think so. It was hard there for a while."