legal maturity. He could put several million yuris in play and cheerfully sleep, eat, and dally with a concubine while he waited for the results. There were times, however, when he suspected some hidden segment of his personality was trembling in terror while it watched the rest of him treat major calamities as if they were trivial disruptions.
A list popped onto Sabor’s display—a complete catalog of the boat’s cargo, assembled from the contracts that had been posted in the databanks. Public posting couldn’t be enforced by law but people who ignored the custom enjoyed short business careers. There was no central government on Fernheim. The business community enforced its rules by monitoring deals and invoking the ancient human customs of shunning and ostracism.
The bulkiest item on the list was a crate containing ten ceramic microwave receptors. The last starship to orbit Fernheim had included a passenger who had brought the program for producing the most advanced model available in the solar system. The receptors would capture fifteen percent more energy than the most competitive model available on the planet—a big increase for a world on which fossil fuels were still under-exploited and only five microwave generators had been placed in orbit.
The receptors took up most of the cargo space. The rest of the cargo consisted of small orders of luxuries. Meat taken from real animals. Organically grown wine. Nine golden swans.
“We could use the swans as harassers,” Choy said. “All I need is the activation codes.”
Sabor pipped the captain. “I would like to buy your cargo. My figure for the total retail value is three hundred and sixty thousand. I’ll add ten percent to cover delays and aggravation.”
“To lighten ship?”
“Yes.”
“It won’t add more than a kilometer per hour to our speed. Given their current position…”
“We’re in an every-second-counts situation.”
“It’s yours.”
“I’ll need the activation and control codes for the ornamental swans. Please transmit them to my assistant, Choytang.”
The overturned table Sabor was using for cover metamorphosed into dust and fragments. Sabor rolled backward and huddled beside the hatch in the middle of the shack.
Lights turned on as soon as he dropped through the hatch. The crate containing the ceramic receptors took up almost half the floor space. The eight swans had been arranged on a pallet with a low guard rail. The rest of the cargo had been packed in neatly stacked boxes.
Choy stepped up to the swans and activated their implants with a command from his own communications implant. Their feathers were as glossy as pure gold leaf. Ripples of light ran along their bodies when they stretched their necks and rustled their wings.
The boat was a typical example of Fernheim’s betwixt-and-between economy. A big loading hatch on the left side of the boat responded to a direct signal from the captain’s brain and rolled upward on a wheeled track. The crate holding the receptors opened in response to another impulse from the captain’s cerebral cortex. And Sabor and Purvali picked up two of the receptors and lugged them across the hold with the chemical energy stored in their own muscles.
The hatch was so close to the water line they could have dipped their hands without bending over. Three hundred meters of dark water stretched between the boat and the shore. Two houses stood beside a creek that emptied into the lake. Terrestrial oaks and sycamores spread branches that were covered with autumn leaves. The entire shoreline had been completely terrestrialized for over two decades.
The captain had given them free access to the information integrator in her command interface. They could examine the entire composite picture the integrator assembled from the sensory moles embedded in every meter of the boat’s structure. They trudged back and forth across the hold with most of their attention focused on the positions of the two boats.
Choy waited until the other boat was making its last maneuvers for boarding position. The swans lumbered across the hold in two ragged lines. Their huge wings pounded at the air. Choy guided them through the hatch and they turned as soon as they gained altitude and drove toward their adversary’s deck.
The coal burner had overcome their captain’s best efforts. It was lying almost parallel with the right side of their boat, with a three-meter gap separating the two hulls. The hardbodies were lined up with their guns at port arms. They were obviously primed to jump as soon as their boat’s sidewise drift brought them close enough. The nine swans covered their helmets and torsos with a blanket of hammering wings.
The hardbodies reacted with the remorseless calm that had been built into their personalities. Their right hands dropped off their guns and gripped the swans around their necks. The two massives reached into the storm of writhing feathers and applied their oversized muscles to the necks the hardbodies had neglected.
“Have the captain open the right loading hatch,” Purvali said. “Enough for us to shoot out.”
Sabor started moving toward the hatch while he was still pipping the captain. The hatch creaked open and they each took a single hardbody and poured moles into his armor. They had to shoot upward at a steep angle, through the commotion created by the swans, but a hit anywhere on the armor would wear it down.
Dead swans dropped into the water in front of Sabor. The gap between the two hulls narrowed. The side of the other boat loomed over them. On Sabor’s display, the omniscient eye of the electronic system presented him with a less pessimistic picture. Three hardbodies had dropped out of the line—presumably to recharge their armor. Two swans were still defying the pitiless hands closing around their necks.
Three hardbodies jumped across the gap. Boots pounded on the deck over Sabor’s head. He scurried away from his firing position and aimed his gun at the hatch he had used to enter the hold.
A hardbody suddenly started firing his gun. The display responded to the shift in Sabor’s attention and presented him with two figures in skintight wetsuits. Two more figures were crowding in behind them. In the water, just a few meters from the boat, three seal riders were standing on their mounts as they poured a stream of projectiles into the hardbodies.
* * * *
“I requested a son who was restless and adventurous,” Sabor’s mother had told him. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised when he tells me he wants to put twenty-two light years between himself and all the pleasures he’s been enjoying since his eyes first registered the light.”
“As far as I can tell,” Sabor had responded, “the only pleasures I’m leaving behind are the pleasures that are irrevocably associated with my family. The only difference between the ship and the home I’ve been honored to share with you and my sisters is the fact that the ship will be moving away from the sun instead of traveling around it. I’ll have almost every luxury I have here. We’ll still have fabricators when we reach Fernheim. The first thing I’m going to fabricate after we make landfall is a bottle of Talini.”
Sabor had been fifty-two when he had broken the news. His mother had been reigning over their family enterprises for almost a century. Billions of neils and yuris bounced around the cities of the asteroid belt during every twenty-four hour day-period and their economists estimated that thirty percent of the total visited their databanks during its rambles.
Rali Haveri was a placid woman for all her power. She had produced him, Sabor believed, because she felt her life needed a dash of turbulence. Adventurous
