The Bright Black Sea Read online

  Chapter 06 Star Gate Boulevard

  It was early afternoon, Fourthday, in Primecentra as the anchorage shuttle followed the guide beam down to Port Prime's Smallcraft Field. Dyn, as principal heir of Miccall's estate, had business with both the Guild and the Ministry of Probate. Being very uncomfortable beyond the confines of the ship, he had asked Illy to accompany him on his bureaucratic ordeal. Since I'd my final accounts to complete, I sent them off with the ship's gig. I'd take a shuttle down and we'd rendezvous for the return trip.

  I'd awoken in a more confident mood. Having seen the ship around Azminn as routinely (save the Belbania Affair) as Miccall, earned a respectable profit and feeling that I could do it again, I decided that there was no cause to be anxious, until I tackled my accounts, anyway. It still took all of the second watch and part of the third before they were within what I considered the margin of error and I was ready to go downside and turn them in to Min & Co.

  Somewhat weary, and now a little wary as well, I'd tucked the secure data drive in my coat pocket, sought a comfortable refuge in a Neb may care attitude against the prospect of meeting my new boss with the Belbania Affair hanging over me, and signaled for the shuttle. I'd credits in my account and even if the ship was laid up, I'd find something to do. It was never my intention to spend my whole life in space, I reminded myself, so I needn't fear meeting Tallith Min. Much.

  The shuttle drove down through the clouds – the view-panels showed only white deepening to grey, leaving the towers of Primecentra and the sprawling fields of Port Prime to memory or imagination.

  Port Prime, Calissant's major space port, spreads southwards from the clearsteel reefs of Calissant's capital city, Primecentra, encompassing a hundred square kilometers of specialized landing fields, hangars, warehouses, docks and ship lots. The passenger center borders Primecentra, serving planetary fliers and near-space rockets, jump ships to orbiting liners and stations and small liners to Yendora, Calissant's major moon. To the east of this is the large Primecentra Yacht Club. Southwards things get commercial and industrial, a jumbled mix of hangars, docks, repair yards, freight fields and cargo transfer facilities. The Smallcraft Field lies on the extreme southern edge. It serves as the landing and parking field for small boats like our ship's gig and a bewildering array of lighters, miners, and other specialized small craft. It's the part of the Port Prime that interplanetary spaceers know best, and was the shuttle's destination.

  The shuttle's landing jets fired suddenly and we settled to the flame scarred tarmac without ever breaking through the clouds. We taxied between space boats, puddles and sooty snow piles, all vague in the fog to the drop point. It looked like winter, but if you know Port Prime, the puddles proclaimed that spring had arrived. (At last!) Coming to rest, we donned our coats and tumbled out into the cold, damp air smelling of hot metal, smoke, ozone and wet tarmac. As a pack we splashed and cursed through the slush and puddles to the access station. Weather can be very unpleasant. It was not noticeably warmer underground as we stepped on board the pseudo-moving surface of the velowalk and quickly strode our way to the large subterranean reception hall. The reception hall seemed darker, almost derelict, many shops closed or deserted, with only a thin scattering of spaceers scurrying quietly about under its arching dome. I steered for Gate 31. Had it been our early fall visit, I'd have walked the five kilometers to Min & Co along Star Gate Boulevard just to soak in its life. But seeing it was spring I limited my choices to the tube or a flier. As mere first mate, I'd have taken the tube, but as my last perk as captain, I rode up to the surface gate to hire a flier. Hunching down in my turned up coat collar, I strode out onto the gloomy dampness of Star Gate Boulevard and hurried towards the nearby flier stand.

  Star Gate Boulevard circles Port Prime, its character varying with the activity of the port and neighborhood. I'm only familiar with the wide canyon between the brooding hangars and workshops of the Smallcraft Port and the glittering, neon-lit escarpment of Port Prime's spaceers' row. This is the Star Gate Boulevard of dark bars and dim taverns, vile drug dens, dives and joints, loud spaceer clubs and crowded lounges, hundreds of quiet cha houses, cafes, bustling bistros, diners, eateries, specialty restaurants and snack stalls, cinemas and immersive vids, arcades, game rooms and gambling dens, vice clubs and pleasure palaces, cheap boarding houses, rundown hotels and rendezvous flats, interspersed with narrow, dark shops, crowded, dusty stores, and bright, vast emporiums, all offering the guaranteed lowest prices on the largest selection in the galaxy of everything you want, need, or can imagine, plus a million other things as well, used and new, second and twenty-seventh hand, all guaranteed and warranted authentic, and for those at the end of their tether, pawn shops, Guild hostels, sheltered corners and benches. And perhaps, a friend, or a shipmate. In short, everything the spaceer, the tourist and the curious can spend a credit on. When the weather is nice, this teeming life bursts out of the neon escarpment to flood the Boulevard with tables and chairs under awnings and lights, racks and piles of merchandise, booths and carts, spaceers, companions, tourists and the curious milling, drinking, eating or fighting under the arch of trees and banners. But on this early spring afternoon, Star Gate was dirty, white, grey and desolate, the canyon walls of colorful signs fading to brighter greys within a block in either direction, posing no challenge to the brooding dark hangars along the port side of the boulevard. The only spot of color in the Boulevard was a line of brightly dressed companions perched on a bench half buried in a sooty bank of old snow and a small pack of uniformed and shivering flier pilots keeping them company.

  One companion dressed only in a little blue dress rose as I hurried out of the port gate and skipping lightly through the slush and puddles, slipped her(its) arm around mine and said brightly, 'Hello, mate. Welcome home. I'm Lyrath.'

  'Hello Lyrath,' I said, though I continued walking towards the flier stand. 'You should put more clothes on young lady. Just looking at you in that skimpy dress is making me even colder than I am already.'

  She laughed, being a professional. 'We can't have that love,' she replied, and I felt a sudden glow of warmth as the avatar's operator raised the heat level of avatar's 'body'. Within a few steps I was walking arm and arm with a warm stove. 'Better?'

  'Much. But I'm on ship's business, my dear, and regrettably I haven't time to sample more of your heat.'

  'Oh, I'm sure we'll find time. My rendezvous is just a few steps up the way, and love, with times being the way they are, the Guild allows me to offer very special rates for handsome ship's officers like you – matinee rates all day for the entire day. So why not let me warm you up thoroughly before your ship's business and afterward make an evening of it? I don't see any company badges,' she added glancing at my cap, 'so I can't imagine you'll be going anywhere soon.'

  The robotic avatar clinging to my arm was a woman shaped animated machine referred to as a companion. They come in both sexes. I was conversing, however, with a real woman somewhere in Primecentra, or, more likely, one of the less expensive satellite cities that huddled close to Port Prime. She controlled the avatar's mannerisms and speech as well as its personality, and she's the she I'll refer to. Companions, avatar and operator, work as prostitutes or animated sex toys. Your call. Under the Unity Charter's post robot rebellion laws, all avatars must be clearly mechanical, though body styles vary from planet to planet. They're legal on most planets and all moons, though sometimes in only limited areas like around space ports and red light districts. Safe, sanitary and strictly regulated by government and their guild, they're the companion of choice amongst spaceers. If you wanted a human prostitute around Prime Port, you'd have to leave Star Gate and venture beyond the office buildings into the tenements beyond. Not recommended. Besides being safer for customer and operator, avatar companions are also very versatile – a'la the little furnace beside me. You also avoid the pitfalls associated with social taboos, tastes and smells which vary planet to planet. And you don't need to buy 'em drinks. The avatar is pre-progra
med for sex – active participation or virtual presences of the operator is not required making it easier for the operator to become a companion and making the operators much less socially stigmatized by their job. In my experience, I've found the operators pleasant, intelligent and a treasure trove of information and gossip. All I have to do is share any trade news I have to learn a great deal more of what's going on in the trade before it appears in the regular trade reports. Sex and shop talk may not sound very romantic, but companions, however pleasantly they may pass an hour, are not about romance.

  We'd reached the flier stand and I came to a stop. She stepped around in front of me, pulled me close to her slim hot avatar body by wrapping her arms around my neck. I must admit that I took my hands out of my pockets, but only to warm them on this very female shaped furnace.

  'You may well be right about not having places to go, my dear. But today I have to turn over my accounts, meet my new boss, and head back to the ship to pay off my crew... So I'm really sorry, my dear, no time today...'

  She snuggled closer and began to purr and softly vibrate. 'Are you sure...? And quizzically glancing at my cap with its first mate's pin still on it, added, 'Captain?'

  'Quit that, Lyrath. I told you I'm meeting my bosses in a few minutes...' I said ignoring the implied question, though failing to find the strength to push her away. 'I really need to be right straight and proper...'

  'But that's what I'm doing...'

  'What? Oh. Belay that, Lyrath! Do you want to land me on the beach before my time?'

  She smiled and looked up at me with her large dark eye lenses and said, 'If you insist, my love....' And stepping back she added, 'Seriously Captain, in better days, I'd have taken your no and wished you fair orbit. But you're likely my only chance today. I go to the back of the line,' she indicated the bench with a nod of her head. 'Certainly not all of your time is spoken for. I'm willing to wait until you're free. I've nothing else to do except the laundry. Sorry, that's out of character.'

  'I understand.'

  'Times are no better along the Boulevard than they are in space,' she continued. 'I'll have to decide whether to stick it out, or call it quits. If too many of us stay, we'll all starve... And if not, what am I to do? I suppose I could go down to the Amibon coast. I know enough spaceers, so maybe I could find a partner. But in six months or a year he'll be off again, and where would I be?'

  'I'm hearing it may be four to five years just to turn the slump around and ten to recover...'

  'Bloody Neb, you're kidding me mate. Guild unemployment credits won't last that long and I'll end up supporting a beach combing chump.'

  'Hardly fair. We can be tamed. When domesticated, tramp spaceers can be quite handy around the house, cook, clean, repair appliances. Besides there's always work for rocket pilots, systems techs and even engineers. And I'm sure you could manage a poor spaceer, my dear. Though you could probably make a better career move than finding an out of work spaceer to partner with.'

  'Perhaps, but I know spaceers...'

  'Suppose you do. Well, don't go by what I say. Haven't a clue, myself. My firm has a young second class scholar in economics who's making these predictions, but I'm not sure it's anything better than a guess at this point.'

  She considered that in silence for a moment and looked up with a smile on her mechanical face. 'Well, thanks mate, you've given me something to think about. Can I give you my badge id? When you're free, as you'll likely be, look me up.'

  'Sure,' I said and pulled up my sleeve where I was wearing the com link so that she could use her finger to transfer that data. 'And let me have your purse, Lyrath. I owe you for the heat...'

  'Thanks Captain. Not necessary. It's on the house. I'm not in the furnace business. Yet.' she added.

  'I insist. A little offering to the Neb for surviving my first voyage as Captain.'

  'Well for luck, Captain. Thank you. You're sweet,' she said, presenting her little purse.

  I punched in a credit amount on the keypad and authenticated it with the chip in my finger insert. 'Have a meal delivered while you do your laundry.'

  'You're over generous, Captain. I can't accept that for... a little heat.'

  'Well if you find me derelict on some bench along Star Gate a few months from now, I'll expect you to take me home and nurse me back to health and happiness.'

  'Right. I hope to see you before...'

  'Maybe. Till, fair orbits, Lyrath,' I said with a smile.

  I nodded to the flier pilot who had been hanging in the middle distance waiting, and boarded the flier he indicated was his. I gave him Min & Co.'s address and we lifted off into the fog. Like companion avatars, fliers can be flown remotely, but on Calissant, as on many worlds, passengers prefer to ride fliers with pilots on board. The theory being that they'll fly a bit less carefree if they have to pay the consequences along with passengers. I doubt it. Most flier pilots are ex-spaceers who are flying taxis because they were never overly concerned about consequences. However, this was just a short hop up and over a few kilometers and what the fog hid didn't overly concern me. We touched down on a rooftop landing stage in less than a minute. I punched in the credits and slipped out into the dense dampness forty stories up just as another flier landed. I crossed the landing stage to the rooftop lobby and summoned the lift. I stepped aboard as the door opened and stood in the door to hold it for the other flier's passengers.

  Through the clearsteel lobby wall, I watched a strange, slim, bird like figure absently make her way into the lobby from the gloom. At first glance I thought she was an avatar, her legs seemed too long, too slim and she was barefooted as well. But as she approached I realized she was not an avatar, though her legs were indeed, intricately mechanical. Her head was bowed, her hands in her coat pockets, she walked, lost in thought.

  I felt a dart of pity. Though perhaps sympathy is the more appropriate word.

  Only after stepping into the lobby did she look up, quietly startled to find me watching her from the waiting lift.

  I find it impossible to connect the right combination of words to describe what I caught in her eyes for a single second. There was sadness, perhaps loneliness, or a quality of being lost, a remoteness, or perhaps it was quietness, and, I felt, an unspoken appeal... She blinked and her eyes were well guarded, showing nothing.

  I felt embarrassed, an intruder in a private moment, and she may well have felt it too. And resented it. She took a swift survey of me with now guarded eyes, nodded slightly, and said quietly, 'Thanks, mate.'

  'My pleasure,' I replied and stepped into the lift, off to one side. She followed me in.

  I punched in floor 27. She glanced at it and kept her hands in her coat pockets. The doors closed and the car dropped.

  I could not read her age. It's hard to pin down even an approximate age between the first three decades of youth and well into the second half of one's second century. Only the accumulated experience seen in the eyes and carriage give a clue as to age. Her eyes lacked the look of age, but her face was rather worn and thin, her hair pulled tight and tucked under her cap. She was, however, a spaceer, a fellow pilot, judging from the pilot's wheel pin on her cap. I didn't see a company badge, but the expensive cut and quality of her uniform style coat suggested she was employed by one of the big passenger or freight liner companies. Since most of the offices in the building are devoted to interplanetary trade she was not out of place.

  We spent the few seconds in the lift without further words, she looking straight ahead. The lift's abrupt slowing to a stop at floor 27 made me glad I'd strapped a pair of braces on my legs before coming down. In theory, daily workouts and electro-sim treatments should keep one fit enough to handle Calissant's .93 standard gravity. But I wanted to attend my tasks without getting too tired or resting too often, so I was wearing a thin, powered exoskeleton under my trousers to take a some of the load off my legs.

  It was only as the door opened and she started out that it occurred to me who she had to be
.

  I'd never met Tallith Min. I saw her parents occasionally when they visited Miccall aboard ship and so I didn't pay too much attention to their accident at the time. For spaceers, things like that always happen far away and a while ago – a remote event. It greatly affected Miccall however. He was never quite the same afterward.

  On learning that Tallith Min was now in charge of Min & Co, I'd talked to the old gang who knew her and her parents far better. As a child, she had sailed aboard the Lost Star with her uncle, Captain Vinden, and she and the old gang have gotten together at various times over the years since, but they could offer no useful insights. I did know she was the fourth pilot of a Zenith Line freighter at the time of the accident, so she knew the trade from our point of view.

  The accident that killed her parents was quite unusual – a space boat with a dead man at the controls smashed into the Mins' boat at the edge of space above Calissant's Trimeta Sea. Tallith was piloting the Min's boat and managed to nurse the damaged craft down to an island beach crash landing. It was found however, that her parents had been instantly killed and the landing left Tallith more dead than alive. She'd spent the better part of the last two years recovering on the planet of Kimsai, amongst the mystic Taoist adepts – widely known for their healing skills – where her older brother, an adept, looked after her.

  Too late to say anything, I hung back, drifting down the passageway at a leisurely pace. I was, however, right, in my guess. She strode into the clearsteel walled office of Min & Co at the end of the passageway like she owned the place. Several gentlemen and a lady rose as she entered to greet her.

  I waited until they disappeared into her office before thoughtfully pushing through the clearsteel office doors, fearing I'd seen too much in that unguarded second.