“Oh, there you are!” Deckenson exclaimed with asperity as John loomed up beside him. He reached up and took a firm grip on the right cuff of John’s orange flight suit. “Don’t wander off again. I’m trying to explain our position to you, and why this must be handled so delicately.”
The small man’s grip on his cuff annoyed John, but he didn’t shake it off. Part of why Mariner was his first option was because he could adapt to new customs, even within his own species. And this casual physical familiarity seemed to be the current custom. Everywhere, people clung to one another as they hurried down the corridors. Trios and quartets, all gripping hands or clothing as they bustled along, were not uncommon. Huddles of people cuddled on benches as they talked. So he tolerated Deckenson’s grip and tried not to put any emotional tags on it. Male/male bonding had also been unpopular last time he was here, but that, too, seemed to have changed. Or perhaps it was only that every time John docked somewhere, it seemed that the prepubes looked more asexual. He knew Deckenson was a male only because his secretary had referred to him as “him” when John had been waiting to see him.
He looked down on his escort as Deckenson hustled him along. At least the smaller man was trotting; John’s longer legs matched his stride effortlessly. Deckenson’s hair was long and pale and flounced with every step he took. Looking down on it made John feel like a giant in contrast to Deckenson’s fine-boned stature. He lifted a hand to his own scalp and ruffled up the scant growth of dark hair on it. Shaving the scalp and treating the follicles with inhibitor was a standard procedure before entering Waitsleep. His hair was as long as it ever got, and would soon be stripped back to bare scalp again; that is, if his negotiations with Deckenson went well, and he contracted a mission for the Evangeline.
For the hundredth time, he wished Norwich had renewed their shipping contract. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out what had gone wrong. “Sorry. Our company no longer has any need for your services. We’ll be happy to supply you with an excellent reference.” John hadn’t even got past their outer offices. And that was it. No explanations. The only thing he could come up with was that someone had undercut his price. But no other Beastship in port had the vast cargo capacity that Evangeline had. She was practically the only “lifeboat” left unmodified since evacuation days. He couldn’t figure it out, and it was keeping him from concentrating on his dealings with Earth Affirmed.
Not that he especially wanted to concentrate on them. Earth Affirmed had a reputation among Beastship captains, and it wasn’t good. In a word, they were crackpots. Always stepping on the Conservancy’s toes, always pushing to the limits of the law. Fines, warnings, and cargo seizures seemed to follow in the wake of any deals with them. Earth Affirmed itself had too much funding to feel much of the Conservancy’s displeasure. So when their high-handed ways needled the Conservancy badly enough, the Conservancy’s wrath usually fell on Earth Affirmed’s minions. Like their ship captains. Years ago, Chester on the Beastship N’raltha had taken the scorching for bringing Rabby imports into Beta Station. The Conservancy had ruled them environmentally dangerous, and the captain, ultimately responsible for his ship’s conduct, had undergone complete Readjustment and two years of intensive environmental respect classes. Nowadays, the same raw materials routinely came into the dirty-tech stations for processing, under the supervision and taxation of the Conservancy. John idly wondered what Chester was doing now; whatever it was, it wouldn’t have anything to do with marinering.
John tried to sigh away the uneasiness the thought gave him. He wished he could just get a contract and be out of here. Too many rules in the stations, and if John was going to bend any of them, he was going to do it for his own benefit, not for some big corporation that would leave him to take the heat if things went bad. He didn’t need that kind of complications in his life. He didn’t need any complications in his life.
In fact, the older he got, the less time he liked to spend in port. The light and bustle of the corridor was already making him think longingly of the privacy of the Waitsleep womb and the quiet of Evangeline’s crew quarters. He still had his pickup of Ginger’s wares and his rendezvous with Andrew to look forward to. Even those errands carried some nerve-wracking risks of their own. About the only thing he was actually looking forward to was a visit to a semiscrupulous dealer for a rather esoteric poetry recording that he intended especially for Tug’s edification. He grinned at the thought, and found Deckenson was smiling back up at him, in mistaken interpretation of John’s expression.
“So, do you approve of the changes in living conditions here? We’ve been instrumental in lobbying against the Conservancy’s ridiculous ban against all but sentient life-forms in station corridors. Quite a switch from when you were a boy, I imagine. The plants make quite a difference, don’t they?”
“Yes. They do,” John replied awkwardly. He hoped Deckenson hadn’t been talking about anything more important than interior decoration. He realized he hadn’t been listening to him. How could he, while wandering through this chaos? He wished the man would settle down somewhere and talk. But no, first it had been a meeting at his office, which accomplished little more than actually making contact with this representative of Earth Affirmed, and being endlessly introduced to office staff. He’d expected to have to sit through some kind of negotiating meeting there, but abruptly Deckenson had insisted that he and John had to go out to lunch. They’d been walking now for twenty minutes but Deckenson showed no signs of stopping.
“You’re impatient with us, aren’t you?” Deckenson suddenly asked, as if he had read John’s mind. He didn’t wait for John’s cautious nod. “That’s in our files about you; that you have an impatient nature. It’s a fault, John, one you should work on. At least, for our business, it is. Think on this …”
And he was off again, looking all around and talking as they walked, so John could barely follow his words. Earth Affirmed seemed to have an affinity for garrulous, busy little men. Their last representative had been just like this; he could have been Deckenson’s clone. John began to believe he’d have turned down their last two offers even if he hadn’t had Norwich’s contract.
“Earth Affirmed has had to be patient. Even to gain these small concessions from the Conservancy has taken lifetimes. Patience, John. It’s one of our virtues, and the chief reason why we still exist, so many years after Earth’s Evacuation. We’ve been here since the very first Humans came to Castor and Pollux; we’re a contemporary of the Conservancy itself, if you would credit it. Very few other Human institutions have managed to exist as long as we have, and most of them were religious organizations that merged into the Conservancy’s philosophy; scarcely separate entities at all anymore. But Earth Affirmed has stood firm. All we’ve had was our dream and our patience to sustain us. It’s our sense of mission that’s kept us going. A mission that’s needed a certain kind of man to reach fulfillment. And now, we think, we may have our man.”
He looked up at John suddenly as he said this, and there was such fervent hope in the man’s face that John drew back from him. Looks like that always meant the same thing. Someone was about to put grapplers on you and hold on, to depend and ask favors and demand promises. It was a look no Mariner could fairly accept or return. To see it on this businessman’s face was doubly unsettling.
If Deckenson noticed John’s withdrawal, he didn’t comment on it. “The restaurant’s here,” he declared suddenly. “Let’s go in.” Without waiting for John’s response, he ducked into a doorway nearly obscured by a vine trellised over it. John followed, ducking more deeply than Deckenson had.
Deckenson was already following the host to a table. John fell in behind him. Damn. The whole place was scaled down to the size the Human race had become. The walkways between the tables were narrower, the tables lower, the chairs more spindly than any John had ever seen. All the furniture and screens were of woven tika vine, hardened with tika syrup into a glossy finish.