His face cleared. "I get it. Or maybe they're eating the cost themselves. In which case . . ."

"In which case," E.D. said grimly, "were sending a pinnace over there with orders to fire if they don't allow a squad of armored cops aboard to search that vessel stem to stern. There's no way a legitimate gypsy would agree to swallow the cost of spending that much time in orbit, twiddling their thumbs."

"What's a stem?" he asked, as he sent the instructions to the Hali Sowle. "I thought it was part of a plant. So why would it be connected to a starship?"

Since he couldn't see her face, she let her eyes roll. At least she'd only have to put up with the ignoramus for another three days before the shifts were restructured. If she got lucky, she might even be partnered next time with Steve Lund. Now, there was a man with whom you could have an intelligent conversation. He had a good sense of humor, too.

"Never mind, Gansükh. It's just a figure of speech."

She sometimes thought that for Gansükh Blomqvist, the whole damn universe outside of his immediate and narrow range of interests was a figure of speech. Oh, well. She reminded herself, not for the first time, that every hour she spent bored by Blomqvist's company piled up just as much in the way of pay, benefits and retirement credit as any other hour on the job.

"And there it is, Ganny," said Andrew Artlett admiringly. "Just like you predicted. How do you know these things, anyway?"

Elfride Margarete Butre smiled, but gave no answer. That was because the answer would have been heart-breaking for her. She knew the many things she did which almost none of her descendants and relatives did, for the simple reason that she'd had a full life prior to being stranded on Parmley Station—where most of them had spent their entire lives there.

For some considerable part of that pre-Station life, she and her husband had been very successful freight brokers. That was how they'd amassed their initial small fortune, which Michael Parmley had then parlayed into a much larger fortune playing the Centauri stock exchange—and then blown the whole thing trying to launch a freight company that could compete with the big boys in the lucrative Core trade.

She'd loved her husband, sure enough. But there hadn't been a day go by since his death decades earlier, that she hadn't cursed his shade. Michael Parmley hadn't had a malicious bone in his body—but he hadn't had a very responsible one either. An inveterate gambler, he'd lost three fortunes already before he completely bankrupted himself and his kin building the station.

And, in doing so, condemned at least one entire generation of his extended family to lives that were distorted by isolation and would surely end in early graves. Ganny knew full well—had known for years, now—that the day would inexorably come, assuming she survived herself, when she would be grieving at the death of her beloved great-nephew Andrew Artlett. He'd die of old age—while his great-aunt still had perhaps a century of life ahead of her.

"Never mind, Andrew. It's a long story. Make sure you send the financial records within ten minutes—but not too much before then. They won't expect a tramp freighter in orbit to be all that alert."

He nodded. "And how long do we stay?"

"Until the freighter from Gupta brings us the goods. If they time it right, they'll arrive two or three days before our deadline here in orbit runs out. It'll take less than a day for customs to check everything. Then we're on our way to Palmetto, just as our—completely legitimate—papers say we are. A quick swap of the jewels on Palmetto for a cargo of sutler goods, and we're back again. That shouldn't take more than two weeks. By then, we'll have established our bona fides with Mesan customs, and we should be able to get permission to stay in orbit for up to thirty T-days."

"And what if Anton and Victor need to make an escape during one of the stretches while we're gone?"

"Then they're shit out of luck. There's simply no way we can stay in orbit indefinitely, given our cover story. Not anywhere that has a functioning planetary government, much less Mesa. They're on the paranoid side here, and for damn good reason, as generally hated as they are." She shrugged. "But if those two characters are as good as they think they are—which is probably true—then they'll have enough sense to time whatever they might be doing that's likely to set off any alarms for one of the stretches we're in orbit. Of course, it's always possible they'll get caught by surprise by something unexpected. But that's the risk they run, in that business. Either way, I made sure we're covered in the contract. We get paid, no matter what happens."

She didn't see any reason to explain that the "contract" amounted to nothing more than a verbal agreement between herself, Web Du Havel and Jeremy X, and a representative of Beowulf's BSC. She knew, from a lifetime's experience, that she could trust the BSC and if she couldn't trust the Torch people there was nothing she could do about it anyway. But she couldn't see any way to make that clear to Artlett without undermining her years-long campaign to get her reckless great-nephew to stop trusting the fates so much.

Besides, the BSC would be footing most of the bill anyway. They'd agreed to pay the Butre clan an annual stipend for the use of the station. The stipend was more than enough to pay for the expense of providing every one of its members still young enough with prolong treatments—and with plenty left over to send them away for a regular education. The contribution of the Ballroom—technically, the Torch military and if you accepted that at face value you were a moron—was mostly going to be muscle. They'd be the ones who staffed the station, maintained the pretense it was still a slaver entrepot while actually using it as a combination stellar safe house and way station for covert operations—and treat themselves to shooting down the stray slaver ship that showed up from time to time.

It was over. Regardless of what happened to Ganny and the few members of her clan on the Hali Sowle, she'd finally managed to save the clan itself.

She heard the three boys squabbling over something, in a nearby compartment. The mess hall, from the sound of their voices. She couldn't quite make out the words. Ed and James were going at it and Brice seemed to be trying to act as peacemaker.

If they survived this expedition—and whatever other adventures their none-too-cautious souls got them into thereafter—all three of them would live for at least two centuries.

For the first time in years, Elfride Margarete Butre discovered she was crying.

"The financial data from the Hali Sowle's contract of carriage checks out okay, E.D." Gansükh Blomqvist pointed at the screen in front of him.

She leaned over and looked. Sure enough, the logo and seal of the Banco de Madrid was prominently displayed.

"Okay, then." She went to her own work station and spent a minute or so keying in some instructions, before hitting the send button. The Hali Sowle's legitimacy, heretofore provisional and temporary, was now established in the data banks of the Mesan System Guard. The next time they came through, if they ever did, the routine would go much more quickly.

She hadn't bothered to check the details of the data on Blomqvist's screen. There was no reason to waste the time. Faking that seal and logo was effectively impossible for anyone except maybe a handful of governments in the galaxy. It was certainly beyond the capability of a gypsy freighter.

It was not, however, beyond the capability of the government of Erewhon—or any of its major families, even using their own private resources. Jeremy X had been quite right. The great families of Erewhon were still the galaxy's premier money-launderers.