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the governor general, I welcome you all to Slowyear-"
"I already said that, Petoyne," said Blundy.
"I'm saying it officially. -And ask that you fill out these forms and sign
them. Then we can get on with the business we're all really interested in.
Each of you take one, please-have you all got pencils? Well, get some, will
you?"
While someone was hurrying away to find things to write with, MacDonald took
her eyes off the squat man long enough to read one of the forms. The people
of this backwater planet didn't seem to have much regular use for such things,
she saw, because these were just photocopied printouts, headed "Planet of
Slowyear, Department of Trade and Immigration," with the impromptu look of
something somebody had remembered to whomp up at the last minute before
Nordvik arrived. There was an awful lot of tiny type. When she signed that
form she would be relinquishing any claim for liability for almost any kind of
ill that might befall her on the surface of the planet or on the way to
it-from mechanical failure of the planet's ancient shuttles or their own; from
navigation errors; from disease or attack by animals . . . but there weren't
any dangerous animals on
Slowyear, Mercy MacDonald knew very well; they must have copied the thing out
of an old lawbook.
Really, it amused her. She looked up at the girl named Petoyne. "I didn't
know you had lawyers on Slowyear," she said.
The Slowyear girl gave her an impatient look. "Did you sign it? All right,
you've got your visa.
Next!"
And the man named Blundy was saying, "Who's in charge of selling stuff?"
MacDonald raised her hand. "I am. Mercy MacDonald. Purser."
He looked at her again. "That's nice," he said, approving. "Then let's find
some place where we can go, Mercy MacDonald, so we can talk business."
#
Business was business, and this Blundy man didn't waste much time getting down
to it. He perched companionably next to her at her display screen, one hand
lightly holding her shoulder, and frowned at the readout. No seeds, ova or
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sperm right now, he said; not on this first trip. "We came up light so we
could carry a max load back, so there's no refrigeration on board this time."
No living plants right now, either, not until that other man, whose name was
Gowen, finished checking them. "He's our health officer," Blundy explained.
"He'll stay on board until he quick-
cultures everything-so you won't bring anything nasty down with you, you
know."
"He's going to check everything? Even us?"
Blundy looked surprised. "Hasn't he done you yet? No, of course not; well,
give him a drop of blood as soon as you can. You're coming on the first trip,
of course."
"I am?"
Blundy grinned at her. "Of course you are-I'm glad to say. We'll only take
two of you this time-
to have as much cargo mass as possible, you see-and that deputy captain of
yours insists on being
file:///F|/rah/Frederik%20Pohl/Pohl,%20Frederik%20-%20Stopping%20at%20Slowyear
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file:///F|/rah/Frederik%20Pohl/Pohl,%20Frederik%20-%20Stopping%20at%20Slowyear
.txt one of them. So you're the other."
MacDonald just smiled at that, not having made her own mind up yet-though
actually there wasn't any real doubt about it-and he got back to business.
Scrimshaw? Sure. A lot of people would like that sort of stuff, he conceded,
though only heaven knew why. Books? Certainly; and music and dramas and
dance recitals, too, why not.
But the big thing, he told her, was datastores. "Science, history,
medicine-especially medicine;
we'll buy copies of everything you've got about medicine or biochemistry.
Diagnosis, therapies, pharmaceuticals, surgical procedures-you name it, we'll
buy it. Can you get all that in the first load? I assume all this stuff is
electronic, so it won't mass much- Fine! Now, what are these
Hades artifacts I see on the list?"
He kept her jumping, but it wasn't all business. She could see that. She
didn't miss the way he was looking at her, even when what he was talking about
was merchandise. It was exciting.
It gave her pleasure. The excitement was good for her. She could feel it in
her groin, an almost sexual tingling-no, she corrected herself fairly, not
"almost" at all. It was defnitely sexual, all right. And Blundy's interest
in her was not just for generic sex, as it always was with dirty
Hans Horeger, because when she took the stranger to see Betsy arap Dee she
observed carefully that, although he gave Betsy a thoroughly assessing look,
his eyes returned to MacDonald herself.
Betsy, of course, assessed him right back. It didn't seem to be serious,
though, because the other stranger, Gowen, had obviously already taken a lien
on Betsy's interest when he took her blood sample. The four of them went over
Betsy's datastores rapidly, and before they were halfway through MacDonald
made a surprising discovery.
The surprise was that Betsy wasn't moping. More than that, for the first time
since the death of her baby, Betsy looked not only alert but actually happy.
There was no other word for it. Her face was flushed and her eyes sparkled;
she smiled; she even laughed out loud.
Then MacDonald made the even more surprising discovery that she was quite
happy too. She was eager to board the shuttle and find out what this
forbidding, but also intriguing, new planet had to offer her.
Of course, that was the point at which Hans Horeger came bustling into the
datastore room, radiating officious authority and orders. MacDonald didn't
let even that puncture her mood. She let him strut for a few minutes. Then,
"Come on, Hans," she said, pulling him by the sleeve as she invented an
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errand to get him away from Betsy and the new man-realizing with astonishment
that it was the first time in a good long while that she had deliberately
invited Horeger to do anything with her-"come on, help me pick out the first
load of scrimshaw and start loading the shuttle."
That kept them both busy for half an hour. Then, with the selections made,
she left Horeger to round up a loading crew, shouting more orders that no one
either heeded or needed, and she went looking for the "health officer".
He wasn't in the datastore room, wasn't even with Betsy arap Dee, who was back [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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