n.b.: “Ascending and Descending” is the name of a print by M. C. Escher depicting the infinite, Penrose stairs atop a building.
Ascending and Descending
- - -
Michael glanced again at the glazed eyes wavering across the table across from him; He needed what the scruffy man knew, but by the Queen it was getting frustrating, and he ran his fingers through his hair in trying not to show it. The chap had clearly seen better days – his thinning hair seemed to have migrated down into thick, unwashed stubble and he slumped low in the stained seat of the booth, swaying ever so slightly whenever he shifted his gaze. Unfortunately, the Deep Space Engineering logo just visible beneath a layer of grease and filth on his overalls made him Mike’s best opportunity.
“Look,” he tried again, leaning forward to catch the mans’ attention, “If you could just show me—“
He gagged on the foulness of a burp that hit his face and quickly moved himself backwards on the seat to avoid any more. The man paused for a follow-up “hic!” before trying to speak.
“I’m try’n ta shay, if you go through Kepler then ya ca—“
“I don’t care about the Independent Worlds!” Michael reiterated over the top, “I just need to know what’s beyond that. A path to Honshu, that’s all! Simple! And that before I get you any more drinks!” He added, noticing the mans’ focus shift to the empty ale bottles lining the table.
“Captain!” A voice rose above the din of the bar and he looked up to see one of his senior crewmen, Marcus Whittard, weaving his way towards him through the empty array of tables.
“Hey, Marc. How is she?” He greeted his friend and shifted along the seat to allow room, but his colleague remained standing after a brief glance at – or whiff of – Michael’s company. Instead, the man grimaced. “Sick as a dog, I’m afraid. I left her to rest some more. I don’t think she’ll be coming with us to Kusari.” He admitted. “She can barely sit up without emptying her stomach. Nasty.”
Mike sighed, put off from hearing the news. Jane Harmann was his navigator, translator and good friend, having flown by his side for years – from long before his employment with Bowex. But a pit-stop at Curacao on their way to Pittsburgh had left her confined to the medbay with a nasty infection, and now she’d caught some nasty bug on top of it all. Just when he needed her skills most, too – but with his contract deadline looming, he couldn’t afford to wait for her to recover.
“All right, “ he said, flicking his gaze between the two men, “thanks for the update, Marc. See if you can get her transferred to a medbay here and we’ll collect her on the way home. Have the Penrose prepped for departure.” After several years of war and high tensions, trade between the Kingdom and the new Republic of Kusari had just been re-established, and he’d jumped to seize the opportunity to move the nations’ exports back to the much-needing Bretonia. Unfortunately, the company starmaps and databases on the foreign sector were years out of date, and still sensitive information besides – and with the Penrose being a new vessel, it had none of the old maps available. But NavMap or no, his time to dawdle in Liberty was up.
“Roger that, she’ll be ready within the hour.” Marcus nodded and confirmed before turning to leave, but then hesitated. “Mike?”
“What is it?”
“I’d like to stay with her, if you’ll allow it. See she recovers enough by the time you get back, and all.”
Feury paused for only a moment before nodding and giving his crewman a smile. Harmann was popular among the shipmates, and she’d no doubt wake up dazed and confused in a strange place without someone by her side. “Of course. And Marc? Thanks.”
Purposely leaving the swill they called tea on the table, he got up to leave. As he rose, however, a grunt from the scruffy man swaying across from him caught his attention. In a dirty hand was a napkin with a crude scribble on it, and Michael tried very hard not to laugh upon accepting it. It was hardly the comprehensive company database he’d requested an upload of, but it would have to do. He dropped a thousand-credit chip on the table as thanks and headed for the door before the drunkard could ask for anything else.
“Does this look like ‘Kyoto’ to you, too?” He questioned aloud, trying to decipher the drunken scribble on the napkin supported in his left hand. “I don’t know much about Kusari, I admit, but I know enough to know the capital is Tokyo, not this... mess.”
The slim woman leaning on the back of his chair and reading over his shoulder shook her head, causing her straight, neck-length blonde hair to sway gently. “I don’t think that ‘map’ is good for anything but wiping down tables. If that.” She habitually raised a finger and pushed her rectangular glasses back up the bridge of her nose. “I don’t suppose he mentioned anything about the tradelane routes?”
“Hah, fat chance of that. It was enough effort to get this much. Bloody Libertonians.” Michael Feury, Captain of the Penrose, sighed and tossed the stained shroud of paper aside. He leant forward and stared ahead out of the bridge’s viewport again, wishing for the umpteenth time that Harmann were at his side. The shadow of Tokyo’s Yokohama shipyard loomed ahead and he watched traffic slowly filter left and right around the system’s loop of tradelanes. How many times had they been around that, now?
“Maybe try asking someone again?” The voice behind him suggested mildly, and his chair rocked forward as the young woman stood up and walked back to her own console. Sarah Cornwell was an eager new recruit he’d picked up on his last visit to Scarborough, looking for enough experience in the trade to secure herself a firm administrative position within the company hierarchy. The woman was a wizard with spreadsheets, he’d found, and would be a great asset to Bowex – but he secretly hoped to change her mind and retain her for the Penrose, especially now in light of all the new commodity routes he could ply with the trade agreement between Bretonia and Kusari.
“That’ll be no use again. That State Police officer just spouted something intelligible in the local tongue until I stopped pestering him, and the Kishiro convoy we passed? They didn’t even grace us with a response. And we don’t have time to dock and ask even if it were that simple.” He scratched his chin and realised from the stubble that he hadn’t shaved again. Luxuries like that would have to wait until they sorted this mess and were homeward bound.
“Well,” he shrugged and pulled the on the flight yoke, guiding the nose of the Shetland-class supertransport towards the nearest tradelane ring, “There’s nothing for it. I guess we’ll get stopped and shouted at again if we take too wrong of a turn. How hard can it be to find a planet, anyhow?”
His fingers a blur, he tapped away at the datapad and frowned, double and triple-checking the numbers.
“I think there’s a mistake.” He raised his eyes to those of his contact, a private seller whose name he couldn’t begin to read let alone pronounce. “You’re overpaying by almost—”
“No mistake.” Came the curt reply in a thick accent, the black-clad businessman eying him warily. “Price, correct. Route, correct. All correct.” He emphasised each point and shook a hand after as if waving aside any further discussion, and to Michael it didn’t seem like a suggestion. He nodded and turned back towards the shuttle that would return him to the Penrose in orbit, uncomfortably aware of the eyes boring into his back. He waited until the steel hatch snapped shut and the vessel rose into the sky before relaxing and catching the eye of Cornwell.
“They’re running me for a fool out here!” he admitted, exasperated. He would’ve thought that a foreign trader from Bretonia would be met with a welcome surplus of overpriced goods just begging for the company’s attention, but every local he’d met thus far avoided his eye as much as they could, and shot him foul looks when they could not. It was enough to drive a man mad.
“First they tell me that we’re somewhere called Toma... Tomi-oh-ka, or something, and look at me like I’m barking up the wrong tree when I asked how to locate our buyer. But then sure enough once they see the shipping manifest they admit they’d just been leading me on! As if they could convince us that this place isn’t Honshu. And that buyer they took me to... I dunno, there was something about him. Mentioned some chaps called the Hogosha a few times and shot me some pretty sour looks...” He shook his head and took a deep breath.
“You sound like you’re not cut out for this!” Sarah grinned back at him from a seat on the opposite wall of the shuttle. “What did you expect trading with people who probably wanted us dead not too long ago? People don't forget wars that quickly.”
He conceded that she had a point, but continued nevertheless. “I know, but... That isn’t the half of it. They didn’t even have our return shipment – said it wasn’t stocked yet but we could pick it up at a station on the way back to Tokyo. A place called—“ he paused to draw his datapad out of a jacket pocket and flick through its files “—Misaki? It says Rishiri here too, but I’m sure that’s not where we... Oh, whatever.” He shrugged again and returned the pad to its pocket. “They didn’t exactly encourage argument, not with their thugs standing around staring daggers at me. Next time I’m having Harmann do this; she can at least understand them when they start blabbering their own language.”
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