Starliner(23)

"Well, sir," she said, "you've picked the right ship to go home on, then. The Empress means success!"

Unless you rode her in Third Class, in the spaces that would double as cattle byres when the Empress of Earth lifted from Calicheman.

The passenger beamed at Blavatsky. He wasn't listening, but he was glad of her presence because he needed an audience to burble his joy aloud. "Marie doesn't know I'm coming back," he explained, waving the sealed letters again. "I'd return when I'd made my fortune, we agreed, and every two weeks of those five years she's sent me a letter. By the Brasil or by the Empress, voyage and voyage. And what I've done—"

Chekoumian looked around to see who else might be listening. No one was. He added in a confidential voice anyway, "—you see, these past three months, when I knew I was going home to marry Marie, I've saved her letters. I'm going to read one at each planet-fall, and then when we reach Tblisi—I'll have my Marie herself."

Blavatsky looked at the passenger. He was a sophisticated man as well as being rich and successful. Unlike many of those in the Social Hall, Chekoumian wore his stylish clothes with practiced ease. He wasn't dressing up for the voyage; he looked as he did to his business associates, at what must be a very high level of his field of endeavor.

But he was also childishly enthusiastic, especially when he was talking about his Marie. Blavatsky smiled, genuinely pleased by Chekoumian's good fortune—and his fiancee's. Her expression couldn't be pure laughter, though, because she remembered how recently she'd thought she was that happy also.

"Five years ago, I had nothing but the clothes I stand in," reminisced Chekoumian. He looked around at the ivoroid and silk, at successful passengers and the images of a supernal empire on the walls. "Ship's clothes they were, too, bought from the bosun's slop chest. And now, only five years—the Beakersdorff chain decides they must have my connections on Szgrane and K'Chitka. They pay me a million three—so much from nothing, in five years!"

Chekoumian had spoken of his warehouse. It sounded as though he was an import-export specialist—had been one, and would certainly be something, maybe the same thing, again soon. His kind of man didn't sit on his hands just because he'd found himself rich.

"I'm glad of your good fortune, Mr Chekoumian," Blavatsky said aloud. She knew she needed to get on, but she no longer felt the pressure of a moment before. Quiet longing eased over her as smoothly as the sea across tidal flats. Commander Kneale's anger was as remote a possibility as the threat of lightning; and in any case, it didn't rule Blavatsky's soul.

"The best of my fortune," Chekoumian said, "is my Marie. She can't realize how well I've done. I tell her, but a letter is a letter, you know . . . and I didn't realize until Beakersdorff made their offer three months ago! Many women wouldn't wait five years, you know."

And some men wouldn't wait four weeks, Blavatsky thought. The length of a round-trip voyage, Earth to Tblisi and back, with the wedding planned for the day the Empress docked on her return. . . .

"That's quite true, sir," Blavatsky murmured. "I hope you continue to be so happy."

The uniformed rating walked toward the real exit framed by the pillared facade of Rome's Temple of Concord. Chekoumian's Marie was a very lucky woman. Blavatsky hoped—and doubted—that she knew it

Chekoumian settled himself into a chair. He was too absorbed in his own affairs to notice that Blavatsky had gone without leave or ceremony. That wasn't the sort of thing that mattered to him, anyway.

He touched the edge fold of the earliest letter with his chip-encoded signet ring. The envelope peeled back neatly, like tensed skin drawing the flesh open along a cut. If the seal was broken in any other fashion, the envelope would have melted with enough violence to ignite the paper within.

Chekoumian extracted the letter and began to read:

My Dearest Abraham,

Today Mother and I went shopping for Nita's baby shower. You know Nita. Oh, don't put yourselves out, she says, but if we didn't you can be sure she'll be telling everybody what cheapskates our side of the family is until she's a gray old woman! Well, we . . .

* * *

The five passengers in the Starlight Bar, all of them male, watched the clear, curving wall as tugs on ground transporters crawled toward the Empress of Earth.

Wade wore his credit chip on a bracelet of untarnished metallic chain, an alloy from the heavy platinum triad. "I'll take this round, then," he said, and inserted the chip in the autobar's pay slot.

Other men began punching selections into the pads on their chair arms. "Many thanks, ah, Wade," Dewhurst said. "The next one's—"