“You don’t seem surprised,” said Garal, behind Ingray in the corridor.
“I didn’t expect this,” said Captain Uisine. “But now that it’s happened, you’re right, I’m not surprised.” He rose. “I imagine you’ll both need to produce your identification.”
“Yes,” said Ingray. “We’re just fetching it now.”
“And you don’t seem worried, either,” observed Garal.
“I’m not,” replied Captain Uisine. “But I can’t get to my own tabulas until you move farther down the corridor, excellencies.”
“Of course.” Ingray continued down the narrow corridor, Garal behind her, to her tiny cabin. She sat on the bunk and pulled her own tabula out of her bag. “Do you know how to use the vesicle kit? It has instructions in it.”
“Yes.” Still standing in the corridor, e opened the kit’s top edge and peered at the contents. Removed the tiny sampler and thumbed it. Snapped the sampler back into its slot. Fifteen seconds later the brown box made a click and the hard, blue strip of an identity tabula slid out. E handed the now-useless brown box back to Ingray, who stowed it in her bag. “Do you have any idea,” e asked, “what this interdict is about?”
“None whatever,” she said. “Let’s go see what we can find out.”
3
Out in the bay, the two patrollers had taken up positions on either side of the doorway into the dock corridor. The Enforcement official stood inside the bay, where Ingray and Garal had left em, and Captain Uisine was speaking calmly to em, to all appearances not the least bit alarmed. “The ship is mine. The purchase was registered here at Tyr Siilas. I have all the documentation—the history is all in the tabula, every transfer of ownership since it came from the shipyard. I own it free and clear. I am also a citizen of Tyr, with registered residency on Tyr Siilas.”
E looked over Captain Uisine’s shoulder, to where Ingray and Garal approached. A quick flash of some expression when e realized Garal was wearing nothing but a blanket, quickly gone. Tyr officials were famously uninquisitive about anything that wasn’t a potential breach of Tyr law. “These are your passengers?”
“Yes, excellency,” said Captain Uisine. “Booked through the dock office, you’ll find. I don’t do any business that isn’t aboveboard.”
“No doubt, Captain. Excellencies.” That last addressed to Ingray and Garal. “Your identifications, please.” And, having examined them and handed them back, “Thank you. This is unfortunately beyond my control, Captain. Your documents are all in order, but there’s really nothing I can do. The Geck delegation insists that you be placed under arrest until they can examine you and your ship for themselves, and they won’t be able to do that for the next several hours, at the very least. It may well be longer than that.”
“It appears,” said Captain Uisine, to Ingray and Garal, “that the Geck delegation saw my ship as they were coming in, and think it’s one that was stolen from them.”
“It’s ridiculous, I know,” said the Enforcement official, “and treaty or no treaty, they don’t have the right to demand the arrest of a citizen in good standing. We’ve told them so.”
“But nobody wants to even come close to violating the treaty,” Ingray guessed. The prospect of the Presger freed from the constraints of the treaty was horrifying. Even ordinarily an alien delegation would be treated with extreme care and caution, and this was not an ordinary time. “And everyone’s on edge about this conclave.”
“Just so,” agreed the Enforcement official. “The ship is clearly your property, Captain, and once we can show the evidence of that to the Geck delegation, we expect you can be on your way. In the meantime, we’ve promised we won’t let anyone enter or leave this bay. The Geck worry you might flee, or orchestrate some sort of trick, were I to believe the ambassador’s exact words. This is why I didn’t warn you I was coming, and why I must insist you and your passengers remain here without communicating with anyone else until the ambassador arrives. I’m sure you understand that it’s in your best interest to allay the ambassador’s suspicions as much as we can. Do you have sufficient food and water? Sanitary facilities functioning properly? No medical issues that might require outside resources?”
“Yes to the first two, and none that I know of to the last.” Captain Uisine looked a mild inquiry over his shoulder at Ingray and Garal.
“No, Captain, we’re fine. Right, Garal?”
“Just fine,” e agreed.
Back aboard, Ingray said, “I don’t have any extra clothes for you, but I didn’t want to say that in front of the Enforcement official. Maybe Captain Uisine has something you could wear. Is the top bunk all right?”
“If no one is occupying this cabin”—e tapped the doorframe of the set of bunks on the other side of the narrow corridor—“I would prefer that.”
“Of course,” replied Ingray. A bit relieved, truth to tell.
E turned, looked down the otherwise empty corridor. “I wonder how you manage to steal a ship from the Geck.”
“You don’t think he stole it, do you? He’s apparently got all the documentation.”
“This is Tyr Siilas,” said Garal. “And if the captain could afford a citizenship buy-in, it’s not a far stretch to imagine he could also afford some well-forged documentation.” E said nothing about the identification tabula still in eir left hand, which had just passed Enforcement’s examination without so much as the suggestion of suspicion.
Ingray considered this a moment. “If he really did steal it from the Geck—I can’t even imagine that. I mean, they don’t leave their homeworld, right? Why would they even have a ship to steal? But if it’s true, what’s going to happen when they get here?”
“I have no idea,” said Garal. “But that’s hours from now. At the moment, I would like to have something to eat.”
E swallowed down a bowl of rehydrated noodles in what seemed like a single gulp. “Did you eat anything yesterday?” Ingray asked, sitting across from em at the galley’s tiny table. And then she realized e couldn’t possibly have, not unless e’d managed to steal something. E’d left the bay with no money, no credit account, not even any identity, and carrying nothing besides the blanket Captain Uisine had given em. Where would e have gotten food?
“Is that really what you wanted to ask me?” E leaned back and pushed the bowl into the recycle chute.