Part 8 (2/2)
15.
Van Rycke ushered his companions into his office. The panel had scarcely closed behind them before he turned to Rael. ”All right. What treasure have you found for us amid the debris?”
”Maybe none,” she replied, as she accepted the shears he held out to her and slit open each of the packets. She spilled then- contents out in two carefully separated piles.
”Which does the Queen want? The cost was the same.”
”The bicolored one.”
”Good choice,” she said as she separated two pink stones from it. ”These appear to be the only ones,” she remarked after a few seconds' examination of the rest. A similar study of her own packet produced another prize, this one somewhat larger than the first two.
Rael peered closely at all three, holding them so that they caught the full of the bright light from the desk lamp.
Her head rose in a gesture of triumph. ”Star rubies,” she announced. ”Very old and unquestionably the real thing. They'll have to be tested for quality, but I suspect it's first rate.”
”So that's why you chose cabs rather than faceted stones,” Miceal said softly.
She nodded. ”I'd spotted them right off. I couldn't be entirely sure without examining them more carefully, but I knew I did have something out of the ordinary. I just had to be careful not to arouse his suspicion by paying too much attention to those particular sets.” She made a wry face. ”I'd probably have been vacuum-brained enough to tell him if that son hadn't tried to give us such a doing. Fifty credits a carat for those little ma.s.s-produced toys of his!”
”What if we had refused the packet you picked up for us?” the Cargo-Master asked.
The Medic answered Van Rycke, but it was Jellico's eyes that she met and held. ”Temporary hand or permanent, I am part of this s.h.i.+p, and I'm ent.i.tled to your trust. I'd proven my knowledge of gems. If you couldn't go along with me blindly, or at least indulge my whim if you suspected nothing more, when the outlay was so insignificant, then you'd deserve to take your loss.”
”You'd have just held onto both packets and kept mum about the rubies?” Jan asked.
”Naturally. What else would you expect me to do?”
”Fair enough,” the Captain said. ”We were testing you. You had the right to return the compliment.”
Dane fingered the rubies, although he did not pick them up. It would be too much like him to drop one of them- Cofort's probably-and send it skittering into some crevice from which it could not be extracted short of dismantling the s.h.i.+p. ”What're they worth?”
”That I couldn't venture to say with certainty, not until they've been tested,” she replied, ”but if they're as good as they look, they're worth plenty. Mr. Van Rycke will be the better one to lay the proper valuation on them once he has the necessary information to do it.”
”They're old to judge by the way they've been polished, probably Terran . . .” The Cargo-Master stopped speaking.
His breath caught. ”Spirit of s.p.a.ce!”
”What's the matter?” Miceal demanded.
”Most of Terra's good star ruby sources were played out long ago, the best of them centuries ago, and there's never been anything to equal their output since anywhere in the Federation. If these stones originated in one of those old mines, we're looking at the stuff of legend. They'll go for whatever the market'll bear.”
”If we can locate that market,” his Captain said gloomily.
”Hedon. We keep our mouths shut and fire all our tubes to get there. Our small constellation here, our double star,” he corrected, recalling that one of the three did not belong to the Queen, ”could well pay for that voyage and a number of others after it even if we moved nothing else at all on any of them.”
”Do you really think that's what we've got?” Rael asked in awe.
”There's a very strong possibility of it. Doctor, judging by surface appearances at any rate. Neither this sheen nor this color has been around for a very long time.”
”What if they aren't as old as we think or aren't from one of the famous Terran mines?” Thorson asked, trying to keep his head in the face of his superiors' enthusiasm.
They had seen what seemed like real prizes turn sour before, and he did not want to work himself into the same pitch over what could be nothing more than an extremely costly shot at the next galaxy. A trip to Hedon of Eros was an expensive proposition, and they had nothing else whatsoever that they could hope to trade there. ”They're not even very big.”
”About a carat each for ours. The Doctor's is half that weight again. That's not bad for a major gemstone. They're also dead matches for one another both in color and cut, and the Queen's two for size as well. That means we can bill them as a suite. No, provided they're natural, we have ourselves a treasure, whatever their age or source. - a.s.suming they're not hot, of course.” Rael had been careful to secure doc.u.mentation of the sale, but they would still get no profit in that event and would be out the cost of the voyage as well.
Dane nodded, inwardly hoping that their ”treasure” would at least prove of sufficient resale value to match the efforts they would have to expend to establish its authenticity and then dispose of it.
The answer to that lay in the future, but there were other mysteries still to be resolved. He turned his attention to the woman. ”How did you spot them, Rael? For that matter, how'd you know the rest were synthetics?”
”Oh, by the color. Manufactured stones are subtly different from their natural counterparts. Usually, they're more intense than real ones, and the shade or tone's at least a wee bit off.” She forestalled his next question. ”How these came to be in those sets, I couldn't begin to say. They've probably been knocking around for a long time, moving from place to place with no one suspecting their true nature. All the gems in these two lots look like they were previously mounted. They were probably part of a large, low-value s.h.i.+pment gathered from all over the ultrasystem and split up into sets for resale at marginal profit.”
”That's more or less what I figure, too,” the Cargo-Master agreed.
There was a strange note in his tone, and she looked up to find him studying her intently. ”What's wrong?” she asked in surprise.
”I hesitate to use the word preternatural. Doctor. It's too melodramatic coming from anyone but Craig Tau. However, the stones on that stand were not the work of amateurs, The fact that they were synthetic would not have been instantly apparent to most of us, myself included, and I'm not precisely a novice at buying and selling such items.
Add to that the fact that absolutely no one else I've ever known could possibly have smelled out that rats' nest and it rather makes me wonder about you.”
”That's only because you're judging by purely Terran standards,” she told him calmly. ”When I introduced myself as Teague Cofort's sister, I should have been more specific. We're actually half-siblings. Our mothers were different. Very different. In point of fact, I'm a genetic impossibility.”
Her chin lifted. ”I don't know Mother's race or homeworld. My father just returned to the s.h.i.+p with her one day after a short absence on some planet neither they nor his crew would ever name. She definitely was not of Terran blood, not human at all, although she was very beautiful by human standards. There were some significant physiological and genetic differences, incompatibilities. Marriage was possible between them. Conception should not have been and certainly not a viable birth. That notwithstanding, I was conceived, born, and have managed to thrive.
”Like most intelligent beings, I have my own set of gifts and talents. Most seem to have come from my father, some from Mother, but none are of a nature to set me apart from the better part of the Federation's citizens. Whatever strengths I might have came by the time-honored means of determined effort and practice. If I hadn't been reared in an environment like s.p.a.ce where the lack of other distractions does wonders for the ability to concentrate on a long course of study or training, I doubt I'd have achieved much with them at all, and even with that push, I'm a far voyage from being some sort of ultrawoman.
”Admittedly, my senses are pretty acute, but there's nothing super-anything about them.
”I do have a good feel for color and can differentiate between shades quite finely, but I learned that from our former Cargo-Master, Mara's predecessor. Other than that, my vision's not remarkable. - No pin spotting at ten miles or peering through t.i.tanone plates.
”It's much the same with hearing. My sense of smell is keen, which is usually more disadvantage than blessing. I have trained myself to separate and identify different odors even when they're components in a melody. That's a bit uncommon, I suppose, but don't imagine I can perform like a tracking or hunting animal, or you're in for a major disappointment.
”Sensitivity to aroma and refined sense of taste go together. You can be sure that I appreciate Mr. Mura's fine hand with his seasonings and that I don't let many chances for a good feed of real food pa.s.s me by when they crop up.”
The expression of each of her companions brightened into a grin. That, at least, was typical of their kind. When a s.p.a.ce hound hit the surface of a basically Terran-type planet and had some free time, it was almost inevitably to an eating place that he first hurried rather than to the local version of a Happy City.
Rael did not smile. ”The last sense I have is touch, and that's not terribly extraordinary, though I'll admit to preferring the feel of that Thornen silk to that of our uniforms.
”There's nothing else,” she continued firmly and a little wearily, ”no sixth-plus powers. I don't read minds or see past or future or move solid objects by will alone.”
”What about conversing with animals?” Miceal asked quickly.
”No,” she said firmly. ”I wish I could. They're often a galaxy nicer than our own kind. They like me because they know how much I like them. Maybe it's a little unusual,” she conceded, ”but it's nothing more than that. Plants, too, grow for me as they do for other gardeners who understand their ways and enjoy working with them. There's no particular magic in it.”
The Captain gave a slight shake of his head. ”No go, Cofort. A lot of people like animals, but none of them affects Queex the way you do.”
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