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market to find the old Alfazhi
trader. The day was heating up and the crowd was thickening as he
made his way into the maze of stalls and booths and small-lot
auctions. Somehow he expected the old man to have vanished, but the
trader was right where he had been the previous day.
    “ Good tool, ah?” said the trader,
looking at Albrecht with a suspicious glint in his eye.
    “ Yeah. Valve bleeding great.”
Albrecht squatted on his heels opposite the trader, looking at
today’s merchandise on the solar sail. More small tools, still the
Higgs sniffer, along with a new a collection of vacuum-rated bolts,
bindings and toggles. The spill of an engineering hardsuit’s
utility pouch, he would wager a guess.
    Then he broke the first rule of a
marketplace – he asked a stupid question. “Where do you get this
stuff from?”
    The trader sat very still for a
moment, staring Albrecht down. Then, with a shrug: “Here,
everywhere, there. Smart man know where look. I sell you, you sell
pawn, what difference?”
    “ Look, I don’t care. It doesn’t
matter. I just want to know.”
    “ Why you want know if you don’t
care, ah?”
    Albrecht sighed. That was a good
question. But the codelock key...something was wrong here. Maybe
there was more to it, some angle to his benefit. He slipped a
too-precious five cred chit out of his pocket, showed it to the old
man on the palm of his hand, and said the first thing that popped
into his head. “I got curiosity like a monkey, ok? My old man, he
died on the ship that codelock key came from. I just want to
know.”
    The Alfazhi snatched the chit
away. There went a night’s mattress
fee , thought Albrecht. The old man grinned,
looking half-crazy now. “Beggar auction.”
    “ What?”
    “ Dead men, ah? They drink, they
die, nobody know them, nobody respect for them, bodies go for
reprocessing, stuff go for beggar auction. Not for you, ah. You go
now, sailor.”
    “ Yeah.” He knew from nobody
knowing him. “I go now. ‘Ah’ to you too.” He stood up, wincing from
a sharp rush of pressure and pain. That takedown in front of the
library was making itself known to him.
    “ Sailor. One more
thing.”
    “ What?”
    “ Maybe you go down Sixth Wharf.
Drink some, talk some. Maybe somebody know your daddy.”
    “ Here?
From Jenny D ?”
That seemed dreadfully unlikely. But then again, so did the
codelock key, when you got right down to it.
    “ We live through our fathers, my
people, ah. I give you same respect.” The trader’s face closed into
a scowl. “Now go.”
    ‡
    Menard: Nouvelle Avignon, in
transit toward c-beacon ∂318-f
    The Chor Episcopos tried to ignore
the angel in his ready room and concentrate on the line of thought
which had been nagging at him since his conversation with Sister
Pelias. The angel was obviously content to ignore him as it slept,
after all. Menard prayed briefly to the power of the Holy Spirit
for forgiveness of his unkind thoughts regarding a fellow servant
of the Patriarch. Mind cleared and soul somewhat eased, he then
considered his situation.
    They traveled on the Church
fast courier St. Gaatha . Being a c-courier, she was a heavy beast. The ship relied on
that strange trade-off of mass and acceleration that decreased
transit time and energy required to make the transition to a smear
of negative matter and perverse equations, resolving some few dozen
lightyears distant as an allegedly identical copy of ship, cargo
and crew. As a heavy beast, she sported large, luxurious
cabins.
    It was obvious to Menard that his
quarters were ordinarily reserved for someone much more senior than
he. There was more gold filigree in here than he’d seen in most
churches outside the Prime See, and the entire compartment was done
over in blue silk upholstery and carpeting, with an ostentation
that was just short of bizarre. He had regretfully passed over the
ornamented altar with its beautiful iconostasis with Sts. Basil,
Gaatha and Tikhon rendered in delicate