Finity's End - a Union-Alliance Novel by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online

point to yours some seven years ago that we are prepared to go to court,—which with other matters at hand, is a very untimely flare-up of an issue that should have been settled. We do not owe Pell Station any station-share. We will not pay living expenses. We will pay Francesca's medical bills. That is my statement." A wave of James Robert's hand, a dismissal. "Just so you know there's no ill will."
    A ship-share of
Finitys End
was an immense amount of money—and so was a station-share on Pell. Francesca Neihart had run up medical bills, living expenses. So had her son.
    "The boy is a year from his majority" Damon said
    "And seven years older than the last time we sued. We're in the middle of cargo purchase. But here we are, with what seven years ago was a simple wash: your debt for our debt. Now we're dealing with real money, fourteen point five million credits of real money, which you will not see, I assure you in a very friendly way, and which your courts will
not
attach,
or
freeze, because we will sue the bloody clothes off you—so to speak."
    James Robert did not bluff.
    "The boy," Damon said, "is a ward of Pell courts."
    Madison cleared his throat, in what became a very long silence. The Konstantins were also known for stubbornness.
    "He is
our
citizen," James Robert said. "And we no longer operate in harm's way. I believe that was the exact objection of the court in prior years. We cannot afford to debate this particular issue, Konstantin. Not at this particular moment. Yet on principle, we will sue."
    Damon, who'd never contradict his wife in the midst of negotiations—Damon viewed the concept of law in lieu of God; and Damon was going to hit the overhead when they got home tonight. Elene could feel it in the rock-hard tension of his hand, his sharp, almost painful squeeze on her fingers. No children in a war zone, the Children's Court had held, in spite of the fact that there were children on every family merchanter ship out in space. The Children's Court had its hands on
one
of those children and in a paralysis of anguish over the War one judge and her own husband's office wouldn't let that child go. But in those critical words,
no longer operate in harm's way
, the advocacy system, the judiciary, which couldn't resolve its technical issues over Francesca Neihart's son because the court-appointed social workers and psychiatrists wouldn't agree, had just had its point answered.
    Fletcher Robert Neihart had always been caught in the gears. It wasn't the boy's fault that elements in Pell's administration resented being a trailing appendage to the Merchanter Alliance, and some noisy few fools even thought that Pell should assess merchant ships to see whether they were fit for children. It was a ridiculous position, one that would have collapsed the whole merchanter trade network and collapsed civilization with it—but they were issue-oriented thinkers.
    To complicate matters, years ago some clever child advocate in the legal office had thought it a fine argument to claim a station-share and sue
Finity
during wartime on the boy's behalf. In further bureaucratic idiocy, filing said claim with the court thereafter had made no difference after that that 14.5 million credits was a figure that never had existed, in or in any official assessment of actual debt. Once that sum had gotten onto the documents, politicians and bursars alike afraid to take the responsibility of forgiving a fourteen-million-credit debt. So it was in the court records, and it would persist until someone somewhere signed papers in settlement.
    Now, to cap a macabre comedy teetering on the verge of tragedy, it sounded as if the Pell Bursar's office, unstoppable as stellar gravity, had just billed
Finity
for the amount outstanding on Pell's books and thereby annoyed the seniormost and most essential captain in the Merchanters' Alliance, a man to whom Pell and the whole Alliance owed its independence. And done so at the very moment the peace and the