Trading in Danger by Elizabeth Moon Read Free Book Online Page A

going down the hall to her room. She remembered her first insertion experience very clearly; she had been seven, getting a child’s school expansion kit, and she had insisted that her balance wasn’t affected, she didn’t need to lie down and take a nap… all the way to the ground when she fell off the pony. I’m fine, she’d said, lying on the ground and looking up at a pony hazed in a supernatural golden glow, its wings waving gently in the breeze. My pony has wings, she’d said. No one had believed her. She’d woken from that nap with a bruise on her rump and her brothers prancing around the room waving their arms, pretending to be flying ponies.
    Enhanced memory was one side effect of implants and their insertion. She pulled off her clothes, put on a gown, turned off the light, and lay down.
    She had been sure she wouldn’t sleep, but the moment her head hit the pillow, she was out. She woke, remembering no dreams, at first disoriented because sunlight played on the opposite wall from the garden window in her room—and she expected instead the cold dim light of a winter dawn in the capital. Misery hit her again, and she rolled over, burying her face in the pillow. Her career. Her hopes. Her friends. Hal… he wouldn’t even know what happened. She hadn’t actually started crying when something landed with a thump on her back.
    “Rise and shine, lazybones,” came her brother’s voice. “You’ve got to hit the books.”
    Ky rolled out of bed, threw the offending roll of towels back at her brother—wet, he must have just come in from swimming—and stalked into the ’fresher with as much dignity as possible. Her implant offered the time, the temperature, the humidity, water temperature of the ’fresher, her own pulse and respiration if she wanted it. She didn’t. She ate a hasty breakfast in a corner of the kitchen, and then settled down to the pile of data cubes her father had left for her to read. Everything there was to know about
Glennys Jones
, about the route she was to take, everything she needed to know about the Vatta Transport codes. At intervals her attention drifted to her disgrace, but she yanked it back to the matter at hand. She could not think about it… any of it… without going to pieces. If she was to be a cargo ship captain, she had better things to do than feel sorry for herself. The implant fed her accessory information whenever she asked. She was deep in the revised space regulations applicable to licensed carriers Class C and below when her father and brother came home for lunch.
    “How’s it going?” her father asked.
    “These are done,” Ky said, pointing to that stack. “I’m into space regs. Why on earth did they restrict Class Bs from carrying nutrient components? Seems to me that’s what they’re ideally suited for.”
    “Politics,” San said. “But I’m not supposed to say that.”
    Her father gave San a look. “P & L,” he said. “They’ve moved into nutrient component production, over onChelsea. They transport the stuff very efficiently in purpose-built Class Ds; they’re just protecting their investment.”
    “Closing out competitors, both producers and shippers,” San said.
    “San.”
    “They’re our competitors; I don’t see why we can’t be plainspoken at least at home,” San said.
    “They’re also our friends. You might have married the girl—”
    “Not me,” San said.
    Ky watched this interchange with interest. San arguing with her father? That was new.
    “Lunch,” her father said firmly, leading the way to the veranda. At midday, it was shady, breezy, scented with roses and jasmine. Her mother didn’t appear. She often skipped lunch with the family. Ky wasn’t hungry—she’d done nothing all morning but read—but she picked at a salad. Her father frowned at her. “You should get out a little,Ky.If you don’t eat, your mother will pester me.”
    “I need to finish these,” Ky said.
    “Not today. I didn’t think you’d be