CONTRABAND

CONTRABAND
Nathan Archer (Lawrence Watt-Evans)

The ship's afterjets were still smoking as Jeffers trotted out onto the blast apron, the display panel in his hand showing the manifest the crew had transmitted from orbit. He'd snagged this one the minute he saw the read out, before Ota or Singh got a look at it, and all because of one word: Pets.

As far as Jeffers was concerned, pets were a struggling customs officer's wet dream. He could claim they were diseased or dangerous, he could demand endless documentation, genetic scans, certifications from half a dozen governments or organizations-basically, he could delay the shipment indefinitely.

And pets needed care and feeding, which would eat into someone's profits for every day the cargo was delayed, and the animals would be getting older and less valuable, and might get sick or die, which would make them worthless; their owner would want them delivered as quickly as possible.

Which meant that Jeffers could expect a very healthy fee to expedite the process. With luck, he could wind up with half the captain's profits going onto his own card.

And it was all far safer than "overlooking" drugs or weapons; exotic alien pets were legal, after all, and the people who transported them were therefore far less likely to shoot an overly greedy customs inspector. He wouldn't be threatening anyone with arrest, deportation, or reprogramming-just with bureaucratic delays. Nobody liked red tape, but only a lunatic would shoot anyone over it, while drug dealers and gun runners shot each other with depressing frequency.

Of course, the Lord Lucan might be smuggling contraband, as well as its official cargo, which could make the haul even richer, albeit riskier. Jeffers smiled happily as he tapped the phone keys on his display.

"Musashi Port Customs, requesting permission to come aboard," he said.

"Just a minute, Customs," a woman's voice replied, though no image appeared. "I'm checking on the cargo restraints. Wouldn't want anything to hit you on the head."

"Whenever you're ready, Captain," Jeffers said. He stood on the apron, waiting patiently, as the sound of heavy objects thumping on metal surfaces came over the display speakers.

At last the woman spoke again.

"Opening the lock, Customs; stand clear."

Jeffers booted up the atmospheric sensors on the display, then tucked the panel under one arm and watched as the outer door of the airlock swung open and extended itself downward to become a boarding ladder. Before the bottom rung had entirely stopped moving he grabbed the rails and began climbing.

At the top he waited while the airlock cycled-apparently the captain wasn't in any hurry to expose herself to Musashi's air. At last, though, the inner door opened and he found himself facing the Lord Lucan's captain. She was a sturdily built woman with coffee colored skin, wearing a standard ship suit that was drab blue at the moment.

"Madis Tyler," she said, holding out a hand. "Is Maintenance coming?"

Jeffers shook the offered hand. "Karl Jeffers," he said. "I haven't heard anything from Maintenance; that's between you and them."

"They said they'd send someone right out."

"Shouldn't be more than an hour or so, then. They're a bit backlogged." His curiosity got the better of him. "What needs maintenance?"

"The main drive. That's why I put down; I wasn't planning to land at all. If this place had a decent orbital station instead of just that stupid navigation post, I wouldn't be here, wasting time and fuel, I'd have made the repairs in orbit."

"Then your cargo isn't bound for Musashi?"

"Oh, hell, no; I've got buyers waiting on Telemachus III. I'm just here because I was using the Musashi beacon for transition, and the drive went unstable and dumped me out of hyper about fifteen light minutes off the point. I didn't want to risk jumping again until I found out why."

This took the edge off Jeffers' enthusiasm; if the ship was going to be delayed for expensive repairs anyway, and the impatient buyer wasn't here on Musashi, his bargaining position wasn't quite as good as he had thought. He couldn't demand payment before allowing the pets to leave the ship, because they weren't going to leave the ship here. He could probably still manage something, but this wouldn't be as lucrative as he thought; if he got too greedy the Lord Lucan would probably just launch without clearance and run for it, and there wouldn't be much anyone in the Musashi system could do about it. Musashi did not have many patrol ships, and the Confederacy Guard was unlikely to waste one pursuing someone whose only crime was not bribing the port officials adequately.

"I'll still need to take a look," Jeffers said apologetically. "Port rules, you know."

"I figured you would," Tyler said with a sigh. "Every port in the galaxy has rules and bureaucrats. I suppose there'll be paperwork.''

"Oh, I think we can keep it to a minimum, since you aren't offloading anything," he said. "In fact, a small service charge might expedite the process..."

"How much?"

"Well, that depends on the exact nature of your cargo."

"They're pets. Sixty of them. Furballs indigenous to Fomalhaut IV. Do you need the species name? It should be in the manifest."

Jeffers took the display board from under his arm and looked at it. The atmosphere indicators showed a bunch of non standard trace organics-that would presumably be from the cargo's breath or waste. There were no traces of anything that looked like illicit drugs or out gassing from explosives, unfortunately, which meant Tyler probably wasn't smuggling anything and Jeffers couldn't extort even more.

The manifest did give a species name-Ardemanus ardermani formalhauti-that was amazingly uninformative, and tapping the query button elicited "No data on file."

He hesitated. He knew he should just name a fee, but he wanted to see what these things looked like. There might be some excuse to charge more if they looked especially valuable.

And a thought struck him. "You only have sixty? On a ship this size."

"They're big furballs, not just hamsters or something, and I've got to haul the food and water for them."

Big animals? That meant he might be able to make an accusation of inhumane treatment, or transporting dangerous livestock; that could raise the price. "I'll need to take a look," he said.

"Yeah, fine. This way." Tyler led the way to the central core, where they ascended a ladder to the main hold.

The smell reached Jeffers before the door slid open, and he almost gagged; there was no question that the Lord Lucan wastransporting animals. A glance at the display showed four red indicators on the atmosphere readings-but steady red meant "unidentified," not toxic.

Then he looked at the cargo, and saw why Captain Tyler had called them "furballs."

There were about a dozen of the creatures in this compartment. Each stood about five feet tall and about three feet wide, thick legs supporting almost spherical bodies covered in luxurious fur in a variety of colors. It took Jeffers a moment to puzzle out exactly what he was seeing, beyond walking balls of fur, but at last he understood.

They were tripodal-a leg on either side and one at the back, the back one jointed differently, which Jeffers suspected meant it had evolved from something like a tail. Plastic restraints encircled every leg, each creature tethered to a cargo ring on the bulkhead.

Between the front and back leg on either side of each furball was what could only be considered an arm, though the resemblance to human arms was slight; each was equipped with four things somewhere between fingers and pincers at the end, and also with something clawlike at the lower elbow. There were no actual hands.

And between each pair of front legs hung a long neck ending in a flat, pan shaped head, equipped with four eyes and a mouth, and other openings that might or might not be ears and nostrils.

Most of those many eyes were staring back at him.

"Whoa," he said. "Who'd want those for pets?"

"Rich people," Tyler said. "On Telemachus III."

Jeffers shrugged. "I suppose some people will buy anything." He looked at his display. "I'll want to take some readings."

Tyler didn't reply; she just frowned. Then her com twittered. "Maintenance, waiting to come aboard," it said. "What's the nature of the problem?"

"I'll be right there," she said. Then she turned her attention back to Jeffers. "Don't touch anything," she said. "They're docile, and they're tethered, but that doesn't mean they can't step on your foot or butt you accidentally if you get too close." Then she spun on her heel and marched back out to the ladder.

Jeffers watched her go, then turned back to the furballs.

He didn't really care what they were, or what the readings said; he just wanted to figure out how he could maximize his income from this.

They were odd looking creatures, and the way they were all watching him made him nervous. The smell didn't help.

"You guys stink, you know that?" he said.

"Sorry," the nearest replied, in slightly accented Commerce.

Jeffers almost dropped his display. "You can talk?" he demanded, once he was sufficiently recovered to speak.

The furballs exchanged glances; one said, "The captain lady said we mustn't talk to you." Two of the others turned to glare at it.

Jeffers glanced around for cameras, and spotted three-but he knew how to deal with that; anyone who conspired with smugglers had to be able to alter records. He hurried to the compartment's com port and punched up a link between the ship's systems and his display board, then selected one of the display's files and quickly entered a few parameters.

That would generate synthetic images of utterly innocuous behavior in the cargo hold, starting from the moment Captain Tyler descended the ladder.

"She can't hear us now," he said, turning back to the furballs. "Now, what were you saying?"

"We're sorry we stink," a reddish brown one said. "We haven't had a decent bath since we came aboard, and the food doesn't agree with us."

"Or the air, " a bluish one interjected.

Visions of a charge of inhumane treatment, and the bribe it would take to have it dismissed, arose in Jeffers' thoughts, only to be immediately dismissed by a far more basic issue.

These things weren't pets.

Oh, there were talking pets-parrots and mynah birds and Sirian mimic hounds-but those couldn't hold real conversations. A mere pet would not apologize for its smell and complain about a lack of bathing facilities, would it? Those flat heads didn't look big enough to hold much brain, but not every species kept its brain in its head.

"What are you?" Jeffers asked.

The furballs exchanged glances.

"Well, our own word for our kind is..." It made a gurgling noise.

"It just means 'people', really," another explained.

"The captain lady calls us her cargo," said the reddish one.

"Or furballs."

"Or slaves."

Jeffers stared at them. "Slaves," he said.

"That was the word she used, yes."

There was clearly more going on here than a little smuggling. "Not pets?"

The furballs exchanged glances.

"No."

"I don't think so."

"What are pets?"

Jeffers ignored the question and asked, "Do you know what slaves are?"

"Workers," the reddish one answered promptly. "We're to cultivate crops, and run machines, and do whatever we're told. If we don't, our families will be killed."

Oh, this was just getting better and better, Jeffers thought. Kidnapping, slavery, and maybe even murder if Tyler had demonstrated that her threats were serious. Not to mention that she was probably suppressing knowledge of an intelligent species, in violation of the contact laws.

This was not something he wanted to be part of.

Jeffers knew he was not a law-abiding citizen. For the right price he could look the other way when spacers decided to bring in drugs or weapons, because after all, their customers chose to buy the stuff. Drugs might ruin lives, but the owners of those lives had taken the drugs in the first place of their own free will, despite all the warnings in their schooling and entertainment. Weapons might kill people, but people could improvise weapons readily enough, or kill each other without them-human beings had demonstrated great ingenuity in their long history of violence. He could tolerate drug smuggling and gun running, and still consider himself a fairly decent human being; he had no trouble facing himself in the mirror most mornings. He lived with that sort of crime easily.

But slavery? That was an entirely different level of wrong.

And what was the point? Why weren't the farmers of Telemachus III using robots for their labor?

Slaves were probably cheaper, especially if these things would breed in captivity. If Telemachus was a metal-poor system, or if it had an environment that corroded metal or circuitry, robots might be expensive there.

Slaves might be more versatile; the furballs seemed pretty bright.

Or maybe there wasn't any sound economic reason. Maybe the Telemachans just liked the idea of slaves. Jeffers shuddered at the thought, but he knew it was possible.

It wasn't really any of his business, he told himself. He shouldn't get involved...

But slavery?

Still, what could he do about it? Reporting it to the cops here wouldn't do any good; Tyler would just bribe them, or maybe launch before she could be arrested. Jeffers knew very well just how corrupt the local law enforcement was. He also knew what would happen to his own reputation among both cops and smugglers once the word got out.

And if by some fluke he found an honest cop, and Tyler got hauled off to jail, and did not manage to flee, then what? He'd be called to testify, and if Tyler managed to find even a halfway competent lawyer the jury would then be treated to all the lurid details of Jeffers' own past. Juries were notoriously unlikely to believe crooked officials.

And the other smugglers, the people who made it possible to live decently on his salary, would all hear about it. Losing half his income was the best he could hope for; turning up dead in an alley was far more likely.

No, the sensible thing to do here was to take a moderate bribe and keep his mouth shut, slaves or no slaves.

But he looked at the furballs, at the dozens of eyes staring at him, and wished there were another way.

He blinked, closed his eyes, and tried to clear his thoughts. This wasn't really so different, he told himself. He'd let gun runners through, after all, and he knew those weapons weren't just for target practice. And he'd seen what happened to people who got too fond of the drugs he'd let in.

It wasn't any of his business. Drugs and guns and slaves were going to be smuggled in no matter what he did; he might as well take his money and keep quiet. He had long ago decided that-well, he had long ago decided that about drugs and guns, anyway; slaves had never come into it before.

He wished they hadn't come into it now, either.

He opened his eyes and found the furballs were looking past him; he quickly tapped the abort on his display and turned to find Captain Tyler climbing back up the ladder.

"They're looking at the drive," she said. "Can we get this paperwork out of the way so I can go keep an eye on them, and make sure they don't break anything they can add to my bill?"

"Of course," Jeffers said. He looked at the display and began entering commands. "So tell me about Telemachus III," he said. "I've never been there-hell, I've never been off Musashi. I love to hear the stories, though."

"I don't know what to tell you," Tyler said with a shrug. "It's just another damn colony. The Confederacy runs the port, but mostly people there just mind their own business."

"They're rich enough to buy your cargo, though; how'd that happen?"

"Oh, the local fauna's good for scents and flavors; real complex stuff, easier to grow it than synthesize it. They've got whole plantations of weird plants they export."

"Sounds interesting," Jeffers said, with a glance at the furballs. That explained what these things would be doing.

"Yeah, and it gets lonely out there in the backwater plantations, so they'll buy fancy pets. Now, do you have the papers ready? Got the fees figured out?"

"Just about..."

Tyler's com twittered.

"Yes?"

"Maintenance, Captain. Looks like you've got a blown balancer."

Tyler grimaced. "Which one?"

"Portside, number three."

"That son of a bitch. I'll be right down."

"I could just transmit..."

"No, I want to see it." She turned to Jeffers. "Show me where to thumb, and tell me what it's going to cost to get out of here as soon as Maintenance has my drive working."

Jeffers decided that he didn't want to drag this out. He held out the display and pointed. "Right there. And I think that, say, sixty kay will cover everything and get you cleared."

"Sixty kay? Try twenty."

"Well, I was allowing for extras, you know how it is. Say fifty."

"Thirty five. The Telemachans aren't that rich."

"I can't be sure to get it all done for less than forty."

"Forty's good enough. Give me your card."

Jeffers held out the card, and accepted the funds transfer. Then he took back the display and tapped more keys.

Tyler glared at him. "I thought you said that would cover it."

"It will," he said, not sure himself why he was delaying. "I still need to do the data entry, that's all. It'll just be a minute; I'll be out of here long before they have a new balancer aligned."

"Fine. You know the way out. Don't bother the furballs, okay?"

"Sure."

She wasn't even nervous; he marveled at that. She hadn't asked whether the furballs had done anything, wasn't worried about what he might see or do. She had weighed him in her mind and found him harmless.

Jeffers stood and watched as Tyler once again descended out of sight; the minute she was gone he reactivated the camera jammer and turned back to the furballs.

"Listen," he said, only then realizing what he was going to do, and what he would say, "this is your ship, you understand? You bought it, and hired Captain Tyler to fly it for you, and then she chained you up and you don't know why. Got it?"

The furballs exchanged glances.

"No," one of them said. "It isn't true."

"No, it's not true, but it should be, and you tell anyone who asks you on Telemachus that's what's happened, and they'll make sure that you can go home and that your families will be safe."

"I don't understand," the reddish one said.

"Just do it!" Jeffers said. "If anyone asks. If no one asks, forget I said anything."

"But..."

"I don't have time to argue," he said. He turned and headed for the ladder.

He glanced over his shoulder as he descended, and saw the furballs looking at one another in confusion. He hoped they could manage their role-but it shouldn't be too demanding. All they had to do was act like wronged innocents-and that's what they were.

He started working up the new manifest while waiting for the airlock to cycle, but didn't finish it until back in his own office. It was a bit tricky; he had to make it look as if his substitute was the original, and the freight list a fake pasted over it. He also had to make sure that the Confederacy officials at the port on Telemachus wouldn't miss the revised version.

It was a safe bet that Captain Tyler would never check it, but he didn't dare just leave the modified version out in the open; the Confederacy would never believe that...

At last he was satisfied, and transmitted the files, along with a customs clearance for the Lord Lucan-a deliberatelyfaulty customs clearance, so that the Confederacy would double check it.

If it worked-and he thought it would-when Tyler landed at the port on Telemachus and had her documents checked, it would look as if she had been hired to fly sixty passengers to the Contact Authority on Sirius II, and had instead kidnapped them to Telemachus III to be sold as slaves, with altered records calling them pets.

He hoped that the Confederacy officials on Telemachus III were less corrupt than his coworkers on Musashi. They should be; the Confederacy had a reputation for clean, if ruthless, administration.

Tyler must have had some way to get past the customs officials there, though. Would the "pets" designation have been enough? Perhaps she knew who to bribe. But the risk letting a manifest this damaged through...

Well, Jeffers had done his best. He could only hope it was enough. The more he thought about it, the more he wanted those furballs safely returned home. He wished there were a way to find out what would happen to them on Telemachus III, but he doubted the news would ever reach Musashi.

An hour later he watched the launch, wondering whether he had done enough-and why he had done anything.

He hadn't known he had any real scruples left, but obviously he did.

As he watched the glowing dot vanish into the heavens he wondered whether it might be time to find another line of work, perhaps even time to get off Musashi once and for all; Musashi Port was clearly not a good place for a man with scruples.

He had tried for years to do without them, but he had discovered today that there were some he was not willing to lose, and the discovery was strangely comforting.

If he settled somewhere new, he would try to do better than he had here, to be a better person. He wondered how honest he could be if he worked at it.

To his own surprise, he thought he would enjoy finding out.