Arilanna Tayrey (astrogator) wrote in spinningcompass, @ 2022-04-17 19:37:00 |
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Entry tags: | suzume, ~arilanna tayrey |
Who: Arilanna Tayrey and Suzume
What: Ari's being reflective, spacer worldbuilding, 24th century meets 18th, attempted trading
Where: Village in France, 1783
When: Saturday afternoon
Ari Tayrey had never seen such extensive fields in her life, stretching out towards the horizon. She was walking down to the village, having quickly left the castle with no more than a few words to those around her. She hadn't been planetside since Cardalek, and Cardalek Tower where she had spent her childhood, the Company headquarters, had been all shining steel and covered walkways, with no need for a director's daughter ever to descend to its lower levels. She followed the road, such as it was, and smiled to herself as the thought of it, the idea that there was some conceptual connection between this little lane and the Tradelines which stretched between the stars.
It had been a spacer's instinct which led her to step through the doorway into the unknown, she was sure, but now it brought conflicted feelings. She recognised the emotional exhaustion in herself, Arilanna whose psychological development had been picked apart and analysed in the Tower. She'd learnt to fool the psych-tests in that last year, and the intellectual ones, and to tell the analysts what she had wanted them to know. It had been a game to them, Arilanna and Kaizen, Sarai and Ellai, all the children who knew that they were Company genetic projects. Ari hadn't heard from any of them since her departure, nor did she want to. She looked back on it as a sort of social contagion, how they'd convinced each other that when the woman at the head of the Company died, terrible things would happen to them, because her successor wouldn't want them growing to maturity there and presenting an alternative. Control of Cardalek belonged to the majority shareholder, and they'd talked about how they could manage that someday, as a group.
Ari hadn't believed in all the plans for power, they were children's grandiose dreams and nothing more. The fears, however, had seemed real, and that was why she'd left. Most runaways would have gone for the biggest, best-known tradeship they could find, but Arilanna chose the Prosperity, a small one. There was less chance of being thrown off at the next station. She'd met the Prosperity's astrogator, Leah Savitskaya, and learned that her second-shift backup hadn't renewed his last contract, and she was alone. She'd heard about Captain Kavarai, heard that he had a kind heart, and decided this was the risk she would take. It had worked. She'd become Savitskaya's apprentice, taken up with the other young spacers in Acquisitions, and acted as if she were born to the spacer life. Which she had been, she told herself. A Tayrey by blood, descended from the hero of Breakaway. It had to have helped her case. It had been years before she had looked back and realised what her departure must have done to the father who raised her, who had been given no indication of her plans, but by then it was too late.
Now she was stuck on a station, and Ari had always been wary of stationers. They assumed that spacers were a lot more organised than they truly were, as if they had something more than code and culture binding them. When a stationer had a grudge, they'd blame the next ship to come through. As an apprentice, Arilanna had always stayed aboard the ship, but all that changed when she qualified. Stationers didn't understand what a dangerous job astrogation was, why a qualified astrogator got shipboard rank and favourable contract and a share in profit even if she wasn't yet sixteen. Ari, whose first real test had involved being sent out in an old rustbucket of a courier ship and told to go through L-space, completely alone, send a message back from the next relay station, and then return? She thought it was only fair. She'd had no problems with it, but she'd had Savitskaya's undivided attention for over a year at that point. The attrition rate for apprentices on the bigger ships was frightening – dropouts and space sickness cases, yes, but there was a reason they were all given worn-out ships for that particular test.
So the very existence of the very young Lieutenant Tayrey had been enough to trouble some stationers. Then there were the ones who saw her as an easy target. She'd had to learn the right words, spacer formulae. Excuses, for things that might have been done months before the Prosperity had docked there. It rarely escalated into real violence, but that was because of a quirk in the spacer's code. It was true that spacers didn't initiate violence. But they could retaliate, however they liked, even if it meant returning a punch with a killing shot. The ship's captain would back them up. Spacers who didn't even know them would back them up. This was probably the reason why Ari had never found herself in any real danger on stations. People might complain, they might shout, but they didn't attack and they didn't obstruct Tradelines business.
Thinking too much about that was troubling, considering her present circumstances, and Arilanna reminded herself that she was planetside for calm and for culture, and to put everything else behind her.
~~~
She stood out in the village. Ari wore what was normal for her – coveralls in spacer blue, tailored just enough to avoid looking baggy and boxy, but very far from form-fitting. She carried a spacer's kit, a little case with a shoulder strap, and had her gun clipped at her belt, because she hadn't known what to expect when she stepped through. She attracted stares from the locals, but she hardly noticed, because the scene before her was captivating. All these people – on Earth! Born nearly a century after Breakaway, Ari had no fear of Earth. She could appreciate this opportunity to step back in time for just what it was, and spent hours sitting on a bench in the market square, just watching.
Eventually she gathered the courage to try to buy something – a little ceramic bowl, as a souvenir. Ari knew that she didn't recognise the language the others around her were speaking, but she was surprised when not only did the shopkeeper not have English, he was simply confused by her efforts in Tamil and Arabic and Russian. She resorted, ultimately, to pointing. Then there was the matter of payment. She offered him a little copper disc token that would have more than paid for the bowl at any stop along the Tradelines, upscale station or frontier one. Easily redeemed at any planetary bank. To Ari's amazement, he seemed annoyed, and started trying to shoo her away.
Barter, then? Ari rummaged in her spacer's kit, but there wasn't much that she had available for trade. She ended up holding out an energy snack bar, which the shopkeeper looked at much as if it were radioactive.
This was going to require a little more thought.