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than
anything I’ve ever laid hands on.”
    “You handled D’Nei’s property?” Cal was alarmed. Everything
should have been disposed of quickly and quietly, not passed around like a
damned show and tell session.
    “You’re not hearing me, C’Al.” Bel was unperturbed by his
leader’s obvious disapproval. “ Fresh spicewood. Maybe folks see that
kind of thing in a rich city like Xo’Khov where the plantations send what
little they manage to grow, but here? Fresh spicewood being given away to
someone like D’Nei in return for services on a middle-of-nowhere ball of
water like Chaco Benthic?”
    “So what does that mean to us, Bel?” Even after a century
and a half pretending to be a Tauhentan, he still sometimes missed what was obvious
to the locals and he wasn’t sure what Belfric was getting at.
    “We’ve been seeing fresh spicewood artifacts over the last
few months.” Belfric chewed at the inside of his lip as he spoke, indicating
that he was thinking the problem through. He looked up at Cal. “There has to be
a source of the stuff nearby. Only way to explain it getting smuggled down
here.”
    “Smuggling wood?” Cal frowned. “What makes you think it’s
not just being brought down openly?”
    “Anyone that has a source is incredibly protective of it. If
it was declared on the tether manifest, the company goons would find out and
wring the secret out of whoever brought it.” Bel nodded to himself. “Chances
are the poor vitro wouldn’t survive the questioning, so the company would just
step in and take over the trade.” He touched a finger to the side of his nose.
“Remember Qel’Kun,” he intoned solemnly.
    A blank look.
    “Gods! Don’t they teach any Imperial history on Tauhento?”
    “I had other interests when I was younger.” Cal
raised a lewd eyebrow.
    A snort. “So did I, but I still had to pass my scans before
I could implant a trade.” Bel shook his head. “Qel’Kun was one of the first
traders to deal in spicewood, back in the Imperial days. Some say he was the
one who found the world where it originally comes from and one of the emperors
– one of the guys from near the end, when travel began to collapse – decided
he’d get the secret out of the poor bastard. Poor Qel died on the interview
table and took his secret with him.”
    “Now I remember,” Cal feigned a dawning recollection. “Hence
the famous joke about tight-fisted Ufangians. It started with Qel’Kun
preferring to die rather than yield his secret.”
     Now it was Bel’s turn to look confused.
    “Well,” Cal admitted, “you wouldn’t have learned it in a pod
session. There was this Ufangian, see, and he was walking along the beach near
Xo’Khov when he got too close to a scuttler. Before he knows it, the cursed
thing nips three fingers off his right hand.”
    Bel was grinning. He loved a good joke and Cal was glad his
own Scottish heritage had exposed him to dozens of ‘cheap’ jokes. It was a
simple enough matter to convert the story and add another layer of realism to
his cover.
    “Well, the poor guy is screaming his head off and a
patrolman and an off-duty paramedic are both within earshot so they come
running. They make a quick search but the fingers are already gone – the
scuttler’s dragged them down under the sand for a quick snack.
    “ Not to worry , the paramedic says. We’ve had to
find Ufangian fingers before. He fishes around in his pocket and comes out
with an Iron Emperor, the smallest coin they had back then, and drops it on the
sand. Sure enough, up out of the sand come the Ufangian’s fingers to wrap
themselves around the coin!”
    “Hah!” Bel’s breath was ripe with the kelp rolls he’d had
for his breakfast. “That one from Tauhento?”
    “Not sure,” Cal replied, pretending to give it some thought.
“I told it to a Tauhentan once and he’d never heard of it.” No sense in giving
Bel anything that could be confirmed as wrong. “Anyway, I’ll have someone