Free Transference Station by Stephen Hunt Page A

the cargo area, mirrored gull-wing doors lifting to reveal her legs swinging out. She didn’t look much like Calder’s idea of what a dusty academic should resemble. Six foot-tall, dark auburn hair secured by an ivory Alice band, a bright green trouser suit impeccably tailored to her lithe frame. Her pretty pale face might have appeared the same age as Calder’s on the surface, but the exiled nobleman noticed her snow-white fingernails – not the result of cosmetics, but repeated deep age re-sets. Professor Alison Sebba was an alliance patrician, all right, and the woman could have been pushing five hundred years old for all that Calder knew.
    ‘Professor Sebba?’
    ‘I am. And you must be Calder Durk,’ she smiled, an energetic voice, her aristocratic accent bubbling over with enthusiasm. ‘Don’t look so surprised. Mister Dillard sent me everything he had on the ship and crew. With only six of you on board, it made for a short read. Your file was the thinnest by far, but then Hesperus has been off the grid for a very long time.’
    Calder wasn’t sure he enjoyed being the focus of study of this venerable intelligence. There was something about those too-young blue eyes, depths hidden and dangerous, and starkly at odds with her cheerful openness and perfect white smile. I must be imagining it. After being casually betrayed by the beautiful princess Calder had been betrothed to back home, he didn’t find it easy to trust anyone, especially not women.
    ‘It’s a rare thing to meet someone who’s even heard of my home world.’
    ‘I used to be an archaeologist,’ said Sebba. ‘Until the alliance develops functional time travel, collapsed civilizations are as near as we can get to seeing how pre-machine age societies work.’
    ‘You used to dig up old bones?’
    ‘Rarely. Mostly what I dug up were obsolete file formats in the datasphere. My specialism was marketing archaeology. Studying ancient brands and working out why some still prosper and have lodged deeply in our current human consciousness, while others just wither and die. Why you can still buy a can of Pepsi from a vending machine on the station, while nobody drinks Coke, for instance, when the converse was more frequently the expected result.’
    ‘Because the taste of coal dust is disgusting?’ The professor had a natural prettiness, soft lines and extended eyelashes, a long distance removed from the obviously artificial perfection Calder had noted in many of the station’s females. It was easy to warm to her open, engaging manner.
    Sebba laughed. ‘You see, you make my point for me. You would be the perfect test example for me. Unexposed to a marketing messages for the majority of your life.’
    ‘There were priests on my world,’ said Calder. ‘They had a message. Worship at our altar or burn in a tar bath.’
    ‘Ah yes, religion, the earliest meme. You are quite correct, of course. I see I shall have to study you more closely, Mister Durk. You are a wonderful breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale universe.’ She pointed towards the gaping hold of the Gravity Rose . Her relatively small exploration ship was visible loaded on one of the shuttle rails. ‘Would you be able to give me a tour of your vessel?’
    Calder indicated the crates of supplies being shifted by Zeno’s robots, other freight still being opened and searched. ‘Later, perhaps.’
    ‘Of course. I have inspected your ship and crew’s bona fides, it is only fair to expect a little of the same in reverse.’
    ‘Well, you are working for Dollar-sign Dillard…’
    ‘Working with him. Much the same as yourself and your crew, I suspect. If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know. My mining team is still on Abracadabra and they’re going to be running low on supplies by the time I return.’
    ‘We’ll be there in good time, professor.’ Of course, that’s a fairly hollow reassurance until you give us the world’s coordinates.
    She reached out and touched