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."
"Enlisted."
"Whatever the word is."
Chapter 16
Fraki weren't bad when you got to know them.
They had their secret language, even though they thought they talked Interlingua. Thorby added a few dozen verbs and a few hundred nouns as he heard them; after that he tripped over an occasional idiom. He learned that his light-years as a trader were respected, even though the People were considered odd. He didn't argue; fraki couldn't know better.
H.G.C. Hydra lifted from Hekate, bound for the Rim worlds. Just before jump a money order arrived accompanied by a supercargo's form which showed the draft to be one eighty-third of Sisu's appreciation from Jubbulpore to Hekate -- as if, thought Thorby, he were a girl being swapped. It was an uncomfortably large sum and Thorby could find no entry charging him interest against a capital share of the ship -- which he felt should be there for proper accounting; it wasn't as if he had been born in the ship. Life among the People had made the beggar boy conscious of money in a sense that alms never could -- books must balance and debts must be paid.
He wondered what Pop would think of all that money. He felt easier when he learned that he could deposit it with the Paymaster.
With the draft was a warm note, wishing him good business wherever he went and signed: "Love, Mother." It made Thorby feel better and much worse
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