Read Online The Bright Black Sea by C. Litka - Free Book Online

of Min & Co
at the end of the passageway like she owned the place. Several
gentlemen and a lady rose as she entered to greet her.
    I waited until they disappeared into her office
before thoughtfully pushing though the clearsteel office doors,
fearing I'd seen too much in that unguarded second.
     
     
     

Chapter 07 Tallith Min
     
    Ensly Mirrior is a small, quiet, grey and dour woman.
I sat watching her slowly plow through my accounts and wondered if
she was born for this work or if the work made her so. Speaking
from personal experience, dealing with ship captains is not for the
faint of heart, so dealing with ship captains and their accounts
must be pretty grim work.
    I'd had a brief interview with the office manager,
Phylea Kardea, who welcomed me home, congratulated me on my modest
success, and said Tallith Min hoped that I'd stay to meet with her
when I finished my accounts. I was passed on to Ensly, who handles
the Lost Star accounts and we set out to reconcile my
verified accounts with their records.
    In interstellar trade the preferred credit transfer
method is the Unity Carter Central Bank's CreditTokens, issued and
monitored by the Directorate of Machines. But as that relies on the
Sentient Directorate, which, while absolutely reliable, makes
humans nervous, CreditTokens are only used when reliable human
financial links are not available. In our interplanetary trade we
relied on a web of interplanetary financial institutions that used
a system where each transaction was authenticated by both parties
with a set of codes, one of which is radio transmitted and the
other delivered on a physical drive. Credits change accounts in a
complex chain of inner-bank transfers only after being verified by
both codes. My transactions were routinely transmitted to Min &
Co via radio-packets, but the second, physical drive versions of
those transactions needed to match the transmitted codes to
finalize the credit transfers. These transactions had to be found
in our two ledgers and reconciled to complete the transfers. In
theory it should be a simple matter of merging the two accounts,
but in practice, it's not. At least it wasn't for me. Miccall had
always handled the financial side and his and Min & Co's
conventions were unfamiliar to me. As a result, entries appeared
under different headings and sometimes names in our two files.
Tracking them down took a focused effort for more than two
hours.
    Halfway through Illynta signaled to say Dyn had
wrapped up his affairs. I told them not to wait, I'd take a shuttle
up when, or if, Neb help me, I was ever able to find my way clear
of these Neb blasted accounts.
    Fortunately, as grim as Ensly looked, she was patient
(or resigned) and we worked our way through the accounts without
harsh words. As the process was drawing to a close, I began
thinking about my next meeting and asked her what she thought of
our new boss. 'Nice enough. Doesn't say much. Has a lot to learn,
but Phylea is confident,' was her assessment.
    'Do they get along? I'd imagine Phylea has had to
step back, after running Min & Co for several years.'
    'Phylea's been running the firm for twenty years,'
Ensly replied. 'The Mins brought in the clients and kept them well
dined and happy. Phylea ran the actual operation. The accident was
a tragedy, but it did not affect our operation much. The trade
collapse is another story. We'll get by, thanks to the small ship
traders whose business is now booming. They need bookkeepers and
shipbrokers to keep everything straight. Still, we're moving down
to the less expensive 5th floor in three weeks and half the staff
will likely be looking for other employment before it runs its
course.'
    'Aye, don't know what I'll be doing tomorrow.'
    'Don't go in for accounting,' she replied blandly
without looking up.
    I laughed. 'Damn, that was my best hope.'
    'In that case you're bound for a Guild sleeper,' she
replied drolly and hurried on. 'Hard times even for the owner. Sold
off her parent's