The assistant  advised him  not  to  bother,  and  had  him  wait while she  examined  the  transit  manifest.  Cargo  was given as: mixed cargo. Port  of loading, Saudade. Port  of discharge: New Miass, on some rock named Kunene, a hundred  lights nearer the Tract. ‘Here’s something odd,’ she noted. Shipper, consignee and the ‘notify party’ were all the same: one MP Renoko, trading as FUGA-Orthogen, a limited liability operation with all the quantum uncertainty  you expected in the Halo – if you knew who ran it, you didn’t know what it did, and vice versa. She asked Epstein what he thought  of that,  and  Epstein said he had  no  opinion. FUGA-Orthogen, it turned out, dealt mainly paper – rights to the images of dead minor celebrities, brands no one bought into any more – but also owned the remaining  assets of a once-popular travelling entertainment, Sandra Shen’s Observatorium  & Native Karma Plant aka The Circus of Pathet  Lao. ‘Fifty years after he picked them up,’ the assistant told Epstein, ‘this man Renoko is moving the assets of a circus around the Halo under the guise of commerce.’ She read on. One of those assets, it seemed, was an HS-HE cargo hauler, sold as-seen five years ago through a third party to Saudade Bulk Haulage: who renamed it Nova Swing.

‘Fat Antoyne,’ the assistant said to herself, ‘you are a dark horse.’ She asked Epstein if he had ever been to Kunene. Epstein said he hadn’t, but he thought it wasn’t far up the Beach.

Unaware of their desultory exchange, Rig Gaines was on a visit to one of his less demanding projects. This corroded cylinder – about fifty feet long by twenty in diameter, cold enough to chill ham, smelling inside of hydrazine  and  unwashed  feet and  known  to Gaines as ‘the Tub’ – was heading towards the K-Tract at just over walking pace, piloted by his old friend and ally, Impasse van Sant. Though it rarely produced anything marketable, Gaines liked the Tub. He liked to spend a morning  there, drinking  Giraffe beer while the pilot brought him up to date.