interplanetary.biz — a notebook for long-distance trade

01

concerning the office, and what is kept here

The office is small, and has always been small. There is a desk, and on the desk there is a ledger, and beside the ledger there is a cup that has been refilled, in one form or another, every working day for forty years. The window faces a courtyard where a pair of carved marble busts have weathered into the colour of pale honey. We do not know who they were. The plaque went missing in 2349, in a small fire that took only the plaque and nothing else. We have grown fond of not knowing.

The work is quiet. Cargo arrives, cargo leaves, a name is written down, a name is crossed out. A tally is reached at the end of each cycle. The tally is sometimes pleasing and sometimes disappointing, but it is always honest, because we have only ever counted what we have actually moved.

a small thing, kept carefully, is still a small thing.

We send and receive between Earth Orbit, Ceres, Europa, and — when the season permits — Io. We are licensed for the Saturn run but rarely take it; the freight is heavy and the stories afterward are not as good as they used to be. The current manifest is open on the desk, weighted at one corner by a bust of an unidentified consul, and at the other by a small pewter cup. We invite you to read.

the consul of far trade · c. 134 CE · station courtyard

02

the transfer windows, with a hand-drawn diagram

A transfer window is a courtesy that the worlds extend to one another, and like all courtesies it must be answered promptly. The diagram below is the one we keep pinned beside the desk; it is not, in any rigorous sense, accurate, but it is accurate enough to mean something — which is, in our experience, the kind of accuracy a manifest most often requires.

window II · ceres-hohmann · drawn at the desk, sol 04·09

We post the windows on the courtyard wall when they are forty days out, and we redraw them in the ledger when they are eighteen days out, and we sign them when the freighter clears station. The freighter The Antikythera sails on the next Ceres-Hohmann, weather permitting; she has sailed on this window twenty-three times and we trust her captain a great deal.

what about the saturn run? — perhaps in summer.

03

a list of recent manifests, with marble paperweights

For the curious, and for those keeping their own accounts, here are the entries the office has signed off in the present cycle. The hand belongs to the senior clerk; the ticks belong to the proprietor. Cargo weights are in standard units, on the scale agreed at the Concord of Ceres in 2298 and not since revised.

ref. vessel cargo std units tick

6108 The Antikythera grain · enceladus wheat · long sacks 2,140

6109 Margin Cruiser No. 7 books, archival, four crates 182

6110 Slow Lantern oil, lamp-grade · six tuns 714

6111 Honeyed Course marble, fragmentary · two crates 880

6112 Quiet Engine letters, sealed · one box 11

6113 The Antikythera cordage, hempen · awaiting count — ·

an unattributed scholar · marble, weathered

a magistrate · perhaps · c. 198 CE

The cycle's running tally appears in the band overhead, as it always has, and as it always will. We sign manifests in the order they arrive and ask only that the captain be patient — the count is the count, and the count must be honest.

04

a torn poster pinned by an unknown predecessor

Pinned to the wall behind the desk, at a slight tilt that nobody has ever quite straightened, is a travel poster from a previous decade. We are not certain who pinned it, but we have grown accustomed to it, and we keep it dusted.

ICE HARBOR

— IO —

STAY THE SUMMER

cabin class · twelve berths · sailings every fortnight

TRAVERSE THE TRANSFER

18 DAYS

CABIN CLASS AVAILABLE

WHEAT FROM ENCELADUS

ARRIVING SOL 04

GOOD VALUE

The poster's typography is loud in a way no other surface in this room is permitted to be. We forgive it; it has been a long way, and it has been pinned a long while, and it deserves its volume. The corner is torn. We have not repaired it. Some things ought to remain torn.

05

on the slow business of moving anything between worlds

Moving anything between worlds is a slow business. It will not be hurried. It cannot be hurried. A freighter sets out from Earth Orbit bound for Ceres and arrives, if all is well, eighteen or twenty days later — and the days, in transit, are not the days you remember. They are paler, longer, and more frequently interrupted by silence.

This is not a problem to be solved. It is, in fact, the work itself. We have known clerks who tried to make the days shorter, and they did not last. We have known captains who tried to make the windows narrower, and they kept the office awake at night. The work has its own pace, and the office is at peace with that pace, and so are the cargoes — which, after all, are mostly grain and books and oil, and which do not particularly mind being patient.

a captain in a hurry will keep the office awake at night.

The poet Honorius of Astraea — and the office keeps a slim volume of his work in the second drawer — wrote that a freighter at the Hohmann window is a bird that has chosen to take the long way home, knowing the long way home is the only home. We do not always agree with poets, but Honorius had been on a freighter himself, and he knew what he meant. The cargo bay smells of straw and machine oil and, faintly, of the ocean, even where there is no ocean.

What does the office actually do, then? It writes the names down. It signs the manifest. It draws the diagram. It checks the count. It sends the letter to the captain's wife, in the next station up, when the captain is going to be late again, and it makes sure the letter is mailed by the next freighter going that way. It keeps the cup full. It accepts the gift of an unidentified marble bust from a passing trader and sets it on the desk and does not ask too many questions. It writes the cycle closed at the end of every cycle, and opens the next one, and refills the inkwell. This is a great deal, when you tally it up, and it is also nothing very much. Both are true. We have made our peace with both.

If you have read this far you are perhaps the kind of visitor we like best. You are welcome to write to us. Letters take the long route. Mark them clearly. We will read them at the desk, in the cycle they are received, and if the matter requires answer we will answer in the cycle following. There is no faster route, and we have not looked for one.

honorius of astraea · poet · marble copy of a wax original

06

closing note, signed at the desk

Compliments of the season, from Station 7. May your transit be brief and your manifest exact. May the marble keep its colour, and the ledger its ink, and the cup its warmth.

We close this cycle's pages with the usual ceremony: the inkwell capped, the pen laid alongside, the seal pressed into a small disc of warm wax, the lamp turned down by a quarter. A freighter is calling at the bay, and she has letters for us, and we will read them in the morning.

the cycle closes. the cycle opens.

If you have business with the office, write. Letters reach the office via the long route. Mark them clearly.

— the senior clerk, with care