Drake had arranged his morning around a very good breakfast. By half past eight, the breakfast was cold, the morning was ruined, and two perfectly innocent sheets of paper had begun threatening him.
Merrit laid them beside each other on the freight desk.
“Which one,” she asked, “would you like the ship to be?”
The first sheet promised desks, shelves, and twelve chairs to a school on the southern commercial circuit. The second gave the revised loading window for the coalition’s regulator parts.
Drake examined the dates. He examined the routes. He moved the school contract slightly to the left.
“That doesn’t shorten the coast,” Merrit said.
“It improves the arrangement.”
“Of the paper.”
