"Secondly," the kqyres informed him, "you will want to come back here. When you look at the cargo and see what it is, you will want to come back." He sighed again. "I know your species so well. And I do not fancy they have changed."
VI
When the Valkyrie reached normspace, her cargo proved to be the traditional reward—gold. Not the most precious metal in the universe any more, certainly, but still valuable. What there was in her hold would come to perhaps as much money as Mattern might, if his luck had held, have amassed in several decades of operating with Schiemann in normspace.
"Well," said the kqyres as Mattern stood goggling at the glowing bullion, "is the payment just?"
"Yeah," Mattern grunted, "fair enough." His mind was working busily: Captain Schiemann is dead, and so is Balas, so I can't do anything about that. A man's got to have some kind of business. Why shouldn't I go on trading with the xhindi, since I seem to be one of the few people lucky enough to be able to do it? Besides, from what the mbretersha said, I couldn't get out of it even if I wanted to. So why fight? Ethics aside, it's a good deal. I'd make more money that way than any other way. I could see a lot of Lyddy.
He caught a flicker in the shifting planes of a grayness that the kqyres had become, according to promise.
"I'm thinking the way you want me to think—right, Lord Njeri?" Mattern asked self-mockingly.
"You are thinking the way any reasonable being would think."
Left to his own devices, Mattern would have disposed of the gold as quickly as he could, and then gone back to Erytheia to spend it all on a year or so with Lyddy. She came that expensive.