Merchanter's Luck

Chapter XVIII

Dublin was in port: he had heard that much, when they took Curran out and left him behind, among the station wounded. He lay and thought about that, putting constructions together in his mind, none of which made particular sense, only that somewhere, as usual lately, he had been conned.

So there was a reason Dublin had handed out a paper half million; and Norway had landed on the case of a petty skimmer with customs problems. He had pursued his fate till it caught him, that was what.

Allison. All of Lucy’s crew was safe. They had told him that too, and he was glad, whatever else had happened. He had no personal feeling about it—or did, but he had no real expectation that Allison would come down into the depths of Norway to see him. He made a fantasy of such a meeting; but she failed to come, and that fit with reality, so he enjoyed the fantasy and finally stopped hoping.

He was, before they took out the station casualties, a kind of hero—at least to the few men next to him, who had gotten him confused with the captains of ships like Dublin and Finity’s End and, he had heard, even the Union ship Liberty, who had done the liberating of their station. Mostly Norway. Mostly the tough, seasoned troops of the Alliance carrier had invaded the halls and routed out what pockets of Mazianni remained holding stationer hostages. The same troops had found him holding Curran, trying to keep him from bleeding to death, which was how he had spent the battle for Venture Station, crouched down in a small spot and confused about who was fighting whom. The gratitude embarrassed him, but it was better than admitting what he really was, and fighting a silent war across the space between cots, so he took it with appropriate modesty.

It was someone to talk to, until they moved the stationers out.

“When do I get out?” he asked, hoping that he was going to.

“Tomorrow,” the medic promised him, whether or not that came from official sources.

He was not in the habit of believing official promises, and he was trying to sleep the next morning after breakfast when the medic came to ask him if he could walk out or if he had to have a litter.

“Walk,” he decided.

“Got friends waiting for you.”

“Crew?”

“So I understand.”

He took the packet the medic tossed down, his own shaving kit. A change of clothes. So they had come. He was heartened in spite of himself, reckoned that somehow it had turned up convenient in Dublin’s books.

It got him out of Norway. That much. He shaved with the medic’s help—no easy trick with one arm immobilized. Got dressed .—”Here,” the medic said, stuffing a paper into his pocket. “That’s the course of treatment. You follow it. Hear me?”

He nodded, only half interested. A trooper showed up on call to take him out. “Thanks,” he told the medic, who accepted that with a dour attention; and he left with the trooper. “Got to walk slow,” he told the woman, who adjusted her pace to suit.

It was not a far walk—not as far as it might have been on something Norway’s size. He came down the lift and out the lock, taking it as slowly as reasonable, only half light-headed.

And they were there, Allison, Deirdre, Neill; and Curran, at the foot of the ramp. He went down and met offered hands, took Curran’s. “You all right?” he asked Curran.

“Right enough,” Curran said, embraced him carefully with a hand on his sound shoulder. Looked at him with that kind of gratitude the stationer had had, which he took in the same understanding.

“Allison,” he said then, and took her hand—a forlorn pain went through him, a flicker of the dark eyes. “Well, you did it right, Reilly, top to bottom. Must have.”

“I should have come after you,” she said. “I didn’t know you were on the dock.”

Then how could you? No way. It worked, didn’t it?”

“Got us all in one piece.”

“I’m usually right.” He touched Deirdre’s arm and took Neill’s hand, looked back at Allison and saw a trooper beckon.

“Captain’s waiting,” the trooper said, waved a hand toward the dockside offices.

“Mallory,” Allison said.

He nodded. His heart had turned over. He started that way—at least it was not far across the dock; the same office, the place of recent memory. He felt numb in the cold, and no little disoriented.

“Dublin’s in on the conference,” Allison said. The Old Man; our legal counsel—you’ve got that behind you.”

“Good to know,” he said.

“You don’t believe it.”

“Of course I believe it. You say so.”

She gave him one of those looks as they went into the office, into a gathering thick with military in blue and merchanters in silver and white.

Repeat scene: only it was Mallory behind the desk, and Talley close by her… one of the breed exchanged for another.

“Captain,” she said, a courteous nod.

He paid her one in return. He looked further about him, noted the patches: Dublin’s shamrock on the silver, and on the white, the arrogant black sphere of Finity’s End, a Name so old they had no insignia at all: and rejuv-silvered hair other than Mallory’s, a gathering of senior officers in which one Sandor Kreja would have been a small interest—give or take a bogus cargo and half a million credits.

“Wanted to straighten a matter out with you,” she said, “—Need a chair, Captain?”

“No.” An automatic no, half-regretted; but no one else was seated but Mallory… he refused to be the center of things along with her; but he was: he reckoned that.

“Any time you change your mind,” she said, “feel free. It’s really not fair to call you in like this, but Norway’s prone to sudden departures. And I’m sure others don’t want to log too much dock time.—Are you sure about the chair, Captain?”

He nodded. A small trickle of sweat started down the side of his face. Small talk was not Mallory’s style. He disliked it, them, this whole gathering.

“You played it straight,” she said. “I rather hoped you might, Captain. But I was a little surprised by it”

“You were a little late.” He recovered his sense of balance, pulse rate getting up again. “You took our arrival rate. You cut it pretty long on our side.”

She shrugged, passing off the wounds, the deaths onstation. “You bettered your rate by a few hours… didn’t you?”

He thought back then, through the fog of realtime—the haste they had used through the second jump, Allison in command and mutiny on the bridge. The anger went out of him. “Maybe we did,” he said.

“We were on time, absolutely.—But you managed well enough. —Tell me… did you tell them where to find me?”

“I reckoned you meant me to. You don’t set much store by heroes, do you?”

Mallory laughed. It surprised him, that quick, cold humor. “Land on your feet, do you? No, I didn’t expect it.”

“So I spilled all I knew and invented some. But I’ll trust you’re going to stand by our agreement.”

“On what, Captain?”

“Hazard rate. On military cargo.”

She thought a moment, wondering, he thought.

“I didn’t breach the seals,” he said, “but they did. And they knew I was a plant. That wasn’t comfortable.”

“No, I daresay not.” She turned over some papers on her desk. “Vouchers for the pay you’re due. No dock charge at Venture, under the circumstances. Let’s treat it as lifesupport freight.”

Mallory had, he thought, a certain sense of humor. He was going to get out of this. He was insanely tempted to like Mallory, in sheer gratitude. “Captain,” he said. Thanks stuck in his throat.

“That’s an interesting rig, your ship.” She failed to let go of the papers and he let go of them in a sudden chill, cursing his momentary trust. “Everything under lock—papers of clouded origin-backing from one of Union’s major Names. You know there was a time, Captain, I wondered about Dublin itself… keeping your company.”

“We don’t take that,” a Dublin officer said.

“Oh, I’m assured otherwise. Our allies from across the Line vouch for you. But you have odd associates.—Tell me, Captain Reilly—what motive to lend to a marginer… on that scale?”

“Private business.”

“I don’t doubt” She offered the papers a second time. Sandor took them, his fingers gone cold. He wanted to sit down. The room proved hot/cold and confused with sound. “Your papers, Captain—are altered. Do you know that?”

He blinked… felt the edge of the desk with his fingertips, tried to summon up his wits. That’s not so.”

“And you run gold under the plates.”

“Private store. My own property. I expect it to be there when I board.”

Mallory considered him slowly. “Of course it is.”

“If you ran that thorough a search on Pell—”

“We wondered.”

“That’s under Dublin finance,” Allison said from behind him. “The papers say that too. We’re good for any debts.”

He looked around slowly at the Dubliners—at Curran’s sweating pale face, and Allison’s flushed one, Deirdre and Neill unfocused behind them. The rest of the room blurred. They had it, he reckoned. The keys and the excuse, He made a small shrug and looked around again at Mallory, “That’s the way the papers are set up.”

“I know that too. As long as Dublin stands good for it”

“No question,” the Reilly said.

He tucked the voucher into his pocket, finding about all the strength he had gathered deserting him. He could make it back to Lucy, he reckoned, if he got that far. He wanted that, just to get home, however long it lasted.

“You want to let me see the aforesaid papers, Captain?”

He felt in his pocket, of the jacket draped about his shoulder on the left, fumbled the packet out and gave it into Mallory’s hands,

“They are faked,” she said, riffling through them, “Pell caught that Paper analysis didn’t match. Good job, though. They’re going to go over to disc on this kind of thing: it’s going to put a lot of paper-traders out of business. Some merchanters howl at the prospect; but then some have reason, don’t they? You really ought to get that title straightened up.”

She offered them back. He took them, blind to anything else.

“That ought to be all,” she said. “Dublin vouches for you. And Union, to be sure, vouches for Dublin. So we don’t ask any more questions.”

“Can I go?”

She nodded, dark eyes full of surmises. He kept his face neutral, turned about and walked out, in the company of Allison and her crew, unasked. Allison put herself in front of him and he stopped outside, dizzy and none too steady on his feet “Get it clear,” she said. “Dublin’s with us. They won’t do anything. You can clear the Name up, go by your own, you understand that? You can get the papers cleared.”

“Maybe I don’t want to.”

“For what?—Who is it that recorded the comp messages? It’s you he talks to, isn’t it? Who was he?”

He looked at the decking, across the dock, at the scant foot traffic, at the overhead where lonely lights gave the dock what illumination it had.

“You want to talk about it?” Curran asked.

“Not particularly.”

“Brother?” Allison asked.

He shrugged. “Might have been.”

“He set it up,” Allison said, “for somebody who really didn’t know how to run a ship. To teach everything there was. It must have taken him a long time to do that. I figure he must have thought a lot about your being able to take care of yourself.”

“None of your business.”

“We’re not welcome there, are we?”

He thought a moment about that one. “You coming back?” he asked, looking at her. “Or do they send me a new set of Dubliners for the run back?”

“We’re coming back,” she said. “You know we know how to work comp. Do everything. We’re pretty good.”

It was about the humblest he was likely to get out of Allison Reilly, and it set him off his balance again. “I know you’re pretty good,” he said, shrugged it off. Looked up, then, at her and the others, one face and the other.

“Excuse me,” he said, and walked back into the office and others’ business. Aides moved: rifles swung fractionally in the hands of guards. Mallory’s face had an uncommon degree of wariness. “It’s Kreja,” he said, feeling the presence of Allison and the others close at his back. He took his papers from his pocket, another tiny movement of the rifles which had not quite given up their focus. “Le Cygne and Kreja. Maybe I ought to get the papers straightened out.”

Mallory looked up at him curiously. “Is it? And how do you come by that Name? It’s a long time out of circulation.”

He wondered in that moment—decided in the negative. Mallory’s puzzlement seemed for once other than a mockery. “I was born with it,” he said. “I’d like it back.”

Mallory settled back in her chair, a hand on her desk. “Not a difficult matter. Pan-paris, was it? That was a time ago.”

Breath failed him. “Would you know what happened?”

“I heard what happened.”

He believed that. Mallory was trustable—in some degree. He believed that much.

“Give me the papers,” she said. And when he laid them on the desk she simply took them and wrote in longhand. “Le Cygne. Name of owner?”

“Sandor Kreja.”

The pen flourished and stopped. She handed the papers back. The corrections were there. S. Mallory was written below: amended by her authority.

“Kreja.”

A hand was offered him from his right. One of the Reillys—the Reilly: he had heard him answer. He took the hand, suffered the friendly pressure, escaped then past the door in his own company,

“That’s straight,” he said. He pocketed the papers, along with the voucher, walked a fragile course toward Lucy/Le Cygne’s dock, with his Dubliners about him. “Going to have to go out on the hull when we get time. Do a name change.”

“Not much chance of getting cargo here,” Allison said. “But hazard rate ought to cover it both ways.”

“Game for another run?”

“They’re keeping military watch on the whole Line for the time being. So the rumor runs.”

“Nice to pick up rumors. I’m not sure I believe all of them.”

“I figure they’ll hold by this one.”

They reached the access. It was about the limit of his strength and Curran’s, who was out of breath as he was going up the ramp—a young Dubliner plastered himself against the wall of the lock as they came in with a quick “Sir—Ma’am” and Sandor gave the boy a dazed and misgiving stare as his own Dubliners pulled him past. “I didn’t clear any boarders,” he said, finding more of them by the lift “Hang it, Reilly—”

“Borrowed help,” Allison said. The corridor was clean. The inside of the lift car was clean, spit and polish. “Young Dubliners wanted some exercise.”

The lift let them out in the lounge/bridge area. Scrubbed decks, polished panels, every smudge and smear and tarnish cleared away. It looked new again, except for the tape patches on the upholstery. “You cleaning her up to take possession?” he asked outright.

“No,” Allison said.

“Can’t touch anything without fingerprinting it.”

“That’s fine. It’s old habits.”

He looked back at them standing there, reckoned how the place would feel without them. Nodded then. “Looks like she used to,” he admitted, and turned back and walked onto the bridge.

She went out, Le Cygne did, with empty holds, moving lightly as she could in that condition.

Comp talked to them, commending them that they had got it right. Jump coming up, Sandy. Find your referent.”

“Got it,” Allison said from number two post, talking back to comp and to him, and the numbers came up on the screen.

The checks came in from the others, routine matters.

They headed for Pell, for station cargo this time, and reckoned Dublin would pass them on the way. There was a bet on, inside Le Cygne, about elapsed-time and drinks when they got there. He reckoned to win it, knowing his ship.

But it was all one account, anyway.