Rimrunners

CHAPTER 9

Ramey?" She let the door shut. Shop area wasn't a place she felt secure wandering around, a real warren of a machine-shop, a narrow aisle, the lights down to a dim glow, place cold as hell. She left the lights alone. She stayed where she was, not precisely scared, just careful. "You here, man?"

Silence. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe she was a fool talking to an empty room. Maybe somebody on mainday shift was going to walk out of Engineering next door and find her here off-shift and she was going to catch hell.

"Ramey?"

A slight movement, from back in the aisles of drills and lifts and presses.

He was there, all right. It occurred to her that he could be crazy—but that wasn't what Muller had said, precisely.

But he wasn't being cooperative, either.

"All right," she said, "all right, I can take a hint. I'm going to bed, I've had better times, Ramey, but thanks for the beer."

She heard the move, she saw the shadow at the end of the aisle.

Man is crazy, she thought. On drugs, maybe.

And I'm stark crazy for being here.

Ought to go for the door, but that could set him off, like as anything else. Talk to the man.

"You want to come on back," she asked him, "maybe have another beer? Can't say I'm up to too much deep thinking, but I owe you the beer. Except you'll have to put it on your tab, haven't got my week here."

The shadow stood there a moment, finally made an abrupt throwaway gesture and sauntered up the aisle into the light—man in a faded jumpsuit, the light making hollows of his eyes, under his cheeks. He stopped there, put his hands on his hips, then came walking up to her, closer and closer.

Careful, man, she thought. Trying to scare me. Trying to put the fear in me. I'm a damn fool to be here in the first place, but this fool can break your neck, man.

"You looking for trouble?" he asked.

"Looking for another beer," she said, hands on hips herself, making up her mind to keep the whole situation cool: damned if he was going to think he had his bluff in and start any petty, hands-on stuff in the dark corners during duty hours when Bernstein could put her on report. "Dunno what else. I'm blind tired, Fitch gave me a hard time, Bernstein gave me a hard time, man buys me a beer and shoves me off—right now I got nothing particular in mind, except yours was the bed I was headed for and I got no notion where to put my duffle without waking somebody up. Got no desire to pick the wrong bed, don't want to get some sum-bitch mad at me, I don't want some damn skuz next to me either; and I ain't awake enough right now to make critical judgments, so I want to go back down there—" She hooked a thumb toward the door. "—and get me another cold beer and a shower and I ain't up to deep philosophy after that. You interested?"

He was close now, not nice, trying to spook her. But maybe he had sense she could be trouble. He backed up against the counter and leaned there with his arms folded, just looking down at the deck.

"Get out of here."

Probably it was good advice. She started to take it, legs all ready to walk. But he kept staring down like that, tight muscle across his jaw. So she stayed, folded her arms, just stood there looking at him, and he stood up and looked at her with pure venom.

"Get," he said.

"Hell," she said. "I do get the idea why you're not too popular."

He jerked away toward the door and went out it. She crossed the same space in about as many steps and walked after him, down the corridor, him walking as fast as he could like a damn kid on a tantrum, herself trailing, because his legs were that much longer and she refused to run to catch him up.

They passed a couple of crew on some errand, maybe getting a couple of looks from behind them. She didn't look. He didn't. He stopped, just past that line-of-sight, about the time they reached the general stowage area, and glared at her. "You're damn persistent."

She glared back. "So were you. You give me the whole come-ahead. Wasn't my idea. And if I got a lunatic on my shift, I want to know it, mister."

He gave her a killing kind of look. But not quite. The not-quite became a saner, thinking-something-over kind of scowl. "Name's NG. NDG."

She stuck out her hand. "Mine's Bet."

He looked at her like she was crazed. She kept the hand out. A long time.

"What're you after?" he asked.

"Fuckin' beer. Maybe both of 'em. Is that some big deal? Ain't to me."

He drew a shaky breath, took the hand, not handshake-like: hooked his cold fingers on hers and closed, like, she thought, pulling somebody out of a pit. All chilled down, she thought, man totally out of the mood, looking for something else for a while.

But he didn't let go of her fingers, either. He pulled her up against him, body against body, which she hadn't expected, backed her against the inside wall, and stared at her, all the while she was thinking how her knees ached and her butt ached and her back and her arms ached and her skull kept echoing the sounds back, she was so tired.

Crazy man, she thought. Ought I to do something about this? What's he do then? What's Fitch do, what's crew do, if I break his arm?

And NG was saying, up against her ear: "Do it the other way around, don't go back there, go on back up to the shop, then a beer, if you want, you want to do that?"

She was mostly numb. But what she felt so far, felt all right. He wasn't bad, she thought, not bad at all, oh, really, not bad!—which was a relief to her, she hadn't been sure there was feeling left anymore, since Thule. And what part of her brain was working said a crazy man was trying to get her off somewhere there weren't any witnesses, dangerous, dangerous as hell, he could very likely be some kind of real major trouble, he could have kinks God only knew.

"Locker right here is real private," he said, breathing against her neck, with his hand inside her collar.

I'm a fool! she thought. What do I even want 'im for? I don't want to get tangled up in bed with some damn spacer case, don't want to sleep with this man, don't even want his damn beer, I sure don't want to go in any locker with him.

But I don't want any trouble with him, either. I can take care of myself. I seen crazier. On Africa, I seen crazier.

He opened the stowage beside them, shoved her in, pulled the door to and that was the end of the light, black after that. She hoped to hell he wasn't fool enough or rattled enough to let it lock: she was still worrying about that when he pushed her back deeper into the zig-zagged recess, pressed her up against the lockers and started unfastening her jumpsuit and running his hands over her.—Hell, she thought, then, not thinking terribly clearly past the echoing in her skull and the things he was doing: she unfastened his and they did a little warm-up, real gentle, real polite, she thought, now that he'd calmed down a little; but things came on him a little sudden then and they ended up sorting it out on the stowage deck in the dark, rough, a few more bruises on her backside and real pain, so she was thinking whether it was safe to say anything about the way he was going, crazy as he was; criticism didn't help a man and it might set a real lunatic off good and all.

But "I'm sorry," he said, then, between breaths, when he'd suddenly finished, and sounded mortally earnest and embarrassed. " 'S all right," she said, and fussed with his hair while he just lay on top of her breathing hard and sweating, for a long time.

"Hope to hell nobody needs in here," she said finally, when his breathing had calmed down, but he hadn't moved, and she wasn't sure he was collected enough to think of practicalities. "You all right?"

He didn't say anything. He just started making love to her then, really making love, nice and gentle a touch as could be, best man she'd had since Bieji, except he was already done and he was doing it, she thought, just for politeness, just a thank-you.

"Damn!" she said finally, not as exhausted for a moment as she'd thought; "Damn…" and several other things. She held onto him awhile then, and he held her, and when she'd gotten her breath back she said, "Thanks, mate. I appreciate that. I really do."

He didn't answer. He just held her and rubbed her shoulder. And finally, after she'd been comfortable a few breaths: "I got to get to bed," she said, not wanting to talk, not wanting to think about moving. "I'm going to go to sleep here if I don't."

So he politely helped her up and helped pull her clothes together, all in the absolute dark. Then he put his own self in order, went and felt around after the latch, and cracked the door carefully. She leaned on his shoulder, looked out and listened too, and the two of them slunk out into the corridor and shut the locker door.

"Better go on ahead," he said, then, tight-mouthed, the only words but two he'd said during the whole business. "Find yourself a bunk. There's two vacant midway up the loft."

She looked at him with a real clear idea now at least what part of his spookiness was, and why he had no inclination to do anything in crew-quarters. A man living in with everybody, where everything went on all the time without any privacy, that bothered a lot of people who hadn't grown up with it: bothered her, at first, on Africa. It bothered a man a lot worse, if he was inclined to freeze up real easy, if he was on the outs, and people gave him a hard time, and especially if he was straight off some family ship like Ernestine, where he wasn't used to that. Merchanter. The war killed ships and scattered their people. She knew that for sure, knew it the way she knew the breed when Africa jerked some scared kid in off a merchanter deck and put him through the Initiation, same as she'd gotten, same as everyone got.

But some of that breed cracked. Some suicided. Some just died.

"Muller make a habit of giving you a hard time?" she asked.

He drew a breath, hesitated as if words cost by the gram, and looked skittish at the sound of somebody coming further around the curve. "Get. I'm doing you a favor."

"Oddest damn favor I ever had." She stayed, he started walking, so she walked and caught up with him, stride for stride, keeping ahead of whoever it was back there.

"They'll give you hell," he said without looking at her. "They'll give you real hell if you get caught with me, think it's real damn funny. Take your stuff topside, 'bout third, fourth bunk up-ring." He reached over, gripped her shoulder, friend-like, let it go with a sexy little brush at her arm that left a tingle behind it.

Oddest man she'd ever had, she thought, except Ritterman. Two in one couple of months. What'd I do to deserve this?

Blind tired, I'm going to screw up tomorrow, sure, hell of an impression I'm going to make with Bernstein.

But she got inside, slipped up the ladder with her duffle and tied it to the end of the second vacant bunk, fell down on top of the mattress, cover and all, fumbled the safety-net across her and snapped it, and just went numb, out, gone, till the alterdawn bell rang.

"I got to talk to you a minute, Yeager," Bernstein said when she reported into Engineering, and then, beckoning her over into a corner: "We got a complaint, Yeager, we got cleanliness standards on this ship, don't care how tired you are, you don't fall into a bunk that isn't dressed and you be careful and shower after duty, Yeager."

"Yessir," she whispered, feeling her face burning. "Not my habit, sir, I apologize, sir. Just couldn't find everything right off, I didn't want to wake people up."

"Not putting you on report," Bernstein said. "First and only warning."

"Yessir, I appreciate that, sir."

He looked at her odd, then, real strange for a minute, so she thought maybe she'd reacted wrong, or spoken wrong, or something, and that made her nervous.

God, maybe somebody had spread the word about her and her associate.

"You just remember," Bernstein said, then took her the tour himself, what was where, where the jury-rigs were, the special problems, told her what had to be done, what had to be checked on what schedule.

Thank God, she thought, she'd done a lot the same for Ernestine, even to the point Jennet let her sit alterday watch alone toward the end, taught her the read-outs and told her in Jennet's sane, easy way what was critical and what was an as-you-can. Walk the rounds with Musa, Bernstein said, and introduced her to a small, dark man.

And introduced her to NG, who looked at her cool, smartass, and just inside Bernstein calling him down. She felt the tension in the air.

So she gave NG Ramey a raised eyebrow and a cold stare for Bernstein's and Musa's benefit, as if she'd just met somebody she had no trust of at all.

Which might be the case.

Musa had nine fingers. He was one of those people you'd never ask how that was. Something had hit his nose once, broken it and scarred it right across, and that same something, probably, had made a burn-scar across his temple and right on into his cotton-wool hair, where there was a gray bit right at that temple: you didn't ask him about that either. He looked about fifty, his skin was pale brown, that shade really dark skin did when you went on rejuv, not a bad-looking man at all, but his real age might be fifty or ninety-five or a hundred fifteen for all she could tell.

But Bernstein was right: Musa was all right, Musa knew what he was doing with any system on this ship, you could tell that right off, and Musa kept saying, "Ask questions, I don't mind."

Musa truly didn't, she found out, and that was a relief. Musa said Bernstein had put her on maintenance, plain scut to start with, and job one was a simple matter of a dead pump that needed fixing as a backup.

She was positively cheerful then. It was mindless work, it was something she understood backward and forward and it was sit-down work, at a bench alone in the machine-shop—no matter that her arms hurt and her hands hurt and it was all she could do to hold a wrench.

So a simple plastic diaphragm was shot. "We got one," she went back to Engineering to ask, and it was NG she ran into, on the check-rounds, "or do we make one?"

NG showed her the parts-inventory access on comp, turned up a backup in storage. "Show you where to get it," he said, and showed her on the computer-schematic of the storeroom.

Bernstein being in a briefing and Musa being on a check-see call in ops, they were alone. He put his hand on her hip, not smartass, just kind of trying to see what she'd do, she thought. She twitched it off.

"Not on duty, friend."

He glanced off at the comp then and scowled. Not a word.

"Didn't say never," she said, and frowned. "You make me damn nervous."

Not a word to that, either.

"Trade you," she said. "You tell me where the hell we are and what we're doing out here, and we do a little private rec-time tonight."

"Don't need to do that," he said sullenly, without looking at her. "We're lying off by Venture."

"What in hell for?"

"Hunting. Just hunting."

"Hunting what?"

"Mazian's lot," he said.

No hard work to guess that much—as long as you could guess which side a spook ship was on.

"They got any notion who?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Australia, maybe. Not real sure right now."

Africa, she thought. Her heart beat higher. Thinking about her ship made a little lump in her throat. "Watch-see, huh?"

"We just spot 'em," NG said. "Cripple 'em if we can. Run like hell in any case. This ship hasn't got a big lot of armament."

"Wouldn't think," she said under her breath, thinking—thinking that she was on the wrong side of everything. She was desperate to get home to Africa again, to Australia, Europe, any ship that might be operating in the Hinder Stars: and she had no chance, no chance at all of living through an encounter like that, except if Loki got disabled and boarded.

Chance of arranging that, a little sabotage—

You could get spaced for thinking about it.

And to do that without blowing yourself to glory, you had to know more than she knew about ship systems.

She looked back at NG, saw him sitting there at the console, mop of black hair, always a brooding look, like he was never happy, like he expected nothing good out of anyone or anything.

Crazy man, she thought. Maybe no fault of his how he'd gotten there, and he might be a damn good lover as far as that went, but a man that nervous could go crazy someday, it had happened a couple of times on Africa, even to seasoned troops, and you could tell the look, day by day, just quieter and crazier. One had got hold of an AP, shot right down the main downside corridor, blew six skuts to hell before somebody got him; one ten year vet had just spattered pieces of herself all over barracks three one main-night when she was sleeping just four spots over—nobody could account for how she'd gotten the grenade.

NG wasn't damn happy on this ship, with this crew.

And NG—the thought gave her a queasy stomach—was in Engineering.