Rimrunners

CHAPTER 14

I got news for you," Bet said, leaning over NG's chair, putting her hand on his shoulder; NG flinched, mild attempt to get rid of her, but she was at an inconvenient angle. "Musa and I are walking you out of here tonight—"

"I got enough trouble."

"You haven't heard the rest of it. Musa and I are walking behind you in the morning, we're walking you to supper, we're walking you into quarters, anytime you move, you got us behind you."

"And how long does that last?" He swung the chair around, far as he could without bashing her knee. "Stay out of it."

"What's their names?"

"Not your damn business."

"Going to be. Mine and Musa's. We agreed."

"I said let me alone! You trying to get me on report?"

"For what? Walking down a corridor?"

"They'll find a way." NG wasn't doing well. He waved a shaking hand. "Just go to hell. I got enough trouble."

"What're you going to do next time?" She slid past his knee, into the seat next to his at the counter, facing it to him; leaned forward, arms on knees. "What're you going to do, merchanter-man, if they aren't through hitting on you?"

"That's my problem."

"Mnn." She stuck out her foot between his, against the circular foot-rest of his chair, stopping him from turning it. "No. It's Bernstein's orders. Bernstein's own idea. And I'm not stupid. Didn't come off any Family ship. Maybe I know this game, all right?"

"It's not just them—"

"Yeah, yeah, that's all fine. What're Musa and I going to do? You were drinking our beer. Bunch of skuzzes takes exception to that. So what do we do, just play stupid? Act like we're just too stupid to see how A fits with B? Or too stupid to know if you push a thing you got to be ready to back what you did? Lot of this crew isn't committed on this, lot of this crew don't care shit about you, lot of this crew doesn't give you two thoughts in a week—because you didn't mean shit, friend, till you got yourself beat up and now it looks like Musa's got to decide to ignore that or not. And I do, being the new guy. So you got yourself an organization, you see what I'm talking about?"

"Fitch'll kill you!"

"You're not listening, merchanter-man. You're not playing the game right."

"Shit."

He was turning away. She braced her foot and grabbed his arm.

"And that right there is one of the problems, friend."

"Get your hand off me before I break it."

"Mmmm-mmm. Won't put a mark on the guys that beat you up and now you're going to break my hand. Real smart."

He shook her off.

"Muller told me," she said, "you got this way of repaying what people do for you."

He shoved the chair the other way around this time, kicked her foot out of the way and got up.

Right face-on with Musa.

"Sit down," Musa said.

"Hell!"

"Looks like we got to beat shit out of him," Bet said to Musa. "Seems to be the only way he takes anybody seriously."

"Leave me alone!" NG shoved Musa out of his way, headed for the door.

"NG!" Bernstein shouted across the room.

NG took a couple of strides more toward the door. And stopped there, as if there was some kind of invisible line on him.

"It's my order," Bernstein said. "You damn well do what you're told."

NG shoved his hands into his pockets, made a move like a shiver, then turned around with that damned cocky set of his jaw, cut lip and all.

"Yessir," NG said.

NG left, they left—Bernstein having held all of them until all the mainday shift came on; NG walked into rec and got his pills and they got beers and sat—

"Dammit," NG said when they parked themselves one on either side of him.

Musa patted him on the knee. "Everything's fine. Doing just fine." And Musa looked at him, leaning a little outward on the bench. "That eye's going to turn all colors, isn't it?"

People stared as they came in. People minded their business, until they got what they fancied out of earshot, and then heads got together and not too furtive looks darted NG's direction—people naturally wondering what had happened to NG's face, and the business about NG having one more chance with Fitch being, as Musa put it, shipwide famous, there was certainly a little morbid speculation going on, damn right there was.

"You stay right here," Musa said, patting NG again on the knee. "I got to get me another beer."

But Musa got directly into a conversation with Muller before he got to the counter—not without saying exactly what he wanted to say, Bet figured, sipping her beer and watching NG from the corner of her eye—watching whether he reacted to anybody in particular this evening.

Linden Hughes reacted—walking in, seeing him there.

Damn sure.

"That the man?" she asked NG without turning her head.

"I got enough help."

"Sure. Him. His friends. You got all sorts of help."

Silence out of NG.

"You got it wrong," she said. "You got it all backwards. Friends is the ones you help."

"You're a damn fool," he said, and got up and went off toward quarters.

So she went.

And caught up to him inside, in the dim light.

He stopped short. "Get off my tail," he snarled at her.

"Hey, fine," she said.

"Look," he said, and came back, hands open. "Look, Bernie's got this great idea, works just fine until some damn emergency comes up and Bernie's got to have Musa off over here, and you're off over there—"

"All you got to do is be halfway smart. Like you weren't."

"Musa's not going to put up with this past three days. Musa's going to duck out of it soon's Bernstein gives him the excuse, and that leaves you, you understand me, that leaves you in that damn locker. You like that?"

"Musa and I got this understanding, just this little arrangement—"

"What kind of arrangement?"

"What you think. Same's with you. Or-ga-ni-zation, merchanter-man. You understand Family? I'll bet you do. Same thing. Same thing."

NG looked as if she had hit him in the face.

And he walked off on her, down the aisle to his bunk.

A second later, Musa walked through the door.

"What's that?" Musa asked.

Family merchanter, for sure, she thought, I bet you anything you like.

But she said, staring after NG, arms folded: "Just getting something at his bunk."

Musa scratched his shoulder. "Not real happy, is he?" Musa said. "Didn't figure."

"I got to tell you," she said, "I been sleeping over with him."

"He all right?" Musa asked.

"Little nervous," she said. "Real sweet, sometimes."

Musa thought that over. "Been a long time," Musa said. "Long time for me, too. You're a pretty woman. Can't blame him."

She laughed a little. Felt a little nicer, at that. Nobody ever had said that but Bieji when he was drunk.

That was what you had to do, find yourself a niche and a couple or three you could trust. That was what was the matter with this ship, that there were so damned few you could, you could pick that up right out of the air. And she hadn't felt safe on this ship until she felt Musa put his arm around her.

Musa was all right in bed too, during the vid, when the bad guys and the good guys were noisily shooting hell out of each other on the screen at the end of the quarters, to the cheers of the drunks and heavy breathing from the couples behind the privacy screens.

NG was in neither category. NG was sleeping, if he could. More likely he was hurting, but at least he was safe—right next to the bed both of them were in, NG's being endmost toward the vid, Musa's being next over.

It was something Musa had bargained his way into at Bernstein's instigation, back when NG had first come onto alterday shift—Musa having a favored mid-quarters bunk that Muller had been all too glad to trade for, and nobody but Musa being on speaking terms with NG.

That was the way Musa explained it, anyway.

Which was how Musa with all his seniority ended up next to the vid, with cheering drunks sitting on the deck at the foot of the bunk he was sharing at the moment—good question now and again whether it was the vid they were cheering.

"Damn fools," Musa said between breaths.

"'S all right," Bet said, and laughed, because it was funny, laughed and got Musa to laughing, quietly, under the blankets they had thrown over themselves.

"You're a good woman," Musa said— Musa smelled of perfumed soap, no less, Musa had clean sheets, Musa had hauled out an old bottle of real honest-to-Mother-Earth whiskey and poured her a big hit on it. It was something she had only heard about, from Africa troopers old enough to remember it.

Where'd you get this? she had asked, and Musa, pleased, had said, Taste of home.

So Musa was from Earth. The Fleet had fought for Earth. Africa had gone back to fight there. It was kind of an obscure connection that formed, not even a friendly one most of the time, but it made her think what a tangled lot of things it took to get an Africa trooper and a man like Musa into the same bed.

Lot of places that led.

The vid reached a series of explosions, the drunks yelled. Musa voice-overed the next lines from memory, funnier than hell, at least drunk as she was getting, and poured her another drink.

The vid went quiet of a sudden. The drunks groaned into a disappointed silence.

"This is the captain speaking," the com thundered out. "This ship will make jump at 0600 mainday."

Then the vid started up again, but the talk was quiet then.

"Damn," Bet said, "gone again. Where now?"

"Easy to answer," Musa said.

"Where, then?"

"Wherever they got us put."

"Damn," she said, and hit him a gentle punch.

"Actually," Musa said, settling down to be comfortable a while, "not too hard to guess. The Fleet's got its ass kicked twice now, back at Earth, they popped out again, nobody knows where—they say maybe old Beta Station—"

That could put a chill into you. There had always been rumors in the Fleet that Mazian had a hole-card, and the name of abandoned Beta, old Alpha Cent, had come up—the bad-luck station, second star humankind ever parked a pusher-can at and set up to live there—and, the story ran, it had just gone transmission-silent one day, the constant data-flow to other stations had just—stopped, no reason, no explanation, and not a scrap of a clue left behind when a ship finally got there—sublight—to investigate. Beta Station had systematically shut down, and the pusher-module that could have gotten the people off was gone—

But no wisp of wreckage or electronic ghost of a transmission ever told what had happened.

"They'd be fools," she said, and thought to herself it was the kind of rumor Mazian himself might have started, just to confuse things.

"They jumped to some point in that direction," Musa said. "That's what I hear."

"So maybe they know some point of mass nobody else does."

"Could be. Or maybe they just jumped out to old Beta and laid real quiet. Beta would be good for them, all that old mining and biomass gear, antiquated as hell, but if the dust ain't got it it's still there. Could be what he's done."

"Is that where we're going?"

"Not us. No."

"Then what are we doing?"

"Keeping the lanes open. Not letting that sum-bitch cut us off from Earth. Not letting him peel off the Hinder Stars. He could start the whole war up again, get Earth cut off, force Pell into Union or force Pell to deal with him, one way or the other. Sure as hell Pell can't hold out independent if Earth goes into his pocket. Sure as hell the Hinder Stars are nothing but a damn human warehouse. You found that out."

"Found that out," she said.

The vid never did get as noisy again, not what was going on-screen, not the crowd that was watching. A lot of people left to go out to rec and get a beer and talk, and a lot of people just sat around on bunks to drink and talk.

"I got to check on NG," she said, and leaned down off the edge of the bunk to put her head below the level of the privacy screen.

"He all right?" Musa asked.

"Looks to be asleep. 'Scuse."

She crawled out and ducked under, and sat down again on NG's bunk, beside him.

Half-asleep, all right. Pills had a kick to them. He gave her a bleary look.

"You hear that?" she said. "We got jump in the morning."

"Got to wake up," he muttered.

"No, you sleep. Musa and I'll pour you into your hammock in the morning. No problem. You can trust us." She squeezed his hand. "G'night. All right?"

No answer. The fingers didn't twitch. But he was all right. She and Musa had custody of the pills—in case. And if Loki was going somewhere tomorrow, wherever that was, then at least they were starting out in good order this time, no surprises.

She ducked back under, crawled back into Musa's bed, cold and shivering.

Man who didn't mind that was a gentleman, she thought.