Rimrunners

CHAPTER 17

We got a little trouble," was what she told NG when she caught up to him, in the dim light down by his bunk, down by the vid. "Don't ask questions. Come on. Fast."

And when she got him as far as the ladder to the loft: "Come on, it's all right."

"Dammit," he said, confused-sounding.

But he went in front of her up the ladder—a lot of trust, she figured, from a man who had lately been ambushed.

She caught him up, grabbed him by the arm and steered him right for her bunk—got him that far and then he started pulling back.

"Where's Musa?" he asked.

"Musa's right where he needs to be. Just shut up, stay put, don't make me trouble." She edged between him and the privacy screen, tilted up her bunk in the dim light and pulled out a bottle, the viewer, and Ritterman's pictures, and set them on the floor. She let the bunk down then, said, "Sit down. Don't be so damn conspicuous," and when NG did that, sat down beside him, reached after the bottle, uncapped it and took a drink. "Here."

He took one. She took one. He took a second; she snuggled up close, swung around on one knee on the bunk and settled with a leg in his lap. "Dammit," he said, catching on. He made to give her the bottle back and get up, she got her knee in the way, got her arms around his neck and said very close to his ear:

"Didn't say we couldn't entertain ourselves. Just keep it quiet, all right, and don't spill my bottle."

He stayed put. In half a dozen seconds he was warming up a lot, went back on the bunk, she did, and somehow they managed not to spill the vodka.

"Where's Musa?" he asked while clothes were coming askew.

"Oh, I dunno," she said. "He's taking care of stuff. I'm just keeping you where you can't get into trouble."

"Dammit, dammit—" he mumbled, and after that not much.

Man always did have a primary problem with sex and priorities, or maybe life just got cheap. So he was occupied when McKenzie showed up, McKenzie with a "Mind?"

"Help yourself," she said, and held onto NG, while NG was trying to scramble up off the bunk. "It's all right, McKenzie was going to borrow the viewer."

"Hell!" NG said.

"It's all right," McKenzie said, and got the viewer and sat down on the bed. "That vodka you got?"

"Sure."

"Excuse me," NG said, gone all cold, but Bet snagged him with an arm before he could escape.

"No, no," she said, "NG, Gabe's a friend."

"Dammitall!"

"No problem," McKenzie said, all easy, and Bet hooked a knee over NG's to keep him sitting. McKenzie thumbed the power on the hand-viewer, popped a fiche in and took a look.

"What d'you think?"

"Shee-it," McKenzie said, "that's something."

"Let's see." She reached, while NG sat there in stony silence. She took a look, passed it to NG.

"Not interested."

"Don't be a lump." She reached after the vodka and traded Gabe back the viewer. "Here."

"Where's Musa?" NG asked in a flat voice, refusing the drink.

"Musa's just fine. Have a drink."

"I'm getting the hell out of here."

"You want to walk down there and get into trouble?"

"Trouble's here."

"No trouble." She pushed the drink on him. "Come on. Gabe's just sitting look-out."

Sullen silence. But he stayed put.

"How you doin', Gabe?" While she kept her arm tight around NG.

"Fine," McKenzie said, and took another drink and passed it back.

Then Park and Figi showed up in the aisle, mostly shadow, from past the privacy screen. "H'lo," Park said.

"Oh, damn," NG said. "What is this?"

"Party," Bet said, holding onto him. "You're invited. Stay put."

"The hell!"

"Keep it quiet. Everything's fine. Have a drink. Gabe's a friend of mine, these are friends of his."

"What are you doing?" he asked, real quiet. "Bet, what're you doing?"

"Just be polite. Friends of mine dropped by after some stuff, it's no big problem. Everybody knows everybody, just sit back, take a drink—"

"I want out of here," he said in that same tone. His muscles were all hard. His voice was just over the edge of calm. "Bet, I'm leaving."

"No, you're not. Musa'd skin you. Sit still."

As Park and Figi added their heft to the load on the bunk, and the mattress slanted a little.

"Hey, vodka," Figi said; and Bet put her arms around NG's middle, and her legs to front and back of him, and got familiar again.

"Stop it," he said under his breath.

"Just be nice," she said, but she didn't push him, just took the bottle in her turn and gave it to him, and he took a big drink of it, while the viewer passed around and Park and Figi made appreciative noises. NG was tense as drawn cable, just ready to snap, but she got another drink into him, got him to take a desultory look at the viewer, which did him no good at all.

Then Rossi and Meech showed up with their own bottle, and sat down on the floor in what space there was, right in the escape aisle. And a couple other strays came in, so the viewer was going wide circles now.

And NG was just sort of back in the corner of things with her, up against the wall, trapped, and relaxing a little when nobody turned out to notice him—and since she curled herself around him and got her hand in his and just kept things secure and friendly a while.

"What in hell?" Musa asked, coming up from around the curtain, and NG tensed up all over.

"I got him," Bet said, and:

"Have a drink," McKenzie said, offering Musa the bottle.

"Shit," Musa said, but he stood there and took his drink.

"See?" Bet said into NG's ear. "Ever'thing's fine."

No word out of him, not a thing, just a shiver, NG tucking up against the wall and staying real quiet.

So she worked at relaxing him.

"Let me alone," he said.

"Come on," she said. "It's friends."

"Dammit, let me alone"! he yelled, and shoved her and started through, but she tackled him from the back and yelled, "Gabe, stop 'im!"

NG stepped on Meech and got tangled up, with her holding around his neck and Gabe getting him from the front and Meech and Rossi impeding him from below.

He went crazy then, swinging on them, twisting to get loose—

"Where d'you want 'im?" Gabe called out, no soberer than he had to be, and: "God, let me alone"! NG was yelling, fighting to get loose, while the whole mass dumped itself generally back on the bed.

"You want us to hold 'im for you?" Park asked.

"Man's crazy," Rossi said. "Told you he was crazy."

And Musa didn't say a thing about it: Musa was one of those holding onto NG till he was half-smothered and gasping after breath.

"Give the man a drink," Bet said. "NG ain't crazy, he's just a little nervous. Careful, there! Sit him up!"

Because they were a little gone, having a damn good time, but gone, and NG was gone too, out-there, deep-spaced and having trouble breathing.

"Ease off," Musa snapped, and let go to fend Rossi off pouring vodka down NG, and shoved her hard. "Ease off, Bet, dammit!"

"Man's all right." She didn't take the shove for serious, just slipped in again and got her hand on NG's shoulder while everything was quiet and everybody was catching their breaths. "NG? Nobody going to hurt you. Nobody going to hurt you."

"Go to hell," he said, teeth chattering.

"Hey, let up, let up," she said, and disengaged Rossi and McKenzie and Figi, and Musa, one by one, everything staying quiet. God! if it got out of hand and some drunk sod decided he was common property along with the bottles—

She got the bottle from Rossi, offered it, shaking-scared NG was going to blow up and blow everything to hell. "Come on," she said. Like coaxing a kid out of a hidey-hole. "NG?"

He just stared at her. Musa patted him on the shoulder, telling him it was all right, telling him get his breath.

"You got a mate talking to you," McKenzie said, drunk and expansive. He shook at NG's knee. "You hear 'im? Mates trying to help you, you sum-bitch. Take a drink."

"Let me go," NG yelled, between gasps after air. "Let me go"!

"Let 'im loose," Musa said. "Let Bet have 'im."

"Get 'im drunker," somebody advised from the periphery, who else had come up to kibitz Bet had no idea. There was a crowd gathering—dangerous, damn, the whole thing was getting out of limits and what could happen next—

"I got 'im," she said. "Gimme the bottle."

Rossi gave it; she took a drink herself, said, "Relax," and offered a swig to NG.

He took a deep one, drank twice between gasps for breath, and she took it back, took another one, and peeled her suit down and got down on the bunk with NG while the bottle went round and by-standers cheered.

He stopped fighting. He wasn't good for much, but he shivered and then relaxed. After a minute or so he got a little buzz out of it, and put his arms around her while she said into his ear, the air between them fumed with alcohol:

"You're doing fine, merchanter-man."

Damn if he didn't about manage it then, witnesses and all, when some fool started to unhook the privacy screen on the next bunk, that was Mel Jason's, Jason being nowhere to be found, and all Jason's pin-ups in danger of folding. "Hey, careful with her stuff!" Bet yelled. "That's my neighbor."

"Let that be!" Musa yelled, and McKenzie and Park and Meech got it stopped, while NG just struggled up on his arm to see what was going on and went out like that, thump, curled onto his side.

Somehow there had turned up far more people in on this than she had brought in, there were a couple more bottles going around—had to be, or the first couple were bottomless—and she pulled her clothes together and just leaned against NG with her head spinning and her ears buzzing while Musa and McKenzie and his mates controlled the booze and the drunks and started up a dice game.

So it wasn't so exciting anymore, except the viewer was going the rounds to howls and comments, the bottle kept passing, and somebody was saying Mel Jason was mad as hell about the crowd in the loft.

But the crowd had kept growing, it was noisy, and she figured then she could be in real trouble, so she kept faking her drinks after that when the bottle came her way, and sobered a bit, leaning there at the head of her bunk on a body she finally figured out was NG, and insulated on the left by Figi's broad rump. So she was all right back there, behind a wall of friends, NG was safe where he was,

But it all settled down, Musa was drunk as a docksider while he played his mates out of their credits, all the while spinning some incredible tale about serving on Gloriana.

On Gloriana, for God's sake—a sublighter.

Man was old enough, maybe.

She felt a shiver in her bones, like meeting God, figuring how old Musa could be, because if time-dilation got to spacers nowadays, it was nothing to what the old sublighters had gotten, and although they were all changed and FTL'ed now—the several of those nine original ships that still survived—crew could still be alive—

Musa had a bottle of real whiskey in his bag—

Musa had learned his engineering the patchy way, knew practical because-it-works things, but not the technical words for it, like somebody grown up in FTL ships—

Musa had seen Earth—

The curfew-bell rang quietly. "Party's over," somebody said, and people groaned and wondered if they could negotiate the ladder.

"Want us to leave him?" Musa came to her to ask.

"Yeah," she said; and gave Musa a bleary hug and a kiss, and a sloppy, passionate kiss to Gabe McKenzie, too. "See you later," she said with his hands all over her. "Owe you one."

"Major one," he said.

"I got to get my stuff," she said, remembering that. But people had been halfway considerate, piling fiches and viewer on the bunk, taking their empties with them, so she grabbed up the fiches and stuck them in her patch-pocket and she grabbed up the viewer and she shoved that deep into her bedding.

Then she just collapsed with NG for a pillow, struggled and worked one-armed to get the safety mesh across both of them, sort of, and clipped it in.

And passed out.

"What in hell—" NG mumbled sometime during the night, and stirred and lashed out with his arm, or he had been doing that and that was why her shoulder hurt.

"'S all right. I got you. Go to sleep."

"Hell!" He flailed out again, kneed her good, trying to straighten himself out, and then he got the safety mesh clip undone and that spring-wound itself back across her while she was trying to get her arms around him and reason with him.

"You're all right. You're in my bunk, settle down—

"Shut up!" came a female voice from next door.

"Shhhsssh," she whispered, trying to hold onto him the while. "Curfew's long gone. Lie still."

"Going to my bunk," NG muttered, shoving his legs off and tearing loose from her.

"You're in the loft," she hissed, fast, while he could still hear her, because in his condition she wasn't sure he wouldn't walk right into the net or right off the ladder.

He left. She got up and she followed him, staggering and reeling herself, saw he got down the ladder all right before she went back to her bunk and fell in, doing the netting on autopilot, that was all she had left in her.

Mel Jason was pissed, no question about that. Mel stormed past her when she was dimly taking account of the fact she didn't have to put on yesterday's jumpsuit to make the showers, she was still wearing it.

So, well, Jason was always pissed.

She ran her hand through her hair, got up, staggered over to the edge of the balcony and hung there on the safety netting to get her eyes in focus and see that Musa was up and Musa had NG in view, NG already up and looking like he had been through the showers ahead of the wake-up, his clothes being unrumpled. So she went back and made her bunk—the lump she found doing that was the viewer, that had to be stowed underneath; and her thigh-pocket was full of fiches, but they were all still flat. Everything seemed to have come through all right, except she had a headache.

Except when she got downside she was running late, NG and Musa were already out at breakfast, she supposed: almost everybody was ahead of her.

And that almost was Lindy Hughes.

Didn't mind being in line for the head in front of that man; didn't like being in the showers with him damn near the last in quarters.

But you didn't shy off.

So she just went on ahead in when a guy came out, meaning there was a stall free; and she went in, stripped down for a quick rinse and a dry—mind your own damn business, Yeager, she was telling herself, soaping up.

The door opened. Hughes was standing there.

"I hear you'll do it for anybody," he said.

"Want to find out?" she said. "Or you want to keep what little you got?"

He made a grab for her. She just grabbed his coveralls and went with the grab, and Lindy Hughes kept going, right into the wall and the shower toggle.

"My God!" she yelled, bashed the back of his head with her elbow, his face with her knee, and let him hit the floor, then when he stirred, smashed down on his head with her bare foot, again and a second time when he kept trying to move. Then she stepped out past his body and looked at Davies from Cargo, who was out in the aisle, naked as she was; so was Gypsy Muller. "I tell you, that damn fool came charging right into the wall, hit his head something terrible. Somebody better call infirmary."

"Shee-it," Davies said, and grabbed his clothes; "Shit for sure," Gypsy said, looking at her and Hughes' clothed legs lying across the shower threshold.

As Hughes' friend Presley showed up in the doorway.

"Better call infirmary," she said. "Your friend slipped."

"You damn bitch!" Presley said.

"Hey, it ain't my fault." She edged past Davies in the body-wide aisle. "God, I got soap all over. 'Scuse, please."

"Damn bitch!"

"You got trouble," Davies warned her.

"Yeah."

Presley was picking Hughes up, Hughes was coming around, sitting up bleeding from the forehead. Nasty cut.

"Be nice," she said to Hughes. "And I won't say it was rape."

Hughes looked at her with murder on his face.

"We was just doing an exotic in the shower," she said. "You just hit the soap. Right?"

Man added it up—two witnesses and Presley.

"You damn whore," he said.

"You want you and me to go up to the captain's office? I'm for it.—Or you want to go up to infirmary and just tell 'em how you hit some soap and slipped? I'll save your ass for you. You can owe me one."

Maybe Davies and Gypsy would back her. Maybe they'd side with Hughes. But she didn't think so in Gypsy's case.

"Son of a bitch"! Hughes said, blotting his forehead.

Not a sound from anybody then, except Presley helped Hughes get up.

And Gypsy said, after Hughes was on his feet: "Looked like a slip to me. Nobody needs any damn trouble, Lindy."

"Yeah," Davies said.

Hughes glowered, blotted his forehead with the back of his hand—he was dripping red on the tiles.

And he shoved Presley out ahead of him and left.

Bet let go her breath.

"Thanks," she said; and looked at them—Gypsy who stood there in the altogether and Davies who was grabbing after his towel.

"Late," Davies said. "Damn, we're going to be late."

Gypsy just stared at her. Then he nodded, once, decisively, and didn't look unhappy.

She went and rinsed the soap off before it ate her skin, washed the blood off the shower floor, grabbed her clean clothes and tossed the old ones in the bin.

Not a drop of blood on those.

Mainday crewman opened the outside door, first of the incoming shift. "Evenin'," she said, uncomfortable in his staring at her.

But about half a dozen mainday crew were out there, and she got more than one stare on her way out, felt them uncomfortably close against her backbone from there to the door and out.