Rimrunners

CHAPTER 23

The news about their heading into dock was on general com when she headed back for Engineering, forty-odd minutes to shift-change.

"Everything all right?" Bernie asked, asking more than that, she reckoned, and she frowned at him, just not able to come back from it and knowing she had to—had to put a decent face on things and not do anything that could make Bernstein wonder about her, because Bernie was watching, Bernie was going to be making regular reports to Orsini and Wolfe and maybe Fitch, and she knew it. You asked a body to be a turncoat and you'd better keep an eye on them, if you had any respect at all for them.

Damn right, sir.

Nor trust them if they smiled at you.

She said, "Wasn't a real good time, sir."

Bernie looked sad at that. But at least he didn't frown back at her.

"Anything the matter?" NG said—NG the first one to come up to her, on his own, when you never used to get NG out front on anything.

She said, thinking fast, "Looks like I don't get a liberty."

It wasn't what NG had worried about, for sure. He looked upset, touched her arm. "Hell, I never have had. I'll be here."

Got her right in the heart. She couldn't think for a second, couldn't remember what she'd decided two beats ago her story was, or put any organization in her thoughts.

NG'll be on board. Him and me. God.

"You didn't expect it," Musa said, from beside her.

"Dunno, didn't think, till they made the announcement; and Orsini told me it was five years. Shit, Musa—"

She didn't want to think about months and years. A week was hard enough, NG bound to ask what she was doing topside while they were in dock, or why Orsini had her out of main Engineering, going back and forth between the shop and topside.

Damn!

Musa gave her a hug around the shoulders, friendly, Bernie didn't mind a little PDA, NG didn't say anything else, back in his habit of no-comment, and she tried to cheer up, which she reckoned made it a tolerably good act.

Damn, damn, and damn.

They did a burn before shift-change, they started doing others, after.

"We'll be docking at Thule Station …" Wolfe said on general address.

She felt sick at her stomach.

Wonder if Nan and Ely are still there. How long've we been out, realtime?

She counted jumps they had made, figured maybe as much as a year, stationside.

She stowed everything she wouldn't need, stuffed a duffle with things she would, same as those who were going stationside—"Hard luck, Bet," people dropped by to say, and some few of them, McKenzie included, were cheeky enough to say, "Yeah, well, but you and NG got free bunks and all the beer aboard.—Want me to buy you anything?"

She checked with the purser's office and found out she could draw on her liberty money even being held aboard, and that NG was downright affluent, never having used his liberty credits except for on-board beers.

"Vodka," she said to McKenzie, trusting him with a sizeable draft on her account. "Walford's is cheap, Green dock, listen, I got some incidentals I need, stand you three bottles if you hit supply for me."

"Hell," McKenzie said, "give us a list. Nobody's in port but us, we got to make do with dockers, and you know Figi's going to be in a damn card game from the time he hits—Park and me can go shopping, buy you anything you want."

"You're a love," she said, feeling better for the moment, and took McKenzie off in the corner and exchanged about twenty concentrated minutes of accumulated favor-points.

Real special, this time, rushed as it was—hard to know what it was, maybe that they were both in a desperate hurry, and taking time to be mutually polite, maybe just that they'd gotten beyond acquainted and all the way over to looking out for each other.

She wanted that right now, wanted somebody it just wasn't complicated with, who cared about her; and she hurt her back doing it and didn't regret it later, when the take-hold was sounding and she hauled thirty kilos of hammock and duffle down to the stowage area to clip in and hang on with the rest of alterday and most of mainday.

Not the mofs. Mofs and a few of the mainday tekkies got to ride the lift down from the bridge to the airlock, of course—except for the lucky few who drew duty part or all of the port-call.

I hope to hell Fitch gets a long liberty. Hope the sonuvabitch gets laid at least once. Might help his disposition.

Mostly she worried about Hughes and his friends being out there with Musa and her and NG not being. "Keep an eye on him," she'd asked McKenzie, and McKenzie'd sworn he would.

They made a tolerably soft dock, no teeth cracked, no bruises, and crew stood in harness waiting for permission to move about, laying grandiose plans for the bars they were going to hit—yeah, sure, mates, on Thule…

They got the permission, they undipped, they milled or they settled down on their duffles and checked through their cred-slips.

Johnny Walters had left his kit. There was usually some poor sod. There was always a volunteer who'd get it down by shift-change. "Yeah," Bet said. "NG or I, one. Who else,? Make a list."

Damn list always grew when people found out there was a quarters-run going. "Shit. Write it down! I got a year's worth of favor-points coming from you guys…"

Except Dussad, out of mainday Cargo, who muttered something about having NG into his stuff—

"You want a favor?" Bet asked, swinging around, read the name on the pocket and said, "Dussad? You want a favor or you got a problem with me and my mate?"

"You got lousy taste," Dussad said, and of all people, Liu said, "Take it easy." And McKenzie said, "Nothing wrong with NG. He just doesn't talk too good."

"Ask Cassel," a mainday woman said.

God, they couldn't move, they were here till they got orders. NG just stood there, nobody could go anywhere or do anything.

Gypsy said, "Man's got by that. Man's stood his watches, took his shit for it, long enough."

And Musa:

"Damn valve blew, Ann, you get your head in the way of it and it happens, it don't matter if you got a mate there. The rest of it's hell and away too old to track."

"He got an opinion?"

"Let him the hell alone," Bet said, and threw NG a look, couldn't not; NG was just staring somewhere else, jaw clenched—God, he couldn't talk, just damn couldn't, out-there for the moment. "Let him alone."

"I know what his mates are saying. I want to hear what he's got to say about it, all right? There's a lot of trouble going on. I want to know what the guy has to say."

McKenzie said, "I'll buy you a drink, Dussad. We'll talk about it."

Quiet for a second or two, real tense. The lift clanked and whined, high up on the rim—mofs doing their business with dockside.

"Drop it," Liu said. "Drop it, Dussad. Later. All right?"

"What about my kit?" Walters asked, in the silence after. "Is somebody going to go after it?"

They finished the fetch-downs list, mofs went out and did customs, lot of noise from the lift and the airlock; and they waited and talked, and bitched—

Prime bitch coming, if you drew duty, if you had to get up and wish everybody Drink one for me, while the captain got on the general com and told everybody clear out and when the board-call was. "I got a couple of old friends here," Bet said to Musa. "Drop in by the Registry, wish Nan Jodree and Dan Ely g'day for me. Stand 'em a drink if they got the time."

Depressing, when everybody cleared out in a noisy rush and left the downside corridor all to the two of them—and NG paying attention again, but down-faced, quiet. Damn that Dussad.

"Well?" she said, looking at NG, and sighed and picked up the duffle and the hammock. "Where d'we put it?"

NG looked at the corridor and looked up and down the curves in either direction, and finally sighed and said, in all that awful quiet of shutdown: "Locker's all right."

They got Walters' kit down, a matter of climbing up the curve using the safety clips, also stuff for Bala and Gausen and Cierra—and for Dussad, NG did that, did all the climbing around, the dangerous part, where you could take a long, long fall if you got careless clambering through the quarters. "You'll hurt your back," he told her. "I'll do the climbing, you just stay down here and catch it."

He acted all right. She wished she knew what to say about Dussad and mainday shift, that had been NG's—and Cassel's. She wished she knew what was going on in his head and she wished she had Musa here, to talk to NG, if nothing else. Or Bernstein. Bernie could get through to him. She wasn't sure she could, she wasn't sure she wanted to get into the topic with him at all.

Damn Dussad. Hughes had stayed out of it, Hughes had to be taking all of it in and wanting to say something—and there was no doubt he would be saying something, in the bars and up and down dockside for five days, causing as much damage as he could, dropping stuff in ears he knew would be receptive, and in a liberty, down to the last day, the shifts mixed.

Damn, she wanted to be out there. Most of all she wanted NG out there in Musa's keeping, not on-ship, brooding on things, working alone while his partner was off doing what she couldn't let him know—

She ought to tell NG, had to tell him sooner or later what was going on, and alone on the alterday watch might have been a decent time to do it, except for Dussad and that damn woman from mainday—Thomas, she thought it was, Ann Thomas, navcomp, Hughes' opposite. Alterday and mainday nav both were a pain in the ass, she decided—must be something in the mindset; while Dussad, out of Cargo, was a hard-nosed hard-sell sonuvabitch, but you couldn't fault him too much—just want to bust his damn thick skull, was all. "Eyes up!" NG yelled from overhead. "Fragiles!"

They weren't the only crew missing liberty: Parker and Merrill were on mainday duty in Engineering, and Dussad and Hassan just had a partial, going out to the suppliers' and dealing for the ship, with whatever spare time they were efficient enough to gain; while Wayland and Williams were on a three-day pass, having to come back and supervise the supply loading, and a lucky handful of bridge crew, rotating off-ship for sleep and whatever rec-time they could squeeze in, was responsible for the fill, indicator-watching, mostly, and communication with Thule Central—an ops routine she knew, for once, the intricacies of cables and hoses, the names of the lines and what the hazards were—learned it because you'd always had to worry about sabotage, in the war, and when Africa was in dock, the squad was always out there in full kit, checking the hook-ups, posting guard—

Dammit.

She kept remembering. She didn't want to. There were those dead rigs topside, waiting for her, like ghosts—

And NG was going to ask questions, NG had a natural right to ask questions about where she was going every day, and why.

They had the night, at least. "I'm not making love in any hammock," she said to NG, setting up, having consulted Parker and Merrill via com on what was going to be quarters for four people, alternately, in the main stowage—so they just spread their two hammocks down for padding on the stowage deck, and, it turned out during the set-up, got themselves a brand-new bottle of vodka when Walters and some of the guys showed up to pay off the fetch-downs.

"You sure ain't missing much," Walters delayed to say to them. "Place is dead, places are closed up, about two bars and a skuzzy sleepover still open, and that's it. Nothing alive out there but echoes…"

Made her feel sad, for some odd reason, maybe just that it was a slice out of her life, however miserable, maybe that there was something spooky about it now, knowing a piece of humankind was dying, the dark was coming just like they'd said, taking the first bases humans had made leaving Sol System.

Like those names in the restroom they just painted over. Polaris, and Golden Hind. God, Musa could probably remember Thule in its heyday.

And came back, a crewman on an FTL, to see it die.

"Bet?" NG asked her, nudged her arm, when the lock-door had shut, when Johnny Walters was away to the docks, and she thought, for no reason, Everything we ever did—the War, and all, they'll paint right over, like it never was, like none of us ever died—

Mazian doesn't see it. Still fighting the war—

Hell. What's winning? What's winning, when everything's changing so fast nobody can predict what's going to be worth anything?

She felt NG's hand on her shoulder. She kept seeing Thule docks, Ritterman's apartment, the Registry—

The nuclear heat of Thule's dim star.

Curfew rang.

Walters' vodka, bed, privacy, all the beer they could reasonably drink and all the frozen sandwiches they could reasonably eat, out of Services, next door.

Wasn't too bad, she decided, putting tomorrow out of her mind, the way she had learned to do. Just take the night, get her and NG fuzzed real good—

Tell him later. The man deserved a little time without grief.

So they ate the sandwiches with a beer, chased them with vodka, made love.

Didn't need the pictures. Didn't need anything. NG was civilized, terribly careful of her back—

Not worth worrying about, she said. And got rowdy and showed him a trick they used to do down in the 'decks, her and Bieji.

"God," he said. He ran his hand over the back of her neck.

Nobody else had that touch. Nobody else ever made her shiver like that. Nobody else, ever.

He was the one who got claustrophobic… but for a second she couldn't breathe.

Here and now, Yeager. This ship.

This man. This partner.

"You all right?" he asked.

"Fine," she said, and caught the breath, heavy sigh. "I just can't get stuff out of my mind."

He worked on that problem. Did tolerably good at it after a minute or two, till she was doing real deep breathing and thinking real near-term.—One thing with NG, he didn't question much, and he knew the willies on a first-name basis. Knew what could cure them for a while, too.

She said, somewhere after, when she found the courage: "Bernstein just left me this nasty little list of stuff, topside, seems I'm the mechanic and you got the boards." She tried to say what it was. And had another attack of pure, despicable cowardice. Couldn't trust it. Couldn't predict what he'd do. Didn't want a blow-up til she'd gotten a day or so alone with him, softened him up, got an idea what was going on with him. "I hate it like hell. You're going to be alone down there."

"Been alone before," he said. "Been alone on port-calls for years."

He didn't ask what the work was. She told herself that if he had asked she would have gone ahead and spilled it right then. But he didn't. Wasn't even curious.

Thank God.