Rimrunners

CHAPTER 3

The woman Ely called Nan looked up from her desk in the outer office, took one look at her and came abruptly to her feet.

"Fell," Bet said, because the eye was going to go black, she'd had a look at it in the bar's restroom. She looked like hell, she had her collar zipped up high to cover the scratches on her throat, she was still wobbly, and she smelled of sweat and God knew what. But she was on time. She signed in at the desk and she ignored the stare a moment doing that. Then she looked up.

"Ma'am, I got faint and I fell. I'm sorry. I got breakfast this morning. Kind man gave it to me. I'll be better."

"O dear God," the woman said, in a shocked, bewildered way, and just stood there, so that Bet found herself staring eye-to-eye with this stationer woman, this upright, respectable stationer woman who could kill her with a phone call to the authorities. "God. Sit down."

"I'm here to work," Bet said. "Mr. Ely said he'd pay me."

"Just sit," Nan said sharply, pointing to a chair behind the counter. And when she did that, Nan brought her coca and wafers.

She took them. "Thank you," she said meekly, figuring she was in no place now to quarrel. "Ma'am, I really want the job."

It was begging. But she was out of choices.

"I'll call the infirmary," Nan said.

"No;" Her heart thudded. She almost spilled the cup over. "No. Don't."

"You didn't fall," Nan said darkly.

Bet looked up, met more straight sense than she'd looked for in this dry, plain woman. Not accusing. Just knowing damn well a fall didn't do what had happened to her face. "I got shoved up a wall. Rough night. Please. I don't want any trouble. It's just bruises. Give me a chance. I'll work back in the offices. Won't frighten the clients."

"Let me talk to Mr. Ely. We'll fix something up."

"No meds. Please. Please, ma'am."

"Stay here."

Nan left. Bet sat and sipped the coca. It hurt her cut mouth; the sugar made a loose tooth ache. She held the cup in both hands, trying not to panic, watching toward the glass-walled corridor where the back offices were, trying not to think about phones and security and the restroom last night.

But her heart was beating in hard, painful beats, enough to make her dizzy when Ely came back with Nan and looked down at her. "Wall, huh? You look like hell, Yeager."

"Yes, sir."

He looked at her a long while. Arms folded. He said, "I want to talk to you in my office."

"Yes, sir," she said. She put the cup down on the counter. "Thank you," she said to Nan, but, "Bring it," Ely said. So she did, as she followed him down the corridor and into his office.

He sat. She sat, the cup warming her hands.

"You all right?" he asked.

She nodded.

"You report it?"

She shook her head.

"You get robbed?"

"Nothing to steal," she said.

"Are you all right?" he asked again, which she guessed finally in a stationer's delicate way meant had she been raped.

"I'm fine," she said. "Just a disagreement. Damn drunk and I crossed paths." God, if he or Nan put it together with the morning news—"I just wasn't walking very steady last night. He shoved me. I cussed him. I hit the wall. I went out. He apologized. Bought me breakfast."

Ely looked as if he doubted her. He looked at her a long time. Then: "Where are you staying?"

She thought, desperately. A year since anyone had asked that. She remembered the name of the bar. "Rico's. Good an address as any."

"You staying there?"

"I get my mail there."

"Who writes to you?"

She shrugged. The heartbeat was doing doubletime. But Ely didn't have to help. Ely didn't have to hand out a cred-chit to a down-and-gone spacer. He didn't have to call a woman friend in when he talked to her, all proper, so she could read his signals, that it wasn't her he was after, that he was trying to do a good deed. That kind was scarce on station docks. "Nobody," she said. "But if someone did, it'd be there. If something came in."

He just looked at her. Finally: "You do the trash-sorts. You run errands. You sign in every morning and you make sure you look like a client otherwise, if somebody's here besides Nan and me. I don't want Personnel to see you. If somebody comes in and you get caught in the back hall, just make like you were going to the restroom."

She nodded. She sat back in the back room and sorted the trash for recycling. She weighed it out and she noted the weight on each bundle because sometimes the cyclers cheated you. She'd heard that about Thule the first day she was onstation.

Mainday noon she got her cred-chit from Ely and she went to a sit-down restaurant and had another bowl of soup.

That night she went back to Rico's and Terry, his last name was Ritterman, bought her a beer and a cup of chowder.

He took her into the back then. She undressed, she said she had to wash her clothes, so he got her a bucket and she scrubbed her jumpsuit and her underwear and hung them to dry over the heat-vent. He came up behind her while she was doing that and put his hands on her. Without saying anything. She let him. She let him pull her down on the floor and he still wanted to touch her, that was all, while she shut her eyes or stared at the ceiling, and finally somebody came in out front, so he swore and went out to see about that.

She turned over and wrapped up in the rug and went to sleep for a while before he came back and woke her up, turning her over again and starting in.

Customers came in. He was gone a while. He came back and he got down again and she thought he must've been a long time without, he'd wear out finally and maybe go to sleep or let her sleep the rest of the night. But he never did.

She got dressed in the morning, he bought her breakfast. He wanted her to come to his apartment. "I got to work," she said.

She earned her chit. She thought about finding somewhere else to spend the night, she was recovered enough to be more fastidious, and Terry gave her the chills, but that meant no supper and no breakfast.

So she went back to Rico's.

It was that way every day. Every day she got the single chit. Every main-night she went back. Terry got stranger. He wanted her to come to his apartment. He wanted to show her his place, he said.

He got to doing weird things, like wanting to tie her up. "Hell if you do," she said. "I don't play those games."

He acted embarrassed. But she was worried about the drinks he gave her after that. She was worried about going to sleep with him. He kept fingering her scars and asking how she'd gotten this one and that one and being weird, just weird, the way he went at sex while he was doing that. "Quit it," she said, finally, and shrugged him off. He slammed her back again, her bruised skull hitting the tiles and sparking color through her vision. She lay still, because she'd told her subconscious she was in trouble—don't react, don't react, he's a fool, is all—

"That night you came here," he said. "That black eye and all."

He hurt her. She got a hand free and clouted his ear. "Hurts, dammit!" He pawed after a hold on that arm and she gave him the knee. He yelled. She got away, off the blanket, over where her shoulders hit the corner and the shelves.

"You damn bitch," he said.

"Just back off." She levered herself up and sat down on a beer keg. It was cold. The air was. The whole place stank. "Back off, friend."

"Come on back."

"Hell. Just let me alone. I'm tired. This is my night-time, man, I work mainday. Just back off."

"You and that black eye. That man you say grabbed you—'

"Just leave me the hell alone. You got your supper's worth."

The front door chimed. He sat there, ignoring it, breathing hard.

"You got customers, Terry-lad."

"Security's looking for some woman, off in Green, same night, same night you came here, all marked up. You got no card, no ID, come in here beat up—Don't call the meds, you say. Don't want anything to do with the meds—I bet you don't, sugar."

Someone came into the hall. Shouted for service.

"Get out there, dammit," she hissed. "You want the law in here?"

"You're the one don't want the law, sugar." He put his hand on her leg. "I do what I want. Got that? I know where you hang out at the Registry. I followed you. Hear? If I call the law I can tell 'em where to look, even if you aren't in the comp, like I bet you aren't, sugar…"

"You want the law, dammit, get out there and wait on those guys before they call security!"

He stroked her skin. "You be here. You better be here. I got you for a long time. You better know I do."

More shouting. "Just a minute," he yelled. He got up and limped around putting his clothes together, staggered out the door fastening his belt.

She sat there on the beer keg with her arms clenched around her knees. She wanted to throw up.

She thought it through, what her choices were. She listened to the voices in the bar and she got up and got her clothes from over the heat-vent, she dressed and she walked out into the bar where he was waiting on a rowdy tableful of dockworkers.

He gave her a stark, mad look. She went over to the bar and got a drink for herself and listened to the rude comments from the four dockworkers, the invitation to have a drink, go to a sleepover with them and do this and that exotic number.

Attractive notion, considering. But the thought that kept coming through cold and clear was how fast Terry Ritter-whoever would be on the com to Central.

And with her fingerprints at the scene, the law just needed to get a look at her black eye and those scratches and to know that she was a transient and an illegal to get a judge to give a writ for real close questions.

Under trank.

She gave a scowl toward the dock workers. Loaders. Lousy lot. But cleaner than Terry Ritterman. Maybe even decent types, sober and solo. Terry came up and put his hand on her hip.

She took it. She leaned on the bar and drank her vodka sip by sip, she stared at the dockworkers with the thought that any one of them would be a hell and away better pick.

She walked over and got a bottle, she went over and poured their glasses full while they protested they hadn't ordered it.

"It's on me," she said, and played a scenario through in her mind, stirring up a ruckus where a soft little man could get his neck broken by some dockworker. But that still meant the law. It still meant questions.

So they drank, she played up to them and enjoyed Terry squirming and worrying, played it all the way and hoped to keep them there till maindawn, when the owner came.

Terry rang up her charges on his own card, Terry glowered at her and beckoned her over, but she ignored it until he picked up the phone.

Then she came over to him.

"You go home with me," he said, cutting the phone off then. "You're going to pay for this."

She said nothing. He pinched her hip. Hard. She stared at the mirrored room and when he demanded a response from her, nodded.

The dockworkers left, fifteen minutes before maindawn. She poured herself synth orange while they walked out.

"My place," Terry said. "Understand?"

She nodded again. He rubbed her shoulder. She flinched away and went to sit down and drink her breakfast, while the owner came and checked out the accounts. The owner gave her the eye and gave her a laconic good morning.

"'Morning," she said. Probably he was more than suspicious why an orange juice and toast always turned up on Terry's card. It was that kind of look.

Probably that look followed them when Terry came and told her to come with him, they were leaving.

"You'll learn," he said, linking his arm through hers. They walked like lovers as far as the lift. He had to behave himself: there were other passengers in the car. But he trapped her arm again when he got her off on his floor, over in Green. He radiated heat like a furnace. He kept squeezing her hand in his soft, sweating fist. He started telling her in a half-whisper that she'd like him, he really had to teach her not misbehave, but they could get along, she could stay in his apartment and as long as she did the things he wanted he'd keep her safe from the law.

She said nothing, except when he squeezed down on her hand and insisted she say yes. So she said yes.

He got his keycard out of his pocket. He led her to a dingy door in the dingy miniature hall that could have been the bowels of some ship, instead of a station residency. He opened the door and he turned on the lights with a manual switch and he shut the door again.

It was an ugly place. It was all clutter. It stank of bad plumbing, unwashed dishes and old laundry. She watched him take his coat off and throw it down on the table. His hands were shaking.

She watched. She waited till he turned around and reached for her. She took his hand and twisted around, and he hit the floor. Hard.

"I want to tell you something," she said in that instant of shock. "My ship name's Africa."

His eyes got wide. He scrambled to get up. She let him. He staggered over against the wall. There was a phone around somewhere in the filth, she was sure of that. She gave him a chance to make a dive for it. She leaned on a chair back, just waiting. But he froze, gone white.

"You're lying," he said, standing there with his hair on end. "You damned whore, you're lying to me."

"Got separated from my ship when the Fleet pulled out. Just mixed with the refugees, worked docks a while, talked my way aboard a freighter." She patted her breast pocket. "Even got myself an Alliance testimonial. Said I lost my papers. Not too hard to get this far. I was born spacer, friend, that's a fact. But I was trained marine."

"Go away," he said, waving a fluttering hand. "Get the hell out of here. You got nothing to gain here. I got no percentage in saying anything."

She shook her head slowly. "Oh, no, friend, you know I'm going to kill you. And in your case I'm going to take my time."