Tripoint

Chapter Three

A BROTHER HE’D RATHER NOT HAVE met lying like a heap of laundry on the bunk in the brig, and, Christian said to himself, Austin was very possibly going to kill him, when Austin finished sorting out the fines and the penalties… none of which was his fault; but that didn’t mean whoever approached Austin with a minor problem wasn’t going to catch hell.

“I wouldn’t go in there,” Beatrice said, in the vicinity of Austin’s office. As a mother, Beatrice wasn’t the historic model… she’d dropped her kid between jumps, left him to cousin Saby’s ten-year-old mercy, and nowadays abdicated him to Capella’s, God help him. Right now Beatrice showed the ravages of a night on the docks, red eyes, hair trailing out of its usual tight twist—the glitz-paint was worn on one bare shoulder, saying Beatrice had been in bed when the search team found her or the beeper on the pocket-corn finally blasted her out of whatever lair she’d intended for the next several days.

So they’d all had cancelled plans. Capella was in a funk. Beatrice looked mildly sedated, just a little strange about the edges when she grabbed him and hugged him in the corridor, not Beatrice’s maternal habit. Then she got a fistful of his hair and looked him closely in the eyes with,

“You’ve given us a problem. You’ve given Austin one.”

“What was I to do? He’d been looking at the cans. And pardonnez-moi, maman, I didn’t pick this particular problem. He’s Austin’s.”

“He won’t thank you.”

“Pity.”

He started to leave. Beatrice didn’t let go her fistful of hair. “Christian. Keep your mouth shut. It will die down. We can leave this fool at Pell… send him to Earth, for that matter, and he won’t find his way back.”

“It won’t die down. There’s too broad a trail, and there’s that woman…”

“Shit on that woman!”

“Shit on the whole situation, I—”

The door of Austin’s office whisked aside. Austin loomed in the doorway. “Get in here!”

“Who, me?” He honestly wasn’t sure, and mimed it. Austin grabbed him by the arm, jerked him through the door, and backhanded him hard into the wall, which left him nursing a sore ear and a personal indignation.

“It’s not my damn fault!”

“Why could somebody just walk into the warehouse? Where in hell was the guard?”

“Millers’ had people on duty, but they had to have somebody sign the damn repair order, I didn’t know they were going to leave the office unlocked…”

Austin took a glancing swipe at him, total disgust. “All you had to do was have a guard on that door.”

“I know that.”

“You know that, sir, damn your impudence! You look to inherit Corinthian? You’re a long way from it, at the rate you’re going! We’ll be lucky not to lose this port, and Miller, and all they do for us, you understand that? Does that remotely affect your social interests?”

“I was busting my ass, sir, getting Miller moving. I got us turned around, we just can’t use any damn deckhand that comes along. We’re loading, we’re going as fast as the loader can roll, I’ve sent out the board-call. The only thing I didn’t predict was Miller’s man deciding to take a walk and leave the damn door unlocked—”

“Try predicting what we’re going to do when the cops show up wanting Thomas Hawkins! Does that fit in your crystal ball? Sprite crew is all over the damn dock out there!”

“Looking for Marie, by my sources. Not interested in calling the cops, no more than we are. They’re asking up and down the row, every bar, showing her picture. They probably think he’s with her.”

“Damn lucky they didn’t arrest half the crew.”

“I hear luck had nothing to do with it.”

“Expensive luck. I’m not in a damned good mood, boy. Nobody’s coming through those access doors or near our lock. Damned elusive woman. Damned persistent—and you snatch her kid? Thanks. Thanks a whole lot. It’s just the luck we needed.”

“Dump him in space. It’s no different than leaving him lie in a warehouse full of cold cans. He was taking a tour of Miller’s premises, for God’s sake, it wasn’t my doing, I don’t know what more I could do than I did… if I’d left a body behind, you wouldn’t be happy with me either, especially seeing he’s your own offspring,—sir. I wouldn’t want you to get the idea I wanted him dead.”

“You’re real close to annoying me, Christian.”

“I did what seemed to me to be less liability.”

“After you finally deigned to return a com call. After you gave that ship that much extra time to let Marie Hawkins loose on the dock.”

“It’s not my fault the transport broke down. It’s not my fault everything on this God-forsaken station depends on some separate labor union—I could have fixed that damn transport with a screwdriver, Miller could have fixed the transport, we didn’t know we had an emergency, and I wasn’t that hard to track down, sir, I’d told Miller where I was and what general direction I was going. You could have called Miller.”

“Miller isn’t an officer on this ship. Damned right I called Miller, once Bianco saw fit to tell me the offloading was stalled.”

“You tell Bianco what you thought about it?”

“Bianco’d told you. You were the officer of the watch, boy, and if you have any desire to stay an officer on this ship, I suggest you establish clear understandings with the duty officer of each watch, that you take threats against this ship damned seriously, that you don’t screw with the guard I’ve put on our accesses, because I don’t take for granted that woman won’t try to slip us a bomb in one of the cans or walk onto this ship armed, do you hear me?”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“As long as they’re searching for her… she hasn’t gone to the cops or reported in. Just keep those cans moving. And let me tell you something—” Austin went to the door and opened it again. “Beatrice? Beatrice, I want you to hear this, too.”

Beatrice came in… subdued, for Beatrice. She folded her arms and stood there glumly.

“I don’t know how seriously you take the threat Marie Hawkins poses,” Austin said. “But twenty years of threats and her skulking around out there don’t add up empty in my book. She’s got this kid—by her own letters, she’s primed this kid of hers to get us, meaning the crew, and particularly anybody attached to me. That kid stays in the brig. Nobody takes chances with him. I’m damned serious, Beatrice.”

“What do you intend to do with him?”

“Take him as far away from Sprite schedules as we can.”

“No paternal interest.”

“Filed right behind your maternal instincts, Beatrice, don’t push me. Tell your offspring use his head. I am tired. I am hung over… Beatrice, this wasn’t the best wake-up I’ve had in a year.”

Beatrice moved in for aid and comfort. It seemed a good moment to excuse oneself out the door. Christian slid in that direction, opened the door—Austin had it set on fast, and auto-dose—and walked—

“Boy. Don’t screw up.”

—out. The door whisked shut in his face, leaving him blank surface instead of the pair that were ultimately responsible—leaving words in his mouth, and nowhere to spit them.

He didn’t hit the door. Or open it. He dropped the fist and walked the curving deck, headed for the lift.

He’d ordered the dockside crew to keep an eye out, see if they could spot this Hawkins woman—keep her off Austin’s neck. No damn thanks from Austin, Austin never asked, Austin never looked to see who did what, it was just your fault if something went wrong.

Never Austin’s fault. Never Austin’s damned fault. Austin never made mistakes.

—ii—

CANS WERE OFFLOADING. You could hear the hydraulics working, distant, a comfortable, all’s-well sort of sound.

Couldn’t figure. What station? When had he gotten back to the ship? One spectacular blow-out in a bar, maybe, drunk till he couldn’t figure…

Except he was face down on a bed that didn’t feel like his own, and it didn’t have sheets, and his mouth felt like fuzz inside while the outside felt skinned.

A moment of fright came back to him, shadows around him while he lay on a freezing deck trying to fight them off. He grabbed the edge of the bed and sat up in a hurry, legs off the edge, and a cold plastic line dragging from his wrist.

Hell, he thought, scared. Blurred eyes made out an unfamiliar room, green, not white, an unfamiliar blur of metal grid in front of him, and a spinning of his head and a queasiness in his stomach said it hadn’t been a good experience that put him in this unfamiliar place. The station brig, maybe. Maybe the cops had come and arrested everybody, and Marie…

Marie was still out there. Maybe she’d gotten away, but he hadn’t, and he couldn’t remember everything about how he’d come here, just the warehouse and the cold, and people around him.

People. Corinthian crew.

And there was a cold metal bracelet around his right wrist, and a plastic-sheeted cable going up to where the wall met the ceiling, which he couldn’t make out the sense of, except the metal grid where the front wall ought to be, and the rest was any crewman’s ordinary accommodation, without sheets, without personal items, without anything on the walls, or any internal com unit—just a patch on the wall where one might have been taken out, and nobody’d cared to paint it, or anything else people had scratched up… skuzzy walls, skuzzy panels, where previous occupants had scratched initials and obscenities.

He didn’t remember any station cops.

It wasn’t Viking’s brig. It wasn’t the legal system that ran this graffiti-scarred cell. It was Corinthian. He’d become a hostage for something, or a prisoner Corinthian had some reason to keep, or God knew what else.

He staggered up, shaky in the knees and immediately aware the cell wasn’t precisely on the main axis of the ship. He grabbed the cable that trailed from his wrist and gave it a jerk that burned his palms—but it didn’t give. It went out a little aperture at the join of wall and ceiling, and it was securely anchored somewhere the other side of the wall.

His breath came short. It might be the anesthetic they’d shot him with. It might be the exertion. It might be the beginnings of panic, but he couldn’t get enough air to keep the room from going around as he stumbled to the metal grid and tried to slide it one way and the other.

It didn’t give, either, not even so much as to show what way it could move when it opened.

There was, at the other end of the narrow space, the ribbed panel that, aboard Sprite, rolled back to give access to the bathroom, and there was a trigger-plate. He leaned against the wall there and pressed it, and the panel rolled back, making itself the side wall of the bath.

There was a sink, a toilet, a vapor closet for a shower, same facilities his own cabin had. He punched the cold water. It gave a meager amount and shut itself off. He punched the hot, and it wasn’t, but it shut itself off.

Not the ritz, he thought distractedly. He felt better that the bath worked. At least it wasn’t deliberately bad treatment—they hadn’t left him to freeze, they hadn’t beaten him unconscious: they must have sent to the ship for what they’d dosed him with; and, aside from a slight nausea and a frost-burn on his fingers and the side of his face, he wasn’t exactly hurt… but the cable crossed his legs every time he took a step or reached for anything, telling him he wasn’t free, he wasn’t all right, they didn’t intend him to get loose, and they weren’t doing what they’d done for his convenience.

More… he didn’t know what might be going on outside, or whether they’d also caught Marie, or what his crew might be doing.

Not much, he thought, trying to be pragmatic. A, Mischa didn’t give the proverbial damn, B, if Mischa did give a damn, Marie would still be Sprite’s first worry for very practical reasons, and, C, if Mischa did decide to do something about it, Sprite didn’t hold an outstandingly high hand.

Unless Marie had come up with the evidence Marie had said she was looking for.

Marie lied without a conscience.

But Marie had brought a camera, Marie had committed every subterfuge she’d committed with the simple, predictable notion of getting to Corinthian’s dock—but whether the camera was an excuse to do it or the reason for doing it, he didn’t know. She’d said there were things she wanted to ask the station trade office, and maybe she’d wanted to gather evidence enough to be allowed to get at station records, or to make someone else take a look…

He didn’t know. He couldn’t know from here. But if Marie was in fact on to something, he knew what motive Corinthian could have for taking him and holding on to him, at least until they were ready to leave port, or until it was clear Marie couldn’t prove anything.

Only hope they hadn’t caught Marie. Only hope Marie hadn’t done something to lose whatever leverage she had with Mischa or with Viking station authorities, or whoever could get him out of here.

He found himself walking the length and width of the cell, staggering as he was, telling himself he was all right, Marie wouldn’t let him stay here, Marie would move whatever she had to move to get him out—telling himself they couldn’t have caught her, Marie was slippery as hell, that was how he’d gotten into this in the first place, and something was going to get him out, Corinthian couldn’t just kidnap somebody and get away with it, and they couldn’t have the motives with him they’d had with Marie. Surely not. Please God, that wasn’t even a reasonable thought.

He heard someone walking in the corridor, heard someone come near the cell. He went to the bars of the grid, leaned against them to try to see.

A young man. Blond hair, sullen expression, a face and a body language that jolted into recognition… the warehouse.

Corinthian.

Christian.

Brother.

“Alive, after all,” Christian said. “So happy to be here. I can tell.”

“Happier to be out of here. What’re my chances?”

“Hey. You’re already lucky. Pump drugs into a body, you don’t know, you woke up. I don’t know what’s your bitch.”

He didn’t think he liked Christian Bowe. But there was some cause, he could see that, for Corinthian not to like the situation. Christian Bowe said it—he was alive: point on Corinthian’s side.

He looked his half-brother up and down. Pretty boy, he thought. Papa had good genes.

“So why’d you bring me here?”

“Hell if I know.”

It was more and less answer than he expected. A disconcerting answer. “So what do you want for me to get out of here?”

“Idea of the moment, bringing you here. Don’t ask me. I don’t do long-range planning.”

“Am I the only one?”

“The only what?”

Temper flared. “The only one, the only one you brought aboard, you know damned well what I mean.”

Pretty-boy made a motion of his fingers. “No. I don’t know. What do you mean?”

“Screw you.” It wasn’t getting anywhere. This wasn’t a friend. He walked back to his bed and sat down.

“You mean your mama?” Christian asked from the other side of the bars.

He meant Marie. He was scared. And mad. He tucked his foot up into the circle of his arms and the cable dragged across his shins. He didn’t look at Christian Bowe. He didn’t expect any help, or any honest answer.

But if they’d caught Marie, he thought Christian would be happy to tell him so.

Machinery whined, sharply, suddenly. The cable jerked tight, jerked him off the bed and up against the wall, his arm drawn up and up.

The whine stopped. His arm did, the bracelet cutting into his wrist, his feet all but off the deck. It hurt, from his chest to his wrist. It scared him, what they could do, what his half-brother could do.

“Want down?”

“Son of a—”

The cable yanked him half his height up the wall. It made him think, at that point of rest, what the winch could do to his wrist once it hit the exit point.

“Want down?” Christian asked.

He had a choice. He knew he had a choice. He’d never backed down in his life. He couldn’t manage to say I give. Couldn’t find it.

The winch took up another spurt. There wasn’t another inch left.

“Want down?”

He couldn’t get the wit to talk. He couldn’t frame an appeal to reason. Or kinship.

“Good day,” Christian said, “good luck, good bye.”

“Christian!”

“Please?”

“Damn you!”

Christian walked off. He hung there, against the spin of the whole of Viking station, telling himself he’d been a fool, he had nothing to win, he’d nothing to lose, he just wanted down before his arm broke or his hand went dead, which could happen, and he didn’t know how long it could take.

“Christian, damn you!”

He’d been a fool. But he wasn’t sorry. Hell, he wasn’t sorry. He’d seen more of Corinthian already than he hoped to see in his lifetime, he didn’t like it, he hoped for papa’s curiosity, if nothing else, to draw him down to wherever his prison was, and he hoped to hell they hadn’t caught Marie.

God, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think of anything but that his wrist or his shoulder was going to give.

He heard Christian’s footsteps going away.

“Help!” he yelled, “help! dammit!” and couldn’t get the breath to call out, after.

Christian didn’t come back. Not right away.

Eventually—he measured the time in the clunk and thump of the loader hydraulics—Christian’s shadow darkened the bars again, and Christian hung a casual forearm through the grid.

“Want down?”

Damn you, was what he wanted to say. He’d said it to his cousins. But his cousins wouldn’t kill him, and something said Christian might, given the right moment.

“Yes,” he said through his teeth.

“Pity,” Christian said. And left him.

“Son of a bitch!” he yelled, and ran out of breath.

“H’lo, Chrissy,” came from the corridor. Someone female met Christian. He kicked the wall and tried to grab the cable with his left hand, the bracelet was pressing bone in his right one. “Mmm,” female-person said, “and aren’t we cheerful. Told Austin yet?”

He couldn’t hear what Christian said. He got the second hand on the cable. He kicked the wall, trying to get a better grip, and slammed back into the panel.

Female-person came to stand at the grid, forearms through the bars, staring at him… an apparition of glitz-paint, exposed skin in shimmer cloth, and a shock of pale, shave-sided hair. Bar-bunny, he thought. Traveling entertainment.

“Pretty, pretty, pretty,” she said. “Austin does good work.”

“You stay the hell away from him, Capella, you hear me?”

“Aww.”

The cable was cutting into his fingers. Breath was short. He shut his eyes, to time out, but Capella said, “Let him down, Chrissy. He’s going to turn blue.”

“Don’t call me Chrissy.”

“Christian. Chretien Perrault-Bowe. Be nice.”

He didn’t know what happened or who did what. But the cable spun loose of a sudden and dumped him onto his feet, hard. His arm swung down and life tingled back into a hand with the mark of the bracelet blazoned white.

Capella stuck her hand through the bars. “H’lo. I’m Capella. You’re Thomas Hawkins. How-do.”

“Capella. “ Christian wasn’t pleased.

“Jealous?”

The hand stayed. He’d thought space-brain. But he didn’t now. He saw the bracelet of stars tattooed around the woman’s wrist, and felt his blood run a little colder. He’d heard about that mark. Never seen one. Navigator’s mark, but one no merchanter needed—navigator off a damned Mazianni pirate, near as made no difference. The sort that raided shipping during the War, the sort that the Trade still ducked in mortal terror.

Surely, even time-lagged as hell, she was too young to wear that mark.

He walked up and reached out to the offered handshake.

Whine of a motor. The cable took up, jerked him backward and, off balance, down to one knee.

“Chris-sy,” Capella said.

“Damn you!” It hurt his pride, his wrist and his knee; and it was Christian’s doing, his Corinthian half-brother.

“Hands off,” Christian told Capella. “Don’t screw with him, you hear me?”

“Sounds like fun,” Capella said, leaning on the bars, flashed him a feral grin. “How are you in bed, Christian’s older brother?”

He got up from where the cable had jerked him, dusted himself with the hand that wasn’t pulled in the direction of the wall. He didn’t think Capella was any prospect of help. But he swallowed the Screw Yourself that leapt up first in his mind, and shot Capella a not-hostile look. “Is he always this tense?”

It tickled Capella. It didn’t amuse Christian.

“Just leave him alone,” Christian said. “Haven’t you got a duty assignment?”

“Not in your c-oh-c, darlin’. But probably. Don’t break his wrist. It just annoys Medical.”

Christian still wasn’t amused. Capella sauntered off. He expected another jerk of the cable, except Christian’s hands were both in sight. Control that temper of yours, Mischa had said, and much as he wanted to get his hands on Christian’s neck, he was in a bad situation. He didn’t like what he’d seen, he didn’t like the company, but, painful as the wrist was, and mad and scared as he was, he was in no position to carry on an argument.

“Look,” he said. “Christian. I don’t want any fight with you. All I want is to get my mother off the docks… she lied to us, she got away from us. That’s all. I just want to find her and get her back to the ship.”

“Expected to find her in a shipping can, huh?”

No answer for that one. The whole line of Marie’s thinking was evident in where they’d caught him, scraping ice off a can label. He was no help to Marie, tipping them to more than he had.

“What’s going on outside?”

“We’re loading.”

It wasn’t the answer he wanted and Christian knew it. Pretty-boy had a tilt of the head and a smug expression that made him want to pound pretty-boy to pulp, but he couldn’t come closer to the bars than he was. He couldn’t do anything. He had only to hope they’d let him go and by where they’d caught him… he didn’t think they would.

He just couldn’t figure where Marie was, or what might be happening out there.

Mischa talking sense to Austin Bowe, if he had his choice. Maybe offering a pledge not to get either of them involved in station law. No ship wanted that kind of entanglement. We get our lunatic off the docks, you give her her boy back, and neither of us files station charges…

“Have fun,” Christian said, evidently deciding the amusement value was nil here, and shoved away from the bars.

“You want to release that cable?”

“Please?”

“Please. Politely.”

Christian flipped some sort of switch beside the door. He tugged at the cable and it ran free, take-up gear disengaged. He went as far as the grid and tried to see where Christian went, but it was around the corner of the block where the cell was—tried to see the control panel for the cable, and it was out of reach, and no damn good, since the only thing you could do with it was free the gear or take the cable up, and he didn’t want to turn the winch on.

Nothing like this on Sprite.

Nothing like this on any honest ship. It wasn’t lower-main corridor, at least: off the axis but not much off, you could feel the slant in the deck. It was for keeping someone locked up while the ship was docked: half the heated, pressurized deck space a ship owned became vertical while the ring was de-spun and locked to some station’s orientation. You didn’t give up a centimeter of downside deck space to a facility that wasn’t manned during dock, and that meant this was one important facility to Corinthian, and prisoners weren’t unusual—or let off to station jurisdiction, where you’d think a hired-crew ship would be glad to dump its problems for good and all.

You did get the skuz of the spacer trade among hire-ons, they had that universal reputation. A Family ship very rarely took one or accepted a passenger, and that only after careful background checks and an oath from God that the individual was trustworthy. But this… this place, occupying valuable dock-positive space, was built to contain people the ship didn’t intend to turn over to station authorities, people who could try to break out and take over the ship. The cable arrangement meant you couldn’t get further across the cell than they wanted you to go. The bracelet had a kind of lock he’d never seen before, a lever that shut, that had no wobble in it, no hint of how it opened.

He went back and sat down on the bunk, and worked and worked at the lock in frightened silence.

There wasn’t anything else to do. Wasn’t any other hope. He didn’t know if they’d caught Marie or if they were still looking for her. If he was held hostage—that was a joke.

He wasn’t sure at this point that Marie wanted him back.

Justifiably.

—ii—

THE LOADING OPERATION WAS A steady flow of data on Austin’s office monitor, a steady stream of canisters thumping through the cargo access port, contiguous at the moment with the passenger ring, so it sounded through Corinthian’s ring structure like some monstrous heartbeat.

Machine parts was the principal load they were taking; also radioactives, medical and industrial, transshipped; chemicals, organic and otherwise; minicans of rejuv, lately legal, tapes, transshipped; minicans of personal goods and small commercial freight, transshipped and some originated at Viking—no mail: they hadn’t a bond for that, and he didn’t want the background check. But this was the payout cargo, this was the one where Miller bought on spec and they rebought, and sold at their destination; this was the one that paid the bills and kept them running. It was an eclectic load, and a few minicans went up the lift and into the ring, where they’d jury-rigged passenger accommodations into warm-cargo space.

The further you got from Earth the pricier Earth goods got, simple proposition, but the further you got from civilization, the pricier, too, the sweet taste of the motherworld. And pay they would, in credit and in various ways.

If—

Com beeped. “Excuse me, sir,” the voice said, from the bridge. “Marie Hawkins. On the com. For you. Do you want to take the call?”

Damn the woman!

Tell her go to hell? Let her have the frustration?

Better hear the threats, he thought. Better give the woman the satisfaction. Five got ten she wasn’t calling with Mischa Hawkins’ blessing and go-ahead. The woman was still on the docks somewhere. Corinthian had gone on the boards as Departure: 1400h. And if she was out there—and he’d bet she was—she knew.

“Quillan?”

“Sir?”

“She’s at a phone. Probably within sight of our dockside. Get a team looking.”

Not a damned word from Mischa Hawkins. The cops hadn’t arrested anybody after the set-to, just tagged the ships involved and a judge had slapped both Corinthian and Sprite with thousand credit fines, with a warning.

Damned right a warning. “You keep your people clear,” he’d phoned Sprite to say. “And we will.”

“Aye,” Quillan said. “Put her through, sir?”

“Put her through,” he said, and heard the click. “Marie Hawkins?”

“You son of a bitch,” Marie Hawkins said. “How are you, Austin?”

“Oh, getting along. How have you been?”

“Just fine. Alive. Saner than you’d like. I just wanted to call and thank you.”

“That’s nice.” You wondered where she’d planted the bomb. Or if she knew they had her kid. “Did you have something more in mind? It’s been a few years, Marie. Things got a little out of hand. I apologize for that.”

“You’re senior captain now. Congratulations. And a—is she your wife?”

“Nothing official. It’s just not our style.”

“Beatrice Perrault.”

What in hell was the woman after?

Beatrice at least was safe, on duty. Christian was below, inside the ship.

“Beatrice, yes. I hear you’ve moved up to cargo officer. Congratulations. How do you like the work?”

“Love it. I owe you so much. My start in life. My son.”

Did she know? He had no idea.

“Would you like to come aboard, Hawkins? Have a drink, discuss mutual interests?” He didn’t think so. Possibly she was taping the call, for playback to authorities. He didn’t expect an acceptance. “There’s time before undock. You’ve noticed we are pulling out.”

“I’ve noticed,” Marie Hawkins said.

“So what about the drink? Apologies?”

“I don’t think so.”

She hung up. He shouldn’t have pushed.

“Captain, we—”

“—didn’t have time. Damn it, watch the frontage! If she’s calling from one of the bars, we can still catch her. Haul her in, if you can do it without a fuss. Relay that.”

“We’re looking.”

Damned crazy woman. Mischa Hawkins probably didn’t know where she was, or they’d cheerfully reel her in. Sprite was on warning with station authorities, and Hawkins had sent one terse message: Call us if you have any contact with any Sprite crew. Neither of us can afford this.

Nobody’d raised hell with station offices yet about the missing son—so they hadn’t figured where Thomas Hawkins was, yet. Probably they thought he was keeping company with Marie.

Which meant if they didn’t find Marie, they couldn’t know to the contrary; Marie probably thought her kid was with the group the cops had turned back to Sprite and told stay off the docks—Marie wasn’t interested in being found, and so long as Marie stayed out of Sprite’s reach, nobody was going to know Thomas was missing.

If they couldn’t catch her—she was still doing Corinthian a favor, just staying out there. Best hope they had of getting out of here.

—iv—

“CHRISTIAN.”

Christian cut his eyes toward the overhead and leaned his back against the wall. Where it figuratively was, already, with Austin.

“Sir.”

“You stay inside the ship. That’s an order, boy.”

“I was just going…”

“Maxie’s seeing to it. I want a double-check on the warm-hold count. Get on it.”

“That’s Maxie’s job!”

“See to it, damn you! I’m fall up with your excuses!”

“Yes, sir,” he said, and when he heard the com click out, pounded the paneling with his fist.

Saby put her head out of ops and stared.

“What?”

“What, what, Austin’s what, he’s on my case, is what.” He stalked to the office, shoved past Saby and sat down at the console.

Punched keys. Not his favorite job. Maxie’s job, and, thanks to brother Thomas and his crazy mother, no last tour on dock-side, no chance to slip back to the shop for the earrings Capella had lusted after, no chance to go back to the vid shop for the tapes he’d eyed… you didn’t load up on stuff while you were on liberty, you waited till the last minute, if you didn’t want to pay delivery.

Cheap cost, on this occasion.

Saby shot him a feed from her terminal. Lots and lots of boring serial numbers and clearances.

“So is anybody asking about this kid?” Saby asked.

“How would I know? Austin’s not talking. Beatrice is hung over as hell and on station. Damned Family-ship prig.”

“I’d be scared,” Saby said. “In his place, I’d be damned scared.”

“He’s a Family Boy. Ship-share, all the best, don’t you know. I wish I’d left him. Say he must’ve hid out after the fight, we wouldn’t have this problem.” He set the computer to scan for WH’s and location, the sole intellectual function the job needed for the pass.”His mother’s out there looking for

Austin, Austin’s hiding aboard, hauls the whole damn crew in, it’s damned ridiculous. Now my half-brother’s gone poking about in Miller’s and we’ve got ourselves a problem,”

“What was he doing in Miller’s?”

“Looking for his mama, what else?”

“I’d like to know what mama was looking for. It wasn’t Austin.”

Cousin Sabrina had a brain. Cousin Sabrina was using it. He shoved back from the console, turned the chair and looked at her, rethinking, absent temper, what Thomas Bowe-Hawkins had been doing scraping labels.

“What’s her source?” he asked Saby. “Since you know so much.”

“I don’t know what her source is. He might.”

Saby’d wiped his nose when he was a brat—till he got older and Saby had justly told him go to hell. Now he ran with Capella, Saby supered the computer techs, handled Hires, trouble-shot cargo functions at need, and took her lovers on dock-side. With all the dockside willies to choose from, she hadn’t hired or slept with a psych-case yet.

Better than Austin could claim. Austin listened, when Saby said who was crazy and who wasn’t.

So where did she always see that far ahead of him, damn her?

The computer came up with a Warm-Hold headed for the wrong hold, and beeped.

Damn, damn, and damn. “Who in hell checked that through? Can anybody in our crew read, or just maybe use the laser, God! I don’t believe this.” He punched through to the dock chief. “—Connie, Connie, do you hear? I want a number pulled off the list, fast, 987-7. Get that mother upside into warm 2 before they load it in, that’s not for deep cold.”

Connie took his time writing it down. Connie said they’d look for the number. Christian ran his hand through his hair and wondered how long it had been since he’d slept.

Half-brother. With a mother out there looking for Austin’s hide. And a real interest in the cans.

Yeah.

Tom Hawkins knew.

“If the program finds another mis-route, handle it, will you?”

“Where are you going?—You better not go out there.”

“I’m not going any damned where. It’s a good question.” He put in a call for Austin’s office, the direct link. “Austin?”

“What’s the problem?” came back, not patiently.

“Austin? My half-brother down here? Saby’s got a real interesting idea. Marie Hawkins being onto something… half-brother knows how, and who, and if there’s cops mixed up in it.”

Silence from the office.

“So we should ask him,” he said, since Austin didn’t draw the conclusion.

“Are you finally figuring that out?”

“I’m not fucking stupid, sir!”

Which wasn’t the brightest thing to do with Austin when Austin was looking for a fault. He heard the com cut out. He tried the re-call.

Ignored. Ignored, ignored and ignored.

“Son of a bitch!” he yelled, at no one accessible, and slammed his fist onto the console.

Connie came back on with, “I think it already went in, Chris. We got to reverse the loader to get it back.”

“Get it out,” he said. And when Connie came back on with, Can we wait till we’re finished loading? he checked the contents, only about 50,000 credits worth of fancy liquor that didn’t like freezing, and said, kindly, nicely, “No, you get the sod that passed this list, have him find two volunteers, and you have him hand-carry that mother topside through the lift.”

“That’s against union—”

“You carry it, Connie, or you get it carried! Those are your choices! Hear me?”

“Yessir.”

He cut the connection. He sat glaring at the computer screen, and felt Saby staring at him, a rational, too-damned-superior presence prickling at his shoulder-blades.

So he wasn’t reasonable. So was Austin? So was Beatrice? So was anybody in the upper end c-oh-c, reasonable? It wasn’t a job requirement.

—v—

ANESTHETIC AFTEREFFECTS DIDN’T make a body feel at all good, Tom decided. He’d never had anesthetic before, assuming it was something medical and not outright illicit—but once he’d decided that he couldn’t get the bracelet off, that he couldn’t reach any useful switch panel and he couldn’t do anything, in general, except wait, sweat, and nurse his headache, he figured he could just as well do that flat on his back on the bunk. There was a white-diamond patch on a let-down on the wall over the bunk—universal symbol for deep-space emergency supplies. He flipped it in idle curiosity and it was stocked with trank and nutri-paks. He was tempted, about the trank—just time-out and let the hours pass. But you didn’t abuse the stuff. And the packs were for emergency—you left them for that. You toughed it out, that was all, though, please God, he wasn’t going to need them, they’d get him out of here.

His stomach was upset, his head hurt more than the wrist did—that he was outright scared might account for a good part of the upset, but he kept trying to keep a reasonable attitude. Corinthian, in his best theory, was hanging on to him as insurance for Marie’s good behavior. Corinthian didn’t want him. It was going to be all right. Somehow the captains would sort it out and get Marie back and him back and Corinthian would leave Viking port before anybody got hurt.

Or Marie would figure the game, notify the cops, call the lawyers and get him out of this herself. Beat out Austin Bowe for good and all, and maybe after that, please God, get her life turned around.

Make her peace with him, and Mischa, and the universe in general.

Yeah. And Viking would reverse its spin and the sun would burn black. He couldn’t even recognize the Marie that scenario would ask to exist.

Meanwhile the thump in the guts of Corinthian kept up, regular as a heartbeat. Nobody interrupted the loading, no contingent of police came looking. Wherever Marie was, she couldn’t or wouldn’t stop the flow of goods into Corinthian.

A man passed the cell and stopped. Tom lifted his head, stared at the man between his feet, the man looked at him as if he was a museum exhibit, and walked on. Skuzzy-looking bastard, Tom thought with a prickling of defensive instincts. Wouldn’t like to meet that one on dockside, and that was walking the corridors out there.

That was the first.

Then others, not much better—older guys, a few in green coveralls: the rest in the skintights that were getting to be popular, earrings, glitz-stripes on the skin, jewelry… not a real tidy lot, he said to himself, a few of them worse than others—and with no front wall and no privacy in the cell he was sitting there for all of them to stare at.

Most did. Some laughed, as if it was funny he was there. He didn’t get the point. “Well, well, well, who’s this pretty thing?” a guy asked—a guy with his hair in braids, a tattoo around his neck, and so many tattoos on his bare arms he was green and purple, all snakes.

Tom stared. He would have stared on dockside. He’d not seen that many tattoos. “You want a chocolate?” the tattooed man said. He was drunk. Extremely. Others grabbed him away.

He didn’t know what to think. He got to his feet and went to the bars to look after the group and see what was going on in the corridor, wondering whether that was an authorized entry or were dock-crawlers taking a drunken tour of the ship while the cargo ports were open. He heard shouts in the corridors, the usual noises of meetings and comparisons of stories, after a liberty.

Crew, he decided.

Suddenly the noises weren’t friendly. He heard angry shouts, guessed from chance words he could pick up that two of the crew had had a prior set-to on dockside, and heard other voices trying to break it up, some woman yelling there were going to be officers.

“He’s got a knife!” somebody yelled. Somebody hit the paneled walls, he heard the thump. And someone yelled, “Get him, get him, get him!”

Another thump, a lot of shouting. He couldn’t see anything. Then:

“Damn, it’s Michaels,” he heard, and by everything he heard, some officer had come in on it, was asking questions, who’d started it, who’d flashed a weapon. A man got hauled off to infirmary on this Michaels’ orders, and then…

Then a deal of cursing, a thump again against the paneling, and a measured, meaty thud, of something meeting flesh, not just the once or twice he thought might be justified, but it went on, and on, and on, until the screaming stopped, and something heavy hit the deck.

“Get him out of here,” somebody said. The voices after that were all quiet.

He found himself with a death-grip on the bars, shivering in a cold more inside than out, and more than ever wanting out of this cell.

Not a Family ship. He’d just had a demonstration what the penalties were, and how they were dealt out. No word with the captain, nothing of the sort.

He’d thought he’d had a hard life. Now Sprite seemed a sheltered, protected existence, where Mischa’s frown was a reprimand, where crew didn’t carry knives against their shipmates. He’d never heard the sounds he’d just heard, out of any human being, sounds that had gone straight to his nerves, and brought a quiet over the whole ship.

He heard other traffic in the corridor and retreated from the gridwork, went back to his bunk and sat down with his back to the face of the cell, so he wouldn’t have to deal with anybody. Wherever he went the cable trailed, and reminded him that even if the door opened he hadn’t a chance at escaping… or putting up damn much of a fight against anybody with a key and access to the cable switch.

Ransom wouldn’t work. He’d been in a place he shouldn’t have been and they knew he knew, and if the station cops came asking, he didn’t know what Corinthian might do, but he didn’t think they were going to turn him loose to tell the police or the merchant trade at large what he’d been doing or what he’d seen and not seen.

Not if gossip was right about Corinthian’s business.

Traffic came and went outside.

And it had to be board-call, Corinthian calling in its crew, even while the loading was still going on. You didn’t ordinarily crowd up the ship with crew underfoot until they had something to do—unless they’d for some reason had to get off the docks.

Unless they were shortening their dock time and planning to pull out.

In which case he didn’t see a thing Mischa or Marie could do about it. Station police could say Stop, and demand to search the ship, but only if they could come up with plausible evidence: a merchanter deck was the same as foreign territory, merchanters didn’t allow boarders as a matter of principle, while stations depended so much on ship traffic they just wouldn’t push that point unless they had very clear evidence of a customs crime.

That left him nothing to do but sit and worry at the lock. He searched the bath for anything he could use for a pick, but he couldn’t find anything—there weren’t any drawers, and he tried bashing it with the butt of the wall-mounted razor.

But it didn’t do any good.

Just after that spate of noise-making, the loading stopped.

The whole ship sat in silence, except the rush of air in the vents.

He went to the bars again, trying to see something, anything to tell him what was going on.

Then came the unmistakable thump as the hatch sealed. A moment later the louder thump as the lines closed down and detached, and a siren sounded throughout the ship, no word from the captain, just that lonely, warning sound that said hazard, hazard, take stations, the ship is moving.

It was a nightmare. The misjudgment. The mistakes he’d made, that led this direction, step by step. Thinking that he’d win Marie’s… acceptance, if no more than that. He’d gambled his safety. Thought he might win Marie’s acceptance—and her sanity. And he’d lost.

He hoped Marie was free, and safe. He hoped nobody had gotten hurt on his account.

But it was decidedly time to sit down and take hold. Which he did, with a lump gathering in his throat. He located the safety restraints on the bunk and sat down, cross-legged, not expecting but a short zero g, and a gentle shove, not worth belting in for.

It was far more than a gentle shove. He grabbed the frame of the bunk and the safety hold on the wall, and braced his feet, one on the deck and one on the mattress—thinking he’d just made a serious mistake.

He didn’t know how long the acceleration was going to last. He dared not let go the handholds he had to get the safety restraints fastened. His heart was going doubletime.

He didn’t like the ship putting out like that. He didn’t like a pilot who skirted the regs and a bridge that didn’t warn people when they were moving.

It struck him then that there couldn’t be kids or seniors aboard. It just wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t a Family ship, never mistake it again, and if he didn’t lose his grip and break his neck during launch, he’d be luckier than he deserved for trusting anything about it.

They went inertial then, a moment of float, and he snatched the restraints across and jammed the first and the second clip shut with shaking hands.

After that he lay flat on his back and felt the stomach-jolting g-shifts of maneuver of a ship that didn’t care about crew comfort, and didn’t engage the ring for crew safety, or warn anyone beyond sounding the siren.

In a hurry to leave and doing a show-off bit of maneuvering, he could read it—screw you all, the pilot was saying to Sprite, and to Viking, and maybe to all civilized places, maybe just because Austin Bowe was pissed, who knew?