Tripoint

Chapter Five

“CHRISSY-SWEET,” THE ARGUMENT in the corridor wound up, “if I want to go I go. If I want to stay I stay. You want me to go is not the question here. It is never the question. Not here. Not dockside. Capish?”

“I understand. I understand damned well. Go to hell!”

Things had gotten very far from reason. Tom sat still on his bunk and let the firefight go on without his input.

But Capella lingered, strayed to the brig frontage to lean on the cross-bars and smile sweetly.

“Tommy-person, don’t piss off your brother. I suspect he’s jealous.”

He didn’t answer. Didn’t say a thing as Christian turned up in his barred view of the ship. Didn’t say a thing as he watched Capella pass out-of-field and on down the corridor.

“You’re a pain in the ass,” Christian said, he thought to him. “You know that?”

“Not by choice,” he said.

Suddenly the cable took up and snaked around his leg, dumping him first on the deck and then past the end of the bunk, slamming him against the wall.

“Dammit!” he yelled.

“Son of a bitch,” Christian said. “You keep yourself out of Corinthian business, you keep yourself away from Corinthian crew, you don’t ask questions, and you don’t listen to the answers if somebody hands them to you, you fuckin’ stay out of our business, you hear me?”

He got up. In the meantime somebody else had turned up in the area outside, with a wave of a shirted arm and a: “What in hell is this? I think you’ve got duties, mister. If you don’t, find some.”

“Sir,” Christian said, scowling, and got out of the way as the gridwork shot open and the new arrival walked into the cell—

Blond like Christian, tall—officer, you hadn’t any doubt about it, and that wasn’t by a longshot by reason of the black skintights, or the shirt, an off tone of shimmer red-purple. “Hawkins, are you?” the newcomer asked, hands on hips, occupying the way out, and he hadn’t any doubt who he was dealing with. He stood his ground and glared, tight-jawed, seeing no need whatever to answer.

“So are you Marie Hawkins’ little present,” Bowe asked, “or what?”

“I don’t know what you think I saw. I don’t know what there was to see. I don’t care about your business.”

“Stupid must be her genes. Not mine.”

“Yeah, real damn bright, the stuff at Mariner, you son of a bitch! You left a hell of a reputation on my ship!”

Bowe came closer, between him and an exit that wouldn’t help him, with the cable on his wrist. He understood the game. He stood and glared, and Bowe glared back. Taller than he was. As big. And with the home advantage.

Bowe stared at him. Finally: “This isn’t Sprite, boy. And there’s a wide universe out there that doesn’t give a damn what you want or whose mistake you are. You keep out of my way. You don’t cause any trouble. And I might let you out on some civilized dockside…”

“Yeah. And otherwise?”

“You watch that mouth, son.”

“Go to hell. I’m not your son.”

A hand exploded against his head. He hit the wall, rebounded and hit Bowe with all the force he had.

Or tried to. The cable snagged. Bowe cuffed the other ear, he hit the wall again and slid down it onto a tucked and trapped leg, half deaf. He went for Bowe’s knees and hit the wall a third time.

Freed the knee. He came up yelling, “You son of a bitch, I’ll kill you!”

Bowe got him in an arm lock and shoved him at the wall, face-first.

“Will you, now?”

“Damn you!” He had one hand linked to the cable. He twisted half about, got the other fist wound in Bowe’s shirt, and Bowe rammed a fistful of coveralls up against his throat and shoved him at the wall again, hard head, yielding panel…

“I don’t think so,” Bowe said. “Call it quits, boy?”

“No!”

Another bounce of his skull against the panel. Blood wasn’t getting to his brain. He was going out. He brought a knee up, tried for Bowe’s throat, and his skull met the panel again.

“You’re being stupid, boy.”

“You don’t win,” he said. Everything was grey. “You don’t win.”

Bowe dropped him. Legs buckled every which way, and the boot soles resisted on the tiles, pinning him against the wall and the bunk as he fell. He tried to grab the bunk with his free hand, and couldn’t get purchase to get up. Bowe walked out.

Gave orders to someone. He had a pounding headache and a shortness of breath, and he got an elbow onto the bunk, enough to lever himself out of the angle he’d wedged himself into. He rested there getting his breath, trying his hardest not to throw up.

Shadow loomed over him. He rolled over to protect himself, saw Tink and another guy about the same size.

“Tried to tell you,” Tink said with a sorrowful shake of his head.

By which he figured Tink wasn’t there to kick him while he was down.

The opposite. “You need Medical, kid?” Tink asked, patting his shoulder.

He didn’t think so. His ears were ringing, his head hurt and the legs still wouldn’t work predictably, but he shook his head to the question and tried to get all the way up.

Legs buckled. Tink caught him.

“Get a cold towel,” Tink said, and, “No, they ain’t got ‘em in here, down in the galley.”

“I’m all right,” he insisted, but Tink looked at his eyes one after the other, said he should get flat and wait for the towel.

Didn’t want to. Wanted to be let the hell alone. But Tink didn’t give him that option.

Bowe’s orders. Son of a bitch, he kept thinking, son of a bitch who’d hurt Marie—Marie’d told him, told him details he didn’t want to know—before he knew what sex was, he’d known all about rape, and after that, sex and Marie and Bowe were all crosswired, the way it wasn’t in normal people, he understood that. And now this huge guy with the snakes, and Capella, and Christian, and the damned holocards and subspace and the scratches, and Bowe… it felt as if something had exploded in the middle of him, right in the gut, pain Bowe had handed out, or Marie had, or whatever in himself had deserved to be in the mess he was in. He sat there half on the floor and started shaking, and the big guy, Tink, just gathered him up and hauled him onto the bunk and covered him up.

“Shock,” Tink called it. “You’ll be all right, just breathe deep.”

Might be. Might well be, an accumulation of images, an overdose of reality. But deep breaths didn’t cure it. No matter where he looked, he was still where he was, he was still who he was, nothing cured that.

—ii—

YOU COULD FIGURE, YOU COULD damned well figure, Christian thought, with the echo of Austin’s steps still recent past his vantage point. He folded his hands tightly under his armpits—he’d learned, at fourteen, the pain of bashing one’s fist at Corinthian’s walls, or his personal preferences against Austin’s whim of the moment. He’d gotten the orders, the same as Tink had: Thomas Bowe-Hawkins was going on galley duty, Austin wasn’t talking, Austin had just had every button he owned danced over and hopped on by Thomas Hawkins, and it didn’t take a gold-plated genius to know Austin wasn’t in a mood to discuss the Hawkins case, Austin wouldn’t be in a mood to discuss the Hawkins case in a thousand years, with him, ever, end report. Austin was headed back to his lordly office, Capella was on bridge duty, running calc, Saby was on report and on duty—everybody who’d taken a hand in the brother-napping fiasco was on report or on duty.

“Christian,” came the call over his pocket-corn.

Correction. Everybody but Beatrice. Maman wanted to talk to him, bless her conniving soul, maman had just heard the news, and he’d right now as gladly have taken a bare-ass swim in the cold of the jump-point as go discuss half-brother with Beatrice.

“Christian, immediament, au cabinet. “

Now, Beatrice wanted to see him, in her sanctum sanctorum, her office, down the corridor and around the rim from Austin’s precincts. Beatrice was evidently turning Corinthian’s helm and Capella’s course-plotting over to Travis an hour and a half early for the purpose—one supposed they weren’t running blind and autoed at the moment.

So he took the lift topside, to the inner ring, soft-footed it past Austin’s shut door, to Beatrice’s office. He took a deep breath, raked his hair into order, and presented himself, perforce, to maman,—who got up and poured two drinks.

Stiff.

He took his. He sat down. Beatrice sat down. He took a drink. Beatrice took a drink and stared at him. Life had left few marks on Beatrice, except about the eyes, and right now they were sleep deprived and furious.

“This Hawkins,” Beatrice said as if it was a bad taste, “this Hawkins. What do you know about it?”

“What should I know about it? I brought him aboard because I hadn’t any choice…”

“You could see this coming, with that ship inbound. You had to take every action to make this Hawkins a problem—”

“I hadn’t any instructions that said leave a man to freeze!”

“We’re not talking about that. You’re in a position to make judgments, you’re in a position to observe—I’m telling you use your head. That boy is a threat to you, do you understand? Austin won’t see him, no, of course Austin won’t so much as look at him—does this say to you he’s not interested? This boy’s had nothing but Hate Austin poured into his veins. And does this deter him? No. Altogether the opposite. Does a man tell Austin no? Does he?”

“Not damned often.”

“And this boy?”

“This boy is older than I am.”

“Bravo. You notice the point. This woman. This boy.—Austin does not take kindly to ‘no. ‘ It’s a major weakness in him.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Use your wits. This is not our friend. And there are degrees of rebellion that won’t amuse, do you see? Find them. Make them. Deprive this Hawkins of any reasonable attraction in this business. We have too much at stake here for self-indulgence, of his fancies or of yours.”

He didn’t ask how he was to do this. Beatrice wasn’t long on details. Beatrice wasn’t long on sleep right now, clearly, and about time Travis took over out there. Bad jump. He saw the signs of it. He took down half his drink. Beatrice took all of hers. He set his glass down and got up and went for the door.

“Damn Saby,” Beatrice said, having, apparently belatedly, remembered another offender on her agenda.

He stopped, his hand on the switch. “She’s involved?”

“Saby’s character judgments. Ouí. Certainement. What else but my sister’s child? Saby the judge of character. Chut!” Beatrice took up his glass, lifted it, silently wished him out the door and out of her thoughts.

The air was clearer outside. Ideas weren’t. Maman’s perfume was still in his nostrils, along with the scent of brandy. It clung to a man that dealt with her.

Corinthian’s alterday pilot. Perrault and not Bowe.

And tenacious of her position.

Maman never wanted a kid, that was sure. Probably Austin hadn’t been thrilled, in so many words. But maman when she came aboard and knew Austin in the carnal and the ambitious senses, had made the professional sacrifice…

Beatrice always did know Austin better than Austin knew himself.

Gave Austin a new experience, laid out of sex maybe imminently before birth, shoved him off on ten-year-old Saby and put a fresh coat of gloss on her nails.

So Beatrice was worried. Never ask whose ass was threatened. With Beatrice it wasn’t a question. Beatrice was worried and Beatrice was pissed at him for not freezing his Hawkins half-brother into a police puzzle.

And he didn’t know why he hadn’t, except the whole business had caught him off guard, and he’d made a fast decision, a decision he’d stuck by when it got complicated, and when, in Corinthian’s predeparture hours, it had looked less than sensible.

But nobody’d told him to kill anybody. Nobody’d told him it was a requirement. And, dammit, Austin had shot a couple of fools, but not on dockside—he’d seen Austin be scarily patient with guys who’d crossed him in bars and on the docks, when he’d thought Austin wouldn’t take it… that was the example he’d had, and where did everybody get so damned know-everything when he’d played it by the rules he’d been handed?

It was the way with every damn piece of hell he caught, he was supposed to have read it in the air, in flaming letters, different than anybody else on the ship.

Don’t get involved with the cops or with customs. Don’t do anything to get hauled into legal messes.

Wasn’t murder?

Wasn’t killing Austin’s own bastard kid just a little nuisance to the ship?

Wasn’t giving Marie Hawkins grounds to call the cops and name names just a little slight possibility of trouble, if her own kid turned up as an icicle in the warehouse Corinthian was using?

Nobody ever considered that. They didn’t have to consider it, now. He’d handled that part. He’d removed that possibility and kept their record clean. And now Beatrice as much as called him a fool.

While Hawkins did the only damned thing that would have stopped Austin from dumping him on some Sol-bound ship at Pell. Hawkins had said no. Hawkins had all but spat in Austin’s eye doing it, and now Austin wouldn’t dispose of him anywhere until he’d won. Count on it, the way you counted on a star keeping its course, or a mass-point being in the space you launched for.

Austin would win. Austin would win, on whatever terms the contest took.

Seeing to it what those terms were…

Hawkins wanted off the ship. Well and good. He wanted Hawkins off.

Fair exchange.

—iii—

IT WAS GALLEY SCUT. NOTHING IN the least technical, just a lot of scrubbing to get the galley’s contribution to the electrostatic filters down as close to zero as possible, which meant scrubbing the floors and cabinets after every meal on every shift, polishing the surfaces, sorting the recyclables, including the slop that went to the bio-tanks to feed the cultures, of which you didn’t want closer knowledge—but the product was salable. And you cleaned the water outflow filters, more crud for the tanks to digest, and if you didn’t have a cable attached between your wrist and the wall, you went down the corridor and did all the recycling filters, too, but Tink did those.

Except the cable, he was glad to have the duty, anything but lie in a cell with nothing to do but think about his problems, and Tink said, joking, Be careful, if Cook found out how clean things could be, he could get stuck on permanent scrub.

He decided Tink probably looked like he’d cut your throat because really he’d rather not have to. Tink turned out to be a nice guy, a genuinely nice and overall kind individual—he didn’t recall anybody he’d ever run into who just gave things away like Tink… the chocolates-offer when Tink was drunk he decided hadn’t been a come-on, at all. He’d been stuck in a cell, Tink had a bag of rare imported extravagance, and Tink would have probably given him three or four just because he looked sad, that was the way Tink seemed to operate. No systems engineer, for sure, but if Tink had thought he’d screwed up something in installing the filters, Tink would have fixed it himself and never told the cook.

So he took Tink’s advice and didn’t scrub so hard, for fear Cook would demand the same out of Tink… and it couldn’t be Tink’s favorite job.

Tink’s favorite, in fact, seemed to be doing the pastry stuff, making ripples and curls and sugar-flowers that probably nobody in this crew was going to appreciate. But Tink made them anyway. He said it made the food look good and if the food looked good the ship got along better. He said if you hired on crew it was important they felt like they got quality food and quality off-shift entertainment and quality perks on dock-side. That way you got them back aboard with no trouble.

“This ship treat you all right?” he asked Tink. The cable that linked him to a safety-line bolt didn’t inspire belief in the system.

“Real good,” Tink said, making another sugar-flower. “Big allowance dockside. I tell you, there’s guys didn’t appreciate the captain when they started, but they know where that allowance comes from. You stay on his right side and you don’t hear from him; and I tell you, he give a few guys a chance or two, that’s not bad. Never cut their allowance. Just put a tag on ‘em. That’s pretty good, anywhere you look for work.”

Didn’t say what happened if they got altogether on his bad side. Or if you were his unwanted son. “They beat this guy. I heard it.”

“Yeah, well, Michaels.”

“He’s the officer.”

“He’s the round-up man. Gets the crew in. Guy pulled a knife, he knew better.”

“He live?”

“Oh, yeah. Busted ribs, busted hand, guy name of Tolliver. I tell you if he don’t come about and do right after this, crew’ll kill him.”

“Seriously kill him?”

“Out the lock,” Tink said, and a flower happened, and a curlicue. “This crew got no need for a guy who don’t appreciate what we got here. “ Tink pursed his lips and concentrated on embellishments for the moment, so he was scared Tink didn’t take to the question. Tink added, frowning, “Suppose a Family ship’s got better. Some of us ain’t got that option, you know?”

“I don’t know. If Sprite got a look at that cake, they’d steal you fast.”

Tink grinned and laughed. “Ain’t so sure.”

“So it really is pretty good here.”

“Best deal us hard-ass hired-crew’s going to get. “ Tink shot him an under-the-brows look. “Captain’s your papa. You should make officer real easy.”

“Looks like it, doesn’t it?” He gave the cable a shake. But he didn’t want to turn bitter with Tink, who clearly didn’t know. “Maybe. “ He laughed, to throw Tink off the track. “Maybe out the lock next, who knows?”

Tink was quiet a bit, starting another frosted pastry, thoughtful-looking, his lip caught in his teeth. “Didn’t know my father or my mother. Don’t know what ship I was. Ship was blew to hell, there was pockets, you know, and they got some of us out. That ship passed me on, I don’t remember the name. “ Tink’s brow knit. “Don’t remember either name. I remember standing in the airlock. I remember the crossover when we come aboard. But I can’t remember the names. And then there was another ship, and then Mariner, till she blew. Some things I remember. I remember Mariner all right. But not the ships. Don’t know why that is.”

He could guess. Thousands of people blown to cold space, a handful of survivors, most of them kids… even stationers put the kids inmost and protected from hull breach.

“I hear,” he said cautiously, because he wasn’t sure Tink had ever been through school in the sense a Family kid had, “I hear a lot of the Mariner kids don’t remember.”

“Yeah. Funny thing, I remember that part, remember the sirens and the smoke and all. “ Tink filled a pastry cone with blue, and made a part of a design. “Remember ‘em coming through in suits, with lights, looking for survivors. “ The design became a star. And another, smaller. “Bounced around a bit, couldn’t do any damn thing, but I didn’t want to sit on any station after that. “ Star after star, little and big. “So I started out with galley scut, same’s any kid. Graduated to advanced scut and general maintenance. Studied di-e-tary science, and got a couple good posts… “ A series more of stars and a whimsical sprinkle of silver beads. “The guy who taught me to do this, he was real old, hospitaled off at Pell, he used to let me do a lot of stuff, illegal, you know, no station permit, but he didn’t pay me. I watched him do it, I spent my whole leave learning the basics. Next time I got a leave there, the old guy’d died, so I taught myself the rest.”

“That’s beautiful.”

“Huh. “ Tink looked at him as if to see was he kidding. Grinned. “Most guys say, hell, that’s stupid. Then they argue over who got what piece.”

“You could get a job anywhere. Station chef’d hire you.”

“No station. I ain’t getting blowed to hell, not Tink.”

“Can’t blame you for that.”

“No damn way.”

“How long have you been with Corinthian?”

“Fifteen years. Fifteen years. “ He looked at the pastry. “That do it?”

“That’s real pretty.”

“I seen roses on Pell,” Tink said then. “That’s what the flowers are, is roses. They got this big greenhouse, you can take a guided tour. Cost you five c. It’s worth it.”

“Pell’s where we’re going?”

“Yeah. If you get dock time, if you want to go, you can come with me. It’s an hour tour.”

“I don’t think they’re going to let me.”

“More’n you just backtalked the captain, isn’t it?”

Tink wasn’t so slow. “Yeah,” he said. “Don’t think he’s ever wanted me alive, let alone on his ship.”

“Huh,” Tink said. That was all. And his estimate of Tink’s common sense went way up.

—iv—

THE LIGHTS DID THAT BRIEF DIMMING and rebrightening that was maindawn and alterdark, that ancient re-set of biological clocks for the two main shifts together, that odd time that two entire crews who shared the same ship should meet and cross and exchange duties. One shift’s first team was eating breakfast, one shift’s first team was eating supper, while the seconds of one shift were making ready for switchover and the seconds of the other were at supper if they liked, or rec, or sims or whatever… it was a great deal the same as on Sprite, a great deal, Tom supposed, the same on every ship in space, a lot the same on stations, so it must say something about what Earth did or had done… he’d never figured, but he supposed so.

Officers’ mess was elsewhere… Tink put pans on a cart, no different at all went into it than the general crew got, by his observation. One pastry went to the officers, one to the crew, set out on the sideboard, on display, and on the breakfast-dinner line you could have whatever appealed to you, Cook said, just dish up what they wanted, no quotas, no fuss. Meanwhile they had their own meal, himself and cook, whose proper name was Jamal. Cook was all right, seemed to like him. Jamal had what looked like knife scars on his arms and down the right side of his face, and he’d never seen anybody carry scars like that. But he guessed Jamal hadn’t been where he could get to meds, or didn’t want to, or some reason he’d never met in his life.

Jamal wasn’t the only one. The crew that drifted in… just wasn’t like the people he associated with, which meant like Hawkinses, and the safe bars and the high-class sleepovers of Fargone and places Sprite went. Men and women had missing fingers, marks of burns here and there, what he took for old cuts, stuff, God, a surgeon could still fix, along with guys clearly over-mass, and one woman blind in one eye. He saw tattoos, and shaved heads or long hair—he looked at the first arrivals with the panic feeling he’d walked into the wrong bar. But he stood his ground, behind the fortification of the hot line.

“Well, well, well,” the comments ran, from female and male, “look at you, pretty.”

Or: “Reluctant sign-up, looks like.”

Or: “Hey, cook, something new on the menu?”

“Name’s Tom Bowe-Hawkins,” Jamal said.

“Bowe,” the murmur went around.

He just dished up the meatloaf and gave a tight-lipped smile at the offender.

After that it was quieter, with him dishing out main items while cook handled the pastry-cutting—Tink was right, the boundaries among the flowers and vines were as disputatious as trade negotiations.

He could relax after that. The crew looked like dockside hustlers, but the humor wasn’t anywhere totally out of line. He snatched a bite himself, the meatloaf, having counted what drew the most second helpings. It was good. He managed to have a mostly uninterrupted supper, give or take the late arrivals who came trailing in. Pastry was as good as it looked, real cake, which meant flour, which wasn’t easy come by or cheap—you usually got it on special occasions or in stations’ fancier restaurants, at ferocious prices.

Lot of money. Or—he revised the thought—just nearness to the source—and Pell, where they were bound, was a source. You couldn’t prove anything against Corinthian by the sweets and the cake. He didn’t have to think it was stolen.

It wasn’t, overall, too damn bad a situation. The crew ragged him, but he’d had that everywhere. He just kept his head down, kept his panic reaction in check, and did his work and didn’t bother anybody… didn’t look for another run-in with Austin Bowe down here in crew territory, and that made him easier with the company he did have.

He finished the cleanup and helped set up mid-shift snacks, the sort that got delivered out. And it was scrub down the galley and the filters again… not a big job, because Jamal wanted it done every meal, and a rinse with detergent would do it.

The galley’s standards didn’t speak of a sloppy ship, at all.

“Guys don’t look real regulation,” he remarked to Tink, when he and Tink were working side by side; and he’d gotten so used to Tink’s appearance he forgot he was saying that to a guy whose arms were solid tattoos of snakes and dragons.

“Hey. You stick with me, I know a good artist on Pell. Glow in the dark.”

He couldn’t imagine. Couldn’t imagine going back to Sprite with a tattoo.

And then he recalled where they were, traversing the dark of Tripoint, on their way to places Sprite wouldn’t find them, didn’t care to find them, and he got a lump in his throat and asked himself what he was going to do—except Tink had had things a hell of a lot worse, and he told himself somehow he could survive, and there was a future.

“You worried about the crew?” Tink asked him.

“No,” he said. “Not really.”

“A lot of these guys, like me,” Tink said, and shoved a filter into its slot, “you knock around a lot, you know. Play hob getting work. You get a real solid berth, you damn sure appreciate it. Some’s dockers, however. You may have detected.”

“Its own dockers, this ship?” That wasn’t usual. You hired your off-ship workers. You had to, far as he’d ever heard Marie deal with cargo. But maybe if a ship really didn’t want outsiders handling its cargo…

Tink didn’t answer right off. Maybe it was something Tink wasn’t supposed to say. Maybe it was a question he wasn’t supposed to ask. “Hey, the unions want to insist, all right, our guys handle it to the gateway, they take it after. And most of these guys are all right. Just ever’ now and again you figure they got a little stash they’re hitting… the long, deep dark’s the place they get spooky. They don’t got enough to do. They start hitting the stash, you know, four, five days… that don’t improve their personality a bit.”

“I wouldn’t think. “ Maybe he really shouldn’t have asked. It dawned on him—if there were trades in the deep, and that was Corinthian’s business—even there, somebody had to handle cargo, and umbilicals, and all the mate-ups, in an exchange of cargo, or whatever. Dockers… were what you needed in that operation, dockers and cargo monkeys, not your tech crew.

Tink got up and dusted his hands. “I got to get a new overhead filter. This indicator’s turned.”

Definitely shouldn’t have asked, he thought to himself. “Yeah,” he said, “all right. “ As if his approval meant anything. Tink terminated the conversation, went off to storage to look for the right filter—Tink wasn’t lying about that, he was sure.

Tink stayed gone a bit. Possibly, he thought, there wasn’t a filter in stock where it ought to be… if that happened, you had to check other lists, because usually you could sub something, but you also chewed out Supply, and asked why the computer hadn’t reported it.

If it hadn’t, he could fix it, instead of scrubbing tables—if he wanted to admit he knew enough to be a danger to the ship. Which he didn’t intend to do, not without knowing more than he did, not without some sort of peace between him and Corinthian, that maybe seemed a little nearer since he’d dealt with Tink, but far from certain, since there were clearly right questions and wrong questions and things Tink didn’t want to discuss on his own.

A good thing, was it, for hired crew? Maybe the best berth any of them could ever hope for? The ship paid… damned well, evidently. Evidently the ship could afford it without a blink. In either case one had to ask—

Latecomers arrived, a noisy six, seven crewmen who’d missed the serving hour, who saw the food line taken down and weren’t happy. “Jamal?” one called out, and got no answer.

Guys who thought they might not get supper weren’t a happy lot, and he was uneasy being out front instead of behind the counter, in the galley-proper, where only galley personnel belonged, according to the sign. He went over to the gap in the counter, eased past a guy standing in his way.

“Tink’s here,” he said, “he just stepped out. He’ll be back—”

The man behind him stepped on the cable, jerked his arm.

“Who are you?”

“Tom Hawkins. Tom Bowe-Hawkins. “ That name had never been an asset in his life, but it seemed that way now. “Excuse me. “ He closed his hand on the cable to pull it free, looking at the man dead on. The trouble warning was flashing through his nervous system. It doubled when the guy didn’t move his foot. “I pay favors,” he said.

“Well, what about some favors?” the clown said. “You handing it out, boy?”

“You want meals off-schedule, you ask and say please, or you talk to Cook about—”

The guy jerked the cable. He was ready for it, but the guy outweighed him. He had the counter corner between them. He used that for a brake, but the pull put his arm in hostile territory and hurt a wrist getting sorer by every pull on it—hurt it considerably, and the guy grabbed his arm to jerk him around the counter and into the galley.

Another jerked on him and he got him—threw all the weight he owned at the target he found clear—the guy’s throat, that being what he exposed, and grabbed the guy’s sleeve as he slid across the counter and the others closed in. He had one hand free, the other was tangled with the cable, and he couldn’t swing, but he tried to grab the cable and get it around a neck, any neck, he wasn’t particular. He got part-way up when he landed, got hits in anywhere he saw open, between efforts to keep them from doing a complete take-down, the way they were trying, not just the one, all of them. “Get him, get him, get him,” someone yelled, and as the sheer weight shoved him down, his head hit the cabinet handle, boomed off the doors, his shoulders hit the floor and five or six guys were piling on him, weighing his legs down, hanging onto his arms. A blow caught his temple and knocked him blind, a knee landed in his gut, and he kept trying to swing, but he couldn’t get the one hand clear, couldn’t get out of the vee they’d jammed him into, and couldn’t fend the next blow or the next or the next…

“What in hell are you doing?” somebody yelled, and he kept trying to swing—caught one with his elbow. “Break it up. Now, damn it! Break it up!”

Somebody waded in and pulled the guys off him, told them to get the hell out—didn’t sound like Jamal, didn’t sound like Tink… he still hadn’t gotten his sight back, but whoever had gotten them off ordered them out, said he wouldn’t put them on report, just get the hell out. “This is my brother,” somebody yelled next his ear, the same somebody holding him on his feet. “You lay a hand on him again and I’ll kill you.”

Christian? He didn’t believe it—but somebody who called him brother was holding him up, arm around his bruised ribs. His knees weren’t working at all well, he couldn’t get his breath. One of them had hit him in the gut, and he couldn’t keep his feet when his rescuer let him down to the deck against the cabinet and lifted his eyelids one after another.

“‘m all right,” he said, trying to get his wind back. “Can’t see—they caught me one in the head.”

“Goes away,” Christian said, and it was, to the extent he could make out lights and darks, the white of the floor, the dark of Christian’s knee. He was preoccupied getting his breath and still didn’t comprehend why Christian who’d given him, hell till now was holding him from falling on his face—his Polly girl’d hold him like that, defend him like that, but, different, he thought dimly, different, never had anybody pull him out of a fight who hadn’t likewise lit into him, and him being close to falling on his face, and the rescue being somebody he didn’t otherwise trust… he didn’t know what he thought or felt… whether he resented it or didn’t when Christian shouldered his weight, ran a hand through his hair and called him a damned ass in a tone gentler than Marie ever used with the same endearment.

Stupid to trust the guy who’d jerked him up a wall on a cable.

But Christian dug a key-card out of his pocket, and used it on the cable lock, just took it off, and rubbed his wrist and pulled at him. “I’ll give your regrets to Cook. Come on. Up. Up.”

He didn’t know what he thought. Didn’t understand the game, but he hurt, he couldn’t see, and up on his feet was where he wanted to be, except the whole room was tilted. Christian kept him upright—kept him from falling on his face—he was seeing blurry tables in a vacant galley, now.

And Tink came back.

“What’s going on?” Tink asked. “I just stepped out to storage, sir, I was with him all the time—”

“Six, seven fools,” Christian said. “I got him, Tink. He’s all right. I’ll fix him up.”

He wasn’t sure about that proposal. He wasn’t sure he wanted Christian taking him anywhere, and he wanted Tink to stick with him, but Tink didn’t raise any objection as Christian steered him past the tables and out the door—what could Tink do anyway? Christian was an officer on this ship.

It was up to him, then. He made a try at walking on his own, but he still couldn’t see anything but shapes, and he wasn’t, it turned out, walking straight. Christian threw an arm around him, hauled him away from impact with the wall.

“Don’t be an ass,” Christian said, “difficult as that may be for you.”

“Go to hell.”

Christian jerked him hard enough his head snapped. “I can beat up on you. They can’t. That’s the rules.”

Seemed perfectly clear. He got a breath as they walked. “Where’re we going?”

“My cabin.”

He planted his feet. Tried to. He wasn’t at all stable, even standing, and Christian dragged him along anyway. By now his vision was clearing, but a headache arrived with it, and he thought a bone in his forearm might be cracked, where Christian was pulling on it.

Another jerk. “Don’t give me trouble.”

Hurt, being hauled on like that. Didn’t have the brain operative enough to argue otherwise, and he thought for a moment he was going to throw up, right there in the corridor. He didn’t want to do that. Wanted a bathroom, wanted to sit down, and if Christian had a place closer than he could otherwise get to, fighting wasn’t worth it yet, wait-see… hope the rescue was a rescue and not an ambush in itself.

Christian steered him for a blurry door, opened it, on a wide cabin with real carpet. Chairs. Bunk. Lot of pillows.

“Don’t bleed on the bed. “ Christian dropped him onto it. “You hear me?”

He wasn’t trying to. He was looking for somewhere to lean his hand, but it was bleeding or bloody, his nose was bubbling, and Christian went back to the bath and ran water while he considered whether he was or wasn’t going to heave his gut up.

Not, he decided after several breaths and a wait-see. He propped himself with his hand on his knee, mildly tilted, on the edge of the bed, while Christian brought him a wet towel and insisted on going at his face with it, mopping his nose and his mouth, his eye. He was shaky. The cold towel obscured his vision and he wasn’t sure where up was. The tilt warned him.

Christian shoved him backward, flat, and said catch his breath.

Good idea, he thought. But it rode his thoughts consistently that Christian wasn’t his friend, the captain of the ship had ordered him to be in the galley, and if there was a set-up for blame possible, Christian wasn’t necessarily the one going to catch hell—he just couldn’t think through the haze and the headache to figure out what the game was.

“Listen,” Christian said, settling, a weight on the mattress edge beside him. “The guys made a mistake. I don’t want it blown up into an incident that can sour this trip, you read me clear? Mad crew can make a lot of trouble.”

It sounded like an actual honest reason. A serious reason. He wasn’t brought up a total fool—a ship in space was wholly vulnerable. This ship in particular was vulnerable to its hire-ons or any total crazy they happened to get aboard. Was Christian saying they were already running scared of the crew, or what, for God’s sake? And was Christian in some kind of personal bind about what had happened?

His head hurt too much to figure it out. Christian meanwhile got up and rummaged through his clothes locker, after something, he didn’t figure what, or want to know. He just wanted back in the galley or back in the brig without being used or manipulated into something that could bring their mutual father to bounce his already aching body off the bulkhead again, that was his chief concern. He’d just had it fairly good where he was, today, and he didn’t want a set-to with anybody right now.

Except—

Christian came back, threw some clothes onto the end of the bed. “You concussed? Anything broken?”

He ran his tongue around his mouth as he lay there. Stared at Christian down his nose. There were cuts. Teeth ached. Everything ached. “Ribs, arm, maybe cracked. I don’t know. “ He couldn’t help it, couldn’t keep his mouth shut and give up a fight with a guy who had one due. “What’s it to you?”

“All right, all right. “ Christian waved his arms. “Cancel, stop, go back. Bad start, all right? Bad start. My damn temper.—But I caught hell for bringing you aboard. Austin calls me a fool. Everybody calls me a fool. But it was a judgment call. Don’t ask me what I was supposed to do! You’re the one went poking into what didn’t involve you, and now everything’s my fault. When I’m wrong I catch hell for it. When I’m right I catch hell. When I’m right and they’re wrong I catch double hell, but I didn’t plan this, I did the best I could, all right? I got you out of there. Probably Austin would’ve, if he was there, just the same, but it’s my fault since I did it and he didn’t have to, you understand me?”

Most guys wouldn’t. Not half. But he’d lived with Marie. “Yeah,” he said, and struggled to sit up, with a hand pressed against his forehead, because his brain hurt.

“So I’m sorry,” Christian said. “Bad start. Austin pounded me against a wall. And he didn’t pass the warning to all the guys. The ones that pounded you, they won’t, twice. They’ll walk wide of you, and me. I have it over them in spades right now. They’ll do me favor points, you, too, if you don’t make a case. Rough guys, but they know they’re on notice.”

“I won’t be anybody’s target. Not anybody’s. Not theirs. Not yours.”

“I said I was sorry. I’d had my own run-in with Austin, all right?—There’s a shower. Clean clothes. Couple of days yet before jump and then you can lie still and let it heal. You’ll be fine. Won’t even scar.”

Christian could say that. But a shower was attractive. Real attractive. Clean clothes… it felt as if the coveralls had grown to his skin. He’d sweated in them. He’d bled over them. He loathed the feel of them. And the loan of a shower and clean clothes… was a bribe worth a peace treaty, far as he was concerned. He started to get up.

“You make it on your own?” Christian asked.

“Yeah,” he said, and hauled himself up, one hand on the wall.

A little dizziness then. But his sight was mostly back. He got up in the unaccustomed great space of the biggest junior officer’s cabin he’d seen, and wobbled back to the shower.

Forgot the clean clothes. He turned around to trek back again, but Christian brought them to the bath and left him alone, afterward, to knock around the small mirrored space, getting undressed.

After that was warm water vapor, luxury detergent, the kind-to-abused-skin sort, and he could have sunk to the bottom of the shower and stayed there a year, but it had an auto-cycle he hadn’t set right and it went to blow dry long before he wanted it.

He opened the door a crack and snaked an arm out for the clothes, such as they were. He’d never tried skintights. Never had the budget and never wanted the cousins laughing at him.

Black. Shimmer-stuff. Damned little left to the imagination, one size fit all, or you definitely shouldn’t think about it.

He hadn’t a mirror inside the shower and he wasn’t at all sure, except they were clean, dry, more comfortable than they looked, and the shirt—blue—at least was tunic-style. Tabs at the side that made the waist fit—another one-size, and the loose sleeves, anybody could wear who didn’t have arms to their knees. He wasn’t sure. He felt like a fool coming out of the shower, and stopped in the doorway for a mistrustful glance at the mirror.

“Better,” Christian said, “A little style, Hawkins, couldn’t hurt.”

Heat from the shower hadn’t made him steadier. He wobbled. He glared at this implied deficiency in Hawkins taste. He stuck his foot in his boot in the doorway, and leaned on it, working the heel on while he braced a hand against the wall.

“So you want off this ship,” Christian said.

Escape? A deal with Christian? No way in hell did he trust it. He balanced and shoved the other foot in the other boot.

“This is a true or false. Possible even for a Hawkins. Fifty percent chance of being right. Do you want off this ship?”

Christian might want rid of him. That part he could believe, the way he couldn’t readily believe Christian’s stepping into a brawl only to save him. He didn’t know how obvious his suspicions were, or what it could cost him to challenge Christian with the truth. But he decided on confrontation, for good or for ill. “Not to any Mazianni carrier, if that’s the trade you’re in.”

“Yeah, yeah, we just load up the fools and Mazian pays top price, loves to buy those fools. Use your damn head. Where are we going?”

“Pell’s what I’ve heard.”

“Not a bad place to ship from. Civilized port. Lot of ships. Go where you like. Can’t beat that.”

Christian left a silence in which he might be expected to say something. He didn’t. He didn’t trust anything about the offer, didn’t trust Christian’s motives—

“Look,” Christian said. “Sit down. “ Christian indicated the end of the bed, and reluctantly, because his knees weren’t that steady, he went back to the bed and sat. “You may have noticed,” Christian said, leaning against the wall near him, one booted ankle over the other, working the heel back and forth, “that Austin is a difficult sod. I said we hadn’t an auspicious beginning. Much less so with maman, Beatrice, who doesn’t like your presence. We are the victims of two ferocious women, one of whom wants to kill us and the other of whom wants to kill you before you kill us.”

“I’ve no desire whatever—”

“I’m perfectly certain you’re an independent and difficult spirit, yourself, but maman, understand, Beatrice… will absolutely not tolerate you on this deck, not as Marie Hawkins’ offspring, certainly not as Austin’s, competing, shall I say it, with me? Shall I say plainly that Beatrice wants you out of here, you most certainly want to go… and it seems to me that you have no evidence against us, nothing but a merchanter quarrel,—and we all know how quickly stations wash their hands of our untidy affairs. I would never tie myself up with station police and lawyers, on the Alliance side of the Line, lawyers and court dates and station law—you don’t like station lawyers, do you, Hawkins? You’re not that crazy.”

“No.”

“Not going to be that crazy.”

“No.”

“Pell has customs. But you’ve got your passport…”

God. They would have it. With his papers, that said he worked computers.

“—Found it on you. No problem. Just get you out the airlock all legitimate and you take a walk.”

“And end up dead.”

“Hawkins. Hawkins. I had my chance in the warehouse. But the fact that you’re, realtime, my slightly older brother, suggests to certain members of this crew that you might find a niche aboard, that you might pose some threat to interests that have worked a long time to secure the positions they have, do you see? Not that I’m immune. I could rather like you, as a human being. You have certain engaging qualities, occasional flashes of actual intellect, you don’t know the depth of dimness I have to deal with in the crew, God! you’d be such a relief! But I’m not about to see you become a focus of dissension, or find partisans. This is a rough crew. We manage very borderline individuals. We simply can’t afford anyone challenging an officer’s authority, do you see? So for various reasons, and peace with maman, who is our chief pilot, far more essential than either of us, and a perfect bitch when she’s taken a position, I’m perfectly willing to have you disappear at Pell.”

“And if something goes wrong?”

“If something goes wrong you end up back aboard. Or with the Pell cops. Choose aboard, is my advice. You wouldn’t like the cops.”

No spacer liked the cops.

This spacer didn’t like the idea of being shanghaied into another crew, either.

And it scared him that Christian’s logic halfway persuaded him.

“So?” Christian said. “Deal?”

He shrugged. He’d had a lifetime of Mischa ducking questions, apologizing his way past personnel decisions. He didn’t like the taste it left in his mouth. Didn’t like what this maneuver implied about Christian’s style of command. ‘We can’t afford anybody challenging an officer’s authority. ‘ Hell.

So Christian helped him escape?

“Yeah,” he said, not daring, not wanting to say anything that could change Christian’s mind. It wasn’t for him to critique whatever got him back to Sprite.

Christian got up.

“Better get you back,” Christian said. So the deal seemed done.

—v—

OLDER BROTHER WAS THINKING ON the way back to the brig. Older brother was limping, too—the guys had exceeded suggestions, and that was a problem. “Tell anybody that asks,” Christian said, “that it was me that gave you the black eye.”

“Is it black?”

“It will be.”

Damned odd, Christian thought, everything was so placid of a sudden. They came to the brig, and he figured then that all the rules still applied, in Austin’s book, and therefore in his, no matter that older brother wasn’t in fighting form. “Cable,” Christian said, and Hawkins went inside, picked it up off the floor and locked the bracelet on his own wrist. “Let me see it.”

He shut the grid. Hawkins came to the bars and let him inspect the bracelet. The wrist and hand were bruised dark, ugly and painful looking. And the lock was solid.

“Yeah,” he said, thought about offering to change hands with the lock, but, hell, they weren’t a charity. He started off down the corridor, to leave older brother to his own amusement, or to get to sleep, or whatever, but it occurred to him then that there were reasons security might lock down tight after the rumors got topside, lock down in ways that would screw everything. Besides, older brother might do something entirely stupid if Austin came down in Austin’s morning to check on the rumors that were bound to get started—he didn’t trust Jamal’s discretion or Tink’s to hold them off five minutes longer than it took a casual mention to get up to the bridge.

So he went back to the bars, leaned there. Hawkins had sat down on his bunk.

“Hawkins. A warning. If our mutual papa says you’re scum, say yes, sir, thank you, sir. That’s all. No matter what.”

Hawkins’ jaw set. You could see the muscle clench. “Man’s an ass.”

“Hawkins. A small touch of sanity. You’re already on scrub. You want to find yourself working four shifts on scrub? No sleep? That’s your choice. You keep your mouth under control.”

A moment of surly silence.

“Son of a fool bitch,” he said, “I’m trying to get you out of here. I’m trying to save your ass. Can we have a yes out of the savee? Can we have a thank you, just a trial run?”

Hawkins kept glaring at him. Didn’t trust him, and properly so. But then Hawkins said, “Yeah. Thanks.”

“Mouth, Hawkins-brother?”

“Yeah. “ Hawkins dropped his stare, at least. Tucked a foot up under the other leg and winced. “I hear. I understand you.”

“Easy to pronounce, please and yessir. Get you out of a lot of situations.”

Hawkins didn’t say a thing.

“Damned fool,” Christian said with a shake of his head, but he knew the look, he saw it on Austin, he saw it in mirrors when he’d had a run-in with authority. He withdrew his arms from the bars and went on down the corridor with his own blood pressure up, and with an intense urge to do bodily harm to Hawkins before he got off this ship.

So it didn’t make sense that the bloody mess the guys had left Hawkins in should turn his stomach queasy, or make sense that the bruises he’d left had touched the same nerves. He’d seen worse. He’d probably done worse, he didn’t keep count.

Didn’t know why, when he got up to the bridge and went through his initial shift-change checks—an hour late—he kept flashing on that parting argument and Hawkins’ bruises—his fault—and how, just quite strangely, in a ship full of hire-ons you couldn’t trust and a handful you knew you could rely on to guard your back, he had an instant expectation of Tom Hawkins’ behavior, the body language, the way he worked, an expectation what he was thinking and what it took to get him off a point he wanted to hold…

But, dammit, he had no choice.

He walked the aisles, monitored their course. They’d been lazing along for a full run of the clock in the dark of Tripoint, eating, sleeping, checking and fixing and maintaining. Midway through his watch they’d do a long burn, no traffic problems here, get up to speed on their outbound vector toward Pell.

After which it was Austin’s watch, and Beatrice would take them through. He managed the shift, when the number one crew was off… he set up the numbers and the number one crew ran them. Routine, this place, this nearest mass that was nothing but a radiating black lump in the starry dark. The techs were hewing to a long-established procedures list, for this precise place.

“Got it. Thanks. “ He signed a check-sheet, meaning the bridge hadn’t blown up an hour-thirty into the watch.

The techs around him were in danger of falling asleep of boredom—a contagious condition. Mainday shift on an alter-day ship only punched buttons and checked readout. And stayed ready for the instant of absolute terror that could be an inbound rock. It did happen. Or an inbound and oncoming ship. With Marie Hawkins possibly on their tail—who knew what was a possibility?

The further he got from the moment the more it seemed crazy to have taken Hawkins into his own quarters, behind locked doors. Hell if he’d have done that with hired crew. Austin would skin him if the guy didn’t stick a knife in him for his trouble. Stupid, what he’d done. Gave him cold chills just thinking about it.

But he had read Hawkins. He’d been absolutely confident. He’d known and he’d guessed right—the way he’d gone from gut-level irritation to body-sense understanding what Hawkins was doing. Next was guessing what the son of a bitch was going to—

Hands touched his back.

He yelled and spun around with an elbow for the offender.

Capella was faster than that, and a centimeter out of range.

“Don’t walk up on me! This is the bridge, not a—”

“Not what?”

Capella had logical business on the bridge, the mainday chief having every right to be where she was.

Meanwhile, among the techs, Bowe, Perrault, and eclectic, not a head had turned. Everybody on the bridge knew the situation between the captain’s-son-mainday-chief-officer and the lend-lease navigator. He grabbed Capella’s wrist and got her started in the officeward direction—and let go once she was launched. Hold onto Capella when you weren’t joking and you were asking for a broken arm.

Which he wasn’t. He led the way off to the central corridor, back to his office, and near enough to Austin’s quarters and Beatrice’s that he signaled quiet until he’d triggered the door.

“Need a favor,” he said. “You know where they put older brother’s effects, in downside Ops.”

“Yeah. The safe.”

“You know the combination.”

“You want his stuff?”

“Yeah. But I can’t get down there as easily.”

Capella gave him a suspicious stare. “Yeah?”

“Dockside’s on me this trip. And older brother’s taking a walk while we just can’t be responsible.”

“Wait, wait, brake it, mister.”

“Passport. Papers. ID. I want it.”

“Christian-person. Walk like… cold, or walk like… off?”

“I mean I’m letting him go, shoving him off at Pell.”

Capella’s brows went together. Bang. “Straight to the cops. If Sprite’s on our tail… if that ship comes in while we’re there—”

“They had their full offload and load yet to do and we’re wasting no time here. We’ll be offloaded, loaded and out before they make a ripple at Pell.”

“You’re betting the ship. You’re betting the whole fucking ship.”

“I’m protecting our asses. He’s trouble. He’s major trouble on board.”

“You’re jealous.”

“I’m not jealous.”

“Hell you aren’t.”

“Crew’s complicated enough.”

Family was complicated enough. That was the truth. Austin never listened. Zeroed in on this Hawkins. Never once saw he’d done the best he could, bringing Hawkins aboard, never wanted to talk about the solution—oh, no, that wasn’t Christian’s business.

“You know,” Capella said, “there are places Hawkins could be besides Pell.”

He glumly shook his head, to all Capella’s… associations. And to all the other places Hawkins could end up.

Including the deep-cold dark, stabbed in some crew fight. He didn’t know why he couldn’t have arranged that option—he could have put it off on some sumbitch like Edgar Hogan, or Tolliver, who could probably be arranged to do it, and to pay for it—except there was suddenly a line between him and Capella there hadn’t been a moment ago, and a caution there’d never needed be before. If he’d crossed that line himself, somewhere, he’d not known it had happened—in that warehouse, maybe, or down in the galley just now.

Because Capella would kill—and he discovered he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. He didn’t know whether that was a fault or a virtue, when their collective lives depended on it; or whether it was strength or weakness, when he knew the universe he lived in wasn’t neat, or clean, or inclined to give anything for free the way it was in those damn books Capella read.

He did everything Austin wanted. He worked his butt off to get one well done out of Austin all his fucking life. But, oh, Hawkins got Austin’s attention—got Austin’s complete attention, cheap, on the going market.

And the guy was everything… intelligent, reasonable, easy to like… that he fucking wasn’t.

“Chrissy, Christian-sweet. You want advice? Don’t—don’t do this. It’s too risky to let him out. The cops, that’s one. And Austin, if he finds out you had anything to do with it—”

“You give me advice,” he said, “on something you know about. I’m telling you. We want him off this ship, we want him the hell invisible, to us and to the cops. For the ship’s sake.”

“Marie Hawkins is not to ignore. If she comes spreading tales—and a witness climbs out of some drainpipe—”

“Not a shred of evidence. None. Nothing they can use. She’ll look the fool. What will Sprite have? One of their own crewmen? Back where he belongs, with his maman? What a crime! What a disaster! His mother claims kidnapping. But with what evidence? His word? No, I want the stuff, Pella, dear. You’ve got the access. Use it on my behalf and I won’t tell about the brandy.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Fils de Beatrice, absolument. “ He caught Capella’s arms as they came about him, as Capella’s teeth came very near the sensitive spots of his neck. “Does it occur to you that Austin’s preferences run in a pattern?”

“Absolutely. “ Capella’s hands, freed, wandered to his lower back, arms pulled him close. Hips moved. Teeth grazed his ear. “Like father like son. Take ten, Chris-tian, duty can spare it. A whole boring month in hyperspace…”

Austin would skin him, the higher brain said. Lower brain was taking over rapidly, now was now and the couch in his office was a convenient immediate destination.

Himself on the bottom this time, Capella taking over—while he was thinking, distractedly, of older brother stuck in that cell, older, easy-to-like brother—and he came back to here and now with Capella shoving his hands out of play above his head and trailing kisses progressively below his neck. The risk of running toward jump without him on duty, the risk of violating orders, saying screw-you to Austin and knowing his own judgment about Corinthian was as valid—not that Austin would consult him. That was what sent him toward a dark, suicidal high, half-wishing physical harm was a real risk at Capella’s hands.

Never fucking listened to him…

—vi—

AT ABOUT MAINDARK, MAINDAY SHIFT change on this alterday ship, the lights briefly faded, tribute to a lately hostile sun, and a voice that might be Christian’s came on over the general com, saying, Take hold. They were starting acceleration toward a jump at 0448: 32h, shift to alterday crew slightly before that.

A more formal warning and certainly more information than they’d gotten with Austin Bowe on watch, Tom thought, deciding that, over all, Christian seemed more reasonable than his father by a wide margin.

Immediately after that announcement, the siren sounded, and if a spacer was conscious, semiconscious, or sane, he grabbed after the belts and fastened them.

Then he tugged the blanket up against the chill that seemed a permanent part of jump, and snugged down for a secure rest. Acceleration began, with an initial slam that hit all the floating organs, and then a steady pressure—familiar as a sense of moving, getting up to speed, toward Pell, he told himself, and maybe toward freedom. He began to turn that promise of Christian’s over and over in his mind, yes, it could be true, Christian might have the reasons he cited; or, no, it wasn’t true, it was a set-up and he ought to tell somebody who could get word to the captain something was going on that he wouldn’t approve—

But then, third side… he couldn’t get away by staying on the ship, and, fourth, even if it turned out to be a set-up, he might still turn the tables on whoever set him up (likely Christian) and get to the police.

Except—fifth—Christian was absolutely right about going to station police, it scared him, the way Lydia, damn her screwed-up meddling, had once had him terrified of being left on station; but there was a reasonable adult fear in it, too—depending on the seriousness of what Corinthian was involved in, it was a way to get tangled up in Pell’s Legal Affairs office, in a cross-border incident, called in at least as a witness in some God-only-knew court case that could drag on and involve drugs he didn’t want to take, when all he remotely wanted to do was get a ship to Viking and have a reasonable chance of meeting Sprite on a port call, give or take a year. Viking was an immediate port for Pell, there had to be numbers of ships going and coming, all the time. If everything Christian said was true and he had his papers, he could be out of there maybe in hours from the time he hit Pell docks, and have all of it behind him.

But—six—he could talk his way into free passage, maybe; but a year’s wait, on Viking, even eating out of vending machines, was, God, he didn’t know, 15000c, at sleepover rates, if he starved himself and stayed in the cheapest places he could find. That was the next worry. Either Christian would keep his word and bid him farewell on Pell’s dock, scenario a, and he was on his own, to get transport… or, scenario b, back to the set-up… Christian might have something in mind else. Like double-cross. Like…

Like setting him up to be killed, so nobody would ask questions.

Could Christian do a thing like that? It was the most logical thing for Christian to do, if he didn’t come with a conscience, if Austin didn’t intend to let him go, ever, if…

God, he’d lost count. But scenario three, or eight, or whatever—if Christian was right, and Austin might try to work him into crew, beat hell out of him until he learned to say yessir to Austin the way Christian did—

But after that, Austin wouldn’t let him go, either, he’d just be on better terms with Austin. Which he by no means wanted. Christian and Christian’s mother damn sure didn’t.

So they agreed on something. The question was what they actually intended for a solution to the tangle.

He just wanted to go to sleep. God, he desperately wanted not to think.

But then he had a colder, more awful thought, and pulled open the panel beside the bunk.

No trank to keep him sane. No packets. He’d used them all. Nobody’d resupplied the locker. On Sprite, they checked and rechecked them, made sure every one was refilled.

Christian was in charge, on mainday. Christian was running things and Austin wasn’t on duty.

Now he really couldn’t sleep. Accel was hell enough and most times you could sleep through it, if you didn’t mind feeling in two directions at once, but right now the knowledge of that empty panel and the lack of a com in the brig combined to upset his stomach. He kept rolling Christian’s motives over and over, told himself, one, it was a long time until 0448h, and the minute someone started stirring about he could get attention to the problem. And, two, maybe if Christian was trying to scare him, he could get other attention at shift change…

Maybe the dark-haired girl would come back. Even Capella. It was no good lying and sweating, there’d be a chance to talk to someone, surely, they weren’t going to go without a final check.

This, in the ship that didn’t sound but cursory warnings when it moved.

It was an hour before they went inertial. He got up then, risking his neck, God, stiff and sore, every movement he made—maybe the ribs were cracked from the fight, maybe not, but that was minor compared to the chance of being left with no supplies down here. He yelled. He banged the walls, he yelled again at every remote sound he heard, hoping someone would hear.

Eventually he heard someone walking in the corridor, and screamed to anyone out there that he hadn’t any trank, dammit, he needed help, he needed somebody to tell the captain…

Tink came walking up, with a tray—with trank and the nutri-packs on it, along with breakfast, or supper, or something, and one of Tink’s decorated pastries.

Relief flooded through him and left a flutter like electric shock.

“We weren’t going to forget you,” Tink said. “We weren’t going to forget you, no time we ever forgot the brig.”

“I didn’t know you were in charge. God, I’m glad to see you.”

“Yeah, yeah. Galley always sees to stations. Always a snack first—first class stuff, here.”

“It’s wonderful. “ He tried to make light of it, feeling foolish. “Thanks, Tink. “ But he was shaking so when he took the tray through the opening in the bars that the liquid shook in the cup. “Sugar-flowers. That’s real pretty.”

“Made it special. I’m real sorry I left you alone yesterday. I am. Wouldn’t’ve happened if I hadn’t left.”

“Not your fault. It’s all right, Tink.”

Tink looked troubled… beyond ‘it’s all right. ‘ “Scuttlebutt was… there was an order.”

“On what?”

Tink evaded his eyes. Found an interesting spot on the floor to the far side of the bars. “Like, it was just an order.”

An order. And Tink just happened to need to change a filter?

“Tink?”

Tink still didn’t look at him, quite.

He felt a twinge of regret. Of disappointment. Of anger, for Tink’s sake… and his own.

“Yeah,” he said, “I copy. Thanks. Thanks, Tink. Really, thanks.”

“I didn’t know they was going to do that!”

“You didn’t know my brother was going to do that. I should’ve figured it.”

“He ain’t a bad officer,” Tink said. “He’s a layoff, but things get done.—And he’s fair, most times. The captain’s got him bothered.”

“About what? What’s enough, to go to that trouble? Tink, Tink, he’s saying… he’s saying he’ll get me off at Pell. That I can go free. Is he lying?”

Tink looked at him then. A long, troubled look.

“What’s the truth, Tink? I swear… I swear I won’t say where I heard it, just tell me, and I’ll believe you.”

“The junior’s a nice guy,” Tink said. “He really is. Tries to take the crew’s side. Stood between the hire-ons and the senior. Michaels. Michaels is who you don’t cross. But the junior’ll always hear you, if there’s a side you got, you understand me? I don’t figure what he did, it ain’t like him to set somebody up like that, except he’s got some notion you’re a problem—on account of your mama. I hear she’s got a grudge with the captain.”

“You could say.”

“So maybe that’s it. “ Tink cast a nervous glance down the corridor. “Tom, I got other places to get to, I got to hurry. We got jump at Oh Five, just short. Can’t collect the tray, just kind of dump it in the shower when you’re through, all right? And latch the door? I got a lot of stations to get to, before. But I come here first.”

“Yeah,” he said, “yeah, thanks, Tink. Sincerely, thanks.”

He took the tray back to his bunk, sat down, dug in to the synth eggs-’n-ham, which wasn’t bad, but peculiar. It had leafy stuff in it, that wasn’t algae. Strong-flavored stuff. Maybe it was another thing they got off a living world, like a real spice. He’d had a few—just a few.

But he figured it had to be all right—Jamal kept the galley so clean, if green stuff turned up it was legit, and safe, and probably expensive. And once you thought that, it began to taste fairly good.

Not surprising, he told himself, what Tink had said. He’d had a halfway instinct about it, that he couldn’t trust Christian’s motives.

So Christian had him beaten to hell so he could get him to believe what he was going to say.

So he’d been a fool when, for about a dozen heartbeats, he’d leaned on Christian Bowe, believed he’d found someone in the universe who gave a damn slightly more than Marie gave.

Stupid, he said, to himself. He was ashamed, outright angry that he’d given serious credence to Christian’s persuasions.

But hell if he’d let on. He’d be far more foolish to let on to Christian that he knew what he did know—and he had confidence in what Tink had told him. Tink didn’t have any motive to lie to him. Christian did. Tink hadn’t looked at all comfortable telling him what he’d told him—Christian had been so, so smooth, not a flicker of conscience in his delivery.

All of which argued that he had an ally in Tink, if he wanted to put it on Tink’s shoulders, but he could get Tink in a helluva lot of trouble on that account, too, and he didn’t damn want to, for Tink’s sake.

He ate the pastry, thinking about that. It was as good as it looked, dark, with a rough, smoky flavor different than any chocolate he’d ever had. He thought it might just be real, and he wasn’t sure if everybody got it, or just people Tink wanted to do it for.

Whatever—it was good. Whatever—Tink didn’t need to apologize for being absent. Whatever—Tink had no reason to tell him what he’d told him, except some sense of fairness, except maybe everything he thought he read in the man was true—because Tink didn’t read out to him as vengeful, or a habitual or purposeful liar. He’d do a lot for Tink. He hadn’t met anybody like Tink, on Sprite or on the docks, and Tink had a piece of his priorities, if Tink ever somehow needed something he could do.

But he could think of a thousand reasons for Christian to lie, and to want him off the ship—if only for the reasons that Christian had plainly admitted to him as his reasons.

It made… not quite a lump in his throat, but at least welling up of feeling he hadn’t expected to apply, on this ship. Didn’t know why he should be surprised. Even Marie’d double-crossed him, in her way—played him for a fool, ditching him on the docks the way she had.

The truly embarrassing thing was, he couldn’t learn. Cousins had caught him in sucker-games, and you’d think he’d get cleverer—he had, give him credit, grown more reserved with them. But the harder Marie had shoved him away the more desperate he was to get close to her—

Kid mentality. Panic instinct. Once, in a corridor downside she’d told him she wasn’t speaking to him, and walked off-he’d followed, gotten slapped in the face, and kept it up, and gotten slapped… he’d been, maybe, five, six, he wasn’t sure, but it came back to him sometimes with particular clarity, the smothered feeling, the feeling he had to hold on to Marie, and he’d known he was making her madder, he’d known she was going to hit him every time he caught her, but he kept doing it, and grabbing at her clothes and screaming his head off—she kept hitting him, until Marie got a better grip on her panic than he had on his—it was panic, he’d figured that out somewhere years later, panic on her side, panic on his.

God knew. They did it to each other, simply existing. He’d gone to that warehouse in some confused sense of responsibility for Marie he would have thought he’d learned not to have.

She’d kept him, Mischa had said, for reasons that had scared him—that ought to scare anybody with a conscience and a responsibility—but had Mischa done anything to protect him’

Not one solitary thing.

A half-brother who wanted rid of him. A father who wished he’d never existed.

He wasn’t anybody Sprite expected anything from, either,—hadn’t Mischa said so? He’d screwed up. Everybody expected it. Why in hell shouldn’t he deliver? Only major time he’d ever helped Marie, he’d screwed up.

And why spare Christian, or his father? Why cooperate with anyone at all, except to spite the powers that created him? Try helping them, maybe. Worst thing he could think of to do to anybody.

Didn’t want to hurt Tink, though, really didn’t want to hurt Tink, or get him arrested, or lose his license—he didn’t even know the guy but a couple of days, but Tink didn’t deserve it. Wasn’t fair that he couldn’t think about Corinthian anymore without remembering specific faces, guys like Tink, guys like those sons of bitches he’d like to find when he didn’t have a cable on his wrist, but he didn’t want to kill them, just…

Wasn’t damned fair. Corinthian hadn’t been faces to him. Hadn’t been people like Tink, at all.

Which meant he should disappear fast when he got to Pell, just out the lock and out of port, no note to the cops, nothing that could screw his father the way he deserved.