Tripoint, page 24
part #6 of Company Wars Series
There might be a chance. There might be…
Fool's thought, he told himself, and felt Saby's hand on his arm, and listened to Saby talk about the roses, and the jonquils and iris and the tulips and hyacinths. Figure that the cornfields and the potatoes were much more important, yielding up their secrets to the labs as well as supplying stations and spacers direct…
Interesting statistics about the value they were to humankind. About human civilizations riding botanical adaptations to ascendancy.
But less inspiring than the sensory level… and he was glad that the tour wended its final course back to the whispering of the tall trees, back to that sweet-breathing shadow. His legs ached from walking. Felt as if they'd made the entire circuit of the station.
Maybe they had. But he took the invitation the guide offered, to linger a moment on the path. He didn't want to go out, where, he'd been thinking the last half hour, a whole contingent of Corinthian crew must be waiting for him.
Maybe Christian, too. Probably Christian—madder than hell.
But a ship was a place. A station wasn't, in his book. He'd had his taste of dodging the station authorities just trying to evade questions from the botanical gardens staff. He didn't want to do it dockside and in and out of hiring offices, trying to stay out of station-debt, which, if he got into that infamous System… no.
Which meant a return to Corinthian was rescue, in a way, and he was willing to go. But he didn't want to lose the souvenir leaf—the garden was a place he wanted to remember and wasn't sure he'd see again. So, fearing a little over-enthusiasm on the part of the arresting party he was sure was waiting, he asked Saby to keep the leaf safe for him. "Sure," she said, and slipped it into her sleeve-pocket.
So the tour was done, and he walked out with Tink and Saby.
Didn't find the reception party—and he was so sure it existed he stopped and stood in the doorway, looking for it.
"She's a pretty one," the ticketer at the door said—to him, he realized then, and then, in the racing of his bewildered wits, remembered the lie he'd told, about waiting for a girlfriend.
"Yeah," he said, and only wanted to get out of there before some other remark started trouble, but Saby laughed, took the cue and hooked her arm into his, steering him away and on, toward the doors.
"Tink," she said, "it's all right. You don't know where we are. Right? We'll make board call. Captain's orders."
Tink didn't look certain about that. He wasn't certain about this 'don't know where we are' and 'captain's orders'… not that Saby was likely to use physical force. But Saby clearly had the upper hand in the information division, and he could be in deep trouble, for all he knew, headed for one more ship like Christophe Martin.
Tink said, looking straight at him. "Tom,—if she says it's so, it's so. If she says do, you do it. All right? Is that all right?"
Tink meant it. Tink meant it a hundred percent, like a nervous mama turning her kid over to a stranger she almost trusted, and he had it clear who was in what role in Tink's book: if he did anything Saby could complain of, Tink was going to find him, he had no question.
"Yeah," he said, and meant it. "No problems. I want to go back to the ship. I'm willing to go. " It finally occurred to him to say that, and he thought at least Tink would believe him.
"Come on," Saby said, tugging on the arm still linked with hers, and he had the momentary, panicked thought that if anything happened to Saby, if any remote, unpredictable accident happened to Saby Perrault, he was a dead man, not alone in Tink's book, but with the rest of Corinthian, the same law that, had brought Sprite's crew to Marie's defense, however belated, the same that defended every merchanter on dockside and made, stations skittish of any challenge to ship-law, if two ships decided to settle a problem, or if, however rarely, a spacer disappeared off a dockside. Saby could call down all of Corinthian, hire-ons the same as born-crew, he got that clear and clean from Tink.
And he was, on those grounds, as much a prisoner in Saby's light, cheerful grip as he would have been in the hands of the delegation he'd expected.
He didn't see where Tink went. Maybe to the shops, maybe to another lift. But Saby coded Blue 9/20 on the lift pad where they stopped. The car took a moment or two arriving.
"That was nice," Saby said, hugging his arm tight. "It's always different, the gardens. I try to go at least once. I don't want to be on a planet. I really don't like the thought of infalling. The gardens are really just close enough for me. They do weather sometimes. I think that's just on the morning tour. They say you can plan on getting wet."
"I'm not going to run away," he said. "You can let go."
She didn't let go. She kept it physical—meaning knock her down if he wanted to run. And you could die for that, if Tink got hold of you. "I'll take you back to the ship," she said, "if you really want."
"What's my choice?"
"The Aldebaran. I talked to Austin. He's just really pissed at Christian. He said it's my call. The Aldebaran's a really nice place. Good food. Class One. You tell me you won't do anything stupid and you can stay there and we can have first-class food and soak up the latest vids. No sex in the offer, understand, just a place to be for a few days."
He was relieved at the no-sex part. Wasn't a mach' thing to be relieved at. Or maybe it was. Human dignity. If you reckoned that. He didn't like being shoved, ordered, ultimatumed, or kidnapped. He'd grown very touchy about kidnapped.
"Why?" he asked.
But the car came, and they got in, with two other riders aboard. Saby smiled. He smiled. Acted easy. The other passengers did, clearly romantically inclined, hand in hand. Everybody smiled at everybody. Saby hung on to his arm and his nerves were strung tight as wire, the whole short distance out to Blue 9/20, where they got off and the other spacers stayed.
"What's the deal?" he asked, then, in the brief privacy they had as they walked.
"The offer?"
"The sleepover. The fancy food. You."
"I told you. I don't come with the room."
"Yeah, that's fine. I don't, either. But why?"
"Because you're not a fool. Because Christian's got it coming, and Austin's pissed. That's enough."
"I don't see it."
"Do you dance?"
"Do I dance?"
"I know this restaurant. They've got a view, this huge real view of the stars from the dance floor. I can teach you."
He'd never. He'd never imagined. He'd never, in his life. Saby was a tumbling infall of propositions and changes of vector he'd never, ever, expected to deal with.
Dance?
Stationers danced. Spacers… did, but not on Sprite, they didn't. He couldn't imagine.
"I don't know," he said. "I guess. " He was thinking more about the food. He'd lately been hungry. He'd no assurance he might not be again.
And they walked the dockside, to a frontage with the very small, gold-and-silver sign that said Aldebaran.
Any spacer would say, high-class, expensive, and ask, being prudent, Who's really financing this?
Saby? Austin? Or somebody else? Like another ship… with proprietary ideas.
Saby input an access code and showed him through the doors into a very beige, very pricey-looking reception area. Amenities were listed on the walls, with code numbers. Display cases lined the room. He saw, at one pass of the eye, directions to a gym, to a barber/stylist shop… to a jewelry store, restaurants, one breakfast, brunch, lunch, one dinner. He drew in a breath, shook his head, reckoning himself far out of his credit budget—you could feel the money in your pocket ebb just in looking at the case-displays.
"Anything you need urgently," Saby said. "Personals? They have those in the bath, in every room. That's all right."
"I've got a hundred eighty seven cee," he said. "Actually it's Christian's."
"Oh, good," Saby said cheerfully. "Buy whatever you like. I've a phone call to make."
"To the captain? Or to him?"
"The captain,—naturally. Be good. We'll eat here, tonight. Are you hungry?"
"Hungry. Sleepy. Tired. Mostly tired."
"Dancing when you're rested," Saby said, and went to the desk, to make her phone call… after which there might be God knew what. He hoped just for a chance to sit down. But he'd gotten to the slightly crazed, half-giddy stage of sleep deprivation, and he wandered around the room and looked at the displays, that was all, mentally blank. He was aware of Saby on the phone, at the desk. He was aware as she crossed the room toward him.
Entirely cheerful. "Captain says fine, it's all right, anything you need—in reason. Have you found anything you have to have?"
"Just a bed, just sleep. " That was the honest answer. It was all he could think of now, now a room and a bed were that close. So Saby coded them through further doors. It was down the corridor to number 17, and inside, to a private room with two beds.
He went straightway and fell face-down on one, not eager for conversation, his legs tired from walking and standing, his eyes stinging from sleeplessness. He said to himself that if Saby wanted to call the cops or Corinthian or anybody, he didn't care, so long as he could get a little rest that wasn't hiding out in a restroom or sitting on a waiting-area bench.
A blanket settled over him. If Saby was the source of the blanket, he was grateful—the room was chill, and he hadn't the self-awareness left to figure out what to do about it.
Pleasant, he thought about Saby. Nice. Tink said she was all right.
But clearly reporting to his father. That wasn't a recommendation.
But it was opposite sides of the room, Saby didn't bother him, the blanket made him comfortable as he was, and the lights went out. He hadn't even the interest to open his eyes as he heard Saby settle into the other bed. Stark naked or in the sexiest gown he could imagine… couldn't muster a shred of interest. Face-down and going, gone.
—iii—
THE MUSIC IN Jaco's made the glasses shake. The walls were all screens, on which old vids played endlessly. It was a horror-show to the left, a riot scene to the right, a murder-thriller straight ahead.
In the immediate vicinity, it was impending apocalypse, one day before board-call and no brother.
Not one sight, sound, clue of Tom Hawkins, and no call from the station police office.
Thanks very likely to 200c of his money. 10200c, correction.
Correction again, 14750c, after he'd paid the computer time, the records searches, the bar tabs, the working-time of various crew who had to be put on duty-time to find the son of a bitch, and he couldn't ask Austin to foot the bill.
Clock on the wall said 0448m/1548a, meaning approaching suppertime on Corinthian's main-crew schedule, meaning Austin was awake and he was having supper an hour and a half before alterday dawn. On one wall a giant spiny monster was flattening an ancestral Terran city and on the opposite, one guy was choking another while some dimbrain woman stood and watched and screamed.
"There you are. " Capella pulled a chair back and dropped into the seat with a clatter of bracelets. "God, 0500?"
"Found anything?"
"Not a damned thing. " She slumped back and, the waiter being instantly on them, "Sandwich. Cheese. Rum and juice. I need vitamins."
"ID."
She pulled her card from her sleeve-pocket and the waiter ran the mag-strip through his handheld, logged the charge and handed back the card.
"14756 50c," Christian said glumly, and had a sip. "My guess… just my remotest guess is our big chance is tomorrow. Board-call starts at 1500 and ends at 1830, and I'm betting he'll be watching from somewhere, either right at the first or right toward the end."
"What makes you think it?"
"Genes. Can Austin turn hold of a question? Older brother won't be satisfied until he sees the ports close and the lights go out and he sees our departure telemetry on the boards—until then it's not enough. He won't believe it until he sees our outbound wavefront, but that's outside our parameters. I want to be on that dock tomorrow right down to the last, I want to have your eyes and mine where we can see anybody watching us. Because he will come down to watch."
"Best hope we've got, I guess. Guy's nice-looking. My notion is he's snagged a free stay with somebody—no knowing he even knows what day it is."
"Oh, he knows," Christian said. "I'd bet anything he knows to the second when that board-call is. And if we do spot him—"
"Going to be interesting hauling him past the customs check."
"Ship-debt. We've got his papers. We've got his sign-on at Viking."
"He really sign on?"
He hadn't, of course. "The papers I've got say he did."
"Be careful how long you flash those. Pell cops aren't blind. They know their local artists."
"What the hell else am I going to do? This is expensive paper, Pella."
"Yeah."
"You're not making any headway."
"Christian, I have called in debts you would not want to know about. I have talked to people I never wanted to talk to, at expenses you don't reckon in any bank account. Don't talk to me about effort in this not noble cause, dear friend. These are people I never wanted to see, and they don't come cheap."
His heart sank. "How much?"
"Those that ask for cash—2400, at current."
"I haven't got it, God, Austin's going to leave me in station-debt."
"Cash, Chrissy-sweet, cash is the only way. My ID has smoked from the withdrawals. It smells of brimstone. Your account isn't dead, but it's on life-support, and we are eating sandwiches till we clear this port, that much I do know, or you don't want to see the hell we'll be in. Austin does not want me to access these people, Chrissy, Austin will have my hide for the places I've looked, which won't report to Austin, so there. Just don't you tell him, and you cover that tab, Chrissy. You cover it."
"That's three quarters of everything I own but ship-share, dammit!"
"As I recall, Christian-love, this was not originally my idea. I would have predicted elder-brother wouldn't have liked the trip to Tokyo and London. I just really didn't think it was his artistic preference."
"Shut up! God! give me a little understanding! Where was your advice when it could have done some good?"
"I don't recall I was consulted. Cajoled, entreated, asked for illegal acts, but consulted…"
"How is he in bed?"
"Who?"
"My half-brother, dammit. How good?"
"We are suspicious, aren't we?"
"He's dangerous as hell. A Family Boy? All full of conscience? All full of principles? My father's off his head. I'm not! I've nothing against Hawkins personally. But nobody sees, nobody sees a damned thing dangerous in him!"
"And we can't find him," Capella said. "I don't see Austin disturbed. I see the captain quite, quite calm—considering the gravity of the circumstances. Possibly because he's not speaking to you. Or—possibly—"
That veer sideways took a second to think about. Two seconds. "The son of a bitch ran for the ship? And Austin didn't say?"
"It is a place we haven't searched," Capella said. The sandwich and rum arrived, which meant a brief distraction to sign the tab.
"He wouldn't," Christian said.
The waiter left. Capella took a bite of sandwich and swallowed. "I don't know. It'd be the smartest thing elder brother could do, in his situation—supposing he's noticed the passport's fake."
"No. Surely not."
"We are down to surely nots. Aren't we?"
"Point."
"Doesn't cost anything. " Another bite. Then Capella's eye strayed. She swallowed, belatedly. He looked, in the chance the distraction was named Hawkins.
Negative. He saw nothing to attract Capella's attention. Bar traffic, nothing but.
But Capella took the paper napkin and wrapped the sandwich. Tossed off half the drink at two gulps.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Somebody I don't want to meet. Just sit still. Don't attract attention."
"What somebody?"
"Chrissy. Just listen. Stay calm. In a moment I'm going to get up and go, and you sit here long enough to see if anybody follows me. Then you get up at your leisure and go left outside, go left, just keep traveling. I'll watch for you and intercept."
"What in hell's going on? Pella? Is it cops?"
"Just do it, dammit. Man in a grey shirt, blue glitz, dark hair, can't miss him. " Capella's eyes tracked something past his shoulder, cold as deep ice. "If he follows, don't let on, just keep walking. I'll be watching. Just wait till I'm clear plus some. If he follows me… still, you follow. We steer this to a venue we like. Got it?"
He didn't. Hadn't. Not the fine details of what Capella proposed to do about it.
But Capella slid out of her seat and walked, quietly, for the door, while he tried to pick out the newcomer she'd described, and did. He was giving an order at the bar, meaning he planned to stay; or asking a question, which might send him to their table: Capella wasn't exactly inconspicuous in an establishment. At least the guy didn't look in his direction.
Until the bartender pointed at his table.
Immediately the guy and two others started over. It wasn't in the instructions. Neither was this guy bringing help with him.
He sat still. Hell, he was a Corinthian officer, not open to hassle or harassment without involving more ante than any other ship might want. So he looked them up and down like germs and stayed his position.
"Looking for Capella," the first guy said, him in grey and blue; and leaned a knuckle on the table-surface. "Where'd she go?"
"I dunno. Back to the ship. " That was a right-hand turn from here. "She was going to check something. Why?"
Blue-and-grey made a flip of the hand at the muscle behind ' him. One left, presumably on Capella's track. That tore it.
"Wait a minute," he said.
"Just a personal matter," blue-and-grey said.
"With my wife?"
Blue-and-grey stepped back, looking shocked, and laughed outright. It was an unpleasant face. Somebody a woman might have been interested in, maybe, but this was a man that'd knife you, this was a man who still wore open shirts when the waistline was getting a little much for skintights.
