Mindship (v1.0), page 3
Behind him the girl moaned. He listened to her rustlings with slight amusement. He’d slept with professional women before, and he knew how foolish it was to have illusions about them—especially since his abortive affair with Marka three years before, and even more so, now that he owned a brothel himself. But still…something of the romantic nestled within him, and he turned and watched her movements as she stretched under the blankets, smiling, almost, with affection. It was simpler to make love to a woman like this. She was firm bodied, as were all the women in his brothel; her breasts were heavy, flattening as she shifted to one side, and there was a coarseness to her features no makeup could remove, tight fines at the edges of the mouth, tension in the molding of her face. Life was difficult for a Physical on Endrim. Even though the city was a port, its inhabitants rarely found work in anything but a tourist-service capacity. The refineries employed only Company contractees from off planet, for reasons Kilgarin couldn’t comprehend, with the result that hopefuls immigrating to this rim world often found themselves without a job. Many tried for a shipping Contract, but more often the less qualified Physicals sought work in one of the taverns or hotels. How many whores in the city? Kilgarin didn’t want to know. In a way he felt responsible for their misfortunes, though he didn’t treat his own women unfairly—yet somehow that didn’t matter. To Kilgarin, at moments like this one, his very participation in the economy of the world—regardless of the motives he knew worked within him, and which he understood—brought out a normally buried sense of guilt.
There was a sound in the street below. He stepped to the balcony and looked over. A figure drifted by, cape floating from firm shoulders. Two men on the opposite corner called again—it was their first call that had attracted Kilgarin’s attention—and the girl in the cape, positioning herself by the doorway of the building, motioned them over. Kilgarin grunted and turned his gaze to the rooftops.
He stared at the white buildings of the port, arranged at angles to the central mile-square landing strip. He felt nothing, and sensed pride because of that emptiness. It’d taken him time to heal the wounds he’d sustained aboard the Drowner. The six years he’d spent as a Cork since his eighteenth birthday hadn’t been easy for him. He was glad to forget what he could.
He turned and reentered the apartment. It was still strange to think of it as his own. He’d never possessed anything as large as this building, and it made him uneasy—for a moment Shrugging off the gathering concerns, he smiled to himself and walked softly back to the bed to awaken the sleeping girl.
Kilgarin moved down the short flight of steps into the bar’s foyer, where a man in a high-waisted tunic briefly probed his mind, satisfied himself that Kilgarin was a Sensitive, took his tip, and led him into the main lounge. As he walked to the counter Kilgarin felt the doorman’s eyes on him, admiring his blue tunic and leather trousers; he smiled, and still smiling, settled himself on a swivel stool before the ancient ex-Cork bartender and ordered a beer cut with absinthe. The old man did things with glasses, slid a mug across the counter, and accepted the credit chit Kilgarin gave him in return.
“Any of the others around, Pul?” The absinthe burned in Kilgarin’s throat, dry and bitter, reminding him it had been years since he’d tasted honest Endrim wormwood.
Shrugging bony shoulders the bartender said, “A few, not many tonight. J’kar. Wils. The twins were here, but not now. Bad time tonight, ships out, you know?”
Kilgarin nodded and sipped his drink.
’J'kar told us you were coming,” the old man continued, muttering through broken lips. “How long Out, huh?”
“A couple of months. J’kar must have left the Drowner on our last pass through Endrim, right?”
Pul passed a hand over his stubbled chin, eyeing Kilgarin's emptied glass. The younger Cork pushed it toward him, asked for one more. The old man complied and KILGARIN asked, “How is he, Pul?”
“J’kar? Now, OK, guess. Bad for a bit. Couldn’t move, too much trembling, face all swollen, red. Broken bad. But what hell, happens to us all, y'know?”
Kilgarin said yes, he knew, accepted the glass, and swung down from the bar, glancing around the shadowed room. In a corner by one of the draped windows, two men were talking. One had his back to Kilgarin: red hair over a thick, florid neck, the collar of a blue Sensitive’s jump suit lapping a gray vest that barely stretched between broad shoulders. Kilgarin walked over. The man facing him noticed his approach and said something to his companion. J’kar blinked around, his lopsided face splitting into a grin when he recognized Kilgarin. He made room on the bench, half-turning to face his friend and make the introductions.
“This here straight, his name’s Kilgarin. Old buddy, back to back, sweat same ship five years, the Drowner. Looks like a fed cow, hey? Bet you been slopping off since J’kar left, no one whips you ’round, huh?”
Kilgarin smiled. “Something like that.” He gave the older man his hand. J’kar took it and pressed it loosely. There was something wrong with the muscles in his wrist. “How are you, J’kar?” Kilgarin asked.
“Living, OK. This mate here, his name’s Whyte,”
The two men greeted each other formally. Whyte’s eyes were a soft yellow and seemed somehow out of focus; Kilgarin realized, startled, that the man’s right eye was sightless. Whyte’s features were devoid of emotion, though his lips were tucked back in a noncommitted smile as he shook Kilgarin’s hand.
J’kar nudged Kilgarin’s hand with his own. “C’mon, drink. We’ll get another.”
Kilgarin complied and they ordered another round from the console in their booth. When the glasses came, Kilgarin started to lift his. but J’kar stopped him with a toast. “Shipmates,” said the broken Sensitive, and both Kilgarin and Whyte drank with their eyes watching each other over the rims of their mugs.
“What now, Killy?” J’kar asked. “Here, good? No more Contracts?”
“Certainly not this year. Perhaps never again, if things work out. I’ve just about come the route, J’kar; your luck only lasts so long, and mine’s been pretty strong, I suppose…, but, well…you know.”
“Sure, best, that. I guess. Whyte, Killy was fellow on Drowner till last spring, would’ve been this year five together, but I had this accident, y’know.” J’kar flexed the muscles in his arms, smiling with just a hint of regret “But Kilgarin, still going, him. Right?”
“Until now, anyway,” Kilgarin said, uneasily. J’kar’s inability to speak coherently was something he hadn’t expected, though he knew he should have—it was normal with a Sensitive who’d collapsed. In fact, Kilgarin had almost managed to forget the incident which’d broken the former art critic; it came back now with J’kar’s every-slurred word. “I’ve gotten myself a place.”
“Now? Oh, right: you quit.” The Centaurian seemed confused for a moment, finally nodding as though he’d settled something in his mind. “You and your brother, getting together now? You mean place for you two?”
“My brother?”
“Sure, him here month ago, this bar. Ask Pul. Asking ‘bout you, sure. Hey, didn’t find you, huh?”
Kilgarin worked on his drink, thoughtfully. He shook his head. “No, he didn’t. The last I knew, he was back home on Wellington, schooling.”
“Well, now here. Or was. Ask Whyte.”
The other Sensitive broke in, changing the subject. “What sort of place you got, Kilgarin?”
With half-attention, Kilgarin told the two broken Sensitives about the building he’d bought in the Sensitive District. It was a mechanical description; in the two weeks since he’d landed on Endrim, he’d given the report a hundred times to every ex-shipmate he met. He always extended the same offer of work, and always, it was accepted. He knew what information would interest his listeners, be knew how to pace all the elements of the tale, and for a time he’d enjoyed working the reactions of his audience. But only for a time. For Kilgarin, the process of telling a story had become a craft so instinctive it no longer intrigued him, and a part of him regretted this, more deeply than he would have thought possible.
When he’d been Cork aboard the Drowner, before the run just past, he’d spent most of his free ship time in the galley lounge, spinning long and involuted stories for his mates, each a creation of the moment and each what they needed to break the tedium of mind-drive. He’d gained a minor sort of fame, and he supposed there’d been a few disappointed newcomers on his last run, when he refused to work up a single tale. As certain as he was that word had gotten around about his storytelling ability, he was equally certain that word about bis accident hadn’t been circulated. Such subjects were taboo, both out of compassion for the Cork (who was always aware of what was being said and thought about him) and out of a superstitious notion that if it wasn’t mentioned, it hadn’t really happened.
Trunking about that very effective method of dealing with tragedy, Kilgarin wondered briefly if any of the men who’d been with him when Baeder died could even remember how close Kilgarin had come to breaking. So complete were those emotional erasures, Kilgarin reflected as he sipped at his beer and told J’kar and Whyte about his brothel, that it often seemed as though the bad events were merely dream memories, fading away.
He then remembered his brother, Marc, and realized he’d been practicing his own emotional erasure. By centering on his own problems, he’d managed to avoid thinking about his brother’s. The boy must have broken loose, Kilgarin thought. It was something he’d expected since he himself had left the family. Marc Kilgarin was an unstable boy: it had been apparent in the way he moved, and especially in his hands, which were incapable of rest. Kilgarin remembered how, when the four members of the family used to gather for dinner, young Marc would sit with his fingers knotting and unknotting in his lap until his father allowed the family to begin eating. They were like pink birds, those hands. Kilgarin smiled at the image; it was one Marc would have liked. If the boy were here on Endrim—
Kilgarin shook himself, looked from his own hands to the faces before him and finished the description of his new project. “Want to come aboard, J’kar? I could use a friend with a dose of common sense.”
J’kar tapped both hands on the tabletop, nervously drumming a quick rhythm, blinking at Kilgarin, then at Whyte, then at his hands. Kilgarin glanced at the Centaurian’s fingers, the memory of his brother’s hands still strong in his mind. J’kar’s knuckles were red and bloated, and both little fingers were obviously paralyzed, apparently by the same nervous disruption that had ruined his forearms.
“I’m asking you to come in with me.” Kilgarin said again, this time with more emphasis, hoping his tone would tell J’kar what he needed to know.
The older man stopped tapping, sat one hand in the palm of the other, and rubbed the two hands together. He was still silent, but the storm of emotions Kilgarin felt boiling in the air between them was almost overpowering—so strong Kilgarin couldn’t determine which emotion was the dominant one: frustration, anger, love, gratitude, shame, or that other emotion, the one for which Kilgarin had no name. He knew nothing like it in his own experience, yet it seemed to touch something closed tightly within him. A sense of…owing? Kilgarin almost caught it completely, but then the emotion passed as J'kar regained control. Kilgarin sighed, pushing the remainder of the feelings aside: he knew he couldn’t afford to open up fully again, not in the way he’d opened aboard the Drowner. He wasn’t strong enough yet, not yet. He pressed his hands together and noticed that his palms were wet. The leather strappings around his wrists were also moist with sweat, glistening in the dim light.
J’kar looked at him again, and the Centaurian’s face was stiff and immobile. He nodded, saying nothing, and glanced at Whyte, who also nodded, and then J’kar shoved against the table, sliding it back and easing out past Kilgarin. The Cork watched as J’kar walked to the bar and took a drink from Pul. Whyte followed Kilgarin’s gaze and smiled gently when the Cork turned back to him. Amber eyes smiling: one solid, one faint.
“He’s had the full route,” Whyte said.
“I know,” Kilgarin answered. Then: “You too?”
The man furrowed his brow, then grinned again, less sure of himself for reasons Kilgarin didn’t care to read. “That’s why we’re together, him and me. Who else, either of us?”
“You want in?”
“Contract pensions go only so far. Of course I want in.”
“What about J’kar’s pension?”
“The way he broke, he gets nothing. You know that. You were there, you saw it happen.”
“You’ve been supporting him?” Kilgarin asked; Whyte nodded. “Tell him I meant the offer. Make him understand. And both of you. be there tonight. There’s going to be a party. A small celebration.”
“We’re not good at socials. Kilgarin.”
“Stop protecting him, Whyte. Be there.” Without glancing at J’kar, Kilgarin walked briskly out. pausing at the door to pay his tab and straighten his vest and tunic, very distinctly aware that on his body, at least, there were no scars.
Behind the bar a narrow alley dropped down a series of wide steps to a small plaza. Kilgarin stopped beside the fountain, shifted himself onto the stone rim, and stared into the waters below. Bits of metal were scattered over the bottom of the pool, some engineer’s effort to give the fountain an aura of history: green and blue and gold, the credit chits glittered in the moonlight—unaffected by the motion of the fountain waters, the chits were only for viewing. Kilgarin ran his hand through the water, cooling the heat that throbbed under the skin. No outward scars, oh, no. But there were reminders.
Suddenly his hand clenched into a fist and slammed hard against the stone rim, splashing water over his thighs. He sat trembling, watching his image split and reform in the spreading ripples. After a moment another reflection moved in beside his own. Marka. She tried a smile.
“Still remembering, Killy?” Her voice was soft behind him.
“No memory, Marka. Just a nerve spasm, only that.” He cradled his bruised knuckles and glanced around at her. “You came up rather quietly just now.”
“I saw you leaving the tavern. Are you sure you have no memories? This was our place, once…” She laughed at him, tilting her head as she moved closer. “I waited for you to come back, that night. T wanted to explain. I even went to the port, but I couldn’t find you. I guess you didn’t want me to.”
“If you believe that, what am I supposed to say?”
He edged off the fountain and stood facing her. She’d lost weight since the last time he’d been on Endrim, three years before. Her shoulders were narrower, two sharp strokes under the tan material of her blouse. Her hips were flat, nudging out only slightly below her waist, sinking straight into her thighs. She wore a jumper, something knit from black synthetic wool: it was frayed beneath her breasts and at her waist. She went barefoot, apparently no longer attempting to conceal the ruin of her left foot with boots—perhaps she was proud of the limp she affected,
Kilgarin thought, proud of the accident that kept her from being a mindship Physical.
She felt him studying her and drew her arms more tightly together under her bosom. When he continued to stare, she laughed. The laughter was a return cut. They each knew the other’s weakness.
“I know I tried to hurt you, Killy. I was just trying to get back at you…for being so cold. He didn’t mean anything to me. He was just a customer.”
“Have you found passage Out yet, Marka?”
“Who’d take me on, Killy? Who needs a Physical who can’t do work? Oh, I’ve survived, but it hasn’t been good here these past few months…no jobs, and none of the Company plants are contracting…everything’s taken. Newcomers everywhere for work in the taverns, so who’d be desperate enough to take me? You?”
“Maybe,” Kilgarin said. “In a way.”
Her smile faded a moment, then returned, a wry upturned line. “I can’t live on might-be’s and maybes, Killy. I’m almost through my pension…” Shivering suddenly, she uncrossed her arms and rubbed her palms along the sides of her face, as though trying to wake herself from a half-sleep. She tossed her mane of crimson hair, eyed him casually. “How long are you down this time around? Still with the Drowner?”
“Not anymore. I’m finished.”
He caught the surge of hope, not so clear as a Sensitive’s broadcast, but there: dull and blunt, searching. He cut it out of his mind. He didn’t want to know the reason for the rush of hope inside her. Practical or emotional, why she cared didn’t matter to him. That she did care was almost enough to touch him—but he pulled away, not wanting more delusions. He pulled out of the momentary Sensitivity.
“For good?” she asked. “You’re done shipping Out?”
“I almost pushed it one run too many, Marka. My Contract is up, so I cashed it in, and now I’m setting up on my own. That’s what I meant by taking you on.”
He explained it all, careful not to look at her again. The plaza was paved with cobblestones, new stones, washed clean by the previous evening’s rain. “You can come in with me,” he finished. “I’ll need someone experienced to handle the girls.”
“That would be nice.” Her voice was so low he almost missed her answer. Almost, it was the same girlish voice she’d used when they’d sat on the balcony of his hotel room that distant summer, holding hands and pretending to an age they’d left behind centuries before. Kilgarin brushed off the feeling of dejà vu.
“Come to my place tonight,” he said. “There’s a party. Ask J’kar; he’ll know where.” He turned and started to move out of the plaza, walking quickly. Suddenly he stopped and called back over his shoulder, “Come tonight, Marka. We’ll need you. We’ll all need you. Tonight.”
If she answered, he didn’t hear.
