Empery (26 page)

“My job,” Ramiz said curtly.

“It looks like you’re trying to do mine. What did you think he was going to do? Stow away? He’s just an old man with a fantasy. He couldn’t hurt anything. There wasn’t any need to go after him like that.”

Ramiz could not resist the temptation to parade his superior knowledge before the youth. “You dumb little mouthpiece,“he snarled. “What’s he have to do, go sit in his chair before you’d recognize him? He’s an old man, all right, but he’s not here fantasizing. He’s here remembering.”

Better judgment finally silenced Ramiz before he said Langston’s former name. “Now get out of my way,” he growled, “before I knock you down and walk out of here on your face.”

He enjoyed the sight of Hawkins hastening to comply.

Back in the tour-guide booth, still fuming over Ramiz’s presumption, Hawkins struggled with what the colonel had said. Could the bearded old man actually be Merritt Thackery?It seemed impossible. And yet who else could Ramiz have meant? Hawkins tried to study the face of the mystery passenger, but he sat sunken into his chair, chin down, head turned half away. The seat-assignment chart said the man’s name was J. M. Langston, which proved nothing.

If it is Thackery, I can’t let him leave without talking to him
.

But how could it be? Yes, Thackery’s deepyacht was here. The Museum had tried to acquire it but had been outbid by the Colony Manager’s Office. Could it have been Thackery himself that brought it to Arcturus?
I thought he was dead. But even if he’s not, why would he come here?

The pale, scarred patches on the man’s hand—Hawkins suddenly remembered a grisly sequence in the holoflick
Appointment With Destiny
. In the course of one of the landings he made while pursuing the D’shanna, Merritt Thackery had been bitten by a native organism and nearly died of poisoning, his skin turning black and splitting open to reveal raw red flesh. He did not know how much the makers of the film might have stretched the truth—but if there had been such an incident, surely it would have left its mark.

But he would have had the flaws corrected, surely—who would have worn such scars willingly?

By the time
Viking
returned on its berth at Equatorial Station, Hawkins was no more sure of his facts. But he was firmly determined not to let the matter end there.

Getting to Langston proved to be a test of patience, since Hawkins did not want Ramiz to know of his interest. Happily, all of Equatorial Station’s dock facilities were concentrated in one area, with the Museum’s offices located directly across from the boarding lounge for the Cheia shuttle. It was not difficult for Hawkins to find reasons to linger in the offices, and an easy matter to keep an eye on Langston from there.

Ramiz was also lingering and watching, though somewhat more obviously, almost as if he wanted Langston to be aware that he was there. Twice Langston shambled up the corridor toward the main station, with Ramiz following openly. Each time, he returned within twenty minutes, Ramiz dogging his heels, and took a seat in the shuttle boarding lounge.

Not until the gate attendant arrived and Langston lined up with the others to register for the 18:00 shuttle did Ramiz relax his vigilance. As Langston took his seat once more, the colonel approached the attendant, exchanged a few words with him, and then, apparently satisfied by what he had learned, headed off in the direction of the Defense Annex.

That was Hawkins’s opportunity. Leaving the Museum offices, he double-checked the corridor for any sign of Ramiz, then headed for Langston. Using a side entrance to the lounge, he came up out of nowhere to take Langston by the shoulder with a firm grip.

“Would you come with me, please,” he said in as authoritative a tone as he could muster.

As though he had no will left with which to resist, Langston allowed himself to be steered down the corridor to an unoccupied comfort station. When they were inside, Hawkins locked the door behind them, then gestured toward the single chair.

“Sit down, please,” he said.

Moving slowly, Langston complied. Hawkins hopped up and sat on the edge of the sink facing him. “You’re Merritt Thackery,” he said, leaning forward.

Langston closed his eyes and his features seemed to sag.

“You are, aren’t you?”

Eyes still closed, Langston nodded. “I didn’t know that I was being watched, even here, until today,” he said in a half whisper.

“You are. Not by me. By that man who caught you on B-deck. Colonel Ramiz, from the Defense Branch.” Langston—Thackery—opened his eyes but still avoided looking at Hawkins. “I had hoped I had left all that behind me,” was his tired answer.

“Why are you here? Did you come all this way just to see
Munin
?”

Thackery said nothing.“What, do you think I’m working for Richardson?” Hawkins prodded. “I despise the man.” Still Thackery was silent, staring at the floor.

Hawkins frowned and rubbed his face with one long-fingered hand. “See, I keep trying to figure out why you came here, why a little backwater colony like Cheia. Somehow I don’t think it’s a coincidence that
Munin
is here too. And I keep trying to figure out what Colonel Ramiz was worried about. The answers keep coming out the same.”

At that moment the first boarding call for the Cheia shuttle sounded through the comfort station’s speaker. “My flight—“Thackery said, starting to rise out of his chair.

“Sit down. We have fifteen minutes, at least,” Hawkins said sharply. When Thackery meekly acceded, Hawkins continued. “You know, I know a lot about these ships. Not just what I say during the tours. I’ve read most everything the curators can dig up. But there’s one thing I’m not sure about, something you can answer. What if there’d been a disaster that left only one crew member alive—some kind of contamination, maybe? Would he have been stranded? Can one man handle a survey ship?”

Thackery shuddered violently and folded his hands in front of his mouth.

“It must bother you, all these strangers trampling through your ship,” Hawkins said softly. “Peering into the room where you and Dr. Koi slept—listening to the ghosts on the bridge and thinking that’s the way it was—”

“What do you want from me?” Thackery cried.

Hawkins flashed a quick, sympathetic smile. “I don’t want anything from you. I want to
give
something to you. I want to tell you that if Captain Ramiz is right—if you came here to try to take
Munin
—that I’ll help.”

Thackery raised his eyes to meet Hawkins’s and stared unbelievingly into them.

“I don’t think you could manage it on your own,” Hawkins said. “Not with Ramiz watching. Not without someone to tell you where to find the cutout box the curators installed to disable the controls during tours. But we could do it together, if that’s what you want. I can handle Ramiz. I already know how I’ll do it.”

“Why would you do this?” Thackery asked wonderingly.“Why would you care?”

Hawkins smiled wryly. “You’re Merritt Thackery. What more reason do I need?” But instead of warming up at the flattery, Thackery’s expression frosted over again. “You wouldn’t have left Earth and come all this way unless it was important,” Hawkins went on anxiously. “And you wouldn’t think of taking
Munin
unless you had a need that justified it.”

“And what if my only reasons are selfish ones, if the only needs I care about now are my own?”

Shaking his head, Hawkins said, “Whatever she means to you, it’s more than she means to us, to the Museum,
Munin
is yours if you want her—we owe you so much more. Will you take her?”

For a long moment there was silence, and Thackery would not meet Hawkins’s eyes. “It—it was easier to leave Earth than you might think,” Thackery said at last, slowly, as though the words were painful, as if the very act of self-disclosure required breaking deeply ingrained patterns. “I don’t belong there—I never really have. It’s been a layover, a breathing space between missions.
Tycho—Descartes—Munin—Fireside
—they were my real homes, the only places that life stood still long enough for me to understand the rules.”

Thackery raised his head and their eyes met. In Thackery’s blue-gray orbs Hawkins saw pain and vulnerability, a loneliness and weariness that he could not touch. They were eyes that seemed to remember everything they had ever seen in a life spanning half a millennium.

“Will you take her?” Hawkins repeated. “Will you let me help?“Thackery drew a deep breath and released it as a sigh. “Yes,” he said.

Hawkins hopped off the sink and onto his feet. “Friday is the last tour of the season,” he said, moving to the door and unlocking it. “Come on the tour again. I’ll hold a seat for you.”

“As simple as that?”

“For you—yes.” His hand on the door actuator, Hawkins turned to go, then turned back to Thackery. “If you could just tell me—where will you go that
Fireside
couldn’t take you?”

“Out,” Thackery said, his eyes misting. “Out where there are no colonels to watch me. Where there’s no one that wants anything from me.
Munin
will take me where I can be alone. Where there are no stars in the sky, only galaxies—” Thackery’s voice broke, and he looked away.

“I’ll—I’ll look for you Friday,” Hawkins said, regretting having asked. “You have about five minutes to catch your shuttle,” he added. Then he slipped out the door quietly, feeling for all the world like an intruder in the other man’s life.

Friday brought both Thackery and Ramiz back to
Viking
. The crucial first step was to seat them far enough apart so that Hawkins could draw the line separating the two tour groups for
Munin
somewhere between them.

Thackery had the first seat on the aisle, from which position he would be first in line when it was time to cross to
Munin.
Hawkins filled the seats around him with two families with eight children between them.

So when Ramiz came to the counter and demanded, “Put me as close to Langston—that one, there—as you can,” Thackery was already insulated.

“I can get you across the aisle and one seat back,” Hawkins said helpfully.

“No. Put me on the same side as him.”

“Row H?”

“Fine.”

Hawkins resisted the impulse to smile.

For the first time in three seasons the tour seemed interminable.
You’re turning into a skimmer
, Hawkins thought, chiding himself. But he forgave himself his impatience, and even the flubs his inattention created, knowing the reason.

Finally
Munin
was in sight. Hawkins waited until
Viking
was alongside and the transfer tunnel extended before announcing, “The first group will consist of Rows A through G—”

For a moment Ramiz sat rooted in his chair by surprise. Then, after looking around the cabin as if to see who might try to stop him, he bounced up out of his seat and headed forward. But by then the aisle was full, and he had no choice but to bide his time at the end of the line.

At the head of the line Thackery’s eyes locked with Hawkins’s, asking a silent question. “Go right on aboard, sir,“Hawkins said. “Follow the blue line and wait at the other end. F-5,” he added in a whisper as Thackery brushed by him.

Hawkins had unlocked the isolation cabin at the end of the previous day’s tour, and he trusted that Thackery understood he was to wait there. He passed him through without registering a tally on his counter, then turned his attention to the next face in line. “Brought the family out With you, eh?” he said brightly.

The counter showed twenty-seven when Ramiz rounded the corner from the main aisle to where Hawkins stood by the hatch.

“Excuse me, sir, but I believe you were seated in row H,“Hawkins said, blocking the corridor. Hawkins and Ramiz were alone, but the fact that there could be an audience on
Viking
’s bridge—in truth, Hawkins hoped that there was—required carefully chosen words. “Wait your turn, please. I’ll be back for the rest of the group in a few minutes.”

“You little jerk, he came back for a reason. You don’t know what he could do in there—”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hawkins said innocently. “Now, if you’d just return to your seat—”

“Get out of my way,” Ramiz snarled, placing one hand on Hawkins’s chest and giving a shove.

Hawkins staggered back, but he had been prepared for it and kept his balance. His right hand went to his hip, and as Ramiz tried to pass, the hand came up in what must have seemed to Ramiz to be an attempt to ward off any further contact—except that Hawkins’s hand was not empty.

In three seasons Hawkins had never had cause to use the small aerosol of Sub-Dew that rode unobtrusively on his belt, but he remembered all he needed to about how it worked and what to expect. There was a sharp hissing sound, and a narrowly focused jet of mist caught Ramiz full in the face. Almost between one step and the next, Ramiz slumped sideways against the bulkhead, his rubbery legs buckled, and he slid to the floor.

His own legs shaky, Hawkins leaned back against the bulkhead and tapped the shipnet. “Bridge, I had a little trouble with one of the passengers. If you could send a steward back to the transfer hatch—”

“We saw, Jeff,” came the reply. “Are you all right?”

“Sure. I’m fine.”

“Then go ahead with your tour. We’ll take care of it.”

Hawkins waited until the last passenger of the last tour had crossed back to
Viking
before paging Thackery in F-5. It was an unnecessary step; as though
Munin
were already his again, Thackery seemed to know the right time, appearing bare seconds later at the far end of the corridor.

“I don’t have long. I’m supposed to be powering down for the season,” Hawkins said. “The cutout box is under the panel at the gravigation station—nothing complicated, just turn everything off to on. The consumables reprocessor is still about a third full from when the curators moved out. The clothes in your cabin are your size, unless you’ve gained weight—the curators were very thorough. The drive hasn’t been touched since she came in, except cosmetically.”

“Should I wait, or—”

Hawkins shook his head. “Just long enough for
Viking
to get clear. If you don’t leave quickly, you may not get a chance to.”