Authors: C. J. Cherryh
Rimrunners (11 page)
Venture, maybe at Bryant's, wherever. She left the whereabouts of the ship as a
whole to the mofs and just wished she knew if she dared go back to the lockers
and see where her duffle was; she wished she knew if she had a bunk or whatever,
and if she let herself think as far as the other prospects of settling in, her
stomach got upset. But she figured she was on somebody's list, sooner or later,
and somebody was going to tell her. Muller's reaction told her it was a nervous
ship and experience told her staying low and quiet was the best thing to do for
the time being.
Especially if it got her fed and got her a sit-down, long enough to get the
wobbles out, before some mof showed up with a duty-list.
Damn sure.
Damn near a med case, with teeth sore and the bones showing in her hands till
she hardly recognized them for hers—but she was afraid to go to the meds and
complain, afraid to start out her sign-up on this ship with a med report, afraid
to go anywhere near officers and people who might take a close look at her and
then start watching her more than they needed to.
But a man came by, stopped and stood in front of her.
"Yeager."
She looked up, did a fast scan from the boots to the faded collar with the three
black bands of a civ ship's officer and the circle-and-circuit of Engineering on
the sleeve.
"Sir," she said, "Bet Yeager, sir." She would have gotten up, but the man was in
the way.
"Been a problem, have you?"
"Had a problem, sir. Don't want one here."
The man stared at her a long moment like she was a contamination. Finally he put
his hands on his hips. "What's your experience?"
"Freighters, sir. Machine-shop. Injection molding. Small-scale hydraulics,
electronics. General maintenance. Twenty years."
"We aren't real specialized."
"Yes, sir."
"Means you do any damn thing that needs doing, at any hour around the clock.
Means you do it right, Yeager, or you tell somebody you can't, you don't fuck it
up."
"Yessir. No problem with that, sir."
"Name's Bernstein. Chief of Engineering, Alterday. Hear it?"
"Yessir."
"What in hell are you doing here on your butt?"
"No assignment yet, sir."
"Got a mainday crew of thirteen, alterday's down to two. We're a re-fit. That's
special problems. And they give me a damn small-hydraulics mechanic." Bernstein
drew breath. "With no papers."
Long silence, then.
"You screw anything up," Bernstein said, "I'll break your fingers one at a
time."
"Yessir."
Another long silence. "You got a trial run on my shift, Yeager. We got a few
areas you keep your nose out of, we got a few cranky systems I'm real particular
about. You got a piece of property in stowage one, you get that, you get
yourself checked into quarters. Somebody show you around?"
"Nossir."
"Why's it my job?"
"I dunno, sir. Sorry, sir."
"You got any bunk that isn't claimed, ring's got ten sections, front number's
your section-number, ten-four's a stowage, eight-four's crew quarters, section
five's bridge, one-one's engineering; you see a white line on the deck you don't
cross it, you don't cross it, without a direct order: sections four, five, and
six are all white-lined, you got to walk the long way around. You steal,
Yeager?"
"No, sir!"
"You see this deck?"
"Yessir."
"You got a job. You get your supplies from ten-two, you get on it, get it done.
Crew-wise, on your shift, I'll tell you right now, Musa's all right, you're all
right with him. NG, you don't mess with. That do, Yeager?"
"Yessir."
"Anything I need to know?"
"Nossir."
Bernstein stared at her long and steady. "Regulations are posted in quarters,
you take a look. It's coming up 0600 right now, alterday. You get that deck
clean before you go to sleep, I don't care whose shift it is. Got any problems
with me, Yeager?"
"Nossir," she said.
"Good," Bernstein said. And walked off.
Put an armor-rig in working-order, take it apart and put it together again,
right down to the circuitry, same with weapons, sir, probably any fire-system a
spook might carry, damn right, sir.
Twenty years' seniority on Africa.
Sir.
First thing, you consulted the reg-u-la-tions.
And the reg-u-la-tions Bernstein named were official print with the Alliance
seal behind them, shiny-new, behind plastic, mounted right on the wall, all
about the captain's authority and how you had a right to station-law if you
wanted to appeal a case off your ship; and another sheet that was Alliance
military law, that said they could shoot you out of hand for mutiny or sabotage
or obstructing the execution of proper orders while the ship was in a power-up
condition or in an emergency; but there was another list taped on at the bottom,
and those were the ones you wanted to know, the ones peculiar to this ship—like
you could get on report for going onto the bridge without a permission from an
exec, and if you were working with tools you damn well better have an adequate
belt clip or a wall clip on every one of them and never have but one outsized
number clipped to you.
That meant a ship that tended to move in a hurry. No surprise there.
So, first thing, you got around to the stowage directory and you got yourself a
belt and some clips and then you got into the supply locker Bernstein had said
and got to it, wiping down the burn-deck, mindless scut. You could drift and do
it, you could shut your eyes and halfway sleep sometimes and just feel the tread
with your fingers to know you were on, and check sometimes with your eyes to
make sure the strokes didn't miss any dust.
Effin' scrub-duty.
But you got to hear a bit, like the couple saying the ship was on a
sit-and-watch, like the three bitching about somebody named Orsini, somebody
saying Fitch had put somebody named Simmons on report for a slow answer to a
page, and Simmons was asking for a transfer to alterday, but Orsini wouldn't
take him: you got a feel for the way things drifted on board.
But then the back started to ache and the arms ached, and the kneecaps got to
feeling every shift of weight.
And you knew every damn doorway and every crack and crevice in the burn-deck,
and you damned every foot that stepped off the mat. You got to know those prints
that did it often and what size they were, and thought if you ever found that
son of a bitch he was meat.
Up to the galley by noon, for tea and a Keis-roll, the hard way, quiet there,
because mainday was sleeping.
All the way around through the galley and past sickbay—right next to each other;
and right around to the white-line and the bridge by a/d 1800. The bridge was a
swing-segment like the galley, thank God, no burn-deck to scrub at all, its
cylinder-segments oriented itself whichever way the G might want to be—
And hell if she wanted to ask Fitch or the captain permission to trek through
the bridge to the burn-deck on around the ring, so she gathered up her supplies
and stowed them, and went on back down-ring to the galley for a sit-down supper
and a plate of real food and cup of hot tea with mainday's breakfast—and she
didn't want trouble with Fitch, she didn't want trouble with anybody, so she
avoided looking at people, especially looking them in the eye or starting up a
conversation, just stared blankly at the main-deck and all those possible
footprints people were making walking back and forth—footprints had occupied her
mind all day, still occupied it, in her condition—and she mentally numbed out,
tasting the food and the tea down to its molecules, it was so good, and finding
her hands so sore holding a fork hurt.
People stared at her. She knew they did. A few talked about her, out of earshot,
masked by Loki's constant white noise. She could get scared if she let herself.
So she just finished her dinner and got up without getting involved with
anybody, chucked the recyclables, and went down and got the supplies out again.
That was halfway around Loki's ring.
Up the other way around the ring, this time, past downside ops and the purser's
office, and Engineering, where mainday crew was getting to work and alterday had
gone to rec.
Arms and knees were beyond simple hurting now. She sat to work, she inched her
way along, changing hands every time she changed position to keep the shoulders
and hands from cramping up, and by now it hurt so much all over she just shut
the pain out as irrelevant to any one place.
Past Engineering and up toward the shop and the machine storage.
Past 2000 hours a/d, and people walked by, crew evidently on errands, occasional
officers. People minded their own business, mostly. Occasional laughter grated
on her nerves, maybe not even her they were talking about, but she figured it
likely was: she was the new item, she was getting it from Bernstein, she'd
already had it from Fitch, and probably it satisfied their souls to see somebody
else sweating on a duty maybe five or six of them in some other department would
be doing, otherwise. At least they were quiet enough. And no one interfered with
her and nobody messed with her clean deck.
She gave the occasional kibitz-squad the eye, just enough to know who the
sum-bitches were. Just enough to let them know it was war if they messed with
her or put a foot near that mat. No one tried her. And she went on. Could stop
for a cup of tea, she thought. Could go and put the stuff away and get a tea or
a soft drink—hell, it was past mess, supposed to be her rec-time, they might let
her have a soft drink on credit, and tea might be free. Bernstein hadn't said no
break, the regs in galley had said there was beer for a cred, honest-to-God cold
beer you could buy during your own supper hours, if you weren't on call, regs
let you have that. There was that vodka in her duffle if it hadn't been stolen:
regs didn't object to that either, on your own time.
But she had mof territory yet to go, she didn't want to go and plead cases with
anybody tonight and her knees and her under-padded right hip were halfway numb
now. She had no desire to let the bruises rest and stiffen up and start hurting
all over again.
Just a quarter of the ring or less to go, not so trafficked as the crew-quarters
side. Maybe she could get finished before midnight. Maybe get that cup of tea.
Even a sandwich. Knees wouldn't bruise so easy, arms wouldn't shake if she got a
few regular meals. Please God.
Feet strolled up. Stopped. Stood there.
No stripe. Nothing but a hash-mark and an Engineering insignia. Just the two of
them in this line-of-sight in the dim systems and shop area, and her
trouble-sense started going off, little alarm, a larger and larger one, as the
man kept standing there.
She edged forward on her track. Another arm's-reach.
"One of Bernie's ship-tours, huh?"
"Yeah," she said. "Go to hell."
He didn't go anywhere. She kept wiping, edged forward another hitch.
"Real clean job," he said.
She said nothing, just kept her head down. It could start like this, you could
get killed. And if you killed the bastard you could end up taking a long cold
walk. The bastard, of course, knew it.
"Name's Ramey," the bastard said.
"Yeah. Fine."
"Friendly."
"Yeah. Real. You want to stand out of my light?"
The bastard moved around behind her. "View ain't bad."
"Thanks."
"A little skinny."
"Go to hell."
"Now, I was going to offer you a beer."
She looked around at the pair of feet, looked up at a not-at-all bad face.
Younger than herself, ragged black hair, not-at-all bad rest of him. What in
hell! she thought, squinted to unfuzz her tired eyes, and recollected Bernstein
talking about an all-right type on her shift, name of Musa.
So she got painfully to her feet, trailing clip-lines, wiped her hands on her
legs and gave him a good look-over. "Beer, I could stand, but the way I'm going,
doesn't look likely tonight."
"I can wait." He leaned his hand up against the wall, up real close. She had
this defense-twitch, a gut-deep he-could-use-a-knee twitch, but it wasn't the
way he was going, shift of his body that put her up against the wall—Oh, good
God, she thought with a little wilting sigh and an urge to put her knee up,
hard. She was disgusted, annoyed he was going to be a son of a bitch, and stood
there a breath or two thinking really hard about doing something about it,
except that being In with somebody was safer than trying to lone-it, except,
point two, that he was too good-looking for a move like this and he was probably
trying to have a laugh at her expense. So she leaned up against him, soapy hands
and sweat and all and still felt little jolts where his hands touched, damn
difficult to ignore.
He got warm real fast. Breathing a little heavy. So it wasn't all a set-up: he
was really interested. And he asked: "You want that beer tonight?"
"Anything come with it?"
"Yeah," he said. "No one's in the shop stowage right now."