Tripoint (12 page)

He found himself walking the length and width of the cell, staggering as he was, telling himself he was all right, Marie wouldn’t let him stay here, Marie would move whatever she had to move to get him out—telling himself they couldn’t have caught her, Marie was slippery as hell, that was how he’d gotten into this in the first place, and something was going to get him out,
Corinthian
couldn’t just kidnap somebody and get away with it, and they couldn’t have the motives with him they’d had with Marie. Surely not. Please God, that wasn’t even a reasonable thought.

He heard someone walking in the corridor, heard someone come near the cell. He went to the bars of the grid, leaned against them to try to see.

A young man. Blond hair, sullen expression, a face and a body language that jolted into recognition… the warehouse.

Corinthian.

Christian.

Brother.

“Alive, after all,” Christian said. “So happy to be here. I can tell.”

“Happier to be out of here. What’re my chances?”

“Hey. You’re already lucky. Pump drugs into a body, you don’t know, you woke up. I don’t know what’s your bitch.”

He didn’t think he liked Christian Bowe. But there was some cause, he could see that, for
Corinthian
not to like the situation. Christian Bowe said it—he
was
alive: point on
Corinthian’s
side.

He looked his half-brother up and down.
Pretty
boy, he thought. Papa had good genes.

“So why’d you bring me here?”

“Hell if I know.”

It was more and less answer than he expected. A disconcerting answer. “So what do you want for me to get out of here?”

“Idea of the moment, bringing you here. Don’t ask me. I don’t do long-range planning.”

“Am I the only one?”

“The only what?”

Temper flared. “The only one, the only one you brought aboard, you know damned well what I mean.”

Pretty-boy made a motion of his fingers. “No. I don’t know. What do you mean?”

“Screw you.” It wasn’t getting anywhere. This wasn’t a friend. He walked back to his bed and sat down.

“You mean your mama?” Christian asked from the other side of the bars.

He meant Marie. He was scared. And mad. He tucked his foot up into the circle of his arms and the cable dragged across his shins. He didn’t look at Christian Bowe. He didn’t expect any help, or any honest answer.

But if they’d caught Marie, he thought Christian would be happy to tell him so.

Machinery whined, sharply, suddenly. The cable jerked tight, jerked him off the bed and up against the wall, his arm drawn up and up.

The whine stopped. His arm did, the bracelet cutting into his wrist, his feet all but off the deck. It hurt, from his chest to his wrist. It scared him, what they could do, what his half-brother could do.

“Want down?”

“Son of a—”

The cable yanked him half his height up the wall. It made him think, at that point of rest, what the winch could do to his wrist once it hit the exit point.

“Want down?” Christian asked.

He had a choice. He knew he had a choice. He’d never backed down in his life. He couldn’t manage to say I give. Couldn’t find it.

The winch took up another spurt. There wasn’t another inch left.

“Want down?”

He couldn’t get the wit to talk. He couldn’t frame an appeal to reason. Or kinship.

“Good day,” Christian said, “good luck, good bye.”

“Christian!”

“Please?”

“Damn you!”

Christian walked off. He hung there, against the spin of the whole of Viking station, telling himself he’d been a fool, he had nothing to win, he’d nothing to lose, he just wanted down before his arm broke or his hand went dead, which could happen, and he didn’t know how long it could take.

“Christian, damn you!”

He’d been a fool. But he wasn’t sorry. Hell, he wasn’t sorry. He’d seen more of
Corinthian
already than he hoped to see in his lifetime, he didn’t like it, he hoped for papa’s curiosity, if nothing else, to draw him down to wherever his prison was, and he hoped to hell they hadn’t caught Marie.

God, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think of anything but that his wrist or his shoulder was going to give.

He heard Christian’s footsteps going away.

“Help!” he yelled, “help! dammit!” and couldn’t get the breath to call out, after.

Christian didn’t come back. Not right away.

Eventually—he measured the time in the clunk and thump of the loader hydraulics—Christian’s shadow darkened the bars again, and Christian hung a casual forearm through the grid.

“Want down?”

Damn you, was what he wanted to say. He’d said it to his cousins. But his cousins wouldn’t kill him, and something said Christian might, given the right moment.

“Yes,” he said through his teeth.

“Pity,” Christian said. And left him.

“Son of a
bitch
!” he yelled, and ran out of breath.

“H’
lo
, Chrissy,” came from the corridor. Someone female met Christian. He kicked the wall and tried to grab the cable with his left hand, the bracelet was pressing bone in his right one. “Mmm,” female-person said, “and aren’t we cheerful. Told Austin yet?”

He couldn’t hear what Christian said. He got the second hand on the cable. He kicked the wall, trying to get a better grip, and slammed back into the panel.

Female-person came to stand at the grid, forearms through the bars, staring at him… an apparition of glitz-paint, exposed skin in shimmer cloth, and a shock of pale, shave-sided hair. Bar-bunny, he thought. Traveling entertainment.

“Pretty, pretty, pretty,” she said. “Austin does good work.”

“You stay the hell away from him, Capella, you hear me?”

“Aww.”

The cable was cutting into his fingers. Breath was short. He shut his eyes, to time out, but Capella said, “Let him down, Chrissy. He’s going to turn blue.”

“Don’t call me Chrissy.”

“Christian. Chretien Perrault-Bowe. Be nice.”

He didn’t know what happened or who did what. But the cable spun loose of a sudden and dumped him onto his feet, hard. His arm swung down and life tingled back into a hand with the mark of the bracelet blazoned white.

Capella stuck her hand through the bars. “H’lo. I’m Capella. You’re Thomas Hawkins. How-do.”

“Capella. “ Christian wasn’t pleased.

“Jealous?”

The hand stayed. He’d thought space-brain. But he didn’t now. He saw the bracelet of stars tattooed around the woman’s wrist, and felt his blood run a little colder. He’d heard about that mark. Never seen one. Navigator’s mark, but one no merchanter needed—navigator off a damned Mazianni pirate, near as made no difference. The sort that raided shipping during the War, the sort that the Trade still ducked in mortal terror.

Surely, even time-lagged as hell, she was too young to wear that mark.

He walked up and reached out to the offered handshake.

Whine of a motor. The cable took up, jerked him backward and, off balance, down to one knee.

“Chris-sy,” Capella said.

“Damn you!” It hurt his pride, his wrist and his knee; and it was Christian’s doing, his
Corinthian
half-brother.

“Hands off,” Christian told Capella. “Don’t screw with him, you hear me?”

“Sounds like fun,” Capella said, leaning on the bars, flashed him a feral grin. “How
are
you in bed, Christian’s older brother?”

He got up from where the cable had jerked him, dusted himself with the hand that wasn’t pulled in the direction of the wall. He didn’t think Capella was any prospect of help. But he swallowed the Screw Yourself that leapt up first in his mind, and shot Capella a not-hostile look. “Is he always this tense?”

It tickled Capella. It didn’t amuse Christian.

“Just leave him alone,” Christian said. “Haven’t you got a duty assignment?”

“Not in your c-oh-c, darlin’. But probably.
Don’t
break his wrist. It just annoys Medical.”

Christian still wasn’t amused. Capella sauntered off. He expected another jerk of the cable, except Christian’s hands were both in sight. Control that temper of yours, Mischa had said, and much as he wanted to get his hands on Christian’s neck, he was in a bad situation. He didn’t like what he’d seen, he didn’t like the company, but, painful as the wrist was, and mad and scared as he was, he was in no position to carry on an argument.

“Look,” he said. “Christian. I don’t want any fight with you. All I want is to get my mother off the docks… she lied to us, she got away from us. That’s all. I just want to find her and get her back to the ship.”

“Expected to find her in a shipping can, huh?”

No answer for that one. The whole line of Marie’s thinking was evident in where they’d caught him, scraping ice off a can label. He was no help to Marie, tipping them to more than he had.

“What’s going on outside?”

“We’re loading.”

It wasn’t the answer he wanted and Christian knew it. Pretty-boy had a tilt of the head and a smug expression that made him want to pound pretty-boy to pulp, but he couldn’t come closer to the bars than he was. He couldn’t do anything. He had only to hope they’d let him go and by where they’d caught him… he didn’t think they would.

He just couldn’t figure where Marie was, or what might be happening out there.

Mischa talking sense to Austin Bowe, if he had his choice. Maybe offering a pledge not to get either of them involved in station law. No ship wanted that kind of entanglement. We get our lunatic off the docks, you give her her boy back, and neither of us files station charges…

“Have fun,” Christian said, evidently deciding the amusement value was nil here, and shoved away from the bars.

“You want to release that cable?”

“Please?”

“Please. Politely.”

Christian flipped some sort of switch beside the door. He tugged at the cable and it ran free, take-up gear disengaged. He went as far as the grid and tried to see where Christian went, but it was around the corner of the block where the cell was—tried to see the control panel for the cable, and it was out of reach, and no damn good, since the only thing you could do with it was free the gear or take the cable up, and he didn’t want to turn the winch on.

Nothing like this on
Sprite
.

Nothing like this on any honest ship. It wasn’t lower-main corridor, at least: off the axis but not much off, you could feel the slant in the deck. It was for keeping someone locked up
while
the ship was docked: half the heated, pressurized deck space a ship owned became vertical while the ring was de-spun and locked to some station’s orientation. You didn’t give up a centimeter of downside deck space to a facility that wasn’t manned during dock, and that meant this was one important facility to
Corinthian
, and prisoners weren’t unusual—or let off to station jurisdiction, where you’d think a hired-crew ship would be glad to dump its problems for good and all.

You did get the skuz of the spacer trade among hire-ons, they had that universal reputation. A Family ship very rarely took one or accepted a passenger, and that only after careful background checks and an oath from God that the individual was trustworthy. But this… this place, occupying valuable dock-positive space, was built to contain people the ship didn’t intend to turn over to station authorities, people who could try to break out and take over the ship. The cable arrangement meant you couldn’t get further across the cell than they wanted you to go. The bracelet had a kind of lock he’d never seen before, a lever that shut, that had no wobble in it, no hint of how it opened.

He went back and sat down on the bunk, and worked and worked at the lock in frightened silence.

There wasn’t anything else to do. Wasn’t any other hope. He didn’t know if they’d caught Marie or if they were still looking for her. If he was held hostage—that was a joke.

He wasn’t sure at this point that Marie wanted him back.

Justifiably.

—ii—

THE LOADING OPERATION WAS A steady flow of data on Austin’s office monitor, a steady stream of canisters thumping through the cargo access port, contiguous at the moment with the passenger ring, so it sounded through
Corinthian’s
ring structure like some monstrous heartbeat.

Machine parts was the principal load they were taking; also radioactives, medical and industrial, transshipped; chemicals, organic and otherwise; minicans of rejuv, lately legal, tapes, transshipped; minicans of personal goods and small commercial freight, transshipped and some originated at Viking—no mail: they hadn’t a bond for that, and he didn’t want the background check. But this was the payout cargo, this was the one where Miller bought on spec and they rebought, and sold at their destination; this was the one that paid the bills and kept them running. It was an eclectic load, and a few minicans went up the lift and into the ring, where they’d jury-rigged passenger accommodations into warm-cargo space.

The further you got from Earth the pricier Earth goods got, simple proposition, but the further you got from civilization, the pricier, too, the sweet taste of the motherworld. And pay they would, in credit and in various ways.

If—

Com beeped. “
Excuse me, sir,”
the voice said, from the bridge. “
Marie Hawkins. On the com. For you. Do you want to take the call
?”

Damn the woman!

Tell her go to hell? Let
her
have the frustration?

Better hear the threats, he thought. Better give the woman the satisfaction. Five got ten she
wasn’t
calling with Mischa Hawkins’ blessing and go-ahead. The woman was still on the docks somewhere.
Corinthian
had gone on the boards as Departure: 1400h. And if she was out there—and he’d bet she was—she knew.

“Quillan?”

“Sir?”

“She’s at a phone. Probably within sight of our dockside. Get a team looking.”

Not a damned word from Mischa Hawkins. The cops hadn’t arrested anybody after the set-to, just tagged the ships involved and a judge had slapped both
Corinthian
and
Sprite
with thousand credit fines, with a warning.