Tripoint (14 page)

He heard other traffic in the corridor and retreated from the gridwork, went back to his bunk and sat down with his back to the face of the cell, so he wouldn’t have to deal with anybody. Wherever he went the cable trailed, and reminded him that even if the door opened he hadn’t a chance at escaping… or putting up damn much of a fight against anybody with a key and access to the cable switch.

Ransom wouldn’t work. He’d been in a place he shouldn’t have been and they knew he knew, and if the station cops came asking, he didn’t know what
Corinthian
might do, but he didn’t think they were going to turn him loose to tell the police or the merchant trade at large what he’d been doing or what he’d seen and not seen.

Not if gossip was right about
Corinthian’s
business.

Traffic came and went outside.

And it had to be board-call,
Corinthian
calling in its crew, even while the loading was still going on. You didn’t ordinarily crowd up the ship with crew underfoot until they had something to do—unless they’d for some reason had to get off the docks.

Unless they were shortening their dock time and planning to pull out.

In which case he didn’t see a thing Mischa or Marie could do about it. Station police could say Stop, and demand to search the ship, but only if they could come up with plausible evidence: a merchanter deck was the same as foreign territory, merchanters didn’t allow boarders as a matter of principle, while stations depended so much on ship traffic they just wouldn’t push that point unless they had very clear evidence of a customs crime.

That left him nothing to do but sit and worry at the lock. He searched the bath for anything he could use for a pick, but he couldn’t find anything—there weren’t any drawers, and he tried bashing it with the butt of the wall-mounted razor.

But it didn’t do any good.

Just after that spate of noise-making, the loading stopped.

The whole ship sat in silence, except the rush of air in the vents.

He went to the bars again, trying to see something, anything to tell him what was going on.

Then came the unmistakable thump as the hatch sealed. A moment later the louder thump as the lines closed down and detached, and a siren sounded throughout the ship, no word from the captain, just that lonely, warning sound that said hazard, hazard, take stations, the ship is moving.

It was a nightmare. The misjudgment. The mistakes he’d made, that led this direction, step by step. Thinking that he’d win Marie’s… acceptance, if no more than that. He’d gambled his safety. Thought he might win Marie’s acceptance—and her sanity. And he’d lost.

He hoped Marie was free, and safe. He hoped nobody had gotten hurt on his account.

But it was decidedly time to sit down and take hold. Which he did, with a lump gathering in his throat. He located the safety restraints on the bunk and sat down, cross-legged, not expecting but a short zero
g
, and a gentle shove, not worth belting in for.

It was far more than a gentle shove. He grabbed the frame of the bunk and the safety hold on the wall, and braced his feet, one on the deck and one on the mattress—thinking he’d just made a serious mistake.

He didn’t know how long the acceleration was going to last. He dared not let go the handholds he had to get the safety restraints fastened. His heart was going doubletime.

He didn’t
like
the ship putting out like that. He didn’t
like
a pilot who skirted the regs and a bridge that didn’t warn people when they were moving.

It struck him then that there couldn’t be kids or seniors aboard. It just wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t a Family ship, never mistake it again, and if he didn’t lose his grip and break his neck during launch, he’d be luckier than he deserved for trusting anything about it.

They went inertial then, a moment of float, and he snatched the restraints across and jammed the first and the second clip shut with shaking hands.

After that he lay flat on his back and felt the stomach-jolting
g
-shifts of maneuver of a ship that didn’t care about crew comfort, and didn’t engage the ring for crew safety, or warn anyone beyond sounding the siren.

In a hurry to leave and doing a show-off bit of maneuvering, he could read it—screw you all, the pilot was saying to
Sprite
, and to Viking, and maybe to all civilized places, maybe just because Austin Bowe was pissed, who knew?

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—i—

“MARIE.”

Depend on it. Saja found her. Turned up at her elbow in the Trade Bureau offices, all concern, all indignation.

Marie keyed up another file in the Financial Access section, downloaded it… they said a ship at Viking Free Port had open access to the trade records. Translation: they let you look. If you understood the software and knew what files might be significant, good luck, you had a chance, but the too-damned-helpful system wanted to pre-digest the reports for you if you got into the market area, not give you access to the raw data, and
that
was a piece of computer cheek.

So
Corinthian
had pulled out. Spooked out, left, maybe to change its whole pattern, her worst fear, and she was not in a mood to be lectured to by Family.

Maybe, with luck, and substantial evidence, she could get the cops into Miller’s warehouse.

“Marie.”

“I’m not deaf.” The station files were in database and wouldn’t be accessed from Sprite’s ops boards, the Rules were against it. Unfortunately so was the barrier system. So one trekked in and asked questions, and even load-splicing couldn’t fit the total DB onto any data storage medium that the casual questioner might carry into the Trade Bureau.

“Mischa’s been worried.”

“I don’t know why.” Another splice. Another capture. Hours to reconstruct the bastard when she got it home.

“He’s not happy about the fines, Marie.”

“I imagine not. Sorry about that. We’ll make it up.”

“You’re due back to handle offloading.”

“Charles can do it. He’s perfectly competent.”

“What are you doing?”

“Trade information. Data. What else is the Trade Bureau for?”

“Fine. Fine. I’ll tell him.—Tell Tom get his rear back on duty. You don’t need him here.”

Saja was Tom’s officer, on the bridge. Saja had reason to ask.

Saja had actual need-to-know where Tom was. And should, by now. She turned away from the monitor and looked at him straight-on, with the least disturbed inkling of things not quite in order.

“He’s not with me,” she said. “Have the cops got him?”

“The cops didn’t arrest anybody, either side. He’s not with you. He’s not on the ship. I called them five minutes ago, max.”

Wandering around the docks looking for her. “The damned fool,” she said.

“That ship’s out of dock, Marie. It’s outbound.”

She knew where the ship was. She looked at the clock on the wall of the Trade Bureau. Hours out. Computers ate up human time—you lost track between keystrokes and during processing.

And Saja was saying Tom could be
with
that ship?

She didn’t think so. “He’s not that stupid. He’s searching the bars, is where he is.”

“We’ve got people all over the bars. We’re looking. For you. And for Tom. You’re accounted for. Where’s Tom?”

“Wherever he thinks I’d go. Bars. Sleepovers.—Miller Transship.” She didn’t want to suggest that last name. She didn’t want them forewarned. But—”
Corinthian’s
broker. Miller Transship. Warehouses. Phone
Sprite-com
, get them to inquire at Miller’s, just down the row from
Corinthian’s
berth.”

“Miller’s,” Saja said, and went, she supposed, for a phone.

They just weren’t searching right. Tom was going to duck them. The kid was no fool.

But the more they stamped around searching for the damn kid, disturbing evidence…

Most urgently, they needed to find the damn kid and quit stirring things up, before he or they did do something stupid.

She was uneasy. Couldn’t really remember where she was in the data problem. Damn the brat, he’d always had a knack for disturbing her concentration.

And Tom probably
was
staying out of reach and deliberately out of touch with
Sprite
simply because he thought
she
was staying out of touch (true, until now) and he was looking for her. It could take a while to reel him in.

Though you’d think once
Corinthian
had gone on the board for Departure, the kid would catch a notion that the game was up at that point, retreat, call
Sprite
and report in… since
she
, at that point, had no more reason to stay under-surface.

Damn.

He
would
show up. He
had
to show up. She didn’t want to leave her search looking for an erratic, jump-at-shadows brat who was old enough to take care of himself.

She jabbed a key, dumped the current operation, pocketed her data-cards on the way to the door, and swore to kill the kid when she found him.

—ii—

TOM STARED AT THE CEILING, feeling the push on the ship and thinking how if he’d had the presence of mind to have counted when the shove started he could have told something about the actual
v
, based on the undock pattern.

But what did it matter?
Corinthian
was going and he was going with it,

No way
Sprite
could throw over that government contract to chase after him. Not even Marie could talk them into it.

Only hope to God that Mischa’s fears were exaggerated and
Corinthian
wasn’t going to lay for
Sprite
out in the dark.

Out in the same dark, a body could go out the airlock and never be reported, if his own biological father wanted to get rid of him. And what paternal interest had Austin Bowe ever needed in the offspring he’d probably… spacer-fashion… scattered on God-knew-what ships? Men didn’t generally keep up with their own. They had their own ship-board nieces and nephews, if they had sisters. And always they had cousins. Men didn’t have to give a damn. And Bowe hadn’t a reputation for fatherly concern. The Bowe he’d heard about
could
throw a man out the airlock.

Better than some ways to go, he thought in morbid self-persuasion, while the ship ripped along toward that deep cold. The absolute zero was supposed to get you before you felt much. You froze solid before you could get a breath of vacuum. You frosted your lungs. Your eyes froze and your blood froze and you’d be floating with the dust, exactly the way your outbound breath had left you—until some star near enough went nova and you got shoved along on the wavefront and included in the infall of a next-generation star.

Or none might be near enough and you’d just drift there till entropy slowed down the stars for good.

A permanent sort of half-life, as it were.

Permanent as the galaxy. No damn
fathers
to deal with.

Father, hell! There had to be a word for a guy with as little invested as Austin Bowe.

Rapist talked about his relations with the mother in question. Society hadn’t made a word for his relations with the kid that resulted.

Hadn’t made a word for the situation between them or given him a word he wanted to say to Austin Bowe.

Thanks for screwing my mother? Thanks for not showing up till now. Screw
you
, sir, for a damned self-centered son of a bitch.

Acceleration was steady at
+2
or thereabouts. The straps would hold against five and six times that. He’d no fear of them giving way. But
Corinthian
spent energy like it was handed out free, and he measured his breaths, feeling the anger of a ship forced out of port, maybe out of civilization altogether.

Or—remotely possible, if Marie had found her evidence—and his heart picked up a beat—they could have the military on their tail.

Which wasn’t good news, to think of it. Go up in a fireball, they would, then, and good-bye Tom Hawkins.

It was a nightmare. He didn’t know where it had started, whether he’d been in it all his life and this turn of things was someone else’s doing, or whether he was that abysmally stupid he’d let himself in for it, going into that warehouse and caring about Marie.

He didn’t want to think about reasons. He’d never got it straight about caring for people. His aunt Lydia who’d studied psych had told him when he was five he was emotionally deprived and he never would be normal. So he figured he had to copy, because he was different enough, and he figured he’d better pick good people to copy, like his nursery-mates, sometimes, like Marie sometimes, when he was living with her. Like Saja, again, when he got to know Saja. Mischa…

Definitely not Mischa.

Saja was all right. People liked Saja. But Saja wasn’t stupid.

Saja wouldn’t have gotten into it. Even if he cared what happened to Marie. And he didn’t think it was Marie’s fault, him being in the warehouse, he couldn’t blame that on her.

He couldn’t tell why things happened, most of the time. He certainly couldn’t figure this one. He didn’t know as much as most people. He’d always figured in the scales of the universe he’d somehow come a little short of what ordinary people got, and not known a lot of things ordinary people knew. It wasn’t not knowing his father. A lot of people didn’t know that. It was not knowing other things. It was like so damn many contrary signals from Marie and from aunt Lydia and Mischa and them changing their stories all the time, and the fact nobody else liked him much, of his agemates. There was just something wrong, there was something he’d missed, and getting snatched away from
Sprite
like that, and never seeing anybody again, it was just one more ripping away of information he couldn’t get now. He wasn’t going back, nobody could get back to their ship unless they were on the same route… he’d accumulate station-debt waiting, even if Bowe let him go finally back at Viking; and he wasn’t honestly sure Mischa would spend the ship-account to get him out of hock.