Tripoint (27 page)

He didn’t need to understand. He needed out of this ship. On any terms. Any at all.

He got up, tossed the cups, got a sponge and set to work on the counters with a vengeance. Didn’t know, didn’t know, didn’t know, there was a lump in his chest where certainties had used to be. Pell system was where they were now, but its docks were a foreign place, and the rules were foreign—he didn’t know what Christian was going to do.

A voice in his head still kept saying, Don’t trust him.

Had to be Capella.

Why
, for God’s sake, did Capella get off on tormenting him? Because he was there? Because she sensed he’d crack? Because he was the new guy and the rest of the crew knew her tricks?

It was as crazy-patchwork as all the rest of his thinking. Nothing made sense.

Capella’s little joke, maybe… but he wasn’t to play games with.
His father
took him seriously. Christian at least seemed to consider him a threat. He didn’t know why Capella shouldn’t.

Point of vanity, maybe. But he deserved more precaution than that. He deserved more respect than that.

Dammit!

—iv—

LONG APPROACH, THREE WHOLE days to dock—Pell was a huge, busy system: outlying shipyards, auxiliary stations for heavy industry, and refining—local traffic, but in the ecliptic, which an inbound long-hauler scorned. In at solar zenith, a quick slow-down and a lazy plowing along through the solar wind toward the inner system. You figured on an easy on board schedule if nothing had gone fritz—did your routines, pursued your hobbies, if any.

And made reservations for liberty dockside, where needed.

Inner system, nearest Pell’s Star, was primarily cloudy Down-below, sole habited planet, first alien life and first alien sapience humanity had found. Those were the facts every kid learned in primer tapes.

Which hadn’t done either the Downers or humanity a whole lot of good, for what anybody could tell. The discovery of the Downers had spooked Earth’s earthbound religions and helped start the War, that was so—no great achievement for humanity, except the whole of space-faring humanity wasn’t under Earth’s thumb any longer.

Wasn’t Christian’s generation, personally.
He
didn’t see any particular value in the War. Or in Earth. Or in planets in general, except as places to anchor stations, from which one could do nice safe dives into hazard and get back to civilization. He didn’t personally plan to take a dive like that, but it was nice some could, and bring up refined flour and condensed fruit juice.

And as for the famous eetees, Downers and humans didn’t breathe the same oxy-ratio, humans didn’t tolerate the high CO2 on Downbelow and most of all didn’t tolerate the molds and fungi rife on the planet. Downers needed the CO2, one supposed, and had to wear breathing assists in human atmosphere. So Downers carved their large-eyed statues to watch the heavens no different than they ever had, as if they were looking for some other, better answer.

Downers worked on Pell Station, for reasons no one evidently understood, but most of all, one supposed, because Downers
liked
the idea of space. Downers worshipped their sun, they served a time on the station and went back again to their mating and their birthing and burrowing and whatever else they did—he’d been fascinated by them when he was a kid, knew every Downer stat there was, useless hobby, right up there with Earth’s dinosaurs and Cyteen’s platytheres. Humans lived on Pell Station, the sole Alliance Station, poised between the Beyond and Earth’s native space. Regularly, the science people descend to their carefully insulated environments, to pursue their carefully monitored projects, and, irregularly, and depending on the season, ordinary tourists could do a tour onplanet—which he’d been hot to do when he was a kid, but there was a waiting list longer than a ship’s docktime, and now he’d grown out of his interest in eetees, human or otherwise. You saw Downers on the station, skulking along near the maintenance area… little furred creatures with—one had to take it on faith—big dark eyes and pleasant faces behind the breathing masks.

Even so, you weren’t supposed to talk to them, trade with them, touch them or impede them ‘in any way whatsoever, under penalty of law and a substantial fine… ‘ Which was probably for everybody’s protection, humans as well as the eetees.

One wondered if, things being otherwise, he could trade the furry bastards a slightly used brother.

On off-shift, he paged through the current offerings in the
Pell Station Guide
, the vids, the books, the imports… rich list, from local produce to Earth imports.

Embassies: Earth and Union.

Financial Institutions… a long list.

Government offices… another list.

Institute for Foreign Studies, Pell Branch.

John Adams Pell University. Oxford University Special Extension: Earth Studies.

Angelo Konstantin Research Institute, tours available.

New Alexandrine Library, reproduction paper texts available.

Museums. Cultural exhibits. Local artifacts. Botanical gardens.

Religious Institutions… the list was a page long.

Restaurants, from fast food to cultural, ethnic, and scenic, entertainment live and otherwise.

Stores, Ship Suppliers, General, Special Listings.

Sleepovers, various classes.

Technical centers. Special training. Recreational courses.

Trade Organizations.

And so on, and so on, pages of ads for suppliers, outfitters, services, importers, exporters, manufacturers, associations, lawyers, specialist medical services, reproductive services… a trading ship was self-contained for almost any necessity: but the choices on a major station were legion.

Two hundred eighty-five restaurants. Name your ethnicity.

Sleepovers that made you think you were camping on Down-below surface. With virtual rainstorms.

Walk-through theater.

Venus Hotel. Adults-only tape links. Experience your partner. Luxury accommodations. Restaurant class A pass. 200c and up. On-premises security. Ship registration and age ID required
.
>

He Captured that address.
. 1
It
wouldn’t look as if he didn’t want to be found. And if, or when—Austin did come asking… He pushed another button, got the ship list back.

He’d hoped for somebody like
Emilia
. No such luck.
Christophe Martin
and
Mississip
, both Earth-bound, were the best of a chancy lot. He put his bet on
Martin
, with a departure listed for 36 hours; and on the fifteen thousand hard-won credits he had in Alliance Bank. Five thousand might tempt
Martin’s
recruitment officer. But ‘might’ was too chancy a word. Ten. It hurt, it really hurt, but ten was a sure thing.

The closer he got to the decision, the closer
Corinthian
drew to Pell and dock, the scarier it got. Not that elder brother had a shred of evidence against them, not even ID, if he didn’t give it back, and he didn’t intend to.

In point of fact he was scared stiff. Austin might not have figured out yet that Hawkins was a threat. But he had. Too damned clean. Give brother priss a year or two to get an eyeful and an earful of
Corinthian’s
business. Family Boy that he was, he’d start to pull back, just too, too clean for
Corinthian
, just too by-the-book. He’d leave them, sooner or later he’d leave them or he’d slip the evidence to somebody about the trade
Corinthian
ran.

He
saw the problem coming. Think ahead, Austin kept saying. So he did.

Sometimes, dammit, you did things you knew you’d pay for—because you could see far enough to know where doing nothing was going to leave you. Sometimes you did what was good for the ship.

Wasn’t that what Austin used to say to him?

Didn’t mean Austin wouldn’t have him in the brig when they left port.

But he could get out of that. He could survive that. He couldn’t survive Austin finding out older brother was ever so much more spit ‘n polish and ever so much more yessir, johnny on the spot, sir, than Christian. Older brother might even have trade figures in his head that Austin might very much like to know. Older brother could get himself worked into
Corinthian
if they didn’t watch out, worked in so deep that younger brother Christian just didn’t know anything anymore—point in fact, he’d seemed to know less and less the harder he worked to get Austin to admit he knew anything at all.

Point in fact,
Corinthian
couldn’t survive Hawkins’ attack of law-abiding conscience when it came. He saw it. He even halfway
liked
Hawkins, for the same straight-up mentality that attracted and infuriated Austin, he saw that, too. But
Austin
had illusions he
was
righteous, Beatrice had that pegged.

Trouble was, Austin wasn’t damned righteous with the authorities in Hawkins’ case. It was the righteous sons of bitches who didn’t have any doubts when they did you in, and Hawkins was so straight you could feel honesty dripping off him—feel it in the way Austin went slightly crazy dealing with him. Hawkins being more right than Austin… got Austin dead center, and to prove he was God, Austin was just going to suck older brother deeper and deeper into
Corinthian
, never understanding what stupid younger brother understood as a fact of life: that wars between two righteous asses ended up in double-crosses and a wide devastation.

Righteous had never described
him
, at least. On
Corinthian
there could only be one, clearly Austin, and the rest of them slunk around the edges of Austin’s principles and Austin’s absolute yesses and absolute noes—and kept the ship out of hock.

—v—

“THAT’S WELCOME,
CORINTHIAN
, you’re in queue as you bear. Pretty entry, compliments to your pilot and your navigators. Market quotes packet will accompany, trade band. Mark one minute.”

“Flattery, flattery, Pell Control. Can it get us a berth near green 12? Acknowledge receipt nav pack. Stand by for
Corinthian
information packet, band 3. Transmitting in thirty seconds. Please signify receipt and action on signal.”

Light-lag still bound conversation. Compressed com was an artform. You jumped from topic to topic and had to remember several threads of conversation at once, with your answer and more of their conversation coming a large number of minutes later.

As well as trusting the com techs to snatch the hard compression data when it came, a squeal the computers read. Beatrice was preening, most likely. Austin propped one heel on the other ankle and sighed, hoping for that berth.

They could always breathe easier at Pell. Wholly different rules… a completely independent station with a bias toward instead of against ship-law, ship-speak, and captain’s rights. Run by a council only part of which station elected, at least two of which were always merchanters or merchanters’ legal representatives… nothing got done, in fact, that merchanters didn’t want done.

Corinthian
wasn’t an Alliance merchanter—couldn’t get that clearance and didn’t try. There were too many hard feelings, and there were records
Corinthian
didn’t want to produce. But they didn’t need the certification to trade here. They did get the protections of ships’ rights that the merchanters’ Alliance had written into their contract with Pell. They got the benefits of Pell banking, which kept ships’ accounts at a very favorable interest, and backed them with a guarantee of services to the ship out of an emergency fund:
Corinthian
was signatory to it and
Corinthian
paid into it—if you ever got into trouble that let you limp anywhere, you made for Pell and its shipyards in preference to Viking or Fargone if you could possibly make it.

Which
Corinthian
had done on one notable occasion.

But mostly… the law Unionside (and never mind Viking’s new status, he personally counted Viking as Union law) couldn’t run inquiries here. Pell didn’t cooperate. Matter of principle.

Sovereign government—mostly consisting of ships. Matter of principle indeed. You could get trade figures, the same as everywhere. But the internal records couldn’t be probed.

Damned nice port to be registered to.

And if you were Pell registry, you got a priority on the berths you wanted, the docking services, all sorts of amenities. So
Corinthian
wasn’t Alliance, but she
was
Pell-registered, and that made it home, much as
Corinthian
owned one.

“Number twelve is free,
Corinthian,”
Pell Central said. “How long will you require dock? You have personal messages accumulated. That transmission will follow, in one minute. Mark.”

“Thank you, thank you, Pell-com, for the accommodation. Request you schedule us for a ten-day. I’ll turn you back to
Corinth-com
, now, Pell, thank you. Helm’s in charge.”

Beatrice shot him a look. He smiled, unbelted,
Corinthian
running stable as she was, and went over to Helm. Squeezed Beatrice’s shoulder.

“Shift change. Twenty minutes. See you.”

“Yeah,” Beatrice said, not cheerfully.

Berth 12, opposite the warehouse, easy transport. If it of any trouble that could possibly catch up with them.

There was, however, Hawkins.

He’d a few places he personally liked to go at Pell, and he was ready to go mind-numb and forget his problems. There
were
times he and Beatrice worked admirably well together, and there were times not. This run was one of the times not. He was anxious to have breathing room.

But there was Hawkins.

Still might be smarter to ship Hawkins out from here. He didn’t want to. He didn’t know why. Curiosity, maybe, what Hawkins was. Maybe the thought that Hawkins was a bargaining piece if Marie Hawkins did at some point show.

Maybe, deep down, the thought that the boy wasn’t all Hawkins. That he had some investment in the boy, and
that
might make the boy worth something, if he could get past twenty years of Marie Hawkins’ brainwashing.