Tripoint (29 page)

If breath was short before, it was all but choked now. Don’t look nervous, he said to himself, every spacer kid learned it, never look nervous with customs, don’t look like you’re carrying anything, don’t get too friendly, please God there’s no glitch with the papers…

God, I didn’t get an entry stamp at Viking, do you get an exit stamp at a free port? Last I got was Mariner, four months, maybe, four months realtime…

Agents didn’t even look at the stamps. If you strongly looked like your passport picture, if you were approximately the right gender, that was fine, they didn’t even run the microchecks or fingerprints or anything… just go on, keep the line moving, and you were through. He couldn’t believe it was that easy.

Christian grabbed his elbow. “Not far,” Christian said. “Everything’s set.”

“I need my passport. “ It was always the sticking-point in the plan. Christian
needed
it aboard ship to support his story. He needed it far worse. His actual license was in
Sprite’s
records. His files were the other side of the Line. He’d never felt his identity, his whole claim on existence, so tenuous as it was with that red folder in Christian’s hands.

“Just keep walking. Let’s do this fast, for God’s sake, I’ve got to get back. You’ll get your damn passport.”

“What berth?”

“We’re at 12.
Martin
is 22.”

Ten berths wasn’t a pleasant hike at the tempo Christian took it. The air felt heavy to him, giving him more than he wanted, but laden with scents that made it seem thick to him. Breaths didn’t steam on this dockside, but, maybe it was the chill he’d gotten in the tube, maybe it was the raw fear of something going wrong, that fast walking couldn’t break a sweat—he was keeping up with Christian, a step behind at times, thinking maybe it would have made sense to hop a ped-transport, it surely would have made better sense…

But the display boards were saying Berth 20, and 21, and that was 22 ahead.

A group of four men was standing in their path. “You just go with them,” Christian said. “Everything’s set. It’s all right. Here’s your passport, there’s your escort aboard, you don’t need papers, they’ll fix you up whatever papers you need. You’ve got the two hundred.”

“Yes. “ He took the red passport folder, tucked it into his pocket as they walked toward the four men meeting them. Couldn’t see any departure boards from here… he wanted to see was the ship on schedule and he lagged a step to turn and get a look back over his shoulder, at the section/berth display for 20 through 25. He picked out the 22 under Berth, and right beside the reassuring digital
Christophe Martin, Pell Registry
, was, in smaller letters:
Sol Station One, +30: 23h
.

Christian grabbed his arm, jerked him around.

He didn’t think. He broke the grip and bolted for the dock-side wall, into the thickest traffic he could find.

“Hawkins!” Christian yelled after him. And: “Get him, dammit!”

He dodged pedestrians, a taxi, a can transport. He ran as far and as fast as he could. A stitch came in his side. His knees began to go, tendons aching. Obstacles blurred. He kept missing them, as long as he could keep going, finally jogged down to a walk, sweat burning off in the icy dry air, throat raw, legs and arms going increasingly to rubber. He didn’t bend over to get rid of the stitch, nothing to make him obvious in the traffic. Shirt and black skintights weren’t unusual in the crowd near the heated frontage, just too recognizable. He expected
Corinthian
crew at any moment to overtake him and ship him off to Sol, where he’d never get back again, never, ever match up with
Sprite’s
course, too many variables, too far from everything he knew. Besides that, Earthers were weird, with weird, irrational laws, and he didn’t want to go where, for all he knew,
Martin
might be under agreement to dump him.

Legs wobbled under him. Spacer-boys didn’t run distances.

Do anything you like in null-
g
, maybe sprint the length of lower main, but no races on dockside. Only thing in his favor, Christian and the guys from
Martin
didn’t have station-legs, either. And terror was on his side.

Nobody overtook him. If they’d lost track of him somewhere, they’d have had to factor in the chance he’d dived into a shop or a bar, or taken a lift up to the station’s upper levels, and once they did that, Pell was a huge station, not easy to search with any degree of quiet. He ought to go to the cops, he ought to, but no way in hell was that an option. Best was the lifts, while he was still ahead of the search and they hadn’t a chance to post watch by the doors.

He had the credit chits Christian had given him—a gift to salve Christian’s conscience or just property
Martin
would have taken from him to pay his bills aboard, he didn’t intend to find out. He had the passport Christian had given him—maybe that was conscience-salving, too, because Christian could have stranded him for good and all if he had just handed that over to
Martin
crew.

He took it out of his pocket. It was the right official cover. But it didn’t have the thumb-dent on the edge his had. He opened it and it was just color repro inside, a good, professional forgery.

The wind went out of him, then. He wasn’t sure where he was walking. He flipped through the pages, dodged pedestrians, told himself he was a fool, he’d seen the folder, he’d believed it—but no customs agent was going to pass it at close inspection. Christian had switched it on him, maybe had the real one and the fake in his pocket, and he was on Pell without a legitimate passport to let him go to the station offices, or apply for work. His license was there, all repro, nothing he could legitimately take to any ship’s master.

He bumped into a man—excused himself. He was lightheaded and close to panic, and, with that near-incident, he shoved the passport into his pocket and kept walking, half-blind, heart beating in great, heavy thumps.

Stupid, he kept saying. Stupid, stupid. The only worse thing that he’d escaped… was being on
Christophe Martin
.

—ii—

NOT GOOD, WAS ALL CHRISTIAN could say to himself as he reached
Corinthian’s
dockside. Not good, in the way an oncoming rock wasn’t good.

Michaels had seen to the details—had the cargo crew taking care of business, setting up with Pell transport. A glance around told him at what stage routine was at the moment and Austin couldn’t fault him for that—Michaels was on his job and it wasn’t as if he’d kited off with things undone.

What he
had
done was a trouble he couldn’t even graph. It wasn’t supposed to have happened that way. Things weren’t supposed to have skewed off like that, they had no right not to have gone the way they should.

“Chris-tian.”

Capella’s voice. He waited. Capella overtook him at the edge of the ramp.

“Well?” Capella said.

“Son of a bitch,” he said.

Capella didn’t even start with: What happened? She dived straight to: “Where is he?”

“I don’t know! How should I know? The damn fool bolted, kited off, I don’t know where he is!”

“Fine. Fine.
With
the passport?”

“He thinks. “ He patted the pocket where he had the real one. “He’s not going anywhere without this. He’d be a fool to go to the cops. He knows it.”

“Yeah,” Capella said, implying, to his ears, that people had been fools before. That she was looking at one.

“He wasn’t in any danger,
Martin’s
a fair ship—he just—took off when he saw the guys waiting, I don’t know what got into his head. We’ve got to find him.”

“We’ve got to find him,” Capella echoed. “Yeah.”

He wanted to hit her. He knew better. That bracelet
wasn’t
a forgery. “Pella, we’ve got a problem. We’ve got a major problem out there. Yeah, it’s mine, but it’s the ship’s problem if we don’t get him before the cops do. We can’t go out of here and leave him loose—God knows what he’d do. We’ve got to use this port.”

“Well, maybe we should stand here, I mean, if he wants Corinthians, he can just walk right up to the ramp and ask.”

“Don’t be an ass!”

“I’m not the ass, Chris-baby.”

“Chris-tian.”

That was Austin. He’d left the pocket-com on.

“
You
told him!”

“Not this spacer,” Capella said. “Was your trail that immaculate?”

“Chris-tian.”

He thumbed the com up. “Yessir, I hear you.”

“Do you want to come aboard, Christian?”

No shouting. No cursing. Panic hit him. He wanted Austin to yell at him, swear at him, just simply bash him against a bulkhead and beat hell out of him. He’d never heard Austin so calm about something he’d done.

No, he didn’t want to come aboard. He wanted to take a bare-ass walk in deep space rather than come aboard.

“Yessir,” he said past the obstruction in his throat. He threw a condemned man’s look at Capella, an appeal to the living. “Organize a search. Find him. Get him back.”

“With what promises?” Capella hissed. “A pay raise? Promotion to tech chief?”

He couldn’t stay to argue. Capella was his only hope. He mounted the long ramp, got his wave-through from customs, and walked the tube to the airlock.

Austin didn’t meet him there. The inner lock was shut— optional, and
Corinthian
generally opted, not relying wholly on ‘ station security. He coded through into lower main. Austin was standing down by ops, waiting with arms folded.

“Sir,” Christian said when they were face to face. He still expected Austin to hit him.

“Where’s your brother?” Austin asked him.

“I don’t have a—” The answer fell out, faster than he wanted. He shut up. Austin waited.

And waited.

“He was trouble,” he said to Austin’s steady stare. “He’d be trouble. He’s too scrubbed-
clean
, he’d find out we’re not and he’d go straight to the cops, some time we’d never know it.”

“So?” Austin said. And waited.

“I set it up with
Martin
, down the row. Trip to Sol. They’d leave him there. He’d stay gone.”

Another silence, the longest of his life. “I have a question,” Austin said finally.

“Sir?”

“Who appointed you captain?”

“Nobody. Sir.”

“Who told you your judgment was more important than mine?”

“Nobody, sir.”

Another silence. He’d never dealt with Austin in this mode. He’d never seen it in his life. He didn’t want to see it again.

“This ship doesn’t agree with your judgment, then.”

“Nossir. “ He saw himself busted to galley scrub. For years. He saw Austin selling him to the Fleet. Beatrice wouldn’t like it. But Beatrice herself might be on the slippery slope with Austin right now.

“I have a suggestion,” Austin said.

“Sir. “ He asked what Austin wanted, he did what Austin wanted. He only hoped to stay alive. Hitting him would have blown off Austin’s temper. He prayed for Austin to hit him and call it quits. This… didn’t promise forgiveness. Ever. No confidence in him. Ever again.

“I want you to go out and find him,” Austin said softly. “I want you to get him back here without tripping any alarm. What are we agreed to with
Martin
?”

“Ten thousand c.”

“You paid it?”

“Yes, sir. “ It was the only defense he could claim. “My money.”

Austin only nodded. “You’d better get out there.”

“Yessir,” he said, paralyzed.

“So why are you standing there?”

“Yessir,” he said, and backed off a pace before he dared turn and make for the lock, feeling Austin’s stare on his back all the way.

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—i—

AUSTIN WAS ASKING HIMSELF BY NOW whether he needed a son. Asking himself maybe what Beatrice had had to do with the older brother affair. Or what Capella had done.

Guilt was a contagion. That was what Christian discovered. No one of his associates was going to thank him for what he’d involved them in. He couldn’t even find most of them.

He walked the docks with no notion in this star system or the next where it made sense to look, or where a fool with a forged passport was going to run. He hadn’t caught up with Capella, who, for all he knew, was lodged in some sleepover with a stranger she’d yanked off the docks, the hell with him, Tom Hawkins, and the mess he’d made… she’d raided the safe for him, she’d told him he was out of his mind, and if Capella caught hell from Austin, she knew how to pass it along. No Capella. No Michaels. Nobody answered his pages. He’d thought at least he could rely on
Martin’s
crew to join the search.
Martin’s
captain having ten thousand of his money, it ought to buy something.

But
Martin
was pulling out of dock on schedule. The same reason he’d picked
Martin
was taking that resource out of reach.

He couldn’t go to the police. He thought of excuses… he could say he’d forgotten to give his brother his passport and if the fool would just go along with it… but you couldn’t rely on Hawkins taking the cue and keeping his mouth shut. Hawkins wouldn’t benefit from ending up in the hands of the police, but
Corinthian
would benefit far less, and Austin would skin him alive. With salt and alcohol. He didn’t want the cops. God, he didn’t want the cops—or the customs authorities.

He’d searched every bar in running distance. He’d checked public records. He’d checked sleepover registers. He’d put a page on the message system:
Tom, call home to
Corinthian.
We have a deal
.

But the son of a Hawkins bitch wasn’t buying.

He didn’t want to call a general alarm with
Corinthian
crew, over what was bound to be scuttlebutted as his fault. The rumor had to be going around. There hadn’t been any witnesses to that scene in lower main, but something was going to get out, and the whispers were going to run behind him for years, he knew they were. Bad enough as it was, if he somehow could retrieve the situation—and Hawkins.