Tripoint (32 page)

He’d never. He’d never imagined. He’d never, in his life. Saby was a tumbling infall of propositions and changes of vector he’d never, ever, expected to deal with.

Dance?

Stationers
danced
. Spacers… did, but not on
Sprite
, they didn’t. He couldn’t imagine.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess. “ He was thinking more about the food. He’d lately been hungry. He’d no assurance he might not be again.

And they walked the dockside, to a frontage with the very small, gold-and-silver sign that said
Aldebaran
.

Any spacer would say, high-class, expensive, and ask, being prudent, Who’s really financing this?

Saby? Austin? Or somebody else? Like another ship… with proprietary ideas.

Saby input an access code and showed him through the doors into a very beige, very pricey-looking reception area. Amenities were listed on the walls, with code numbers. Display cases lined the room. He saw, at one pass of the eye, directions to a gym, to a barber/stylist shop… to a jewelry store, restaurants, one breakfast, brunch, lunch, one dinner. He drew in a breath, shook his head, reckoning himself far out of his credit budget—you could feel the money in your pocket ebb just in looking at the case-displays.

“Anything you need urgently,” Saby said. “Personals? They have those in the bath, in every room. That’s all right.”

“I’ve got a hundred eighty seven cee,” he said. “Actually it’s Christian’s.”

“Oh, good,” Saby said cheerfully. “Buy whatever you like. I’ve a phone call to make.”

“To the captain? Or to him?”

“The captain,—naturally. Be good. We’ll eat here, tonight. Are you hungry?”

“Hungry. Sleepy. Tired. Mostly tired.”

“Dancing when you’re rested,” Saby said, and went to the desk, to make her phone call… after which there might be God knew what. He hoped just for a chance to sit down. But he’d gotten to the slightly crazed, half-giddy stage of sleep deprivation, and he wandered around the room and looked at the displays, that was all, mentally blank. He was aware of Saby on the phone, at the desk. He was aware as she crossed the room toward him.

Entirely cheerful. “Captain says fine, it’s all right, anything you need—in reason. Have you found anything you have to have?”

“Just a bed, just sleep. “ That was the honest answer. It was all he could think of now, now a room and a bed were that close. So Saby coded them through further doors. It was down the corridor to number 17, and inside, to a private room with two beds.

He went straightway and fell face-down on one, not eager for conversation, his legs tired from walking and standing, his eyes stinging from sleeplessness. He said to himself that if Saby wanted to call the cops or
Corinthian
or anybody, he didn’t care, so long as he could get a little rest that wasn’t hiding out in a restroom or sitting on a waiting-area bench.

A blanket settled over him. If Saby was the source of the blanket, he was grateful—the room was chill, and he hadn’t the self-awareness left to figure out what to do about it.

Pleasant, he thought about Saby. Nice. Tink said she was all right.

But clearly reporting to his father. That wasn’t a recommendation.

But it was opposite sides of the room, Saby didn’t bother him, the blanket made him comfortable as he was, and the lights went out. He hadn’t even the interest to open his eyes as he heard Saby settle into the other bed. Stark naked or in the sexiest gown he could imagine… couldn’t muster a shred of interest. Face-down and going, gone.

—iii—

THE MUSIC IN
Jaco’s
made the glasses shake. The walls were all screens, on which old vids played endlessly. It was a horror-show to the left, a riot scene to the right, a murder-thriller straight ahead.

In the immediate vicinity, it was impending apocalypse, one day before board-call and no brother.

Not
one
sight, sound, clue of Tom Hawkins, and no call from the station police office.

Thanks very likely to 200c of his money. 10200c, correction.

Correction again, 14750c, after he’d paid the computer time, the records searches, the bar tabs, the working-time of various crew who had to be put on duty-time to find the son of a bitch, and he couldn’t ask Austin to foot the bill.

Clock on the wall said 0448m/1548a, meaning approaching suppertime on
Corinthian’s
main-crew schedule, meaning Austin was awake and
he
was having supper an hour and a half before alterday dawn. On one wall a giant spiny monster was flattening an ancestral Terran city and on the opposite, one guy was choking another while some dimbrain woman stood and watched and screamed.

“There you are. “ Capella pulled a chair back and dropped into the seat with a clatter of bracelets. “God, 0500?”

“Found anything?”

“Not a damned thing. “ She slumped back and, the waiter being instantly on them, “Sandwich. Cheese. Rum and juice. I need vitamins.”

“ID.”

She pulled her card from her sleeve-pocket and the waiter ran the mag-strip through his handheld, logged the charge and handed back the card.

“14756 50c,” Christian said glumly, and had a sip. “My guess… just my remotest guess is our big chance is tomorrow. Board-call starts at 1500 and ends at 1830, and I’m betting he’ll be watching from somewhere, either right at the first or right toward the end.”

“What makes you think it?”

“Genes. Can Austin turn hold of a question? Older brother won’t be satisfied until he
sees
the ports close and the lights go out and he sees our departure telemetry on the boards—until then it’s not enough.
He
won’t believe it until he sees our outbound wavefront, but that’s outside our parameters. I want to be on that dock tomorrow right down to the last, I want to have your eyes and mine where we can see anybody watching us. Because he will come down to watch.”

“Best hope we’ve got, I guess. Guy’s nice-looking. My notion is he’s snagged a free stay with somebody—no knowing he even knows what day it is.”

“Oh, he knows,” Christian said. “I’d bet anything he knows to the second when that board-call is. And if we do spot him—”

“Going to be interesting hauling him past the customs check.”

“Ship-debt. We’ve got his papers. We’ve got his sign-on at Viking.”

“He really sign on?”

He hadn’t, of course. “The papers I’ve got say he did.”

“Be careful how long you flash those. Pell cops aren’t blind. They
know
their local artists.”

“What the hell else am I going to do? This is expensive paper, Pella.”

“Yeah.”

“
You’re
not making any headway.”

“Christian, I have called in debts you would not want to know about. I have talked to people I never wanted to talk to, at expenses you don’t reckon in any bank account. Don’t talk to me about effort in this not noble cause, dear friend. These are people I
never
wanted to see, and they don’t come cheap.”

His heart sank. “How much?”

“Those that ask for cash—2400, at current.”

“I haven’t
got
it, God, Austin’s going to leave
me
in station-debt.”

“Cash, Chrissy-sweet, cash is the only way. My ID has
smoked
from the withdrawals. It smells of brimstone. Your account isn’t dead, but it’s on life-support, and we are eating sandwiches till we clear this port, that much I do know, or you don’t want to see the hell we’ll be in. Austin does not want me to access these people, Chrissy, Austin will have my hide for the places I’ve looked, which
won’t
report to Austin, so there. Just don’t you tell him, and you cover that tab, Chrissy. You cover it.”

“That’s three quarters of everything I own but ship-share, dammit!”

“As I recall, Christian-love, this was not originally my idea. I would have predicted elder-brother wouldn’t have liked the trip to Tokyo and London. I just really didn’t think it was his artistic preference.”

“Shut up! God! give me a little understanding! Where was your advice when it could have done some good?”

“I don’t recall I was consulted. Cajoled, entreated, asked for illegal acts, but consulted…”

“How is he in bed?”

“Who?”

“My half-brother, dammit. How good?”

“We are suspicious, aren’t we?”

“He’s dangerous as hell. A Family Boy? All full of conscience? All full of principles? My father’s off his head. I’m not! I’ve nothing against Hawkins personally. But nobody sees, nobody sees a damned thing dangerous in him!”

“And
we
can’t find him,” Capella said. “I don’t see Austin disturbed. I see the captain quite, quite calm—considering the gravity of the circumstances. Possibly because he’s not speaking to you. Or—possibly—”

That veer sideways took a second to think about. Two seconds. “The son of a bitch ran for the ship? And Austin didn’t say?”

“It
is
a place we haven’t searched,” Capella said. The sandwich and rum arrived, which meant a brief distraction to sign the tab.

“He wouldn’t,” Christian said.

The waiter left. Capella took a bite of sandwich and swallowed. “I don’t know. It’d be the smartest thing elder brother could do, in his situation—supposing he’s noticed the passport’s fake.”

“No. Surely not.”

“We are down to surely nots. Aren’t we?”

“Point.”

“Doesn’t cost anything. “ Another bite. Then Capella’s eye strayed. She swallowed, belatedly. He looked, in the chance the distraction was named Hawkins.

Negative. He saw nothing to attract Capella’s attention. Bar traffic, nothing but.

But Capella took the paper napkin and wrapped the sandwich. Tossed off half the drink at two gulps.

“What
is
it?” he asked.

“Somebody I don’t want to meet. Just sit still. Don’t attract attention.”

“
What
somebody?”

“Chrissy. Just listen. Stay calm. In a moment I’m going to get up and go, and you sit here long enough to see if anybody follows me. Then you get up at your leisure and go left outside, go left, just keep traveling. I’ll watch for you and intercept.”

“What in hell’s going on? Pella? Is it cops?”

“Just do it, dammit. Man in a grey shirt, blue glitz, dark hair, can’t miss him. “ Capella’s eyes tracked something past his shoulder, cold as deep ice. “If he follows, don’t let on, just keep walking. I’ll be watching. Just wait till I’m clear plus some. If he follows me… still, you follow. We steer this to a venue we like. Got it?”

He didn’t. Hadn’t. Not the fine details of what Capella proposed to do about it.

But Capella slid out of her seat and walked, quietly, for the door, while he tried to pick out the newcomer she’d described, and did. He was giving an order at the bar, meaning he planned to stay; or asking a question, which might send him to their table: Capella wasn’t exactly inconspicuous in an establishment. At least the guy didn’t look in his direction.

Until the bartender pointed at his table.

Immediately the guy and two others started over. It wasn’t in the instructions. Neither was this guy bringing help with him.

He sat still. Hell, he was a
Corinthian
officer, not open to hassle or harassment without involving more ante than any other ship might want. So he looked them up and down like germs and stayed his position.

“Looking for Capella,” the first guy said, him in grey and blue; and leaned a knuckle on the table-surface. “Where’d she go?”

“I dunno. Back to the ship. “ That was a right-hand turn from here. “She was going to check something. Why?”

Blue-and-grey made a flip of the hand at the muscle behind ‘ him. One left, presumably on Capella’s track. That tore it.

“Wait a minute,” he said.

“Just a personal matter,” blue-and-grey said.

“With my wife?”

Blue-and-grey stepped back, looking shocked, and laughed outright. It was an unpleasant face. Somebody a woman might have been interested in, maybe, but this was a man that’d knife you, this was a man who still wore open shirts when the waistline was getting a little much for skintights.

This was a man he didn’t like, on instant instinct.

“You?” blue-and-grey asked, still laughing. And started to walk out.

The trouble was, he was still figuring how this fit with Capella’s safety, which occupied all circuits and input a wait-count while the sumbitch with the mouth was walking to the door on him, while his gut level reaction, to grab that sumbitch by the throat, had adrenaline flooding his system and doing no good at all for the brain.

He carried a knife in his boot. So, he figured, did the two leaving, and so would their friend, the one he’d misdirected down the dock.

Meanwhile, if blue-and-grey and his friend were thinking at all, they’d guess he’d misdirected them, and head the other way out of here, on Capella’s track, if they hadn’t had a man outside to catch an escapee in the first place.

It went against the grain to call for help. But he took the com out—this close to the ship, he didn’t need the phonelink—and punched in, on his deliberate way to the door. “
Corinth-com
, this is Christian, in
Jaco’s
, we got a code six tracking one of ours spinward out of here, guy in blue and grey, extreme bad manners, relay and get me immediate help here.”

Cops routinely monitored the coms as well as the ship-to-station links, and that was too damn bad. Trouble was headed at Capella’s back and he was on the way—it wasn’t so much what blue-and-grey might do to Capella that scared him… it was the ruckus bound to explode if somebody pulled a knife or a piece of macho argument on
Corinthian’s
chief spook—
Corinthian
didn’t want any more legal trouble, and bodies were so hard to—

Something hit his head—dropped him to one knee with stars flashing red in his brain, and he came up at the target, straight-armed somebody he couldn’t even see, approximately at the throat, impacted a face with the heel of his hand, surprise to him.

But the guy went down anyway, and papa hadn’t taught him to turn his back on any attacker. He saw a shadow-someone in the red flashes and grey, trying to come up off the deck, and he rammed his hands down and his knee up. Bang. Guy went backwards, flat.