Tripoint (34 page)

“You’re worried about something,” Saby said.

“I can’t imagine why.”

“I don’t know what. Whether you can trust me? Is that it?”

“It’s an obvious question.”

“You’re a nice guy. You are. I told the captain that.”

“Thanks. Did you tell him not to knock me into walls? I’d appreciate that.”

“I really like you,” Saby said.

His heart went thump. Brain cut out of the loop.
Why
? was the last logical thought.

“You want to dance?” Saby asked, and reached out her hand on the tabletop. “Come on. Slow-dancing. Nothing fancy.”

He really didn’t want to. A, he didn’t want to make a fool of himself. B, he didn’t know where the conversation had taken the turn it did or why Saby suddenly got personal. He’d a drink to finish, but the mouth wasn’t working and the brain was on shut-down. He tossed off the rest of the drink to calm his stomach, hooked fingers with Saby—let Saby tug him to his feet and walk him out into the dreadful tilting visions of the walls and the reflections on the floor. The alcohol hit, and he was right in front of the big viewport, where the stars were moving and small and far, behind the silhouetted dancers. They were potentially in people’s way, but others managed not to bump them, and Saby turned him toward her, holding both his hands—kept one, drew one behind her waist, at the curve of a—he wasn’t dead—satin-clad hip.

“Relax,” she said, and laughed, and bumped his foot with hers. “Step, step, step, turn—”

The room spun. He managed to breathe and move, step, step, step, turn, with Saby, and they hadn’t knocked into anybody. They moved with the traffic, joined the movement around the swirling floor, the sweeping walls.

“Isn’t that easy?”

She made him lose where he was. The dreadful face of the planet was coming into view—he got the count back, desperately, and took Saby’s lead for a giddy turn, abandoned hope of equilibrium, and began to figure Saby wasn’t going to steer him into collision, he just had to stay with it, feel when she moved, listen to the music…

“There,” Saby said, “now you’re getting it.”

It was more commitment to Saby’s guidance than he wanted, period. He’d held back. He’d maintained a stolid non-involvement and non-interest in Saby Perrault—he’d read a book, sat on his bed, they’d discussed colors and her harmless preference for coffee over tea. But he was occupied in keeping up, now, and, he guessed, by Saby’s mercy, not making too much of a fool of himself—nobody was staring, and Saby seemed happy. The alcohol buzz made the images fuzz, and his heart that thumped in panic at the grand sweep of the planet, the deadly gulf of infall, found a sustainable level of adrenaline and kept time, thump, thump, thump to the music and the dizzy turns.

Silence came like a stop in the universe. He stood, hard-breathing, dizzy, with one hand where not-dancing made it too familiar, and the other sweating in Saby’s grasp. Everybody applauded, the band got a second wind, and while some drifted back to the tables, Saby said it was a slow tune and she’d teach him that step, too.

It wasn’t so organized as the fast step, just kind of wandering back and forth, no way for anybody to be conspicuous, the stars there beyond the shadows of other couples, Saby’s body brushing his on a regular sort of movement that he… didn’t really mind. Much. Often. He was wary. He asked himself if he was being seduced, or if she was—taking a stupid chance, if that was what was happening. But if Saby wanted to end this up with bed, he could agree with that, he’d been clever as long as he could, and stupid was taking over with a vengeance.

Wasn’t his fault. Wasn’t any way out of the trap he was in. Might as well enjoy anything that came before. There was, tomorrow, inevitably the day after. And Austin.

The dance ended.

“Want to sit?” Saby asked.

“What do you want?”

“Want to dance,” Saby said. So they did, a fast one this time. He remembered. Saby floated in his arms, threw changes and embellishments into the steps and the turns he couldn’t match—she was gorgeous. The light of magnified stars sparked on cut-away sleeves that fluttered against her and away again, her hair eclipsed the light like a swirl of shadow—he kept up with her, he took her cues, and when the music was done, she laughed, breathless, and applauded, dragged him back to the table when the music was done.

Two fresh drinks were sitting there. He didn’t think that was a good idea. He sipped at his, out of breath, himself, with far less work, and she sipped at hers, the same, until they’d both caught their breaths and cured the dry mouths.

The music had settled to a saner pace. “Go again?” Saby asked.

“Sure,” he said. He hadn’t had all his drink. He wanted water, but the waiter was invisible, and Saby was happy… a yes could do that, it was easy, and it wasn’t with most people in his experience—a new experience, she was, no negatives, hell, you could get too easy, you could get to
like
making Saby happy. So here he was, going out onto the floor, for one dance and then two, slow and sane dancing, just wandering back and forth. Saby leaned her head on his shoulder, and body moved against body, her instigation: he didn’t want her complaining tomorrow, telling her crewmates and her captain he’d had the ideas and she hadn’t.

Because maybe it wasn’t a come-ahead. He couldn’t figure, and all the higher brain managed was a warn-off, a wait-see. Brain-base was on slow ignite, and feedback from the lower body circuits was hitting warning, warning…

Music faded. Applause and sort-out was a reprieve. They stared at each other in the giddy dark and… he wasn’t sure whose initial motion it was… joined the drift back to tables and drinks.

They rested, they got at least the moisture in the drinks—he wanted water, Saby said she did, and they tried to catch a waiter, but the next dance was starting. They danced some more, the drinks kept refilling every time they got back to the table, and by then they were immortal and impervious to successive rounds. They danced, they drank, they danced until the stars were blurry, until, in the ending of a slow number, while they moved in a slow, brain-buzzed drift, the speakers announced shift-change, and last call.

They got their breath. The waiter showed, with the reckoning. He didn’t dare to ask.

“Tab us to
Corinthian, “
Saby said, and showed her passport. “House percentage.—And bring some water, please.”

They never got any water, just sips of the last refill. And the receipt and a chocolate.

—v—

SO THE SECOND CHIEF NAVIGATOR wanted to board and talk. Capella had to pass on an urgent piece of news.
Capella
had to talk to him. Of course Christian wasn’t in the vicinity.

Like bloody hell, Austin thought, and it didn’t take a master intellect, once Capella showed at the lock, to predict it had to do with the dustup on the dock, that the dustup had a lot to do with Christian asking extra security outside, and had a damned lot to do with Christian’s scouring around and making more noise on the information market than
Corinthian
habitually liked.

Which, logic argued, might just drop a small amount of fault for the situation on the captain’s own plate, for not yanking Christian’s authorizations and codes before they docked, but, hell, he expected at least eighteen years worth of maturity out of the twenty ship-years the kid had lived, he expected a degree of basic sense of consequences, and
he
wouldn’t have sneaked Hawkins out the lock, or involved
Christophe Martin
, which was the start of the whole info-blowup. It could have racketed clear to the stationmaster’s office if he hadn’t put a fast brake on it. Right now he could wring the young fool’s neck, Christian knew it, and damned right Capella came alone, soft-footing it into lower main, trading on her connections. You got a Fleet navigator on quasi-permanent loan, all right, but you consequently had to ask yourself what that individual could and would do if you came to cross-purposes, and you had to ask yourself a second time, when said individual immediately locked on to your admittedly attractive mainday chief officer-and-offspring, whether it was wholly as physical an attraction as Christian’s young ego could assume it was. Warn him, yes. Repeated warnings. Like pouring current into a non-conductor. Of course Christian knew all that, Christian knew everything, Capella was just a good time. Capella was
intelligent
, Capella was good conversation.

Capella screwed his brains into overload and Christian had revelatory insights, oh, damned right he did.

Heredity didn’t warn him at all. Paternal experience was irrelevant. The wages of sin walked down the corridor and arrived face to face.

“Sir,” Capella said. “There’s a spotter for somebody out there. Guy named Patrick, that’s all I know.”

“The hell that’s all you know. “ Worst-case became, in a single, disastrous instant, the present case, and you didn’t know how far it had proliferated: but Capella if not Christian knew why she’d asked for a hearing—
knew
she’d let a situation slip over a line past-which-not, by this unaccustomed and stark quiet of manner.

“Can we talk, sir?”

“We can talk,” he said. And maybe he should run scared of her connections, but hell if he was going to. “Do I assume somebody’s screwed up? Do I assume this involves your solution to the problem?”

No bluff. No flinch. An arrogant stare. “If I could have caught him, yessir, I should’ve done, but I couldn’t account for the four with him and I didn’t want the cops.”

“So what’s your recommendation?”

“Lie in port. It’s not a sure bet
Sprite’s
coming in. It
is
a fact that that something’s already here.”

“Who? What?”

Forget getting all the truth out of Capella. It took her a couple of beats to censor. Or lie.

“Renegade. Scavenger. Little stuff. No threat to us. But he’ll track us. He’ll find the dump. He’ll kill us if he can… to shut
me
up.”

“I can understand that motivation.”

Capella’s chin came up, eyes a clear try-me, and he gave it back:

“You are an
arrogant
sumbitch. My son’s just a good lay, is he? Good boy, a little dim, do anything you like on his watch? Or did he scare you into this?”

Long, long silence in the corridor, and Capella’s nostrils flared.

“Didn’t think it would go this far.”

“Yeah.”

“Yes,
sir
, I fucked up. I considerably fucked up.”

He let the silence hang there. He’d never been sure what captain or what interests Capella served. But it was down to basics, now. When something threatened the ship you were on… it was suddenly damned basic; and he let that admission hang there long enough for Capella to hear it herself.

“But in some measure,” he said ever so quietly, so she
would
hear it, “your friends are something we can deal with outside Pell system. In some measure, you’re up to that, aren’t you?” He’d never challenged
how
she handled navigation, or her other faculties. It was the closest pass he intended to make to that touchy matter. He challenged her nerve. And her skill. And waited for his answer.

“I think—” she began to equivocate. It wasn’t ordinary for her.

“I know,” he said, cutting her off. “I
know
. Period. If
Sprite
gets here, what action do you suggest, second chief navigator, to prevent a search of our records?”

“It’s our deck, sir.”

“That’s fine. We can lose docking privileges pending our release of those records. This isn’t the War, second chief navigator. We may be necessary to the Fleet, but our little hauling capacity isn’t necessary to Pell Station, and our brother and sister merchanters aren’t just apt to rally round
Corinthian
in a quarrel with other merchanters, does that occur to you, second chief navigator?”

A Fleet navigator wasn’t an entity to piss off. You agreed to take on the inevitable Gift from the Fleet and you agreed not to ask questions; you agreed that was grounds for very severe action in certain quarters. In effect, you took a ticking bomb aboard, and you hoped to hell nothing ever set it off: there was nothing but Capella’s personal inclinations and physical restraint to keep said navigator from walking out on that dock, finding this Patrick, and turning coat in five minutes. It was a hell of a chance to take.

But it had gotten, thanks to Capella and Christian and Marie Hawkins, down to a similar hell of an alternative.

“Yes, sir,” Capella said, equally quietly, “it does occur to me. But if we don’t get Hawkins back… we’re still screwed, no matter whether
Sprite
comes in here or not, which isn’t proven they will, sir, that’s my thought.”

“I am so glad, I am so very glad we agree on that, second chief. But take it from me that we
are
going to board call tomorrow on schedule, that this is the course we’re taking, and that, while I have thought of spacing Christian, I expect his ass in that airlock, safe, sober, and in your company. After that, I expect your professional talents to be on, period, capital letter, On. Can we agree on this, second chief?”

No blink, just analysis, like the face she wore on the bridge.

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“Good. That’s real good. Because I appreciate the seriousness of what’s happened out there. And I value officers who do. Ahead of my son, at this moment. Do you copy that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s all, then.”

Capella nodded a courtesy, turned with a touch more precision than the habit of the crew, and walked… you could see the military in the backbone, the way you could see her move around her station on the bridge, economy of everything.

Damn-all worst woman in the available universe for Christian to take to bed. Marie Hawkins was safer. Much.

He’d said, just now,—he was sure Capella had heard him: Choose a side. Get the hell to them, or take orders from me.

It remained to see, it did, how much she’d fill Christian in—how much she’d dare fill Christian in, if she meant to stay on
Corinthian
—because Christian wasn’t going to be an automatic choice to succeed to the captaincy, not now, not since Viking, and damned well not since the stunt he’d pulled here… was still pulling, staying clear of him, not coming in to report, himself. There were times to revise priorities, there were times to be sure messages got through… you didn’t hand off to a bedmate not even remotely connected to the crew, if Christian had even made the decision that brought Capella in to report what couldn’t go over com.