Tripoint (43 page)

“Want the light?” Saby asked.

“No. Dark’s fine. I know who I’m with. “ Light just confused the eyes with here and now, and didn’t solve what went on in the dark space.

Didn’t silence Marie. She lived there, at the edge of jump. Like Rodman. Like Roberta R. Like the kids.

Just wondered… where they were going. What they were going to do.

“Tink says… back through Tripoint. Non-stop, I take it?”

Silence out of Saby for a few breaths. Her quarters. Her bed. Her fingers twitched in his. “We’re hauling. Not light mass on this leg. My bet is, we’ll deliver.”

“Deliver to what?”

“Where we have to.”

“Level with me. What do we haul? What are they after, this ship they’re talking about?”

“Don’t know. Don’t know who this ship’s working for. “ Another twitch of the fingers. “But while they’re searching… we can move cargo. They can try to find us.”

“That’s crazed. You just dump it out there, or are we meeting somebody, or what?”

“Just a place. Spooky place. Dead ship. I don’t like it. But stuff’s waiting there for us. Always is.”

“
Those
were the cans at Viking.”

A moment Saby just lay still. “Yes,” she said. “Sorry to say, that’s what you found.”

“Stuff they raided?” Indignation was hard, this close to the edge, under the heavy hand of acceleration. “That’s your trade? Stolen goods?”

“Stuff from a long time back. Old stuff. It’s the dates, the
dates
you don’t want to question. Ships we deal with don’t raid anymore. Don’t want the attention. Long as we sell them food, medicines… import Scotch.”

“And arms.”

“Food. Medicines. Mostly food. Plants. Live plants.”

“Live plants.”

They maintained a separate silence a while, hands joined.

“That’s the damned oddest thing I ever heard,” he said.

“Truth,” Saby said.

“I guess. “ Best offer he had. “If you say so—yeah, I believe it.”

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—i—

TWO HOURS TWENTY MINUTES. The whole difference. The whole… damned… difference between
Corinthian’s
system exit and
Sprite’s
entry, the height and depth of Pell Star system apart.

Nothing to do at that point but to continue on in, with
Sprite
running full-loaded as she was. Nothing to do but maintain a quiet calm, a sweetness to the offered sympathy of cousins and, of course, Lydia. Less likely… sympathy from Mischa, whose expression of regret had a certain lack of conviction, but Mischa had at least made the gesture.

“We tried, Marie. All we could do.”

It
was
all they could have done, a heartbreakingly hard run through Tripoint, everyone on long hours and short food and sleep. Tempers had frayed, understandably so. And there had been recriminations about missing
Corinthian
.

Not from her. And they waited for her opinion. Maybe with bated breath.

Spirits aboard had picked up when their cargo sold during their run-in toward station, no languishing on the trade boards while the ship ran up dock-time, no waiting to sell this part and that lot of cans… Dee Biomedical bought the whole lot sight unseen, the publishing data-feed, the biomedicals, neobiotics, and biomaterials, with damage exceptions, which, Marie knew from her boards, there were none: every one of the cans came in registering, constantly talking to the regulation devices.

Not one can even questionable. And profit clear—Pell had no tariff on biomedicals of Cyteen origin, when Pell could get them.

Faces started to smile. People started to be pleasant to each other in the corridors. The seniors who’d been fuming mad about transshipping the government contract now thought that, of course, it had all been their idea.

But ship activity at dock? Pell didn’t have that kind of information available to an inbound ship. Get it at the Trade Office once you dock.

Information on Thomas Bowe-Hawkins? His mother wanted to know?

Oh, there was a record of that. Listed with exiting crew on
Corinthian
. And listed with returning crew.

Somebody using Tom’s passport, she thought, but she kept that to herself, and kept the information to herself until
Sprite
docked, grappled to, and opened its ports at 10 Green, where Dee Imports had can transports waiting.

Then
she was off to the Customs Office so fast the deck smoked.

Well, yes, Tom’s passport had been used. Well, yes, there had to be a credit record of transactions on station, but she had to get a court order. And, yes, they knew which agents had been assigned at
Corinthian’s
dock, and, well, yes, there was no actual regulation against an individual inquiry with the agent, although they didn’t give out names.

Her pocket-com nagged at her. She ignored it.

“I’m his
mother, “
she said to the customs officer. “I have copies of his papers.”

“The boy is over eighteen. By Alliance law, he’s an adult.”

“Do you have kids?”

“Look, Ms. Hawkins…”

She didn’t raise her voice. She made it very quiet. “This boy was out drinking when that ship cleared port. We’re a Family ship. Check us out. I want to know does that passport, used exiting
Corinthian
, still have the right picture.”

“You’re asking if it was stolen.”

“Yes. “

The agent vanished into inner offices. The pocket-corn kept beeping. She thumbed it on.

“Yes, dammit!”

It was Mischa, asking did she need help.

“Not actually,” she said, and flipped the display on her handheld again, to market display, mere mind-filler, something to look at and think about before she went mad.

Mischa chattered at her.

“Yeah,” she said, “nice. No, I don’t need help. You’re driving me crazy, Mischa. I’m busy here. All right?”

She thumbed the switch and cut him off. Didn’t care what he was saying. The agent came back with a woman in a more expensive suit. “We’re talking about a stolen passport?”

“This—” She laid the ID on the counter. “—is a duplicate of my son’s ID. I want to know, does the agent remember this face?”

“Come into the office, Ms…”

“Hawkins. “ She passed the counter, she sat in a nicer office, she waited. She drank free coffee and entered searches on the hand-held for low-mass goods, and sat there for forty-three minutes before the woman in the suit brought a uniformed customs agent into the office.

“Ms. Hawkins. Officer Lee. Officer Lee is the one that read the passport through at board-call. Officer Lee, this is the young man’s mother.”

The officer handed the ID to her. “I do remember him,” the officer said. “He’d forgotten his passport. The captain came down to be sure he got ID’d. It
was
that boy, Ms. Hawkins, very well dressed, in the company of a pretty young woman and a man. Came up in a taxi. I thought then, that cost them. But the boy didn’t act upset, except about the passport. Went right to the captain, he and the girl. They walked in together.”

“How did he get out there without a passport?”

“Happens. He went out with a group, should’ve gotten it from the officer, once they’d cleared customs, but he didn’t. Captain said he hadn’t missed it til the board-call, and he panicked.”

“This man with them.”

“Rough-looking. Cheerful fellow. Drunk as a lord. Papers perfectly in order. Cook’s mate.”

“No visible threat.”

The agent went very sober for a moment. “You mean was he drafted back? Didn’t look to be. The young man spoke for himself, apologized about the passport, had a new haircut, clothes, brand new duffle, everything first class. Met the captain on friendly terms.”

“Ms. Hawkins. Would you like to sit down?”

Out of nowhere a hand grabbed her arm. She didn’t need support. She shrugged it off, took a deep breath, took out her wallet and managed to get the ID into the slot.

“Sit down,” the woman said.

She did. The agent offered to get her water. She said yes. She wasn’t through asking questions and they were distressed on her account, moving to get her whatever she wanted. “I want the credit record. If my son was on this station, I want to know who paid, where he slept…”

The woman looked doubtful. The damn com beeped again, and she cut it off, completely. “I have to know,” she said. “This is my
son. “

“Just a minute,” the woman said, and went somewhere. Officer Lee came back with the water and sat and asked her stupid questions, trying to distract her. She kept her calm, played the part. It was maybe thirty minutes before the woman came back, looking grim, and said there hadn’t been any credit record, but that the young woman, the passport number he’d been with on customs exit, had run up big bills at the fanciest sleepover on Pell. Big bills at a clothing store. At Pell’s fanciest restaurant. Dinner for two. Lot of drinks.

“I see,” she said, a little numb, it was true. Maybe a little grey around the edges. But it did answer things.

“You might check station mail. He might have left a message.”

“I have, thank you, Ms…”

“Raines.”

“Ms. Raines. Thank you very much. “ She shook hands. She was polite. She thanked Officer Lee.

She came to herself maybe half an hour later, in front of a shop window, and didn’t know where she was until she looked at the dock signs opposite.

She had to get out of this port. She had to find that son of a bitch. Forget Tom. A nice-looking girl, fancy clothes, damned… shallow… kid. Probably scared, probably saw a cheap way out, just go along with it, wasn’t too uncomfortable, he had a lot of money,
Corinthian
would give it to him, because
Austin
wanted to get to her. Austin wasn’t going to drop the boy in any port, wasn’t going to sell him out to the Fleet, no need. Tom had sold himself, for a fancy bed and fancy clothes and the best restaurants and a girl who’d do whatever it took to keep him and keep his mouth shut.

Damn him. You could see the boy’s point of view. Easier to be courted than shake his fist in Austin’s face and take the hits.

Easier to be let loose dockside with a pretty girl and more money than
Sprite
ever allotted its junior crew. Easier to be plied with lies and promises. Austin could be a charming bastard. A very charming bastard, give or take that the rough edge wasn’t a put-on, far from it.

And give or take that the man’s taste in bedmates ran to whores. That detail wasn’t going to impact Tom’s little bubble too seriously.

Hell!

She went to a bar. She ordered a drink,
not
her habit. She flipped on the hand-held, drank, and stared at the meaningless scroll of figures. She couldn’t leave this port until they’d offloaded. That was happening, as fast as the cans could roll out.

And that bastard on
Corinthian
was on his way back through Tripoint.

She’d
suspected
Tripoint was the dark hole where
Corinthian
pursued its private business, the off-the-record trades with God knew what agencies—it was a vast, gravitationally disturbed space, with no station to provide an information-flow: a dozen ships could lie there, silent, absolutely impossible to spot if you didn’t know exactly where they were; ships could move, and the place was so vast the presence-wave wouldn’t reach you for hours… you didn’t know what might be watching you.

But
Corinthian
hadn’t waited on this leg—they’d kited through and been gone by the time they’d come through.

Expecting trouble, it was clear.

Time-wise,
Corinthian
was in hyperspace now. A ship that followed them for the next month, real-time, would exist there right along with them until
Corinthian
dropped out again, and the vector was Tripoint. Again. Where
Corinthian
had business to do.

But
Sprite
couldn’t catch them. The gods of physics afforded no chance to one freighter to overtake another with
Corinthian’s
head start—unless
Sprite
was running empty, with outright
nothing
in the holds when she went into hyperspace.

Tell the Family they were going back to Viking empty? That, having cleared one chancy low-mass, high-value deal at Pell, for which they’d had to dip into bank reserves, they were going to throw away everything they’d just gained at enormous risk—and run empty back to Viking-via-Tripoint?

No way. No way in hell. She could muster the votes against Mischa on the matter of the Pell run, because she could threaten the sure economic disaster of her quitting, against the promise of profit. She couldn’t get anywhere in a vote by demanding a disaster.

She swallowed a mouthful of ice-melt and vodka and did a different-criteria search through the market.

Pell… was the gateway to Earth. To arts. To
culture
.

Books
. Zero mass. Vids. Software. Distribution licenses. Always high-priced because ships bid on them. But ships only bid so much, usually scooping up what they could get without a fight, because it was a chancy market, riding local fads, and the willingness of some station-side promoter to take it off your hands where you were going… so if you were willing to gamble big that you knew tastes where it was going… ordinarily you could get it, the info-market being quiet, low-tension, not subject to big bids from ships that better understood the market for frozen foods and machine parts.

She took out her stylus, punched the keys you couldn’t accidentally access with bare fingers, and money moved.

Data moved.

Data flooded into
Sprite’s
black-box info-storage. Permits, licenses. Credit. Text. Images. Patents. Two solid hours, while she sipped fruit-juice and vodka, of high-speed input—in which the info-market accelerated, picked up interest on some items—then hyped into a wild surge of activity.

She traded back some books, some vids, snapped up rights less useful to ships that didn’t reach deep in Union territory: license to reproduce at Union ports and points further, exclusive rights down routes reachable from Unionside—prices ballooned as ships bid to get a speculative commodity they regularly dabbled in, rights they routinely bid on, ships and stationside interests battling each other for what somebody unknown was going for in huge quantities. The whole info-market soared as station-side speculators and automatic trading programs saw a rising price and a limited availability and went for it. Feeding frenzy set in, sent prices crazy. She sat it out for fifteen minutes and sipped her drink while the market computers registered a flurry of trades.