Tripoint (6 page)

“He told me a lot of stuff. Nothing that changes anything. “ That was, he guessed, what Marie most wanted to believe. And he took a deliberate, not quite lying, chance. “I’d like to break that bastard’s neck.”

“Mischa’s?”

“
Bowe’s. “
He’d stepped over the edge. On Mischa’s side. He didn’t know if Marie was going to swallow it. But it took no acting. He was upset. Scared of her, scared of Mischa, scared of that ship out there. “Marie, I swear to you, I wish I could get him, but there’s not a way in hell—”

“Is Mischa talking about restricting me?”

He shook his head, thinking, God, she’s not intending just the markets. “He says not. He says you’ve got to do this on your own, you’ve got to walk out there and back and show you can face him, he’s says that’s enough, that does as much as you need to do.”

“And tagging me?”

“He didn’t say that.”

Marie took a breath, ducked her head, arms folded, looked up at him. “I’ve got the trade stats. I know when
Corinthian
came into port, I know what went on the sales boards, I know what’s moved off green dock. It’s a sluggish market, and
Corinthian’s
off-loading with nobody’s buy snowing on the reports, not even an offer on the boards.”

“Warehousing stuff here?”

“Or hauling
for
somebody, or hauling a pre-sold cargo. Something’s irregular.”

“Are you going to take it to authorities?”

“Possibly nothing’s illegal. Nothing wrong with hauling jar, or pre-selling. Nothing wrong with warehousing.
Corinthian’s
been
legal
for decades. It was
legal
all through the War.”

“But not totally legal.”

“Not if you could get at all the picture.
Corinthian
is a small ship. It paid for a refit five years ago. If it’s in debt I haven’t found it.”

I have my sources, Mischa had said, regarding
Corinthian
and its movements. Depend on it that the cargo officer had sources, too. And Marie
had been
tracking
Corinthian
, that part was true.

“Could you?”

“Say I’ve been careful not to trigger alarms. Say I wrote the transactions-search program twenty years ago. I’m no fool, kid. Not this woman. It’ll smell any out-of-parameter market situation in any time frame I ask it. Plus availability of loaders, dockers, all those little details station doesn’t mind giving out, while it keeps ship-records sacrosanct. I know who’s been offloading, who’s bought, all that sort of thing they say they don’t tell us—at least, I can make a good guess, knowing what fallible human minds come knowing.”

It wasn’t the picture Mischa had painted, of an out-of-control crazy, hell-bent on murder. Marie had a case. She was building it piece by piece,
with
the trade records, through the trade records, the way Marie had told him outside the lift, and, damn it, she confused him. Marie was lying or Mischa didn’t give her credit for what she could do with her computers and her sense of what was normal and not—Marie was a walking encyclopaedia of trade and market statistics, imports, exports, norm and parameters, and if Marie thought she had a sense of something in the pattern when
Corinthian
hit the market boards… there might well be.

Unless Marie was deluding herself, too desperate to make a case, now, while they had
Corinthian
in reach of station authority.

“Can you nail him?” he asked.

“I need to get to the trade office. Myself. Do a little personal diplomacy.”

An alarm went off. Late. Marie had his back to the wall in more senses than one. Suddenly it was Marie’s agenda, Marie’s conspiracy, not Mischa’s. He made a try to save his autonomy in it. “I’ll go with you. If Mischa says you shouldn’t go, I’ll say I’ll keep track of you.”

Marie looked up at him—half a head shorter than he was. Fragile-looking. But the expression in her eyes wasn’t. She was steady as a high-
v
rock, while he lied to her, and while he remembered what Mischa had said: that Marie had to walk across the dock and back again, call it settled—an exit with honor.

And where was Marie’s vindication in her twenty-year fight if her son and her brother tricked her and did everything? People on the dock might not find out. But the family would. The more people who were in on it, beyond one, that much harder it was to have it accepted that Marie had carried it off herself.

The more people… like Mischa… who knew that Marie was chasing
Corinthian
through the financial records, and, maybe, as Marie said, that she was finessing her way into things she wasn’t supposed to access… the more likely Mischa was to intervene and screw things up royally.

He took a step on the slippery slope, then, knowing he was in danger, knowing Marie and the whole ship were, if things blew up.

So far as he knew, Marie
couldn’t
jack the station computers from outside the station system. The access numbers that any merchanter cargo chief or ship’s chief tech knew were never going to get anybody into station files: merchanter ships carried techs who well knew how to get where they weren’t supposed to be in any system, but stations had learned from the War years to take precautions: even Saja couldn’t get into station central banks or into a ship’s recorder, and Saja was good.

“You figure out everything we need,” he said to Marie. “And when we dock, you go out like always. I’ll go with you. I swear, Marie. I want to.”

They never much looked at each other straight on—not the way he did and she did now. His heart was pounding, his brain was telling him he was a fool, but for about twenty seconds then, Marie was ma’am, and mama, and home, and all the ship-words a man had to attach to, in the ancient way of merchanter matriarchy.

“He put you up to this?” Marie asked him hoarsely.

“Yes.” If one of them could twist truth inside out and confuse a man, so could he. She’d taught him. So had Mischa. “But he doesn’t know I mean it.”

“You son of a bitch. “ Not angry, not cruel. Marie could make it into a love-note.

“You’re all I’ve got,” he said, and really felt it, for the moment, fool that he was.

“Get out of here,” she said, and laughed, the grim way that Marie could when, rarely, he scored a point in their endless fencing. But she caught his arm before he could leave. “Tom. Bitch-son. Only chance. If
Corinthian
spooks, he’s gone. Understand?”

In a lifetime, maybe her only chance at this ship. Only chance to win. Only chance to risk everything. He knew how much that meant. “Read you,” he said, already a traitor to Mischa. “No question. “ Betraying Mischa was easy. But he
wanted
Marie to get the bastard—just not… not the way he still feared she might try.

She let him go. He walked away, to escape her closer questions about Mischa and his intentions, and decided on rec and the commissary, he didn’t really care.

But once he thought about it, he knew he ought to eat: jump took too much out of a body. He decided he’d better, hungry or not, and wondered if Marie had—but Marie had probably ordered in, probably had one of the junior techs bring something to her: you could do that if you were sitting Station. He should have asked her. But he wouldn’t, now, didn’t want back in Marie’s reach.

Cousins were thick, going and coming around the commissary area, which was no more than a district in lower-deck. He hadn’t, himself, checked the boards. He didn’t expect assignment different than Mischa had given him. Saja had to know that he was spoken for. He hoped to God no one else had the idea what Mischa had set him to do, but rumors about
Corinthian’s
presence were running the corridors—he caught whispers, furtive stares.

And had cousin Roberta R. ask him, brilliantly, as he eased his way through the gathering around the stack of sandwiches, “You hear about
Corinthian
in port?”

Then cousin remotest-thank-God-removed Yuri Curtis Hawkins added in a not discreet undertone that he’d heard they’d had thirty in hospital at Mariner the last time the ships met, and maybe they should snatch themselves some
Corinthian
crew and “show them a thing or two.”

“Yeah, right,” another cousin said, “from the station brig, big show.”

He shouldered his way past the comments, got his sandwich, ignoring the lot, but Yuri C. said, “Hey,
Bowe
-Hawkins, what’s your idea?” and somebody else, Rodman, drawled, “
Bowe
-Hawkins, I hear they inbreed on
Corinthian
, what d’ you think? You got all those crossed-up genes?”

“I think that ship’s armed, it’s not a regular merchanter, and we’re not in a damn good situation if it gets pissed, cousin, thanks for the personal concern.”

Hoots and catcalls for the exchange. He wasn’t popular with Yuri or with Rodman, whose eye he’d blacked, in their snot-nosed youth. He didn’t care what Rodman did or said. He cared only marginally about Yuri C. or Yuri’s two half-sibs, and Roberta was no hyperspace engineer. He took his sandwich, got his drink and took his lunch to the quiet of his own quarters.

It was peace, there. He settled sideways and cross-legged on his bunk, sore from the temper fit in the gym, and ate his sandwich—he couldn’t even identify the flavor. Jump did that to you, too, left you with a metallic taste that was mineral deficiency.

But he was thinking—if Marie
could
tag
Corinthian
with illicit trading, smuggling, whatever—there was everything Marie wanted, on a platter.

Damned right he wasn’t going to take on Rodman Hawkins. He wasn’t crazy, the same way Marie wasn’t. You could put up with a hell of a lot to get something you wanted as badly as he wanted the question settled, wanted Marie straightened out, or something finally resolved.

So she’d wanted to keep Austin Bowe’s kid, Marie had, back when the choice had been possible. She hadn’t aborted him.

And a while ago she’d requested the only companionship she’d ever asked of him.—Well, not asked, but at least not rejected when he offered. That was something. That was entirely unlike Marie.

And, damn Mischa’s holier-than-thou-ism, he so wanted Marie to be right this time, he so wanted Marie to have the vindication that would let Marie score her point, win her case, prove whatever Marie had needed all these years to prove.

Damn, if Marie could get her life straightened out, if Marie could stop the pain that made her do the things she did…

If he could just once in his life help her…

He sat there eating the sandwich and drinking his soft drink while
Sprite
glided toward rendezvous. He told himself he was a mortal fool for believing Marie. But telling himself, too, that he didn’t owe Mischa a damned thing.

Least of all… loyalty.

Take-hold sounded.
Sprite
was approaching the slow-zone.

Coming into the region of controlled approach. Insystem velocities.

After this they were well within Viking’s time-packet—realtime with station com.

—vi—

MILLER TRANSSHIP SAID AN HOUR. They’d said it an hour ago, when the voltage regulator on their only 20k can transport went fritz and died the death.

Get a part from supply, Miller said, as if it was that easy. No big delay.

Hell.

Christian Bowe slammed the receiver down on the hook and went back to the table in
Fancy’s
, while Fancy Leeman himself was strolling among the tables. Big guy, Fancy was, and you didn’t ask about the name—Fancy caught his eye and Christian made the fist and thumb, signaling one more refill.

“So?” Capella, chin in hands, looked up, a flash of dark eyes in pale blue glitz-paint. Tattooed snake up one arm, tattooed skull and rose on her right buttock—but that wasn’t on display.

Christian sighed and subsided into the chair. “Hour.”

“Hour! It’s been an hour! Let’s just screw it. Come on, Chrissy-sweet.”

“A round’s coming. We give it that long.”

Capella sighed. Traced a circle in the condensation on the table. The hand had a fortune in rings. The wrist had a band of stars in tattoo, and below it, Bok’s Equation, in ornate letters. Navigator’s mark, in certain quarters.

The hand captured his, amid the circles of two prior rounds and one double ice water.

“Chrissy.”

“Christian.”

Lavender lips quirked. “Chris-tian, they’re not going to get that sum-bitch moving till alterday. You know that, I know that, they’re going to crawl clear into next shift, they’ll be Beatrice’s problem, anyway. Why sit? Music is happening.
Dancing
is going on.”

Beatrice was sleeping. Or whatever. Austin was definitely barricaded for the night. The drinks came. They went down too fast for prudence.

“You can call them from the next bar,” Capella said, nudging his leg with her foot.

They had a fair amount of the cargo taken care of. Capella was right, the transport was probably screwed for the next few hours. Late mainday was a bad time to have a mechanical; mainday techs already had their work schedule full, they’d bitten off about what would send them off duty on schedule. If something more came in they’d just pile it up and let it wait for alterday, no matter how they told you they were ‘going to get to it.’ It never happened. It was unions. And they weren’t going to budge on their hours requirements, not if they held their breath and turned blue.

Damn and damn. Austin could go kick ass and maybe get something accomplished. But Miller Transship’s mainday management and Austin’s mid-rank kid weren’t heavy enough push to get things accelerated another hour or so. Capella might. That tattooed bracelet carried cachet with some techs, but it made other people nervous, and at Viking you didn’t know, you just didn’t know what loyalties or what agency you might be dealing with.

Besides, Capella was in a mood, Capella was ready to go off-shift, and the third drink had fuzzed things a little—hazed the blinking neon, brought a little less imminency to the situation, hell, Austin had said don’t bother him with cargo problems, handle it, and wasn’t it dealing with it, when you knew damned well they weren’t getting anywhere? They had fifty cans yet to move. Then they could onload and use
any
trans port. What came
out
of Miller’s was no problem. Hire anything. Anybody. They were well within schedule as was.