Rimrunners (23 page)

He stopped fighting. He wasn't good for much, but he shivered and then relaxed.

After a minute or so he got a little buzz out of it, and put his arms around her

while she said into his ear, the air between them fumed with alcohol:

"You're doing fine, merchanter-man."

Damn if he didn't about manage it then, witnesses and all, when some fool

started to unhook the privacy screen on the next bunk, that was Mel Jason's,

Jason being nowhere to be found, and all Jason's pin-ups in danger of folding.

"Hey, careful with her stuff!" Bet yelled. "That's my neighbor."

"Let that be!" Musa yelled, and McKenzie and Park and Meech got it stopped,

while NG just struggled up on his arm to see what was going on and went out like

that, thump, curled onto his side.

Somehow there had turned up far more people in on this than she had brought in,

there were a couple more bottles going around—had to be, or the first couple

were bottomless—and she pulled her clothes together and just leaned against NG

with her head spinning and her ears buzzing while Musa and McKenzie and his

mates controlled the booze and the drunks and started up a dice game.

So it wasn't so exciting anymore, except the viewer was going the rounds to

howls and comments, the bottle kept passing, and somebody was saying Mel Jason

was mad as hell about the crowd in the loft.

But the crowd had kept growing, it was noisy, and she figured then she could be

in real trouble, so she kept faking her drinks after that when the bottle came

her way, and sobered a bit, leaning there at the head of her bunk on a body she

finally figured out was NG, and insulated on the left by Figi's broad rump. So

she was all right back there, behind a wall of friends, NG was safe where he

was,

But it all settled down, Musa was drunk as a docksider while he played his mates

out of their credits, all the while spinning some incredible tale about serving

on Gloriana.

On Gloriana, for God's sake—a sublighter.

Man was old enough, maybe.

She felt a shiver in her bones, like meeting God, figuring how old Musa could

be, because if time-dilation got to spacers nowadays, it was nothing to what the

old sublighters had gotten, and although they were all changed and FTL'ed

now—the several of those nine original ships that still survived—crew could

still be alive—

Musa had a bottle of real whiskey in his bag—

Musa had learned his engineering the patchy way, knew practical because-it-works

things, but not the technical words for it, like somebody grown up in FTL ships—

Musa had seen Earth—

The curfew-bell rang quietly. "Party's over," somebody said, and people groaned

and wondered if they could negotiate the ladder.

"Want us to leave him?" Musa came to her to ask.

"Yeah," she said; and gave Musa a bleary hug and a kiss, and a sloppy,

passionate kiss to Gabe McKenzie, too. "See you later," she said with his hands

all over her. "Owe you one."

"Major one," he said.

"I got to get my stuff," she said, remembering that. But people had been halfway

considerate, piling fiches and viewer on the bunk, taking their empties with

them, so she grabbed up the fiches and stuck them in her patch-pocket and she

grabbed up the viewer and she shoved that deep into her bedding.

Then she just collapsed with NG for a pillow, struggled and worked one-armed to

get the safety mesh across both of them, sort of, and clipped it in.

And passed out.

"What in hell—" NG mumbled sometime during the night, and stirred and lashed out

with his arm, or he had been doing that and that was why her shoulder hurt.

"'S all right. I got you. Go to sleep."

"Hell!" He flailed out again, kneed her good, trying to straighten himself out,

and then he got the safety mesh clip undone and that spring-wound itself back

across her while she was trying to get her arms around him and reason with him.

"You're all right. You're in my bunk, settle down—

"Shut up!" came a female voice from next door.

"Shhhsssh," she whispered, trying to hold onto him the while. "Curfew's long

gone. Lie still."

"Going to my bunk," NG muttered, shoving his legs off and tearing loose from

her.

"You're in the loft," she hissed, fast, while he could still hear her, because

in his condition she wasn't sure he wouldn't walk right into the net or right

off the ladder.

He left. She got up and she followed him, staggering and reeling herself, saw he

got down the ladder all right before she went back to her bunk and fell in,

doing the netting on autopilot, that was all she had left in her.

Mel Jason was pissed, no question about that. Mel stormed past her when she was

dimly taking account of the fact she didn't have to put on yesterday's jumpsuit

to make the showers, she was still wearing it.

So, well, Jason was always pissed.

She ran her hand through her hair, got up, staggered over to the edge of the

balcony and hung there on the safety netting to get her eyes in focus and see

that Musa was up and Musa had NG in view, NG already up and looking like he had

been through the showers ahead of the wake-up, his clothes being unrumpled. So

she went back and made her bunk—the lump she found doing that was the viewer,

that had to be stowed underneath; and her thigh-pocket was full of fiches, but

they were all still flat. Everything seemed to have come through all right,

except she had a headache.

Except when she got downside she was running late, NG and Musa were already out

at breakfast, she supposed: almost everybody was ahead of her.

And that almost was Lindy Hughes.

Didn't mind being in line for the head in front of that man; didn't like being

in the showers with him damn near the last in quarters.

But you didn't shy off.

So she just went on ahead in when a guy came out, meaning there was a stall

free; and she went in, stripped down for a quick rinse and a dry—mind your own

damn business, Yeager, she was telling herself, soaping up.

The door opened. Hughes was standing there.

"I hear you'll do it for anybody," he said.

"Want to find out?" she said. "Or you want to keep what little you got?"

He made a grab for her. She just grabbed his coveralls and went with the grab,

and Lindy Hughes kept going, right into the wall and the shower toggle.

"My God!" she yelled, bashed the back of his head with her elbow, his face with

her knee, and let him hit the floor, then when he stirred, smashed down on his

head with her bare foot, again and a second time when he kept trying to move.

Then she stepped out past his body and looked at Davies from Cargo, who was out

in the aisle, naked as she was; so was Gypsy Muller. "I tell you, that damn fool

came charging right into the wall, hit his head something terrible. Somebody

better call infirmary."

"Shee-it," Davies said, and grabbed his clothes; "Shit for sure," Gypsy said,

looking at her and Hughes' clothed legs lying across the shower threshold.

As Hughes' friend Presley showed up in the doorway.

"Better call infirmary," she said. "Your friend slipped."

"You damn bitch!" Presley said.

"Hey, it ain't my fault." She edged past Davies in the body-wide aisle. "God, I

got soap all over. 'Scuse, please."

"Damn bitch!"

"You got trouble," Davies warned her.

"Yeah."

Presley was picking Hughes up, Hughes was coming around, sitting up bleeding

from the forehead. Nasty cut.

"Be nice," she said to Hughes. "And I won't say it was rape."

Hughes looked at her with murder on his face.

"We was just doing an exotic in the shower," she said. "You just hit the soap.

Right?"

Man added it up—two witnesses and Presley.

"You damn whore," he said.

"You want you and me to go up to the captain's office? I'm for it.—Or you want

to go up to infirmary and just tell 'em how you hit some soap and slipped? I'll

save your ass for you. You can owe me one."

Maybe Davies and Gypsy would back her. Maybe they'd side with Hughes. But she

didn't think so in Gypsy's case.

"Son of a bitch"! Hughes said, blotting his forehead.

Not a sound from anybody then, except Presley helped Hughes get up.

And Gypsy said, after Hughes was on his feet: "Looked like a slip to me. Nobody

needs any damn trouble, Lindy."

"Yeah," Davies said.

Hughes glowered, blotted his forehead with the back of his hand—he was dripping

red on the tiles.

And he shoved Presley out ahead of him and left.

Bet let go her breath.

"Thanks," she said; and looked at them—Gypsy who stood there in the altogether

and Davies who was grabbing after his towel.

"Late," Davies said. "Damn, we're going to be late."

Gypsy just stared at her. Then he nodded, once, decisively, and didn't look

unhappy.

She went and rinsed the soap off before it ate her skin, washed the blood off

the shower floor, grabbed her clean clothes and tossed the old ones in the bin.

Not a drop of blood on those.

Mainday crewman opened the outside door, first of the incoming shift. "Evenin',"

she said, uncomfortable in his staring at her.

But about half a dozen mainday crew were out there, and she got more than one

stare on her way out, felt them uncomfortably close against her backbone from

there to the door and out.

CHAPTER 18

« ^ »

Late for sure. She came kiting into Engineering, said, "I'm here, sir," to

Bernstein, and Bernstein gave her a moment's glowering attention that upset her

stomach.

"Everybody gets one," he said.

"Yessir," she said, fast and sharp, and went to check the duty board.

Not to socialize for a while, NG and Musa both being on the rounds and on the

reports: no shop-jobs, no fix-ups, a real conspicuous shortage of fix-ups lately

on alterday shift, main-day doing the scut-work, since it had three times the

personnel. Bernstein's list under her name was short: Calibrations Check Assist:

see Musa.

So she did.

"He ain't happy," Musa said, meaning, she thought, not Bernstein.

"Yeah, well," she said, with this little sinking feeling, then got down to ship

business, figuring NG could keep and Bernstein's good will was real important

just then. "Calibrations Check Assist. List says that's you."

"Show you," Musa said, and bringing her over to station three boards: "Man's

mad," Musa said under his breath. "I tried to talk to him, he's not talking, not

real reasonable. Bernie's onto it that something happened, I said give me some

room with it—Bernie said all right, but he give me this look, understand, I

dunno how long he's good for."

"I got you," Bet said, and: "Hughes grabbed at me in the showers, man had an

accident this morning."

"Damn."

"Nothing broke. Gypsy was there, and Davies. Ever'body says he must've hit some

soap and fell."

"Going to stick by that?"

"Dunno how he couldn't. I was stark naked, he was dressed, we got three stalls,

we was four in there, me and him and Gypsy and Davies. Even mofs can count."

Damn. Wish she hadn't used that word. For a moment Musa was looking at her real

funny.

"Yeah," Musa said. "I'll talk to Gypsy tonight."

Musa showed her the routine, mostly computer-stuff: you just got the

Calibrations program up and you told it which system and it ran checks for a few

minutes and then told you if it found things outside pre-set parameters.

That was all as easy as filter-changes.

Except NG was walking around like he had murder on his mind and he wasn't

looking at anybody.

And Hughes was off in infirmary telling whatever damn lies Hughes could think

up.

And she could hear Orsini asking the chief med, that morning when it was NG

getting patched up, Anybody else have trouble with that door? And the med

saying, with a deadpan face, Not yet.

So she got the CCA run, because mainday was busy with the shop-scut and the

plain maintenance—and the core-crawl and the sync-check and the dozen other

nasty jobs for reason of which mainday had to be wanting to cut their throats

about now—

—while a dumb skut whose only real expertise was field-stripping arms and armor

was trying to learn which board was which, never mind qualifying for a license.

Bernie wasn't pushing anybody on his understaffed shift, wasn't having anyone on

alterday turn a hand on anything but at-the-boards Engineering Ops and absolute

on-deck or in-shop maintenance—and damn sure wasn't doing anything that could

send one of his crew out alone and unwatched.

Which told you something, she was afraid, first because the ship just might not

be tending to routine maintenance in any major way, which could have any of

several reasons, like being close to a docking; or like being in chancy space.

Or maybe Bernie had a deal with Smith on mainday, because Bernie didn't want any

more accidents like NG's.

Till when? she wondered. How long is Bernie going to keep this up? How long can

he? And she remembered what NG had said—that sooner or later Bernie was going to

get pressed or Musa was going to get tired of shepherding him around, and Hughes