Tripoint (40 page)

He’d composed a message. All the logic went straight out of his head.

“You apply the same standard. Me and my brother. Sir. “ His tongue went stupid. Breath caught in his throat and he swallowed. “Sir. He caught us breaking regs. He had some justice.”

Silence from the other end.

“
It remotely strike you, Hawkins, that the captain might be busy
?”

“I’m sorry, sir, I was just trying to message the system.”

“About your policy assessments?”

“Sir,—”

“Where are you?”

“The galley, sir. Sir,—I do want to talk to you about this.”

“Talk. Now. Fast. You’re tying up channels. “

“I mean I’ve got to talk to you in private. I’m on the galley-com, sir, I want to talk to you before you talk to—”

“Hawkins. I have a ship moving at 1. 092 kips, exceeding Pell traffic speed limits, for which we have a Ik fine. I have a ship in count behind me and a caution on an inbound insystem hauler and two service craft, whose point-location is often a mystery unto themselves. Do you think we could postpone the personal business?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you. “

Dead connection after that. He pounded the wall with his fist, thinking…

“Trouble?” Tink asked.

… Christian was going to walk into Austin’s office, remotely justified, and come out of there wanting to cut his throat.

Which wasn’t smart policy, which wasn’t what he wanted to live with, which wasn’t the man he’d seen for about two beats when Christian was figuring out how and on what ship to dump him.

Say it right: Christian could have left him in that warehouse to freeze, and nobody would have found him. Christian, Saby had said it, had gone to a lot of effort to get him shipped out, never mind Christian could have walked him into a lot rougher situation than a ticket out of port and out of their lives. Christian was fighting for his place on this ship, was what Christian was doing…

Beatrice didn’t want him.
I
brought him up.

And he understood Christian in that light a lot more than he’d ever understand the man who’d raped Marie.

“Tom?”

“I need to check on something,” he said. “Tink, cover me.”

Maybe Tink wanted to ask. He didn’t want to answer. He ducked down the straightway of the galley back toward lower main, where alterday crew was headed for the lifts.

He looked to find Christian anywhere in the traffic. He knew where his cabin was. He thought about going there. He checked near lower deck ops, and then at the nearby lifts, where the next shift was cycling up by the carload. He slipped into that lot, nervous, waited his turn, one trip after the other, then jammed into the car with the rest and stared at the level indicator instead of the faces around him. Crew stared… the cuts and bruises, it had to be, or the question what he was doing, going topside. “He clear?” somebody finally asked. And: “Think so,” somebody else said. “—Mister, you got a clearance?”

“Appointment,” he muttered, as the lift banged into its topside lock. “Captain’s office. “ The door was opening. He wanted out. Fast. “Excuse me.”

A hand caught his shoulder.

“Hold it, Hawkins.”

He saw seniority in the grey hair. He said, “Yessir,” and figured he’d just routed himself back in the brig. The guy shoved him against the wall by the lift doors.

“Appointment, is it?”

“My brother’s supposed to be up here. I need to talk to him.”

“Is that so?” The officer—Travis, the pocket emblem said—turned him back to the next arriving lift. “Right back downside, mister.
Stay
to lower decks.”

Second lift opened. He faced, suddenly, blond hair, bruises, scowling face.

“Inside,” the officer said, and jerked at him by the arm, sending him past Christian, into that lift. “Downside. Go. Now.”

Hand propelled him inside. Christian dived in beside him, mad. The lift doors shut, on the two of them alone, and the lift sank.

“So?” Christian asked.

“I didn’t want what happened. I’m sorry. I don’t
want
to get in your way…”

“You had a good time, you and Saby?”

“We—” He couldn’t justify anything. Christian was looking for offense, and his face and his ribs were already sore. “We didn’t plan anything. We ran into each other—”

The lift hit bottom. Crew jammed aboard, pinning them to the back of the car.

“I don’t want another fight,” he said. They were face-to-face against the back wall of the lift car as the door shut and the lift started up again. “I don’t want to argue with you.”

“Yeah. Keep your concern.”

“He didn’t do right. He wasn’t
right
, lighting into you like that—”

“Just shut up, Family Boy. I don’t
need
your damn condescension, all right?”

The door opened. The crowd in front vacated the lift. Christian shoved his way through and he tried to follow, but Christian turned around, furious, the other side of the threshold. “Get to hell out of my
life
, Hawkins!”

Shocked faces, around Christian. He’d started forward, to leave the lift. It seemed useless, then, with Christian opposed, to pursue anything with anyone in command.

Downbound crew flooded in, pushing him back against the rail. The doors shut, the lift went down and let out downside. The other passengers got off. He did.

Straight face-on into Saby.

“Tink said—” Saby began, and grabbed his arm as they worked their way outward, against the five or six upbounds trying to get in the doors.

He wasn’t coherent. He waved a hand, made a helpless gesture as they got clear, back at the corridor wall. “No luck. Waste of time.”

“I could have told you,” Saby said. “Tom, let me talk to him.”

“Not Austin.
Christian
. Damn him. Attitudinal son of a
bitch. “

“Him, too. “ Saby made a flustered gesture and punched the lift button. One car had gone. The other was downbound. “He’s being a fool.”

“You don’t go up there!”

Saby turned around with a furious stare. “I’m going
up
there because this is my shift, and I’m late!—And leave it to me who I talk to!”

“It’s my life, dammit!”

The lift arrived. Saby ducked in with a last few upbound crew. The doors shut. He stood there, having embarrassed himself, generally, having made a public scene with Christian, up and down the lift system, and disagreed with Saby, in public.

There was nothing but a shut door to talk to. There was nothing to do but walk back to the galley where he’d agreed to be. Forever.

Right now he wanted to strangle Christian. He’d blamed Saby. He’d blamed himself. He’d blamed Marie and Austin and fate.

But right now he saw only one person responsible for what had happened to Christian, and to him, and for the misunderstanding with Saby, and every damn thing else.

Wasn’t Saby’s fault she’d been drafted as surrogate mama to a jealous brat whose universe insisted every problem was somebody else’s fault.

He slammed his fist into the paneling as he walked. It hurt as much as he remembered. He pounded it two, three, four, five times, until the corridor thundered and the pain outside equalled the explosion inside his chest.

Somebody put his head out of ops and ducked back again. Fast.

He hit the wall four more times, until his knuckles showed blood.

Nobody asked. Nobody came out. He got as far as the next traverse, with the mess-hall in sight, when the siren sounded, and the PA thundered, “
Take-hold, take-hold, long bum in one minute. This is your warning. “

He didn’t run. He walked, deliberately, counting the seconds, down the mess-hall center aisle, made it to the comfortable side, the stern wall, this time, where Tink and Jamal were getting set.

“Fix it?” Tink asked.

“Waste of time. Waste of effort. Nobody listens.”

Tink raised his brows. He remembered he was supposed to be seeing about bed-sheets. “Yeah,” Tink said, and held out a bag of candy. “Lot of that going around today. Have one. Have two.”

He did. His hand was skinned. He figured the knuckles would turn black. He ate the chocolate. Jamal had one, the three of them alone in a galley redolent of spices and, rare, expensive treat, bread baking.

The burn started, smooth, clean, steady, this time.

Mainday crew was the heavy load for the galley, the dockers, who seemed to keep whatever schedule they fancied—but figure that the horde would hit the galley hall for supper once the burn cut out. Sandwiches out to the working stations. Everybody to feed before they made jump.

Gentle burn. Reasonable burn.

“Easy does it now,” Tink said. “Pell is the most reg-u-lated place in the ports we do. You sneeze and gain a tenth of a k in their zones, you got a fine. One k ain’t nothing. Pilot knows.”

“Runs in the genes,” he muttered, while that ‘ports we do’ hit the conscious part of his brain, the assumptions he’d made, the questions he’d asked himself and not asked, because the routes were so laid down by physics and what points a ship could reach from where they were that he’d assumed Earth, Tripoint, and Viking. From Pell, they could make Earth, spooky enough thought, strange, overcrowded place. But that had been where
Christophe Martin
was bound. Christian wouldn’t ship him where
Corinthian
was already going. From Pell… if they went really off the charts they could reach the Hinder Stars, the old bridge of stars the sub-lighters had used for stepping-stones out from Earth—shut down, now, dead,

… civilized powers couldn’t keep the Mazianni out of them, and the Military had dismantled the stations.

So they said.

“Tink. “ He felt stupid asking, at this late date. “Where are we going?”

“Tripoint. Just Tripoint to Viking.”

So mundane it shook him, after the giddy speculation he’d just made. He wasn’t even sure he’d have believed it, if it hadn’t come from Tink.

“Where’s the Fleet connection?” he asked. It was just the three of them in the galley, Tink, Jamal, himself.

And a silence.

Then: “Tripoint,” Tink said. That was all. The silence outweighed curiosity, reminding him Tink wasn’t innocent. Saby wasn’t. Nobody on this ship was. Now he wasn’t, because he’d voluntarily come back aboard.

He’d been in a position, while he was free, to do everything Marie would have done—whatever it might have cost him. But he hadn’t. Hadn’t wanted to—thinking about himself. Then Tink. Then Saby, after which… he guessed now he was where he wanted to be, scared, lost—queasy at the stomach as the burn kept up, getting them up to the
v
Pell would let them carry in its inner zones.

And very, very lonely, just now. Cut off from everything and everyone he’d grown up with. From everything he’d been taught was right and wrong, good and bad.

Burn cut out.

“That’s about 10 kips,” Tink said. “Out
and
away from Downbelow’s pull. We’re outbound now.”

“How long have we got? Days? Hours?”

“Four hours inside the slow zones,” Jamal said. “Two meals to two shifts, fast as we can turn ‘em, and all the resupply at the posts. You make coffee?”

“I can learn. “ He stood away from the wall, steady on his feet. Movement was starting down the corridor, a drift of mainday crew past the tables… “Serving line’s not open yet,”

Jamal yelled out, which roused no complaint, but faces were grim-Ship, he heard. People weren’t happy, and it didn’t have to do with the line not being open. While Jamal and Tink hauled the serving-pans out and settled them on the counter, he opened up the cabinet and got out the coffee and the filters, listening all the while.

Something about a ship following them.

Marie? he asked himself. His heart skipped a beat, two, recalling what Austin had said, that Marie might come here.

Then he heard another word. Mazianni. And he stopped cold, asking himself what in hell was going on, that
Corinthian
had to worry.

Didn’t they supply the Fleet? Weren’t they on the same side?

He looked at Tink. Tink looked grim, too.

“Aren’t they friendlies?” he asked Tink. “What are they talking about?”

“Dunno,” Tink said. “But, no, they ain’t, all of’ em. Not by a long shot.”

—ii—

“I DON’T FEEL SORRY FOR YOU,” Austin said, for openers. “Not one damn bit. Am I going to hear you whimper, or what?”

“You don’t get to hear anything,” Christian said, and sank into the well-worn interview chair. “You’re not interested. Do I get to go back to the bridge now? We’ve got a ship pulled away from dock. You might be interested.”

“You have a seriously maladjusted psyche, Mr. Bowe.”

“I have a seriously warped sense of values, captain, sir, that would indicate to me the captain might have advised me, rather than leave me and the second chief navigator outside the information loop. I hope you enjoyed your joke. I hope you enjoyed it a lot. Because thanks to our rattling around back there on Pell docks, that’s a Mazianni spotter behind us. That’s a ship called
Silver Dream
, based at Fargone, if you haven’t noticed before this.”

“Let me recall how, also leading to this event, we had a deal with an Earth-bound ship that I didn’t authorize. Let me recall…”

“Let me recall we’re not talking about a personal matter. If Family Boy and cousin Saby want to screw each other blue in lower main, fine, that’s their judgment, I’m glad they had a good time while we were turning the bars upside down and knocking on every door on Pell. So that’s all right, they’re in a room somewhere on your credit, thanks ever so much—but the burning question’s still that ship back there. I’m sorry I blacked brother’s eye, just for God’s sake pay attention to what I’m saying.”

“Attention? Did I hear the word, Attention?”

“Listen to me! Damn you, will you just one time listen to me?”

“Mister, I have the most shocking revelation for you. Your discoveries of the universe are twenty years behind mine, your insights and your wisdom do not overreach my own, your outrage at the situation does not outmatch mine, and I am moved at this moment to leave this chair and explain to you physically the same rules my father explained to me the week I made my own most egregious mistake, except that I swore that I’d lean a bit heavier on communication and a little less to the fist.
Which
I do, in consequence.—So what was it you had to say?”