Rimrunners

CHAPTER 10

She got settled in—she figured who the skuz was who had complained, figured it for one Mel Jason, who had the bunk next, and whose stuff was all over the walls, pictures of flowers and souvenirs of bars and stations and pictures of naked, nice-looking men, all of which told you not much about Mel Jason except you supposed by that, that Mel Jason was a she.

As for the other, the downside ladder was down-ring from her, Jason was up-ring from her, she had no neighbor on the left, and the plastic privacy sheet and all prevented most neighbors seeing that she hadn't put a sheet down last night, except one up-ring that might be passing by the foot of the bed headed for the ladder—always possible it was somebody else, but the one next was the likeliest, the way she figured it.

So she put one Mel Jason on her tentative shit-list, and still made up her mind not to be too mad, all things considered: nice quarters on this ship, she thought, with the privacy screens and all, real fine airy feeling and safe at the same time, with the safety net there to prevent anybody going flying onto the downside skuts in any sudden maneuver.

Best of all, in her figuring, you got your own rack to yourself, and your own storage underneath for all your stuff: the ship wasn't crewed even half to quarters capacity and you didn't have to share with mainday.

So, seeing how clean things were and how people expected to live, she didn't much blame Jason, if it had been Jason who had complained, although Jason had been a little quick on the trigger. Africa had had standards, crowded as they had been, and if she'd gotten some skuz neo moved in next to her who broke the sanitation regs, she'd have bitched too.

Life had just made her a little more willing to give a body room, that was what she detected in herself.

So she was pleasant to Jason, walked around the privacy screen, and said; "Sorry about last night. No excuses; but it's not habitual."

Jason looked around from her sewing, bit off a thread, nodded then, once and definitely. That was all the comment Jason was going to make, Jason didn't even ask what she was talking about, and that was all the answer she wanted out of Jason right now. She figured time would kill or cure, and she went on down to supper.

NG was there. NG gave her hardly more than a look, and she didn't walk past empty spots to sit with him, considering he'd warned her keep clear of him in public, for what might be good reasons of not wanting a ruckus. So she just sat down at the first convenient vacant place on the bench and paid all her attention to her food. He left. She didn't know where.

But afterward, when a lot of the crew gathered back in the darkened quarters to watch a very tired pre-War vid, a man came up close beside her at the back of the crowd, while she was standing with her arms folded and thinking she'd seen this one twenty times at least.

The man touched her shoulder, made a nod toward the door, and said: "Yeager?"

Not NG. She'd thought that it was at first.

But it was an approach, she knew the dance. His name was Gabe, he said, he wanted to buy her a beer, he was polite and interested, and he wanted to sit and talk a while, with intentions for the rest of the night by no means hard to figure.

She wasn't altogether enthusiastic about the invitation, she'd been looking for NG with the hope of straightening some signals out with him, but if NG had been in the quarters she couldn't spot him and if he'd gone off somewhere else he damn well hadn't signaled her a come-ahead. So she found no immediate excuse, she had the beer, she had two, and Gabe—the name on his pocket was McKenzie—asked her questions she told the usual lies to: merchanter swept up in the Pan-paris route, dumped at Thule, desperate—what about himself?

McKenzie was sympathetic. McKenzie said he was ten years on Loki, McKenzie was clearly more interested in making his move than in answering detailed questions. Then another couple of crew came wandering up from down-ring, both male, friends of McKenzie's, just to look over the neo, do a little safe shopping and neo-baiting—get her rattled if they could, have a little fun if they couldn't. An all-right couple of guys, she decided: Park and Figi. They didn't sit down, they just hovered, asking how was it going, checking out her disposition toward McKenzie with an eye to a more personal check-out later if she was amenable.

—McKenzie, Park, Figi, obviously a buddy-system, all three of them scan-techs, McKenzie the good-looking one, Park and Figi a little shyer, a little less comfortable with a stranger, under the smartass facade.

You could bet who ran that trio, she thought, and she laughed at their fun-poking. It was kind of cute, actually, that McKenzie actually blushed—they nailed him with a tag about getting wrong bunks in the dark and he told them go away.

But McKenzie was just trying to get friendly again when another couple of male crew showed up in the rec area, and they had to walk over and introduce themselves—Rossi and Wilson, by the tags, Dan and Meech, by name; not bad, either, certainly Rossi wasn't, but you didn't get picky when you were new: not good business, and you didn't start with one man and go off with another either, not unless you wanted a rep as a trouble-maker. "Hey," McKenzie said, finally, slipping a protective arm around her, "it's my beer. Get out of here.—Kate, get these guys."—to a woman getting herself a beer.

"Do I get a favor-point?" Kate yelled back, which got a friendly rec-riot started, just comfortable stuff over at the counter between Kate and Rossi and Wilson: McKenzie took his chance to get familiar, a little squeeze. "Don't take 'em serious. How're you doing? Quarters is pretty private right now, everybody's watching the vid. I got a private bottle. What do you think?"

"Fine," she said.

Except when she got up to go with McKenzie, she saw NG over against the wall by the quarters, just standing there looking at them.

Her gut tightened up. She remembered about that rec-time promise she'd tossed off to him this afternoon, and he'd tossed it off the other way, a kind of a don't-bother she'd decided was his opinion on the matter.

But that look he was giving her didn't say don't-bother. Her heart started pounding and she didn't want eye-contact with him, but it happened, once, fast, direct, while she was walking toward the door.

Then he turned his face the other direction, just leaned there with his hands in his pockets while she walked through the door and into the quarters with McKenzie.

McKenzie had a downside bunk, back in the far end from where the vid was still going on. They weren't the only couple back in the dark end, very likely not everybody in their proper bunks this evening, because of the vid occupying the other end of the quarters. McKenzie got out a bottle and took a drink and passed it to her while he was undressing. She took a couple or three big ones, then passed the bottle back and stripped down. They got in bed, got under the sheet, while the end of the room erupted in a cheer for that damned tired vid, about the time the good guys' ship showed; she remembered the plot. But the cold air got her, or the straight vodka did, and she tucked down against McKenzie, her teeth all but chattering.

"What's the matter?" he asked, rubbing her shoulders, and was real careful with her, real concerned about her maybe being scared of him. "Just a little cold out there," she said. "I'm fine."

So they had another couple of swallows off the bottle. Hell, she thought, there was nothing wrong with Gabe McKenzie. He was polite, he was sane, he was worried about her, he did everything right and he appreciated her the same—but it was like her skin was dead all of a sudden, the way it had been with Ritterman—like she was just too tired or the hormones weren't working or something.

It scared her, and then she flashed just for a second on NG and his hand on her arm and it tingled, it tingled just thinking about that, all the while nothing that McKenzie did was even getting past the surface.

That's crazy, she thought, and thought suddenly about NG out there in the rec area, NG knowing what was going on right about now, and probably mad and upset about her skipping out on him—

No, dammit, she hadn't skipped out, he hadn't taken up on her, he'd put her off this afternoon when she flatly propositioned him, he'd had a chance at dinner to at least look her direction and cue her.

She wished to God he wasn't a crazy man, wished he wasn't out there right now being a damn lunatic, hanging around like that. She wanted to kick him down the corridor.

She wanted—

Damn, she wanted him touching her instead of McKenzie, so she kept flashing deliberately to him last night in the rec area and back to what McKenzie was doing, trying to get some kind of feeling back—damn, dammitall! She reckoned what kind of a buzz she was getting off NG Ramey, and when somebody ever got to doing that… anytime you ever got to confusing sex with risking your neck, you had a problem. She'd seen that kind in the Fleet—seen them take a few bystanders with them, too, when they screwed up for the last time. Damn stupid, that was what it was…

Except there was something else about NG, there was that wounded look of his, that was no expression McKenzie could have caught if McKenzie had been looking straight at him: she was the only one who knew why NG was standing there—and.she couldn't forget he was there, couldn't stop, even while McKenzie ought to have her attention, thinking that nobody had ever affected her the way NG had.

No, dammit, that was a lie, too, that was an absolute lie, the man had shoved her off in a dark locker, gone near the limit of her patience with any man, no matter what his excuse—nothing had been that damn spectacular in the first place—

Except her mind kept getting the business in the locker all confused with the way he'd touched her in the corridor and gotten that crazy jolt out of her nerves that she'd never in her life had even in sex, that feeling that, if she could get it twice and turn it over and figure it out—

Damn, you flat couldn't go on getting it, it was a cheat, a first-time-in-two-years adrenaline buzz, that was all it was, it wasn't going to repeat, she was just stressed out and NG was the first man along. She certainly wasn't crazy enough to get a high like that off a man who could just likely go off the edge some night—and she damn sure wasn't crazy enough to get a high only because he could go off the edge some night.

No. The risk wasn't what was nagging at her, it was that look he'd given her out there, that look that said he was doing something his common sense told him not to do.

And it was two different people, the man who had smart-assed his way into a beer with her—and the one who was out there, scared to come in here… and still refusing to walk off and leave it at that.—God, it could look to everybody else like he was just being his usual spook self, but that wasn't what was going on out there, she knew it, she was sure of it. NG was pushing it tonight, his standing outside that door was a kind of fighting back, even if McKenzie wouldn't even notice it.

That was what got to her, deep down. He wasn't out there to start a fight, not to embarrass her, either—risking, she thought, a whole lot of his pride with that one moment of eye-contact, before he just turned his face the other way. That was the thing that kept bothering her while she was in McKenzie's bunk. She had no idea where NG's bunk was, she had no idea, finally, as people came and went by that corridor doorway, whether NG had come on into quarters or not. She might have passed out a while, she woke up and another vid was on and McKenzie was snoring, so she got out of bed and went on up to the loft.

Somebody accosted her up there in the dark of the walkway past the bunks, big man, a little rude, drunk and offering her a drink if she'd stop at his bunk, so, what the hell, she did it with him, she didn't know why, she just wasn't sleepy, and she wanted somebody to touch off what NG had last night and blow holes in all her careful analysis.

He didn't. He didn't care, either, he was far too lost in his own space, but he shared his bottle, she got herself wobbly-drunk, still found her bunk, got undressed and went to bed in good order, out soon after her head hit the mattress.

But she woke up part of the way through the night, disgusted and scared by what she'd done, dropped off and woke up a second time with the alterdawn bell ringing and people getting up to go to work.

Damn, she had no idea who the second man had been or what bunk she'd been in.

She wanted a shower. She wanted not to have done what she'd done, at least the second one, for God's sake. That piece of gossip would make the rounds, damn sure it would.

Fool stunt—no name, nothing—get blind drunk in a strange place, let herself get talked into a bunk with some skuz as drunk as she was, God, she couldn't even remember if one was all there had been, or how she'd gotten back to her own bunk. She could've ended up a med case, no knowing what could have happened, they were no shipmates of hers, not yet, not by a long way.

Only hope was, the drunk she'd slept with might be wondering who she was.

Damn, damn, damn! she was mad at NG Ramey, that was what, damn spook, damn lunatic, she was crazy if she had to have him to set her off, it was a piece of nonsense, a feeling bred of too many drinks and too many loose ends around her, that was all, it was insecurity, and it was easier to worry about an effin' spacecase than it was to worry about where the ship was and what kind of game she was into and what she was going to do when Bernstein tried her on some complicated something she couldn't fix.

She got her shower, she ate her breakfast, a few quick gulps of synth orange and some salt to get her blood back in balance, piece of cracker, enough to cushion her stomach and buffer a couple of pills for a sick hangover.

But she showed up in Engineering, first to sign in this time, clean sweater, clean pants, never mind the red in her eyes and the pounding in her skull.

There was check to do, she grabbed the checklist off the wall-clip, and got right to it, all enthusiastic efficiency, exactly the way Bernstein had said first-in was expected to do.

NG showed up, walked over and took the board out of her hand.

"Good morning," she said.

"I'd better check it over," he said, and then started re running all the checks, everything she'd just done, from the top.

"I'm right," she said indignantly, at his elbow, trying to keep it all quiet from the mainday crew members that were still finishing up. "Dammit, I can write down a damn number, Ramey!"

He nodded, and didn't even look at her, just walked on his rounds.

She couldn't do anything about him just then. The mainday chief was still there, within earshot, and then Bernstein walked in with Musa. So she choked it down and waited for Bernstein to put her on something.

Bernstein put her on a core-crawl with Musa, that was how the rest of the day went—suited up and still freezing her ass off, a long, long misery of checking joints and looking for leaks and all the while knowing, as Musa put it—

"I like to move a little fast on this. Different from any merchanter—if Loki had to move right now, mate… we'd be in for one hell of a ride."

"How are we so lucky?" she asked, meaning alterday shift. They drifted, zero-G, in the dark dizzy perspective of pipes a quarter kilometer long, half swing up and over the pipes, half swing down under, like lacing, helmet-lamps and hand-held spots throwing close pipe into light, losing itself down the long, long fall Musa was talking about.

"Bernstein lost a bet," Musa said.

"You serious?"

"Crazier stuff goes on." A moment of silence, while the sniffer-lights ticked away, blink-blink, blink-blink.

You had a tether you kept moving and clipping on as you moved. You hoped to hell you never had to trust it. You never let yourself think up or down in a place like this, or they might have to pry you loose from the girders.

Anybody in the Fleet knew all about long corridors and sudden moves. A carrier's ring wasn't a ring, it was a cylinder with a few long, long corridors fore to aft, and corridors zigged, precisely to break falls like that, but even those could be a long, long drop if the engines cut in. You ran like hell when the take-hold sounded, you set yourself into a nook, hoped you had a ringbolt close you could clip your safety-belt to, you held onto the handholds as long as your hands could stand and sometimes the push was too hard for that, you just hoped it quit soon and concentrated on breathing. One time there'd been only a three-second split between the take-hold siren and a push that became a whole lot too much, a hundred twenty dead, that time, just couldn't get the clips on—God, she remembered that, she dreamed about it sometimes, remembered bodies falling right past her—and herself just lucky enough to have her back to a solid wall.

You didn't look at a perspective like the core as down, no way, or you could heave everything in your stomach.

Especially with a hangover.

Damn him.

"Musa."

"Yeah."

"You mind to tell me something?—Is anybody going to monitor us?"

"Not real likely. Can. What d'you want?"

"What's the story on NG?"

"Who you been talking to?"

"Muller."

Long silence, just the hiss of the airflow and the ping of the sniffer-readout. Then: "What'd Muller say?"

"Just he was on the outs. That he had some bad shit with the crew, didn't say what."

Another long silence. "He give you trouble?"

"No. What's his problem?"

"At-ti-tude, mate. I told him.—I tell him that now and again. What he did, he killed a man."

"Law didn't get him?"

"Wasn't like that. Just wasn't where he was supposed to be, wasn't watching what he was supposed to be watching. Damn pipe blew, killed a man, name of Cassel. Good man. NG—just had that habit of ducking out when he wanted to, Cassel tried to cover for him. That's how he paid Cassel."

"Hell of a tag."

"Not only the one thing that won it for him. I'm fair with him, I don't pick any fights, I don't make trouble, and Bernstein's his last chance. Fitch had him up on charges, last time he ducked out. Fitch was going to space him, no shit. Those rules and rights in quarters?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't you believe 'em… And NG, he was done, but Bernstein got him off, Bernstein threw a fit with the captain and said put him on alterday crew, and move this other chap, he'd take him. Or NG'd have gone the walk, damn sure."

Lot to think about in that, she thought.

"He thank Bernstein?"

"I dunno. Maybe. Maybe not.—I tell you, I tell you something. That man's not altogether here. But he never run out on duty again. Never gives Bernstein any trouble, never gives me any. You just don't cross him." Another long silence, Musa rising above the level of the pipe, arcing over toward her. Musa grabbed her hand and pulled her close until their helmets touched. He cut his com off. She understood that game and cut hers. "I tell you something else, Yeager." Musa's voice came strange and distant. She could see his face inside the helmet, underlit in the readout-glows. "I think one time this ship went jump and NG was in the brig—I'm not real sure Fitch saw he got his trank. I'm not sure, understand, but that time Bernstein got him off—maybe it was just one time too often in the brig, maybe it was just that jump and looking that spacewalk in the face—but I'm not real sure that didn't happen, just the way I said: Fitch hates his guts, we had an emergency, we had to go for jump, NG was dead, the way Fitch had to figure. But once Bernstein got him reprieved, the other side of jump—no way was Fitch going to tell the captain what he'd done. Can't prove it. NG don't talk. I'm not real sure all of him came back from that trip."

"God…"

"Not saying it's so, understand. No way to prove it. Don't even think about it. We're legitimate now. We're Alliance. There's rights and there's laws, and the captain's signed to 'em. But they aren't on this ship, woman, and you don't get off this ship, no way you ever get a discharge from this crew, I hope you figured that when you signed your name. You skip on a dockside, Fitch'll find you, you go complain to station law, Fitch'll lie and get you back, and you'll go a cold walk, that's sure. Fitch tell you that?"

"No. But I'm not real surprised."

"You got the right of it, then."

"NG a volunteer?"

"Dunno. Fitch gets 'em. NG never has said. Unless he told Cassel. Doesn't matter. He's on this ship, he'll die on this ship, and so will all of us." Musa pushed her adrift and turned his com back on. She flipped the switch on hers.

"Let's make a little time," Musa said, motioning along the ship spine with a shine of his lamp. "I hate this effin' core-crawl, damn if I don't."