Rimrunners

CHAPTER 2

Bet walked carefully, having refuge in sight, the women's restroom on Green dock, a closet of a facility, an afterthought the way the whole dock was an afterthought, the bars and the sleepovers, the cheap restaurants, in a station designed for the old sublights and now trying, in a second youth, to serve the FTLs and their entirely different needs.

And there was this restroom. It was graffitied and it stank and there was one dim light in the foyer and one no better in the restroom, with four stalls and two sinks, where spacers in the early-heyday of the place had engraved shipnames and salutations for ships to come:

Meg Gomez of Polaris, one said. Hello, Golden Hind.

Legendary ships. Ships from the days when stations were lucky to get a shipcall every two years or so. Something like that, station maintenance had painted over.

Damn fools.

It was home, this little hole, a safe place. She found the dingy restroom deserted as it usually was, washed her face and drank from the cold trickle the better of the two sinks afforded—

Her legs failed her. She caught herself against the sink, stumbled and sank down against the wall beside it. For a moment she thought she was going to pass out, and the room swam crazily for a while.

Not used to food, no. She'd wanted the coca for the sugar in it, but the little that she had drunk had almost come back up right in Ely's office and now the half a wafer threatened to, while her eyes watered and she fought, with even breathing and repeated swallows, to keep from the heaves.

Eventually she could take a broken bit of wafer from her pocket and nibble on it, not because it tasted good, nothing did, now, and eating scared her, because the last had made her sick and she couldn't afford to lose the little food that was in her stomach. But she tried, crumb at a time, she let it dissolve on her tongue and she swallowed it despite the cloying sweetness.

Smart. Real smart, Bet.

Got yourself into a good mess this time.

Time was on Pell she'd hid like this. Time was on Pell she'd been almost this desperate. Hard to remember one day from the other when it got that bad. Somehow you lived, that was all.

Somehow you stuck it out, in this dingy place, sitting on an icy floor in the loo trying to keep your gut together. But bite at a time, you kept it down and it kept you alive, even when you got down to a pocket full of wafers and the hope of a cred-a-day job. A cred got a cheese sandwich. A cred got a fishcake and a cup of synth orange. You could live on that and you had to survive this night to get it, that was all.

She'd stopped believing yesterday, had really stopped believing. She'd gone in to the Registry today only because maintenance checked out the holes now and again, because going to the Registry was a way to stay warm, and showing up there proved she was still looking, the one proof an un-carded resident could use to maintain legal status. And most of all it kept her priority with any available job on that incoming freighter. Hoping for that was an all-right way to die, doing what she chose to do, looking forward to what she insisted was the only thing worth having. A good way to die. She'd seen the bad ones.

And if it got too bad there was a way to check out; and if the law caught her there were ways to keep from going to hospital. She carried one in her pocket. She'd gotten down to thinking about when, but she hadn't gotten to that yet, except to know if she passed out and people were calling the meds she might; or if they convicted her and slapped a station-debt on her—she could always do it then. Just check right out, screw the lawyers.

And now there was a little more chance. So she'd been right about sticking it out so far. She could turn out to be right in everything she'd done so far. She could win. That ship next week could come in short-handed. It could still happen.

So she sat there in the shadow of the sink awhile till one whole wafer had hit bottom, and then she knew she had to move because her legs and her backside were going numb, so she pulled herself up by the sink and got some more of the metal-tasting water on her stomach and went into one of the stalls to sit down, arms on knees and head on arms, and to try to rest and sleep a little, because that was the warmest place, the walls of the stall cut off the draft that got everywhere else, and manners kept people from asking questions.

Two women came in, way late, probably dock maintenance: she heard the murmur of voices, the curses, the discussion about some man in the crew they had their eye on. They sounded drunk. They went away. That was the only traffic, and Bet drowsed, catnapping, thinking that tomorrow evening, she could go to a vending machine and put that one cred in a slot and have a hot can of soup… start with that. She'd had experience with hunger. Keep to the liquids when you came off starvation, do a little at a time, nothing greasy. Her stomach was working on the dissolved wafer and the third of a cup of coca, not sure how to cope with what it had.

The docks outside entered a quiet time then, less noise of machinery and transports moving outside. Alterday on Thule was hardly worth the wake-time. Hardly any of the offices stayed open on that shift, no ship traffic was in to make it necessary, the few bars were mostly empty. Early on, when she'd had a few chits left, she'd gone into bars to keep warm. Docks were always cold, every dock ever built would freeze your ass off. Thule-alterday shut down just like some old Earth town going into night, and the general lack of machinery working all over Thule during that off-shift, she reckoned, and the demand of all the people back in their apartments for heat, meant a fierce chill-down in the dockside air. Which meant stationers were even less likely to be down here during main-night, and station scheduling didn't care to do anything about it.

So nothing got loaded out there, nothing got signed, moved, done, anywhere on the docks until maindawn brought the lights up. Thule was dying. The Earth trade opened up again after the War, but Thule had turned out to be superfluous, the run had drawn a few big new super-freighters like Dublin Again, that could short-cut right past the Hinder Stars, and the discovery of a new dark mass further on from Bryant's meant a bypass for Thule, Venture, Glory and Beta, which was over half the re-opened stations at one stroke.

A route straight to Earth via Bryant's, straight past the place Ernestine had left her, the Old Man apologetic, saying, "Don't be a fool, Bet. We've got to go back to Pell, is all. We'll be short, but we can make it. It's no good here and further on is worse."

Hope you made it, she thought to old Kato. But she knew Ernestine's chances, a little ship, running mostly empty, trying to get back to Pell against the tide of economics, luck, and the onus of her own mass, because the Hinder Stars were heartbreak, the Hinder Stars had drunk down more than one small ship, and Ernestine's last hope, after losing all her cargo credit in a major mechanical, was Pell, just getting there, even stripped down, carrying a few passengers whose fares would get her a little credit in Pell's banks.

But Pell wasn't where Bet Yeager wanted to go.

"Not me," she'd said, "not me."

Ernestine crew had argued with her, they'd known her chances too. The free-hands other ships let off found berths here and went on. Jim Belloni had tried to give her a third of his sign-up money when he left on the Polly Freas. He'd gotten her royally drunk. He'd left it in her bed.

So she'd gotten drunk again. She still didn't regret that extravagance. Not even when her belly cramped up. It was the times like that kept you warm on nights like these.

She catnapped a while more, waked hearing the sound of the outside door.

Her heart jumped. It was unusual, alterday, main-night, for somebody to be in this particular nook to need this particular restroom. Maintenance, maybe. Plumber or something, to fix that sink.

She tucked her knees up in her arms, just stayed where she was, shivering a little in the cold. It was a man's step that came on in. Rude bastard. No advisement to any possible occupant.

She heard the door close. Heard him breathing. Smelled the alcohol. So it wasn't a plumber.

You got the wrong door, mate. Go on. Figure it out.

She heard the steps go the little distance to the door and stop.

Go on, mate. G'way. Please.

She heard the door close. She dropped her head against her knees.

And still heard the breathing.

God.

She shivered. She did not move otherwise.

The steps came back to the stall. She saw black boots, blue coveralls.

He tried the door. Rattled it.

"Get the hell out of here!" she said.

"Security," he said. "Come on out of there."

Oh, hell.

"Out!"

It was wrong. It was damned indelicate. And he stank of alcohol.

"Hell if you're security," she said. "I'm spacer, on layover. You get your ass out of this restroom, stationer, before you get more than you bargained for."

"No ship in, skuz." He bent down. She saw an unshaven, bentnosed face. "C'mon. C'mon out of there."

She sighed. Looked at him wearily. Waved a hand. "Look, station-man. You want it, you owe me a drink and a sleep-over, then you got it all night, otherwise I ain't buying any."

A toothy grin. "Sure. Sure I'll give you a good time. You come out of there."

"All right." She took a deep breath. She put her feet down.

She saw it coming. She knew it, she tried to clear the sudden grab after her ankle, but the knees wobbled, she staggered and he tried again, under the door.

She smashed a foot down, bashed his head into the tiles, but he twisted over and got a hold on her ankle and twisted, and there was no place to step but him, and he was pulling. She staggered against the stall, felt his fingers close, tried to keep from falling and went down against the toilet seat, a crack of pain on one side, pain in her cheek as she rebounded and hit the wall and then the floor beside the toilet. His hands were all over her, he was crawling under the stall door onto her, arms wrapping around her, and everything was a blur of lights and his face. He hit her, cracked her head back against the tiles once and twice, and for a while it was exploding color, alcoholic breath, his weight, his hands tearing at her clothes.

Damn mess, she thought, and tried to stay limp, just plain limp, while he ripped her jumpsuit open and pawed her, which she couldn't stop: he had her pinned between the toilet and the stall wall.

Just a little more breath. Just a little time for the stars to stop exploding.

He started choking her then. And there was damned little she could do except struggle. Except get her right hand to her pocket, while his stubbly mouth was on hers and he was choking the sense out of her.

She got the razorblade. She kept her fingers clenched despite the pain and the fog in her brain and she got it out and slashed him down the leg. He reared up, howling, his back against the stall door. She nailed him dead-on with her boot-heel and he gasped and fell down onto her, so she got him with the razor again.

Then he was mostly trying to slither out of the stall, and she let him. She got an elbow over the toilet and heaved herself up and got the stall unlatched while he was throwing up outside.

He was on his knees. She caught her balance against the row of stalls and kicked him up under the jaw. When he hit the sink and went down on his back with his leg under him, she waited until he tried to get up again and then kicked him in the throat.

After that he was a dead man. She could finish it, while he lay there choking to death, but she just stared at him with her skull pounding and her vision going gray—she came to with the water running and water in her hands and splashing up into her face. Which was stupid. She could be wrong about how hard she'd hit him. He could have a knife, he could get up and kill her. But she looked to see where he was with the water dripping off her face and her hands and running down her collar and he was lying there with his eyes open.

So he was dead. A dizzy wave came over her. She threw cold water on him to be sure he wasn't shamming, but there was no blink or twitch.

Another wave. She remembered he'd yelled. Somebody could have heard the shouting outside. She looked herself over for marks. There were scratches all down her chest and on her throat. There was blood on her jumpsuit, blood soaked one knee. So she peeled down and washed that leg of the jumpsuit in the sink until the water ran pale pink and the jumpsuit was mostly clean; and she almost blacked out, so she leaned her elbows against the sink to scrub, and she wrung out the jumpsuit and got it on again, one leg and a lot of spots all over it icy cold. So she used the blower to dry them. It was dangerous while the docks were this quiet. Security might hear.

But she wanted to go on leaning there in the warm air, wanted to stay there the rest of the night. She pushed the blower switch again and again, legs braced, staring at the man on the floor, while the gray and the red came and went in her vision. There was a trail of blood from the stall to where he'd died. She remembered the razor, but she had that in her pocket again, she found it there. Along with two cred chits.

She was walking outside on the docks. She couldn't remember how she had gotten there. She remembered the restroom, that was all. She remembered the man on the floor. Remembered going through his pockets, stopped, and turned and looked around to find out where she was.

You could get caught from evidence too." Station bank had her prints. But a woman could use the damn restroom. So she had. So a lot of people had. So he was where he had no business being. She walked further, thought about the law getting a genetyping off his fingernails: but they had to catch her first, they had all those cards, all those prints they did have, all those women to question.

Another dark spot. She felt wobbly-hungry. She kept walking, eating a very few soggy crumbs of wafers she scraped out of her pocket, and finally, steadier than she had been, with two cred in her pocket, she went to a bar and had a plastic cup of watery chowder she could even manage to eat.

The barman was lonely, she sat and talked. It turned out he wanted more than that. "All right," she said. Her head hurt and she was sick and she was tired. She'd done it to pay off a bet, never done it just to pay a tab, but he was quiet, he was lonely, she didn't even care what his name was, he had something to offer her and she was down to that finally, if it got her a warm spot and away from the law. "Place to sleep," she said. "What the hell."

"I got that," he said.

So she went back in the storeroom with him, he made a pallet down, she lay down with him and he did what he wanted to while she lay there and thought about Pell and old shipmates.

His name was Terry. He found out she was hurt, she gave him a story about a dockworker getting rough in a sleepover and her walking out on him. He got her something for her headache and he was careful with her, he excused himself to go take care of a customer and he came back and started in with her again, while she was half asleep.

So that was all right too. He was gentle about it. He was soft, sweaty and nervous, she let him do whatever he wanted, he waked her up a couple of times, but she was too weak to do anything. "I'll come back tomorrow night," she said. "I'll be better. Do what you want. You buy me breakfast."

He didn't say anything. He was busy at the time. She went out like that, just back into the dark. A couple of times she felt him. In the morning he bought her breakfast. She sat at a table in the bar and she ate plain toast while she watched the morning news, about how a woman had found a dead man in a restroom on Green dock.

Terry was busy doing his checkout with the owner. He was hangdog, slightly overweight, nothing to look at and nothing too clean. He never looked the owner in the eye. The owner looked at her once, a long stare. But Terry Whoever was smart enough to pay cash for her breakfast, so she could have been a chance customer and the owner had nothing on him.

The dead man was a dockworker, two years resident on Thule, recently laid off his job. The company he'd worked for had folded. He'd been on station work. His supervisor had docked him three days' work yesterday for drinking on the job.

They said his windpipe was crushed.

They said they were checking fingerprints. Naturally. And when they got down to hers, she could say she'd been here, Terry might say she'd been a customer all night, Terry might even say they'd had a fight, if she could keep him interested.

She took careful spoonfuls. Her head hurt. Her whole body hurt. She had never done what she'd done just to get a bed and a meal, not even on Pell.

But there was a ship next week. After weeks since the last, there was a ship named Mary Gold, and damn, she meant to be on it.

Anything. Anything, now, to get off Thule.