Tripoint

Chapter Seven

THE GALLEY DIDN’T SHUT DOWN on approach to dock, no, it was up to its elbows in business. Tink was doing special pastries for the security detail that had to remain aboard… because of him, Tom thought glumly, neither Tink nor Austin being privy to Christian’s plans.

And the pans of food for two hundred plus crewmen during their outbound hours… all had to be ready. They went into the freezer.

Meanwhile the mess-hall vid screens had come on, with what might be a canned view of Downbelow, with its perpetual clouds, greenhoused, he understood, so you could rarely see the continents or the oceans. The indigenes below that cloud cover looked heavenward in hopes of a glimpse of their lord Sun. Made amazing large-eyed statues to do the job for them in the case someone lapsed in duty, he supposed—divine stand-ins.

When he’d been a kid he’d dreamed of Downbelow. Never looked to see it, seeing how the War brought a border between them. He never…

“H’lo, there,” a voice said, out of other dreams, the deep, echoing dark of hyperspace. Blond, in an officer’s fatigues—Capella arrived, drew a cup of coffee.

And said hello, for God’s sake. Hello didn’t mean an assault. No reason for his gut to go to jelly or uncertainty to rise right through his knees.

“Feeling better, are we, Tommy-person?” She came and leaned elbows on the counter to sip her coffee. “H’lo, Jamal, hi, Tink. Smells good in here. Pasta stuff?”

“Pasta,” Jamal said. “No samples.”

“Spoilsport.—Tommy-person. “ She reached across the counter and touched the back of Tom’s hand with her little finger. “Tommy-person. You can come scrub my quarters anytime. Some of us appreciate quality.”

They were about to dock. He was about to leave the ship. And Capella came to harass him a last time. Parting gesture. He hadn’t seen her since system-drop. He was seeing black from second to second, was acutely aware of his own skin, and the touch of ghostly fingers in his sleep.

“Eh?” Capella asked. “What do you think, Tommy-person?”

“I don’t think the captain would approve.”

“Do you do everything he says?”

“Right now I do. Yes, ma’am.”

“Ma’am,” Capella laughed, and he remembered Saby hadn’t liked it either. “Oh, come on, Tommy-pretty. You can call me chief, on duty, and I’ll call you Hawkins. On my own time, and we are on my own time, here, Capella’s just fine. “ Her finger traced down the bone above his index finger. “I bet they could spare you for a cup of coffee and a small sit. Especially if I pull rank. How about?”

“I can’t.”

“Jamal?”

“I don’t—”

Christian… arrived in the door and paused there, just the single beat it took to say Christian hadn’t expected Capella to be there, and he didn’t like what he was seeing. He had an instant guilty feeling, and he didn’t immediately know for what; a fear Christian might take jealous offense, and screw the escape, if he ever intended it—a fear Capella’s purpose was to screw it. It was quiet in the galley. Jamal and Tink had stopped work, and didn’t say a thing.

“Time for older brother to go back in his box,” Christian said cheerfully, walking up to the counter. “Put the toys away, Cappy.”

“Aww,” Capella said, and shoved away from the counter—tossed the cup into the disposal. She looked at him—she had a wicked look, a naturally predatory look. He didn’t even think she intended it. Or it was supposed to tell him something he didn’t know how to read. She gave him a theatrical sulk, and a lift of the chin, flashed a dazzling grin at Christian Bowe. “I’ll take him back.”

“Not a chance. “ Christian had a key. Tom let him unlock the bracelet, endured Christian’s proprietary hand on his shoulder, asking himself what he should believe. “I’ll handle it. See you. The promise stands.”

“Going to cost you,” Capella said.

And didn’t say a thing more as Christian nudged him into motion.

But he couldn’t go without a look at Tink and Jamal. Couldn’t say a good-bye that wasn’t supposed to happen—that from second to second he wasn’t sure was going to happen, or that he wanted to happen. He only looked to fix their faces in his mind, and chanced to see a very different Capella standing by the counter, a Capella all business and grim as hell’s gates.

Christian swung him around abruptly, took him the familiar route back to the brig. A quiet route. The lowerdecks crew were doing their last minute scurrying about, and half the passenger ring would be securing for dock, crew and stations that belonged there gathering thick in docking stations, corridors crowding up along the take-holds.

There were lewd comments, offers to take ‘the new boy’ onto the docks. Christian didn’t spare a glance, just hurried him around the turn to the brig, a corridor full of its own offers and comments… worrisome comments from dockers at take-holds up and down, waiting for the grapple-to and the lock to open. Rough crowd. Rude crowd. They held it down when Christian said stow it, but Christian didn’t have to wait out the docking in an open-fronted cell, and it wasn’t aimed at him.

Besides which, Capella had made Christian mad, and Christian wasn’t talking to him, until Christian took him inside the brig and to the far rear by the bath, face to face with him.

“What did Capella say?”

“Didn’t. I don’t know what she wanted. She hadn’t gotten that far. “ His back was against the wall. It wasn’t a position he wanted in a fight. At least the cable wasn’t on, this time.

But Christian didn’t shove him further. Instead, he reached inside his jacket and pulled out a dozen passports, Union red and Alliance blue. Thumbed open the topmost, red.

To his picture, his name. His passport, his papers, all the freedom to pass customs and take hire, even to prove his identity and origin. Everything was in that red folder. He reached for it—but Christian snapped it shut and held it with the others.

Christian’s terms. Everything was, and Christian was smug and smooth.

“After,” Christian said. “After we walk out. Duty officer carries the papers on all the dockers, that’s the way we work. They go out first. It’s going to look like you slipped through… I was taking you to Medical, right?”

“I guess.”

“You hit your head during dock. Only on the way to Medical, you broke and ran for it, and mixed in with outbound crew. Probably you faked the bump. Got it? Only that’s just the story I tell about how you got out, am I doing this in small enough words, slower brother? I do things like always, take these guys out and you just come along with me through customs… these guys have zero percentage in calling me a liar. They have to deal with me tomorrow, and they won’t notice a thing when papa asks, how’s that?”

“I need my papers.”

“What I’ve got here,” Christian said, pocketed the passports, and reached in a side pocket for a short stack of notes, Alliance cash. “That’s two hundred, immediate save-your-ass cash. I can give you a name, a ship that’ll take hire. Name’s Christophe Martin. I’ll walk you down there, myself. Get you hired, get you papers, Martin’s going out tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“Viking. Meet your approval?”

Breath came short. “Yeah. “ He suddenly had to revise everything. The two hundred, he hadn’t imagined—and the recommendation to another, outbound ship, immediately, without having to hang around Pell. It was everything he could hope to get on his own, heaped up and running over, if he could get his hands on those papers.

It only didn’t add on Christian’s side, on this ship—the passport missing, on a guy who also turned up missing from Christian’s escort… Christian was going to catch hell for it, was what it looked like.

Maybe that was why Capella had wanted to talk to him, maybe that was why the voice in his dreams kept saying Don’t trust Christian… and maybe because the warning had come in hyperspace it threaded its way into his waking mind without any denying it… that voice was Capella, too, he was sure it was, and he couldn’t help doubting, and couldn’t figure what Christian was doing.

An expensive favor. Clearly. He might have to revise his opinion on Christian. Maybe Christian was paying a price for what he did, and had to shove him out the door hard and fast and for his own selfish reasons, but Christian hadn’t had to give him the money.

Christian left, without putting the cable on—left him to the catcalls and promises of the crew outside. He’d heard the door lock. For the first time he was glad it was locked, and he hoped opening it wasn’t just a button push.

“Hey, pretty-boy,” someone yelled.

He went to his bunk and sat down. In a moment more, the take-hold sounded, and he took a firm grip on the inset handhold, next to the e-panel.

Interminable minutes, then, to dock. He sat and tried not to chase those circular paths of thought again, why, or how, or what the choices were. His were all made.

Maybe there was a chance of seeing Marie again. Of his own quarters, on Sprite.

Hell, they’d have bumped somebody into his space. There was always a waiting list, and his cousins wouldn’t have waited till the sheets were washed.

Didn’t bloody miss them. That was the unhappy truth. Marie… Marie wasn’t an affection, she was a bleeding wound. But she was his bleeding wound. He couldn’t but ask himself where she was and what was happening to her. He liked Tink. He was glad he’d met Tink. He couldn’t say that about a lot of people. But he had to get back. Something about bad pennies always turning up.

Mischa was going to be so glad to see him. Rodman was going to die. It was a kind of revenge. Let them think they were rid of him. He didn’t know what Rodman would say. He was almost homesick to hear it. Didn’t even want to beat hell out of him. They were getting old for that solution. In a couple of weeks subjective time, he’d suddenly arrived at that point of maturity.

Give him a couple of weeks with Rodman, he’d recover his edge.

Bump and touch. It wasn’t easy to claim a head injury with that dock. No fault to find in the station’s computers, the ship’s engineers, or the pilot at the helm.

Butterflies hit his stomach. As soon as that touch came, the crew outside the bars left their take-hold points and started for the airlock, while the echo of the grapples locking was still ringing through the hull. The corridor emptied. Fast.

Then he thought… maybe Christian won’t come. Maybe it’s all a joke.

Maybe Austin caught him with the documents. Maybe Capella spilled the whole business.

Inner lock opened, then the outer, crash-crash-thump, with the slight rush of air you almost always got. It smelled… of something he’d never in his life smelled. Exotic and fresh, and wonderful. It was Pell. Downbelow.

He wanted to go. He truly wanted to.

The grid started retracting. Christian showed up, outside. “Hurry up,” Christian snarked at him, and he hurried, out and along with Christian, overtaking the crew in the airlock. Christian yelled for quiet, ordered a line-up along the wall, started calling out names and sorting through the passports and papers.

“Anybody I didn’t call, stay the hell aboard, go find the chief and tell her you need documents.”

There was one, who swore and complained he’d turned in his fuckin’ papers, he hadn’t had them, it was a Corinthian screw-up.

“It’s a clerical, all right. Just get back there,” Christian said, and strode along the ragged line, holding him by the elbow, the fistful of passports in the other. “Come on. Stay a damn line, for God’s sake! Look like business, and don’t mouth off to Pell customs, they got a nasty habit of dropping you out of computers, screw your accounts, you don’t need that kind of trouble, so shut up!”

There were hoots and catcalls that died fast as Christian led the way down the access, the crew and Christian in coats, himself in his shirt sleeves, which he hoped to God nobody in customs was going to question. He might be hyperventilating—the cold made his breaths too short, and made his chest hurt. Frost whitened every surface but the heated floor. Heated plates, too, as they came down the ramp and into the vast echoing shadow of the dock, under white lights that, like stars, glared from far aloft in the girders, lighting nothing until the light reached the metal decking and the waiting customs agents, at the check-through at the bottom of their ramp. Neon from the bar frontages pierced through the dark and the spots, faint traceries of bar and shop signs, freedom, just that close ahead.

If breath was short before, it was all but choked now. Don’t look nervous, he said to himself, every spacer kid learned it, never look nervous with customs, don’t look like you’re carrying anything, don’t get too friendly, please God there’s no glitch with the papers…

God, I didn’t get an entry stamp at Viking, do you get an exit stamp at a free port? Last I got was Mariner, four months, maybe, four months realtime…

Agents didn’t even look at the stamps. If you strongly looked like your passport picture, if you were approximately the right gender, that was fine, they didn’t even run the microchecks or fingerprints or anything… just go on, keep the line moving, and you were through. He couldn’t believe it was that easy.

Christian grabbed his elbow. “Not far,” Christian said. “Everything’s set.”

“I need my passport. “ It was always the sticking-point in the plan. Christian needed it aboard ship to support his story. He needed it far worse. His actual license was in Sprite’s records. His files were the other side of the Line. He’d never felt his identity, his whole claim on existence, so tenuous as it was with that red folder in Christian’s hands.

“Just keep walking. Let’s do this fast, for God’s sake, I’ve got to get back. You’ll get your damn passport.”

“What berth?”

“We’re at 12. Martin is 22.”

Ten berths wasn’t a pleasant hike at the tempo Christian took it. The air felt heavy to him, giving him more than he wanted, but laden with scents that made it seem thick to him. Breaths didn’t steam on this dockside, but, maybe it was the chill he’d gotten in the tube, maybe it was the raw fear of something going wrong, that fast walking couldn’t break a sweat—he was keeping up with Christian, a step behind at times, thinking maybe it would have made sense to hop a ped-transport, it surely would have made better sense…

But the display boards were saying Berth 20, and 21, and that was 22 ahead.

A group of four men was standing in their path. “You just go with them,” Christian said. “Everything’s set. It’s all right. Here’s your passport, there’s your escort aboard, you don’t need papers, they’ll fix you up whatever papers you need. You’ve got the two hundred.”

“Yes. “ He took the red passport folder, tucked it into his pocket as they walked toward the four men meeting them. Couldn’t see any departure boards from here… he wanted to see was the ship on schedule and he lagged a step to turn and get a look back over his shoulder, at the section/berth display for 20 through 25. He picked out the 22 under Berth, and right beside the reassuring digital Christophe Martin, Pell Registry, was, in smaller letters: Sol Station One, +30: 23h.

Christian grabbed his arm, jerked him around.

He didn’t think. He broke the grip and bolted for the dock-side wall, into the thickest traffic he could find.

“Hawkins!” Christian yelled after him. And: “Get him, dammit!”

He dodged pedestrians, a taxi, a can transport. He ran as far and as fast as he could. A stitch came in his side. His knees began to go, tendons aching. Obstacles blurred. He kept missing them, as long as he could keep going, finally jogged down to a walk, sweat burning off in the icy dry air, throat raw, legs and arms going increasingly to rubber. He didn’t bend over to get rid of the stitch, nothing to make him obvious in the traffic. Shirt and black skintights weren’t unusual in the crowd near the heated frontage, just too recognizable. He expected Corinthian crew at any moment to overtake him and ship him off to Sol, where he’d never get back again, never, ever match up with Sprite’s course, too many variables, too far from everything he knew. Besides that, Earthers were weird, with weird, irrational laws, and he didn’t want to go where, for all he knew, Martin might be under agreement to dump him.

Legs wobbled under him. Spacer-boys didn’t run distances.

Do anything you like in null-g, maybe sprint the length of lower main, but no races on dockside. Only thing in his favor, Christian and the guys from Martin didn’t have station-legs, either. And terror was on his side.

Nobody overtook him. If they’d lost track of him somewhere, they’d have had to factor in the chance he’d dived into a shop or a bar, or taken a lift up to the station’s upper levels, and once they did that, Pell was a huge station, not easy to search with any degree of quiet. He ought to go to the cops, he ought to, but no way in hell was that an option. Best was the lifts, while he was still ahead of the search and they hadn’t a chance to post watch by the doors.

He had the credit chits Christian had given him—a gift to salve Christian’s conscience or just property Martin would have taken from him to pay his bills aboard, he didn’t intend to find out. He had the passport Christian had given him—maybe that was conscience-salving, too, because Christian could have stranded him for good and all if he had just handed that over to Martin crew.

He took it out of his pocket. It was the right official cover. But it didn’t have the thumb-dent on the edge his had. He opened it and it was just color repro inside, a good, professional forgery.

The wind went out of him, then. He wasn’t sure where he was walking. He flipped through the pages, dodged pedestrians, told himself he was a fool, he’d seen the folder, he’d believed it—but no customs agent was going to pass it at close inspection. Christian had switched it on him, maybe had the real one and the fake in his pocket, and he was on Pell without a legitimate passport to let him go to the station offices, or apply for work. His license was there, all repro, nothing he could legitimately take to any ship’s master.

He bumped into a man—excused himself. He was lightheaded and close to panic, and, with that near-incident, he shoved the passport into his pocket and kept walking, half-blind, heart beating in great, heavy thumps.

Stupid, he kept saying. Stupid, stupid. The only worse thing that he’d escaped… was being on Christophe Martin.

—ii—

NOT GOOD, WAS ALL CHRISTIAN could say to himself as he reached Corinthian’s dockside. Not good, in the way an oncoming rock wasn’t good.

Michaels had seen to the details—had the cargo crew taking care of business, setting up with Pell transport. A glance around told him at what stage routine was at the moment and Austin couldn’t fault him for that—Michaels was on his job and it wasn’t as if he’d kited off with things undone.

What he had done was a trouble he couldn’t even graph. It wasn’t supposed to have happened that way. Things weren’t supposed to have skewed off like that, they had no right not to have gone the way they should.

“Chris-tian.”

Capella’s voice. He waited. Capella overtook him at the edge of the ramp.

“Well?” Capella said.

“Son of a bitch,” he said.

Capella didn’t even start with: What happened? She dived straight to: “Where is he?”

“I don’t know! How should I know? The damn fool bolted, kited off, I don’t know where he is!”

“Fine. Fine. With the passport?”

“He thinks. “ He patted the pocket where he had the real one. “He’s not going anywhere without this. He’d be a fool to go to the cops. He knows it.”

“Yeah,” Capella said, implying, to his ears, that people had been fools before. That she was looking at one.

“He wasn’t in any danger, Martin’s a fair ship—he just—took off when he saw the guys waiting, I don’t know what got into his head. We’ve got to find him.”

“We’ve got to find him,” Capella echoed. “Yeah.”

He wanted to hit her. He knew better. That bracelet wasn’t a forgery. “Pella, we’ve got a problem. We’ve got a major problem out there. Yeah, it’s mine, but it’s the ship’s problem if we don’t get him before the cops do. We can’t go out of here and leave him loose—God knows what he’d do. We’ve got to use this port.”

“Well, maybe we should stand here, I mean, if he wants Corinthians, he can just walk right up to the ramp and ask.”

“Don’t be an ass!”

“I’m not the ass, Chris-baby.”

“Chris-tian.”

That was Austin. He’d left the pocket-com on.

“You told him!”

“Not this spacer,” Capella said. “Was your trail that immaculate?”

“Chris-tian.”

He thumbed the com up. “Yessir, I hear you.”

“Do you want to come aboard, Christian?”

No shouting. No cursing. Panic hit him. He wanted Austin to yell at him, swear at him, just simply bash him against a bulkhead and beat hell out of him. He’d never heard Austin so calm about something he’d done.

No, he didn’t want to come aboard. He wanted to take a bare-ass walk in deep space rather than come aboard.

“Yessir,” he said past the obstruction in his throat. He threw a condemned man’s look at Capella, an appeal to the living. “Organize a search. Find him. Get him back.”

“With what promises?” Capella hissed. “A pay raise? Promotion to tech chief?”

He couldn’t stay to argue. Capella was his only hope. He mounted the long ramp, got his wave-through from customs, and walked the tube to the airlock.

Austin didn’t meet him there. The inner lock was shut— optional, and Corinthian generally opted, not relying wholly on ‘ station security. He coded through into lower main. Austin was standing down by ops, waiting with arms folded.

“Sir,” Christian said when they were face to face. He still expected Austin to hit him.

“Where’s your brother?” Austin asked him.

“I don’t have a—” The answer fell out, faster than he wanted. He shut up. Austin waited.

And waited.

“He was trouble,” he said to Austin’s steady stare. “He’d be trouble. He’s too scrubbed-clean, he’d find out we’re not and he’d go straight to the cops, some time we’d never know it.”

“So?” Austin said. And waited.

“I set it up with Martin, down the row. Trip to Sol. They’d leave him there. He’d stay gone.”

Another silence, the longest of his life. “I have a question,” Austin said finally.

“Sir?”

“Who appointed you captain?”

“Nobody. Sir.”

“Who told you your judgment was more important than mine?”

“Nobody, sir.”

Another silence. He’d never dealt with Austin in this mode. He’d never seen it in his life. He didn’t want to see it again.

“This ship doesn’t agree with your judgment, then.”

“Nossir. “ He saw himself busted to galley scrub. For years. He saw Austin selling him to the Fleet. Beatrice wouldn’t like it. But Beatrice herself might be on the slippery slope with Austin right now.

“I have a suggestion,” Austin said.

“Sir. “ He asked what Austin wanted, he did what Austin wanted. He only hoped to stay alive. Hitting him would have blown off Austin’s temper. He prayed for Austin to hit him and call it quits. This… didn’t promise forgiveness. Ever. No confidence in him. Ever again.

“I want you to go out and find him,” Austin said softly. “I want you to get him back here without tripping any alarm. What are we agreed to with Martin?”

“Ten thousand c.”

“You paid it?”

“Yes, sir. “ It was the only defense he could claim. “My money.”

Austin only nodded. “You’d better get out there.”

“Yessir,” he said, paralyzed.

“So why are you standing there?”

“Yessir,” he said, and backed off a pace before he dared turn and make for the lock, feeling Austin’s stare on his back all the way.