Tripoint

Chapter Eight

AUSTIN WAS ASKING HIMSELF BY NOW whether he needed a son. Asking himself maybe what Beatrice had had to do with the older brother affair. Or what Capella had done.

Guilt was a contagion. That was what Christian discovered. No one of his associates was going to thank him for what he’d involved them in. He couldn’t even find most of them.

He walked the docks with no notion in this star system or the next where it made sense to look, or where a fool with a forged passport was going to run. He hadn’t caught up with Capella, who, for all he knew, was lodged in some sleepover with a stranger she’d yanked off the docks, the hell with him, Tom Hawkins, and the mess he’d made… she’d raided the safe for him, she’d told him he was out of his mind, and if Capella caught hell from Austin, she knew how to pass it along. No Capella. No Michaels. Nobody answered his pages. He’d thought at least he could rely on Martin’s crew to join the search. Martin’s captain having ten thousand of his money, it ought to buy something.

But Martin was pulling out of dock on schedule. The same reason he’d picked Martin was taking that resource out of reach.

He couldn’t go to the police. He thought of excuses… he could say he’d forgotten to give his brother his passport and if the fool would just go along with it… but you couldn’t rely on Hawkins taking the cue and keeping his mouth shut. Hawkins wouldn’t benefit from ending up in the hands of the police, but Corinthian would benefit far less, and Austin would skin him alive. With salt and alcohol. He didn’t want the cops. God, he didn’t want the cops—or the customs authorities.

He’d searched every bar in running distance. He’d checked public records. He’d checked sleepover registers. He’d put a page on the message system: Tom, call home to Corinthian. We have a deal.

But the son of a Hawkins bitch wasn’t buying.

He didn’t want to call a general alarm with Corinthian crew, over what was bound to be scuttlebutted as his fault. The rumor had to be going around. There hadn’t been any witnesses to that scene in lower main, but something was going to get out, and the whispers were going to run behind him for years, he knew they were. Bad enough as it was, if he somehow could retrieve the situation—and Hawkins.

But it looked grimmer and grimmer.

Then he did spot a familiar backside. A shock of blond, spiked hair. A familiar swing to the walk.

“Capella!”

Said swinging walk never interrupted at all. He sprinted, overtook, grabbed an elbow. Gingerly.

“Not a sign,” Capella said darkly. “Not a perishing sign. And I’ve called in favors.”

Favors where Capella knew them might involve cages they didn’t want to rattle. Very dark places indeed.

“I’ve been out for two fucking days, Pella, I’ve been top to bottom of the station, I’ve been through records, I’ve been in the bars, I’ve been through computer services, I’ve put messages on the station system. I’ve looked in station employment and the spacer exchange. I’m out of places to look.”

“You look like hell.”

He rubbed an unshaven face with a hand that felt like ice. Tried to imagine what he was going to do or say if he didn’t find Tom Hawkins at all. Or if he couldn’t claim to be in command of the crew that did.

“When’d you eat last?” Capella asked.

He didn’t know. He shook his head. Remembered bar chips. A drink. God knew when. He hadn’t slept. Hadn’t showered. Hadn’t shaved. Hadn’t stopped walking in hours.

“Come on,” Capella said, and steered him for the frontages.

“We haven’t time. Pella, if we don’t find him…”

“Yeah, your ass is had. You just did us all such a favor. Come on.”

“Austin’s going to kill me.”

“Chrissy-sweet, I’m going to kill you, if captain-sir tosses us both off the ship, damned right I am. “ Capella didn’t give up his arm. She steered him into the dark of one of Pell’s ‘round the clock bars, into a vibrational wall of beat and light and music. He all but turned and walked out, confused by the input, except for Capella’s governing hand on his arm. Capella walked him up to the bar, tapped the counter in front of the barkeep with a black fingernail. The bracelet of stars glowed green. And the barkeep looked up with a stark, hard stare.

“Man wants something edible,” Capella said, “before he falls over. Can do?”

“Done,” the barman said, and shoved crackers at them. “Stew coming. What are you drinking?”

“Vodka and juice for him,” Capella said. “Rum for me. Scanlon’s.”

“You got it,” the barkeep said.

His knees made it to the table next the bar. He sat down. Good thing there was a chair under him.

Capella settled opposite. Folded her arms. Stared at him dead-on.

“We have got to find that son,” Capella said. “Think, dammit!

Where would he go? Is he religious? Has he got a kink? A vice? Has he got friends here?”

“No.—Hell, I don’t know. How would I know?”

“Sprite ever trade here?”

“No. I’m sure of that.”

“No business contacts. No companies with offices in places they do trade. Banks. Outfitters. Insurance companies. Religious organizations.”

“I don’t know! How could I know?”

“You could have asked him. You might have been curious. You might have wondered before you chucked him off to Martin. “

“Don’t accuse me!”

The barman brought the drinks. Capella handed over her crew-card. “Put standard on it. I do math. Thanks.”

“He’s got two hundred,” Christian said.

“Two hundred what?” Capella asked.

“Two hundred in chits! I wasn’t going to turn him out broke! He’s got two hundred in hand. A fake passport. “ He got a breath. The air was cold, sullen cold, all the way to the center of his bones. He could admit, at least, the rest of his disgrace. “Martin’s got ten thousand.”

Capella hadn’t expected that. Clearly. She sat for a moment, then shook her head and gave a whispered whistle. “Shit-all. What’ve you got left here?”

“Five. Five to my name, Pella. I didn’t want to kill him!”

You never knew, with Capella, how anything played, or whether she thought you were sane or crazy. She sat staring for a moment and finally shook her head, looking away from him as if that much insanity was too much for her.

In her universe. In his. In Beatrice’s. In Austin’s. He didn’t know. He just never understood the rules. He never had. He got one set from implication and another set from Austin’s expectations, and Beatrice’s, and another still from Capella’s, and he just never understood the way to fit them together.

“Christian,” Capella said, then, and took his hand in hers, on which the bracelet of stars glowed as independent objects. “We’ll look. All we can do. We’ll look, and I’ll call in a couple more favors. I don’t know what more we can do.”

“Austin’s going to kill me.”

“Yeah. I do wish you’d thought about that. But in realspace we play with real numbers, don’t we?”