Текст книги "Rimrunners "
Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh
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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'schances, 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'slast 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."
Ernestinecrew 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.
CHAPTER 3
THE WOMAN Ely called Nan looked up from her desk in the outer office, took one look at her and came abruptly to her feet.
"Fell," Bet said, because the eye was going to go black, she'd had a look at it in the bar's restroom. She looked like hell, she had her collar zipped up high to cover the scratches on her throat, she was still wobbly, and she smelled of sweat and God knew what. But she was on time. She signed in at the desk and she ignored the stare a moment doing that. Then she looked up.
"Ma'am, I got faint and I fell. I'm sorry. I got breakfast this morning. Kind man gave it to me. I'll be better."
"O dear God," the woman said, in a shocked, bewildered way, and just stood there, so that Bet found herself staring eye-to-eye with this stationer woman, this upright, respectable stationer woman who could kill her with a phone call to the authorities. "God.
Sit down."
"I'm here to work," Bet said. "Mr. Ely said he'd pay me."
"Just sit," Nan said sharply, pointing to a chair behind the counter. And when she did that, Nan brought her coca and wafers.
She took them. "Thank you," she said meekly, figuring she was in no place now to quarrel. "Ma'am, I really want the job."
It was begging. But she was out of choices.
"I'll call the infirmary," Nan said.
"No;" Her heart thudded. She almost spilled the cup over. "No. Don't."
"You didn't fall," Nan said darkly.
Bet looked up, met more straight sense than she'd looked for in this dry, plain woman.
Not accusing. Just knowing damn well a fall didn't do what had happened to her face. "I got shoved up a wall. Rough night. Please. I don't want any trouble. It's just bruises. Give me a chance. I'll work back in the offices. Won't frighten the clients."
"Let me talk to Mr. Ely. We'll fix something up."
"No meds. Please. Please, ma'am."
"Stay here."
Nan left. Bet sat and sipped the coca. It hurt her cut mouth; the sugar made a loose tooth ache. She held the cup in both hands, trying not to panic, watching toward the glass-walled corridor where the back offices were, trying not to think about phones and security and the restroom last night.
But her heart was beating in hard, painful beats, enough to make her dizzy when Ely came back with Nan and looked down at her. "Wall, huh? You look like hell, Yeager."
"Yes, sir."
He looked at her a long while. Arms folded. He said, "I want to talk to you in my office."
"Yes, sir," she said. She put the cup down on the counter. "Thank you," she said to Nan, but, "Bring it," Ely said. So she did, as she followed him down the corridor and into his office.
He sat. She sat, the cup warming her hands.
"You all right?" he asked.
She nodded.
"You report it?"
She shook her head.
"You get robbed?"
"Nothing to steal," she said.
"Are you all right?" he asked again, which she guessed finally in a stationer's delicate way meant had she been raped.
"I'm fine," she said. "Just a disagreement. Damn drunk and I crossed paths." God, if he or Nan put it together with the morning news—"I just wasn't walking very steady last night. He shoved me. I cussed him. I hit the wall. I went out. He apologized. Bought me breakfast."
Ely looked as if he doubted her. He looked at her a long time. Then: "Where are you staying?"
She thought, desperately. A year since anyone had asked that. She remembered the name of the bar. "Rico's. Good an address as any."
"You staying there?"
"I get my mail there."
"Who writes to you?"
She shrugged. The heartbeat was doing doubletime. But Ely didn't have to help. Ely didn't have to hand out a cred-chit to a down-and-gone spacer. He didn't have to call a woman friend in when he talked to her, all proper, so she could read his signals, that it wasn't her he was after, that he was trying to do a good deed. That kind was scarce on station docks. "Nobody," she said. "But if someone did, it'd be there. If something came in."
He just looked at her. Finally: "You do the trash-sorts. You run errands. You sign in every morning and you make sure you look like a client otherwise, if somebody's here besides Nan and me. I don't want Personnel to see you. If somebody comes in and you get caught in the back hall, just make like you were going to the restroom."
She nodded. She sat back in the back room and sorted the trash for recycling. She weighed it out and she noted the weight on each bundle because sometimes the cyclers cheated you. She'd heard that about Thule the first day she was onstation.
Mainday noon she got her cred-chit from Ely and she went to a sit-down restaurant and had another bowl of soup.
That night she went back to Rico's and Terry, his last name was Ritterman, bought her a beer and a cup of chowder.
He took her into the back then. She undressed, she said she had to wash her clothes, so he got her a bucket and she scrubbed her jumpsuit and her underwear and hung them to dry over the heat-vent. He came up behind her while she was doing that and put his hands on her. Without saying anything. She let him. She let him pull her down on the floor and he still wanted to touch her, that was all, while she shut her eyes or stared at the ceiling, and finally somebody came in out front, so he swore and went out to see about that.
She turned over and wrapped up in the rug and went to sleep for a while before he came back and woke her up, turning her over again and starting in.
Customers came in. He was gone a while. He came back and he got down again and she thought he must've been a long time without, he'd wear out finally and maybe go to sleep or let her sleep the rest of the night. But he never did.
She got dressed in the morning, he bought her breakfast. He wanted her to come to his apartment. "I got to work," she said.
She earned her chit. She thought about finding somewhere else to spend the night, she was recovered enough to be more fastidious, and Terry gave her the chills, but that meant no supper and no breakfast.
So she went back to Rico's.
It was that way every day. Every day she got the single chit. Every main-night she went back. Terry got stranger. He wanted her to come to his apartment. He wanted to show her his place, he said.
He got to doing weird things, like wanting to tie her up. "Hell if you do," she said. "I don't play those games."
He acted embarrassed. But she was worried about the drinks he gave her after that.
She was worried about going to sleep with him. He kept fingering her scars and asking how she'd gotten this one and that one and being weird, just weird, the way he went at sex while he was doing that. "Quit it," she said, finally, and shrugged him off. He slammed her back again, her bruised skull hitting the tiles and sparking color through her vision. She lay still, because she'd told her subconscious she was in trouble– don't react, don't react, he's a fool, is all—
"That night you came here," he said. "That black eye and all."
He hurt her. She got a hand free and clouted his ear. "Hurts, dammit!" He pawed after a hold on that arm and she gave him the knee. He yelled. She got away, off the blanket, over where her shoulders hit the corner and the shelves.
"You damn bitch," he said.
"Just back off." She levered herself up and sat down on a beer keg. It was cold. The air was. The whole place stank. "Back off, friend."
"Come on back."
"Hell. Just let me alone. I'm tired. This is my night-time, man, I work mainday. Just back off."
"You and that black eye. That man you say grabbed you—'
"Just leave me the hell alone. You got your supper's worth."
The front door chimed. He sat there, ignoring it, breathing hard.
"You got customers, Terry-lad."
"Security's looking for some woman, off in Green, same night, same night you came here, all marked up. You got no card, no ID, come in here beat up—Don't call the meds, you say. Don't want anything to do with the meds—I bet you don't, sugar."
Someone came into the hall. Shouted for service.
"Get out there, dammit," she hissed. "You want the law in here?"
"You're the one don't want the law, sugar." He put his hand on her leg. "I do what I want. Got that? I know where you hang out at the Registry. I followed you. Hear? If I call the law I can tell 'em where to look, even if you aren't in the comp, like I bet you aren't, sugarc"
"You want the law, dammit, get out there and wait on those guys before they call security!"
He stroked her skin. "You be here. You better be here. I got you for a long time. You better know I do."
More shouting. "Just a minute," he yelled. He got up and limped around putting his clothes together, staggered out the door fastening his belt.
She sat there on the beer keg with her arms clenched around her knees. She wanted to throw up.
She thought it through, what her choices were. She listened to the voices in the bar and she got up and got her clothes from over the heat-vent, she dressed and she walked out into the bar where he was waiting on a rowdy tableful of dockworkers.
He gave her a stark, mad look. She went over to the bar and got a drink for herself and listened to the rude comments from the four dockworkers, the invitation to have a drink, go to a sleepover with them and do this and that exotic number.
Attractive notion, considering. But the thought that kept coming through cold and clear was how fast Terry Ritter-whoever would be on the com to Central.
And with her fingerprints at the scene, the law just needed to get a look at her black eye and those scratches and to know that she was a transient and an illegal to get a judge to give a writ for real close questions.
Under trank.
She gave a scowl toward the dock workers. Loaders. Lousy lot. But cleaner than Terry Ritterman. Maybe even decent types, sober and solo. Terry came up and put his hand on her hip.
She took it. She leaned on the bar and drank her vodka sip by sip, she stared at the dockworkers with the thought that any one of them would be a hell and away better pick.
She walked over and got a bottle, she went over and poured their glasses full while they protested they hadn't ordered it.
"It's on me," she said, and played a scenario through in her mind, stirring up a ruckus where a soft little man could get his neck broken by some dockworker. But that still meant the law. It still meant questions.
So they drank, she played up to them and enjoyed Terry squirming and worrying, played it all the way and hoped to keep them there till maindawn, when the owner came.
Terry rang up her charges on his own card, Terry glowered at her and beckoned her over, but she ignored it until he picked up the phone.
Then she came over to him.
"You go home with me," he said, cutting the phone off then. "You're going to pay for this."
She said nothing. He pinched her hip. Hard. She stared at the mirrored room and when he demanded a response from her, nodded.
The dockworkers left, fifteen minutes before maindawn. She poured herself synth orange while they walked out.
"My place," Terry said. "Understand?"
She nodded again. He rubbed her shoulder. She flinched away and went to sit down and drink her breakfast, while the owner came and checked out the accounts. The owner gave her the eye and gave her a laconic good morning.
"'Morning," she said. Probably he was more than suspicious why an orange juice and toast always turned up on Terry's card. It was that kind of look.
Probably that look followed them when Terry came and told her to come with him, they were leaving.
"You'll learn," he said, linking his arm through hers. They walked like lovers as far as the lift. He had to behave himself: there were other passengers in the car. But he trapped her arm again when he got her off on his floor, over in Green. He radiated heat like a furnace. He kept squeezing her hand in his soft, sweating fist. He started telling her in a half-whisper that she'd like him, he really had to teach her not misbehave, but they could get along, she could stay in his apartment and as long as she did the things he wanted he'd keep her safe from the law.
She said nothing, except when he squeezed down on her hand and insisted she say yes. So she said yes.
He got his keycard out of his pocket. He led her to a dingy door in the dingy miniature hall that could have been the bowels of some ship, instead of a station residency. He opened the door and he turned on the lights with a manual switch and he shut the door again.
It was an ugly place. It was all clutter. It stank of bad plumbing, unwashed dishes and old laundry. She watched him take his coat off and throw it down on the table. His hands were shaking.
She watched. She waited till he turned around and reached for her. She took his hand and twisted around, and he hit the floor. Hard.
"I want to tell you something," she said in that instant of shock. "My ship name's Africa."
His eyes got wide. He scrambled to get up. She let him. He staggered over against the wall. There was a phone around somewhere in the filth, she was sure of that. She gave him a chance to make a dive for it. She leaned on a chair back, just waiting. But he froze, gone white.
"You're lying," he said, standing there with his hair on end. "You damned whore, you're lying to me."
"Got separated from my ship when the Fleet pulled out. Just mixed with the refugees, worked docks a while, talked my way aboard a freighter." She patted her breast pocket.
"Even got myself an Alliance testimonial. Said I lost my papers. Not too hard to get this far. I was born spacer, friend, that's a fact. But I was trainedmarine."
"Go away," he said, waving a fluttering hand. "Get the hell out of here. You got nothing to gain here. I got no percentage in saying anything."
She shook her head slowly. "Oh, no, friend, you know I'm going to kill you. And in your case I'm going to take my time."
CHAPTER 4
MORNING, Nan," she said, at the door of the Registry, and Nan looked at her oddly and tilted her head as she unlocked.
"You're right cheerful," Nan said.
She nodded. And went and had her morning cup of coca, in the back, out of view of the couple of clients that were coming in the door—that being an employee privilege.
Rico was going to wonder for maybe an hour this mainday evening, when Terry failed to show. And maybe he'd call up the apartment and maybe leave a message, but Terry's kind was cheap, Terry's kind was the sort that showed up to work a stretch and then got his life in a mess and just dropped out of sight. Rico might have a new alterday man by mainday next, that was all Rico was likely to do. Meanwhile Terry's card still had credit in the bank, it worked in the vending machines—she wasn't fool enough to walk into some restaurant and claim to be Terrence Ritterman; she just used the machines, just cheap stuff, just to tell anybody who happened to check the card-use records that Terry Ritterman was still walking around, no reason for alarm unless someone had specific reason to be alarmed.
And was it unusual if alterday help in a skutty bar walked out one shift-change with some piece of ass that might have more money than he did, and just not bother to tell the owner he wasn't coming back?
She could live off stuff in the apartment, but she wanted to keep the card active. So she'd had this morning's breakfast out of the dockside vending machines. You didn't need an access code check for that, you just slipped it in and out came breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner. There'd been a little cash in Ritterman's pocket. Eight cred. She knew where that could turn to a cheap duffle: she could use that, for when the ship came; that and a few other necessaries off Ely's cred a day, that she could save now.
She'd left the body in the bedroom, she'd turned the heat off in there, she had stuffed the vents and cracks under the door and sealed everything up with tape. It could get real unpleasant in a week or so, but there were no neighbors close and if people noticed a scruffy spacer coming and going out of Terry Ritterman's apartment, all they could figure was, she was crazy as he was for hanging around with him. And nobody much bothered a crazy woman.
She'd washed the jumpsuit, she'd had herself a shower, she'd scrubbed with perfumed soap and she'd given herself a haircut; and Ely gave her a second look when he came in.
Looked pleasantly surprised to see her scrubbed-up and cheerful, as if he'd really done something spectacularly good with his charity.
"Looking good, Yeager."
"Adds up," she said back, and grinned. "Few meals don't hurt, stationer-man."
She had a real warm feeling for people like Nan and Ely. They were probably real happy doing good. And it was really too bad, they were probably going to shake their heads and have long second thoughts about their helping strangers when station-law found what was in that apartment bedroom and linked everything up.
Damn mess was what. Get herself a ship out of here, get clear back to Sol if she had to, change ships where she could, just keep moving far enough and long enough and stay alive.
The Old Man was operating hell and gone away from here. Africawas still alive, and maybe she could be lucky enough, sometime, somehow, to match up her course and the Fleet's. Meanwhile she just hoped to hell to avoid Alliance law and Mallory's attention.
Thatwas the thing gave her the chills, that turncoat Mallory was out hunting her old friends, and Norwaymade these ports from time to time, Mallory being respectable now.
The rest of them had come up on the losing side, that was all, and Mallory was smart, Mallory had gotten herself on the outs with Mazian, then luck happened and here was Mallory, shiny-new loyalties and all. Smart captain. Damn good, Bet gave her that. If luck had been on her own side she'd have gotten snagged up in Norway'scompany instead of Africa'sand have herself a clear record right now—have credit in her pocket, have a snug spot and a rack to sleep in, rich as a skut could get. No matter Norway's captain was a hardnosed bastard who'd gunned down her own troops and tried to blow Africato hell—no love lost at all between Mallory and Porey. They'd fought in space, fought on dock-side, Mallory had arrested three of Africa'smarines and Africatroops had sniped at Norway'son the docks of Pell before they got to open space. Not to ask what Norway'sskuts would do to one of Africa'sif they got her aboard.
Long, long way to die, she knew that.
And if station law caught her they'd hold her for Mallory, who would take a direct, even personal interest in her.
She shivered. She did her work, she thought about that ship that was coming and how long they were going to be in port—some three, four days from now. Another three, four days to fill Mary Gold'stanks—
While the contents of that bedroom got more noticeable, long enough for an inquiry into that business in the restroom to get damned close.
They said they were going to close down Thule, they were going to blow it and shove the pieces into the sun so there was no way the Fleet could even mine the place for metal—so there wasn't going to be a Thule Station for a ship to come back to, the people were going to be scattered across a dozen lightyears and maybe they wouldn't even bother about the records, just junk everything, maybe forget all the old records as useless and she could go on and never worry about the business on Thule catching up with her someday, if she could just keep it quiet for a week, keep on using Ritterman's card in places Ritterman might go, and convince the computers he was still alive. Thule wasn't like Pell, where there might be relatives to ask questions: the types that had come out to this armpit of the universe were all loose-footed, the dregs of Pell, mostly; the sweepings out of Q-section, refugees and nobodies hoping for a break that might have come but wouldn't, now. And Ritterman wasn't the sort to have a lot of friends.
