Текст книги "Tripoint "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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And he was, on those grounds, as much a prisoner in Saby's light, cheerful grip as he would have been in the hands of the delegation he'd expected.

He didn't see where Tink went. Maybe to the shops, maybe to another lift. But Saby coded Blue 9/20 on the lift pad where they stopped. The car took a moment or two arriving.

"That was nice," Saby said, hugging his arm tight. "It's always different, the gardens. I try to go at least once. I don't want to be on a planet. I really don't like the thought of infalling. The gardens are really just close enough for me. They do weather sometimes. I think that's just on the morning tour. They say you can plan on getting wet."

"I'm not going to run away," he said. "You can let go."

She didn't let go. She kept it physical—meaning knock her down if he wanted to run. And you could die for that, if Tink got hold of you. "I'll take you back to the ship," she said, "if you really want."

"What's my choice?"

"The Aldebaran. I talked to Austin. He's just really pissed at Christian. He said it's my call. The Aldebaran'sa really nice place. Good food. Class One. You tell me you won't do anything stupid and you can stay there and we can have first-class food and soak up the latest vids. No sex in the offer, understand, just a place to be for a few days."

He was relieved at the no-sex part. Wasn't a mach' thing to be relieved at. Or maybe it was. Human dignity. If you reckoned that. He didn't like being shoved, ordered, ultimatumed, or kidnapped. He'd grown very touchy about kidnapped.

"Why?" he asked.

But the car came, and they got in, with two other riders aboard. Saby smiled. He smiled. Acted easy. The other passengers did, clearly romantically inclined, hand in hand. Everybody smiled at everybody. Saby hung on to his arm and his nerves were strung tight as wire, the whole short distance out to Blue 9/20, where they got off and the other spacers stayed.

"What's the deal?" he asked, then, in the brief privacy they had as they walked.

"The offer?"

"The sleepover. The fancy food. You."

"I told you. I don't come with the room."

"Yeah, that's fine. I don't, either. But why?"

"Because you're not a fool. Because Christian's got it coming, and Austin's pissed. That's enough."

"I don't see it."

"Do you dance?"

"Do I dance?"

"I know this restaurant. They've got a view, this huge real view of the stars from the dance floor. I can teach you."

He'd never. He'd never imagined. He'd never, in his life. Saby was a tumbling infall of propositions and changes of vector he'd never, ever, expected to deal with.

Dance?

Stationers danced. Spacers… did, but not on Sprite, they didn't. He couldn't imagine.

"I don't know," he said. "I guess. " He was thinking more about the food. He'd lately been hungry. He'd no assurance he might not be again.

And they walked the dockside, to a frontage with the very small, gold-and-silver sign that said Aldebaran.

Any spacer would say, high-class, expensive, and ask, being prudent, Who's really financing this?

Saby? Austin? Or somebody else? Like another ship… with proprietary ideas.

Saby input an access code and showed him through the doors into a very beige, very pricey-looking reception area. Amenities were listed on the walls, with code numbers. Display cases lined the room. He saw, at one pass of the eye, directions to a gym, to a barber/stylist shop… to a jewelry store, restaurants, one breakfast, brunch, lunch, one dinner. He drew in a breath, shook his head, reckoning himself far out of his credit budget—you could feel the money in your pocket ebb just in looking at the case-displays.

"Anything you need urgently," Saby said. "Personals? They have those in the bath, in every room. That's all right."

"I've got a hundred eighty seven cee," he said. "Actually it's Christian's."

"Oh, good," Saby said cheerfully. "Buy whatever you like. I've a phone call to make."

"To the captain? Or to him?"

"The captain,—naturally. Be good. We'll eat here, tonight. Are you hungry?"

"Hungry. Sleepy. Tired. Mostly tired."

"Dancing when you're rested," Saby said, and went to the desk, to make her phone call… after which there might be God knew what. He hoped just for a chance to sit down. But he'd gotten to the slightly crazed, half-giddy stage of sleep deprivation, and he wandered around the room and looked at the displays, that was all, mentally blank. He was aware of Saby on the phone, at the desk. He was aware as she crossed the room toward him.

Entirely cheerful. "Captain says fine, it's all right, anything you need—in reason. Have you found anything you have to have?"

"Just a bed, just sleep. " That was the honest answer. It was all he could think of now, now a room and a bed were that close. So Saby coded them through further doors. It was down the corridor to number 17, and inside, to a private room with two beds.

He went straightway and fell face-down on one, not eager for conversation, his legs tired from walking and standing, his eyes stinging from sleeplessness. He said to himself that if Saby wanted to call the cops or Corinthianor anybody, he didn't care, so long as he could get a little rest that wasn't hiding out in a restroom or sitting on a waiting-area bench.

A blanket settled over him. If Saby was the source of the blanket, he was grateful—the room was chill, and he hadn't the self-awareness left to figure out what to do about it.

Pleasant, he thought about Saby. Nice. Tink said she was all right.

But clearly reporting to his father. That wasn't a recommendation.

But it was opposite sides of the room, Saby didn't bother him, the blanket made him comfortable as he was, and the lights went out. He hadn't even the interest to open his eyes as he heard Saby settle into the other bed. Stark naked or in the sexiest gown he could imagine… couldn't muster a shred of interest. Face-down and going, gone.

—iii—

THE MUSIC IN Jaco'smade the glasses shake. The walls were all screens, on which old vids played endlessly. It was a horror-show to the left, a riot scene to the right, a murder-thriller straight ahead.

In the immediate vicinity, it was impending apocalypse, one day before board-call and no brother.

Not onesight, sound, clue of Tom Hawkins, and no call from the station police office.

Thanks very likely to 200c of his money. 10200c, correction.

Correction again, 14750c, after he'd paid the computer time, the records searches, the bar tabs, the working-time of various crew who had to be put on duty-time to find the son of a bitch, and he couldn't ask Austin to foot the bill.

Clock on the wall said 0448m/1548a, meaning approaching suppertime on Corinthian'smain-crew schedule, meaning Austin was awake and hewas having supper an hour and a half before alterday dawn. On one wall a giant spiny monster was flattening an ancestral Terran city and on the opposite, one guy was choking another while some dimbrain woman stood and watched and screamed.

"There you are. " Capella pulled a chair back and dropped into the seat with a clatter of bracelets. "God, 0500?"

"Found anything?"

"Not a damned thing. " She slumped back and, the waiter being instantly on them, "Sandwich. Cheese. Rum and juice. I need vitamins."

"ID."

She pulled her card from her sleeve-pocket and the waiter ran the mag-strip through his handheld, logged the charge and handed back the card.

"14756 50c," Christian said glumly, and had a sip. "My guess… just my remotest guess is our big chance is tomorrow. Board-call starts at 1500 and ends at 1830, and I'm betting he'll be watching from somewhere, either right at the first or right toward the end."

"What makes you think it?"

"Genes. Can Austin turn hold of a question? Older brother won't be satisfied until he seesthe ports close and the lights go out and he sees our departure telemetry on the boards—until then it's not enough. Hewon't believe it until he sees our outbound wavefront, but that's outside our parameters. I want to be on that dock tomorrow right down to the last, I want to have your eyes and mine where we can see anybody watching us. Because he will come down to watch."

"Best hope we've got, I guess. Guy's nice-looking. My notion is he's snagged a free stay with somebody—no knowing he even knows what day it is."

"Oh, he knows," Christian said. "I'd bet anything he knows to the second when that board-call is. And if we do spot him—"

"Going to be interesting hauling him past the customs check."

"Ship-debt. We've got his papers. We've got his sign-on at Viking."

"He really sign on?"

He hadn't, of course. "The papers I've got say he did."

"Be careful how long you flash those. Pell cops aren't blind. They knowtheir local artists."

"What the hell else am I going to do? This is expensive paper, Pella."

"Yeah."

" You'renot making any headway."

"Christian, I have called in debts you would not want to know about. I have talked to people I never wanted to talk to, at expenses you don't reckon in any bank account. Don't talk to me about effort in this not noble cause, dear friend. These are people I neverwanted to see, and they don't come cheap."

His heart sank. "How much?"

"Those that ask for cash—2400, at current."

"I haven't gotit, God, Austin's going to leave mein station-debt."

"Cash, Chrissy-sweet, cash is the only way. My ID has smokedfrom the withdrawals. It smells of brimstone. Your account isn't dead, but it's on life-support, and we are eating sandwiches till we clear this port, that much I do know, or you don't want to see the hell we'll be in. Austin does not want me to access these people, Chrissy, Austin will have my hide for the places I've looked, which won'treport to Austin, so there. Just don't you tell him, and you cover that tab, Chrissy. You cover it."

"That's three quarters of everything I own but ship-share, dammit!"

"As I recall, Christian-love, this was not originally my idea. I would have predicted elder-brother wouldn't have liked the trip to Tokyo and London. I just really didn't think it was his artistic preference."

"Shut up! God! give me a little understanding! Where was your advice when it could have done some good?"

"I don't recall I was consulted. Cajoled, entreated, asked for illegal acts, but consulted…"

"How is he in bed?"

"Who?"

"My half-brother, dammit. How good?"

"We are suspicious, aren't we?"

"He's dangerous as hell. A Family Boy? All full of conscience? All full of principles? My father's off his head. I'm not! I've nothing against Hawkins personally. But nobody sees, nobody sees a damned thing dangerous in him!"

"And wecan't find him," Capella said. "I don't see Austin disturbed. I see the captain quite, quite calm—considering the gravity of the circumstances. Possibly because he's not speaking to you. Or—possibly—"

That veer sideways took a second to think about. Two seconds. "The son of a bitch ran for the ship? And Austin didn't say?"

"It isa place we haven't searched," Capella said. The sandwich and rum arrived, which meant a brief distraction to sign the tab.

"He wouldn't," Christian said.

The waiter left. Capella took a bite of sandwich and swallowed. "I don't know. It'd be the smartest thing elder brother could do, in his situation—supposing he's noticed the passport's fake."

"No. Surely not."

"We are down to surely nots. Aren't we?"

"Point."

"Doesn't cost anything. " Another bite. Then Capella's eye strayed. She swallowed, belatedly. He looked, in the chance the distraction was named Hawkins.

Negative. He saw nothing to attract Capella's attention. Bar traffic, nothing but.

But Capella took the paper napkin and wrapped the sandwich. Tossed off half the drink at two gulps.

"What isit?" he asked.

"Somebody I don't want to meet. Just sit still. Don't attract attention."

" Whatsomebody?"

"Chrissy. Just listen. Stay calm. In a moment I'm going to get up and go, and you sit here long enough to see if anybody follows me. Then you get up at your leisure and go left outside, go left, just keep traveling. I'll watch for you and intercept."

"What in hell's going on? Pella? Is it cops?"

"Just do it, dammit. Man in a grey shirt, blue glitz, dark hair, can't miss him. " Capella's eyes tracked something past his shoulder, cold as deep ice. "If he follows, don't let on, just keep walking. I'll be watching. Just wait till I'm clear plus some. If he follows me… still, you follow. We steer this to a venue we like. Got it?"

He didn't. Hadn't. Not the fine details of what Capella proposed to do about it.

But Capella slid out of her seat and walked, quietly, for the door, while he tried to pick out the newcomer she'd described, and did. He was giving an order at the bar, meaning he planned to stay; or asking a question, which might send him to their table: Capella wasn't exactly inconspicuous in an establishment. At least the guy didn't look in his direction.

Until the bartender pointed at his table.

Immediately the guy and two others started over. It wasn't in the instructions. Neither was this guy bringing help with him.

He sat still. Hell, he was a Corinthianofficer, not open to hassle or harassment without involving more ante than any other ship might want. So he looked them up and down like germs and stayed his position.

"Looking for Capella," the first guy said, him in grey and blue; and leaned a knuckle on the table-surface. "Where'd she go?"

"I dunno. Back to the ship. " That was a right-hand turn from here. "She was going to check something. Why?"

Blue-and-grey made a flip of the hand at the muscle behind ' him. One left, presumably on Capella's track. That tore it.

"Wait a minute," he said.

"Just a personal matter," blue-and-grey said.

"With my wife?"

Blue-and-grey stepped back, looking shocked, and laughed outright. It was an unpleasant face. Somebody a woman might have been interested in, maybe, but this was a man that'd knife you, this was a man who still wore open shirts when the waistline was getting a little much for skintights.

This was a man he didn't like, on instant instinct.

"You?" blue-and-grey asked, still laughing. And started to walk out.

The trouble was, he was still figuring how this fit with Capella's safety, which occupied all circuits and input a wait-count while the sumbitch with the mouth was walking to the door on him, while his gut level reaction, to grab that sumbitch by the throat, had adrenaline flooding his system and doing no good at all for the brain.

He carried a knife in his boot. So, he figured, did the two leaving, and so would their friend, the one he'd misdirected down the dock.

Meanwhile, if blue-and-grey and his friend were thinking at all, they'd guess he'd misdirected them, and head the other way out of here, on Capella's track, if they hadn't had a man outside to catch an escapee in the first place.

It went against the grain to call for help. But he took the com out—this close to the ship, he didn't need the phonelink—and punched in, on his deliberate way to the door. " Corinth-com, this is Christian, in Jaco's, we got a code six tracking one of ours spinward out of here, guy in blue and grey, extreme bad manners, relay and get me immediate help here."

Cops routinely monitored the coms as well as the ship-to-station links, and that was too damn bad. Trouble was headed at Capella's back and he was on the way—it wasn't so much what blue-and-grey might do to Capella that scared him… it was the ruckus bound to explode if somebody pulled a knife or a piece of macho argument on Corinthian'schief spook– Corinthiandidn't want any more legal trouble, and bodies were so hard to—

Something hit his head—dropped him to one knee with stars flashing red in his brain, and he came up at the target, straight-armed somebody he couldn't even see, approximately at the throat, impacted a face with the heel of his hand, surprise to him.

But the guy went down anyway, and papa hadn't taught him to turn his back on any attacker. He saw a shadow-someone in the red flashes and grey, trying to come up off the deck, and he rammed his hands down and his knee up. Bang. Guy went backwards, flat.

Thenhe whirled around and ran leftward up the dockside, on what he was sure was blue-and-grey's trail. Red flashes were still floating across his watering vision, it was still grey around the edges, and balance consequently wasn't a hundred percent, but he was dead on course, with blue-and-grey and one other some distance ahead of him.

He didn't see Capella. He kept going, double-fast, figuring on giving Mr. Sumbitch another quarrel to take his mind off her, figuring on his Corinthianbackup to be coming, and hoping some Corinthianwould have the basic sense to drag the sod he'd left behind him into the bar. Cops might ignore bar-business until it spilled onto the docks, but bodies in doorways were a guarantee of notice.

Just, if Capella had come out, too, and run into a trap…

"You!" he yelled, at blue-and-grey, with a stitch coming in his side and his head going around—he was too dizzy to chase the guys at a dead run. But run was what they did, then, damn the luck, just took out, both of them.

He ran, his head pounding like hell, vision fuzzing and tearing. He knocked shoulders with somebody in a better mood than he was—caught-step, recovered, chased the two until he knew he didn't know where they'd gone—then leaned against a friendly support girder near a pharmacy frontage, sweating and aching for breath.

Pocket-com was beeping, when things got quiet. He fumbled after it and thumbed it on. "Christian. Yeah. Lost the guy. Got a fix?"

"What in hell's going on?"

God. Corinth-comhad rousted Austin out. Wasn't what he wanted.

"Dunno, sir, I was walking out of Jaco's—" He gasped for air. "—and some damnfool hit me over the head."

"Thieves?"

"I—" It was better than any lie he could think of. He didn't know what Capella was into. He didn't spill Capella's confidences—and he thought in the best functioning of his battered brain that an urgent request to cover her rear was at least in the neighborhood of a confidence. "Yes, sir, maybe. I dropped a guy in Jaco'sdoorway. They find him?"

There was a delay while, one presumed, Corinthianasked on another channel.

"Travis says negative. Phone if you've got detail. "

Get off the com, Austin meant. Travis was mainday Engineering, and he'd been that for years, no green fool.

"Yessir. Working on it.—Sir. Have you seen my brother?"

A pause. " Negative. "

As if Austin wouldn't lie.

Damn!

Austin clicked out on him. And where Capella was…

"Chrissy!"

His heart did a flip. He turned around. Capella was there in the ambient noise of the docks, ghostlike, not a warning.

"Shit!" He got a breath. "Guy clipped me on the head. I was scared they'd got you…"

"You get him?"

"Got away. Who werethose guys?"

"Them, I don't know. Not a ship-patch in the lot, but they're no station-slime."

"Blue-and-grey. You knew him."

"Yeah, I knew him."

He didn't like the tone or the faraway look Capella sent in that direction. Capella didn't talk about times past. Or the Fleet. That was the deal. "Pella. Need-to-know, here. Just—is it personal? Or what?"

Capella could have a real bar-crawler look, type you'd pick up for a fast one and maybe cheap, till she went all business and gave you that down-the-gun-barrel stare. "I want to know what ship he's on. I want to know who just came into port.

"Capella. " He had his business track, too, when he had to. And he knew what he had a right to ask. "The one question. Personal? Or not?"

Capella didn't answer for a moment. Then: "You remember those doors I said I rattled looking for elder brother?"

"Yeah?"

"Bad stuff. Real bad stuff. This is not a friend and it has a ship, apparently, I can't think how else it got here. I'd sincerely like to lie in port until this leaves. It has to leave. Eventually."

They'd seen port-scum. They'd dealt with it. Corinthianhad had encroachers on their territory, in port, and in space. He'd never seen Capella spooked into sobriety by any opposition. She just got crazier.

She wasn't now. Cold sober. Not laughing.

"Pella. We've got that Hawkins ship…"

"Screw the Hawkinses. This is Mazianni, you understand me."

Capella didn't use that word. Not about herself. Capella said Fleet. TheFleet, as if there wasn't any other. As if they still served something besides survival.

"No," he said. "Pella. Tell me the truth. I swear—it doesn't go past me."

Long silence. Then: "Worth your life. Mine. Yours. The ship. Yeah, I know we've got Hawkins troubles. But screw 'em. Blow 'em. Ships have got lost before now in the deep dark. But we can't goout with this guy on our tail, and he will be, he can feelus in the dark."

"We can't not!"

"If Patrick's in port, this isn't the time I'd have sent shock-waves through the informational ambient here, you know what I mean? You seriously understand?"

"Patrick-who?"

"Patrick's enough. Used to be Europe. "

"Mazian himself?"

"Yeah."

"He's alive."

"Oh, yeah. Stuff I can't say, Christian-person."

" Christian, dammit. I have a name."

"Yeah. So did I. But names are little things. Winner. Loser. Right. Wrong. This side, that side. All that shit. On old Earth—they used to be superstitious about names. Like if you could call somebody the right one, you could catch their soul. And you don't wantto engage on that level, you truly don't, Chrissy-love. You don't want that karma with me."

"Don't play me for a fool, dammit, I don't know your words."

"I like you. Like you too much."

"Is that why you're sleeping with my brother?"

"Chrissy… Christian. Is that a matter? Is that sincerely a matter? We are talking about survival. We are talking about something…"

Capella didn't finish.

"Yeah?" he said, notdismissing the matter of older-brother and Capella and what he thought had been going on.

"Christian. Not all of us trade with you. Some have their own notions. I need to talk with the captain."

"Yeah," he said.

It was all heknew to do.

—iv—

SABY WAS RIGHT. THE RESTAURANT view was spectacular, a real viewport (fortified, the sign at the door assured the patrons: even the Battle of Pell hadn't compromised it) that reached from polished black floor to mirror-finish ceiling, a revolving view of the stars and the planet that spacers themselves rarely saw so directly. To either side, making silhouettes of the tables, dwarfing human dancers, the walls were high-rez screens, with magnified, filtered views, that spun and whirled in a camera-construct, a montage of images that a spacer's body reacted to in expectation of accel and vector shifts that didn't, of course, happen.

Meaning a spacer could get motion-sickness walking across the floor, if he was a cabin-dwelling merchanter whose well-loaded ship didn't regularly do the maneuvers those shots described, but whose stomach knew when a g-shift ought to happen. Tom kept his eyes on the level surface where the floor was real as the waiter captain led them to their table. A stationers' revenge on spacers, that tape was, that produced those images… or the stationers that produced it had no remotest idea they'd made an amusement ride for a spacer's force-trained body.

Dance, did the woman want? Damned show-off spacer-femme. He was going to fall on his ass before he reached the table. Tripped over his own feet, but the chair saved him.

Grace under pressure.

They sat. They had cocktails. The food was good, if scant by his reckoning, small vegetable things he hadn't seen on the tour, and a good sauteed fish with, they advertised, genuine herbs (not difficult) and genuine citrus sauce, an expensive and tongue-puzzling treat. But not an extravagance at Pell. He'd seenoranges growing. He'd got himself a leaf—well, Saby had it, but he'd caught it in mid-flight. He'd seen fish swimming in a man-made brook, almost enough to put him off eating this one. But not quite. It was good. The lights came and went and whirled about the polished floor.

And against the light, shadows came, once, that he took for children, until a handful of spacer-diners near them stopped, and stared.

He looked, too, and saw the glint of breathing-masks with a little increase of heart rate. Downers, a handful of them, and the sight richocheted off the study he'd done as a boy—off all the sense of the strange and unfathomable that a boy could romanticize. Alien intelligence, if eccentric and even childlike to human estimation.

"Look," he whispered to Saby, not to be rude, because they were quite near.

"Local sun's sacred to them," Saby said. "They can come here. It's the law."

"Law, hell. They're people. It's their world. " He'd thought he almost liked Saby tonight. Not with that attitude.

"Yeah," Saby said. "But good there's a law. Damned shame we have to make a law. What I hear… we had to explain crime to them."

"They have deviants."

"Not criminals."

He was discussing criminality with a Corinthiancrewwoman. "No kidnappers?"

"No reason, I guess. " Saby refused the bait. "But I wouldn't be a Downer. I'd rather have our faults… since we can't figure theirs. Seems safer."

The waiter came. Saby ordered a drink. He did. The band had started. He saw the Downer-shadows bobbing to the music, knees bending ever so slightly, to tunes light, classic, rather than current. Couples were walking onto the floor.

Going to fall on my ass, he thought.

They had the cocktails. His was lime and vodka, hers was import Scotch. The music was slow and soft, and the Downers had filed away to the edges of the dark. They lived in the arteries and veins of Pell Station, where their oxy-ratio was law. They maintained, they worked, they asked no pay but the sight of the Sun of Downbelow, Pell's Star. They worked a season or two and then went down again to the world, in the springtime of their main continents, when, the brochures said, Pell had to take to human resources, and make do without its small and industrious helpers. No Downer would work in springtime. Mating consumed them. Females left their burrows and took to walking, simply walking, wherever their fancy took them; and males followed them, far, as far as their resolve and their interest could drive them, until the last gave up, lost interest, resigned the Downer lass to his last rival, who had still to find a place, and dig a nest, and satisfy the far-walking adventuress of his craft and his passion and his worth. What need of nations or boundaries, or such territorial notions? The object of their desires went where she pleased.

Not likely they'd form a government. Not likely they'd fight a war.

Not likely they'd have achieved their dearest dream, to see their Sun, except as human guests.

But they traded their agriculture for human goods, they maintained complex machinery they had no innate impulse to invent themselves. Ask what they might become, or understand, or do, in centuries to come.

"Penny for your thoughts."

"Huh?"

"They say that, this side of the Line. Penny for your thoughts. What are you thinking?"

"About the Downers. About getting into things you don't understand. About fools that go wandering in warehouses. Why haven't they hauled me back to the ship?"

Saby lifted a bare and shapely shoulder. Pretty. A distraction to clear thinking. You could get to looking in her eyes and missing the thoughts entirely.

Saby didn't answer his question. Never had. They'd sat in the room for most of three days, shopped via the vid system, used the Aldebaran'srestaurant, the Aldebaran'sgym, the Aldebaran'shair salon, swum in the pool, baked in the sauna… had no personal conversation, just a Race you to the other side, and a, What's your favorite color? kind of dealing with each other, shallow, safe. Saby liked green, loved to dance, preferred coffee to tea, liked the skintight craze and bought him some for evening as well as day. Saby could take an hour in the bath and run a chain of figures in her head instantly. Those things he'd learned about Saby. But talk about the ship, Christian, the captain, even Tink,—no. Dead cutoff.

"What could I have seen in that warehouse?"

"I don't know. What were you looking for?"

"You could be a lawyer. Was it something 1 could have seen or just a chance to get at my mother's son?"

"That's then. Now's now. " She sipped her whiskey. "They've a marvelous dessert. Orange creme cake."

He wasn't even tempted. "You," he said. "No thanks."

"Board-call's tomorrow. Are you going to go?"

"Have I got a choice?"

"Oh, you could raise a fuss right now. Yell for the cops, all sorts of things."

"I could end up stuck here. Legaled to death. I'd as soon be dead."

"So you'll go back without a fuss?"

"Sure. " His turn to shrug. They'd been through it before. He didn't know why she'd started down this track. "No passport. No choice. " He dreamed of answering that board-call, showing up and having Corinthianhand him to the cops, claim they never knew him. He didn't understand Saby. They'd spent a lot of money. Saby had spent it… on her account, Saby said. Or he'd spent Christian's cash.

But he could get to that customs gate only to discover it was hisaccount she was accessing and the ship wasn't paying. In that case, he hadthat station-debt, and he had to pay it, if the ship wouldn't. No passport, no ID, no ship willing to pay for him. That was the scenario he'd slowly put together—Saby swearing to customs that he'd lied to her, they were his charges, not hers, with a whole ship to back her story and damn him to a spacer's hell.

"You're worried about something," Saby said.

"I can't imagine why."

"I don't know what. Whether you can trust me? Is that it?"

"It's an obvious question."

"You're a nice guy. You are. I told the captain that."

"Thanks. Did you tell him not to knock me into walls? I'd appreciate that."

"I really like you," Saby said.

His heart went thump. Brain cut out of the loop. Why? was the last logical thought.

"You want to dance?" Saby asked, and reached out her hand on the tabletop. "Come on. Slow-dancing. Nothing fancy."

He really didn't want to. A, he didn't want to make a fool of himself. B, he didn't know where the conversation had taken the turn it did or why Saby suddenly got personal. He'd a drink to finish, but the mouth wasn't working and the brain was on shut-down. He tossed off the rest of the drink to calm his stomach, hooked fingers with Saby—let Saby tug him to his feet and walk him out into the dreadful tilting visions of the walls and the reflections on the floor. The alcohol hit, and he was right in front of the big viewport, where the stars were moving and small and far, behind the silhouetted dancers. They were potentially in people's way, but others managed not to bump them, and Saby turned him toward her, holding both his hands—kept one, drew one behind her waist, at the curve of a—he wasn't dead—satin-clad hip.