Текст книги "Tripoint "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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He'd had his moral victory, maybe, maybe could slip out of this mess… maybe escape all the rest of the little regulation-generated disasters, so long as he lived, on a ship that had thrown in its lot with what was changing. Little ships couldn't get the profit margin, with the new regulations, couldn't keep ahead of the Family ships and the state-sponsored combines.

So what did a small-hauler do, but go on serving the ports they could, getting cargo where they could, even doing what obliged them to take personnel the Fleet dictated they take?

No way to refuse the honor, of course, no objection possible, and no assurance the divisions inside the Fleet weren't going to play out one day on their own deck, for interests a mere merchant captain didn't guess, and against opposition said captain might not find out about until it was too late.

Unless, say, the second chief navigator saw it, too, saw the same wall coming, and the same Götterdämerung.

Yes, sir, that word was, and he watched her settle in, all business, listened to her, on A-band, engage Beatrice, and tell Beatrice she'd have certain data, and she should trust it blindly, no matter how extreme it seemed.

Beatrice half-turned in her seat. He nodded. Beatrice settled back. So they were going with it. Beatrice would handle it. He had confidence, too, in the Fleet's gift—granted you knew which faction she belonged to.

—v—

ACCEL GREW HARDER, JOINTS POPPED. Fingers twined with fingers. Couldn't think of anything, not at this g-stress, just company.

"Want the light?" Saby asked.

"No. Dark's fine. I know who I'm with. " Light just confused the eyes with here and now, and didn't solve what went on in the dark space.

Didn't silence Marie. She lived there, at the edge of jump. Like Rodman. Like Roberta R. Like the kids.

Just wondered… where they were going. What they were going to do.

"Tink says… back through Tripoint. Non-stop, I take it?"

Silence out of Saby for a few breaths. Her quarters. Her bed. Her fingers twitched in his. "We're hauling. Not light mass on this leg. My bet is, we'll deliver."

"Deliver to what?"

"Where we have to."

"Level with me. What do we haul? What are they after, this ship they're talking about?"

"Don't know. Don't know who this ship's working for. " Another twitch of the fingers. "But while they're searching… we can move cargo. They can try to find us."

"That's crazed. You just dump it out there, or are we meeting somebody, or what?"

"Just a place. Spooky place. Dead ship. I don't like it. But stuff's waiting there for us. Always is."

" Thosewere the cans at Viking."

A moment Saby just lay still. "Yes," she said. "Sorry to say, that's what you found."

"Stuff they raided?" Indignation was hard, this close to the edge, under the heavy hand of acceleration. "That's your trade? Stolen goods?"

"Stuff from a long time back. Old stuff. It's the dates, the datesyou don't want to question. Ships we deal with don't raid anymore. Don't want the attention. Long as we sell them food, medicines… import Scotch."

"And arms."

"Food. Medicines. Mostly food. Plants. Live plants."

"Live plants."

They maintained a separate silence a while, hands joined.

"That's the damned oddest thing I ever heard," he said.

"Truth," Saby said.

"I guess. " Best offer he had. "If you say so—yeah, I believe it."

Chapter Eleven

—i—

TWO HOURS TWENTY MINUTES. The whole difference. The whole… damned… difference between Corinthian'ssystem exit and Sprite'sentry, the height and depth of Pell Star system apart.

Nothing to do at that point but to continue on in, with Spriterunning full-loaded as she was. Nothing to do but maintain a quiet calm, a sweetness to the offered sympathy of cousins and, of course, Lydia. Less likely… sympathy from Mischa, whose expression of regret had a certain lack of conviction, but Mischa had at least made the gesture.

"We tried, Marie. All we could do."

It wasall they could have done, a heartbreakingly hard run through Tripoint, everyone on long hours and short food and sleep. Tempers had frayed, understandably so. And there had been recriminations about missing Corinthian.

Not from her. And they waited for her opinion. Maybe with bated breath.

Spirits aboard had picked up when their cargo sold during their run-in toward station, no languishing on the trade boards while the ship ran up dock-time, no waiting to sell this part and that lot of cans… Dee Biomedical bought the whole lot sight unseen, the publishing data-feed, the biomedicals, neobiotics, and biomaterials, with damage exceptions, which, Marie knew from her boards, there were none: every one of the cans came in registering, constantly talking to the regulation devices.

Not one can even questionable. And profit clear—Pell had no tariff on biomedicals of Cyteen origin, when Pell could get them.

Faces started to smile. People started to be pleasant to each other in the corridors. The seniors who'd been fuming mad about transshipping the government contract now thought that, of course, it had all been their idea.

But ship activity at dock? Pell didn't have that kind of information available to an inbound ship. Get it at the Trade Office once you dock.

Information on Thomas Bowe-Hawkins? His mother wanted to know?

Oh, there was a record of that. Listed with exiting crew on Corinthian. And listed with returning crew.

Somebody using Tom's passport, she thought, but she kept that to herself, and kept the information to herself until Spritedocked, grappled to, and opened its ports at 10 Green, where Dee Imports had can transports waiting.

Thenshe was off to the Customs Office so fast the deck smoked.

Well, yes, Tom's passport had been used. Well, yes, there had to be a credit record of transactions on station, but she had to get a court order. And, yes, they knew which agents had been assigned at Corinthian'sdock, and, well, yes, there was no actual regulation against an individual inquiry with the agent, although they didn't give out names.

Her pocket-com nagged at her. She ignored it.

"I'm his mother, "she said to the customs officer. "I have copies of his papers."

"The boy is over eighteen. By Alliance law, he's an adult."

"Do you have kids?"

"Look, Ms. Hawkins…"

She didn't raise her voice. She made it very quiet. "This boy was out drinking when that ship cleared port. We're a Family ship. Check us out. I want to know does that passport, used exiting Corinthian, still have the right picture."

"You're asking if it was stolen."

"Yes. "

The agent vanished into inner offices. The pocket-corn kept beeping. She thumbed it on.

"Yes, dammit!"

It was Mischa, asking did she need help.

"Not actually," she said, and flipped the display on her handheld again, to market display, mere mind-filler, something to look at and think about before she went mad.

Mischa chattered at her.

"Yeah," she said, "nice. No, I don't need help. You're driving me crazy, Mischa. I'm busy here. All right?"

She thumbed the switch and cut him off. Didn't care what he was saying. The agent came back with a woman in a more expensive suit. "We're talking about a stolen passport?"

"This—" She laid the ID on the counter. "—is a duplicate of my son's ID. I want to know, does the agent remember this face?"

"Come into the office, Ms…"

"Hawkins. " She passed the counter, she sat in a nicer office, she waited. She drank free coffee and entered searches on the hand-held for low-mass goods, and sat there for forty-three minutes before the woman in the suit brought a uniformed customs agent into the office.

"Ms. Hawkins. Officer Lee. Officer Lee is the one that read the passport through at board-call. Officer Lee, this is the young man's mother."

The officer handed the ID to her. "I do remember him," the officer said. "He'd forgotten his passport. The captain came down to be sure he got ID'd. It wasthat boy, Ms. Hawkins, very well dressed, in the company of a pretty young woman and a man. Came up in a taxi. I thought then, that cost them. But the boy didn't act upset, except about the passport. Went right to the captain, he and the girl. They walked in together."

"How did he get out there without a passport?"

"Happens. He went out with a group, should've gotten it from the officer, once they'd cleared customs, but he didn't. Captain said he hadn't missed it til the board-call, and he panicked."

"This man with them."

"Rough-looking. Cheerful fellow. Drunk as a lord. Papers perfectly in order. Cook's mate."

"No visible threat."

The agent went very sober for a moment. "You mean was he drafted back? Didn't look to be. The young man spoke for himself, apologized about the passport, had a new haircut, clothes, brand new duffle, everything first class. Met the captain on friendly terms."

"Ms. Hawkins. Would you like to sit down?"

Out of nowhere a hand grabbed her arm. She didn't need support. She shrugged it off, took a deep breath, took out her wallet and managed to get the ID into the slot.

"Sit down," the woman said.

She did. The agent offered to get her water. She said yes. She wasn't through asking questions and they were distressed on her account, moving to get her whatever she wanted. "I want the credit record. If my son was on this station, I want to know who paid, where he slept…"

The woman looked doubtful. The damn com beeped again, and she cut it off, completely. "I have to know," she said. "This is my son. "

"Just a minute," the woman said, and went somewhere. Officer Lee came back with the water and sat and asked her stupid questions, trying to distract her. She kept her calm, played the part. It was maybe thirty minutes before the woman came back, looking grim, and said there hadn't been any credit record, but that the young woman, the passport number he'd been with on customs exit, had run up big bills at the fanciest sleepover on Pell. Big bills at a clothing store. At Pell's fanciest restaurant. Dinner for two. Lot of drinks.

"I see," she said, a little numb, it was true. Maybe a little grey around the edges. But it did answer things.

"You might check station mail. He might have left a message."

"I have, thank you, Ms…"

"Raines."

"Ms. Raines. Thank you very much. " She shook hands. She was polite. She thanked Officer Lee.

She came to herself maybe half an hour later, in front of a shop window, and didn't know where she was until she looked at the dock signs opposite.

She had to get out of this port. She had to find that son of a bitch. Forget Tom. A nice-looking girl, fancy clothes, damned… shallow… kid. Probably scared, probably saw a cheap way out, just go along with it, wasn't too uncomfortable, he had a lot of money, Corinthianwould give it to him, because Austinwanted to get to her. Austin wasn't going to drop the boy in any port, wasn't going to sell him out to the Fleet, no need. Tom had sold himself, for a fancy bed and fancy clothes and the best restaurants and a girl who'd do whatever it took to keep him and keep his mouth shut.

Damn him. You could see the boy's point of view. Easier to be courted than shake his fist in Austin's face and take the hits.

Easier to be let loose dockside with a pretty girl and more money than Spriteever allotted its junior crew. Easier to be plied with lies and promises. Austin could be a charming bastard. A very charming bastard, give or take that the rough edge wasn't a put-on, far from it.

And give or take that the man's taste in bedmates ran to whores. That detail wasn't going to impact Tom's little bubble too seriously.

Hell!

She went to a bar. She ordered a drink, nother habit. She flipped on the hand-held, drank, and stared at the meaningless scroll of figures. She couldn't leave this port until they'd offloaded. That was happening, as fast as the cans could roll out.

And that bastard on Corinthianwas on his way back through Tripoint.

She'd suspectedTripoint was the dark hole where Corinthianpursued its private business, the off-the-record trades with God knew what agencies—it was a vast, gravitationally disturbed space, with no station to provide an information-flow: a dozen ships could lie there, silent, absolutely impossible to spot if you didn't know exactly where they were; ships could move, and the place was so vast the presence-wave wouldn't reach you for hours… you didn't know what might be watching you.

But Corinthianhadn't waited on this leg—they'd kited through and been gone by the time they'd come through.

Expecting trouble, it was clear.

Time-wise, Corinthianwas in hyperspace now. A ship that followed them for the next month, real-time, would exist there right along with them until Corinthiandropped out again, and the vector was Tripoint. Again. Where Corinthianhad business to do.

But Spritecouldn't catch them. The gods of physics afforded no chance to one freighter to overtake another with Corinthian'shead start—unless Spritewas running empty, with outright nothingin the holds when she went into hyperspace.

Tell the Family they were going back to Viking empty? That, having cleared one chancy low-mass, high-value deal at Pell, for which they'd had to dip into bank reserves, they were going to throw away everything they'd just gained at enormous risk—and run empty back to Viking-via-Tripoint?

No way. No way in hell. She could muster the votes against Mischa on the matter of the Pell run, because she could threaten the sure economic disaster of her quitting, against the promise of profit. She couldn't get anywhere in a vote by demanding a disaster.

She swallowed a mouthful of ice-melt and vodka and did a different-criteria search through the market.

Pell… was the gateway to Earth. To arts. To culture.

Books. Zero mass. Vids. Software. Distribution licenses. Always high-priced because ships bid on them. But ships only bid so much, usually scooping up what they could get without a fight, because it was a chancy market, riding local fads, and the willingness of some station-side promoter to take it off your hands where you were going… so if you were willing to gamble big that you knew tastes where it was going… ordinarily you could get it, the info-market being quiet, low-tension, not subject to big bids from ships that better understood the market for frozen foods and machine parts.

She took out her stylus, punched the keys you couldn't accidentally access with bare fingers, and money moved.

Data moved.

Data flooded into Sprite'sblack-box info-storage. Permits, licenses. Credit. Text. Images. Patents. Two solid hours, while she sipped fruit-juice and vodka, of high-speed input—in which the info-market accelerated, picked up interest on some items—then hyped into a wild surge of activity.

She traded back some books, some vids, snapped up rights less useful to ships that didn't reach deep in Union territory: license to reproduce at Union ports and points further, exclusive rights down routes reachable from Unionside—prices ballooned as ships bid to get a speculative commodity they regularly dabbled in, rights they routinely bid on, ships and stationside interests battling each other for what somebody unknown was going for in huge quantities. The whole info-market soared as station-side speculators and automatic trading programs saw a rising price and a limited availability and went for it. Feeding frenzy set in, sent prices crazy. She sat it out for fifteen minutes and sipped her drink while the market computers registered a flurry of trades.

Four ships and one publishing house released major holdings to profit-take on the market, she grabbed it all and resold, bought hand and fist on the panic, and the market dropped and rose and ticked into stability as the regulators slammed the lid on.

She keyed Spritefor departure at m2330h, then, scant time to get the Dee Imports cans offloaded and get the tanks filled.

After which, she turned on her pocket-corn and told Mischa they were in count for departure in under twenty-four hours, beep everybody who was out.

" Marie, "Mischa said calmly, " where are you?" Less calmly: "– Are you in some bar?"

"Noisy? I said 24 hours, Mischa, do you copy? We're bought up. We're going. I've made a profit just sitting here and logged us for departure. You can check the schedule board."

"Marie. We aren't loaded. "

"Zero-mass. Publishing rights. Tons of publishing rights. We're bought and loaded. It's in Sprite'sdatabanks right now, didn't you notice that little light flicker? Every cent we have in credit. It's time-critical and I suggest we pull out the second the tanks are filled."

"Damn you! Get your ass back on this ship, Marie! Dump that infoshit back on the market, resell and get our money back! You're not pulling this!"

"Mischa, sweet, we've made money, as stands. There's been a modest little trade war in the last few hours and the market's gone under regulatory controls, now. There's really no way to make anything short-term under a regulatory, you know that. If we sell now, we sell at a loss. So we'd better make that schedule, Mischa. Dear. It'll work."

"This is going to a vote, Marie. Your post is going to a vote!"

"I'll call yours to one, too, sweet. Think about it. I've made us money in this port. I'll make us money where we're going."

"And where's that? What area's this damn infodump valid for?"

Mischa's grammar was going.

"Marie?"

"Cyteen, via Viking, via hell, brother. It's what we have to do. And speed counts. Trustme."

—ii—

WAVES UPON WAVES, SCARY climb into nothing and nowhere.

Hand brushed Tom's brow. Voice, ever so far, whispered to him.

His heart started beating too fast. Colors flared and ran like dyes across his vision. It was Saby he was with. Saby's bed. He could feel her presence by him.

Feel the hovering presence, too, then a change in pitch of the surface he lay on. A finger brushed his cheek.

"You hear me, Tommy? No good shamming, I know you do."

"Leave me alone," he tried to say.

"Person's truly sorry, Tommy-lad. " For a while the touch went away, and came back again. The universe quaked. Ran colors. Tilted.

"Stop it, dammit. Saby's. Saby's place, here."

"Yeah, sorry, Tommy-person. Didn't come to devil you. Came to be sure you were all right. " Air whispered against his forehead. A touch followed. "Gets lonely, in the dark. Gets cold. You know it. They don't. You doing all right?"

"Yeah."

"My fault you waked. Sex'll do it sometimes.—And hell if I wanted Christian to ship you out to Earth—selfish me. I tried my best to warn you, Tommy-person, short of all the trouble you had. Tried to make you hear me. But you went out with him all the same. And now look. Saby's got you. I lost out again."

He felt the loneliness, and the cold. Then… just felt/ smelled/saw the colors a while. And vast, terrifying silence. He tried to move, then. He couldn't feel things. Couldn't tell up from down. He leaned into space, flinched back toward solid limits, and thought he was falling.

Arms were there. Caught him. Hands showed him where level was. "Tommy-person," a voice said. "Sillyass. Easy. Easy. You took the trank. It's still in your system, and I can't watch you all the time. Break your silly neck, you will, or your nose. Lie still. Lie still. Enjoy it. Go with it… like sex… you got to go with it. You got to like it.—Deep breath. The willies will stop."

He lay still—he thought he was lying down, Saby lying near him, but whether it was light or dark didn't seem relevant to his eyes. He saw, somehow, or something like. The brain kept shifting things around or the walls truly ran in streams of color. Things just were. Couldn't see Capella, then shivered at a strangeness as her hand met his body.

"Where were you?" he tried to ask.

"Upside, mostly," Capella said. "The bridge. Everybody's cold, everybody's still. Don't worry, I won't touch you, just a sit-a-while, just a voice."

"Yeah," he said. He thought he could see and feel her, then, sitting on the edge of the bed, elbows on her knees, depressing the mattress.

"Yeah, well, once you start to, you know, be aware, the trank's real chancy. You're a little disconnected. Distances go down a tunnel, don't they?"

"Long. Long tunnel," he said, because it was. That very well described it. He was astonished and relieved that someone else could see what he thought was his own senses out of control. "Cold. " He didn't remember walking. Didn't know where he was, just that he was on his feet in a wildly tilting universe, but Capella's hand found his arm. He was going to be sick, and then he wasn't. Was just lying on his bed trying to be steadily solid.

"Relax. Easy. I got you. I won't let you fall."

Two deep breaths.

"You can tell, you know. The ones that fight it. The ones that can hear you. More can than do, if you understand."

"Don't. Understand."

"Yeah. Easy. Don't know why it's cold. Metabolism, I guess. Maybe using up more 'n we take in. You'll drop a few kilos. Dehydrate. You got to drink, Tommy. Brought you a raft of the green stuff. Drink up."

Didn't want to. Wasn't tracking real well. But you learned, if somebody said drink, you drank, no matter the taste.

Didn't taste green. Tasted purple. Orange. Smelled blue. Stuff ran in front of his eyes. Colors made curls like water and oil in free-fall. Made you sick awhile. But it went away.

"Better?"

"Uh-huh," he agreed. It sounded reasonable. Anything would have gotten his agreement, echoing as it did, being color, and taste. It echoed on for a long, frightening while.

"We got a little problem out there," Capella said, after a long silence. He felt that sinking of the edge that told him most surely Capella was there, like a depression in space itself. "I think now there's maybe three of us. But the instruments are screwed, you can't tell, sometimes you get echoes off the interface, you see yourself. Lot of echoes in the sheet, sometimes from clear to hell and gone, you never don't know where they come from. Maybe not even human, who knows?"

"Don't understand."

"Ships, Tommy-love. Ships in the same relevance of space-time. When the Fleet would jump, several ships together, all space'd go crazy."

"Trouble?" He couldn't figure what she was saying. Couldn't figure if she was asking help. Couldn't stand up. "What do you want?"

"Talk. Just talk to me. Give me a voice, Tommy. I've heard the music too long."

He didn't understand about the music. But maybe that was what he heard, too, when he thought about it, you could call it music, a deep, deep sound, that went through the bones.

He heard it deeper and deeper. It might have been another time. When seemed irrelevant as where. Capella raked a hand through her hair, looked distractedly, desperately at the wall, the overhead, said, quietly, "Something's screaming out there. Hear it? Honest freighter passing, what it most sounds like, but I don't bet on it. We can fake ID, too, leastwise for a ship. So can Patrick. Sumbitch."

"Who?"

"Patrick. Mazianni spook. One of Edger's skuz, and Edger is not our friend. Chased us out of Pell, Patrick did, and this trading dump is lost to us, Tommy-person, no question he'll find it. Everything we can leave at Tripoint is loss—if not to him, to the cops: one or the other'll get it for sure. But, problem is, we can't leave the system without offloading—we unquestionably got to shed mass somehow—can't outrun this bastard otherwise. He's on us, and there's this very important little card… Shit, shit, shit!"

Shivery feeling. Like… things happened again and again, bump, bump, against the nerves, like the same colors, the same events, kept coming back, right through him, waves of sound bouncing off and coming back, off and back, heartbeat trying to synch with the waves, pressure in the ears, behind the eyes, in the brain-stem.

Touch came at his shoulder. Hard grip. Painful.

"Serious stuff. Tom. I want you to listen to me now, deadly serious. I want you to remember it."

Things came and went. Covers whispered. Bed tilted. Capella leaned close. "We dump down hard, and we're mass-heavy to start with. So you keep those belts on."

"Yeah."

"Dockers are going to earn their pay, now, no question. Unload fast as we can. I thought maybe we could skim on through, maybe make Viking, loaded as we are, but this sum-bitch is good. He's on us, not overjumping, and we can't make it: if he adds his mass to ours in hyperspace, he can push us faster on the exit than we can brake with the mass we're hauling, that's what it adds up to—send us right to Viking and right into hungry, hot old Ep-Eridani."

"You sure?" Falling into a sun… wasn't how he wanted to go.

Colors came and ran in disturbed sheets. Space warped and twisted.

"Tommy, I've worked it every way I can think of and I can't drop us far enough out that we can do any damn thing but fall. He can stop, but us, with all the mass, one way we end up plasma and sunbeams and the other we go outbound with no fuel. Patrick-bastard's given me no choice."

"Shit…"

"No, now, listen, Tom. You listen. I got to drop us in solid at Tripoint, if I can fake him once. Use our mass to throw him, here. In one scenario, I won't throw him far enough and he'll be in our laps. In the one I want, we'll buy that time we need to dump mass. Depends on if Patrick reads my intention to drop us out, and if Patrick-bastard knows to a navigational precision just where that supply dump is. I do. "

Shook his head. "Can't do. " Didn't like what he was hearing. Didn't know you could control anything in hyperspace… he knew there were things you could do right at the edge of jump or drop, but… this… God…

"Bet our lives I can. Have to. Patrick's out there. And I can't wake Austin up to tell him how things in the universe have changed, you read me, Tommy-person? You got to read me, Tommy, pay attention."

"I hear."

"You got to tell Austin it's no doublecross. He doesn't trust me. And this time he's got to. This old hulk sits in the dark out there, you follow me? And it's got stuff inside for us to take and it's got loading racks we can offput stuff to, real fast."

" That'swhat those cans were, at Viking."

"Old, old cans, from the War. Salvage, legitimate salvage, if it didn't come from the Fleet. And ordinarily another ship comes to this old hulk and gets the cans we leave in trade, and takes our cans to somewhere else. But this isn't ordinary. Patrick's not our breed. You want to say Mazianni, Patrick's Mazianni, no question, not Fleet, Tommy. Not our friend. He's a damn pirate, he'll have found our old hulk before we're done, he's armed a helluva lot heavier than he looks, and there's one way out of this thing—put a certain key in that old wreck and give it the right code and she'll let you aboard and credit your offload. Give her another one and she remembers things she's otherwise forgot. Got to have that card in the slot and that message input, Tommy. If Patrick comes at us, and he will, got to have that message input. Then that old hulk's our friend. Then she'll give us authorizations we got to have, bottom line, got to have to survive. There's a port we can go to, trust me on this."

What other port? he asked himself. Out of Tripoint there was Mariner, or Viking, cheapest vector out, or there was Pell, priciest, fuel-wise.

But he was following most of it. At least… the cargo part. The mass they had to get rid of before they came in at Viking velocity-high and fuel-short, aimed at the sun.

And he believed there was something out there dogging them in hyperspace: he feltsomething he couldn't explain.

But moral argument and promises of deliverance from a person he didn't half trust himself? Not so easy.

He felt Capella straighten his collar.

"Tommy-person. If I say on com, we got to move, we got to move. Tell Austin—if I was against him—I'd have switched keys on him. You know I could've, if he doesn't. I can open any door on this ship, pick any pocket right now. He's got that key I'm talking about. I'll give him the code that answers that son of a bitch out there, the way I said. If everything goes wrong—he's got to use it. Tell him so. Understand?"

"Chance this Patrick does know… where we're going?"

"We see in the dark, lover. But not that well. Even figuring that old hulk's on the Pell reach and the Tripoint perimeter… that's a lot of space to search, for a quiet object. No. Odds are absolutely on him not knowing, especially the way he's riding us. He doesn't want to lose track of us. And if he's any appreciable distance past us, hard-ordnance is impossible for him. Not impossible for us. We'll fire right down his tail. That's what I'll try to do, position us where we got that chance. But Austin's going to come out with everything screwed. Cargo screwed. Extra ship in the soup. Man's going to be real damn mad at me."

"Not your fault."

"Yeah. But, you got to understand, I'm on real short credit with him."

"Don't understand."

"Since Chrissy's stunt at Pell? Both of us are on Austin's shit-list. I want you to know this one more detail: this little card Austin's got? Austin's gotto offload that mass, that's one, because we're loaded, and Patrick isn't; and he's got to feed the old wreck that keycard real fast, close as I'm dropping us. Austin doesn't know that. It's not a detail he's ever needed to know. Keeps the suppliers honest, you understand. Now he has to know. That key-card gets the hold to open, in the lock slot. But in the cargo console slot, with the right code, that old wreck can write to that key-card—and he's gotto get me that authorization, he's gotto use that codeword before we get out of here. But if happens he doesn't believe me—Tommy, if he won't input or if he takes me off that nav board, we are screwed. I've got to be on the bridge. Beatrice has got to take the next figures I give her. If the captain orders me off the bridge, I tell you, I'm locking-down the navigation computers."

"You can't do that!"

"Oh, I can do it, Tommy, I can do it, and Bianco can probably crack my lock, given an hour or so. But Patrick'll blow us to hell first. Austin will figure that part with no prompt at all."

"God, you're crazy."

"I've been accused of that. But you watch me not talk, Tommy-sweet. Austin can ask me, pretty please. Austin can do what I say. " A hand brushed his forehead. "I just want somebody but me to know, if it happens. But, listen, if Austin's the man I think he is, he'll deliver that damn cargo. That card's his proof. His credit with the Fleet. Call it old-fashioned honor. I think they still use that word. He'll fight to keep it."