Rimrunners (16 page)

She escaped. She didn't know how McKenzie felt about it, but he looked at least

a little mollified. She got back to quarters, she ducked into the head for a bit

in the case McKenzie was following her or one of his friends was, then ducked

out again and escaped out the door of the quarters in the other direction

without even turning her head, well down the corridor before she slowed down.

Damn! she thought, her heart pounding. McKenzie gave her the shakes. The

appointment she was going to gave her the same.

Damn, she thought, why are you doing this, Bet Yeager?

No good answer for that one, besides hormones—and besides a real disgust with

the skuz who was back there trying to buy her along with a beer, and disgust

with the women's surly silence, and a disgust for what she was picking up for

morals on this crew. There were a lot of peculiar things on this ship, she

thought, and only one crazy man gave her anything like a healthy feeling.

Hormones, maybe. But there was her own experience with Fitch. There was what

Musa had said. And Gypsy Muller's ambiguous signal.

She headed on around past Ops and Engineering, past ordinary traffic, and ducked

into the shop-stowage, quite business-like.

The lights inside were on power-save. The place was three long aisles of bins;

and all around the edge, barrels of plassy for the injection-mold and pieces of

the press, and pieces for the extrusion-mold, and hoses and rods and wire and

insulation-bales that made the whole huge compartment a maze. She leaned against

the door, looked left and right and listened for sound above the general

white-noise that masked everything on a little ship.

"NG?" she called out, enough to carry in the place, in case he had gotten here

ahead of her and just hadn't heard the manual-latch door.

Not a sound. But with him that was nothing unusual.

She had a sudden, bad case of the willies, felt the chill in the place, her

breath frosting in the dim light. She chafed her arms and folded them, wishing

she had a sweater under the jumpsuit.

God, the man wants to make love in a damn freezer.

If that's actually what he wants, she thought then, with a little upset at her

stomach, thinking that a man on the edge could just be crazier than anybody

thought, could be waiting somewhere in here with a knife or something, in some

notion that she was pushing him—

What in hell am I doing in this hole? I got more sense than this, I always had

more sense than this.

So I can take care of myself. Taking care of myself means getting the hell out

of here, back to quarters, just tell him later I couldn't find him—

And, sure, he'll believe that. And then I got trouble with him.

You focus a crazy on you, you got trouble forever, that's what you've done, Bet

Yeager. You know better, you known better since you were eight years old…

She ought to get back to quarters, just go to bed, not with McKenzie, not with

anybody tonight, not for a lot of nights, maybe—just get her thinking

straightened out and maybe figure out some things. She already had two problems

on this crew, three, counting Fitch, and the smart thing to do now, the smart

thing to have gone for in the first place, was to shed all connection with NG

Ramey, and get in with a compatible crowd well on the Ins with everybody, some

group with a woman in it, dammit, she wanted buddies as well as bed-mates, and

the female crew was being more than stand-off right now. She was getting hostile

signals out of certain people, all women, like she was doing something entirely

wrong, or like she was crossing lines she didn't know existed—and she was less

and less sure she was doing anything right.

She was about two jumps from scared about this crew, considering the confused

signals she was getting out of McKenzie—scared of what she was picking up from

the women the way she was scared with stationers, scared the way she'd been

scared sometimes on Ernestine, like she walked around making wrong move after

wrong move and people were putting their heads together and whispering at her

back—look at her: look at the way she did that—that's not civ.

She tried to remember civ manners. She tried to act right. She'd been sixteen

when she'd volunteered aboard Africa, but she remembered very little about home

before that, couldn't even clearly remember her mama's face, just the apartment

where you had to let down the bunks to sleep every night and put them up to move

around, everything was so crowded; and mama's clothes hanging all along one wall

and lying all over the deck—just the dingy metal corridors of Pan-paris number

two refinery-ship, and the places she used to hang out, the holes there were—her

mama trying to handle a kid who never did take to civ rules, who was always in

trouble, people always making up their minds two and three times what they

wanted, rules they never posted, exceptions they never told you—

But then, mama could have done a better job of telling her the regs in the first

place. And mama never had a real grip on things. Mama would break something,

mama would slap her for it, mama would come in mad and you just ducked out,

didn't matter whether it was your fault or not.

Never could figure mama out, let alone mama's friends. Never could trust what

one said, never dared get alone with them.

Because she never was In with civs. But when you got In on a ship, you could

trust people. Like Bieji Hager, and Teo—the five of them—the times they had—

Damn!

She got a lump in her throat, suddenly felt like it was the refinery-ship around

her again, felt herself strangled and had to get out, get a breath of air, get

herself back to bright light and sanity—

She opened the door and ran straight into NG, inbound.

"I—" she said, face to face with him. She didn't want to upset him or act the

fool, and then it was too late, she'd let him back her up inside and shove the

latch down on the door. So there she was, in the middle of it.

She shoved her hands into her pockets and said: "Wasn't sure you were coming."

She felt like she was sixteen again. Or twelve. Only it wasn't mama they were

dodging. It was Fitch.

"I wanted to talk to you," she said. He tried to take hold of her right off and

she flinched back a couple of steps, fast, not even what she wanted to do, she

was that spooked.

He turned his move into a throwaway gesture, a hell with you kind of shrug, and,

God, her hands were shaking. She balled them into fists and stuck them back into

her pockets where they were safe.

I like you, she wanted to start with, but that was stupid, there was no knowing

what NG was capable of: he could go off the edge, do something violent later if

he got the idea there was some kind of claim he had on her. She said: "Are we

safe here?"

He just stared at her, talkative as he always was when he was crossed.

"Aren't," she concluded, and her skin crawled. Then she thought about Fitch,

thought about NG getting on report about one more time.

Last chance for him, Musa had said.

"I don't want to get you in trouble," she said. "Ramey, dammit—"

Hell, I can't even get my own shit straight on this ship. What can I do for him?

She shook her head and raked a hand through her hair, and looked at him again.

"Look, I got caught up with a guy last night, didn't really want that. I wanted

to go over and ask you up to my bunk, that was what I wanted, I wanted to get

things straight, but you said it'd make trouble. So I didn't come over and talk

to you, I don't know what you're mad at."

Not a word, hardly a blink from him.

"Ramey, give me some help here."

Long silence. Then: "You can get in a lot of trouble," he said, so quietly she

could hardly hear him above the ship-noise. "More than crew. Better not to be

here. Better not to talk to me."

That miffed her. "Is that what you wanted, night before last?"

NG just shrugged.

She screwed up her courage to have it out, then, her whole body going on alert

to move if she had to. "I talked to Musa," she said, and expected some blow-up,

but all he did was breathe a little faster, no change of expression. "He's half

on your side, Ramey."

"Musa's all right," NG said, so little moving of his jaw it hardly showed.

"McKenzie's all right, far as that goes. I do my job, crew lets me alone, don't

screw it up."

He was going to leave. He reached for the door latch.

"Ramey."

"Forget it."

"Hell if I will." She put her arm in his way, heart-thumping scared, knowing he

could break it in that position. "I go back down there and McKenzie's all over

me. I don't want McKenzie."

He stood still, just stopped with his hand on the door, not looking at her.

"Ramey, don't walk out on me. Dammit, don't you walk out on me! I got some

answers coming!"

He dropped his hand, turned around of a sudden and hauled her up against him,

nothing she couldn't stop, but she went entirely null-state then, scared—God,

getting body to body with him was so damned stupid. He could do anything, he

could break her neck, she ought to make him back up and work this through slow

and sane, but she was having real trouble putting two thoughts in a row right

now, not on-course with anything that had to do with him.

"Out of the damned doorway," she gasped when she got her mouth free and had a

breath, "dammit, NG—"

She hadn't meant to call him that. He didn't even seem to notice. "Come on," he

said, and pulled her off with him into the dark, into a gap between the wall and

the cans, where the track they rode on turned a corner.

There was an old cushion and a couple of blankets back there in the dark, about

enough room between the track and the outside wall for a body to fit; or two,

one on top of another, if they arranged things. Cold, God, it was cold, but his

hands weren't, and he wasn't, and she was trying the best she could to keep

things paced with him, to keep him calm and all right… until the colored lights

went off behind her eyes and she had to concentrate on breathing and not making

a sound for a while.

"Oh, God," she said, finally, and put an arm out into the cold air and hugged

him. He let out a breath and just got heavier for a moment, relaxed on top of

her because there was no room for him to do anything else.

"You're all right," she said, hand on his side, not wanting him to move. "You're

all right, Ramey. Let me tell you, you got a couple friends on this ship. At

least."

He drew a sharp, sudden breath, another one, as if the air had gone thin—or his

sanity had.

She rubbed his shoulders, a little scared at that, kept doing it while he got

his breathing straightened out again. "How'd you get here?" she asked, to chase

the silence away and keep him thinking. "How'd you get on this ship?"

No answer. But NG was like that.

"You free-spacer, Ramey? Just a hire-on?—Or are you a Family merchanter? What's

your real name?"

He shook his head, slowly, against her shoulder.

"Ramey a first name?"

Another shake of his head, just refusal to answer, she thought.

"Doesn't make any difference," she said. "You just got the moves, Ramey, just

got the way about you. I don't care. Want to know about me?"

No answer.

"What I thought.—Well, me, I'm a hire-on, Pell, Thule, wherever. Seen a lot.

Some of it not too pretty. They tell where Fitch got me?"

A few deep breaths. Quieter now. "They say."

"What d' they say?"

"Say you cut up a couple of people."

It caught her grimly funny, somehow, him with cause to worry about her, all

along; and not funny: maybe they both had cause. She ruffled his hair. "Not

habitual. Doesn't worry you, does it?"

"Don't care," he said.

Absolute truth, she thought, just flat, dead tired truth.

"Been that way too," she said, and felt the cold of Thule docks, remembered what

the nights were like there when you were broke—felt the cold ofLoki's deck

through the blanket, chilling her backside; felt the cold chance that somebody

could walk in and bring down the mofs on both of them. "But things change. I'm

alive to tell you that."

"Can't," he said, "can't change," and he gave a long, deep breath that became a

shiver, brushed his mouth past her ear. "Just a matter of time." A slow tremor

started, like a shiver, got worse; and he started to get up in a hurry, but he

banged the overhang of a girder and came down hard on her, smashed her with his

elbow, shoved at her, but the space trapped them. "God!" he yelled, "God—get out

of here!"

No place to go: she knew a space-out when she saw one. She scrambled, blind for

a second, blood in her mouth, fetched up against the icy metal of the can-track,

got her knees up to protect herself, but he was just sitting there, bent double.

"Ramey," she said, shaking, trying to pull her clothes together.

He just curled over and tucked down, arm over his head.

She grabbed a blanket and got it around his shoulders.

"Go to hell," he said, between chattering teeth.

"Been there, too, you sum-bitch." She put back the blanket he shrugged off.