Rimrunners (2 page)

other.

She shrugged. "Economics, I guess."

"What are you looking for?"

"Freighter if I can get it. Insystemer's all right."

A little hope enlivened her face. It made him guilty, being in the least

responsible for that illusion. "You've been here a long time," he said, and

said, to be blunt and quick, "I haven't got anything. But there's station work.

You know you can go station-work. Get basics that way, shelter, food, get an

automatic no-debt ticket out of here if there's a fold-up. It's pretty empty

here. Food's awful but the accommodations are take-your-pick all over station. A

machinist—could damn sure get more than that, if she was good."

She shook her head.

"Reason?"

"Spacer," she said.

He never quite understood that. He had heard it a hundred times before—the ones

who had rather starve than go station-side, take a job, draw the ration: the

ones who would go by drugs or outright suicide, rather than lose their priority

on the Registry hire-list, that little edge that meant who went to the

interviews first.

"Papers?" he asked, because there had been none on the record, comp-glitch, he

reckoned, nothing unusual in Thule's frequently screwed-up systems.

She touched her pocket, not offering to show them.

"Let's see," he said.

She took them out then, offered them in a hand that shook like an old woman's.

"My name's Don Ely," he said conversationally, since it occurred to him he had

not. He looked at the folder—not the official paper it ought to have been, just

a letter.

To any captain, it said.

This is to attest the good character and work record of Bet Yeager, who shipped

with us from '55 to 56 and who paid passage with honest work at watch and guard,

at galley and small mechanics, general maintenance, in which she has many skills

which she has gained under supervision of able spacers and which she performed

with zeal and care. She leaves this ship with the regret of me personally and

all crew. She earned her passage and had credit in the comp at her leaving.

Bet Yeager boarded without papers under emergency conditions and this ship

testifies that they know her to be the person Elizabeth Yeager whose thumbprint

and likeness are hereto affixed, who served honorably on this ship, and hereby,

by my authority, this stands in lieu of lost identification and swears her to be

this person Elizabeth Yeager according to the Pell Convention, article 10.

Signed and Sworn to by: T. M. Kato, senior captain, AM Ernestine, lately based

at Pell.

E. Kato, a/d captain.

Q. Jennet Kato, chief engineer, IS pilot.

Y. Kato, purser.

G. B. Kato, supercargo, IS pilot.

R. Kato; W. Kato; E. M. Tabriz;

K. Kato…

He looked at the back. The signatures went on. The paper was wearing through at

the folds. There was no other sheet in the papers-folder, nothing official but

Ernestine's embossed seal and the date.

"That's it?" he asked.

"War," she said, flat and quick,

"Refugee?"

"Yes, sir."

"Where from?"

"Ernestine," she said. "Sir."

Cold turn-down. Go to hell. Sir.

He saw Nan behind the glass wall, coming down the hall with the tray. She caught

his eye discreetly, got his nod and came inside with it.

Yeager took the cup Nan offered. Her hand shook. She ignored the wafers and set

the cup down untasted on the table beside her.

"Set it there," Ely told Nan, meaning the tray with the wafers, indicating the

same table. He took his own cup and sipped at the sweet stuff as Nan set the

rest by Yeager. "Have a wafer," he said to Yeager.

Yeager took one, picked up the cup and sipped at it.

Hell with you, that look still said. I'll take hospitality, you better not think

this is charity.

"Thanks," he said to Nan. "Hang around, will you?"

Nan gave him a look, added zero up, and left in irritated, worried patience. Nan

had her own problems, probably had dinner going cold in the oven if this dragged

on, maybe had a date to keep. He owed her for this one: and Nan clearly thought

he was a fool. Nan, being a veteran of the Registry at Pell, had probably seen

hundreds of Yeagers while he had sat in insulated splendor in Mariner's shipping

offices. Certainly they dealt with odd types in this office. All of them had

troubles. Some of them were trouble.

He laid Yeager's paper on the desk in front of him. Her eyes followed that, the

first hint of nervousness, now that Nan was gone, up again, to meet his. "How

long," he asked, "have you been here?"

"Year. About."

"How many jobs?"

"I don't know. Maybe two, three."

"Lately?"

A shake of the head.

"Maybe I could find something for you."

"What?" she asked, instant suspicion.

"Look," he said, "Yeager, this is straight. I've seen you around—a long time.

This—" He flicked a finger at the paper from Ernestine. "This says you know how

to work. You show that to the people on interviews?"

A nod of her head. Expressionless.

"But you won't take station work."

A shake of the head.

"Those papers don't say anything about a license. Or a rating."

"War," she said. "Lost everything."

"What ship?"

"Freighters."

"Where?"

"Mariner. Pan-paris."

"Name." Mariner was his native territory. Home. He knew the names there.

"I worked on a lot of them. The Fleet came through there, blew us to hell. I was

stationside." No passion in the voice, just a recital, hoarse and distant, that

jarred his nerves. It was too vivid for a moment, too much memory, the refugee

ships, the stink and the dying.

"What ship'd you transport on?"

"Sita."

That was a right name.

"No records, no registry papers." She set the cup down, hardly tasted, pocketed

the wafer. "They got stolen. So'd everything else. Thanks all the same."

"Wait," he said as she was getting up. "Sit down. Listen to me, Yeager."

She stood there staring down at him. A light sweat glistened on her face,

against the dark outside, the lone desk light in the next glass-walled cubicle

that was Nan's backroom office.

"I was there," he said. "I was on Pearl. I know what you're talking about. I was

in Q, just the same as you. Where are you living? On what? What pay?"

"I get along. Sir."

He took a breath, picked up the paper, offered it back, and she took it in a

shaking hand. "So it's none of my business. So you don't take handouts. I watch

you day after day coming here. It's a long wait, Yeager."

"Long wait," she said. "But I don't take any station job."

"And you'd rather starve. Have people offered you other jobs?"

"No, sir."

"You turn them down?"

"No, sir."

It would have been in the record. Illegal to turn them down, if she was

indigent.

"So you fail the interviews. All of them. Why?"

"I don't know, sir. Not what they're looking for, I guess."

"I tell you what, Yeager, you do the scut around this office for a few weeks,

you keep the place swept and the secs happy. A cred a day worth it?"

"I stay on the Registry."

"You stay on the Registry."

She stood there a moment. Then nodded. "Cash," she said.

It had to be. He nodded. She said all right, and she was his liability, a

problem not easy to cure; and his wife was going to look at him and ask him what

the hell he was doing handing out seven cred a week to a stranger. A Registry

post on Thule was no luxury berth, and if Blue Section questioned it he had no

answer. Probably it broke regulations. He could think of three or four.

Like unauthorized hire-ons in a station office.

Like failing to notify security of a probable free-consumer. No way in hell that

Bet Yeager afforded a sleepover room. Damned right she was an illegal, taking

Station supplies and returning nothing.

Day after day in the Registry. With the smell of restroom soap.

He fished in his pocket. What came out was a twenty-chit. He found no smaller

change. He offered it, regretfully.

"No, sir," Yeager said. "Can't say where I'll be twenty days from now. Ship's

due."

"So pay me back if you get a berth. You'll have it then."

"Don't like debts. Sir."

"Won't fill the gut, Yeager. You don't eat, you can't work."

"No, sir. But I'll manage. Your leave, sir."

"Don't be—"—a damn fool, was in his mouth. But she was like as not to walk out

then. He said: "I want you here in the morning. With a full stomach. Take it.

Please."

"No, sir." The lip trembled. She didn't even look at the money he was holding

out. "No charity." She touched the pocket, where the papers were. "Got what I

need. Thanks. See you tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," he said.

She gave a scant nod, turned and left.

Military, he thought, putting it together. And then he was worried, because

there was nothing like that in the letter, very few freighters were that

spit-and-polish, and military meant station militia, or it might just as easily

mean Fleet or Union, if it was more than a few years back.

That scared him—because big, armed merchanters were rare, because Norway, the

only real force the Alliance had, was God-knew-where at any given time: the

Earth Company Fleet was God-knew-where too, and every unidentified blip that

showed up on station longscan sent cold chills through Thule.

Call security, was the impulse that went through Ely's bones. An investigation

was not an arrest. They could do a background check, ask around, see if there

was anyone else of the three thousand souls on Thule who remembered Bet Yeager

on Sita or in Pell's infamous Q-zone.

But Security would arrest the woman if she came at them with that

none-of-your-business attitude, Thule's very nervous Security would certainly

haul her in and question her… feed her, that much was true… but they would go on

to ask unanswerable questions like Where are you living? and How are you living?

And maybe Bet Yeager was everything she said, and had never committed any crime

in her life but to starve on Thule docks, but if they got the wrong answers to

those questions about finances, they would put Bet Yeager on station rolls and

charge her with her debt, and Bet Yeager would end up a felon.

A spacer—would end up shut up in a little cell in White Section. A spacer—who

would suffer anything to keep to dockside and the chance of ships—would end up

working for a fading station till they turned the lights out.

That was what his inquiry could do to Bet Yeager.

He walked out into the front office, behind the counter, saw Yeager open the

outside door.

He had no idea where Yeager might go for main-night; tucked up in some cold

corner of dockside, he guessed, wherever she had been spending her nights. Wait,

he could say, right now. He could take her home, feed her supper, let her sleep

in the front room. But he thought of his wife, he thought of their own safety,

and the chance Bet Yeager was more than a little crazy.

The word never left his mouth, and Yeager went out the door, out into the

actinic glare and deep shadow of dockside.

"Huh," he said, recalled to the office, to Nan standing by her desk looking at

him.

He motioned toward the door. "You know that one?"

"Here every day," Nan said.

"Know anything about her?"

Nan shook her head. They shut down the last lights, walked to the door

themselves. The door sealed and they walked down the docks together, under the

cold, merciless glare of the floods high in the overhead, in the chill and the

smells of cold machinery and stale liquor.

"I offered her a five once," Nan said. "She wouldn't take it. You think she's

all right in the head? Think we—maybe—ought to notify security? That woman's in

trouble."

"Is it crazy to want out of here?"

"Crazy to keep trying," Nan said. "She can sit still. Another year, they'll shut

us down, pack us up, move us on to somewhere. She could get a berth from there,

likely as here. Maybe more likely than here."

"She won't live that long," Ely said. "But you can't tell her that."

"I don't like her around," Nan said.

He wished he could do something. He wished he knew if they ought to contact

security.

But the woman had done nothing but go hungry. He had worked a year in the

Registry System, helped administer the hiring system that was supposed to be

humane, that was supposed to give highest priority and first interviews to the

longest-listed. But it ended up encouraging cases like Bet Yeager, it ended up

making people hang on, suffer anything rather than step out of line and let

somebody get in ahead of them, God knew where another spacer was going to come

from now who could threaten Yeager's seniority on the roll, if it was not the

incoming Mary Gold that let him off—but tell that to Yeager, who was down now to

scrabbling for the little temp jobs that made the difference in how long she

could hold on, and those had become nonexistent. Another few days and it was the

station bare-subsistence roll: the station judiciary always reckoned

free-consumers at ten cred for every day they could not prove they had been