Rimrunners (33 page)

from the bridge to the airlock, of course—except for the lucky few who drew duty

part or all of the port-call.

I hope to hell Fitch gets a long liberty. Hope the sonuvabitch gets laid at

least once. Might help his disposition.

Mostly she worried about Hughes and his friends being out there with Musa and

her and NG not being. "Keep an eye on him," she'd asked McKenzie, and McKenzie'd

sworn he would.

They made a tolerably soft dock, no teeth cracked, no bruises, and crew stood in

harness waiting for permission to move about, laying grandiose plans for the

bars they were going to hit—yeah, sure, mates, on Thule…

They got the permission, they undipped, they milled or they settled down on

their duffles and checked through their cred-slips.

Johnny Walters had left his kit. There was usually some poor sod. There was

always a volunteer who'd get it down by shift-change. "Yeah," Bet said. "NG or

I, one. Who else,? Make a list."

Damn list always grew when people found out there was a quarters-run going.

"Shit. Write it down! I got a year's worth of favor-points coming from you

guys…"

Except Dussad, out of mainday Cargo, who muttered something about having NG into

his stuff—

"You want a favor?" Bet asked, swinging around, read the name on the pocket and

said, "Dussad? You want a favor or you got a problem with me and my mate?"

"You got lousy taste," Dussad said, and of all people, Liu said, "Take it easy."

And McKenzie said, "Nothing wrong with NG. He just doesn't talk too good."

"Ask Cassel," a mainday woman said.

God, they couldn't move, they were here till they got orders. NG just stood

there, nobody could go anywhere or do anything.

Gypsy said, "Man's got by that. Man's stood his watches, took his shit for it,

long enough."

And Musa:

"Damn valve blew, Ann, you get your head in the way of it and it happens, it

don't matter if you got a mate there. The rest of it's hell and away too old to

track."

"He got an opinion?"

"Let him the hell alone," Bet said, and threw NG a look, couldn't not; NG was

just staring somewhere else, jaw clenched—God, he couldn't talk, just damn

couldn't, out-there for the moment. "Let him alone."

"I know what his mates are saying. I want to hear what he's got to say about it,

all right? There's a lot of trouble going on. I want to know what the guy has to

say."

McKenzie said, "I'll buy you a drink, Dussad. We'll talk about it."

Quiet for a second or two, real tense. The lift clanked and whined, high up on

the rim—mofs doing their business with dockside.

"Drop it," Liu said. "Drop it, Dussad. Later. All right?"

"What about my kit?" Walters asked, in the silence after. "Is somebody going to

go after it?"

They finished the fetch-downs list, mofs went out and did customs, lot of noise

from the lift and the airlock; and they waited and talked, and bitched—

Prime bitch coming, if you drew duty, if you had to get up and wish everybody

Drink one for me, while the captain got on the general com and told everybody

clear out and when the board-call was. "I got a couple of old friends here," Bet

said to Musa. "Drop in by the Registry, wish Nan Jodree and Dan Ely g'day for

me. Stand 'em a drink if they got the time."

Depressing, when everybody cleared out in a noisy rush and left the downside

corridor all to the two of them—and NG paying attention again, but down-faced,

quiet. Damn that Dussad.

"Well?" she said, looking at NG, and sighed and picked up the duffle and the

hammock. "Where d'we put it?"

NG looked at the corridor and looked up and down the curves in either direction,

and finally sighed and said, in all that awful quiet of shutdown: "Locker's all

right."

They got Walters' kit down, a matter of climbing up the curve using the safety

clips, also stuff for Bala and Gausen and Cierra—and for Dussad, NG did that,

did all the climbing around, the dangerous part, where you could take a long,

long fall if you got careless clambering through the quarters. "You'll hurt your

back," he told her. "I'll do the climbing, you just stay down here and catch

it."

He acted all right. She wished she knew what to say about Dussad and mainday

shift, that had been NG's—and Cassel's. She wished she knew what was going on in

his head and she wished she had Musa here, to talk to NG, if nothing else. Or

Bernstein. Bernie could get through to him. She wasn't sure she could, she

wasn't sure she wanted to get into the topic with him at all.

Damn Dussad. Hughes had stayed out of it, Hughes had to be taking all of it in

and wanting to say something—and there was no doubt he would be saying

something, in the bars and up and down dockside for five days, causing as much

damage as he could, dropping stuff in ears he knew would be receptive, and in a

liberty, down to the last day, the shifts mixed.

Damn, she wanted to be out there. Most of all she wanted NG out there in Musa's

keeping, not on-ship, brooding on things, working alone while his partner was

off doing what she couldn't let him know—

She ought to tell NG, had to tell him sooner or later what was going on, and

alone on the alterday watch might have been a decent time to do it, except for

Dussad and that damn woman from mainday—Thomas, she thought it was, Ann Thomas,

navcomp, Hughes' opposite. Alterday and mainday nav both were a pain in the ass,

she decided—must be something in the mindset; while Dussad, out of Cargo, was a

hard-nosed hard-sell sonuvabitch, but you couldn't fault him too much—just want

to bust his damn thick skull, was all. "Eyes up!" NG yelled from overhead.

"Fragiles!"

They weren't the only crew missing liberty: Parker and Merrill were on mainday

duty in Engineering, and Dussad and Hassan just had a partial, going out to the

suppliers' and dealing for the ship, with whatever spare time they were

efficient enough to gain; while Wayland and Williams were on a three-day pass,

having to come back and supervise the supply loading, and a lucky handful of

bridge crew, rotating off-ship for sleep and whatever rec-time they could

squeeze in, was responsible for the fill, indicator-watching, mostly, and

communication with Thule Central—an ops routine she knew, for once, the

intricacies of cables and hoses, the names of the lines and what the hazards

were—learned it because you'd always had to worry about sabotage, in the war,

and when Africa was in dock, the squad was always out there in full kit,

checking the hook-ups, posting guard—

Dammit.

She kept remembering. She didn't want to. There were those dead rigs topside,

waiting for her, like ghosts—

And NG was going to ask questions, NG had a natural right to ask questions about

where she was going every day, and why.

They had the night, at least. "I'm not making love in any hammock," she said to

NG, setting up, having consulted Parker and Merrill via com on what was going to

be quarters for four people, alternately, in the main stowage—so they just

spread their two hammocks down for padding on the stowage deck, and, it turned

out during the set-up, got themselves a brand-new bottle of vodka when Walters

and some of the guys showed up to pay off the fetch-downs.

"You sure ain't missing much," Walters delayed to say to them. "Place is dead,

places are closed up, about two bars and a skuzzy sleepover still open, and

that's it. Nothing alive out there but echoes…"

Made her feel sad, for some odd reason, maybe just that it was a slice out of

her life, however miserable, maybe that there was something spooky about it now,

knowing a piece of humankind was dying, the dark was coming just like they'd

said, taking the first bases humans had made leaving Sol System.

Like those names in the restroom they just painted over. Polaris, and Golden

Hind. God, Musa could probably remember Thule in its heyday.

And came back, a crewman on an FTL, to see it die.

"Bet?" NG asked her, nudged her arm, when the lock-door had shut, when Johnny

Walters was away to the docks, and she thought, for no reason, Everything we

ever did—the War, and all, they'll paint right over, like it never was, like

none of us ever died—

Mazian doesn't see it. Still fighting the war—

Hell. What's winning? What's winning, when everything's changing so fast nobody

can predict what's going to be worth anything?

She felt NG's hand on her shoulder. She kept seeing Thule docks, Ritterman's

apartment, the Registry—

The nuclear heat of Thule's dim star.

Curfew rang.

Walters' vodka, bed, privacy, all the beer they could reasonably drink and all

the frozen sandwiches they could reasonably eat, out of Services, next door.

Wasn't too bad, she decided, putting tomorrow out of her mind, the way she had

learned to do. Just take the night, get her and NG fuzzed real good—

Tell him later. The man deserved a little time without grief.

So they ate the sandwiches with a beer, chased them with vodka, made love.

Didn't need the pictures. Didn't need anything. NG was civilized, terribly

careful of her back—

Not worth worrying about, she said. And got rowdy and showed him a trick they

used to do down in the 'decks, her and Bieji.

"God," he said. He ran his hand over the back of her neck.

Nobody else had that touch. Nobody else ever made her shiver like that. Nobody

else, ever.

He was the one who got claustrophobic… but for a second she couldn't breathe.

Here and now, Yeager. This ship.

This man. This partner.

"You all right?" he asked.

"Fine," she said, and caught the breath, heavy sigh. "I just can't get stuff out

of my mind."

He worked on that problem. Did tolerably good at it after a minute or two, till

she was doing real deep breathing and thinking real near-term.—One thing with

NG, he didn't question much, and he knew the willies on a first-name basis. Knew

what could cure them for a while, too.

She said, somewhere after, when she found the courage: "Bernstein just left me

this nasty little list of stuff, topside, seems I'm the mechanic and you got the

boards." She tried to say what it was. And had another attack of pure,

despicable cowardice. Couldn't trust it. Couldn't predict what he'd do. Didn't

want a blow-up til she'd gotten a day or so alone with him, softened him up, got

an idea what was going on with him. "I hate it like hell. You're going to be

alone down there."

"Been alone before," he said. "Been alone on port-calls for years."

He didn't ask what the work was. She told herself that if he had asked she would

have gone ahead and spilled it right then. But he didn't. Wasn't even curious.

Thank God.

CHAPTER 24

« ^ »

Ms. yeager," Wolfe said, when she arrived on the bridge and looked around for

the mof-in-charge. The captain was not who she was looking to find.

"Sir," she said, and by way of explanation: "Mr. Orsini—"

Wolfe nodded. "Go to it, Ms. Yeager."

"Thank you, sir." She gave a bob of the head and took herself and her tool-kit

to the number one topside stowage, where she could draw an easier breath.

It wasn't Fitch in charge, thank God, thank God.

Not Fitch in charge anywhere else on the ship, she hoped, but there was no way

to find that out without asking, and she didn't figure asking was real politic.

Mofs were handling the matter, mofs had their ways of saving face, and if Fitch

was on board he was going to be twice touchy if they had him under any hands-off

orders regarding her.

Couldn't push it. Didn't even dare worry about it.

So she got down to work, clambered up the inset rungs to set a 200 kilo

expansion track between two locker uprights, hooked a pulley in, ran a cable and

a couple of hooks into the service rings of the better of the two rigs, and

hauled the thing up where she could work without fighting it.

You could figure how Walid might have died—considering there was no conspicuous

damage to the rig, no penetration at first glance that ought to have killed

him—but those that got blown out into space had been low-priority on rescue.

Nobody in authority on Pell had much cared about the survival of any trooper,

and the air only held you for six hours.

Six hours—floating in the dark of space or the hellish light of Pell's star.

Arms wouldn't work far enough to reach the toggles. Couldn't even suicide. The

rig had caught some kind of an impact—when it was blown out Pell's gaping wounds

into vacuum, maybe; it had survived the impact, but it was shock enough to throw

play into every joint it owned—

—and spring a circulation seal in the right wrist and a pressure seal in the

same shoulder. Scratch the six hours. You could lose a wrist seal and live

without a hand, but when you lost a main body seal, you just hoped you froze

fast instead of boiled slow—and which happened then depended on how much of you

was exposed to a nearby sun.

"Helluva way, Walid." With a pat on the vacant shell. "You should've ducked."

Lousy sensahumor, Bet—

Walid's voice. Clank of pulleys, skuts bitching up and down the aisles while