Crossways (11 page)

“Benjamin,” Ben said.

“Wolfe,” Ronan said. “Doctor.”

“Carlinni,” Cara said. “Garrick sent us.”

Ben glanced around to see if anyone else was interested. They weren't. In fact, their disinterest was so studied that he guessed they were taking in the whole scene. Ronan didn't seem worried.

“Ah, shit! Just about finished this anyway.” She picked up her bowl and slurped down the last of the contents. “You eaten? It's good today.”

“What is it?” Cara asked.

“There's vat-meat, fifty cents; razorfin, forty-five; or
don't ask
. That's forty, but you get a hunk of bread with it and it's got real vitamin supplements.”

“Don't ask?”

“Yeah, that's right, don't ask. Most of the folks around here grew up on Casey's
don't ask
. It won't kill ya. Want some?”

Cara shook her head.

Kennedy just shrugged. “Suit yourself. You won't get better value anywhere on-station, specially not once supplies start to dry up.”

She raised one eyebrow to make that into a question. Word traveled fast. Ben neither confirmed nor denied it.

“Come on, this way.” She led them to a narrow entrance between a closed door and a station maintenance hatch. “Mind where you put your feet, I ain't too particular about where I drop stuff down.”

Ben caught his toe on something that scuttled away with a metallic tinkle.

“I said be careful. I only just fixed that little feller.”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, right.”

The dark passageway opened up into an Aladdin's cave. Shelves and racks overflowed with what some people might call junk. If there was a space, there was something stuffed into it, leaning against it, or hung in front of it.

“You a real medical doctor?” Kennedy asked Ronan.

“Yes, real as they come. You need a doctor?”

“Not me. Never sick.” She patted her chest. “One of my kids, though.” She looked around. “Shanna, come out from under that workbench.”

A stick-thin child with big round eyes emerged, dark hair hanging in rats' tails over her face.

“This one?” Ronan beckoned the girl, squatted down in front of her and asked for her hand. He grasped her wrist and after a few moments said, “Nothing wrong with this one that a few square meals wouldn't cure. You don't feed your kids well around here.”

“As well as we can afford. It's her brother that's the problem. Shanna, go ask your mother to send Ez. Tell her we got a real doctor who's going to take a look at him for free. That's right, isn't it, Doc?”

“Sure.” Ronan glanced at Ben.
*You go ahead, I'm still listening in.*

Ben stared around the room. Tool chests, none of them matching, climbed on top of each other making a bid for the ceiling, and there were three workbenches, one covered with tiny parts in neat rows, another with a tarp thrown over something lumpy, and a third, the one Shanna had been hiding beneath, littered with the detritus of what appeared to be a dozen failed experiments. In one corner was a couch with a throw over it that Ben strongly suspected was where Kennedy slept.

“Yeah, before you ask, I know where everything is, so no touching.”

Ben put up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “I wouldn't dream of it.”

“Did you make all this?” Cara asked, a slightly glazed expression on her face.

“Lord love ya, girlie. Course I didn't.” Kennedy gestured at the shelves. “Folks bring me stuff they can't use anymore. Sometimes it's stuff they've . . . found . . . in a finding kind of way. I make it work, get a few credits for it, pass the profit back so I get the best tech to play with. I take it apart, see what makes it run, make it run better, do more. Sometimes I get lucky and sell on a new design, then we're all in the gravy for a while. I've been working on jump tech for a few years now. Figured someone would pay a lot for a system that didn't lose platinum, or a system that could recover the platinum it lost. It's got to be possible. That other universe out there, foldspace. Somewhere in that big old chunk of nothing there's a big old chunk of platinum.”

“Tell us something we don't know.”

“I only said that was what I was working on, y'know, in general. I figured that this time I could sell Garrick something different—jump drives small enough to retrofit. You interested?”

Ben nodded.

“I know what Garrick thinks of me. I saw it in his eyes. Fat, ugly woman, can't be too bright or why's she in Red One? 'Cept he thinks maybe, just maybe there's something to what I say, so he ties me into his debt with a couple of hundred creds for materials and sends me off to play pretty.”

A small disturbance in the entrance announced the return of Shanna with a small boy, even skinnier and paler than she was. Ronan knelt on the floor and took charge of both children.

“And how's it going?” Ben chose to ignore Ronan.

“It's going good. I got this.”

Kennedy pulled a cover off a block of wires, tubes, and pipes that looked like an explosion in a spaghetti factory.

“What is it?”

“That's only the big old drive that brought half of a clapped-out O'Neill cylinder through the Folds to be tacked on and used as Crossways' farm.”

“That was—”

“Yeah, I know, close on fifty years ago. Don't touch!” She slapped his hand away.

“How does something that size punch something as big as an O'Neill cylinder in and out of foldspace?” Cara asked.

“Ain't the size of it, it's the power that it packs and that's all about the compression ratio in the antimat— Hey, you don't need to know that. All you need to know is that if I can reverse engineer this thing and squish it down some, you can have jump drives.”

“Can you?” Ben asked. “Reverse engineer it, I mean? And if you can, how come no one else has tried?”

“I'm halfway to understanding it.” She settled the cover back into place. “And the reason no one else has tried is because they didn't believe the thing survived its trip here. The story always fascinated me. Some tomfool Navigator brought an O'Neill cylinder through foldspace, then got sucked into the black when the thing cracked apart. They looked for the drive but they didn't find it, so they figured it was lost, too. I figured it was more likely buried. You wouldn't believe how much shit I had to dig through—literally. I found it in a sump under one of the barns.” She patted the cover gently as if her favorite dog was sleeping beneath it. “Course, it's fifty years old, so there's a containment problem, but, hey, you wouldn't want it to be too easy, wouldya?”

Ben hastily checked the readout on his buddysuit, but background radiation levels were normal.

“Relax.” Kennedy smiled. “I ain't going to put anyone in danger. My friends all live here. I got external containment. Should hold it while I work.”

“So what do you need to move forward with this?” Ben asked.

“Platinum. Can't test anything without it. Four rods.”

*Ronan?*
Ben asked.

*She's playing you about the platinum. Going to ask for more than she needs, but she's straight up about the jump drives. She honestly thinks that she can do it. She was right about the boy, too. Got a heart murmur. Routine surgery will cure him completely. Not likely to be something the good folks down here can afford.*

Ben jerked his head toward the doorway and the people
outside. “This area doesn't strike me as the safest to keep a fortune in platinum.”

“Well, I wouldn't shout about it, but, yeah, those folks out there are only ordinary folks. Just as cream rises, so does scum.” She jerked her head toward the ceiling. “The real hardcases are all on the upper levels, fleecing the fancy folks. No point in robbing the piss-poor.” She turned to Ronan. “How's Ez, Doc?”

“Needs a little surgery, nothing serious.”

“Expensive?”

*Ah,*
Ronan said.
*She's overdoing the platinum to cover the cost of surgery.*

“Not so much. We can include it in the deal.” He nodded to Ben.

“Surgery for the boy, five hundred a month, two platinum rods and you give us first refusal on whatever you come up with. Deal?”

“Deal!” Kennedy's eyes lit up. “Five hundred in advance?”

“In advance. Expect a man called Yan Gwenn,” Ben said. “He'll have what you need. He's also my best engineer, a Psi-Mech specializing in ships' systems.” Ben looked at Cara, who confirmed what he suspected with a tiny shake of her head. Dido Kennedy didn't have an implant.

“Yeah, whatever. Send whoever you like. Just make sure he's got my paycheck and the platinum. Shanna, go tell your mother to pack a bag for Ez. He's going with this nice doctor. Right, Doc?”

“Right.” Ronan stood up and scooped the boy up as if he weighed nothing. “He'll be back in four days. Does his mother want to come too?”

“She might want to come, but she's got another three little ones to look after,” Dido said. “You could take Shanna, though. Four days of feeding up wouldn't do her harm.”

Ronan nodded and the little girl slipped her hand into his free one.

*It's my guess her paycheck will be feeding half this sector,*
Ronan said.
*And it looks like they all need it.*

Ben couldn't put it off any longer. With departure imminent, he had to make a courtesy visit to Victor Lorient and see how the settlers were getting on in their temporary
quarters. The multipurpose sports arena seated twenty thousand, so the sanitary facilities were sufficient, if basic, and Garrick had organized enough food vendors. Those who'd extended their menu beyond the usual snack foods were doing good business. It was all working on extended credit, though, until the profits from Olyanda kicked in.

The stadium looked like the refugee camp it had become. Unlike some of the planet-bound grapple arenas, the spectators' benches only filled the lower half of the sphere and, though steep, were perfectly safe when gravity was on. There were safety straps for when gravity was off for a game. The bottom of the sphere was flattened off for track events and gymnastics. Currently ten thousand settlers were crammed among rows of beds, nothing more than a blanket on the ground for most, air mattresses for the lucky. The psi-techs had made a more private space for themselves on the lower spectator benches, but they looked anything but comfortable.

“We need more sonic shower units.” That was Victor Lorient's opening gambit.

“Hello, Director, how are you doing?” Ben extended his hand and from force of habit Lorient took it, though he didn't remove his glove.

The man looked tired and unkempt. His dark hair flopped over one eye and he'd lost weight. His nose dominated the landscape of his face, his features turning from chiseled to gaunt, his eyes deep set. Once handsome, now Victor's features had lost their vigor and he'd become haggard. How had he aged so much in such a short time?

Victor snatched his hand back as soon as he could. “The players' facilities are inadequate and this whole place is starting to stink of the unwashed.”

Ben couldn't deny it.

“Let me show you.” Lorient walked a few paces, then whirled suddenly. “Are we prisoners here?”

“You're confined for your own protection,” Ben said. “Crossways can be dangerous for anyone not used to its ways, but Mother Ramona can arrange for anything you want to be brought in, or for small groups of you to go out, escorted, of course.”

Lorient scowled. “We had to leave so much behind on Olyanda.”

“But not one life lost.”

Lorient sighed. “I'll grant you that, Commander Benjamin. You were right about van Blaiden and his thugs.”

Ben wondered if he could get that in writing, or maybe chiseled into tablets of stone two meters tall. He suppressed a grin. It was the closest to thanks Lorient would ever come.

“Commander Benjamin.” Rena Lorient picked her way across some of the makeshift beds and held out both hands to him.

“Mrs. Lorient, how are you doing?” He took her hands and she squeezed. Ben hadn't seen Rena since she left Olyanda with the first evacuees. He'd expected her to look tired, but she looked energized. Throwing herself into work was probably her way of dealing with the loss of her son. Ben had heard that all was not well between the Lorients since Danny's death. Losing a child, especially in such tragic circumstances, could either strengthen a marriage or tear it apart. The jury was still out on this one, but it wasn't looking good.

“I'm doing well, thank you. Keeping busy. There's so much to do here, and since I arrived early, most of it has fallen to me.” She gave Victor a long look, but he didn't respond.

There was an awkward silence, so, thankful to have avoided a guided tour of inadequate showers, Ben moved on to practicalities, getting a list of everything they needed, noticing that during the whole conversation the Lorients only spoke to him and not to each other.