Tripoint (15 page)

Marie would. Marie was rich in ship-account.

But maybe Marie wouldn’t want him at all, then, except to get information about Bowe. Maybe she’d call him a fool and say she didn’t know why she’d bought him back… he could hear her tone of voice, as if she were talking to him right now.

But when he imagined Marie yelling at him about being a fool, about going in the warehouse, it sort of put things in perspective, as if now he knew what he’d done, and where he’d been stupid, trying to intervene in Marie’s business. The law of the universe was, Marie knew what she was doing, and you didn’t put your hands into it or you risked your fingers.
That
was the mistake he’d made.

So he did understand. And the universe had a little more solid shape around him.

But he decided then, calmly, that he did want to meet Austin

Bowe after all—at least to see the man and know whether they looked alike, or what Marie had seen staring back at her all these years. That would tell him something, too, about the way of things. And that information was on this ship. That was something he could learn about himself. He could listen to Bowe. He could find out the man’s habits and figure out if there was anything genetic that just somehow he’d gotten, in the way of temperament, or whatever else could get through the sieve of genetic code.

Marie said… your father’s temper. Marie said… your father’s manners. Your father’s behavior… And he
tried
to cure it in himself, he tried not to lose his temper and he tried not to be rude, and all the other things Marie attributed to his genes.

Aunt Lydia said most people could pattern themselves off positives. He learned to avoid negatives. Aunt Lydia said he had to define himself, by himself.

And most of all… not do things that pushed Marie’s buttons.

But maybe—it was a dangerous, undermining thought, and he worked all around it for a moment—maybe, even remotely possibly… there might even be another side to Austin Bowe. Maybe Marie’d pushed
his
buttons, the way she had other people’s, and things had just blown up.

Not to excuse what happened. Nothing could do that.

But maybe what she’d told Mischa and what Mischa had told her might have confused the facts.

And he didn’t know why Marie should have gotten the entire truth from Mischa.
He
never had.

And… more and more dangerous a thought… if there was another side, considering the position he was in, it did make sense to ask Bowe’s side of things. And even if it was bad… and even if he couldn’t accept it… considering he was stuck here, considering he had somehow to get along with this crew…

Such as they were.

… he’d learned what happened when you (Lydia’s saying) poisoned the water you had to drink from.

He didn’t know where this ship went. The rumor-mongering They who ran rampant on
Sprite
said it didn’t stay on the charts, that it found Mazianni ports somewhere in the great dark Forever.

He could handle that, he supposed. If all
Corinthian
did was trade with them, he could justify that… after all, nobody had a guarantee the goods that
Sprite
brought to port didn’t end up being cheated over and run through illegal channels. They weren’t responsible. It wasn’t immoral. Illegal, highly, but it wasn’t like they were doing anything that cost any lives…

He began to sink slowly into the mattress surface. That was the passenger ring engaging as
Corinthian
went inertial at its outbound velocity.

A
v
far more than most merchanters handled. Light-mass cargo, he thought, staring bleakly at the sound-baffling overhead. Had to be light mass, relative to the engine cap. You wondered what they were hauling.

Luxuries was the commonest low-mass article. Food-stuffs that wouldn’t compress. But generally, Viking exported high-mass items, so you hauled heavy, and took the light stuff for—

A siren blew three short bursts. Disaster? he wondered, taking a grip. His heart had skipped a beat. His thoughts went skittering over every horizon, leaving nothing but the wide dark, and the cosmic chance of a high-energy rock in their path.

Then over com, a woman’s voice, accented with a ship-speak he didn’t recognize.

“We are inertial for the duration, in count for departure. Count now is… sixty seconds, mark.”

His heart found the missed beat, thudded along in heavy anticipation. It was real. They were going. He reached for the panel with the white diamond, got the drug out, the needle-pack—shivering-scared, until he had that in his fist. If you didn’t have that you didn’t come out of jump whole, you left pieces of yourself… that was what the universal They also said, and if you were curious on that topic… they had wards on certain stations where they sent the kids that experimented with hyperspace, and the unlucky working spacers that for some emergency or another hadn’t had a pack in reach.

“…
count is twenty and running.”

He had it. He had it. He was all right, as all right ran, on this ship.

“..
. fifteen.”

He thought about Marie. He thought he loved her.

(He didn’t, really, but Lydia said he wasn’t going to be capable of it, yet. Like the prince in the fairy story, he was going to be crazy until somebody loved him… )

But if he had loved anybody it was Marie, and he hadn’t loved anybody, if not her, and right now the place where Marie ought to fit—felt like a twisty hollow spot, filled up with anger and hurt where she’d lied to him and ducked out on him, and absolute terror that he’d never see her again and never know what had happened to her.

Because Marie was the edges of the universe. Marie was right and wrong. Marie was the place to go to for the answers and he didn’t have a map without her.

Lydia’d say that wasn’t normal either. But it was all he had. And nobody else was going to get him out of this. Nobody else gave a damn.

Lydia didn’t. Lydia said he was a misfit and a time bomb on the ship. Lydia’d said he’d go off the edge someday, and they ought to find him a nice safe berth on a station, where he could get adopted.

He had nightmares about Lydia finding ways to leave him. Like Lydia convincing Mischa, who didn’t like him anyway. And when Marie would send him back to the nursery because she was sick of him, and when the nursery would complain that he was too old, he hurt the younger kids and he wouldn’t take their sleep cycle, because all the other kids and all the mothers except Marie were on mainday…

And the nursery workers all wanted to watch vids while the kids were asleep, but they wouldn’t let him watch the ones they did, they said go to bed, go to sleep, if he just behaved himself Marie might take him back…

The siren sounded again. Warning of jump imminent.

“Count is five… four… “

He squeezed the pack. Felt the sting of the needle.

“…
three… two… “

Marie wasn’t coming, wasn’t ever coming to get him, where he was going.

—iii—

THE WAVEFRONT OF
CORINTHIAN’S
passage was still coming at them when the clock on
Sprite’s
bridge said to anybody who knew anything that
Corinthian
had just left the system.

That information hit Marie in the gut—for God knew what reason, because, dammit, she didn’t owe the kid. It was the other way around. Highly, the other way around. She’d searched up and down the frontage where she’d left him, she’d gone back to
Sprite
to pursue matters as far as she dared with the police, almost to the point of getting swept up and detained herself. It hadn’t been a good experience, and meanwhile
Sprite
crew wholesale was still out searching every nook in every bar and shop they could think of for a damned elusive twenty-three-year-old offspring who ought occasionally to read the schedule boards.

Miller Transship claimed to know nothing. The station police called station Central, and Central called the stationmaster, who called
Corinthian
long-distance, himself, big deal, while
Corinthian
was outbound.

Surprise:
Corinthian
denied all knowledge of Hawkins personnel aboard.

Then
Corinthian
said, which they needn’t have said… that if they should turn out to have a stowaway, they’d drop him at their next port.

The stationmaster said, all mealy-mouthed, Do that, and signed off.

Injustice… there wasn’t a choice about it. There wasn’t a ship in hell or Viking system that could chase that bastard down once they’d finally roused the stationmaster with word something could be wrong… even
Sprite
, mostly empty. Couldn’t, with the head start he’d have had, and their tanks still drawing… and for a station to call an outbound ship to dump
v
and limp back the long slow days it would take to reach station from where they were, plus buck the outbound traffic, against all regulation… meant big lawsuits if station couldn’t prove their case; and catch-me-if-you-can if the merchanter in question wanted to claim they were in progress for jump and missed the transmission. By the time they got back again, witnesses had scattered and it was, again, better have good evidence and a good reason.

So they had to watch the son of a bitch become a blip on station scopes.

And that last, that unnecessary bit of information about stowaways, was a clear message from Bowe, damn his smug face—
she
knew. They could just as well pull in the search teams, Tom
was
on that ship, Bowe had taken away the only thing she had of his, and the remark about dropping Tom ‘at their next port’ was a threat, not a reassurance. God knew what their ‘next port’ was, if it wasn’t some Mazianni carrier in want of personnel.

If there’d just been proof to give the police, if there’d been any concrete evidence of a kidnapping…

But what could they have done? If she got the evidence now, the station administration could bar
Corinthian
from coming back—supposing the evidence was iron-clad. But it wouldn’t be. It was all circumstantial. If the station needed their commerce more than they needed justice done…

But Viking was just newly a free port. Viking didn’t want any dirty, unfathomable merchanter quarrel on its shiny new trade treaty.
Sprite
was from one side of the Line.
Corinthian
was from another. The next time
Corinthian
docked, was Viking going to search
Corinthian
for personnel
Corinthian
had plainly just told the stationmaster wasn’t going to be aboard next time?

“It’s gone,” Mischa said with a shrug of his shoulders. “Nothing we can do.”

Nothing we can do.

Nothing we can bloody do.

A sanctimonious shrug from Mischa, who’d been watching the clock—and was damned well satisfied to wash his hands of Tom Bowe-Hawkins.

“Nothing we can do,” she echoed him. “You son of a bitch, you mealy-mouthed, self-serving son of a bitch, you
know
he’s on that ship!”

“That’s far from certain, Marie.”

“Oh, nothing’s ever absolute with you, nothing’s ever just quite clear, is it?”

“Marie. This is the bridge. You’re on the bridge. Control it, can we?”

“‘Control it, can we?’ ‘Control it?’ ‘Just shut up, Marie? We know you’re not quite stable, Marie? Too bad about your
kid
, Marie, you can get another one? Why don’t you go get
laid
, Marie, and cure your Problem while you’re at it, Marie!”

“Reel it in, Marie, you never gave a damn about that boy!”

“I never gave a damn? Oh, let’s talk about giving a
damn
, Mischa, excuse me,
captain
Hawkins. They could sell him to the Fleet for all we know—they’re always short of personnel, he’s a good-looking kid, and we know what happens to good-looking kids they get their hands on, don’t we, captain Hawkins?”

“We don’t even know he’s not on dockside. Let’s talk about ducking orders, let’s talk about kiting off on your own, why don’t we? The kid had orders to keep up with you and keep in touch. He violated those orders or we wouldn’t be asking where he is right now.”

“Oh, now it’s
his
fault! Everything’s someone else’s fault.”

“Fault never lands in your lap, does it? You ditched your tag, Marie. I’d have thought you’d have learned your lesson twenty years ago.”

“Damn your interference! If I hadn’t had to dodge you, I’d have the evidence on that son of a bitch, we’d have him screwed with the port authority and Tom wouldn’t be in Bowe’s ship right now!”

“There is nothing we can do, Marie.”

“There was nothing you could do on Mariner, either, was there? I know what it feels like, Mischa,
I know
, and I don’t take ‘nothing we can do. ‘ That son of a bitch is laughing at us, he’s
laughing
at us, do you hear? Or do you give a damn?”

“Marie,—”

“Marie, Marie, Marie! We know his vector, I know that ship, I know what his elapsed-time is like, he’s going for Tripoint, and on to Pell, and we can catch him there. He won’t be expecting it.”

“Out of the question.”

“Hell with you!”

“Marie, let’s talk sanity. He may not be going on to Pell. You may not know his schedule as well as you think you do. We’re not going off in the dark with that ship. We’re not equipped for that. No way in hell, Marie. No way in hell!”

She looked at the clock, jaw clenched, arms folded, as the minutes kept going. Let Mischa think he’d won. Let Mischa think he’d made his point.

“I can make the credit at Pell, Mischa. You load us for Pell and I can turn a profit.” She lifted her hand. “Swear to God.”

“Out of the bloody question.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“For God’s sake, that’s across the Line, they’d charge us through the nose for a berth, we’ve no account there, and if you’re right about Bowe, the kid will never see Pell…”

“The kid, the kid, the boy’s got a name.”