The boat tunked along, moving slowly in the chop beneath the deserted piers. Not wasting fuel. She put the tiller farther over and kept her course under the pilings, which was the quietest way to move. Mondragon got down on his knees and slid backward into the hidey under her feet, disappearing from her vantage.
"Thanks is fine," she said above the engine-noise, as the boat labored its way along under the pilings, eating up fuel that cost nearly as dear as the sugar. "I'm glad you're so grateful. That's real nice."
After a moment a hand caught hold of the deck-edge; an arm followed, and he put his head up. "Thanks," he said.
"Doing what I say is best," It was her mother's line. She delivered it sternly and with all the righteousness her mother had ever used. "What if them bullyboys get sight of you, huh, and come after me? Maybe you don't remember. Maybe you need time to get your brain unscrambled, huh? All right. I'll hide you out that long. You eat my food. You sleep in the hidey. You damn well do what I say. Hear? Now get back in there."
He let go all at once and vanished.
She held onto the tiller and drew a great amazed breath.
So. She said and this rich man, this handsome uptowner, ducked and did as he was told. She drew yet another breath, with the timbers passing in insane perspective toward dawnlit brown water. She was in control of things on this her deck, this morning. She swung the tiller as the boat passed from under the New Wharves and headed under the Rimmon Isle bridges, a dark, dark passage toward the dawn-lit water of the Old Harbor.
It was open running after that—shallow water in places, so a body could go aground and maybe hurt a boat doing it, if a body did not look sharp and know the currents that swept the Dead Harbor, at least in principle, Knowing them thoroughly was a matter of sailing the harbor every day; which some did—the harbor-dwellers were out here, looking like tiny floating islands on their rag-canopied rafts. Some were pathetic, a lot old, riverfolk just gone beyond their prime and down on their luck, surviving till the end. Some were not old; some were downright dangerous. A lot of crazy had come down from the Ancestors, curse them; and the really lunatic haunted the marshes and ventured out on the Rim in numbers. Of those, the pathetic ones died and the dangerous ones flourished, having no more scruples than a razorfin and about as much hesitation when it came to prey. It was evolution at work. The canny crazy ones survived best, and occasionally the Governor declared a cleanup, and the law and the sporting uptowners came down and scoured the Rim until they had routed out the current crop.
Naturally the canny-crazies took to rafts and most got away, and laid low for a few days, to return again.
So it was wise to go wary crossing the water out here, steer well clear of others, and when it came to a harborage on the Rim in this season, a body just coasted along looking for an unoccupied niche, something with good visibility and a bit of beach.
Mondragon put his head out again, up over the edge of the hidey.
"You can come out," Altair said over the low mutter of the engine and the slap of the water. "Just as well someone does see you out here." He looked doubtfully leftward, where the bleak rocky shore of the Rim showed nothing but shallow anchorages and floating garbage that even the fish disdained. "Rough place," she said. "Just as soon have folks see I got a man with me. Understand?"
He gripped the edge of the halfdeck and slid out, kneeling there after with his arms on the deck surface. He still looked a little dazed.
"Look lively. I bring her in and you get up for'ard and step off with that bow rope and just give her a pull. You strong enough to do that?"
"Where are we?"
"You ain't local for sure."
No answer.
"This is the Rim. Old seawall, most natural, some the Ancestors built. Back there—" She waved an arm off toward the open water. "That dark spot in the water is the Ghost Fleet. And further back, on that shore, that's the Dead Wharf; and over from it's the marsh; and that great hazy flat out there's the old port."
He twisted about to see, then got to his knees and got up, wobbling this way and that.
He sat down, thump! on the slats, with a wild wave of his arms and a quick catch of one hand against the deck.
"Damn, you're a lot of help."
He twisted round with a scowl—not her gentle bewildered fool; it was for a moment a hard-planed face that looked at her, looking somehow older and more dangerous. Then the planes relaxed. The fool was back.
"Dizzy?" she asked. She preferred to talk to the fool. What she had seen in his face the moment before was not something to rouse. What she had seen flicker there told her she was a fool herself not to swing that tiller about and head back for the canals where there were witnesses and a way to get this fellow taken up by the law, if nothing else.
He nodded, looking drowned and dazed and compliant.
So he didn't want to run ashore with that rope and maybe be stranded if she took it in her head to do it. Standoff. Neither did she. She had a spot in view, let the boat chug up as close as put them in shore-shallows and killed the engine. She let down the tiller and dropped the stern-anchor, then skipped blithely off the halfdeck and down the well to pick up the bow anchor and heave that overboard.
Off-shore tieup. So they floated. That idea had its merits, considering the area.
She turned and looked at him where he sat on the deck, his feet in the well, on the slats. "Been managing this boat a long time with no help to hand," she said cheerfully.
"Safer to tie up here anyway. Crazies run the shore. With you all dizzy like that, I'd worry. Hate to think of you wobbling around like that if we had to put out real fast with shore under our bottom."
"Crazies."
She waved a hand off toward the rocks, the long ridge of the west Rim. "Rim there connects right onto the marsh. All sorts of crazies can walk here as well as float. Some won't hurt you. A lot will. You just sit there. I'll just set up work here, do a little fishing. If I sing out Pull the anchor, you get up to the bow and haul up on this rope here—" She put her bare foot on it. "That easy enough for you? I'll be aft hauling up the other, and there'll be some real good reason for it. Not likely to happen. But just so's we don't cross paths on the deck. Knock each other in the wash, we would. Rules of the deck; poleman has right of way. I move with that pole and you're in my way, you just fall down and be walked on. You foul me, we could hole this boat or I could hit you in the head and you don't need another lump, do you? Second rule: you don't touch my gear. It's right where I need it. I got two calls I use: I yell Deck, hey! you just fall flat, like with the pole: this here's a small boat, and it's real easy to get your skull cracked. If I yell Scup! that means something's loose and you grab it. Got no time on a boat to explain things." She drew breath. It hardly mattered. Getting rid of him was the idea. Not attracting undue attention with him was the principal problem. "Got to do something about that head of yours. Never saw hair that blond. Anybody looking for you, you shine like a beacon." She walked on up to the halfdeck and rummaged in the first drop-bin along the side. There was a scrap of a black shibba shawl she used for a towel. It was clean. Mostly. She sniffed it and threw it at him. "Wrap that round your head. Look like a proper rafter, you will."
He looked nonplussed. "Damn. Dumb." She came and snatched it out of his hands and wrapped it for him, turbanlike, herself up close against him.
She had not thought about it when she started; she did before she was done, and she backed off when she had given the cloth its final tuck, with the same embarrassed unease she had had in the night—that he was not a boy, not just anyone, and the only company in her whole life had been female. He was just—different. Touching him felt different; and it reminded her that when she had offered him what she thought was the most profoundly generous thing she had ever offered, he had flinched. Nothing so calculated as a No. Just a gut reaction from a dazed man, honest as it came. She had herself up in his face and he just sat there. Never did what a man ought to do, just tried not to notice.