Dartagnan felt his throat close, swallowed. “What do you mean? You mean he—”
“No. No, he's too ‘civilized’ for that. He's a psychological sadist. When he's with his father, with the other corporation men, he's fine, charming, normal. But when it's someone he doesn't—respect—he …” she broke off, searching for the word, “… he …”
“He ‘teases’. ” Chaim nodded. “I'll show you my scars, if you'll show me yours.” He hesitated. “Why do you put up with it?”
“I like my job! He—doesn't travel much.”
He heard a noise below; his slow smile widened with insincerity as he looked toward the well. “Heads up.”
Siamang appeared, pinned them against the panel with his gaze as he pushed upward past the rim of the well. “So here you are,” he said, too congenially. He held a drink bulb in his hand, sucked at the straw.
“Hello, boss.” Dartagnan bowed. “We were just talking about what a pleasure it is to work for Siamang and Sons.”
Siamang laughed in disbelief. “I thought we were supposed to confine our socializing to the lower levels.”
“I was just getting a little footage of the stars, a little arty effect: with the pilot's supervision.…” He raised his hands apologetically.
“He was just leaving,” Mythili said, her voice brittle.
“Good. Don't want to break the rules, do we, Red?” Siamang tossed his drink bulb out into the air. Chaim watched it arc slowly downward toward the cold metal of the floor. “Time for a refill.” He sank, like the bulb, disappeared below floor level. His door opened, closed.
“You're always surrendering, aren't you, Dartagnan? Always lying—”
Dartagnan looked back at the pilot's rigid face, feeling her distaste, and down at his hands, still palm-out in the air. He pulled them in against his sides, unexpectedly ashamed, covered the twinge of his stomach. “Yeah.” He wiped his hands on his jacket. “Always lying flat on my back, while the whole damned universe fucks my integrity.” He stepped into the well.
Mythili Fukinuki caught at the ceiling, stopped herself from drifting on down into the dormitory. Dartagnan looked up, almost surprised.
“Do you mind?”
“Not if you don't.” He pushed aside his camera on the bunk. “Make yourself at home. I'm harmless.”
She floated down. Her knees bent slightly as she reached the floor, stabilizing. Her short, shining hair moved softly across her forehead; her skin was the color of antique gold in the strong light. Chaim glanced away uneasily.
Her own dark eyes searched the emptiness, avoiding him. “Why do you do it, if it—”
“What's a nice boy like me doing in a job like this?” He grinned, peering down at her, like the Cheshire Cat. She flushed. The grin disappeared, leaving him behind. “Somebody has to do it.”
“But you don't.” She brushed back her hair. “Not if you really hate it so much.”
“The voice of experience?” He baited her, smarting with the things she didn't say. “Goody Two-Shoes, female pilot, tell our viewers how you got where you are. And don't tell me it was clean living. It was connections—”
Her mouth tightened. “That's right, it was. My uncle was a freighter pilot, my father got him to use his influence. But they did it because it was what I wanted.”
“Well, good for them; good for you,” he said sourly. “We should all have it so good. If we did, maybe I'd be where you are, instead of where I am.”
“There are other jobs. You don't need influence—”
“—to dump fertilizer into a hydroponics tank for the rest of my life? To break up rocks in a refinery? Sure. All the dead-end jobs in the universe, back home on Delhi.… Being a mediaman, at least I've got a chance, at money, at making contacts … at maybe getting free, getting a ship of my own again, someday. If this's what I have to do to get it—whatever I have to do—I will.”
She settled slowly onto a box. “Oh … What happened to your ship? What kind of ship was it?”
“It wasn't my ship … my father's. He taught me all I know; like they say.” He laughed oddly. “He was a prospector, it was a flyin' piece of junk. I never saw it till I was eighteen. I hardly ever saw him. My mother was a contract mother.”
“Oh.” Almost sorrow.
He nodded. “When I was eighteen my father dropped in out of the black like a meteor and told me I was going prospecting. I spent fifty megasecs learning to pilot a ship, scouting artifacts on rocks with names I'd never even heard of; hardly ever seeing anybody but him … and a lot of corpses.” He laughed again, not hearing it. “I thought I'd go crazy. Finally he gave up and let me go home, instead. The next thing we heard from him, he claimed he'd made the strike of his life … and the next thing we heard, he was dead. He'd smashed up the ship, and smashed himself up, in a lousy docking accident. Some corporation picked up his salvage find, we never got a thing. I had to start doing something then, to support my mother … and here I am. I thought I'd enjoy being a mediaman, after fifty megaseconds of prospecting … Now, even solitary confinement sounds good.”
“Why did your mother let you do it? Doesn't she know—?” Sympathy softened the clear, straight lines of her face.
“What was she supposed to do? Dump fertilizer instead of me?” He shrugged. “She's nice looking, she got married, maybe a hundred megasecs ago. I don't hear from her much now; her husband doesn't appreciate me, for obvious reasons.… While my father was alive, she never even contracted to have anybody else's children. Funny—he stayed with us maybe seven times in six hundred megaseconds, never gave her a thing, except me; but she loved him, I think she always hoped he'd marry her someday.” He grunted. “Wouldn't that make a great human-interest filler.… Sorry, I haven't been filling my quota of compulsive conversation for the last megasecond.” And watching her, all at once he was overwhelmingly aware of another need that had not been fulfilled for too long. The fact that she made no effort at all at sensuality made her suddenly, unbearably sensual. He unbuttoned the high collar of his loose, gray-green jacket, shifted uncomfortably above the edge of the bunk, almost losing his balance.
“My father,” she said, looking down, unaware, “wanted a son. But he couldn't have one … genetic damage. That's why he let me become a pilot; it was like having a son for him. But there's nothing wrong with that—” her voice rose slightly. “Because piloting is what I always wanted to do.”
“Was it? Or was it really just that you wanted to please your father?” He wondered what had made him say that.
She looked up sharply. “It was what I wanted. If a mediaman isn't satisfied to stay in his ‘place’, why should I have to be?”
Something in her look cracked the barrier of his invulnerable public face. He nodded. “It's not easy, is it? They never make it easy.…”
She smiled, very faintly. “No, Dartagnan … they never do. But maybe you've helped, a little.”
“Call me Chaim?”
“I thought your friends called you Red.”
“I don't have any friends.”
She shook her head, still smiling; pushed up from the box, and rose toward the entrywell. “Yes, you do.”
Alone, he meditated on stars until his arousal subsided, leaving a warmth in his mind that had nothing to do with sex. He savored it as he listened to her heating food in the commons above his head; heard something else, Siamang's voice:
“How about heating something up for me, Mythili?”
“I'm a pilot, not a cook, Demarch Siamang. You'll have to do it yourself.”
“That's not what I meant—”
Dartagnan heard a magnetized tray clatter on the counter, a choked noise of indignation. “Do that for yourself, too!”