“No word on that. I talked with Mallory. The lock was hers. The cargo’s hers. I think she wants rumors spread, or she wouldn’t spill what she spilled.”
“Like what?”
“That Union’s occupying the nullpoints along the Line, hunting Mazianni, and Alliance is doing the same.”
“Lord, you’ve got to tell that to the Old Man.”
He walked along in a moment’s silence—that it took that much for them to suggest him and the Reilly talking face to face. They were scared. He saw that. Deirdre’s face had lost all its cheer, pale under its freckles. Allison’s—had a hard-eyed wariness like Curran’s. Neill just looked worried. “I’ll make a call from Lucy” Sandor said. “When I get clear and boarded.”
“They’re on a hunt?” Neill asked.
“I think I was told what she wants told in every bar on dock-side. And I don’t know what the percentage is.”
“She say anything else?” Curran asked.
“She knows about the deal. She talked about the profit there might be for a route from Sol into Union. Direct to the point. Said they’re going to be at the nullpoints of the Hinder Stars, keeping an eye on things.”
“For sure?” Allison said.
“I don’t trust anything I was told.—I know I want to be down there if they’re taking the security seal off the hatch. I want to see what they’ve had their fingers into on my ship.”
“We’re going to take a look and go straight back to Dublin? Allison said, “as soon as we’re sure we’ve got that lock open. Got some good-byes to say, all of us. If they’re going to load for a 0900 undock, then you can use some crew over there.”
“Could,” he agreed. “Could.”
He had help, he was thinking, an unaccustomed comfort. He had his Dubliners who were not leaving him at the first breath of trouble. He felt a curious warmth in that thought.
Legitimate, he kept reminding himself. With connections. Mallory could not touch him. Might not want to, wanting to keep on the good side of a powerful Unionside merchanter, with all its connections.
He tried to believe that
But he had looked Mallory in the eyes, and doubted everything.
Downers surrounded the lock, the barriers having been removed… Downers in the company of one idle dockworker, who rose from the side of the ramp and gave them all a looking at. “Business here?” the man asked.
“Stevens,” Sandor said. “Ship’s owner.”
The dockworker held out his hand. “Be happy to turn her over to you, sir, with ID. Otherwise I have to report”
It was insane, such bizarre security interwoven with the real threat of Alliance military. It was Pell, and they did things in strange ways. He took out his papers and showed them.
“He good?” a Downer asked, breather-masked and popping and hissing in the process. Round brown eyes looked at them, one Downer, a whole half-circle of Downers.
“Good paper,” the dockworker confirmed. “Thank you, sir. Good day to you, sir; or good night, whichever.”
And the dockworker collected his assortment of Downers, who bowed and bobbed courtesies in the departure, trooped off with shrill calls and motion very like dancing.
“Lord,” Allison said.
“Pell,” Sandor said. He turned, led the way up the ramp in deliberation, into the lighted access, with thoughts now only for his ship. He walked the tube passage, into the familiar lock. Home again. He kept going to the lift—five of them to fill the space, to make an unaccustomed crowd in the narrow corridors. The lift let them out on the main level, into the narrow bowed floor of the in-dock living quarters and the bridge; and he stood by the lift door and watched them walk about the little zone of curved deck that was accessible… silver-clad visitors come home to scarred Lucy, to pass their fingers over her aged surfaces, to touch the control banks and the cushions, to look this way and that up the inaccessible curve of her cabin space and storage corridors, wondering aloud about this and that point of her design. He was anxious in that scrutiny, watched their faces, their smallest reactions, more sensitive than if they had been looking him over.
“Not so comfortable in dock,” Allison said, “but plenty of room moving.” She fingered the consoles. He had cleaned the tape marks off because of customs, disposed of all the evidence: but she found a sticky smudge and rubbed at it. She looked back at him. “She’s all right,” she pronounced. “She’s all right”
He nodded, feeling the knot in his chest dissolve.
“Handle easy?” Curran asked.
“A crooked docking jet. That’s her only wobble. I use it”
“That’s all right,” Curran said, surprisingly easy.
“You going to call the Old Man?” Allison asked.
“… it’s likely,” he said into the com, “that all of it’s planted rumors. But if you’re headed for Union space, sir—it seemed you might want to know what was said.”
“Are you in trouble with them?” the voice came back to him.
“It’s still possible, yes, sir.” And aware of the possibility the transmission was tapped, shielded-line as it was: “I hope they get it straightened up.”
A silence from the other end. “Right,” Michael Reilly said. “You’ll be taking care, Captain.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thanks for the advisement”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Yes,” the Reilly said, “you might do that.”
“Sir.”
“Information appreciated, Lucy.”
“Signing off, Dublin.”
He shut it down, alone in the quiet again. The Dubliners were on their way back to their ship. For good-byes. For gathering their baggage. He sat in the familiar cushion, staring at his reflection in the dark screens and for a moment not recognizing himself, barbered and immaculate and in debt over his head.
Mallory’s face kept coming back at him, the scene in her onship office. Talley’s face, and the meeting on Pell. The old fear kept trying to reassert itself. He kept trying to put it down again.
He clasped his hands in front of him on a vacant area of the console, lowered his head onto his arms, tried for a moment to rest and to recall what time it was—a long, long string of hours. He thought that he had slid mostly into the alterday cycle; or somehow he had forgotten sleep.
He did that, slept, where he sat
It was com that woke him, the notice from dockside that he had cargo coming in, and would he prepare to receive.
Chapter X
Leaving Dublin was a tumult of good-byes, of cousin-friends hugging and looking like tears; Ma’am with a look of patience; and Megan and Connie—Connie snuffling, and Megan not— Megan with that data-gatherer’s focus to her stare that most acquired in infancy, who got posted bridge crew, wide-scanning the moment, too busy inputting to output, even losing a daughter. And in that, they had always understood each other—no need for fuss, when it stopped nothing. Allison hugged her pregnant sister, listened to the snuffles: hugged her mother longer, patted her shoulder. “See you,” she said. “In not so many months, maybe.”
“Right,” her mother said. And when she had begun picking up the duffel and other baggage in a heap about her feet: “Don’t take chances.”
“Right,” she told Megan, and shouldered strings and straps and picked up the sacks with handles. She looked back once more, at both of them, nodded when they waved, and then headed out of the lock and down the access tube to the ramp, leaving her three companions to muddle their own way off through their own farewells.
Her leaving had an element of the ridiculous: instead of the single duffel bag she might have taken, she moved all her belongings. It was not the way she had started. But she found excuses to take this oddment and that, found sacks and bags people were willing to part with, and ended up going down the ramp and across the docks loaded with everything she owned, a thumping, swinging load she would have done better to have called a docksider to carry. But it was not that far to walk; and the load was not that heavy, distributed as it was. She had her papers, her IDs and her cards and a letter tape from Michael Reilly himself that advised anyone they cared to have know it, that Lucy was an associate of Dublin Again—in case, the Old Man put it, you have credit troubles somewhere.