“You think he’s conned me?”
“I think he was desperate and we gave him a line. But he’s keeping the keys in his hands and maybe he’s had other crew aboard who never made it off. We don’t know that. We can’t let him loose.”
“You got another idea? Calling the military—that still doesn’t give us the keys. They’d have to haul us down; or we lose the ship. Might as well apply to leave the ship ourselves. Hand it back to him. Go back to Pell, beached. In a year, maybe we can explain it all to the Old Man. And go back to Dublin and go on explaining it. You think of that?”
“What do we do, then?”
“He’s got no food in that section,” Deirdre said. ‘There’s that. There’re things he needs.”
Allison drew a long breath, short of air. So they were around to that, the logical direction of things. “So maybe we come up with something more to the point than that. That’s what he was saying, you know that? He knows what kind of a mess we’re in. We can’t rely on him at controls—how much do you think you can rely on comp keys he might give us if we put the pressure on? He’s out-thought us. He’s not going to bluff.”
Silence.
She rested her hands on her knees and stood up. “All right. It’s in my watch. So I’ll talk to him. I’m going up there.”
“Allie-”
“Al-li-son.” She frowned at Curran. “You stay by com and monitor the situation. Only one way he’s going to trust us halfway —a way to patch up things, at least; make a gesture, make him think we think we’ve straightened it out. God help us.” She headed for the corridor, looked back at a trio of solemn faces. “If you have to come after me, come quick.”
“If he lays a hand on you,” Curran said, “I’ll break it a finger at a time.”
“Don’t take chances. If it gets to that, settle it, and call the military.” She walked on, raw terror gathered in her stomach. Her knees had a distressing tendency to shake.
There was no more chance of trusting him. Only a chance to make him think they did. He was, she reckoned, too smart to kill her even if it crossed his mind: he would take any chance they gave him, come back to them, bide his time.
She hoped to get them to Venture Station alive: that was what it came to now. And if they were lucky, there might be a strong military authority there.
He sat in the corridor—no other place in section two that was heated: he had the heat started up in number 15, and if the sensors worked, the valve that shut the water down in 15 would open and restore the plumbing. He never depended on Lucy’s plumbing. At the moment he was beyond caring; he was pragmatic enough to reckon priorities would change when thirst set in.
And in an attempt at pragmatism he made himself as comfortable as he could on the floor, nursed bruised ribs and wrenched joints and a stiff neck, trying to find a position on the hard tiles that hurt as little as possible. The teeth ached; the inside of his mouth was cut and swollen: there was a great deal to take his mind off more general troubles, but generally he was numb, the way the area of a heavy blow went numb. And he reckoned that would start hurting too, when the shock of betrayal had passed. In the meantime he could sleep: if he could find a spot that did not ache, he could sleep.
The alarm went off—the door down the curve opened from their side, jolting his heart. He scrambled up—staggered into the wall and straightened.
Allison by herself. The door closed again; the alarm stopped. He stared at her and the numb spot gained feeling and focus, an ache that settled everywhere. “So, well,” he said, “got around to figuring how it is?”
“Look, I’m here. You want to talk or do you want me to let be?”
“I won’t give it to you.”
She walked closer, the length of the corridor between them. Stopped near arm’s length. “I won’t pass it to Curran. I’m sorry.— Listen to me. I reckoned maybe we were too close for reason. I just figured maybe Curran could get the sleepover out of it; maybe— Hang it, Stevens, you’re strung out on no sleep and you’re risking our lives on it. Not just mine. Theirs; and I got them into it You don’t trust them. Maybe not me. But I figured if you and Curran could sort it out—maybe it would all work. That maybe if you got it straight with them, if all the heat blew out of it—”
“Misfigured, did you?”
“Don’t be light with me. Say what you think.”
“All I want—” His throat spasmed. He thrust his hands into his pockets and disguised a second breath with that. “I don’t give you the time of day, Reilly. Let alone the comp keys. Now we can go on like this. And maybe you’ll think of other clever ways to get at it. But you loaned me money; you didn’t buy me out You figure —what? To trump up something to get me between you and the police at Venture? And then to offer me another deal? Sorry. I’ve got that figured out. Because if they get me, Reilly, you’re stuck on a ship you can’t even get out of dock. Embarrassing. Might raise questions about your title to her. Might cost you a long time to get that straightened out, long-distance to Pell and wherever Dublin might be. Not to mention—if they send me in for restruct —I’ll spill what happened here, all in the little pieces of my mind. And there goes the Reilly Name. So refigure, Reilly. Nothing you do that way’s going to work.”
“You’re crazy, you know that?”
“You know, I really took precautions. I signed on drunks and docksiders and insystemers, and I got through with all of them. I figured a big ship like Dublin might try to doubledeal me, but you’re pirates, Reilly—I never figured that. Mallory’s out there hunting Mazianni and here’s a ship full of them.”
Her face flushed. He had that satisfaction. “You don’t take that seriously, do you?”
“I don’t see a difference.”
“Stevens-”
“Sandor. The name’s Sandor.”
“I’m sorry for what happened. I told you why; I told you— Look, Curran thought you’d bluff. That was his thinking. Now he knows better. So do all of us. You want to come back to the bridge and sort this out?”
He ran that through his mind several ways, and none of it eased the ache. Stood there, obstinate, only to make it harder.
“Stevens—what’s it take?”
“Worried, are you? We’re not even near the Jump point. And what when we’re across it? A replay? I only go for this once,
Reilly. The next time you lay a hand on me if it’s war. You’ll get me. Sure you will. I’ve got to sleep, after all. But let’s just lay it on the table. You may not be able to haul it out of me. And then what? Then what, Reilly?”
“It’s crazy to talk like that.”
“How much do you want this ship?”
“A lot. But not that way. I want us working with each other. I want our hands clean and all of us in one piece, not killed because you’re still running a loaded ship like a margin cargo—you’re blind crazy, Stevens. Sandor. You’ve got too many enemies in your own head.”
“It doesn’t work. You take it on my terms. That’s all you’ve got. Up the ante, and that’s still all you’ve got.”
“All right,” she said after a moment, stood there with a look in her eyes that seemed halfway earnest She nodded toward the section seal. “Let’s go.”
He nodded, walked along with her. “They’re listening,” he said in a low voice. “Aren’t they?”
She looked at him, a sudden, disturbed glance. They reached the section seal and she stopped and reached for the button. He was quicker, his hand covering it. He looked her in the eyes, that close, and the closeness murdered reason for the instant. The scent of her and the warmth and the remembrance of Viking and Pell.
“You could have had it all,” he said. “You know that.”