“They won’t let you in.”
“Maybe not. Shut down and come with me.”
“Right,” Deirdre said, and both of them shut down on the moment and got up.
Down the lift to the lock: Norway troops were standing guard on the dock when they had gone out into the bitter cold, three battered merchanters in sweat-stained coveralls.
There was a thin scattering of movement beside that, a noise of loudspeakers and public address, advising stationers in hiding to come to dockside or to call for assistance. Men and women as haggard as themselves, in work clothes—came out to stand in lines the military had set up, to go to desks and offer papers and identifications—
“Poor bastards,” Neill muttered. “No good time for them, in all of this.”
She thought about it, the situation of stationers with Mazianni in charge. They were very few, even so. A maintenance crew-there were no children in evidence, and there would have been, if it had been a station in full operation. All young; all the same look to them.—”You,” an armored trooper shouted at them. “IDs.”
Allison stopped, Deirdre and Neill on either side of her— “Allison Reilly,” she said, and the rifle aimed at them went back into rest. “Papers,” the trooper said, and she presented them.
“We’ve got two of ours in Norway medical section,” she said. “I’m headed there.”
The trooper handed the papers back, faceless in his armor. “Got the Lucy crew here,” he said to someone else. “Requesting boarding.”
And a moment later—a nod to that unheard voice… “One of you is clear to board. Officer on duty will guide you.”
“Thanks,” Allison said. She glanced at Neill and Deirdre, silent communication, then parted company with them, walked the farther distance up the docks to the access of Norway.
Another trooper, another challenge, another presentation of papers. She walked the ramp into the dark metal interior without illusions that Mallory had any interest in talking to her after what they had done.
She was an inconsequence, with her trooper escort, in the corridor traffic, came virtually unremarked to the doorway of the medical section. An outbound medic shoved into her in his haste and she flattened herself against the doorway, gathering her outrage and fright. A second brush with traffic, a medic on his way in— “Where’s the Lucy personnel?” she asked, but the man brushed past. “Hang you—” She thrust her way into a smallish area and a medic made a wall of himself. “Captain’s request,” the trooper escorting her said. “Condition of the Lucy personnel. This is next of kin.”
The medic focused on her as if no one until now had seen her. “Transfused and resting. No lasting damage.” They might have been machinery. The medic waved them for the door. “Got station casualties incoming. Out.”
She went, blind for the moment, was shaking in the knees by the time she walked Norway’s ramp down to the dockside and headed herself toward Dublin. The troopers stayed. She went alone across the docks, with more of anger than she could hold inside.
Megan met her at the lock—had been standing there… no knowing how long. She looked at her mother a moment without feeling anything, a simple analysis of a familiar face, a recognition of the heredity that bound her irrevocably to Dublin. Her mother held out her arms; she reacted to that and embraced her, turned her face aside. “You all right?” Megan asked when they stood at arm’s length.
“You set us up.”
Megan shook her head. “We knew Norway had. We shed it all… we knew where Finity was bound and we put out with them. Part of the operation. They gave you false cargo; mass, but nothing. And you hewed the line and played it honest but it wouldn’t have made a difference. Mallory gave you what she wanted noised about. And sent you in here primed with everything you were supposed to spill. If you were boarded, if they searched—they’d know you were a setup. But all you could tell them was what Mallory wanted told.”
The rage lost its direction, lost all its logic. She was left staring at Megan with very little left in reserve. “We were boarded. Didn’t Deirdre and Neill say? But we got them off.”
“Curran and Stevens—”
“They’re all right. Everything’s fine.” She fought a breath down and put a hand on Megan’s shoulder. “Come on. Deirdre and Neill aboard?”
“With the Old Man.”
“Right,” she said, and walked with her mother to the lift, through Dublin’s halls, past the staring, silent faces of cousins and her own sister—”Connie,” she said, and took her sister’s hand, embraced her briefly—Connie was more pregnant than before, a merchanter’s baby, pregnancy stretched into more than nine months of realtime, a life already longer and thinner than stationers’ lives, to watch stationers age while it grew up slowly, with a merchanter’s ambitions.
She let her sister go, walked on with Megan into the lift, and topside—down the corridor that led to the bridge. She was qualified there, she realized suddenly: might have worn the collar stripe… posted crew to a Dublin associate; and it failed to matter. She walked onto the bridge where Michael Reilly sat his chair, where Deirdre and Neill stood as bedraggled as herself and answered for themselves to the authority of Dublin. Ma’am was there; and Geoff; and operations crew, busy at Dublin running.
“Allison,” the Old Man said. Rose and offered his hand. She took it, slump-shouldered and leaden in the moment, her sweat-limp hair hanging about her face as theirs did, her crew, her companions, both of them. “You all right?”
“All right, sir.”
“There wasn’t a way to warn you. Just to back you up. You understand that.”
“I understand it, sir. Megan said.”
“Small ship,” the Old Man said. “And expendable. That’s the way they reckoned it.” He gestured toward the bench near his chair. She folded her hands behind her, locked her aching knees.
“Won’t stay long,” she said.
“You don’t have to have it that way.” The Reilly sat down. “You can turn your post over to Second Helm… take a leave. You’re due that.”
She sucked at her lips. “No, sir. My crew can speak for themselves. But I’ll stay by Lucy”
“Same, sir,” Deirdre said, and there was a like murmur from Neill.
“They owe us,” she said. “They promised us hazard rate for what we’re hauling, and I’m going to Mallory to collect it.”
The Reilly nodded. Maybe he approved. She took it for dismissal, collected her crew.
“You can use Dublin facilities,” the Old Man said. “During dock. We’ll help you with any sorting out you need to do.”
She looked back. “Courtesy or on charge?”
“Courtesy,” the Old Man said. “No charge on it.”
She walked out, officer of a small ship, a poor relation come to call. Dubliners lined the corridor, stared at her and her ions, and there was something different. She did not bother to reason what it was, or why cousins stared at them without speaking, with that bewilderment in their eyes. She was only tired, with more on her mind than gave her time for politenesses.
Chapter XVIII
Dublin was in port: he had heard that much, when they took Curran out and left him behind, among the station wounded. He lay and thought about that, putting constructions together in his mind, none of which made particular sense, only that somewhere, as usual lately, he had been conned.
So there was a reason Dublin had handed out a paper half million; and Norway had landed on the case of a petty skimmer with customs problems. He had pursued his fate till it caught him, that was what.
Allison. All of Lucy’s crew was safe. They had told him that too, and he was glad, whatever else had happened. He had no personal feeling about it—or did, but he had no real expectation that Allison would come down into the depths of Norway to see him. He made a fantasy of such a meeting; but she failed to come, and that fit with reality, so he enjoyed the fantasy and finally stopped hoping.