“She’ll find out.”
“Then tell her I didn’t have the time to waste escorting you back and there was no way I was letting you walk through downside alone. She’ll let it go if you tell her it was my idea.”
“You’ve known her for a long time?”
“Pretty much since she was born.”
Jonathon flattened against the bulkhead as Able and the approaching docker merely shifted their shoulders sideways and slid past each other. “She’s actually really good to work for,” he declared scrambling back to Able’s side. “Her bark is worse than her bite.”
“Most days.” Able paused at the hatch that would take them from dockside into the station proper. “I knew a guy once that she bit.”
Sucking chest wound or wrench to the back of the head, after a cursory inspection of the only bar in downside, Able was sure of one thing: that Richard Webster had gotten what he deserved. The place was everything people like Jonathon expected a downside bar to be. Dark and filthy and stinking of despair and rage about equally mixed—as well as a distinct miasma of odors less metaphorical.
She ripped a yellowing list of rules off the outside of the hatch—splash marks making the vector for the yellowing plain—and stepped over the threshold. The panel just inside the door responded to her chip and once she’d pried the cover off, she hit the overhead lights. The amount of grime that had sealed the cover shut suggested it had been a while since the overheads had been turned on.
A pile of rags in the far corner coughed, cursed, and turned into a skinny person of indeterminate gender.
“I didn’t do nothing,” it whined, squinting across the room.
“That’s obvious.” Able pushed a dented chair out of the way and moved close enough to see that the rags had covered a balding man who could have been anywhere from forty to seventy, his mottled scalp a clear indication that hair loss had been caused by other than genetic factors. Toxic spills were endemic to downside. “Who are you?”
“Bob.”
She’d be willing to bet that Bob was the guy Webster had been paying in booze. One way or another, and there were a number of ways, he’d gotten so far in debt to the Company that they’d written him off. He’d lost his access to the ship’s database, his quarters, and his food allotment, leaving him with two choices, the kindness of strangers—only people who’d burned off their friends fell quite so far—or the tubes. Clearing the tubes of blockages was usually a mecho’s job but the little robots were expensive and they didn’t last long. People like Bob didn’t last long in the tubes either, but they were cheap.
Arms curled around his chest, he rubbed his hands up and down filthy sleeves. “I need a drink.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“‘s cheaper than paying me. Keeps your profits up.”
“Who told you that?”
“Webster. Lets me sleep here, too.”
“Webster’s dead.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“I don’t care.”
If Bob was sleeping in the bar during the eight in twenty-four it was closed, he was using the bathroom sinks to keep clean. And not very often.
“I knew a guy once who smelled like you. Somebody kicked his skinny ass out of an air lock and nobody missed him.”
Without waiting for a response, she ducked behind the bar. The door on the right led to the storeroom, to the left, her quarters. Both smelled strongly of disinfectant. The QMO. If they’d been attempting to run the Hole, the only thing they’d care about was the stock. Wiping Webster out of her quarters had probably been a personal courtesy from Nasjonal. Able’d thank her later.
“I need a drink.”
The whine came from directly behind her left shoulder. Up close the smell was nearly overpowering.
Fortunately, disinfectant was cheap.
Grabbing the back of Bob’s overalls, she frog-marched him through her quarters, ignoring his struggles and incoherent protests, carefully touching him to as few surfaces as possible. The showers on downside all had the same two settings. Hard clean. Soft clean. Hard clean for when the riggers and the fitters came off shift. Soft clean for the rest of the time. The Company saved money by keeping the pressure and temperature consistent.
Bob went in, as he was, on Hard.
When the cycle finished, Able checked to see he hadn’t drowned, efficiently stripped him of overalls and ragged cloth slippers, and hit the button again.
By the time the second cycle finished, his clothes were dry, the industrial solvents in the Hard clean having taken care of most of the grime.
She dressed him, ran a depilatory pad over his head, and marched him back to the bar.
The whole thing had taken just under twenty minutes.
“I assume you sold your shoes?”
Bob stared at her, wide-eyed and trembling.
“Then the slippers will do for now. Here’s the deal… you work for me, I pay you like everybody else. You can decide what you do with it. You can start paying down your debt to the Company, or you can drink it away—after you pay me what you owe me for the two showers. Until you’re clear and can get quarters again, you can keep sleeping in the bar but not on that crap. I’ll pull a couple of shipping pads out of stores. You don’t do your job—well, a smart man will keep in mind that I’m the only thing between him and the tubes. Oh, and you will shower every two days. You can use a communal cleanup off the hives.”
He was panting now. “I need a drink.”
“You need to haul the big steam cleaner out of the storeroom. Or you need to let the Company know they’ve got a new tube man. I knew a guy once, survived four trips down the tubes. His record still stands.”
By the time Bob had dragged the cleaner out into the bar, the five other servers were standing, blinking in the light. None of them looked too pleased about being summoned.
“I didn’t even know this place had overheads,” one muttered.
“Then how did you see to get it clean?” Able asked, coming out from behind the bar, wiping her hands on a dark green apron.
“Fuck that, how clean do you need to get a place like this?” one of the others snorted. “Nobody who drinks here gives a crap.”
“What difference does that make? My name’s Able Harris and I’m the new bartender. You’re Helen, Tasha, Toby, Nick…” With each name, she nodded toward an incredulous server. “… and Spike.” She studied the last woman curiously. “Spike?”
Spike folded heavy arms over an ample chest. “Able?”
“Good point. So…” Her attention switched back to the group. “Is that what you wear to work?”
The four women and two men looked down at their overalls and exchanged amused glances.
Able waited.
Toby finally shrugged and muttered, “Yeah.”
“It’ll do for now, but when the first shift’s back for opening, I want the overalls to be clean. There’s a dozen or so aprons like this one in stores. You’re in them while you’re working.” When the protests died down, Able nodded. “Okay. You don’t have to wear them if you don’t want to. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. If you work for me, you wear the aprons, but you don’t have to work for me.”
“And if we could get other jobs on this fucking station, we’d be fucking working at them.”
Toby moved up behind Spike’s shoulder. “Webster didn’t care what we wore.”
“Webster’s dead.”
Bob jerked up from behind the steam cleaner. “I didn’t do it.”
After the snickering died down, Spike growled, “He wasn’t killed because he wasn’t wearing a fucking apron, was he?”