Flashing blue, then. The cops were coming in, breaking it up with stun-sticks and bare hands. He didn’t see Marie. He didn’t know what to do. They were hauling people out of the tangle on the deck and arresting them and he found space to retreat at his back, people just pushing past him to shout information, who’d swung, who’d done what, the cops were shouting to calm down, they wanted officers, and they wanted them now.
He heard Saja saying he was an officer, dammit, and Corinthians started it, and somebody else shouting it was Sprite and there was a crazy woman trying to kill their captain, but Marie wasn’t anywhere in sight, Marie was loose somewhere and she was liable to do anything… or some Corinthian could have dragged her off, he didn’t know and he didn’t take station police as going to listen to a spacer quarrel.
He had the chance. He just backed away, just turned and kept walking, dizzy, his head hurting. He wasn’t aware of where he was walking, only it turned out to be toward Corinthian, and where they’d come from, and then he knew where Marie would go if she was loose. If she wasn’t crazy, she’d want the evidence to prove to the universe Corinthian was guilty and they’d had the motive to attack her, she’d fry Austin Bowe if it was the last and only thing she could do, and the evidence, if she couldn’t get at Corinthian’s own data, was at an address.
His head hurt. He couldn’t think of it. It was in the twenties on the same dock, and that was a long hike down from Corinthian’s berth at 10, but nobody was offering to stop him, he was just any spacer walking on the dock, staggering a little, but spacers did, on the Strip, that was why safe, moral stationers didn’t come walking here, it was spacer territory, spacer logic, even with the cops… couldn’t say they’d actually arrest anybody if nobody landed in hospital, just fine hell out of both ships, you didn’t know, you couldn’t predict…
Support column came up in his face. He grabbed it, leaned against it, head hurting, vision doing tricks again.
Couldn’t blame Marie for running. She’d conned him. She’d used him. Made Mischa think everything was under control. She’d probably scammed Saja, too, with that trick of stepping back onto the transport, Saja’d had to wait for the next one.
But what did you expect of Marie? She was what she was. She didn’t deserve to be in any psych ward, please God.
She’d pulled the same thing on Mischa twenty years ago. He wasn’t any brighter.
She’d said she had trade information, she said she was working on Corinthian doing something illegal, at least something borderline—she said if she could get some information out of the trade office,—and she had an appointment… everything looked good… but that wasn’t where she’d gone. She’d come here…
Wandering the ever-night of the docks, the clash and crash of loaders, the echoing of distant voices. He was walking again. He didn’t remember since when.
Abundant places to hide. Abundant places to lose oneself in, if one were determined, and Marie was that. Spacers passed him. He saw patches on sleeves but he didn’t know the ships. Strange to him. And he’d never been a place in his life where that was true.
Past the frontage of a sleepover. He felt his hands sweating despite the cold, his heart pumping and not keeping up with the oxygen demand. Opposite berth 18, it was. Looking for the twenties, he said to himself, and saw a transport go past.
Saw a sign, not a big one. Hercules Shipping. Commercial district. And warehouses. The character of the zone changed that quickly. Suddenly it was all warehouses, some with open doors, cans standing inside in the light, most with doors shut.
Transshippers, Marie had said. Couldn’t remember the name or the number, until he saw the sign.
Miller.
Miller Transshipping.
The doors weren’t open. Looked closed, except shippers didn’t ever close. No neon about the sign, easy to miss, on the frontage like that, with no lights. But Miller was the name, he was sure of it.
He tried the personnel entry, heavy door with no window. It was supposed to work on hydraulics, but it didn’t, you had to shove it after the electric motor took it halfway, and it wasn’t illegal to walk into an office and ask directions to some place: he could pretend he didn’t know where Hercules Shipping was, he had his story all ready.
But nobody was in the office. The side door wasn’t locked, either, and that led into the lighted warehouse.
Going there was a little chancier, but he could still say he was lost and looking for somebody… please God the vacancy in the office wasn’t because Marie had done something, like killing somebody.
He was lost, he’d tell them, if he ran into workers inside. He’d gotten separated from his crewmates in the transport crush, he didn’t know where he was.
He walked among tall shipping canisters, cold-hauler stuff, up in racks, like a ship’s hold, only more brightly lit. The cans drank up heat from the air, made the whole warehouse bitter cold. They were covered in frost.
The rack-loader had stopped with a can aboard. It was frosted as the rest. He undipped his ID, used the edge to scrape the plate to find out what was listed in it… Marie wanted to know, and he wanted to be able to tell her. Prove he was on her side.
It said the origin was Pell. It said… he couldn’t make out the contents, the label was faint and the plate kept frosting over again while he scraped thick greyed peels of ice off it, but it said it was cold-hold stuff, it said it was biologic, that was a check-box. It said food-stuffs. He was freezing where he stood, hadn’t realized it was cold-hold goods filling the warehouse. He needed more than the insulated coveralls you used on the docks. Needed gloves, because his fingers were burning just peeling the frost off, and the can drank the heat out of his exposed skin, out of his eyes, so he didn’t dare go on looking at it. Deep cold was treacherous: if you felt it do that and you didn’t have a face-mask, you needed to get out.
A door opened behind him. His heart thumped. He heard voices, decided he’d better go ahead with his charade. So he clipped his ID back to his pocket and walked out to see who’d come in, to give his story about being lost.
Personnel came in wearing heavy coats, in gloves; then a handful of spacers in no more protection than he stood in—in the same green he’d seen on Corinthian crew.
He decided to bluff it through, giddy and shivering as he was. “There you are,” he declared. “I was wondering if there was someone in charge.”
“What in hell are you doing in here?”
“Door was open,” he said, walking toward them, scared as hell and trying not to show it. “Sorry. I thought there’d be somebody in the warehouse, if nothing else. “ He didn’t want Corinthian crew to see the patch on his sleeve, please God, he just wanted to deal with the warehouse owners. “Lost my mates, got off at the wrong stop… I was supposed to go down to Hercules Shipping, I forgot the damn number…”
“He was with her,” one of the spacers said.
Shit, he thought, desperate, and made a throwaway gesture, measuring the distance to the door. “I was with my crew, except I got off too soon. Sorry if I’ve inconvenienced anybody, I was just looking for a number…”
His legs were stiff from the cold. He wasn’t sure he could run with any speed. The spacers came closer, the warehouse workers saying things about the dangers of cold cans, about not wanting any trouble on their premises.
Fine, he thought, he’d go through them, not the spacers. And he bolted for the door.