“Austin’s damn clearance,” he said. “Look at him!”
“Looks pretty good, actually,” Capella said. “And Saby. My, my, my.”
“You did know!”
“I know now. Give up the quarrel, Chrissy-lad, it’s over, it’s won, this is why papa Austin said what he said.”
“About what?”
“Just that he’d made up his mind. That Sprite was more threat than one Mr. Hawkins. Damn right. He had this one tied up and wrapped around his high-credit finger, just yank the string.”
It didn’t make sense to him, except that Austin had played him for a fool deliberately, Austin had spent whatever it took to make him look a fool not only to Saby and Tink, who were in on it, but in front of Capella, who might have been under orders, in front of the whole crew—people laughing behind his back, enjoying the joke.
He looked at Capella, searching for any hint of that laughter at his expense. He couldn’t find any hint of it, but Capella wasn’t easy to catch, no expression at all.
A handful of dockers arrived, Gracie Greene and Metz, Dan Blue, Tarash and Deecee, trouble, all of them, he watched them walk up to customs, and his gut was in an upheaval, thinking… they were going to hear about it, everybody who’d been out in the search after his brother had to have known, at some point, and here he stood, playing the fool, while his brother went into the ship on his own terms.
“Fuck it!” he said, and grabbed Capella by the sleeve, heedless of safety. “It’s a couple of hours till ail-aboard, there’s a bar, there’s a restaurant…”
“I thought we were economizing,” Capella said.
“Hell! I’ve got a k or so left, what do I fucking care? Fucking smart-ass Family Boy, on Austin’s fucking credit, while I spend everything I’ve got? Fuck it, fuck it all, let’s blow it, everything—”
“Chrissy,—”
“I said everything! What do I need? A father who fucking cares what I do? A cousin with one shred of basic loyalty? A partner who doesn’t go screwing my brother? What’s the matter with me, Pella, what’s the matter with me?”
Capella delayed to look at him. Long. “Got all your parts,” Capella said. “Things work.”
“Don’t be a damned ass!”
“Maybe you better work with what you got,” Capella said, “what you stand in when you shower, hmn? It’s all anybody’s got.”
Philosophy wasn’t Capella’s long suit. She threw it at him now and again, she whispered it in his ear when the ship made jump, she confused him when he was mad, and blew it off, which nobody else could do*.
“Dance,” Capella said, “is a lot nicer than looking for stray brothers. Couple drinks, a few dances—long and dark after, Chris-person. Long and deep and dark. I’d dance, myself.”
“You’re crazed! You’re absolutely crazed!”
“It’s my calling. But there’s now, and thereafter’s such quiet, Chris-ti-an. Hear it. Listen to it. Don’t waste time. It’s so scarce.”
“Don’t con me! You knew, you knew what my father was doing!”
“Guessed, maybe. Didn’t know. “ She hooked his arm with hers. “Last trip of all, maybe. There’s something in the dark, I don’t know where.”
“Sprite?”
“Maybe several somethings. They may take me back, Chris-person. I don’t know. There’s only now. This liberty’s been a bitch. Let’s go.”
“What—take you back?” She’d met them at this station, she’d come, with what he overheard and what he guessed, with codewords and such she didn’t show to customs. She was their access to a trade they had to have, that otherwise they couldn’t find, couldn’t access. A second, perilous grab at Capella’s arm, as she turned away. “Have you told Austin this notion? Have you told him?”
“I’m not supposed to have told you. No. This is a confidence, Christian-person.”
“Christian, dammit! And where do you get such notions? We aren’t even near hyperspace.”
Pale eyebrow quirked. Mouth pursed. “The presence. The spook that’s in port. Is that solid enough for you?”
“Can you feel something?”
Capella had a fey, distracted look for an instant, as if she reached out at that moment, into something he couldn’t, nobody could. But the eyes flickered and Capella drew in a sudden, unscheduled breath before she shook her head. “You can convince yourself of anything. No. “ She seized his arm and tugged him toward the frontage, and the bars. “I wish we’d see them.”
“Who? The spook? This Patrick?—You think they’re boarding, now?”
“I say if you find a small ship that is, you know his name.”
“Well, look, for God’s sake, look at the boards. “ He’d been occupied with Hawkinses and Capella wasn’t, Capella wasn’t concerned with Sprite or Hawkinses in singular or plural, he saw that now.
“I know two names. Because one is, doesn’t mean the other isn’t.”
“You mean there could be a back-up in port? Tell Austin, for God’s sake!”
“Austin knows there’s danger. Austin’s danger is Hawkins. Was, from when you let elder-brother take a walk.”
“The hell!”
They’d reached the frontage. Almost the door, and Capella swung around on him, angry, astoundingly so. “Your fault, Christian, and mine, I should have said, and didn’t, it looked good, what you were doing, and it wasn’t, it had flaws. It had flaws in Christophe Martin, it had flaws in assuming elder-brother’s easy, it had flaws all over the place, and my looking for him was very hard, and very scared, Christian-person, so scared I made another mistake, and got attention from this damn spook, who isn’t ours, do you follow me?”
Anger whited out half of it. But ours came through, touching on what he’d tried to understand. Ours. Theirs. Us. The Fleet. “Explain. Explain to me—ours, theirs,—who’s us?”
“Mazian’s, Mallory’s, Percy’s… the Fleet’s pieces, the pieces that have their own partisans, their own spooks and their own suppliers… you work for Mazian, that’s the truth. But not all do. Some ships are dead, Mallory turned coat, the rest… “ Capella ran out of breath, and didn’t find another immediately. “I’ll tell you this. There’s two needs here. There’s Corinthian, wanting everything the same forever, and there’s us, who can’t make that happen, Christian, captain-papa won’t understand that, but there’s those that want me so bad…”
“Why? Because you can do what you do?”
“You might say. Because I know places.”
“What places?”
“Places they want. Badly.—I can’t let Corinthian get boarded. It’s not in my own interest, you copy that? If the captain asks,—make him believe it. And we’re running with guns live this jump. Take my side on that, if there’s any argument on it.”
It was crazy. He was up to his ears in the Hawkins business, he couldn’t think about anything else, but Capella was telling him about waking up the guns they’d used once in his lifetime, about the ordinance Michaels maintained and serviced and kept viable, through all these ship-board years. It didn’t happen. A chance encounter on a dockside didn’t lead to live guns, when a crazy woman was trying to get them hauled in by port authorities.
But a spook had gone invisible… which could well mean some other ship at Pell was in an unannounced board-call at this very moment.
Hell in a handbasket, that was what it felt like. He wanted to break a Hawkins neck, and two or three others, but suddenly he was perceiving a threat that didn’t give him time for that. Austin might not take it seriously. Austin had his mind on Hawkinses, on Marie Hawkins in particular. That was who was ruling Corinthian’s movements. Hawkinses had them going out instead of lying in port until at least they had the advantage of not being a target.