“She said you were shy. Nice guy.”
“Sure.”
“She wants to bunk with you. I think she’s crazy, myself.”
Silence hung there a moment, and breath came thin and short. “Maybe. “ Another oxygen-short breath. Desperate thinking. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. She doesn’t know me. Dockside and here is different.”
“I’ll tell you something. Nobody much tells Saby what she’s thinking. Makes her mad.”
He didn’t know how to read Austin. He began to prefer the Austin who’d knocked him against a wall. Safer. Much.
“Look, you don’t owe me. You don’t give a damn. You know what my post is, you’ve got my papers, you’re not going to put me anywhere near ops—any ops, because I’m good, when I want to be, and I can screw it, so let’s not kid ourselves. Galley scrub’s all you can trust me to do, that’s all I want out of you, so just let me the hell alone, and let’s not complicate anything.”
“You’re bound to be a problem.”
“Yes, I’m a problem. I’ll be a problem. I was born a problem. “ Shortness of breath made him light-headed, slowed things down, numbed the nerves. “Did you ever remotely think, maybe making a life ought to be worth at least as much thinking as taking one? Did it ever bother you?”
“You think of that last night?”
“I didn’t have to think; I know I’m safe, right now, since before Viking, and it takes two, mister. I didn’t get Saby pregnant, except by cosmic chance, and two sets of implants failing.”
“She had the same choice. Saby did. Your mama did.”
“So did you. And, yeah, so did she. You were out there looking for your personal immortality, she was, too, and, God save us, you got me, and here I am. Now what? Now where do we go?”
Austin was glumly sober for a moment. Then the mouth made a tight smile, and a laugh that died.
“You want an answer to that question? Or just an echo?”
“Is there an answer?” If there was one… he hadn’t gotten it from Marie. Not from Mischa. Not from Lydia and not from the seniors in general. It didn’t mean he was going to believe one from Austin. But he waited.
“You’re going to say the hell with you,” Austin said. “Still want it?”
“That the line you handed my mother?”
Another grim laugh. “I should have. No question. You’re right about the immortality. Ships were dying. Every time you got to port, there were gaps in the schedules, the Fleet was going to hell, you couldn’t get those numbers, but we knew. We were running supply. We had our network. We saw the wall coming.”
“Damn Mazianni spotters.”
“Suppliers.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Damn right there’s a difference. The Fleet paid us for what we hauled. It wasn’t even in our economic interest to promote raids on anybody—we knew they were conscripting, and we knew they wouldn’t take any of ours while we were running their cargoes; but we knew which ships were raiding, too, and we didn’t like going near them, let alone give them a way not to need us, does it take a thought? We didn’t give them information. But where we got them legitimate supply they didn’t have to raid merchant traffic. Safer for them. Faster. Left them free for military operations. We kept them supplied—there weren’t raids.”
It made some half sense. Easy to say. Unprovable, that they’d had any altruism in their trade. Unprovable, that they’d not sold out other ships at the going rate. Everybody said so. He didn’t see anything to convince him otherwise.
“I wanted,” Austin said after a moment, and quietly, “myself, to find a post in the Fleet. That was my ambition. But that year, ships were dying. Africa and Australia had turned to raiding commerce. Momentum was shifting to the other side. I hated Union. I still hate Union. But that was the year I saw the handwriting on the proverbial wall, and, yeah, immortality figured in it. Wanting to leave something. Didn’t know the kid was a first-timer, those weren’t the signals she gave off, or I wouldn’t have asked her to my room. She was drunk, I wasn’t sober, first thing I knew she hit me in the face, bashed me with a glass, I was bleeding, she got to the phone, and the station went to hell in five minutes. End of story.”
“You didn’t need to beat her up.”
“See this scar?” Austin’s finger rested on his temple. “I was bleeding worse than she was, your captain wasn’t returning calls, they had the station authorities in it, my crew was trying to keep me out of station hands… yeah, some heads got cracked, three captains and three crews were at each others’ throats—and, yeah, I was mad, I got mine, as time hung heavy on my hands, and since she’d told them it was rape, hell, I figured why not give her something to bitch about. I didn’t hurt her—”
“The hell!”
“Physically. Let’s talk about whose career was on the line, whose damn life was on the line, with Ms. Modesty screaming rape. I’ll ask you who got screwed in that room, thanks.”
“You could have walked out of there.”
“Damn right I could, right into the hands of the station police.”
“My heart aches.”
“I was eighteen. I was nihilistic. My career was shot to hell, civilization was going down with it, nothing I did was going to last. Surprise, of course. Marie of course informed me when she got the chance—we have something in common, she said. And we do, matter of fact. Tenacious. Still mad. Hell, I don’t cry foul. I respect the woman. Somebody did that to me, I’d track the bastard down, damn right. I wouldn’t forget.”
He could all but hear his heartbeat, under what Austin was saying. Could see his own life and his prospects in Austin’s attitude, and Marie’s.
“No forgiveness,” he said, “anywhere in the equation. No regrets.”
Austin shrugged. “I regret it’s involved three crews who didn’t ask for it. I regret my father put me in sickbay when he got his hands on me. Broke my arm, my collarbone, and three ribs. I am a patient man, you understand. He wasn’t, the son of a bitch. But he ran a rough crew.”
Austin, bidding for sympathy? Telling him he’d had it rough? Enough to turn a stomach. He wanted Austin to get up and hit him. Threaten him, do something else but bid for understanding. He wanted to hit Austin so badly he ached with it… but that wasn’t the role he’d come to want, in this room, one more clenched fist, one more act of force that didn’t do anything, didn’t prove anything, except to a mentality that understood the fist and not a damn thing else.
He gave it a second thought, in that light. Maybe it would get him points. Maybe it was all Austin Bowe did understand. But he didn’t hear that in the con job Austin was pulling, he didn’t see it in the sometimes earnest look on the man’s face… there was more to Austin Bowe than that, and hell if he’d give him a fight Austin had calculated to win.
“We all have hard lives,” he said, Marie’s coldest sentiment, and got up to walk out. “No, I don’t want to bunk with Saby. She’s got her own problems. I’ve got mine. Galley’s just fine. Brig’s all right. I like the door locked.”
He thought Austin might pull the you’re-not-dismissed shit on him. Might get up and knock him sideways, or lock the door.
“Marie’s coming here, you know,” Austin said, before his hand hit the switch. It stopped him cold, short of it, and he looked around at Austin’s expressionless smugness.
“You don’t know that.”