Which wasn’t smart policy, which wasn’t what he wanted to live with, which wasn’t the man he’d seen for about two beats when Christian was figuring out how and on what ship to dump him.
Say it right: Christian could have left him in that warehouse to freeze, and nobody would have found him. Christian, Saby had said it, had gone to a lot of effort to get him shipped out, never mind Christian could have walked him into a lot rougher situation than a ticket out of port and out of their lives. Christian was fighting for his place on this ship, was what Christian was doing…
Beatrice didn’t want him. I brought him up.
And he understood Christian in that light a lot more than he’d ever understand the man who’d raped Marie.
“Tom?”
“I need to check on something,” he said. “Tink, cover me.”
Maybe Tink wanted to ask. He didn’t want to answer. He ducked down the straightway of the galley back toward lower main, where alterday crew was headed for the lifts.
He looked to find Christian anywhere in the traffic. He knew where his cabin was. He thought about going there. He checked near lower deck ops, and then at the nearby lifts, where the next shift was cycling up by the carload. He slipped into that lot, nervous, waited his turn, one trip after the other, then jammed into the car with the rest and stared at the level indicator instead of the faces around him. Crew stared… the cuts and bruises, it had to be, or the question what he was doing, going topside. “He clear?” somebody finally asked. And: “Think so,” somebody else said. “—Mister, you got a clearance?”
“Appointment,” he muttered, as the lift banged into its topside lock. “Captain’s office. “ The door was opening. He wanted out. Fast. “Excuse me.”
A hand caught his shoulder.
“Hold it, Hawkins.”
He saw seniority in the grey hair. He said, “Yessir,” and figured he’d just routed himself back in the brig. The guy shoved him against the wall by the lift doors.
“Appointment, is it?”
“My brother’s supposed to be up here. I need to talk to him.”
“Is that so?” The officer—Travis, the pocket emblem said—turned him back to the next arriving lift. “Right back downside, mister. Stay to lower decks.”
Second lift opened. He faced, suddenly, blond hair, bruises, scowling face.
“Inside,” the officer said, and jerked at him by the arm, sending him past Christian, into that lift. “Downside. Go. Now.”
Hand propelled him inside. Christian dived in beside him, mad. The lift doors shut, on the two of them alone, and the lift sank.
“So?” Christian asked.
“I didn’t want what happened. I’m sorry. I don’t want to get in your way…”
“You had a good time, you and Saby?”
“We—” He couldn’t justify anything. Christian was looking for offense, and his face and his ribs were already sore. “We didn’t plan anything. We ran into each other—”
The lift hit bottom. Crew jammed aboard, pinning them to the back of the car.
“I don’t want another fight,” he said. They were face-to-face against the back wall of the lift car as the door shut and the lift started up again. “I don’t want to argue with you.”
“Yeah. Keep your concern.”
“He didn’t do right. He wasn’t right, lighting into you like that—”
“Just shut up, Family Boy. I don’t need your damn condescension, all right?”
The door opened. The crowd in front vacated the lift. Christian shoved his way through and he tried to follow, but Christian turned around, furious, the other side of the threshold. “Get to hell out of my life, Hawkins!”
Shocked faces, around Christian. He’d started forward, to leave the lift. It seemed useless, then, with Christian opposed, to pursue anything with anyone in command.
Downbound crew flooded in, pushing him back against the rail. The doors shut, the lift went down and let out downside. The other passengers got off. He did.
Straight face-on into Saby.
“Tink said—” Saby began, and grabbed his arm as they worked their way outward, against the five or six upbounds trying to get in the doors.
He wasn’t coherent. He waved a hand, made a helpless gesture as they got clear, back at the corridor wall. “No luck. Waste of time.”
“I could have told you,” Saby said. “Tom, let me talk to him.”
“Not Austin. Christian. Damn him. Attitudinal son of a bitch. “
“Him, too. “ Saby made a flustered gesture and punched the lift button. One car had gone. The other was downbound. “He’s being a fool.”
“You don’t go up there!”
Saby turned around with a furious stare. “I’m going up there because this is my shift, and I’m late!—And leave it to me who I talk to!”
“It’s my life, dammit!”
The lift arrived. Saby ducked in with a last few upbound crew. The doors shut. He stood there, having embarrassed himself, generally, having made a public scene with Christian, up and down the lift system, and disagreed with Saby, in public.
There was nothing but a shut door to talk to. There was nothing to do but walk back to the galley where he’d agreed to be. Forever.
Right now he wanted to strangle Christian. He’d blamed Saby. He’d blamed himself. He’d blamed Marie and Austin and fate.
But right now he saw only one person responsible for what had happened to Christian, and to him, and for the misunderstanding with Saby, and every damn thing else.
Wasn’t Saby’s fault she’d been drafted as surrogate mama to a jealous brat whose universe insisted every problem was somebody else’s fault.
He slammed his fist into the paneling as he walked. It hurt as much as he remembered. He pounded it two, three, four, five times, until the corridor thundered and the pain outside equalled the explosion inside his chest.
Somebody put his head out of ops and ducked back again. Fast.
He hit the wall four more times, until his knuckles showed blood.
Nobody asked. Nobody came out. He got as far as the next traverse, with the mess-hall in sight, when the siren sounded, and the PA thundered, “Take-hold, take-hold, long bum in one minute. This is your warning. “
He didn’t run. He walked, deliberately, counting the seconds, down the mess-hall center aisle, made it to the comfortable side, the stern wall, this time, where Tink and Jamal were getting set.
“Fix it?” Tink asked.
“Waste of time. Waste of effort. Nobody listens.”
Tink raised his brows. He remembered he was supposed to be seeing about bed-sheets. “Yeah,” Tink said, and held out a bag of candy. “Lot of that going around today. Have one. Have two.”
He did. His hand was skinned. He figured the knuckles would turn black. He ate the chocolate. Jamal had one, the three of them alone in a galley redolent of spices and, rare, expensive treat, bread baking.
The burn started, smooth, clean, steady, this time.
Mainday crew was the heavy load for the galley, the dockers, who seemed to keep whatever schedule they fancied—but figure that the horde would hit the galley hall for supper once the burn cut out. Sandwiches out to the working stations. Everybody to feed before they made jump.
Gentle burn. Reasonable burn.
“Easy does it now,” Tink said. “Pell is the most reg-u-lated place in the ports we do. You sneeze and gain a tenth of a k in their zones, you got a fine. One k ain’t nothing. Pilot knows.”
“Runs in the genes,” he muttered, while that ‘ports we do’ hit the conscious part of his brain, the assumptions he’d made, the questions he’d asked himself and not asked, because the routes were so laid down by physics and what points a ship could reach from where they were that he’d assumed Earth, Tripoint, and Viking. From Pell, they could make Earth, spooky enough thought, strange, overcrowded place. But that had been where Christophe Martin was bound. Christian wouldn’t ship him where Corinthian was already going. From Pell… if they went really off the charts they could reach the Hinder Stars, the old bridge of stars the sub-lighters had used for stepping-stones out from Earth—shut down, now, dead,