Hallan winced, ears twitching with the assault, nostrils working. He shivered visibly. Then she remembered she was dealing with adolescent male hormones, which ought to give a sane woman pause — but gods rot it, he insisted he was one of the girls, that he was cool-headed, he wanted to play the game on their terms; and she slammed her hand down on the desk, bang!
"Off-comp!"
Sound stopped. And Meras was still twitching, but be hadn't left his chair, his eyes were dilated, but the ears were trying to come upright — he was paying attention, he was listening, he wasn't crazy.
"Captain.”Tiar — on the bridge. Magnificent timing.
"I'm hi my office, Tiar. What's the problem?"
"Just got a blip on station feed.Sun Ascendant's just entered system.''
The answer to prayers, it might be.
Hallan looked upset. Shook his head and shaped No with his mouth. Said something else.
"Thanks, cousin. Glad to hear that.'’
"I don't want to go, captain. I don't want them—"
"You signed with them. You sat at their table, you slept in their shelter, they got you your license, and I don't know what made diem leave you at Meetpoint, Meras, but so far as what I've seen they may have run for their lives."
Made him mad, that did. Good.
"If you want to go back to the laundry, you stay there. If you want to go back to the passenger cabins and help Chihin paint and patch, feel free. I'm not turning you over to station police, and being the righteous fool I am, I'm not identifying Sun Ascendant to the tc'a. We'll handle it. But I've done everything I'm obliged to do for somebody I gathered out of a jail he by the gods got himself into. I've got 41 messages in ship's files for my aunt at this station; I've got 156 for me, most of them from people trying to use me to get to my aunt for favors they want; and here comes one of my aunt's devoted admirers who just really badly wants into my crew, because he just really badly wants it, that's why.
— Well, so does half the universe, Meras. And I'd suggest you give up and go home if meeting my aunt is what you want; or if being a spacer is what you want, focus down and use your head on problems before you kill somebody. I'd suggest you give up on the Manual of Trade and start reading the licensing and operations manual. It may keep you out of the next hot spot you land in. — And give my regards to Tellun Sahern. Minute your ship makes port you're going over there."
Ears were flat. Really mad. Better. Maybe he'd survive in Sahern, in far space.
"Go on," she said. And he got up and bowed and left.
Which didn't make her happy. Nobody could be happy, who had a 200,000 credit charge pending against her ship, a cargo half unloaded, a distraught stsho dignitary in the crew lounge, and a course change pending to Kita Point, a gods-forsaken dot in the great empty, after which, as she had said to Meras — limited options.
"Ker Chihin," Hallan said, hesitating in the open doorway. "The captain suggested I help."
"I don't need anything backed into," Chihin said shortly, and Hallan winced. The room was all white.
The furniture was gone. You walked up steps to the floor and there was a depression full of white cushions. Besides there was a pedestal with braces going out to it, but nothing on it.
"You can vacuum," Chihin said. "Floor, walls, everything. Steam vac. All the dust. Height could help.
Are your feet clean?''
He looked. They weren't, exactly. "I'll go wash," he said meekly.
"Packaged wet towel, right there by the steps." Chihin frowned at him as he sat down on the steps and reached for it. He tried not to look at her face. He felt sick, he had felt sick ever since he had backed into the tc'a, but he couldn't go back to that closed room, he couldn't stand it. So he washed his feet off so no one could complain of a smudge and he looked for a place to dispose of the towel.
"Over there," Chihin said, indicating a plastic bucket. He went and dropped it in. "You know how to use the steam vac?''
"Yes, ma'am." He was too well acquainted with it. It was all Sahern had let him do for his first weeks aboard the Sun. He went and checked the prime, checked the water and pulled the filter screen, which he figured he ought to clean before someone else found fault with him. "Is there a sink, ma'am, or should I—"
"Bath's in there. Sink works just like ours — it's the fixture on the left."
He went and washed the filter. It was different plumbing. Ordinarily he would have been intrigued, but the lump in his throat would not go away and he just tried to go moment by moment and not to think about what the captain had said, one way or the other. The captain had a right to be mad, gods, he couldn't pay back the damage he'd cost — probably nobody in Meras clan history had ever fouled up so egregiously, so consistently.
But the docking chief had said to move the cart.
He put the vacuum back together. He took it to a corner and started there, with a racket that made conversation impossible. But he was aware of Chihin staring at him from time to time: maybe she expected the vac to explode or something; or him to do something she could fault. Of all the crew, Chihin was not in any way friendly, and he supposed by now the rest of the crew was ready to kill him. Except maybe… at least Tarras had tried to speak for him. Fala and Tiar had looked upset, as well they might, but they hadn't hated him. Chihin — didn't want him here. Which was why the captain had sent him to work with her, he supposed. But it was still better than sitting alone in the laundry and remembering backing into that truck, and that thing snaking back and forth in pain and battering itself against the windows, leaving bits of skin and fluid on the glass…
At least it hadn't exploded. Nobody had gotten killed- Quite the opposite. Somebody had gotten created. He wondered how the tc'a felt.”
"The kid was trying to straighten out the loader," Tarras said. There was still ice in her beard, melting and glistening in the heat of the downside office — Hilfy had called her up, ordered her to trade places with Fala, and the way to the dock lay through the lower main corridor and past her office. So she had both of them, Tarras and Fala, arguing with her, the loader was in temporary shut-down, pending the switch, and no cargo was moving. But she figured she might as well listen and be done with it.
"All right," she said. "Voices on Meras' behalf… while we're at it." She pushed the call button.
"Cousin. Listen in."
"Aye,"Tiar answered from the bridge. "What's up?"
"The loader jammed," Tarras said, and sat down, while Fala edged a half a step further into the office, in the doorway. "The kid knew the equipment— Sun Ascendant must use the same model. Anyway, it pulled its usual stunt, and the kid said it was the 14-can truck, when the arm positions itself: he says it's a false signal, there's nothing to do with the chain, it's the arm overextending. This one model of truck has a slightly lower bed. It reaches down to get it, the arm jams, jams the chain, you back the chain — it fixes it.
So if you move the truck a little farther—"
"The docker chief said he's heard of it," Fala said. "It's something they say on the docks but the companies won't investigate. Doesn't happen until the equipment gets a little wear on it, and then it'll happen if the play that gets into the joint works far enough to the right where the sensor bundle runs through, and that bias only happens when you get a whole lot of fifteen-year-old Daisaiji 14-canners in a row. Which you get on Urtur, they got more of them than anywhere, because they made them here. And it only happens if some driver parks short. That's why it comes and it goes." She couldn't help but be interested in the purported olution to the loader glitch, if it was the answer — it sounded iffy to her; but most of all she didn't want to hear it was Meras who had the information. She'd worked up a perfectly good, justified fit of temper, from which Meras could learn something that might keep him alive, and she didn't want any extenuating circumstances.