“Let me tell you,” he said—and did, in the light traffic of the Starbow’s autobar: they were in a crowd of dockers and tender- and pusher-jocks. The piped music adjusted itself up, affording a little privacy to people at the back corner table.
“Yow,” Meg said, when she had the essentials. “So Ben’s down in Admin, is he?”
“If he didn’t break a leg,” he said. “I tell you, I’m worried about him. He’s been acting like a crazy man from the time we linked on with that ship.”
“I dunno.” Meg was what the young folk called rab, and the hairdo this time was what his generation called amazing, shaved bare up the sides, red as fire atop, a mass of curls trailing down her neck and all these bangles on her ears. With Meg you’d never know what you’d see—sometimes it was braids and sometimes that hair turned colors. Meg Kady, she was, Hungarian on one side, Sol Station Irish on the other, Meg said—but sometimes it was Scots; and once, overheard in a bar, she’d said it was Portuguese Martian. God only knew about Sal Aboujib, who had a coffee complexion and coffee-black eyes: with Sal it was braids today, a hundred of them, with metal clips, but you never knew—sometimes that hair changed styles and colors too.
Either one of them was too pretty for a gray-haired, brittle-boned old wreck—had to be his brains they were after picking, he was sure: get him drunk and ask him questions, buy a dinner and try to get specific coordinates out of glum, close-to-the-chest Ben—neither one of which had ever been too successful. But you never figured what made friends: you just took up with people, found out who you could trust, and if you found a good one you kept those contacts polished, that was all—never could remember how they’d taken up with him—well before Ben, back when he’d been working with various hire-ons, something to do with a mixed-up drink order (he’d been far gone and so had they) and a game of pitch-the-penny in quarter gwith a crowd of equally soused tender-jocks.
Never could remember who’d finally gotten the bill.
“From over the line?” Meg asked, regarding the strayed ship, and he said, “One’er number. Clean-talking kid, real young, maybe twenty, twenty-two. Partner’s dead out there. Tank blew. His partner was outside.”
“Brut bad luck,” Sal said with a shake of her braids. A little grimace. Then: “You seriously got rights on that ship?”
“Ben thinks so. Thinks so enough to risk his knees. He’s been working out for weeks. I figured he was going to pull this, but I did think he’d at least check in first.”
Meg said: “Want us to track him? We’ve been scuzzing along on 6, in no hurry, figuring on a friend showing up—could’ve done 3 two days ago. We can go down…”
“He’ll get back. If he doesn’t I’llcall the hospital.”
“You two feuding?”
“Ben gets a little over-anxious.”
“Yeah, well. That’s Ben.—But if it worked, if you did get salvage—can you just take the ship?”
“It’s not going to work. Company’ll find an angle. You watch.”
“Que sab?” Meg said. “But if it did—”
“Meg, he’s been damn crazy. Ever since we found that ship. I tell you, I was afraid—” He’d been too long away from a drink. He hadn’t dared indulge, on the return trip, and this one hit him like a hammer. He almost said: Afraid of him,—but that word could get back to Ben, and he didn’t want that. He said, instead, “Ben works real hard. But sometimes he gets to looking most at where he’s going, not what he’s doing.”
Meg reached out and laid a hand on his arm. “Yeah, well, cher, you want us to talk to him?”
“No, no, it’s between him and me. Let him get this bug out of his works. He’s going to find nothing but a string of bills to that ship’s account. It’s probably in hock for its last fuel bill. If we get expenses I’ll be happy.”
“Can’t blame him for trying,” Sal said. “Hell, I’d brut kill for a chance like that.”
You never knew on some things whether Sal was kidding.
“Look,” Meg said, squeezing his wrist. “What say you screw the med-regs, cancel here and come down to 6 with us?”
“Meg, my old knees—”
“Old, hell. We got a nice berth there at the Liberty Bell. You just stay here and collect Ben when he comes in. We’ll party tonight. Get the spooks out. We knew we were waiting for somebody.”
“Yeah,” said Sal. “Just give us a little time to clean up the room.”
“Clean up, for God’s sake—what are we? Strangers?”
Meg elbowed his arm, getting up. “Hey, we just got to get a few things out of it. Female vanity.”
He gave a shake of his head and sipped his bourbon. A few things out of the room. The things might well be male. But he charitably didn’t suggest that.
And it was (charitably) true Meg and Sal might do some feminine fussing-up in the place; and it was no real surprise that Meg and Sal might bounce a casual acquaintance or two in favor of him and Ben—they were simpatico, for some reason God only knew; they were also on Trinidad’slease-list, though they were just in themselves, and in no position to take a ship out for another month or three.
“See you below,” they said, and went.
Pretty woman like that could’ve talked him down to helldeck tonight if she’d insisted: pretty woman like that—
Who lied like a company lawyer.
Meg was an ex-shuttle pilot, native to Sol Station (or Mars)—accused at Sol Station of political agitation (or arrested for smuggling, depending on how many Meg’d had). Either one in fact could’ve gotten her deported down to the motherwell if they’d gotten the evidence she’d evidently managed to dump. In either case, the company had (she said) invited her to leave places conveniently close to sources of luxuries. Meg had taken up with Sal when she got here—Sal herself had gotten bounced out of Institute pilot training, Sal never had said why, but it didn’t matter: there were a number of things Sal wouldhave done, and you could take your pick. Sal was smart, she’d had at least her class 3 license, and by his reckoning, she had what the good numbers men had: she went past the numbers to seethe Belt in her head. It was formal schooling and experience Sal lacked—and the way Sal had been getting it, in the School of Last Resort, you just hoped to live long enough.
He was sure the pair skimmed, occasionally—just clipped a little off another freerunner’s tag if they didn’t know him personally.
But not from their friends. Or if they had—he figured they’d pay it back when they had it to pay and never tell you they stole it. That was the kind they were, even Sal, who was real loose about a lot of things, and he counted that honest. Everybody got desperate enough sometime. He’d done it himself once or twice or three. And paid it back to the guys he’d done it to, without ever telling them he’d done it. He understood that kind of morality.
So he’d lease Trinidadto Meg and Sal now and again—a classier ship than they could generally get, with equipment other rigs didn’t have. They were learning. They took advice. He’d lease to them this time, if they’d been ready to go—he likedthem, that was reason enough.
But all of a sudden there was this other ship: he’d seen that idea light up in their eyes—that if by some stroke of cosmic luck they did get a second ship, then somebodyhad to be leasing it, didn’t they, maybe on a primary basis? Surely he wasn’t going to sell it to the company. God only how far their imaginations took those two.