“Got us all in one piece.”
“I’m usually right.” He touched Deirdre’s arm and took Neill’s hand, looked back at Allison and saw a trooper beckon.
“Captain’s waiting,” the trooper said, waved a hand toward the dockside offices.
“Mallory,” Allison said.
He nodded. His heart had turned over. He started that way—at least it was not far across the dock; the same office, the place of recent memory. He felt numb in the cold, and no little disoriented.
“Dublin’s in on the conference,” Allison said. The Old Man; our legal counsel—you’ve got that behind you.”
“Good to know,” he said.
“You don’t believe it.”
“Of course I believe it. You say so.”
She gave him one of those looks as they went into the office, into a gathering thick with military in blue and merchanters in silver and white.
Repeat scene: only it was Mallory behind the desk, and Talley close by her… one of the breed exchanged for another.
“Captain,” she said, a courteous nod.
He paid her one in return. He looked further about him, noted the patches: Dublin’s shamrock on the silver, and on the white, the arrogant black sphere of Finity’s End, a Name so old they had no insignia at alclass="underline" and rejuv-silvered hair other than Mallory’s, a gathering of senior officers in which one Sandor Kreja would have been a small interest—give or take a bogus cargo and half a million credits.
“Wanted to straighten a matter out with you,” she said, “—Need a chair, Captain?”
“No.” An automatic no, half-regretted; but no one else was seated but Mallory… he refused to be the center of things along with her; but he was: he reckoned that.
“Any time you change your mind,” she said, “feel free. It’s really not fair to call you in like this, but Norway’s prone to sudden departures. And I’m sure others don’t want to log too much dock time.—Are you sure about the chair, Captain?”
He nodded. A small trickle of sweat started down the side of his face. Small talk was not Mallory’s style. He disliked it, them, this whole gathering.
“You played it straight,” she said. “I rather hoped you might, Captain. But I was a little surprised by it”
“You were a little late.” He recovered his sense of balance, pulse rate getting up again. “You took our arrival rate. You cut it pretty long on our side.”
She shrugged, passing off the wounds, the deaths onstation. “You bettered your rate by a few hours… didn’t you?”
He thought back then, through the fog of realtime—the haste they had used through the second jump, Allison in command and mutiny on the bridge. The anger went out of him. “Maybe we did,” he said.
“We were on time, absolutely.—But you managed well enough. —Tell me… did you tell them where to find me?”
“I reckoned you meant me to. You don’t set much store by heroes, do you?”
Mallory laughed. It surprised him, that quick, cold humor. “Land on your feet, do you? No, I didn’t expect it.”
“So I spilled all I knew and invented some. But I’ll trust you’re going to stand by our agreement.”
“On what, Captain?”
“Hazard rate. On military cargo.”
She thought a moment, wondering, he thought.
“I didn’t breach the seals,” he said, “but they did. And they knew I was a plant. That wasn’t comfortable.”
“No, I daresay not.” She turned over some papers on her desk. “Vouchers for the pay you’re due. No dock charge at Venture, under the circumstances. Let’s treat it as lifesupport freight.”
Mallory had, he thought, a certain sense of humor. He was going to get out of this. He was insanely tempted to like Mallory, in sheer gratitude. “Captain,” he said. Thanks stuck in his throat.
“That’s an interesting rig, your ship.” She failed to let go of the papers and he let go of them in a sudden chill, cursing his momentary trust. “Everything under lock—papers of clouded origin-backing from one of Union’s major Names. You know there was a time, Captain, I wondered about Dublin itself… keeping your company.”
“We don’t take that,” a Dublin officer said.
“Oh, I’m assured otherwise. Our allies from across the Line vouch for you. But you have odd associates.—Tell me, Captain Reilly—what motive to lend to a marginer… on that scale?”
“Private business.”
“I don’t doubt” She offered the papers a second time. Sandor took them, his fingers gone cold. He wanted to sit down. The room proved hot/cold and confused with sound. “Your papers, Captain—are altered. Do you know that?”
He blinked… felt the edge of the desk with his fingertips, tried to summon up his wits. That’s not so.”
“And you run gold under the plates.”
“Private store. My own property. I expect it to be there when I board.”
Mallory considered him slowly. “Of course it is.”
“If you ran that thorough a search on Pell—”
“We wondered.”
“That’s under Dublin finance,” Allison said from behind him. “The papers say that too. We’re good for any debts.”
He looked around slowly at the Dubliners—at Curran’s sweating pale face, and Allison’s flushed one, Deirdre and Neill unfocused behind them. The rest of the room blurred. They had it, he reckoned. The keys and the excuse, He made a small shrug and looked around again at Mallory, “That’s the way the papers are set up.”
“I know that too. As long as Dublin stands good for it”
“No question,” the Reilly said.
He tucked the voucher into his pocket, finding about all the strength he had gathered deserting him. He could make it back to Lucy, he reckoned, if he got that far. He wanted that, just to get home, however long it lasted.
“You want to let me see the aforesaid papers, Captain?”
He felt in his pocket, of the jacket draped about his shoulder on the left, fumbled the packet out and gave it into Mallory’s hands,
“They are faked,” she said, riffling through them, “Pell caught that Paper analysis didn’t match. Good job, though. They’re going to go over to disc on this kind of thing: it’s going to put a lot of paper-traders out of business. Some merchanters howl at the prospect; but then some have reason, don’t they? You really ought to get that title straightened up.”
She offered them back. He took them, blind to anything else.
“That ought to be all,” she said. “Dublin vouches for you. And Union, to be sure, vouches for Dublin. So we don’t ask any more questions.”
“Can I go?”
She nodded, dark eyes full of surmises. He kept his face neutral, turned about and walked out, in the company of Allison and her crew, unasked. Allison put herself in front of him and he stopped outside, dizzy and none too steady on his feet “Get it clear,” she said. “Dublin’s with us. They won’t do anything. You can clear the Name up, go by your own, you understand that? You can get the papers cleared.”
“Maybe I don’t want to.”
“For what?—Who is it that recorded the comp messages? It’s you he talks to, isn’t it? Who was he?”
He looked at the decking, across the dock, at the scant foot traffic, at the overhead where lonely lights gave the dock what illumination it had.
“You want to talk about it?” Curran asked.
“Not particularly.”
“Brother?” Allison asked.
He shrugged. “Might have been.”