“I’ve been printed.”
“A great help. Really great.”
He thrust the credits back. “Keep your handout I’ve got my own funds.”
“The blazes you have. Shut your mouth. You go to that sleep-over and stay there and that bar next door. We want to know right where to find you. We don’t want any complications and we don’t want anything else stupid on your part. Keep that money and don’t try to touch what you arrived with. You’ve got enough troubles.”
He stared into black and angry eyes, smothered his own temper, afraid to walk away. “So how do I find the place? I’m lost.”
The Dubliner reached and pushed buttons on the lift call. “I’ll get you there.”
“Where’s Allison?”
“Don’t press your luck, mister.”
“That’s Captain, and I’m asking where Allison is. Is she in trouble?”
“Captain.” The Dubliner hissed, half a laugh, and the scowl darkened. “Her business is her business and none of yours, I’m telling you. She’s working to save your hide, and I’m not here because I like the company.”
“She’s not spending any money—”
“You’ve got one track in your mind, haven’t you, man? Money. You’re a precious dockside whore.”
“Go-”
“Shut your mouth. You take our charity and you’ll do as you’re told.” The car arrived and the door whipped open. The Dubliner held it for him and he got in, with rage half blinding him to anything but the glare of lights and the realization that they were not alone in the car. Curran Reilly stepped in: the door shut and the car shot away with them. A pair of young girls stood against the rail on the far side of the car; an old man in the front corner. Sandor put his hands in his pockets and felt the Reilly money in his left with the sandwich wrapper, with the adrenalin pulsing in him and Curran Reilly standing there like a statue at his right. The girls whispered behind their hands. Laughed in adolescent insecurity. “It’s him” he heard, and he kept staring straight ahead, an edge of raw terror getting through the anger, because his face was known—everywhere. And he had to swallow whatever the Dubliner said and did because there was no other hope but that.
If the Reillys were not themselves plotting revenge, for the stain on their Name.
A long, slow trip on Dublin, Allison had warned him, if he crossed her cousins. Revenge might recover Dublin’s sullied Name, when the word passed on docksides after that.
But he went where he was told. He knew well enough what station justice offered.
Chapter VII
It was executive council on Dublin, and to be the centerpiece of such a meeting was no comfortable position. Seventy-six of the posted and the retired crew… and the Old Man himself sitting in the center seat of the table of captains which faced the rest of the room: Michael Reilly, gray-haired with rejuv and frozen somewhere the biological near side of forty. Ma’am was in the first row after the Helm seats, in that first huge lounge behind the bridge that was the posteds lounge when it was not being the council room. And with Ma’am was the rest of Com; and Scan on the other side of the aisle, behind the rest of Helm, and that was Megan and Geoff and others. Allison sat with impassive calm, hands folded, trying to look easy in the face of all the power of Dublin, all the array of her mother and aunts and grandmother and cousins once and several times removed. She was all too conscious of Curran’s empty seat beside hers, Helm 22; and Deirdre missing from 23; and Neill sitting in 24 and trying to look as innocent as she. The Old Man and the other captains had a nest of papers on the long table in front of them. She knew most of the content of them well enough. Some of it she did not, and that worried her.
The Old Man beckoned, and Will, who was the senior lawyer in the family, came up to the table and bent over there and talked a while to the captains in general. Heads nodded, lips pursed, a long slow conversation, and not a paper shuffled elsewhere in the room. The rest of the council listened, eavesdropping; and words fell out like papers and liability; and piracy, and Union forces.
Will went back to his seat then, and the board of captains straightened its papers while Allison tried not to clench her hands. Her gut was knotted up; and somewhere at her back was her mother, who had to be feeling something mortal at her daughter’s insanity. People never quit their ships. Kin stayed together, lifelong; and daughters and sons were there, forever. There was Connie left, to be sure—Connie, waiting elsewhere, not posted, and not entitled here. There were friends and cousins, Megan’s support at a time like this. Allison was numb, convinced that she was committing a betrayal of more than one kind—and still there was no more stopping it than she could stop breathing. Win or lose, she was marked by the attempt.
“Your entire watch,” the Old Man said, “21, isn’t represented here.”
“Sir,” she said quietly, “they’re settling a situation involving Lucy. Before it gets out of hand.”
“I’ll refrain from comment,” the Old Man said. “Mercifully.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m going to approve the request for financing. Contingent on the rest of your watch applying for this transfer as you represent.”
“Yes, sir.” A wave of cold and relief went through her. “Thank you, sir.”
“You’ve phrased this as a temporary tour.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ll retain your status then. Your watch in Helm will not be vacated.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. That was the risk they had run. Council supported them, then. “Thank you for the others, sir.”
“I’ll be talking to you,” the Old Man said. “Privately. Now. Council’s dismissed. Come to the bridge.”
“Sir,” she said very softly, and caught Neill’s eye, two vacant seats removed, as others began to rise—Neill, whose brow was broken out in sweat. He gave her a nod. She got up, looked back across the rows of chairs for Megan and Geoff, and met her mother’s stare as if there were no one else in the room for the moment. Her mother nodded slowly, and it sent a wave of anguish through her, that small gesture: it was all right; it was—if not understood—accepted. Thank you, she said: her mother lipread. Then she turned away toward the forward door the Old Man had taken, which led down the corridor to the bridge.
Little was working… in this heart of hearts of Dublin, most of the boards dark and shut down. Most of the work they did now besides monitor was connected to the cargo facility and to the com links with station. The Old Man had taken his seat in his chair among the rows and rows of dormant instruments and controls, with the few on-duty crew working in the far distance forward on the huge bridge. She went up to that post like a petitioner going to the throne, that great gimballed black chair in the pit which oversaw anything the captain wanted to look at Anywhere. Instantly.
“Sir,” she said.
The Old Man stared at her—white-haired and powerful and young/old with rejuv that took away more hope than it gave… for the ambitious young.
“Allison.” Not Allie; Allison. She was always that with him. He rested his elbows on the arms of the chair and locked his hands on his middle. “You’ll be interested to know that it’s all stalled off. Dancer’s the ship that made the complaint. I’ve talked to their Old Lady. Says she doesn’t have anything personal involved, and there hasn’t been word of other witnesses. I take it you’re still set on this.”
“Yes, sir.” Soft and careful. “By your leave, sir.”
He stared at her with that humorless and unflappable calm that came of being what he was. “Sit down. Let’s talk about this.”
She had never sat in the Old Man’s presence, not called in like this. She looked nervously to her left, where a small black cushion edged the main vid console, there for that purpose. She settled, hands on her knees, eye to eye with Michael Reilly.
“Applying to take a tour off Dublin,” the Old Man said. “Applying for finance into the bargain. Let me see if I can quote your application: ‘a foot in Pell’s doorway, a legitimate Alliance operation… outweighing other disadvantages.’ You know where the sequence of command falls, 21, if we buy into another ship. Could that possibly have occurred to you?”