He looked up again, at the strangers who looked to share with him, to come onto Lucy’s deck—permanent company. So they were not all what he would have chosen. But with a Curran came a Deirdre, whose broad, cheerful self he liked on sight; and Neill Reilly, who had said little of anything and who seemed set in the background by all the others—They were Family, like any other, the rough and the smooth together. He had not known that kind of closeness… not since Ross. He wanted it, and Allison, with a yearning that welled up in his throat and behind his eyes and throughout. And it was his. It came with the wealth, the luck he still could not imagine. But it was real. It was all about him. He made himself relax, limb by limb, up to the shoulders, looked across the table at his acquired crew and felt something knotted up inside unsnarl itself.
And when dinner was done, down to a fancy fruit dessert, when they had drunk as much as merchanters were apt to drink on liberty—they found things to laugh at, Dubliner anecdotes, tales on each other. He laughed and wiped his eyes, as he had not done in longer than he had forgotten.
The bill was his: he took it without flinching, gave a tip to the waiter—left a happy man in their wake and strolled out into the chill air of the dockside with his flock of Dubliners.
“Go to the offices,” he suggested, “see if we can’t get the lock off my ship.”
“Let’s,” Allison agreed. “Is it past alterdawn? We can get something done.”
“Get a ped-carrier,” Deirdre said.
“Walk,” said Neill. “We might be sober when we get there.”
They walked, along the busy docks, past Lucy’s barriered berth, weaving a good deal less when they had covered all of green dock, sweating a bit when they had come into blue, and near the customs offices.
But he came differently this time, in company, with the knowledge of Dublin’s lawyer behind them, and papers on file that put him in the right. He walked up to the desk and faced the official with a plain request, brought out the papers. “I need the lock off,” he said. “We seem to have everything else straightened away but that.”
“Ah,” the official said. “Captain Stevens.”
“Can we get it taken care of?”
The official produced a sealed envelope, passed it over.
“What’s this?”
“I’ve no idea, sir. I’m told it relates to the hold order.”
He was conscious of the others at his back—refused to look at them, tore open the seal on the message slip and read it once before it sank in. “Report blue dock number three,” he read it, looking back at Allison then. “AS Norway, Signy Mallory commanding.”
Curran swore. “Mallory,” Allison said, and it might as well have been an oath. “On Pell?”
“Arrived two hours ago,” the official said, a roll of the eyes toward the clock. “The message is half an hour old.”
“What’s the military doing in this?” Curran asked. “Those papers are clear.”
“I don’t know, sir,” the official said. “Answering ought to clear it up.”
The fear was back, familiar as an old suit of clothes. “I’d better get out there and take care of this,” Sandor said. “I don’t see there’s any reason for you to go.”
They walked out with him, that much at least, back out onto the dock facing the military ships… the schedule boards showed it plainly: NORWAY, the third berth down occupied now, conspicuously alight. He looked at the Dubliners, at worried faces and Curran’s scowl.
“Don’t know how long this may take,” he said. “Allison, maybe I’d better call you after I get back to the sleepover. Maybe you’d better go on back to Dublin”
“No,” Allison said. “If you don’t get out of there fairly soon, we’ll be calling some legal help. They don’t bluff us.”
That was some comfort. He looked at the rest of them, who showed no inclination to take any different course. Nodded then, thrust his hands into his pockets, crumpling the message in the right
He prepared arguments, countercharges, mustered the same indignation he had used on authorities before. It was all he knew how to do.
But it was hard to keep the bluff intact walking up to the lighted access of Norway, where uniformed troops—these were troops, far different from any stationside militia—took him in charge and searched him. They were rejuved, a great number of these men and women—old enough to have fought in the war, silver-haired and some of them marked with scars no stationsider would have had to wear. They were not rough with him in their searching, but they were more thorough than the police had been. They frightened him, the way that ship out there frightened him, behind that cheerful lighted access, a huge carrier bristling with armaments, a Company ship, from another age. They brought him toward the ramp that led up into the access. And standing in the accessway… Talley, grim and waiting for him.
He kept walking. So the man was part of this action. He was somehow not surprised. The Dubliners, he was thinking, ought to get back to their ship. The military would think twice about demanding that a merchanter family of the Reillys’ size give up some of its own to questioning. But alone, far from Dublin, they were vulnerable, unused to authorities who ran things as they pleased.
He encountered Talley, a bleak, pale-eyed stare from the Alliance officer, a nod in the direction he should go. So he had acquired a certain importance: a man with commander’s rank took him in personal charge and escorted him into the heart of this row-accessed monster. Dim corridors: a long walk to a wider area and a lift to the upper levels. He stared through Talley on the way up in the car. Conversation could do him no good. One never gave anything away. One always regretted it later.
A walk afterward down a narrower corridor—bare, dull metal everywhere, nothing so cheerful as Lucy’s white, age-scarred compartments. Coded identifications on the exposed lines, on the compartments. Everything was efficiency and no comfort. They reached the door of an office and got a come-ahead light: the door opened, and Talley brought him through.
“Captain,” Talley said, “Stevens of the merchanter Lucy.”
The silver-haired woman was already looking at him across her desk, already sizing him up. “Mallory,” she identified herself. “Sit down, Captain.”
He pulled the chair over and sat facing her across the desk, while Talley settled himself against the cabinet, arms folded. Mallory pushed her chair back from the desk and leaned back in it— rejuved, young/old, staring at him with dark eyes that said nothing back.
“You’re getting clearance to go out,” she said. “On the Venture run. I understand there’s some question about your ID, Captain.”
His wits deserted him. It was not the question. It was the source. One of the nine captains, one of the Mazianni from the war years, who had gotten supplies by boarding merchanters, by taking supplies and personnel. Who had killed. It might have been this one, those years ago, this ship that had locked onto Lucy and boarded. He might be that close to the captain who had ordered it, among troops who had been inside the armor, who had killed all his family. He had thought if he met one of them he would kill barehanded, and he found himself sitting still and staring back, paralyzed by the quiet, the tenor of the moment
“You don’t have any comment,” Mallory said.
“I thought it was settled.”
“Is there an irregularity, Captain?” Softly. Staring straight at him.
“Look, I just want the lock off my ship. I’ve got a cargo lined up, I’ve got everything else in order. Because some muddled-up merchanter mistakes my ship…”
“Let me see your papers, Captain.”
It took the breath out of his argument. He hesitated, off his mental balance, pulled them out of his pocket and leaned forward as she did, passing them into her extended hand across the desk, close, that close to touching. She leaned back easily, looked through them, lingered over them.
“But these are new,” she said. “Except for the title papers, of course.” She felt of the older paper, the title, itself false. “You know this kind of paper gets traded on the market. Has to get from one station to the other, after all; and across docks, and I know places where you can get it. Don’t you, Captain?”