‘You’re not going anywhere. Tomas.’
I cut the bodyguard a glance before he could act on the command. He froze and shifted his feet. I shifted my eyes to the entrepreneur, fighting a strong urge to push the confrontation as far as it would go. Since my run-in with the priest’s wife, I’d been twitchy with the need to do violence.
‘If your tuskhead here touches me, he’s going to need surgery. And if you don’t get out of my way, so will you. I already told you, your cargo’s safe. Now suppose you step aside and save us both an embarrassing scene.’
He looked back at Tomas, and evidently read something instructive in his expression. He moved.
‘Thank you.’ I pushed my way through the gathered crewmembers behind her. ‘Anybody seen Japaridze?’
‘On the bridge, probably,’ said someone. ‘But Itsuko’s right, there’s no sniffer gear on the ’duci. We’re not fucking seacops.’
Laughter. Someone sang the signature tune to the experia show of the same name, and the rest took it up for a couple of bars. I smiled thinly and shouldered my way past. As I left, I heard the entrepreneur demanding loudly that the hatch be opened again immediately.
Oh well.
I went to find Japaridze anyway. If nothing else, at least he could provide me with a drink.
The squall passed.
I sat on the bridge and watched it fade away eastward on the weather scanners, wishing the knot inside me would do the same. Outside, the sky brightened and the waves stopped knocking the Haiduci’s Daughter about. Japaridze slacked off the emergency drive to the grav motors and the freighter settled back into her former stability.
‘So tell me the truth, sam.’ He poured me another shot of Millsport blended and settled back in the chair across the navigation table. There was no one else on the bridge. ‘You’re casing the webjelly consignment, right?’
I lifted an eyebrow. ‘Well, if I am, that’s a pretty unhealthy question to ask me.’
‘Nah, not really.’ He winked and knocked his drink back in one. Since it had become clear that the weather was going to leave us alone, he’d let himself get slightly drunk. ‘That fucking prick, for me you can have his cargo. Just so long as you don’t try and lift it while it’s on the ’duci.’
‘Right.’ I raised my glass to him.
‘So who is it?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Who you running radar for? The yak? Weed Expanse gangs? Thing is—’
‘Ari, I’m serious.’
He blinked at me. ‘What?’
‘Think about it. If I’m a yak research squad, you go asking questions like that, it’s going to get you Really Dead.’
‘Ah, crabshit. You ain’t going to kill me.’ He got up, leaned across the table towards me and peered into my face. ‘You don’t got the eyes for it. I can tell.’
‘Really.’
‘Yeah, besides.’ He sank back into his seat and gestured untidily with his glass. ‘Who’s going to sail this tub into Newpest harbour if I’m dead. She’s not like those Saffron Line AI babies, you know. Every now and then, she needs the human touch.’
I shrugged. ‘I guess I could scare someone on the crew into it. Show them your smouldering corpse for an incentive.’
‘That’s good thinking.’ He grinned and reached for the bottle again. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. But like I said, I don’t see it in your eyes.’
‘Met a lot like me, have you?’
He filled our glasses. ‘Man, I was one like you. I grew up in Newpest just like you and I was a pirate, just like you. Used to work route robberies with the Seven Per Cent Angels. Crabshit stuff, skimmer cargo coming in over the Expanse.’ He paused and looked me in the eyes. ‘I got caught.’
‘That’s too bad.’
‘Yeah, it was too bad. They took the flesh off me and they dumped me in the store for three decades, near enough. When I got out, all they had to sleeve me in was some wired-for-shit methhead’s body. My family had all grown up, or moved away, or, you know, died or something. I had a daughter, seven years old when I went in, she was ten years older than the sleeve I was wearing by the time I got out. She had a life and a family of her own. Even if I had known how to relate to her, she didn’t want to know me. I was just a thirty-year gap in her eyes. Likewise her mother, who’d found some other guy, had kids, well, you know how it goes.’ He sank his drink, shivered and stared at me through suddenly teared eyes. He poured himself another. ‘My brother died in a bug crash a couple of years after I went away, no insurance, no way to get a re-sleeve. My sister was in the store, she’d gone in ten years after me, wasn’t getting out for another twenty. There’d been another brother, born a couple of years after I went away, I didn’t know what to say to him. My father and mother were separated – he died first, got his re-sleeve policy through and went off somewhere to be young, free and single again. Wouldn’t wait for her. I went to see her but all she did was stare out of the window with this smile on her face, kept saying soon, soon, it’ll be my turn soon. Gave me the fucking creeps.’
‘So you went back to the Angels.’
‘Good guess.’
I nodded. It wasn’t a guess, it was a riff on the lives of a dozen acquaintances from my own Newpest youth.
‘Yeah, the Angels. They had me back, they’d gone up a notch or two in the scheme of things. Couple of the same guys I used to run with. They were knocking over hoverloaders on the Millsport runs from the inside. Good money, and with a meth habit to support I needed that. Ran with them for about two, three years. Got caught again.’
‘Yeah?’ I made an effort, tried to look mildly surprised. ‘How long this time?’
He grinned, like a man in front of a fire. ‘Eighty-five.’
We sat in silence for a while. Finally, Japaridze poured more whisky and sipped at his drink as if he didn’t really want it.
‘This time, I lost them all for good. Whatever second life my mother got, I missed that. And she’d opted out of a third time around, just had herself stored with instructions for rental re-sleeve on a list of family occasions. Release of her son Ari from penal storage wasn’t on that list, so I took the hint. Brother was still dead, sister got out of the store while I was in, went north decades before I got out again, I don’t know where. Maybe looking for her father.’
‘And your daughter’s family?’
He laughed and shrugged. ‘Daughter, grandkids. Man, by then I was another two generations out of step with them, I didn’t even try to catch up. I just took what I had and I ran with it.’
‘Which was what?’ I nodded at him. ‘This sleeve?’
‘Yeah, this sleeve. I got what you might call lucky. Belonged to some rayhunter captain got busted for hooking out of a First Families marine estate. Good solid sleeve, well looked after. Some useful seagoing software racked in, and some weird instinctive shit for weather. Sort of painted a career for me all on its own. I got a loan on a boat, made some money. Got a bigger boat, made some more. Got the ’duci. Got a woman back in Newpest now. Couple of kids I’m watching grow up.’
I raised my glass without irony. ‘Congratulations.’
‘Yeah, well, like I said. I got lucky.’
‘And you’re telling me this because?’
He leaned forward on the table and looked at me. ‘You know why I’m telling you this.’
I quelled a grin. It wasn’t his fault, he didn’t know. He was doing his best.
‘Alright, Ari. Tell you what, I’ll lay off your cargo. I’ll mend my ways, give up piracy and start a family. Thanks for the tip.’
He shook his head. ‘Not telling you anything you don’t already know, sam. Just reminding you, is all. This life is like the sea. There’s a three-moon tidal slop running out there and if you let it, it’ll tear you apart from everyone and everything you ever cared about.’