Acceleration was steady at +2or thereabouts. The straps would hold against five and six times that. He'd no fear of them giving way. But Corinthianspent energy like it was handed out free, and he measured his breaths, feeling the anger of a ship forced out of port, maybe out of civilization altogether.
Or—remotely possible, if Marie had found her evidence—and his heart picked up a beat—they could have the military on their tail.
Which wasn't good news, to think of it. Go up in a fireball, they would, then, and good-bye Tom Hawkins.
It was a nightmare. He didn't know where it had started, whether he'd been in it all his life and this turn of things was someone else's doing, or whether he was that abysmally stupid he'd let himself in for it, going into that warehouse and caring about Marie.
He didn't want to think about reasons. He'd never got it straight about caring for people. His aunt Lydia who'd studied psych had told him when he was five he was emotionally deprived and he never would be normal. So he figured he had to copy, because he was different enough, and he figured he'd better pick good people to copy, like his nursery-mates, sometimes, like Marie sometimes, when he was living with her. Like Saja, again, when he got to know Saja. Mischa…
Definitely not Mischa.
Saja was all right. People liked Saja. But Saja wasn't stupid.
Saja wouldn't have gotten into it. Even if he cared what happened to Marie. And he didn't think it was Marie's fault, him being in the warehouse, he couldn't blame that on her.
He couldn't tell why things happened, most of the time. He certainly couldn't figure this one. He didn't know as much as most people. He'd always figured in the scales of the universe he'd somehow come a little short of what ordinary people got, and not known a lot of things ordinary people knew. It wasn't not knowing his father. A lot of people didn't know that. It was not knowing other things. It was like so damn many contrary signals from Marie and from aunt Lydia and Mischa and them changing their stories all the time, and the fact nobody else liked him much, of his agemates. There was just something wrong, there was something he'd missed, and getting snatched away from Spritelike that, and never seeing anybody again, it was just one more ripping away of information he couldn't get now. He wasn't going back, nobody could get back to their ship unless they were on the same route… he'd accumulate station-debt waiting, even if Bowe let him go finally back at Viking; and he wasn't honestly sure Mischa would spend the ship-account to get him out of hock.
Marie would. Marie was rich in ship-account.
But maybe Marie wouldn't want him at all, then, except to get information about Bowe. Maybe she'd call him a fool and say she didn't know why she'd bought him back… he could hear her tone of voice, as if she were talking to him right now.
But when he imagined Marie yelling at him about being a fool, about going in the warehouse, it sort of put things in perspective, as if now he knew what he'd done, and where he'd been stupid, trying to intervene in Marie's business. The law of the universe was, Marie knew what she was doing, and you didn't put your hands into it or you risked your fingers. Thatwas the mistake he'd made.
So he did understand. And the universe had a little more solid shape around him.
But he decided then, calmly, that he did want to meet Austin
Bowe after all—at least to see the man and know whether they looked alike, or what Marie had seen staring back at her all these years. That would tell him something, too, about the way of things. And that information was on this ship. That was something he could learn about himself. He could listen to Bowe. He could find out the man's habits and figure out if there was anything genetic that just somehow he'd gotten, in the way of temperament, or whatever else could get through the sieve of genetic code.
Marie said… your father's temper. Marie said… your father's manners. Your father's behavior… And he triedto cure it in himself, he tried not to lose his temper and he tried not to be rude, and all the other things Marie attributed to his genes.
Aunt Lydia said most people could pattern themselves off positives. He learned to avoid negatives. Aunt Lydia said he had to define himself, by himself.
And most of all… not do things that pushed Marie's buttons.
But maybe—it was a dangerous, undermining thought, and he worked all around it for a moment—maybe, even remotely possibly… there might even be another side to Austin Bowe. Maybe Marie'd pushed hisbuttons, the way she had other people's, and things had just blown up.
Not to excuse what happened. Nothing could do that.
But maybe what she'd told Mischa and what Mischa had told her might have confused the facts.
And he didn't know why Marie should have gotten the entire truth from Mischa. Henever had.
And… more and more dangerous a thought… if there was another side, considering the position he was in, it did make sense to ask Bowe's side of things. And even if it was bad… and even if he couldn't accept it… considering he was stuck here, considering he had somehow to get along with this crew…
Such as they were.
… he'd learned what happened when you (Lydia's saying) poisoned the water you had to drink from.
He didn't know where this ship went. The rumor-mongering They who ran rampant on Spritesaid it didn't stay on the charts, that it found Mazianni ports somewhere in the great dark Forever.
He could handle that, he supposed. If all Corinthiandid was trade with them, he could justify that… after all, nobody had a guarantee the goods that Spritebrought to port didn't end up being cheated over and run through illegal channels. They weren't responsible. It wasn't immoral. Illegal, highly, but it wasn't like they were doing anything that cost any lives…
He began to sink slowly into the mattress surface. That was the passenger ring engaging as Corinthianwent inertial at its outbound velocity.
A vfar more than most merchanters handled. Light-mass cargo, he thought, staring bleakly at the sound-baffling overhead. Had to be light mass, relative to the engine cap. You wondered what they were hauling.
Luxuries was the commonest low-mass article. Food-stuffs that wouldn't compress. But generally, Viking exported high-mass items, so you hauled heavy, and took the light stuff for—
A siren blew three short bursts. Disaster? he wondered, taking a grip. His heart had skipped a beat. His thoughts went skittering over every horizon, leaving nothing but the wide dark, and the cosmic chance of a high-energy rock in their path.
Then over com, a woman's voice, accented with a ship-speak he didn't recognize.
"We are inertial for the duration, in count for departure. Count now is… sixty seconds, mark."
His heart found the missed beat, thudded along in heavy anticipation. It was real. They were going. He reached for the panel with the white diamond, got the drug out, the needle-pack—shivering-scared, until he had that in his fist. If you didn't have that you didn't come out of jump whole, you left pieces of yourself… that was what the universal They also said, and if you were curious on that topic… they had wards on certain stations where they sent the kids that experimented with hyperspace, and the unlucky working spacers that for some emergency or another hadn't had a pack in reach.
"… count is twenty and running."
He had it. He had it. He was all right, as all right ran, on this ship.
".. . fifteen."
He thought about Marie. He thought he loved her.