But he could think of a thousand reasons for Christian to lie, and to want him off the ship—if only for the reasons that Christian had plainly admitted to him as his reasons.
It made… not quite a lump in his throat, but at least welling up of feeling he hadn't expected to apply, on this ship. Didn't know why he should be surprised. Even Marie'd double-crossed him, in her way—played him for a fool, ditching him on the docks the way she had.
The truly embarrassing thing was, he couldn't learn. Cousins had caught him in sucker-games, and you'd think he'd get cleverer—he had, give him credit, grown more reserved with them. But the harder Marie had shoved him away the more desperate he was to get close to her—
Kid mentality. Panic instinct. Once, in a corridor downside she'd told him she wasn't speaking to him, and walked off-he'd followed, gotten slapped in the face, and kept it up, and gotten slapped… he'd been, maybe, five, six, he wasn't sure, but it came back to him sometimes with particular clarity, the smothered feeling, the feeling he had to hold on to Marie, and he'd known he was making her madder, he'd known she was going to hit him every time he caught her, but he kept doing it, and grabbing at her clothes and screaming his head off—she kept hitting him, until Marie got a better grip on her panic than he had on his—it waspanic, he'd figured that out somewhere years later, panic on her side, panic on his.
God knew. They did it to each other, simply existing. He'd gone to that warehouse in some confused sense of responsibility for Marie he would have thought he'd learned not to have.
She'd kept him, Mischa had said, for reasons that had scared him—that ought to scare anybody with a conscience and a responsibility—but had Mischa done anything to protect him'
Not one solitary thing.
A half-brother who wanted rid of him. A father who wished he'd never existed.
He wasn't anybody Spriteexpected anything from, either,—hadn't Mischa said so? He'd screwed up. Everybody expected it. Why in hell shouldn't he deliver? Only major time he'd ever helped Marie, he'd screwed up.
And why spare Christian, or his father? Why cooperate with anyone at all, except to spite the powers that created him? Try helping them, maybe. Worst thing he could think of to do to anybody.
Didn't want to hurt Tink, though, really didn't want to hurt Tink, or get him arrested, or lose his license—he didn't even know the guy but a couple of days, but Tink didn't deserve it. Wasn't fair that he couldn't think about Corinthiananymore without remembering specific faces, guys like Tink, guys like those sons of bitches he'd like to find when he didn't have a cable on his wrist, but he didn't want to kill them, just…
Wasn't damned fair. Corinthianhadn't been faces to him. Hadn't been people like Tink, at all.
Which meant he should disappear fast when he got to Pell, just out the lock and out of port, no note to the cops, nothing that could screw his father the way he deserved.
Chapter Six
—i—
NUMBERS WERE SPIELING OUT TOWARD jump, arbitrary destination at this point, but crew of both shifts on last-minute errands needed the time to reach secure places. The bridge was all shift-changed. The last, the pilot switchover, was quick, exchange of a couple of words of report, and Beatrice settled into her post, still mildly pissed, you could tell it in the set of her jaw.
Mildly pissed was more worrisome than raging hell in Beatrice's case, and Austin kept an eye on the aristocratic, pale-skinned arrogance that was one damned fine pilot smiling with perfect friendliness at her outgoing shift-mate.
Mildly pissed meant that some event had made la belle Beatricea little happier about the cause célèbre Beatrice wasn'ttalking about, namely Hawkinses. She wasn't giving him advice, he had hadall the advice he wanted, and he strongly suspected the meeting between Beatrice and Christian, that he was sure he wasn't supposed to know about, had had something to do with a handful of dockers trying the new boy on board, somethingto do with Christian's pulling said new boy aside—for a talk, presumably.
From which, exit Tom Hawkins with new clothes—expensive clothes. Christian's. They were about the same size.
"On target," Beatrice said, without looking at anyone. "Five minutes, mark."
Beatrice was, face it, jealous—jealous of her position, which never was threatened exceptby her damnable moods. So her personal effort had produced a shipboard Bowe offspring. It hadn't been hisidea. Ten years of immature brat whose whereabouts had to be assured before the ship moved, thank God for Saby or the Offspring would have gone smack against the bulkhead for sure. Ten more years of juvie phobias, psychoses, and damn-his-ass attitudes before the brat was supposed to turn into an adult with basic common sense.
Which meant knowing when to take a wide decision and when to realize he didn't have all the information and he should ask before he did something irrevocable.
But, oh, no, Christian wouldn't ask. Christian knew everything.
Christian was full of bullshit.
Christian had been tormenting Hawkins, probably from the time he came aboard, right down to the instant he caught him at it, and now Christian was a sudden source of wardrobe and brotherly sympathy?
Don't mind papa, he beats up on all of us?
Double bullshit.
Christian had gotten Hawkins' temper up in the encounter they'd just had… and he'd gone on to try that temper, quite deliberately—only prudent, considering Hawkins had had that particular mother for a moral and mental guide, Marie Hawkins whispering her own sweet obsession into young Hawkins' ear, guiding his steps, maybe right onto Corinthian'sdeck, who but Hawkins could possibly know?
Hawkins' back had hit the wall and he'd come up yelling I'll kill you. Which was the truth. Maybe only for that moment, and maybe only in extremity, it was the unequivocated truth—but extremities occurred, moments did happen, desired or not, and Hawkins was a bomb waiting all his life to find such a moment.
It made him unaccountably angry, that Marie Hawkins had done that to the boy. He couldn't be sure, of course, that he could write the whole of Hawkins' reactions down to Marie Hawkins' account, but when Hawkins had come away from the wall shouting what he had, his own nerves had reacted off the scale, just… bang. Kill him. Grab him and beat his head against the wall until he yells quit.
And afterward, reverberations in himself far out of proportion to the quarrel, shaky-kneed reaction that hadn't let up for half a damned hour after he'd walked out of that cell and back to the territory where the captain ruled as lord and master of Corinthian.
He didn't know why. He wasn't accustomed to react like that to a confrontation, not with crew, not with Beatrice, not with Christian.
So he didn't know why he felt a personal hurt for Hawkins' reaction. Maybe that Marie Hawkins had done something off the scale of his personal (if more rational) morality, doing that to the flesh of her own flesh—couldn't say he was surprised. Marie Hawkins hadn't become a lunatic afterthey'd spent forty-eight hours barricaded… she'd been crazy before they'd ever shared a bed, and it might be, to his observation, a genetically transmitted imbalance.
So why did Marie Hawkins' unfair action get him in the gut? What did he fucking care about Marie Hawkins or her kid?