But underdosing couldn't explain the cable on his arm and the clothes folded on his bunk, no more than it explained the equations running around the edges of his brain. Maybe, he thought desperately, maybe he'd understood the deep-tape better than he thought. Maybe information he'd picked up had clicked in and it all surfaced in his subconscious and made him think about tape he hadn't had for ten years.
Bok's equation… and snakes… and Christian…
Hell if it had.
It hit him then… a fit of shaking he couldn't control. He wasn't even sure it was fear—or exhaustion, or sickness, or just the overwhelming heat of the drier cycle. He sank down where it was private and safe and let the hot air blast around him, hair on end, knees and elbows knocking together, teeth clicking in sporadic shivers the air didn't warm.
So why give a damn if somebody got off for a month at his expense? He wasn't hurt. Didn't matter what somebody had done to him that he didn't half know about. Didn't matter what he'd done, asleep…
He jerked, swung his hands back to catch the walls beside him, half-twisted a knee… it was that violent, that vivid an illusion of falling. Sexual arousal. Pain. Terror. He was back in jump-space.
Held his eyes open, even from blinking, while the surfaces dried in the vortex of warm air. He couldn't see the shower wall. He knew it was white. He couldn't remember white. He tried, desperately, and got something like UV. Glaring. Burning into his open eyes.
White, then, finally, white. Ordinary, cheap, gold-flecked paneling. The roar of the fans.
He had to get out of Corinthian. Christian had promised to let him go, he remembered Christian's quarters, the clothes, the talk… and he knew he couldn't trust the offer… nothing's for free, echoed in the back of his skull. Nothing's free.
He shivered, quick spasm of physical revulsion, not sure what he remembered.
Couldn't be safe on this ship. Someonewas wandering the corridors playing grotesque pranks, God knew what. A voice patiently telling him how hyperspace was configured, the equations running through his head like a nuisance piece of music, along with lying half-awake in a chaos of sequence, everything out of order, every sensation piling up with the last one—she'd said… she'd said… only the numbers were true.
His body reacted—quick, physical arousal.
Another spasm of shivering hit, then. And anger, this time—overriding everything but the common sense that said that if there was such a creature as a night-walker and if it was Capella, as he suspected…
He rested his forehead on his arms, he stared at the shower floor between his feet, and the snaking trail of the cable, the governing reality of his situation on Corinthian. He'd not likedthe people he was with on Sprite…but he'd never been other than part of Sprite. He'd never had this sense of being stalked, never had to feel he hadn't any resource whatsoever to protect himself. He was, point of fact, terrified—not so much of the night-walker whoever it was: that grotesque, strange episode wasn't so bad as the notion he couldn't do anything about what these people decided to do to him, no matter whatthey decided to do to him…
And somebody was telling him don't believe Christian? Don't believe in a way off this ship?
He had to. He fucking had to. He didn't know what the next joke might be. And the captain knew—the captain had to know what was going on, knew there was such a thing as a walker, he knew who it was, and he sat smug while Christian and Capella played their dominance games, one against the other, and both of them with him—so, so damned funny, it had to be, to them…
Another shiver hit him, diminished in force. He felt sick at his stomach.
"Mr. Hawkins," he heard, from outside. Male voice, stranger. Harsh. It sent him scrambling for his feet, and he heard the motor move the grid on its track. The next might yank the cable and him through the shower door and across the brig. He caught his balance on the wall, scraped his back on the water-vents doing it, and nipped the shower door latch.
Buck naked, confronted an officer he didn't know, who gave him a stare as if he was a sale item in the bargain bin.
The pocket tab said Michaels.
He remembered the thump of blows falling, in the corridor, the man Tink called trouble. The presence turned out middle-aged, greying hair down to his shoulders and face set in an inbuilt scowl.
"Sir," he said.
"Galley, mister. You're on duty."
"Yes, sir, thank you, sir. Two seconds. Getting my clothes."
He flinched past Michaels in haste, grabbed his clothes off his bunk, pulled on underwear, skintights,—he couldn't put on the shirt, and Michaels came and keyed open the bracelet, indicated he should get the boots on and get moving.
Which he did, pulling his shirt on as they left, no questions, no uninvited word of conversation or question with this man—
Michaels might find some excuse to use that spring baton he carried clipped to his belt; and he was vastly glad that they went straight down to the galley, with no detours and not a word exchanged.
Except Michaels said, when he delivered him to Jamal, at the galley section counter—"Kid's shaky. Light duty."
Shook him as badly as a curse. The dreaded Michaels personally braceleted his left wrist to the cable coiled up on the counter and walked out, all the while the cold traveled a meandering course to the nerve centers and started a tremor in the gut, in the knees, in the chest. Oh, God, he thought in disgust, but he couldn't stop it, he couldn't walk away and pretend it wasn't going on—it went to all-over shakes. Reality was coming apart on him, in red and blue flashes, right over the white galley walls.
"Hey. " Jamal pried him loose from the counter and about that time Tink arrived in the galley—"Kid sick?" Tink asked, grabbed his other arm, and between his shaking and his attempts to walk on his own, the two of them got him into a chair at a mess table. They hovered over him, debated calling somebody—"No!" he said, and somehow they materialized a cup of real fruit juice, a cup of the nutri-pack stuff, an offer of coffee or tea… he just sat there like a fool and shook, trying to drink the fruit juice… it was real, and rare, and he wasn't about to waste it… with Tink patting him on the shoulder and saying how he should just sit there until he felt like moving, it was all right.
Damned near shook the cup out of his hand when Tink said that. He tried to figure why it made the shakes worse, and couldn't, but somewhere in the back of his mind was the lonely feeling he not only couldn't leave Tink, he didn't want to leave Tink… don't trust Christian, kept ringing in his head, but he didn't know if that was any truer than Christian's offer.
Crazy, he told himself finally, when he could set the cup down without slopping it, when he could glance up at the mundane white and blues and chrome of the galley and realized he'd been seeing something darker and less organized, some place with black patches and some place that was Sprite'scorridors, and cousins, and Marie's office, and the muted beiges of Marie's apartment. He was suddenly close to tears. He didn't know why. He didn't understand himself.
He didn't need to understand. He needed out of this ship. On any terms. Any at all.
He got up, tossed the cups, got a sponge and set to work on the counters with a vengeance. Didn't know, didn't know, didn't know, there was a lump in his chest where certainties had used to be. Pell system was where they were now, but its docks were a foreign place, and the rules were foreign—he didn't know what Christian was going to do.