Dance?
Stationers danced. Spacers… did, but not on Sprite, they didn't. He couldn't imagine.
"I don't know," he said. "I guess. " He was thinking more about the food. He'd lately been hungry. He'd no assurance he might not be again.
And they walked the dockside, to a frontage with the very small, gold-and-silver sign that said Aldebaran.
Any spacer would say, high-class, expensive, and ask, being prudent, Who's really financing this?
Saby? Austin? Or somebody else? Like another ship… with proprietary ideas.
Saby input an access code and showed him through the doors into a very beige, very pricey-looking reception area. Amenities were listed on the walls, with code numbers. Display cases lined the room. He saw, at one pass of the eye, directions to a gym, to a barber/stylist shop… to a jewelry store, restaurants, one breakfast, brunch, lunch, one dinner. He drew in a breath, shook his head, reckoning himself far out of his credit budget—you could feel the money in your pocket ebb just in looking at the case-displays.
"Anything you need urgently," Saby said. "Personals? They have those in the bath, in every room. That's all right."
"I've got a hundred eighty seven cee," he said. "Actually it's Christian's."
"Oh, good," Saby said cheerfully. "Buy whatever you like. I've a phone call to make."
"To the captain? Or to him?"
"The captain,—naturally. Be good. We'll eat here, tonight. Are you hungry?"
"Hungry. Sleepy. Tired. Mostly tired."
"Dancing when you're rested," Saby said, and went to the desk, to make her phone call… after which there might be God knew what. He hoped just for a chance to sit down. But he'd gotten to the slightly crazed, half-giddy stage of sleep deprivation, and he wandered around the room and looked at the displays, that was all, mentally blank. He was aware of Saby on the phone, at the desk. He was aware as she crossed the room toward him.
Entirely cheerful. "Captain says fine, it's all right, anything you need—in reason. Have you found anything you have to have?"
"Just a bed, just sleep. " That was the honest answer. It was all he could think of now, now a room and a bed were that close. So Saby coded them through further doors. It was down the corridor to number 17, and inside, to a private room with two beds.
He went straightway and fell face-down on one, not eager for conversation, his legs tired from walking and standing, his eyes stinging from sleeplessness. He said to himself that if Saby wanted to call the cops or Corinthianor anybody, he didn't care, so long as he could get a little rest that wasn't hiding out in a restroom or sitting on a waiting-area bench.
A blanket settled over him. If Saby was the source of the blanket, he was grateful—the room was chill, and he hadn't the self-awareness left to figure out what to do about it.
Pleasant, he thought about Saby. Nice. Tink said she was all right.
But clearly reporting to his father. That wasn't a recommendation.
But it was opposite sides of the room, Saby didn't bother him, the blanket made him comfortable as he was, and the lights went out. He hadn't even the interest to open his eyes as he heard Saby settle into the other bed. Stark naked or in the sexiest gown he could imagine… couldn't muster a shred of interest. Face-down and going, gone.
—iii—
THE MUSIC IN Jaco'smade the glasses shake. The walls were all screens, on which old vids played endlessly. It was a horror-show to the left, a riot scene to the right, a murder-thriller straight ahead.
In the immediate vicinity, it was impending apocalypse, one day before board-call and no brother.
Not onesight, sound, clue of Tom Hawkins, and no call from the station police office.
Thanks very likely to 200c of his money. 10200c, correction.
Correction again, 14750c, after he'd paid the computer time, the records searches, the bar tabs, the working-time of various crew who had to be put on duty-time to find the son of a bitch, and he couldn't ask Austin to foot the bill.
Clock on the wall said 0448m/1548a, meaning approaching suppertime on Corinthian'smain-crew schedule, meaning Austin was awake and hewas having supper an hour and a half before alterday dawn. On one wall a giant spiny monster was flattening an ancestral Terran city and on the opposite, one guy was choking another while some dimbrain woman stood and watched and screamed.
"There you are. " Capella pulled a chair back and dropped into the seat with a clatter of bracelets. "God, 0500?"
"Found anything?"
"Not a damned thing. " She slumped back and, the waiter being instantly on them, "Sandwich. Cheese. Rum and juice. I need vitamins."
"ID."
She pulled her card from her sleeve-pocket and the waiter ran the mag-strip through his handheld, logged the charge and handed back the card.
"14756 50c," Christian said glumly, and had a sip. "My guess… just my remotest guess is our big chance is tomorrow. Board-call starts at 1500 and ends at 1830, and I'm betting he'll be watching from somewhere, either right at the first or right toward the end."
"What makes you think it?"
"Genes. Can Austin turn hold of a question? Older brother won't be satisfied until he seesthe ports close and the lights go out and he sees our departure telemetry on the boards—until then it's not enough. Hewon't believe it until he sees our outbound wavefront, but that's outside our parameters. I want to be on that dock tomorrow right down to the last, I want to have your eyes and mine where we can see anybody watching us. Because he will come down to watch."
"Best hope we've got, I guess. Guy's nice-looking. My notion is he's snagged a free stay with somebody—no knowing he even knows what day it is."
"Oh, he knows," Christian said. "I'd bet anything he knows to the second when that board-call is. And if we do spot him—"
"Going to be interesting hauling him past the customs check."
"Ship-debt. We've got his papers. We've got his sign-on at Viking."
"He really sign on?"
He hadn't, of course. "The papers I've got say he did."
"Be careful how long you flash those. Pell cops aren't blind. They knowtheir local artists."
"What the hell else am I going to do? This is expensive paper, Pella."
"Yeah."
" You'renot making any headway."
"Christian, I have called in debts you would not want to know about. I have talked to people I never wanted to talk to, at expenses you don't reckon in any bank account. Don't talk to me about effort in this not noble cause, dear friend. These are people I neverwanted to see, and they don't come cheap."
His heart sank. "How much?"
"Those that ask for cash—2400, at current."
"I haven't gotit, God, Austin's going to leave mein station-debt."
"Cash, Chrissy-sweet, cash is the only way. My ID has smokedfrom the withdrawals. It smells of brimstone. Your account isn't dead, but it's on life-support, and we are eating sandwiches till we clear this port, that much I do know, or you don't want to see the hell we'll be in. Austin does not want me to access these people, Chrissy, Austin will have my hide for the places I've looked, which won'treport to Austin, so there. Just don't you tell him, and you cover that tab, Chrissy. You cover it."
"That's three quarters of everything I own but ship-share, dammit!"
"As I recall, Christian-love, this was not originally my idea. I would have predicted elder-brother wouldn't have liked the trip to Tokyo and London. I just really didn't think it was his artistic preference."