“You could say.”
“So maybe that’s it. “ Tink cast a nervous glance down the corridor. “Tom, I got other places to get to, I got to hurry. We got jump at Oh Five, just short. Can’t collect the tray, just kind of dump it in the shower when you’re through, all right? And latch the door? I got a lot of stations to get to, before. But I come here first.”
“Yeah,” he said, “yeah, thanks, Tink. Sincerely, thanks.”
He took the tray back to his bunk, sat down, dug in to the synth eggs-’n-ham, which wasn’t bad, but peculiar. It had leafy stuff in it, that wasn’t algae. Strong-flavored stuff. Maybe it was another thing they got off a living world, like a real spice. He’d had a few—just a few.
But he figured it had to be all right—Jamal kept the galley so clean, if green stuff turned up it was legit, and safe, and probably expensive. And once you thought that, it began to taste fairly good.
Not surprising, he told himself, what Tink had said. He’d had a halfway instinct about it, that he couldn’t trust Christian’s motives.
So Christian had him beaten to hell so he could get him to believe what he was going to say.
So he’d been a fool when, for about a dozen heartbeats, he’d leaned on Christian Bowe, believed he’d found someone in the universe who gave a damn slightly more than Marie gave.
Stupid, he said, to himself. He was ashamed, outright angry that he’d given serious credence to Christian’s persuasions.
But hell if he’d let on. He’d be far more foolish to let on to Christian that he knew what he did know—and he had confidence in what Tink had told him. Tink didn’t have any motive to lie to him. Christian did. Tink hadn’t looked at all comfortable telling him what he’d told him—Christian had been so, so smooth, not a flicker of conscience in his delivery.
All of which argued that he had an ally in Tink, if he wanted to put it on Tink’s shoulders, but he could get Tink in a helluva lot of trouble on that account, too, and he didn’t damn want to, for Tink’s sake.
He ate the pastry, thinking about that. It was as good as it looked, dark, with a rough, smoky flavor different than any chocolate he’d ever had. He thought it might just be real, and he wasn’t sure if everybody got it, or just people Tink wanted to do it for.
Whatever—it was good. Whatever—Tink didn’t need to apologize for being absent. Whatever—Tink had no reason to tell him what he’d told him, except some sense of fairness, except maybe everything he thought he read in the man was true—because Tink didn’t read out to him as vengeful, or a habitual or purposeful liar. He’d do a lot for Tink. He hadn’t met anybody like Tink, on Sprite or on the docks, and Tink had a piece of his priorities, if Tink ever somehow needed something he could do.
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 was panic, 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 Sprite expected 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 Corinthian anymore 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. Corinthian hadn’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
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 Beatrice a little happier about the cause célèbre Beatrice wasn’t talking about, namely Hawkinses. She wasn’t giving him advice, he had had all 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, something to 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 except by her damnable moods. So her personal effort had produced a shipboard Bowe offspring. It hadn’t been his idea. 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.