“You’re going to wear a track in the deck,” she said. “Sit down. They’re doing all right. They understood you about parking on the line.”
“You speak it?”
“I understand it,” she said, and indicated the spot beside her. “Sit. Stay out of their way.”
He sat. Chihin didn’t sound annoyed, only tired. She said, “We’ve got cargo coming in. It’s Kefk we’re going to. You know about Kefk?”
“I know it’s on the kifish side.”
“It’s not a good place. I’ve never been there. But it’s not a place I ever wanted to go.”
“I’d go anywhere,” he said, consciously pleading his case with her. “If there’s a chance I won’t come back … that’s better than home.”
“Is it?” Clearly Chihin didn’t think so.
“I’m not a fighter. I’m really not. Not for—for what I’d have to fight for if I stayed on Anuurn.”
“Is this better?” Chihin asked. He was surprised at Chihin talking seriously with him at all. But it wasn’t asking if Chihin was going to reason long with him. He said only the short answer.
“I want to be here.”
Chihin was quiet after that. He thought he had exhausted her patience and his welcome, and he should get up and go be useful, somehow. But Chihin reached out and caught his wrist with the hand that worked.
He didn’t know what she wanted. He stared at Chihin for what felt like a long, uncomfortable time, and Chihin said, “You kept your head. You did all right under fire.”
“Thank you, ker Chihin.”
“I don’t like your being here,” she said bluntly.
“I know that.”
She let go his hand. She didn’t say anything for a while. Then: “What do you want? What do you really want?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You want to be out here? You want to spend your whole life running from port to port, with debt at your tail? Or did you think you were going to get rich and be lord of the spaceways?”
“If I knew I could be lord Meras, it wouldn’t matter. I don’t want what’s down there. I want to be here.”
“You’re a fool.”
“They’ve told me that. But I want it. I don’t mind being junior. I am. I just want to be here.”
“You tell me that the other side of Kefk.”
“I will. I promise you I will, ker Chihin. There’s nothing ever going to change my mind.”
“Kid. The captain wants you out of here.”
It hurt. He’d almost hoped. He kept a polite expression all the same.
“Most ships,” she said, “are going to want you out of here.”
“I’ll find someone,” he said.
“You can’t work dockside. Stations aren’t going to want you.”
He shrugged, said, with a leaden feeling, “I’ll find a way.”
“It’s sense to go home.”
“No, it isn’t. I don’t want to go back there. It’s not sense to do what you don’t want.”
“Ships have their ways of getting along. Hard enough for any outsider to come in. The Pride was … under duress. You’ve got to understand. We get called to station, sometimes in the middle of the night, you haven’t got time to dress … I mean, it’s a thousand things like that…”
“I don’t mind.”
“Yeah. Well, others do. People talk. And heads have to be cracked for it, I mean, you get no respect if you let somebody make a remark, you know what I mean.”
“Yes.”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s the problem. Shit. — Look at you, your ears are flat.”
He brought them up with a mindful effort, started to get up to excuse himself and get back to work, but Chihin took hold of his arm.
“You understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes, ker Chihin.”
Chihin’s ears went down and then to half. She was looking him in the face and he stared right back.
“ ‘Yeah, Chihin,’ “ she said.
“Yeah.”
She had let him go, having made her point. He started a second time to get up, and a second time she stopped him.
“Kid. I don’t know it will do a bit of good, but I’m going to talk to the captain, say maybe we should do a wait-see. Mind, she might not go with it. But in my book you earned a chance at it. Not because you hauled me out. But because if you hadn’t, a couple more of us might have been fools.”