“No,” Allison said. “If you don’t get out of there fairly soon, we’ll be calling
some legal help. They don’t bluff us.”
That was some comfort. He looked at the rest of them, who showed no inclination
to take any different course. Nodded then, thrust his hands into his pockets,
crumpling the message in the right
He prepared arguments, countercharges, mustered the same indignation he had used
on authorities before. It was all he knew how to do.
But it was hard to keep the bluff intact walking up to the lighted access of
Norway, where uniformed troops—these were troops, far different from any
stationside militia—took him in charge and searched him. They were rejuved, a
great number of these men and women—old enough to have fought in the war,
silver-haired and some of them marked with scars no stationsider would have had
to wear. They were not rough with him in their searching, but they were more
thorough than the police had been. They frightened him, the way that ship out
there frightened him, behind that cheerful lighted access, a huge carrier
bristling with armaments, a Company ship, from another age. They brought him
toward the ramp that led up into the access. And standing in the accessway…
Talley, grim and waiting for him.
He kept walking. So the man was part of this action. He was somehow not
surprised. The Dubliners, he was thinking, ought to get back to their ship. The
military would think twice about demanding that a merchanter family of the
Reillys’ size give up some of its own to questioning. But alone, far from
Dublin, they were vulnerable, unused to authorities who ran things as they
pleased.
He encountered Talley, a bleak, pale-eyed stare from the Alliance officer, a nod
in the direction he should go. So he had acquired a certain importance: a man
with commander’s rank took him in personal charge and escorted him into the
heart of this row-accessed monster. Dim corridors: a long walk to a wider area
and a lift to the upper levels. He stared through Talley on the way up in the
car. Conversation could do him no good. One never gave anything away. One always
regretted it later.
A walk afterward down a narrower corridor—bare, dull metal everywhere, nothing
so cheerful as Lucy’s white, age-scarred compartments. Coded identifications on
the exposed lines, on the compartments. Everything was efficiency and no
comfort. They reached the door of an office and got a come-ahead light: the door
opened, and Talley brought him through.
“Captain,” Talley said, “Stevens of the merchanter Lucy.”
The silver-haired woman was already looking at him across her desk, already
sizing him up. “Mallory,” she identified herself. “Sit down, Captain.”
He pulled the chair over and sat facing her across the desk, while Talley
settled himself against the cabinet, arms folded. Mallory pushed her chair back
from the desk and leaned back in it— rejuved, young/old, staring at him with
dark eyes that said nothing back.
“You’re getting clearance to go out,” she said. “On the Venture run. I
understand there’s some question about your ID, Captain.”
His wits deserted him. It was not the question. It was the source. One of the
nine captains, one of the Mazianni from the war years, who had gotten supplies
by boarding merchanters, by taking supplies and personnel. Who had killed. It
might have been this one, those years ago, this ship that had locked onto Lucy
and boarded. He might be that close to the captain who had ordered it, among
troops who had been inside the armor, who had killed all his family. He had
thought if he met one of them he would kill barehanded, and he found himself
sitting still and staring back, paralyzed by the quiet, the tenor of the moment
“You don’t have any comment,” Mallory said.
“I thought it was settled.”
“Is there an irregularity, Captain?” Softly. Staring straight at him.
“Look, I just want the lock off my ship. I’ve got a cargo lined up, I’ve got
everything else in order. Because some muddled-up merchanter mistakes my ship…”
“Let me see your papers, Captain.”
It took the breath out of his argument. He hesitated, off his mental balance,