alterday. Suppose you take your time off and go get some sleep. You’re going to
have to take her after jump.”
“Look, I’d like to go through the setup.”
“Did I tell you who’s setting up the schedules on this ship? Go on. Get some
rest.”
She said nothing for the moment, sitting with her back to him. He stayed where
he was, adamant. And finally she turned on the auto and levered herself out of
the cushion. Offended pride. It was in every movement.
“Cabins are up the curve there,” he said, trying to pretend he had noticed none
of the signals, trying to smooth it over with courtesy. It hurt enough, to offer
that, to open up the cabins more than the one he had given to his sometime
one-man crews. (“I sleep on the bridge,” he had always said; and done that,
bunked in the indock sleeping area, catnapped through the nights, because going
into a cabin, sealing himself off from what happened on Lucy’s bridge—there was
too much mischief could be done.— “Crazy,” they had muttered back at him. And
that thought almost ways frightened him.) “Take any one you like. I’m not
particular. —Curran,” he said, turning from Allison’s cold face—and found all
the others looking at him the same way.
(“Crazy,” others had said of him, when he occupied the bridge that way.)
“Look,” he said, “I’m running her through the jumps this go at it. I know my
ship. You talk to me when it gets to the return trip.”
“I had no notion to take her through,” Allison said. “But I won’t argue the
point.”
She walked off, feeling her way along the counter, toward the corridor. He
turned, keyed in and took off the security locks all over the ship, turned again
to look at Curran, at the others, clustered about the console where they were
installing the new systems. He had offended their number one’s dignity: he
understood that. But given time he could straighten comp out, pull the jump
function out of Ross’s settings. And the other things… it was a trade, the
silence Ross had filled, for live voices.
Putting those programs into silence—sorting Ross’s voice out of the myriad
functions that reminded him, talked to him—(Good morning, Sandy. Time to get
up…)
Or the sealed cabins, where Krejas had lived, cabins with still some remnant of
personal items… things the Mazianni had not wanted… things they had not put
under the plates. And the loft, where Ma’am and the babies had been…
“Curran,” he said, daring the worst, but trying to cover what he had already
done, “you’re on Allison’s shift too. Any cabin you like.”
Curran fixed him with his eyes and got up from the repair. “That’s in,” Curran
said. Being civil. But there was no softness under that voice. “What about the
other one?”
“We’ll see to it. Get some rest.”
We. Neill and Deirdre. Their looks were like Curran’s; and suddenly Allison was
back in the entry to the corridor.
“There’s stuff in there,” she said, not complaining, reporting. “Is that yours,
Stevens?”
“Use it if you like.” It was an immolation, an offering. “Or pack it when you
can get to it. There’s stuff left from my family.”
“Lord, Stevens. How many years?”
“Just move it. Use it or pack it away, whichever suits you. Maybe you can get
together and decide if there’s anything in the cabins that might be of use to
you. There’s not that much left.”
A silence. Allison stood there. “I’ll see to it,” she said. She walked away with
less stiffness in her back than had been in the first leaving. And the rest of
them—when he looked back—they had a quieter manner. As if, he thought, they had
never really believed that there had been others.
Or they were thinking the way other passengers had thought, that it was a
strange ship. A stranger captain.
“Going offshift,” Curran said, and followed Allison.
Neill and Deirdre were left, alone with him, looking less than comfortable,
“Install the next?” Neill said.
“Do that,” Sandor said. “I’ve got a jump to set up.”
He turned, settled into the cushion still warm from Allison’s body. Lucy