snugged down more comfortably in the bed and drifted off again.
And waked later with that feeling one got waking on sleepovers, that the place
was wrong and the sounds and the smells strange.
Lucy. Not Dublin but Lucy. Irrevocable things had happened. She felt out after
the light switch on the bed console, brightened the lights as much as she could
bear, rolled her eyes to take in the place, this two meter by four space that
she had picked for hers… but there was a clutter in the locker and storage, a
comb and brush with blond hair snarled in it, a few sweaters, underwear, an old
pair of boots, other things—just left. And cold … the heat had been on maybe
since last night, had not penetrated the lockers. A woman’s cabin. Newer,
cleaner than the rest of the ship, as if the ship had gotten wear the cabin had
not.
Pirates, Stevens had said; pirates had killed them all. If it was one of those
odd hours when he told the truth.
There was nothing left with a name on it, to know what the woman had been, what
name, what age—not rejuved: the hair had been blond. Like Stevens’ own.
Or whatever the name might have been.
And how did one man escape what happened to the others? That question worried
her: why, if pirates had gotten the others-he had stayed alive; or how long ago
it had been, that a ship could wear everywhere but these sealed cabins.
Questions and questions. The man was a puzzle. She stirred in the bed, thought
of sleep-over nights, wondered whether Stevens had a notion to go on with that
on the ship as well, in cabins never made for it.
Not now, she thought; not in this place. Not in a dead woman’s bed and in a ship
full of deceptions. Not until it was straight what she had brought her people
into. She was obliged to think straight, to keep all the options open. And
keeping Stevens off his balance seemed a good idea
Besides, it was business aboard—and no time for straightening out personal
reckonings, no time for quarrels or any other thing but the ship under their
hands.
The ship, dear God, the ship: she ached in every bone and had blisters on her
hands, but she had sat a chair and had the controls in her hands—and whatever
had gone on aboard, whoever the woman who had had this room and died
aboard—whatever had happened here, there was that; and she had her cousins about
her, who would have mortgaged their souls for an hour at Dublin’s boards and
sold out all they had for this long chance. She could not go back, now, to
waiting, on Dublin, for the rest of a useless life.
Hers. Her post. She had gotten that for the others as well, done more for them
than they could have hoped for in their lives. And they were hers, in a sense
more than kinship and ship-family. If she said walk outside the lock, they
walked; if she said hands off, it was hands off and quiet; and that was a load
on her shoulders— this Stevens, who figured to have a special spot with her.
They might misread cues, her cousins, take chances with this man. No, no onboard
sleepovers, no muddling up their heads with that, making allowances when maybe
they should not make them. It was not dockside, when a Dubliner’s yell could
bring down a thousand cousins bent on mayhem. Different rules. Different
hazards. She had not reckoned that way, until she had looked in the lockers. But
somewhere not so far away, she reckoned, Curran slept in someone’s abandoned bed
and spent some worry on it And the others-She turned onto her stomach, fumbled
after an unfamiliar console, punched in on comp.
Nothing. The room screen stayed dead.
She pushed com one, that should be the bridge. “Allison in number two cabin: I’m
not getting comp.”
A prolonged silence.
Everything unraveled, the presumed safety of being in Pell System, still in
civilized places… the reckonings that there were probably sane explanations for
things when all was said and done… she flung herself out of bed with her heart