Cherryh, CJ – Merchanters Luck

“You watching us, Stevens? You don’t want us loose unwatched? I don’t think

you’ve been sleeping at all. How long are you going to keep that up?”

He drank another swallow. “I told you how it’s going to be.” He turned, threw

the rest of the brown stuff in the glass into the disposal and put the glass in

the washer. ” ‘Night, Reilly. Your noon, my midnight.”

“Why don’t you go get in a real bed, Stevens, a nice cabin, turn out the lights,

settle down and get some sleep?”

He shrugged. Walked off.

1158, She was due. She walked behind him, watched his barefoot, unsteady

progress down the corridor, walked into the bridge behind him and stood there

watching him find his couch in the lounge again. He lay down there on his side,

pulled the blankets about him, up to his chin, stiff and miserable looking.

The gut-feeling was back, seeing the disintegration, a man coming apart,

biological months compressed into days—hell on a solo voyage while Reillys

sipped Cyteen brandy.

She looked at Curran, whose eyes sent something across the bridge—impatience,

she thought. She was late. Curran would have seen Stevens leave; she imagined

his fretting.

“Your turn,” she said, coming to dislodge him from the number one seat “Any

action?”

“Nothing. Everything as was.”

She settled into the cushion. Curran lingered, tapped her arm and, shielded by

the cushion back, made the handsign for question.

* Negative problem, she signed back. And then a quick touch at Curran’s hand

before he could draw away. *We two talk, she signed further. *Our night.

*Understood. A moment more he lingered, knowing then that something was on her

mind. She gave a jerk of her head toward the galleyward corridor. *Out, she

meant; and he went.

Watch to watch: it was the tail of her second, 1442, when Neill came wandering

out of the cabins corridor, shaved and combed and fresh-looking. Deirdre

followed, pale and sober, looked silently at Stevens sleeping there. *All right?

The uplifted thumb. It was a question.

Allison nodded, and they padded back again, to the little personal time they had

in their schedules. She had the ship on auto, their escort running placidly

beside them. She watched Curran at his meddling with the comp console, quiet

figuring and notetaking. There was not a chance he could crack it. Not a chance.

A bell went off, loud and sudden, down the corridors the way Neill and Deirdre

had gone. She looked up, a sudden clenching of her heart, at the blink of a red

light on the lifesupport board. The bell and the light stopped. The section seal

had opened, closed again. “Deirdre,” Curran was saying into com. “Neill.

Report.”

A weight hit Allison’s cushion, Stevens leaning there. “Section seal’s opened,”

she said. “Are they all right, Stevens?”

“No danger, none.”

She believed it when Neill’s voice came through. “Sorry. We seem to have tripped

something.”

Exploring the ship. Trying to do the logical thing, going around the rim. “You

all right?” Curran asked.

“Just frosted. Nothing more. Section three’s frozen down, you copy that”

“You got it shut?”

“Shut tight.”

“Here,” Stevens said hoarsely, tapped her arm. ‘Vacate. I’ll get the section up

to normal. Sorry about that.”

“Sure,” she said. She slid clear of the cushion and he slid in.

“Just go on,” he said. “I’ll take care of it, do a little housekeeping. Take a

break, you and Curran. We don’t need to keep rigid schedules. God knows she’s

run without it”

Curran might have gone on sitting, obstinate; she gathered him up with a quiet,

meaningful glance, a slide of the eyes in the direction Neill and Deirdre had

gone. “All right,” he said, and came with her, walked out of the bridge and down

the corridor.

And stopped when she did, taking his arm, around the curve by the galley.

*He might hear, Curran signed to her. Pointed to the com system.

She knew that. She cast a look about, looking for pickups, found none closer

than ten feet. “Listen,” she said, “I want you to keep it quiet with him.

Friendly. I don’t know what the score is here.”

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