Cherryh, CJ – Merchanters Luck

know that. We can’t let him loose.”

“You got another idea? Calling the military—that still doesn’t give us the keys.

They’d have to haul us down; or we lose the ship. Might as well apply to leave

the ship ourselves. Hand it back to him. Go back to Pell, beached. In a year,

maybe we can explain it all to the Old Man. And go back to Dublin and go on

explaining it. You think of that?”

“What do we do, then?”

“He’s got no food in that section,” Deirdre said. ‘There’s that. There’re things

he needs.”

Allison drew a long breath, short of air. So they were around to that, the

logical direction of things. “So maybe we come up with something more to the

point than that. That’s what he was saying, you know that? He knows what kind of

a mess we’re in. We can’t rely on him at controls—how much do you think you can

rely on comp keys he might give us if we put the pressure on? He’s out-thought

us. He’s not going to bluff.”

Silence.

She rested her hands on her knees and stood up. “All right. It’s in my watch. So

I’ll talk to him. I’m going up there.”

“Allie-”

“Al-li-son.” She frowned at Curran. “You stay by com and monitor the situation.

Only one way he’s going to trust us halfway —a way to patch up things, at least;

make a gesture, make him think we think we’ve straightened it out. God help us.”

She headed for the corridor, looked back at a trio of solemn faces. “If you have

to come after me, come quick.”

“If he lays a hand on you,” Curran said, “I’ll break it a finger at a time.”

“Don’t take chances. If it gets to that, settle it, and call the military.” She

walked on, raw terror gathered in her stomach. Her knees had a distressing

tendency to shake.

There was no more chance of trusting him. Only a chance to make him think they

did. He was, she reckoned, too smart to kill her even if it crossed his mind: he

would take any chance they gave him, come back to them, bide his time.

She hoped to get them to Venture Station alive: that was what it came to now.

And if they were lucky, there might be a strong military authority there.

He sat in the corridor—no other place in section two that was heated: he had the

heat started up in number 15, and if the sensors worked, the valve that shut the

water down in 15 would open and restore the plumbing. He never depended on

Lucy’s plumbing. At the moment he was beyond caring; he was pragmatic enough to

reckon priorities would change when thirst set in.

And in an attempt at pragmatism he made himself as comfortable as he could on

the floor, nursed bruised ribs and wrenched joints and a stiff neck, trying to

find a position on the hard tiles that hurt as little as possible. The teeth

ached; the inside of his mouth was cut and swollen: there was a great deal to

take his mind off more general troubles, but generally he was numb, the way the

area of a heavy blow went numb. And he reckoned that would start hurting too,

when the shock of betrayal had passed. In the meantime he could sleep: if he

could find a spot that did not ache, he could sleep.

The alarm went off—the door down the curve opened from their side, jolting his

heart. He scrambled up—staggered into the wall and straightened.

Allison by herself. The door closed again; the alarm stopped. He stared at her

and the numb spot gained feeling and focus, an ache that settled everywhere.

“So, well,” he said, “got around to figuring how it is?”

“Look, I’m here. You want to talk or do you want me to let be?”

“I won’t give it to you.”

She walked closer, the length of the corridor between them. Stopped near arm’s

length. “I won’t pass it to Curran. I’m sorry.— Listen to me. I reckoned maybe

we were too close for reason. I just figured maybe Curran could get the

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *