“For what?—Who is it that recorded the comp messages? It’s you he talks to,
isn’t it? Who was he?”
He looked at the decking, across the dock, at the scant foot traffic, at the
overhead where lonely lights gave the dock what illumination it had.
“You want to talk about it?” Curran asked.
“Not particularly.”
“Brother?” Allison asked.
He shrugged. “Might have been.”
“He set it up,” Allison said, “for somebody who really didn’t know how to run a
ship. To teach everything there was. It must have taken him a long time to do
that. I figure he must have thought a lot about your being able to take care of
yourself.”
“None of your business.”
“We’re not welcome there, are we?”
He thought a moment about that one. “You coming back?” he asked, looking at her.
“Or do they send me a new set of Dubliners for the run back?”
“We’re coming back,” she said. “You know we know how to work comp. Do
everything. We’re pretty good.”
It was about the humblest he was likely to get out of Allison Reilly, and it set
him off his balance again. “I know you’re pretty good,” he said, shrugged it
off. Looked up, then, at her and the others, one face and the other.
“Excuse me,” he said, and walked back into the office and others’ business.
Aides moved: rifles swung fractionally in the hands of guards. Mallory’s face
had an uncommon degree of wariness. “It’s Kreja,” he said, feeling the presence
of Allison and the others close at his back. He took his papers from his pocket,
another tiny movement of the rifles which had not quite given up their focus.
“Le Cygne and Kreja. Maybe I ought to get the papers straightened out.”
Mallory looked up at him curiously. “Is it? And how do you come by that Name?
It’s a long time out of circulation.”
He wondered in that moment—decided in the negative. Mallory’s puzzlement seemed
for once other than a mockery. “I was born with it,” he said. “I’d like it
back.”
Mallory settled back in her chair, a hand on her desk. “Not a difficult matter.
Pan-paris, was it? That was a time ago.”
Breath failed him. “Would you know what happened?”
“I heard what happened.”
He believed that. Mallory was trustable—in some degree. He believed that much.
“Give me the papers,” she said. And when he laid them on the desk she simply
took them and wrote in longhand. “Le Cygne. Name of owner?”
“Sandor Kreja.”
The pen flourished and stopped. She handed the papers back. The corrections were
there. S. Mallory was written below: amended by her authority.
“Kreja.”
A hand was offered him from his right. One of the Reillys—the Reilly: he had
heard him answer. He took the hand, suffered the friendly pressure, escaped then
past the door in his own company,
“That’s straight,” he said. He pocketed the papers, along with the voucher,
walked a fragile course toward Lucy/Le Cygne’s dock, with his Dubliners about
him. “Going to have to go out on the hull when we get time. Do a name change.”
“Not much chance of getting cargo here,” Allison said. “But hazard rate ought to
cover it both ways.”
“Game for another run?”
“They’re keeping military watch on the whole Line for the time being. So the
rumor runs.”
“Nice to pick up rumors. I’m not sure I believe all of them.”
“I figure they’ll hold by this one.”
They reached the access. It was about the limit of his strength and Curran’s,
who was out of breath as he was going up the ramp—a young Dubliner plastered
himself against the wall of the lock as they came in with a quick “Sir—Ma’am”
and Sandor gave the boy a dazed and misgiving stare as his own Dubliners pulled
him past. “I didn’t clear any boarders,” he said, finding more of them by the
lift “Hang it, Reilly—”
“Borrowed help,” Allison said. The corridor was clean. The inside of the lift
car was clean, spit and polish. “Young Dubliners wanted some exercise.”
The lift let them out in the lounge/bridge area. Scrubbed decks, polished
panels, every smudge and smear and tarnish cleared away. It looked new again,