Ross had died on Wyatt’s, dealing with people who tried to cheat him. The
stationers, beyond doubt, had cremated him, so one of them was forever missing
from the tally of drifters in the deep. In a way, that troubled him most of all,
that he had had to leave Ross in the hands of strangers, to be destroyed down to
his elements… but he had had only the quick chance to break Lucy away, to get
her out before they attached her, and he kept her. He had been seventeen then,
and knew the contacts and the ports and how to talk to customs agents.
He slept in Ross’s old bunk, in this one, because it was as close as he could
come to what he had left of family, and this one bed seemed warmer than the
rest, not so unhappily haunted as the rest. Ross had always been closer than his
own mind to him, and because he had not cast out Ross’s body with his own hands,
it was less sometimes like Ross was dead than that he had gone invisible after
the mishap at Wyatt’s, and still existed aboard, in the programs comp held—so,
so meticulously Ross had recorded all that he knew, programed every operation,
left instructions for every eventuality… in case, Ross had said, simply in case.
The recorded alarms spoke in Ross’s tones; the time signals did; and the
instruction. It was company, of sorts. It filled the silences.
He tried not to talk to the voice more than need be, seldom spoke at all while
he was on the ship, because he reckoned that the day he started talking back and
forth with comp, he was in deep trouble.
Only this time he sat with his eyes fixed on the screens on the bridge, with his
shoulder braced against the acceleration, and a vast lethargy settled over him
in the company of his ghosts. Ross, he thought, Ross… I might love her; because
Ross was the closest thing he had ever had to a father, a personal father, and
he had to try out the thought on someone, just to see if it sounded reasonable.
It did not. There were story-tapes, a few aged tapes Ross had conned on
Pan-paris when they were young and full of chances. He listened to them over and
over and conjured women in his mind, but he knew truth from fancy and refused to
let fancy take a grip on him. It had to do with living… and solitude; and there
were slippages he could not afford. He had been drunk, that was all; was sober
now, and simply tired.
He had been crazy into the bargain, to have paid what he had paid to get clear
of station. And he was outbound, accelerating, committed… He was headed for a
real place out there, was about to violate lane instructions, headed out to new
territory with forged papers. It was a real place, and a real meeting, where a
dream could get badly bent.
Where it could end. Forever.
(Ross… I’m scared.)
No noise but the fans and the turning of the core, that everpresent white sound
in which the rest of the silence was overwhelming. Little human sounds like
breathing, like the dropping of a stylus, the pushing of a button, were whited
out, swallowed, made null.
(Ross… this may be the last trip. I’m sorry. I’m tired…)
That was the crux of it. The certainty settled into his bones. The last trip,
the last time—because he had run out of civilized stations Unionside. Even Pell,
across the Line—they had called at once, when it was himself and Ross and Mitri
together; and Lucy had been Rose. They owed money there too, as everywhere. Lucy
was out of havens; and he was out of answers, tired of fear, tired of starving
and sleeping the way he had slept on the way into Viking, marginally afraid that
the old man he had hired might rob him or get past the comp lock or—it was
always possible—kill him in his sleep. And once, just once to see what others
had, what life was like outside that terror, with the fancy bars and the fancy