want to start this over—try it my way this time?”
“No,” Allison said after a moment. “Partners. That’s the way it works.”
“Might. Might, Reilly.”
“If we go at it your way.”
“This isn’t Dublin. You don’t get your way. You signed onto my ship and my way
is the way she runs. Majority vote wasn’t in the papers. Cooperative wasn’t. My
way’s it. That’s the way it works. You sit down and figure out who’s on the
wrong side of the law.”
He walked off and left them then, went back to his own quarters—entertained for
a little while the forlorn hope that they might in fact think about that, and
come to terms. But he had not hoped much, and when no one came, he curled up and
courted sleep.
A suited figure rumbled through his vision, and that was himself and that was
Mitri. He opened his eyes again, to drive that one away; but it rode his mind,
that image that came back to him every time he thought of solitude. He shivered,
recalling a boy’s gut-deep fear, and cowardice.
(“Ross,” he had called, sick and shaking. “Ross, he’s dead, he’s dead; get back
in here. I can’t handle the ship, Ross—I can’t take her alone. Please come
back—Ross…”)
The feeling was back in his gut, as vivid as it had been; the sweating
cowardice; the terror—He swore miserably to himself, knowing this particular
dream, that when it latched onto his mind for the night he would go on dreaming
it until Lucy’s skin seemed too thin to insulate him from the ghosts.
He propped himself on his elbows in the dark, supported his head on his hands…
Finally got up in the dark and turned up the light, hunting pen and paper.
He wrote it down, the central key to comp, and put it in the drawer under the
mirror, afraid of having it there—but after that he could turn out the lights
and go back to bed.
Mitri gave him peace then.
He slept the night through; and waked, and fended his way past Deirdre and Neill
at breakfast. In all, there was a quiet over all the ship, less of threat than
of anger. And a great deal of the day he came and sat on the bridge, simply took
a post and sat it— because it was safer that way, for the ship, for them. He
took his blanket and his pillow that night and slept there, so that there was
that much less distance between himself and controls if something went wrong.
“Give it up,” Allison asked of him, on her watch.
He shook his head. Did not even argue the point.
And Neill came to him, when they were minus eight hours from mark: “It was a
mistake, what we did. We know that. Look,Curran never meant to get into that; he
made a mistake and he won’t admit it, but he knows it, and he wishes it hadn’t
gone the way it did. He just didn’t expect you’d go for him; and we—we just
tried to stop someone from getting hurt.”
“To stop Curran from getting hurt.” He had not lost his sense of humor entirely;
the approach touched it. He went serious again and flicked a gesture at the
Dubliner’s sleeve. “You still wear the Dublin patch.”
That set Neill off balance. “I don’t see any reason to take it off.”
And that was a decent answer too.
“I’m here.” Sandor said, “within call. Same way I’ve run this ship all along.
You’re safe. I’m taking care of your hides.”
They left him alone after that, excepting now and again a remark. And he lay
down and went to sleep a time, until they reached minus two from mark and he had
jump to set.
His crew had showed up, quiet, businesslike. “So we go for civilization,” he
said. And with a glance at Allison, at Curran: “A little liberty ought to do
good for all of us. Sort it out on the docks.”
He imagined relief in their faces, on what account he was not sure. Only they
all needed the time.
And he was glad enough to quit this place, dark and isolated as the