“Well,” Tink said out of nowhere. Torn looked up. “They’re looking for you, “ Tink said.
Last hope. A ball of fire and smoke.
“Did you tell her?”
“Tell her what?” Tink asked.
“That I’d be here.”
“I didn’t know you’d be here,” Tink said, sounding honestly puzzled.
It was too much. He shook his head. He had a lump in his throat that almost prevented the soup going down.
“Tink was going to the gardens,” Saby said. “He always does. I said I’d meet him here.”
“Not like a date or anything,” Tink said, sounding embarrassed. “She’s an officer.”
“Tink’s a nice date,” Saby said. “Knows everything there is about flowers.”
“I don’t,” Tink said.
He’d been caught by an accident. By the unlikeliest pair on Corinthian. Nothing dramatic. Tink and Saby liked flowers. What was his life or what were his plans against something so absolutely unintended?
“Call the ship,” he said. Tink clinched it. He didn’t want the cops. He didn’t want station law. “Tell them… hell, tell them you found me. Say it was clever work. Collect points if you can get ‘em.”
“You seen the gardens?” Saby asked.
He shook his head.
“You like to?” Saby asked.
Of course he would. He just didn’t think she was serious.
“You got to,” Tink said. And to Saby: “He’s got to.”
“You want to?” Saby asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
“You through?” Saby asked, and waved a hand. “Finish the salad. We’ve got time.”
“Good stuff here,” Tink said. “We’re taking on a load of fresh greens. Tomatoes. Potatoes. Ear corn. Good stuff…”
He’d only gotten potatoes and corn in frozens. He thought about the galley. About Jamal. Ahead of Austin Bowe, damned right, about Jamal, and Tink. A homier place than the accommodation his father assigned him. The pride Tink had in his work… he envied that. He wanted that. There were things about Corinthian not so bad.
If one had no choice.
“You want to go the tour, then?” he asked Saby. “I swear I won’t bolt. I promise. I don’t want you guys in trouble.”
“No problem,” Saby said. “I give everybody one chance.”
He shoved the bowl back. Half soup. Half salad. He hated to waste good food, especially around Tink. But he didn’t trust more Corinthians wouldn’t just happen in, on somebody’s phone call, and it had gotten important to him, finally, to see the place’ he’d seen beyond the doors, the path with the nodding giants he thought were trees. He’d heard about Pell all his life, some terrible things, some as strange as myth. He’d not seen a Downer yet. But he imagined he’d seen trees, in his view through the doors.
And if he’d only a little taste of Pell… he wanted to remember it as the storehouse of living treasures he’d heard about as a kid. He wanted the tour the kid would have wanted.
Didn’t want to admit that to his Corinthian watch, of course. He thought Tink was honest, completely. But he wasn’t sure Saby wasn’t just going along with anything he wanted until reinforcements arrived.
“I got a phone call to make first,” Saby said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess you do.”
He was surprised she was out in the open about it. It raised his estimation of Saby, and made him wonder if she had after all come here, like Tink, with Tink, just to see the trees.
He watched her walk away and outside the restaurant. He went to the check-out and paid the tab, in cash. He went out with Tink, toward the ticket counter, finally.
“Let me get the tickets,” he said to Tink. “It’s on my brother. He gave me funds.”
Tink didn’t seem to understand that. Tink seemed to suspect something mysterious and maybe not savory, but he agreed. Tink looked utterly reputable this mainday evening, which was Tink’s crack of dawn morning—wearing Corinthian-green coveralls that hid the tattoos except on his hands. His short-clipped forelock was brushed with a semblance of a part. He had one discreet braid at the nape. Most men looking like that were looking for a spacer-femme who was also looking. Not Tink. And he understood that. At twenty-three, he began to see things more important than the endless search after encounters and meaning in some-one. Some-thing began to be the goal. Some-thing: some credit for one’s self, some achievement of one’s ambitions, some accommodation with the illusions of one’s misspent childhood.