Damn-all worst woman in the available universe for Christian to take to bed. Marie Hawkins was safer. Much.
He’d said, just now,—he was sure Capella had heard him: Choose a side. Get the hell to them, or take orders from me.
It remained to see, it did, how much she’d fill Christian in—how much she’d dare fill Christian in, if she meant to stay on Corinthian—because Christian wasn’t going to be an automatic choice to succeed to the captaincy, not now, not since Viking, and damned well not since the stunt he’d pulled here… was still pulling, staying clear of him, not coming in to report, himself. There were times to revise priorities, there were times to be sure messages got through… you didn’t hand off to a bedmate not even remotely connected to the crew, if Christian had even made the decision that brought Capella in to report what couldn’t go over com.
He didn’t take it for a given. Not now. Not any longer. And that touched a personal investment he hadn’t thought he had in Beatrice’s unasked-for offspring. It affected him. It made him personally, painfully angry.
He stood there, asking himself why he gave a damn, and since when.
—vi—
LONG TRIP THROUGH THE LIFT system, alone for some of the trip, but they didn’t talk—too many drinks, probably, Tom decided, a headache coming.
And an inevitable reckoning, tomorrow, the prospect of which, now that the music had died, and Saby’s manner had gone remote and still, didn’t sustain the mood for bed-sharing. He wasn’t up to intricate personal politics. He wished he was gone enough to skip the excuses and the assurances, just to go face-down and maybe get some sleep that might, in the face of a not very pleasant tomorrow, desert him all too easily.
They reached the Aldebaran’s doors. Saby screwed the access code twice, couldn’t find her manual key card, and swore, going through all her pockets.
“I’m sorry,” she kept saying. “Damn.”
“It’s all right,” he found himself saying. “Maybe we could phone Corinthian’s board. “ It could only, he told himself, mean a shorter station stay. “Central’d have to put us through.”
“Oh, hell,” Saby said. “No. Let me think. It’s eight-six-one…”
“Five?” He’d watched her code it a dozen times. “It’s not bottom row.”
“Eight-six-one… You’re screwing me up. Eight-six, eight-six, eight-six—”
“Five.”
“It’s not five.”
“Eight-six-five-one—”
“Two-one. Eight-six-two-one-nine-nine-one. “ Saby leaned on the wall and coded it into the pad. The light turned green, the latch opened, they were in, and the same code worked all the way to the room.
The card, figure it, was on the table. Right by the door.
“Damn,” Saby said, and took it and put it in the coveralls she probably was going to wear tomorrow. She looked tired and out of sorts, and went to the bath and ran one ice-water. And a second one.
“Cheers,” she said, bringing him his.
He was sitting on his bed. She was standing. They drank the ice-water they hadn’t gotten. Saby laughed, then, tired-sounding.
“What’s funny?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Just a thought.”
“Fools that trust Corinthians?”
A frown. “No.”
Sexual tension was gone, no echoes but a remote regret it hadn’t, couldn’t, have lasted. Maybe, he thought, that was her rueful laughter. He asked, cool and curious, “—Were you supposed to seduce me?”
“No. Not. Nada. “ She squatted down, peered up at his face, bleary-eyed herself, and shook at his knee, an attention-getting. “Tom, it’s going to be all right. Believe me.”
“Yeah.—Truth. Who really got the tab tonight?”
“The captain. Cross my heart. “ She did. Almost fell on her rear. She didn’t look like a conspirator.
“What? Fatherly generosity?”
“Christian shouldn’t have done what he did. That’s all. “ She patted his knee and got up, turned out the light, then, before she wobbled over to her bed and threw back the covers, evidently at the limits of her sobriety. They never had gotten undressed together—just took the boots off. Shared a room. She sat down in the night-light and kicked her flimsy shoes off, one foot and the other—he shoved his own off and hauled back his sheets. Horizontal for eight hours seemed very attractive right now.