He set hands on hips and watched this apparition walk up to customs… got a questioning look from the agent, who surely couldn’t do a confident ID on Hawkins’ new side-fall haircut. He nodded, the agent pulled out the passport, delivered a sober lecture to Hawkins, probably about being sure about the passport, Hawkins nodded, seemed dutifully impressed and sober, and the agent gave the whole group a wave-through… you bought it at Pell, customs wasn’t interested, unless you just radiated shady deals. And nobody could know how to rate this taxi-load.
Hawkins and Saby cleared customs, while Tink was still chattering at the agent, offering him a candy or something, Tink was a walking sugar-fix. Meanwhile the passport headed for Hawkins’ pocket.
Austin held out his hand. Smiled tightly.
Hawkins stopped so abruptly, evidently just now seeing him, that Sabrina ran into him.
Austin crooked a finger.—Hawkins meekly came and, to his outheld hand, delivered the passport.
“Stow your stuff with Saby,” Austin said then, as they walked, as he pocketed the passport. “Log in with ops, no word to anybody what happened, do you copy? And I’ll see you in my office thirty minutes to undock, on the mark, Mr. Hawkins.—Saby, you get him there.”
—ix—
IT WAS HIM, DAMMIT, WITH Saby, and Tink, Austin was waiting the other side of the barrier, and Christian had not a question in his mind.
“He knew, damn him! He knew all along! Damn her! Damn her!”
“Damnation to go around,” Capella said, leaning against the store-front. “We’ve still other strays to watch.”
Redirection. In Capella, suspect it.
“You knew. You damned well knew!” He was furious. And Capella, having talked to Austin aboard, having had a chance to ask questions… came back with a grim look, a, “He’s keeping the schedule,” and, to his, “Why?”—”Thinks Hawkinses are as serious a threat, evidently.”
Capella swore she didn’t, personally, think Sprite was on a scale with their other problem. But the taxi was gone from the customs area, Tom Hawkins was walking up the ramp with Saby, who, dammit, owed him some loyalty, being his cousin, being who’d brought him up—
And it looked to him like a problem, a major problem, Hawkins in his new clothes and his new haircut—he hadn’t recognized him. He’d thought he was some better-class recruit than they even usually got, somebody Saby had recommended.
But, no, it was a surplus, conniving brother, whose clothes alone cost more than the 200c he’d been carrying—who hadn’t had a passport, who’d had no way to lay his hands on his without Corinthian’s complicity; who hadn’t had a credit card… if Family Boy had money stashed in banks the other side of the line, he couldn’t have accessed it without ID.
Somebody else’s money. Corinthian money.
“Austin’s damn clearance,” he said. “Look at him!”
“Looks pretty good, actually,” Capella said. “And Saby. My, my, my.”
“You did know!”
“I know now. Give up the quarrel, Chrissy-lad, it’s over, it’s won, this is why papa Austin said what he said.”
“About what?”
“Just that he’d made up his mind. That Sprite was more threat than one Mr. Hawkins. Damn right. He had this one tied up and wrapped around his high-credit finger, just yank the string.”
It didn’t make sense to him, except that Austin had played him for a fool deliberately, Austin had spent whatever it took to make him look a fool not only to Saby and Tink, who were in on it, but in front of Capella, who might have been under orders, in front of the whole crew—people laughing behind his back, enjoying the joke.
He looked at Capella, searching for any hint of that laughter at his expense. He couldn’t find any hint of it, but Capella wasn’t easy to catch, no expression at all.
A handful of dockers arrived, Gracie Greene and Metz, Dan Blue, Tarash and Deecee, trouble, all of them, he watched them walk up to customs, and his gut was in an upheaval, thinking… they were going to hear about it, everybody who’d been out in the search after his brother had to have known, at some point, and here he stood, playing the fool, while his brother went into the ship on his own terms.