“Fuck it!” he said, and grabbed Capella by the sleeve, heedless of safety. “It’s a couple of hours till ail-aboard, there’s a bar, there’s a restaurant…”
“I thought we were economizing,” Capella said.
“Hell! I’ve got a k or so left, what do I fucking care? Fucking smart-ass Family Boy, on Austin’s fucking credit, while I spend everything I’ve got? Fuck it, fuck it all, let’s blow it, everything—”
“Chrissy,—”
“I said everything! What do I need? A father who fucking cares what I do? A cousin with one shred of basic loyalty? A partner who doesn’t go screwing my brother? What’s the matter with me, Pella, what’s the matter with me?”
Capella delayed to look at him. Long. “Got all your parts,” Capella said. “Things work.”
“Don’t be a damned ass!”
“Maybe you better work with what you got,” Capella said, “what you stand in when you shower, hmn? It’s all anybody’s got.”
Philosophy wasn’t Capella’s long suit. She threw it at him now and again, she whispered it in his ear when the ship made jump, she confused him when he was mad, and blew it off, which nobody else could do*.
“Dance,” Capella said, “is a lot nicer than looking for stray brothers. Couple drinks, a few dances—long and dark after, Chris-person. Long and deep and dark. I’d dance, myself.”
“You’re crazed! You’re absolutely crazed!”
“It’s my calling. But there’s now, and thereafter’s such quiet, Chris-ti-an. Hear it. Listen to it. Don’t waste time. It’s so scarce.”
“Don’t con me! You knew, you knew what my father was doing!”
“Guessed, maybe. Didn’t know. “ She hooked his arm with hers. “Last trip of all, maybe. There’s something in the dark, I don’t know where.”
“Sprite?”
“Maybe several somethings. They may take me back, Chris-person. I don’t know. There’s only now. This liberty’s been a bitch. Let’s go.”
“What—take you back?” She’d met them at this station, she’d come, with what he overheard and what he guessed, with codewords and such she didn’t show to customs. She was their access to a trade they had to have, that otherwise they couldn’t find, couldn’t access. A second, perilous grab at Capella’s arm, as she turned away. “Have you told Austin this notion? Have you told him?”
“I’m not supposed to have told you. No. This is a confidence, Christian-person.”
“Christian, dammit! And where do you get such notions? We aren’t even near hyperspace.”
Pale eyebrow quirked. Mouth pursed. “The presence. The spook that’s in port. Is that solid enough for you?”
“Can you feel something?”
Capella had a fey, distracted look for an instant, as if she reached out at that moment, into something he couldn’t, nobody could. But the eyes flickered and Capella drew in a sudden, unscheduled breath before she shook her head. “You can convince yourself of anything. No. “ She seized his arm and tugged him toward the frontage, and the bars. “I wish we’d see them.”
“Who? The spook? This Patrick?—You think they’re boarding, now?”
“I say if you find a small ship that is, you know his name.”
“Well, look, for God’s sake, look at the boards. “ He’d been occupied with Hawkinses and Capella wasn’t, Capella wasn’t concerned with Sprite or Hawkinses in singular or plural, he saw that now.
“I know two names. Because one is, doesn’t mean the other isn’t.”
“You mean there could be a back-up in port? Tell Austin, for God’s sake!”
“Austin knows there’s danger. Austin’s danger is Hawkins. Was, from when you let elder-brother take a walk.”
“The hell!”
They’d reached the frontage. Almost the door, and Capella swung around on him, angry, astoundingly so. “Your fault, Christian, and mine, I should have said, and didn’t, it looked good, what you were doing, and it wasn’t, it had flaws. It had flaws in Christophe Martin, it had flaws in assuming elder-brother’s easy, it had flaws all over the place, and my looking for him was very hard, and very scared, Christian-person, so scared I made another mistake, and got attention from this damn spook, who isn’t ours, do you follow me?”
Anger whited out half of it. But ours came through, touching on what he’d tried to understand. Ours. Theirs. Us. The Fleet. “Explain. Explain to me—ours, theirs,—who’s us?”