“You figure out everything we need,” he said to Marie. “And when we dock, you go out like always. I’ll go with you. I swear, Marie. I want to.”
They never much looked at each other straight on—not the way he did and she did now. His heart was pounding, his brain was telling him he was a fool, but for about twenty seconds then, Marie was ma’am, and mama, and home, and all the ship-words a man had to attach to, in the ancient way of merchanter matriarchy.
“He put you up to this?” Marie asked him hoarsely.
“Yes.” If one of them could twist truth inside out and confuse a man, so could he. She’d taught him. So had Mischa. “But he doesn’t know I mean it.”
“You son of a bitch. “ Not angry, not cruel. Marie could make it into a love-note.
“You’re all I’ve got,” he said, and really felt it, for the moment, fool that he was.
“Get out of here,” she said, and laughed, the grim way that Marie could when, rarely, he scored a point in their endless fencing. But she caught his arm before he could leave. “Tom. Bitch-son. Only chance. If Corinthian spooks, he’s gone. Understand?”
In a lifetime, maybe her only chance at this ship. Only chance to win. Only chance to risk everything. He knew how much that meant. “Read you,” he said, already a traitor to Mischa. “No question. “ Betraying Mischa was easy. But he wanted Marie to get the bastard—just not… not the way he still feared she might try.
She let him go. He walked away, to escape her closer questions about Mischa and his intentions, and decided on rec and the commissary, he didn’t really care.
But once he thought about it, he knew he ought to eat: jump took too much out of a body. He decided he’d better, hungry or not, and wondered if Marie had—but Marie had probably ordered in, probably had one of the junior techs bring something to her: you could do that if you were sitting Station. He should have asked her. But he wouldn’t, now, didn’t want back in Marie’s reach.
Cousins were thick, going and coming around the commissary area, which was no more than a district in lower-deck. He hadn’t, himself, checked the boards. He didn’t expect assignment different than Mischa had given him. Saja had to know that he was spoken for. He hoped to God no one else had the idea what Mischa had set him to do, but rumors about Corinthian’s presence were running the corridors—he caught whispers, furtive stares.
And had cousin Roberta R. ask him, brilliantly, as he eased his way through the gathering around the stack of sandwiches, “You hear about Corinthian in port?”
Then cousin remotest-thank-God-removed Yuri Curtis Hawkins added in a not discreet undertone that he’d heard they’d had thirty in hospital at Mariner the last time the ships met, and maybe they should snatch themselves some Corinthian crew and “show them a thing or two.”
“Yeah, right,” another cousin said, “from the station brig, big show.”
He shouldered his way past the comments, got his sandwich, ignoring the lot, but Yuri C. said, “Hey, Bowe-Hawkins, what’s your idea?” and somebody else, Rodman, drawled, “Bowe-Hawkins, I hear they inbreed on Corinthian, what d’ you think? You got all those crossed-up genes?”
“I think that ship’s armed, it’s not a regular merchanter, and we’re not in a damn good situation if it gets pissed, cousin, thanks for the personal concern.”
Hoots and catcalls for the exchange. He wasn’t popular with Yuri or with Rodman, whose eye he’d blacked, in their snot-nosed youth. He didn’t care what Rodman did or said. He cared only marginally about Yuri C. or Yuri’s two half-sibs, and Roberta was no hyperspace engineer. He took his sandwich, got his drink and took his lunch to the quiet of his own quarters.
It was peace, there. He settled sideways and cross-legged on his bunk, sore from the temper fit in the gym, and ate his sandwich—he couldn’t even identify the flavor. Jump did that to you, too, left you with a metallic taste that was mineral deficiency.