His head hurt. He couldn’t think of it. It was in the twenties on the same dock, and that was a long hike down from Corinthian’s berth at 10, but nobody was offering to stop him, he was just any spacer walking on the dock, staggering a little, but spacers did, on the Strip, that was why safe, moral stationers didn’t come walking here, it was spacer territory, spacer logic, even with the cops… couldn’t say they’d actually arrest anybody if nobody landed in hospital, just fine hell out of both ships, you didn’t know, you couldn’t predict…
Support column came up in his face. He grabbed it, leaned against it, head hurting, vision doing tricks again.
Couldn’t blame Marie for running. She’d conned him. She’d used him. Made Mischa think everything was under control. She’d probably scammed Saja, too, with that trick of stepping back onto the transport, Saja’d had to wait for the next one.
But what did you expect of Marie? She was what she was. She didn’t deserve to be in any psych ward, please God.
She’d pulled the same thing on Mischa twenty years ago. He wasn’t any brighter.
She’d said she had trade information, she said she was working on Corinthian doing something illegal, at least something borderline—she said if she could get some information out of the trade office,—and she had an appointment… everything looked good… but that wasn’t where she’d gone. She’d come here…
Wandering the ever-night of the docks, the clash and crash of loaders, the echoing of distant voices. He was walking again. He didn’t remember since when.
Abundant places to hide. Abundant places to lose oneself in, if one were determined, and Marie was that. Spacers passed him. He saw patches on sleeves but he didn’t know the ships. Strange to him. And he’d never been a place in his life where that was true.
Past the frontage of a sleepover. He felt his hands sweating despite the cold, his heart pumping and not keeping up with the oxygen demand. Opposite berth 18, it was. Looking for the twenties, he said to himself, and saw a transport go past.
Saw a sign, not a big one. Hercules Shipping. Commercial district. And warehouses. The character of the zone changed that quickly. Suddenly it was all warehouses, some with open doors, cans standing inside in the light, most with doors shut.
Transshippers, Marie had said. Couldn’t remember the name or the number, until he saw the sign.
Miller.
Miller Transshipping.
The doors weren’t open. Looked closed, except shippers didn’t ever close. No neon about the sign, easy to miss, on the frontage like that, with no lights. But Miller was the name, he was sure of it.
He tried the personnel entry, heavy door with no window. It was supposed to work on hydraulics, but it didn’t, you had to shove it after the electric motor took it halfway, and it wasn’t illegal to walk into an office and ask directions to some place: he could pretend he didn’t know where Hercules Shipping was, he had his story all ready.
But nobody was in the office. The side door wasn’t locked, either, and that led into the lighted warehouse.
Going there was a little chancier, but he could still say he was lost and looking for somebody… please God the vacancy in the office wasn’t because Marie had done something, like killing somebody.
He was lost, he’d tell them, if he ran into workers inside. He’d gotten separated from his crewmates in the transport crush, he didn’t know where he was.
He walked among tall shipping canisters, cold-hauler stuff, up in racks, like a ship’s hold, only more brightly lit. The cans drank up heat from the air, made the whole warehouse bitter cold. They were covered in frost.
The rack-loader had stopped with a can aboard. It was frosted as the rest. He undipped his ID, used the edge to scrape the plate to find out what was listed in it… Marie wanted to know, and he wanted to be able to tell her. Prove he was on her side.
It said the origin was Pell. It said… he couldn’t make out the contents, the label was faint and the plate kept frosting over again while he scraped thick greyed peels of ice off it, but it said it was cold-hold stuff, it said it was biologic, that was a check-box. It said food-stuffs. He was freezing where he stood, hadn’t realized it was cold-hold goods filling the warehouse. He needed more than the insulated coveralls you used on the docks. Needed gloves, because his fingers were burning just peeling the frost off, and the can drank the heat out of his exposed skin, out of his eyes, so he didn’t dare go on looking at it. Deep cold was treacherous: if you felt it do that and you didn’t have a face-mask, you needed to get out.