He cut the connection. He sat glaring at the computer screen, and felt Saby staring at him, a rational, too-damned-superior presence prickling at his shoulder-blades.
So he wasn’t reasonable. So was Austin? So was Beatrice? So was anybody in the upper end c-oh-c, reasonable? It wasn’t a job requirement.
—v—
ANESTHETIC AFTEREFFECTS DIDN’T make a body feel at all good, Tom decided. He’d never had anesthetic before, assuming it was something medical and not outright illicit—but once he’d decided that he couldn’t get the bracelet off, that he couldn’t reach any useful switch panel and he couldn’t do anything, in general, except wait, sweat, and nurse his headache, he figured he could just as well do that flat on his back on the bunk. There was a white-diamond patch on a let-down on the wall over the bunk—universal symbol for deep-space emergency supplies. He flipped it in idle curiosity and it was stocked with trank and nutri-paks. He was tempted, about the trank—just time-out and let the hours pass. But you didn’t abuse the stuff. And the packs were for emergency—you left them for that. You toughed it out, that was all, though, please God, he wasn’t going to need them, they’d get him out of here.
His stomach was upset, his head hurt more than the wrist did—that he was outright scared might account for a good part of the upset, but he kept trying to keep a reasonable attitude. Corinthian, in his best theory, was hanging on to him as insurance for Marie’s good behavior. Corinthian didn’t want him. It was going to be all right. Somehow the captains would sort it out and get Marie back and him back and Corinthian would leave Viking port before anybody got hurt.
Or Marie would figure the game, notify the cops, call the lawyers and get him out of this herself. Beat out Austin Bowe for good and all, and maybe after that, please God, get her life turned around.
Make her peace with him, and Mischa, and the universe in general.
Yeah. And Viking would reverse its spin and the sun would burn black. He couldn’t even recognize the Marie that scenario would ask to exist.
Meanwhile the thump in the guts of Corinthian kept up, regular as a heartbeat. Nobody interrupted the loading, no contingent of police came looking. Wherever Marie was, she couldn’t or wouldn’t stop the flow of goods into Corinthian.
A man passed the cell and stopped. Tom lifted his head, stared at the man between his feet, the man looked at him as if he was a museum exhibit, and walked on. Skuzzy-looking bastard, Tom thought with a prickling of defensive instincts. Wouldn’t like to meet that one on dockside, and that was walking the corridors out there.
That was the first.
Then others, not much better—older guys, a few in green coveralls: the rest in the skintights that were getting to be popular, earrings, glitz-stripes on the skin, jewelry… not a real tidy lot, he said to himself, a few of them worse than others—and with no front wall and no privacy in the cell he was sitting there for all of them to stare at.
Most did. Some laughed, as if it was funny he was there. He didn’t get the point. “Well, well, well, who’s this pretty thing?” a guy asked—a guy with his hair in braids, a tattoo around his neck, and so many tattoos on his bare arms he was green and purple, all snakes.
Tom stared. He would have stared on dockside. He’d not seen that many tattoos. “You want a chocolate?” the tattooed man said. He was drunk. Extremely. Others grabbed him away.
He didn’t know what to think. He got to his feet and went to the bars to look after the group and see what was going on in the corridor, wondering whether that was an authorized entry or were dock-crawlers taking a drunken tour of the ship while the cargo ports were open. He heard shouts in the corridors, the usual noises of meetings and comparisons of stories, after a liberty.
Crew, he decided.
Suddenly the noises weren’t friendly. He heard angry shouts, guessed from chance words he could pick up that two of the crew had had a prior set-to on dockside, and heard other voices trying to break it up, some woman yelling there were going to be officers.