“Sabrina Perrault. Sabrina Perrault-Cadiz. Saby, for short. Tink says you’re Cargo.”
“Yes, ma’am. “ It was his lie. He had to stick by it. At least it was something he knew. He was going to ask about the trank, before somebody forgot…
“Thomas. Is that what you go by?”
“Tom.”
“Tom Bowe-Hawkins. I’m sorry you got snatched. I really am.”
“Thanks.—I take it you’re Medical?”
“Not me. No. Cargo.”
His lie caught up with him. Called his bluff. He knew stuff from Marie, but that was all he knew.
“It’s not a bad ship,” Saby Perrault said.
He didn’t know what to say to that. Couldn’t argue. Any ship you were born on, he guessed, wasn’t an unbearably bad ship, if it was the only one you ever knew.
“I guess,” he said. “You could tell the captain I’m not a fool. You could let me loose. I’m on this ship, I assure you I don’t want to sabotage anything.”
“Not my say,” she said, with a lift of the shoulder. “But I’ll pass it along.”
“You ever talk to the captain direct?”
“Sure. You want me to tell him something?”
He was sorry he’d asked. He didn’t want to. He didn’t know why he’d opened his mouth. But Saby was the least threatening human he’d met aboard and he wanted to know where the chain of communication was. “Yeah.” He tried to think. “Say hi. Love the food. Tink’s a human being. The bunk’s lousy.”
Saby laughed.
“I’ll do that. Anything you particularly need?”
“Change of clothes. Shower. Shave.”
“Shower works. There’s a shaver on the panel.”
He held up the cable. “Key.”
“Not authorized. Sorry.”
“I’m stuck in these clothes. I don’t have my kit. I don’t have anything but what I’m in. They didn’t encourage me to pack.”
“Do what I can. Has to be cleared.”
“You mean the captain has to clear it.”
“Do what I can,” she repeated, and gave a shrug, and started away.
“Sera,—”
“Ms,” she said. “Ms. Perrault. “ She’d stopped, just in view. Looked at him. He looked at her, with the disturbed feeling… maybe it was the dream… that he desperately wanted her to come back, he wanted her to talk, and fill the silence and be reasonable… because she did seem humanly sympathetic. Sane. Somebody who might believe he wasn’t crazy, or explain to him that his father wasn’t.
She knew his father. Even sounded easy in the relationship. Friendly.
A whole several breaths she stood there, and he couldn’t think what to say to keep her talking, and she didn’t find anything. Then she walked off with all the promises of help he’d had since he’d come aboard this ship… promises that suddenly, on a friendly voice and an infectious grin, suddenly had him weak in the knees and wanting her to stay for one more look, one more assurance he wasn’t alone down here, she was going to appeal to the captain on his behalf and get the man who’d, after all other considerations, fathered him… to come down here and become a face and a presence and listen to his side of things.
And pigs will go to space, he told to himself, without any knowledge what pigs were, beyond creatures that built flimsy houses. He’d no more knowledge what was the matter with him, beyond shot nerves and jangled hormones, or whatever had made him scratch himself bloody in an erotic dream that had gotten wholly out of hand. He didn’t have any miraculous truth to communicate to Austin Bowe, he didn’t have any just cause to trust Tink or Saby Perrault-Cadiz-whoever-she-was, and damned sure not his so-claimed half-brother, who clearly didn’t like him on sight. He’d been set up before in his life—earliest education he’d gotten, not to pin hopes on a cousin suddenly just too damned friendly, and too unreasonably on his side.
He wobbled back to his bunk, vengefully jerked the cable out of his way, sat down in despair and punched the mattress with his hand, there being nothing else in reach.
He hated them, he hated them one and all, Tink and Saby and Christian and Capella and every other name he knew along with his father’s.