So now Austin Bowe was Corinthians senior captain. Mischa and Marie kept current using dockside sources he didn’t have, clearly they did.
“I’ve done my job, “ Marie said, “I’ve worked for this ship. Where does he get off, calling me on the deck like that, in front of the whole damned crew?”
“I think he just wanted you to know, before the word got out—he couldn’t leave…”
“The hell he couldn’t! The hell he couldn’t manage the intercom. Wake up, Marie, oh, by the way, Marie, could you come up here, Marie? Damn him!”
“I’m sorry.” When Marie blew, it was the only safe thing to, say. Teenaged cousins clustered in the corridor, now, down by the infirmary. Probably it was a shock case, some young fool cheating on the nutri-packs. Every half-grown kid thought he knew what was enough—at least once in his life.
“Mischa’s going to be talking to you, “ Marie said. “I know his ways. He’s going to be telling you all his good reasons why poor Marie can’t be trusted outside. Poor Marie’s just too emotional to do her job. Marie who got raped and beaten half to hell while her mother and her brother dithered about station law just might do something like go down the dock and take a cargo hook to the son of a bitch that did it, because poor Marie just never got over it. I chose to have you because I choose what happens to me, and Mischa doesn’t trust poor Marie to manage her own damned life! Well, poor Marie is going to go around to her office and study the market reports and see if there’s any way in hell to screw Austin Bowe’s ship lit the financial market, legally, because that’s my arena! So when dear Mischa calls you in to tell you you’ve got to spy on poor Marie, for the sake of the ship, you’ll know just what to tell him.”
“He wants to see me.”
“How could I not guess? Tell him to—” Marie shut her mouth. “No, tell him whatever you want to tell him. But I’m not crazy, I’m not obsessed. Motherhood’s not my career, I’ve always been clear on that, but you’ve turned out all right.” She reached—in teenage years he’d flinch—she’d fought that piece of hair all his life. She brushed it away from his eyes. It fell. “Tell Mischa he’s an ass and I said so.—It was a long time ago I told you kill that son of a bitch that fathered you. It was a bad time, all right? I made some mistakes. But you’ve turned out all right.”
It was the first time Marie had ever admitted that. She paid him a compliment, and he latched on to it with no clear idea how much she meant by it—like a fool, he tucked it into that little soft spot he still labeled mama, and knew very well that Marie of all people wasn’t coming down with an attack of motherhood. She was absolutely right. It wasn’t her specialty—though she had her moments, just about enough to let on maybe there was something there, enough to make you want a whole lot more than Marie was ever going to give, enough sometimes to make you feel you’d almost attained something everybody else was born having.
She walked away, on her way to her office.
The general com blasted out the announcement that juniors should be careful about the nutri-packs, and take their dosages faithfully.
You could guess. Some kid down in infirmary had muscle cramps he thought he’d die of and a headache to match.
Always a new generation of fools. Always the ones that didn’t believe the warnings or read the labels.
He’d trade places with that kid—anything but show up in Mischa’s office and listen to Mischa’s complaints about Marie. Mischa couldn’t tell Marie to sit down and shut up. He didn’t know why, exactly, Mischa couldn’t. But something Marie had said a moment ago, about her mother and Mischa waiting for station law—that was another bit in a mosaic he’d put together over the years, right pieces and wrong pieces. Put them in and take them out, but never question Marie too closely or you never got the truth.