Shadow loomed over him. He rolled over to protect himself, saw Tink and another guy about the same size.
“Tried to tell you,” Tink said with a sorrowful shake of his head.
By which he figured Tink wasn’t there to kick him while he was down.
The opposite. “You need Medical, kid?” Tink asked, patting his shoulder.
He didn’t think so. His ears were ringing, his head hurt and the legs still wouldn’t work predictably, but he shook his head to the question and tried to get all the way up.
Legs buckled. Tink caught him.
“Get a cold towel,” Tink said, and, “No, they ain’t got ‘em in here, down in the galley.”
“I’m all right,” he insisted, but Tink looked at his eyes one after the other, said he should get flat and wait for the towel.
Didn’t want to. Wanted to be let the hell alone. But Tink didn’t give him that option.
Bowe’s orders. Son of a bitch, he kept thinking, son of a bitch who’d hurt Marie—Marie’d told him, told him details he didn’t want to know—before he knew what sex was, he’d known all about rape, and after that, sex and Marie and Bowe were all crosswired, the way it wasn’t in normal people, he understood that. And now this huge guy with the snakes, and Capella, and Christian, and the damned holocards and subspace and the scratches, and Bowe… it felt as if something had exploded in the middle of him, right in the gut, pain Bowe had handed out, or Marie had, or whatever in himself had deserved to be in the mess he was in. He sat there half on the floor and started shaking, and the big guy, Tink, just gathered him up and hauled him onto the bunk and covered him up.
“Shock,” Tink called it. “You’ll be all right, just breathe deep.”
Might be. Might well be, an accumulation of images, an overdose of reality. But deep breaths didn’t cure it. No matter where he looked, he was still where he was, he was still who he was, nothing cured that.
—ii—
YOU COULD FIGURE, YOU COULD damned well figure, Christian thought, with the echo of Austin’s steps still recent past his vantage point. He folded his hands tightly under his armpits—he’d learned, at fourteen, the pain of bashing one’s fist at Corinthian’s walls, or his personal preferences against Austin’s whim of the moment. He’d gotten the orders, the same as Tink had: Thomas Bowe-Hawkins was going on galley duty, Austin wasn’t talking, Austin had just had every button he owned danced over and hopped on by Thomas Hawkins, and it didn’t take a gold-plated genius to know Austin wasn’t in a mood to discuss the Hawkins case, Austin wouldn’t be in a mood to discuss the Hawkins case in a thousand years, with him, ever, end report. Austin was headed back to his lordly office, Capella was on bridge duty, running calc, Saby was on report and on duty—everybody who’d taken a hand in the brother-napping fiasco was on report or on duty.
“Christian,” came the call over his pocket-corn.
Correction. Everybody but Beatrice. Maman wanted to talk to him, bless her conniving soul, maman had just heard the news, and he’d right now as gladly have taken a bare-ass swim in the cold of the jump-point as go discuss half-brother with Beatrice.
“Christian, immediament, au cabinet. “
Now, Beatrice wanted to see him, in her sanctum sanctorum, her office, down the corridor and around the rim from Austin’s precincts. Beatrice was evidently turning Corinthian’s helm and Capella’s course-plotting over to Travis an hour and a half early for the purpose—one supposed they weren’t running blind and autoed at the moment.
So he took the lift topside, to the inner ring, soft-footed it past Austin’s shut door, to Beatrice’s office. He took a deep breath, raked his hair into order, and presented himself, perforce, to maman,—who got up and poured two drinks.
Stiff.
He took his. He sat down. Beatrice sat down. He took a drink. Beatrice took a drink and stared at him. Life had left few marks on Beatrice, except about the eyes, and right now they were sleep deprived and furious.