So why give a damn if somebody got off for a month at his expense? He wasn’t hurt. Didn’t matter what somebody had done to him that he didn’t half know about. Didn’t matter what he’d done, asleep…
He jerked, swung his hands back to catch the walls beside him, half-twisted a knee… it was that violent, that vivid an illusion of falling. Sexual arousal. Pain. Terror. He was back in jump-space.
Held his eyes open, even from blinking, while the surfaces dried in the vortex of warm air. He couldn’t see the shower wall. He knew it was white. He couldn’t remember white. He tried, desperately, and got something like UV. Glaring. Burning into his open eyes.
White, then, finally, white. Ordinary, cheap, gold-flecked paneling. The roar of the fans.
He had to get out of Corinthian. Christian had promised to let him go, he remembered Christian’s quarters, the clothes, the talk… and he knew he couldn’t trust the offer… nothing’s for free, echoed in the back of his skull. Nothing’s free.
He shivered, quick spasm of physical revulsion, not sure what he remembered.
Couldn’t be safe on this ship. Someone was wandering the corridors playing grotesque pranks, God knew what. A voice patiently telling him how hyperspace was configured, the equations running through his head like a nuisance piece of music, along with lying half-awake in a chaos of sequence, everything out of order, every sensation piling up with the last one—she’d said… she’d said… only the numbers were true.
His body reacted—quick, physical arousal.
Another spasm of shivering hit, then. And anger, this time—overriding everything but the common sense that said that if there was such a creature as a night-walker and if it was Capella, as he suspected…
He rested his forehead on his arms, he stared at the shower floor between his feet, and the snaking trail of the cable, the governing reality of his situation on Corinthian. He’d not liked the people he was with on Sprite… but he’d never been other than part of Sprite. He’d never had this sense of being stalked, never had to feel he hadn’t any resource whatsoever to protect himself. He was, point of fact, terrified—not so much of the night-walker whoever it was: that grotesque, strange episode wasn’t so bad as the notion he couldn’t do anything about what these people decided to do to him, no matter what they decided to do to him…
And somebody was telling him don’t believe Christian? Don’t believe in a way off this ship?
He had to. He fucking had to. He didn’t know what the next joke might be. And the captain knew—the captain had to know what was going on, knew there was such a thing as a walker, he knew who it was, and he sat smug while Christian and Capella played their dominance games, one against the other, and both of them with him—so, so damned funny, it had to be, to them…
Another shiver hit him, diminished in force. He felt sick at his stomach.
“Mr. Hawkins,” he heard, from outside. Male voice, stranger. Harsh. It sent him scrambling for his feet, and he heard the motor move the grid on its track. The next might yank the cable and him through the shower door and across the brig. He caught his balance on the wall, scraped his back on the water-vents doing it, and nipped the shower door latch.
Buck naked, confronted an officer he didn’t know, who gave him a stare as if he was a sale item in the bargain bin.
The pocket tab said Michaels.
He remembered the thump of blows falling, in the corridor, the man Tink called trouble. The presence turned out middle-aged, greying hair down to his shoulders and face set in an inbuilt scowl.
“Sir,” he said.
“Galley, mister. You’re on duty.”
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir. Two seconds. Getting my clothes.”
He flinched past Michaels in haste, grabbed his clothes off his bunk, pulled on underwear, skintights,—he couldn’t put on the shirt, and Michaels came and keyed open the bracelet, indicated he should get the boots on and get moving.
Which he did, pulling his shirt on as they left, no questions, no uninvited word of conversation or question with this man—