Maybe that was why Capella had wanted to talk to him, maybe that was why the voice in his dreams kept saying Don’t trust Christian… and maybe because the warning had come in hyperspace it threaded its way into his waking mind without any denying it… that voice was Capella, too, he was sure it was, and he couldn’t help doubting, and couldn’t figure what Christian was doing.
An expensive favor. Clearly. He might have to revise his opinion on Christian. Maybe Christian was paying a price for what he did, and had to shove him out the door hard and fast and for his own selfish reasons, but Christian hadn’t had to give him the money.
Christian left, without putting the cable on—left him to the catcalls and promises of the crew outside. He’d heard the door lock. For the first time he was glad it was locked, and he hoped opening it wasn’t just a button push.
“Hey, pretty-boy,” someone yelled.
He went to his bunk and sat down. In a moment more, the take-hold sounded, and he took a firm grip on the inset handhold, next to the e-panel.
Interminable minutes, then, to dock. He sat and tried not to chase those circular paths of thought again, why, or how, or what the choices were. His were all made.
Maybe there was a chance of seeing Marie again. Of his own quarters, on Sprite.
Hell, they’d have bumped somebody into his space. There was always a waiting list, and his cousins wouldn’t have waited till the sheets were washed.
Didn’t bloody miss them. That was the unhappy truth. Marie… Marie wasn’t an affection, she was a bleeding wound. But she was his bleeding wound. He couldn’t but ask himself where she was and what was happening to her. He liked Tink. He was glad he’d met Tink. He couldn’t say that about a lot of people. But he had to get back. Something about bad pennies always turning up.
Mischa was going to be so glad to see him. Rodman was going to die. It was a kind of revenge. Let them think they were rid of him. He didn’t know what Rodman would say. He was almost homesick to hear it. Didn’t even want to beat hell out of him. They were getting old for that solution. In a couple of weeks subjective time, he’d suddenly arrived at that point of maturity.
Give him a couple of weeks with Rodman, he’d recover his edge.
Bump and touch. It wasn’t easy to claim a head injury with that dock. No fault to find in the station’s computers, the ship’s engineers, or the pilot at the helm.
Butterflies hit his stomach. As soon as that touch came, the crew outside the bars left their take-hold points and started for the airlock, while the echo of the grapples locking was still ringing through the hull. The corridor emptied. Fast.
Then he thought… maybe Christian won’t come. Maybe it’s all a joke.
Maybe Austin caught him with the documents. Maybe Capella spilled the whole business.
Inner lock opened, then the outer, crash-crash-thump, with the slight rush of air you almost always got. It smelled… of something he’d never in his life smelled. Exotic and fresh, and wonderful. It was Pell. Downbelow.
He wanted to go. He truly wanted to.
The grid started retracting. Christian showed up, outside. “Hurry up,” Christian snarked at him, and he hurried, out and along with Christian, overtaking the crew in the airlock. Christian yelled for quiet, ordered a line-up along the wall, started calling out names and sorting through the passports and papers.
“Anybody I didn’t call, stay the hell aboard, go find the chief and tell her you need documents.”
There was one, who swore and complained he’d turned in his fuckin’ papers, he hadn’t had them, it was a Corinthian screw-up.
“It’s a clerical, all right. Just get back there,” Christian said, and strode along the ragged line, holding him by the elbow, the fistful of passports in the other. “Come on. Stay a damn line, for God’s sake! Look like business, and don’t mouth off to Pell customs, they got a nasty habit of dropping you out of computers, screw your accounts, you don’t need that kind of trouble, so shut up!”