Merchanter's Luck

Curran fixed him with his eyes and got up from the repair. “That’s in,” Curran said. Being civil. But there was no softness under that voice. “What about the other one?”

“We’ll see to it. Get some rest.”

We. Neill and Deirdre. Their looks were like Curran’s; and suddenly Allison was back in the entry to the corridor.

“There’s stuff in there,” she said, not complaining, reporting. “Is that yours, Stevens?”

“Use it if you like.” It was an immolation, an offering. “Or pack it when you can get to it. There’s stuff left from my family.”

“Lord, Stevens. How many years?”

“Just move it. Use it or pack it away, whichever suits you. Maybe you can get together and decide if there’s anything in the cabins that might be of use to you. There’s not that much left.”

A silence. Allison stood there. “I’ll see to it,” she said. She walked away with less stiffness in her back than had been in the first leaving. And the rest of them—when he looked back—they had a quieter ma

Or they were thinking the way other passengers had thought, that it was a strange ship. A stranger captain.

“Going offshift,” Curran said, and followed Allison.

Neill and Deirdre were left, alone with him, looking less than comfortable, “Install the next?” Neill said.

“Do that,” Sandor said. “I’ve got a jump to set up.”

He turned, settled into the cushion still warm from Allison’s body. Lucy continued on automatic, traversing Pell System at a lazy rate.

Of Norway there was now no sign. Station was giving nothing away on that score.

A long way, yet, for the likes of a loaded merchanter, to the jump range. Easy to have set up the coordinates. He went over the charts, turned off the sound on comp, ran the necessities through—started through the manual then, trying to figure how to silence comp for good.

(I’ll get it on tape, Ross. For myself. Lose no words. No program. Nothing. Figure how to access it from my quarters only.)

But Ross knew comp and he never had, not at that level; Ross had done things he did not understand, had put them in and wound voice and all of it together in ways that defied his abilities.

(But, Ross, there’s too much of it. Everywhere, everything. All the care—to handle everything for me—and I can’t unwind it. There’s no erase at that level: not without going into the system and pulling units…

(And Lucy can’t lose those functions…)

“We got it.” Neill was leaning on the back of the cushion, startled him with the sudden voice. “Got it done.—Is there some kind of problem, there?”

“Checking.”

“Help you?”

“Why don’t you get some sleep too?”

“You’re in worse shape.”

“That’s all right.” A smooth voice, a casual voice. His hands tended to shake, and he tried to stop that “I’m just finishing up here.”

“Look, we know our business. We’re good at it.”

“I don’t dispute that.”

Deirdre leaned on the other side of the cushion. ‘Take some help,” she said. “You can use it”

“I can handle it”

“How long do you plan to go on handling it?” Neill asked. “This isn’t a solo operation.”

“You want to be of help, check to see about those trank doses for jump.”

“Is something wrong there?”

“No.”

“The trank doses are right over there in storage,” Neill said. “No problem with that”

“Then let be.”

“Stevens, you’re so tired your hands are shaking.”

He stared at the screens. Reached and wiped everything he had asked to see. The no-sound command went out with it. It always would. It was set up that way.

“Why don’t you get some rest back there?”

“I’ve got the jump set up,” he said. He reached and put the lock back on the system; that much he could do. “You two take over, all right?” He got up from the chair, stumbled and Neill caught his arm. He shook the help off, numb, and walked back to the area of the couches to lie down again.

They would laugh, he thought; he imagined them hearing that voice addressing a boy who was himself, and they would go through all of that privacy the way they went through the things in the cabins.

He should never have reacted at all, should have taken the lock off and let her and the others hear it as a matter of course. But they pla

He was, perhaps, what the others had said, crazy. Solitude could do that, and perhaps it had happened to him a long time ago.

And he missed Ross’s voice, even in lying down to sleep. What he discovered scared him, that it was not their hearing the voices in Lucy that troubled him, half so much as their discovering the importance the voices had for him. He was not whole; and that had never been exposed until now—even to himself.

He did not sleep. He lay there, chilled from the air and too tired to get up and get a blanket; tense and trying in vain to relax; and listening to two Dubliners at Lucy’s controls, two people sharing quiet jokes and the pleasure of the moment. Whole and healthy. No one on Dublin had scars. But the war had never touched them. There were things he could have more easily said to Mallory than to them, in their easy triviality.

Mallory did not know how to laugh.

They reached their velocity, and insystem propulsion shut down; Allison felt it, snugged down more comfortably in the bed and drifted off again.

And waked later with that feeling one got waking on sleepovers, that the place was wrong and the sounds and the smells strange.

Lucy. Not Dublin but Lucy. Irrevocable things had happened. She felt out after the light switch on the bed console, brightened the lights as much as she could bear, rolled her eyes to take in the place, this two meter by four space that she had picked for hers… but there was a clutter in the locker and storage, a comb and brush with blond hair snarled in it, a few sweaters, underwear, an old pair of boots, other things—just left. And cold … the heat had been on maybe since last night, had not penetrated the lockers. A woman’s cabin. Newer, cleaner than the rest of the ship, as if the ship had gotten wear the cabin had not.

Pirates, Stevens had said; pirates had killed them all. If it was one of those odd hours when he told the truth.

There was nothing left with a name on it, to know what the woman had been, what name, what age—not rejuved: the hair had been blond. Like Stevens’ own.

Or whatever the name might have been.

And how did one man escape what happened to the others? That question worried her: why, if pirates had gotten the others-he had stayed alive; or how long ago it had been, that a ship could wear everywhere but these sealed cabins. Questions and questions. The man was a puzzle. She stirred in the bed, thought of sleep-over nights, wondered whether Stevens had a notion to go on with that on the ship as well, in cabins never made for it.

Not now, she thought; not in this place. Not in a dead woman’s bed and in a ship full of deceptions. Not until it was straight what she had brought her people into. She was obliged to think straight, to keep all the options open. And keeping Stevens off his balance seemed a good idea

Besides, it was business aboard—and no time for straightening out personal reckonings, no time for quarrels or any other thing but the ship under their hands.

The ship, dear God, the ship: she ached in every bone and had blisters on her hands, but she had sat a chair and had the controls in her hands—and whatever had gone on aboard, whoever the woman who had had this room and died aboard—whatever had happened here, there was that; and she had her cousins about her, who would have mortgaged their souls for an hour at Dublin’s boards and sold out all they had for this long chance. She could not go back, now, to waiting, on Dublin, for the rest of a useless life.