Merchanter's Luck

His face went red. For a moment he said nothing at all. Then his eyes hooded and he leaned back. “Hoosh, what a tongue on ye, Allie. Do you really want the details? I’ll give you all you like.”

She smiled, a move of the lips, not the rest of her face. “Doubtless you would. No doubt at all. You had your try; and he knocked you flat, didn’t he? So while we’re discussing my personal involvement here, suppose we add that to the count: is it just possible you have something personal at stake?”

“All of that’s aside. The question’s not what we see; it’s what Stevens is… and where we are. And what we do about it.”

“And I’m telling you it didn’t work.”

“You stopped it. It’s ugly; it’s an ugly thing; I don’t like it; but it would have settled it and your way hasn’t got us anywhere but back behind start. Way behind.”

She thought that over, and it was true, “Where did we ever get off doing something like this? Where did we ever learn to think about things like this?”

“It’s not us. It’s the company you came up with.”

“Suppose he told the truth. Suppose that for a minute.”

“I don’t suppose it. You’re back where you were, falling for a good act. And you think every customs agent and banker who ever believed him didn’t think he looked sincere? Sincere’s his stock in trade, him with that fair, blue-eyed i

She took a napkin, blotted the spilled coffee, wiped the bottom of the cup and took a drink, and a second.

“So we go on,” Curran said. “Next jump—and him ru

“What would you do?”

“No more than I had to.”

She shook her head. Got up and cleaned the plate and tossed the cup, put things in the washer.

“Alli-son. I’m not willing to risk my life on your maybe.”

She looked back at him. “You’re my number two. Isn’t that your job?”

“If there’s reason—”

“My reason is a judgment call. And I’m making it.”

“On what percentage? It gets us into another spot like this one. On that understanding—just so we agree where we’re going—it’s my job. Right.”

She walked over and squeezed his shoulder, walked past and out of the galley.

Chapter XIV

That’s five minutes to range limit,” Allison said. Transmitting advisement to our escort.”

“Got it,” Sandor murmured back, busy at final adjustments. The reports from the other stations came in, routine and indicating all stable. It had an especially valuable feel, the familiar cushion, the rhythm of operations, his hands on the controls again, as if nothing had happened. Wild thoughts came to him, like stringing the next two jumps, seeing whether his Dubliner companions had the stomach for that—he imagined screams of terror and shouts of rage; and maybe they could not haul the velocity down —would become a missile traveling out into the Deep beyond any control, too much mass for her own systems and exponentially doomed… Or even minutely fouling up the schedule they had given to the military that still ran beside them. Being hauled down by Alliance military—that would give the Dubliners something to worry about… if it was worth falling into the hands of the military himself. He still preferred his Dubliners to either fate. Allison and Curran and Deirdre and Neill—Allison. Allison. It hurt, knowing what she had wanted; what, subconsciously, he had seen—that for her it was Lucy herself. She wanted what he wanted, the way he wanted—and the loneliness in her was filled without him. She had family. He had known. It was his solitude that gave him strange ideas. It was listening to stationer tapes and forgetting what family was, and where right and wrong was.

Forgetting Ross and Mitri and all the voyagers in the dark. For getting what Lucy contained… as if Dubliners could forget their own ways.

He had had time in the hours shut in his cabin—in the cabin that had been Papa Lou’s, amid the remnant of things that he and Ross and Mitri had not sealed away under the plates, taking everything that might have identified the Kreja name to customs —he had had time to reckon what had happened. He might have hated them. He reckoned that But it was too tangled for hate. It was survival, and maybe it had started out as something better than that.

He understood Allison, he reckoned: generous sometimes, and where it touched her Name, hard enough to cut glass. She would not have come to him in worthlessness, the way he would not have left Lucy and gone to her pe

Even—he had reckoned, with more painful slowness—there was worth in Curran Reilly, if he could only discover what it was. He believed that because Allison believed it, and what Allison valued must be worth something. He took that on faith. There was worth in all of them.

But he meant to break Curran Reilly’s arm at next opportunity.

And meanwhile he had come out of his cabin, nodded a pleasant good day, sat down at controls and proceeded with jump prep as matter of factly as if he were only coming on watch.

“Set it and retire?” he had asked of Allison, as blandly i

“You’ll take her,” Allison had to say. There was no safe alternative, things being as they were with comp. And Curran’s face, a twist of his head and a look in his direction, had had the look of a man with a difficult mouthful going down.

No word to him yet of warnings. Maybe they felt threats superfluous. They were. Data came to him on schedule, to screens, to his ear, quiet voices and businesslike.

“Two minutes to mark.”

“All stable.”

“M/D to screen three. All on mark.”

“Scan to four, Norway’s moving.”

His heart did a turn. The image came up on screen four, Mallory was underway—had been, for some lightbound time.

“Message incoming,” Neill said. “Acknowledge?”

“Put it through,” he said… he said, and not Allison. The realization that the moment was thrown in his lap and not routed to Allison shocked him. But they had to: the military would expect him. ‘That’s a tight transmission,” Neill said. “Same mode reply… We’re receiving you, Odin”

“This is Odin command,” the answer came. “Captain Mallory sends her compliments and advises you there are hazards in the Hinder Star zones. Wish you luck, Lucy”

That was polite. The tone surprised him. He punched in his own mike. “This is Stevens of Lucy: do we expect escort at our next point?”

A silence. “Location of Alliance ships is restricted information. Exercise due caution in contacts.”

“Understood, Odin command.” On the number four screen, Norway was in decided motion, gathering speed with the distinctive dopplered flickers of a military ship on scan.

“Odin’s just braked,” Curran said. “Losing them on vid.”

“Up on scan,” Deirdre said, and that was so: the image was there, the gap between them widening.

“Twenty-four seconds to mark,” Allison said. “Jump point minus fifteen minutes twenty seconds.”

He checked the belts, the presence of the trank on the counter. His eyes kept going back to that ominous and now closer presence coming up on them. Norway could lie off and make nothing of their days of passage when she woke up and decided to move. He tried to ignore that monumental fact, bristling with weapons, bearing down by increments scan was only guessing. He went about his private preparations as his crew had begun to do: settling in, being sure of comfort and safety for the jump to come.

“Minus ten minutes,” Allison murmured. “Hang, what’s Mallory up to?”

“She won’t crowd us,” Sander said. “She’s not crazy, whatever else.”

He put the trank in. Began to glaze over… His concern for everything diminished. He stared at the scan image for an instant, hyper and fascinated, recalled the necessity to track on other things and focused his mind down the tu