Rimrunners

McKenzie—Park and Figi—all those guys—

Maybe Bernstein, too.

Wolfe took the pawn. She took his knight.

She saw it coming, then. Rook took queen in four moves. Check and mate.

She bit her lip, surveyed the board.

Knew Wolfe was several moves ahead in the other game, too.

"You can go," Wolfe said.

"Thank you, sir." She got up carefully, as if the whole place was rigged with explosives. She was sweating. She only half-felt the pain in her back.

What do I say? Enjoyed the game, sir?

Wolfe let her walk to the door, let her open it, let her walk out into the restricted section by herself.

She walked through to the bridge, through Fitch's territory to the med-area corridor, through the galley to rec and the darkened quarters.

0258 alterday.

She went to Musa, told Musa she was back. Musa was wide awake, asked her: "You all right, Bet?"

"Fine," she whispered back, only then getting a bad case of the shakes. She went right on over to NG's bunk, but Musa followed her, Musa said, "He's sleeping one off."

Sleeping one off, hell. He was tied to the damn bunk, out cold. "Dammit," she said, popped him a light one on the cheek and started working at the knot, shaking so badly she could hardly work the cord through, especially when NG came to a little and started pulling. "What'd you give him?"

"Figi's sleeper hold, for starters.—He's all right. I've been watching him."

"Hell!,—Hold still!"

"Betc"

He wasn't crazy. Not half as crazy as where she'd been. She got him loose, he hugged her till he hurt her back, but she didn't mind that. She had sore muscles and he had a bitch of a hangover, evidently, because he made a miserable sound and held his head.

"Fitch?" he asked.

"Wolfe," she said.

He dropped his hands. Musa said, beside her, "What happened?"

"Captain wanted a chess partner," she said, and almost spilled what Wolfe had been asking her for three hours, she was so aching tired and so rattled. She got it together, remembering nobody in the 'decks knew what the mofs knew about her. Most of all NG

didn't know. And she didn't know how long that would last or what he would do when he found out.

Merchanter, lost from his ship. And there was one way, in the War, that that would have happened.

"That was all," she said. "We played chess."

CHAPTER 22

WHAT HAPPENED?" was a question she got too damned often in the shower-line and at breakfast, everybody from McKenzie to Masad out of Cargo, people coming up to her, and then putting their heads together to whisper the business elsewhere.

The first time she was caught a little off-balance, and hesitated, and said, "The captain asked into it," as if it was the Fitch business, which was a damn lie, at bottom, and she wished she'd never been so stupid—like a challenge to Fitch, and using Wolfe's name for a weapon. It might get back to Fitch. It might make him think twice. It might also make him talk to the captain about it, and that wasn't the outcome she wanted, damn sure.

So she wished she could take that back. She changed it as far as she could the next time she was asked—said, "Captain wanted to ask me some questions, said keep my mouth shut."

Damn stupid, Yeager. That mouth's going to kill you someday.

She ate her breakfast with her mates, and they were worrying about Fitch, they were thinking about Wolfe and trying to reckon whether Wolfe was going to come down on her side, that was all they understood about it.

"I'd be gone," NG had said quietly, in the dark, before the little sleep she had gotten,

"except for Wolfe. I don't know why. Favor to Bernie, I guess. I don't understand it."

Most she'd ever gotten out of NG on that topic, that dozen or so words.

And when she thought about it this morning, she thought Fitch had to be worried right now, damn worried, and that she ought to be happy about that situation, ought to thank God Wolfe had stepped in, and ought to be a whole lot more cheerful than she was.

Except Fitch just meant to kill her. Wolfe seemed to have decided something last night, Wolfe had let her go, Wolfe had written her down as a liability or an asset, she didn't know which.

In either case—expendable.

Hell, she thought, sipping her morning tea, tail back in the fire. What's different than it ever was?

She had that answered until she saw NG looking at people this morning, looking around him, looking at her and Musa and paying attention to human beings the way he could those damn boards, saner this morning than she'd ever seen him.

He'd gotten drunk with friends last night, people had cared enough to sit on him and knock him stupid to save him, and she'd gotten back safe, God in the person of Wolfe had intervened to stop Fitch from killing her, and maybe things weren't going to be the hell they'd been for three years.

Yeah.

Nothing could hurt him before this. Not even Fitch. He wasn't sane enough to hurt, when I came aboard, and look at all I've done for him. Helped him no end, haven't I?

Man'd have died for me last night, all he could've done, but he'd have done it.

Maybe he's got some crazy notion my trouble is his fault. Maybe he thinks he's responsible for me, the same as for Cassel.

If he everwas responsible for Cassel.

Can't prove it, can't ever prove it, can't even do that much for him.

And what when he learns what he's been sleeping with!

Dealing with NG in a social situation was like handling a live grenade—you really had to pay attention, all the time, to the little things—like how he'd jump like he was wired if somebody touched him unexpected, he'd tense up when people came up on him, he'd do this little subtle flinch when he knew people were going to speak to him. You had to know him to know it was a flinch, but he was just on-alert all the time, schiz as hell, trying so damned hard, and sane enough to be scared, himself, that somebody was going to startle him and he was going to blow up—he held onto her and Musa like they were his lifeline, that was what he was doing at breakfast, with people asking him how he was doing, how's the head, NG?

Hughes had just made himself scarce. Headed off to work early, thank God.

And NG was doing all right, so far, with social acceptability cold sober, doing all right and once, with Freeman, even managing a thin, tentative grinc not the smartass one, the real, wide-open one.

Doing just fine until they got to Engineering and Bernstein met them with: "Yeager, Mr. Orsini wants to see you."

"It's all right," she said to NG, and touched his arm. "I know what about. No problem."

"What?" NG asked her point-blank, delaying her at the door. "Fitch?"

"They're just trying to figure out some things." Best lie she could manage. "Fitch won't lay a hand on me. You can believe it."

So she checked out of Engineering before she'd even checked in, didn't say a thing to Bernstein about last night, and Bernstein didn't say anything to her.

Probably Bernstein and Orsini had talked. Orsini and the captain would have. Maybe the captain and Fitch—last night, his day, after she had left.

So she went up-rim to Orsini's office, she sat down and she got what she thought she would, question after question, while Orsini took notes on the TranSlate.

Nossir, nossir, yessir, nossir, I don't know anything about ops, sir.