Tripoint

TriPoint

by C. J. Cherryh

Chapter One

—i—

DREAM OF AN INTERFACE OF ENERGIES above the Einstein limit.

Dream of a phase-storm skimming what it can't envelop—until the storm slides down, down, down the nearest gravity-pit—

In this case, E. Eridani. Viking, Unionside, with ties to Pell, on the Alliance side of the line.

Shipyards and industry. Trade. Mining.

Hydrogen glows in the bow-shock. The ship dives for thermonuclear hell.

The field re-shapes itself. Almost. Once. Twice.

Becomes Sprite, inbound for the habitation zone.

The ring engages.

Body settles to the mattress.

Breaths come Viking-time now, ten, fifteen to the caesium-timed minute. Heart fibrillates and finds its beat.

Right hand gropes after the nutri-pack, left hand flutters off-target, trying to pull the tab. Hand to mouth is another targeting problem.

God-bloody-awful, going down. But if a man lay very, very still for a few minutes, the luxury of the off-duty tech, he'd find he felt a lot, lot better for swallowing all of it.

And Tom Hawkins, at twenty-three, had made close to two hundred such system drops, a few of them before he was born. At twenty-three, he was a veteran of the Trade, the Fargone-Voyager-Mariner-to-Cyteen circle that had been Sprite'sroutine.

Long time since they'd seen Viking—in a time-dilated childhood, longer since Viking had seen him.

Those had been the scary days, runs when you got into port and other ships told you you'd be crazy to go on as you pla

Mariner was all rebuilt now, modern and shining new. The pirates were mostly out of the picture. Pell resumed its role as gateway to ancestral Earth and its luxury trade. Cyteen and Pell had signed the long-negotiated trade treaty, with the final closing of the Hinder Stars, by the terms of which, Pell dropped its claim to Viking and agreed to tariff adjustments on haulers plying the Viking—Mariner run, thus promoting Viking commerce, since Viking hadn't much to sell exceptmachinery, raw materials, and accommodations for the long-haulers.

But, bad news for the smugglers—by the treaty just signed, Viking became a free port, Union by government, tax-free for Earth goods, shipped through from Pell, and for certain Union goods, shipped through from other ports.

Big boost for struggling Viking, that was what Mischa-captain-sir had said when they'd drawn their fat government contract. Bigger boost for themselves— Spritewasn't a warm-hold hauler, and only a few of her class had gotten into the lottery for the government contracts, though the Family hadn't even been in agreement at the outset to take the offer, being reluctant to fall out of their ordinary cycle, and miss their frequent rendezvous with decade-long friends on Pollyand Surinam;but the figures had worked out, showing them how they were going to get back into the loop with their trading partners—make two tightly scheduled, fast transits between Viking and Mariner, and they'd be meeting Pollyand Surinamon their trips back from Cyteen Outer Station, intersecting their old schedule for a loop out to Fargone once every other ship-year, making a literal figure eight with Bolivarand the Luiz-Romneys, who had likewise lusted after the contract and found the same objections. Spriteand Bolivartogether could do what the big combine ships did, perfectly legal, if they met schedule.

So it wasn't goodbye forever to old friends, off-ship lovers and favorite haunts—just wait-a-while.

And hello to Viking. He'd not been here since he was six—since an unscheduled long layover had provided the kids' loft a rare permission for the middles and olders in the loft to go downside, right out the lock and down the dock, with a close guard, in those wild years, of armed senior crew.

That had been impressive—their escort of uncles and aunts and mothers carrying guns at the hip, his first-ever view of a station dock in all his young ship-born life, a memory of cold, frosty breaths, browned metal and huge machinery the seniors said would snatch strayed children up and grind them into the fishcakes Viking sold.

At that age, he'd believed it absolutely, had particular suspicions certain two cousins in the group would feed him to the machines, and held tight to the crocodile-rope, gawking about but being very wary of sneak attacks by cousins and rapacious robot loaders.

Warehouses, long, long areas of warehouses, huge cans waiting loading, that was what he remembered: vending machines where they'd all gotten soft drinks and chips—lousy chips, but they'd never seen food drop out of a machine and it was a marvel. He remembered a long row of bars children weren't supposed to go into, but the seniors had let them look into one, which was dark and loud and full of people who stopped drinking and stared at them, moment frozen in a kid's remembrances.

Thirty years ago, station-time, that was. He lived ship-years, his own biological years. The arbitrariness of outside time had confused him when he was six—and still, though computers and numbers were his job and his livelihood, he fell into that childhood misconception when he tried to feelthe near forty years outsiders said he'd lived.

But that only mattered against history. He'd been six on that outing, not ten—body and mind, a staggering difference, but station officers always wanted your universal dates on the customs papers you had to fill out. To ship-dwellers, body-years mattered, and you knew those from Medical; computers calculated it by where your ship had been, what it hauled, and kept careful track all your life, never mind how long it took some long-ago planet to go around its star. Ship was your world. Ship was four hundred sixteen cousins and uncles and aunts, all Hawkinses, every one. Inside was Us, where you were born, where you had a ship-share and the freedom to come and go with the ship forever—a couple of weeks in any port and then out again, good-bye, see you next turn about, or never again. Spacers weren't in charge of sureties. It was always if, and plans changed, and ships went where the trade was.

Two hundred ship-years old, Spritewas. Not a big ship. Not as old as Dublinor Finity's End. Not a glamour ship, no long runs, no memorable action in the war, just a light-armed hard worker that kept the goods moving and delivered the heartbeat of civilization when she made port and the information of her last port flowed into the current ports. Data on banks, stock reports, trade figures, births and deaths, books, entertainments, news and inventions across the web of stars: the tick and pulse of everything human was in Sprite'sdatabanks when she docked. Some of it she was paid to carry; some was public information, obligatory for any ship that docked to carry, non-charge, to its next port. At Viking, Spritewould drink down an informational feed she hadn't had directly in years, the data of Earth-space and Alliance, such, at least, as Alliance was willing to spill to Unionside in this strange new era of peace.

That dataflood-to-come meant a lot of work ahead for Sprite, to make its own best use of what it learned—knowledge ultimately as valuable to the ship as the goods in her hold, data that was profit, and survival, for a ship that competed for its contracts and owned at least most of its own cargo. It took a lot of head-work and computer work to keep a small ship competitive in a market that saw new station-bound combines and cartels trying to tie up the trade and turn everything corporate…