Tripoint

It wasn't the picture Mischa had painted, of an out-of-control crazy, hell-bent on murder. Marie had a case. She was building it piece by piece, withthe trade records, through the trade records, the way Marie had told him outside the lift, and, damn it, she confused him. Marie was lying or Mischa didn't give her credit for what she could do with her computers and her sense of what was normal and not—Marie was a walking encyclopaedia of trade and market statistics, imports, exports, norm and parameters, and if Marie thought she had a sense of something in the pattern when Corinthianhit the market boards… there might well be.

Unless Marie was deluding herself, too desperate to make a case, now, while they had Corinthianin reach of station authority.

"Can you nail him?" he asked.

"I need to get to the trade office. Myself. Do a little personal diplomacy."

An alarm went off. Late. Marie had his back to the wall in more senses than one. Suddenly it was Marie's agenda, Marie's conspiracy, not Mischa's. He made a try to save his autonomy in it. "I'll go with you. If Mischa says you shouldn't go, I'll say I'll keep track of you."

Marie looked up at him—half a head shorter than he was. Fragile-looking. But the expression in her eyes wasn't. She was steady as a high- vrock, while he lied to her, and while he remembered what Mischa had said: that Marie had to walk across the dock and back again, call it settled—an exit with honor.

And where was Marie's vindication in her twenty-year fight if her son and her brother tricked her and did everything? People on the dock might not find out. But the family would. The more people who were in on it, beyond one, that much harder it was to have it accepted that Marie had carried it off herself.

The more people… like Mischa… who knew that Marie was chasing Corinthianthrough the financial records, and, maybe, as Marie said, that she was finessing her way into things she wasn't supposed to access… the more likely Mischa was to intervene and screw things up royally.

He took a step on the slippery slope, then, knowing he was in danger, knowing Marie and the whole ship were, if things blew up.

So far as he knew, Marie couldn'tjack the station computers from outside the station system. The access numbers that any merchanter cargo chief or ship's chief tech knew were never going to get anybody into station files: merchanter ships carried techs who well knew how to get where they weren't supposed to be in any system, but stations had learned from the War years to take precautions: even Saja couldn't get into station central banks or into a ship's recorder, and Saja was good.

"You figure out everything we need," he said to Marie. "And when we dock, you go out like always. I'll go with you. I swear, Marie. I want to."

They never much looked at each other straight on—not the way he did and she did now. His heart was pounding, his brain was telling him he was a fool, but for about twenty seconds then, Marie was ma'am, and mama, and home, and all the ship-words a man had to attach to, in the ancient way of merchanter matriarchy.

"He put you up to this?" Marie asked him hoarsely.

"Yes." If one of them could twist truth inside out and confuse a man, so could he. She'd taught him. So had Mischa. "But he doesn't know I mean it."

"You son of a bitch. " Not angry, not cruel. Marie could make it into a love-note.

"You're all I've got," he said, and really felt it, for the moment, fool that he was.

"Get out of here," she said, and laughed, the grim way that Marie could when, rarely, he scored a point in their endless fencing. But she caught his arm before he could leave. "Tom. Bitch-son. Only chance. If Corinthianspooks, he's gone. Understand?"

In a lifetime, maybe her only chance at this ship. Only chance to win. Only chance to risk everything. He knew how much that meant. "Read you," he said, already a traitor to Mischa. "No question. " Betraying Mischa was easy. But he wantedMarie to get the bastard—just not… not the way he still feared she might try.

She let him go. He walked away, to escape her closer questions about Mischa and his intentions, and decided on rec and the commissary, he didn't really care.

But once he thought about it, he knew he ought to eat: jump took too much out of a body. He decided he'd better, hungry or not, and wondered if Marie had—but Marie had probably ordered in, probably had one of the junior techs bring something to her: you could do that if you were sitting Station. He should have asked her. But he wouldn't, now, didn't want back in Marie's reach.

Cousins were thick, going and coming around the commissary area, which was no more than a district in lower-deck. He hadn't, himself, checked the boards. He didn't expect assignment different than Mischa had given him. Saja had to know that he was spoken for. He hoped to God no one else had the idea what Mischa had set him to do, but rumors about Corinthian'spresence were ru

And had cousin Roberta R. ask him, brilliantly, as he eased his way through the gathering around the stack of sandwiches, "You hear about Corinthianin port?"

Then cousin remotest-thank-God-removed Yuri Curtis Hawkins added in a not discreet undertone that he'd heard they'd had thirty in hospital at Mariner the last time the ships met, and maybe they should snatch themselves some Corinthiancrew and "show them a thing or two."

"Yeah, right," another cousin said, "from the station brig, big show."

He shouldered his way past the comments, got his sandwich, ignoring the lot, but Yuri C. said, "Hey, Bowe-Hawkins, what's your idea?" and somebody else, Rodman, drawled, " Bowe-Hawkins, I hear they inbreed on Corinthian, what d' you think? You got all those crossed-up genes?"

"I think that ship's armed, it's not a regular merchanter, and we're not in a damn good situation if it gets pissed, cousin, thanks for the personal concern."

Hoots and catcalls for the exchange. He wasn't popular with Yuri or with Rodman, whose eye he'd blacked, in their snot-nosed youth. He didn't care what Rodman did or said. He cared only marginally about Yuri C. or Yuri's two half-sibs, and Roberta was no hyperspace engineer. He took his sandwich, got his drink and took his lunch to the quiet of his own quarters.

It was peace, there. He settled sideways and cross-legged on his bunk, sore from the temper fit in the gym, and ate his sandwich—he couldn't even identify the flavor. Jump did that to you, too, left you with a metallic taste that was mineral deficiency.

But he was thinking—if Marie couldtag Corinthianwith illicit trading, smuggling, whatever—there was everything Marie wanted, on a platter.

Damned right he wasn't going to take on Rodman Hawkins. He wasn't crazy, the same way Marie wasn't. You could put up with a hell of a lot to get something you wanted as badly as he wanted the question settled, wanted Marie straightened out, or something finally resolved.

So she'd wanted to keep Austin Bowe's kid, Marie had, back when the choice had been possible. She hadn't aborted him.

And a while ago she'd requested the only companionship she'd ever asked of him.—Well, not asked, but at least not rejected when he offered. That was something. That was entirely unlike Marie.

And, damn Mischa's holier-than-thou-ism, he so wanted Marie to be right this time, he so wanted Marie to have the vindication that would let Marie score her point, win her case, prove whatever Marie had needed all these years to prove.