Tripoint

"Because I didn't lie to you! I want to help you! Can't you take loyalty when you get it?"

"I take it. For what it's worth."

"God, Marie!" He couldn't get his breath. He hung on to the pole as the transport swerved. "This is crazy!"

" I'mcrazy. Hasn't Mischa told you? Poor Marie's just not that stable."

"You're acting like it!" There were people all around them, giving them room, determinedly avoiding their vicinity even standing shoulder to shoulder with them. He couldn't get breath enough to argue. He felt crushed by the crowds. He clung to the pole with one hand, people sitting behind them, the dock business frontage passing in a blur. Green sector was coming after blue, where, according to what they'd seen coming in, Corinthianwas docked. "Where are we going? The obvious?"

"Not quite," Marie said, leaving him to wonder, because they couldn't discuss murder on a crowded transport.

He didn't want Marie arrested. Marie wasn't going to give him an answer here anyway, and he wasn't entirely sure, by that last answer and by Marie's sarcasm about poor Marie and Mischa, that Marie wasn't still on to something that didn't involve attacking Corinthianbare-handed, or doing something that could get both of them… he recalled Mischa's warning all too vividly, and had a sickly and immediate fear in the pit of his stomach… caught by station police and ground up fine in station law.

Held on station while the ship went on without them. Psych-adjusted, however far that went, until they didn't threaten anyone.

Stationers wouldn't kill you, no, they didn't believe in the death penalty. When the psychs were through with you, you couldn't even wish you had that option. That was what Marie was risking, and he shut up, because he didn't knowwhat the local law was; he didn't know whether just suspicion of intent to commit a crime could get you arrested—it could, on Cyteen Outer Station, and he didn't want to talk about specifics or name names with witnesses all around them. He just clung to the pole on the overcrowded transport, watched Marie for some evidence of an intent to bolt, and watched the numbers pass as they trundled along from blue dock, where the government and the military ships came in—a government contracted cargo didn't entitle them—toward green dock, ordinary merchanter territory, closer and closer to Corinthian.

The transport stopped just before the green section doors. Three passengers got on, maybe ten or fifteen people got off. A transport passed going the other direction, and stopped near them. He stood ready to move in case Marie should try to lose him again, and go the other way around the station rim. But she stayed still, refused when he pointed out to her that there was a seat free. Someone else took it. Marie held to the pole, not saying anything, but sharp and eager and not at all distraught—happy, he kept thinking, uneasily, happy and alive to her surroundings in a way he'd never seen in his life.

They passed the section doors and rolled into green. He didn't know Corinthian'sexact berth, but he had it pegged from the visual display as somewhere a third of the way into green out of blue.

He wasn't ready for Marie's hop off the transport as it slowed for a flag-down. He jumped, and tagged her quick pace along the frontage of bars and sleepovers, overtook her as she stopped and waited for him.

"What are you doing?" he hissed. "Marie, what are you doing? Tellme when you're getting off!"

"The berth's right down there," Marie said, gazing down-ring, deeper into green. "They're showing as offloading."

He could see the orange light, but only a single transport was sitting, loaded, at the berth. "Not moving."

"Taking their own time, for certain. I want a look at the warehouse and the company where that's going. The transport logo says Miller."

It sounded better than shooting at Corinthiancrew. "What are we looking for, specifically?"

"What we can find. What they're dealing in. " She grabbed his sleeve and drew him back against the frontage of a trinket shop as a man walked past them. He was confused for a moment, looking for obvious threat on the man, but Marie didn't let up.

"That's a Corinthianpatch. Corinthianofficer."

Sleeve-patch on the light green coveralls showed a black circle, an object he understood was some kind of ancient helmet. Crossed missiles. Spears. He'd learned that word from Marie. The patch had never looked half as much merchanter as military.

But, then, that described Corinthianto a tee.

And that might even be a cousin, striding along as if he owned the dock. Or a cousin's shipmate, he amended the thought, considering that the slurs about hire-ons and sex as a pre-req for employment that he'd heard all his life from his cousins were probably entirely true. He found himself nervous, unaccountably afraid, even in this degree of proximity to the ship and a side of his life he didn't want to meet.

"Come on," Marie said, and tugged at his arm, urging him closer to that berth.

"No!" He disengaged, grabbed her arm and drew her back. "You said you'd settle with them in the market. You said you were looking for. something in the data."

"Scared?"

"You can't go down there, I won't let you go down there."

"Won't let me?"

"I won't. If they spot a Spritepatch, they're going to be all over us. It's crazy, Marie! If you can fix him through the market, do it, I'm with you, I'll help you, but I'm not going to see you go down there and do something stupid!"

"I'm fine. What's to worry about? Afraid to say hello to your father? I'm sure he'd be interested."

The cousins who gave him trouble had nothing on Marie. "I doubt he knows I exist. Unless you know a reason for him to."

"Interesting question."

"Marie,—for God's sake—"

"It's not a problem, Tom, I don't know why you're making it a problem. We just go a little closer, have a look around…"

"You lied to me."

"I didn't lie."

"Marie, what do you care now? After twenty years, for God's sake, what could you possibly careabout that man? I don't. I don't give a damn where he is, what he does, I don't want to meet him, I don't want to know anything about him."

"Are you afraid?"

"No, I'm not afraid, but—"

"Liar yourself."

"Do you want him to rule your life, Marie? Is what happened twenty years ago going to govern your whole damned career?"

Marie's hand was in motion, and he'd gotten faster over the years. He blocked it. It stung, even so.

"Don't you lecture me!" Marie hissed. "Don't you lecture me, Thomas!"

"'Bygones be bygones.' Hell!"

He wasn't looking for the second try. He didn't intend the force of the hand that blocked it.

"Cut it out, Marie!"

"Don't you lift a hand to me, don't you ever lift a hand, you hear me? Damnyou!"

"I said cut it out!" He intercepted the third try, realized he was holding too tight and let go. "I'm not him, dammit, Marie, I'm not him, God, stop— stopit, Marie!"

She got a breath. She was absolutely paper white, staring at him with white-edged eyes, mouth open—he was shaking. She could still do that to him, he didn't know why, except that she could make him mad and that when he was mad he didn't think. He could hit her in his temper and maybe hurt her, maybe wantto hurt her, that was the fear that paralyzed him.