Tripoint

Maybe, with luck, and substantial evidence, she could get the cops into Miller's warehouse.

"Marie."

"I'm not deaf." The station files were in database and wouldn't be accessed from Sprite's ops boards, the Rules were against it. Unfortunately so was the barrier system. So one trekked in and asked questions, and even load-splicing couldn't fit the total DB onto any data storage medium that the casual questioner might carry into the Trade Bureau.

"Mischa's been worried."

"I don't know why." Another splice. Another capture. Hours to reconstruct the bastard when she got it home.

"He's not happy about the fines, Marie."

"I imagine not. Sorry about that. We'll make it up."

"You're due back to handle offloading."

"Charles can do it. He's perfectly competent."

"What are you doing?"

"Trade information. Data. What else is the Trade Bureau for?"

"Fine. Fine. I'll tell him.—Tell Tom get his rear back on duty. You don't need him here."

Saja was Tom's officer, on the bridge. Saja had reason to ask.

Saja had actual need-to-know where Tom was. And should, by now. She turned away from the monitor and looked at him straight-on, with the least disturbed inkling of things not quite in order.

"He's not with me," she said. "Have the cops got him?"

"The cops didn't arrest anybody, either side. He's not with you. He's not on the ship. I called them five minutes ago, max."

Wandering around the docks looking for her. "The damned fool," she said.

"That ship's out of dock, Marie. It's outbound."

She knew where the ship was. She looked at the clock on the wall of the Trade Bureau. Hours out. Computers ate up human time—you lost track between keystrokes and during processing.

And Saja was saying Tom could be withthat ship?

She didn't think so. "He's not that stupid. He's searching the bars, is where he is."

"We've got people all over the bars. We're looking. For you. And for Tom. You're accounted for. Where's Tom?"

"Wherever he thinks I'd go. Bars. Sleepovers.—Miller Transship." She didn't want to suggest that last name. She didn't want them forewarned. But—" Corinthian'sbroker. Miller Transship. Warehouses. Phone Sprite-com, get them to inquire at Miller's, just down the row from Corinthian'sberth."

"Miller's," Saja said, and went, she supposed, for a phone.

They just weren't searching right. Tom was going to duck them. The kid was no fool.

But the more they stamped around searching for the damn kid, disturbing evidence…

Most urgently, they needed to find the damn kid and quit stirring things up, before he or they did do something stupid.

She was uneasy. Couldn't really remember where she was in the data problem. Damn the brat, he'd always had a knack for disturbing her concentration.

And Tom probably wasstaying out of reach and deliberately out of touch with Spritesimply because he thought shewas staying out of touch (true, until now) and he was looking for her. It could take a while to reel him in.

Though you'd think once Corinthianhad gone on the board for Departure, the kid would catch a notion that the game was up at that point, retreat, call Spriteand report in… since she, at that point, had no more reason to stay under-surface.

Damn.

He wouldshow up. He hadto show up. She didn't want to leave her search looking for an erratic, jump-at-shadows brat who was old enough to take care of himself.

She jabbed a key, dumped the current operation, pocketed her data-cards on the way to the door, and swore to kill the kid when she found him.

—ii—

TOM STARED AT THE CEILING, feeling the push on the ship and thinking how if he'd had the presence of mind to have counted when the shove started he could have told something about the actual v, based on the undock pattern.

But what did it matter? Corinthianwas going and he was going with it,

No way Spritecould throw over that government contract to chase after him. Not even Marie could talk them into it.

Only hope to God that Mischa's fears were exaggerated and Corinthianwasn't going to lay for Spriteout in the dark.

Out in the same dark, a body could go out the airlock and never be reported, if his own biological father wanted to get rid of him. And what paternal interest had Austin Bowe ever needed in the offspring he'd probably… spacer-fashion… scattered on God-knew-what ships? Men didn't generally keep up with their own. They had their own ship-board nieces and nephews, if they had sisters. And always they had cousins. Men didn't have to give a damn. And Bowe hadn't a reputation for fatherly concern. The Bowe he'd heard about couldthrow a man out the airlock.

Better than some ways to go, he thought in morbid self-persuasion, while the ship ripped along toward that deep cold. The absolute zero was supposed to get you before you felt much. You froze solid before you could get a breath of vacuum. You frosted your lungs. Your eyes froze and your blood froze and you'd be floating with the dust, exactly the way your outbound breath had left you—until some star near enough went nova and you got shoved along on the wavefront and included in the infall of a next-generation star.

Or none might be near enough and you'd just drift there till entropy slowed down the stars for good.

A permanent sort of half-life, as it were.

Permanent as the galaxy. No damn fathersto deal with.

Father, hell! There had to be a word for a guy with as little invested as Austin Bowe.

Rapist talked about his relations with the mother in question. Society hadn't made a word for his relations with the kid that resulted.

Hadn't made a word for the situation between them or given him a word he wanted to say to Austin Bowe.

Thanks for screwing my mother? Thanks for not showing up till now. Screw you, sir, for a damned self-centered son of a bitch.

Acceleration was steady at +2or thereabouts. The straps would hold against five and six times that. He'd no fear of them giving way. But Corinthianspent energy like it was handed out free, and he measured his breaths, feeling the anger of a ship forced out of port, maybe out of civilization altogether.

Or—remotely possible, if Marie had found her evidence—and his heart picked up a beat—they could have the military on their tail.

Which wasn't good news, to think of it. Go up in a fireball, they would, then, and good-bye Tom Hawkins.

It was a nightmare. He didn't know where it had started, whether he'd been in it all his life and this turn of things was someone else's doing, or whether he was that abysmally stupid he'd let himself in for it, going into that warehouse and caring about Marie.

He didn't want to think about reasons. He'd never got it straight about caring for people. His aunt Lydia who'd studied psych had told him when he was five he was emotionally deprived and he never would be normal. So he figured he had to copy, because he was different enough, and he figured he'd better pick good people to copy, like his nursery-mates, sometimes, like Marie sometimes, when he was living with her. Like Saja, again, when he got to know Saja. Mischa…

Definitely not Mischa.

Saja was all right. People liked Saja. But Saja wasn't stupid.

Saja wouldn't have gotten into it. Even if he cared what happened to Marie. And he didn't think it was Marie's fault, him being in the warehouse, he couldn't blame that on her.

He couldn't tell why things happened, most of the time. He certainly couldn't figure this one. He didn't know as much as most people. He'd always figured in the scales of the universe he'd somehow come a little short of what ordinary people got, and not known a lot of things ordinary people knew. It wasn't not knowing his father. A lot of people didn't know that. It was not knowing other things. It was like so damn many contrary signals from Marie and from aunt Lydia and Mischa and them changing their stories all the time, and the fact nobody else liked him much, of his agemates. There was just something wrong, there was something he'd missed, and getting snatched away from Spritelike that, and never seeing anybody again, it was just one more ripping away of information he couldn't get now. He wasn't going back, nobody could get back to their ship unless they were on the same route… he'd accumulate station-debt waiting, even if Bowe let him go finally back at Viking; and he wasn't honestly sure Mischa would spend the ship-account to get him out of hock.