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Marie would. Marie was rich in ship-account.
But maybe Marie wouldn't want him at all, then, except to get information about Bowe. Maybe she'd call him a fool and say she didn't know why she'd bought him back… he could hear her tone of voice, as if she were talking to him right now.
But when he imagined Marie yelling at him about being a fool, about going in the warehouse, it sort of put things in perspective, as if now he knew what he'd done, and where he'd been stupid, trying to intervene in Marie's business. The law of the universe was, Marie knew what she was doing, and you didn't put your hands into it or you risked your fingers. Thatwas the mistake he'd made.
So he did understand. And the universe had a little more solid shape around him.
But he decided then, calmly, that he did want to meet Austin
Bowe after all—at least to see the man and know whether they looked alike, or what Marie had seen staring back at her all these years. That would tell him something, too, about the way of things. And that information was on this ship. That was something he could learn about himself. He could listen to Bowe. He could find out the man's habits and figure out if there was anything genetic that just somehow he'd gotten, in the way of temperament, or whatever else could get through the sieve of genetic code.
Marie said… your father's temper. Marie said… your father's ma
Aunt Lydia said most people could pattern themselves off positives. He learned to avoid negatives. Aunt Lydia said he had to define himself, by himself.
And most of all… not do things that pushed Marie's buttons.
But maybe—it was a dangerous, undermining thought, and he worked all around it for a moment—maybe, even remotely possibly… there might even be another side to Austin Bowe. Maybe Marie'd pushed hisbuttons, the way she had other people's, and things had just blown up.
Not to excuse what happened. Nothing could do that.
But maybe what she'd told Mischa and what Mischa had told her might have confused the facts.
And he didn't know why Marie should have gotten the entire truth from Mischa. Henever had.
And… more and more dangerous a thought… if there was another side, considering the position he was in, it did make sense to ask Bowe's side of things. And even if it was bad… and even if he couldn't accept it… considering he was stuck here, considering he had somehow to get along with this crew…
Such as they were.
… he'd learned what happened when you (Lydia's saying) poisoned the water you had to drink from.
He didn't know where this ship went. The rumor-mongering They who ran rampant on Spritesaid it didn't stay on the charts, that it found Mazia
He could handle that, he supposed. If all Corinthiandid was trade with them, he could justify that… after all, nobody had a guarantee the goods that Spritebrought to port didn't end up being cheated over and run through illegal cha
He began to sink slowly into the mattress surface. That was the passenger ring engaging as Corinthianwent inertial at its outbound velocity.
A vfar more than most merchanters handled. Light-mass cargo, he thought, staring bleakly at the sound-baffling overhead. Had to be light mass, relative to the engine cap. You wondered what they were hauling.
Luxuries was the commonest low-mass article. Food-stuffs that wouldn't compress. But generally, Viking exported high-mass items, so you hauled heavy, and took the light stuff for—
A siren blew three short bursts. Disaster? he wondered, taking a grip. His heart had skipped a beat. His thoughts went skittering over every horizon, leaving nothing but the wide dark, and the cosmic chance of a high-energy rock in their path.
Then over com, a woman's voice, accented with a ship-speak he didn't recognize.
"We are inertial for the duration, in count for departure. Count now is… sixty seconds, mark."
His heart found the missed beat, thudded along in heavy anticipation. It was real. They were going. He reached for the panel with the white diamond, got the drug out, the needle-pack—shivering-scared, until he had that in his fist. If you didn't have that you didn't come out of jump whole, you left pieces of yourself… that was what the universal They also said, and if you were curious on that topic… they had wards on certain stations where they sent the kids that experimented with hyperspace, and the unlucky working spacers that for some emergency or another hadn't had a pack in reach.
"… count is twenty and ru
He had it. He had it. He was all right, as all right ran, on this ship.
".. . fifteen."
He thought about Marie. He thought he loved her.
(He didn't, really, but Lydia said he wasn't going to be capable of it, yet. Like the prince in the fairy story, he was going to be crazy until somebody loved him… )
But if he had loved anybody it was Marie, and he hadn't loved anybody, if not her, and right now the place where Marie ought to fit—felt like a twisty hollow spot, filled up with anger and hurt where she'd lied to him and ducked out on him, and absolute terror that he'd never see her again and never know what had happened to her.
Because Marie was the edges of the universe. Marie was right and wrong. Marie was the place to go to for the answers and he didn't have a map without her.
Lydia'd say that wasn't normal either. But it was all he had. And nobody else was going to get him out of this. Nobody else gave a damn.
Lydia didn't. Lydia said he was a misfit and a time bomb on the ship. Lydia'd said he'd go off the edge someday, and they ought to find him a nice safe berth on a station, where he could get adopted.
He had nightmares about Lydia finding ways to leave him. Like Lydia convincing Mischa, who didn't like him anyway. And when Marie would send him back to the nursery because she was sick of him, and when the nursery would complain that he was too old, he hurt the younger kids and he wouldn't take their sleep cycle, because all the other kids and all the mothers except Marie were on mainday…
And the nursery workers all wanted to watch vids while the kids were asleep, but they wouldn't let him watch the ones they did, they said go to bed, go to sleep, if he just behaved himself Marie might take him back…
The siren sounded again. Warning of jump imminent.
"Count is five… four… "
He squeezed the pack. Felt the sting of the needle.
"… three… two… "
Marie wasn't coming, wasn't ever coming to get him, where he was going.
—iii—
THE WAVEFRONT OF CORINTHIAN'Spassage was still coming at them when the clock on Sprite'sbridge said to anybody who knew anything that Corinthianhad just left the system.
That information hit Marie in the gut—for God knew what reason, because, dammit, she didn't owe the kid. It was the other way around. Highly, the other way around. She'd searched up and down the frontage where she'd left him, she'd gone back to Spriteto pursue matters as far as she dared with the police, almost to the point of getting swept up and detained herself. It hadn't been a good experience, and meanwhile Spritecrew wholesale was still out searching every nook in every bar and shop they could think of for a damned elusive twenty-three-year-old offspring who ought occasionally to read the schedule boards.