Tripoint

Capella. Guy with the snakes. Green and purple snakes. Crawling all over him. Capella andthe snakes, climbing up his legs, holding him down, the bars weren't there anymore.

Sensation that wasn't part of any subspace dream he'd ever had…

Sexual high, and raw terror.

Then down again. Skuzzy, scarred walls. Mattress under his back. Nice, safe bars, between him and the nightmares.

Breathe. Drink the fluids. Don't throw up.

Please, God. He didn't want their medics. Didn't want their crew in here, didn't want that grid opened…

Next sip. Didn't see any snakes, didn't feel them slithering around him.

Couldn't remember what it felt like now. It had been vivid, before.

He was coming out of it. Wi

Shit. Shit…

God. God, God, God…

Calm. Quiet. Breathe.

Easier if you had the output of instruments in front of you. Lying here scared stiff and with the sweat chilling in the current from the air ducts… you didn't know where the ship was… you didn't have any information what was going on, they didn't even signal you…

He wasn't used to that kind of sloppiness. Wasn't the way Sprite did business. Made him mad.

Wasn't used to the signals when they did give them. Damn sirens. No human word out of anybody. Wasn't a way to run a ship.

His biological father was in charge up on this bridge. Marie wasn't down in cargo. The condition of the universe had done a total reverse. He wasn't going back. Ever. He didn't know where he was going. His head was starting to ache, right between the eyes.

Second… or was it third…? skip at the interface.

Long, long skip. Erotic feelings ran up and down his body, found center… God, he couldn't stand it. Couldn't stop it.

Scratches healed and otherwise… both? How did you dothat to yourself?

He shut his eyes, pressed fingers against the sinuses. Kept feeling the scrapes on his skin, stinging with the sweat, aftermath of pure stupidity. He tried to be mad. Mad was the way to get through things. Marie said.

Stupid thing to do. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Hell of a nightmare. Jerk off in jump-space and you were lucky you didn't do worse… deserved everything he got, absolutely, he'd learned better, if he could just stop the physiological reactions…

Maybe the trank was a brand he hadn't used, and he was having a drug reaction, he didn't know. He damned sure meant to ask, if he could find anybody on this ship disposed to care about details like that.

Long quiet, then. But you couldn't trust they weren't going to dump down again, you couldn't trust anything. Just try to make the feelings go away.

The siren blew two blasts, then. God, how was he supposed to know what it was? Impending evasive action? Impending impact with a rock? Considering the headache, he wasn't sure he gave an effective damn.

But after the echoes died, he heard that indefinable stirring of life in the ship's guts that meant definitive all-clear, distant, ordinary sounds, confirming the ship was about its routines, safe, and crew was moving about.

Safe as this ship ever was. Safe as the crew could make this ship. Not for him, maybe. But at least they were alive together. At least it was down to human motives and human reasons.

His father's ship.

His father'ssay-so and his father'sset of laws, amen.

He lay there and drank the nutri-packs, two of them, before his stomach decided it wasn't going to heave everything up, and before his head decided it wasn't going to explode. He let the belts go when he'd come to that conclusion, lay still with one knee up and an arm under his head, finding no reason to venture more than that. The noises in the ship now were noises he understood, mostly, somebody banging around with a service panel, checking on filters or plumbing. Somebody was shouting at somebody else about schedules, except you didn't shout obscenities like that down Sprite'scorridors. It occurred to him he'd never heard a stream of profanity like that in his life, and Marie was no prude when she was pissed. It actually attained meter and art.

Another voice then, jolted him… familiar voice, voice he wasn't going to forget—along with the beating he'd heard before they left port. "Get your ass out of there!" came near and clear, and he thought he'd move, if that voice was yelling at him.

Memory of something hitting flesh and bone. Vivid as the other side of jump.

Wasn't sure the guy had lived through it. If they cycled the airlock while they were out here in the dark between stars… that might tell.

Body trade, he said to himself. Marie thought so. The cousins did. Live merchandise and dead spacers, you couldn't depend there'd be a great deal of care which, on certain ships, on ships that didn't mind selling out other merchanters: whole ships blown because somebody'd spilled the numbers and set somebody up, back in the War; and they said, the hunters were still picking targets, little ships that just might not make port again—ships with irregular routes, minimal crew, no great atrocities, no known Names, like a Family ship. Just the little, marginal haulers… easy to pick off.

A rattle sounded in the corridor, then, something metal bumped the wall just outside, where someone was walking, and in sudden fright, he remembered the cable and didn't wait to be snatched off his bunk by the wrist. He got up to one knee on the bunk as the noise-maker showed up with a hand-carrier and a stack of covered food trays.

The guy with the snakes. The drunk with the chocolates. He watched apprehensively as the guy shoved a tray through an opening in the gridwork, clearly expecting him to come into his reach and take it from his hand.

"You actually the captain's kid?" the guy asked when he did venture over to the bars.

"Tom Hawkins," he admitted, and took the tray, not willing to give the man any provocation—the tattooed arms were as thick as most men's legs, the fingers that gave up the tray were thick with muscle and callus.

"Tink," the snake-man said.

"Tink?"

"Name's Tink. Cook's mate. How-do."

"Glad to meet you. " He wasn't, not even halfway. But what did you say? And the guy didn't act crazy.

"You must've pissed the captain off real bad."

"I guess." What could you say to that, either? The guy when he wasn't scowling had a rough, but downright gentle kind of face. And still scared hell out of him.

"Tell you, kid, you got to do what he says. He don't never take no. Shoot you first. I seen him do it."

"For what?"

A couple of blinks as Tink sized him up. "Guy carried a knife topside. You don't ever do that. That'll get you dead."

"I'll remember that."

"You bridge?"

"Cargo." Quick lie. He didn'twant them to know he was computers.

"You sign on?"

"Is there any other way to get onto this ship?"

Tink thought that was fu

"Is there?"

"Yeah. Happens."

"They do much of that?"

Tink's face went slowly sober. He looked one way and the other down the corridor as if to see whether anyone was listening. And there was people-noise from the left-hand direction. "Sometimes. But listen, however you got here, you don't skip ship. Work here's permanent. No matter how you come. Hear? You don't skip."

"What do they do if you try?"

Tink's face screwed up as if he was short of description. Then Tink looked down the corridor and straightened away from the bars.

"Food's not bad, though," Tink said, a little louder. "They give you a big allowance dockside. Can't fault the pay at all."