Tripoint

Jamal wasn't the only one. The crew that drifted in… just wasn't likethe people he associated with, which meant like Hawkinses, and the safe bars and the high-class sleepovers of Fargone and places Sprite went. Men and women had missing fingers, marks of burns here and there, what he took for old cuts, stuff, God, a surgeon could still fix, along with guys clearly over-mass, and one woman blind in one eye. He saw tattoos, and shaved heads or long hair—he looked at the first arrivals with the panic feeling he'd walked into the wrong bar. But he stood his ground, behind the fortification of the hot line.

"Well, well, well," the comments ran, from female andmale, "look at you, pretty."

Or: "Reluctant sign-up, looks like."

Or: "Hey, cook, something newon the menu?"

"Name's Tom Bowe-Hawkins," Jamal said.

"Bowe," the murmur went around.

He just dished up the meatloaf and gave a tight-lipped smile at the offender.

After that it was quieter, with him dishing out main items while cook handled the pastry-cutting—Tink was right, the boundaries among the flowers and vines were as disputatious as trade negotiations.

He could relax after that. The crew looked like dockside hustlers, but the humor wasn't anywhere totally out of line. He snatched a bite himself, the meatloaf, having counted what drew the most second helpings. It was good. He managed to have a mostly uninterrupted supper, give or take the late arrivals who came trailing in. Pastry was as good as it looked, real cake, which meant flour, which wasn't easy come by or cheap—you usually got it on special occasions or in stations' fancier restaurants, at ferocious prices.

Lot of money. Or—he revised the thought—just nearness to the source—and Pell, where they were bound, was a source. You couldn't prove anything against Corinthianby the sweets and the cake. He didn't have to think it was stolen.

It wasn't, overall, too damn bad a situation. The crew ragged him, but he'd had that everywhere. He just kept his head down, kept his panic reaction in check, and did his work and didn't bother anybody… didn't look for another run-in with Austin Bowe down here in crew territory, and that made him easier with the company he did have.

He finished the cleanup and helped set up mid-shift snacks, the sort that got delivered out. And it was scrub down the galley and the filters again… not a big job, because Jamal wanted it done every meal, and a rinse with detergent would do it.

The galley's standards didn't speak of a sloppy ship, at all.

"Guys don't look real regulation," he remarked to Tink, when he and Tink were working side by side; and he'd gotten so used to Tink's appearance he forgot he was saying that to a guy whose arms were solid tattoos of snakes and dragons.

"Hey. You stick with me, I know a good artist on Pell. Glow in the dark."

He couldn't imagine. Couldn't imagine going back to Spritewith a tattoo.

And then he recalled where they were, traversing the dark of Tripoint, on their way to places Spritewouldn't find them, didn't care to find them, and he got a lump in his throat and asked himself what he was going to do—except Tink had had things a hell of a lot worse, and he told himself somehow he couldsurvive, and there wasa future.

"You worried about the crew?" Tink asked him.

"No," he said. "Not really."

"A lot of these guys, like me," Tink said, and shoved a filter into its slot, "you knock around a lot, you know. Play hob getting work. You get a real solid berth, you damn sure appreciate it. Some's dockers, however. You may have detected."

"Its own dockers, this ship?" That wasn't usual. You hiredyour off-ship workers. You had to, far as he'd ever heard Marie deal with cargo. But maybe if a ship really didn't want outsiders handling its cargo…

Tink didn't answer right off. Maybe it was something Tink wasn't supposed to say. Maybe it was a question he wasn't supposed to ask. "Hey, the unions want to insist, all right, our guys handle it to the gateway, they take it after. And most of these guys are all right. Just ever' now and again you figure they got a little stash they're hitting… the long, deep dark's the place they get spooky. They don't got enough to do. They start hitting the stash, you know, four, five days… that don't improve their personality a bit."

"I wouldn't think. " Maybe he really shouldn't have asked. It dawned on him—if there were trades in the deep, and that was Corinthian'sbusiness—even there, somebody had to handle cargo, and umbilicals, and all the mate-ups, in an exchange of cargo, or whatever. Dockers… were what you needed in that operation, dockers and cargo monkeys, not your tech crew.

Tink got up and dusted his hands. "I got to get a new overhead filter. This indicator's turned."

Definitely shouldn't have asked, he thought to himself. "Yeah," he said, "all right. " As if his approval meant anything. Tink terminated the conversation, went off to storage to look for the right filter—Tink wasn't lying about that, he was sure.

Tink stayed gone a bit. Possibly, he thought, there wasn't a filter in stock where it ought to be… if that happened, you had to check other lists, because usually you could sub something, but you also chewed out Supply, and asked why the computer hadn't reported it.

If it hadn't, hecould fix it, instead of scrubbing tables—if he wanted to admit he knew enough to be a danger to the ship. Which he didn't intend to do, not without knowing more than he did, not without some sort of peace between him and Corinthian, that maybe seemed a little nearer since he'd dealt with Tink, but far from certain, since there were clearly right questions and wrong questions and things Tink didn't want to discuss on his own.

A good thing, was it, for hired crew? Maybe the best berth any of them could ever hope for? The ship paid… damned well, evidently. Evidently the ship could afford it without a blink. In either case one had to ask—

Latecomers arrived, a noisy six, seven crewmen who'd missed the serving hour, who saw the food line taken down and weren't happy. "Jamal?" one called out, and got no answer.

Guys who thought they might not get supper weren't a happy lot, and he was uneasy being out front instead of behind the counter, in the galley-proper, where only galley perso

"Tink's here," he said, "he just stepped out. He'll be back—"

The man behind him stepped on the cable, jerked his arm.

"Who are you?"

"Tom Hawkins. Tom Bowe-Hawkins. " That name had never been an asset in his life, but it seemed that way now. "Excuse me. " He closed his hand on the cable to pull it free, looking at the man dead on. The trouble warning was flashing through his nervous system. It doubled when the guy didn't move his foot. "I pay favors," he said.

"Well, what aboutsome favors?" the clown said. "You handing it out, boy?"

"You want meals off-schedule, you ask and say please, or you talk to Cook about—"

The guy jerked the cable. He was ready for it, but the guy outweighed him. He had the counter corner between them. He used that for a brake, but the pull put his arm in hostile territory and hurt a wrist getting sorer by every pull on it—hurt it considerably, and the guy grabbed his arm to jerk him around the counter and into the galley.

Another jerked on him and he got him—threw all the weight he owned at the target he found clear—the guy's throat, that being what he exposed, and grabbed the guy's sleeve as he slid across the counter and the others closed in. He had one hand free, the other was tangled with the cable, and he couldn't swing, but he tried to grab the cable and get it around a neck, any neck, he wasn't particular. He got part-way up when he landed, got hits in anywhere he saw open, between efforts to keep them from doing a complete take-down, the way they were trying, not just the one, all of them. "Get him, get him, get him," someone yelled, and as the sheer weight shoved him down, his head hit the cabinet handle, boomed off the doors, his shoulders hit the floor and five or six guys were piling on him, weighing his legs down, hanging onto his arms. A blow caught his temple and knocked him blind, a knee landed in his gut, and he kept trying to swing, but he couldn't get the one hand clear, couldn't get out of the vee they'd jammed him into, and couldn't fend the next blow or the next or the next…