Tripoint

And somebody was telling him don't believe Christian? Don't believe in a way off this ship?

He had to. He fucking had to. He didn't know what the next joke might be. And the captain knew—the captain had to know what was going on, knew there was such a thing as a walker, he knew who it was, and he sat smug while Christian and Capella played their dominance games, one against the other, and both of them with him—so, so damned fu

Another shiver hit him, diminished in force. He felt sick at his stomach.

"Mr. Hawkins," he heard, from outside. Male voice, stranger. Harsh. It sent him scrambling for his feet, and he heard the motor move the grid on its track. The next might yank the cable and him through the shower door and across the brig. He caught his balance on the wall, scraped his back on the water-vents doing it, and nipped the shower door latch.

Buck naked, confronted an officer he didn't know, who gave him a stare as if he was a sale item in the bargain bin.

The pocket tab said Michaels.

He remembered the thump of blows falling, in the corridor, the man Tink called trouble. The presence turned out middle-aged, greying hair down to his shoulders and face set in an inbuilt scowl.

"Sir," he said.

"Galley, mister. You're on duty."

"Yes, sir, thank you, sir. Two seconds. Getting my clothes."

He flinched past Michaels in haste, grabbed his clothes off his bunk, pulled on underwear, skintights,—he couldn't put on the shirt, and Michaels came and keyed open the bracelet, indicated he should get the boots on and get moving.

Which he did, pulling his shirt on as they left, no questions, no uninvited word of conversation or question with this man—

Michaels might find some excuse to use that spring baton he carried clipped to his belt; and he was vastly glad that they went straight down to the galley, with no detours and not a word exchanged.

Except Michaels said, when he delivered him to Jamal, at the galley section counter—"Kid's shaky. Light duty."

Shook him as badly as a curse. The dreaded Michaels personally braceleted his left wrist to the cable coiled up on the counter and walked out, all the while the cold traveled a meandering course to the nerve centers and started a tremor in the gut, in the knees, in the chest. Oh, God, he thought in disgust, but he couldn't stop it, he couldn't walk away and pretend it wasn't going on—it went to all-over shakes. Reality was coming apart on him, in red and blue flashes, right over the white galley walls.

"Hey. " Jamal pried him loose from the counter and about that time Tink arrived in the galley—"Kid sick?" Tink asked, grabbed his other arm, and between his shaking and his attempts to walk on his own, the two of them got him into a chair at a mess table. They hovered over him, debated calling somebody—"No!" he said, and somehow they materialized a cup of real fruit juice, a cup of the nutri-pack stuff, an offer of coffee or tea… he just sat there like a fool and shook, trying to drink the fruit juice… it was real, and rare, and he wasn't about to waste it… with Tink patting him on the shoulder and saying how he should just sit there until he felt like moving, it was all right.

Damned near shook the cup out of his hand when Tink said that. He tried to figure why it made the shakes worse, and couldn't, but somewhere in the back of his mind was the lonely feeling he not only couldn't leave Tink, he didn't want to leave Tink… don't trust Christian, kept ringing in his head, but he didn't know if that was any truer than Christian's offer.

Crazy, he told himself finally, when he could set the cup down without slopping it, when he could glance up at the mundane white and blues and chrome of the galley and realized he'd been seeing something darker and less organized, some place with black patches and some place that was Sprite'scorridors, and cousins, and Marie's office, and the muted beiges of Marie's apartment. He was suddenly close to tears. He didn't know why. He didn't understand himself.

He didn't need to understand. He needed out of this ship. On any terms. Any at all.

He got up, tossed the cups, got a sponge and set to work on the counters with a vengeance. Didn't know, didn't know, didn't know, there was a lump in his chest where certainties had used to be. Pell system was where they were now, but its docks were a foreign place, and the rules were foreign—he didn't know what Christian was going to do.

A voice in his head still kept saying, Don't trust him.

Had to be Capella.

Why, for God's sake, did Capella get off on tormenting him? Because he was there? Because she sensed he'd crack? Because he was the new guy and the rest of the crew knew her tricks?

It was as crazy-patchwork as all the rest of his thinking. Nothing made sense.

Capella's little joke, maybe… but he wasn't to play games with. His fathertook him seriously. Christian at least seemed to consider him a threat. He didn't know why Capella shouldn't.

Point of vanity, maybe. But he deserved more precaution than that. He deserved more respect than that.

Dammit!

—iv—

LONG APPROACH, THREE WHOLE days to dock—Pell was a huge, busy system: outlying shipyards, auxiliary stations for heavy industry, and refining—local traffic, but in the ecliptic, which an inbound long-hauler scorned. In at solar zenith, a quick slow-down and a lazy plowing along through the solar wind toward the i

And made reservations for liberty dockside, where needed.

I

Which hadn't done either the Downers or humanity a whole lot of good, for what anybody could tell. The discovery of the Downers had spooked Earth's earthbound religions and helped start the War, that was so—no great achievement for humanity, except the whole of space-faring humanity wasn't under Earth's thumb any longer.

Wasn't Christian's generation, personally. Hedidn't see any particular value in the War. Or in Earth. Or in planets in general, except as places to anchor stations, from which one could do nice safe dives into hazard and get back to civilization. He didn't personally plan to take a dive like that, but it was nice some could, and bring up refined flour and condensed fruit juice.

And as for the famous eetees, Downers and humans didn't breathe the same oxy-ratio, humans didn't tolerate the high CO2 on Downbelow and most of all didn't tolerate the molds and fungi rife on the planet. Downers needed the CO2, one supposed, and had to wear breathing assists in human atmosphere. So Downers carved their large-eyed statues to watch the heavens no different than they ever had, as if they were looking for some other, better answer.

Downers worked on Pell Station, for reasons no one evidently understood, but most of all, one supposed, because Downers likedthe idea of space. Downers worshipped their sun, they served a time on the station and went back again to their mating and their birthing and burrowing and whatever else they did—he'd been fascinated by them when he was a kid, knew every Downer stat there was, useless hobby, right up there with Earth's dinosaurs and Cyteen's platytheres. Humans lived on Pell Station, the sole Alliance Station, poised between the Beyond and Earth's native space. Regularly, the science people descend to their carefully insulated environments, to pursue their carefully monitored projects, and, irregularly, and depending on the season, ordinary tourists could do a tour onplanet—which he'd been hot to do when he was a kid, but there was a waiting list longer than a ship's docktime, and now he'd grown out of his interest in eetees, human or otherwise. You saw Downers on the station, skulking along near the maintenance area… little furred creatures with—one had to take it on faith—big dark eyes and pleasant faces behind the breathing masks.