Tripoint

It made some half sense. Easy to say. Unprovable, that they'd had any altruism in their trade. Unprovable, that they'd not sold out other ships at the going rate. Everybody said so. He didn't see anything to convince him otherwise.

"I wanted," Austin said after a moment, and quietly, "myself, to find a post in the Fleet. That was my ambition. But that year, ships were dying. Africaand Australiahad turned to raiding commerce. Momentum was shifting to the other side. I hated Union. I stillhate Union. But that was the year I saw the handwriting on the proverbial wall, and, yeah, immortality figured in it. Wanting to leave something. Didn't know the kid was a first-timer, those weren't the signals she gave off, or I wouldn't have asked her to my room. She was drunk, I wasn't sober, first thing I knew she hit me in the face, bashed me with a glass, I was bleeding, she got to the phone, and the station went to hell in five minutes. End of story."

"You didn't need to beat her up."

"See this scar?" Austin's finger rested on his temple. "I was bleeding worse than she was, your captain wasn't returning calls, they had the station authorities in it, my crew was trying to keep me out of station hands… yeah, some heads got cracked, three captains and three crews were at each others' throats—and, yeah, I was mad, I got mine, as time hung heavy on my hands, and since she'd told them it was rape, hell, I figured why not give her something to bitch about. I didn't hurt her—"

"The hell!"

"Physically. Let's talk about whose career was on the line, whose damn lifewas on the line, with Ms. Modesty screaming rape. I'll ask you who got screwed in that room, thanks."

"You could have walked out of there."

"Damn right I could, right into the hands of the station police."

"My heart aches."

"I was eighteen. I was nihilistic. My career was shot to hell, civilization was going down with it, nothing I did was going to last. Surprise, of course. Marie of course informed me when she got the chance—we have something in common, she said. And we do, matter of fact. Tenacious. Still mad. Hell, I don't cry foul. I respect the woman. Somebody did that to me, I'd track the bastard down, damn right. I wouldn't forget."

He could all but hear his heartbeat, under what Austin was saying. Could see his own life and his prospects in Austin's attitude, and Marie's.

"No forgiveness," he said, "anywhere in the equation. No regrets."

Austin shrugged. "I regret it's involved three crews who didn't ask for it. I regret my father put me in sickbay when he got his hands on me. Broke my arm, my collarbone, and three ribs. I am a patient man, you understand. He wasn't, the son of a bitch. But he ran a rough crew."

Austin, bidding for sympathy? Telling himhe'd had it rough? Enough to turn a stomach. He wantedAustin to get up and hit him. Threaten him, do something else but bid for understanding. Hewanted to hit Austin so badly he ached with it… but that wasn't the role he'd come to want, in this room, one more clenched fist, one more act of force that didn't do anything, didn't prove anything, except to a mentality that understood the fist and not a damn thing else.

He gave it a second thought, in that light. Maybe it would get him points. Maybe it was all Austin Bowe did understand. But he didn't hear that in the con job Austin was pulling, he didn't see it in the sometimes earnest look on the man's face… there was more to Austin Bowe than that, and hell if he'd give him a fight Austin had calculated to win.

"We all have hard lives," he said, Marie's coldest sentiment, and got up to walk out. "No, I don't want to bunk with Saby. She's got her own problems. I've got mine. Galley's just fine. Brig's all right. I like the door locked."

He thought Austin might pull the you're-not-dismissed shit on him. Might get up and knock him sideways, or lock the door.

"Marie's coming here, you know," Austin said, before his hand hit the switch. It stopped him cold, short of it, and he looked around at Austin's expressionless smugness.

"You don't know that."

"I know her. She'll be here—maybe three, four days, maybe on Sprite, maybe on something else. I'm surprised you're surprised."

"She can't. No way in hell. " His hands had started to shake, he didn't know why. He jammed them in his waistband, trying to hide the fact.

Austin just shrugged. "We're out of this port. Glad you made it back."

"You son of a bitch. She's nowhere on this track. She wouldn't leave Sprite, no way she'd leave Sprite. "

Another shrug. "Take L14 for a berth. It's clear, nobody in there. You'll have to move some galley supplies, the bunk lets down, probably needs linens. Water lines need turning on. You're competent to do that, aren't you?"

"Probably," he said.

"You're permitted to Saby's cabin. The galley. The laundry. If I see your ass near an ops station, we'll discuss it. But you didn't want that, anyway."

"No, sir," he said, and the door opened, letting him out.

Marie wasn't coming here. He hadn't been that close to finding her, when he was loose out there. He couldn't have been that close.

The shakes got worse on his way to the lift. He had a knot in his throat that didn't go away on the ride.

No guard. No surveillance. He had a cabin assignment, not the barracks bunk he'd feared he might have, with hired-crew, who wouldn't go easy on a Bowe in disfavor, crew who clearly took orders from Christian—and not a bunk with Saby, which he was going to have to explain, downside, when the offer did explain why Saby'd so cheerfully shoved him topside to talk to Austin.

Saby just didn't know. Saby got along with Austin. And good for her. But he dreaded meeting her, when the lift door opened—and she was right by ops.

"Thanks," he said, uneasy, not wanting to have to explain, not comfortable meeting that clear-eyed stare of hers. "Thanks for taking my side. I—didn't want to involve you. I've got a bunk assignment, it's not that I didn't want the other—" A lie. "Just—I don't want you hurt."

"It's no problem, with me, there's nothing to worry about…"

"I don't want to worry. " He wasn't doing well with the lie. His whole mind wasn't on it, and then was, and he knew it wasn't working. "I don't know what I think, all right? I'm not thinking real clearly right now. Too much input. Too many inputs. I just c-couldn't—"

"Tom. " Saby took his face between her hands, rose up taller and kissed him, very sweetly, on the mouth. "Shut up. All right?"

"I didn't—" He wasn't doing better with his voice. Nobody'd ever kissed him that fondly, nobody'd ever forgiven him any least thing he'd done or not done or been suspected of thinking. Of a sudden his chest was as tight as his throat and his wits went every which way—suddenly everything good around him was Saby, Saby, Saby. Saby—who'd for some reason just kissed him, and for some reason didn't look like once was enough. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what he was supposed to do next, or what had just turned inside out in him, so that a minute ago he could reason that he was infinitely better off in this universe without Saby and the next she was everything, absolutely everything worth living for.

"It's all right, Tom. Can I possibly write? Leave notes on your door? Messages through Tink, maybe."

"Don't dothat to me!—I'm in L14, all right?"

"That's a damn closet!"