Rimrunners (14 page)

Australia, Europe, any ship that might be operating in the Hinder Stars: and she

had no chance, no chance at all of living through an encounter like that, except

if Loki got disabled and boarded.

Chance of arranging that, a little sabotage—

You could get spaced for thinking about it.

And to do that without blowing yourself to glory, you had to know more than she

knew about ship systems.

She looked back at NG, saw him sitting there at the console, mop of black hair,

always a brooding look, like he was never happy, like he expected nothing good

out of anyone or anything.

Crazy man, she thought. Maybe no fault of his how he'd gotten there, and he

might be a damn good lover as far as that went, but a man that nervous could go

crazy someday, it had happened a couple of times on Africa, even to seasoned

troops, and you could tell the look, day by day, just quieter and crazier. One

had got hold of an AP, shot right down the main downside corridor, blew six

skuts to hell before somebody got him; one ten year vet had just spattered

pieces of herself all over barracks three one main-night when she was sleeping

just four spots over—nobody could account for how she'd gotten the grenade.

NG wasn't damn happy on this ship, with this crew.

And NG—the thought gave her a queasy stomach—was in Engineering.

CHAPTER 10

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She got settled in—she figured who the skuz was who had complained, figured it

for one Mel Jason, who had the bunk next, and whose stuff was all over the

walls, pictures of flowers and souvenirs of bars and stations and pictures of

naked, nice-looking men, all of which told you not much about Mel Jason except

you supposed by that, that Mel Jason was a she.

As for the other, the downside ladder was down-ring from her, Jason was up-ring

from her, she had no neighbor on the left, and the plastic privacy sheet and all

prevented most neighbors seeing that she hadn't put a sheet down last night,

except one up-ring that might be passing by the foot of the bed headed for the

ladder—always possible it was somebody else, but the one next was the likeliest,

the way she figured it.

So she put one Mel Jason on her tentative shit-list, and still made up her mind

not to be too mad, all things considered: nice quarters on this ship, she

thought, with the privacy screens and all, real fine airy feeling and safe at

the same time, with the safety net there to prevent anybody going flying onto

the downside skuts in any sudden maneuver.

Best of all, in her figuring, you got your own rack to yourself, and your own

storage underneath for all your stuff: the ship wasn't crewed even half to

quarters capacity and you didn't have to share with mainday.

So, seeing how clean things were and how people expected to live, she didn't

much blame Jason, if it had been Jason who had complained, although Jason had

been a little quick on the trigger. Africa had had standards, crowded as they

had been, and if she'd gotten some skuz neo moved in next to her who broke the

sanitation regs, she'd have bitched too.

Life had just made her a little more willing to give a body room, that was what

she detected in herself.

So she was pleasant to Jason, walked around the privacy screen, and said; "Sorry

about last night. No excuses; but it's not habitual."

Jason looked around from her sewing, bit off a thread, nodded then, once and

definitely. That was all the comment Jason was going to make, Jason didn't even

ask what she was talking about, and that was all the answer she wanted out of

Jason right now. She figured time would kill or cure, and she went on down to

supper.

NG was there. NG gave her hardly more than a look, and she didn't walk past

empty spots to sit with him, considering he'd warned her keep clear of him in

public, for what might be good reasons of not wanting a ruckus. So she just sat

down at the first convenient vacant place on the bench and paid all her

attention to her food. He left. She didn't know where.

But afterward, when a lot of the crew gathered back in the darkened quarters to

watch a very tired pre-War vid, a man came up close beside her at the back of

the crowd, while she was standing with her arms folded and thinking she'd seen

this one twenty times at least.

The man touched her shoulder, made a nod toward the door, and said: "Yeager?"

Not NG. She'd thought that it was at first.

But it was an approach, she knew the dance. His name was Gabe, he said, he

wanted to buy her a beer, he was polite and interested, and he wanted to sit and

talk a while, with intentions for the rest of the night by no means hard to

figure.

She wasn't altogether enthusiastic about the invitation, she'd been looking for

NG with the hope of straightening some signals out with him, but if NG had been

in the quarters she couldn't spot him and if he'd gone off somewhere else he

damn well hadn't signaled her a come-ahead. So she found no immediate excuse,

she had the beer, she had two, and Gabe—the name on his pocket was

McKenzie—asked her questions she told the usual lies to: merchanter swept up in

the Pan-paris route, dumped at Thule, desperate—what about himself?

McKenzie was sympathetic. McKenzie said he was ten years on Loki, McKenzie was

clearly more interested in making his move than in answering detailed questions.

Then another couple of crew came wandering up from down-ring, both male, friends

of McKenzie's, just to look over the neo, do a little safe shopping and

neo-baiting—get her rattled if they could, have a little fun if they couldn't.

An all-right couple of guys, she decided: Park and Figi. They didn't sit down,

they just hovered, asking how was it going, checking out her disposition toward

McKenzie with an eye to a more personal check-out later if she was amenable.

—McKenzie, Park, Figi, obviously a buddy-system, all three of them scan-techs,

McKenzie the good-looking one, Park and Figi a little shyer, a little less

comfortable with a stranger, under the smartass facade.

You could bet who ran that trio, she thought, and she laughed at their

fun-poking. It was kind of cute, actually, that McKenzie actually blushed—they

nailed him with a tag about getting wrong bunks in the dark and he told them go

away.

But McKenzie was just trying to get friendly again when another couple of male

crew showed up in the rec area, and they had to walk over and introduce

themselves—Rossi and Wilson, by the tags, Dan and Meech, by name; not bad,

either, certainly Rossi wasn't, but you didn't get picky when you were new: not

good business, and you didn't start with one man and go off with another either,

not unless you wanted a rep as a trouble-maker. "Hey," McKenzie said, finally,

slipping a protective arm around her, "it's my beer. Get out of here.—Kate, get

these guys."—to a woman getting herself a beer.

"Do I get a favor-point?" Kate yelled back, which got a friendly rec-riot

started, just comfortable stuff over at the counter between Kate and Rossi and

Wilson: McKenzie took his chance to get familiar, a little squeeze. "Don't take

'em serious. How're you doing? Quarters is pretty private right now, everybody's

watching the vid. I got a private bottle. What do you think?"

"Fine," she said.

Except when she got up to go with McKenzie, she saw NG over against the wall by

the quarters, just standing there looking at them.

Her gut tightened up. She remembered about that rec-time promise she'd tossed

off to him this afternoon, and he'd tossed it off the other way, a kind of a

don't-bother she'd decided was his opinion on the matter.

But that look he was giving her didn't say don't-bother. Her heart started

pounding and she didn't want eye-contact with him, but it happened, once, fast,

direct, while she was walking toward the door.

Then he turned his face the other direction, just leaned there with his hands in

his pockets while she walked through the door and into the quarters with

McKenzie.

McKenzie had a downside bunk, back in the far end from where the vid was still

going on. They weren't the only couple back in the dark end, very likely not

everybody in their proper bunks this evening, because of the vid occupying the

other end of the quarters. McKenzie got out a bottle and took a drink and passed

it to her while he was undressing. She took a couple or three big ones, then

passed the bottle back and stripped down. They got in bed, got under the sheet,

while the end of the room erupted in a cheer for that damned tired vid, about

the time the good guys' ship showed; she remembered the plot. But the cold air

got her, or the straight vodka did, and she tucked down against McKenzie, her

teeth all but chattering.

"What's the matter?" he asked, rubbing her shoulders, and was real careful with

her, real concerned about her maybe being scared of him. "Just a little cold out

there," she said. "I'm fine."

So they had another couple of swallows off the bottle. Hell, she thought, there

was nothing wrong with Gabe McKenzie. He was polite, he was sane, he was worried

about her, he did everything right and he appreciated her the same—but it was

like her skin was dead all of a sudden, the way it had been with Ritterman—like

she was just too tired or the hormones weren't working or something.

It scared her, and then she flashed just for a second on NG and his hand on her

arm and it tingled, it tingled just thinking about that, all the while nothing

that McKenzie did was even getting past the surface.

That's crazy, she thought, and thought suddenly about NG out there in the rec

area, NG knowing what was going on right about now, and probably mad and upset

about her skipping out on him—

No, dammit, she hadn't skipped out, he hadn't taken up on her, he'd put her off

this afternoon when she flatly propositioned him, he'd had a chance at dinner to

at least look her direction and cue her.

She wished to God he wasn't a crazy man, wished he wasn't out there right now

being a damn lunatic, hanging around like that. She wanted to kick him down the

corridor.

She wanted—

Damn, she wanted him touching her instead of McKenzie, so she kept flashing

deliberately to him last night in the rec area and back to what McKenzie was

doing, trying to get some kind of feeling back—damn, dammitall! She reckoned

what kind of a buzz she was getting off NG Ramey, and when somebody ever got to

doing that… anytime you ever got to confusing sex with risking your neck, you

had a problem. She'd seen that kind in the Fleet—seen them take a few bystanders

with them, too, when they screwed up for the last time. Damn stupid, that was

what it was…

Except there was something else about NG, there was that wounded look of his,

that was no expression McKenzie could have caught if McKenzie had been looking

straight at him: she was the only one who knew why NG was standing there—and.she

couldn't forget he was there, couldn't stop, even while McKenzie ought to have

her attention, thinking that nobody had ever affected her the way NG had.

No, dammit, that was a lie, too, that was an absolute lie, the man had shoved

her off in a dark locker, gone near the limit of her patience with any man, no

matter what his excuse—nothing had been that damn spectacular in the first

place—

Except her mind kept getting the business in the locker all confused with the

way he'd touched her in the corridor and gotten that crazy jolt out of her

nerves that she'd never in her life had even in sex, that feeling that, if she

could get it twice and turn it over and figure it out—

Damn, you flat couldn't go on getting it, it was a cheat, a

first-time-in-two-years adrenaline buzz, that was all it was, it wasn't going to

repeat, she was just stressed out and NG was the first man along. She certainly

wasn't crazy enough to get a high like that off a man who could just likely go

off the edge some night—and she damn sure wasn't crazy enough to get a high only

because he could go off the edge some night.

No. The risk wasn't what was nagging at her, it was that look he'd given her out

there, that look that said he was doing something his common sense told him not

to do.

And it was two different people, the man who had smart-assed his way into a beer

with her—and the one who was out there, scared to come in here… and still

refusing to walk off and leave it at that.—God, it could look to everybody else

like he was just being his usual spook self, but that wasn't what was going on

out there, she knew it, she was sure of it. NG was pushing it tonight, his

standing outside that door was a kind of fighting back, even if McKenzie

wouldn't even notice it.

That was what got to her, deep down. He wasn't out there to start a fight, not

to embarrass her, either—risking, she thought, a whole lot of his pride with

that one moment of eye-contact, before he just turned his face the other way.

That was the thing that kept bothering her while she was in McKenzie's bunk. She

had no idea where NG's bunk was, she had no idea, finally, as people came and