Rimrunners (3 page)

solvent. In Bet Yeager's case, that money had probably run out a year ago. And

she had tried so damned long.

Next week, she said. Maybe next week. A ship was due in.

But none of the other ships had taken her.

CHAPTER 2

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Bet walked carefully, having refuge in sight, the women's restroom on Green

dock, a closet of a facility, an afterthought the way the whole dock was an

afterthought, the bars and the sleepovers, the cheap restaurants, in a station

designed for the old sublights and now trying, in a second youth, to serve the

FTLs and their entirely different needs.

And there was this restroom. It was graffitied and it stank and there was one

dim light in the foyer and one no better in the restroom, with four stalls and

two sinks, where spacers in the early-heyday of the place had engraved shipnames

and salutations for ships to come:

Meg Gomez of Polaris, one said. Hello, Golden Hind.

Legendary ships. Ships from the days when stations were lucky to get a shipcall

every two years or so. Something like that, station maintenance had painted

over.

Damn fools.

It was home, this little hole, a safe place. She found the dingy restroom

deserted as it usually was, washed her face and drank from the cold trickle the

better of the two sinks afforded—

Her legs failed her. She caught herself against the sink, stumbled and sank down

against the wall beside it. For a moment she thought she was going to pass out,

and the room swam crazily for a while.

Not used to food, no. She'd wanted the coca for the sugar in it, but the little

that she had drunk had almost come back up right in Ely's office and now the

half a wafer threatened to, while her eyes watered and she fought, with even

breathing and repeated swallows, to keep from the heaves.

Eventually she could take a broken bit of wafer from her pocket and nibble on

it, not because it tasted good, nothing did, now, and eating scared her, because

the last had made her sick and she couldn't afford to lose the little food that

was in her stomach. But she tried, crumb at a time, she let it dissolve on her

tongue and she swallowed it despite the cloying sweetness.

Smart. Real smart, Bet.

Got yourself into a good mess this time.

Time was on Pell she'd hid like this. Time was on Pell she'd been almost this

desperate. Hard to remember one day from the other when it got that bad. Somehow

you lived, that was all.

Somehow you stuck it out, in this dingy place, sitting on an icy floor in the

loo trying to keep your gut together. But bite at a time, you kept it down and

it kept you alive, even when you got down to a pocket full of wafers and the

hope of a cred-a-day job. A cred got a cheese sandwich. A cred got a fishcake

and a cup of synth orange. You could live on that and you had to survive this

night to get it, that was all.

She'd stopped believing yesterday, had really stopped believing. She'd gone in

to the Registry today only because maintenance checked out the holes now and

again, because going to the Registry was a way to stay warm, and showing up

there proved she was still looking, the one proof an un-carded resident could

use to maintain legal status. And most of all it kept her priority with any

available job on that incoming freighter. Hoping for that was an all-right way

to die, doing what she chose to do, looking forward to what she insisted was the

only thing worth having. A good way to die. She'd seen the bad ones.

And if it got too bad there was a way to check out; and if the law caught her

there were ways to keep from going to hospital. She carried one in her pocket.

She'd gotten down to thinking about when, but she hadn't gotten to that yet,

except to know if she passed out and people were calling the meds she might; or

if they convicted her and slapped a station-debt on her—she could always do it

then. Just check right out, screw the lawyers.

And now there was a little more chance. So she'd been right about sticking it

out so far. She could turn out to be right in everything she'd done so far. She

could win. That ship next week could come in short-handed. It could still

happen.

So she sat there in the shadow of the sink awhile till one whole wafer had hit

bottom, and then she knew she had to move because her legs and her backside were

going numb, so she pulled herself up by the sink and got some more of the

metal-tasting water on her stomach and went into one of the stalls to sit down,

arms on knees and head on arms, and to try to rest and sleep a little, because

that was the warmest place, the walls of the stall cut off the draft that got

everywhere else, and manners kept people from asking questions.

Two women came in, way late, probably dock maintenance: she heard the murmur of

voices, the curses, the discussion about some man in the crew they had their eye

on. They sounded drunk. They went away. That was the only traffic, and Bet

drowsed, catnapping, thinking that tomorrow evening, she could go to a vending

machine and put that one cred in a slot and have a hot can of soup… start with

that. She'd had experience with hunger. Keep to the liquids when you came off

starvation, do a little at a time, nothing greasy. Her stomach was working on

the dissolved wafer and the third of a cup of coca, not sure how to cope with

what it had.

The docks outside entered a quiet time then, less noise of machinery and

transports moving outside. Alterday on Thule was hardly worth the wake-time.

Hardly any of the offices stayed open on that shift, no ship traffic was in to

make it necessary, the few bars were mostly empty. Early on, when she'd had a

few chits left, she'd gone into bars to keep warm. Docks were always cold, every

dock ever built would freeze your ass off. Thule-alterday shut down just like

some old Earth town going into night, and the general lack of machinery working

all over Thule during that off-shift, she reckoned, and the demand of all the

people back in their apartments for heat, meant a fierce chill-down in the

dockside air. Which meant stationers were even less likely to be down here

during main-night, and station scheduling didn't care to do anything about it.

So nothing got loaded out there, nothing got signed, moved, done, anywhere on

the docks until maindawn brought the lights up. Thule was dying. The Earth trade

opened up again after the War, but Thule had turned out to be superfluous, the

run had drawn a few big new super-freighters like Dublin Again, that could

short-cut right past the Hinder Stars, and the discovery of a new dark mass

further on from Bryant's meant a bypass for Thule, Venture, Glory and Beta,

which was over half the re-opened stations at one stroke.

A route straight to Earth via Bryant's, straight past the place Ernestine had

left her, the Old Man apologetic, saying, "Don't be a fool, Bet. We've got to go

back to Pell, is all. We'll be short, but we can make it. It's no good here and

further on is worse."

Hope you made it, she thought to old Kato. But she knew Ernestine's chances, a

little ship, running mostly empty, trying to get back to Pell against the tide

of economics, luck, and the onus of her own mass, because the Hinder Stars were

heartbreak, the Hinder Stars had drunk down more than one small ship, and

Ernestine's last hope, after losing all her cargo credit in a major mechanical,

was Pell, just getting there, even stripped down, carrying a few passengers

whose fares would get her a little credit in Pell's banks.

But Pell wasn't where Bet Yeager wanted to go.

"Not me," she'd said, "not me."

Ernestine crew had argued with her, they'd known her chances too. The free-hands

other ships let off found berths here and went on. Jim Belloni had tried to give

her a third of his sign-up money when he left on the Polly Freas. He'd gotten

her royally drunk. He'd left it in her bed.

So she'd gotten drunk again. She still didn't regret that extravagance. Not even

when her belly cramped up. It was the times like that kept you warm on nights

like these.

She catnapped a while more, waked hearing the sound of the outside door.

Her heart jumped. It was unusual, alterday, main-night, for somebody to be in

this particular nook to need this particular restroom. Maintenance, maybe.

Plumber or something, to fix that sink.

She tucked her knees up in her arms, just stayed where she was, shivering a

little in the cold. It was a man's step that came on in. Rude bastard. No

advisement to any possible occupant.

She heard the door close. Heard him breathing. Smelled the alcohol. So it wasn't

a plumber.

You got the wrong door, mate. Go on. Figure it out.

She heard the steps go the little distance to the door and stop.

Go on, mate. G'way. Please.

She heard the door close. She dropped her head against her knees.

And still heard the breathing.

God.

She shivered. She did not move otherwise.

The steps came back to the stall. She saw black boots, blue coveralls.

He tried the door. Rattled it.

"Get the hell out of here!" she said.

"Security," he said. "Come on out of there."

Oh, hell.

"Out!"

It was wrong. It was damned indelicate. And he stank of alcohol.

"Hell if you're security," she said. "I'm spacer, on layover. You get your ass

out of this restroom, stationer, before you get more than you bargained for."

"No ship in, skuz." He bent down. She saw an unshaven, bentnosed face. "C'mon.

C'mon out of there."

She sighed. Looked at him wearily. Waved a hand. "Look, station-man. You want

it, you owe me a drink and a sleep-over, then you got it all night, otherwise I

ain't buying any."

A toothy grin. "Sure. Sure I'll give you a good time. You come out of there."

"All right." She took a deep breath. She put her feet down.

She saw it coming. She knew it, she tried to clear the sudden grab after her

ankle, but the knees wobbled, she staggered and he tried again, under the door.

She smashed a foot down, bashed his head into the tiles, but he twisted over and

got a hold on her ankle and twisted, and there was no place to step but him, and

he was pulling. She staggered against the stall, felt his fingers close, tried

to keep from falling and went down against the toilet seat, a crack of pain on

one side, pain in her cheek as she rebounded and hit the wall and then the floor

beside the toilet. His hands were all over her, he was crawling under the stall

door onto her, arms wrapping around her, and everything was a blur of lights and

his face. He hit her, cracked her head back against the tiles once and twice,

and for a while it was exploding color, alcoholic breath, his weight, his hands

tearing at her clothes.

Damn mess, she thought, and tried to stay limp, just plain limp, while he ripped

her jumpsuit open and pawed her, which she couldn't stop: he had her pinned

between the toilet and the stall wall.

Just a little more breath. Just a little time for the stars to stop exploding.

He started choking her then. And there was damned little she could do except

struggle. Except get her right hand to her pocket, while his stubbly mouth was

on hers and he was choking the sense out of her.

She got the razorblade. She kept her fingers clenched despite the pain and the

fog in her brain and she got it out and slashed him down the leg. He reared up,

howling, his back against the stall door. She nailed him dead-on with her

boot-heel and he gasped and fell down onto her, so she got him with the razor

again.

Then he was mostly trying to slither out of the stall, and she let him. She got

an elbow over the toilet and heaved herself up and got the stall unlatched while

he was throwing up outside.

He was on his knees. She caught her balance against the row of stalls and kicked

him up under the jaw. When he hit the sink and went down on his back with his

leg under him, she waited until he tried to get up again and then kicked him in

the throat.

After that he was a dead man. She could finish it, while he lay there choking to

death, but she just stared at him with her skull pounding and her vision going

gray—she came to with the water running and water in her hands and splashing up

into her face. Which was stupid. She could be wrong about how hard she'd hit

him. He could have a knife, he could get up and kill her. But she looked to see

where he was with the water dripping off her face and her hands and running down

her collar and he was lying there with his eyes open.

So he was dead. A dizzy wave came over her. She threw cold water on him to be

sure he wasn't shamming, but there was no blink or twitch.

Another wave. She remembered he'd yelled. Somebody could have heard the shouting

outside. She looked herself over for marks. There were scratches all down her

chest and on her throat. There was blood on her jumpsuit, blood soaked one knee.

So she peeled down and washed that leg of the jumpsuit in the sink until the

water ran pale pink and the jumpsuit was mostly clean; and she almost blacked