Rimrunners (4 page)

out, so she leaned her elbows against the sink to scrub, and she wrung out the

jumpsuit and got it on again, one leg and a lot of spots all over it icy cold.

So she used the blower to dry them. It was dangerous while the docks were this

quiet. Security might hear.

But she wanted to go on leaning there in the warm air, wanted to stay there the

rest of the night. She pushed the blower switch again and again, legs braced,

staring at the man on the floor, while the gray and the red came and went in her

vision. There was a trail of blood from the stall to where he'd died. She

remembered the razor, but she had that in her pocket again, she found it there.

Along with two cred chits.

She was walking outside on the docks. She couldn't remember how she had gotten

there. She remembered the restroom, that was all. She remembered the man on the

floor. Remembered going through his pockets, stopped, and turned and looked

around to find out where she was.

You could get caught from evidence too." Station bank had her prints. But a

woman could use the damn restroom. So she had. So a lot of people had. So he was

where he had no business being. She walked further, thought about the law

getting a genetyping off his fingernails: but they had to catch her first, they

had all those cards, all those prints they did have, all those women to

question.

Another dark spot. She felt wobbly-hungry. She kept walking, eating a very few

soggy crumbs of wafers she scraped out of her pocket, and finally, steadier than

she had been, with two cred in her pocket, she went to a bar and had a plastic

cup of watery chowder she could even manage to eat.

The barman was lonely, she sat and talked. It turned out he wanted more than

that. "All right," she said. Her head hurt and she was sick and she was tired.

She'd done it to pay off a bet, never done it just to pay a tab, but he was

quiet, he was lonely, she didn't even care what his name was, he had something

to offer her and she was down to that finally, if it got her a warm spot and

away from the law. "Place to sleep," she said. "What the hell."

"I got that," he said.

So she went back in the storeroom with him, he made a pallet down, she lay down

with him and he did what he wanted to while she lay there and thought about Pell

and old shipmates.

His name was Terry. He found out she was hurt, she gave him a story about a

dockworker getting rough in a sleepover and her walking out on him. He got her

something for her headache and he was careful with her, he excused himself to go

take care of a customer and he came back and started in with her again, while

she was half asleep.

So that was all right too. He was gentle about it. He was soft, sweaty and

nervous, she let him do whatever he wanted, he waked her up a couple of times,

but she was too weak to do anything. "I'll come back tomorrow night," she said.

"I'll be better. Do what you want. You buy me breakfast."

He didn't say anything. He was busy at the time. She went out like that, just

back into the dark. A couple of times she felt him. In the morning he bought her

breakfast. She sat at a table in the bar and she ate plain toast while she

watched the morning news, about how a woman had found a dead man in a restroom

on Green dock.

Terry was busy doing his checkout with the owner. He was hangdog, slightly

overweight, nothing to look at and nothing too clean. He never looked the owner

in the eye. The owner looked at her once, a long stare. But Terry Whoever was

smart enough to pay cash for her breakfast, so she could have been a chance

customer and the owner had nothing on him.

The dead man was a dockworker, two years resident on Thule, recently laid off

his job. The company he'd worked for had folded. He'd been on station work. His

supervisor had docked him three days' work yesterday for drinking on the job.

They said his windpipe was crushed.

They said they were checking fingerprints. Naturally. And when they got down to

hers, she could say she'd been here, Terry might say she'd been a customer all

night, Terry might even say they'd had a fight, if she could keep him

interested.

She took careful spoonfuls. Her head hurt. Her whole body hurt. She had never

done what she'd done just to get a bed and a meal, not even on Pell.

But there was a ship next week. After weeks since the last, there was a ship

named Mary Gold, and damn, she meant to be on it.

Anything. Anything, now, to get off Thule.

CHAPTER 3

« ^ »

The woman Ely called Nan looked up from her desk in the outer office, took one

look at her and came abruptly to her feet.

"Fell," Bet said, because the eye was going to go black, she'd had a look at it

in the bar's restroom. She looked like hell, she had her collar zipped up high

to cover the scratches on her throat, she was still wobbly, and she smelled of

sweat and God knew what. But she was on time. She signed in at the desk and she

ignored the stare a moment doing that. Then she looked up.

"Ma'am, I got faint and I fell. I'm sorry. I got breakfast this morning. Kind

man gave it to me. I'll be better."

"O dear God," the woman said, in a shocked, bewildered way, and just stood

there, so that Bet found herself staring eye-to-eye with this stationer woman,

this upright, respectable stationer woman who could kill her with a phone call

to the authorities. "God. Sit down."

"I'm here to work," Bet said. "Mr. Ely said he'd pay me."

"Just sit," Nan said sharply, pointing to a chair behind the counter. And when

she did that, Nan brought her coca and wafers.

She took them. "Thank you," she said meekly, figuring she was in no place now to

quarrel. "Ma'am, I really want the job."

It was begging. But she was out of choices.

"I'll call the infirmary," Nan said.

"No;" Her heart thudded. She almost spilled the cup over. "No. Don't."

"You didn't fall," Nan said darkly.

Bet looked up, met more straight sense than she'd looked for in this dry, plain

woman. Not accusing. Just knowing damn well a fall didn't do what had happened

to her face. "I got shoved up a wall. Rough night. Please. I don't want any

trouble. It's just bruises. Give me a chance. I'll work back in the offices.

Won't frighten the clients."

"Let me talk to Mr. Ely. We'll fix something up."

"No meds. Please. Please, ma'am."

"Stay here."

Nan left. Bet sat and sipped the coca. It hurt her cut mouth; the sugar made a

loose tooth ache. She held the cup in both hands, trying not to panic, watching

toward the glass-walled corridor where the back offices were, trying not to

think about phones and security and the restroom last night.

But her heart was beating in hard, painful beats, enough to make her dizzy when

Ely came back with Nan and looked down at her. "Wall, huh? You look like hell,

Yeager."

"Yes, sir."

He looked at her a long while. Arms folded. He said, "I want to talk to you in

my office."

"Yes, sir," she said. She put the cup down on the counter. "Thank you," she said

to Nan, but, "Bring it," Ely said. So she did, as she followed him down the

corridor and into his office.

He sat. She sat, the cup warming her hands.

"You all right?" he asked.

She nodded.

"You report it?"

She shook her head.

"You get robbed?"

"Nothing to steal," she said.

"Are you all right?" he asked again, which she guessed finally in a stationer's

delicate way meant had she been raped.

"I'm fine," she said. "Just a disagreement. Damn drunk and I crossed paths."

God, if he or Nan put it together with the morning news—"I just wasn't walking

very steady last night. He shoved me. I cussed him. I hit the wall. I went out.

He apologized. Bought me breakfast."

Ely looked as if he doubted her. He looked at her a long time. Then: "Where are

you staying?"

She thought, desperately. A year since anyone had asked that. She remembered the

name of the bar. "Rico's. Good an address as any."

"You staying there?"

"I get my mail there."

"Who writes to you?"

She shrugged. The heartbeat was doing doubletime. But Ely didn't have to help.

Ely didn't have to hand out a cred-chit to a down-and-gone spacer. He didn't

have to call a woman friend in when he talked to her, all proper, so she could

read his signals, that it wasn't her he was after, that he was trying to do a

good deed. That kind was scarce on station docks. "Nobody," she said. "But if

someone did, it'd be there. If something came in."

He just looked at her. Finally: "You do the trash-sorts. You run errands. You

sign in every morning and you make sure you look like a client otherwise, if

somebody's here besides Nan and me. I don't want Personnel to see you. If

somebody comes in and you get caught in the back hall, just make like you were

going to the restroom."

She nodded. She sat back in the back room and sorted the trash for recycling.

She weighed it out and she noted the weight on each bundle because sometimes the

cyclers cheated you. She'd heard that about Thule the first day she was

onstation.

Mainday noon she got her cred-chit from Ely and she went to a sit-down

restaurant and had another bowl of soup.

That night she went back to Rico's and Terry, his last name was Ritterman,

bought her a beer and a cup of chowder.

He took her into the back then. She undressed, she said she had to wash her

clothes, so he got her a bucket and she scrubbed her jumpsuit and her underwear

and hung them to dry over the heat-vent. He came up behind her while she was

doing that and put his hands on her. Without saying anything. She let him. She

let him pull her down on the floor and he still wanted to touch her, that was

all, while she shut her eyes or stared at the ceiling, and finally somebody came

in out front, so he swore and went out to see about that.

She turned over and wrapped up in the rug and went to sleep for a while before

he came back and woke her up, turning her over again and starting in.

Customers came in. He was gone a while. He came back and he got down again and

she thought he must've been a long time without, he'd wear out finally and maybe

go to sleep or let her sleep the rest of the night. But he never did.

She got dressed in the morning, he bought her breakfast. He wanted her to come

to his apartment. "I got to work," she said.

She earned her chit. She thought about finding somewhere else to spend the

night, she was recovered enough to be more fastidious, and Terry gave her the

chills, but that meant no supper and no breakfast.

So she went back to Rico's.

It was that way every day. Every day she got the single chit. Every main-night

she went back. Terry got stranger. He wanted her to come to his apartment. He

wanted to show her his place, he said.

He got to doing weird things, like wanting to tie her up. "Hell if you do," she

said. "I don't play those games."

He acted embarrassed. But she was worried about the drinks he gave her after

that. She was worried about going to sleep with him. He kept fingering her scars

and asking how she'd gotten this one and that one and being weird, just weird,

the way he went at sex while he was doing that. "Quit it," she said, finally,

and shrugged him off. He slammed her back again, her bruised skull hitting the

tiles and sparking color through her vision. She lay still, because she'd told

her subconscious she was in trouble—don't react, don't react, he's a fool, is

all—

"That night you came here," he said. "That black eye and all."

He hurt her. She got a hand free and clouted his ear. "Hurts, dammit!" He pawed

after a hold on that arm and she gave him the knee. He yelled. She got away, off

the blanket, over where her shoulders hit the corner and the shelves.

"You damn bitch," he said.

"Just back off." She levered herself up and sat down on a beer keg. It was cold.

The air was. The whole place stank. "Back off, friend."

"Come on back."

"Hell. Just let me alone. I'm tired. This is my night-time, man, I work mainday.

Just back off."

"You and that black eye. That man you say grabbed you—'

"Just leave me the hell alone. You got your supper's worth."

The front door chimed. He sat there, ignoring it, breathing hard.

"You got customers, Terry-lad."

"Security's looking for some woman, off in Green, same night, same night you

came here, all marked up. You got no card, no ID, come in here beat up—Don't

call the meds, you say. Don't want anything to do with the meds—I bet you don't,

sugar."

Someone came into the hall. Shouted for service.

"Get out there, dammit," she hissed. "You want the law in here?"

"You're the one don't want the law, sugar." He put his hand on her leg. "I do

what I want. Got that? I know where you hang out at the Registry. I followed

you. Hear? If I call the law I can tell 'em where to look, even if you aren't in

the comp, like I bet you aren't, sugar…"

"You want the law, dammit, get out there and wait on those guys before they call