Rimrunners (9 page)

If Nan wouldn't panic and or just answer some trick question and hang her, never

knowing.

They took the form, they looked at it, and then they asked her to step into an

interview room—"To answer a few questions," they said.

"I answered!"

"Ms. Yeager," the men said, holding the door.

So they had her sit down at a table, they sat on the other side and they asked

her questions, like What happened to your face, Ms. Yeager?

Fight with a drunk, she said, the same as she'd told Terry Ritterman.

Where?

Green dock, she said.

When?

She had to be honest about that: the eye made it clear, and it was possible Rico

might remember the date she'd shown up. She said, "Last week. I don't know what

day."

"Wednesday?"

"I dunno. Could have been.—Look, I got to call my ship. I got a right to call my

ship…"

They said, "What's Nan Jodree's address?"

And she said, suddenly thinking like a merchanter, "I got a right to call my

captain."

"What's his name?" they asked.

"Wolfe!" she said, the first answer she'd had absolutely no doubt of.

But then they went back to the first questions.

"I don't have to answer you," she said. "I answered you once. Call my captain."

"Do you want to go before the judge?"

Civil law. Alliance law. Stations and civil rights and judges and hospitals

where they could get the truth out of you. Where nobody could keep from spilling

everything they'd ever done or thought about doing. "I don't have to talk to you

without my captain knowing."

"Come on," they said, "you're not crew yet, you aren't logged out of station

records."

"I'm Loki crew, I've got a right to notify my captain!"

"No, you don't," they said. "You can call in a lawyer, that's the only thing

you're allowed."

"Then I'm calling Loki's legal staff."

That stopped them. They went outside and consulted, maybe what to do next, maybe

what their choices were or whether they had to do that: she had no idea.

They kept arguing about something; then three of them walked off and left her

there, in that cubbyhole of a room with one large window. One stayed standing by

the door.

She didn't know what they were up to now. Maybe checking with Nan.

Maybe finally making that call to Wolfe, who could not be happy about getting a

call like that from a-new hire-on.

They had never searched her. That meant, she supposed, she wasn't quite under

arrest yet. That meant she still had the little razor. She thought about it

while she sat there. She thought that Wolfe was about one jump away from Mallory

herself, if Wolfe got onto her case—if they got a court order to question her

under trank and found out what she was; but there was no chance of that, no

chance unless maybe they rushed an indictment through at the last moment,

between the board-call and the undock, when Loki had to be away, on whatever

business was so urgent they'd prioritied out an honest freighter and created

hardship on stations down the line.

She pould see the outside clock through the window. She saw the time pass 1745,

and 1800 and 1830, and she got up finally and tried the door, to talk to the man

outside, but it was locked. She bashed its metal face with her fist.

"I got a board-call to answer!" she yelled; then, with no answer at all, not

even any interest on the man's part, she walked back to the chair and sat down,

raked a hand through her hair, and came the closest yet to complete panic.

She hoped—hoped if nothing else, they'd called Nan, and Nan or Ely had backed

her, and Nan or Ely was going to come through that door and take her side, do

something clever, get her clear. At least they could call Wolfe for her, if no

one else would.

But it wasn't Nan or Ely who stood there when they unlocked the door. It was

uniformed Security.

"Bet Yeager," one said, "you're under arrest."

"For what?" she asked, all indignation.

"For the murder of one Eddie Benham, the murder of one Terrence Ritterman…"

"Terry isn't dead!" she yelled back. She'd primed herself for that one while

she'd been sitting here. "I picked up my stuff at his place this afternoon! I

don't even know any Eddie Benham!"

"You picked up your belongings there. The duffle out front? You said you were

staying with a Ms. Jodree."

"I was. I was staying there. I left my stuff with Ritterman, I borrowed a fifty

from him, I was trying to pay it back!"

"Mr. Ritterman's dead. You didn't go in the bedroom?"

"No, I didn't go in the bedroom! What call would I have to go in somebody's

bedroom?"

"That's one of the questions we want to ask you, Ms. Yeager."

"I want my lawyer!"

"Turn out your pockets on the table, please."

She thought about refusing, she thought about taking out a couple of security

men, which came down to the same thing it had on the docks. She emptied her

pockets, and it came down to a one cred chit and the razor. She laid them on the

table.

They took her down the hall and put her in Detention. She did not argue.

She sat there staring at the door, making up her mind that Nan was going to come

after her at any minute, they would surely have talked to Nan by now, and Nan

was going to come down here and handle the station legal people the way a

stationer knew how to do.

And she'd tell Nan it wasn't the way it looked, she'd tell Nan everything—at

least the part about Ritterman and the other man, and Nan would understand that,

Nan would back her story about not being a free-consumer—And the Thule

stationmaster would give her a personal apology and a thousand cred too, of

course he would, that was the way station justice worked, every one in the Fleet

knew that, the way they knew there was thanks from stationers for favors done or

a memorial to the Fleet's dead or a shred of support from the merchanters who

had persistently smuggled war supplies and intelligence either side of the Line,

then cried piracy because the Fleet supplied itself the only way it could—with

no damn help from the stations, none from the merchanters, none, at the last,

from Earth.

She could always ask Mallory for a posting on Norway. Apply for a commission in

the Alliance while she was at it.

Oh, God!

Past 1900 now, past 2000 hours. She paced and she studied the calluses on her

hands and the tiles on the floor. She was aware of pain in her stomach that

would have been hunger, except she couldn't have kept anything down.

Finally they unlocked the door and it was Security again.

And Fitch, God, it was Mr. Fitch.

"That's her," Fitch said, to Security. "Let's go sign the papers."

Bet stared at him. Security beckoned her and she came, and Fitch, as she passed

him in the doorway, caught her arm a second and said, "You're in deep trouble,

Yeager."

But she knew nowhere else to go, when a station lawyer showed up to tell her she

had a two-way choice: she could stay on station or accept extradition by Loki,

which was claiming Alliance military jurisdiction over her case.

She thought about that little room back there, she thought about the dockside

and that ship and being off Thule; she thought a long, long few breaths about

Mallory and about what could happen if she'd slipped somehow with Wolfe and

Wolfe knew what she really was.

But it was all the same, sooner or later, if the stationers started in with

their questions under trank; and Loki was the only way she saw that had a chance

in it.

"Give me the paper."

"You realize," the station lawyer said, "if you sign this, you're giving up all

right to civil process. That includes appeal. And military law has a death

penalty."

She nodded. Her stomach had cramped up. She was stark scared. She signed her

name, Elizabeth A. Yeager, and she gave the station-man the paper.

So Fitch took her by the arm. "I got my duffle," she said, and Fitch called

another Loki crewman out of the outside office, before they cuffed her hands in

front of her and Fitch and the crewman took her out into the corridor of Blue

section and down to the lift.

All cool and quiet then, Fitch not saying a word; and she figured silence was a

good idea, under the circumstances. She stared at the door during the ride down

to dockside. She walked on her own between Fitch and the crewman, out across the

docks, over to Loki's berth—the customs man'd had the word evidently, and there

was no objection as they walked up the ramp and into the tube.

They reached the airlock and Fitch opened it up, Fitch took her by the arm and

brought her inside.

"Stow that," Fitch told the crewman with the duffle. And shoved her back against

the wall. "You got anything to tell me?" Fitch asked.

"Thank you, sir."

Fitch slammed her back a second time. "You're a damned problem, Yeager. You're

already a problem to this ship. Hear me?"

"Yes, sir," she said, and halfway expected a punch in the gut then. Or a crack

of her head against the wall.

But Fitch said: "So you know." And snatched her around by the arm and marched

her along to the first latch-door along the corridor.

Stowage compartment, dark series of zigs and zags going God knew how far back.

Oh, shit! she thought. And Fitch shoved her inside, and shut the door.

She searched beside it with her hands, found a number of switches. None of them

worked. No com in here that she could feel. No power to anything, not even

ventilation, so far as she could hear. The master switch had to be cut off from

ops.

She leaned back against the wall of lockers facing the entry, did a fast mental

sort, in the total dark, what the orientation was, where the ship-axis was—

What Fitch had said—a problem. She was a problem.

Like Fitch was damn pissed about her, but Fitch didn't seem to be onto her as

one of Mazian's. Fitch might not know anything beyond the fact of a new-hire the

captain wanted hauled out of the station brig and dumped into a secure place

aboard.

Wolfe himself might not know.

God, if, if there was any chance of getting out of here, if there was any chance

a spook ship was that desperate for crew—

She braced one boot tentatively against the door opposite to see if there was

the right amount of room. Just about.

After a long time she heard the take-hold.

And there was no going back from here, live or die. She knew that, knew that

better than the station lawyer could ever say it.

You held on, that was all, just held on, braced the best way you could, fair

chance—fair chance that son of a bitch had given her, the kind of a safe-hole

you used if you got caught by a take-hold in a long corridor, narrow space, a

place to wedge in: and after the shocks of Loki's oversized engines firing and

after the slam of force that tried to float your kidneys through your stomach

and a second one that bashed a sore skull against a metal locker, you just

clenched your teeth and tried to stay braced and keep from slipping, because if

you got pushed off center you could spend a real uncomfortable ride; and if you

slipped off to the left you could fall a long, long way.

And when Loki finally smoothed out into a steady one G plus push, you just lay

on the face of the lockers that were going to be the deck for a while and kept

your foot braced, in case, in case of God-knew-what.

Eventually Fitch would get somebody down here. Eventually somebody would get

around to it before the ship went jump. Somebody would get the drugs you had to

have in hyperspace, without which you were good as dead.

Without which you had no grip on where you were and you had no way back again,

no way to process what the mind and the senses had no way to get hold of.

It was one way to get rid of a problem. All it took was a little screw-up in

orders. And there was no com in here.

Somebody remember I'm down here, dammit!

She risked her skull to try the switches again, overhead this time. Nothing. The

acceleration dragged at her arms, made her dizzy, made her knees weak. She lay

down and braced one foot up against the door again.

Calm, she told herself. They'd get around to it. A ship heading for jump was

damned busy, that was all. Matter of priorities. Somebody like Fitch didn't trek

all the way up to station ops to get a skut out of the brig only to scramble her

brain for good and all in some fucking official screw-up.

Couldn't do that.

God—get somebody down here!

CHAPTER 7

« ^ »

She heard the latch give, and she moved, rolled across the uneven surface of the

lockers and staggered for her knees as the hatch opened and light flooded in—a

man was standing astride the doorway, which was the way the stowage was oriented

since the sort-out, a pit of unguessed depth in its zigzag contours.

It wasn't Fitch. "Up," the man said, and she pulled herself to her feet, tried

to use the door-edges beside her for a ladder up to the deck level, but the

edges were shallow and her own weight dragged at her.

He reached down and grabbed her chained hands, she climbed and he pulled, and