CHAPTER 17

“Yo. Younger brother.”

Juan’s voice. Kit, his hands and forearms covered in the bright orange grease he was using to lube the centrifuge bearings, looked over his shoulder at the access hatch. Lightly deformed globes of weightless sweat hung tenuously to his forehead, the curves of his nostrils.

“In here.”

Juan’s head appeared in the hatch, spiky hair glowing red in the dim light of the metal-caged safety bulb above the hatch frame. “Bossrider wants you.”

Kit swiped at his forehead with his upper arm, trying not to get grease on his face. The smell of the stuff was sharp in his nostrils. He held up his hands. “I’m not presentable.”

Juan’s expression was sullen. “Now, Marco said. I’m supposed to finish for you.”

Kit reached for a towel. Apprehension sang a wordless, keening song in his thoughts. If Marco wanted him to leave his maintenance work, it was probably because he wanted Kit for something worse. “Okay,” he said. “Sounds fair to me. I’ve finished with the Cantor units, but all the Chingiz still need attention.”

“Lazy bastard. Shoulda had half those done by now.”

“I knew you wouldn’t want to miss all the joy, Elder Brother.”

Kit swabbed off as much of the stuff as he could and vaulted feet-first through the hatch. Cooler air touched his grateful skin. The access tunnel was striped with color-coded superconducting glassware cables that carried power and communications to and from the fuge. Kit tugged himself hand over hand in a direction that normally would have been head-downward, reversed himself, kicked out through another access into the personnel level. Cooking smells drifted through the corridor.

Marco was in his office, illuminated from above by a bright naked yellow light. Kit, trying not to get grease on anything, stopped his momentum with an elbow and knee to the doorframe. The mirrored espresso machine behind Marco gave a hiss, as if warning the old man of a hostile approach. Marco’s skeletal body, naked except for his silver crucifix, was strapped by a zero-gee harness to his computer terminal. A bulb of espresso was stuck by its velcro tab to his desk. Jesus Rice was nailed in painted agony on the wall behind.

“Bossrider, Juan told me you wanted...”

“Yes.” The bossrider’s eyes were still focused on his terminal. Marco raised an inhaler to his nose, fired, sniffed.

“I’d like to shower, if you have time. I’ve got grease all over me.”

Only then did Marco turn to him. In the strong overhead light it seemed as if his eyes had disappeared into their jaundiced hollow sockets, like the retreating eyes of a skull. Kit tried to stop himself from shrinking away.

“I can talk to you in the shower as well as anyplace,” Marco said.

The espresso machine gave another hiss. Marco saved his work on the comp, turned it off, and shrugged off his harness. He left the straps floating at the station, picked up his bulb of espresso, kicked out with a knobbed foot.

Kit’s nape prickled as Marco followed him purposefully down the corridor. The smell of cooking onions drifted down from the galley, mingling with the odor of scented candles from the blue-painted shrine to the Virgin. Kit passed the shrine and turned into the cabin he shared with his brother. The walls were covered with hype posters and holographic pornography. As he moved toward the shower door, three-dimensional labia followed him, as in a trompe l’oeil.

Kit swung it open, flexed to strip off his g-string. He could hear a couple of the younger children laughing next door, their voices louder than the comic hype they were watching. Marco, his muscles hanging slack even in zero gravity, floated into the room and stabilized himself next to Juan’s rack.

“Runaway’s in station space,” Marco said.

Kit felt a cold prickle up his arms and shoulders as he swung himself into the shower.

“I know.” Trying to keep his voice level.

“You seen your sweetie?”

“I figured you wouldn’t want me to.” Kit avoided Marco’s gaze as he swung the shower door closed. Dread did a nervous dance in his heart. He started the exhaust fan, then the water. Perfect globes of crystal issued from the black-rimmed plastic nozzles and burst on impact with Kit’s skin. Three naked holographic femmes looked at him with appreciative eyes. Marco’s shadow appeared on the pebbled glass of the door. His voice carried over the sound of the shower.

“She and her brother settled their troubles with the law. Came in with the richest cargo anyone’s seen.”

Kit breathed softly through the sieve of his teeth so as not to drown. He reached for the detergent dispenser and pressed the trigger. White soft foam poured into his palm. Kit watched high-impact water drops pockmark its perfect surface before spreading it over his hands and arms. He was glad he didn’t have to look in Marco’s eyes.

“Twenty-eight thousand tonnes of the highest-class compounds,” Marco said. “Runaway utilized its entire cargo capacity. When’s the last time any of our ships did that, hey? And the stuff can’t have been stolen, because by now someone would have noticed that much missing.” Kit saw Marco’s shadow raising a hand to fire espresso into its mouth. When the voice came back it was louder. “You hearing me, boy? I’m not talking for my own edification, here.”

“Be hearing!” Kit shouted as loud as he could. Maybe, he thought, he could make Marco scream at him for the rest of the afternoon.

Marco’s voice continued at increased volume. Score one, Kit thought.

“The stuff was in standard containers, except the containers were made out of something weird, some kind of resinated compound. People be knowing how to make the stuff for a long time, but why bother? Alloys are cheaper.” White foam streaked with orange cascaded from Kit, spiraled down the exhaust. Water droplets were trying to ascend his nose. Expertly he blew them out. Marco shouted over the exhaust’s whine.

“And you said they were going out prospecting, yes? They’ve still got the magnets hooked to their ship. So they probably went out pretty far, right? So they wouldn’t hit a system already swept for black holes?”

“I guess so!” Still shouting.

“I figure they ran into somebody out there. Be people saying it was some old Hiliner ship, jumped off course during a bad shoot and somehow everyone died before they could get it back. Ubu and Maria stripped it, may be going back for another load. I don’t think so. All Runaway’s drugs are products of the last thirty years, all in the public domain. No ship’s been lost during that time with that kind of cargo.”

“So what is it?” Kit shouted.

“Some people say it might be a lost settlement.”

Kit shut off the water and shook drops out of his hair. Tiny jewels exploded from his head, smashed, recombined, were carried down the howling exhaust. Warm air gusted on his body.

Despite the heat, chills rolled up and down Kit’s spine. He knew exactly where this was leading.

“How could there be a lost settlement?” he asked. “Sounds a lot less likely than a lost Hiliner.”

“Who knows?” Still shouting. “Maybe it’s some of us. Shooters. Maybe when Consolidation started pounding us, a group of families went off on their own, built a habitat somewhere. But that doesn’t explain how they can come up with twenty-eight thousand tonnes of pharmaceuticals in just a few months’ time. Like they were just making the stuff out there, waiting for someone to find them and buy their stuff. But I figured that out, boy.”

Kit rolled open the shower door and reached for a towel. Certain things, he knew, were inevitable. He would do what his great-uncle asked. He just wanted a fair price for his efforts.

“See, I figure the settlement was exporting the stuff already.” Marco realized he was shouting, scowled, then lowered his voice. “They’ve likely got a few shooter families distributing for them, in smaller amounts, through the human sphere. And when Ubu and Maria stumbled onto them, the settlement bought ’em off. Just gave ’em this giant cargo out of their warehouse and told ’em to forget what they saw. They didn’t have enough of our containers to hold the stuff, so they had to use their own, the resinous containers they hold their own stuff in. Maybe they’ll work Runaway into their distribution chain later.

“Ubu’s buying AIs, see. The latest model Lahores, meant for shootconning. One’s being retrofitted into Runaway, the others are meant as cargo. It’s like Runaway’s gonna outfit an entire fleet. And I figure I know whose fleet. Right, boy?”

Kit finished drying himself and threw the towel into the bin. Marco floated before him, yellow skin, three-day beard, withered grey genitals, sunken chest— a preposterous contrast to the moned, smiling women on the walls. Kit forced himself to stare into Marco’s deep eyes.

“You want me to get close to Maria,” he said. “Find out where this settlement is.”

Marco’s lips coiled away from his teeth. “Be getting smart, boy. I want you to play the same game with her that she played with you. Use your famous charm. Maybe once you get yourself in her twat she’ll tell you anything you want to know.” His bulb hissed as he misted espresso over his palate. “Whatever deal Pasco’s Ubu cut with these people, I figure De Suarez Expressways can cut a better. We’ve got more ships, we can work more efficiently with them, have more flexible scheduling.”

“She might not tell me.”

“Then you’ll have to find out some other way. Get into the ship’s log. Do what you have to do.”

A tremor ran up Kit’s spine. He suppressed it. Marco, he thought, was like some kind of family demon. You couldn’t get rid of it, but you could bargain with it sometimes. “I’ll do it,” he said. Filling him was a determination that he hadn’t quite known he possessed. “But I want something, bossrider,” he said.

Marco’s liquid black eyes gazed at Kit, as empty of pity as the vacuum that surrounded the ship. He raised a knobby hand, stabbed a finger at Kit. The middle finger, which he always used for pointing. “Don’t give me this kiddyshit, boy. I can make life hell for you.”

Hate flared in Kit’s vitals, gave him the energy to stare into the old man’s eyes. “I want shooter status,” he said. “On the Familia, with my father.”

“Huh.” Marco appeared to consider this. “You better come back with the information, boy.”

When Marco didn’t snarl at him instantly, Kit felt a distant surge of hope. Maybe he could get out of here, back to someplace sane. “Is it a deal, bossrider?”

“It’s a deal,” Marco said. “If you bring me what I need to know. If not, forget it. I don’t need shooters who can only fuck up.” He reached out to Juan’s bunk, turned himself to face the door. “You’re off your regular duties,” he said as he cast off for the door. “Just concentrate on giving Maria a good time.”

Kit watched him go. For some reason he didn’t feel like saying thank you.

The thing he had to keep very clear in his mind, he thought, and keep clear every minute, was why he was doing what he intended to do.

*

“Hi. I just wanted to apologize for the way I acted two days ago.”

Beautiful Maria cocked her head as she watched Kit’s recording. Had he undergone a course of mones? His face somehow seemed more defined. Grown-up.

Kit fidgeted in his chair. “Marco ordered me not to see you again, and I was afraid somebody would see us together. One of my cousins was there. Maybe you saw him.” Maria, thinking back, couldn’t remember any other de Suarezes present, but that didn’t mean they weren’t around.

Kit looked over his shoulder, as if someone might overhear him using the transmitter. “I would like to see you, though, if you’d like. I’d just rather not use any public place. Not even a hotel.” His voice drifted away. “Maybe I could come to Runaway,” he said. He looked embarrassed. Kit looked into the camera, opened his mouth to say something, then decided against it.

I love you? Maria wondered.

“Leave a message on the station net if you like. I’ll be onstation tomorrow morning and the rest of the day.”

The message ended. Maria looked at the empty black threedee screen and wondered how Kit had changed. More adult, but also more uncomfortable. Maybe he just didn’t know how to phrase his message.

Maxim hopped into Beautiful Maria’s lap. At least, Maria thought as she scratched the cat, her relationship with Kit had been simple. He hadn’t asked her to bring back a whole lost existence like Mitaguchi or demanded, like Ubu, a complex, entirely unspoken standard of behavior. All Kit wanted was to be kept away from his family for a while.

She’d have to hide Twelve, she thought. And maybe Ubu would never know.

*

The inner hatch slid open. Beautiful Maria wore a red vest trimmed with silver lace and a pair of grey pipestem trousers that looked as if they’d come from the closet of an onstation accountant. The contrast was meant to be surprising, and it brought a grin to Kit’s face as he unsealed his helmet and began to wrestle with his suit’s hard plastic shoulder harness.

Maria gave a chuckle as she stepped forward to help him. “Hi,” she said. Her smile was cheerful. He could smell the odor of her hair and breath, feel the warmth of her skin. He wondered whether he should kiss her or not. She didn’t offer, so neither did he.

He hooked his feet under a pair of straps made for the purpose and let her haul the harness maneuvering unit over his head. He undipped the harness hardware leads, unsealed the bottom part of the suit, then hauled himself out of the bulky trousers. The top half of the suit was next.

Maria snugged each element of the suit in an elastic net. Then she stepped back and looked at him as he tugged his T-shirt down from around his armpits.

“You’ve lost mass,” she said.

“Gained,” he said. “Mostly muscle. Marco’s had me doing all the repair and heavy hauling.”

Her look softened. “My fault?”

A flash of resentment cracked through him. “On account of you, yes,” he said. With more anger than he’d intended.

Damn. He was supposed to be charming, not make her angry.

“Sorry.” She gave a guilty smile. “Real sorry.”

“Forget it.”

She started to say something more, but the idea faded from her eyes and she turned easily in air. “Let’s go to the lounge,” she said.

Maria levered herself through the hatch with both arms, then waited for him to leave the lock before closing the hatch and sealing it. He drifted ahead for the moment, turned down the trunk housing that led to the centrifuge, kicked out past the auxiliary control room.

“What’s that smell?” he asked.

“Smell?” Maria’s voice was loud.

“Smells funny in here.”

“Oh.” There was a pause. “Ubu was painting something in auxcontrol.”

“Huh. Smells like an animal or something.”

“When have you ever smelled a real animal?”

“My mother kept cockatoos.”

She chuckled. “I don’t think birds count.”

“Okay. I suppose dogs and cats don’t count, either. So in that case I haven’t ever smelled an animal.”

Good, he thought. He’d put her at ease again. He was going to have to watch those bursts of hostility. Even his brothers had learned to be wary of him when cracks of anger began to glow in him like lava welling through the misting methane surface of a cold moon.

As Kit went down the ladder into the centrifuge, he tried to remember their first meeting. Something he’d done then, he thought, had made him attractive to her. He wished he could remember what it was. He could feel tension turning his shoulders to iron.

He stepped downspin along worn pale green carpeting to the upper lounge, sat on the sofa. It was lunchtime for her, and she offered him something to eat and drink; he accepted and called it supper. She handed him a bulb of Lark and dropped food from the warmer on a plate, then filled her own and sat in one of the side chairs.

Kit took a few bites of cashew chicken, then looked up at her. Was it stupid to start so soon? He really couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“I’ve been hearing a lot about you.”

“Heard what?” Her pale hands danced in a gesture of dismissal. He felt a deep vibration inside him, a thrumming bass chord of memory; he had forgotten those extravagant hand gestures.

“About your arrival here.” Choosing his words carefully. “And how you— got over your problems.”

“Not you, too.” Maria shook her head. “We’re not talking about any of that stuff.” She looked up at him, gave a throaty laugh. “I’ve had lots of questions. From the press, from the Navy, from every shooter onstation.”

“I’m curious.”

“Don’t start.” The warning tone was clear.

“Okay.”

“I’m not going to say anything to a man whose uncle keeps files on everybody.” Laughing.

Kit laughed, too. Suddenly this was funny. He was on board Runaway to seduce this femme, get her into the rack and fuck the information clean out of her brain; and here she was onto him from the start. This wasn’t going to work: Marco’s idea was the stupidest he’d ever heard.

“Won’t mention it again,” Kit said.

“I’d be grateful if you didn’t.”

Kit felt his tension fade. He didn’t care about this any more. In another few days he’d go back to greasing bearings, and Marco was welcome. He looked up at Maria.

“So what else have you been doing for the last six months?”

A bubble of laughter burst from Maria’s throat. She put down her plate and kicked her heels up. Kit had the impression she hadn’t laughed in a while.

“Haven’t done anything,” she said. “How about you?”

“Greased bearings. Rerouted power cables. Worked autoloaders. Strapped a lot of cargo.” He shrugged. “That sort of sums it up.”

Her eyes sparkled. “Tell me about it.”

Kit told her. He threw in stories about his family: his Aunt Sandy, who slipped him food when the others weren’t looking; Marco scheming alone in his room, under his yellow light, the mirrored espresso machine his only company; Ridge, strutting and flexing his pecs in front of some downside girls on Salvador Station, only to have a half dozen of their brothers beat him silly. The words came easily, without calculation. Maria listened with bright attention. The cat ghosted into the room, sniffed Kit warily, found his lap acceptable. The meal was finished, put aside. She charged his bulb with another round of Lark.

He stopped for a second, looked at her. “Could I touch you?” he asked. “I’d sort of like to— I dunno.” He shrugged.

Maria’s eyes appraised him. “Not yet,” she said. “I’m just a little—” Her hands fluttered like his mother’s white cockatoos. “I’m not sure if I need someone touching me right now.”

Suddenly he knew why they’d seemed so easy before. They’d just been a pair of junior shooters then, meeting by chance, spending a few hours between Nows. Now Maria had a secret, Kit was a spy, and both had a history together.

He smiled at her. “You will let me know when you’re ready, right?”

“I’ll make it good and clear.”

He stayed another pair of hours before Maria had something to do. Kit told her he’d be free the next few days, kicked out toward the airlock. She helped him into his suit, pressed her lips to his before sealing the helmet.

He tasted promise. He was going to enjoy this as long as he could before Marco lost patience and decided to have him doing double-shift maintenance again.

“Well, boy?” Marco met him at Abrazo’s airlock. The red light above the inner hatch guttered in the old man’s deep eyes.

“Nothing yet. She doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“Not be doing this for my own amusement, boy.”

Kit wrestled with his shoulder harness, pulled it over his head. His own inner laughter at this pointless melodrama was a secret warmth deep inside him. “I’ll do what I have to do,” he said. Maybe that would sound positive enough for the old man to leave him alone for a while.

Marco glowered at him. “Listen, boy. This is serious. The contract with PDK is due for renewal in less than three years. Every time we renegotiate we lose some of our margin. That contract’s been keeping us alive, boy!” Marco’s voice was a shout. Kit looked at him in amazement. Marco’s middle finger trembled as it pointed at Kit. “The family’s gotta live!”

“Okay,” said Kit. He looked at the pointing finger, the red light gleaming off the yellow, horned nail. “I know.” Marco said it often enough, practically every breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

“You don’t know shit. You think this is some kind of fucking game.”

“I’ll do what I have to do.”

“You say it. Do you mean it?” There was a gleam of saliva on Marco’s lower lip. Kit watched it as he tried to work out what was happening here. He had never heard the old man talk this way before.

“We’re dying here,” Marco said. Spots on his sallow skin flushed bright red from anger. “I looked at the figures and I know. The PDK contract has been supporting us for years, but that’s because till now places like Angelica weren’t big enough to support Hiline commerce. Now they’re growing and soon we won’t be needed.” He pushed closer to Kit, took him by the vac suit collar. Kit could smell the garlic on the man’s breath, see the desperation in Marco’s eyes.

“I’m not doing this for me.” Marco’s voice beat on Kit’s ears. “I don’t give a fuck any more. I’m gonna die soon anyway. But the family, boy, we gotta keep it alive. I been trying to impress this fact on you young assholes, but it never seems to come through clear. We’ve got eighty-one people on five ships, and in another few years none of us will be there any more. The whole apparatus is gonna come unraveled. I’d have Ridge beat this fact into your head, if I thought it would do any fucking good. But Ridge doesn’t understand it himself, and it wouldn’t work anyway, not with you. So what do I have to do to get it through to you that we’re dying?”

The last word was a scream. Spittle rained against Kit’s face.

Marco’s momentum faltered as he looked into Kit’s startled, terrified eyes. He hung there for a moment, attached to Kit by his collar, and then his old leer returned. “Hope you got in her pants anyway, boy,” he said. “Bet she’s got a young, tight pussy. Been years since I had one myself.”

Marco pushed Kit gently backward in the lock, used the momentum to drift through the hatch. Marco turned and kicked off without another word.

Kit drifted against the closed outside hatch. His heart hammered like a riveting gun.

Marco was serious about this survival stuff. Kit had just always thought it was part of the man’s hatefulness, part of the background. He’d never thought Marco really cared about anything.

Eighty-one people on five ships, he thought. And they’re dying.

Kit visited Beautiful Maria again the next day, ate vat-grown huachinango in pico de gallo sauce, drank with it some of Ubu’s toasty home-brewed beer.

Eighty-one people, he thought, and remembered Marco screaming as if he were in pain.

There was a tone from the comm panel and Kit jumped as if he’d been stung. Maria told the system to answer. A neutral machine voice came on.

“Mr. C. C. Mahadaji calling from his office. Request permission to encode transmission using Cypher 17.”

“Stand by,” Maria said. Maria gave Kit an exasperated look. “Sorry, but it’s the lawyer. He and Ubu and I are doing some negotiations. I need to be alone, okay?”

“No problem. I’ll put the dishes away.”

“Would you? Thanks.”

Kit scooped up the plates, left the room, and closed the screen behind him. Dimly he heard Maria’s voice answering the phone.

He stepped between scarred corridor walls until he came to the kitchen. He put the dishes in the washer, then straightened, listening to the ship.

Eighty-one people, he thought. And these two have already made a fortune.

Kit moved down the corridor to the ladder, looked up and down. The lower-level control cage was visible from the bottom of this ladder; he wouldn’t even hear Maria coming, and this would be the first place she’d look.

He went up, to auxiliary control.

*

The cold touch of your dream, whispered the song in Twelve’s mind, the colder wind of your soul.

Since hearing the old dolores ballad a few days before, Twelve had been unable to get it out of his thoughts. He couldn’t say why, but somehow the words stirred him. Yet a literal reading of the lyrics made little sense, and the lyrics furthermore possessed problematical subject matter.

Dream? he thought. Soul?

His definitions were inadequate.

This was the sort of thing he needed to ask a human about; but he’d asked Ubu and Maria about lyrics before, and the answers hadn’t been very helpful.

He drifted in the empty room.

Yes, he thought. No.

He was being drawn into the human mind. Experiencing the cold, comfortless touch of the human dream, the demanding presence of their gods.

His mind had been contaminated.

On his return to Beloved, he should report himself unfit to live.

He wished he could play the synthesizer, hear the comforting tones of Beloved’s drumbeats. But Beautiful Maria had informed him that there was a visitor on board Runaway who should not know of Twelve’s presence, and that Twelve should lock himself in auxiliary control and do nothing to cause attention to himself.

And suddenly there was a tug on the screen that led to the trunk corridor outside. Alarm crashed in Twelve.

There was another tug on the screen. “Hello?” A strange human voice.

Terrifying thoughts sped through Twelve’s brain. Perhaps he would be carried off, like Kirstie in the hype, for his genetics.

“Anyone there?”

Twelve could see the flimsy screen lock moving up and down as the human outside tested it. If the weightless human outside got some leverage, Twelve knew, he would wrench the screen open easily.

He needed to do something fast. Human words hurled themselves through his mind.

“Who is it?” He spoke loudly, in Ubu’s voice.

“Oh.” Twelve received the impression of surprise. “Sorry, bossrider. This is Kit de Suarez. I didn’t know anyone was here.”

“I’m busy now. I cannot talk. Please go away.”

“Yes. Sorry, bossrider. I was just looking around.”

“Goodbye!” Twelve produced the sound at such volume that his voder buzzed heavily under the strain. Twelve’s hearts raced as he listened in the silence, hoping he hadn’t given himself away by his loss of control.

There was no more noise from the corridor. The lock suffered no more strain.

It wasn’t until after he calmed down that he remembered the name of the intruder. De Suarez.

The human god had warned him about that name.

Renewed alarm rang through his mind. He would have to tell Ubu and Maria about the intrusion as soon as the intruders left the ship.

But the human god had told him to keep the information to himself. Twelve thought for a long time about that.

He decided to find out more before he came to a decision.

*

A tsunami of fear flooded through Kit de Suarez as he bounced down the ladder. He’d given himself away.

Still, he now knew there was something going on in the auxcontrol. Ubu was performing some task behind the locked screen. Maybe he was plotting a return course beyond the Edge, to Runaway’s next pickup from the lost human settlement. Or maybe Ubu had an artifact hidden there— an odd-smelling artifact, at that— that would give some clue as to where Runaway had been.

Maybe Ubu was just playing with his new parrot.

Gravity sang in Kit’s inner ear. He stepped off the ladder onto the pad on the bottom, then walked downspin to the second-level lounge.

Maria’s voice still alternated with voices from the comm. Kit couldn’t make out the words. He waited outside the door, trying to come up with a plausible story for why he had been found trying to get into the auxiliary control room. Nothing came to mind.

The conversation inside ended. Beautiful Maria slid open the screen, gave Kit an apologetic smile. “You should have taken your beer,” she said.

He forced a smile. “I’ll have some now, then.”

“Sorry. Ubu and I are getting into some heavy trading with—” She paused for a moment, a smile touching her lips lightly, then resumed. “With someone. We’re trying to nail down a contract.”

“I wasn’t even going to ask.” He recharged his bulb and sat down on the sofa.

“Sorry. Things got paranoid a while back. Someone tried to break in. We had to install lots of security equipment.”

“Who?” Kit looked up at her in surprise.

“We don’t know.” Maria sat down on the sofa next to him. Warm hair brushed his upper arm. She looked at his serious expression and laughed. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It wasn’t Marco. Your ship hadn’t got here yet.”

“That’s not what I was thinking.”

“What were you thinking, then?”

He looked at her, chose his words carefully. Know exactly why you’re doing this, he thought.

“I was thinking,” he said, “you could get hurt.”

“Oh.” Maria looked down. A faint flush rose on her translucent cheeks. “Thank you.” She took one of his hands and kissed it. A hot electric current seemed to lick Kit’s nerves. “That was a nice thought.”

He leaned close and kissed her. Maria turned to him, lips parting, her breath warm on his cheek. Know exactly, he thought, why you’re doing this.

Eighty-one people.

The comm rang again. Maria giggled from around his tongue, then turned away.

“It’s not a good day, Kit,” she said.

He sat on the couch, defeated. Ubu would tell Maria of his reconnaissance expedition, and that would be that.

The call was from the lawyer again. She turned to him. “Can you come back tomorrow?”

“Yes. Of course.”

She’d cancel, he thought as he rose to his feet.

But for some reason she didn’t.

*

“Shooter Maria, I wonder if it is safe to remain in auxcontrol with visitors on the ship. Visitors usually enter through the dorsal lock and must travel past through the auxiliary control room to enter the centrifuge.”

The sizer beat out a thoughtful pattern. Maria’s face folded in a way that Twelve was learning to think of as thoughtful. “I see your point. We were trying to keep you out of gravity as much as possible.”

“I have been strengthened for gravity. I have visited the centrifuge several times.” Twelve dreaded the experience, the painful breathing and the load on his muscles, but the truth of the human god’s warning had been borne out, and he needed a place to hide from any strangers while he gave further thought to what the god had told him.

“Yes. And you can’t stay in auxcontrol once the Lahore people start retrofitting our new AI.” Maria’s face folded again. She shifted one of her feet for another in the castoff bar on top of the pilot’s acceleration couch. “I’ll put you in one of the spare cabins on the second level. No one’s lived in it for years. You’ll just have to be very quiet.”

“Thank you, Shooter Maria.”

“There will be another visitor tomorrow. I’ll help you move.”

“May I ask his name?”

Beautiful Maria seemed surprised by the question. “Kit de Suarez,” he said. “A member of a rider family.”

“And the nature of his visit?”

“We’re friends.”

“Do you and his family have commerce together?”

“Ah. No. We’re sort of rivals. It’s just me and Kit who like each other.” Her eyebrows neared one another. “Why do you ask?”

“I wish to learn about humans.”

Once, Twelve thought, he would have been appalled by the idea that people from different clans could have the intense affinity the humans called friendship. Now it no longer seemed to bother him.

She accepted that and the conversation drifted on to other subjects. As usual, Maria’s assistance was minimal in regard to his problem with the dolores lyrics. “It’s poetry,” she said. “You’re not supposed to read it literally. You’re just supposed to feel it.”

Feel it, Twelve thought. By which Maria meant exercise of gestalt and intuition.

The horrifying fact, for Twelve, was that he was beginning to have such intuitions. Proof, as far as Beloved would be concerned, of his own contamination.

And of the need for his obliteration, as soon as he reported his disease to Beloved.

*

This time the meal was a rice dish, filled with meat and vegetables, a red pepper sauce over all. The peppers warmed Kit as he made love to Beautiful Maria afterward, spiced her kiss, her breath. He was faintly amazed at the fact he was allowed aboard Runaway at all, that she made no mention of his visit to auxiliary control.

He felt weirdly blessed. For a while he could pretend he was here because it was his idea, because he wanted to immerse himself in Maria, in her presence, her laughter... and then memory would come, a simulacrum of Marco’s voice in his own mind. She used you. Then, the family’s gotta live! And there he could feel a catch in his own happiness, a break in the steady throb of his pleasure.

He had forgotten, Kit thought, why he was doing this. Or maybe he just needed to find another reason.

Kit reached out a foot, the narrow metal rack swaying with the shift of weight, and snagged his forcebulb carefully between first and second toes. He raised the bulb from the floor, brought it nearer, took it in his hand, fired warm Lark into his mouth.

Appease the demon, he thought.

Beautiful Maria followed his balancing act with her placid dark eyes. She was lying partly under him, and it would have been too much trouble to disentangle himself from her.

“You have got stronger,” Beautiful Maria said. “I noticed.”

“I’m still growing.” He offered her the bulb. “Not like you.”

She took some Lark. He could hear it fizz in her mouth. He lowered himself to her, rested his head on her knobbed white shoulder.

“You remember,” he said, “back on Angel Station, you mentioned the possibility of an apprenticeship program? I think I could work it now. Marco doesn’t want to see me any more. He’d be glad to let me go.”

He wasn’t entirely certain what he was after. Marco would approve the scheme, he knew, just to find out where Runaway was bound.

Still, he knew he hadn’t asked the question entirely for Marco.

Maria’s slow heart beat four times, the sound plain in Kit’s ear. Then she sighed and took his hand.

“We can’t do it, Kit,” she said. “Not for a long time.”

“Yeah.” Suddenly he was angry. “You and Ubu are so paranoid.”

Maria stiffened. Her answer came fast and sharp. “We wouldn’t have to be paranoid if it weren’t for people like Marco.”

Kit bit back his resentment. He emptied his lungs, took a long breath. “Sorry,” he said. “It was just ... a fantasy I’d like to come true.”

She ruffled his hair. “Maybe it will. Who knows? Gonna have to expand our operation at some point. Just not now.”

Eighty-one people, Kit thought. He kissed her perfect cheek. Inside him, without a sound, without a protest, the fantasy died.

He lowered the bulb to the mattress and, as if by accident, touched the trigger. Lark foamed over Maria’s cheek and hair. She gave a yelp and came upright, almost pushing him off the rack.

“Sorry,” he said.

A moment later Maria stepped into the shower to wash her hair. His sense of unbelievable luck returned as Kit watched her roll shut the cubicle door. Water began to drum against the door and Kit rolled out of the rack and jumped for the ladder.

The auxcontrol screen was open. Other than an odd smell, Kit could detect nothing unusual. He was going to get away with this. He hooked his knees under the nav board and called up Runaway’s log.

Cold surprise brushed the back of Kit’s neck as he saw that a huge chunk of the log had been erased. Tampering with logs was illegal— a ship’s records were considered public property rather than property of the shipowner, and could not be altered. Kit could conceivably get Ubu and Maria in trouble by reporting the missing files, but that wouldn’t help De Suarez Expressways.

So much, he thought, for luck. Maybe Maria was careless about letting him wander around the ship because there wasn’t anything for him to find.

He looked numbly at the nav board and wondered if he could get into some other record— find a private journal, a copy of Runaway’s contract with its supplier, something like that. . . His fingers touched the keyboard, called up a list of files. He scanned down the list, the filenames a meaningless blur, and then another idea took him.

His fingers answered without conscious thought. It all happened so fast that Kit didn’t even develop suspense over the outcome.

He called up the navigation plots of the last set of shoots. An awed shiver of triumph rose in him as he saw them all displayed, everything he needed, logged and plotted. These were the working plots made before feeding the final result into the shooting computer, and apparently Runaway’s computer automatically saved them. Ubu and Maria had forgotten about them entirely and had never so much as slugged them under a password.

He paged back through the plots, trying to memorize as much as possible, then realized that all he had to discover was the point where the return series of shoots originated. He flipped backward through the file until he saw the four-dimensional gravity well of a Population I star alongside a series of smaller planetary wells. The star had a neat label, a number followed by a name. Santos 448.

He flipped back further into time just to make certain, found the outward-bound point of origin at Angel Station. He cut the power to the nav board and kicked out for the exit.

An unusual feeling welled through him, danced like a magnetic storm in his head. Power, he thought, it’s power. He had never had power before.

He raced back to Maria’s cabin, caught her just as she was stepping out of the shower, picked her up in his arms, and, while laughter bubbled in her throat, swung Maria in a furious, awkward dance— she was taller— then carried her to the rack. Her giggling protests were disregarded.

He knew who had the power now, and who didn’t.

Now it was time for his, Kit’s, fantasy.