I watched the tide fall. I’d thrown out what was left of my best clothes. I’d made an effort to tidy the deckhouse. I’d set out a spread of Blue Moon patience. Then I’d sat in the deckhouse, where the sun threw a square of warm light through the plex, and watched as the tide fell and the ladder emerged from the water.
The remains of the ladder.
The left upright was the only part of it unchanged. The other upright had torn away from the wall, buckling the rungs as it twisted. Several were broken, jagged ends waiting to tear cloth or flesh. I winced. At least I’d been flung sideways, clear of them and of the boat and the narrow pontoon beside it.
The water was just above the level it had been last night.
Reluctant, needing to know, I uncurled from my warm seat and went out and down on to the pontoon.
At this distance I could touch the broken ironwork if I wanted. I could see the deep pits of rust, the way the metal was compressed and distorted. The bright gleam of a new breakage.
It took me more than a minute to understand. The broken rungs showed old metal rusted to fragile lacework or dull and brittle with the obvious evidence of terminal fatigue. The glinting metal on the upright was wrong. I could see quite clearly the marks where it had been cut almost through, from the side closest to the wall.
Laser-saw. Nothing else was small enough to work in that limited space. It would have taken only a few seconds, would have seemed to any watcher only as though someone had paused on the way down the ladder. My brain listed the facts even as I tried to deny their meaning.
I had told Milo it wasn’t his fault. It had been someone’s.
“You causing trouble?”
I looked up, squinting, to see Gus staring down at me. Hostile. I was causing him trouble. He’d have preferred to hear I’d drowned: it would have given him the chance to get an eyesore like the Pig out of his Port. If I could find a motive, I could easily believe he’d been the one to rig the ladder.
“Me, Gus? I’m not in charge of maintenance.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I paid for safe mooring, remember?”
“And you’re responsible for any damage you cause.”
It wasn’t even a bluff worth arguing with, although if he saw what I had seen he would probably accuse me of sabotaging my own ladder.
“Getting your intimidation in first, Gus? What you going to do about the ladder?”
“Can’t do anything till low water. Looks like you’re stuck down there.”
He liked that. He would also be delighted to stop me making use of the marina to land my dinghy. I’d have to go a klik upstream if I wanted to get ashore.
I hadn’t planned to go anywhere until I thought of being trapped down here. I was wondering how long it would take me to get the dinghy’s outboard working when a second head looked down from the dockside.
“Byron. Come to see the damage?”
The dark head bowed. The circuitry was still there, enigmatic.
“Heard you’d been swimming. And mud-bathing.” It was an afterthought that seemed to hint at something that might even have been amusement on that enigmatic face.
I suppose everyone in the Port had heard. I was just surprised he had chosen to come in person to look at the ladder’s pathetic remains. And he was looking at them. Unlike Gus, he had squatted to stare more closely.
“It prevents hangovers. You auditing the outlay on ladders?”
“Of course.” He straightened. Bland. Unreadable. “Wouldn’t mind a talk with you.”
“Gus tells me I’m stuck till the tide rises. You’ll have to wait. Unless someone’s devised a personal anti-grav I could borrow?”
“No need for that. An old-fashioned jet pack would get you up. Even easier, why don’t you shift the boat?”
Gus and I both looked at him.
“There are no other quay moorings.”
Gus enjoyed saying that. I suspected any repairs to the ladder would be temporary: he would make sure I had nothing left to return to once I left here.
“The marina is full?”
Byron’s question was so polite I expected it to draw blood. Gus needed an extra breath before he could answer.
“It’s not even open! And she couldn’t pay for it if it was.”
“If it’s not open, you needn’t charge, need you?”
Gus was finding breathing a problem. Byron allowed him another ten seconds to file an objection. It wasn’t long enough to reconnect Gus’s circuits.
“I’m sure you wouldn’t want the Port to be sued for careless maintenance.”
“She couldn’t afford it!”
“Nor could the Port.”
Silence. Neither intended to back down. Byron waited. Gus swallowed, blustered, shifted responsibility. “I’ll need the Port Officer’s authority!”
“Get it.”
He turned to look back down at the damage, leaving Gus wanting to protest but unsure of Byron’s place in the hierarchy. Doubt defeated him. He went off to call Daisy.
I looked up at Byron. “Why?”
The shrug was more of a ripple. “Told you: I want to talk. And I don’t like ladders. In any condition.”
He was walking away before I could demand to know what was wrong with the phone.
When Gus came back to find him gone, his face was a mixture of relief and fury. Relief that he didn’t have to concede defeat in front of his victor, fury at the confidence which hadn’t waited to learn what Daisy said. I was beginning to wonder if I’d misjudged Byron Cody. On more than one level.
It took a couple of hours to tidy the pontoon, including the rope which had saved my life. I coiled it with care. Then I fired up the drive, which started without a protest, used a single spring to help swing the Pig out into the tide and started the short journey towards the lock gates.
Too much to hope for any help from Gus. No problem. Even in a tideway with sore hands and stiff shoulders I can handle the Pig on my own and locks are easy. I’d had a close enough look at the set-up here to know it was standard but I sent the signal in plenty of time for Gus to react. I didn’t trust him not to have left the security wards on. He’d like me to make a false approach. The reluctant but definite swing of the gates said he was more eager to avoid another encounter with Byron than to humiliate me. Just.
No sign of Byron as I moored. No sign of Gus, either; just a curt message over the phone directing me to a berth as far from the sight-line of his office as he could contrive. Suited me.
The mooring web held the Pig as though she were made of glass, as though the slightest scratch would send an owner clamouring for compensation. My barge had never been better protected.
I hooked up the Pig’s systems to the bank of controls by the berth. That took three of the dozen outlets available. I speculated about the possibilities offered by the rest. Gus wouldn’t tell me about them. A pity. I liked the idea of my own private VR room. Especially today: escapism had its own appeal. But I couldn’t spend all day experimenting. Or even an hour. I kept looking around me, unable to forget that glint of clean metal on the rusted ladder.
The marina had facilities better than any I’d ever sampled, with the added benefit of unrivalled opportunities to bait Gus. It also had hectares of unoccupied space. Apart from the showboat, the Pig was the only craft moored here. If anyone wanted to find her, or me, I might as well be broadcasting to the whole net. Despite what Gus had claimed about the level of the marina’s security, I felt exposed. I would have felt safer back on the old wooden pontoon with a ladder no one could climb.
A ladder which had been deliberately cut.
I called the Harbour Office. “Gus? You cleared me to come and go here?”
He didn’t want to, couldn’t find a reason not to. I waited while he pulled my file and input whatever was needed to tell the marina I was legit if I went ashore and tried to come back.
“You’re cleared. Until your fees run out.”
Three days. It wouldn’t take that long to replace the ladder but if I hadn’t found work of some sort by then, I’d have to go sailing. Luna’s bill had changed my plans.
I’d worry about that later. Daisy might help. What mattered was that I was free to go ashore. I picked up my sack, set the Pig’s systems, all of them, and left.