Loki's tanks to fill. Maybe closer to four till
boarding, counting the ten hour boarding-call. If she could just keep things
quiet that long, do the daily run to the vending machines, back to the
apartment, and stay put, then everything would work out.
All she had to do was stick it out and check the comp for things like overdue
tapes, things that could require Ritterman's intervention.
Meanwhile she got out Ritterman's collection of fiches and started sorting. That
kind of trade goods was low-mass, it would pack real easy, Thule customs only
worried about guns and power-packs and knives and razor-wire and explosives,
that kind of thing, it had no duty on anything, and there were no regs on Thule
about liquor.
She started packing, at least the sorting part.
She bedded down, the way she had been doing, on Ritterman's couch, she watched a
vid, she drank herself stupid and she woke up with a headache and the absolutely
true memory that she had a berth.
Best damn night she'd had in half a year.
CHAPTER 6
« ^ »
She made the morning trip to the vending machines, she lived off chips and soda
and cheese sandwiches she heated and added Ritterman's pickles and sauce to.
That was the second day down. She stayed in the apartment otherwise and she went
through everything in the cluttered front rooms, to see what was worth leaving
with.
She checked the comp, she drank, she had another cheese sandwich for supper, she
looked at skuz pictures and she made a hook and fixed up the one of Ritterman's
useable sweaters that was really snagged—like ship, a lot. You tinkered with
stuff, you mended, you washed, you did the drill, you scrubbed anything that
didn't fight back, but hell if she was going to give Ritterman a good rep by
cleaning up this pit: she just kicked his stuff out of her way and washed what
she was going to drink out of.
But that night sleep came harder, and the level in the vodka bottle went down
markedly before she could rest.
She kept thinking about immigration and the one formality there was, that she
was going to have to log out of station records to get by that customs man.
Right now she might be hard to find, on Ritterman's card, in Ritterman's
apartment, with not even the Registry knowing where she was right now and only
Nan and Ely able to connect her name to her face—but all of that changed the
moment she had to hand dockside customs that temporary ID card of hers and that
customs man sent the information back through the station computers, right from
a terminal on dockside, to be sure she was who she said.
The one thing Alliance was touchy about besides weapons was people, because
Mariner and Pan-paris had learned the hard way that people were much more
dangerous—the kind of people who came and went under wrong names and false IDs,
at the orders of people parsecs away. Customs insisted on checking crew IDs:
they'd checked her onto Thule off Ernestine and they'd check her off and onto
Loki.
And that check, if anyone was looking for her, if they had any questions about
her fingerprints among a hundred others, if the customs man himself had any
interest in why her face showed marks—
She tried to think of a way to dodge that check, like maybe going down to
Thule's few bars, finding Loki's crew, maybe sleeping over with somebody and
maybe talking her way into an early boarding that might miss customs altogether,
if Loki would cooperate—
But doing anything that might make Loki back off taking her on, that scared her
more than the check-out did.
Besides, getting in with the crew during liberty took money she didn't have, and
a body was expected to stand her own bar-bill.
She had certainly fallen asleep with worse prospects on her mind, but solitude
was a new affliction. Her mind kept going back to old shipmates on Africa,
wondering if they were still alive, wondering whether the major was, and who
Bieji Hager was sleeping with now.
Teo was dead.
boarding, counting the ten hour boarding-call. If she could just keep things
quiet that long, do the daily run to the vending machines, back to the
apartment, and stay put, then everything would work out.
All she had to do was stick it out and check the comp for things like overdue
tapes, things that could require Ritterman's intervention.
Meanwhile she got out Ritterman's collection of fiches and started sorting. That
kind of trade goods was low-mass, it would pack real easy, Thule customs only
worried about guns and power-packs and knives and razor-wire and explosives,
that kind of thing, it had no duty on anything, and there were no regs on Thule
about liquor.
She started packing, at least the sorting part.
She bedded down, the way she had been doing, on Ritterman's couch, she watched a
vid, she drank herself stupid and she woke up with a headache and the absolutely
true memory that she had a berth.
Best damn night she'd had in half a year.
CHAPTER 6
« ^ »
She made the morning trip to the vending machines, she lived off chips and soda
and cheese sandwiches she heated and added Ritterman's pickles and sauce to.
That was the second day down. She stayed in the apartment otherwise and she went
through everything in the cluttered front rooms, to see what was worth leaving
with.
She checked the comp, she drank, she had another cheese sandwich for supper, she
looked at skuz pictures and she made a hook and fixed up the one of Ritterman's
useable sweaters that was really snagged—like ship, a lot. You tinkered with
stuff, you mended, you washed, you did the drill, you scrubbed anything that
didn't fight back, but hell if she was going to give Ritterman a good rep by
cleaning up this pit: she just kicked his stuff out of her way and washed what
she was going to drink out of.
But that night sleep came harder, and the level in the vodka bottle went down
markedly before she could rest.
She kept thinking about immigration and the one formality there was, that she
was going to have to log out of station records to get by that customs man.
Right now she might be hard to find, on Ritterman's card, in Ritterman's
apartment, with not even the Registry knowing where she was right now and only
Nan and Ely able to connect her name to her face—but all of that changed the
moment she had to hand dockside customs that temporary ID card of hers and that
customs man sent the information back through the station computers, right from
a terminal on dockside, to be sure she was who she said.
The one thing Alliance was touchy about besides weapons was people, because
Mariner and Pan-paris had learned the hard way that people were much more
dangerous—the kind of people who came and went under wrong names and false IDs,
at the orders of people parsecs away. Customs insisted on checking crew IDs:
they'd checked her onto Thule off Ernestine and they'd check her off and onto
Loki.
And that check, if anyone was looking for her, if they had any questions about
her fingerprints among a hundred others, if the customs man himself had any
interest in why her face showed marks—
She tried to think of a way to dodge that check, like maybe going down to
Thule's few bars, finding Loki's crew, maybe sleeping over with somebody and
maybe talking her way into an early boarding that might miss customs altogether,
if Loki would cooperate—
But doing anything that might make Loki back off taking her on, that scared her
more than the check-out did.
Besides, getting in with the crew during liberty took money she didn't have, and
a body was expected to stand her own bar-bill.
She had certainly fallen asleep with worse prospects on her mind, but solitude
was a new affliction. Her mind kept going back to old shipmates on Africa,
wondering if they were still alive, wondering whether the major was, and who
Bieji Hager was sleeping with now.
Teo was dead.
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