God.
She ditched the card behind a loose base-moulding, there by the lift, a place
where it was out of her possession if she got searched, and available if she
needed it—she'd spotted that two days ago; she took the lift down to dockside,
she walked out, she just kept all her movements normal. If they hadn't followed
the trail as far as Loki yet, if she could just get down the dock and get
aboard, counting on Thule's usual inefficiency—
Crew came and went all the time till board-call, a body forgot things, somebody
had to go back and check with the ship's purser: and a ship had no particular
wish to have anybody but crew coming and going through its hatch, especially in
a skuz place like this, so customs habitually reckoned a ship had a strong
motive to police its own entries, and customs didn't watch that until the last
moment, at least Thule didn't. There was just that log-off formality if they
were taking passengers—
And ships didn't ordinarily let new-hires on till board-call, when there was
crew aboard to keep track of them and make sure they behaved.
So it was 1600. She was five hours early.
She walked toward that berth and toward the lights, and she kept thinking all
the while that, even if the station mofs were tracing her the long way around,
and they had gotten to Rico's via Nan and Ely, and tracked her all the way to
Ritterman, they knew she was spacer, and they didn't need to go that far. She
was on the Registry list, Nan and Ely couldn't cover that fact even if they
would lie for her and even if Nan didn't tell half as much as she knew: once
they were looking for her, the authorities needed only one functional neuron to
think about that ship in port and to know where she was going to go.
Dammit, they couldn't get you for having fingerprints in a damn restroom.
All right, she thought, approaching that ship-ramp, that dark skein of lines and
gantry-braces and the maze of pump-housings and buttresses, all right, Bet
Yeager, so something goes sour, no good breaking heads, there's enough of them
to do what they like. If they grab you, you go with it, you do the innocent act,
you get them to call Nan, that's what, Nan's got good sense—Nan might could
nudge the situation on your behalf—
She walked up to the working area. She had her foot on the ramp when the voice
yelled, "You there!" and she did a moment's flash between running up that ramp
and risking a shot in the back and sanely realizing Loki's hatch was going to be
shut up there, even if she got that far, no way they left it wide open to
dockside cold.
"I'm crew," she said to the men who walked up to her—no dockers, for sure, very
definitely upstairs types. "I'm Loki crew. Got a load to take aboard. What's the
trouble?"
"Elizabeth Yeager," one said, and showed her an ID. "We'd like to ask you some
questions, upstairs."
"For what? I got a board-call going in a couple of hours!"
"You'll make your board-call, if you can satisfy the legal office. We have some
questions, that's all."
"About what?"
"Come with us, Ms. Yeager."
"Hell!—I got a call to make, then. Just a minute."
"No calls, Ms. Yeager. You can notify anyone you want upstairs."
She looked at the two of them, had this momentary irrational impulse to try her
luck making a break for it and losing herself on dockside, to try to get to
crew, but what she'd already decided weighed heaviest in crisis-thinking, always
did. You had your plan, and especially when things went absolutely worst-case
you stuck to it, you most of all didn't get rattled and do something stupid.
"All right," she said, and waved a hand toward the lifts, distant across the
dock. "All right. Let's get this settled."
But she was close to panic. She wasn't sure what she'd decided to do was right,
now. She distrusted knee-jerk decisions, always wanted to think, always wanted
to be sure, as long as it was something she'd had a chance to plan out, but God,
she was in a mess, she
She ditched the card behind a loose base-moulding, there by the lift, a place
where it was out of her possession if she got searched, and available if she
needed it—she'd spotted that two days ago; she took the lift down to dockside,
she walked out, she just kept all her movements normal. If they hadn't followed
the trail as far as Loki yet, if she could just get down the dock and get
aboard, counting on Thule's usual inefficiency—
Crew came and went all the time till board-call, a body forgot things, somebody
had to go back and check with the ship's purser: and a ship had no particular
wish to have anybody but crew coming and going through its hatch, especially in
a skuz place like this, so customs habitually reckoned a ship had a strong
motive to police its own entries, and customs didn't watch that until the last
moment, at least Thule didn't. There was just that log-off formality if they
were taking passengers—
And ships didn't ordinarily let new-hires on till board-call, when there was
crew aboard to keep track of them and make sure they behaved.
So it was 1600. She was five hours early.
She walked toward that berth and toward the lights, and she kept thinking all
the while that, even if the station mofs were tracing her the long way around,
and they had gotten to Rico's via Nan and Ely, and tracked her all the way to
Ritterman, they knew she was spacer, and they didn't need to go that far. She
was on the Registry list, Nan and Ely couldn't cover that fact even if they
would lie for her and even if Nan didn't tell half as much as she knew: once
they were looking for her, the authorities needed only one functional neuron to
think about that ship in port and to know where she was going to go.
Dammit, they couldn't get you for having fingerprints in a damn restroom.
All right, she thought, approaching that ship-ramp, that dark skein of lines and
gantry-braces and the maze of pump-housings and buttresses, all right, Bet
Yeager, so something goes sour, no good breaking heads, there's enough of them
to do what they like. If they grab you, you go with it, you do the innocent act,
you get them to call Nan, that's what, Nan's got good sense—Nan might could
nudge the situation on your behalf—
She walked up to the working area. She had her foot on the ramp when the voice
yelled, "You there!" and she did a moment's flash between running up that ramp
and risking a shot in the back and sanely realizing Loki's hatch was going to be
shut up there, even if she got that far, no way they left it wide open to
dockside cold.
"I'm crew," she said to the men who walked up to her—no dockers, for sure, very
definitely upstairs types. "I'm Loki crew. Got a load to take aboard. What's the
trouble?"
"Elizabeth Yeager," one said, and showed her an ID. "We'd like to ask you some
questions, upstairs."
"For what? I got a board-call going in a couple of hours!"
"You'll make your board-call, if you can satisfy the legal office. We have some
questions, that's all."
"About what?"
"Come with us, Ms. Yeager."
"Hell!—I got a call to make, then. Just a minute."
"No calls, Ms. Yeager. You can notify anyone you want upstairs."
She looked at the two of them, had this momentary irrational impulse to try her
luck making a break for it and losing herself on dockside, to try to get to
crew, but what she'd already decided weighed heaviest in crisis-thinking, always
did. You had your plan, and especially when things went absolutely worst-case
you stuck to it, you most of all didn't get rattled and do something stupid.
"All right," she said, and waved a hand toward the lifts, distant across the
dock. "All right. Let's get this settled."
But she was close to panic. She wasn't sure what she'd decided to do was right,
now. She distrusted knee-jerk decisions, always wanted to think, always wanted
to be sure, as long as it was something she'd had a chance to plan out, but God,
she was in a mess, she
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