He deliberately misunderstood. "Thought it showed."

It won him a punch on the arm. A gentle one. Saby leaned over him in the dark they'd kept, long after lights had cycled to day. Her hair brushed his face. "Don't be an ass."

"It's hard."

"Don't be one to me, anyway, I'm serious, Tom."

It had been fun, right down to 'serious. ' His heart started increasing beats. Outright fear. He didn't know what to do with a statement like that. He didn't know where to take it, except to agree and keep his mouth shut and show up at Corinthian'sdock on time.

Or grab the perpetrator with both arms, roll her under and kiss her until she wasn't asking any more questions, because he wasn't good at lying—If Saby wanted to help him, yes, he wanted the help. Lie for it, cheat for it, all right, the coin she dealt in wasn't unpleasant at all. And he didn't know, once he thought of that, where that betrayal fit on Marie's scale of things, whether he was victim or victimizer—he just didn't want to hurt or be hurt by anybody, didn't want to believe anybody. Once you did that…

Once you did that, then you just walked helplessly, stupidly into what people did for fun or for profit.

The wake-up alarm went off, finally. Autoservice from the front desk said, robot-idiot that it was, Time to get up, time to get up, time to get up… until Saby reached out a hand and killed it.

Morning light came up, autoed, cold truth after the night they'd had. He could envision where he was going, back to the brig. Which he didn't mind.

He wanted Capella to let him alone. He wanted to go to the galley every day and deal with Tink and Jamal, he didn't want to be opted anywhere else. He just wanted a long, rational life where nobody would bother him—he didn't think that was too much to ask of the man responsible for his existence, seeing that Austin surely wanted his own life uncomplicated, too. Tink would swear to his good behavior. Tink could do that. There were people everybody instinctively seemed to like, and Tink was one of those, the same way he was one of the other kind.

"Can you find Tink?" he ventured asking, when they were dressing; and when he knew Saby was about to make the inevitable phone call. "You think Tink could walk in with us? You think Tink would mind?"

Saby looked a little surprised, maybe… a little perplexed. "Tom," she said, "everything's going to be all right. I promise."

Creative no, in other words. Con job.

"Yeah," he said, "all right."

Tink wouldn't tolerate him getting beaten up, wouldn't tolerate any treachery, Tink was pure as his sugar flowers, uncomplicated. Corinthianfolk could sell him out. Produce fake papers. Say he had a contract with them, or screw him in some means—or just do the mach' business on him, show him not to run, after this. All right, lesson taken: he'd been hit before, he could survive it. They never believed you got it intellectually, the mach' types didn't.

And Austin wasone of their kind. Maybe so was he. Genetics at work. Maybe it was why he got in trouble.

"Tom.—You don't believe me, do you?"

"Sure. " But he was a rotten liar when he was rattled. And he was rattled—and short on sleep and mildly hung over. "Sure, I believe you."

"Tom… " Whatever Saby was going to say, she didn't, then, just took on a hurt look. He didn't know why. Not exactly. He guessed he'd been rude, he'd burst the bubble of false trust. "Why in hell'd you…?" she started to ask.

But she didn't finish that either, just looked upset with him, or the situation, or something maybe he'd led her to think.

"I'm sorry," he said. He meant it. Saby'd been all right. "We don't need Tink. It's fine."

"You think they're going to pull something, don't you?" She sounded surprised. As if it couldn't possibly occur to her. "You think this whole thing's a set-up."

"Hey. " He waved a hand, Stop, enough. "No problem."

"Shit. " She jammed her hands into her belt and looked at him sidelong, from under a fall of bangs, as if she was re-adding everything.

"I said I wouldn't run. You didn't have to do anything. But thanks. It was nice."

Her mouth opened, her head came up, she would have hit him with the back of her hand. Hard. Except he blocked that one with his arm. He wasn't moved to hit her. But she was mad, furious with him, and he didn't know which of several things she was mad at.

"Don't hit," he said, "I don't like it."

"For God's sake…"

Another censorship. Her eyes watered. Her chin quivered. He'd made her mad, but he couldn't read it, couldn't react to what didn't make sense. He could defend himself if she hit him again, he wasn't going to take that from her, but he equally well wasn't going to get into personal arguments this close to the end—he was just scared, was all, scared of her tears, scared of him getting mad—he wanted to like her, he wanted so much to like her, and that was the most dangerous thing…

"Where did you get the notion," she asked him, "that I didn't give a damn? Where did you think I liedto you? Tom,—"

He panicked, backed up when she reached, she'd gotten to him that badly, and she just stared at him, confused, hurt, he couldn't tell. Maybe it was even real, but he'd thought that too many times. It wasn't reasonable it could be true now, when he didn't even know her, except she liked roses and coffee and blue glitter-stuff…

"I didn't lie to you," she said. "I didn't need to lie to you. Do you think I did?"

She hit right on it, and the lump wouldn't go away. He was scared of that little, little step she was asking, everything he'd tried to give away, too long, too desperately, until he'd learned strong people didn't want it and weak ones drank you dry.

But he'd hurt Saby. Dammit, it wasn't fair of her to be mad— hewas mad, and hurt, that she was mad.

"I likeyou," Saby said. "I wantyou to bunk with me. I didn't think, I didn't think I was, like, pressuring you…"

"You're not."

"Why Tink? Why do you trust him?"

"I don't know," he said, and that was the truth. "I don't know."

—viii—

FIGURE THEY'D BE FIRST IN or last in. But among the first, it turned out—a mortal relief, the phone call from Saby advising Corinthianthey were leaving the Aldebaran. "Can you be there at customs?" Saby asked, tacit reminder there was a customs problem.

Easy fix, in fact. "Boy called," Austin said to the agent at the kiosk out front of Corinthiansramp, and handed him the Union passport. "Lot activity of in and out the ship, he went out with the group—officer had the passports—"

The agent thumbed the passport. Ran the mag-strip for the visa, and it flashed Valid. "Checked through."

"Yeah, he was supposed to get it from my son, something came up, he ran off on that problem… he's twenty-three, scatter-brain, we'dbeen trying to find him to get it to him—this morning, he panics and phones our com, and now it's a problem."

"Yeah. Kids. I got two. Twelve and sixteen. Four-room apartment."

"God."

"Kid coming in?"

"On his way."

"I'll have it here, no problem. " The agent put the passport under the desk. They talked about other things, the economy, both sides of the line, the entertainments on Pell, the free-port situation… for a ship's captain at board-call, he was uncommonly leisured; for himself, with strangers, he was uncommonly conversational, but from where he stood, talking, he could see the whole dockside behind the customs line, a dim, utilitarian deckage, a neon-lit frontage of shops behind the two girders that were part of Pell's main structure.