Swan Song. Brian Stableford
I said. “It’s no fun hooking up to that column. It feels like I’m being garrotted.”
Sam shrugged. It was none of his business. But the way his eyes dropped told me that there wasn’t much chance.
I accepted the situation without grace, but without much bitterness. In all likelihood I would have to go at the captain anyhow, if I got the chance. I would complain long and hard. But it would only be for the good of his soul and mine.
“It’s a living,” said Sam. He didn’t sound as if he meant it—much.
“Any idea where we’re liable to be going in the near future?” I asked him.
“Nowhere,” he said. “Lots of it.” He waved a hand indicatively. ‘Hop, skip, and hop again. No jump, not for a while. Wait for some luck. That captain’s one hell of a smartass when it comes to cheating dirt squatters. In time, he’ll land us a little role. Then we go somewhere decent for a while. The company doesn’t need to ask too many questions. Anyone’s entitled to a look at the living now and again.”
I nodded. It was no more than I expected. No ship working this kind of territory was going to be taking long hauls unless she had effort in hand. Her margins were too narrow. She’d hop a handful of light-years at a time, picking up crumbs and swapping marbles. It might be months before we touched somewhere important enough to warrant my hanging around waiting for something to turn up—somewhere that opportunity might call once now and again to give a quick knock. Perhaps I could have made it to the inner ring faster by taking one ship at a time and keeping my direction out from the heart stars, but that would be risky. I might get stranded and I’d certainly get poorer. Far better to stick with the Sandman and be patient. If it took six months, six months it took. You can’t command the future from where I was.
“You’ve been around these parts all your life?” I asked him, to manufacture conversation.
“I know my way around,” he said. He looked at me and he grinned.
“I used to work the outer rim,” I said. “Mostly.”
“Never could stand wide-open spaces,” he said.
The hatch behind me was open, and somebody on their way out of the belly of the ship paused to look in on us. It was a kid whose name I didn’t know. Chief bottle-washer and cargo-humper, and part-time everything as the occasion demanded. The captain generally called him “Hey you,” or—not so often—”What the hell are you doin’?” Everyone else probably did the same. It’s easy to lose or gain names out in space.
“You got seckin watch, Turpin,” he said, with an odd flattening accent that I’d not heard before. “Better mik most of the evenin’.” He paused as he glanced sideways at me. “You’re OK,” he said, deliberately avoiding any direct manner of address. “Free till tomorrow.”
“Thanks,” said Sam. I nodded acknowledgment.
“Captain still aboard?” I asked. I knew the other spare crewman had already gone. He’d been in the cockpit with me when we touched and he’d gone out like a rabbit. Apparently, he had urgent business of one kind or another on the ground.
“Naw,” said the engineer, waving the kid away. “He’ll be in his cabin, but not in, if you see what I mean. He’ll crawl around the port as soon as the jumboes have cleared the cargo—he won’t be fit to talk to till tomorrow, when he’ll have his mind on a lift again. He shouldn’t have to beg for cargo—the port knew we were on regular run, and they got a standing arrangement to fix us up. Unless the big company’s expanding its operation to cut us out.”
“What company’s that?” I asked.
He looked at me a little sharply. “Zacher’s lot,” he said. “The something-or-other lifting company. Something like that.”
“Never heard of it,” I said.
“You could have signed on with ’em where we picked you up, if you’d wanted to,” he said. He thought I was already sick to death of the Sandman.
I shook my head. “Don’t like the big men and the sign-on,” I said.
He looked away again. He knew the score. He probably valued his own soul too much to put it in hock.
I turned away to go back to the cockpit, but he interrupted me. “I’m going out in a couple of minutes,” he said. “If you want to come with me. I know my way around. Here and everywhere.”
I didn’t hesitate. “Okay,” I said.
“Don’t bother the captain,” he said. “Just lock your cabin door.”
“Sure,” I said.
I waited for him outside. I looked around the field at all the rust-buckets sitting on the tarpol. There were six, but one of them just had to be a derelict. I couldn’t imagine that anybody intended to lift it. Of the others, two were obviously based here—transports owned by communities or planet-based operations which had found something to dig up and ship out to somewhere else in the vicinity, just to keep the micro-economy ticking over. The others were operative ships, cleaner and tougher, but not new. I assumed that one, at least, must belong to the company Sam had talked about. Even a relatively small company with a name like the something-or-other lifting company could probably keep a couple of hundred ships on a rim-to-rim shuttle covering a two-fifty-world circuit and clean up pretty comprehensively. Come the time when the Sandman and all the other small-time operators like her got run clear out of the black edges on the profit margins they’d have a stranglehold on a corner of civilization. Then they’d merge with Star Cross or somebody, and another piece of the jigsaw of Galactic Empire would be in place. I wouldn’t live to see it, unless I got really unlucky and the whispering thing that rode in my mind let me live forever. Once the amalgamation had taken place Zacher’s collection of toy traders would be put to the thankless task of drawing into their net all the little worlds which had stayed out of the loose network of exploitation—the worlds which had contrived, somehow, to look after themselves. Things could get unpleasant then—all around. One by one, they’d be tied in one way or another. There could be no escape except ultimate escape—total insularity. Only the Coventry worlds could stay out of the company bag forever—worlds which turned their back on the stars from which the settlers had come, and forgot that there was a great big wonderful universe on their tail end. I could smell wars—maybe a hundred years off, maybe only five. They’d come. It’s a great big fragile universe.
Sam came down out of the skipper and we set off for the port clearing-house. The sun—a deep red sun—was already close to setting. I had no idea how fast local time might run and I didn’t really care. I was still becalmed by the desolation of newfound freedom, and the length of the night didn’t seem a terribly relevant thing. I had no ideas, no foci in time. I was content to drift with Sam.
The air was thin but clean and fresh. There was a light wind, perhaps a little cold for comfort, but rolling just a hint of alien odors across the field. It was easy enough, drifting, I thought. I didn’t mind the emptiness.
Though I didn’t know it, a fragment of darkness from the long shadow of my past was waiting for me in the clearing-house. It hadn’t just caught up with me, it was already ahead of me.
CHAPTER TWO
We walked into a small coffee-house at the farther end of the huddle of transient-traps which crowded around the field. I just followed Sam, and he went straight there without glancing into any of the lighted windows or advertising displays which edged out on to the pavement along our path as if they were waiting to pounce.
I let him order both food and drink. This was his stamping ground and he was canny enough to have sorted out something that was better than the average.
I hadn’t noticed the man waiting at the port while our papers were checked, and I hadn’t consciously realized that we’d been followed from the clearing-house.
When we sat down, I asked Sam why the kid had called him Turpin.
“They