Finity's End - a Union-Alliance Novel (65 page)

"The whole damn dock, Fletcher. Holes everywhere, a dozen ships emptied out…"

Chad
exaggerated.
Chad
had that small tendency. But the court had just met, on the business of inciting a riot. It was vividly in memory.

"Fletcher came charging in there," Jeremy said, perched on the edge of the chair, his whole body aquiver. "They all had guns and Fletcher just lit into them with his bare hands!"

"Mild exaggeration," Fletcher said in an undertone. "You'll make me
ridiculous
. Hear me?"

Henley
's Soft-bar was the venue. The station repair crews were patching the last leaks in the station's water and ventilation systems, rendering the name Arnason Imports highly unpopular among two residency blocs of very rich stationers who'd had their water cut off; and the man they'd found with two broken legs and a broken arm in the depths of the tunnels would recover from the fall, but not so easily recover from the charges filed against him.

Jeremy was sitting on Fletcher's right, Linda and Vince on his left. The headlines on the station news above the adjacent liquor bar were full of investigations and charges of which
Finity's End
was officially, today, judged innocent.

In celebration of that fact, the juniors of
Finity's End
owned a large table in
Henley
's. Bucklin and
Wayne
were on duty. They'd come in later. But meanwhile it was on JR's tab. So was the rest of the liberty, unlimited ticket to ride, as of this morning.

A round of soft drinks later, Madelaine showed up, in silvers, and patted Fletcher on the shoulder. "Told you how they'd rule," Madelaine said, and pressed a kiss on Fletcher's ear, to the laughter of the table.

But Fletcher didn't flinch. He caught Madelaine's hand and squeezed it, turning in his chair, looking into Madelaine's eyes. Madelaine the dragon. Madelaine, who'd led the effort in court.

"Grandmother," he said, and amended that, stationer-style: "Great-gran. You're a damn good lawyer. Sit down. Have a sip. JR's buying."

"Uniform," Madelaine reminded him. "Even if you're perfectly proper. Later. On the ship. When we undock. Behave. I got you out of this one, you. Don't break up the furniture."

Madelaine was off with a pat on his shoulder. The table was momentarily quieter, everyone eavesdropping.

The hearing today might have been a formality, a foregone conclusion—a verdict against
Finity
would have provoked another chain-swinging riot. But the court had had him scared, on principle. Courts could rule. Things could change. Anything could be taken away. Rule of his life. If it was important to you, and the courts got involved, anything could be taken away.

And he didn't want things taken away right now. He had something to lose—like three junior-juniors, one fairly scuffed-up, all sitting with him sipping soft drinks and figuring out how to spend the wildest liberty of their young dreams.

Like the senior-juniors, who were making tentative, wary approaches to him, under a flag of truce.

Sue hauled out cash chits when the next drinks came. "One round's on me, my tab," Sue said without quite looking at anybody. "Even's even, then. All you guys."

It wasn't the money. It wasn't the drinks. It was the acknowledgement.

"Appreciated," Fletcher said, all that anybody said.

It was a start on repairs. He bought all the senior-juniors a round, in spite of the free tab, because it was the gesture that was important. It dented the finance he had left, but that was the way you did things. It was the gestures that counted. You took a joke, you paid one back. You got as good as you gave. And you owned up when you'd screwed up. Simple rules. Rules that made sense to him in a way things never had.

They ate, they played rounds of vid-games, they had dessert, and they walked back to the sleepover in a group, all the juniors except the ones on duty.

Fletcher lay in bed in the Xanadu that night watching the illusory colors drift across a dark ceiling, thinking he'd talk to Jake about an apprenticeship when he got aboard…

Thinking, so easily, of grayed greens, and
Old
River
, and falling rain.

Thinking of a kid growing up, in a cabin alone while the ship rode through combat, a kid who'd written high and wide
ship's honor
, when what he really wanted to save was his own.

He got up and walked back to the kids' rooms, looked in on Linda's; and she was asleep. Jeremy's and Vince's, and they were asleep, too.

They were all right. Jeremy had bruises and scrapes and so did he, but those would all have faded, the other side of jump, and they were leaving in two days.

Some things faded, some things grew stronger. I love you wasn't quite in a twelve-year-old's vocabulary. But it was in that brown sweater the kid almost lived in. It was in the look he got, wanting his approval, his advice, in the couple of fragile years before a kid knew everything there was possibly to know.

He couldn't go back, and sit on that bank for the rest of his life and watch
Old
River
roll by. He couldn't look at a forever-clouded, out-of-reach heaven, knowing the stars were up there, and that all that was human went on in the Upabove.

He couldn't sit on a station for months, waiting for his ship to come back to him, out of a dark that had begun to be more real and more present in his thoughts than sunrises and sunset had once been.

He'd been to the farthest edge of human civilization. And even it wasn't foreign to him. The dark of space was where he lived, where he knew now he would always live. The bright neon of stations, the brief, surreal passage through station lives… that was carnival. Life for spacers was something else, out there, within the ships.

He couldn't describe that view to a stationer. Couldn't tell Bianca, when they met, what it was he'd found. He only knew he'd begun to move in a different time than anything that swung around a sun. He could love. He could feel the pangs of loss. It would hurt—there was no guarantee it wouldn't. But there was so much… so very much… that had snared him in, hurried him along with the ship and kept him moving. For the first time in his life… moving, and knowing where he belonged.

Their cargo was Satin's peace. Not a perfect one. Not one without maintenance cost. But the best peace that fallible humans could put together. Overseeing it, making it work… that was their job.

"Fletcher?" Jeremy hadn't been asleep. Or picked his presence out of the air currents. Or heard his breathing. The kid was uncanny in such things.

"Just being sure you were here," he said "I'm not going anywhere. Won't ever duck out on you again, Fletcher. I promise."

"I'll hold you to that," Fletcher said.