Part 29 (1/2)

I shrugged, sitting down on the deck beside her. ”There's not very much to tell.”

”Of course there is,” she said quietly. ”You had hopes and plans and dreams once. Maybe you still do. What would you be doing now if you weren't smuggling?”

”Who knows?” I said. She didn't care about my hopes and dreams, of course. I knew that. She was just casting around looking for some mindless chatter, something to distract herself from the mental image of her father floating dead in there. ”Once, I thought I might have a career in EarthGuard. That ended when I told a superior officer exactly what I thought of him.”

”In public, I take it?”

”It was public enough to earn me a court-martial,” I conceded. ”Then I thought I.

might have a career in customs. I must have been a little too good at it, because someone framed me for taking bribes. Then I tried working for a s.h.i.+pping firm, only I lost my temper again and slugged one of the partners.”

”Strange,” she murmured. ”I wouldn't have taken you for the terminally self-destructive type.”

”Don't worry,” I a.s.sured her. ”I'm only self-destructive where potentially promising careers are concerned. When it comes to personal survival, I'm not nearly so incompetent.”

”Maybe the problem is you're afraid of success,” she suggested. ”I've seen it often enough in other people.”

”That's not a particularly original diagnosis,” I said. ”Others of my acquaintance have suggested that from time to time. Of course, for the immediate future my options for success of any sort are likely to be seriously limited.”

”Until about midway into the next century, I believe you said.”

”About that.”

She was silent a moment. ”What if I offered to buy you out of your indenture to that smuggling boss?”

I frowned at her. There was no humor in her face that I could detect. ”Excuse me?”

”What if I offered to buy out your indenture?” she repeated. ”I asked you that once, if you recall. You rather snidely countered by asking if I had a half million in spare change on me.”

I felt my face warm. ”I didn't know who you were then.”

”But now you do,” she said. ”And you also know-or you ought to if you don't- that I have considerably more than a half-million commarks to play with.”

A not-entirely-pleasant tingle ran through me. ”And you're suggesting thatbailing me out of my own pigheaded mismanagement would be worth that much to you?” I asked, hearing a hint of harshness in my voice.

”Why not?” she asked. ”I can certainly afford it.”

”I'm sure you can,” I said. This was not safe territory to be walking on. ”The Cameron Group probably spends half a million a year just on memo slips. Which, if I may say so, is a h.e.l.l of a better investment than I would be for you.”

”Who said anything about you being an investment?” she asked.

”Process of elimination,” I said. ”I don't qualify as a recognized charity, and I'm too old to adopt.”

Somewhere along in here I'd expected her to take offense. But either she was too busy worrying about her father to notice my ungrateful att.i.tude, or she had a higher annoyance threshold than I'd thought. ”Perhaps it's a reward for bringing the Icarus safely home,” she said. ”Payment for services rendered.”

”Better wait until it's sitting safely on the ground before you go off the edge with offers of payment,” I warned. ”Unless, of course, you think I'm likely to weaken before we get to Earth and figure this is the best way to lock in my loyalty.”

”Or else I just want to give you a new chance,” she said, still inexplicably unruffled. ”You don't belong with smugglers and criminals. You're not the type.”

It was worse than I'd thought. Now she was sensing n.o.bility and honor and decency in me. I had to nip this in the bud, and fast, before there was trouble I couldn't talk my way out of. ”Not to be insulting or anything,” I said, ”but the high-society life you grew up with is not exactly the sort of background you need for judging people in my line of work. I could tell you about a man with a choirboy face and manner who could order one of his thugs to rip your heart out and watch him do it without batting an eye.”

”You seem awfully vehement about this,” she commented.

”I don't want you to get hurt dabbling in things you don't understand, that's all,” I muttered. ”More than that, I don't want me to get hurt. Stick with corporate mergers or archaeological digs or whatever it is you do for your father, Elaina Tera Cameron. You'll live longer that way.”

I frowned, an odd connection suddenly slapping me in the face. ”Elaina Tera Cameron,” I repeated. ”E.T.C. As in et cetera?”

She smiled wanly. ”Very good,” she complimented me. ”Yes, it was my father's little joke. I was the fourth of the three children they'd planned on. But the first three were boys, and Mom had always wanted a girl. And Mom generally got what she set her mind on.”

”Hence, the et cetera?”

”She didn't even notice for four years,” Tera said. ”Not until I started learning to write and was putting my initials everywhere.”

”I'll bet she was really pleased with your father.”

”Actually, she was mostly just annoyed that she'd missed the joke. Especially since Dad was famous for that sort of wordplay.”

”Nothing like that with your brothers' initials?”

She shrugged. ”If there was, it was something so obscure none of us ever figured it out. Dad certainly never let on about any jokes hidden there.”

”Sounds like him,” I said. ”He's always had a reputation for playing his cardsall the way inside his vest.”

”Only when it was necessary,” Tera insisted. ”And he never hid them from his family and close friends.” She looked past me at the access hole. ”Which just makes this all the stranger. Why would he go in there without telling me?

Especially after forbidding anyone else to do so?”

”Maybe he was afraid I would come into the 'tweenhull area after him again,” I suggested.

”But why didn't he tell me?” she persisted. ”There was a day and a half between that incident and our landing on Potosi. If he thought he needed to hide out from you, there was plenty of time for us to talk it over.”

”Unless he thought I might drop in on him unexpectedly,” I said. ”Remember, there was nowhere else on the s.h.i.+p he could hide.”

”Of course there was,” she said. ”The Number Two cabin on the top deck, the

one.

Jones used before he died. After Ixil took the release pad off to put on his own door, it would have been a perfect place for him to hide. We were planning to move him in there while we were on Potosi.”

”With access in and out through the inner hull?” I asked, feeling my face warm and hoping it didn't show. Once again, an angle I'd missed completely. Though to be fair, by the time I knew we even had a stowaway he was already gone.

”If he needed to move around, yes,” she said. ”We couldn't very well take the chance of letting one of the others see him, could we? We had some of the hull connectors gimmicked so that he could get quickly in and out.”

”Ah,” I said, feeling even more like n.o.bel prize material. I'd been through that whole 'tweenhull area from starboard to port, and it had never even occurred to me to check for loose or missing inner-hull connectors. ”But he never took up residence there?”