Somewhere below them, in the smooth lines of the conventional centripetal rings, were his real quarters, a student cell differing from his student cell in Vandereaux only in square footage and quality of neighbors. He’d be back there soon, would be back there now, if his initial assignment had remained unchanged. Instead, he was coasting, carefree and happy, above the labs where he should be working.
His life could be worse.
Smith was leaning forward, elbows hooked around the handlebars, staring at the station. Rani, seeing him safely delivered to Smith’s side, took off for a bit of her own free-wheeling.
“Tell me what you’re thinking, and I’ll contribute a milicred toward that VEM bill.”
Smith leaned back in the straps.
“She’s just inside there,” Smith’s voice murmured across the local com-bubble. “See that service entrance? Go in there, up the ladders and to your left. No locks, no questions, no rules. So close and yet so far...”
“And what’s keeping you from going in?”
Laughter, infectious, yet holding a touch of bitterness. “You have to get through the service lock first.”
“Oh.”
“That about covers it.” More laughter. This time free and easy. Too free. “Wait here.”
“Wesley, —wait!”
Too late. He was off. Full speed, headed straight for the spires.
“Wesley!”
Marani shot past him, only to come to a spinning, barely controlled stop when it became clear Wesley wasn’t listening.
The Stinger, a bright glittering jewel among the lights of the towers, dodged and darted among them, weaving a complex, random path, disappearing from view for long, heart-stopping moments, only to return, skipping and dancing as if without a care in the universe.
“Damn him,” Marani whispered. “He’s going to get me—”
A general cease and desist rang in their helmets on a band no legal receiver could ignore. Smith had to hear, had to know he was pissing off CNAS traffic control, had to know the fine was building every moment he continued his manic defiance of that order.
Just as the controller was threatening to launch a team to corral him, Smith made a full speed run straight at the tower, flipping at the last moment to use full reverse thrust, creating what had to be mind-numbing grav pressing him into the padded seat-back, coming at last to a spinning halt directly in front of the observation tower.
Upside-down. Relativistically speaking. The spin slowed, and stopped, the Stinger face to the window.
Over that same open band, Smith’s voice said cheerfully:
“Wesley Smith, at your service.”
“Your ID, sir?”
“Aw, shucks, laddie, ask your boss. She knows. Tell her ‘Hi’ for me, will you?”
And with that, he was off again, a high curve that let him wave to the tower before heading off full speed on a direct line for Academy Station.
“Damn.” The soft curse pretty much summed up his own feelings.
“What the hell got into him?”
“How would I know?” Panic touched her voice.
“I think maybe I should call—” He almost said Rycoff, substituted quickly: “—Danislav. Ask him to talk to the controller.”
“He’d never forgive you.” She shook her head slowly, cursing softly and profoundly. “—Nothing for it. Let’s try and catch him up.”
Small chance of that. The Stinger was parked and covered by the time they got back to the stalls. Silently as the trip back, they secured their vehicles among the service hoppers and emergency pods and passed together through the air-lock and rotational-sync into the gravity of AcStat.
Smith was not in sight.
“Moving fast,” he observed. “Guilt.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it.” Marani, angry as he’d never seen her, strode off toward Smith’s room, pressure suit and all.
“Rani, wait.” He had to run to catch up. “Don’t—”
She wheeled to face him.
“Don’t what? That was my fucking hopper he used to pull that stunt. It’s my fucking neck he’s put on the line, and if they confiscate my Stinger, I’m going to fucking kill him!”
She was off down the hall before he could think of any argument that might cool her down. Possibly because there was no excuse and her heat was fully justified. He hurried to catch her, then just held to her flank.
At Smith’s door, she didn’t bother to announce herself, but walked in, the locks yielding to her bios.
Inside the room, Smith was on vid-phone... with CNAS tower.
He was laughing.
The controller on the screen was laughing.
The controller sobered first, his eyes moving past Smith to the woman seething beside Jean-Phillippe.
“You’d best look out, Smith. She might have a gun.”
Wesley turned, held up both hands. “Wait, Rani. I can explain—”
“I take it you’re the hopper-queen Smith told me about.”
Marani froze in her slow stalk of Smith.
“It was my machine, sir. I take full responsibility for allowing him—”
“He’s explained everything, Ms Moharrad. I must admit, I’d have had a hard time not putting it through its paces myself. —Next time, Smith, take it to the commercial course. Damned if I’ll try to explain this twice.”
“Honestly, Bill, just send me the ticket.”
“Hell, no. I’ll have lunch off this one for a week. Just don’t repeat, hear me?”
“I hear you, Bill. And thanks. I owe you a drink.”
“That, I’ll collect.”
Smith signed off. His back heaved and with an audible sigh he turned to face them.
“Rani, believe me. I’m sorry. I honestly don’t know what got into me. I just... saw those towers and had to go.”
Marani shook her head. “And got away with it, you slick-tongued bastard. Any normal human would have been diced, fried and served up on a platter to ’NetAt security.”
“Helps being a Smith, I imagine,” Jean-Phillippe observed drily, and regretted the statement in the next breath as both Smith and Marani turned on him, frowning. “I appear to have committed a major faux pax. Smith, I—”
“I’ll tell you this once, Beaubien,” Smith said slowly. “I never have and never will use Seneca to whitewash my own stupidity. I called the tower to clear Marani of all responsibility. I lucked out that Bill just happens to be a hopper racer in his spare time. He asked about the Stinger’s unusual maneuverability and I explained. That’s it. That’s all. I’m embarrassed as hell about the whole thing and wish he’d send me the ticket I deserve, but he’s not going to and the important thing is, Marani’s out of it, except—” He turned to Marani with a grimacing smile. “I gave him your e-addy, love. He wants the specs on the AG/CG.”
“I should kill you anyway.”
“And maybe now you’ll get that paperwork in like I told you to.”
“Bastard.”
“I know.” He leaned to kiss her, and Jean-Phillippe had to wonder if he felt her melt under that casual caress. Probably not, from the easy way he released her. “Thanks, love.” A look of wonder filled his eyes, and he gave a bone-popping stretch. “I’m healed!”
She gave a reluctant laugh. “Fuck you, Smith,” she murmured softly, then aloud: “That’s it. I’m outta here.”
“You’ll be back, though. You promised.”
“You’re healed. I’m superfluous now.”
A shadow crossed his face. “Never, love. Come warm me up.”
“You’re too warm already.”
“Please?”
“Bat your lashes at someone who gives a...” Another visible yielding. “Yeah, scum, I’ll be back.”
She headed for the door.
“Rani?” Smith pulled the keys to the Stinger out of his pocket. “Catch.”
She caught the keys and in one smooth continuous motion tossed them back. “Keep ’em.”
“Ran
i, you can’t—”
“Happy birthday, scum. —JP?”
“Mind if I stay here?”
“Only if you promise to remind him at least three times what an idiot I am for what I just did.”
“Promise.”
She paused half in and half outside the door, her shoulder against the frame preventing its closing, staring back at them.
“Rani?” Smith asked.
She didn’t answer. She simply shrugged herself free of the frame, smiled and left.
Smith watched her go, then turned a puzzled gaze on him. “Do you know what that was all about?”
“Other than the fact she still loves you?”
Smith’s eye’s dropped. “I know. I wish...” He shrugged. “Well, can’t change how I feel. She realized before I did. But realistically, once she decided...” A quick glance, up and away. “I love her, too, just not... enough somehow.” He headed for the kitchen. “Iced tea?”
“Hot would be better for your aching system.”
“Hot it is.”
He waited until they were both ensconced on the couch to ask: “You going to tell me what really happened out there?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” Smith poured the tea into two large mugs and handed one across the length of the couch, all without meeting his eyes.
“One minute you were fantasizing about breaking in to visit Seneca, the next you’re off running suicidal rings around the ’NetAt.”
“You know, your ‘insights’ could become seriously...” Smith paused, staring down into the steaming cup, sighed and continued quietly, “It was that or blast that lock. Seeing it just... brings it all home, don’t you see? Seneca and I... we had plans. We were working on... things that need doing. And it’s all on hold now. For years and years. Possibly forev—” He broke off, stared up and around the room. “I think, sometimes, I’ll go crazy, waiting.”
“You can’t work on those ‘things’ in your spare time?”
“Like the piano?” Smith laughed, a small, rather morose sound. “I... don’t think so.”
“And because you can’t work on them, you just—what? Snapped out there?”
Smith’s mouth compressed into a hard line. “Something like. Look, I really think I should go soak in the hot tub for a while before practice. Unless you care to join me... ?”
He shook his head. “I’ve got work to do.” In actual fact, he had a meeting with Danislav. Danislav’s request, not his, but he didn’t want to bring that up to Smith. “Been playing truant long enough.”
Something like pain flickered across Smith’s face, gone in an instant.
“Are you all right?”
Eyebrows raised. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Why not, indeed. Never mind he’d narrowly averted the wrath of CNAS traffic control, an incident that might well have black-balled him from CNAS for life. Talk about fuel for Antonia’s... vendetta.
There was no denying Smith had his own ways. While he doubted Smith’s contention that the Smith name played no part in his avoidance of consequences, Smith’s own irrepressible humor might well carry the moment more often than not.
Made him wonder if he had in fact helped, intervening with Madwick, or simply made things more difficult.
In many ways, Smith could be as naïvely charming as Francesca, a similarity that gave an insight to a childhood unlike anything a core-rat could even imagine. A childhood where youth and innocence were treasured, possibly even nurtured, a childhood where personal safety was a theoretical issue, not a matter of life and death.
The man won more than he ought to, and not just in the name of universal balance. It wasn’t healthy. People needed to lose, needed to know life had real consequences.
They needed boundaries.
The snap out there— that had scared hell out of him. He’d thought he was watching a total meltdown. It wasn’t, this time, but it could well be, next time. He was watching a man in crisis. Someday, if something in Wesley’s life didn’t change, he’d snap the wrong way at the wrong time around the wrong person. Jean-Phillippe didn’t want to be around to see it— certainly didn’t want to be part of it.
A prudent man would call an end to this mission and avoid the risk to his career. Tell Rycoff and Hanford that Smith was beyond salvage and settle for a life of field work under Hanford’s orders.
A gambler would stick around and try to get through to the man. Try to stop the inward spiral before it hit the event horizon, then claim credit for a minor miracle.
No one had ever accused Jean-Phillippe Beaubien of being particularly prudent.
“Are we still on for Saturday, after the game?”
Smith’s eyes danced with a light he hadn’t realized was missing until it returned. “Still willing to be seen with me?”
Not pain he’d seen, just now: concern. Smith had been worried. Worried about his SL’s opinion of him...
...Or was he? Recalling that impression of isolation in a crowd he’d gotten from Smith early on, he realized it wasn’t his SL’s good opinion he craved, hell with that—no, it was his friend’s. He somehow doubted there were more than half a dozen people in the Alliance with the power to rouse that expression in Smith.
The stakes on the gamble doubled.
But somehow, suddenly, the game no longer seemed quite so important.
“I think my reputation can handle the strain. Provided, of course, you win.”
A shout of laughter, his... friend’s laughter... followed him out of the room.
C. J. Cherryh, Invitations: A Foreigner Short Story
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