"No, you wouldn't, but you did your best to make me think you would. No matter. So you went looking for somebody who could point you to whatever was worth stealing on Venus, and then that person steered you to Hegramet. Then what? Did Hegramet tell you that I was dumb enough to be your boy?"
Cochenour wasn't quite as relaxed, but he hadn't turned aggressive, either. He said mildly, "Hegramet did mention your name, yes. He told me you were as good a guide as any if I wanted to look for a virgin tunnel. Then he answered a lot of questions for me about the Heechee and so on. So, yes, I knew who you were. If you hadn't come to us I would have come to you; you just saved me the trouble."
I said, feeling a little surprise as I said it, "You know, I think you're telling me the truth. Except that you left out one thing."
"Which was?"
"It wasn't the fun of making more money that you were after, was it? It was just money, right? Money that you needed pretty badly." I turned to Dorotha, standing frozen with the augers in her hands. "How about it, Dorrie? Did you know the old man was broke?"
It wasn't too smart of me to put it to her like that. I saw what she was about to do just before she did it, and jumped off the igloo crate. I was a little too late. She dropped the augers before I could take them away from her, but fortunately they landed flat and the blades weren't chipped. I picked them up and put them away.
She had answered the question well enough.
"I see he didn't tell you about that," I said. "That's tough on you, doll. His check to the captain of the Gagarin is still bouncing, and I would imagine the one he gave me isn't going to be much better. I hope you got it all in fur and jewels, Dorrie. My advice to you is to hide them before the creditors want them back."
She didn't even look at me. She was only looking at Cochenour, whose expression was all the confirmation she needed.
I don't know what I expected from her, rage or reproaches or tears. What she did was whisper, "Oh, Boyce, dear, I'm so sorry." And she went over and put her arms around him.
I turned my back on them, because I wasn't enjoying looking at the way he was. The strapping ninety-year-old buck on Full Medical had turned into a defeated old man. For the first time since he'd walked cockily into the Spindle, he looked all of his age and maybe a little bit more. The mouth was half-open, trembling; the straight back was stooped; the bright blue eyes were watering. Dorrie stroked him and crooned to him, looking at me with an expression filled with pain.
It had never occurred to me that she might really care about the guy.
I turned and studied the synoptic web again, for lack of anything better to do. It was about as clear as it was ever going to get, and it was empty. We had a little overlap from one of our previous
soundings, so I could tell that the interesting-looking scratches on one edge were nothing to get excited about. We'd checked them out already. They were only ghosts.
There was no instant salvation waiting for us there.
Curiously, I felt kind of relaxed. There is something tranquilizing about the realization that you don't have anything much to lose anymore. It puts things in a different perspective.
I don't mean to say that I had given up. There were still things I could do. They didn't have much to do with prolonging my life anymore-that was one of the things I had had to readjust to-but then the taste in my mouth and the pain in my gut weren't letting me enjoy life very much anyway.
One thing I could do was to write good old Audee Walthers off. Since only a miracle could keep me from that famous total hepatic collapse in a week or two, I could accept the fact that I wasn't going to be alive much longer. So I could use what time I had left for something else.
What else? Well, Dorrie was not a bad kid. I could fly the airbody back to the Spindle, turn Cochenour over to the gendarthes, and spend my last couple of walking-around days introducing Dorne to the people who could help her. Vastra or BeeGee would be willing to give her some kind of a start, maybe. She might not even have to go into prostitution or the rackets. The high season wasn't all that far off, and she had the kind of personality that might make a success out of a little booth of prayer fans and Heechee lucky pieces for the Terry tourists.
Maybe that wasn't much, from anyone's point of view. But the captain of the Gagarin was surely not going to fly her back to Cincinnati for nothing, and scrounging in the Spindle beat starving. Somewhat.
Then maybe I didn't really have to give up on myself, even? I thought about that for a bit. I could fling myself on the mercy of the Quackery. Conceivably they might let me have a new liver on credit. Why not?
There was one good reason why not; namely, they never had.
