Rimrunners Read Online Free PDF Page A

shipmates.
    His name was Terry. He found out she was hurt, she gave him a story about a
    dockworker getting rough in a sleepover and her walking out on him. He got her
    something for her headache and he was careful with her, he excused himself to go
    take care of a customer and he came back and started in with her again, while
    she was half asleep.
    So that was all right too. He was gentle about it. He was soft, sweaty and
    nervous, she let him do whatever he wanted, he waked her up a couple of times,
    but she was too weak to do anything. "I'll come back tomorrow night," she said.
    "I'll be better. Do what you want. You buy me breakfast."
    He didn't say anything. He was busy at the time. She went out like that, just
    back into the dark. A couple of times she felt him. In the morning he bought her
    breakfast. She sat at a table in the bar and she ate plain toast while she
    watched the morning news, about how a woman had found a dead man in a restroom
    on Green dock.
    Terry was busy doing his checkout with the owner. He was hangdog, slightly
    overweight, nothing to look at and nothing too clean. He never looked the owner
    in the eye. The owner looked at her once, a long stare. But Terry Whoever was
    smart enough to pay cash for her breakfast, so she could have been a chance
    customer and the owner had nothing on him.
    The dead man was a dockworker, two years resident on Thule, recently laid off
    his job. The company he'd worked for had folded. He'd been on station work. His
    supervisor had docked him three days' work yesterday for drinking on the job.
    They said his windpipe was crushed.
    They said they were checking fingerprints. Naturally. And when they got down to
    hers, she could say she'd been here, Terry might say she'd been a customer all
    night, Terry might even say they'd had a fight, if she could keep him
    interested.
    She took careful spoonfuls. Her head hurt. Her whole body hurt. She had never
    done what she'd done just to get a bed and a meal, not even on Pell.
    But there was a ship next week. After weeks since the last, there was a ship
    named Mary Gold, and damn, she meant to be on it.
    Anything. Anything, now, to get off Thule.
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 3
    « ^ »
    The woman Ely called Nan looked up from her desk in the outer office, took one
    look at her and came abruptly to her feet.
    "Fell," Bet said, because the eye was going to go black, she'd had a look at it
    in the bar's restroom. She looked like hell, she had her collar zipped up high
    to cover the scratches on her throat, she was still wobbly, and she smelled of
    sweat and God knew what. But she was on time. She signed in at the desk and she
    ignored the stare a moment doing that. Then she looked up.
    "Ma'am, I got faint and I fell. I'm sorry. I got breakfast this morning. Kind
    man gave it to me. I'll be better."
    "O dear God," the woman said, in a shocked, bewildered way, and just stood
    there, so that Bet found herself staring eye-to-eye with this stationer woman,
    this upright, respectable stationer woman who could kill her with a phone call
    to the authorities. "God. Sit down."
    "I'm here to work," Bet said. "Mr. Ely said he'd pay me."
    "Just sit," Nan said sharply, pointing to a chair behind the counter. And when
    she did that, Nan brought her coca and wafers.
    She took them. "Thank you," she said meekly, figuring she was in no place now to
    quarrel. "Ma'am, I really want the job."
    It was begging. But she was out of choices.
    "I'll call the infirmary," Nan said.
    "No;" Her heart thudded. She almost spilled the cup over. "No. Don't."
    "You didn't fall," Nan said darkly.
    Bet looked up, met more straight sense than she'd looked for in this dry, plain
    woman. Not accusing. Just knowing damn well a fall didn't do what had happened
    to her face. "I got shoved up a wall. Rough night. Please. I don't want any
    trouble. It's just bruises. Give me a chance. I'll work back in the offices.
    Won't frighten the clients."
    "Let me talk to Mr. Ely. We'll fix