Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [132]
To no avail whatsoever.
Tia Cade it was who was lodged so completely in his mind and heart, and Tia Cade it would remain.
So, besides being hung over, he was still torn up inside. And without that blur of alcohol to take the edge off it, his pain was just as bad as before.
There was only one thing for it: he and Tia would have to work it all out, somehow. One way or another.
He opened his eyes again; his tiny rented cubicle spun slowly around, and he groaned as his stomach protested.
First things first; deal with the hangover. . . .
* * *
It was just past the end of the second shift when he made his way down the docks to the refit berth where CenSec had installed Tia for her repair work. It had taken that long before he felt like a human being again. One thing was certain; that was not something he intended to indulge in ever again. One long binge in his life was enough.
I just hope I haven't fried too many brain cells with stupidity. I don't have any to spare.
He found the lock closed, but there were no more workers swarming about, either inside the bay or out. That was a good sign, since it probably meant all the repairs were over. He'd used the day-and-night noise as an excuse to get away, assuming Tia would contact him if she needed to.
As he hit the lock controls and gave them his palm to read, it suddenly occurred to him that she hadn't made any attempt at all to contact him in all the time he'd been gone.
Had he frightened her?
Had she reported him?
The lock cycled quickly, and he stepped onto a ship that was uncannily silent.
The lights had been dimmed down; the only sounds were of the ventilation system. Tia did not greet him; nothing did. He might as well have been on an empty, untenanted ship, without even an AI.
Something was wrong.
His heart pounding, his mouth dry with apprehension, he went to the main cabin. The boards were all dark, with no signs of activity.
Tia wasn't sulking; Tia didn't sulk. There was nothing functioning that could not be handled by the stand-alone redundant micros.
He dropped his bag on the deck, from fingers that had gone suddenly nerveless.
There could be only one cause for this silence, this absence of activity. Tia was gone.
Either the BB authorities had found out about how he felt, or Tia herself had complained. They had come and taken her away, and he would never see or talk to her again.
As if to confirm his worst fears, a glint of light on an open plexy window caught his eye. Theodore Edward Bear was gone, his tiny shrine empty.
No—
But the evidence was inescapable.
Numb with shock, he found himself walking towards his own cabin. Perhaps there would be a note there, in his personal database. Perhaps there would be a message waiting from CS, ordering him to report for official Counseling.
Perhaps both. It didn't matter. Tia was gone, and very little mattered anymore.
Black despair washed into him, a despair so deep that not even tears would relieve it. Tia was gone. . . .
He opened the door to his cabin, and the light from the corridor shone inside, making the person sitting on his bunk blink.
Person sitting on my—
Female. It was definitely female. And she wasn't wearing anything like a CS uniform, Counselor, Advocate, or anything else. In fact, she wasn't wearing very much at all—a little neon-red Skandex unitard that left nothing to imagine.
He turned on the light, an automatic reflex. His visitor stared up at him, lips creasing in a shy smile. She was tiny, smaller than he had first thought; dark and elfin, with big blue eyes, the image of a Victorian fairy—and oddly familiar.
In her hands, she gently cradled the missing Ted Bear. It was the bear that suddenly shook his brain out of inactive and into overdrive.
He stared; he gripped the side of the door. "T-T-Tia?" he stammered.
She smiled again, with less shyness. "Hi," she said—and it was Tia's voice, sounding a bit—odd—coming from a mouth and not a speaker. "I'm sorry I had to shut so much down, I can't run this and