Price of Ransom Read Online Free Page B

at the other’s words.
    The Mule hissed, long and sharp. “That would be immoral,” it said. “And perfectly human of you. I will have no part in such an enterprise.”
    “And in any case,” Pinto pointed out, “the people on Forsaken have never done anything to us.”
    Jenny grinned, glancing at Yehoshua again. “But if they had, it would be all right to take what we need by force?”
    “B’ain’t never right,” exclaimed Paisley.
    “Do you expect me to believe,” asked Finch, “that you, or any other tattoos—Ridanis—never stole from the people who weren’t Ridanis while you lived on Station? It’s common knowledge that it’s all right for Ridanis to steal from people who aren’t tattooed, just not from each other.”
    “Sure it be ya common knowledge,” replied Paisley scornfully, “cause it be ya easier to believe ya worst o’ us than ya truth. That way it be less burdensome to treat us so bad.”
    Finch blushed. It was a little hard to see, because of the duskiness of his skin, but the tightening of his mouth added to his expression of discomfiture.
    Yehoshua chuckled. “Hoisted you with that one, comrade.”
    Finch shoved back his chair and without a word stood up and stalked out of the mess.
    Paisley rose as well, looking abruptly worried, but Jenny caught her eye and shook her head. “Let him go, Paisley,” she said. “It won’t hurt him to dwell a little on his sufferings.”
    “But I didna’ mean—” began Paisley.
    “Paisley,” interrupted Pinto. “I can’t begin to understand how you can have any sympathy for that little bastard, considering how many times he’s made it quite clear how he feels about us filthy tattoos.”
    “Because he’s min Ransome’s friend,” said Paisley with dignity, “and because it be ya wrong o’ us to return prejudice with hatred.” She sat down, looking fierce and a little haughty.
    Yehoshua applauded softly. Jenny smiled. The Mule said nothing.
    “That’s fine,” said Pinto, looking disgusted, “for people like that writer, Pero, but look where he is now.”
    “Pinto! It be sore wrong o’ you to speak such o’ ya dead—”
    Gregori slipped out from under his mother’s careless touch and off his chair and padded out of the room, leaving behind what bid fair to develop into one of Paisley’s full-blown polemics. That she was the merest slip of a girl, scarcely twice Gregori’s age, seemed to amuse the others, but it depressed him. It was one of the reasons he so rarely spoke up. If they found her opinions, as passionate and generous as they were, more delightful than provoking, and she so old as sixteen, what then would they think of him, a thin sprite of some seven ship’s years, expressing the deep and private thoughts that moved him to wander this ship? Paisley might be oblivious, or immune, to their amusement, but he could never be.
    So he went to find the one person who always took him quite seriously, and who never treated him like a child. He went to Medical.
    He checked the lab first, but the counters and console bays where Hawk could often be found working were silent and dark. Slipping past the Ridani guard who was always left as a precaution at the Medical door, he padded into the main ward.
    Hawk’s blue hair was harder to distinguish in the half light, but still his figure was the first and most obvious one in the large space. The broad flats of beds lay awash in light that, although dimmed even here, seemed brilliant compared to the severe rationing imposed on the rest of the ship. Hawk moved with quiet grace from couch to couch, checking stats and speaking briefly with each couch’s occupant—those who could speak.
    Hawk’s assistant trailed after him, a young Ridani woman who had gotten medical technologist training when she had joined Jehane’s forces some four years back. To Gregori, it seemed that Flower lived and walked in perpetual amazement that someone of Hawk’s skill and experience would treat her,