Bram Möller's Arc

Chapter 29 of 63

Bram woke on a cot in the harbormaster's back room under three blankets and a coat that was not his. Gray light came through the window. His chest was bandaged. His hands were bandaged. A tin cup of broth sat cooling on a stool by his head. He heard voices in the front office and a name he knew. The dockhand who had held his hand around the pen was talking. Not to him. To two pilots at the counter with mugs. The dockhand was repeating something he had been told. Bram heard the word reckless. He heard the word lucky. He heard his rival's name, and then his own, in the same breath. "Flew a torn bag into a shear line on purpose," the dockhand said. "Ditched a prototype on a slope. Walked a package down through a squall like a man with nothing left to lose. That's the story going around. From a courier who was there." One pilot laughed short. "Then he's a menace. I wouldn't fly his freight." Bram put his feet on the floor. He got the coat around his shoulders. His cracked leather jacket was folded on a chair, the collar still white with old frost. He picked it up. The weight of it steadied him. He walked out to the counter holding the doorframe. The harbormaster's ledger was still open where he had signed. Bram set the jacket on the counter beside it. He turned the ledger toward the two pilots. "Read the line," he said. His voice came out flat and low. "Read the one above it too. The one with the ruler through it." The older pilot leaned in. His mouth moved as he read. He looked at the voided entry under Kesh's name. He looked at Bram's mark under it, and the consignee's clean signature beneath that. "He signed off my run without me," Bram said. "My rival told you the shear line. He didn't tell you why he was in it. He was trying to take my cargo off my deck at knifepoint. I put him in the shear. Then I finished the route on foot." He tapped the ledger once with a bandaged finger. "Every stop. In front of the hand that received it. Ask the harbormaster. Ask the consignee upstairs. Ask the doctor who's coming down to yell at me." The younger pilot set his mug down. The older one drew a slow breath through his nose. "That's a different story," the older pilot said. "It's the one on the paper," Bram said. The harbormaster came in from the back with a fresh pen. He turned the ledger a quarter turn and offered it to the two pilots as witnesses. Both signed under the consignee's line. Bram watched their hands move. His own were shaking again, but the story on the counter was his now, in ink, in front of men who would carry it out.