Текст книги "Devil to the Belt (novels "Heavy Time" and "Hellburner")"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 45 страниц)

“Meg and Sal do just fine. We don’tknow about this guy. And we’d have had twopair of hands today if Meg and Sal weren’t out spending money on this guy. He’s trouble, Bird, he’s been trouble from the first we laid eyes on him.”

“We can always say no, if he turns out to be trouble. We got time yet at least to find it out. Let’s just put him to work, see how he gets along.”

“You can’tsay no, Bird, you got this severe problem with saying no. You crawl ass-backwards into what’s going to cost you money. If I didn’t—”

“I can say no real good, Ben, if you recall. I said no to Meg and I said no to quite a few would-be’s before I took you on. Now, you and me being partners, I give you a lot I wouldn’t give just anybody—but being partners goes both ways. And right now I’m asking you to just give me a little more line.”

“To do what? Wait until his money comes through? Then he’ll pay for his own bills? That’s real convenient, Bird, that’s real damned convenient. He doesn’t get to pay anything, he doesn’t do anything, and we’re buying his meals!”

“Ben,—”

“I don’t know why you believe him over me, that’s all!”

“Ben,—I dunno whether the gals are right about this deal: they could be. Here I am trying to figure whether I trust Dekker, and you’re acting so damn crazy I end up defending him. I can’t hardly take yourside, without having him off down the ‘deck in a fit now, can I?”

“It’d be good riddance!”

“Yeah, and what if the gals are right and this guy’s a good steady prospect?”

“Steady, hell! Bird, whoare we going to get to go out with Dekker? ‘What time is it? What time is it?’ Who’s going to put up with that?”

“The guy really got to you out there, didn’t he?”

He hatedbeing patronized. “He didn’t getto me.”

“Good,” Bird said. “Good.”

“Dammit, don’t—”

“—don’t what?”

Cut me off like that, Ben thought blackly. But what he said was, “All right, all right. We’ll see how he does the next week or so.” He took a pretzel out of the bowl. “Guy didn’t take ‘em.” Wasteful habit. It was like somebody who had money, who was used to having it. And on the thought of the 47 k Dekker claimed to have: “If he’s got the funds he claims, he’s a damned walking bank. Where’d he get it, except this rich college girl? He had a lot to gain by her dying, you know.”

“Yeah, looked like he was having a real good time out there, didn’t it?”

He hated it when Bird got surly with him. It made him figure maybe he wasn’t being reasonable.

Bird said: “The Nouri thing, you know, changed a lot. Cops with warrants to do anything they wanted, the news full of friends informing on friends… I don’t think there was half the under the table stuff going on that the company claimed—like we were some major leak in the company accounts. We weren’t. We were making it. You understand? People used to help each other, that’s what was going on, then. If you got in trouble and you needed a part, you didn’t go to the bank, you went to a friend. You could borrow under bank rates, if you kept your promises, if you ran a good operation and paid your debts—and damn sure people knew if you did. We were making it, and the company wasn’t. Now you tell me who’s the better businessmen.” Bird lifted a shoulder and took a sip of a dying beer. “Now we’ve got a generation coming off Earth with the Attitudes. We got a generation coming out of the Institute that never heard of Shakespeare—”

“God, so give me a tape, Bird! I swear I’ll listen to the sumbitch.”

Bird looked at him oddly, then reached across the table, took hold of his hand, man/woman-like, which was odder still, scarily odd, coming from Bird, from the guy he shared a ship with. Bird said, “Ben, you’re a good guy. You really are. Staythat way.”

Ben rescued his hand, shaken. “What’s that mean?”

Bird only said, in that same peculiar way, “Ben-me-lad, I’ll look you up that tape.”

Dekker stared at the ceiling and thought about a sleeping pill, thought about the whole damned bottle—but hell if he’d give the company the satisfaction.

Ben wasn’t going to let him alone. That was the way it was, that was the way it was going to be. Ben didn’t like him, and with Belters, that well could be the final word on it. Ben had taken his ship and now Ben had him down as trouble—that was the way it was going to be, too.

He didn’t know why Ben set him off like that. He didn’t know why he’d said what he had, he didn’t know why he’d talked about Cory’s business, or whether he had a chance left with them, under any terms now he’d walked out—and he didn’t know what Bird might be thinking.

If nothing else—that he and Ben together were a problem: he had no question which way Bird would go if Ben wanted him out.

And Ben talked about getting his license back, with no dollar figure on it. Everything he had, he was sure– ifthey still took him after the blow-up out there. Ben thought he was crazy, Ben thought he’d crack if he got out there again, and, honestly speaking, he wasn’t sure of himself. The deep Belt was no place to discover you’d grown scared of the dark; and handling a ship making a tag was no time to have a memory lapse, to find the next move wasn’t there—or not to remember where you were in a sequence or what you’d already done. You didn’t get other chances. The Belt didn’t give them.

He didn’t know himself what would happen when the hatch shut behind him, whether he’d panic, whether he’d be all right—whether he’d think he was all right and, the longer he was out in that ship, slowly unravel between past and present, the way he had in the shower– thatshower, the same surroundings, nothing but his current partners’ presence to anchor him in time.

Everybody seemed to be asking him to collect himself, get on with his life as if nothing had happened. It seemed to be the way everybody got by—they numbed themselves to feeling, made themselves deaf and blind to what the company got away with, just kept their mouths shut, chased what money they could get, and got used to seeing a lying sonuvabitch in the mirror every morning, because that was the only kind that had a chance in this place.

He didn’t know whether he could do that. He didn’t even know whether he could keep out of that pill drawer and stay alive tonight, or whether the gain was even worth it anymore.

Cory, he’d said that time they’d had the argument, maybe I don’t want to go. What in hell am I going to do on a starship? I failed math. I failed physics. I don’t have your brains, Cory, it was your idea all along. They won’t have work for me, I’ll be dead mass, the rest of my life, Cory. What kind of life is that?

She’d set him down, told him plain as plain he hadn’t any chance in staying, she’d told him the company was crooked, the company was screwing the freerunners, screwing the pilots, screwing everybody that worked for them. Cory had handled big money, she knew how banks worked with the big operations. She’d told him what ASTEX was doing with their electronic datacards and their policies on finds. She’d tried to explain to him exactly what that direct-deduct stuff on LOSes did to accounts and interest, and how they were skimming on the freerunners in ways that had nothing to do with rocks.

She’d said, Dek, don’t be a fool, you’ve no future here. They’re killing the freerunners, they’ll get the Shepherds in not too many years—there’s no hope here.

She’d said, Don’t ever think I’ll leave you behind…

Sal sipped her drink in the blue neon of Scorpio’s—the vid had been not-too-bad, chop and slash, the way Meg said, but not a long one, and as she had put it, it was way too early to chance walking in on the boys, besides which she had a word to drop on some friends next door. It was her favorite lounge—Shepherd territory, right next to the Association club—pricey, spif: you got the usual traffic of office types who went anywhere au courant on the edge of helldeck, but the Shepherd relationship with Scorpio’s was longstanding: Shepherds got the tables in the nook past the glass pillars, and Shepherd glasses came filled to the brim, no shorting and no extra water, either.

Not a place they could afford as a steady habit, damn sure, not unless they picked up some guys with Shepherd-level finance, and they weren’t shopping to do that this time.

No danger of walk-up offers this side of those pillars either, thank God: the women to men ratio on helldeck meant Shepherds were used to being courted, not the other way around, and two women who weren’t signaling didn’t get the pests that made sane conversation impossible in a lot of the cheaper bars, God, you got ‘em in restaurants, in vid show doorways—this shift some R&R bunch was in from the shipyard, and the soldier-boys on leave down at the vid were the damn-all worst. They’d had a glut of male fools for the last few hours and Scorpio’s was a refuge worth the tab, in her own considered opinion.

“I tell you,” she said over an absolutely genuine margarit, “my instinct would be to take this Dek a tour before we go out, you know, personal, just friendly. Rattle him and see what shakes. I think that’s a serious safety question. But we got Ben in the gears, damn ‘im.”

“You want my opinion, Aboujib?”

“Po-sess-ive?”

“Vir-gin, Aboujib. You’re probably the first that ever asked him.”

“Hell, he’s that way with Bird!”

“Yeah.”

She saw what Meg was saying, then. “That way about a lot of things, isn’t he?”

Meg stirred her drink with the little plastic straw. “Man’s got a serious problem. Hasn’t cost us yet. But it’s to worry about. Ni-kulturny, what he pulled on Bird tonight.”

“Ochin,” Sal agreed with an uncomfortable twitch of her shoulders, sipping her margarit, thinking how they weren’t doing as ordinaire with Ben, how if it was anybody else but the best numbers man on R2, she’d have handed him off to Meg—switch and dump, the old disconnection technique. But, dammit, Ben was special, the absolute best, and Meg with Ben didn’t do them any good. Meg didn’t know the right questions and she didn’t do the calc as well.

Besides which it wasn’t Meg who made Ben crazy enough to show her things the Institute hadn’t, that he’dfigured, that he wouldn’t hand out to anybody. She’d never met a case like Ben—you felt simpatico with him one minute and the next you wanted to break his neck. She’d never met anybody she trustedthe way she did Ben—except Meg and Bird; Ben was the only one but Meg and Bird she’d feel safe going EV with—and, counting his crazy behavior, she couldn’t figure that out.

At least he wasn’t like the greasy sumbitch who’d threatened not to let her back in the ship unless she did him special favors. Numbers men were always at a disadvantage, always got the problems until you were as good as Ben, that nobody wanted to lose. Meg had never been through that particular trouble—a numbers man didn’t dare antagonize his pilot, if he had any sense; and he didn’t send his pilot walkabout either—but a numbers man definitely could get out with some severely strange people in this business; and if you had some few partners you were sure of, you didn’t let them go—didn’t try to run their lives for them, not if you wanted all your fingers back, but hell if you wouldn’t go to any length to hold on to them, to keep things the way they were.

Kill somebody? If it came to it, if you ever would—then you would. And trying to keep two tallish young guys from killing each other out there…

“What are we going to do, Kady?”

Meg pursed her lips. “Just what we’re doing. Let Bird handle it.”

Someone brushed by their table. Touched her shoulder. “Aboujib?”

God. A walk-up? Meg’s frown was instant. Sal looked around and up an expensive jacket at a Shepherd—one of Sunderland’s crew, friend of Mitch’s—she didn’t know the name. He said, very quickly, slipping something into her pocket, “That question you left?”

“Yeah,” she said—different problem. Sameproblem. She held her breath. Felt something flat and round and plastic in her pocket, her heart going doubletime.

“This is Kady?”

“Yeah,” she said. “You can say.”

“Word is, problem’s gone major. You’re tagged with it. Go with it the way you said. Time’s welcome. But when you get your launch date… you let us know. Very seriously.”

The guy walked off then.

God.

“What the hell?” Meg asked.

“I dunno,” she said, thinking about a shadowy ‘driver sitting out there spitting chunks at the Well. And MamBitch, who prepared the charts andtheir courses, and shoved them up to vand braked them. “I dunno.” Her stomach felt, of a sudden, as if she’d swallowed something very cold.

“Is that what I think I heard?” Meg asked. “They think we could be in some kind of danger?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, God, great!”

“Let’s not panic.”

“Of course let’s not panic. I don’t effin’ like the stakes all of a sudden.”

She leaned forward on the table, pitched her voice as low as would still carry. “Meg. They’re not going to let us run into trouble.”

“Yeah,” Meg whispered back. “Let’s not hear ‘run into.’ I don’t like the words I’m hearing. I don’t like this ‘Go with it.’ Maybe I want a little more information than we’re getting into.”

“They’re saying we’re doing the right thing—”

“Yeah, doing the right thing. We can be fuckin’ martyrs out there, is that what they want?”

She reached across the table and grabbed Meg’s hand, scared Meg would bolt on her. “We got a real chance here—”

“What real chance? Chance your high and mighty friends are going to hold us a nice funeral? Chance we can collect the karma and they stay clean?”

“Meg, I can get you in.”

“Screw that.” Meg jerked her hand back. “I don’t take their charity.”

“Meg. For God’s sake don’t blow it.”

Meg set her jaw. Took several slow breaths, the way she would when she was mad. “What’s their guarantee? Shit, we could be bugged here—”

Sal took the flat plastic out of her coat pocket, which had a little green light showing. Palmed it, fast.

“God,” Meg groaned.

“They’re ahead of the game. They’re not going to let us walk into it.”

“Oh, you’ve got a lot of faith in them. That’s contraband, dammit!”

“Meg, they’re not fools.”

“They must think we are.”

“We made them an offer, Meg, they’re sayingthey’re agreeing. They’re warning us.”

“Yeah,’tagged with him.’ I like that. I really like that.”

“Meg.” She couldn’t lay it out better than Meg already knew it. Meg looked like murder.

But Meg said finally: “So we’re tagged with him.—Are we talking about giving up that lease?”

The answer was yes. Meg knew it. Meg knew it upside and down.

“Shit,” Meg said.

“We’ve got what they want. They wanthim. They paid their debts. That’s what they’re saying. They’re asking us take a risk, and we’re in, Meg, they’re making us an offer. If we screw ‘em on this—or if we back out now—”

She was down to begging. There were pulls in too many directions if Meg skitted out on this one. God, everything she wanted, everything. “A Shepherd berth, Meg. One last run. We get Dek out in the big quiet for a few months and that’s it. Ben and Bird set up with those ships. Karma paid. We’re getting outof here, Meg. A chance at a realship. Both of us.”

Thatscored with Meg. Only thing that could. Meg’s face got madder. Finally Meg said: “Hell if. Wake up, Aboujib.”

“Hell if not. This is big, Meg, dammit, this is it.”

Meg shook her head. But it meant yes. All right. We’re going to be fools.

“You better be right, Aboujib.—And that jeune fils damn well better get his bearings. Fast. If they’re going to make a case on him—he sincerely better not be crazy.”

CHAPTER 14

SPENDING his sleeptime with Bird wasn’t exactly what Ben had planned. Breakfast with Dekker wasn’t his idea of a good time either, but Bird insisted.

So here they were, himself and Bird at the table and Dekker in line—Meg and Sal were sleep-ins: they’d gotten in latelast shift, up to what Ben didn’t try to imagine. Dekker hadn’t seemed enthusiastic about their company from his side either: Dekker had answered his door, said Yeah, he’d be there, and arrived late—clipped up the sides and all.

“All he needs is a couple of earrings,” Ben muttered.

“Be nice,” Bird chided him, over the sausage and unidentifiable eggs.

Ben looked at him, lifted a chilled shoulder. “Hey, did I do anything?” But he reminded himself he had better bite his tongue and keep criticisms of Bird’s precious pretty-boy to himself, the way he’d made up his mind yesterday that since the insanity had gotten to Meg and Sal he had as well go along with it.

Bird shot him a look that said he didn’t trust him not to knife Dekker in his bed. That was the level things had gotten to. That was the primary reason he figured he had better go along with it.

Until Dekker slipped up. Then he was even going to be charitable about “I told you so,” he sincerely was—so long as Bird saw it clear when it happened and came to his senses.

So Dekker walked up with his cup of coffee and his eggs, not quite looking at either of them, kicked back a chair and sat down.

“I have to apologize,” Dekker said first off, still without looking at them.

Ben manfully kept his mouth shut.

“I sort of wandered off yesterday,” Dekker said.

Bird shrugged, but Dekker wasn’t going to see that gesture, looking at his plate like the zee-out he was. Bird said, “Pills will do that.”

“I’m going off them,” Dekker said. His hand with the fork was shaking. Badly.—A real mess, Ben thought. Wonderful. We’re supposed to go out with this guy. This is going to be at the controls out there.

Dekker did look up then, shadow-eyed as if he hadn’t slept much. “I cut you off yesterday. If the offer’s still open—I’d like to talk about it.”

“Offer’s open,” Bird said. Ben thought: Hell.

Dekker didn’t say anything for a moment, just stirred his eggs around on his plate. Then a second look at Bird. “So I want my license back. What’s the time worth?”

“Depends on your work,” Bird said.

Ben did a fast calc, what Dekker had, what gave them a solid return on putting up with him. “10 k flat. With a guarantee you getthe license.”

Dekker looked bewildered—maybe a little overcome at the price and notunderstanding the quality of what he’d just thrown in. Hewasn’t exactly sure why he’d thrown it in—except he’d had this nanosecond of thinking he’d asked high and Bird was already on his tail. So it just fell out of his mouth: There you are, fancy-boy, Ican fix it, Ican, so you damned sure better mind your manners with me.

Bird didn’t say anything, Dekker didn’t, so Ben added, with a certain satisfaction, “Fair, isn’t it? Guaranteed, class 1.”

Bird looked a little worried. But he still didn’t say anything.

“Whose guarantee?” Dekker asked.

Ben gave him a cold stare. “Mine. On the other hand, if you ask anybody the time, Dekker, if you pull anyshit on us out there, you’ll take a walk bare-assed.”

“Ben,” Bird said.

“I’m serious,” he said, and Dekker looked worried.

“Ben’s all right,” Bird said. “He really is.”

Dekker said, finally, “I haven’t got any other offers.”

“Small wonder,” Ben said, and realized that he’d broken his resolution a tick before Bird glared at him.

Dekker glared at him too. Dekker said, “I’ll pull my weight.”

Ben said, “Damn right you will. You’ll do whatever you’re told to do. And you’ll put up with whatever shit you’re handed, whatever you think of it—with no gripes.”

Bird said, “Ben,—”

Dekker glumly reached across the table. It took a moment before Ben realized he wanted his hand, that Dekker was truly calling his bluff and taking the deal.

Damn, Ben thought. He had as soon stick his hand in a grinder, but things with Bird were precarious. So he made a grimace of a smile, gave Dekker his hand and they made a limp, cheerless handshake across the plates.

No one looked convinced, not Dekker, not Bird. Hecertainly wasn’t. But he said, “All right, if we’re going to do this, let’s get that re-cert application in right now. I take it you haven’t done that.”

“No craters,” Meg said as they walked out into the bar. They’d come in late last shift, they’d slept late, gotten up and come out on the absolute tail end of breakfast. No Dekker, no Bird, no Ben. Meg shoved her hands into her pockets and looked at Mike over at the bar. Sal looked too, with a lift of the eyebrows.

“They kill each other?” she wondered.

Mike said, dishing up the last of the rubbery eggs, “Left like old friends, all three. Said tell you they were going up to the dock. They’re leaving you a pile of scrub-up and sanding in the shop.”

“Fun,” Sal sourly.

“Ben with Dekker?” Meg said, with a gathering worry. “Not damn likely. We got a problem here.”

Sal poured her own coffee and took the plate Mike handed her. “Kady, I think we got to use strategy.”

“What strategy? I vote we shoot Ben.”

“Na, na, he’s playing along with Bird.” Sal took the plate and the coffee back to the table and hooked a chair out, as Meg did the same. “We got, what, three weeks if we push it. If Dek’s able to pitch in. The guys are going to be trouble. Trez macho.”

“Trez pain in the ass. If Birdtakes a position you need a pry-bar.”

“We can’t have Ben and Dekker in the same ship. That’s prime.”

“So Bird takes Dekker—and wetake Ben.” That, come to think of it, wasn’t at all a bad idea. They’d been after Ben’s numbers for two years. Thatwas solid and Shepherd promises were come-ons and maybes.

Besides which, if there was anybody who could keep Dekker in line—

Sal ducked her head, checked in her pocket a beat—God, smoothmove, there, Meg thought, with a knot in her stomach; and Sal looked up with the devil’s own ideas in her eyes. “ I’lltell you what we do, Kady, we apply to go out tandem. Allof us. I’ll tell you why.” A jab of Sal’s finger on the tabletop. “Because Bird doesn’t want Dekker sliced and stacked. Because Bird’s had one trip with Ben and Dekker already and if we give him the out to break that up—we ask for even split on the board time, just to make him believe it, we set it up with the Bitch, and we get Ben and his numbers andaccess to Dekker.”

“Hell, we have got a ship coming out of refit. Shakedown run.”

“That’s the grounds. Only reason they’ll do it.”

“A skosh noisy. Do we need MamBitch’s special attention on us? I don’tthink a special app is a good idea.”

“Kady, we gotthe Bitch’s attention. I’ll ask my friends, but I don’t know what worse we can do. And ifthey say do it, and if She’ll let us—hell, if we can get out there tandem, we can just do our job, just ride it out while the shit flies, as may, and figure things are getting taken care of—they’re notgoing to arrange anything on the way out, not unless they’re pushed, and if the Association brings it up as an issue, damn surethe Bitch isn’t going to run us into a rock on the way back. There’s coincidences and there’s coincidences. They’re just a little from having the EC down their throats.”

You had to wonder whether more understandings might have passed in that little encounter at Scorpio’s than Sal had even yet admitted: and MamBitch beaming them up to von a heading MamBitch picked—on charts that might have a little technical drop-out right in their path—hadn’t helped her sleep at all. MamBitch was finally admitting in the news how she might go grievance procedures with the Shepherds to settle the outstanding complaints and patch up the sore spots—MamBitch having this severely important production schedule to meet, because the Fleet High Command was breathing down her neck.

That was the public posture. Behind the doors in management there were careers on the line.

There was the Shepherds’ whole existence on the line.

“I tell you,” she said to Sal over the eggs, “I’d sincerely like to know if you know anything additional—now or in future.”

“If I know you’ll know.” A solemn look. “I swear.”

“Thanks,” she said. She did try to believe it.

A berth with the Shepherds, Sal said. It was already an endangered species. And they themselves were fools to think otherwise: you got out of the habit of longterm thinking—when the only out you had was a break in a business that was already taking the deep dive to hell. Freerunners weren’t going to last forever. Go with the lease deal or go for broke Sal’s way– seeif the Shepherds kept their bargains, or if there was a bargain—or if the Shepherds were still independents when the shakeout came.

Sal had wanted this break, God, she’d chased it for years—blew it once, by what she knew, and those sons of bitches relatives of hers had kept Sal on a string for near six years, sure, let the kid be eyes and ears on helldeck, let Aboujib run their errands and risk arrest, let Aboujib sweat long enough to be sure she took orders—

Aboujib had gotten a severe warn-off from the Shepherd Association when she’d taken up with her—and being Aboujib, she’d locked on to her mistake and damned the consequences. Her high and mighty friends had said, Drop Kady, and Sal had gone to talk to some officer or other—God only what she’d said in that meeting, or what they’d said or threatened, but Sal had stormed out of their exclusive club and not talked about a berth with the Shepherds for the better part of a month.

They’d survived the ups and down since, gotten hell and away better than they’d started—things had looked so clear and so possible, til yesterday, til the Association dangled Sal’s dream in front of her, the bastards—

She’d said yes to Sal last night. She had the sinking feeling this morning she’d been a chronic fool, and committed herself to something she wouldn’t have, except for those two margarits. But she hadn’t exactly come up with an effective No this morning, either, both of them sitting here betting their necks on that little green light—Sal was dead set.

She still couldn’t open her mouth and say, Sal, no deal. We’re going with the lease.

Didn’t know if you’d call it friendship. Didn’t know what was wrong with her head—but the way things were getting to be on R2, the freerunners didn’t have that many more years. She could worry about Bird—you couldn’t call it romance, what she had with Bird. Mutual good time. And a guy she’d no desire to see run up against a rock, dammit: if Dekker was the problem… they were all tagged, as the Shepherd had put it: Bird, Ben, allof them. The Association might be using them—but the Association might be the only protection a handful of miners had—the Shepherdswere the only independents with any kind of leverage.

That—was enough to advise keeping one’s mouth shut. And not to say No.

Couldn’t tell Bird. Bird wasn’t good at secrets. Damn sure not Ben.

What had the Shepherd said? The problem’s major? The problem’s gone major?

Something had shifted. Ben’s charts? Something the company had done?

The dumbasses in the fire zone didn’t get that kind of information.

Turn in the re-cert application, Ben had said. Move on it. Way Outwas headed for soon-as-possible launch, dock time cost, Ben swore he had friends who could get the test scheduled within the week, and Dekker decided, in Bird’s lack of comment, that Ben might be telling the truth.

So it was a good idea to do that, Dekker supposed: and found himself sitting in a Trans car between Bird and Ben, nervous as a kid headed for the dentist—only beginning to calm down and accept the idea of taking an ops test before he’d gotten the shakes out of his knees. Ten days was soon enough, Bird said. Give him a little time. Ten days to get his nerves together, ten days til he had to prove to BM that he still had it—that was still time enough to get the class 3 license pushed through, Ben said, which he had to have before he could count any time at Way Out’sboards.

God, he couldn’t blow this.

Bird said: “After we get this done, we thought we’d take you up to the docks, show you the ship, all right?”

“All right,” he said, in the same numb panic, asking himself what they were up to– show you the ship…

Maybe they wanted to see if he could take it. Maybe they were pushing him to find out if he would go off the edge—

Sudden memory of that fouled, cold interior, the suit drifting against the counter—the arm moving. He’d waked in the near-dark and imagined it was Cory beckoning to him.

Bird talked into his ear, talked about some of the damage on the ship, talked about what they’d done—

But the ship in his mind was the one he remembered. The stink, and the cold, and the fear—

“Admin,” Ben said as the Trans pulled into a stop. “Here we are.”

He got up, he got off with them into an office zone, all beige and gray, with the musty cold electronics smell offices had. They went into the one that said ECSAA Certifications, and Ben and Bird walked up to the counter with him.

“I want to apply for a license,” he said.

“Recertification,” Ben said, leaning his elbows on the desk beside him.

“Just let me do it.” He couldn’t think with Ben putting words in his mouth; he felt shivers coming on—he’d caught a chill in the Trans—and he didn’t want to be filling in applications with his hands shaking. Fineimpression that was in this office.

The clerk went away, came back with a datacard, directed him to a side table and a reader.

He went over to it and his entourage came with him, one on either side as he put the card in the slot and made three mistakes entering his name.

“Look, you’re making me nervous.”

“That’s all right,” Ben said. And when he tried to answer the next question, about reason for revocation: “Uh-uh,” Ben said. “Neg. Say, ‘Hospitalization.’ “

“Look, the reason is a damned stupid doctor—”

“They don’t wantthe detail.” Ben reached over and moved the cursor back. “Don’t explain. The only answer any department wants in its blanks is the wording in its rule books. Don’t volunteer anything, don’t get helpful, and if you don’t know, N/A the bastard or shade it in your favor. Remember it’s clerks you’re talking to, not pilots. Say: ‘Hospitalization.’ “

That made clear sense to him. He only wished it hadn’t come from Ben.

“ ‘Reason for application’?” Ben read off the form, and pointed: “Say: ‘Change in medical status.’ “

He hadn’t thought of having to pass the physical again. The idea of doctors upset his stomach. But he typed what Ben said.

“Sign it,” Ben said. “Put your card in. That’s all there is to it.”

It left a lot of blank lines. “What about ‘Are there any other circumstances…?’ “