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

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 45 страниц)

CHAPTER 4

REFINERY Two was only slightly prettier than a rock, but it did come welcome—that k-plus wide sooty ring that you only caught sight of on camera—and most to Bird’s knowledge were eager to see it, and did turn the optics on, long before it was regulation that you had to get visual contact. There she hung, magnified in the long lens, spinning with a manic vengeance, with her masts stuck up like spindles and her stationary mast surfaces bristling with knobby bits that were pushers and tenders, and shuttles from the Shepherds and such. A few, hardly more than ten or so at any one time, counting company rigs waiting crew change, were ships a lot like Trinidad, a whole lot like Trinidad, if you took plan B on your outfitting, and opted for green in the shower.

A lot of the fitting inside Refinery Two was a lot like Trinidad, too, except, one supposed, if you got down to corporate residence levels, and there was about the same chance of freerunners seeing that in person as getting a guided tour of the company bunker on Mimas.

Belters lived and Belters died and Refinery Two just rolled on, this big factory-hearted ring which was the only close to g-1place miners and tenders in R2 zone ever got back to. She swallowed down what the Shepherds gathered in, she hiccuped methane and she shat ingots and beams and sheet and foam steel. She used her own plastics and textiles or she spat them at Mars, in this year when Jupiter was as convenient to that world as Sol Station was. But nobody knew what went to Mimas. Some said what was down there repaired itself and had more heart than any company exec—but that was rumor and you didn’t want to know. Some said it wasn’t really the ops center it was reputed to be, in case of something major going wrong at the Well: some said it was the ultimate bunker for the execs—but you didn’t say warin polite society either and you didn’t think too much about the big frame that sat out there aswarm with tenders and construction craft, a metal-spined monster that took rough shape here at the source of steel and plastics before it moved on to final rigging at Sol. You called what was going on out in the Beyond a job action or you called it a tax strike or you called it damned stupid, but if you were smart you didn’t discuss it or that ship out there and you didn’t even think about it where Mama might hear.

A-men.

“Well,” he sighed, “she’s still here. Kept the porch light on and the door open.”

Ben didn’t say, What’s a porch light? You never could get a rise out of him like that.

“Used to sit outside at night,” Bird said, “look up at the stars—you know what a shooting star is, Ben, lad?”

“No.” Ben’s tone said he was not at the moment interested to know. He was working approach, as close as his second-class license would let him. “I’m about ready to hand off. You got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Dockmaster advises they copy on the request for meds. They’re on their way.”

“Good on that.” He saw Ben furiously ticking away at the comp. “—I got your handoff. Take it easy.”

“Take it easy. We got meds and customs swarming in here, we have to have the records straight.”

“Everything’s in order. I checked it. You checked it.—You’re sure they copy on that mass.”

“Yeah. I made ‘em say-again.” Ben was going through readout. No papers. Everything was dataflow. BM wanted forms, and it was all dataflow, not at all like the old days when if you fouled up some damn company form you got a chance to read it over slow and easy and say it right. Now in this paperless society the datalink grabbed stuff and shoved new blanks at you so fast you didn’t have time to be sure all your answers made sense.

“You got all that stuff,” Bird said. “And welcome to it. Damn, I hate forms.”

“No worry.”

Ben had a sure instinct for right answers. Ben swore it was a way of thinking. Ben input something and said, “Shit! Shut him up!”

He only then realized Dekker was talking, mumbling something in that low, constant drone of his. “I can’t half hear him, he’s all right.”

“I can hear him! I can damn well hear him—Where are we? Where are we? What time is it? I tell you—”

“Easy.”

“I’ve beeneasy. I’m going to kill him before we make dock, I swear I am.”

“No, you’re not. He’s being quiet. Just let him alone.”

“You’re losing your hearing. You can’t hear that?”

“Not that loud.”

“The guy’s crazy. Completely out of it. Only good thing in this business.”

“Ben… just—drop it, Ben. End-of-run nerves, that’s all. Just drop it, you mind?”

There was a cold silence after that, except the click of buttons. And Dekker’s voice, that wasloud enough to hear now and again once you thought about it.

Long silence, except for ops, and approach control talking back and forth with them, walking them through special procedures.

“I’m sorry,” Ben said stiffly.

Maybe because they were closer to civilization now. And sanity.

“Where are we?” Dekker asked.

“God!” Ben cried, and leaned far back in his seat. He yelled up at Dekker: “It’s June 26th and we’re coming into Mars Base, don’t you remember? The president of the company’s going to be at the party!”

“Don’t do that,” Bird said. “Just leave the poor guy alone.”

“He’s alone, all right, he’s damn well alone. Another week and we’d be as schitz as he is.”

Another call from Base: “ Two Twenty-nine TangoTrinidad, this is ASTEX Approach Control: tugs are on intercept. Stand by the secondary decel.”

“Approach Control, this is Two Twenty-nine Tango. We copy that decel. We’re go.” He shut down his mike, yelled: “Dekker! Stand by the decel, hear me?”

“Break his damn neck,” Ben muttered.

There was no time for debate. They had a beam taking aim. Approach Control advised them and fired; pressure hit the sail and bodies hit the restraints—they weren’t in optimum attitude thanks to that ship coupled to them, and it was a hard shove. Dekker yelled aloud—hurt, maybe: they had him padded in and tied down with everything soft they could find, but it was no substitute.

It went on and on. Eventually Dekker got quiet. Hope to hell that persistent nosebleed didn’t break loose again.

“ Two Twenty-nine TangoTrinidad, this is ASTEX Approach Control: do a simple uncouple with that tow.”

“Approach Control, this is Two Twenty-nine Tango. We copy that uncouple. Fix at 29240 k to final at 1015 mps closing. O-mega.”

Bird uncapped the button, pushed it, the clamps released with a shock through the frame, and One’er Eighty-four Zebra went free—still right up against them, 29240 k to their rendezvous with the oncoming Refinery and they were going to ride with the tow awhile, until the outlying tugs could move in and pick it off their tail.

Ben muttered. “I got everything customs can ask on that ship. Got all the charges figured, too.”

“Just leave it, Ben.”

“I want that ship, Bird. I want that ship. God, we got the proof—I got all the proof they need—”

“Ben,—”

“Look, they do their official investigation. But this guy’s incompetent, he was incompetentwhen we boarded. What’s he going to do, ask ‘em the time? The law’s on our side.” Ben was cheerful again. “We got it, Bird, we got it.”

“Let the guy alone,” he said. “Forget about that ship, dammit!”

“I’m not forgetting it. Hell if I’ll forget it. We’re filing on it. Or I am. You can take your pick, partner.”

“There’s such a thing as wanting things too much. You can’t ever afford to want things that much. It’s not healthy.”

“Healthy, hell. I’lltake care of us. All you have to do is sit back and watch me go, partner, I know the law.”

“There’s things other than law, Ben.—Just stow the charts, hear me?”

“I’m not stowing the charts.”

“We’re going to get searched, dammit, just put the damn things in the hole or friggin’ dump ‘em, we can’t get ‘em off this time—”

“Guys run ‘em in all the time, customs doesn’t give a damn—just say they’re vidgames. They don’t even boot to check.”

“Ben, dammit!”

“I haven’t spent all this work to give up those charts. They’re going to go over us with a microscope, Bird,—”

“Thirty years nobody’s found that hideyhole, not customs and not the lease crews. Just drop ‘em in. You think they’re going to go at us plate by plate over a rescue?”

“ Two Twenty-nine TangoTrinidad, this is ASTEX Approach Control: tugs are 20 minutes 14 seconds, mark.”

“Approach Control, this is Two Twenty-nine Tango. We copy: 20 minutes 14 seconds. No problem, tow is clear. Proceeding on that instruction.”

Ben said, “You got an Attitude this trip. I don’t understand it, Bird, I swear I don’t understand it.”

“You know Shakespeare, Ben?”

“Haven’t met him.”

They were still speaking as they made dock. Barely.

“We got ‘er,” Ben said.

Several significant breaths later Ben said, “I’m sorry, Bird.”

“Shakespeare’s a writer,” Bird said.

“One of those,” Ben said.

“Yeah.”

“You got him on tape?”

“There’s a tape. Hard going, though.”

“Physics?” Ben asked.

“ Two Twenty-nine TangoTrinidad, this is ASTEX Dock Authority, check your pressure. Will you need a line?”

“We copy 800 mb, B dock. No line, we’re 796.”

“Trinidad, we copy 796. Medical units standing by on dockside. Stand by life systems sample.”

“Shit,” Ben groaned, “they’re going to stall us on a medical. They damn well better not find some bug aboard, I’ll skin him.”

“Won’t find any bug. Get our data up, will you?”

They were nose to the docking mast. Trinidadshuddered and resounded as the cradle locked. She hissed a little of her air at the sampler.

ASTEX said: “ Welcome in, Trinidad. Good job. Stand by results on that sample.”

The dockside air went straight to the back of the throat and stung the sinuses, icy cold and smelling of volatiles. It tasted like ice water and oil and it cut through coats and gloves the way the clean and the cold finally cut through the stink Bird smelled in his sleep and imagined in the taste of his food. Time and again you got in from a run and the chronic sight of just one other human face, and when you looked at all the space around you and saw real live people and faces that weren’t that face—you got the sudden disconnected notion you were watching it all on vid, drifting there with only a tether and a hand-jet between you and a dizzy perspective down the mast—worse than EVAs in the deep belt, a lot dizzier. Dock monkeys kited about at all angles, checking readouts, taking samples, talking to empty air. Bird’s earpiece kept him informed about the meds inside the ship, the receipt of the manifest and customs forms at the appropriate offices—

“Morris Bird,” the earpiece said, thin voice riding over the banging and hammering of sound in the core. “This is officer Wills, Security. Understand you found a drifter.”

He hated being sneaked up on, hated the office-sitters that would blindside a man and made him look around to see where they were—or whether they were there and not a phonecall. He turned and saw three of them in ASTEX Security green, sailing his way down the hand-line.

“Yessir,” he said, before they got there. “Details have already gone to BM. Any problem?”

“Just a few questions,” Wills said. Before he got there.

CHAPTER 5

YOU have any theories to explain what happened?” Wills asked. The cops hung face to face with him, all of them maintaining position with holds on the safety-lines, and you about needed the earpiece to hear at the moment over the thundering racket from a series of loads going down the spinning core. Bird, mindful of the Optex Wills was wearing, shrugged, shook his head and said, mostly honestly: “Could’ve caught a rock. Helluva bash on one side. On the other hand, the bash could’ve been secondary. Maybe he was working real close in and just didn’t see another one coming, dunno, really, dunno if it’s going to be easy to tell. We didn’t go outside, just got a look on vid. We did make a tape.”

“We’ll want that. Also your log. Did you remove anything from the wreck?”

“We took out the rescuee and the clothes he was wearing. Nothing else. We washed ‘em and he’s still wearing ‘em. He had his watch, and nothing in his pockets. He’s still wearing the watch. Anything else we left aboard, even his clothes and his Personals. You wouldn’t want to open up without a decon squad. It’s a real mess in that ship.”

“Any idea where the partner is?”

“Evidently she was outside when the accident happened. He kept trying to call her, kept trying when he was off his head, I guess he tried til he couldn’t think of anything else. They’re from Rl. Her name was Cory. That’s all we ever figured out. His life systems were near gone, ship was tumbling pretty bad. He’d taken a lot of knocks.” He hoped to hell that would cover Ben’s ass about the bruises. He felt dirty doing it, but he would have felt dirtier not to. “Kid was pretty sick from breathing that stuff, kept hallucinating about having to call his partner—evidently did everything he could to find her, sick as he was.” He tried to put Dekker in the best light he could, too, fair being fair. “When we got to him, I guess he just finally realized she was gone. Fever set in—he’s been off his head a lot, just keeps asking over and over for his partner, that’s all.”

“What would he say?”

“Just her name. Sometimes he’d yell Look out, like he was warning someone. Kid’s exhausted. Like when you give up and then the adrenaline runs out.”

“Yeah,” Wills said. “Didn’t happen to say why they were out of their zone?”

“He didn’t know they were out of their zone.”

“So he did say something else.”

“We had to explain we were taking him to R2. It upset him. He was lost, disoriented. The accident must’ve happened the other side of the line.”

Cops never told you a thing. Wills grunted, monkeyed along the lines toward the hatch as if he was going inside. The other officers followed. But one of the blue-suited meds was outbound, towing a stretcher with Dekker aboard, and the other meds were close behind. The cops stopped them at the lines just outside the hatch, delayed to look Dekker over, talk to the meds, evidently asked Dekker something: there was a lot of machinery noise on the dock—they must be loading or offloading—and he couldn’t hear what they said or what Dekker answered. They only let the meds take him away, and that course came past him.

They had wrapped Dekker up in blankets, had him strapped into the stretcher, and Dekker looked wasted and sick as hell. But his eyes were open, looking around. The meds brought the stretcher to a drifting stop and said, “You want to say goodbye?”

It was one of those faces that could haunt a man, Dekker’s lost, distracted expression—but Dekker seemed to track on him then.

“Bird,” he said faintly through the noise and the banging overhead. “Where’re they taking me?”

Dekker looked scared. Bird wanted it over with, wanted to forget Dekker and Dekker’s nightmares and the stink and the cold of that ship, not even caring right now if they got anything for their trouble but their refit paid. He sure didn’t want an ongoing attachment; but that question latched on to him and he found himself reaching out and putting a hand against Dekker’s shoulder. “Hospital. That’s all, son. You’re on R2 dock. You’ll be all right.”

Bird looked at the meds, then gave a shrug, wanting them to go, now, before Dekker got himself worked up to a scene. They started away.

“Bird?” Dekker said as they went. And called out louder, a voice that cut right to the nerves, even over the racket: “ Bird?”

He exhaled a shaky breath and shook his head, wanting a go at the bar real bad right now.

Ben came out of the hatch with their Personals kits. The police stopped him and insisted on taking the kits one by one and turning them this way and that. They were asking Ben questions when he drifted up, and Ben was saying, in answer to those questions, “The guy was off his head. Didn’t know what he’d do next. Screaming out all the time. Thinking it was his ship he was on. We had to worry he’d go after controls or something.”

He scowled a warning at Ben, but not a plain one: there was the Optex Wills was making of every twitch they made. Ben was looking only at the officers. He said, to explain the scowl, “You’d be off your head too if you’d been banged around like that.”

“In the accident,” Wills said, fishing.

“Ship tumbling like that,” he said. “The wonder is he lived through it. Couldn’thave helped his partner. All he looked to have left was his emergency beeper, and when that tank blew, it didn’t go straight—you got this center of mass here, see, and you get this tank back here—”

You got too technical and the docksiders wanted another topic in a hurry.

Wills said, interrupting him, “Go into that with the Court of Inquiry. We’ll want to log those kits. Leave them with us and we’ll send them on to your residence. What’s your ID?”

“On the tag there.” Ben indicated his kit. “1347-283-689 is mine. Bird here’s 688-687-257. Ship’s open. Look all you like.”

“You can go now.”

You never got thanks out of a company cop either. Bird scowled, looked at Ben, and the two of them handed their way up lines toward the hand-line. A beep meant a boom was moving. Red light stained the walls. But the alarm was from the other end of the big conduit– and chute-centered tunnel that was the cargo mast. You could get dizzy if you looked at the core itself, if you let yourself just for a moment think about up and down or where you were. Bird focused on the inbound gripper-handle coming toward him, ignored the moving surface in the backfield of his vision—caught it and felt the first all-over stretch he’d had in months as it hauled him along. Ben had caught the one immediately behind him—he looked back to see.

“Customs,” he remarked to Ben, in a lull in the racket from the chutes. “I hope they’ve talked to the cops.”

“No trouble. We haven’t even got our Personals. Cops’ve got ‘em. Cops have got everything. They gave me this receipt, see?” He used his free hand to tap his pocket. “Hell, we’re just little guys. What are we going to have? We’ll get a wave-through. You watch.”

“They’ll give us hell.”

“So don’t tell ‘em it was out-zone. We reported it where the rules say. We got rights. Meanwhile we’re gone into a public contact area and there’s no use for them to check us, is there?”

“Rights,” he muttered. “We got whatever rights Mama decides to give us, is what we got.—What did you tell that cop about Dekker? Did you tell them he was crazy?”

“Hey, they don’t need my help to figure that. The meds belted him in good and tight when they took him away.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I said he wasn’t too clear where he was. They asked about the bruises, and I said he got loose, all right? I said he was after the controls and he’s crazy, besides which he fought us when we had to get him back and forth to the head.”

“That’s a couple of times, Ben, for God’s sake…”

“Hey. We got this guy tied to the plumbing, bruises all over him, all ages, what are we going to say, it was a month-long party out there?”

“Yeah,” he said, and shut up, because the chute was sucking another load down, and down here you could hear the hydraulics. His stomach was upset. It had been upset for the last week, when it had been clearer and clearer Dekker was not going to be able to support a thing they said, that Dekker was liable to say anything or claim they’d met eetees and seen God. This is it, Ben had said when Dekker had tried to get at the engine fire controls. They’d put Dekker to bed taped hand and foot: Dekker had screamed for an hour afterward, and Ben had gotten that on tape too.

He had wanted to erase that video. Dekker had enough troubles without that on permanent record with the company: Dekker could lose his license, lose his ship, lose everything he had, and he didn’t want to hand BM the evidence to set it up that way—but Ben had said it: Dekker wasn’t any saner than he had been. Dekker would have been dead in a few days if they hadn’t found him, and as much as they’d done to patch the kid together, he didn’t seem likely to need much of anything but a ticket back to the motherwell and a long, long time in rehab.

“Poor sod,” he said.

Ben said: “Good riddance.” And when he frowned at him: “Hell, Bird, I’ve seen schitzy behavior before, I’ve seen damn well enough of it.” There was profound bitterness behind that: he had no idea why, or what Ben was talking about, but Ben didn’t volunteer anything else. Ben was talking about the school, he decided, or the dorms where Ben had spent what other people called childhood. It didn’t matter now. The trip was over, Dekker was with the meds, the whole business was out of their hands, and Ben knew Shakespeare wasn’t a physicist. Good for him. They’d patch up their partnership and take their heavy time while somebody else leased Trinidadout—and paid them 15-and-20 plus repairs and refit: could do that all the time if they wanted, but you didn’t get rich on 15-and-20 while you were sitting on dockside spending most of it.

Got to give up sleeping and eating, he was accustomed to joke about it.

Ben would say, intense as he always was when you talked about money, We got to get us a break, is what.

They got off the line in customs, explained they didn’t have their Personals, the cops had them, no, they didn’t have any ore in their pockets and they didn’t have any illegal magmedia on them, all the records were on the ship, yes, they had contacted another ship out there, they’d hauled a guy in, they hadn’t taken anything off it, no, sir, yes, ma’am, they’d tell Medical if they got any rashes or developed any fevers or coughs, Medical had already told them that, yes, sir.

God, no, they didn’t volunteer to customs that it was an out-zone ship, yes, sir, they’d reported the contact, no, it was an instructed contact: the agents questions were strictly routine and the stress-detectors didn’t beep once.

Customs validated their datacards, logged them both as active in R2, and they went back to the hand-line for the lifts.

Ben said, conversationally, while they were each trailing by a gripper handle, Ben in front this time: “You can quit worrying about the charts. Got the card in my pocket.”

His heart went thump. “Dammit, Ben,—”

“Hell, it was all right.”

“I told you leave it!”

“Where the cops’d find it?”

“You could’ve said. God!”

“Hey. You’re a lousy liar. Was I going to burden your conscience? You passed the detectors—so did I, right?”

Ben could. Stress detectors depended on a conscience.

“You’re just too damn nervous, Bird.”

“You could’ve left ‘em under that plate, dammit. You could’ve done what I told you to do—”

“You want to get caught, that’sthe way to do it—conceal something on the cops. I didn’t conceal it. It was right in my pocket. God, Bird, everybodydoes it. If they wanted to clamp down, why do they let us have gamecards? Or vid? Why don’t they check that? I could code the whole thing onto a vidtape.”

“If too many people get too cocky, just watch them. Some nosy exec gets a notion, and you can walk right into it, Ben, you can’t talk your way out of everything.”

“Everything so far.”

“Hell,” he muttered. They were coming to the end of the hand-line, where you got three easy chances to grab a bar and dismount in good order instead of (embarrassment) shooting on down to the buffer-sacks that forcibly disengaged a passenger before the line took the turn.

Ben was first on the bar, swung over and pushed 8-deck on the lift panel before he caught up. “I’ll ride down with you.”

“So where else are you going?”

“Where do you think?”

“Shit, Ben.”

“Somebody will. Probably there’s a line of creditors on the ship. But we’ll at least get the 50/50. Damn right we will.”

“You’re bucking for back trouble, and you won’t get a damn thing. There’ll be a rule.”

“Young bones. I won’t stay long. And there’s no real choice, Bird, you have to file the day you get in. That’sthe rule.”

“So file at the core office.”

“Trust those bastards? No do. Corp-deck’s it.”

“Out of your mind,” he muttered as the car arrived. They floated in, took a handhold. The car sealed, clanked and made its noisy, jerky interface with the rotating heart of the core, and started solidly off down the link. He didn’t argue any more with Ben. If Ben had the fortitude to go down a level past helldeck an hour after dock and stand in some line to file to claim the poor sod’s ship, he didn’t know what to do with him. He only sighed and stared glumly at the doors and the red-lit bar that showed them approaching another take-hold.

“Bird, you got to take better care of yourself. What have you got for your old age?”

“I’m in it, and I don’t plan to survive it.” The car clanked into the spoke, and they shot into it with the illusion of climbing, until they hit that queasy couple of seconds where distance from R2’s spin axis equaled out with the car’s momentum as far as the inner ear was concerned. Then the ear figured out where Down was, the car’s rolling floor found it a half-heartbeat later, and bones and muscles started realizing that the stimsuits you worked in, the spin cylinders you slept in and the pills you took like candy didn’t entirely make up for weeks of weightlessness. Knees would feel it; backs would. The red-lit bar that showed their distance from the core was shooting toward 8-deck.

Meg and Sal were on 6; he had found that out on their way in. He’d left a message for them on the ‘board, and he planned on company tonight. That and a drink and a long, long bath. Maybe with Meg, if she answered her messages.

If she wasn’t otherwise engaged.

The car stopped. He got out, on legs that felt tired even under 8’s low g, muscles weary of fighting the stimsuit’s elastic and now with gto complicate matters. Ben got out too, and said, “Meet you at the ‘Bow.”

Ben didn’t even slow down. He just punched the button to go on down as far as the core lift went, to 3.

Bird shook his head and headed off down 8-deck—damned if he was even going to call up his mail before he hit the bar at the Starbow. Mail would consist of a bank statement and a few notes from friends as to when they’d gone out and when they’d be back. His brother in Colorado wrote twice a year, postal rates out here being a week’s groceries and Sam not being rich. It wasn’t quite time for the biannual letter and outside of that there wasn’t mail to get excited about. So screw that. He just wanted a chance to get the weight off, get a drink, see a couple of familiar female faces if fate was kind, and never mind Ben’s wet dreams. Ships didn’t come without debts, probably multiple owners, not mentioning the bank, and the company would find some technicality to chew up any proceeds they could possibly make from the ship, til it was hardly worth the price of a good rock, plus expenses. Ben was going to work himself into a heart attack someday, if ulcers didn’t get him first.

The meds said, and the Institute taught you, some null– geffects got worse every time you went out: your bones resorbed, your kidneys picked up the calcium and made stones, and the body learned the response—snapped to it faster with practice, as it were, and Ben believed it. Science devised ways to trick gravity-evolved human systems, and you took your hormones, you spent your sleeptime in the spinner and you wore the damn stimsuit like a religion. Most of all you hoped you had good genes. They told gruesome tales of this old miner whose bones had all crumbled, and there was a guy down tending bar in helldeck who had so many plastic and metal parts he was always triggering the cops’ weapon scans. He didn’t intend to end up like that, nossir, he intended eventually to be sitting in a nice leasing office collecting 15-and-20 on twoships, free and clear of debt, and letting other poor sods get their parts replaced. He had no objection to Morrie Bird sitting in that office as vice president in charge of leases, for that matter: Bird had the people sense that could make it work, and Bird couldn’t last at mining forever: they’d already replaced both hips.

So Bird went off to the easy adjustment of 8-deck in blind trust that Mama would do the right thing and assay their take in the sling and record all the data they’d shot to the offices during their approach—while the one of them who’d worked for Mama for two years and knew the way Mama worked took the immediate trip down to 3-deck, and the frontage of the debtors’ barracks he’d once lived in. Oddity was endemic hereabouts—you could look down the strip now and spot a guy dressed head to foot in purple, but he wasn’t necessarily crazy—at least you could lay money he didn’t claim the company’d done this or that or ask you the time every five minutes.

God, he hated remembering this place. But he still kept an ultra-cheap locker there, with a change of clothes—

Because you had to dress if you were going to go call in debts, nothing rad or rab, just classic. Good sweater, good pants, casual coat. Real shoes. You had to look like solid credit to get what he was after. And his legs were in good enough shape, all things considered: he’d foreseen this, and taken his pills and worked out all the way back—burning off the desire to strangle Dekker, Bird had probably thought, regarding those unusually long sessions on the cycle and the bounce-pads.

But he could walk, at least. He could peel out of the coveralls and the stimsuit, shower in the public gym, dress himself in stationer style and go down past helldeck to 1, where he weighed Earth-normal, walking like an old man, it might be, but he’d taken a painkiller while they were coming in, and it was just a matter of taking it easy—going where Mama knew damned well a spacer directly back from a run wasn’t comfortable going—which was why so many tricky little company rules said you had to sign the forms in person, on the day you docked, at the core office if you wanted Mama to take her time—or in the main offices if you wanted Expedition. The inner decks being notoriously short of lawyers, a lot of spacers never even realized Expedition was possible.

You could put in a company-backed claim on salvage, for instance: go to the general office, file to have the company run procedures and wait it out; but that threw it into ASTEX administrative procedures, which ground exceedingly slow, and put it in the hands of ASTEX Legal Affairs, which usually found some t uncrossed or i undotted. Up there you could file a claim for expenses, but you only got that after Mama had adjudicated the property claims, unless you knew to file hardship along with it; and you could file for salvage, but you had to know the right words and be sure the clerk you got used them: half the low-level help at the core couldn’t spell, let alone help you with legalese.