“It’s the truth,” Dekker said. “We got a tag on it. Uncharted rock. You can have it, if you’ll go back there and find her.”
“Cory’s a her.”
“Cory. Yes.” He was going out again. “God, go back. Go back there, listen to me, anything you want…”
“You want another sip?” Bird asked, but Dekker was out again, gone. Bird shoved off and arrowed down to grab a handhold by Ben’s workstation, but Ben said:
“I’m already ahead of you. Man said 79, 709, 12? No signal in that direction but the ‘driver.”
Nothing but the ‘driver, Bird thought. God. “Hear any tag?”
Ben shook his head.
Bird bit his lip, wondering—
Wondering, dammit, how long that particular ‘driver had been there. A while, damned sure. But Mama only told you what you needed. You could work out the rest from what you could gather with your own ears and your radar, but who wanted to?
Who, in a question about a company tag and a private claim,—wanted to?
Ben said in a low voice, “Do you suppose that fool tried to skim the company on a rock that size?”
Bird thought, I want out of here.
But what he argued to Ben was: “We just don’t ask. We don’t know anything and we sure as hell aren’t getting in their way. Whatever claim’s out there already has a ‘driver attached.”
“Makes other claims kind of moot, doesn’t it?”
“Don’t even ask.”
Company prerogatives, secret company codes and direct accesses—company ships could talk back and forth at will; bet your life they could.
And count that that ‘driver ship was armed—if you counted a kilometer-long mass driver as a lethal weapon, and Bird personally did. You didn’t want to argue right of way or ownership with a ‘driver captain. They were ASTEX to the core and they were a breed—next to God.
Ben said, “Told you we should have left this guy on the other side of the lock. It’s still not too late.”
“Cut the jokes. It wasn’t funny the first time.”
“Bird, there’s a hell of a lot more than he’s telling. Big find, hell. They were skimming a company claim.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Well, that’s all I want to know. Suddenly I’m damn glad we haven’t been talking to that ‘driver. I don’t like this, damn, I don’t.”
“I don’t know anything. You don’t know anything. We didn’t look at that log. Thank God. Let’s just get us out of here.”
“We could offer to give evidence.”
“We don’t know what we’re swearing to. We don’t knowwhat happened.”
“We couldlook in that log.”
“Sure, a skimmer’s going to log his moves. What’s he going to write? ‘1025 and we just blew a chip off a 1 k rock’? If we touch that panel over there we’ll leave a record of that access, and maybe that’s not a good idea. Do I spell it out? Don’t be a fool.”
“I can fix that log. I think I can bypass that access record if you really want to know.”
“Don’t depend on it. ‘Think’ isn’t good enough. No. We don’t run that risk. Best claim we’ve got is that we haven’t seen those records and we don’t know a thing. We don’t have a problem if we just keep clean. No shady stuff. Nothing. Clean, Ben.”
“Knock that guy in the head,” Ben muttered. “Be sure there’s no questions. Then there’s no problem.”
God, he thought. Is that what they teach this generation?
The ship jolted.
Dekker yelled aloud, struggling to get free. Someone—a familiar voice now—shouted at him to shut up.
Another, gentler, said, “That was just getting in position, Dekker. Take it easy.”
He had another blank spot then, woke up with the nightmare feeling of increasing g, not knowing where it was going to stop, or what had started it. Something pressed into his back and he thought, God, we’re spinning—
“Cory!” he yelled.
“Shut up, dammit!”
“Dekker.” This came gently then, with a touch at his shoulder. A smell of something cooked. Freefall. He blinked and looked at the gray-haired man, who let a foil packet of something drift near his face.
“We’ve done our position,” the man said to him, he couldn’t remember the name, and then did. Bird. Bird was the good one. Bird was the one who didn’t want to kill him. “We’re going to catch our beam tomorrow and we’re going home. Seems Mama thinks we’re in no hurry or something, damn her. I’ll let you loose if you can keep awake.” Another pat on the shoulder. “You know you’ve been off your head a little.”
“What time is it?”
“Shush,” Bird said, “don’t go asking that.”
“I want to know—”
Bird put a hand on his mouth. “Don’t do that,” Bird said, looking him in the eyes. “Don’t do that, son. You don’t need to know. You really don’t need to know. Your partner’s just lost, that’s all. A long time ago. There’s nothing anybody can do for her.”
He didn’t want to believe that. He didn’t want to wake up again, but Bird caught the packet drifting in front of his face and held the tube to his mouth, insisting.
He took a little. It was warm, it was soup, it was salty as hell. He turned his head away, and Bird let it go, leaving a tiny planetesimal of soup cooling in the air, drifting away with the current. Bird brushed at it, caught it in his hand, wiped it on his sleeve.
Blood everywhere, shining dark drops…
Everything was stable. Clean and quiet. Nothing had ever gone wrong here. Nothing had ever beenwrong. He kept his eyes open for fear of the dark behind them and tried another sip of what Bird was offering him, while the first was hitting his stomach with an effect he was not yet sure of.
Why am I here? he asked himself. What is this place? This isn’t my ship. What am I doing here?
Maybe he asked out loud. He didn’t keep track of things. “To Refinery Two,” Bird told him.
He shook his head. He got a breath and thought, Cory’s still in the ship, they’ve left Cory back in the ship—
He reminded himself, he could do it now with only a cold, strange calm: No, Cory’s dead—Not that he could remember. He kept telling himself that over and over, but he could not remember. She was still there. She was wondering what had happened to him. She was trusting him to do the right thing, the smart thing. She was waiting for him to pick her up…
The dark-headed one, the young one, Ben, rose into his vision, carrying a length of thin cable and a davies clip. Ben hung in front of his face and reached behind his neck with the cable.
“Hell!” he yelled, and used a knee, but Ben grabbed a handful of his coveralls and it missed its target.
Oh, shit, he thought then, looking Ben in the face. He thought Ben would kill him.
Bird said, from the other side, “Easy, son. It’s temporary. Hold still.”
He had thought Bird was all right. But Bird held him still and Ben got the cable around his neck. The clip clicked.
“There,” Ben said. “You can reach the necessaries… reach anything in this ship but the buttons. And you don’t really want those, do you?”
He stared eye to eye at Ben and wondered if Ben was waiting to kill him while Bird was asleep. He remembered hearing them talk. He wondered whether Ben was going to hit him right now.