“Not yet,” Dekker said, just as quiet and sober as if he was sane. “But they’d like to. Get the reactions right on one run, so they can bottle it and feed it into the techs— word is, that’s what they want to do, ultimately. Get one crew that can do it. And they’ll teach the others. Hundreds of others.”
“God,” Sal said, and hooked a thumb back at the human factory. “Like that!”’
Dekker shrugged. “That’s what they think.”
“That’s what they think,” Ben muttered. The human race was shooting at each other. Dekker said Union was building riderships, too—
“I thought the other side was where they wired you to a machine and taught you to like getting blown to hell. Not here. Not on this side, no way, Dek-boy. What the hell are we fighting for? That’s Union stuff in there!”
“They developed it, what I hear.”
“God.”
“ ‘Not yet,’ “ Meg quipped.
“Damn funny, Meg.”
Ben looked at Dekker, looked at Meg and at Sal, with this sudden sinking feeling—this moment of dislocation, that said he was surrounded by crazies, including the woman he went to bed with; including every hotshot Shepherd tight-ass in this whole establishment, and the CO, and the lieutenant.
“What’s it do to your reflexes?” Meg said.
Dekker said, “Screws ‘em to hell. Scares shit out of you. Like I said at breakfast. Hands move, you don’t know why, you threw a switch, you don’t know why. Moves are right. But you got to convince yourself they are. You can’t doubt.”
“Any chance it came around on this Wilhelmsen?”
Dekker didn’t answer that for a second or so. Ben wasn’t sure about keeping his breakfast. “Yeah,” Dekker said. “But that’s the one thing you never better think. You never mink about it. Not in the sims. Especially in the real thing—”
Dekker’s voice wandered off. He stood there with his band on a door switch and looked off somewhere, just stood there a breath or two—then drew a larger breath and said, “Worst enemy you’ve got—asking whether your moves are right. You just can’t doubt—”
“Yeah,” Ben said, with the sudden intense feeling they had to get him out of this hallway before a guard saw him or something. “Yeah, right. Why don’t we go tour somewhere else? Like what there is to do on this station?”
Dekker looked at him like he’d never thought of such a thing. “Don’t know that there is. This isn’t One.”
“What I’ve seen, it isn’t even R2. What do you do for life in this can? Play the vending machines?”
“Not much time for social life,” Dekker said faintly. Which reminded him there hadn’t been outstanding much in TI, either. Even attached to Sol One, where there was plenty.
“Not much where we’ve been,” Meg said. “Either.”
They walked down the hall in this place full of labs where human beings learned to twitch like rats, to guide ships that moved too fast to think about, and you couldn’t help thinking that helldeck on R2, for all R2’s faults, had been the good old days....
“So what do you want to do, Dek-boy? I mean, granted we all get our wants, —what’s yours?”
Scariest question he’d ever asked Dekker. And Dekker took a while thinking about it, he guessed, Meg sort of leaning up against Dekker, one visible hand on his arm— where the other one was might have something to do with his concentration....
But Dekker said, real quiet, “I want to be the one cuts that tape. I want to be the one that does it, Ben.”
He wished he hadn’t asked. Sincerely wished he hadn’t asked. Sincerely wished Meg would put her hand somewhere to disrupt the boy’s concentration and shake him out of his spook notions.
“There a chance?” Meg asked, quiet too; and he thought. God, it’s in the water, they got to put it in the water—
Dekker didn’t answer that one right off. “If they let me back in the sims, there is...” And a few beats later. “But I’m not doing it with you, Meg. I can’t do it with you.”
Silence from Meg. Then: “Yeah.”
“I don’t mean that.” Dekker stopped cold, took Meg by the shoulders and made her look at him. “I mean I don’t want to. I can’t work with you....”
Meg didn’t look real happy. Meg was about as white and as tight-lipped as he’d ever seen her. Meg shoved his hands off. “You got a problem, mister? You got a problem with me not being good enough, that’s one thing, you got a problem about setting me on any damn shelf to look at— that’s another. You say I’m shit at the boards, that’s all right, that’s your damned opinion, let’s see how the Aptitudes come out. I’ll find a team and I’ll fly with somebody, we’ll sleep together sometimes, fine. Or I’ll wash out of here. But you don’t set me on any damn shelf!”
After which Meg walked off alone down the hall, sound of boots on the decking, head down. Not happy. Hell, Ben thought, with a view of Dekker’s back, Dekker just standing there. Sal was with him—he wondered that Sal didn’t go with Meg; he was still wondering when Dekker lit out after Meg, walking fast and wobbling a little.
“You make sense out of either one of ‘em?” he asked Sal.
“Yeah,” Sal said. “Both.”
Surprised him. Most things came down to Belter and Inner-systemer. So maybe this was something he just wasn’t tracking. He asked, for his own self-preservation: “Yeah? I know why he’s following. I don’t know why she’s pissed.”
Sal said, “Told you last night.”
“He didn’t say she couldn’t fly. He said—”
“He said not with him. Not on his ship. She’ll beat his ass. That’s what he’s asking for.”
Talking was going on down the hall, near the exit. Looked hot and heavy.
Sal said, “She’ll pass those Aptitudes. You never seen Meg mad.”
He thought he had. Maybe not, on the other hand. Meg was still lighting into Dekker—boy was a day out of hospital, shaky on his feet, and he didn’t look as if he was holding his own down there.
Then Dekker must’ve said something, because Meg eased off a little.
Probably it was Yes. Probably. Meg was still standing there. Meg and Dekker walked off together toward the security door, so he figured they’d better catch up.
The other side of the door, Meg said, “We got it worked out.”
Ben said, “Not fair, man’s not up to this.”
Dekker looked as if he wanted holding on his feet, as was. But Dekker said, “Going to try for that tape, Ben. You want to test in?”
He threw a shocked look back at the doors, where roomfuls of walking dead were flying nonexistent ships. “To that? No way in hell. Non-com-ba-tant, do you read? No way the UDC is risking my talent in a damn missile. I’ll test for data entry before I do that—”
“What’s Stockholm got?” Sal asked. “They say Pell’s got a helldeck puts Sol to shame. Got eetees and everything.”
“Yeah?” He was unmoved. “I’ve seen pictures. Can’t be that good in bed.”
“Got real biostuffs, just like Earth. There’s Pell, there’s Mariner Station—”
“Yeah, there’s Cyteen going to blow us to hell or turn us into robots. Don’t need to go to Cyteen—our own service is trying to do it to us...”
Seriously gave him the willies, that did. Get into his mind and teach him which keys to push, would it?
A programmer didn’t need any damned help like that.
No answer, no answer, and no answer. Graff was beyond worrying. He was getting damned mad. And there was no place to trust but the carrier’s bridge, with the security systems engaged—but workmen had been everywhere, the UDC had very adept personnel as capable of screwing up a system as their own techs were of unscrewing it—and it was always a question, even here, who was one up on whom. “I know the captain knows about Dekker,” he said to Saito and Demas and Thieu—age-marked faces all; and the only reassurance he had. “Pollard, Aboujib, Kady all shipped in here—you’d think if he is moving them, they’d be couriering something, a message, two words from the captain—”