Meg was looking at him, they all were, and he didn’t want to meet their eyes. He stared at the lift controls instead, watched the buttons light, listened to the quiet around him, just the lift thumping on the pressure seals.
“So?” Tanzer asked, on the phone; “Does this mean a runaround or does it mean you’ve found an answer to my question?”
“There is an answer, colonel. Negative. The orders come from outside this base. We cannot change policy.”
“Policy, is it? Policy? Is that what we call it now, when nobody at this base can answer questions? What do you know, lieutenant? Anything?”
Graff censored what he knew, and what he thought, and said quietly, “I repeat, I’ve relayed your objections. They’ve been rejected. That’s the answer I have to convey, colonel, I’m sorry.”
“Damn you,” Tanzer said, and hung up.
He hung up. He sat for a long few moments with his hands folded in front of his lips and tried to think reasonably. No, he could not call the captain. FleetCom went through Porey now. No, he would not go running to his crew—and maybe that was pride and maybe it was distrust of his own reasoning at the moment. He was not command track. He was not in charge of policy. He was not in authority over this base, not in authority over strategy, and not in the decision loop that included the captain, who somehow, in some degree, had to know what was going on here—at least so far as Demas and Saito had said: they’d warned Keu, they’d pleaded with him, and Keu—had refused to rein Mazian back, had let Mazian make his promises and his assignments.
So what was there to say? The captain had refused to disapprove Porey’s command. The captain had refused Demas, refused Saito... who was he, to move Keu to do anything? Perhaps the captain was more farsighted, or more objective, or better informed.
Or more indifferent.
Porey was aware of Dekker’s problem? And Porey shoved Dekker and a novice crew toward mission prep?
Bloody damned hell\
“You blew it,” Porey said.
“Yessir,” Dekker said on a breath. “No excuses.”
“ ‘No excuses.’ I told you I wouldn’t hear excuses, and I wouldn’t hear ‘sorry.’ You’re the pilot, you had the say, if you weren’t ready you had no mortal business taking them in there.”
“Yessir.”
Porey’s hand came down on the desk. He jumped.
“Nerves, Mr. Dekker. What are you going to do about it?”
“Get my head straight, sir.”
Second blow of Porey’s hand. “You’re a damned expensive failure, you know that?”
You didn’t argue with Porey. The lieutenant had warned him. But too damned many people had told him that.
“I’m not a failure, sir.”
“Was that a success? Was taking trainees into that sim and screwing them up a success?”
“No, sir.”
“Nothing’s the matter with you physically. The meds found nothing wrong with you. It’s in your head, Dekker. What did you claim after Wilhelmsen cracked up? That you knew better? Do you still know better?”
“Yessir.”
“Can you do the run he did?”
“Yessir.”
“You’re no use to me screwed up, you are no damned use, mister. I’ve got other crews. I’ve got other pilots. And let me tell you, if you don’t straighten yourself out damned fast, we’ve got one more way to salvage you. We’ve got one more tape we can use, which I haven’t, because you said you were better, because the techs said untrained personnel were better on tape, but if you’re no other good to anyone, Dekker, then we might just as well put you right down in that lab and input what might improve your performance. You know what I’m talking about?”
He guessed. He managed to say, “Yessir.”
“I’ll make a promise to you, Dekker. You’ve got one week. I’m not restricting you, you can do any damned thing you want, I don’t give a damn for the regulations, for the schedule, for whatever you want to do. You’ve got carte blanche for one week. But if you don’t pull those sim scores right back where you were before your ‘accident,’ then we put you into lab, input Wilhelmsen’s tape into your head, and see if it improves your performance. You understand that?”
“Yessir.”
“Are you clear on that?”
“Yessir.”
“Then get the hell out of here and do it, Dekker, while the labs try to straighten out the damage you’ve done to your crew. I don’t want to see your face right now. I don’t know if I want to see it again.”
CHAPTER 14
SEQ. 285MII. Dekker, Paul F. Authorized. He waited, clinging to the line, felt like a fool inputting the card and checking the tape serial number on the display for the second time, but the cold feeling in the pit of his stomach refused to go away, and nothing seemed right, or sure enough.
Couldn’t remember if he’d done it. Things he’d done weren’t registering. He was thinking on things other than here and now and the number didn’t damn matter. There wasn’t a training tape he couldn’t handle.
Come apart on an orientation run, for God’s sake? Their input couldn’t have overridden his displays if he hadn’t let it, and they were apologizing to him for screwing up? If he was glitching on their input, he could have spared a hand to shut them out. He could have let go the damned yoke and recovered it at leisure. The number one sim was a walk down the dock if you didn’t seize up like a fool—
Muscle spasm. Point zero five second bobble—not wide enough to invoke the braces or trigger an abort on a sleeper run like that; and he’d spaced on it—in that five-hundredth second, he’d been in the Belt, he’d been back at Sol, he’d been with Pete and the guys and lost with Cory—God only where his head had been but he hadn’t known his next move. He’d blanked on it, without reason, without warning.
Pod drifted up, opened for him. He grasped the handholds and slid into the dark inside—respiration rate coming up. Sweat starting. He could feel it on his face, feel it crawling under the flightsuit as he prepped the boards. Belts, confirm. Power up, confirm. Single occupant, tape 23b, Dekker, P, all confirm.
He adjusted the helmet. The dark and the glowing lights held a surreal familiarity. It was no time. It was every time.
Some drugs came back on you, wasn’t that the case?
But the guys weren’t with him now. If he screwed it he screwed it by himself. Wasn’t going to let them do to him what they’d done to Meg and Ben and Sal, wasn’t going to take that damned tape—
No.
“Dekker.”
Sim chief again.
“Dekker, you want to stand down for an hour?”
Didn’t like their telemetry. Picking up his heartbeat.
“No. I’m all right.”
“Dekker.”
Series of breaths. “Porey’s orders. Free ticket. I’m all right, let it go.”
Seemed like forever that light stayed red.
They had guys over in hospital that couldn’t walk straight, that never would fly again...
Had guys in the mental ward...
Sim chief was probably checking with Porey’s office.
Calm the breathing down.
Light went from red to green.
Punch it in.
GO!
“Dek,” it was, “how’d the run go?” and “Dek, you all right?”
He winced, shrugged, said, Fine, working on it.
And stopped the lift on three-deck, made it as far as the nearest restroom and threw up non-stop.
From Meg, back in barracks, a shake at his shoulder: “Dek, cher. Wake up. Mess call. You coming? You’d better come.”