The mind conjured intriguing images—but they were thin fare to live on. Heavy time was real life: the reviews Mama radioed you out in the deep Belt of vids in the top ten only let you know what was a must-see when you got back. A stale rehash of handball scores was no substitute for seeing the interdivisional games, and electronic checkers with your shipmate was damn sure no substitute for sex.
Heavy time was anything you could afford besides your hours in the public gyms and your socializing in the sleeperies and bars and your browsing in junk shops—precious little you could buy except consumables and basics, because a miner ship had no place to store unusefuls, and mass cost fueclass="underline" but experience didn’t mass much except around the waistline—so those were the kind of establishments you tended to get on helldeck, those that catered to the culturally, sexually, and culinarily deprived.
And if a couple of your partners turned up absent since quitting time into supper, with a sudden lot of credit in the bank, you knew it was probably one of the above.
Evenif it left you doing the supply shopping and handling the guys wanting a lease, you couldn’t blame him too much, and Bird didn’t: Ben had never been inclined to do it, Ben had worked hard on the legal stuff and the filings, and Ben had finagled a deal with a company repair crew to get the tanks installed.
But leaving him with the phone calls…
The regular lease crews wanting a piece of Trinidador Way Out—those you could explain to. They weren’t overjoyed, but they understood. It was the horde of part-time unpartnered would-be’s, most of whom you wouldn’t trust to find their way up the mast and back, who called up every time a ship went on the list; and who, finding out that Trinidad, newly on the list, wasn’t to lease, argued with you; and, worse, that a brand new ship, Way Out, was already first-let to one Kady and Aboujib, of less seniority and a certain reputation—
Well, it told you that you sure didn’t want to lease to those hotheads anyhow. He said to the latest such to call, “Screw you, too, mister. Hell if you ever get any ship I’m handling,” and hung up.
After which he walked past the looks from the other tables, back to the table by the door and the figures he was working with Meg—bills and bills, this week, pieces and parts of Way Out, mostly. He sat down and shook his head.
“Another fool,” he said, and punched up the Restore on the slate beside his plate, trying to recall his previous train of thought, and wishing to hell they still gave you paper bills, instead of damn windows on a slate that caught the glare from the ceiling lights. “Wayland Fleming. I never let to that son of a bitch and right now I’m damn glad.—Where in hell’s Ben and Sal off to, anyway?”
“Vid, I think.”
“Spending money.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what’s got into Ben.”
Meg looked up with raised eyebrows and said, “Now, Bird, you knowwhat’s got into Ben.”
No, he honestly hadn’t had it figured until Meg said that—and it somewhat upset his stomach. Ben and Sal? Cold, cool Ben?
With Sal Aboujib?
“You didn’thave it figured?” Meg said. “Come on, Bird.”
That they were sleeping together, hell, yes—going at it non-stop, absolutely, but that was youthful hormones. What Meg implied was something else. A guy like Ben, who’d saved every penny all his life, out spending it on a woman?
Ben, his best-ever numbers man—being courted by Kady’s? And advising him who to lease to, against his better judgment?
Meg had toted up the expense figures while he was at the phone: she had a better head for bank balances than he did, she was damned pretty, and sometimes, looking at her, even if an old blue-skyer’s eyes had to get used to fire-red hair shaved up the sides and bangles up the ears, it was the likes of Meg that could keep a man interested in living.
But what was he doing suddenly sleeping steady with Meg Kady, when there were whole stints ashore he’d spent without a woman so much as looking at him? And what was Ben doing spending his money on Sal?
He was afraid he did have the answer to that, and maybe he ought by rights to be mad. Maybe he ought to throw Meg Kady out on her scheming ear and rescue Ben from Sal’s finagling.
The problem with that scenario was—
A hand landed on his shoulder, jerked him around and out of his chair.
A fist sent him back over the table. He had his foot up to stop another attack, but he knewthe wild-eyed lunatic that was standing there wobbling on his feet. Everybody in the room was out of their chairs, Meg had hers in her hands, Mike was probably calling the cops, and Dekker was standing there looking as if standing at all was an effort.
“Where’s my ship?” Dekker yelled at him.
Bird got a cautioning hand up before Meg could bash him. “Ease off,” he said, and yelled at Mike Arezzo, behind the bar: “ ‘S a’ right, Mike, I know this crazy man.”
“You’re damn right you know me!” Dekker said. “I get out of hospital, I call the dock to get my bills, and what have I got?”
The jaw wasn’t broken, but teeth could be loose. He rolled off the table and staggered to his feet with Meg’s hand under his arm.
“Is this Dekker?” Meg asked.
“This is Dekker,” he said. “—Sit down, son, you look like hell.”
“I’ve beenthere.” Dekker caught a chair back to lean on, getting his breath. “You damned thief.”
“Easy. Just take it easy.”
“ Easy! You went and stole my ship, you lying hypocrite!”
It wasn’t a kind of thing a man wanted to discuss in front of neighbors. Mike Arezzo asked, from over at the bar: “Want me to call the cops, Bird?” At tables all over the room a lot of people were listening. “I’m not having my place busted up.”
“Why don’t you?” Dekker gasped. “Prove I’m crazy, this time, so you don’t have me to deal with. They can do the rest of the job on me—that’s what you wanted, isn’t it? That’s what you set up for me. You took everything else. Why don’t you just finish the job?”
“Mike, I’m buying this guy a drink. I want to talk to him. He’s all right.”
“ I don’t want to talk to a damn thief!”
“Beer, Mike, that’s what he’s been drinking.—Sit down, Dekker. Sit!”
Dekker breathed, still leaning on the chair, “I need those log records. Just give me the log records, that’s what I want—”
“I don’t have ‘em,” he said. And when Dekker just stood there looking at him: “She was cleaned out when they turned her over. God’s truth, son. They’re not going to give somebody else’s log over to anybody else—I don’t know if they got it stored somewhere, but her whole tape record was clean when she came to us. Zero. Nada. Everything’s out of there.”
Dekker was absolutely white. “The damn company killed my partner, they’re saying there never was a ‘driver near us—they erasedmy log—”
“Kid, shut up and sit down.”
“You know that ‘driver was out there! You know what the truth was before they changed it—”
Meg pulled at his arm. “Bird,—”
“Ease off, Meg.—Just sit down, son.” People were headed for the door. People were clearing the place.