Up through lighter and lighter decks, where you had to take hold: the tender-jocks tried to talk her into getting off at 8 and going to a sleepery with them. She said no, very patiently, and swore she was going to hunt these guys down and kill them if she got out of this.
8. The jocks got off. Thank God… The car made the jolting transit to the core and stopped—the Access light went on and she shoved the card in, hoping to God customs wasn’t on duty right now.
The door opened. She caught the grip on the line, and rode it through the numbing cold—no jacket, obviously not dressed for the core; but she’d done it before, and customs off in their warm little office had seen her come and go like this a dozen times.
Hope to God nobody’s put a watch on the ships.
She was half-frozen by the time she’d braked off the line and caught Trinidad’srigging-cord—hadn’t even a hand-jet: she monkeyed over to the hatch, her breath coming in ragged, teeth-chattering hisses as she opened up and hauled herself through.
The damn fool was there, just doing a little wipe-down on a cabinet. He made a slow turn to look at her, all calm—like, What’s the rush, Meg? What could possibly be the matter?
She brought up against a console, hauled herself steady against the recoil, out of breath, not knowing what that look meant—that he’d lost his mind and gone totally eetee, or that he was holding it together, up here testing the limits of his sanity.
“You kind of missed a dinner date,” she said.
He blinked as if he were dropping into another track of thought. “God,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
Blank and innocent. She wasn’t entirely sure he was sane right now, or that she was even safe with him in this lonely, noise-insulated place. She said, with her teeth chattering, “Dek, we got to get down and find Bird—right now. Something’s come up.”
“Something wrong?”
She wasn’t about to explain to him here, alone. She grabbed his arm. “We just got a problem.” Her teeth rattling made it hard to talk. “Come on, Dek, for God’s sake, I’m freezing.”
“What’s going on?”
“Tell you on the way.” She made a little finger-sign that meant bug. “Bird wants you. Now.”
He disposed of the cloth he was holding. He wiped his fingers on his sweater, looking scared now.
But he dimmed the lights and followed her out of the hatch.
Message from Salvatore: We’ve got some kind of stir among the military personnel on the ‘deck— MP’s and officers going from bar to bar, spreading out. Looks as if they’re pulling their people off leave…
Payne passed the message on to Crayton’s office and grabbed the phone. “FleetCom,” he told it, and got one ring after another, then a robot.
“Input your priority please.”
“This is Payne, ASTEX Public Information Office.”
“ Your call is entered in queue. Your call will be answered…”
Priority beeped him off. Red lights spread like plague across the phone console.
“ Sir!” Salvatore said into his ear, but another priority beeped Salvatore down to autorecord.
The phone said, simultaneously with the computer, on voice: “… This is President Towney’s office. We are in receipt of an uncoded message echoed from Shepherd craft at the Well, quote:…’At 1540 hours on September 2nd, the ShepherdAthens picked up an anomalous object in the recovery zone. It proved to be human remains, carrying the identification of Corazon Salazar, a miner registered to Rl, and reported lost earlier this year during a reported bumping incident between the ‘driverIndustry and the miner ship 1-89-Z. Our calculations indicate an origin consistent with other loads fired by the aforenamed ‘driver. We are in possession of charts which indicate falsification of records. We are advising the company of these facts and we are demanding that charges immediately be filed of willful murder and attempted murder, with arrest warrants issued for the chief officers of the ‘driver ship—’ “
Sweating, heart thumping, Payne keyed to Salvatore: Whereabouts of Paul Dekker. Priority One.
CHAPTER 17
DEKKER kept his jaw clamped on questions Meg clearly wasn’t going to answer—”I don’t knowwhat the situation is right now,” was the last information thing she’d yet said, when she’d insisted on stopping on 4-deck and walking breakneck to a lift that only took cards like the one she was using—which wasn’t hers. Gold. The only card like that he’d ever seen was Shepherd Access.
He’d never seen this end of helldeck, either—where the lift let out. She led the way across the ‘deck immediately to a door next to a fancy restaurant. A card-sized gold plaque was the only sign of business: the Shepherd emblem, Jupiter and the recovery track, right above the card-lock.
“What is this?” he asked.
Meg put the card in, shoved the door as the electronic lock clicked.
He ducked inside after her, into a carpeted reception room where he knew they didn’t belong—by no right ought they to be here, except that card.
A blond man looked up from the reception desk.
Meg said, “This is Dek; Dek, Mitch.—Have we heard anything from the rest of us?”
“Neg,” Mitch said, before Dekker could say anything, and pointed to the first door down the hall. “Wait in there. Both of you.”
“I’ve got friends out there,” Meg objected, “looking for him.”
“We’re doingsomething about it, Kady. We’ll do it faster if you take care of him.”
“Maybe you’d better tell me what’s going on,” Dekker said, but Meg grabbed him by the arm, said, “Dek, come on,” and steered him down the hall.
“Dammit, Meg,—”
“Shit, I don’t know, I don’t know, come on, just awhile—sonuvabitch! I’m up to here with sons of bitches…” Meg took him back into an elegant deserted bar, left him standing while she turned on the lights and set up on her own, poured two fast, shaky drinks, one whiskey, one rum.
He came and leaned his elbows on the bar, said carefully: “We’re not getting out of here tomorrow, are we?”
She took a sip of the whiskey and shoved the rum at him. “Drink up.”
“Meg. What’s happened? What are we doing here?”
She leaned on the bar, nudged his hand with her glass. “You seriously better have a little of that, jeune rab.—They found your partner.”
Thatwas it.—But the Shepherd Access, Meg’s breathless rush—coming here… He stood bewildered. Meg came around the end of the bar and snagged him by the sleeve, pulled him to a table and set him down opposite her.
She said, “Dek, they found her at the Well. That sonuvabitch put her in a bucket and sent her a long tour of Jupiter. A Shepherd picked her up on the recovery path.”
Meg sneaked up all gentle. Then she shot for the gut. His mind went blank and black—
That huge dark machine…
“Why in hell—” Breath dammed up in his throat. He couldn’t get it out. He reached for the glass, slopped it left and right getting a drink.
Meg reached across the table, reached for his free hand as he set the glass down, squeezed his fingers til they hurt.
“Cher. Death is. Pain’s life. And there’s, above all, sons of bitches. Get your breath. You’re not the only one who knows now. You’re not alone out there. It’s the independents… the freerunners… the Shepherds they were aiming at. The old, old business.”