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.
Dekker slumped against the chair-back, bowed his head, shaking it no, and Abe Persky said, brushing up close on his way out, “Not bright, kid. Understand?”
Abe left. Mike was pissed about his customers, andthe noise—he brought the drink over and said, “Shut this guy up. We don’t need this kind of trouble in here.”
“We got him,” Meg said, got Dekker by the shoulder and steered him for the chair. “You just calm down, hear? Bird’s not a thief.”
“The company’s the thief—you just—”
Meg said, “Shut it down, just shut it down, jeune fils. We hear you. Listen to me. Sit fuckin’ down.”
Dekker fell into the chair, caught his head against his hands, in an ambient quiet even The Hole’s music couldn’t drown.
“Dunno if he ought to have this,” Mike said. “I give you guys a break and you give me a crazy?”
Dekker said, looking up: “I’m not crazy!”
“Them’s the ones to watch,” Mike said, and set the beer down.
Dekker was honestly sorry he’d hit Bird. It was Ben he wished he’d found, before the cops came and got him. He might have killed Ben. And that might have satisfied him.
But Bird had told the bartender not to call the cops, for what good that would do, the red-haired woman had made him sit down at their table and they gave him a beer he didn’t need—
God, his head was pounding. His eyes ached.
The two of them—Bird and this woman with the red hair, who might be a Shepherd—sat at the table with him and told him how the company would have taken everything he owned anyway, how he had to be smart and keep his mouth shut, because he was only making trouble for people who didn’t have any choice…
“So what have Igot?” he asked.
“Hush.” Bird grabbed his wrist, squeezed hard, the way Bird had done on the ship, telling him shut up, to keep Ben from killing him, and his nerves reacted to that: he believedin Bird’s danger, he believedin Bird’s advice the same helpless, stupid way he’d found himself from one moment to the next believing what the doctors told him, and he knew then he was lost. He said, pleading with Bird for help: “They’re lying to me.”
Bird whispered, “Hush. Hush, boy. So they’re lying. Don’t make trouble, if you have any hope of getting that license back.”
He didn’t remember he’d told Bird about his license. He couldn’t even remember how long he’d been sitting here, except his hand stung, which told him how long ago he’d hit Bird. Holes in his memory, the doctors said. Brain damage…
“Whatever’s happened,” Bird said quietly, still holding his arm, leaning close, “—whatever’s happened, son, we’re not against you. We want to help you. All right?”
He was alone in this place, he didn’t know anybody on R2 but Bird and Ben, a handful of doctors and Tommy. He sat there with Bird holding his wrist and keeping him anchored in reality, or he might go floating off right now. Bird said he wanted to help. Nobody else would, here; Belters didn’t; and he couldn’t get back to Rl—couldn’t go back home without Cory even if they’d send him. Their friends would say, Why did you let her die? Why didn’t you do something? And all those letters waiting from her mother…
“Guy’s gone,” the woman’s voice said.
“He’s on something.” Bird shook his arm. “Dekker, you on drugs?”
“Hospital,” he said. He was staring at something. He could see a haze. He had no idea why he was staring, or how he was going to come unlocked and move again, except if Bird would realize he was in trouble and bring him back…
Bird said, “Dekker?”
“Yeah?”
“Look, where are you staying?”
That question required some thinking. It brought the room a little clearer. “I don’t know,” he said, asking himself if it mattered at all. But Bird shook at his arm, saying, “Listen. You’re pretty fuzzed. How are you set? You got any funds?”
He tried to think about that, too. Recalled the 60-day delay—when he’d been on R2 longer than that, dammit, and he didn’t know why the bank had waited til he got out of hospital to start transferring his account. He had no idea how he’d even bought the beers a while back. He had no idea how 500-odd dollars had arrived in his account—whether it was his, or whether he just didn’t remember…
Bird said, “We could put you up a few days—not that we owe you, understand? Let’s be clear on that. But I don’t really blame you for coming in here mad, either. Maybe we can work something out, put the arm on a few guys that might help, you understand what I’m saying?”
It sounded better than Pranh or the rest of them had offered, better than the cops had given him. Bird had always seemed decent—Bird was the one who’d told him about the ‘driver.
“Out there,” he whispered, trying to turn his head and look Bird in the eyes to gauge his reaction, but he couldn’t manage the movement: “Out there—you saw. You remember what happened…”