Bird closed down harder on his wrist, numbing his fingers, hurting his arm, reminding him Bird had another face. “Better you concentrate on where you’re going, son, and not think about anything else. You can’t help your partner now. She’s gone. Best you can do is get yourself clear. You think about it. Your Cory would want you to use your head, wouldn’t she? She’d want you to be all right. Isn’t that what she’d say?”
That made him mad. Nobody had a right to put words in Cory’s mouth. She’d hate it like hell. But he couldn’t get back from where he was. He said, staring off into nowhere, “Screw you, Bird.”
“Yeah, well,” Bird said. “Try to help a guy—”
Another hand landed on his arm, pulled him around until he was looking at brown eyes, shaved head, dark red crest—rab, radrab, Shepherd or whatever she was, he didn’t know. He was fascinated—wary, too. He’d been rab once. But Cory hadn’t approved—Cory was too frugal, too Martian to waste money, she’d say, or to waste effort on the system, even screwing it.
That senator—Broden—saying, when they’d opened fire on the emigration riots—”No deals with the lawless rabble—”
Newsflashes, when he’d been—what? Ten? Twelve? First real political consciousness he’d ever had, seeing people shot down, blood smeared on glass doors…
Rab style and rabfad was one thing. Shepherds wore it modified, he guessed because it annoyed the exec, and they would. But this one, extreme as she was, with marks of age around her eyes—”You’re from Sol Station,” the woman said. “Right?”
“Yeah.”
She stared at him a long time. It felt like a long time. She might be thinking of trouble. Finally she said, her hand having replaced Bird’s on his wrist without his realizing. “Severely young, severely stupid, cher juene fils. Company’ll chew you up. Bird’s all right. If Bird’s telling you, you do. Or are you looking for MamBitch to save you? That’s fool. That’s sincerely primefool, petty cher.”
Rabspeak, from years ago. From before Cory. From a whole different life. Rabfad had turned into respectable fast-fad, except if you didn’t get it out of the trend shops, except if you were truly one of the troublemakers—
Dress like that on helldeck was a statement—a code he couldn’t cipher anymore, not what the colors were, what the earrings said, what the shave-job tied you to… like this woman, who looked him in the eyes and talked to him—as if she saw what he had been before Cory—a damned fool wearing colors and politics he hadn’t then known the meaning of—
A stupid kid, skuzzing around the station, no aims, nothing but mad and trouble on his mind—screw the system, make trouble, get high on the outside chance of getting caught—
He’d been so smart then, he’d known everything, known so much he’d gotten himself arrested, tracked into the System as a juvie Out of Parental Control—himself and his mother tagged for deportation to the well, til his mother paid everything she’d saved to get them both bailed out.
(God, Paul, you’ve been nothing but a disaster to me, you’ve done nothing but cost me from the time I knew I was carrying you—)
They’d put him in a youth program, special studies, writing letters to kids on Mars—
My name is Cory. I live at Mars Base…
“Hear me, jeune rab? Do you read?”
He said, “Yeah. I hear you.”
“Good,” Meg said, patted his face and looked away, at someone else. “Kid’s gone out. Beer’s not a good idea.”
Someone else came up close beside him. He could hear the footsteps. “Not doing real well, is he?”
He didn’t know that voice.
“Kid’s a little buzzed.” That was Bird. Something hit his face. Jolted him. “Dek-me-lad, pay attention. This here’s Mike Arezzo, owns The Hole.—Kid’s had a bad break. Just out of hospital.”
“This is the guy, huh?”
He could see this Mike when Mike moved back past Meg’s shoulder. But he couldn’t recognize him. He was only sure of Bird.
Then there was another voice he knew. “What in hell’s going on here?”
His heart turned over. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t think. Ben was on him, saying, “Call the cops, get this guy out of here…” and Bird said, “Calm down, Ben, just calm down.”
Ben was going to kill him.. He still couldn’t move.
Another voice said, clear and female, “Dekker, huh?”
Dark-skinned face. Hand holding his jaw, turning his head, making him look her in the eyes.
“Skuzzed out,” the dark woman said. She had a thousand braids, clipped with metal. She was right. He was entirely skuzzed out. He said, dim last try at sanity, “Trank. Hospital. Beer.”
She said: “Fool.”
Jack Malinski had grabbed Ben’s arm, him and Sal out shopping the ‘deck, just walking home; Malinski had said, “Ben, some guy just pasted your partner down at The Hole, talking wild about that ship you got—”
He’d run. He’d outright run, getting here, Sal racing along with him—gotten here out of breath. He’d thought it was some guy mad about the lease-list. But they got to the door of The Hole and it was Dekker, no question—Dekker, sitting in a chair at their regular table, and Bird getting up to grab his arm and pull him aside before he hit the bastard. “I got to talk to you,” Bird said, and when he said it that way, Ben had this sinking feeling he knew exactly what Bird was going to say in private, Bird with his damned stupid guilt about that ship.
Bird said, “Dekker’s a little upset. They turned him out of the hospital.”
“Fine, let’s call the cops.”
“He’s all right. The guy’s just at the end of his tether.”
“Tether’s snapped, Bird, for God’s sake, a long time ago, nothing we can do—nothing we’re qualifiedto do.”
“Give him a chance, Ben. Guy’s just mad. Mad and upset.”
“Homicidal is what he is!”
“No. No. He’s not. Come on, Ben.”
“Come on, hell! Your mouth’s a mess.”
Bird blotted his lip with the back of his hand, looked for traces. “Can’t say I blame him. Guy’s lost his partner, lost his ship, lost his license—”
“It’s not our fault!”
“Ben, I got to look at myself in mirrors. You understand? It’s not our fault, but it’s not like we didn’t get something from him, either.”
“That’s life!”
“Ben…” Bird looked utterly exasperated with him, with him, as if it was his fault, Bird just closed off from him again, he had no idea why, and it upset him. He knew he wasn’t likable: there weren’t a lot of people who had ever liked him—while other people got what they wanted just by the way they looked. Dekker was one of those people, the sort that scared him when they got anywhere near somebody he liked—dammit, he had everything he owned and everything he wanted tied up in Bird. And in Sal. And he was willing to fight for it, if he could figure out how to do that.
Go along with it? Or pull strings in Admin, use whatever points he had to get the guy back in hospital—
Bird had his shoulder to him, looking mad, watching the table where Meg and Sal were both making over Pretty-boy. You could figure. Women would—though he’d remotely hoped Sal had better sense. He gritted his teeth and said, “Bird, what do you want to do?”
“Just—” Bird was still upset. But Bird did look at him. “We got a chance to help the guy. Doesn’t cost us much—give him a chance to get his bearings and get his records in shape. You can pull those strings. You know how.”
It hit too close to what he was already thinking—in a completely opposite direction. “Look at him!” he cried. “The guy’s gone! He’s off the scope! You’re thinking about financing him? My God, Bird!”
“Not finance. Just get him introduced around, get him a start, maybe get him partnered up with somebody decent…”
“We don’t know what happened to the last one! Nobody damn well knows, Bird!”
Bird caught his arm and leaned close, saying, half under his breath: “Cut it. We know it wasn’t his fault—”