People in boardrooms had started the war over things nobody understood. And the rab had just said—screw that. And rattled hell’s bars when and as they could until the company shot them down. He hadn’t known that when he was a kid. He hadn’t understood anything, except he was mad at what they said was happening to the human race. He’d hated school, hated the have’s and the corporate brats—he’d understood corruption and pull, all right; he’d thought he was rab and scrawled slogans on walls and busted a few lights with slingshots, gotten skuzzy-drunk a few times and lightfingered a few trinkets in shops before he’d figured out what the rab was and wasn’t, and why those people had died trying to get through those doors—he’d been thirteen then, nothing could touch him and he’d be thirteen forever…
Til Cory.
And Cory—Cory wouldn’t at all have understood him sitting at the table with two women like that. Cory would talk to him later and say, the way she’d said more than once, Stay away from that kind, Dek, God, I don’t know where your mind is… we don’t want any trouble; we don’t want anything on our record—
Meg, the older one’s name was. Meg. With the red hair and the Sol accent he’d never realized existed until he’d gotten out here and heard Cory’s Martian burr and heard the Belter’s peculiar lilt. There might be a heavy dose of Sol in Bird’s speech. But none in Ben and none in the black woman—all of them the last types you’d ever think to be hanging around with a plain guy like Bird—or with each other. Not likely Shepherd women—who might drink with miners, maybe—but far less likely sleep with them… when women were scarce as diamonds out here and available, good-looking women could take their pick clear up to the company elite if they wanted, if they didn’t have a police record. They didn’t have to live on helldeck—unless they wanted to.
Maybe Bird didn’t understand the rab… wreck everything, take what you wanted, rip the company—
So much for ideals and causes. Same here as at Sol. Same in the Movement as in the company boardrooms. No difference.
He squeezed his eyes shut, felt tears leak out. Raw pain. He had no idea why. He thought—
—screw all of them. Company and not.
But he didn’t mean it the stupid way the kid on Sol had meant it, 13 and stupid and tired of bumping up against company types, scared as hell about the rumors that said his generation wasn’t going to have a chance to grow up—he’d gotten a knot in his stomach and lain awake half the night, the first time he’d heard how the colonies didn’t have to fire a shot—how the rebels could just drop a rock out of jumpspace, a near- cmissile aimed right at Earth or Sol Station. Nobody could see it coming in time. Thatfor Earth—that for all the history they were supposed to memorize, all the rules, all the laws. Over in five minutes. So why learn anything that was going to be blown up? Why try for anything except grabbing as much as you could before it went bang?
But nobody’d do a thing like that. Nobody’d really hit Earth, nobody’d really hit a station and kill all those people. Of course they wouldn’t.
Cory would say—just get me far enough, fast enough. Cory had told him about places he’d never cared about until she made it sound like there was an honest chance of getting there—if you had the funds. If you could get the visa. If the cops didn’t stop you at the last minute and say, Wait a minute, Dekker, you have a record—
The Earth Company said no more free rides, and you had to pay off your tax debt before you could get a visa. Then your own government, the only time you’d ever see anything from your government, wrote you down as belonging to the ship you’d bought a share on, and you could go
—Where there’ll be something left, Cory would say—Cory had an absolute conviction that Out There was much better than where they were—
—on a ship that had no use for an insystem pilot. He didn’t know whether that was living or not. Truth be known, he had never had any idea what he was going to do then—keep balancing on one foot, he supposed, saying yes and meaning no, going with Cory because Cory was going somewhere—and he didn’t trust the draft wouldn’t take the miners, too, once those ships were built—haul him off to live in a warship’s gut and get killed for the company, blown to hell for the company—
Step at a time, Tommy had used to tell him when he was too zee’d to walk. Step at a time, Mr. Dekker…
Dammit, he wanted to fly, that was all, just get that back—get his hands back on the controls again—
The last few moments he’d thought—he’d thought, clear and cold, not at all afraid, that he could still pull it out—
That he could still make that son of a bitch pay attention to his com—
Wake somebody up on that damned ship, rattle their collision alerts if that was what it took—
He looked at the ceiling-tiles. He supposed they were real. He supposed he’d gotten this far away from the wreck. But no matter how far he stretched it, time just looped back and sank into that moment like light in a black hole. One single moment when things could have worked and didn’t…
Those sons of bitches on that ‘driver had known he was there. Had known they’d hit a ship. They must have. Even if it had never heard him—if somehow his com wasn’t getting through to them—if nothing else, when the tanks blew they’d have known it wasn’t a rock they’d hit.
And if hiscom wasn’t reaching them—wouldn’t they have listened to the E-band after they’d hit a ship? Wouldn’t they have heard Cory’s suit-com?
Damned right they had.
Meg leaned close to the mirror, painting a thin black line beneath her bottom lashes. Hell to keep the eyes from running right after makeup: she blotted with her finger, tried again. The next door over opened and shut. Ben and Bird were off to breakfast, everybody dressing where their wardrobe was. Sal, mirrored past her shoulder, was putting her boots on. “We got a day to do,” Meg said, with a flourish at the corner of her eye. “But we can take second shift. I vote we feel out the novy chelovek.”
“Severe spook.”
“Decorative spook.” Eyebrow pencil. Auburn. Hard to come by out here. If you were broke you used grease pencil, and thatwas expensive. “He came straight last night, after the bogies. Seemedto be coming in focus… Bird talked to him.”
“After the things he shouldn’t have said in the bar, Kady, a serious lack of governance there— everybodywas talking about it.”
“He was drunk. Gone out. Everybody knows that.”
“So he’s got no failsafes? Shit, Kady! Ben’s got severe misgivings on this.”
“Tsss.” She did the other eye with three even strokes, heard Sal get up and caught her reflection with a rap of the knuckle at the mirror. “Remains to see. Later’s time enough. Bird says.”
“Bird says. Bird says. What’s Bird have in his head, here? ‘Find him a partner.’ Ben can’t scope it. And brut put, I don’t like this ‘partner’ talk and I sincerely don’t like Bird close with this jeune fils, whose tab I don’t know why we’re paying, with ourfunds, while he’s got a card and access, thank you.”
“So do Iunderstand?” But she figured she did, more than Sal would. She looked at Sal, eye to mirrored eye, then turned and leaned against the counter, taking the mandatory three thoughts before a body should commit truth—as the saying went. But Sal was seriously upset this morning—Sal had had her eye on that ship, and Sal had been talking to Ben last night, in these rooms, that was point one, and scary enough—if that was all of it, and there were enough angles with Sal on a thing like this she wasn’t at all sure. “We got to talk, Sal.”
Sal stared at her a couple of beats, still hot, shrugged and picked up her jacket. “Na. Rather breakfast, actually.”
Meg didn’t move. Sal didn’t like brut talks, especially when she’d just snapped to a judgment about a thing, but Sal constitutionally didn’t like mysteries. She said, to Sal’s back, “Sal—do you want to know quelqu’ shoze?”
She waited, knewSal was going to turn around with an exasperated look and say—