Give the culprit the opportunity to find the object, in whatever way he or she wished. It wouldn’t end it, but it would enable him to put the focus on the interpersonal problem and discover what they were actually dealing with: a theft, or the ruse, or the destruction of something irreplaceable.
Fletcher, however, was with the junior-juniors, all three, when he came on them going through A deck’s vacant cabins a search that, in the example he saw, had boxes of whiskey moved, storages opened, bunks swung to look underneath, all with amazing dispatch.
“Fletcher,” JR said, and drew Fletcher outside the door to 40A. “The Old Man expresses extreme concern. It’s not a property issue. I don’t consider it one. He doesn’t. If you want to file a complaint with him, that door will be open. I’m asking you, personally, give me time to unravel this.”
Fletcher had been moving boxes. His breaths came deep. “I didn’t intend to get involved,” Fletcher said, and gave a move of the eyes toward the flurry of activity inside. “They wanted to.”
If it had been any other circumstance, he would have been dismayed at the thought of the inexpert junior-juniors disarranging cargo. Thumps continuing to come from inside the disused cabin. “I’m impressed with their enthusiasm,” he said.
And in the uneasy silence that followed between them: “Fletcher, we’re approaching a very dangerous dock. I hope we can resolve things prior to docking. If not, I’m asking you, as I’ll ask Chad, to refrain from confrontations. Very serious negotiations are riding on it. Alliance-Union negotiations. They could be adversely affected if two of our crew engage on dockside.” There was a moment more of silence, and diminishing hope of Fletcher’s understanding. “I’m asking your cooperation for a handful of days. We’re going to be working hard, tempers are going to be short. You’re assigned to watch the junior-juniors, the same as before, but I can take you off that if you feel you’d be better separated from other personnel. You and the junior-juniors can sit in a sleepover together and watch vids, if that’s your choice, and you won’t have to work.”
Fletcher stood there considering what he said. He increasingly expected Fletcher to choose to stay to the sleepover, the safest choice, and the one, in the absence of Fletcher’s desire to cooperate, he still might order.
But Fletcher let go the frown, and glanced instead toward the doorway, where the junior-juniors were conducting their search. Then he looked back.
“Even if provoked,” Fletcher said. “As long as we’re in dock. You’ve got my promise.”
“I’m glad to take your word,” he said, and left the junior-juniors to their activity. He hunted down Chad with the same proposition, and that quest required a trip out into the rim, where in coats and gloves and with flashlights, Chad had paired up with Wayne. Another glow, from around the girder-laced curve, showed where Nike and Lyra were operating, in cold deep enough to get through boots.
“I don’t know why he picked me,” Chad said “That’s twice he’s come at me like I was the only one.”
“I don’t know why,” he said “I can’t defend it. I only know how important it is we keep the peace. On both sides of this.”
“I don’t even know what the damn stick looks like,” Chad said. “It’s hard to search for something when you only have a description of it. And that’s all I have.”
Chad wanted to convince him he was innocent. He wished he believed it himself. And yet he couldn’t dismiss the possibility it was the case. “It’s all I have, too,” he said to Chad.
“I think he did it,” Chad said, breath frosting in the light, “and he’s just putting us to running rings. I think it’s going to turn up somewhere and he’ll be the only one not surprised.”
“If that’s the case,” he said. “If it’s not the case, the real way this is going to get solved is when we sit down together and look at each other without suspecting the worst. Him. You. Wayne. Me. All of us.”
“Chad’s taking the brunt of this,” Wayne said. “And I don’t think he’s to blame.”
“He doesn’t want to be here, anyway,” Chad said.
“And I just talked to the Old Man, and asked for more time. Give me some help, Chad.”
“Yessir. I won’t fight.”
He had a confidence in Chad he couldn’t have in Fletcher, who hadn’t been a presence all his life. Chad might be on the wrong side of something, but he wouldn’t go against the answer he’d just given.
“Not even if he jumps you, Chad. If he does I’ll settle it. I know it’s hard what I’m asking, but you’re both of you strong hands we need, and I’d rather not have you sitting it out in quarters.”
“I got my tooth chipped the first time station-boy threw a punch out of nowhere!”
“Chad.”
“Yessir,” Chad said.
“And don’t call him that. No words, Chad, same as no fighting.”
“Yessir,” Chad said the second time.
“I take your word on it,” he said, wishing it weren’t Chad’s word that was utterly at issue.
And that Chad wasn’t the only potential explosive in their midst. There was Connor. There was Sue. There was Nike.
Vince seemed to have fallen in on the side of the offended, not the offenders. Vince was, at least, off his mind.
No sign of the stick, not the first twenty-four hours, not the second, and the junior-juniors, early and enthusiastic in their burst of energy, grew frustrated and short-fused.
“We’re not going to find it,” Linda said.
“Probably,” Fletcher said, “we have less chance than the ones in the outer ring.”
“We can go out there,” Jeremy declared.
“No, we can’t. I’m not being responsible for you clambering around in the dark. Senior-juniors are searching that.”
Jeremy’s shoulders slumped. The junior-juniors were tired to the point of exhaustion. They all had blisters.
And senior crew had found out, unofficially. A number had volunteered extra hours, and hiding places they’d known when they’d been young and foolish.
Some of those searches surprised the junior-juniors, that anyone but them did know those nooks and crannies.
Jake came, having gotten the general description, and said there’d been no stones in the recycling traps, which indicated it hadn’t gone into biomass, unless somebody had thought of that and removed the stones before chucking it into a disposal chute.
That was a logical place to search, one Fletcher hadn’t thought how to handle in terms of the chemistry; and Jake, the bioneer, had disposed of the question by something so basic his school-fed theory hadn’t even considered it.
Notes from all four of the captains turned up one by one in his personal pager, saying, essentially, that the captains were aware, and that official issues aside, if he wanted to discuss the matter, they stood ready to listen.
Fletcher didn’t know how to answer, so he delayed answering. The first impulse had been to say, Get me off this ship; and the second one had been a hesitancy to say what might not, even yet, answer where he wanted to go, or what he wanted to do.
He hadn’t expected the flurry of senior help in the search.
He hadn’t expected the junior-juniors, patching blisters, to keep looking.
He hadn’t expected the senior-juniors to show up in the mess hall, half-frozen from the ring skin, looking for hot coffee and looking exhausted as his own small crew. That included Chad, who avoided looking at him, who pointedly looked the other way when he stared.
It’s destroyed, he said to himself, and Chad’s scared to say so. It’s destroyed or it’s lost and Chad can’t find it.
But none of the senior-juniors talked much, least of all to him, and not that much to each other. There was no rec, meals were catch-as-catch-can, and no one associated together.