Hell with it, he thought. He thought he had enough time left on the ones that were in.
The scare when he’d nearly fallen in Old River a while ago had begun, however, to drive something of his self-preservation out of him. It had been a sharp, keen danger, not the sickly kind of terror he hated so much worse—sitting in a lawyer’s office and listening to people disposing of his life. He’d nearly fallen in the river and he began slowly to realize now he wasn’t scared. Just toss the dice, and maybe he’d decide to come back and maybe he wouldn’t.
If he passed the safe limits of choice, then maybe he’d make it, and maybe he wouldn’t. In either case, he had more control over his life than the people who ran things would ever give him.
He was screwing them up good, was what he was doing. They’d be upset, and he wasn’t damned sorry.
Probably Bianca would be upset, too, but then, Bianca didn’t know his record. When people found that out they quit caring, and most of them got away from him so fast their tracks smoked.
Melody and Patch would be upset. Melody most of all. But Melody hoped for a new baby. Hoped he’d grown up and found a girl of his own kind only so she could have a baby and quit taking care of a messed-up human kid.
When he thought about that, he hurt inside. Aged seventeen, safe and secret in the dark, he hurt, for all the things that had ever gone wrong___
They were calling him again…
Wouldn’t let him be alone, and it was all he wanted…
…“Fletcher…”
“Fletcher,” someone said from outside, and he blinked, shaky, sick. Someone—his eyes were blurred—lifted his head up after several tries and succeeded after he began to cooperate with the effort to lift him. Someone put something to his lips and said, “Drink,” so he closed his lips on the straw and drank. It was what his body needed, a taste told him that.
The somebody was a younger cousin. Jeremy. The place was the ship.
The arm he was holding himself up with began to shake. The place smelled like sweat and old clothes. “Something wrong with the ship?” He found the strength to panic, and tried to sit up.
“No,” Jeremy said, and slipped his arm free and let him struggle with the belts that were holding him. “Keep drinking the juice. I’m senior by a month. I get the shower first.”
“Well, did something happen?” he called after Jeremy, thinking because it had been so short a time, they must have aborted the run…But things had changed. He felt his face—the little trace of beard, dead skin that rolled off under his fingers. His clothes were disgusting. Like month-old laundry. The smell was him.
“We’re at Tripoint,” Jeremy called back from inside the shower. “Drink the juice! You’ll be sorry if you don’t! We’re going to be blowing V in a bit. Don’t panic if the ship sort of goes away. It just does that. It’s kind of wild. About two, three times.”
He had three packets of the stuff. He drained the first. There was a terrible moment of giddiness, where the deck seemed to dissolve under him and the walls went nowhere. He was utterly disoriented, and slumped down on the bed until the feeling went away.
“That was the first,” Jeremy called out. “Damn, that was hard!”
“First what?” He felt sick at his stomach.
“K-dump,” Jeremy yelled back. There was the sound of the shower. “Braking, hyperspace style. We don’t go up all the way, we just kind of brush it. Slows us down.”
He knew something about hyperspace. He’d never imagined feeling it. They’d just touched the hyperspace interface. He felt shaky and ripped open another juice, so thirsty his mouth felt dusty.
Things tasted too sweet, and too sour. The green walls had a flavor. The smell had a color, and not a pretty one.
Most of all, the dreadful thing had happened, he was no longer at Pell, he was out of reach of home, and the only thing he could think of was a desperate need for liquid and what taste told him was in that liquid. He ripped open another drink packet. He sat there sipping mineral-reinforced juice until Jeremy came out to look for a change of clothes.
The intercom came on. What sounded like a mechanical voice called their names, and Vince’s and Linda’s, and said, “Galley duty.”
“Shower’s yours,” Jeremy said. “We’ve got galley this round. All those pots and pans. Lucky us. But it’s not bad. Rise and shine.”
He felt like hell. And they were going to be working. The rebel part of him said ignore it, lie here, make them come get him. But it was better than lying in a bunk thinking. He stripped off and went to the shower, and was in the middle of a steamy, lung-hydrating deluge when the siren sounded.
“Takehold!” Jeremy screamed from outside. “Stay put! Damn, what’s he doing up there?”
He didn’t know what to do or which wall to brace himself against. The world dissolved and reformed. The water hit him, boiling hot. Or the world had come back. He leaned against the shower wall hoping to drown and not to be blown to atoms. Shaking head to foot.
“You all right?” Jeremy yelled.
“The emergency has ended.” a calm voice said on the intercom. “The ship is stable. That was a reposition on receipt of an unidentified, now ID’ed as Union military Amity. All clear. Request roll call and safety check.”
“Well, damn all, what are they doing here?” Jeremy said from outside the door. “Bridge wants us to call in. You all right, Fletcher?”
“Fine,” he said He stood there while the fans dried him off and he shook and shivered in the warm air. He managed to ask, meekly, “Is something wrong?”
“Must be all right,” Jeremy said through the door, “Helm must’ve not liked the look of things. But we got our all clear. We can move about”
Move about? He was in the God-help-him shower. “Do we do that a lot?”
“Pretty rare we see anybody,” Jeremy said “It’s empty out here. We didn’t nearly hit her, understand. We just, if we see anybody, we change V. In case they, you know, aren’t up to any good. In case they fired. That is a Union carrier out there.”
“So?”
“So this is sort of Alliance territory. They can come here, just kind of nosing around, but that’s one big ship out there. Usually they’d send just a cruiser to look around. That’s a whole damn command center.”
“Friendly?”
“Yeah. Sort of. It’s pretty wild. Helm must’ve forgot we were hauling.”
He opened the shower door and felt the chill outside. He dressed in clean coveralls, trying to conceal the shakes he was suffering, He’d dropped weight, he’d noticed that when he’d been in the shower. He felt hollow inside, and wanted another fruit juice, but they were out.
“So are we still likely for a takehold?” he asked Jeremy. “Can we go down to the galley, or are we stuck here?”
“We’re supposed to be on the new Old Rules,” Jeremy said, “whatever that means. That everything’s supposed to be looser and if we get a takehold it’s not a takehold like they’re going to be shooting. Not unless they say ‘red.’ Then it’s serious and we’re back on the old New Rules. But I guess the old New Rules still apply on the bridge all the time. Damn, that was a stop! I bet they rearranged the galley good and proper. Cook’s going to be cussing the air blue.”
They were crazy. The whole ship and its company was crazy, and he was still shaking.
“But I guess it’s all right to go,” Jeremy said, “You ready? Guess they’re not going to shoot.”