The lift left without him, the kids upward bound, and he dived for the stairs.
“Fletcher!” a Finity voice called out, and he caught himself with his hand on the bannister.
It was Wayne, with a grin on his face.
“What’s the trouble?”
“Not a thing,” Wayne said cheerfully, and brushed off the importunate incomers with a wave of his arm.
“The kids just went up.”
“They’ll survive,” Wayne said “Join us in the bar.”
“I’m not supposed to.”
“JR’s with us.” Wayne clapped him on the shoulder. “Come on in.”
He’d not had a better offer—on first thought.
On second, he was exceedingly wary it was a set-up.
Except that Wayne had been one of the solid, the reliable ones. He decided to go to the door of the bar and have a look and risk the joke, if there was one.
It was as advertised, the senior-juniors with a table staked out and a festive occasion underway. Wayne set a hand on his back and steered him toward the group. JR beckoned him closer.
He took it for an order, set his face and walked up to the table… where Lyra cleared back, Bucklin pulled up a chair, and JR signaled service. Chad was there, Nike, Wayne, Sue, Connor, Toby, Ashley… the whole batch of them.
“Our novice here just shed three offers,” Wayne announced. “They’re in tight orbit about this lad.”
“Not surprised,” Lyra said. “I would, if he weren’t off-limits.”
“You would, if you weren’t off-limits,” Connor gibed. “Come on, be honest.”
He wasn’t sure whether that was a joke at his expense or not, but the waiter showed up and asked him what he was drinking. He took a chance and ordered wine.
Talk went on around him, letting him fall out of the spotlight. He was content with that. They talked about the sights on the station. They talked about the progress of the loading, they talked about the rowdy arrival—it was a freighter named Belize, a small but reputable ship, no threat to anyone—and he had his glass of wine, which tasted good and hit a stomach long unaccustomed to it. Chad ordered another beer. There were second orders all around.
“I’d better get up to the kids,” he said, and got up and started to move off.
“Good job,” JR said soberly. “Fletcher. Good job. If you want to stay another round, stay.”
“Thanks,” he said, feeling a little desperate, a little trapped. More than a little buzzed by the wine. “But I’d better get up there.”
“Fletcher,” Lyra said “Welcome in.”
Maybe it was a test. Maybe he’d passed. He didn’t know. He offered money for his share of the tab, but JR waved it off and said it was on them.
“Yessir,” he said. “Thank you.” He escaped, then, not feeling in control of the encounter, not feeling sure of himself in his graceless duck out of the gathering and out of the bar.
But they’d invited him. His nerves were still buzzing with that and the alcohol, and if spacers from Belize tried to snag him he drifted through them in a haze, unnoticing. He rode the lift up to the level of his room, got out in a corridor peaceful and deserted except for a slightly worse for wear spacer from Belize, and entered his palace of a room, where he had every comfort he could ask for.
He’d written to Bianca. Things aren’t so bad as I’d thought…
This evening he undressed, showered, and flung himself down in a huge bed that, as Jeremy had said, you almost wanted safety belts for… and thought about Downbelow, not from pain this time, but from the comfort of a luxury he’d not imagined. Memories of Downbelow came to him now at odd moments as those of a distant place—so beautiful; but the hardship of life down there was considerable, and he remembered that, too—only to blink and find himself surrounded by the sybaritic luxury of an accommodation he’d never in the world thought he could afford. He had so many sights swimming in his head it was like the glass-walled water, the huge fish patrolling a man-made ocean. His worlds seemed like that, insulated from each other.
His hurts tonight were all in that other world. He’d felt good tonight. He’d been anxious the entire while, not quite believing it was innocent until he was out of that bar without a trick played on him, but his cousins had made the move to include him, and he discovered—
He discovered he was glad of it.
He shut his eyes, ordered the lights out…
A knock came at the door. A flash at the entry-requested light.
Cursing, he got up, grabbed a towel as the nearest clothing-substitute, and went to see who it was before he opened the door.
Jeremy.
“What’s the trouble?” he asked, and didn’t bother to turn the lights on, standing there with a bathtowel wrapped around him and every indication of somebody trying to sleep.
“Vince and Linda went downstairs. I told them not to. But you weren’t here. And they said they were going down to check…”
“I’m going to kill Vince,” he said. “I may do it before breakfast.” The lovely buzz from the wine was going away. Fast. He leaned against the doorframe, seeing duty clear. “Tell you what. You go downstairs, you tell them we just got a lot of strangers off another ship, some of them are drunk, and if they don’t get their precious butts back up here before I get dressed and get down there, they’re going to be sorry.”
“I’m gone,” Jeremy said, and hurried.
He dressed. There was no appearance at the door. He went downstairs, into the confusion of more Belize crew of both genders in the lobby, wanting the lift, noisy, straight in from celebrating their arrival in port—and their collection of spacers of different ships, not Belize and not Finity. He escaped a drunken invitation and escaped into the game parlor where Belizers were the sole crew in evidence—except the juniors, in an open-ended vid-game booth in which Jeremy, not faultless, was an earnest spectator.
Then Jeremy spotted him, and with a frantic glance tugged at Linda to get her attention to approaching danger. Vince, his head in the sim-lock, was oblivious until he walked up and tapped Vince on the shoulder.
Vince nearly lost an ear getting his head out of the port.
“You’re not supposed to be down here without me.”
“So you’re here.”
“I’m also sleepy, approaching a lousy mood, and the crowd in here’s changed,” Fletcher said.
“You don’t have to be in charge of us,” Vince said. “You’re younger than I am!”
“So act your age. Upstairs.”
“Chad never chased after us.”
“Fine. I’ll call Chad out of the bar.”
“No,” Linda said “We’re going”
“Thought so,” he said “Up and out of here.” He’d been a Vince type, once upon a half a dozen years ago. And it amazed him how being on the in-charge side of bad behavior gave him no sympathy. “Come on. I’m not kidding.”
“We weren’t doing a damn thing!” Vince said
“Come on,” He patted Vince on the rump. “Still got your card wallet?”
Vince felt of the pocket. Fast. Frightened.
“Your good luck you do,” he said, and gave it back to Vince.
“Yeah,” Jeremy said mercilessly. And: “That’s wild. How’d you do that?”
“I’m not about to show you.” He put a hand on Jeremy’s back and on Vince’s and propelled them and Linda through the jam of adult, drunken Belizers at the door. “Up the stairs,” he said to them, figuring the lifts were likely to be full of foolishness, and unidentified spacers. He thought of resorting to JR, then decided it was better to get the juniors into their rooms. He escorted them up three flights, unmolested, onto their floor, just as a flock of spacers arrived in the lift and came out onto the floor, with baggage, checking in, he supposed, but the situation was clearly different than what seemed ordinary.