Bucklin nodded and got up. “I’ll get started on it.”
Word came to the galley: they were going up before main-dawn. Jeremy fairly bounced with the news, and shoved a set of pans into the cupboard and latched it tight, nerves, Fletcher thought, feeling his own nerves jangled, but no part of Jeremy’s fierce anticipation.
“What’s going on?” he asked Jeff the cook—unwilling, at least uneasy, in appearing to be more ignorant than the juniors he’d had put in his charge.
“That ship,” Jeff said. “I imagine.”
Fletcher didn’t know what to imagine, and found himself peevish and short-fused. Stations behaved themselves and stayed on schedule, and so did station-dwellers. He habitually felt a tightness in the gut when even ordinary, minor things swerved slightly off from an anticipated schedule, perhaps the fact that so many truly sinister events in his life had begun that way. He was leaving Mariner, going even farther from Pell. He had an enemy who wanted to spite him, he’d tried to duck out of association with the family, and the juniors had conspired to hold on to him.
He didn’t say a word to Jeff. He just quietly left the galley and took a walk, as circular a proposition as on a station, a long stroll past the machine shop, the air quality station, lifesupport, all the gut and operations areas of the ship, where things were quieter and the feeling of urgency settled. Read-outs were on the corridor walls here. The noise of the machine shop working made him wonder what in all reason someone could be doing on the edge of destruction. It made him wonder so much he put his head in to look. And it was Tom T. using a drill press on a small metal plate.
“So what’s that?” he asked.
“Shower door latch.”
“Oh,” he said. It looked like one when he recalled their door. It was the socket of the door. He was almost moved to ask why Tom would be fixing a shower door if they were all going to be blown to hell and gone. But he just stood and watched. He’d never been in a machine shop. There was a certain comfort in knowing someone’s leaky shower was going to get replaced.
“Did you make that?”
Tom pushed up his safety goggles and wiped his nose. Tom had gray hair, large, strong-veined, competent hands. “We make about everything. Hell to get parts for old items, and most of this ship is old.”
“I guess it is.” A ship that traveled from port to port wasn’t going to find brands the same, that was certain. “Interesting place.”
“Ever done shop work?”
“No, sir.”
Tom grinned. “You want to take a turn at it sometime, you come on in. The youngers of this generation are all hellbent on pushing buttons for a living.”
“I might.” He figured he’d better get back to the galley before Jeff was hellbent on finding out where he’d gone or what he was up to. “I’ll give it a try. I’d better get back.”
“Any time,” Tom said. “Extra hands are always welcome.”
He’d wanted to ask—Have you heard about us going to do a burn tonight? but he didn’t end up asking. People just did their jobs. Jeremy was wired. Linda and Vince were jumpy. Tom fixed a shower door and Jeff was making lasagna.
He supposed it made a brittle kind of sense to do that. He, the stationer, he decided to take the long way back to the galley, and to go all the way around the ring.
Cabins, mostly, in the next two sections. After that, doors with numbers, and designations like Fire System and two more just with yellow caution tags and Key Only. And more cabins, everything looking so much like everything else he began to be uneasy.
But after that he saw the medical station, and the main downside corridor, and he felt reassured. He knew where he was now, beyond a doubt, and he walked on toward the familiar venue of the laundry. It was a farther walk than he’d thought, and he was moving briskly, thinking he really should have gone back the way he’d come.
Running steps came from behind him, all out running. “Fletcher!”
Jeremy’s voice. Jeff must have gotten worried and sent Jeremy the whole walk around, after him.
He stopped, as Jeremy came panting up from off the curvature. “Where are you going?” Jeremy gasped.
“In a circle,” he said.
“Damn,” Jeremy said. “You could’ve said.”
“Sorry,” he said, and clapped Jeremy on the shoulder as they walked, together, on what was now the shortest way to reach the galley.
“You mad, or something?”
“No,” he said, but ahead of them, the crew manning the laundry had come out to stare at who had been running and making a commotion.
Chad. Connor. And Sue.
“What in hell’s going on?” Connor said. “You running races out here?”
“We’re doing what we damn well please,” Fletcher said, feeling the anger rise up in him, telling himself get a grip on it.
“Hey,” Chad said as he passed, “we’re looking for that stick thing.”
He whirled around and hit Chad, hard, and didn’t find two words in a string to describe what he thought about Chad, the missing stick, and Chad’s sympathy all in one breath; Chad slammed into the wall and came back off it aimed at him, and he drove his fist into Chad’s rock-hard gut.
He heard people yelling, he felt people grabbing his shirt, pulling at his arms, and meanwhile he and Chad went at it, hitting the walls, staggering back and forth when Chad got a punch through and he shot one back with no science to it, just flat-out bent on hammering Chad into the deck.
“Hey, hey, hey!” someone shouted close to his ear, and he paid no attention. It was every damned sniping attack he’d ever suffered, and he hit and took hits until he began to red-out and run out of wind, and to lean into the blows as the opposition was leaning into him. Another flurry and they were both out of breath. He took a clumsy roundhouse at Chad and glanced off, and Chad took one at him and he took one at Chad. People were all around them, and when Chad swung at him and halfway connected, somebody got Chad and another got him and pulled them apart.
“I didn’t steal your damn stick!” Chad yelled at him, spitting blood.
“I said shut up!” JR yelled. It occurred to Fletcher that JR had been yelling at him, and JR had hold of him; Bucklin had Chad.
“He started it!” Sue said.
“I’m not damn well interested! Fletcher, straighten the hell up!”
Fletcher wiped his mouth and stretched an arm to recover his shirt onto his shoulder. The hand came away bloody. His right eye was hazed and he couldn’t tell whether it was sweat or blood running into it. Chad was bloody. There were spatters on the walls.
“Fletcher!” Jeremy said “Fletcher, don’t fight anymore.”
“All I said was…” Chad began.
“Shut up!” JR said, and jerked Fletcher back out of reach. “Madelaine wants to see you.”
“I’m not interested.”
“You get the hell up there before she comes down here. Now!”
“I’ll clean up, first.”
“Just go on topside. Right now.”
“Yessir,” he said, because he still believed JR, out of a handful of people he would listen to, and because he hadn’t any other clear direction while the universe was still far and hazed. He blotted at the eye with the back of his hand, sniffed what tasted like blood down his throat, and shot a burning look at Chad before he walked on toward the lift.
Light, quick steps ran behind him, and he spun around.
“Jeremy,” JR said in a forbidding tone, and Fletcher looked at Jeremy through his anger as if he saw an utter stranger—a scared and junior one, one he had no motive to harm, but not one he wanted to touch him at the moment.