He remembered how he’d acquired them, remembered he wanted to beat hell out of Chad Neihart, but the heat of anger was as dim as weeks could make it… dim as a weeks-neglected chemistry of anger could make it. He knew biology, and was halfway glad to have the intervening cool-off, the diminished hormonal surges, but he felt robbed by that elapsed time, too, robbed of something basically and primally human, as effectively as he’d already been robbed of his sole tie to home and the first girl he’d almost loved. Feelings went cold as yesterday’s breakfast. Human concerns diminished until he could contemplate going into a fight as a technical problem, remote from A deck.
They probably wouldn’t find the stick. The pranksters had probably gotten scared, probably chucked it down a waste chute rather than get caught with it.
When he thought that, he could halfway resurrect the anger he’d felt a month ago. Fight Chad Neihart again? It was inevitable that he would.
Trust him again? He didn’t think so.
Love the girl he’d thought he loved? He wasn’t sure what he’d felt and what he did feel.
But he recalled something as recent as slipping into jump, Jeremy’s I’d miss you still echoed in his thinking. Jeremy would in fact miss him, as he’d miss Jeremy, and as strange, he thought he’d miss Madelaine, who’d fought to get him aboard, and who’d given him a tissue for a bloody nose.
He missed Downbelow.
But he’d miss people on Finity, too.
He’d never felt that, going away from the station to Downbelow.
He scrubbed hard, peeling away dead skin and scab and leaving new skin beneath. He raced the shower dial, which would finish with a warm all-over wash-off. His stomach remained queasy, not alone from the jump, but from the divergence between mind and body, that just didn’t muster the intensity of feeling he’d had before. As if the water sluiced away passions and left conclusions intact but without support. People on this ship wanted him. Others didn’t. How much of their feelings had jump leached out of them… and what would a second jump leave? A placid acceptance of the theft?
Hell, no. He wouldn’t let it. There’d be a reckoning. There’d be justice.
But did it take runaway hormones to make anger viable? Was it cowardice to let it fall, or to find it was falling what did a sane human do, who’d gone off where humans were never designed to go?
The water cycle hit from all sides, stung his skin in a short burst. Blinded him.
He loved Melody and Patch, but that passion was fading, too, no more immune to the onslaught of jump-space than his anger was. Spacers’ loves flared in sleepovers and died between jumps and became someone else in the next port, nothing eternal but the brother- and sisterhood on the ships. Family wasn’t meeting someone and marrying; it was your relations, your shipmates, the attachments close as Jeremy. I’d miss you… and that would resurrect itself.
Bianca was further and further behind. He was what, now? six weeks ahead of her and three months further on?
Melody’s pregnancy would be showing now, if she and Patch had succeeded. Her new baby would be a visible fact. She’d spend her time in a burrow. She’d have gone away from him of her own volition, grown absorbed in her future, not his past. His love for them didn’t diminish—their beginnings with him were almost as old as his sense of self—but they were his foundation, not his present reality.
He came out into the cold air, found Jeremy had gotten back from what must have been a sprint to the mess hall, with synth cheese sandwiches and cold drinks in plastic containers. Jeremy finished his in a gulp, started stripping and went to the shower, stuffing his laundry in the bag. “I’ll take it to the laundry chute,” Jeremy said from the shower, before it cut on.
Fletcher dressed and tucked up on his bunk with the sandwich and fruit juice, feeling not too bad and finding it hard to track on where they were in what could be the edge of a fire-fight. Ordinary things went on, the ordinary pleasures of clean clothes, a cold, sweet drink. Went on right down to the moment it might all be over. And he’d fallen into the understanding of it.
He’d finished his sandwich when Jeremy came out and dressed.
“How are you feeling?” Jeremy asked
“Mostly healed up,” he said
Jeremy wasn’t surprised “You got that Introspect tape? You think you could lend it?”
He’d bought it at Mariner. He’d played it several times. And Jeremy liked it.
“Yeah,” he said, and asked himself if he wanted to set up a tape himself.
But visions of Downbelow still danced in memory, a day unlike no other day he could ever imagine. Maybe he could recover that dream.
“Hello, cousins” came from the intercom, a different voice. “Here we are, second shift taking over, a rousing applause for first shift which dropped us neatly where we hoped to be and all the way down to synch with our port. Thanks to the galley for a heroic effort, and all those sandwiches. We’re on to Voyager, where, alas, we’re going to have to be on long hours. But the galley promises us herculean efforts during our Voyager run-in. We are able to reveal to you now, seriously, cousins, that we were engaged in negotiations with both Pell and Mariner, and with numerous captains of the Alliance, who concurred in a plan that now has Union working with us. This ship has become valuable to the peace, cousins, in a way that command will explain in more detail past Voyager, but Captain James Robert has a word for you in advance of our departure. Stand by.”
“Wild,” Jeremy said quietly. “He only does that when we’re going in to fight.”
“This is James Robert,” the next voice said, and a chill went over Fletcher’s skin. “As Com says, more later, but this we do know. We’re couriering in a message Voyager will very much wish to hear. We’re assuring its continued existence in the trading network, one additionally assuring that Mazian will lose the heart of the supply network that’s kept him going. There’s been a black-market pipeline funneling Earth goods to Cyteen and war materiels to Mazian, and that’s about to stop. I’ll fill you all in at Voyager, but console yourselves for a very hard stay at Voyager that we’re about to deal Mazian a blow heavier than any he’s had in years. Peace, cousins. Tell yourselves that when you’re on three hours of sleep and your backs hurt, and you’re tired of watching console lights that don’t change. Voyager liberty is cancelled. We may manage a few hours, but we’re going to work like dockhands at this next port. As an additional piece of news, our running partner Boreale is in hot pursuit of Champlain, and if Champlain doesn’t have the extra fuel we think she has, and does pull in at Voyager, we can deal with that, too.”
“We ought to hit them,” Jeremy said in a tone of disappointment “Why’s Boreale get all the fun?”
“It’s not fun, Jeremy!” Nerves made him speak out, and he gained a shocked look in return. “It’s not fun,” he reiterated. “Listen to the captain who’s done more of hitting them than anybody.”
“Maybe he’s getting old.”
“Maybe he always knew what he’s been fighting for! And maybe you’re too young to know.”
“I’m not too young!”
“I’m too young! Pell’s been at peace, but the idea of no enemy anywhere? I’ve never known that. But I lived with creatures who never fight each other, who don’t steal from one another, and people on this ship do! I’ve at least seen peace, and you haven’t!”
Jeremy looked at him, just stared, as if he’d become as alien as the downers.