Correction. Out here . On this ship he was on. It was very real to Jeremy. It had never been unreal to Jeremy.
He wasn’t hearing anything out of the kid. He wanted a voice. Wanted truth. Wanted an estimation of what to expect out here. “You see any pirates?”
“What do you mean?” Jeremy asked.
“I mean, you ever come close to any? Recently?”
The force was slamming them into the mattresses. It wasn’t easy to move, but Jeremy had rolled over and looked over the edge of his bunk,
“Where do you think we’ve been for seventeen years? They teach you anything on that station?”
He’d been a fool. “I guess not enough.”
“Half this ship died,” Jeremy said fiercely, hair hanging, face reddening. “My mama and half of everybody aboard, some of them juniors who never knew what hit ’em. We got a decompression in half the ring and we had damn-all getting back to a port where we could get us put back together. I wish we was still hunting them and not going on this stupid trade run, massed up so we can’t handle worth a damn at an insystem wallow. Captain-sir wants us back to trading, and Captain Mallory says the War’s over, but they’re still out there, there’s pirates still out there we haven’t got, and Mallory’s still hunting ’em. When I make senior, damn-all , and if we haven’t gotten after those bastards again, I’m going to jump ship and join Mallory’s crew. ”
“You think they could try to raid us on this run?”
“I don’t know.” Jeremy’s face had gone an alarming color from the strain of hanging over the edge. “They say it’s quiet right now and the stations don’t want to give us any more money to keep us out hunting. Madison says they haven’t got hit, is what. They’ve been safe for seventeen years and they don’t want to pay, and we’re the reason they haven’t been hit for seventeen years. Year we were born and we left Pell, the station was a wreck.”
The first years on Pell had been lean, that was sure. His childhood memories were scarce food and a lot of construction.
“Let a ship get hit,” Jeremy said out of the air above him, finally back all the way in his bunk, “and you bet the merchanters are going to be yelling. Where’s Finity ? They’ll say. Why isn’t Finity on the job? And maybe they’ll pay the dock charges for us, or all the ships will go on strike so the stations have to let us dock and fuel on station-charge. That’s what the Old Man did before. He shut down all merchant traffic and nobody hauled. He did it when Union wanted to Unionize us and he did it when the Earth Company wanted us not to trade Union-side, and he did it to cut the Fleet off so the Fleet couldn’t get supply. We could do it again.”
The merchanter strikes were famous. It was something he knew from school. “So why don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” Jeremy said, and then said, in a lower voice: “I think the captain’s getting old.”
Captain James Robert Neihart. The Captain. The one who’d hauled him aboard and wrecked his life. It seemed to him that the captain had power enough to get his way. And that Quen did.
Jeremy didn’t say any more. The acceleration kept up, and kept up. Fletcher put the visor on and turned the book on, and moved only his thumb to change pages.
He was still scared. Maybe more so, but less so of the jump itself. The pirates sounded more active than the station news had had the story. He hadn’t meant to tread on Jeremy’s sensitivities. Jeremy had lost a mother, too, in the War, or what passed for the peace, and they had that in common, as well as their birth.
He didn’t know enough about history. He’d gotten through his courses without having to know that much. He was good on the governments of Earth, far off things that were more exotic than evocative of real pain. The construction had been an inconvenience of his childhood, places you couldn’t go, because there was always construction in the way, but he’d actively avoided knowing about the War, or his mother’s reason for being where she’d died. He’d understood that Q section had been pretty bad, and some of the people that had been in Q section were still visiting the psychs. Some had even asked for a minor wipe, to purge that time from their memories. Which said it had been pretty bad, because the psychs had granted a wipe to some, and they hadn’t even considered it for his mother. Even if she later killed herself.
“ This is James Robert. Jump in five minutes. First warning. Trank down. Fletcher, welcome aboard, and have a sound sleep. ”
Me ? he asked himself. The high and mighty senior and universally-famous captain talked to him, in front of the whole damn crew?
“Trank down,” Jeremy said from above him. “Now. You all right?”
“Yeah. Yes.” He’d mapped out every move he needed to make. His hands were shaking as he pulled the visor off and stowed it the way he’d been warned to stow everything loose, shoved it in the tight elastic pocket at the edge of the bunk. “Where’s best to give it?” JR had said shoot it in the wrist, but Jeremy knew easy ways for everything.
“Anywhere below the neck. Arm’s fine. Push up your sleeve and just hit it.”
He pulled out the packet with nightmares of dropping it, fought with the tear strip, got his sleeve up and froze… just froze, hand shaking so he almost did drop it.
“You give it yet?”Jeremy called down to him.
He pushed the packet hard against his bare forearm. The spring kicked. He didn’t feel it as sharply as he thought he should. It didn’t sting. He held up the clear packet to his eye. The plastic was flat against the backing, fluid depleted. It had gone in. It looked as if it had. Maybe he should take the other one. In case. Maybe it had ejected on the bedclothes instead of in his arm…
“Fletcher? Did you do it? Are you all right?”
“Yes!” He was shivering. But things were growing distant. He felt the drug insinuating itself through his veins. It had gone in, he’d just been so scared he hadn’t felt the sting. He was getting slower…
Slower and lighter at the same time. Maybe the ship had cut the engines. It felt that way…
“Fletcher…” he heard someone say…
They were looking for him…
Rain swept the trees in sheets, and battered the mask, making the seal against his face slippery and uncertain as he traded cylinders—the first trade-out he’d had to make, and sooner than he’d expected. That early depletion of a life-and-death resource scared him; rather than squander another, he replaced just one, just the one with the end gone dark red, all the way expired.
His hands were trembling as he shoved the replacement in, and he couldn’t get the rain-wet facial seal to take and reseal the way it ought. So he pressed it hard against his face as he walked, mad, now, mad at all the world above and half the world of Downbelow and knowing he had to focus down and get his wits about him before he had an accident Downbelow just wouldn’t forgive.
It was getting dark, now: simple fact in the domes, or on the station, where twilight happened as a technological choice and a human hand could revise it.
Not out here. A dozen times he’d tell himself he had to just turn around, go back, follow River home. But he’d long passed any hope of using any excuse he could think of but one: he was lost.
And that was the truth. He’d gotten himself in such a mess now he didn’t know how to get out.
Couldn’t blame anyone—not for the lost part. That was stupid. And if he died of it, he couldn’t pass the blame for that. He had a locator. And he walked without losing it, because dammit, he wasn’t giving up. Not yet. Not until he was a lot closer to being out of cylinders than he was.
And maybe—maybe—it was a tiny idea, a forlorn and hopeless hope—maybe somebody would find him, and maybe he would hold out until the ship undocked, or until—remotest of all hopes—until they were so glad he was alive they’d understand how hard they’d pushed him, and maybe he could engineer something if he just got a chance to talk to the psychs.