He didn’t talk, not even when Jeremy tried to get him to say it was all right.
At least he was getting numb, and the fingers had stopped hurting.
Wayne got up and so did Ashley; the two of them took hold of him, pulling him to his feet. “We’d better get him warm,” Wayne said.
“He never said the names,” Sue protested.
“He’s freezing his ass off!” Wayne said. “Get the knife, get the damn cords off.”
The lift thumped into operation. It was coming down. Connor was saying it wasn’t good enough. He was trying just to stand, telling himself if they’d just listen to Wayne he might get out of this.
“Ease off,” someone said. “Someone’s coming.”
Rescue? He asked himself. An officer?
His knees were shaking so they almost tore the ligaments. He staggered off to the side, and hit a pole and leaned on it, that being all he could do to stand up.
“What in hell are you doing?” Male. Young as the rest. He was losing his ability to stay on his feet. He wanted to fall down, and all that saved him was the fact his chilled knees wouldn’t unlock. “God, he’s frozen ! He’s all over ice. Get him topside, into the warm!”
“We can’t take him topside!” Connor said. “Clean him up, first, get him some clothes or there’ll be hell.”
There was argument about it. He stopped following it, The consensus was take him to the cargo office where they could bring down heat; but he couldn’t walk on his own—they dragged him across to the wall, and opened a door, and flung a light on that blinded him after the scant light of the lantern. Wayne had him stand with his forehead against the wall, his eyes sheltered from the punishing light, and cut the cords on his upper body, and his hands—that was all right. Then somebody yanked his coveralls off his shoulders. They cracked with ice. Warmer cloth landed on his back, somebody’s coat tucked around him, a coat warm from someone’s wearing it.
They fussed about getting heat started, and a fan began blowing warm air in. They stripped the coveralls the rest of the way off and wrapped coats around him, made him sit in an ice-cold chair, at which he protested, and they contributed another coat. He was starting to shiver so his teeth rattled.
“He could lose his ears,” somebody said, the new one, the junior officer, after that there was a lot of protest back and forth around him, about who’d thrown the water and how he’d fallen and cut his arm and whether his fingers and ears were all right. Chad maintained that they were and they hadn’t had time to freeze, but Lyra, more to the point, held her warm hands close to his head and tried to warm them up, and it hurt.
Then Jeremy showed up, out of breath, with dry clothes and a blanket.
“I got them from the room,” Jeremy said, his kid’s voice shaking whether from the running or from fright. “I got the heavy ones.”
He took the clothes. He levered himself out of the chair and a tumble of coats in his soaked and mostly frozen under-wear, no longer giving a damn about females present. He dressed, beginning as he struggled with the clothes to feel pain in his hands again, and in the joints he’d sprained simply in shivering. The cord had left marks on his skin. His elbow was cut from his fall. The tape had ripped his face and left it sore. His hair trailed around his face, dripping again, after being stiff with ice.
“Are you all right?” Jeremy wanted to know. “Fletcher, God,—are you all right? It was a joke. That’s all, it was supposed to be a joke.”
Jeremy was upset. Jeremy was sorry. Jeremy alone of all of them had meant it for a joke. Stupid kid.
Wayne had seen things going to hell and used his head. The young officer had found out and come after them. The rest—
They were somewhere in the depths of the passenger ring rim. It was uncompromisingly dark and cold outside the little office. It was hard to think of braving that dark and going out there again to get to the lift they’d come down in; but he wanted to get out of here in one piece and back to A deck, if they’d just let him, if they weren’t going to try to cover up what they’d done or try to threaten him to silence.
He took an uncertain step toward the door. Two. He could have gone hypothermic if they’d left him much longer, and he’d given them all a show, because he’d really been scared. He was still scared, because he didn’t know what they’d do, and because if he didn’t get himself away from them, maybe they didn’t know yet, either.
“Fletcher,” the newcomer said. Bucklin. That was the name. JR’s shadow. Bucklin had caught his arm. “This went too far. Way too far.”
“Damn right it did.” He managed that much coherently, and shook off the hand, wanting the door.
“Just a minute,” Bucklin said.
Just a minute was too long, way too long to spend with them. But when Bucklin made him look back, he saw the one he wanted, zeroed in on Chad right behind Bucklin’s shoulder, and hit Chad square in the jaw. Chad teetered over a chair, fell back into the office wall and knocked another conference chair over.
Fletcher touched the door control with a throbbing knuckle, only wanting out of this place and away from their welcomes and their double-crossing.
“Chad!” Lyra yelled out, and he spun around as Chad barreled past Bucklin and startled cousins tried to stop him. He used the chance the grappling cousins gave him and punched Chad in the face.
Cousins grabbed him, too, and held on.
“Easy, easy, easy.” The one holding his right arm was Bucklin.
“I’ll kill him,” he said, and Chad charged back at him, dragging cousins with him. He got hold of Chad’s collar and the collar ripped; Chad hit him in the gut and he kept going, lit into Chad with a left and a head-shot right, out of breath, crazed, until two cousins had his arms in separate locks and Chad tried to use that to advantage. Fletcher kicked out, caught Lyra by accident as she was trying to back Chad up.
“Easy!” Bucklin said into his ear, dragging back at him. He was sorry to have hit Lyra, who’d warned him in the counter-attack. Chad never had laid a good hit on him, but Chad’s face was bloody. And Jeremy was in the way now.
“Easy,” Jeremy said. “Fletcher, Fletcher,—easy. It’s all right. We’re getting out of here, all right? We’re getting out of here… we’ll go home.”
“Name’s Bucklin,” Bucklin said, and put pressure on the arm. “Lieutenant over the juniors. This is officially over. It got way out of hand. Way beyond what anybody intended. I’m going to let you go, now, Fletcher. I want you to stand still a minute. I want you to hear apologies, and I want everybody involved in this to stand and deliver loud and clear. Do you hear me, Fletcher?” There was a pat on his shoulder, and he was trembling, partly with the strain on an arm he didn’t want broken and partly from unresolved nerves. “They’ll apologize. No more fighting. Have I got that, Fletcher?”
“I don’t want anything from them,” he said, out of breath. Bucklin’s hold on his arm let up anyway. “Let him go,” Bucklin said, and had to repeat it: “Let him go,” until the other guy—it was Wayne—let go from his side.
“Apologies,” Lyra said before he could bolt. She was limping. “Major sorry, here, Fletcher. Bucklin’s right. Way too much.”
It was hard to walk out on a girl he’d kicked in a fight by accident. He stood still, burning mad. Linda apologized, a sheepish mumble. Sue did. “I threw the water,” Sue said. “Bad judgment.”
Damn premeditated, he thought, regarding Sue. Liquid water? Out there in that cold? She’d brought it down here, with clear intent to use it.
The rest of them, the guys, he wasn’t even interested in hearing. He opened the door and walked off, blind in the dark except for the dim glow of the lift call button that guided him across the gratings. He hit ice. His foot skidded, costing his knee on the recovery.
“Fletcher!” Jeremy called after him, but he kept walking. Jeremy came clattering over the grids, overtook him and tried to hold his hand from the call button. He had such an adrenaline load on he hardly felt it, and could have brushed Jeremy off, oh, three or four meters into the dark without half trying.
“I’m sorry,” Jeremy said. “Fletcher, we’re all sorry.”
“That’s fine,” he said, and the lift door opened. He saw the choices, RIM, A, and B. He took A, and rode it up alone to an astonishingly normal corridor, where nothing had happened and two seniors walking by didn’t notice anything unusual about him.