And JR.
“You set this up,” he said to JR, and was ready to turn and walk out.
“I don’t make the captain’s appointments,” JR said. “Report the situation? I was obliged to.”
“Thank you ,” Fletcher said. So he wasn’t to meet with the captain alone. He had JR for a witness, to confuse anything he wanted to say. It wasn’t going to be an interview. It would be a reading of the rules.
He was here. He held onto his temper with both hands as JR opened the door and let him in.
The Old Man everybody referred to wasn’t that old to look at him, that was the first impression he had as the Old Man looked up at him. He was prepared to deal with some dodderer, but the eyes that met him were dark and quick in a papery-skinned and lean face. The hand that reached out as the Old Man rose was young in shape, but the skin had that parchment quality he’d seen on the very long-rejuved. It felt like old fabric, smooth like that; and he realized he hadn’t consciously decided to take the Old Man’s hand. He just had, suddenly so wrapped in that question that he hadn’t consciously noted whether JR had stayed or what the office was like, until the Old Man settled back behind his desk and left him standing in front of it. JR had stayed, and stood behind him, slightly to the side.
It wasn’t a big office. There was a thing he recognized as a sailing ship’s wheel on the wall between two cases of old and expensive books. There was a side table, and a chart on the wall above it, a map of stations and points that had lines on it in greater number than he’d ever seen.
Mostly there was the Old Man, who settled back in his chair and looked at him, just quietly observed him for a moment, not tempting him to blurt out anything in the way of charges or excuses prematurely.
Like a judge. Like a judge who’d been on the bench a long, long time.
“Fletcher,” James Robert said, in a low, quiet voice, and made him wonder what the Old Man saw when he looked at him, whether he saw his mother, or was about to say so. “A new world, isn’t it?”
He wasn’t prepared for philosophy. Could have expected it, but it wasn’t the angle his brain was set to handle. He stood there, thoughts gone blank, and the Old Man went on.
“We’re glad to have you aboard. You’ve had a chance to see the ship. What do you think?”
What did he think? What did he think ?
He drew in a breath, time enough for caution to reassert itself, and for a beleaguered brain to tell him not to go too far. And to stop at one statement.
“I think I don’t belong here, sir.”
“In what respect?” Quietly. Seriously.
List the reasons? God. “In respect of the fact I prepared myself to work on a planet. In respect of the fact I’m totally useless to you. In respect of the fact I’m no good anywhere except what I trained all my life to do.”
“ What did you train to do?”
“To work with the downers, sir.” The man knew. And was trying to draw him out. While he had JR at his shoulder for an inhibition.
“It’s what I want to do.”
“What’s the nature of that work?”
He wasn’t prepared to give a detailed catalog of his jobs, either. “Agriculture. Archaeological research. Native studies. Planetary dynamics.”
“All those things.”
“I hadn’t specialized yet.”
“What would you have chosen?”
“Native Studies.”
“Why that?”
“Because I want to understand the downers.”
“Why would you want that?”
“Because I want to help them.”
“How would you do that?”
Question begat question, backing him slowly toward a corner of the subject with truth in it, a truth he didn’t want to tell.
“By being a fair administrator.”
“Oh, an administrator. A fair one. Just what they need.”
The tone had been so quiet the barb was in before he felt it.
“Yes, sir, it beats a bad one. And they’ve had that , too.”
“I’m very aware. So you were going into Native Studies. Getting a jump on the administrator part, it seems. You’d formed acquaintances among the downers.”
Bianca. It was the same thing Madelaine had hit him with. But now it had lost its shock value.
“Yes, sir. I did. I knew them before I went down. And there’s nothing in the rules that covered that.”
“I take it you checked.”
“They’re friends of mine! There’s nothing I did that would harm them.”
“Including going into the outback. Including endangering others. Including meeting with downer authorities.”
He’d told that to the investigators. He remembered lying in the bed, and them recording everything he said. He’d had to explain the stick. That he hadn’t stolen it. So it hadn’t been all Bianca.
“Why,” the captain asked him, “would you break the regulations?”
“Because you pushed me.”
“We weren’t there. I don’t think so. You made a decision. You went where you were forbidden to go, you stole lifesupport cylinders—”
“One from each. If anybody got out there compromised it was their own stupidity. You can feel it in the masks. They’d be too light.”
Was that a slight smile on the captain’s face? He didn’t take it for one. And JR was hearing entirely too much.
“You also,” the captain said, “went out there to outwait us. Endangering your downers, about whom you care so much.”
“Outwait you, yes. But not to endanger the downers.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because it wouldn’t.”
“You were sure of that.”
“I know them. I was looking for the two I knew.”
There was a long silence then. James Robert leaned forward, elbows on the desk, fingers steepled in front of his lips. “Then,” James Robert said, “you thought it wouldn’t hurt them. You took conscious thought.”
“Yes, sir. If I’d thought I’d do them any damage I’d have turned around and given up. Right then.”
“Are you sure you didn’t?”
“I am absolutely sure I didn’t.” He was scared, however, that the captain knew more than he was saying… about what he’d boarded with. He waited to be accused.
“You invaded a downer shrine, on your own decision.”
“It’s not a shrine.” Had he said that part of it? God! He didn’t know now what he had said to the investigators, or how much more they’d inferred. “It’s a ritual site. There’s a difference.”
“That’s what they say.”
“Yes, sir.” They knew what he’d brought aboard. They were going to take it away from him.
“And why did you go there?”
“A downer led me.”
“Your friends did.”
“No. A different one.”
“And you still say you didn’t do damage.”
“I know I didn’t. They accepted me there. They brought me there.” There was more that he hadn’t said, but he wasn’t willing now for the Old Man to direct the conversation where he wanted it, chasing him into every corner of what he knew. “I talked to Satin .”
“So have I,” James Robert said.
For a moment he didn’t believe it. And then did. This was James Robert who’d been on Pell when the foremost of downers had been on the station.
“I’ve met Satin,” James Robert said. “An extraordinary creature. She went all the way to Mariner, and came back talking about war.”
He was impressed. In spite of everything.
“Do you know,” James Robert said, “they had no word for war until we told them?”
“She wasn’t on this ship.”