“What do you know about me or her? What the hell do you know?”
“The hour of your birth and the prejudice of several judges. The fear and the anger that sent you running out where you knew you could die… we never wanted you to be that afraid, Fletcher, or that angry.”
“You don’t want me! You wanted your fourteen million! And I was happy until you screwed up my life! Besides, I wasn’t trying to kill myself.”
“But if you hadn’t run out there, Satin would have come to the end of her life without talking to Fletcher Neihart.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“Nothing, if you don’t do anything. A great deal if you commit yourself to find out what peace is, if you learn it, if you find it and take it to your generation. Satin’s still looking at the heavens, isn’t she? Still waiting to see the shape of it, the color of it, to see what it can do for her people, Fletcher. Right now only a few of us remember what peace looked like, tasted like, felt like.”
He caught a breath. A second one. He’d never been up against anybody who talked like James Robert. Everything you said came back at you through a different lens.
James Robert did remember before the War. Nobody he knew of did.
“Work for this ship,” he said in James Robert’s long silence. “Is that what you mean? Do the laundry, wash the pans…”
“All that we do,” James Robert said, “keeps this ship running. I take a turn at the galley now and again. I consider it a great pleasure.”
“Yes, sir.” He knew he’d just sounded like a prig.
“What good were you at laundry anyway? You think the first strike happened at Olympus.”
“Thule, sir.”
“Good. Details matter. If it wasn’t Thule everything would have been changed. The borders, the ones in charge, the future of the universe would have been changed, Fletcher. Details are important. I wonder you missed that, if you’re a scientist.”
“Biochemist.”
“Biochem? Biochem isn’t related to the universe?”
“It is, sir. Thule.”
“Precisely. I detest a man that won’t know anything he doesn’t imminently have to. Just plod through the facts as you think you know them. ‘Approximate is good enough’ makes lousy science. Lousy navigation. And keeps people following bad politicians. Are you a rules-follower, Fletcher?”
The Old Man was joking with him. He took a chance, wanting to be right, aware JR was measuring him and fearing the Old Man could demolish him. “I think you have my record, sir.”
A small laugh. A straight look. “A very mixed record.”
“I’m for rules, sir, till I understand them.”
“I knew your predecessor,” the Old Man said. “There’s a similarity. A decided similarity.”
He hoped that was a compliment.
“So JR tells me he’s assigned you to keep young Jeremy in line.”
“Jeremy’s been keeping me in line, mostly.”
A ghost of a smile. And sober attention again. “Biochem, eh?”
He saw the invitation. He didn’t know whether he wanted it. James Robert had a knack for getting through defenses, with the kind of persuasion he wanted to think about a long time, because he’d gotten his attention, and told him the truth in a handful of words, the way Melody had, once: you sad .
James Robert told him plainly what he’d always seen about the program: that if you didn’t believe what they said, follow their rules, you were out. And he’d hedged it all the way, being new, following his dream, living his imaginings… not looking at…
Not looking at what James Robert told him, that the Base wanted someone like Nunn, someone who’d follow rules, not push them—because what ran the human establishment on Downbelow wasn’t on Downbelow. It was on Pell.
“You get a few ports further,” the Old Man said. “We’ll talk again. You have a good time in this one, that’s my recommendation.”
The Old Man hadn’t ever mentioned the fight. The hazing. Any of it. Or changed JR’s assignment of him.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll try to. Thank you.”
The Old Man nodded. JR opened the door, let him out.
And came outside with him.
“Fletcher,” JR said.
He turned a scowling look on JR, daring him to comment on personal matters.
“I didn’t set you up to fail,” JR said. “Any help you want, I will give you.”
“Thank you,” he said. He couldn’t beg JR to forget what he’d heard. He had to leave it on JR’s discretion, whatever it might be, without trusting it in the least. He left, back to the laundry, thinking… they’d talked about peace , and he’d believed everything the Old Man said while he was saying it. It gave him the willies even yet, when he considered that this ship hadn’t been trading for a living for seventeen years.
The Old Man said they were looking for peace, and that none of them knew what it looked like.
He thought of Jeremy, talking of going to Mallory, carrying on the fight. Of Jeremy, shivering in the bunk approaching jump, because the kid was scared .
The youngest of them had seen the least of what the Old Man said they were looking for. They called it peace , when the Treaty of Pell had stopped Union from going after the former Earth Company stations, when the stations agreed to host the Merchanters’ Alliance and Earth disavowed the Fleet… but the Fleet hadn’t surrendered. And there wasn’t any peace.
And the oldest downer had gone back to her world to watch the heavens and believe for her people.
Believing that there was something more, though she’d seen what war looked like. Believing there’d be something else—when for thousands upon thousands of years the Watcher-statues had watched the heavens, waiting…
For what? Visitors?
What peace ? he should have asked the Old Man when he had the chance. What does this ship have to do with it, when all it’s done is fight? What are we doing, when you say we’re looking for peace? None of the juniors know what it is, for very damn sure .
When did I say yes? When did I even start listening ?
Anger tried to find another foothold. Resentment for being conned.
But this was a ship that had meant important things in the recent past.
What if? he began to ask himself. He, who’d met Satin, and looked into her eyes.
“Got chewed out, hey?” Vince asked when he got back to the laundry, and he just smiled.
“No,” he said in perfect good humor. “I just got put in charge of you three.”
Vince’s mouth stayed open. And shut.
“You’re kidding,” Linda said.
“No,” he said. Jeremy grinned from ear to ear.
Chapter 15
Liberty was coming. The mood all over the ship was excitement, anticipation. The junior-juniors’ attention for anything was scattered: liberty and stationside and games were coming after days of duty and sticking by their posts.
It was, Fletcher thought as the ship prepared for docking, air to breathe—wider spaces, not corridors, not the unsettling pervasive thrum that he’d grown used to and that he now knew was the ring in its constant motion. Where they’d exit in less than an hour wasn’t going to be Pell, but it was a place that would look like Pell, feel like Pell, be like Pell. He could do things ordinary people did on stations, walk curves less steep than Finity ’s deck—go to a shop, look at tapes. Maybe buy one. He was due a little money, a little cash, they’d said, for incidentals. If he skipped a meal or two, he could buy a tape.