Sleepover rules and do’s and don’ts were in the next screen. Third screen provided a crewman other specific procedures in case of disaster, how to avoid getting left here by his ship.
His ship. God. His ship . His independence was gone. He’d begun to rely on his ship . He looked no different than the rest of them. His uniform made no distinction of rank: he wore silver coveralls, with the black patch that had no ship-name beneath it. They were instructed, all of them, the manual said, to write simply spacer if asked for rank on any blank the station handed them, as even the captains did, despite stations wanting to know more than that about the internal business of merchanters, and wanting, historically, to regulate them. Some ships complied. But spacer and Neihart was enough for the universe to know.
Arrogant. Stationers called Finity that.
At least, for his peace of mind, Finity personnel had booked a block of rooms close together in the same sleepover. JR had told him personally no drinking on station, and with the kids in tow and with Vince to keep an eye on, it seemed a good idea. JR hadn’t told him don’t go sleep with any chance stranger who walked up on him… but he had very soberly figured it out for himself that that practice of free sex which so scandalized station-dwellers was not a good idea for him, not in a situation the rules of which he was desperately studying, and not with three kids he was responsible for getting back in one piece, and not with strangers whose motives he could guess far less than he could guess those of his shipmates.
The airlock cycled them through, letting them out into the cold yellow passage to the station airlock, and through to the elevated ramp.
All the docks spread out in front of him from that vantage, the neon lights of unfamiliar shops and establishments displaying an unfamiliar signage above the heads of his fellow Finity spacers as they walked, down, down, down to the cordoned area with the small customs kiosk.
He’d seen this procedure all his life… looking up, from the other end of the proposition, standing, say, by one of the big structural pillars, watching the arrival of a ship. This time he was one of the distant visitors, the customers, the marks to some, the fearsome strangers to others.
The scene inside the airlock wouldn’t be mysterious to him, now. Ever. He knew the routines, he knew the names of the people around him—and this station didn’t know his name or have him in its records. No one on this station knew who he was except as Finity crew, no one would answer familiar phone numbers. His station looked exactly the same—but at home there was a neon Kittridge’s Bar sign opposite Berth Blue 6. Here it was the sign for Mariner Bank.
The shift and counter-shift of perspectives as his feet touched the dock itself had him halfway numb. But he resolved not to gawk at the signs, not even to think about them, for the sake of the butterflies holding riot in his stomach. He waited his turn and reported his own small team through customs and registry as Finity juveniles on liberty, four, counting himself.
Hands only moderately trembling—he’d feared worse—he slipped the passports through the scanner, a modest number compared to what section chiefs in Engineering had to present. Jake from Bio had a stack of passports, as a customs officer read off James Thomas Neihart, James Robert Hampton-Neihart, Jamie Marie Neihart, Jamie Lynn Neihart , and proceeded to June and Juliana in a patient, mind-numbed drone. His agent handed him slips with each passport, slips that said—he looked when he had walked clear of the line, still within Finity ’s customs barriers— The importation or export of radioactive materials, biostuffs and biostuff derivatives including genetic mimes is strictly controlled.
He’d been among the last crew chiefs. JR came behind him and, as he supposed, took the senior-juniors’ passports through the kiosk; by the time the airlock spilled out JR’s bunch, his own three crew members were already lugging their duffles down the ramp. The press of Engineering midlevel crew had largely cleared out; there was still a crowd at the crew baggage chute.
Bucklin walked past him, paused and slipped two messages into his hand. Fletcher looked at them, mildly surprised, thinking one at least, maybe both, were from JR. But one had Finity ’s black disc for a source, that was all. He read the first slip as Bucklin walked away.
From the senior captain. Jr. Crew Chief Fletcher R. Neihart , it said. The senior officers extend good wishes and willing assistance in the assumption of your new duties. Should you have any need of assistance do not hesitate to call senior staff .— James Robert Neihart ,
He read it twice, first assuming it was routine, and then suspecting it might not be and looking for meanings between the lines. It’s your call was what he saw on that second reading. Call too early and you’re incompetent; call too late and you’re in my office .
Maybe he was too anxious. Maybe it was just a routine letter and a computer had done it, the same way a computer called their names for duty assignments.
The other message was a sealed letter. He pulled the edges open. A credit slip was inside.
Two credit slips. A pair of 40 c slips made out to him. Wrapped in a note. No young person should go on first liberty without something in his pocket. Don’t spend it unless you find something totally foolish. This is personal money. Allow me to act like a grandmother for the first time in years .— Love. Madelaine .
He didn’t want charity. He didn’t want Madeline’s money, personal or otherwise, even if 80 c had to be a trifle to her personal wealth.
Grandmother.
And Love? Love, Madelaine ? Her daughter was dead. Her granddaughter was dead. Allow me to act like a grandmother …
A lot of death. How did he say No thank you?
How did he avoid getting in her debt? How dared she say, I love you , his great-grandmother, who didn’t know damn-all about him.
And who knew more than anybody else aboard.
He pocketed the money with the messages, told himself forget it, enjoy it, spend it, it wasn’t an irrevocable choice and money didn’t buy him, as he was sure Madelaine didn’t think it did—Say anything else about her, the woman wasn’t that shallow and it was just a gesture.
“Fletcher!” he heard, Jeremy’s voice, and in a moment more Vince and Linda rallied round. “We got to get our bags!” Jeremy said.
They walked over where baggage was coming out the conveyor beside cargo’s main ramp. The cargo hands, family, were tossing duffles to cousins who were there to claim them, and Jeremy snagged all four in short order, for them to take up.
“Where do we go?” Linda wanted to know. “Where, where, where have they got us? What’s the number?”