“We’re all at the Pioneer,” Fletcher said. “It’s number 28 Blue, that way down the dock.” He pointed, in the smug surety of location that came with knowing they were docked at berth number 6 and the numbers matched.
“They got a game parlor at number 20,” Vince said, already pushing. “It’s on the specs. I read it. There’s this high-gee sim ride. It’s just eight numbers down. We can go there on our own…”
“The aquarium,” Jeremy reminded him.
“Who wants stupid fish?” Linda asked “I don’t want to look at something I’ve got to eat!”
“Shut up! I do!”
“Game parlor this evening,” Fletcher said “First thing after breakfast, the Mariner Aquarium, all three of you, like it or not. Vids in the afternoon, and the sim ride, if I’m in a good mood.”
“You’re not supposed to go with us,” Vince said. “Go off to a bar or something. You can get drinks. We won’t say a word. Wayne did.”
“Find JR and complain,” Fletcher said. He heard no takers as he shepherded his flock past the customs kiosk, a wave-through, as most big-ship arrivals were.
JR was even in the vicinity, with Bucklin and Chad and Lyra, as they cleared customs, and he didn’t notice Vincent or Linda lodging any protest.
You know stations , JR had said in his brief attached note, explaining the general details of his duties and telling him the name and address of the sleepover they’d be staying in. It gave him something to be, and do, and a schedule, otherwise he foresaw he was going to have a lot of time on his hands.
He’d also been sure at very first thought that he didn’t want to consider ducking out or appealing to authorities or doing anything that would get him left on Mariner entangled in its legal systems. That was when he’d known he’d settled some other situation in his mind as a worse choice than being on Finity , and that a grimly rules-conscious station one jump from where he wanted to be was not his choice.
So, amused, yes, he’d do JR’s baby-sitting for him, grudgingly grateful that he was shepherding Jeremy and not the other way around. And JR’s statement you know stations went further than JR might expect. He knew Pell Station docks upside and down. He knew a hundred ways for juveniles to get into trouble even Jeremy probably hadn’t even thought of, like how to get into service passages and into theaters you weren’t supposed to get to, how to bilk a change machine and how to get tapes past the checkout machines without paying. He hadn’t been a spacer kid occasionally filching candy and soft drinks he wasn’t supposed to have, oh, no. He’d been on a first name basis with the police, in his worst brat-days; and when JR had said, Watch Jeremy , his imagination had instantly and nervously extended much further than JR might have expected, and to a level of responsibility JR might not have entirely conceived. Jeremy’s liberty wasn’t going to be nearly that exciting, because he wasn’t going to let his charges do any of those things. They gave him responsibility? He was going to come back to the ship in an aura of confidence and competence that would settle all question about whether Fletcher Neihart could be taken for a fool by three spacer kids. The converse was not to be contemplated.
Confined to Blue and Green ? That eliminated a whole array of things to get into. It was the high-rent area, the main banks, the big dockside stores, government offices, trade offices, restaurants and elite sleepovers.
It was where stationers who did venture into the docks did their venturing. It also was where the well-placed juvvie predators looked for high-credit targets, if this long-out-of-trade ship’s crew was in any wise naïve on that score. Finity juniors as well as the high officers had their pre-arranged sleepover accommodations in Blue , where, no, they wouldn’t get robbed in a high-priced sleepover, but short-changed, bill padded? They might as well have had signs on their heads saying, Rich Spacers, Cash Here. It was a tossup in his estimation whether Finity ’s reputation would scare off more of the rough kind of trouble than it attracted of the soft-fingered kind.
The junior-juniors weren’t going to handle their own money, not even the 20 c cash chits: he’d dole it out at need, and he was very confident the local finger artists couldn’t score on him. He almost hoped they did try, on certain others of the crew, notably Chad and Sue; he was confident at least the con artists would flock. Pick-pockets. Short-changers, even at the legitimate credit exchangers. Credit clerks would deal straight for stationers they knew were going to be there tomorrow, and who’d surely be back to complain if they got the wrong change. Spacers in civvies they might be just a little inclined to deal straight with… in case they were stationers after all. Spacers in dock flash and wearing their patches were a clear target for the exchange clerks; and God help spacers at any counter who might be just a little drunk, and whose board calls were imminent. Crooks of all sorts knew just as well as station administration did which ships were imminently outbound. When a ship was scheduled outbound, the predators clustered to work last moment mayhem.
He checked in at the desk, in this posh spacer accommodation that didn’t at all look like the den of iniquity stationer youngsters dreamed of. Blue and dusky purple, soft colors, neon in evidence but subdued. There was a sailing ship motif and an antique satellite sculpture levelled above a bronze ship on a bronze sea, the Pioneer’s logo, which was also on the counter. A sign said, We will gladly sell you logo items at cost at the desk .
“Can we go to the vid-games before supper?” Jeremy asked.
“Maybe.” He distributed keys. They had, for the duration, private rooms, an unexpected bonus.
He also had a pocket-com. So did the juniors. There were three stories in this hostel, all within what a station called level 9. The junior-juniors and he all had third floor rooms, and this time they had locks.
He shepherded the noisy threesome upstairs via the lift, sent them to the rooms, with their keys, to unpack and settle in and knock at his door when they were done.
It was the fanciest place he’d ever visited. He opened the door on his own quarters, and if the ship was crowded, the sleepover was a palace, a huge living space, a bedroom separate from that, a desk, vid built-ins, a bath a man could drown in.
He knew that Mariner was new since the War, but this was beyond his dreams. Two weeks in this place. Endless vid-games, trips to see the sights.
He suffered a moment of panic, thinking about the money Madelaine had given him, and everything really necessary already being paid for—
And then thinking about the ship, and home, and the hard, cold chairs in the police station, and the tight, small apartment his mother had died in, in tangled sheets, down the short hall from a scummy little kitchen where they’d had breakfast the last morning and where he’d been looking for sandwiches… but she hadn’t made any…
He sat down on the arm of an overstuffed chair and looked around him in a kind of stunned paralysis, his duffle with the sock for an ID dumped on immaculate, expensive carpet at his feet. This kind of luxury was what she’d been used to.
He saw the barracks beds of the men’s dorm, down at the Base. He heard the wind outside, saw the trees swaying and sighing in the storm the night before he’d left…
Came a different thunder. The kids knocked at the door, all three wanting to go play games.
“God bless,” Jeremy said, casting his own look around.
“Are they all like this?” he asked. “Are your rooms this big? This fancy?”
“About half this,” Jeremy said “Kind of spooky, isn’t it? Like you really want to belt in at night.”
He had to be amused. “Stations don’t brake.”