“This…” JR said, and seemed to lose the word.
“This is a joke, right?”
“Not a funny one. Clearly.”
He hadn’t been able to predict what he himself would do. Or say. Or want. He was angry. He wasn’t, he decided now, angry at JR. And that was not at all what he’d have predicted.
“I’d discouraged this,” JR said. “It’s supposed to be a joke, yes. Your first liberty. But it shouldn’t have happened. Was anything damaged?”
“Something was stolen.”
JR had been looking at the damage. His eyes tracked instantly back again, clearly not comfortable with that charged word. He’d deny it, Fletcher thought. He’d quibble. Protect his own. Of course.
“ What was?” JR asked
He measured with his hands. “A hisa artifact. A spirit stick. Wood. Carved, tied up with cords and feathers.”
“I’ve seen them. In museums. They’re sacred objects.”
“I had title to it.”
“I take your word on it. You had it in your cabin. Where?”
“In the drawer.” He indicated the drawer in question with a backward kick of his foot “At the back of the drawer. Under clothes. I’ve been over every inch of the room. Including under the bunk frames as they’d tilt underway. It’s not here. I don’t give a damn about them tearing up the room. I don’t like it, but that’s not the issue. The stick is. The stick is mine , it was a gift, and it’s not something you play games with.”
“I’m well aware.” JR looked around him and frowned, thinking, Fletcher surmised, where it might be, or very well knowing the chief suspects on his own list
“I don’t even know it’s on this ship,” Fletcher said “I don’t know why they thought it was funny to take it. I don’t even want to imagine. I can point out that the market value is considerable, for someone who might be interested in that sort of thing. And that we’ve been in port.”
He’d hit home with that one. JR frowned darker still.
“No one on this ship would do that ,” JR said.
“You tell me what they would and won’t do. Let me tell you. Somebody sitting at your table, in the bar the other evening, looked me straight in the eye knowing damned well what he’d done. Or she’d done. They kept a real straight face about it. Probably they had a good laugh later. I’m serving notice. I can’t work with people like that. I want off this ship. I gave you my best shot and my honest effort. And this is what I get back from my cousins . Thanks. If you want to do me a personal favor, sell me back to Pell and let me get back to my life. If you want to do me a bigger favor, get me passage back from Voyager. But don’t ask me to turn a hand to help anybody on this ship. I want my own cabin, the same as everyone else. I don’t want to be with Jeremy. I don’t want to be with anybody. I want my privacy, I want my stuff left alone, I don’t want any more of your jokes, and I don’t want any more crap about belonging here. I don’t . I think that point’s been made.”
JR didn’t come back with an argument. JR just stood there a moment as if he didn’t know what to say. Then:
“Have you discussed this with Jeremy?”
“ No , I haven’t discussed it with Jeremy. I have nothing against Jeremy. I just want the lot of you off my back!”
“I can understand your feelings. If you want separate quarters, I can understand that, too. But Jeremy’s going to be affected. He’s taken to you in a very strong way. I’d ask you give that fact whatever thought you think you ought to give. I’ll talk to the captains; I’ll explain as much as I can find out. I’ll find the stick, among other things. And if you want someone to clean this mess up, I’ll assign crew to do that. If you’d rather I not…”
“No.” Short and sharp. “I’ve had quite enough people into my stuff. Thanks.” He was mad as hell, charged with the urge to bash someone across the room, but he couldn’t fault JR on any point of the encounter. And he didn’t hate Jeremy, who’d left with no notion of his walking out. “I’ll think about the room change. But not about quitting. It’s not going to work. You’ve screwed up where I was. I don’t ask you to fix it. You can’t. But you can put me back at Pell.”
“There’s no way to get you passage back right now. It wouldn’t be safe. You have to make the circuit with us.”
He wasn’t surprised. He gave a disgusted wave of his hand and turned to look at the wall, a better view than JR’s possibilities.
“I’m not exaggerating,” JR said. “We have enemies. One of them is out in front of this ship likely armed with missiles.”
“Fine. They’re your problem.”
“Fletcher.”
Now came the lecture. He didn’t look around.
“Give me the chance,” JR said, “to try to patch this up. Someone was a fool.”
“Sorry doesn’t patch it.” He did turn, and stared JR in the face. “You know how it reads to me? That my having a thing like that on this ship was a big joke to somebody on this ship. That the hisa are. That everything the hisa hold sacred and serious is. So you go fight your war and make your big money and all those things that matter to you and leave me to mine!
You know that hisa don’t steal things? That they have a hard time with lying? That war doesn’t make sense to them? And that they know the difference between a joke and persecution? I’m sure they’d bore you to hell.”
“Possibly you’re justified,” JR said. “Possibly not. I have to hear the other side of this. Which I can’t do until I find out what happened. Let me be honest, at least, with our situation—which is that we’ve got a hostile ship running ahead of us, and there may be duty calls that I have to answer with no time for other concerns. On time I do have control of, I’m going to find the stick, I’m going to get answers on why this happened, and I’m going to get your answers. I put those answers on a priority just behind that ship out there, which is going to be with us at least all the way to Voyager. I don’t consider the hisa a joke and I don’t consider anything that’s happened a joke. This ship can’t afford bad judgment. You’ve just presented me something I don’t like to think exists in people I’ve known all my life, and quite honestly I’m upset as hell about it. That’s all I can say to you. I will follow up on it.”
“Yessir,” he found himself saying, not even thinking about it, as JR turned to leave. And then thinking… so far as he had clear thoughts… that JR was being completely fair in the matter, contrary to expectations, that he had just said things that attacked JR’s personal integrity, and that he had the split second till JR closed the door to say something to acknowledge that from his side.
But with a flash on that meeting in the bar, he didn’t trust JR, in the same way he didn’t trust anyone on the ship.
And the second after that door had closed… he knew that that wasn’t an accurate judgment even of his own feelings, let alone of the situation, and that he should have said something. It was increasingly too late. The thought of opening that door and chasing JR down in the corridors with other crew to witness didn’t appeal to him.
Not until he’d have to go a quarter of the way around the ship to do it; and by then it was hard to imagine catching JR, or being able to retrieve the moment and the chance he’d had.
It didn’t matter. If JR hated his guts and supported his move to get off the ship, it was all he wanted. Make a single post-pubescent friend on this ship, and he’d have complicated his life beyond any ability to cut ties and escape. That was the mathematics he’d learned in court decisions and lawyers’ offices, time after time after godforsaken time.
There was a sour taste in his mouth. He saw that meeting in the bar as a moment when things had almost worked and he’d almost found a place for himself he’d have never remotely have imagined he’d want… as much as he’d come to want it.