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“2200.” Graff didn’t plan to sleep, maybe. “Right. Thanks. Yeah. I’ll be there.”
“My partners aren’t out of Test yet,” Dekker said. “They went in at 0600. It’s 2202 and Testing doesn’t answer questions....”
“They’re all right,” Graff said, quietly, from the other side of the desk. “I can tell you that much.”
“So what do you know?”
“That they’re being very thorough.”
“They’re not reacting to the drug or anything—”
“No. They’re all right. I did check.”
It wasn’t regulation. He wasn’t convinced. He wasn’t at all convinced.
GrafT said: “On the other matter—”
“I just want to call my mother. Make sure she’s all right.” He kept his frustration to himself. He didn’t want to push Graff. He was ru
Graff said, “I got your message. I understand. There’s a good possibility her phone calls are being monitored by the police. Possibly by someone less official.”
“Who?”
“All we know,” Graff said, “is the same thing you saw in the news. We’re investigating. I could wish this lawyer weren’t involved—personally. Is your mother a member, a contributor—of that organization?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. —Arc you asking me her politics?”
“You don’t have to answer that.”
“She hasn’t got any politics that I know of. She didn’t when I lived there. I don’t think she would change.”
“She was never politically active. Never expressed any opinions, for or against the government, or the Earth Company?”
Bit by bit the line of questioning made him uneasy. It wasn’t like Graff—at least as he knew Graff—to probe after private information. He didn’t think it was necessarily Graff’s idea—and that meant whoever was investigating. So he offered a bit of his own reasons: “I was rab when I was a kid, the clothes, the haircut—Kady says I was a stupid plastic, and I guess I was; but I thought I was real. I used the words. My mother—got hot about it, said politics was all the same, didn’t matter what party, all crooked, she didn’t want any part of it—told me I was a fool for getting involved. They’d shot these people down on Earth. I think—”
Meg was there, he almost said. But that was more than Graff needed to hear—if a deep spacer cared about the Company, the Earthers trying to emigrate...
“Think what?” Graff asked.
He couldn’t remember his thread for a moment. He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. She’s just not the kind. Works a full shift, mostly over, if you want extras you have to do that—and that was all she wanted. A nice place. Maybe a station share. Security. That kind of thing. You wouldn’t get her involved in anything.”
“You know the Civil Liberty Association?”
“No, sir. I never heard of them.”
“They’re the ones funding your mother’s lawyer. They’re headquartered in Munich. They support lawsuits in certain causes, that’s mostly what they do. Their board of advisers has some of the same associations as the Sun Party, the Peace Front, the Karl Leiden Foundation—the Party of Man—”
He shook his head. “I don’t know anything about them. I doubt she does.”
“They’re Earth-based Internationals: of several related groups, only the Civil Liberty Association and the Human Research Foundation maintain offices off Earth. They apparently do each other’s business. So I understand. I’m no expert in terrestrial affairs. But I thought you should know, this organization does have political overtones that aren’t friendly to the program or to the Fleet.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I only thought you should be aware of the situation.”
Deeper and deeper. He thought of saying, I’m in no position to restrain her from anything. I can’t do your politics for you. But it was all on their side and nothing on hers. And probably the lieutenant didn’t want a blunt question, but it wouldn’t be his first offense this week. “So hasn’t the Fleet got strings it might pull?”
“Possibly.”
“So what do you want me to say to her?”
“Nothing. Nothing on that score. I just want you to be aware of these things.”
Why? In case of what, for God’s sake?
“Do you still want to call her?” Graff shifted a glance toward the phone on his desk.
He had never believed of himself that he was smart, no matter what Evaluations told him—if he was smart, he wouldn’t be here now, put on the spot to make an excruciatingly personal phone call in front of a man he’d thought he trusted, whose motives he didn’t now entirely understand.
And, God, he didn’t want to talk to her... he was fast losing his nerve.
“Do you want to do that?”
“Yes, sir,” he said, before all of it evaporated. “If you can get me through.”
Graff took up the handset and punched in. “FleetCom. Route this through our system, FSO, Sol One. —Number there?”
“97...2849. Dekker, Ingrid. Routing can find her.” 2210 mainday and she ought to be home. She didn’t have a nightlife—at least she hadn’t had, when he’d been living at home.
“Takes a bit,” Graff said, and gave him the handset. “It’s going through, now.”
He held it to his ear. Listened to the clicks and the tones. His heart was beating fast. What in hell was he going to say? Hello, mother?
Click. Click-click. Beep.
“There’s a noise on the line.”
“A beep?”
He nodded.
“Somebody’s got it monitored. FleetCom’s picking that up.”
Hell. It was going through. He listened for the pick-up. But the answering service came on instead. Ms. Dekker is out at the moment. Kindly leave your name and number....
You’d know. “Mother. Mother, this is Paul. I’m sorry to hear about the trouble you’re having....” It was hard to talk coherently to a machine, hard to think with that steady beep that meant the police or somebody else was listening. “I don’t know if I can help, but if you just want to talk, I’m here. I’d like to talk to you. I’d like to help—” He wondered if he should mention money. But while he was thinking, it clicked off and co
“She wasn’t home,” he said, and gave the handset back. “I left a message on the machine.”
“Anything that comes through—you will get. I promise you.”
“Thank you.” They’d taught him to say thank you. Please. Yes, sir. No, sir. Stand straight. Answer what you’re asked. They’d told him he wouldn’t fly if he didn’t. His mother hadn’t had that advantage in dealing with him. He didn’t remember he’d ever said Yes, ma’am or Please or whatever boys were supposed to answer to their mothers. Fuck you, he’d said once, in a fit of temper, the week she’d bailed him out of juvenile court, and she’d slapped his face.
He’d not hit her. Thank God, he’d held it back, he hadn’t hit her. Only respect he’d ever shown her, that last year... and if they shipped him out from here—the only respect he might ever have a chance to show, except that phone call.
“Forgive me,” the lieutenant said. “I have to ask this—in your judgment, is it possible—is it remotely possible she did make threats against MarsCorp?”
Ingrid Dekker wasn’t a walkover. She wasn’t going to stand and take it—not without handing it back. “If they threatened her. But she wouldn’t—wouldn’t just take it into her head to do that, no, I don’t believe that.” I have to ask this...
At whose orders... sir....
“Are you close to your mother—still?”
God. He didn’t want to discuss it. But the lieutenant had been on his side, Graff if anybody was still his lifeline. He didn’t want to put his mother in a bad light. She was the one in trouble and she needed all the credit she could get. He said, looking at a spot on the front of Graff’s desk: “I was a pain in the ass, sir. She said if I went to the Belt I didn’t need to come back. I—was sincerely a pain in the ass, sir. I was eighteen. I was in with a rough crowd. —I was stupid.”
Graff didn’t say anything to that, except: “Have you corresponded with her?”