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“Didn’t that come to you?” Porey was all amazement.
“No, it didn’t come to me. I had to hear it from Tanzer. I don’t like dealing with the UDC when I don’t know what’s going on. It makes me feel like a fool. And I don’t like that, Edmund, I truly don’t.”
Satire on Porey’s own style wasn’t what Porey was used to meeting. Porey had a thinking frown as he sat down, guarded amusement at the edges of his mouth: everything for effect, most especially the expressions on his face. Peel Porey layer by layer and you never got to center.
“Matters of policy,” Porey said, rotating a paperweight in his fingers, “are handled in this office. Tanzer has no power that you don’t give him. If you choose to coddle him, that’s your decision. Not mine.” The paperweight stopped moving. “The assignment of perso
Distraction and a shot across the bow. “By the Procedures, Perso
“Jurgen, my staff hasn’t time to handle delicate egos, Tanzer’s or yours.”
“Or three hundred fifty-six Shepherds who’ve been rooked out of their seniority, lied to by the UDC, shafted by the legislature and killed out there on the course because nobody’s ever damn listened to them. Edmund, we have tempers at critical overload here, and a blow-up isn’t going to look any better on your record than it looks on Tanzer’s. If you want a riot, these are the ones that will do it. They’re not kids, they’ve had too many fools in command over them here and in the Belt to trust anybody now on credit. They don’t reject authority: they’re looking for it, they want h—but don’t expect them to follow orders til they know the ultimate source is sane.”
Porey didn’t say anything for a moment. He wasn’t stupid and he cared about his own survival. That was one thing you could believe in.
Porey said softly, “You’re an honest man, Jurgen. How do you plan to get out of Earth system alive?”
“By keeping my CO from making mistakes.”
Long, cold stare. A slow smile. “You don’t have any resentment, do you, for my being installed here?”
“I’m not command track. I never pretended to be.” Still the stare. “You think I’m pretending?”
“I don’t think you’re pretending anything. I know you.” Feed the fantasy—and the anxiety. Porey didn’t like to be known, but he liked to be respected. The man did have an ego. A parsec wide. Porey smiled slowly, in a way that almost touched the eyes. “Good. A vote of confidence from you, I appreciate, Jurgen. I truly do.”
Odd chill of unease as the pod cruised up to the access. Thump of the pressure seals. Hydraulics as it opened and offered its dark, screen-lit interior. Ordinary sounds. Shadows moved on the white plastic of the control console as Dekker put the tape in and he felt an irrational urge to look behind him, as if his crew wouldn’t be there.
No damned reason to get nerves. But it had been Pete on the line beside him, all the times before. It wasn’t now. It wasn’t Elly, it wasn’t Falcone. It was Meg, on Pete’s tape, and Ben and Sal—they belonged here. He made himself believe that, stop remembering what had been...
For no reason, a piece of the puzzle snapped in, unbidden. Null-g. Shadows on the console. He felt the blow at the base of his skull. He knew where he had been—at the entry. Knew where they’d been. Shadows. Two of them...
Dammit. Not the time to be woolgathering. He looked back at Ben—Ben looked scared, but Ben looked On, tracking wide and fast on the pod, taking in everything, the same as Meg and Sal. All business—the way they were when the jokes stopped and they were thinking and absorbing. He gave them the lecture tour, the buttons on the console, the read-out window, the authorizations procedure— “Card and tape in the slot for a check-out. It reads your ID, takes your personal numbers and sets, and double-checks the tape for authorizations. Ready?”
“Are you serious?” Ben said. Then: “Yeah. Yeah. Go.”
He caught the handholds on either side of the entry, angled his feet for inside and eeled into his station. “Sal,” he called back, over the hum of a passing pod, caught her by the arm as she sailed into the dark, shadow against the lights, a glitter of braids tied into a cluster, for safety’s sake. He aimed her for the far side of the four-wide cockpit. “Ben.” Same as Ben came feet-first through the hatch, for the seat between him and Sal. Meg came last, for the seat between him and the hatch, settled in. Green-lit gold on plain stud earrings. Green dyed her side-shaved profile, green turned her red curls black. Ringed fingers found the belts and buckled in, eyes glowed wide and busy in the light of the screens, assessing the instruments.
He drew his own belt over—he waked reaching for them at night, with a recurring nightmare of drifting free. Suit braces powered up as he plugged in, and the helmet cut off side vision. It was deep-field V-HUD now. Switches on, power up. “Comfortable?”
“Yeah,” from Meg. “As possible,” from Ben.
Belts were tight. Second tug, to be sure. Orientation run. Starting over, primer stuff—only he wasn’t the neo this run. There was something surreal in the moment, in the familiar lights, in the ordinary sounds of the pod, the dark masquerading as routine. They were On. Anxious. Wanting to be right. But he kept expecting other voices.
“This thing got any differences?” Meg asked, last-minute.
He shoved the tape into the console, pushed LOAD. “One. See that yellow ABORT, upper left? Doesn’t exist on the real boards. It’ll stop the pod—if you don’t get a response from me, or if you detect anyone in trouble, you hit that. Takes you right back to the bay.”
“Cher,” came Meg’s low voice, “you just do. I got confidence in us.”
“More ‘n I got,” Ben muttered. “Hold it, hold it. I’m not set yet.”.
“Response check, thing doesn’t glitch, but be sure. Boards are all in test mode.”
Passengers was all they were required to be; but that wasn’t Meg’s style, wasn’t Ben’s or Sal’s either. He tried his own boards, set his arms in the supports, heard Meg’s voice saying, “I got it, right on.” Ben muttering, “Don’t screw it, Dek-boy. Yeah, I’m on, on, go.”
Sal’s, saying, “Hit it, Dek.”
Dark, flash of lights—
He kicked the thumb switch on his keys. Readout glowed green against the dark. Finger moves on opposite hands, the undock sequence switch.
Bang! of grapples. Mag-levs and human voices mixed—a 6 g shove butt-first for ten eternal seconds to a sustained straight-at-the-spine shove at +9 g.
Green lines wove fast and faster... the pod was alive and the tons of thrust were mag-lev sim, but it was all in his hands, responsive to a breath, a stray thought, a moment’s doubt—where he was, when he was, who he was with—
He didn’t want to do this.
Serious panic, a flash on instruments in chaos—
Then. Not now. Now was now. Not a time to lose track, God, no—
Focus down. Focus wide. Attention to the moving lines, that’s all—
“Politics,” Porey said, “pure politics. Let me explain it to you. Fifteen of the fifty carriers have to be UDC—-that’s the deal we cut, and that’s what we have to do. The accident gave us Hellburner, and that tape’s going to give us the program. The parliaments on Earth want responsible individuals in policy positions—read: no captains will violate policy laid down by the JLC. And this won’t change in the field.”
Graff stared at Porey. He thought he’d heard the depth of foolishness out of Earth.
Porey made a small, sarcastic shrug. “They have our assurances. And if the news services should call your office, Jurgen, and since you’re over Perso