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“Good job,” he said. “Good job, all of you.”
“Thank you, sir,” Dekker breathed, and looked past him where—he turned his head—the vids showed riot in Bo
“Ens. Dekker,” the reporters shouted, “Ens. Dekker, how do you feel right now?”
Dekker turned his head to look at the reporter, honestly trying and failing, Graff read it, to accept one more slow-moving attention track. “I—” he began.
A reporter said, “Ens. Dekker. Ens. Dekker. There’s a news crew standing by with a link to Bo
Damn! Graff thought, and shot another glance at the vids, where placards and ba
“Talk to her,” the reporter said, “you can talk, she’ll hear you—do you hear us, Ms. Dekker?”
“Yes,” Ingrid Dekker said. “Yes, I hear you....”
“I hear you,” Dekker said faintly, and the whole area shushed each other to quiet.
“Paul? Paul? Is that you?”
“Yes.” God, he was going to fracture—Graff saw the tears well up, saw the tremor. “Are you all right, mother? Are they treating you all right?”
Ingrid Dekker bit back tears. “I wanted to return your call.”
“I wanted to call again. They said the lawyers wouldn’t—”
Somebody shoved between Ingrid Dekker and the interviewer, said, “That’s enough.”
“Let her alone!” Dekker cried. “Damn you, take your hands off her—”
The picture jolted, the broad shadow of peacer security for a moment, Ingrid Dekker’s voice crying, “Paul, Paul, I want to go home!”
Kady got hold of Dekker. Aboujib did; and Pollard said, on Optex, “Those sons of bitches.”
“We’ll see if we can get Ms. Dekker back on,” the interviewer was saying; and addressed his counterpart in Bo
Dekker was in shock, reporters shoving Optex pickups toward him, marines under strict orders not to shove back. That face was magnified on monitors all around the area, pale and lost, then Senator Caldwell’s face was on the screens, reporters asking him his reaction.
Caldwell said, gravely: “It’s clear Ms. Dekker had something more to say, and the Federation leadership didn’t ‘want her to say it. I see enough to raise serious questions about how free Ms. Dekker is, at the moment...”
Serious questions, Graff thought, choking on his own outrage. Serious questions whether Porey’s timing for noon in Bo
God, run the test right past Luna in a move the peacers were bound to protest, have the reporters set up, the questions primed—
Then send Dekker and a crowd of excited crews head-on into the media for a reaction, when Porey damned well knew he was spaced?
He couldn’t pull Dekker out directly, couldn’t order Security to oust the reporters, daren’t look like censorship on this side of the issue. He went in, took Dekker’s arm with Optexes on high gain all around him. “Someone will do something.” Which rang in his own ears as one more damned promise he didn’t know how he was going to keep.
Dekker gave him a bleak, blank stare. “I don’t want to leave, sir. If they can get her back I want to talk to her.”
The mikes got that, too. Kady said, out of turn, “They don’t want her loose. That’s clear.”
But all that showed on the Bo
And all that showed on theirs was Dekker’s stricken face, Dekker saying, dazedly, “They lied to her. They lied to her all the way...”
“It’s playing,” Demas said, leaning against the counter, “it’s playing over and over again, around the planet, as the world wakes up. Dekker’s a handsome kid, doesn’t at all hurt his case. Or ours.”
Graff wanted to break something—Demas’ and Saito’s necks, if he didn’t recognize in Demas’ glum expression an equal disgust. He looked at the vid, seeing Ingrid Dekker’s bewildered distress, her son’s—”Let her alone!” Over and over again.
As a weapon, Ingrid Dekker had turned in the hands of Her wielders, and bit to the bone. Dekker was no longer the faceless Belter exile, he was the pilot who’d pulled a spectacular success with the Hellburner, he was a kid with a human grievance and a mother held prisoner by causes and politicians, and the demonstration organizer who had shoved Ingrid Dekker away from the reporters was under heavy condemnation and refusing questions.
Demas was right: it didn’t hurt that Dekker had the face of a vid star and sincerity that came through the body language. The crew hadn’t played badly either the rumored split in the UDG Fleet ranks, Ben Pollard with his UDC insignia on his flightsuit, Kady and Aboujib in flash and high tech, all of them profoundly concerned and angry at a human issue.... While on the evening and morning news around the world, Alyce Salazar was doing damage control, covering her partisans, claiming that the Fleet had manipulated the media (truth) and that, quote, the important issues were being ignored in a rush to sympathy for a lying scoundrel who’d co
Dekker might be seeing it—he’d ordered open media access for appearances’ sake while reporters were here, if no other reason; and had no argument from Porey. The vid was going out over all the station, their local authority doing no screening whatsoever.
“J-G,” Demas said, “honestly, 7 didn’t know until they ordered me to take charge of Security, right when the test started. They did query Saito, early on, for an assessment of Dekker’s perso
“They. Did the captain know?”
“I don’t know what there is to know. My guess is, Mazian sent Porey in here to figure the odds. If it was good enough, go, shove the best team in the ship and make the run; and if it turned out to be Dekker, meet the political chaff head-on, no hiding it, aim him straight for the cameras and damn all Salazar could do.”
“Pardon me, Nav, but the hell the timing was random! High noon in Europe, in Bo
“I don’t think he pla
“I don’t put it past him.”
“I think you give him too much credit. Some things just drop into your lap. But Mazian did want the protests— according to Saito. He wanted to solidify the issue, Saito says, so that it has substance, and men shoot that substance to hell. Make the peacers take a specific position and prove them wrong.”
“Dekker’s mother.”
“Dekker’s mother is a side issue. An opportunity I’m sure they’ll take advantage of. Not mentioning Salazar. The EC wants Salazar stopped, in such a way it won’t break Mars out of the union... and we have the Kent business with MarsCorp’s fingerprints all over it.”
“And daren’t use it, dammit, we daren’t even arrest Kent and Booten, we don’t know—”
A stray thought crossed his mind.
“What?” Demas asked in his silence. “Don’t know what?”
He leaned back in his chair and looked at the vid, where another instant opinion poll was playing. A radical shift in the numbers in the last 5 hours, plus or minus 3 points of accuracy. People believed the things they’d seen. 45% believed Paul Dekker was i
He said to Demas, apropos of nothing previous, “I want a statement prepared, a public relations version of Dekker’s life. In case. I don’t like unanticipateds, Nav.”
“You’ve got it. But the Company will black-hole it. Salazar is too sensitive an issue. And far too powerful. She’s using the issues, she’s not the grieving mother, she’s a politician. Kent...has got to be a professional. And if we’ve got him, there’ll be others—inside the Earth Company offices, for all we know.”