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Bird walked all the way in. “You’re sounding better.”
“Feeling better. Honestly. I’m sorry about the fuss.”
Ben edged in behind Bird, scowling at him. “Beer and pills’ll do that, you know.”
“Yeah,” he said. He earnestly didn’t want to fight with Ben. His head was starting to ache. “Thanks for the rescue.”
“Good God,” Ben said. “Sorry and Thank you all in one hour. Must be off his head.”
“I’ve got it coming,” he said. “I know.” He slipped back against the pillow, wanting time to remember where he was. “Leave the light on, would you?”
Ben said, “Hell, if it keeps him quiet—”
They left then, except Bird. Bird walked closer, loomed between him and the single ceiling light, a faceless shape.
“You had a rough time,” Bird said. “You got a few friends here if you play it straight with us. Watch those pills, try to keep it quiet. Owner’s a real nice guy, didn’t call the cops, just took our word you’re on the straight. All right?”
He recalled what he’d done. He knew he had maybe a chance with Bird, maybe even with Ben, if he could keep from fighting with him. “Tell Ben—I wasn’t thinking real clear. Didn’t know what ship I was on.”
“You got it straight now?”
“I hope I do.” His head was throbbing. He wanted desperately for them to believe him. He didn’t know whether he believed them—but no other way out offered itself. He put his arms over his eyes. “Thanks, Bird.”
Bird left. The light stayed on. He didn’t move. In a while more he took his arm down to fix the room in his mind. It was mostly when he shut his eyes that he got confused; it was when he slept and woke up again. He kept assuring himself he was out of the hospital, back with people who understood, the way the doctors didn’t, what it was like out there.
And the two rabs, who might be Shepherds, but who didn’t talk like it—he wasn’t sure what they were, or what they wanted, or why they zeroed in on him. They worried him the way Ben worried him—not the dress: the mindset—the mindset that said screw authority. No future. Get high. Get off. Get everything you can while you can, because the war’s coming, the war to end all wars.
Hell, yes, Cory had said, it could end Earth. But it won’tget the human race; that’s why we’re going, that’s why we’re heading out of here…
People in boardrooms had started the war over things nobody understood. And the rab had just said—screw that. And rattled hell’s bars when and as they could until the company shot them down. He hadn’t known that when he was a kid. He hadn’t understood anything, except he was mad at what they said was happening to the human race. He’d hated school, hated the have’s and the corporate brats—he’d understood corruption and pull, all right; he’d thought he was rab and scrawled slogans on walls and busted a few lights with slingshots, gotten skuzzy-drunk a few times and lightfingered a few trinkets in shops before he’d figured out what the rab was and wasn’t, and why those people had died trying to get through those doors—he’d been thirteen then, nothing could touch him and he’d be thirteen forever…
Til Cory.
And Cory—Cory wouldn’t at all have understood him sitting at the table with two women like that. Cory would talk to him later and say, the way she’d said more than once, Stay away from that kind, Dek, God, I don’t know where your mind is… we don’t want any trouble; we don’t want anything on our record—
Meg, the older one’s name was. Meg. With the red hair and the Sol accent he’d never realized existed until he’d gotten out here and heard Cory’s Martian burr and heard the Belter’s peculiar lilt. There might be a heavy dose of Sol in Bird’s speech. But none in Ben and none in the black woman—all of them the last types you’d ever think to be hanging around with a plain guy like Bird—or with each other. Not likely Shepherd women—who might drink with miners, maybe—but far less likely sleep with them… when women were scarce as diamonds out here and available, good-looking women could take their pick clear up to the company elite if they wanted, if they didn’t have a police record. They didn’t have to live on helldeck—unless they wanted to.
Maybe Bird didn’t understand the rab… wreck everything, take what you wanted, rip the company—
So much for ideals and causes. Same here as at Sol. Same in the Movement as in the company boardrooms. No difference.
He squeezed his eyes shut, felt tears leak out. Raw pain. He had no idea why. He thought—
—screw all of them. Company and not.
But he didn’t mean it the stupid way the kid on Sol had meant it, 13 and stupid and tired of bumping up against company types, scared as hell about the rumors that said his generation wasn’t going to have a chance to grow up—he’d gotten a knot in his stomach and lain awake half the night, the first time he’d heard how the colonies didn’t have to fire a shot—how the rebels could just drop a rock out of jumpspace, a near- cmissile aimed right at Earth or Sol Station. Nobody could see it coming in time. Thatfor Earth—that for all the history they were supposed to memorize, all the rules, all the laws. Over in five minutes. So why learn anything that was going to be blown up? Why try for anything except grabbing as much as you could before it went bang?
But nobody’d do a thing like that. Nobody’d really hit Earth, nobody’d really hit a station and kill all those people. Of course they wouldn’t.
Cory would say—just get me far enough, fast enough. Cory had told him about places he’d never cared about until she made it sound like there was an honest chance of getting there—if you had the funds. If you could get the visa. If the cops didn’t stop you at the last minute and say, Wait a minute, Dekker, you have a record—
The Earth Company said no more free rides, and you had to pay off your tax debt before you could get a visa. Then your own government, the only time you’d ever see anything from your government, wrote you down as belonging to the ship you’d bought a share on, and you could go
—Where there’ll be something left, Cory would say—Cory had an absolute conviction that Out There was much better than where they were—
—on a ship that had no use for an insystem pilot. He didn’t know whether that was living or not. Truth be known, he had never had any idea what he was going to do then—keep balancing on one foot, he supposed, saying yes and meaning no, going with Cory because Cory was going somewhere—and he didn’t trust the draft wouldn’t take the miners, too, once those ships were built—haul him off to live in a warship’s gut and get killed for the company, blown to hell for the company—
Step at a time, Tommy had used to tell him when he was too zee’d to walk. Step at a time, Mr. Dekker…
Dammit, he wanted to fly, that was all, just get that back—get his hands back on the controls again—
The last few moments he’d thought—he’d thought, clear and cold, not at all afraid, that he could still pull it out—
That he could still make that son of a bitch pay attention to his com—
Wake somebody up on that damned ship, rattle their collision alerts if that was what it took—
He looked at the ceiling-tiles. He supposed they were real. He supposed he’d gotten this far away from the wreck. But no matter how far he stretched it, time just looped back and sank into that moment like light in a black hole. One single moment when things could have worked and didn’t…
Those sons of bitches on that ‘driver had known he was there. Had known they’d hit a ship. They must have. Even if it had never heard him—if somehow his com wasn’t getting through to them—if nothing else, when the tanks blew they’d have known it wasn’t a rock they’d hit.
And if hiscom wasn’t reaching them—wouldn’t they have listened to the E-band after they’d hit a ship? Wouldn’t they have heard Cory’s suit-com?