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Damned right they had.
Meg leaned close to the mirror, painting a thin black line beneath her bottom lashes. Hell to keep the eyes from ru
“Severe spook.”
“Decorative spook.” Eyebrow pencil. Auburn. Hard to come by out here. If you were broke you used grease pencil, and thatwas expensive. “He came straight last night, after the bogies. Seemedto be coming in focus… Bird talked to him.”
“After the things he shouldn’t have said in the bar, Kady, a serious lack of governance there— everybodywas talking about it.”
“He was drunk. Gone out. Everybody knows that.”
“So he’s got no failsafes? Shit, Kady! Ben’s got severe misgivings on this.”
“Tsss.” She did the other eye with three even strokes, heard Sal get up and caught her reflection with a rap of the knuckle at the mirror. “Remains to see. Later’s time enough. Bird says.”
“Bird says. Bird says. What’s Bird have in his head, here? ‘Find him a partner.’ Ben can’t scope it. And brut put, I don’t like this ‘partner’ talk and I sincerely don’t like Bird close with this jeune fils, whose tab I don’t know why we’re paying, with ourfunds, while he’s got a card and access, thank you.”
“So do Iunderstand?” But she figured she did, more than Sal would. She looked at Sal, eye to mirrored eye, then turned and leaned against the counter, taking the mandatory three thoughts before a body should commit truth—as the saying went. But Sal was seriously upset this morning—Sal had had her eye on that ship, and Sal had been talking to Ben last night, in these rooms, that was point one, and scary enough—if that was all of it, and there were enough angles with Sal on a thing like this she wasn’t at all sure. “We got to talk, Sal.”
Sal stared at her a couple of beats, still hot, shrugged and picked up her jacket. “Na. Rather breakfast, actually.”
Meg didn’t move. Sal didn’t like brut talks, especially when she’d just snapped to a judgment about a thing, but Sal constitutionally didn’t like mysteries. She said, to Sal’s back, “Sal—do you want to know quelqu’ shoze?”
She waited, knewSal was going to turn around with an exasperated look and say—
“ Whatshould I want to know?” As if there couldn’t possibly be anything worth the nuisance. Sal came at some things with her mind as tight as her fists.
She gave the room a significant glance around, then pushed buttons she knew were buttons with Sal. “Tell you later on second thought.”
Sal had this look like she’d knife something; but that only meant Sal’s mind was working again; and they’d been severely careful about bugs since the cops had torn the room apart. She snagged her jacket up. They walked out into the hall and through the door into The Hole proper, where the guys had a table in the shiftchange rush—Ben and Bird already into their breakfast. You went over to the hot table at the end of the bar, you told the second shift cook, Price, that you were breakfast, and he dumped whatever-it-was into a plate while you drew your own coffee.
They took their plates and their cups to Bird and Ben’s table and sat down. “Morning,” Bird said. “Morning,” Meg said back, and thought how that, too, was one of those things native Belters didn’t just naturally say.
Spooky kind of partnership, when you got to thinking about it.
Spookier still, just as they sat down, that Dekker showed up in the doorway. He came part of the way to their table and made a cautious little gesture like Can-I-join-you?
Bird waved his hand, swallowed his mouthful. “Grab your plate.”
Dekker was clean shaven, hair wet and combed back—quiet and polite. That was a plus. Good bones, under a jumpsuit that didn’t fit. A woman did notice things like that, if she was alive.
“Could do with feeding,” Bird said.
Ben made a surly shrug. Meg tried to think of something cheerful, took a forkful of The Hole’s best stand-in for sausage and eggs and a sip of not bad coffee, while they were all waiting for a lunatic to come and sit down with them.
“Want to bet he’ll ask the time?” Ben asked.
“Don’t you open your mouth,” Bird said sternly.
“Did I say a thing?”
“Nice rear,” Meg said.
“Doesn’t impress me,” Ben said.
“Quiet.”
“Yeah, he’d do that for hours.”
“Ben…”
“All right, all right. He’s doing just fine. Hasn’t jumped Price or anything.”
“Ben.”
Dekker came back, with his breakfast and his coffee—into a sudden quiet at their table.
“How are you feeling?” Bird asked him as he sat down.
“Hung over,” Dekker said, sipped the coffee with a grimace, and, from vials in various pockets, started laying out a row of pills: not unusual, for spacer-types—bone pills, mineral pills, vitamin pills; but Dekker’s collection was truly impressive.
“Dekker?” Ben said. “You having eggs with your pills, or what?”
Dekker gave this defensive little glance up, the cold sort that made Meg’s nerves twitch toward a knife she didn’t carry now—didn’t quite meet anybody’s eyes. “Yeah. Thanks, whoever put the crackers by the bed. Lived on them last night. My stomach was upset.”
“They give you a doctor’s number?” Bird asked.
Dekker nodded, swept up a fistful of pills, chased them one after another with coffee, and didn’t ever answer that. Bird shrugged. Dekker ate his eggs. They ate theirs. Finally Dekker got up and went back to his room, saying something about needing his rest.
“Yeah, well,” Ben said, staring after him.
“Man’s hung over,” Bird said.
Ben didn’t say a thing to that except, “Are we going in to the docks?”
“Yeah,” Bird said. “Afraid they’re not going to move if we don’t push. And we can pull those panels, right now. We can do that. But four’s too crowded up there.”
They were close to viable now on Way Out. They’d gotten the tanks mated three days ago, they’d gotten the interior blown out and certified for access, they’d gotten everything well toward completed, if they could just get the refit crews to keep after it and get the value assemblies co
“We’ll be back about suppertime,” Bird said. “And if you two wouldn’t mind to be staying here…”
“Hey!” Sal held up a hand. “Don’t make us responsible for this guy!”
“Don’t let him cross Price. Or Mike. All right?”
“No!”
“ ‘Appreciate that.” As Bird and Ben got up quickly and beat a retreat.
“Well, hell!” Sal said.
“There’s worse.”
“I’d rathervac the cabin.”
“Hey. Don’t judge too soon. That’s goodbone structure.”
Sal gave her a flat, disgusted stare.
Meg said, “You can go up if you want. I can hold it here. Or we can take a walk and I can tell you what I won’t say in the room.”
“ Yeah,” Wills said, on the phone, “ yeah, we did find him.”
Salvatore got a breath. “Damn right you’d better have found him.”
“ Yessir.”
“So where the hell is he?”
“ Sleepery, sir, just hadn’t paid a bill yet. No problem.”
“There’d better not be. You listen to me. If you can’t tag him any other way you keep somebody on it. You don’t let that guy slip. Understand?”
“ Yessir. Report’s coming to you right now.” Wills sounded upset. But he’d been on it, when a routine print had shown no card use for a sleepery. Couldn’t particularly fault Wills: Dekker wasn’t the only case Wills had on his lap, a couple of them felonies, while Dekker was Minimal Surveillance. But Human Services had dropped 5 whole C’s onto that card for the sole purpose of making sure Dekker stayed traceable, and it was embarrassing to the department to have him slip in the first couple of hours, in a place where he had no friends, no contacts, no credit and no way to get it.