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“Why in helldidn’t you tell me?”
“I amtelling you. I found it out from Bird last night. That’s what you can see on those charts you lifted.”
“Shit!—But that doesn’t make sense. Something rolls in from Out There—yeah, rocks like that happen, but wedon’t get ‘em. Those things show up on optics.”
“So somebody slipped—assigned the kids to it. MamBitch can’t make a payout like that to a freeru
She let a breath go between her teeth. “God.”
“You know MamBitch’s help. Some lowlevel fool in BM screws up, puts this freeru
“Dangerous as hellfor a ship their size. Maybe it wasthe rock that got ‘em, maybe they were just rushed…”
“Possible. I du
“And a rock like that—untagged—where’d it come from? Thing had to have an orbit way the hell and gone. And iron?”
“We don’t know shit what it was. We do know one kid is dead and MamBitch wiped the log. But those loads are going to hit the Well any day now. Drop thaton Mitch.”
“I can drop it, for what it’s worth. But with a mouth like that—”
“Severely young, severely green, Aboujib. We can pull him in line.”
“Kady.”
“I’m telling you. Tell you something else. We haveto pull him in line: theyknow where he was last night.”
“What are you talking about?”
“ MamBitch, Aboujib. MamBitch. He camethere. He checked in. He knows Bird and Ben—”
“Oh, God.”
“Yeah, ‘Oh, God.’ I’ve beenthrough this. They’ve got a line on him. Not a short one, maybe, but that depends on what he gets into. And what are we going to tell Bird? Excuse us, Bird, but you sincerely got to pitch this guy out, on account of MamBitch is looking for trouble and on account of Sal’s slipped Ben’s charts to the Shepherds?”
“Dammit, why didn’t you say something?”
“How can I say what I didn’t know? I didn’t hear the word ‘driver.’ I didn’t see those charts. I didn’t hear the word ‘rock’ til last shift—”
“Dammit!”
“You want another thought to sleep with? We’re going out of here in a couple weeks, and what’s hegoing to be doing—or saying—while we’re out there? Can we stop him?”
“God.”
“What’s Mitch going to say about that?”
“I don’t know!”
“We could shut him up for about three months, say.”
“What are you saying? Take him with?”
They walked past a noisy bar doorway. Meg said, the other side: “Well, here’s what I’m thinking: the jeune fils needs his license back. Say he passes the ops. He’s got to have board time. Couple hundred hours. Gets him off the ‘deck. Gets him shut up.”
“Yeah, and where’s Ben in this figuring? Ben’ll killthat guy—”
“Who said Bird and Ben?”
“Oh, God. You’re out of your head, Kady.”
“Look. Bird’s got this debt—and wecan pay it for him. We make it like a favor. Then Bird’s got karma for us. So does this guy—who’s also from the motherwell.”
“Who’s also bent. And we get tagged with him!”
“Tell Mitch what we’re doing. Tell him we’re going to bend this guy around the right way. Do theywant him now? I don’t think so. We can solve Dekker’s problem, solve Bird’s problem, solve Mitch’s problem. Ourrep can’t get too badly bent. That’s where we’re useful. We get this jeune fils’ sober attention and he’s no problem.”
Sal rolled her eyes. Hellof a situation wrapped around that ship that they were so close to—
Decorative is one thing, she thought. But where’s the payout?—Meg hands out this air-is-free and everybody-works-partners stuff, like the preacher folk. But what’s this guy really bring us?
They walked along, looking at displays in spex windows, in the deep bass rhythm of music blasting from the speakers, bouncing off the girders overhead.
She said to Meg: “I’ll tell you one thing, that chelovek better not have been skimming. Wegot rep enough. And he damnsure better not come into The Hole on drugs again. He really better not be that kind.”
“Couldn’t say that this morning,” Meg said.
“Couldn’t say he was on the beam, either. I hate those quiet types. No joke, Meg, if we get out there and he does go schitz—what in hell are we going to do? We don’t know we canget him straight. That guy could get severely strange out there. Then what do we do?”
“Keep him tied to the pipes, the way the guys did? I could go for that.”
She caught a breath. “Warped, Kady!”
“Well, hey,—he isn’t useless, is he?”
“Hell!”
“Gives Mitch three whole months. Do you want this jeune fils loose on the ‘deck the way he is, talking about Bird and Ben and ‘driver ships?”
“Point.”
“So we just got to figure how to sign him in with MamBitch.”
“What the hell do we call him? Ballast?”
Lascivious grin. “Systems redundancy?”
“Rude, Kady.”
“Yeah.” Meg gri
“Don’t con me! We got more than a small problem here. Say we get this guy straight, we stillgot him in the middle of things—we got Ben, who’s seriously put out, here… Ben’s notgoing to go easy on this, he’s notgoing to go shares with this guy.”
“Ben better not push Bird on this. Don’t expect him to figure it, just he shouldn’t push. Everybody needs some room sometime.”
“Serious room, here. Major with Ben, too.”
“He doesn’t have to work with Ben.”
“Who’s going to work with him? We got guys starving on the list, and any numbers man needing a pilot wants one who doesn’t see eetees, f’ God’s sake. That jeune fils made himself a rep yesterday that he’s got to live down a longtime before they forget that—”
“There’s always Yoji Carpajias.”
“God.” Yoji was a great numbers man. But he didn’t bathe. “We’d have to steam and vac all over.”
“Yeah. But there is Yoji. There’s others. Leave Ben on prime with Trinidad. Us on prime with Way Out. If MamBitch lets Dekker re-certify, then quiet is exactly what she wants. And Dekker with his license back—is a whole lot more credible, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, and how do we keep a line on him? He’s poison right now. But we don’t know him. We don’t know whatway he’s going to turn.”
“Dekker’s from Sol. He’s a lot more like Bird. You got to take into account he’ll do things for Bird-type reasons. He’s stuck by his partner, hasn’t he? He’ll owe us. Major karma.”
The idea got through to her then, what Meg was saying. “Karma, hell. If Bird gives that sumbitch board-time, he can charge for it. Take it out of his hide, he can. Either Dekker’s got finance to pay that time or Bird’s for sure got a pilot on a string. That old sonuvabitch!”
“I don’t think that’s why Bird’s doing this.”
Sal gave Meg a look, thinking that through the loop a couple of times, wondering if she was following Meg through everything she’d been saying. “Yeah, but are wethat crazy? Bird owns Way Out—but weown our time. We log that guy’s board-time, and we own him til he can pay his charges with us—that’s the law, that’s the only damn useful thing the Institute ever taught me. We debt that guy to us for time, weget him re-certified, and the company won’t friggin’ get him, how’s that for charitable?” She came to dead stop on the decking, hands in pockets, with a whole new idea taking shape. Mitch, and Way Out, and a deal higher-value cards to deal with. “Maybe that’s why MamBitch left the preacher-stuff out of pilot training, you think?”