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He didn’t want a fight. He took his card back and moused back to his room, upset, he didn’t know why, except he didn’t know what the terms were or why he was too scared to demand the damn chips go on his card—but he was, and he was ashamed of himself. He ate the chips with a lump in his throat, sat there on the bed and thought about taking a sleeping pill and just numbing out for a few hours, because he’d been dislocated out there, nothing and no one out there was familiar. He couldn’t sit here and go around and around in mental circles all day, he hadn’tthe routines that had kept him sane, he was sitting here waiting for something he didn’t know what, and he couldn’t keep out of mental loops.
He took out the sack of pills—looked at the size of the bottle that was sleeping pills—God, he thought. What are they doing? How many of these are there?
In which curiosity, he poured the pills out on the counter and counted them.
212 pills.
Didn’t intend for me to want refills on that one for a while.
He might be a little microfocused. He tended to do that lately. Maybe it was brain damage. But his amusements had gotten very narrow in hospital—bitter, constant harassment. Move, and counter. They moved. You moved. You didn’t trust them. They never made consistent sense.
He spilled pills out onto the nightstand and started counting. Vitamin pills, potassium, 30 or so each. The calcitropin stuff, enough for a month… Big bottle labeled: Stomach Distress: As needed. Another labeled: For Pain: 1 every 4 hours. 40 of those. Decongestant: 45 pills: 1 every 4 hours. Diuretic: 60 pills: 1 daily. Drink plenty of liquid. Anti-inflammatory: 40 pills, Take 2 before meals. Depression: 60 pills: Alcohol contraindicated.
He sat there with those piles of pills, the one of them making this towering great heap on the counter, and he stared at it, and he stared, and he thought: 212 sleeping pills?
What did they do, misread the prescription?
No.
That’s not it, is it?
Cory’s dead, they tell me I’m crazy, they take my ship and take my license and tell me I won’t fly again, and they give me 60 uppers and 212 sleeping pills?
They really don’t want me to screw up my exit.
He hadn’t known where he was going or what he was doing until he’d stared at that heap of pills a while.
He thought: First they kill Cory. Then they want me dead—
The hell with that.
He raked the pills into the appropriate bottles, wondering if there was a way to get into the corporation level—
No, that wascrazy: really crazy people went into places and killed people who didn’t have anything to do with their problems. Some i
Somebody was outside; somebody knocked on his door and cold panic shot through him.
“Dekker?”
“Yeah?” he said.
“Dekker?” A woman’s voice—one of Bird’s friends: he didn’t know why his hands were shaking, he didn’t know what he’d just been doing or thinking that deserved it, but his heart went double-time and reason had nothing to do with it. “It’s Meg Kady. You want to open the door?”
He raked the pill bottles into the plastic bag, the bag into the drawer. Not all of it fit. He made it.
“Dekker?”
Severe spook, Sal had called him, and face to face with him, Meg was very much afraid Sal might be right. He opened the door a crack, listened with a dead cold expression while she explained she and Sal wanted to buy him a drink. “Thought you might be tired of the walls. Come on. Get some air. Have a drink or two.”
He looked as if at any second he was going to slam that door and lock it in her face—maybe with reason, Meg thought: the man must know Ben didn’t like him, and he might have real suspicion about the rest of Bird’s friends.
“Hey,” she said, and gave him her friendliest grin. “You’re not afraid of us?”
If that and the sweater she was wearing didn’t get a man out of his room she hadn’t got a backup.
Dekker muttered under his breath, looked rattled, and felt over his pockets. “This place safe to leave stuff?”
“Yeah. Anybody boosts stuff from The Hole, he’s Mike’s breakfast sausage.—How’re you feeling?”
“All right.”
Dead tone: All right. Dekker came out, let his door lock, walked with her down the hall to the bar like he was primed and ready to jump.
Severe spook. Yeah. Or suspicious of them and their motives.
Sal was waiting. Easy to capture a table with space around it—traffic at this hour was real light, most people being about their business. They went through the social dance, Hello there, good looking, how’re you feeling? Sal pulled a chair out, got up, he sat down, she sat down, Meg sat. Mike, thank God, got right over for the orders.
“Spiced rum?” Dekker asked.
“Premium price,” Mike said.
Dekker hesitated, reached for his card. Meg put a hand in the way. “Let us buy.”
Upset him. He slowly put his card on the table. “Put it on mine. All of it. Rum and whatever they’re having.”
Meg shot a look at Sal, and gave Mike a shrug. “What the man wants,” she said, thinking: Pricey tastes he’s got.
Mike took the card. Dekker started to lean back, arm over the chair back—like it was a fortified corner he wasn’t going to be pried out of; but the hand was shaking. He put it on the tabletop.
Sal said, “What do you go by?”
“Dek—to friends.”
“Dek.” Sal reached out across the table. “Sal. Aboujib, if you got to find me.”
He hesitated, then made a snatch forward and solemnly shook Sal’s hand.
Meg reached hers out. “Magritte Kady.” Cold fingers. Scared spitless. “Meg’ll page me anywhere. There’s only one on R2.—You been out of that room today?”
“Lunch,” he said.
“Any good?”
He shrugged.
Mike got the drinks over, fast, thank God, a merciful few beats without conversation. Dekker picked up his drink. Meg lifted her glass with a flourish.
“Welcome to R2, Dek.”
“Thanks,” he said faintly.
“Thanks for the drinks.—You remember us at all?”
He nodded.
Sal said, “We’d better say, before anything else, we’re the ones that have Way Outleased.”
He didn’t react at all to that, just kept looking at Sal.
“I’m the pilot,” Meg said. “Sal’s my numbers man. You were the primary license on your team, right?”
Dekker nodded glumly, watching them, every move. He held the rum in one hand, the other arm over the chair back. “Yeah. I was.”
“Excuse.” She leaned her elbows on the table and cut down the distance. “Let’s be frank here. They busted your license. Bird and Ben claimed your ship—but they haven’t cut you off cold, either. They risked their financial asses saving your life. Understand? Lot of expenses.”
“Yeah.”
“So we got a lease on what used to be your ship, and probably you aren’t real happy with us.”
Dekker said tonelessly: “Yeah, well. Not your fault. No hard feelings.”
“But,” Sal butted in, “we got to thinking how we could do you and us both some good.”
Meg said, quickly: “We figure you want your license reinstated. Which you got to have board time for. Which could be expensive, if you had to get it from the company—and you still might need some help to get past the bureaucrats.”
Dekker gave her a quick, plain, a what-in-hell-are-you-up-to stare.
“Chelovek,” she said quietly, because even in the bar, even with the music going, you had to worry about bugs lately, since the cops had searched the place, “you ran into real trouble—got ground up in the gears entirely, you andyour partner.—Where are you from? Sol Station?”
Dekker nodded.
“Neo out here?”
“Two years.” His jaw was set, not going to say a syllable more than he had to. Improvement on yesterday, she thought.
“Brut put, Dek, you got yourself in one helluva mess, and there’s beaucou’ guys on R2 who’d pick your pocket the rest of the way. But as happens we’re not them, and Bird’s a blue-skyer, so he knows where you come from.—Not that we owe you, mind. But Bird doesn’t like to take advantage. There’s some things we can’t fix. But suppose we could—what’s prime business on your mind right now? What can we do most for you?”