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He shook his head, staring elsewhere.
“Mad, I don’t blame you, jeune fils. But are you going to spite yourself? What can we do to even things up? Anything you need?”
Another shake of the head.
“Yeah, well. You know what the corp-rats want, don’t you?”
That got a look, a nasty one.
“They want you all theirs, jeune fils. They really don’t like the independents. Their charter makes ‘em have to accept us, but they got you right down to signing with the company.”
“They won’t sign me with the company. I haven’t got a license.”
“Oh, they’ll give it backto you, jeune fils. When you’re theirs. ASTEX regulations screwing you over and ASBANK ready to lend you money. What are you ru
“Yeah, I mind.”
“Good. Do mind. But do you want to get that license without them?”
A little reaction there. Not a word.
“We got a deal for you. You get time at our boards, you take our help, you, me, Sal, Bird and Ben, we all make our own little arrangement that gets you working again, gets you fed, boarded, and eventually reinstated. How’s that?”
Interest, at last. Hostility. “Why? Goodness of your heart, rab?”
“You pay us cash for our time if you can pay us, or you pay us a share plus lease after that—that’s Bird’s word on it, ifyou pass muster by Sal and me.”
He looked somewhere else. She let the silence hang there a moment, then said: “We’re not hard to get along with, Dek. We’re fair good company.”
“My partner’s dead, do you bloody mind?”
Sal said, “She fond of you starving? Cold bitchjeune rab.”
Dekker looked bloody death at her but Sal sailed right on:
“But I’ll guess she wasn’t a cold bitch at that, and she wouldn’t like what you’re doing to yourself, if she was here, which she isn’t, nor will be hereafter. She’s signed off, man, we all do. Death’s life, you know, and it keeps on.”
“Shove off.” Dekker pushed his chair back and got up. Meg did, laid a hand on his arm: he slung it off. Mike, over at the bar, was probably reaching for the length of pipe he kept.
She said, quietly, lifting both hands, “Easy. Easy. No cops here. No offense. Help, here. That’s all.”
“You’re an antique, you know it? You’re a friggin’ antique. Rab’s gone. You’re not in it anymore.”
She actually felt a painful spark of interest—the jeune fils more lately from Sol and more in the current. “True?” She tilted her head, took a damn-you stance and said, “You got better, little plastic?”
He was twenty, maybe—you wouldn’t tell it by the eyes; but the body, the way he let himself be jerked off course, scared as he was, that was all young fool. Maybe he didn’t really even want to care about what she thought now: he’d only attack blind, young-fool-like, and for just a single unquiet moment—knew she’d just attacked him back.
“Come out of it. It’s the twenties.”
“So? What’s the twenties got to offer us the ‘15 didn’t? Corp-rats in fancy suits? Here at R2’s still the teens. Maybe I don’t like your tomorrow, little corp-rat.”
“It’s 2323 on Sol and they’re building warships to blow the human race to hell. Lot you changed, whole fuckin’ lot you changed!”
“So what’s the word, little plastic?”
“The word’s business suits, the word’s grab it before it goes. That’s Sol. That’s all the good you did.”
Bitter news, no better than she already knew. But she balanced on the balls of her feet, hands in belt, shrugged and said, “It goes on, young rab. Didn’t we tell you, back in the ‘15, wake up! You’re going to fly for them?”
“I’m not flying for anybody.”
“You’ll be living off the corp-rat sandwich lines the rest of your life if you do the fool now. They’ll own you—and you’ll be flying some damn refinery pusher til you’re older than Bird.” She added quietly, gently: “Or you can sit down, jeune fils, listen to me, and use your brains for more than ballast.”
He stood there without saying anything. Meg thought, with Sal in the tail of her eye, God’s sake, don’t move, Aboujib, keep your friggin’ mouth shut, kid’s going to blow if you draw breath.
Dekker looked away from her, then, hooked a leg around his chair front and melted down into it.
Meg heaved a sigh, sank into the chair next to him, where he had to look her in the eyes. “Let us make up, jeune rab. Let’s not do deal right now. Let’s just take you out on the ‘deck and show you the cheapshops.”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“Not far. Relax. We’re severely reprehensible, but we don’t take advantage. Won’t push you. Just a little walk.”
Kid was scared white. And he managed not to look her in the eyes.
“Come on,” she said. “You’ve seen too much of hospitals. Sal and I’d like to spend a little, see you get fixed up with a bit more’n a friggin’ plastic bag for a kit—like to stand you a few Personals, you copy? Even if you decide not to take the rest of our offer.”
She figured Sal was having a stomach attack right now, knowing Sal. Meg, Sal’d say, you want to pass out tracts too?
Dekker’s breathing grew calmer after a moment. He said, “Shove off.”
“You telling us you want to go with the company. We should leave you alone, just stay out of your life?”
A few more breaths. He picked up the glass with a shaking hand, drained it and set it down empty, except the ice. Then he nodded, and seemed to fall in on himself a little. “Yeah, all right, whatever.”
Like they could chop him up in pieces if they wanted to, he didn’t care.
She put her hand on the back of his chair, stood up, and he stood up. She showed him toward the door with: “Mike? Tell Bird we’re shopping.”
And Sal, damn her, with the nerve of a dock-monkey, locked on to Dekker’s arm as they headed him out the door, saying, “I know this place. Absolute first-rate. You got to see. All right?”
“Medium,” he told the dealer, embarrassed by his company, exhausted by the walk, not sure he wasn’t going to be had in various ways, some possibly dangerous—but he couldn’t prove it. He’d broken what Cory called Rule One, going off with Belters he didn’t at all know, into shops they did know, taking their word about who to deal with and who to trust—he didn’t know whether they were on Bird’s side of things or not. Ben’s, for all he knew, but they were having a good time and he was out of the funk he’d tried to sink into—
Drifting, a little, maybe. But they’d gotten him moving, they’d made him mad, but they’d done more for his nerves than all of Visconti’s pills. He was alive. He was thinking about something besides Cory, overwhelmed with music, with colors and textures and excited, cheerful voices—
He was halfway happy for a moment.
“Now, no shiz, Pat, you give him our deal, now,” Sal told the guy, whatever that meant, and Meg called after him, “No corp-rad, now! Something serious!”
The dealer brought back pants and a bulky sweater. The pants said medium. They were gray stretch and they didn’t half look medium. The price said 49.99, middling high for a cheapshop.
“That’s too much,” he objected. The dealer whisked out another pair of pants with diagonal stripes, black and red, that looked like a rab’s nightmare. Laid that out with a blue sweater.
“God,” Meg said, “not blue. Red. Can you match?”
“Let’s try for coveralls,” he said. “Blue or gray. Something that fits.”
“Oh, work stuff,” Meg said. “Dull, dull. No fun.—Try the gray pants, come on, Dek. You got the figure.”
“Starvation,” he muttered. He told himself he should stop this, just get the coveralls traded for something that fit. But they were both set on him trying the gray, they shoved sweaters at him, and in their enthusiasm it was just easier to do it, make a fool of himself and prove once for all it wasn’t going to work.
But the mirror showed him a walking rack of bones that actually didn’t look bad in the pants, and that could use a sweater twice its useful size to hide his thin shoulders.