Devil to the Belt (v1.1) (14 page)

“Dekker’s brain’s gone. No question. Yeah, there’s a solid chance on that ship, there’s a good chance.”

“Bird says if you get anything it’ll have to be in court. Bird’s saying you won’t win. That it’s all just a waste. But he doesn’t act it.—Is there anything the company can turn up? I mean, you didn’t seriously transgress any regs out there…”

So that was what was bothering Meg. Meg and Sal had to be looking for a lease for their next run, if that ship wasn’t going to come through—or if they were only going to sell it to the company. Meg and Sal hadn’t been betting elsewhere: that was what he suddenly figured, and they were down to decisions. “There isn’t going to be any court. I promise you. You know what Bird’s problem is? He’s scared he’s going to make money. Every time you get to talking about it—he just looks off the other way. If I hadn’t filed on that ship, you think he’d ever have done it? Hell, no. He’d have waited till he got his legs. Then he’d have said, well, it’s too late, there’d be other creditors—you tell me what goes through his head, Meg. I swear I don’t know.”

“Dirtsider.”

“So?” One of Meg’s stories had her born on Earth, too. But that didn’t seem to be the version Meg was using today. “Are they all like that? Is it something in the water?”

“Bird grew up poor.”

“So I grew up an orphan. So what’s that got to do with anything?”

“It’s habit with him: when he gets enough—that’s all. That’s all he wants from life. He doesn’t want to be rich. He just wants enough.”

It didn’t make any sense—not at least the why of it. He held the thought a moment, turned it over, looked at its underside, and decided he wasn’t going to understand. “Well, it’s not enough for me. Damn well not enough for me.”

Meg sighed. “Haven’t ever seen enough to know what enough is.”

“Damned short rations,” he said. “That’s what Bird’s ‘enough’ comes to. And it doesn’t keep you fed when your legs and your back give out. Doesn’t get you insurance.”

“Insurance,” Meg chuckled. “God, jeune fils…”

“That’s a necessity, dammit! Ask me where I’d have been if my mama hadn’t had it.”

“Yeah, well.—She was a company pilot, wasn’t she?”

“Tech.” He rolled over. He didn’t like to talk about things that were done with or people that didn’t come back. They didn’t matter. But the example did. “You don’t get any damn where halfass protected. Insurance—my company schooling—Bird’s knowing who to lease to—”

“Like us?”

Oh, then,
here
was the approach. Meg was looking at him, chin on hands, putting it to him dead-on, with no Bird for a back-up. He didn’t want to alienate Meg and Sal—especially Sal. They weren’t the best miners in the Belt, but they had other benefits—not all of them in bed. And he kept asking himself if he was using good sense, but the answer kept coming up that there might be miners better at their job, but if you wanted a couple of stick-to-a-deal, canny partners, present company and Sal weren’t damn bad.

Some of Bird’s friends, now—had his affliction. And they were going broke or had gone.

Meg said, “You suppose you could put in a word with Bird, explain how we’d be reasonable. We’d work shares.”

Not every day somebody as tough and canny as Meg needed something from him—seriously needed something. He toted it up, what the debts might be, what the collection might be. If one looked to have a long career leasing ships—one needed a couple of reliable partners who knew the numbers. And Sal in particular had possibilities—if Sal could get a grip on her temper and shake out that who-gives-a-damn attitude. Sal also had useful contacts. While Meg—

He said, he hoped after not too long a pause: “I could talk to him. What are friends for?”

“Wake up.” Someone shook at Dekker’s shoulder. “Come on, Dekker. Come on. Come out of it.”

He didn’t want to come back this time. It was more white coats. He could see that with his eyes half shut. But there was dark green, too, and the gleam of silver. That didn’t match.

A light slap at his face. “Come on, Dekker. That’s fine.—Do you want an orange juice?”

It never was. It was a cousin of that damned Citrisal. But his mouth was dry and he sipped it when they put a straw between his lips and elevated his bed.
G
felt heavier here. He thought: This isn’t the same place. We’re deeper in.

“How are you feeling?” his doctor asked him.

But he was looking suddenly at the company police, realizing what that uniform was.

“Paul Dekker?” the head cop said. “We want to ask you a few questions.”

He heard that beep again. That was him. That was the cops listening to his heartbeat, and it was scared and rapid.

“Have you found her?” he asked. Cops always came with bad news. He didn’t want to hear what they might have to say to him.

But one of them sat down on the side of his bed. That man said, “What did you do with the body?”

“Whose body?” For a moment he honestly didn’t know what they were talking about, and the monitor stayed relatively quiet. Then his pulse picked up. “Whose body?”

“Your partner’s.”

The beeps became hysterical. He hauled the rate back down again, saying calmly, “I couldn’t find her. They hit us. I couldn’t find her afterward.”

“Mr. Dekker, don’t play us for fools. We’ll level with you. Don’t you think it’s time you leveled with us?”

“This ship ran us down—”

“—and it wasn’t on the charts. Come now, Mr. Dekker, you know and I know you had a motive. College girl comes out here with her whole life savings, and here you are—not a steady job in your life, no schooling, not a cent to your name. How’d you get here? How’d you get passage?”

“Cory and I were friends. From way back.”

“So she puts up the equity, she just insists the ship go down as joint ownership, with a death provision in there—”

“No.”

“Or was that your idea?”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“You signed it. We’ve got your signature right at the bottom.”

“I didn’t read it. Cory said sign, I just signed it!”

The officer had reached for a slate the other cop had.

He pressed buttons. “We have here a deposition from your port of origin, from one Natalie R. Frye, to the effect that you and Ms. Salazar quarreled over finances the week you left…”

“Hell if we did!”

“Quote: ‘Cory was mad about a bill for a jacket or something—’”

“I bought a jacket. She thought I paid too much. Cory’d wear a thing til it fell apart…”

“So you quarreled over money.”

“Over a jacket. A damn 38-dollar jacket. We fought, all right, we fought, doesn’t everybody?”

“Ms. Frye continues: ‘Cory had been sleeping around. Dek didn’t like that.’”

“Screw Natalie! She wasn’t a friend of ours. Cory wouldn’t spit on her.”

“
Did
Ms. Salazar’sleep around’?”

“She slept where she wanted to. So did I, what the hell?”

“Well, that wouldn’t matter to anyone, Mr. Dekker, except that she never got back.”

The beeps accelerated, not from shock: a fool could see where this was going. He was shaking, he was so mad, and if he went for the bastard’s throat they’d trank him and write
that
down, too.

“Cory’s lost out there,” he said doggedly. “A ship ran us down—”

“Mr. Dekker, there was no other ship in that sector.”

“That’s a lie. That’s a damn lie.” He reached frantically for things they couldn’t deny. “Bird knew it was there. Ben knew. We talked about it. It was a ‘driver, was what it was—it wasn’t on my charts—”

The officer said, dead calm: “Bird and Ben?”

“The guys that picked me up!” He was scared they were going to tell him
that
never happened either. But
someone
had brought him in. “I called that sonuvabitch, I told it we were there, I told it my partner was outside—”

“Are you sure the rock didn’t block the signal?”

“No!—Yes, I’m sure! I had it on radar. Why in hell didn’t it see me?”

“We don’t know, Mr. Dekker. We’re just asking. So you did see it coming. And did you advise your partner?”

They made him crazy, changing the rules on him. One moment they accused him. Then they believed him. Sometimes he seemed to lose things.

“Didn’t you say you’d hit a rock? Wasn’t that your story at one point?”

He was lost and sick and the drugs still had him hazed. The beeps increased in tempo. He wasn’t sure whether it was his heart or something on com.

“So where did you manufacture this ship, Mr. Dekker?”

“It was out there.”

“Of course it was out there,” the officer said. “You had it on your charts. Your log showed that. How could we doubt that?”

He was totally confused. He put his hands over his ears, he tried to see if the alarm going was his heart or something in his head. “Call the ‘driver, for God’s sake. See if they picked Cory up.”

“Didn’t you call?” the cop asked.

“Yes, dammit, I called, I called and it didn’t answer. Maybe my antenna got hit. I don’t know. I called for help. Did anybody hear it?”

“A ship heard you. A ship picked you up.”

“Different.” He was tired. He didn’t want to explain com systems and emergency locaters to company cops. “Just call the ‘driver out there.”

“If there is a ‘driver out there,” the cop said, “well ask. But if they had picked up your partner, wouldn’t they have notified their Base? Don’t you think they’d have called that in?”

He thought about that answer. He thought about the way that ship had ignored warnings. He thought about it not answering his hails. He thought—It’s not hours, is it? It’s months, it’s been months out there.

The alarm sounded again. He wanted it calm, because when he didn’t do that within a certain time they sedated him, and he was trying to be sane for the police. “I don’t know they heard me. Just call them.”

“We’re going to be calling a lot of people, Mr. Dekker.” The cop got up from his bed. “We’re going to be asking around.”

They walked to the door. The doctor went with them. He lay there just trying to keep the monitor steady and quiet, on the edge of hysteria but a good deal saner than he wanted to be right now. He remembered Bird, he remembered Ben. He was relatively sure he had come here on their ship. But sometimes he even feared Cory might not have existed. That he had always been in this place. That he was irrevocably crazy.

IF 8 was gray and automated, 6 was green paint and a few live-service restaurants and shops, but the time still dragged: you worked out in gyms, you hit the shops til you had the stuff on the counters memorized, you skipped down to 3-deck for a while and maybe clear to 2 for an hour til your knees ached and your heart objected. The first few weeks after a run were idle time, mostly: you didn’t feel like doing much for long stints. You’d think you had the energy and then you’d decide you didn’t; you sat around, you talked, you filled your time with vid and card games and when you found your legs, an occasional grudge match in the ball court or sitting through one of the company team games in the big gym on 3-deck was about it. But mostly you worked out til you were about to drop, if you had to wrap your knees in bandages and pop pills like there was no tomorrow—and that was what Bird did, because the younger set was chafing to get down to heavy time that counted, down in the neon lights and fast life of helldeck—down in the .9
g
on 2 that was as heavy as spacers lived—specifically to The Black Hole, that was the accommodation they favored, and the hour Mike Arezzo called and said he had two rooms clear, adjacent, no less, they threw their stuff in the bags and they were gone.

Checking in at The Hole felt like coming home—old acquaintances, a steady traffic of familiar faces. Mike, who owned the place and ran the bar out front, kept the noise level reasonable and didn’t hold with fights, pocket knives, or illegal substances. Quiet place, all told. Helldeck might have shrunk from its glory days: worker barracks and company facilities had gnawed it down to a strip about a k and a half long, give or take the fashionable tail-end the corporates used: that was another ten or fifteen establishments—but you wouldn’t find any corporate decor in The Hole; no clericals having supper, not even factory labor looking for a beer. The Hole was freefaller territory: dock monkeys and loaders, tenders, pushers, freerunners, construction crew from the shipyard and the occasional Shepherd—not that other types didn’t stray in, but they didn’t stay: the ambient went just a bit cooler, heads turned and the noise level fell.

It went the other way when lost sheep turned up.

“Hey, Bird!” Alvarez called out, and heads turned when they walked in. Guys made rude remarks and whistles as Meg sauntered up to the bar and said, “Hello, Mike.”

Mike said, accurately, “Vodka, bourbon, vodka and lime, gin and bubbly…” and had them on the bar just about that fast.

Home again for sure. Close as it came.

“How’s it going?” Mike asked. “Persky says you got a distress call out there. Pulled some guy in.”

“Yeah. Young kid. Partner dead. Real shame.”

Alvarez said, “What’s this with
Trinidad
hanging off the list? The
cops
impounding her?”

God, the other thing helldeck was good for was gossip.

“Nothing we did,” Ben said, fast. “But Mama’s got her procedures. You contact a ship from across the line—”

“Across the
line
—”

Some parts of a story you saved for effect. They were worth drinks, maybe supper. “Wait, wait,” Alvarez said, “Mamud and Lai are over at The Pacific, I’ll phone ‘em. Wait on that.”

—You got one grounded bird here, Bird had used to joke, when it came to getting about in .9
g
; hard as null-
g
was on the body, you got so frustrated with walking on helldeck—it took so
long
to get anywhere, and the Trans was always packed. Food and drink didn’t have to be chased—that was the plus. But when you first got in you always felt as if you’d forgotten your clothes: you got so used to the stimsuit moving with you and fighting every stretch, you kept checking to make sure you were dressed. Air moved over your skin when you walked. And how did you spot a spacer in a fancy restaurant? Easy. He was the fool who kept shaking the liquid in his spoon just to watch it stay put—or who set something in midair and looked stupid when it didn’t stay there.