Heavy Time (21 page)

He punched Validate. He punched Read, to know what it would show him, and the reader screen showed two things valid: the ASBANK account number and his insurance. It said it was August 15. It said: ALL ACTIVE ACCOUNTS ARE IN

PROCESS OF TRANSFER TO ASBANK R2 DIV.

And below that: PILOT CREDENTIALS: INVALIDATED.

He couldn’t move for a moment. The clerk said, “Mr. Dekker?” and asked if he was all right.

He couldn’t think. There was just a door to a lobby, a way out, and he took his card back, shoved away from the counter and walked for the light.

He had no idea where he was when he left the hospital, he only walked for a while down wide beige hallways with no clear thought in his head except that he was out of the hospital and nobody had stopped him.

But a cop did. The cop blocked his path and asked for his ID card, and he stood there scared they were going to take him back, while people in business suits walked past ignoring the situation.

The cop inserted the card in his pocket slate, with that expression that said he had to be a thief at best and that if there was anything wrong on this whole deck he had to be a prime suspect. Then the cop, still with that dead expression, stared off down the way and said to no one he could see, “Yeah. Yeah. Copy that. Thanks.” Then the cop gave the card back with marginally less chill and pocketed his slate. “Just out of hospital, is it?”

“Yessir.”

“You need any help, Mr. Dekker?”

“No, sir. I’m all right.”

“Where will you be staying?”

“Don’t know. Helldeck.”

“Trans is down the way, about a hundred meters. You’ll want the last car. About your fourth, fifth stop.”

“Thank you,” he said, and walked on in the direction the cop had pointed.

ASTEX didn’t want a spacer walking on their clean deck, fingerprinting their beige paneled walls. He understood the rules. He didn’t even spit on the floor. He made it to the Transstation, leaned on the wall and waited til the Trans showed up and the doors opened.

People in suits got off, he stepped aboard, into an empty car, and sat down. One woman got on, sat down opposite, didn’t look at him, even if there was nothing else to look at. The Trans started up, whipped along to its next stop on the rim.

Somebody else got in. Eventually all the business types got off and spacer and worker types got on: the screen said NEXT STOP 2 as the Trans started off in the other direction and climbed.

It would help if he could ask his way. But people didn’t do that. People kept their mouths shut in the Trans, the same here as at Rl. Ads lit the info screen, advertising upcoming facilities; music blared. The first stop listed mostly BM service offices.

The second was commercial. The third listed sleeperies, gyms, and bars, and that was where he got off, into the echoing noise of helldeck.

He wobbled a bit when he walked, but that wasn’t unusual here, for one reason or another. He looked like a lunatic and carried plastic sacks full of everything he owned, and that wasn’t unusual here either—ordinary helldeck traffic. Some religious type jostled him, a religious type who yelled something about God and judgment and aliens and wanted him to come and hear a tape. But he didn’t, he just wanted to be let alone, and the guy told him he was going to hell.

For a while he was just lost—he could believe there had never been a hospital, there had never been a wreck: everything around him sounded and felt like home Base for the last two years—but the names were all different—

Cory had never existed here. His eyes and his ears kept telling him he had finally come home; but people around him were busy with their own lives, in shops with different names.

He walked, going through the motions people who belonged here went through.

He didn’t know what he wanted. His knees and his feet and his shoulders began to ache with the unaccustomed exercise, and he recalled, out of the long nightmare of the ship, that he had wanted a beer very badly then. So, in the process of picking up his life, he walked into a comfortable-looking bar—The Pacific, it said, with plastic colored fish and plastic coral reefs and blue lights over the bar. The customers—there were ten or so—were tenders and dock monkeys, mostly. The shapes and shadows of creatures he’d never seen reminded him vividly of Sol Station, where he had a mother who honestly might care if she saw the mess he was in.

She’d say, Paul, didn’t I tell you so? Didn’t I say you were being a damned fool?

She’d say, teary-eyed and exasperated beyond endurance: Paul, now, how in hell am I going to get you out of this one? You cost me everything I ever got in my life.

You’ve done every damn thing you could to screw up. What am I supposed to do for you now?

But he’d have been drafted if he’d stayed on the station. No essential job, 18, no medical reason not, they’d have taken him; and she hadn’t wanted that either, they’d agreed on that. She’d kissed him goodbye and he’d been embarrassed and ducked away, the last time he’d ever seen her—humiliated because his mother had kissed him in public. He understood now how he’d been a pain in the ass, and after all the grief she hadn’t deserved, the last thing Ingrid Dekker needed was her grown son calling up, saying he was coming home—to get sucked up by the military after all, if they wanted a certified schitz—

So what the hell good could they do each other? He wouldn’t take any more of her money. Or her peace of mind, whatever it was now. And she couldn’t help him.

He ordered a beer and handed the bar his card, hoping the hospital hadn’t cut off alcohol—not good for a man on trank, but he didn’t care. The bartender looked at him and stuck the card into the reader, where he could find out as much as a bartender needed to know, namely could he pay for what he’d just ordered, and had he any active police record?

A Medical showed up. He could see the screen from where he was supporting himself on the bar. But the guy didn’t argue about the beer, just drew one and gave it to him; and he found himself a vacant booth and fell into it, sipped his beer, shut his eyes and sat there a while in relative null before his brain started to conjure pictures he didn’t want to recall. So he looked at the stuff the hospital had given him—took his watch out of the bag and put it on.

It said, 06/06/23: 15:48:10. 15:48:11: he watched the seconds tick along, thought, No, that date’s not right. It’s August. August 15.

Cory’s somewhere out there. All that black. All that nothing around her.

She’d have seen the explosion, seen the ship—it could have run right over her—

Dammit, no! she wouldn’t have, because that wasn’t what had happened, that was the doctor’s story. There wasn’t any bad valve, there’d been a ’driver… he’d argued with it: This is our claim, hear us?

Instruments went crazy, collision alert sounding—he yelled over and over again,
A-20, Mayday, Mayday, my partner’s out there
—

You damned ass! What do you think you’re doing
?

He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, thinking how the log would show those instrument readings. The doctors kept saying something different, but maybe the cops hadn’t even gotten into the ship—the doctors wouldn’t know shit about the technicalities and they didn’t care, they just made up stuff they thought was going to shut him up—it was their job, and they didn’t want him complicating it. The way the company worked, the cops probably hadn’t even looked, either, just some judge took all these reports from a ’driver that didn’t want any record of what it had done and operators in BM who didn’t want to admit—

—admit a ’driver had jumped a claim.

His head ached with a vengeance. He shied away from the company’s reasons.

He thought about the pills and sorted through the lot, reading labels.

But beyond that…

He looked at the time again. August 15th. The accident—

(No accident, dammit.) That was the 12th of March.

March 12 to March 31 is twenty days. 20 plus 30 in April is 50. 50 plus 21 in May is 71.

January 1 to March 12. Thirty-one days in January, 28 in February, they said it wasn’t a leap year, 12 in March. 31 and 28 and 12 makes seventy-one days.

Seventy-one days til they found me. Seventy-one days from January 1st to the accident. No. From the accident—that was why the watch read out the 12th. The numbers are a match—that’s all. And between then and now—is it coincidence? Or do months always do that? What do 30’s and 31’s have to do with anything sane?

He couldn’t think. His mind slid off any long track it tried to take. It made his head ache. He took his datacard and used its edge to reset his watch. August. The 15th. That was it. It said August 15 and Cory was out there somewhere, while he was sitting in an R2 bar. Half a year was gone, part of it lost in the dark, part of it on the ship, part of it in hospital. The 15th of August. And his card was active here, on R2, and they hadn’t said a word about sending him home: he supposed they didn’t want the expense.

Or they didn’t want him talking.

Screw that—if he knew anyone to tell anything to on helldeck—

If they’d gotten his ship in, if—he had anything to live on—

He remembered the license suspension—the doctors said it was oxygen deprivation and nerve damage because he dumped a stupid box on the floor and pissed off some doctor with an Attitude, that was what had gotten written down on his records. Or they’d pulled it because of the accident—but they’d cleared him of that. He could fix the license part of his problems, get the shakes out, get some sleep and do a few days in the gym—

All he had to do was sign up and pass the operationals again. No problem with that.

Except the hours requirement…

The company was going to be reasonable? The thought upset his stomach.

Retake the medical exam, maybe,
put
the damned washers on the stick, this time.

He could prove it never should have been pulled. Getting the ship in order might take everything he had—tanks blown, all that crud when the lifesupport went down—but he could do a lot of the cleanup himself—but the dock charges… they’d come in, when? July 26th?
June
26th?

God, he didn’t want to think about time any longer, didn’t want to add numbers or sweat finance right now or figure out how much he’d lost. But now that he’d started thinking about it he couldn’t let it go. He couldn’t keep any figures straight in the state he was in, and he had no idea what the tanks were going to cost. Twenty, thirty thousand apiece, maybe, counting the valves and controllers and hookups: some value for the salvage on the old ones, but it was going to take bank finance, and they had his account tied up—it might be smarter to sell it, buy in on some other ship—

The bar had a public reader. He got up with his beer and his bag of pills and his belongings, and went and put his card in, keyed past the surface information for detail this time.

APPLICATION MADE FOR FUNDS TRANSFER: 47,289.08 in ASBANK Rl branch to ASBANK R2. ACCESSIBLE AFTER 60 DAYS. PUBLIC NOTICE

POSTED 08/15/23. CURRENT AVAILABLE BALANCE: 494.50.

Sixty days. God. What could take 60 days? He wanted to know where his ship was, what berth, what those charges were so far. He typed: 1-84-Z: STATUS.

R2’s computer answered: UNAVAILABLE.

Screwups. There wasn’t a thing in his life that some damned agency hadn’t messed up.

He took his card, went back to the bar, said, “Can I use the phone?”

The bartender held out his hand, he surrendered his card for the charges and the guy waved him to the phone on the wall at the end of the bar.

He punched up INFORMATION, asked it: DOCK OFFICE, pushed CALL, waited through the Dock Authority recording, punched Option 2, and patiently sipped his beer while his call advanced in queue. A live human voice finally acknowledged and he said, “I’m Paul Dekker, owner of One’er Eighty-four Zebra.

Should be at dock. I’m getting an UNAVAILABLE on the comp, can you tell me what—”

“Confirm, One’er?”

“Yes. Towed in. Might be in refit.”

“Just a minute. You say the name is Dekker?”

“Paul Dekker.”

“Just a minute, Mr. Dekker.”

He took another sip of the beer, and leaned heavily on the counter, his breath gone short. He’d had enough of incompetence, dammit, he’d had enough of doctors arguing with him what he had and hadn’t seen and he wasn’t ready to start a round with the Dock Authority. A ship
Way Out’s
size was a damned difficult object to misplace.

“Mr. Dekker, that ship was here. I’m not finding any record of it. Just a minute.”

A long wait while he sipped his beer and his heart pounded.

“Mr. Dekker?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure that ship hasn’t gone out?”

He was on the edge of crazy now. He said, “I’m an owner-operator. No, it hasn’t gone out. It
shouldn’t
have gone out. Try Refit.”

“I’ll check.” The operator sounded concerned. Finally.

The barman was looking at him. A bunch of military drifted in and took his attention. He hadn’t seen them on Rl. But they were customers. He was glad of the distraction. He was in no mood for a bartender’s questions.

The bartender served the other drinks. The hold continued. The soldiers settled in at a table. The barman signaled him: Refill?

He slid the empty mug down the bar, still waiting, still listening to inane music.

“Mr. Dekker?” the phone said.

“Yes.”

“I’m going to put my supervisor on. Please hold.”

He had a bad feeling, a very bad feeling. The beer came sailing back to him, and he stopped it and sipped at it without half paying attention.

“Mr. Dekker?” A different voice. Older.

“Yes.”

“Mr. Dekker, that ship’s number was changed. I’m looking at the record right now. You’re Mr. Paul E Dekker. Would you confirm with your personal ID, please.”

“12-9078-79.”

“Yes, sir. That title was transferred by court order. It was claimed as salvage.”

He couldn’t breathe for a moment. He took a drink of the beer to get his throat working downward again.

“Mr. Dekker?”

“Did the guy who claimed it—happen to be named Bird? Or Benjamin-something?”