Heavy Time (23 page)

She’s gone. Best you can do is get yourself clear. You think about it. Your Cory would want you to use your head, wouldn’t she? She’d want you to be all right.

Isn’t that what she’d say?”

That made him mad. Nobody had a right to put words in Cory’s mouth. She’d hate it like hell. But he couldn’t get back from where he was. He said, staring off into nowhere, “Screw you, Bird.”

“Yeah, well,” Bird said. “Try to help a guy—”

Another hand landed on his arm, pulled him around until he was looking at brown eyes, shaved head, dark red crest—rab, radrab, Shepherd or whatever she was, he didn’t know. He was fascinated—wary, too. He’d been rab once. But Cory hadn’t approved—Cory was too frugal, too Martian to waste money, she’d say, or to waste effort on the system, even screwing it.

That senator—Broden—saying, when they’d opened fire on the emigration riots—“No deals with the lawless rabble—”

Newsflashes, when he’d been—what? Ten? Twelve? First real political consciousness he’d ever had, seeing people shot down, blood smeared on glass doors…

Rab style and rabfad was one thing. Shepherds wore it modified, he guessed because it annoyed the exec, and they would. But this one, extreme as she was, with marks of age around her eyes—“You’re from Sol Station,” the woman said.

“Right?”

“Yeah.”

She stared at him a long time. It felt like a long time. She might be thinking of trouble. Finally she said, her hand having replaced Bird’s on his wrist without his realizing. “Severely young, severely stupid, cher juene fils. Company’ll chew you up.

Bird’s all right. If Bird’s telling you, you
do
. Or are you looking for MamBitch to save you? That’s
fool
. That’s sincerely
prime
fool, petty cher.”

Rabspeak, from years ago. From before Cory. From a whole different life.

Rabfad had turned into respectable fast-fad, except if you didn’t get it out of the trend shops, except if you were truly one of the troublemakers—

Dress like that on helldeck was a statement—a code he couldn’t cipher anymore, not what the colors were, what the earrings said, what the shave-job tied you to…

like this woman, who looked him in the eyes and talked to him—as if she saw what he had been before Cory—a damned fool wearing colors and politics he hadn’t then known the meaning of—

A stupid kid, skuzzing around the station, no aims, nothing but mad and trouble on his mind—screw the system, make trouble, get high on the outside chance of getting caught—

He’d been so smart then, he’d known everything, known so much he’d gotten himself arrested, tracked into the System as a juvie Out of Parental Control—himself and his mother tagged for deportation to the well, til his mother paid everything she’d saved to get them both bailed out.

(God, Paul, you’ve been nothing but a disaster to me, you’ve done nothing but cost me from the time I knew I was carrying you—)

They’d put him in a youth program, special studies, writing letters to kids on Mars—

My name is Cory. I live at Mars Base…

“Hear me, jeune rab? Do you read?”

He said, “Yeah. I hear you.”

“Good,” Meg said, patted his face and looked away, at someone else. “Kid’s gone out. Beer’s not a good idea.”

Someone else came up close beside him. He could hear the footsteps. “Not doing real well, is he?”

He didn’t know that voice.

“Kid’s a little buzzed.” That was Bird. Something hit his face. Jolted him.

“Dek-me-lad, pay attention. This here’s Mike Arezzo, owns The Hole.—Kid’s had a bad break. Just out of hospital.”

“This is the guy, huh?”

He could see this Mike when Mike moved back past Meg’s shoulder. But he couldn’t recognize him. He was only sure of Bird.

Then there was another voice he knew. “What in hell’s going on here?”

His heart turned over. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t think. Ben was on him, saying, “Call the cops, get this guy out of here…” and Bird said, “Calm down, Ben, just calm down.”

Ben was going to kill him.. He still couldn’t move.

Another voice said, clear and female, “Dekker, huh?”

Dark-skinned face. Hand holding his jaw, turning his head, making him look her in the eyes.

“Skuzzed out,” the dark woman said. She had a thousand braids, clipped with metal. She was right. He was entirely skuzzed out. He said, dim last try at sanity,

“Trank. Hospital. Beer.”

She said: “Fool.”

Jack Malinski had grabbed Ben’s arm, him and Sal out shopping the ’deck, just walking home; Malinski had said, “Ben, some guy just pasted your partner down at The Hole, talking wild about that ship you got—”

He’d run. He’d outright run, getting here, Sal racing along with him—gotten here out of breath. He’d thought it was some guy mad about the lease-list. But they got to the door of The Hole and it was Dekker, no question—Dekker, sitting in a chair at their regular table, and Bird getting up to grab his arm and pull him aside before he hit the bastard. “I got to talk to you,” Bird said, and when he said it that way, Ben had this sinking feeling he knew exactly what Bird was going to say in private, Bird with his damned stupid guilt about that ship.

Bird said, “Dekker’s a little upset. They turned him out of the hospital.”

“Fine, let’s call the cops.”

“He’s all right. The guy’s just at the end of his tether.”

“Tether’s
snapped
, Bird, for God’s sake, a long time ago, nothing we can do—nothing we’re
qualified
to do.”

“Give him a chance, Ben. Guy’s just mad. Mad and upset.”

“Homicidal is what he is!”

“No. No. He’s not. Come on, Ben.”

“Come on, hell! Your mouth’s a mess.”

Bird blotted his lip with the back of his hand, looked for traces. “Can’t say I blame him. Guy’s lost his partner, lost his ship, lost his license—

“It’s not our fault!”

“Ben, I got to look at myself in mirrors. You understand? It’s not our fault, but it’s not like we didn’t get something from him, either.”

“That’s life!”

“Ben…” Bird looked utterly exasperated with him, with
him
, as if it was his fault, Bird just closed off from him again, he had no idea why, and it upset him. He knew he wasn’t likable: there weren’t a lot of people who had ever liked him—while other people got what they wanted just by the way they looked. Dekker was one of those people, the sort that scared him when they got anywhere near somebody he liked—dammit, he had everything he owned and everything he wanted tied up in Bird. And in Sal. And he was willing to fight for it, if he could figure out how to do that.

Go along with it? Or pull strings in Admin, use whatever points he had to get the guy back in hospital—

Bird had his shoulder to him, looking mad, watching the table where Meg and Sal were both making over Pretty-boy. You could figure. Women would—though he’d remotely hoped Sal had better sense. He gritted his teeth and said, “Bird, what do you want to do?”

“Just—” Bird was still upset. But Bird did look at him. “We got a chance to help the guy. Doesn’t cost us much—give him a chance to get his bearings and get his records in shape. You can pull those strings. You know how.”

It hit too close to what he was already thinking—in a completely opposite direction. “Look at him!” he cried. “The guy’s gone! He’s off the scope! You’re thinking about financing
him
? My God, Bird!”

“Not finance. Just get him introduced around, get him a start, maybe get him partnered up with somebody decent…”

“We don’t know what happened to the last one! Nobody damn well knows, Bird!”

Bird caught his arm and leaned close, saying, half under his breath: “Cut it. We know it wasn’t his fault—”

He said, under his: “We know what he said. But he hasn’t made a whole lot of sense. That’s the trouble, isn’t it?”

“For God’s sake, Ben, give the kid a chance—you said yourself, if we got the finance, give the guy a stake—”

“I don’t know why you want to hand this guy the keys to everything we own and say help yourself! What about me? What about the guy that’s tossed all his funds into this well, huh? This guy could be a slash-killer for all we know, and you’re wanting to use our credit on him?”

“Shut up, Ben.”

He shut up. Bird turned him loose and went over to talk to Mike at the bar. Mike stood there scowling. Dekker was still sitting there with his mind bent, staring off into deep space.

Meg was in the next chair talking to him.
Sal
was leaning over him, showing cleavage. He walked over to Dekker, laid a hand on his shoulder, ready to jump if Dekker wanted to throw a punch. He squeezed Dekker’s shoulder, said, casually,

“Hello there, Dek. Remember me? Ben Pollard. How are you doing?”

He flinched, and he
could
move: he turned his head very slowly to look up at Ben, remembering they were not in the ship, they were in a bar in a sleepery on R2, and he’d just punched Bird. He figured Ben wanted to punch him, but Ben wasn’t doing it because this was a public place.

He said, “Hello, Ben.” He could almost come out of the haze. Ben was far clearer to him than the women had been. He was actually glad when Ben moved a chair and sat down, leaning into his face, holding his arm.

Ben said, “Well, how’ve you been, Dekker?”

“Not good,” he said; and, fighting to get back from where he was, he tried desperately to be civil so long as Ben was being: maybe he
had
been crazy. Maybe Ben was honestly trying to start things over. “You?”

“We’re fine. We’re real fine. Sorry about the ship.” He figured Ben was trying to make a point. He wasn’t going to accept it. But numbness gave him a self-control he wouldn’t have had otherwise. “Yeah, well,” he said.

Ben squeezed his arm. “A little zee’d, are we?”

“They gave me something.” Dekker held up white plastic sacks. Ben took them from him. Prescription bottle showed through the plastic. “I’m supposed to take those.”

“Not all at once,” Meg muttered. “He’s had enough damn pills and excessively too much beer. Man needs to get up and walk, is what he needs.”

He thought, All right, let’s keep people happy, give this guy a chance to show out crazy as he is—the poor little pet.

So he stood up and pulled at Dekker. “Come on, Dekker, on your feet. Walk the happystuff off.”

Dekker didn’t argue. He stood up. Ben got an arm around him before the knees went.

“The Pacific called,” Bird came over to say. “Seems he left his card there.

They’re holding it.”

“Guy’s got a card.” Ben felt a little better then, hoping there was finance on it.

“Has he got a room there?”

“No, I worked something out with Mike.”

Ben stopped, with his arms around Dekker.

He thought:
Shit
!

«
^
»

DEKKER waked, eyes open on dark,
g
holding him steady. But it wasn’t the hospital, it didn’t smell like the hospital. It didn’t sound like the hospital. It sounded like helldeck, before they’d left. His heart beat faster and faster, everything out of control. Nothing might be real. Nothing he remembered might be real.

“
Cory
?” he yelled. “Cory?” And waited for her to answer somewhere out of the dark, “Yeah? What’s the matter?”

But there was no sound, except some stirring beyond the wall next to his bed.

He lay still then, one hand on the covers across his chest. He could feel the fabric.

He wasn’t in a stimsuit. He wasn’t wearing anything except the sheets and a blanket.

He lay there trying to pick up the pieces, and there were so many of them. Rl. Sol.

Mars. The wreck. The hospital. The Hole. His whole life was in pieces and he didn’t know which one to pick up first. They had no order, no structure. He could be anywhere. Everything was still to happen, or had. He didn’t know.

A door opened somewhere. Someone came down the hall. Then his opened, the ominous click of a key, and light showed two silhouettes before the overhead light flared and blinded him.

Bird’s voice said, “You all right, son?”

“Yeah.” His heart was still doing double-time. He put his arm up to shade his eyes. Time rolled forward and back and forward again. He began to figure out for certain it was a sleepery, and he remembered being in the bar with Bird and Ben. It was Bird and the red-haired woman in the doorway, Bird in a towel, the woman—Meg—in a sheet. Ben showed up behind them in the doorway, likewise in a sheet, looking mad. Justifiably, he told himself, and said, “I’m sorry.”

“Clearer-headed?” Bird asked.

“Yeah.” Things are still going around. He recalled walking up and down the hall behind the bar, up and down with Ben and Meg and a black woman, remembered eating part of a sandwich because Ben threatened to hit him if he didn’t stay awake—but he didn’t remember going to bed at all, or how he’d gotten out of his clothes. He had hit Bird in the mouth. Bruised knuckles reminded him of that.

“Sorry. I’m all right. Just didn’t know where I was for a second.”

“Doing a little better,” Bird said.

“Yeah.” He hitched himself up on his elbows, still squinting against the overhead light. “I’m all right.” He was embarrassed. And scared. The doctors said he had lapses. He didn’t know how large this one might have been or how many days he had been here since he last remembered. “Thanks.”

Bird walked all the way in. “You’re sounding better.”

“Feeling better. Honestly. I’m sorry about the fuss.”

Ben edged in behind Bird, scowling at him. “Beer and pills’ll do that, you know.”

“Yeah,” he said. He earnestly didn’t want to fight with Ben. His head was starting to ache. “Thanks for the rescue.”

“Good God,” Ben said. “Sorry and Thank you all in one hour. Must be off his head.”

“I’ve got it coming,” he said. “I know.” He slipped back against the pillow, wanting time to remember where he was. “Leave the light on, would you?”

Ben said, “Hell, if it keeps him quiet—”

They left then, except Bird. Bird walked closer, loomed between him and the single ceiling light, a faceless shape.