Heavy Time (31 page)

At least he wasn’t like the greasy sumbitch who’d threatened not to let her back in the ship unless she did him special favors. Numbers men were always at a disadvantage, always got the problems until you were as good as Ben, that nobody wanted to lose. Meg had never been through that particular trouble—a numbers man didn’t dare antagonize his pilot, if he had any sense; and he didn’t send his pilot walkabout either—but a numbers man definitely could get out with some severely strange people in this business; and if you had some few partners you were sure of, you didn’t let them go—didn’t try to run their lives for them, not if you wanted all your fingers back, but hell if you wouldn’t go to any length to hold on to them, to keep things the way they were.

Kill somebody? If it came to it, if you ever would—then you would. And trying to keep two tallish young guys from killing each other out there…

“What are we going to do, Kady?”

Meg pursed her lips. “Just what we’re doing. Let Bird handle it.”

Someone brushed by their table. Touched her shoulder. “Aboujib?”

God. A walk-up? Meg’s frown was instant. Sal looked around and up an expensive jacket at a Shepherd—one of Sunderland’s crew, friend of Mitch’s—she didn’t know the name. He said, very quickly, slipping something into her pocket,

“That question you left?”

“Yeah,” she said—different problem.
Same
problem. She held her breath. Felt something flat and round and plastic in her pocket, her heart going doubletime.

“This is Kady?”

“Yeah,” she said. “You can say.”

“Word is, problem’s gone major. You’re tagged with it. Go with it the way you said. Time’s welcome. But when you get your launch date… you let us know. Very seriously.”

The guy walked off then.

God.

“What the hell?” Meg asked.

“I dunno,” she said, thinking about a shadowy ’driver sitting out there spitting chunks at the Well. And MamBitch, who prepared the charts
and
their courses, and shoved them up to
v
and braked them. “I dunno.” Her stomach felt, of a sudden, as if she’d swallowed something very cold.

“Is that what I think I heard?” Meg asked. “They think we could be in some kind of danger?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, God, great!”

“Let’s not panic.”

“Of course let’s not panic. I don’t effin’ like the stakes all of a sudden.”

She leaned forward on the table, pitched her voice as low as would still carry.

“Meg. They’re not going to let us run into trouble.”

“Yeah,” Meg whispered back. “Let’s not hear ‘run into.’ I don’t like the words I’m hearing. I don’t like this ‘Go with it.’ Maybe I want a little more information than we’re getting into.”

“They’re saying we’re doing the right thing—”

“Yeah, doing the right thing. We can be fuckin’ martyrs out there, is that what they want?”

She reached across the table and grabbed Meg’s hand, scared Meg would bolt on her. “We got a real chance here—”

“What real chance? Chance your high and mighty friends are going to hold us a nice funeral? Chance we can collect the karma and they stay clean?”

“Meg, I can get you
in
.”

“Screw that.” Meg jerked her hand back. “I don’t take their charity.”

“Meg. For God’s sake don’t blow it.”

Meg set her jaw. Took several slow breaths, the way she would when she was mad. “What’s their guarantee? Shit, we could be bugged here—”

Sal took the flat plastic out of her coat pocket, which had a little green light showing. Palmed it, fast.

“God,” Meg groaned.

“They’re ahead of the game. They’re not going to let us walk into it.”

“Oh, you’ve got a lot of faith in them. That’s contraband, dammit!”

“Meg, they’re not fools.”

“They must think we are.”

“We made them an offer, Meg, they’re
saying
they’re agreeing. They’re warning us.”

“Yeah,‘tagged with him.’ I like that. I really like that.”

“Meg.” She couldn’t lay it out better than Meg already knew it. Meg looked like murder.

But Meg said finally: “So we’re tagged with him.—Are we talking about giving up that lease?”

The answer was yes. Meg knew it. Meg knew it upside and down.

“Shit,” Meg said.

“We’ve got what they want. They
want
him. They paid their debts. That’s what they’re saying. They’re asking us take a risk, and we’re in, Meg, they’re making us an offer. If we screw ’em on this—or if we back out now—”

She was down to begging. There were pulls in too many directions if Meg skitted out on this one. God, everything she wanted,
everything
. “A Shepherd berth, Meg.

One last run. We get Dek out in the big quiet for a few months and that’s it. Ben and Bird set up with those ships. Karma paid. We’re getting
out
of here, Meg. A chance at a
real
ship. Both of us.”

That
scored with Meg. Only thing that could. Meg’s face got madder. Finally Meg said: “Hell if. Wake up, Aboujib.”

“Hell if not. This is
big
, Meg, dammit, this is
it
.”

Meg shook her head. But it meant yes. All right. We’re going to be fools.

“You better be right, Aboujib.—And that jeune fils damn well better get his bearings. Fast. If they’re going to make a case on him—he sincerely better not be crazy.”

«
^
»

SPENDING his sleeptime with Bird wasn’t exactly what Ben had planned.

Breakfast with Dekker wasn’t his idea of a good time either, but Bird insisted.

So here they were, himself and Bird at the table and Dekker in line—Meg and Sal were sleep-ins: they’d gotten in
late
last shift, up to what Ben didn’t try to imagine.

Dekker hadn’t seemed enthusiastic about their company from his side either: Dekker had answered his door, said Yeah, he’d be there, and arrived late—clipped up the sides and all.

“All he needs is a couple of earrings,” Ben muttered.

“Be nice,” Bird chided him, over the sausage and unidentifiable eggs.

Ben looked at him, lifted a chilled shoulder. “Hey, did I do anything?” But he reminded himself he had better bite his tongue and keep criticisms of Bird’s precious pretty-boy to himself, the way he’d made up his mind yesterday that since the insanity had gotten to Meg and Sal he had as well go along with it.

Bird shot him a look that said he didn’t trust him not to knife Dekker in his bed.

That was the level things had gotten to. That was the primary reason he figured he had better go along with it.

Until Dekker slipped up. Then he was even going to be charitable about “I told you so,” he sincerely was—so long as Bird saw it clear when it happened and came to his senses.

So Dekker walked up with his cup of coffee and his eggs, not quite looking at either of them, kicked back a chair and sat down.

“I have to apologize,” Dekker said first off, still without looking at them.

Ben manfully kept his mouth shut.

“I sort of wandered off yesterday,” Dekker said.

Bird shrugged, but Dekker wasn’t going to see that gesture, looking at his plate like the zee-out he was. Bird said, “Pills will do that.”

“I’m going off them,” Dekker said. His hand with the fork was shaking.

Badly.—A real mess, Ben thought. Wonderful. We’re supposed to go out with this guy. This is going to be at the controls out there.

Dekker did look up then, shadow-eyed as if he hadn’t slept much. “I cut you off yesterday. If the offer’s still open—I’d like to talk about it.”

“Offer’s open,” Bird said. Ben thought: Hell.

Dekker didn’t say anything for a moment, just stirred his eggs around on his plate.

Then a second look at Bird. “So I want my license back. What’s the time worth?”

“Depends on your work,” Bird said.

Ben did a fast calc, what Dekker had, what gave them a solid return on putting up with him. “10 k flat. With a guarantee you
get
the license.”

Dekker looked bewildered—maybe a little overcome at the price and
not
understanding the quality of what he’d just thrown in.
He
wasn’t exactly sure why he’d thrown it in—except he’d had this nanosecond of thinking he’d asked high and Bird was already on his tail. So it just fell out of his mouth: There you are, fancy-boy,
I
can fix it,
I
can, so you damned sure better mind your manners with me.

Bird didn’t say anything, Dekker didn’t, so Ben added, with a certain satisfaction,

“Fair, isn’t it? Guaranteed, class 1.”

Bird looked a little worried. But he still didn’t say anything.

“Whose guarantee?” Dekker asked.

Ben gave him a cold stare. “Mine. On the other hand, if you ask anybody the time, Dekker, if you pull
any
shit on us out there, you’ll take a walk bare-assed.”

“Ben,” Bird said.

“I’m serious,” he said, and Dekker looked worried.

“Ben’s all right,” Bird said. “He really is.”

Dekker said, finally, “I haven’t got any other offers.”

“Small wonder,” Ben said, and realized that he’d broken his resolution a tick before Bird glared at him.

Dekker glared at him too. Dekker said, “I’ll pull my weight.”

Ben said, “Damn right you will. You’ll do whatever you’re told to do. And you’ll put up with whatever shit you’re handed, whatever you think of it—with no gripes.”

Bird said, “Ben,—”

Dekker glumly reached across the table. It took a moment before Ben realized he wanted his hand, that Dekker was truly calling his bluff and taking the deal.

Damn, Ben thought. He had as soon stick his hand in a grinder, but things with Bird were precarious. So he made a grimace of a smile, gave Dekker his hand and they made a limp, cheerless handshake across the plates.

No one looked convinced, not Dekker, not Bird.
He
certainly wasn’t. But he said,

“All right, if we’re going to do this, let’s get that re-cert application in right now. I take it you haven’t done that.”

“No craters,” Meg said as they walked out into the bar. They’d come in late last shift, they’d slept late, gotten up and come out on the absolute tail end of breakfast.

No Dekker, no Bird, no Ben. Meg shoved her hands into her pockets and looked at Mike over at the bar. Sal looked too, with a lift of the eyebrows.

“They kill each other?” she wondered.

Mike said, dishing up the last of the rubbery eggs, “Left like old friends, all three.

Said tell you they were going up to the dock. They’re leaving you a pile of scrub-up and sanding in the shop.”

“Fun,” Sal sourly.

“Ben with Dekker?” Meg said, with a gathering worry. “Not damn likely. We got a problem here.”

Sal poured her own coffee and took the plate Mike handed her. “Kady, I think we got to use strategy.”

“What strategy? I vote we shoot Ben.”

“Na, na, he’s playing along with Bird.” Sal took the plate and the coffee back to the table and hooked a chair out, as Meg did the same. “We got, what, three weeks if we push it. If Dek’s able to pitch in. The guys are going to be trouble. Trez macho.”

“Trez pain in the ass. If
Bird
takes a position you need a pry-bar.”

“We can’t have Ben and Dekker in the same ship. That’s prime.”

“So Bird takes Dekker—and
we
take Ben.” That, come to think of it, wasn’t at all a bad idea. They’d been after Ben’s numbers for two years.
That
was solid and Shepherd promises were come-ons and maybes.

Besides which, if there was anybody who could keep Dekker in line—

Sal ducked her head, checked in her pocket a beat—God,
smooth
move, there, Meg thought, with a knot in her stomach; and Sal looked up with the devil’s own ideas in her eyes. “
I’ll
tell you what we do, Kady, we apply to go out tandem.
All
of us. I’ll tell you why.” A jab of Sal’s finger on the tabletop. “Because Bird doesn’t want Dekker sliced and stacked. Because Bird’s had one trip with Ben and Dekker already and if we give him the out to break that up—we ask for even split on the board time, just to make him believe it, we set it up with the Bitch, and we get Ben and his numbers
and
access to Dekker.”

“Hell, we have got a ship coming out of refit. Shakedown run.”

“That’s the grounds. Only reason they’ll do it.”

“A skosh noisy. Do we need MamBitch’s special attention on us? I
don’t
think a special app is a good idea.”

“Kady, we
got
the Bitch’s attention. I’ll ask my friends, but I don’t know what worse we can do. And
if
they say do it, and if She’ll let us—hell, if we can get out there tandem, we can just do our job, just ride it out while the shit flies, as may, and figure things are getting taken care of—they’re
not
going to arrange anything on the way out, not unless they’re pushed, and if the Association brings it up as an issue, damn
sure
the Bitch isn’t going to run us into a rock on the way back. There’s coincidences and there’s coincidences. They’re just a little from having the EC

down their throats.”

You had to wonder whether more understandings might have passed in that little encounter at Scorpio’s than Sal had even yet admitted: and MamBitch beaming them up to
v
on a heading MamBitch picked—on charts that might have a little technical drop-out right in their path—hadn’t helped her sleep at all. MamBitch was finally admitting in the news how she might go grievance procedures with the Shepherds to settle the outstanding complaints and patch up the sore spots—MamBitch having this severely important production schedule to meet, because the Fleet High Command was breathing down her neck.

That was the public posture. Behind the doors in management there were careers on the line.

There was the Shepherds’ whole existence on the line.

“I tell you,” she said to Sal over the eggs, “I’d sincerely like to know if you know anything additional—now or in future.”

“If I know you’ll know.” A solemn look. “I swear.”

“Thanks,” she said. She did try to believe it.