Heavy Time (36 page)

Sweating, heart thumping, Payne keyed to Salvatore: Whereabouts of Paul Dekker. Priority One.

«
^
»

DEKKER kept his jaw clamped on questions Meg clearly wasn’t going to answer—“I don’t
know
what the situation is right now,” was the last information thing she’d yet said, when she’d insisted on stopping on 4-deck and walking breakneck to a lift that only took cards like the one she was using—which wasn’t hers. Gold. The only card like that he’d ever seen was Shepherd Access.

He’d never seen this end of helldeck, either—where the lift let out. She led the way across the ’deck immediately to a door next to a fancy restaurant. A card-sized gold plaque was the only sign of business: the Shepherd emblem, Jupiter and the recovery track, right above the card-lock.

“What is this?” he asked.

Meg put the card in, shoved the door as the electronic lock clicked.

He ducked inside after her, into a carpeted reception room where he knew they didn’t belong—by no right ought they to be here, except that card.

A blond man looked up from the reception desk.

Meg said, “This is Dek; Dek, Mitch.—Have we heard anything from the rest of us?”

“Neg,” Mitch said, before Dekker could say anything, and pointed to the first door down the hall. “Wait in there. Both of you.”

“I’ve got friends out there,” Meg objected, “looking for him.”

“We’re
doing
something about it, Kady. We’ll do it faster if you take care of him.”

“Maybe you’d better tell me what’s going on,” Dekker said, but Meg grabbed him by the arm, said, “Dek, come on,” and steered him down the hall.

“Dammit, Meg,—”

“Shit, I don’t know, I don’t know, come on, just awhile—sonuvabitch! I’m up to here with sons of bitches…” Meg took him back into an elegant deserted bar, left him standing while she turned on the lights and set up on her own, poured two fast, shaky drinks, one whiskey, one rum.

He came and leaned his elbows on the bar, said carefully: “We’re not getting out of here tomorrow, are we?”

She took a sip of the whiskey and shoved the rum at him. “Drink up.”

“Meg. What’s happened? What are we doing here?”

She leaned on the bar, nudged his hand with her glass. “You seriously better have a little of that, jeune rab.—They found your partner.”

That
was it.—But the Shepherd Access, Meg’s breathless rush—coming here…

He stood bewildered. Meg came around the end of the bar and snagged him by the sleeve, pulled him to a table and set him down opposite her.

She said, “Dek, they found her at the Well. That sonuvabitch put her in a bucket and sent her a long tour of Jupiter. A Shepherd picked her up on the recovery path.”

Meg sneaked up all gentle. Then she shot for the gut. His mind went blank and black—

That huge dark machine…

“Why in hell—” Breath dammed up in his throat. He couldn’t get it out. He reached for the glass, slopped it left and right getting a drink.

Meg reached across the table, reached for his free hand as he set the glass down, squeezed his fingers til they hurt.

“Cher. Death is. Pain’s life. And there’s, above all, sons of bitches. Get your breath. You’re not the only one who knows now. You’re not alone out there. It’s the independents… the freerunners… the Shepherds they were aiming at. The old, old business.”

“But what in hell do they think they’re doing?” His voice came out higher than he intended, hardly recognizable. “What kind of a game is this? How could they ever think they could get away with it?”

“There’s crazy people. They shot us down at the company doors. News cameras everywhere. Everybody in the world saw it. How’d they get away with that, can you tell me, jeune rab? —Have your rum. The word’s out on the Shepherds’ com.

They’ll be hearing it at Sol about now. The company won’t want you to talk, you understand—seriously won’t want you to talk to anybody. That’s what’s going on.

But if MamBitch pushes now, the Shepherds are going to shut MamBitch down. Let the corp-rats fly the ships with their cut-rate crews. Let the company execs fly the Well.”

“I want that guy, Meg.”

“Close as we can come. You got the guys that launched him.
Somebody’s
job’s gone. Best you can do with these sumbitches.”

He’s reported in the core
, the last report from Salvatore’s office had said. They were still searching; and Payne, with Towney’s office requesting the Dekker file, searched screen after screen of records generated by Salvatore’s investigation.

Record score on re-certification. Cleared to retrain, shipping with the two miners who’d picked him up, plus a Kady and Aboujib, both female—

Ships both due to launch on the 18th, the sleepery owner swearing he had no idea in hell where Dekker was—Dekker has missed a supper appointment: his partners had been phoning around trying to find him. Dekker could have come and gone, the owner had no idea, he’d been watching the vid. Everybody in the bar had been watching the vid…

Aboujib and Pollard both had Shepherd parentage. Kady was a cashiered shuttle pilot. Bird had been a suspect in the Nouri affair, close friend of Pratt and Marks—

The file had gone to Towney’s desk.

And the monkey was climbing up PI’s back.

Nobody had told
his
office that Dekker was anything but, at absolute worst, a skimmer who’d gotten caught and bumped. Nobody had told him that a ’driver captain was going to make a gesture like this at the Shepherds.

He keyed up
Industry’s
record. Windowed in the second chart.

No record of asteroid 98879 prior to the incident.
Industry’s
transmission logged the discovery to the company. March 7th.

God.

Dekker had flat spooked out about the launch—that was Ben’s opinion on the matter. Thtey’d tried restaurants, game parlors, tried the bars again in the idea he could be skipping from one to the other, but the cops and the military were getting more and more visible on the’deck.

To
hell
with that guy! Ben thought, trying to look inconspicuous while a group of military police came past the frontage. Inside, the vid was saying something about shifts held over due to “military exercises” and “a test of security procedures…”

A hand landed on his shoulder. His heart nearly stopped. He spun around nose to nose with Bird.

“Don’t
do
that!”

“Now
we
got a problem. We got wall to wall cops at The Hole.”

He felt of his pocket, cold of a sudden. “Card’s with me. We’re all right.”

“All right,’” Bird echoed him. “You got a hell of an idea of ‘all right.’ Have you seen Sal or Meg?”

“Not since an hour ago.”

The PA blared out: “
Shifts will be held another hour. There is a Civil Defense
Command exercise in progress. If you have an assigned CDC post on 3-shift, go to
it immediately. If you have no assigned duty, clear the ’decks, repeat, all off-shift
personnel get off the ’decks and return to quarters
,”

“The hell,” Bird muttered. “I’ve seen
this
before.”

“What are they doing?”

“Cops,” Bird said. “Martial law. Shit with finding the kid. They’re going to shut him up, shut it down—it’s Nouri all over again.” Bird’s hand closed on his arm.

“And
we’re
in it up to our ears, understand me?”

He did understand. He saw company cops moving through the crowds—saw blue-uniformed MP’s too, with heavy sidearms.

Bird said, “This time we put the word out, just find some friends, spill the beans, tell them pass it on.”

“Why risk
our
necks? We got enough troubles.”

“That’s what we said the last time.”

“Bird,—those are guns out there!”

“Do you know the word ‘railroad,’ Ben-me-lad? Pratt and Marks were innocent.

No way those boys were with Nouri’s lot. Good, dumb kids. But now nobody’s sure.—You do what you like.”

“Where are you going?”

“Doing a little discreet talking around in various ears. The company’s not hushing this one up. This time we know numbers. And dates.”

His mind went scattering in panic—the launch tomorrow… but that wasn’t going to happen. The urge to kill Dekker for involving them in this… but Dekker was probably the first one under arrest.

He took a fistful of Bird’s coat, hauled him back. “Bird,—”

“I knew Pratt and Marks were being screwed,” Bird said. “
I
had the evidence, you understand me. It could have tied
me
to Nouri—in certain eyes. Everybody was scared. Everybody was saving his own ass. And everybody lost.—Not this time.”

“Bird, for God’s sake—”

“This time it’s us in the fire-path, you understand me? And we’re not dumb kids.

You’ve got that datacard. Give it to me.”

Ben felt after the flat shape in his inside pocket, desperately trying to think what old classmates he knew that could fix
this
one—but there wasn’t anyone. Not a damn soul who wouldn’t be, the way Bird said, saving his own ass.

“
Give
it to me.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Put it on the bulletin board. And pass the word.”

“Shit!”

Bird leaned close and put a hand on his shoulder. “Find yourself a hole, hear me?

Get down to the club. Don’t know if Sal’s friends’ll let you in, but, hell, you’ve got ties there. Use ’em. It’s the only hole might cover you.”

Bird trying anything under the table—Bird didn’t know shit about the safeguards on the computer systems, Bird didn’t know shit what he was doing, dammit, those charts were their living—

They also were the only evidence that existed about where they’d been and what they’d done, and if the company arrested them and erased it—

“Hell,” he said, “you’ve got that Shepherd card. Thing’s got 1-deck Access.”

“Do what with it? Hell, Ben, that thing’s probably more dangerous—”

“Just leave the computer stuff to me and stay out of it, Bird, you don’t know shit how to get past the lockouts. I can get into all the boards, hell, I can get it into general systems, Bird, I know the modem codes…”

“Where in
hell
did you get those?”

He said, “Just give me the fuckin’ card, Bird, and tell ’em the filename’s
Dekker
.”

“
Mr. Crayton is in conference
,” the secretary said, and Payne shot the memo through in desperation. “Give
that
to him. We’ve got to have a policy decision.

Thirty minutes ago!”

“
I believe that’s the subject of the con
—”

Payne hung up in frustration, and stared at the stalled press release on his screen.

Then he shot it unapproved to News & Entertainment, for release.

The nature of a coded Shepherd transmission has been revealed as a query to
Shepherd senior administration regarding the discovery of human remains in a
Shepherd recovery zone. Company records have tentatively identified the body as
likely that of Corazon Salazar, lost earlier this year in an accident near the R2/R1

boundary. Ms. Salazar, daughter of Alyce Salazar, a MarsCorp board member
and prominent member of the Defense Advisory Council, was two years resident
on Rl. She was apparently struck and killed while EVA when a tank explosion sent
her ship out of control. The ship then traveled helplessly at high velocity into R2

zone. Dr. Ronald Michaels, of the Institute, has offered the theory that the body,
traveling in the firepath of the ’driver ship
Industry,
was struck by one of the loads
and carried along with it at a velocity sufficient to delivery it to the recovery site
.

The Shepherd discovery adds another chapter to the already tragic story of the
ill-fated miner craft
Way Out.
The surviving partner, Mr. Paul Dekker, was
rescued earlier this year by an R2 ship dispatched to his rescue. Mr. Dekker,
surviving isolation, cold and failing lifesupport after an amazing 71 days adrift,
was released from James R. Reynolds Hospital after extensive treatment for
physiological and psychological trauma. A spokesman for the hospital this shift
expressed concern that Mr. Dekker has not responded to urgent attempts to notify
him in advance of public release of this news. Mr. Dekker currently remains
unlocatable on R2. Dr. Emit Visconti, Mr. Dekker’s physician, authorized release
of the news in the fear that Mr. Dekker has heard the report via other sources and
appealed for Mr. Dekker or anyone knowing his whereabouts to call Security or
the information desk at Reynolds Hospital immediately. Mr. Dekker
is
on
medication and may have suffered disorientation or mental confusion due to the
stress of this tragic report, and may be despondent. A spokesman for ASTEX

Administration assures Mr. Dekker that he has been cleared of all fault in the
accident, which occurred as the result of a catastrophic equipment failure, and
urges Mr. Dekker to contact the hospital immediately…

Damn him. Damn Crayton—dumping a case like this on him with no indication at all that it had hidden problems.

Now Crayton couldn’t even clear a press release. He had to put his neck on the line,
try
to keep the lid on—knowing that win or lose, this was something the company would want black-holed. Lost. Forgotten. Along with anybody in any way tainted with it.

The comp took the message. Another one windowed up, for Salvatore:
A Shepherd came and went at the core between 2041 and 2108h. Customs
didn’t see him. They were in the office listening to the outlaw transmission. The
card belonged to a tech named Nate Chaney, who isn’t answering to calls at his
listed numbers
…

No way to get to the rental comp at The Hole—but any phone would do, that had a keypad, and Io’s fancy establishment had that amenity. Neon flashed, dyed the beer green and red while it shook in the glass. Couldn’t hear a core blowout in this place, Ben thought, and it was crawling with low-level corporates—but he was wearing his best ’deck casuals and the corner of the bar afforded a dark area.