Rimrunners (37 page)

Different Fitch than she'd ever heard… tired man, mostly civil man, with a

muscle tic in his right arm and skin cold as a corpse right now.

Hell of a pair they made, Fitch complaining, finally, hoarsely, "What the fuck

you doing, Yeager?" when she was shaking so bad she couldn't get the screwdriver

seated. "Sorry, sir," she said. She was shaking, he was shivering, the thing

kept slipping, Fitch being turned at a godawful angle at the time, while she was

trying to get the main body joints to max-set.

Somehow, she was mostly on auto by then, she got the plastron put together, got

the right sleeve and gauntlet on, and she bit her lip and did little screws

until Fitch himself made a com-call to Goddard for hot coca and sandwiches.

Breakfast or supper, she didn't even remember. Mike Parker brought it up, didn't

say anything. She remembered dimly that Parker and NG were down there committing

an act of mutiny, that all Fitch had to do was discover that somebody'd screwed

with the lock downside…

Five quick guesses who'd go up on charges.

She didn't have any appetite left. She just chewed and swallowed big lumps,

washed them down with coca and wished it was beer.

Wished it was a good stiff drink of the vodka down in their makeshift quarters,

most of all. But if alcohol hit her system right now she'd just be gone, out,

zee'd in ten seconds.

Something came in that Fitch didn't like. She watched him listening to Goddard

or whoever-it-was, frowning, shaking his head a little.

"I got that," he said to Goddard, which was as much as he had ever said.

"What's going on, sir?" she finally asked, just to have tried.

Fitch gave her a cold look, said, finally, "Just an on-going problem.—Let's get

the rest of it. Promise you, if this thing runs, you get a sleep break."

If this thing doesn't run, she thought, thinking about pumps and servos blowing,

filters going, all over the rig, I'd rather shoot myself.

"Let's get it then," she said, and picked up the right sleeve, to mate it up.

All those little joints, all those little screws, right down the elbow and wrist

and finger-joints.

She was half-blind when she finished. She really thought about powering Fitch on

without a warning, because Fitch was shaky-wobbly himself, and she had this

vision what Fitch could do when the wobbles hit the body sensors.

But she didn't—didn't want to start a war where one wasn't, right now, didn't

want to take a halfway civil Fitch and make a fool out of him.

"Tell you, sir," she said, in the croak of a voice she had, "you been standing

long enough, if we got time, you better get some rest. If you power on when you

got the shakes it'll throw you, don't want it to pitch you on your ass."

"Where's the switch?"

She showed him. He threw it, threw it back off damn quick, because it rattled.

"It runs," she said. "Wobbles is you." And being diplomatic, as Teo would say:

"Most take a fall, straight off. Rather you didn't, sir. Better you get some

sleep."

"When it runs," Fitch said. "Runs means when it works, Yeager. Works means when

it works for me, so you show me the switches, you show me the technicalities,

you show me the systems, so we both know it works, then we'll both talk about

getting some sleep. Hear me?"

Damn you, I do, sir. "Yessir. I hear you."

First thing you did, if you were instructing somebody, you put your own rig on.

Fitch objected. "No need," he said; and she said, "There is, sir. Or I can call

out the instructions from outside this locker till you got that rig under

control. Sir."

Do him credit, Fitch did get the idea what she was talking about. And Fitch

listened when she said Relax, and stood there watching while she stripped down

and got into her own rig the right way.

She rattled and chattered too, when she powered on. She damped it down. "That's

your adjustment, number three switch, sensitivity on the pickups. If you get the

chatters you just screw it tighter till it stops. If you rattle loud enough you

can draw fire."

Fitch didn't think that was funny.

"You got gyros that keep your balance," she said, no missed beat. Fitch was a

helmeted, faceless form, bracketed in green-glowing readouts from her faceplate

display, 360° vision compressed and projected in a green shadow band on the top

and bottom of her faceplate—Fitch's slight movement getting his hand and

alternately his body bracketed in a stutter of yellow, his sounds amped up with

a decibel readout ticking and flashing in her lower left. She took his hand and

guided it to the first of the controls under the collar.

"You can see your hand, bottom 360 display, you got to get used to the

distortion. This is lock, this is gyros, this is free-movement, three position

switch, first over, see the blinking display, right corner of your screen, tells

you that's switch two, position B, that's stabilizing on, A is lock, C is free.

Got that?"

"A is lock, B is gyros, C is free."

"Rig tends to feel like it's out of balance. Different center of gravity, but

don't forget those big boots under you. Put it on B, the gyros keep your balance

and you got to really fight it to kneel or fall down. I'd advise you keep it on

B a while. Switch three's your sensitivity. I'd put it 85%. It's going to wear

on you some, but better that than falling down. I keep mine at 150, amp to the

rig's max at 300, but I been using these things twenty years. You don't need

switch four, we got no base station, so that's no good.—Feel steadier at 85?"

"Cumbersome," Fitch said. "Stiff."

"You can designate sections for different amps, but it's overall sloppy. Put

three up to 90, just up a point or two as you feel like it, but be careful when

you start passing the hundred mark. Higher you set that amp-switch, that's the

way the rig reads all your muscle twitches. At a hundred it'll move that much

faster, hit that much harder, grip that much tighter. It's incremental. At 150,

a guy can break a gunstock with a squeeze, and most guys never set the total rig

over 250. You move gentle, handle everything like it was blown glass, don't

jerk. Everything you do is amplified. Mass is more. When you get moving, you got

to allow more to stop. Running stride's a float, light as you can, max-set

walk's a lot the same. You got to be light on your feet. If you fall, don't

fight it, don't jerk, fall won't hurt you, just take it and get back up.

—Going to take the gyros off, now. Relax. Just stand. Lift the arm. Gently."

"Damn!" Fitch said, when the rig hummed and flexed. A little jerk. Her arm and

his crashed together and he broke a locker handle stumbling backward and

forward.

She caught him, steadied him. She could hear the breathing, heavy gasps over the

helmet-com.

Man not used to not being in control.

Man exhausted, mad as hell, and maybe a little scared.

He jerked, a rattle and stutter all up and down the joints, he lurched free and

swung the arm further than he wanted, but he caught himself.

"That's pretty good," she said. "If you swing like that, you got to brace back

harder than you would. Mass again. —Who're we supposed to use these on, you mind

to say, sir?"

He didn't say anything for a minute. But she could hear the breathing.

"Suppose you just do your job," Fitch said, "explain the rest of these switches

and stick to business."

"I got no problem with that, sir, except we got hundreds of switches, I take it

our time is limited, and if I knew precisely what we got to deal with, I could

figure out what functions you better know. Sir."

Silence. Then: "Suppose you don't be a smartass, Yeager, and you got a notion to

stay alive. Let's just learn to move this thing."

"Yessir," she said hoarsely, with the wobbles in her joints and the readouts

blurring and a real tight grip on her temper. "You got a good initial balance on

your switches. Let's try walking."

He managed it fine at 95 and a hundred, upped it to 110 and did tolerably

well—managed to stand the first time at 110 with the gyros when she hit him in

the gut; didn't fare so well on the second try without—hit the lockers, but he

didn't hit her hands hard when he bounced forward on the recovery.

"You got a real aptitude, sir." She adjusted her amp, shoved him at 130. He hit

the lockers, bounced forward, she bounced him back, he got better at staying on

his feet.

"You want to find out about the targeting, sir? Question of weapons?"

She kept after him, put her suit on lock finally and just rested, drilled him on

the basics, droned through the standard new-skut lecture, sometimes with her

eyes closed, but he couldn't know that.

"You got four settings, one's for right-handers, one's for left, some don't

care, number one's autofire, skip that, we ain't got it, set it to 2, see the

yellow bracket pop up on your foot there, sir, that's a fiber-optics in your

right glove, gives you a fair idea what you got your gun generally pointed at.

You can adjust the focus, rig understands spoken commands, you say Program On,

Target, Manual, you say Cancel to stop it—" Flutter of grid and markers across

her own rig's faceplate, that stopped with Cancel. "You can tell it left/right,

up/ down, tell it Set when you're happy—"

"Got it," Fitch said. Fitch wasn't sounding real focused himself.

"Think we got the basics," she said. She hoped. "Give you the verbals next try

if I got time. Toggles are more reliable, some voices the pickup just doesn't

get a hundred percent, don't know why somebody can't make a programmable that

can tell sit from shit.—You want to get out of that thing, now, sir?" She didn't

wait for a confirmation, she didn't want to hear no, she just came up and guided

his hand to the master release. "There's your tension-straps. Left is on, right

is off, you let 'em up and you unlatch, ever'thing just exactly like a

hard-suit, once she's built and mated, same direction on the latches—sleeves

first, top, boots and breeches—hold on, there, let me get the hanging-hooks,

sir."

She unscrewed the sleeve-rings, helped him unmate the right one, he got the

left, got his own top-section off, helmet and all, once she had it hooked, and

he ducked out of it, sweat and grease to the waist, while she got her own joints

unscrewed and unmated, and her own hooks on the shoulder-rings.

Fitch looked like he was going to fall on his face, white and sweating and

wobbly as he wiped off and started to get his clothes on.

No sympathy, you sum-bitch. Her back reminded her of old debts, and oh, God, she

wanted a beer.

Fitch was mopping his face, standing there with his clothes half together while

she was putting hers on. "All right, Yeager, you're off. You got maybe six

hours."

She blinked, too stupid to find the catch in that.

"Get!" he said.

She zipped up. "Can I draw a beer, sir?"

"Screw any skuz you want, drink, get some sleep, any way you can, long as you

can get your ass up here cold sober when I want you. Hear me?"

"Yessir! Thank you, sir."

"Get!"

She shoved her feet into her boots, wobbled her way out onto the bridge where

Goddard was still on watch, got into the lift, propped herself against the wall

and leaned there with her head pounding and her knees trying to melt under her.

She didn't even go to the locker where their quarters was set up, she went

staggering on up the curve, into Engineering, up to where NG was working, and

startled hell out of him.

"Got a six-hour," she said. "We got Fitch's sweet goodnight. How you doing?"

CHAPTER 27

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She wasn't navigating well, was just about fit to lie there in the seat at

number three boards, breaking a half-dozen regs—Bernie'd die, she thought,

sipping a cold beer NG had gotten her out of Services, beer and not the vodka,

because beer seemed more like food and there was more of it. Her hands would

hurt if she weren't halfway numb, her back did hurt, she was afraid to take one

of Fletcher's pills, as tired as she was, and she had the feeling a lot of

things were going to hurt, if she sat still any time at all.

But NG was there. That was what she wanted most. NG was still speaking to her,

he was standing there against the counter-edge with this desperate look, like

he'd earnestly like things to make sense more than they did.

There was that lock downside, that was an option, one he'd risked his neck

on.—"We've got a way out," he'd whispered to her, before he went down to

Services for the beer. "It'll work."

And she'd said, not sure she wasn't wrong: "Not yet."

"When? When you're stuck topside?"

"Don't do it," she'd said. "Don't do it. It's not that simple. Something's wrong

out there. Something is wrong, I got it listening to com up there."

NG didn't look happy. But he listened to her. He leaned against the counter now

and said, "Better?"

"Lot," she said, and he just stood there. Waiting.

Because she said so.

Man, you never asked, did you, what ship I come from, what I've done, where I

been? You never said about yourself, either.