“Oh,” Melody said, from somewhere near. “Look, look, they make love.”
“Dammit!” he said, breaking the first ten rules of residency on Downbelow, and never would willingly curse Melody. He broke his hold on Bianca to rip up a stick and fling, and double handfuls of flowers. “Wicked!” he cried, thinking fast, and turning his reaction into a joke.
Melody squatted down, out of range of flower-missiles, and turned solemn, watching with wide downer eyes. “Fetcher no more sad,” Melody said “Good, good you no more sad”
What did you say? What could you say, in front of the girl you hoped to impress, and who knew what an ass you’d just been with downers you were here to protect from human intrusions?
“I love you,” he said to Melody, and fractured the rest of the rulebook, “You my mama, Melody. Patch, you my papa, Love you.”
“Baby grow up”Melody said. “Go walkabout soon, make me new baby.”
God, what did it say about him, that he was so suddenly, so irrationally hurt?
He shifted about on one knee to see what Bianca thought, but you could hardly see a human face through the mask.
As she couldn’t see his. “Melody used to take care of me,” he said to explain things. The truth, but not all of it. To his teachers and the admin people and his psychs and everybody, he was just trouble. They had families and Bianca had Family, and he was always just that boy from the courts.
“Where was this?” Bianca asked, not unreasonably confused.
“A long time back on the station. I got lost, and they sort of—found me. And got me home.” He’d no desire to go into the sordid details. But he couldn’t get a reaction out of her masked face to tell him where he stood in her opinion. He committed himself, totally desperate, a little trusting of the only girl he’d ever really gone around with. “I used to sneak into the tunnels, to be with them. And first thing I wanted when I got down here was to find Melody and Patch.”
“You’re kidding.” she said.
He shook his head, “Absolute truth.”
“Is he making fun?” she asked Melody, breaking the first rule: never question another human’s character.
“He very small, very sad,” Melody said, “Long time he sad. You happy he.”
Sometimes you didn’t know what downers meant when they put words together. He guessed, with Melody, and thought that Melody approved of Bianca.
“Make he walk lot far,” Patch chimed in helpfully,
“This is way too far,” she said, teen slang… which you weren’t supposed to use, either. He guessed Bianca was overwhelmed with it all, and maybe adding it up that she was with a kid who wasn’t quite regulation. Or respectable. Or following the rules. She sat there looking stunned, as far as a body could who was wearing a mask, and he took a wild chance and put an arm around her.
She pushed him back, sort of, and he let go, fast, deciding he’d entirely misread her.
But she patted his arm, then, the way they learned to, when they wanted someone’s serious attention,
“I believe you,” she said, and slipped her hand down and held his fingers, making them tingle, just touching her bare skin.
And by sunset walking home, not so long after, she held his hand again.
“I went through the program over in Blue,” Bianca said, apropos of nothing previous as they walked along the river-edge. “Did you ever go to the games?”
“Sometimes.”
They had the big ball games on Wednesday nights. And the academy in rich Blue Sector played schools like his, over in industrial, insystemer-dock White, where he’d lived with the Wilsons. Sometimes the games ended with extracurricular riot.
“Isn’t it funny, we probably met,” Bianca said.
“I guess we could have.”
She couldn’t imagine, he thought. From moment to moment he was sure she’d turn on him when she got safely back to the domes and tell everything she’d heard. But her fingers squeezed his, bringing him out of his fantasies of dismissal and disgrace. She talked about ball games and school.
He wanted to talk to her about his feelings, At one wild moment he’d like to ask her if she was as uncertain as he was about the line they’d crossed, holding hands, walking holding tight to each other.
But what did he say? He felt as if his nerves and his veins were carrying a load they couldn’t survive.
Maybe normal people felt that way. Maybe they didn’t. He wasn’t ever sure. If Melody didn’t know and peer wisdom didn’t say, he didn’t know who he could ask.
Damn sure not the psychs.
Two legal papers waited Elene Quen’s signature. In the matter pending before the Court of Pell… lay atop: In final settlement of the aforesaid claim against the merchant ship Finity’s End, James Robert Neihart, senior captain, Finity’s End, her crew and company tender 150,000 credits to be held in escrow against all charges whatsoever and of whatever origin, public or private, as of this date pending, said amount to be placed in the Bank of Pell to clear all debts of Fletcher Robert Neihart, a national of Finity’s End.
The last descriptive represented a controversy settled at a fraction of the claim’s 14.5 million value. The 150,000 represented a reasonable valuation of Francesca’s intended stay on Pell, one year, plus her medical bills for a normal birth, excluding interest.
Debt paid. Finity’s End simply sent the agreed amount to the Bank of Pell, and the legal dispute that had troubled all Finity’s wartime dockings, was done with. Further claims and debts of any sort would be judged against that 150,000 fund. It focused the political infighters and their lawyers on a single, achievable prize, not a kid and his surrounding issues.
She signed the papers, stood up, and gave them to Finity’s legal representative, a young man they called, simply, Blue.
“It’s done,” she said. And had qualms about the one remaining step in Fletcher’s case. She’d never agreed to a spacer going downworld in the first place; it had just stopped being easy to prevent him. With some degree of guilt she remembered how she’d not objected strenuously when, four years ago, she’d become aware Fletcher’s juvenile fascination with downers now aimed at planetary science. The study program had kept the boy off the police reports and given her four years without a crisis with Fletcher. And now things came due.
Finity backing in the Council of Captains would build a merchanter ship for the first time since the Treaty of Pell.
Union wouldn’t have its way. That was the down-the-line outcome. Union thought the Council of Captains couldn’t reach a disinterested decision, or a unified action, or get any two merchant ships to agree.
If Mallory of Norway was right and the black market was in fact Mazian’s pipeline to supply and funds, the notion that ships were slipping over into Mazian’s camp was very disturbing and very plausible. The War had been between the Earth Company and Union in its earliest days— and the Alliance hadn’t yet existed. Merchanters had declared neutrality in what had been then a small-scale dispute.
Merchanters had served both sides, excepting those merchanters actively enlisted as gunships.
Meanwhile Earth had built the Fleet to enforce Earth’s hold on the colonies and to break Union’s bid for independence; Earth had typically failed to realize what it took to sustain a war on that scale, hadn’t supplied the Fleet it had launched, declaring that to be the colonies’ job; the Fleet had taken to relying on merchant shipping— buying off the black market during the War and engaging in occasional outright piracy even before the Battle of Pell. The Fleet had alienated the merchanters and it was the merchanters who had risen up against them to drive them out—out far into the dark, when their bid to take Earth itself had met Mallory and Union’s and merchanter opposition. The Fleet, having lost all its allies, had had to retreat into deep space… to obtain supply by means that, indeed, no one had quite proved.