They carried him into the domes and took the mask off and his clean-suit off, the safety officer questioning him very closely about whether he’d breached a seal out there.
If he’d had his wits about him he’d have said yes and let them think he’d die, and that alone would prevent him being shipped anywhere, but he stupidly answered the truth and took away his best chance, not realizing it until he’d answered the question.
They’d found the stick, too, and they wanted to take that from him before he got into the domes, but he wouldn’t turn it loose. “Satin gave it to me,” he said, and when they, like his rescuers, suggested he was crazy and hallucinating, he roused enough to describe where he’d been: that he’d talked to the foremost hisa, and the one, the rumor said, who could get hisa either to work or not to work with humans, plain and simple. The experts and the administrators, who’d suited to come out and meet them coming in, pulled off a little distance in the heavily falling rain and talked about it, not quite in his hearing. They’d given him some drug. He wasn’t sure what. He wasn’t even sure when. Four of the rescuers had to hold him on a stretcher while the experts conferred, and he supposed they were frustrated. They shifted grips several times.
But then someone from the medical staff came outside, suited up too, for the purpose; and the doctor encouraged him to get on his feet, so that he could go through decon, with people holding him.
They wanted to put the stick through the irradiation, and that was all right: he took it back, after that, and wobbled out, stick and all, into a warm wrap an officer held waiting for him.
Then they let him sit down and checked him over, pulse, temperature, everything his rescuers had already done; and another set of medics went over those reports.
After that, when he was so faint from hunger his head was spinning, they gave him hot soup to drink, and put him to bed.
Nunn showed up meanwhile and gave him a stern lecture. He was less than attentive, while he had the first food he’d had in days. He gathered that he’d caused Nunn trouble with Quen, and that Nunn now found fault with most everything he’d ever done in classes. He didn’t see how one equated with the other, but somehow Quen’s directives had overpowered everything but the medical staff. He got sick, couldn’t keep the soup down; and Nunn left, that was the one good thing in a bad moment. He had to go to bed, then, and they gave him an IV and let him go to sleep.
But when he waked, the science office sent people with recorders and cameras who kept him talking for hours after that, wanting every detail. He slept a great deal. He’d run off five kilos, the doctor said, and he was dehydrated despite being out in the rain for days. It was an endless succession of medical tests and interviewers.
Last of all Bianca came.
He’d been asleep. And waked up and saw her.
“How are you feeling?” she asked him.
“Oh, pretty good,” he said. “They bother you?”
“No. Not really.”
“They’re shipping me up,” he said. “I guess you heard. My family wants me back. On Finity’s End.”
“Yes,” she said “They told me.”
“You’re not in trouble, are you?”
She shook her head.
And she cried.
He was incredibly dizzy. Drugged, he was sure, sedated so his head spun when he lifted his head from the pillow. He fought it. He angrily shoved himself up on one arm and tried to get up, tried to fight the sedative.
And almost fell out of bed as his hand hit the edge.
“Don’t,” Bianca said. “Don’t. I’ve only got a few minutes. They won’t let me stay.”
She leaned over and kissed him then, a long, long kiss, first they’d ever shared. Only time they’d ever been together, except in class, without the masks.
“I’ll get back down here,” he said. “I’ll get off that damn ship. Maybe they’ll put me in for a psych-over and I won’t have to go with them.”
“Velasquez.” A supervisor had come to the door. “Time’s up.”
She hugged him close.
“Velasquez. He’s in quarantine.”
“I’ll get back,” he said.
“I’ll be here,” she said. Meanwhile the supervisor had come into the flimsy little compartment to bring her out; and Bianca just moved away, holding his hand as long as she could until their fingers parted.
He fell back and it was a drugged slide into a personal dark in which Bianca’s presence was like a dream, one before, not after the deep forest and the downer racing ahead of him.
The plain was next. A golden plain of grass, with the watchers endlessly staring into the heavens…
Not there any longer. Never there.
Esperance was where. Esperance.
“Jeremy?” He missed the noise from that quarter. Jeremy was very quiet.
“Yeah,” he heard finally. “Yeah. I’m awake.”
“We’re there. You drink the packets?”
“Trying,” Jeremy said. And scrambled out of his bunk and ran for the bathroom.
Jeremy was sick at his stomach. Light body, Fletcher said to himself, and drank a nutri-pack, trying to get his own stomach calmed.
Esperance. Their turn-around point. Midway on their journey.
Chapter 24
Boreale was a day from docking. Champlain was just coming into final approach, an hour from dock.
JR looked at the information while he drank down the nutrient pack and assessed damage. There was one piece of information he wanted, and it was delayed, pending. Charlie would check on the Old Man. Meanwhile he knew his two problems were there ahead of him, but not that much ahead, not so far ahead that they could have made extensive arrangements.
He meditated ordering a high-speed run-in that would put them at dock not long after the two ships in question.
It would also focus intense attention on them, at all levels of Esperance structure, and might impinge on negotiations to come. Foul up the Old Man’s job and he’d hear about it.
He ordered the first and second V-dump, which removed that possibility—and followed approach regulations for a major starstation.
Please God the Old Man was all right. He got down another nutri-pack.
A message from Charlie came through, welcome and feared at once. “He’s complaining,” Charlie said. “Says he’s getting dressed. Madison says he should stay put.”
He gave a little laugh, he, sitting on the bridge and waiting for Alan to relieve him. Their plans had them saving first and second shift in reserve throughout the run-in. Third and fourth were going to work in that edge-of-waking way bridge crew sat ready during jump, and Vickie was going to be at Helm on dock. That meant long shifts, but it also meant the Old Man was going to get maximum rest during their approach.
So would Madison, whose feelings in this shift of personnel were also involved. Madison had gone on the protected list right along with the Old Man, and while Madison hadn’t quite complained about Alan’s and Francie’s ganging up to take all those shifts, Madison hadn’t realized officially that he was being coddled.
“Tell the Old Man there’s not a pan in the galley out of place, and Boreale will be thinking about our presence on her tail as a major Alliance caution flag. She won’t innovate policy. Isn’t that the rule?”
“Don’t quote me my own advisements!” the Old Man’s voice broke in: that com-panel on his desk reached anything it wanted to. Of course the Old Man had been shadowing his decisions.