Meanwhile Earth was building ships again, too, for scientific purposes, they said, for exploration—as they revitalized the Sol shipyards that had built the Fleet that had started the War. The whole damned universe was unravelling at the seams, the agreements they’d patched up to end the War looked now only like a patch just long enough for the combatants to renew their resources and for Union to try to drive merchanters out of business. The rumor on Pell was that of shipbuilding, too, ships to counter Union and maybe Earth.
And now cousin Fletcher had taken out running, the final, chaotic movement in a bizarre maneuver, while the finest fighting ship the Alliance had was loaded with whiskey, coffee, and chocolate she hadn’t sold at Pell, and now with downer wine.
“Luck to the kid,” JR said, on a personal whim, and lifted his mug. Bucklin did so, too, and took a solemn drink.
That was the way they treated the news when they heard it was all off, they’d not get their missing cousin.
But by board call as Finity crew who’d checked out of sleepovers and reported to the ship’s ramp with baggage ready to put aboard, they met an advisement from the office that boarding and departure would be delayed.
“How long?” JR asked their own security at the customs line, giving his heavy duffle a hitch on his shoulder. “Book in for another day, or what?”
“Make it two,” the word was from the cousin on security. “Fletcher’s coming.”
“They found him?” JR asked, and:
“He’s coming up,” the senior cousin said. “They got him just before he ran out of breathing cylinders. I don’t know any more than that.”
There were raised stationer eyebrows at the service desk of the sleepover when all the Finity personnel who’d just checked out came trooping back in with bag and baggage. The Starduster was a class-A sleepover, not a pick-your-tag robotic service. “Mechanical?” the stationer attendant asked.
“Unspecified,” JR said, foremost of the juniors he’d shepherded back from the dockside. The rule was, never talk about ship’s business. That reticence wasn’t mandated clearly in the Old Rules, but it was his habit from the New Rules, and he’d given his small command strict orders in the theory that silence was easier to repair than was too much talk.
“What is this?” Jeremy asked, meeting him in the hallway of the sleepover as he came upstairs. The junior-juniors were on a later call, B group. “We’ve got a hold, sir?”
There was no one in the corridor but Finity personnel. “We’ve got an extra cousin,” JR said. “They found Fletcher.”
“They’re going to hold the ship for him?”
They’d always told the juniors they wouldn’t. Ever. Not even if you were in sight of the ramp when the scheduled departure came.
“She’s held,” JR said, and for discipline’s sake, added: “It’s unusual circumstances. Don’t ever count on it, younger cousin.”
There was a frown of perplexity on the junior’s face. Justice wasn’t done. A Rule by which Finity personnel had actually died had cracked. There were Rules of physics and there were Finity’s Rules, and they were the same. Or no one had ever, in his lifetime, had to make that distinction before. Until now, they’d been equally unbendable. Like the Old Man.
“How long?” Jeremy asked.
“Planets rotate. Shuttles lift when they most economically can.”
“How long’s that?”
“Go calc it for Downbelow’s rotation and diameter. Look up the latitude. Keep yourself out of trouble. I will ask you that answer, junior-junior, when we get aboard. And stay available!” There were going to be a lot of questions to which there was no answer, and Jeremy, to Jeremy’s misfortune, had pursued him when he was harried and out of sorts. The junior-juniors were going to have to stay on call. They all were going to have to stay ready to move, if they were on a hold. That meant no going to theaters or anywhere without a pocket-com on someone in the group. That meant no long-range plans, no drinking, even with meals, unless they went on total stand-down.
Francesca’s almost-lamented son had just defied the authorities and the planet.
Beaten the odds, apparently.
As far as the cylinders held out.
Just to the point the cylinders had run out, by what he’d heard. By all calculations, Fletcher should have died by now.
He didn’t know Fletcher. No one did. But that said something about what they were getting—what he was getting, under his command.
Pell and the new Old Rules had felt chancy to him all along. He’d felt relief to be boarding, with the Fletcher matter lastingly settled; guilty as he’d felt about that, there had been a certain relief in finality.
Now it wasn’t happening.
And nothing was final or settled.
Chapter 6
Customs wasn’t waiting at the bottom of the ramp. Police were. Fletcher knew the difference. He shifted an anxious grip on the duffle he’d been sure he was going to have to fight authority for—again—and knew the game had just shifted rules—again.
He walked ahead nonetheless, from the yellow connecting tube of the shuttle and down onto the station dock, into the custody of station police.
He didn’t know this batch of police. Many, he did know, and no few knew him by name, but he was glad he didn’t have to make small talk. He handed over his papers, a simple slip from Nunn and his shuttle authorization, and halfway expected them to put a bracelet on him, the sort that would drop an adult offender to his knees if he sprinted down the dock, but they didn’t.
“Stationmaster wants to see you,” one informed him. “Your ship’s waited five days.”
Maybe one or the other piece of information was supposed to impress him. But he’d met Stationmaster Quen far too many times at too early an age, and he didn’t give an effective damn what kind of dock charges Finity’s End was running up waiting for him. So his interfering relatives had held a starship for him. They could sit in hell for what he cared.
“Yes, sir,” he said in the flat tone he’d learned was neutral enough, and he went with them, wobbling a little. After the close, medicine-tainted air in the domes and the too-warm sterile air of the shuttle, the station air he’d thought of as neutral all his life was icy cold and sharp with metal scents he’d never smelled before. Water made a puddle near the shuttle gantry, not uncommon on the docks. The high areas of the dockside had their own weather and tended to condense water into ice, which melted when lights went on in an area and heated up the pipes.
Splat. A fat cold drop landed in front of him as he walked. It turned the metal deck plates a shinier black was all. On Pell Station it had rained, too, clean and bright gray just a few hours ago. It had been raining nonstop when he’d left, when he crossed from the van into the shuttle passenger lounge. He’d been able to see out the windows, the way he’d had his first view of Downbelow from those doublethick windows, half a year ago.
He’d rather think of that now, and not see where he was. He had no curiosity about the docks, no expectations, nothing but the necessity of walking, a little weak-kneed, with the feeling of ears stuffed with cotton. They’d stopped up in the airlock and the right one hadn’t popped yet, petty nuisance. Down at the shuttle landing, they’d given him a tranquilizer with the breakfast he hadn’t eaten. He’d had no choice about the pill. Not much resistance, either. Things mattered less than they had, these last few days.
He went with the cops to the lift that would take them out of White Sector, where the insystem traffic docked—the shuttles among them. He’d gone out the selfsame dock when he’d made the only other trip of his life, down to Pell’s World. He came back to the station that way. If nothing intervened to prevent his being transferred, he’d never use White again. He’d be down in Green, or Blue, where holier-than-anybody Finity docked, too good for Orange or Red. Fancy places. Money. A lot of money. Money that bought anything.