Damon, who’d never contradict his wife in the midst of negotiations—Damon viewed the concept of law in lieu of God; and Damon was going to hit the overhead when they got home tonight. Elene could feel it in the rock-hard tension of his hand, his sharp, almost painful squeeze on her fingers. No children in a war zone, the Children’s Court had held, in spite of the fact that there were children on every family merchanter ship out in space. The Children’s Court had its hands on one of those children and in a paralysis of anguish over the War one judge and her own husband’s office wouldn’t let that child go. But in those critical words, no longer operate in harm’s way, the advocacy system, the judiciary, which couldn’t resolve its technical issues over Francesca Neihart’s son because the court-appointed social workers and psychiatrists wouldn’t agree, had just had its point answered.
Fletcher Robert Neihart had always been caught in the gears. It wasn’t the boy’s fault that elements in Pell’s administration resented being a trailing appendage to the Merchanter Alliance, and some noisy few fools even thought that Pell should assess merchant ships to see whether they were fit for children. It was a ridiculous position, one that would have collapsed the whole merchanter trade network and collapsed civilization with it—but they were issue-oriented thinkers.
To complicate matters, years ago some clever child advocate in the legal office had thought it a fine argument to claim a station-share and sue Finity during wartime on the boy’s behalf. In further bureaucratic idiocy, filing said claim with the court thereafter had made no difference after that that 14.5 million credits was a figure that never had existed, in or in any official assessment of actual debt. Once that sum had gotten onto the documents, politicians and bursars alike afraid to take the responsibility of forgiving a fourteen-million-credit debt. So it was in the court records, and it would persist until someone somewhere signed papers in settlement.
Now, to cap a macabre comedy teetering on the verge of tragedy, it sounded as if the Pell Bursar’s office, unstoppable as stellar gravity, had just billed Finity for the amount outstanding on Pell’s books and thereby annoyed the seniormost and most essential captain in the Merchanters’ Alliance, a man to whom Pell and the whole Alliance owed its independence. And done so at the very moment the peace and the whole human future most needed a quiet, well-oiled, dammit, even slightly illegal personal agreement to fly through the approval process before Pell’s enemies knew what was going on.
Her long-suffering husband knew where she stood. Her children—both near grown—they knew. Her son said she cared only for her daughter; her daughter said bitterly that her own birth was nothing but a means to an end.
Far too simple a box, to contain all the battles of a lifetime. Pell Station knew what it wanted when it persistently elected a spacer and a zealot to the office she held… that in her soul there were places of utter, star-shot black.
Means-to-an-end certainly covered part of her motives, yes.
Chapter 3
The next day—the next days—were glorious.
“This you female,” Melody said, in their third meeting on the riverbank, and peered into Bianca’s faceplate in very close inspection, perhaps deciding Bianca, this third day, was more than a chance meeting. “She young, good, strong come back see you.” Melody patted Bianca’s leg. “You walk?”
This spring was what Melody meant: mating, the Long Walk, And Bianca didn’t understand. Bianca murmured something about coming from the Base, but Fletcher blushed behind his mask and said, “Not yet, not yet for us.”
Then Bianca was embarrassed. And indignant. “What did you tell her, Fletcher?”
“That I sort of like you,” Fletcher said, looking at his feet. And Melody and Patch flung leaves at them and shrieked in downer laughter.
He did sort of like her. At least he liked what he saw. What he’d imagined he’d seen in Bianca’s willingness to come back here twice. And on that grounds he was suddenly out of his depth and knew it. He saw v-dramas and vid, and imagined what it would be like to have a girl who liked you and who’d maybe—maybe be part of the dream he’d dreamed, of living down here.
He hadn’t gotten a lot of biochem done the last two nights.
This wasn’t someday. This wasn’t just dreaming. When he’d been a juvvie and thought almost everything was impossible he’d had fantasies of coming down to the world—he’d stow away on a shuttle. He’d pirate supplies and make an outlaw dome, and get all the downers on his side.
Then the downers would join them and humans at the Base would never again see a downer unless he said so. And the stationmasters would have to say, All right, we’ll deal. And he’d be king of Downbelow and Melody and Patch and he together would run the world.
God, he’d been such a stupid juvvie brat in his daydreams, and now, realtime, just having embarrassed himself, he had to admit he’d caught another case of the daydreams almost as fantastical. She was embarrassed; he was. And if you shone light on some daydreams they evaporated.
No Family girl was going to keep on hanging around him. She was probably just trying to make Marshall Willett leave her alone. It had been two days of happiness interspersed with anxiety and a biochem test he might have blown. That was a pretty good run, as his runs went
He’d sounded like a fool. Reality was the best medicine for a case of daydreams, and he went off in his acute embarrassment to go over to the water and squat down and poke at stones at the river-edge, real stones, real world, important things like that
His real life wasn’t like the vids, and daydreams didn’t come true for somebody who wasn’t anybody, somebody who for most of his life couldn’t guarantee where he’d be. It was mortally embarrassing to have to go back to your instructors at school and have to say, with other kids listening, that, no, the reason you didn’t know about the test was your mail wasn’t getting to you and, no, you weren’t still living at 28608 Green, you’d moved, and you were back at the shelter again, or you were out and living with the Chavezes this week.
Then about the time the stupid teacher got the records straightened out you still weren’t getting your e-mail because you “just hadn’t worked out” with the Chavezes. It was pretty devastating stuff when you were eight.
It was doubly devastating if you’d just had a counselor so stupid he didn’t even shut his office door when he was talking about you to your foster parents—who didn’t want you anymore because they were pregnant and thought you’d interfere with the baby.
It hadn’t been fun. The administration eventually changed his psychiatrist to somebody who still asked stupid questions and put him through the same getting-to-know-you routine that by then had just about stopped hurting. It had bored him, by then, because he’d been switched so often, to so many people with court-ordered forms to fill out, you got a sample of the routines and you knew by then it was just business, their caring. They were paid to care, by the hour.
The station paid foster-families.
They paid downers, but not in money, and not to take care of stray station kids: Melody and Patch had cared for him for free.
A hand slipped over his shoulder. He thought it was Melody, and felt comforted.
But it wasn’t Melody. It was Bianca who knelt down by him and touched her head to his so the faceplates bumped edges, and he was just scared numb.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “What did I do?
God, the world was inside out. What did she do? She was kidding. She had to be. But Bianca hugged her arm around him and he hugged her, and if it wouldn’t have risked their lives he’d have taken the mask off and kissed her.