“It's not vodka.” Siamang's tone turned conspiratorial, and sharpened slightly. “I want you to have a drink with me, Red. I won't take no for an answer.”
“No, I'm sorry.…”
“Drink it.” Siamang laughed; Chaim felt his stomach tighten. “Do it—as a favor to me.”
Dartagnan hesitated, toying absently with the metal band that circled his throat beneath the high collar of his jacket. “All right, boss; just one … if you'll do me a favor in return?”
Siamang started. “What did you have in mind?”
“I want my payoff now. I want you to give me a corporate credit voucher for the value of my scoutship.”
Siamang frowned. “I'm willing to transfer the credit to your account directly—”
He shook his head. “Sometimes direct credit transfers don't—get registered. I want it in writing before I do my part to keep you clear of that murder.”
Siamang's frown deepened, lifted slowly. “All right. Red… I'll humor you. I don't expect you'll let me down if I do; since you're in this as deep as I am, and you'll go right down with me—” He went out of the room.
Dartagnan sat staring uneasily at the cup. What the hell; it hasn't done anything to Siamang.… He turned the metal collar slowly around his neck. Damn it, it's worth a bellyache; it's worth anything, to be sure I get what I need.
Siamang returned, passed the voucher across the table to him. “Is that satisfactory?”
Dartagnan took it in his hands, like a starving man holding food. For a second the realization of what that money could mean to his own future rose into his mind, and made him dizzy. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely, “that's just perfect.” He folded it and stuck it into his boot. He lifted the drink bulb from the table, “I'll drink to that.” He pulled up on the straw, and drank.
He tasted nothing, only the bland sweetness of pear juice; he went on drinking, surprised, finished it.
Siamang drank with him, smiled. “What are you going to do with a ship, Red? You mean you really don't enjoy being a garbage man to humanity?”
“I've recycled just about all the shit I ever want to face, boss. Just about all I can stand.…” He squinted; the light glancing up from the table top hurt his eyes: Come on, that's impossible … suddenly afraid that it wasn't.
“Going to be a prospector, like Sekka-Olefin?”
He looked back at Siamang. “Not like Sekka-Olefin. He—made a mistake.” Siamang's voice set his teeth on edge, his skin prickled, he began to feel as though his body was strung together on live wires. “Just like my old man … I'm not going to make that mistake.” Shut up! He shook his head, the light broke up into prisms.
“What mistake was that, Red? What mistake could there be that a man who'd go into your profession hasn't made already?”
Chaim almost shouted it, shaking with uncontrollable rage. He choked back the words, gagged on sudden self-loathing.… Why isn't Siamang feeling it? And then he realized that Siamang hadn't been drinking anything at all, except fruit juice. Siamang was entirely sober; and he had been given one last test.…
Mecca City opened around him, vibrant, brilliant, beautiful, an alien flower … his mind sang, a choir of voices, the voice of the city, eternal life. He cupped life in his hands and drank … life streaming through the prism of his fingers in rainstars of light. He was eternal, he laughed, inhaling the city fragrance of sound, chords of cinnamon and cloves, leitmotif of gardenia … of corruption … a fragrance growing, that deafened him, shattering his ears, shattering his soul like crystal, shattering the crystal city.… A cloying stench of decay clogged his nose, his mouth, his lungs, like slatey dust; the fragile towers withered, fading, shriveling around him; like bodies decaying, betrayed … death was eternal, only death; and her face, all their faces turned to him, turned to ruin, worm-eaten, rotting, decayed … I know you … Mythili, I know you … he had no voice … I know you aren't! … I know you… He heard her sobbing, like flowers, crystal acid-drops eating away his viscera like decay, I don't want to! I don't want to die … I want to live … I have to … want to live …. Cradled in the arms of death, worm-riddled, he saw his flesh rotting, falling from his bones … and it was the end, the end of the world.…
Dartagnan woke, moved feebly on the floor in the bathroom of his private cabin, trying to remember how he had gotten here, why he had eaten hot coals … why he was crying. He lay still, too weary to move, listened to the grating whine of a fan … the exhaust fan. He remembered, then, being sick to his stomach. He touched his face, filmed with wetness, sweat and tears—and vomit; God, he hadn't done a very clean job of it. He pushed himself up, drifted to the wash basin to shut off the fan. He saw himself in the mirror, shut his eyes instead and swore in a fury of humiliation—
Siamang. He reached down, dragged his boot off, swearing again as he wrenched his still-swollen ankle. But he laughed in satisfaction as his hand closed over the crumpled, drifting prize, the credit voucher. Still there … He tried again futilely to remember what else had happened; knowing that Siamang had drugged him for a reason, and that he could have said anything, would have said anything, and anything could have been the wrong thing. But he had the voucher; and he was still alive—A flicker of nightmare, a discontinuity, shook him; he ran his hands down his body in sudden fear. He was still alive. The metal collar was still around his neck; he had what he needed. Maybe, just this once, something was going to come out right.…
He stripped, went to the shower, sealed himself in along with his ruined clothes, and turned on the water. He let it run, heedless of the waste, through three full shower cycles, an entire kilosecond, until he finally began to feel clean. Life, and—almost—self-respect, stirred sluggishly in him again as the heat lamp dried the sheen of water from his skin, baked the shame and the last of the stiffness out of his mind and body. He shaved, did what he could with his clammy clothes, put on the one fresh shirt he had saved for their return to Mecca. Appearance was everything; he had to present a good appearance when he faced himself in the eyes of the media cameras.… He investigated his ankle. The brown skin was still splotched with ugly bruises, but it was healing, slowly, with the passing of time. He forced it back into his boot, polished both boots with his dirty shirt. He thought about other wounds, and wondered how much time he would need before those were healed as well.
“Dartagnan—”
He heard Siamang rap on his door, quietly, and then more loudly. He went to it, opened it, his face set. Siamang stared; Chaim wondered whether he was staring at the neatness of his clothes, or the haggardness of his face. “What do you want?”
Almost diffidently, Siamang held out a drink bulb; Dartagnan grimaced. “It's just milk; you can believe it. Look, I'm sorry about what happened to you, Red. I shouldn't have given you that big a dose, I didn't think about your not being used to it—”
The hell you didn't, Dartagnan thought.
“—I want you to know I'm sorry. How do you feel?”
“Like I'll be glad when I can forget it. How much time's left before we reach Mecca?”
“That's why I knocked—only five kiloseconds. Are you going to be able to bring us in all right?”
Dartagnan almost smiled, realizing the reason for Siamang's sudden solicitude. “I think so. I hope so.” He moved out into the hall, hesitated, trying to make it sound casuaclass="underline" “I hope I didn't—say anything I shouldn't have, boss. I … don't remember much about it.”