He looked from Ben down at the workstation up to Bird, resting by the bulkhead.
“Ben’s excitable,” Bird said. “Just have your breakfast. Or supper, as may be.”
But Ben was drifting up to them. Ben braked with the shove of a hand against the conduits. “I’d like to know,” Ben said, “what you’ve got to pay for this trip. Eat our food, breathe our air, take up our time and our fuel. We’re aborting a run for you. We just got effin’ started and we’re headed back to Base, damn near zeroed on your account, mister. You got any assets to pay for this? Or just debts?”
“We have money,” he said, and then knew he shouldn’t have said that to these people. He said, desperately catching up the thread of his thought—he hoped he hadn’t lost anything between: “So what ’driver is it?”
Ben said, “How much money?”
“Ben,” Bird said.
“I want,” he said carefully, “I want you to call that ’driver and ask about my partner.”
“Ask what about your partner?” Ben asked.
“Ask if they—” He stuttered on the thought. He never stuttered, and still he could not get it out. “—if they p-picked her up.”
“So why should they? What were you doing here, poaching in another Refinery’s zone?”
“We w-weren’t.” Dammit. “It was.”
“What do you mean, ‘it was’?”
“Ben,” Bird said, and then, looking at him: “Forget he asked.”
He didn’t understand. He was so weak he couldn’t track what they were saying from moment to moment, and hostile questions, zero g and unaccustomed food were all one confusion of balance and orientation. There was a constant buzz in his head that rose and fell like the fan-sounds. From moment to moment he knew Cory was alive, and from moment to moment he thought about the time and wanted to check his watch to be sure.
But that was crazy. He began to know it was. The only hope Cory had now was that ’driver ship. Maybe it had picked her up. Maybe it had.
“He’s not telling the story he started with,” Ben said. “Man’s lying somewhere. A collision with a rock, he said. An explosion took one whole damn tank out. The other one’s got a bash you could park a skimmer in. You want to see the videotape, man? I can show you the tape.”
“Didn’t hit a rock,” he said, shaking his head. He had no idea where this was going. He had no idea what they were accusing him of, whether this was going on record or what they wanted from him.
“Why would it explode?”
“The ’driver clipped us.”
“Facing away from the Well? Whose Zone were you in?”
“Rl.”
“ ’Driver, hell. You ran it into a rock, didn’t you? Just plain ran it onto a rock.”
“No.”
“Ben,” Bird said, “take it easy. The guy’s confused.”
“ ‘Take it easy.’—Some people with trouble deserve it, you know.”
“We don’t know anything,” Bird said. “His memory isn’t going to be all that good, with what he’s been through.”
“Looks healthy enough. Looks damned well healthy enough on our air and our food. Looks like he’s making real good progress.”
Ben talked about claiming the ship, he recollected that—they were after the ship and they claimed they were taking him to R2, not home; now they were talking about other debts—
They talked as if they wanted to put him to work for them. He had heard about Nouri. It had happened before in the Belt. Guys with all sorts of kinks went out in ships… and when they were ready to come in to Base, they might not want to take the evidence with them.
God, he thought, and looked off toward nowhere. The only thing in the vicinity was that ’driver ship. If they had never reported finding Cory—
The instruments… something coming at him over the horizon—
Explosion like a fist hit them. G-force. He reached after the fire controls.
No power. Nothing…
Ben left him. Bird left him. He saw Bird talking with Ben, holding on to Ben’s arm, he couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Then Ben shouted, “We own that ship!” and Bird: “Just shut it down, Ben, shut it down, for God’s sake, Ben!”
They started arguing again, yelling at each other about money, about what they were spending on him, and Bird took his part, saying, over and over again, “It’s not your damn decision, Ben!”
He watched, turning so he could see, phasing in and out of clear awareness, the fan-sound going in his ears, the soup he had drunk lying queasy on his stomach. He was afraid at one point Ben was going to hit the old man, and that Ben was going to end up in control of the ship.
The argument broke up. He grayed out a while. He came to with something near him and looked into a cyclopic glass lens, a camera pointed at his face, Ben’s face behind it. That scared him. He stared back, wondering whether Ben had a real kink or whether Ben was just a hobbyist. He was afraid to object. He just stared back and tried not to throw up.
Then Ben cut the camera off and said, “Got you, you son of a bitch,” and drifted off.
He thought, This guy’s crazy, he’s absolutely crazy… Ben wanted his ship. Ben wanted him dead. He had this cable around his neck, that Ben had put there. He was afraid to sleep after that, afraid Ben was going to do something stranger still, and adrenaline kept him focused for a while. But things started going away from him again, he was back in the dark with the tumbling and the pressure building in his head, and then he was back again with that lens in his face and Ben going crazier and crazier…
He had no idea how long those times were or whether he had dreamed the business with the camera. When he looked, Bird was sleeping in a makeshift net rigged down toward the bow, and Ben was back at the workstation keyboard as if he had never moved, never had done anything in the least odd. He watched Ben for a while, wondering if he had hallucinated, wondering if it was safe to move with Bird asleep, because he was beginning to feel an acute need of going down to the head, and he was scared to do anything that Ben might conceivably object to.
Finally he shoved off very slowly and drifted down feet first toward the shower/toilet.
Ben looked around at him. He touched the other wall and caught the shower door, and Ben seemed not to care.
Don’t use the shower, he remembered that—he kept the cable in his left hand the way Bird had said, but for a space he lost track of where he was again: then he was inside the shower where the toilet was, finishing his business. He thought for a panicked moment. They’re lying, this is our ship all along. It was even the same ribbed pattern on the green shower wall. He could feel it when he touched it, real as anything he knew. He thought: Cory can’t be dead, she isn’t dead, there isn’t any other ship—
But there was the cable snaking out the door, there was the clip that wouldn’t come off—he tried to brace himself with his feet and his shoulders while he worked, he pulled the clip cover back to squeeze the jaws with his bare fingers, but he could get no leverage on it and all the while Cory was out there with no way to get back—
He looked at his watch. It said 0638. It said, March 12. He thought, The damn watch is wrong, it can’t be March 12. I’m back where I started. Cory’s going to die. Oh, God—
The clip cover slipped and he pinched his finger, bit his lip against the pain and thought, I’ve got to get rid of this, got to get hold of the ship, get the radio—
He looked around him for leverage, anything that could double for a pliers and put a pinch on the jaws with the clip cover retracted. He tried the soap dispenser, pried the small panel up, worked himself around upside down with his foot braced against the wall, pulled the spring cover back from the jaws with the fingers of his left hand, and held the pressure point under the metal edge of the panel with the leverage of his right hand, pushing the panel edge down on the clip, hard as he could, trying not to let it slip—