“No.”
“Or was that your idea?”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“You signed it. We’ve got your signature right at the bottom.”
“I didn’t read it. Cory said sign, I just signed it!”
The officer had reached for a slate the other cop had.
He pressed buttons. “We have here a deposition from your port of origin, from one Natalie R. Frye, to the effect that you and Ms. Salazar quarreled over finances the week you left…”
“Hell if we did!”
“Quote: ‘Cory was mad about a bill for a jacket or something—’”
“I bought a jacket. She thought I paid too much. Cory’d wear a thing til it fell apart…”
“So you quarreled over money.”
“Over a jacket. A damn 38-dollar jacket. We fought, all right, we fought, doesn’t everybody?”
“Ms. Frye continues: ‘Cory had been sleeping around. Dek didn’t like that.’”
“Screw Natalie! She wasn’t a friend of ours. Cory wouldn’t spit on her.”
“Did Ms. Salazar’sleep around’?”
“She slept where she wanted to. So did I, what the hell?”
“Well, that wouldn’t matter to anyone, Mr. Dekker, except that she never got back.”
The beeps accelerated, not from shock: a fool could see where this was going. He was shaking, he was so mad, and if he went for the bastard’s throat they’d trank him and write that down, too.
“Cory’s lost out there,” he said doggedly. “A ship ran us down—”
“Mr. Dekker, there was no other ship in that sector.”
“That’s a lie. That’s a damn lie.” He reached frantically for things they couldn’t deny. “Bird knew it was there. Ben knew. We talked about it. It was a ’driver, was what it was—it wasn’t on my charts—”
The officer said, dead calm: “Bird and Ben?”
“The guys that picked me up!” He was scared they were going to tell him that never happened either. But someone had brought him in. “I called that sonuvabitch, I told it we were there, I told it my partner was outside—”
“Are you sure the rock didn’t block the signal?”
“No!—Yes, I’m sure! I had it on radar. Why in hell didn’t it see me?”
“We don’t know, Mr. Dekker. We’re just asking. So you did see it coming. And did you advise your partner?”
They made him crazy, changing the rules on him. One moment they accused him. Then they believed him. Sometimes he seemed to lose things.
“Didn’t you say you’d hit a rock? Wasn’t that your story at one point?”
He was lost and sick and the drugs still had him hazed. The beeps increased in tempo. He wasn’t sure whether it was his heart or something on com.
“So where did you manufacture this ship, Mr. Dekker?”
“It was out there.”
“Of course it was out there,” the officer said. “You had it on your charts. Your log showed that. How could we doubt that?”
He was totally confused. He put his hands over his ears, he tried to see if the alarm going was his heart or something in his head. “Call the ’driver, for God’s sake. See if they picked Cory up.”
“Didn’t you call?” the cop asked.
“Yes, dammit, I called, I called and it didn’t answer. Maybe my antenna got hit. I don’t know. I called for help. Did anybody hear it?”
“A ship heard you. A ship picked you up.”
“Different.” He was tired. He didn’t want to explain com systems and emergency locaters to company cops. “Just call the ’driver out there.”
“If there is a ’driver out there,” the cop said, “well ask. But if they had picked up your partner, wouldn’t they have notified their Base? Don’t you think they’d have called that in?”
He thought about that answer. He thought about the way that ship had ignored warnings. He thought about it not answering his hails. He thought—It’s not hours, is it? It’s months, it’s been months out there.
The alarm sounded again. He wanted it calm, because when he didn’t do that within a certain time they sedated him, and he was trying to be sane for the police. “I don’t know they heard me. Just call them.”
“We’re going to be calling a lot of people, Mr. Dekker.” The cop got up from his bed. “We’re going to be asking around.”
They walked to the door. The doctor went with them. He lay there just trying to keep the monitor steady and quiet, on the edge of hysteria but a good deal saner than he wanted to be right now. He remembered Bird, he remembered Ben. He was relatively sure he had come here on their ship. But sometimes he even feared Cory might not have existed. That he had always been in this place. That he was irrevocably crazy.
CHAPTER 7
IF 8 was gray and automated, 6 was green paint and a few live-service restaurants and shops, but the time still dragged: you worked out in gyms, you hit the shops til you had the stuff on the counters memorized, you skipped down to 3-deck for a while and maybe clear to 2 for an hour til your knees ached and your heart objected. The first few weeks after a run were idle time, mostly: you didn’t feel like doing much for long stints. You’d think you had the energy and then you’d decide you didn’t; you sat around, you talked, you filled your time with vid and card games and when you found your legs, an occasional grudge match in the ball court or sitting through one of the company team games in the big gym on 3-deck was about it. But mostly you worked out til you were about to drop, if you had to wrap your knees in bandages and pop pills like there was no tomorrow—and that was what Bird did, because the younger set was chafing to get down to heavy time that counted, down in the neon lights and fast life of helldeck—down in the .9 g on 2 that was as heavy as spacers lived—specifically to The Black Hole, that was the accommodation they favored, and the hour Mike Arezzo called and said he had two rooms clear, adjacent, no less, they threw their stuff in the bags and they were gone.
Checking in at The Hole felt like coming home—old acquaintances, a steady traffic of familiar faces. Mike, who owned the place and ran the bar out front, kept the noise level reasonable and didn’t hold with fights, pocket knives, or illegal substances. Quiet place, all told. Helldeck might have shrunk from its glory days: worker barracks and company facilities had gnawed it down to a strip about a k and a half long, give or take the fashionable tail-end the corporates used: that was another ten or fifteen establishments—but you wouldn’t find any corporate decor in The Hole; no clericals having supper, not even factory labor looking for a beer. The Hole was freefaller territory: dock monkeys and loaders, tenders, pushers, freerunners, construction crew from the shipyard and the occasional Shepherd—not that other types didn’t stray in, but they didn’t stay: the ambient went just a bit cooler, heads turned and the noise level fell.
It went the other way when lost sheep turned up.
“Hey, Bird!” Alvarez called out, and heads turned when they walked in. Guys made rude remarks and whistles as Meg sauntered up to the bar and said, “Hello, Mike.”
Mike said, accurately, “Vodka, bourbon, vodka and lime, gin and bubbly…” and had them on the bar just about that fast.
Home again for sure. Close as it came.
“How’s it going?” Mike asked. “Persky says you got a distress call out there. Pulled some guy in.”
“Yeah. Young kid. Partner dead. Real shame.”
Alvarez said, “What’s this with Trinidad hanging off the list? The cops impounding her?”
God, the other thing helldeck was good for was gossip.