“Thought you’d talked to him,” Bird said.
“I said we’d mentioned it,” Meg said. “We didn’t exactly get down to that point.”
“Well, now we have,” Ben said. “There’s no other way to do it, Dek-boy. Only deal going. So you’ve agreed. We’re waiting to hear how you’re going to pay for it. Time? Or money? Or the pleasure of your company?”
They were coming at him from all sides. He wasn’t sure there wasn’t a moment missing there—his ears were ringing, they were all looking at him, Ben with his hand on his chair back—he lost things, the meds said he did; and he sat here surrounded by these people who as good as had a gun to his head. If they helped him he might have a chance—but if they figured out he did forget things, the word would get around and it was all over, he’d never get reinstated, he’d end up doing refinery work…
“You any good as a mechanic?” Bird asked.
“I kept Way Out working.”
“As a pilot?”
“I was good.” He didn’t expect Bird would believe him. He added, self-consciously, “We weren’t broke.” Bird had seemed the best of them, Bird had kept him alive and argued for him with these people. He was desperate for Bird to take his side now. And if they robbed him, there were worse alternatives. “Cory and I had 47 k in the bank. Not counting the ship free and clear. Rl bank’s sending it, but I can’t draw on it for another fifty, sixty days.”
“47 k,” Ben jeered. “Come on, Dekker.”
He didn’t look at Ben. He looked at Bird and Sal, clasped his hands around the wet chill of the beer glass. “Cory’s mom was pretty well set. Cory had her own account—trust funds. The hour she turned 18, she took it and she called me and bought my ticket and hers. She came out from Mars, I came from Sol—we met out here and we bought the ship. Paid a hundred fifty-eight k for her. Another 40 in parts. We made a few mistakes. We hadn’t made many runs—only been out here two years. But Cory knew what she was doing. She nearly had her degree in Belt Dynamics. 28 of that 47 k we didn’t have when we came out here. We were doing pretty well.”
“Damned well.” Bird said.
“College girl,” Ben said, “come on, the company’d have snapped her up.”
“She didn’t admit to it. She didn’t want a company slot.”
“With that kind of money? She was a fool.”
“Ben,” Bird said.
“Well, she was.”
He set his jaw, made himself patient. “She just didn’t want it. The fact is, she wanted a share in a starship.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Ben said.
“She wanted into the merchanters. You have to buy in. Her trust fund wasn’t enough—wasn’t enough for both of us. And she had this idea, it was all she’d listen to.”
“Why?” Sal leaned forward, chin on clasped, many-ringed hands, neon sparking fire on her metal-beaded braids. “Why, if she was rich?”
“Because,” was all the answer he could manage. There was a knot in his throat and he thought if Ben opened his mouth he’d lose it. Cory had been so damned private. Cory didn’t tell people her reasons. But they went on listening, waiting for him, so he shrugged and said, “Because she hated planets. Because her father was a deep-spacer—her mother wanted a kid, she didn’t want a husband and she didn’t want anybody in Mars Base to have that kind of claim on Cory. Cory was a solo project. Cory was her mother’s doing, start to—”
—finish. That word wouldn’t come out. He said, watching condensation trickle on the beer glass: “Didn’t even know his name. Cory sort of built on her own ideas. Stars were all she talked about. Wanted to do tech training. Her mother wouldn’t have it. So she studied astrophysics. She had the whole thing planned—getting the money, coming out here—getting us both out.”
Ben said, quietly, “Hell, if she could buy a ship, she could have gotten it faster working for the company. What’s the rate? Eighty, ninety thou to get your tax debt bought?”
And her mother there, he thought, her mother on MarsCorp board to pull strings, get her broke and get her back. But he didn’t say that. He said: “They’d have drafted me if I’d stayed at Sol. That was part of her reason. We were going together. That was the plan.”
“That crazy about you, was she?”
“Ben,” Meg said, “shut up…”
“I don’t know why everybody’s telling me to shut up. It wasn’t the damn brightest thing she could have done. She could have gotten to Sol Station, probably bought straight into a ship with what she had—she expected to make it rich here freerunning?”
“Her mother,” he said, “wanted Cory back in college. Wanted—God only.” His stomach hurt. He had a sip of the beer to make his throat work. “She was under age. Couldn’t get an exit visa over her mother’s objection. This was as far as she could get. Til she was twenty-one.”
“The ship and 47 k in the bank,” Ben began. “What do those sons of bitches want for a buy-in, anyway?”
“Maybe a couple hundred k apiece. With the ship, we had it for one of us, tax debt to get the visa, you’ve got to pay that off to the government before you ever get down to paying the ship share—and Cory’s was high: she had a degree. Another 70 k each to get back to Sol. I told her get out—I saw on our first run it was no good. We didn’t know how hard it was out here. We wouldn’t have done it this way—but by then we’d sunk so much into the ship… and just buying passage to Sol would eat up everything she had…”
He’d yelled at her the night before their last run, he’d said, The war’s getting crazier. They’ve got these damn exit charges, God knows when they’re going to jack them higher—if you don’t go now, there’s no telling what they’ll do next, there’s no guarantee you can get out…
He’d begged: Just leave me what’s left over. I’ll buy in on some other ship, work a few years—whatever ship you’re on will come back here. I’ll join you then—
He’d been lying about the last. She’d known he was, she’d known he didn’t want to go. And she’d known he was right, that both of them weren’t going to make it. She’d known she was going alone, sooner or later, or they were going to do what every freerunner ultimately did do—go into debt. That was why the shouting. That was why she’d burst into tears…
“—And she said?” Meg asked.
He’d lost the thread. He blinked at Meg, confused. He honestly couldn’t remember what he’d been telling them. He picked a pretzel out of the bowl, ate it without looking at them. Or answering.
Bird said, “The lad’s tired.”
“Yeah,” he said, remembered that he was behind on his medicine, remembered that the company management were all sons of bitches and they were the ones that handed out the licenses. Even that was in their hands.
Bird reached out, thumped a grease-edged fingernail against his mug. “Want another round? A beer? On us? To sleep on?”
“You’re right,” he said. “I’m pretty tired.” He thought about his room. He thought about the bed and the medicine he was supposed to take.
All those sleeping pills…
Meg hung a hand on his right shoulder, leaned close and said, “We better get you to bed.”
He couldn’t answer. He shoved her hand off and got up and left.
“Man’s in severe pain,” Meg said under her breath, looking over her shoulder.
“Looked all right to me,” Ben said. “Looked perfectly fine, out spending money like there was no tomorrow.”
She muttered, “Yeah, add it up, Ben.” Across the table Bird looked mad. She figured Bird had somewhat to say and she shut up for several sips of beer.
Bird didn’t say anything. Ben set his elbows on the table in an attitude that said he knew he was on Bird’s bad side, but he looked mad too.