Bird had no answer. He couldn’t think of one to cut this off.
“This is my money too, Bird. It’s my money you’re spending. Maybe you own this ship, maybe I’m just a part-share partner, but I have some say here.” Ben flung a gesture toward Dekker, aft. “That guy’s going to live or he’s going to die. In either case he’s going to do it before the month is up. Much as I want to be rid of him, there’s no need busting our tails—we have double mass to move, Bird, and hell if I’m dumping the sling—”
“All right, we’re not dumping the sling. Not ours, not his either, if we can avoid it.”
“And we’re not putting any hard push on the rigging. There’s no point in risking our necks. Or putting wear on the pins and the lines. We don’t call this a life-and-death. We can’t cut that much time off. And hell if I want to meet a rock the way this guy did.”
It made better sense than a lot else Ben had been saying. Bird took that for hopeful and nodded. “I’ll go with you on that. A hard push could do more harm than good for him, too.”
“Guy’s going to die anyway.”
“He’s not going to die,” Bird said. “For God’s sake, just shut up, he can hear you.”
“So if he doesn’t? A month gets him well, and we pull into station and he looks healthy and he says sure he was managing that ship just fine—”
“Just let it alone, Ben!”
“I’m going to get pictures.”
“Get your pictures.” Bird shook his head, wishing he could say no, wishing he had some way to reason with Ben, but if getting a vid record would make Ben happier, God, let him have the pictures. “We have the condition of that ship out there, we have the log records over there—”
“Charts—” Ben exclaimed, as if that was a new idea.
“We’re not touching that log. No way. That part of the law I know.”
“I’m not talking about that. Look—look, I got an idea.”
An idea was welcome. Bird watched doubtfully as Ben punched up the zone schema, pointed on the screen to the’driver ship and its fire-path to the Well, the same thing that scared them even to contemplate. “That’s got a medic. That’s got a friggin’ company captain in charge. We just ask Mama to boost us over there just across the line and they can take official possession.”
“Damn right they would. The company doesn’t run a charity.”
“It’s an Rl ship! They’re obligated to take him. They have no choice. The law says a ’driver is a Base: they can log us right there for a find if we bring it in, and this is a find, isn’t it? Same as a rock. We can turn it in, money in the bank, and we can apply to do some clean-up along with its tenders for the rest of our run—that’s damn good money. Sure money. And we got the best excuse going.”
“Ben, that’s a ’driver captain you’re talking about. They don’t have to do anything. You want him to tell us we’ve still got to turn around and take this guy in to Base, maybe clean to Rl, if he takes it in his head—he can do that. You want him to tell us he’ll hold Eighty-four Zebra for us—and then contest his fees in court when he shows up three years from now with one hell of a haulage charge? We got this run to pay for, we got serious questions to answer, because there’s a whole lot that’s not right about this, and I’m not taking my chances with any Court of Inquiry back at Base with all the evidence stuck out on a ’driver that for all we know isn’t coming in for three or four more years. If you want to talk law, now, let’s be practical!”
Ben’s mouth shut.
“A ’driver does any damn thing it wants to. Three years’ dockage charges, supposing they’re on the start of their run. Three years’ haulage. You want to try to pry a claim away from the company then? Not mentioning the cost of getting it there. We’re short as is. You want to hear them say ferry it back ourselves anyway? Twice the distance? Or get us drafted into its tender crew on a permanent basis? You know what they charge a freerunner for fuel?”
Ben looked very sober during all of this. Ben bit his lip. “So that’s out. You know, we could just sort of knock that fellow on the head. Solve everybody’s problem.”
Ben, who was scared to death of looking at a body.
“Yeah, sure,” Bird said.
And from aft: “What time is it? What’s the time?”
Ben glanced up. “Now what does he want?”
Bird checked his watch. “2310,” he shouted back.
“I want my watch.”
“God,” Ben muttered, shaking his head. “We have four weeks of this guy?”
“I want my watch!”
Ben yelled: “Shut up, dammit, you’re not keeping any appointments anyway!”
“Patience,” Bird said, but Ben shoved off in Dekker’s direction. Bird sailed after, arrived as Dekker said quietly, “I need my watch.”
Ben said: “You don’t need your watch, you’re not going anywhere. It’s 23 damn 10 in my sleep, mister, you’re using our air and our fuel and our time already, so shut up.”
“Ben, just take it easy.”
“I’ll shut him up with a wrench.”
“Ben.”
“All right, all right, all right.” Ben took off again.
Dekker said, “I can’t see my watch.”
Bird floated over where he could read the time on Dekker’s watch. “2014. You’re about three hours slow.”
“No.”
“That’s what it says.”
“What day is it?”
“May 20.”
“You’re lying to me!”
“Bird,” Ben said ominously, and came drifting up again to reach for Dekker, but Bird grabbed him.
“I can’t take four weeks of that, Bird, I swear to you, this guy’s already on credit with me already.”
“Give me a little slack, will you? Shut it down. Shut it up. Hear me?”
“I’ve dealt with crazies,” Ben muttered. “I’ve seen enough of them.”
“Fine. Fine. We get this guy out of a tumble, he’s been whacked about the head, he’s a little shook, Ben, d’you think you wouldn’t be, if you’d been through what he has?”
Ben stared at him, jaw clamped, grievous offense in every line of his face.
Ben was in the middle of his night. That was so. Ben was tired and Ben had been spooked, and Ben didn’t understand weakness in anybody else.
Serious personality flaw, Bird thought. Dangerous personality flaw.
He watched Ben go back to his work without a word.
Good partner in some ways. Damned efficient. Good with rocks.
But different. Belter-born, for one thing, never talked about his relatives. Brought up by the corporation, for the corporation.
Talk to Ben about Shakespeare, Ben’d say, What shift does he work?
Say, I come from Colorado—Ben’d say, Is that a city?
But Ben didn’t really know what a city was. You couldn’t figure how Ben read that word.
Say, I went up to Denver for the weekend, and Ben’d look at you funny, because weekend was another thing that didn’t translate. Ben wouldn’t ask, either, because Ben didn’t really want to know: he couldn’t spend it and he wasn’t going there and never would and that was the limit of Ben’s interest.
Ask Ben about spectral analysis or the assay and provenance of a given chunk of rock and he’d do a thirty-minute monologue.
Damn weird values in Belt kids’ mindsets. Sometimes Bird wondered. Right now he didn’t want to know.
Right now he was thinking he might not want Ben with him next trip. Ben was a fine geologist, a reliable hold-her-steady kind of pilot, and honest in his own way.
But he had some scary dark spots too.
Maybe years could teach Ben what a city was. But God only knew if you could teach Ben how to live in one.