But not what the UDC wanted. And what the Fleet wanted wasn’t any ticket to Stockholm, no.
Damn, damn, and damn.
Meanwhile Dekker got crazier, no knowing what drug they were filling him full of or what it was doing, and if he could get hold of Graff he’d tell him check the damn medication for side effects, it wasn’t helping, it was making Dekker worse; he’d stopped trusting Higgins, and Evans hadn’t been available since yesterday—
He’d seen this before, damn if he hadn’t when an organization got ready to throw a man out with the garbage—some skuz in power had taken a position and bet his ass on it, and now the skuz in power had stopped wanting the truth, since it didn’t agree with the positions he’d taken—
So you trashed the guy who knew what was going on; you pinned the blame on him as far as you could; you shunted out anybody who might be sympathetic—Evans’ departure from the scene—and from where Ben Pollard was standing it didn’t look as if Graff or the Fleet had any serious influence left in the hospital—not enough at least for Graff to get his ass in here and ask Dekker himself, which signal he should have picked up from the beginning if he’d had any antennae up.
Not enough to do a thing about the stuff they were shooting into Dekker, who, if the Fleet knew it, wasn’t outstandingly sane to start with.
Triple damn.
“Good night,” some nurse said to him. “G’night,” Ben muttered, half looking around. Good night was what Earthers said to each other. Good night was where this guy had come from. The place of green and snow and rain. Tides and beaches.
He’d seen growing plants. Been into the herbarium on Sol One. Amazing sight. Guided tours, once a week. Keep to the walkway, don’t pick the leaves. But the Guides demonstrated how some of them smelled. Flowers would take your head off. Leaves smelled strange. He wasn’t sure he liked it. Grease and cold metal smelled one way, and that was home. This hadn’t been, hadn’t smelled quite edible, not quite offensive, not at all smell like anything he’d known. The ocean was what he wanted, not any damn woods full of stinking plants: snow that was water freezing, not methane, or the scary stuff you got when a seal was chancy.
Snow was the result of weather, which was the result of Coriolis forces, which he understood, and atmospheric rollover, which he theoretically understood—he thought about that, pushing the button for another damned cheese sandwich, he thought about a city that was like helldeck without an overhead, with the tides coming and going against its edges and snow happening—that was what he thought about for company on the walk home.
Didn’t think about Dekker lying trank-dead in bed, or Dekker saying, What’s the use, Ben? What’s the use anymore—
When Dekker had hung on to life harder than any son of a bitch of his acquaintance. And when other sons of bitches were playing games with a defense system they called important—dammit, the services played games, with a war on? And the whole human race could find itself in a war zone if the Fleet didn’t keep the mess out past the Oort Cloud?
The Earth Company was playing damn games again, that was what, in another of its corporate limbs, the friggin’ Company and the UDC and the Fleet, that couldn’t find his luggage, was politicking away as usual and throwing out a guy like Dekker who was sincerely crazy enough to want to fly a ship like that into combat.
He’d fought fools in administration before. And they were beatable, except there was such a supply of them.
He’d fought Systems before, and they were beatable, if you knew the numbers, or you could get at them. But damn, he’d tried to stay clean. Even with that EIDAT system, that begged for a finger or two in its works. Use the numbers he had to get to Graff?
Graff couldn’t do anything or Graff would have done it. Possible even that Graff had screwed him from the start of this.
Get to Keu’s office? Not damned easy. And no guarantee the Fleet even at that level could do anything.
Go to the UDC CO and screw Dekker by blowing his own service’s hope of getting him back?
Walking the corridor to his so-called hospice quarters, he thought how if going to Tanzer would get him a pass out of here on the next shuttle, damned if it wasn’t starting to look like a good idea. Screw Dekker? Dekker was already screwed. So what was one more, given he couldn’t help the guy?
He held sandwich, chips, and drink in one arm, fished his card out of his pocket with his right hand and shoved it into the key slot.
The message tight was blinking on the phone, bright red in the dark. He elbowed the button on the room lights, shut the door the same way, and went to the nightstand to set his supper down—
Found his luggage, maybe. He couldn’t think of a call else he had in, unless Dekker’d taken a spell of something.
Couldn’t be he’d broken anybody’s neck. They had him too far out for that. Please God.
He plugged in his personal reader—never use a TI card in an unsecure device—and keyed up playback.
TECH/2 Benjamin J. Pollard
CTVSS/UDC 28 DAT 2
CURRENTLOC: UDC SOL2B-HOS28
1719JUN20/24 SN P-235-9876/MLR 1923JUN20/24
TRANSFER TO: ACTIVE DUTY: UDC SYSTEMS TESTING
RANK: TECH2/UDC SOL2D-OPS/SCAN G-5: PILOT RATING C-3 WITH 200 EXPERIENCE HOURS LOGGED.
REPORT TO: 2-DECK 229, BARRACKS C: JUN21/24/ 0600h: ref/ CLASSIFIED: OUTSIDE COMMUNICATION SPECIFICALLY DENIED.
He sat down. He had that much presence of mind. He punched playback again with his thumb, and the same damned thing rolled past.
Transfer? Systems Testing? Pilot rating?
Shit!
The committee wanted another go. Immediately. The shuttle was two days on its way from Sol One, due in at maindawn, and, informed it wouldn’t be held, senatorial demands notwithstanding, the committee decided to keep going through maindark, if that was what it took. You didn’t snag a senator for a five-day to Sol Two—no famous restaurants, no cocktail lounges, no ‘faculties1 the way they legendarily existed downworld: the senators had important business to do, the senators wanted out and back to Sol One and down to Earth and their perks and their privileges, and they’d talk with the company reps over gin and tonic the whole way back.
Graff had hoped, for a while, after things went to hell, that some few members of the committee might want to ask him questions over gin and tonic, if they had the clout to ask him in for a go-over; or rec-hall coffee, if they had the clout just to get past Bonner. He’d kept his phone free. He’d hoped until he got the notification of the resumption of the sessions—the committee wanted a chance to review testimony and wanted certain individuals to ‘stand by’ a call.
Demas and Saito weren’t on the list. Much and Jamil certainly weren’t. No audience. No guarantee mere would be any questions Bonner didn’t set up. Graff sat there tapping a stylus on the desk and thinking about a fast call to Sol One via FleetCom; but that was still no use—if the captain hadn’t noticed a shuttle-load of senators, contractor executives, and UDC brass headed to Sol Two’s B Dock, there was no hope for them; and if the captain hadn’t known something about the character and leanings of said senators and contractors and Gen. Patrick Bonner, Fleet Security was off its game. So the lieutenant was still left out of the lock without a line, and the lieutenant had to get his butt out there right now and give the senators what they asked as best he could.
So the lieutenant in question put his jacket on, straightened his collar, and opened the door.
“Mr. Graff.”
Face to face with Tanzer.
“I’d like a word,” Tanzer said as he stepped into the hall.