“You sure you better not get back in that bed?”
He moved his arm. That shoulder had hurt. Didn’t now, as much. He kept his eyes on that line and said, “Want to get up, Meg. Just give me a hand.”
She did that. He didn’t need it to lean on. He just needed it steady. Second reference point. He made it to his feet, risked a blink, then shut his eyes and stood there a moment. He opened them and took a step, with Meg’s help. “Shot to hell,” he muttered. “Too much zero g.”
“Does that to you,” Meg agreed. “Going back to it?”
“Inner ear’s playing me tricks.” Another step. A third. He took a breath, let go her hand and took a fourth.
“They ought to have had you walking. Especially a spacer. Especially you. What’re the doctors worth in this place?”
A moment of vertigo. He got it back again. “Meg, how in hell’d you get here?” Months to get in from the Belt. They’d told her he was in trouble? Time threatened to unravel again. Except—
“Just caught a passing carrier. You got people real worried about you, Dek. Important people.”
Carrier could make that passage in a handful of days. Better than that, the rumor was. And a carrier pulled Meg out of the Belt? Out of a berth she’d risked her neck to get? “Meg, make ‘em send you back, don’t get mixed up in this, I don’t want you, I don’t want you here—“
“Hell if, boy-doll. Anyway, I signed the papers. Going to make me an officer—“
“Oh, shit. Shit, Meg!” The room went spinning. He just stared at Meg’s face for a reference point and kept his feet and knees from moving. “You were where you wanted.”
“Yeah, well. It’s not all al-tru-istic. —You want to sit down, Dek?”
“No.” A shake of his head that risked his balance. “No. I’m all right. I need to stand up. They won’t let me stand up. Have I got any clothes in mat locker?”
Meg looked. He didn’t dare track on her. She said, “No.”
“Meg, I want you to go to the lieutenant....”
“Graff?”
“Graff. I want you to go to him—“ The place could be bugged. But there was nothing else to do. “I want you to tell him I need help. I don’t trust what they’re giving me. I want out of here.”
“This then or now, Dek? Who’s doing this?”
He tried a step and another one. His heart was pounding. Sounds came distant and strange. He walked as far as the door, opened it, and gambled his stability on a look at Meg. “You remember your way out of here?”
“Yeah.”
“1’11 walk you to the door. Five on ten I don’t get that far. But you’ll know, then, won’t you?”
“Shit, Dek.”
“Yeah.” He took her arm. She grabbed his hand. “Let’s
walk, huh?”
‘ ‘ ‘
“Aboujib,” Graff said, and put out his hand for a non-reg handshake. Dark-skinned, exotic as they came to Inner System eyes, and by Ben Pollard’s recommendation and the enlistment records, a Company-educated disciplinary washout who’d gotten another kind of rep among the Shepherds. Jamil had been by to give him a quick word. Pollard had shown up for his appointment with Aboujib in tow—one Meg Kady was ‘visiting Dekker’ on Pollard’s pass (“It’ll work in the lock,” Pollard had said, with airy disregard of UDC security, but Pollard was not unconcerned, Pollard had just smiled, put a thoroughly stripped personal card on his desk and said, “I’m screwed, sir. Do you think you could just possibly get somebody to do something about this? They just put me in your command, sir, I’m UDC, and I’m mortally worried the colonel’s going to want to talk to me,”)
Hell in a handbasket. As the Earthers said. And here was file rest of Dekker’s former crew, in on the Sol One shuttle without a word of explanation, warning, or advice what to do with them?
He wasn’t highly pleased with the captain right now. Not pleased with Tanzer, not pleased with the situation, and not pleased to know one of the pair was loose in hospital on somebody else’s Fleet pass.
But Jamil had been damned cheerful, saying, “We got us a couple of recruits, lieutenant. —Mitch is going to the.”
It could give a man the feeling something was passing by him. And that things were careening out of control. “Welcome in, Aboujib. Scan-tech, is it?”
“Yessir.” Aboujib had a solid grip, a steady eye, a distractingly quirky dimple beside a pretty mouth—and she was outside his crew and off limits, end it, right there. Not many women among the Shepherds and a consequent shortage of women in the program; and one of Dekker’s former partners?
The captain had put Dekker’s unit together again. That was what was happening. Keu wasn’t saying a thing—so FleetCom wasn’t secure: the captain was just doing it, case by case: somebody had moved a carrier in from the Belt, for God’s sake, or Victoria was back in-system: no other way to ferry Aboujib and Kady here since the accident.
Which could mean the captain hadn’t been on Sol One for the last week; could mean Mazian had interrupted his diplomatic receptions to take a hand; or it might mean Keu had help: cooperative command in action—Col. Tanzer, sir.
He said, “Very glad to have you aboard, Aboujib....” and the phone beeped. His calls were routing through the carrier’s board and that wasn’t to be ignored. He picked up the receiver, said, “Graff here,” and heard:
“Lieutenant?” Thin voice. Strained. “Dekker. Need some help, sir.”
“Shove it!” he heard in the background. Female voice. And something happened.
A hand came under Dekker’s arm. Pulled. The nurse took hold of Meg’s arm and lost that grip. Fast.
“You want those fingers, mister, you keep ‘em the fuck off my arm.”
The nurse had hit an alarm, or something: a light was flashing. But Dekker knew where he was, he knew who was keeping his balance for him and he’d trust Meg in the black deep of space. He said, “Door, Meg. Now.”
“He’s not released,” the nurse said. Other meds showed up. Higgins arrived at the desk, looked at Meg and said, “Who are you?”
“Ben Pollard right now,” Meg said. “Ben’s getting my pass straightened out.”
“Get security,” Higgins said to someone in the hall. “Lt. Dekker, they’ll take you to your room.”
“No such.” He held his feet. “I’m going.” Head was killing him. But standing was easier. “Where’s my uniform?”
Security showed up, MPs, UDC. An MP grabbed for Meg, and next thing he knew he’d grabbed the MP—the guy looked at him, he looked at the guy with his fist doubled, but the MP with a fistful of his pajamas wasn’t about to hit a hospital case. So he kept his hold on the MP, the MP kept his hold on him, and they stared at each other while the interns tried to drag him away. “You tell Tanzer fuck himself. Hear? —Meg? Get. Get out of here.”
They told her, “You’re under arrest. You’re not going anywhere,” and Meg said,
“Hell if. Spiel on, chelovek, a judge is going to hear every word of this. You seriously better not bruise him.”
“Now wait a minute.” Higgins pulled the MP off—tried to: he wasn’t about to let go his only anchor, and Higgins was upset. “All right, all right, calm down. Everybody calm down. Lt. Dekker, let go of him.”
Things were graying out. But he got a breath and held on, said, rationally, he hoped, “I’m walking out of here and I’m going back to my barracks.”
Meg said, “Dek, calm down.”
Her, he listened to. Kept his grip the way the MP held on to him and listened to Meg say, “He had a seriously bad time with Company doctors. Fed him full of prescription drugs, while he was spaced. You let him go. He’ll be all right.”