“It should be. I take it you heard about the interservice incident. We have personnel in the brig...”
“The colonel’s office,” Porey said, shortly, and motioned him curtly to come along.
Quiet in the cell block, deathly quiet for a while. Then someone yelled: “Hey, Pauli.”
“Yeah?”
“You know that five you owe me?”
“Yeah?”
“Cancel it. You got that sumbitch.”
“That sumbitch is in here!” another voice yelled. “That sumbitch is going to whip you good, Basrami!”
“Yeah, you got a big chance of doing that, Charlie-boy.
How was dessert?”
“Your guy can’t navigate an aisle! What’s he good for, him and his fe-male pi-luts? Couple of Belter whores, what
I hear—“
Dekker stood at the bars, white-knuckled, Ben could see it from where he sat. From down the aisle Meg’s high, clear voice. “You a pi-lut, cher, or a mouth?”
“You come in here to save Dekker’s ass? Bed’s what you’re for, honey. It’s where you better stay.”
Ben winced. Meg’s voice:
“Fuck yourself, Charlie-boy, but don’t fuck with me. What are you, a tech or a pilot?”
“Pilot, baby, and you better stay to rock-picking. You’re
out of your league.”
Chorus of derision from one side of the cell-block. Shouts from the other. Dekker hit the cross-bar with his fist, muscle standing hard in his jaw, and from down the row, Meg
shouted:
“You got a bet, Charlie-boy.”
Wasn’t any way she wouldn’t take a challenge like that. Her and Sal. Ben felt his gut in a knot, saw Dekker lean his head against the bars, not saying anything, that was the danger signal in Dekker. And somebody down the row yelled,
“Hey, Dekker! You hearing this?”
Shouting over the top of it. Dekker had to answer, had to, way the rules worked, and Ben held his breath and crawled off the bunk, not sure what he was going to do if Dekker blew.
“Dekker? You hear?”
Man couldn’t talk. Ben added those numbers fast, yelled out: “He’s ignoring you, mouth! You’re boring.”
“Funny he had a lot to say when Chad bought it! That right, Dekker? That right?”
Ben shoved his arm, not hard. Dekker was frozen. Hard as ice. Staring into nothing. Other guys were yelling. Something hit the middle of the aisle and rattled to a stop. And Dekker looked like a guy hit in the gut, wasn’t saying anything, wasn’t defending himself, was letting others do it. Another shove wasn’t going to push him into thinking. God only knew what it might do. He had the look of a man on the edge of cracking and Ben didn’t know what to do with him, he didn’t know how to answer the catcalls and the shouting that was going on, he hoped to hell for the MPs to come in and break it up. Wasn’t any more from Meg. He could hear Sal’s voice in the middle of it, but he had a desperate feeling he was in a cell with half a problem and Sal had the other half...
“Hey, Custard Charlie,” somebody yelled. “You want to run the sims full hours? Take you on.”
That was a hit. Belters tagged you and you stayed tagged until you burned it off—and then it could come back years later.
“Take you on, take Dekker and his women on, any day, any day—what about it, Dekker? You got a voice, pretty-boy? Where’s your ladies?”
‘Ladies’ included one UDC shave-head in the mix, Ben figured, but he wasn’t going to get into it, wasn’t his business, wasn’t going to win a thing.
But Dekker came alive then, shouting, “We got enough of that Attitude, mister, we got too damn many dead with that Attitude. I liked Chad, you hear me, you son of a bitch? I liked him all right, it was your own CO set him up.” Dekker’s voice cracked. He wasn’t doing highly well right now, but at least the jaw had come unwired. He hit his fist on the bars, turned around and said to the ceiling or the walls, Ben didn’t think it was to him, “God, they’re making me crazy—they’re trying to make me crazy.”
Wouldn’t touch that line, Ben told himself, and held his breath, just stood out of the way while Dekker walked the length of the cell and back.
“Hey, Dekker,” another voice yelled. “You son of a bitch, was that your mama on the news?”
Shit. Dekker was at the bars and that knot was back in his jaw. “You want to discuss it? Is that Sook?”
“No way,” another voice yelled out. “Sook’s not guilty. That was J. Bob.”
Catcalls went one way and the other. Shouting racketed up and down the hall, until starting with the far end, it got suddenly quiet. Quiet traveled. Ben leaned against the bars and tried to see what was going on, and all he could make out was UDC uniforms and MPs.
“That’s better,” someone said. “Keep it quiet. Fleet personnel are being released—“ A cheer went up.
“—to Fleet Security, for your own officers to sort out. You’ll file outside, you’ll give the officers your full name, your serial number, your rank, in that order. You’ll be checked out and checked off...”
“Where do / go?” Ben muttered, suddenly with the notion he didn’t necessarily want to go into a pool of UDC detainees with a grudge. “Shit, where do / go?”
“You go with me,” Dekker said. “You’re in our barracks, you go with me.”
Doors had started opening. You could hear the clicks and the guys moving out.
Their door clicked. Dekker shoved it and they both walked out. Walked down the hall toward the MPs and it was only UDC guys left in the cells on the right, staring at them. They’re not going to let me out, Ben kept thinking, they’re not going to let me out of here...
“Wrong flock, aren’t you?” an MP asked him; but the other said, “That’s all right, that’s Pollard.”
It wasn’t highly all right. Hell if it was. He was all but shaking when they got through the doors and out of the cell block, into the outer hall where sure enough, a couple of Fleet Security officers were waiting with a checklist. “Dekker,” Dekker muttered, “Paul F....” and didn’t get further than that before the senior officer said,
“Dekker, go with the man. —You Pollard?”
Ben nodded. Saw one of the Security officers motion Dekker toward another set of doors, saw Dekker look at him and had this panicked sudden notion that if he let Dekker off alone something stupid was bound to happen—Keu and the lieutenant had tagged him with Dekker, and the only way to ensure Dekker didn’t drag him into worse trouble was to stay with him. “Excuse me,” he said, “but I have orders to keep an eye on him—lieutenant’s orders ...” Highest card he knew.
But the guy said, “You have the commander’s orders to go to your barracks and stay put until further notice. The lieutenant’s not in command now. Comdr. Porey is.”
He must have done a take. He felt his heart stop and start. “Commander Porey?”
“Follow orders, mister. This whole station’s under the commander’s orders. The UDC’s command’s been set aside.”
He wasn’t the only one in the area now. Mason and Pauli had shown up under escort. “Hot damn,” Mason said.
But Ben thought, with a sinking feeling, Oh, my God....
Graff was extremely glad he didn’t have to hear what happened inside what had, until an hour ago, been his office. Occasional words came through the closed door, while he stood outside in the hall with Tanzer’s aide Andrews, neither of them looking at each other, with MPs and Fleet Security at their respective ends of the corridor.
It was not a happy situation. He didn’t like Tanzer. But he felt only discomfort in seeing the man finally walk out of the office white-lipped and red-faced. Tanzer swept up Andrews and walked back the way he had come, with, as Graff understood Porey’s intentions, no transfer out of here, no resignation accepted, and a hardcopy of an order from Geneva that in effect put Edmund Porey in charge of Tanzer’s office and Tanzer’s program.