“Ens. Dekker,” Porey said, with his flat, dark stare. “How are you?”
“Fine, sir.”
“That’s good.” Somehow nothing could register good in mat deep, bone-reaching voice. “Hear you had a run-in with the sims.”
“Yes, sir.”
Long silence then, while Porey looked him up and down, with a skin-crawling slowness a man couldn’t be comfortable with. Then: “Bother you?”
“I’m not anybody’s target, sir.”
“And you lost your crew.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hear they were good. Hear Wilhelmsen was.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So what are you?”
Nerves recently shaken, shook. He didn’t know what the answer was, now. He said, “I want to fly. Sir.”
“What are you, Dekker?”
“Good. Sir.”
“You’re going back in that chair. Hear me? You’re going to go back in and you’re going to forget what happened here. You want to fly?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you do that. You take that crew we’ve put together for you and you get back in that sim and you do it, do you hear me?”
He wasn’t thinking clearly. Nobody he’d ever been in a room with gave him the claustrophobic feeling Porey did. He wanted this interview over. He wanted out of this office... he wasn’t up to this.
“Do you hear me, Dekker?”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“Then you go do that. I want results. You say you’re the best. Then do it. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“You’re dismissed.”
“Yes, sir,” he said again, and then remembered Meg; and Ben; and Sal. “But with another crew, sir, than the one I’ve been given...”
“The Fleet’s assembled the crew you have at cost and expense, Ens. Dekker. We’re told they’re good. We’ll see it proved or we’ll see it disproved—in the field.”
“They’re not ready, sir.” He shoved himself forward, leaned on the desk and stared Porey in the face. “They haven’t had the year I’ve had, they’re not up to this, they haven’t flown in a year at least....”
Porey said, “That’s what the sims are for.”
“What are you after, a body count?”
People didn’t talk to Porey that way. He saw the slight surprise in Porey’s eyes, and something else, something that chilled him before Porey said,
“I’m after whatever you’ve got. As much as you’ve got.
Or you the. And your crew dies. That’s understood, isn’t it? We’re Test Systems here. And you test the systems. Do you want them to live? Then you don’t question me, you do it, mister. Do you have that?”
“It’s not reasonable!”
“I’m not a reasonable man.” Porey’s eyes kept their hold. “I never have been. I never take second best. Have you got it, Ens. Dekker? Or are you talk, and no show?”
He trembled. No human being had ever made him do that, but he shook and he knew Porey could tell it.
‘ ‘We give you everything you ask for, Dekker. Now you do what you say you can do, you pull the Hellburner out. You do it. Don’t give me excuses. I don’t hear them. Am I ever going to hear your excuses?”
“No, sir.”
“You’re meat, til you prove otherwise. Prove it. Or the. I don’t personally care, Dekker.”
He couldn’t get his breath. He couldn’t think, he wanted to strangle Porey so bad. He choked on it. Finally: “Yes, sir. I copy that clear. Am I dismissed, —sir? Because you fucking need me, don’t you, .sir?”
Porey kept staring at him. Looked him up and down. Said, “Aren’t you the bitch, Dekker?” and finally made a backhanded move that meant Get out. Dismissed.
He took it, saluted, turned and walked out, oxygen-short, still on an adrenaline burn, and snaking, while he was still remembering Porey from the ship, remembering that Graff had said even then: Don’t get close to him.
Then he hadn’t been able to figure whether Graff had meant that literally or figuratively, but he had a sinking feeling he’d just made a move that amused Porey—in the sense of defying Porey’s expectations. That was an intelligent man—maybe the most intelligent man he’d ever met; maybe too intelligent to mind who lived and who died. He believed what Porey had said—he believed lives didn’t matter in there, lives didn’t matter in this station at the moment, law didn’t matter...
Guards fell in with him, the same that had brought him there. He hadn’t even any notion where they were taking him, but they escorted him to the main corridor and told him go to barracks, everybody was confined to barracks.
Deserted corridor. Deserted conference rooms. Guards posted line of sight along the curvature. The vacancy of the corridors was surreal. The echoes of his own steps racketed crazily in his ears. The downside of the adrenaline surge left him dizzy and chilled.
several turns, more empty corridors. Guards at the barracks section door asked for his ID. “Dekker,” he said, and pulled his card from his pocket, turned it over numbly, all the rush chilled out of him. “Off duty. Just out of detention.”
The soldier guards said go through. He went, through the corridor into a barracks main-room crowded with people he knew, people he liked, guys who grabbed his arm and wished him well. He thought,
If you only knew what I’ve done to you ... ...
And almost lost everything when Meg got through the crowd and flung her arms around him. Cheers and catcalls from the company, egging her on for a kiss he didn’t shy away from, but all at once he was leaning on Meg, not certain which way was up. Dark was around him, that hazed back to light and the faces—
You all right? someone asked him, and he tried to say he was. Guy belongs in bed, somebody else said, but he said no, and they shoved him at a chair and told him the galley was sending food to barracks and in the meanwhile things had to be better, they were under Fleet control, they were trying to straighten out the duty roster and figure who was on what tomorrow...
Meg hauled a chair up facing his, grabbed his hands and made him look at her.
“Dek. You tracking, cher?”
“Yeah,” he said. He wanted a phone, he wanted—he didn’t know now whether he could cope with the news station or his mother. He kept hearing echoes, like the sim room. Someone saying, Enjoy the ride, Dekker. But the voice never had any tone. It drowned in the echoes.
He kept seeing the accident sequence on the tape. Not threatening, just a problem. He kept thinking about his mother, the apartment, the dock at R2. He kept seeing mission control, and a silent fireball. And the dizzy prospect down the core, all lines gone to a vanishing point. Fire pattern in the sims. Intersecting colors. Green lines. Track, and firepoints. He shook his head and took account of the room again, guys he ought to love, if he had it left. But maybe he was like Porey. Maybe he didn’t have it, or never had had. More comfortable not to have it. More comfortable to love the patterns more than people. Patterns didn’t the. They just evaporated. People went with so much more violence...
“God, he’s spaced. Get him on his feet.”
“We’re going to fly with this moonbeam?” Arm came around him, hauled him to his feet, and he didn’t resist it. “I tell you, I should’ve been in Stockholm, should’ve got my transfer—I hate this shit.” Friends here. People he trusted. People he’d betrayed in there with Porey, because he’d been a damned fool.