“This shift doesn’t find baggage, is that it? It just loses it?”
A moment of silence. “I’ll make a note of it, sir.”
“Thank you.”
He punched out. He did not break the phone. He took a sip of his soft drink and unwrapped the sandwich.
No official assignment, no cafeteria open at this hour, no card with food privileges. He had fifty on him. Period. And Mr. Lieutenant j-g Jurgen Graff and his unnamed captain hadn’t seen to that detail.
God, he didn’t like the feeling he had. Bet that Graff had contacted Maj. Weiter? Hell if. Bet that the UDC knew where he was right now?
He looked at the phone and thought how he could call the UDC CO here. He could do that. He could break this wide open and maybe be a hero to the UDC—or get caught in the middle of something, behind a security screen that didn’t have Stockholm anywhere inside it. A screen confined to this place. Right now he could plead total ignorance. Right now he had a transfer order signed by Keu and a Security stamp on it and he could plead he had regarded the order exactly the way it said in the Interservice Protocols. And he could do what they wanted and get out of here.
Dammit, he didn’t know why Dekker was crazy. Anybody who wanted to fly little ships and get shot at was crazy. If even the simulator could half kill a guy—
He could have said get Dekker off the drugs. He could have said don’t sedate him—but Dekker knew too much about him, damn him, Dekker knew enough to babble things that could end up on his record, if Dekker got to talking to the psych; and if Dekker had told certain things to Graff, God—Graff could have been sifting everything he had said against information he had no idea Graff had, and weighing it for truth. Graff could have had technical backup doing it, big-time, interactive logic stuff you had no good chance to evade without a clearer head and a calmer pulse rate than he had had in that interview—
God only, what Dekker had involved himself in. Or why someone might have wanted Dekker dead.
Or what might happen if he picked up that phone right now and tried to get through to the UDC office—via hospital communications.
He didn’t know enough about how the lines were drawn here. He didn’t want to know enough. Do what Graff wanted and be on that shuttle on the 22nd, that was all. Any way he could. And if the UDC did land on him—spill everything immediately. Total innocence. No, sir, they showed me orders, they said it was cleared—
Somebody subbed a pilot on a test run? And somebody put Dekker into a simulator drugged out of his mind?
Bloody hell.
He pulled out the envelope, from inside his jacket. Opened it and pulled out cards and pictures, a couple of licenses and old IDs.
Flight certification. Picture of Dekker and three other people. Group shot. All in Fleet uniform. Woman and two guys besides Dekker. All smiling. Arms over each other’s shoulders.
Old vid advert for a truly skuz sex item. God. We all have our secrets, Dek-lad,...
Picture of Sol Station. Picture of a couple of people outside a trans station. Picture of Mars Base from orbit. If there’d been any of Cory Salazar, Dekker had lost those, a long time ago.
Datacard. The phone had a reader, but he shoved the card into his own. Personal card showed vid rentals. Commissary charges. Postage charges. Bank records. Bits and pieces of Dekker’s life since they’d parted company. Lad had 5300.87cc to his account and no debts. Not bad. Not rich either.
The other datacard was old notes and mail. Not much of it. Notes from various people. One letter months ago from Ingrid Dekker. Four, this last year from Meg Kady.
So Meg did write him. He would never have figured Meg for the letter-writing kind.
Would never have figured Meg for a lot else, either.
He keyed up Meg’s last letter, scanned at random through what must have cost a Shepherd spacer a mint to send:
.. . can’t complain. Doing fine. I’m working into the crew, got myself onto the pilot list. ..
Sal and 1 dropped into The Hole, just on a look-see. Maybe it’s what we are now. Maybe it’s just the place is duller. It doesn’t feel the same—
So what does? he thought, and thought about Sal, and good times in the Hole’s back rooms. But Sal Aboujib probably had herself a dozen guys on a string by now, swaggering about in rab cut and Shepherd flash, visiting pricey places like Scorpio’s—if Scorpio’s still existed. Sal had her a berth, had her a whole new class of guys to pick from. And Ben Pollard never had gotten a letter from Sal Aboujib. A hello from Dekker once, months ago. He’d said hello back. Only communication they’d had. And it was on here. Hope you’re doing all right. Everything fine. Only long-distance letter he’d ever gotten, tell the truth. And what did you answer, to people you didn’t want to be tied to? Good luck, goodbye, Dekker?
Bills. Note from one Falcone—Dek, we don’t like it either. But nothing we can do right now. They want a show. We’ll sure as hell give them one.
He skimmed back to the letter from Ingrid Dekker. A short one. Don’t come here. I don’t want to see you. You went out there by your own choice and maybe it wasn’t any of it your fault what happened, but things are hard enough. Paul, and I don’t need any more trouble. Stop sending me money. I don’t want any more ties to you. I don’t want any more letters. Leave me alone.
Shit.
He set the reader on his knee, gave a deep breath, thinking— Shit, Dek —He’d grown up on his parents’ insurance himself, both of them having been so careless as to take the deep dive with their whole crew. At first he’d really resented them doing that, thought if they’d given a damn about their kid they wouldn’t have been that careless, but he’d stared into Jupiter’s well himself once—and he knew how subtle and sudden that slope was, in the pit of his stomach he knew it, now, and dreamed about it, on bad nights.
But his mama had never written him a letter like this one, and in that cold little spot marked Who’s left to care, he guessed why Dekker might have written him as next-of-kin: Meg with her letters about how she was working into the crew and everything was going fine for her-Dekker wouldn’t risk having another woman writing him, saying, Get out of my life, you skuz. Dekker already knew what Ben Pollard thought. And if Dekker was in trouble that needed a next-of-kin—whose life was he going to interrupt, who might remotely even know him?
He cut the reader off. He sat there in a cardboard cubby of a room with no damn baggage and for a moment or two had remorseful thoughts about Paul Dekker. Wished maybe he’d written a line or two more, back then, like—hell, he didn’t know. Something polite.
What friggin’ time is it?
Two months in a miner-ship with Dekker off his head asking him the time every few minutes. So here he was back there again—locked into a hospital with Dekker. One part of him felt sorry for Dekker and the other panicked part of him still wanted to beat hell out of the fool and get out of here....
Dammit, what am I supposed to do with this damn card? Why didn’t Graff give this stuff to the psych?
Sub in another pilot, did they? Why, if not Dekker’s attitude? And who did it,” if not the CO who’s supposed to want this stuff from Dekker? Real brand-new ship, Dekker said once. That’s why the Fleet had wanted him. He’d been real excited about it—wanted it more than anything in his life—
And a crew’s dead and Dekker’s screwed like that?
He sat there on the side of the bed desperately, urgently, wanting off Sol Two, he didn’t at the moment care where. This whole deal had the stink of death about it
Serious death, Sal would say.
No shit. Sal. What do I do with the guy?
Chapter 3
MR. Graff, urgent word with you. Down the hall. Sir. Please.” 0645 and the breakfast line in the green room was backed up to the door. Hardly time for coffee in the fifteen minutes before he was due in Tanzer’s office and Jurgen Albrecht Graff punched white coffee instead of Mack for his stomach’s sake. “Can it wait?” he asked without looking at Mitch, and caught the cup that tilted sideways and straightened it in time. Held it while it filled. “No, sir. A number of us want to talk, sir. Urgent business.”