His lip quivered. A lone tear glistened in his eye, then slowly rolled down his cheek. He sagged from attention, wiped it with his sleeve. “What did I do?” he asked, forlorn.
“I didn’t want to make you mad, Captain!”
“Good Lord, Ricky!” I pulled out a chair. “Here, sit.”
I pushed him into it, waited while he fought for control.
When I was sure he wouldn’t cry I said, more gently, “Now you can listen to me. Sit easy, the way you used to in my wardroom, and we’ll talk. All right?”
“Yessir.” He watched me anxiously.
“You saw my announcement about becoming a middy?”
“Yessir!” He was taking no chances of setting me off again.
“You know how it is in the wardroom. Would you like it there?”
“Me, sir? I’m just a sailor.”
“Would you like to be a cadet?”
“You mean, and get to live in the wardroom, and become an officer?” He grappled with the possibility.
“Yes.”
“And have to shine Mr. Holser’s shoes, and stand the regs, and ice-cold showers, and the rest of the hazing?”
Well, better he know now. “Yes, Ricky. That’s part of it.”
“Zarky!”
Good Lord, it actually appealed to him. Maybe it seemed adult, from his perspective. I wanted to stop him, for his own sake.
“Do I have to say yes right now, Captain, sir, or can I think about it?”
“You may think about it,” I told him.
The ship’s boy jumped up and saluted. “Thank you, Captain! You know”--he offered a confidence--”I read the notice myself, really I did. I can read! I didn’t think you meant it for me too. Am I dismissed? Can I go tell my friends?”
“Dismissed, Mr. Fuentes.” He would run to the purser or the chief petty officer, and ask them in his own way whether he should leave the companionship of belowdecks for the heady air of officers’ country. They would tell him to apply, not because we needed officers, but to see one of their own make it to the top.
All was well on the bridge. I knew that; if not, I would have been called. I was scheduled for afternoon watch and would probably stay on for the evening, so if I wanted to see Amanda it had to be now.
She was in her room reading a holovid, her hatch open.
When I knocked on the bulkhead she snapped off her book, got up quickly, and came to the entryway. “Come in, Nicky.” She was the only person aboard who still called me that.
We sat on the bunk. I told her what I had done to poor Alexi. She seemed indifferent. I told her how I encouraged little Ricky to apply, after first scaring the wits out of him.
That brought a smile to her face, but she said little.
After a while she got up and closed the hatch. Then she lay down on the bunk, pulling me down with her. We lay together. She was gentle and kind to me. Yet she seemed somehow abstracted, as if her mind were elsewhere. We made love, slowly, savoring the moments of intensity. When we were done she lay still, her eyes sometimes opening to look at my face, sometimes closing again.
“What is it, hon?” I stroked her hair. She nestled in my arm.
“I like you, Nicky.” She was silent a moment. “You’re gentle, and gallant, and kind to me. I enjoy being with you.”
“Me too,” I said, but she stopped me.
“I like having you as a lover. And as a friend. But-Nicky, I’m sorry. You have to know. If you kill those men, I’ll stop being your friend. We won’t be lovers or see each other ever again. I wanted you to make the right decision on your own, but it isn’t fair not to tell you what I’ll do.”
“How can you--”
She put her hand over my mouth. “It’s just that I may have misjudged you. I think you’re the sort of person who can’t do anything so barbaric. That’s why I like you. But if you can, I’m wrong about you, and it’s over between us.” She kissed my forehead. “I had to tell you.” She rested her head again in the crook of my arm.
I could think of nothing to say. We lay there, sweetly unhappy, until I had to go on watch.
I came onto the bridge, relieved Vax and the Pilot, Vax handed me a holovid chip.
“The essay you ordered, sir.”
I tossed it in the drawer. “Very good, Mr. Holser.” I looked him over. “Straighten your tie, before I put you on report.”
He blanched. “Aye aye, sir!” He quickly straightened his tie, tucked his jacket down, glanced at his shoes. “Am I dismissed, sir?”
“Yes.” I reached a sudden decision. “Meet me in the ship’s launch berth at midnight tonight.”
“The launch-- aye aye, sir!” He turned on his heel and left.This watch, I would stand alone; nobody would interrupt my thoughts. In the silence, I considered -Tuak and Rogoff, our two other condemned souls. I couldn’t face another trip to the brig, but I had to talk to them. Amanda’s conviction that the executions would be barbaric troubled me; I suspected she was right.
I paged Mr. Vishinsky. “Master-at-arms, escort Mr. Tuak to the bridge.”
His voice came over the caller. “Aye aye, sir. Captain, may I bring along--”
“No. Just Tuak.”
There was a pause. “Aye aye, sir. Respectfully, for the Captain’s personal safety I protest--”
“Protest overruled. Get him up here.” I thumbed off the caller.
A few minutes later Tuak arrived, hands cuffed in front of him, his upper arm firmly in Mr. Vishinsky’s grip. He staggered as the master-at-arms propelled him forward.
“Take off the cuffs.”
It did not meet with Vishinsky’s approval. “Aye aye, sir.”
His anger was barely concealed.
“Wait outside.” I slapped the hatch closed behind the master. I turned to the seaman, who stood nervously rubbing his chafed wrists. “I’m considering whether to save your life,” I said. “Tell me what went on belowdecks. No lies.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Tuak swallowed. He looked drawn and haggard. He was tall and thin, of sallow complexion. His eyes shifted constantly, as if he consulted some inner voice.
His story was sordid. He admitted hiding the goofjuice on board, but claimed two of his mates had smuggled the still onto the ship. That was foolish; under drugs he’d already confessed to bringing aboard and setting up the still, and he knew it. I ignored that. The main issue wasn’t the still.
“What started the riot?”
“Weiznisci started fighting, Captain. We was all just trying to stop him.”
“The truth, Mr. Tuak.”
“That’s the truth, Captain, sir.” He glanced up at my eyes.
“I was going to stop making juice; we started the still just for a joke. We didn’t mean to make all that trouble. I had to keep doin’ it, they made me.” He checked my expression once more. “When Weiznisci got wild some of the joes panicked. They wanted to tear out the still right then and there, before they found it in an inspection.”
“So you tried to stop them.”
“Oh, no, sir. I was helping. It was the others tried to stop them.” That was patently untrue.
“Then Mr. Terrill came in.”
“Yes, sir. He said to belay the fighting, but it was too wild, nobody was listening no more.”
“So you held Mr. Terrill while Rogoff clubbed him.”
“I didn’t! I was trying to help him. I held him up, kept him from falling.”
“Come on, now. Mr. Terrill said you grabbed him around the neck to hold on tighter.”
“No, sir. Oh, no, Captain. He’s mixed up, Mr. Terrill is.
I saw him get slugged and I tried to keep him on his feet.
That’s all.”
By now he could probably pass a polygraph and drug test on his story; he’d repeated it so often he believed it. He babbled on, trying to convince me of his good intentions.
A man like Tuak illustrated the pitfalls of guaranteed enlistmerit. If crewmen were given the same rigorous screening as us officers, Tuak wouldn’t have gotten aboard. But the hazards of seafaring life made it difficult to recruit seamen for the huge starships, especially as government policy put a tenyear cap on service begun as an adult, for fear of melanoma T.Government, industry, and academia were all in constant need of educated workers, and the colonies themselves were a drain of educated manpower. Our explosion into space meant that Admiralty had a lot of ships to man, and interstellar voyages took years. Belowdecks they were years of crammed quarters, lack of privacy, hard duties, tyrannical discipline.