Luckily this dance was nothing like that.
Young men eyed girls across a few yards of floor. Those who were dancing were enthusiastic but hardly expert; Rees watched for a few seconds, then began to imitate their rhythmic swaying.
Jaen pulled a face at him. "That's bloody awful. But who cares?"
In the low-gee conditions — gravity here was about half its value near the Labs — the dance had a dreamy slowness. After a while Rees began to relax; and, eventually, he realized he was enjoying himself — - until his legs whisked out from under him; he clattered to the Platform with a slow bump. Jaen covered her face with one hand, suppressing giggles; a circle of laughter clustered briefly around him. He got to his feet. "I'm sorry—"
There was a tap on his shoulder. "So you should be."
He turned; there, with a broad, glinting grin, stood a tall young man with the braids of a Junior Officer. "Doav," Rees said slowly. "Did you trip me?"
Doav barked laughter.
Rees felt his forearm muscles bunch. "Doav, you've been an irritation to me for the last year…"
Doav looked baffled.
"… I mean, the last thousand shifts." And it was true; Rees could bear the constant sniping, cracks and cruelties of Doav and his like throughout his working day… but he would much prefer not to have to. And, since the incident at the Theatre, he had come to see how attitudes like Doav's were the cause of a great deal of pain and suffering on the Raft; and, perhaps, of much more to come.
The wine-sim was like blood now, pounding in his head. "Cadet, if we've something to settle—"
Doav fixed him with a look of contempt. "Not here. But soon. Oh, yes; soon." And he turned his back and walked off through the throng.
Jaen thumped Rees's arm hard enough to make him flinch. "Do you have to turn every incident into an exhibition? Come on; let's get a drink." She stamped her way towards the bar.
"Hello, Rees."
Rees paused, allowing Jaen to slip ahead into the crush around the bar. A thin young man stood before him, hair plastered across his scalp. He wore the black braids of Infrastructure and he regarded Rees with cool appraisal.
Rees groaned. "Gover. I guess this isn't to be the best shift I've ever had."
"What?"
"Never mind. I haven't seen you since not long after my arrival."
"Yeah, but that's not hard to understand." Gover flicked delicately at Rees's braid. "We move in different circles, don't we?"
Rees, already on edge after the incident with Doav, studied Gover as coolly as he could. There were still the same sharp features, the look of petulant anger — but Gover looked more substantial, more sure of himself.
"So you're still skivvying for those old farts in the Labs, eh?"
"I'm not going to respond to that, Gover."
"You're not?" Gover rubbed at his nostrils with the palm of his hand. "Seeing you in this toy uniform made me wonder how you see yourself now. I bet you haven't done a shift's work — real work — since you landed here. I wonder what your fellow rats would think of you now. Eh?"
Rees felt blood surge once more to his cheeks; the wine-sim seemed to be turning sour. There was a seed of confusion inside him. Was his anger at Gover just a way of shielding himself from the truth, that he had betrayed his origins…?
"What do you want, Gover?"
Gover took a step closer to Rees. His stale breath cut through the wine fumes in Rees's nostrils. "Listen, mine rat, believe it or not I want to do you a favor."
"What kind of favor?"
"Things are changing here," Gover said slyly. "Do you understand what I'm saying? Things won't always be as they are now." He eyed Rees, evidently unwilling to go further.
Rees frowned. "What are you talking about? The discontents?"
"That's what some call them. Seekers of justice, others say."
The noise of the revelers seemed to recede from Rees; it was as if Gover and he shared their own Raft somewhere in the air. "Gover, I was in the Theatre of Light, that shift. Was that justice?"
Gover's eyes narrowed. "Rees, you've seen how the elite on this Raft keep the rest of us down — and how their obscene economic system degrades the rest of the Nebula's human population. The time is near when they will have to atone."
Rees stared at him. "You're one of them, aren't you?"
Gover bit his lip. "Maybe. Look, Rees, I'm taking a chance talking to you like this. And if you betray me I'll deny we ever had this conversation."
"What do you want of me?"
"There are good men in the cause. Men like Decker, Pallis—"
Rees guffawed. Decker — the huge Infrastructure worker he had encountered on his first arrival here — he could believe. But Pallis? "Come on, Gover."
Gover was unruffled. "Damn it, Rees, you know what I think of you. You're a mine rat. You don't belong here, among decent people. But where you come from makes you one of us. All I'm asking is that you come along and listen to what they have to say. With your access to the Science buildings you could be… useful."
Rees tried to clear his thinking. Gover was a vicious, bitter young man, and his arguments — the contradictory mixture of contempt and appeal to fellow-feeling he directed at Rees, for example — were simple-minded and muddled. But what gave Gover's words force was their terrible truth. Part of Rees was appalled that such as Gover could so quickly disorient him — but inside him a core of anger flared up in response.
But if some revolution were to occur — if the Labs were smashed, the Officers imprisoned — what then?
"Gover, look up."
Gover raised his face.
"See that star up there? If we don't move the Raft the star will graze us. And then we'll fry. And even if we were to survive that — look further out." He swept an arm around the red-stained sky. "The Nebula's dying and we'll die with it. Gover, only the Scientists, backed by the organization of the Raft, can save us from such dangers."
Gover scowled and spat at the deck. "You seriously believe that? Come on, Rees. I'll tell you something. The Nebula could support us all for a long time yet — if its resources were shared equally. And that's all we want." He paused. "Well?"
Rees closed his eyes. Would sky wolves discuss Gover's case as they descended on the wreck of the Raft and picked clean the bones of his children? "Get lost, Gover," he said tiredly.
Gover sneered. "If that's what you want. I can't say I'm sorry…" He grinned at Rees with something approaching pure contempt. Then he slid away through the crowd.
The noise seemed to swirl around Rees, not touching him. He pushed his way through the crush to the bar and ordered straight liquor, and downed the hot liquid in one throw.
jaen joined him and grabbed his arm. "I've been looking for you. Where…?" Then she felt the bunched muscles under Rees's jacket; and when he turned to face her, she shrank back from his anger.
6
The Scientist Second Class stood in the doorway of the Bridge. He watched the new Third Class approach and tried to hide a smile. The young man's uniform was so obviously new, he stared with such awe at the Bridge's silver hull, and his pallor was undisputable evidence of his Thousandth Shift celebration, which had finished probably mere hours earlier… The Second Class felt quite old as he remembered his own Thousandth Shift, his own arrival at the Bridge, a good three thousand shifts ago.
At least this boy had a look of inquiry about him. So many of the apprentices the Second had to deal with were sullen and resentful at best, downright contemptuous at worst; and the rates of absenteeism and dismissal were worsening. He reached out a hand as the young man approached.