"Nossir."
"Those drugs yours?"
"Nossir."
He hit her again. "Are you any use to me?"
"Dunno, sir." Talking made a bubbling feeling, now. Blood, maybe. "I try."
Fitch said, "How's that?"
"Try, sir. Real cooperative."
"I think you're lying, Yeager. Would you lie to me?"
"Nossir."
The grip on her clothes let up. She tensed up, expecting a sneak blow, but he let her sit there.
"You want your friends to be all right, is that right?"
"Yessir."
"There's a washroom back there. You go clean up. Then you can go."
She stared at him.
"You understand me," Fitch said. "Report on the drugs is inconclusive.—I sure as hell better not catch you in any more trouble, Yeager. You oryour friends, you hear me?"
"Yessir," she said. She got up, the way he said, wobbling, she managed to focus enough to see the door, and she went back into the cubby with the sink and toilet and turned on the cold water. The mirror showed a face better than she expected, the blood from her nose and mouth went with a couple of handfuls of cold water. The red on the sides of her face didn't.
She blotted dry with the towel, she looked up and Fitch was mirrored in the doorway.
Her gut clenched up. She couldn't help it, and couldn't help it when she had to turn around and face him, and pass him when he moved back ever so little to let her brush past him.—Dammit, she knew what he was doing, wasn't half surprised when he put a light hand on her shoulder, enough to make her stomach heave.
"You do better in future," he said. "And we'll get along just fine. Hear?"
"Yessir."
He motioned her toward the door. She went, opened it herself, .walked out into a vacant corridor. The cold of the water was going. Her bones ached, her vision still kept blurring, and she had to walk around the rim and get some rest and get up, she supposed, at alterdawn—back on duty; but she realized numbly that she had no idea where NG and Musa were, or what had happened to them or whether NG was next in Fitch's office.
She grayed out for a second, found herself in rec, walking up to the quarters door, got just about that far before she got dizzy and had to hang there a second. Then she shoved off and walked into the dark, past sleeping crewmates, down as far as Musa's bunk and NG's, and they were both empty.
God.
She had to sit. She picked Musa's bunk, and sat down and after a moment lay down, in the idea that if either of them came back the way she had, they'd come here, and she didn't think she could make the loft, she was too dizzy and too sick.
The dizziness got better after a few minutes of lying down. But the fear didn't.
Exactly what Fitch had done to NG.
Exactly.
Except it could get worse. Except you toed the line with Fitch or he'd see you had accidents, and he had his hand-picked skuz aboard to see you got up on charges—no damn wonder Hughes and his bridge connections were so solid—
Goddard. Goddard, over nav, Hughes' operator.
Friend of Fitch's.
Fitch picked the personnel.
Got himself a skut who carved up two people on Thule, just out of the goodness of his heart and his faith in humanity hauled her aboard and let her loose—
Like hell.
Like hell Fitch didn't run this shipc
Or intend to.
Bernstein had to be a pain in the ass to him. Bernstein had been on mainday until he got a bellyful of Fitch and transferred to alterday—
—like anybody else who could manage it.
Alterdaywas where you went if you couldn't get along with Fitch and you had a little pull—like Bernie had gotten NG and Musa to his shift; or you got there by being Fitch's hand-picked damn spies—
—like Lindy Hughes. Should've killed that skuz.
Will.
Except—the facts were real clear now, what the real rules were on this ship—that meant you went head to head with Fitch, and that meant—
Fitch had just given her a preview of what it meant.
And Fitch had NG in there by now, another locker-door accident, that was all. A lot more valuable alive—
You didn't make martyrs, you just beat hell out of 'em and you turned 'em back into the 'decks to start the rest of the campaign—
—like little accidents to your stuff, and then little accidents to you, so you knew if you fought back you were going to be in Fitch's office, and maybe in the brig when the ship went jump—
—like little accidents to your friends. And your 'friends' would pull off and leave trouble alone, if they were smart.
Or just human.
You always gave your enemies an out, right in the direction you wanted 'em to go.
That was what the Old Man used to say. That was what Fitch was doing. And he shouldn't make her scared, old Phillips had belted her across a hallway once; but Junker Phillips wasn't trying to kill you, he was just trying to keep you alive.
Fitchwas trying to kill you. Or Fitch was trying to break you. And those were the two choices you had. Crew like this had to have an example. Like NG.
But NG was too crazy to break and too valuable to kill.
Not when NG was a way to Bernstein's gut.
And Fitch didn't damn well need her now—except as another way to put the screws to NG.
Who wasn't as crazy as seemed, not halfas crazy as seemed, if he was still alive and Bernstein was.
Man named Cassell wasn't.
Man named Cassell had had a fatal accident. In Engineering.
And NG Ramey took the shit for it.
Cassell had been a friendof NG's. And Bernstein's.
She found her hands in fists, tasted blood and swallowed it; and knew if Fitch so much as stopped her in the corridor after this she was going to be shaking head to foot.
Shake like hell suiting up, she thought, flashing on what it felt like, with your body cased in ceramics, with the servos whining when you moved and the pressure of the bands on your body that told the suit what the body wanted. And the damn servos got confused as hell if you started shaking and everybody knew it, because they stuttered and chattered—
Embarrassing as hell. So you developed a sense of humor about it, since you did it every damn time—
Adrenaline charge. Stutter and rattle.
Smell of oil and metal and plastics. Human sweat and your own breath inside the helmet.
You were machine, then. Human gut inside a human-shaped machine. And it took a damn lucky shot to damage you.
Sure missed that rig, sometimes. Sure hated to leave it, in that corridor on Pell.
Shakes stopped after you got going. Servos smoothed out and you floated, like nothing was effort, and nothing could stop you.
But armor's got no thinking brain, armor's got no guts.— That'syou, skut, you're the Operating System. It'll walk after you're dead, but it don't fight worth shit in that condition. You're the brain and the guts. Remember it.
Damn right, Junker Phillips.
Somebody bumped the bed. She woke up with her heart thumping, knew right off that she was in quarters, and in Musa's bunk, waiting on her mates, and that there were two men, shadowed against the night-glow, one with Musa's shape and Musa's smell, and one with NG's, touching her, gathering her up when she tried to move, hugging her so everything hurt.
"I'm all right," she said. "You?"
"Fine," NG said, or something like that, and she just held onto them a while, not caring that it hurt. NG felt over her face, and the way his fingers stopped at her lip and her right cheek, and the way the spots were both sore and a little numb from swelling she got a mental picture the same as he had to, what she had to look like.