Devil to the Belt (v1.1) (4 page)

It was the best he knew to do for the man. He drifted over to Dekker, extracted the tube and held it to Dekker’s lips.

“Come on. Drink up. It’s the green stuff.”

Dekker took a sip, made a face, ducked his head aside.

“Come on. Another.”

Dekker shook his head.

Couldn’t blame him for that, Bird thought. And you damn sure didn’t want anybody sick at his stomach in null-g. He tested whether the cord and the tape were too tight, decided Dekker was all right for a while. “Well let you loose when your head clears. You’re all right. Hear me? We’re going to get you back to Base. Get you to the meds. Hear me?”

Dekker nodded slightly, eyes shut.

Exhausted, Bird decided. He gave the man a gentle pat on the shoulder and said, “Get some sleep. Ship’s stable now.”

Dekker muttered something. Agreement, Bird thought. He hoped so. He was shaky, exhausted, and he wished they were a hell of a lot closer to Base than they were.

The guy needed a hospital in the worst way. And that was a month away at least. Bad trip. And there was the investment of time and money this run was going to cost them. Half a year’s income, counting mandatory layouts.

Maybe Ben was right and they did have a legal claim on this wreck—Ben was a college boy, Ben knew the ins and outs of company law and all the loopholes—and maybe legally those were the rules, but Bird didn’t like thinking that way and he didn’t like the situation this run had put them in. If it was a company ship they had in tow and if it was the company itself they were going to be collecting their bills from—that was one thing; but the rig with its cheap equipment wasn’t spiff enough for a company ship. That meant it was a freerunner, and that meant it was some poor sod’s whole life, Dekker’s or somebody’s. Get their expenses back, yes, much as they could, but not rob some poor guy of everything he owned. That wasn’t something Bird wanted to think about.

But Ben could. And Ben scared him of a sudden. You worked with a guy two years in a little can like this and eventually you did think you knew him reasonably well, but God knew and experience had proved it more than once—it was lonely out here, it was a long way from civilization, and you could never realize what all a guy’s kinks were until something pushed the significant button.

THE old man went away. Dekker heard him or his partner moving about. He heard the shower going, over the fan and the pump noises in the pipes beside his head. The ship was stable. That was a feeling he had thought he would never have again. He had dimmed the lights, cut off everything he could and nursed it as far as he could til the ‘cyclers went and the water fouled.

And here he was free of the stimsuit, light as a breeze and vulnerable to the chill and the lack of
g
. He was off his head, he knew that: he scared the people who had rescued him, he knew that too, and he tried not to do it, but they scared him. They talked about owning his ship. They might kill him, might just let him die and tell the company sorry, they hadn’t been able to help that.

Maybe they couldn’t. Maybe he shouldn’t care any longer. He was tired, he hurt, body and soul, and living took more work than he was sure he wanted to spend again on anything. He had no idea how long and how far a run was still in front of him getting home. He didn’t think he could stand being treated like this all the way. Everything smelled of disinfectant, and sometimes it was his ship and sometimes it was theirs.

But Cory never answered him wherever he was, and at times he knew she wouldn’t.

The old man drifted up into his sight again, put a straw in his mouth and told him to drink. He did. It tasted of copper. The old man asked him what had happened to his partner. Then he remembered—how could he have forgotten?—that she was out there and that ship was, he could see it coming—

“No!” he cried, and winced when it hit, he knew it was going to hit, the collision alert was screaming. He yelled into the mike, “My partner’s out there!” because it was the last thing he could think of to tell them.

“Your partner’s dead!” somebody yelled at him, and another voice, angry, yelled, “Shut up, dammit, Ben! You got no damn feelings, give the guy a chance. God!”

He was still alive and he did not understand how he had survived. He hauled himself to the radio, he held on against the spin as long as he had strength. “Cory,” he called on the suit-com frequency, over and over again, while the ship tumbled. Maybe she answered. His ears rang so he couldn’t hear the fans or the pumps. But he kept calling her name, so she would know he was alive and looking for her, that he’d get help to her somehow…

As soon as he could get the damned engines to fire.

Or as soon as he could get hold of Base and make that ship out there answer him…

Ben said, “We’re
due
salvage rights, whether he’s company or a freerunner, no legal difference. It’s right in the company rules, I’ll show you—”

Bird said, carefully, because he wanted Ben to understand him: “We’ll get compensated.”

“Maritime law since—”

“There’s the law and there’s what’s right, Ben.”

“
Right
is, we own that ship, Bird. He wasn’t in control of it, that’s what
right
says.”

Ben was short of breath. He was yelling. Bird said, calmly, sanely, “I’m trying to tell you, there’s a lot of complications here. Let’s just calm down. We’ve got weeks yet back to Base, plenty of time to figure this out, and we’ll talk about it. But we’re not getting any damn where if we don’t get our figures in and tell Mama to get us the hell home. Fast.”

“So how much are you going to spend on this guy?. A month’s worth of food? Medical supplies? We’re going to bust our ass and risk our rigging for this guy?”

Bird had no answer. He couldn’t think of one to cut this off.

“This is my money too, Bird. It’s my money you’re spending. Maybe you own this ship, maybe I’m just a part-share partner, but I have some say here.” Ben flung a gesture toward Dekker, aft. “That guy’s going to live or he’s going to die. In either case he’s going to do it before the month is up. Much as I want to be rid of him, there’s no need busting our tails—we have double mass to move, Bird, and hell if I’m dumping the sling—”

“All right, we’re not dumping the sling. Not ours, not his either, if we can avoid it.”

“And we’re not putting any hard push on the rigging. There’s no point in risking our necks. Or putting wear on the pins and the lines. We don’t call this a life-and-death. We can’t cut that much time off. And hell if I want to meet a rock the way this guy did.”

It made better sense than a lot else Ben had been saying. Bird took that for hopeful and nodded. “I’ll go with you on that. A hard push could do more harm than good for him, too.”

“Guy’s going to die anyway.”

“He’s not going to die,” Bird said. “For God’s sake, just shut up, he can hear you.”

“So if he doesn’t? A month gets him well, and we pull into station and he looks healthy and he says sure he was managing that ship just fine—”

“Just let it alone, Ben!”

“I’m going to get pictures.”

“Get your pictures.” Bird shook his head, wishing he could say no, wishing he had some way to reason with Ben, but if getting a vid record would make Ben happier, God, let him have the pictures. “We have the condition of that ship out there, we have the log records over there—”

“Charts—” Ben exclaimed, as if that was a new idea.

“We’re not touching that log. No way. That part of the law
I
know.”

“I’m not talking about that. Look—look, I got an idea.”

An idea was welcome. Bird watched doubtfully as Ben punched up the zone schema, pointed on the screen to the’driver ship and its fire-path to the Well, the same thing that scared them even to contemplate. “
That’s
got a medic. That’s got a friggin’ company captain in charge. We just ask Mama to boost us over there just across the line and
they
can take official possession.”

“Damn right they would. The company doesn’t run a charity.”

“It’s an Rl ship! They’re obligated to take him. They have no choice. The law says a ‘driver is a Base: they can log us right there for a find if we bring it in, and this is a find, isn’t it? Same as a rock. We can turn it in, money in the bank, and we can apply to do some clean-up along with its tenders for the rest of our run—that’s damn good money. Sure money. And we got the best excuse going.”

“Ben, that’s a ‘driver captain you’re talking about. They don’t
have
to do anything. You want him to tell us we’ve still got to turn around and take this guy in to Base, maybe clean to Rl, if he takes it in his head—he can do that. You want him to tell us he’ll hold Eighty-four Zebra for us—and then contest his fees in court when he shows up three years from now with one hell of a haulage charge? We got this run to pay for, we got serious questions to answer, because there’s a whole lot that’s not right about this, and I’m not taking my chances with any Court of Inquiry back at Base with all the evidence stuck out on a ‘driver that for all we know isn’t coming in for three or four more years. If you want to talk law, now, let’s be practical!”

Ben’s mouth shut.

“A ‘driver does any damn thing it wants to. Three years’ dockage charges, supposing they’re on the start of their run. Three years’ haulage. You want to try to pry a claim away from the company then? Not mentioning the cost of getting it there. We’re short as is. You want to hear them say ferry it back ourselves anyway? Twice the distance? Or get us drafted into its tender crew on a
permanent
basis? You know what they charge a freerunner for fuel?”

Ben looked very sober during all of this. Ben bit his lip. “So that’s out. You know, we could just sort of knock that fellow on the head. Solve everybody’s problem.”

Ben, who was scared to death of looking at a body.

“Yeah, sure,” Bird said.

And from aft: “What time is it? What’s the time?”

Ben glanced up. “Now what does he want?”

Bird checked his watch. “2310,” he shouted back.

“I want my watch.”

“God,” Ben muttered, shaking his head. “We have four weeks of this guy?”

“
I want my watch
!”

Ben yelled: “Shut up, dammit, you’re not keeping any appointments anyway!”

“Patience,” Bird said, but Ben shoved off in Dekker’s direction. Bird sailed after, arrived as Dekker said quietly, “I need my watch.”

Ben said: “You don’t need your watch, you’re not going anywhere. It’s 23 damn 10 in my sleep, mister, you’re using our air and our fuel and our time already, so shut up.”

“Ben, just take it easy.”

“I’ll shut him up with a wrench.”

“Ben.”

“All right, all right, all right.” Ben took off again.

Dekker said, “I can’t see my watch.”

Bird floated over where he could read the time on Dekker’s watch. “2014. You’re about three hours slow.”

“No.”

“That’s what it says.”

“What day is it?”

“May 20.”

“You’re lying to me!”

“Bird,” Ben said ominously, and came drifting up again to reach for Dekker, but Bird grabbed him.

“I can’t take four weeks of that, Bird, I swear to you, this guy’s already on credit with me already.”

“Give
me
a little slack, will you? Shut it down. Shut it up. Hear me?”

“I’ve dealt with crazies,” Ben muttered. “I’ve seen enough of them.”

“Fine. Fine. We get this guy out of a tumble, he’s been whacked about the head, he’s a little shook, Ben, d’you think you wouldn’t be, if you’d been through what he has?”

Ben stared at him, jaw clamped, grievous offense in every line of his face.

Ben was in the middle of his night. That was so. Ben was tired and Ben had been spooked, and Ben didn’t understand weakness in anybody else.

Serious personality flaw, Bird thought. Dangerous personality flaw.

He watched Ben go back to his work without a word.

Good partner in some ways. Damned efficient. Good with rocks.

But different. Belter-born, for one thing, never talked about his relatives. Brought up by the corporation, for the corporation.

Talk to Ben about Shakespeare, Ben’d say, What shift does he work?

Say, I come from Colorado—Ben’d say, Is that a city?

But Ben didn’t really know what a city was. You couldn’t figure how Ben read that word.

Say, I went up to Denver for the weekend, and Ben’d look at you funny, because weekend was another thing that didn’t translate. Ben wouldn’t ask, either, because Ben didn’t really want to know: he couldn’t spend it and he wasn’t going there and never would and that was the limit of Ben’s interest.

Ask Ben about spectral analysis or the assay and provenance of a given chunk of rock and he’d do a thirty-minute monologue.

Damn weird values in Belt kids’ mindsets. Sometimes Bird wondered. Right now he didn’t want to know.

Right now he was thinking he might not want Ben with him next trip. Ben was a fine geologist, a reliable hold-her-steady kind of pilot, and honest in his own way.

But he had some scary dark spots too.

Maybe years could teach Ben what a city was. But God only knew if you could teach Ben how to live in one.

Bird was seriously pissed. Ben had that much figured, and that made him mad and it made him nervous. He approved of Bird, generally. Bird knew his business, Bird had spent thirty years in the Belt, doing things the hard way, and Ben had had it figured from the time he was 14 that you never got anywhere working for the company if you weren’t in the executive track or if you weren’t a senior pilot: he had never had the connections for the one and he hadn’t the reflexes for the other, so freerunning was the choice… where he was working only for himself and where what you knew made the difference.

He had come out of the Institute with a basic pilot’s license and the damn-all latest theory, had the numbers and the knowledge and everything it took. The company hadn’t been happy to see an Institute lad go off freerunning, instead of slaving in its offices or working numbers for some company miner, and most Institute brats wouldn’t have had the nerve to do what he’d done: skimp and save and live in the debtor barracks, and then bet every last dollar on a freerunner’s outfitting; most kids who went through the Institute didn’t have the discipline, didn’t refrain from the extra food and the entertainment and the posh quarters you could opt for. They didn’t even get out of the Institute undebted, thank
God
for mama’s insurance; and even granted they did all that, most wouldn’t have had the practical sense to know, if they did decide to go mining and not take a job key-pushing in some office, that the game was not to sign up with some shiny-new company pilot in corp-rab, who had perks out to here. Hell, no, the smart thing was to hunt the records for the old independent who had made ends meet for thirty years, lean times and otherwise.