Devil to the Belt

CHAPTER 8

IT was tests: put the washer on the stick, fit the pegs in the stupid holes. Add chains of figures. Dekker knew what they were up to when they gave him the kid toys.

“Screw that,” he said, and shoved the whole box onto the floor—wishing it was lighter g. But it made a satisfying racket. He looked up at the disconcerted psychologist and said, “Screw all of you. I’m not taking your tests until I see a lawyer.”

He stood up and the orderlies looked ready to jump, the petite psychologist frozen, slate held like a shield.

He coin-flipped the washer he had in his hand. Caught it before it fell, then tossed it toward the corner, looking at the orderlies.

“You want to come along?” Tommy said. He was the one who talked.

“Yeah,” he said, shrugged, and walked over to the door where Tommy and Alvie could take hold of him. They had worked it out: he walked and they didn’t break his arms.

If he was quiet they kept the restraints light and he could keep his hands free. It was hell when you couldn’t scratch.

“Vid,” he said when they were putting him to bed. There was vid in this room. Tommy turned it on for him. He didn’t even want to ponder where he’d been, what they were doing, it was just one more try, no different than the rest.

But it scared him.

Another doctor walked in, turned off the vid. He’d never seen this man before. But it was a doctor. He had the inevitable slate, the pocketful of pens and lights and probes. And a name-badge that said Driscoll.

Driscoll walked over, sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Don’t get friendly,” Dekker said. “I’m not in the mood.”

He enjoyed seeing the bastard sit back and take on an offended surliness. He was down to small pleasures lately. Driscoll consulted his slate mysteriously. Or Driscoll was the one who had the memory problems.

“I understand your impatience,” Driscoll said.

“I’ll talk to a lawyer.”

“We have your test results.”

“You didn’t run any test.”

Driscoll looked at his slate again: “Impaired motor function, memory lapses…”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Mild concussion, prolonged isolation, oxygen deprivation, exposure to toxic materials—a possibility of some permanent dysfunction—”

“Bullshit!”

“Inappropriate behavior. Hostility.”

“Get the hell out of my room. Where’s Pranh?”

“Dr. Pranh is on leave. I’m taking his cases.” Driscoll made a note on the slate. “I take it you’d like to get out of here.”

“Damn right.”

“I’ll order the forms.”

“I’m not signing any forms.”

Driscoll got up, reached the door and hesitated. “Try to control those outbursts, Mr. Dekker. Staff understands your problem. But it would be all around easier if you’d make an effort. For your own sake.—Are the hallucinations continuing?”

Dekker stared at him. “Of course not,” he said. He thought, That’s a damn lie.

But it scared him. It pushed his pulse rate up. They’d turned off the beep, but that didn’t mean they weren’t listening, or that it wasn’t going into storage somewhere.

Eventually a younger man came in, with another slate—walked up to the bed and said, “How are you feeling?”

The badge on this one said Hewett. He hardly looked twenty. He had a pasty, nervous look. Maybe they’d told him he was crazy.

Dekker didn’t answer him; he stared, and the young man said, “I’ve got your release forms.” He offered the slate. “You sign at the bottom—”

“I’m not signing this thing.”

“You have to sign it.”

“I’ve asked for a lawyer. I’m not signing that thing.”

Hewett looked upset. “You have to sign it, Mr. Dekker.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You want out of here, don’t you?”

“They want me out of here.” He was cold. The air-conditioning seemed excessive. He thought if there was a pulse monitor going it must be going off the scale. “I’m not going to sign that thing. Tell them they can do it. They’ve lied about everything else.”

Hewett hesitated this way and the other, said, in hushed tones, “Just sign it. That’s all you have to do.”

“No.” He shut his eyes. Opened them again as Hewett left.

He wanted out of here. He no longer thought he was safe from anything here. But he didn’t see a way.

Rush for the door? If he got to the outside, especially if he hit anybody, the cops would have him on charges, God knew what. Sign the form and then go for a lawyer? A signed form was all that mattered to these people. It was all they listened to. And what kind of legal help was he going to get here? A company lawyer? Company witnesses?

He’d had a brush with the law on Sol Station—kid stuff. He’d learned about lawyers. He’d learned about hearings. Judges went in with their minds made up.

Another white coat came in. With a slate. This one walked up, held it out, and said, “This is for your medical insurance. Sign it.”

He eyed the slate, eyed the woman suspiciously.

“It just authorizes payment of your bills. You’re damned lucky you have it. You’re a hundred percent covered.”

He took it, looked at it. It looked legitimate. It listed him and it listed Cory. He signed the thing, and he remembered fighting with Cory, an outright screaming argument about that policy, saying, We don’t need insurance, Cory, God, if you have an accident out here, that’s it, that’s all—it’s a damn waste of money…

And Cory had said, the college girl, from just a different way of life than his: I’ve never been without insurance. We’re at least having medical. I don’t care what it costs. If we need it, it’ll always be there…

In the crazy way Cory did things—argue about a damn jacket and spend a thousand dollars a year on a company policy that wasn’t going to do them a damn bit of good. He started crying. He didn’t even know why. The medic stood there staring at him a moment, and he put his arm over his face and turned as far over as he could. She left. But he couldn’t stop.

Tommy came in and said, “Do you want a shot, Mr. Dekker?”

He grabbed his pillow and buried his face in it. So Tommy went away.

“Got something for you,” Marcie Hager said, in her office in Records, with that peculiar smugness that Ben remembered. He came away from the doorframe—he had come to the Records office on a cryptic Drop by—from Marcie. This after a nicebottle of wine that showed up with a buzz at Marcie’s door some days past. You never paid Marcie’s kind in funds. But you did want to be remembered.

Marcie said, a very faint whisper, “Got a little flag on your claims case. Seems Dekker’s license has just been pulled.”

He pursed his lips. “Grounds?”

“Doesn’t say. Just turned up on the flag.”

“Mmmn,” he said. He winked at Marcie, said: “Thanks,” with a little lift of his brows. “Big thanks.”

Marcie looked self-satisfied. “I did enjoy that.” Meaning the wine, he was sure. But it didn’t mean the wine paid everything. Marcie had her sights set on promotion—something to do with personnel. He didn’t forget that.

So Dekker’s license was being pulled.

He walked out of the Records, hands in pockets, reckoning what he knew and who he knew, and finally decided to stroll over to a certain small office in Admin—nothing much. Records.

But Fergie Tucker worked there.

Fergie was just plain bribable.

“Hello, Fergie,” he said, leaning on the counter. “How about lunch?”

“The guy’s got no license now,” Ben said, over a sandwich in Io’s flashing neon decor. You never could tell what you were eating in here—everything flashed red and orange and green and the music made the wine shake in the glasses, but Tucker liked it. “He’s out on a medical. Psych, if you ask me. He was crazy, out of his head all the way back—no way in hell he was in control of that ship.”

Tucker took a drink. Strobe light turned the wine black, then flashed red on Tucker’s face as he set the glass down, a jerky movement synched with the bass flutter down the scale. The wine shook. The air quivered. Tucker said, more loudly than he liked, “What exactly do you want?”

“Ex-pe-dition,” he said, leaning close.

“Huh?” Tucker said. Tucker’s hearing had to be going.

“Expedite!” he said, over the bass line. “There’s no damn way he was in control. That’s the law. He has to be in control, or we own that ship.”

“I know the law.”

“Well?”

Tucker shrugged, and took a big bite of his sandwich. Which left him sitting there while he disposed of it. Tucker had been a pig in school and he was still a pig. But he was a high-ranking pig. And he could move data along if he wanted to.

“Everything in order?” Tucker asked finally, when the mouthful was down.

“That application’s so clean it squeaks. Vid. Before, after, and during. Clean bill from the cops.”

“Court of Inquiry?” This around a mouthful.

“We haven’t gotten any complaints. Nothing filed on us. On him, maybe. But I know that title’s clear. It’s his. The partner’s dead, died out there. Sole title’s with the guy, there aren’t any other liens on it. We’re it.”

Tucker’s face was orange now, with moving shadows. Sitar run. Clash of cymbals. Bass in syncopation.

“So what are we talking about?”

“Just slip it ahead in the queue.”

Tucker swallowed. Said, slowly, “Has to have a grounds. Give me one.”

He said, carefully, “What’s grounds?” and inclined his head as far across the table as he could get it. The music was on a loud stretch.

“Where is this ship? What’s its status?”

“At dock. Lifesupport’s a mess. Tanks are blown. Filthy as hell and the cops have it.”

“Chance of ongoing damage?”

“Could be. Depends. Have we got a better one?”

“Hardship.”

“On who?”

“The claimant? Have you suffered damage?”

God, it was so close he could taste it. “Financial?”

“Any kind of damage? Can you document it?”

“Yes!” He winced. The music vibrated through the table top. He held the explanation a moment, then shouted, “We spent our reserve getting that mother in. We’re short at the bank, we couldn’t lease our ship out when we came in because the cops had it impounded, now we don’t know what to do—she’s past time she should have gone, you know, here we are a good way through our heavy time, but she’s sitting idle; we got crews stacking up want to lease, and we need the money, but you only get a percentage on a lease if we do let her go out.”

“So? Where’s the hardship?”

“We could have to be here because of legal questions on the other ship—we’re trying to be in compliance with the rules, but we don’t know which way to jump. We’ve already lost a big chunk of our capital and we’re scared to leave for fear of sending the whole deal out the chute, you understand what I’m saying? We’ve been waiting months already. We’re coming to the time we should be out of here and we can’t be.”

“Yeah,” Tucker said. “You know, somebody else could even slip in with a bid and take that ship, if word got out she was up for claim, if you weren’t around to, sort of, oil the gears.”

Tucker was a real bastard. He stared at Tucker, thinking, Don’t you think about it, you scum,—while the music went from green to red and his blood pressure went up and up.

“Yeah,” he said, “but we aredue a Hardship.”

“Yeah, well, you know those things are hell to fill out. You have to use the right words, say exactly what the clerks around in Claims like to hear. And you have to have somebody take it over there that can put it on the right desk.”

“Guaranteed?”

“Guaranteed.” Tucker’s pig eyes looked him up and down. “Ship owner has collateral like hell. Never has anything in pocket. How’re your finances running?”

“Five hundred.”

“Five thousand.”

“The hell!”

Tucker shrugged, slid his eyes away, filled his mouth with sandwich. The bass fluttered up and down the scale.

“All right!” Ben yelled.

Trinidadwas free. That had come through this morning. Thank God. Bird nursed the beer to the bottom and the last lean froth—wanted a second one, but the tab at The Hole was already too high. August friggin’ 15th, and Trinidad wasstill at dock.

Meg patted his shoulder, went over to the bar. He figured what she was doing, then, and turned half around to protest, but Mike was already drawing the first one, and Sal Aboujib laid her hand on his from his other side. “Beer’s cheap,” Sal said. “Let her buy this one. We owe you a few.”

He had a slateful of figures that wouldn’t balance, Ben was still arguing about staying on, Dez Green and Alvarez and a good many of the other independents who’d been in when they arrived had all checked out on runs, and he was trying right now to decide whether old bones could run the risk of shortening their own time here, or whether they should just lease Trinidadout to Brower and his mate and sit at Base running up sleepery and food bills—maybe even lease her to Meg and Sal. Promisethem the new ship if they got it. In that consideration they were short of supplies, the bank was not cooperating, and the damned LOS never had turned up again. They could try one more thing to get Recoveries to wake it up, but that computer time was expensive—and he just wasn’t sure it was worth it. They’d had another minor LOS yesterday, not on one of their own, but on one they had a 15-and-20 on, on Peterson’s lease; and he wished to hell he knew whether it was just bad luck, Peterson’s fault, or whether there’d been any assignment in that sector when the thing went dead: the company just didn’t like to hand out that kind of information. There were hotheads on helldeck that’d go for somebody if they got the wrongful or rightful notion they’d been robbed. Couldn’t blame Mama on that one. Fights with chains and bottles were hell on the cops.

So they took the second LOS and they were going to have to tighten belts, that was all. And he knew why Meg and Sal were moping around with him and Ben instead of out running down a lease or even hitting on them for Trinidad, when that would have been the logical thing.

Hardat this point to tell them they weren’t good enough to make enough to rate any prime lease, and they’d better go court somebody else, when Meg and Sal were courting them with all the finance they had and they were, dammit, day by day letting them do it, standing by them when anybody else would have called them fools.

You know, he’d told them more than once, at the first; I got to be honest with you: I don’t think that ship of Ben’s going to come through.

Did that drive them off? Hell no.

He should have said, plain and cold: Meg, I hear you’re one hell of a pilot, and Sal, you’re not bad at the numbers, but you just haven’t got the years—haven’t got the math, haven’t got the sense of how things work—

Should have said, a long time ago: You two shouldn’t ever have made a team: two greenies in the same ship is never going to get better fast enough for what you want.

But he knew what kind of slimespots they d already shipped with before they’d proved on Trinidadthat they could go it alone, and started getting leases: and Meg had courted him real hard just before Ben showed up with the cash and the schooling—he still flinched when he recalled having to tell Meg that; and Meg taking it real well, though she looked as if she’d got it in the gut. Maybe Sal even knew. And she and Sal had stayed teamed, even so.

They’d take good mechanical care of a ship, and bring her back sound and clean. Last lease he’d had with Hall and Brower, you couldn’t say that. And they might do better with decent charts—and a little help from Ben.

Sal and Ben were a close pair lately. Those who knew Ben might snicker; and those who knew Sal would never in a million years win a bet on what really went on for some of those hours in the room, which was Ben talking numbers and Soheila Aboujib ticking away with her rented comp, with her lip caught in her teeth and this frown that would break glass—Sal could look madder than any individual he knew except CrazyBob Crawford. Ben was hard to shake when he got an idea, but when it came to plain determination to make it, Aboujib and Meg Kady both were right up there with the cussedest.

We could do worse, Ben kept saying—when who to lease to had never been Ben’s department, just which draws to lease and which to work—but he couldn’t say Ben was wrong, except today it came to him that they’d blown near two months here, and they only now got Trinidadfree. He and Ben could go ahead and make a run—

Yet here they both were, with karma piling up with the pair who’d stayed by them. He couldn’t figure how he’d gotten into this, or when it had gotten too late—but when the cops had raided them and thrown Meg and Sal’s stuff all over, that had been a real bad time to tell them shove off and forget it—

It seemed a worse time this morning, with their account bleeding money and him into Meg for a beer. He knew he ought to say, coldly as he could: Meg, Sal, don’t you buy me a damn other drink this morning, because you’re not getting what you’re after, and you’re wasting your money on what isn’t going to come through—

But Meg set the mug down in front of him, patted him on the shoulder and sank into the chair beside him. “We got an idea, Bird. You and Sal go out in Trinidad. Ben and I stay here to keep that application alive and take care of problems—we get us a little finance, put what Sal and I got in the pot with yours—make sense?”

“I got to say—” was as far as he got toward a desperate I don’t think this is a good idea, and I can’t take your money—

—when a familiar step came up behind him and a hand slapped a paper down in front of him.

His eyes must be going. For a moment it failed to make sense as what it was. A piece of real paper. With official print.

And Ben landing in the chair on his other side, grabbing his arm, shaking him and saying, “We got it! We got it, Bird!”

“The ship?” Of a sudden he knew it was a ship title. He’d handled Trinidad’s—years ago, before he put it in the bank vault. “It says Two-Two-Ten-Charlie. That’s not the number…”

“Same ship. Same ship with the blown tanks. They renumbered it. Like she was new. New start. Everything. We can sell her or we can fix her. We got her, Bird!”

He felt a little dizzy. He took a drink of the beer. Meg grabbed his arm from the other side. Sal was on her feet hugging Ben, and Ben was ordering drinks.

“Wait a minute!” he said, “wait a minute! Free and clear?”

“Free and clear,” Ben said. “We got a few charges to pay, but hell, we got the collateral, now!”

“What charges?”

“We got—8, 9 k to pay… plus the dockage.”

“Nine thousand!”

“Administrative. It’s nothing, Bird,— nothing, against the value of that ship. Figure it! It’s ours!”

“I don’t believe it.”

Ben pointed on the paper, where it said: joint ownership, and both their names. That wasn’t the terms of the split they’d always had, but, hell, he thought, Ben had hunted down the forms, Ben had done the legwork, Ben had pushed the thing when he never thought it would happen.

Mike came over, Mike heard how it was, and gave them a round of drinks on the house—The Hole never did that. But Mike did now.

They had more than was good for them.

Which was when Ben said how he’d heard Dekker was going to be in hospital a long, long time. How he’d gotten his license pulled.

Brain damage, Ben said.

“Shit,” he said, suddenly sick at the stomach.

“Hey, I told you,” Ben said. “Dekker’s a certified mental case.”

“They pull him all the way?” Sal asked.

Ben shrugged. “Close as makes no difference, ifhe gets re-certified there’s no way they give him a class 1. D3, maybe, but no way he can ever be primary pilot. Ship’s ours, on account of it was a tumbling wreck when we got it, and just because he was inside it is im-ma-terial. He was just baggage. He couldn’t stop it and he was in no shape to help himself.”

Poor guy, he thought.

“Fact is,” Ben said, “we stillgot a stack of bills against his account. And if he’s gone for a long walk, he doesn’t need the money: they’ll just ship him out to the motherwell. I got an attachment on his bank account.”

That was too much. “Now, wait a minute, Ben, we gotthe ship.”

“And the repair bills. And our fuel and our dock time—and itsdock time, don’t forget that. They’ll stick us with all those bills.”

Unpleasant thought. “And the clean-up inside,” he said. “God, have you got any figure what that’s going to cost?”

“I dunno,” Ben said. “But we can get our expenses back.”

He was disgusted with himself, being happy to hear that. Maybe there was a lot of disgust at the table. Meg and Sal had gotten real quiet.

But Ben pulled out his pocket slate and started running figures. “What we can do, we do the repairs ourselves, we use the reserve cash—”

“Whoa, wait a minute. That’s our private insurance fund.”

“You don’t have to think like that now. That shipout there’s our insurance fund. We got flexible capital now, Bird, sure we want a reserve, but we got to get that thing in running order. We risk it now, while it’s in this shape; we don’t lease Trinidadthis run, we can do that work in a month if we push it, and we build back our fund. It’ll work.”

“Hell,” he said, “I don’t know. This poor guy—”

“It’s not our problem,” Ben said.

“Ben…”

Ben gave him a bewildered look.

“We don’t take anything more from that guy. That’s flat. No more charges against him.”

Ben didn’t say anything for a moment. Ben looked as if he were worried about the objection, or confused. Finally: “Yeah, well, all right. But we’re talking about a guy that may not make it out of the psych ward.”

“If he does.”

“Yeah, if he does, fine. So we’re all right, so we collect it and if he gets out we can stand him a stake. If not, who cares?” Excitement got the better of him, he broke out in a grin and slapped Bird on the shoulder. “We got it, Bird, we got it, we got it made.”

The guys went off to somewhere, talking about checking out prices on tanks, happy, mostly—they all should be. Everything had worked.

But Meg sat there with Sal turning her glass in a pointless circle and scared for a moment that didn’t clearly make sense. She wasn’t superstitious, as a rule. Maybe she’d gotten to distrust a winning hand: it always seemed to be the big breaks that stung you, the ones that made you lose your sense of reality and pushed you to commit to big mistakes—like the break that had had her believing that sumbitch back at Sol.

“No damn luck at all,” she said. “Poor bastard’s had all up and down, isn’t he? Good old MamBitch. Screwed him good.”

“Yeah,” Sal said. “Didn’t Mitch say?”

“Suppose he iscrazy?”

“Ben swears he is.”

“Brut bad luck for him.”

“Company’d only get that ship. That’s who we’re screwing.”

“That’s the truth.”

“Bet MamBitch passes a reg real fast says this can’t happen again. Bet MamBitch never severely figured somebody’d get through the shitwork and file all those forms. They don’t count on us knowing how.”

“Ah, but they paid off. That proves MamBitch is honest, doesn’t it? Then she’ll pass her rule.”

Sal gnawed her lip, tilted her head to one side, a clash of metal-clipped braids. “That gives Mama credit for brains. That’s never been proved.”

“That’s the truth. True here, true everywhere.”

Clink of glasses.

“Here’s to one more poor bastard,” Sal said. “Up the corp’s.”

“Yo,” Meg said. “Here’s to regulations.”

“Stupidity,” Sal said.

“Inefficiency.”

“Venality.”

“Is that a division?”

“Right under the corp-rat president.”

Clink. “Here’s to somebody Responsible.”

“Must be on Mars.”

“Sure ain’t here.”

A quiet snort. And a look in Sal’s eyes that was dead serious.

“Screwed,” Sal said.

“Yeah,” Meg said, “but what’s new? Maybe he’ll get lucky. Maybe they’ll ship him back to his zone, let him re-train.”

“Lay any bets? He could have friendsthere.”

“No takers,” Meg said, and stirred a water-ring with her finger.

Sal said: “Worth a nudge.”

Meg looked at her then, and Sal made a little shrug, gave her a lift of the brows with this smug look in her eye.

“You let it alone, you and your friends.”

“No worry, Kady.”

“Yeah.” Cold as ice, Sal was; but sometimes you got this feeling she was thinking of something that risked her neck and she was breathing it in like an oxygen high. Sal was a Shepherd’s daughter. Sal was also an orphan—in one deep dive into the Well.

That was worth remembering, too.