Devil to the Belt (v1.1) Page 4

  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.

  Namely Morris Bird.

  Freerunning was the only wide gamble left in the Belt—and freerunners, being from what they were, didn’t have the advantage of expert, up-to-date knowledge from the Institute—plus the Assay Office. But with Morrie Bird’s thirty years of running the Belt, his old charted pieces were bigger than you got nowadays, distributed all along the orbital track, and he got chart fees on those every month, the company didn’t argue with his requests to tag, and those old charted pieces kept coming round again, in the way of rocks that looped the sun fast and slow. Sometimes those twenty-four- and twelve-year-old pieces might have been perturbed, and if somebody tried to argue about the claim, your numbers had to be solid after all those years—besides which, to find the good chaff that might remain to be found, you had to have more than guesswork. That was the pitch he had to offer along with 20 k interest-free to finance some equipment Bird badly needed; that was why Bird should take a greenie for a numbers man in a time when experienced miners went begging: company training, the science and the math and the complete Belt charts that Assay got to see—and they had done damned well as a team—damned well, til they’d got one of those absolutely miserable draws Mama sometimes handed you—a sector where there just wasn’t much left to find but a handful of company-directed tags on some company-owned rocks.

  So right now they were in a financial slump, Bird was under a strain, and Bird had odd touchy spots Ben never had been able to figure—all of which this Dekker had evidently hit on with his crazy behavior and his pretty-boy looks. Dekker was up there in their sleeping nook mumbling about losing his partner (damned careless of him!) and now Bird was mad at him, acting as if it was his fault the guy was alive and the find that might have been their big break turned out complicated.

  Maybe, he thought, Bird did want that ship as much as he did, maybe Bird was equally upset that this fellow was alive, Bird having this ethic about helping people—Bird might well be confused about what he was feeling.

  Dangerous attitude to spread around, Ben thought, this charity business—and unfair, when Bird even thought about forgoing that ship for somebody who owed him and not the other way around, at his own partner’s expense. It was a way for Bird to get had, and a man as free-handed as Bird was needed help from a partner with a lasting reason to keep him in one piece.

  “Bird?” he called out from the workstation. “I got your prelim calc. No complications but that ‘driver and our mass.”

  Bird came over to him, Bird said he’d finish it up and call Mama. Bird touched him on the shoulder in a confusingly friendly way and said, “Get some sleep.”

  Ben said, because he thought it might make Bird happier, “You. I’m wired.” At the bottom of his motives was the thought that a little time next to Dekker’s constant mumbling about Cory and his watch might make Bird a little less charitable to strangers.

  But Bird said, “You. You’re the one needs it most.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means what it means. You’re tired. You’ve worked your ass off Get some rest.”

  “I don’t think I’ll sleep right off. That guy makes me nervous. This whole situation makes me nervous.”

  “Bad day. Hard day.”

  He decided Bird was being sane again. He was relieved. “You know,” he said, “we might just ought to get a statement out of this guy. You know. Besides pictures. I’m going to get a tape of this whole damn What-time-is-it? routine, show what we got to cope with. Might just prove our case.”

  Bird shook his head.

  “Bird, for God’s sake.”

  “Ben,” he said firmly.

  Ben did not understand. He flatly did not understand.

  “Just go easy on him,” Bird said.

  “So what’s he to us?”

  “A human being.”

  “That’s no damn recommendation,” Ben muttered. But it was definitely a mistake to argue with Bird in his present mood: Bird owned the ship. Ben shook his head. “I’ll just get the pictures.”

  “You don’t understand, do you?”

  “Understand what?”

  “What if it was you out there?”

  “I wouldn’t be in that damn mess, Bird! You wouldn’t be.”

  “You’re that sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Ben, you mind my asking—what ever happened to your folks?”

  “What’s that to do with it?”

  “Did they ever make a mistake?”

  “My mama wasn’t the pilot.—That ship’s not going to be book mass, with that tank rupture. Center of mass is going to be off, too. Need to do a test burn in a little while, all right? I don’t want to leave anything to guesswork.”

  “Yeah. Fine. Nothing rough. Remember we have a passenger.”

  Ben frowned at him, and kept his mouth shut.

  Bird said, pulling closer, “I got to tell you, Ben, right up front, we’re not robbing this poor sod. He’s got enough troubles. Hear me? Don’t you even be thinking about it.”

  “It’s not robbing. It’s perfectly legal. It’s your rights, Bird, same as he has his. The same as he’d take his, if things were the other way around. That’s the way the system is set up to work.”

  “There’s rights, and there’s what is right.”

  “He’s not your friend! He’s not even an
ybody’s friend you know. Bird, for God’s sake, you got a major break here. Breaks like this don’t just fall into your lap, and they’re nothing if you don’t make them work for you. That’s why there’s laws—to even it up so you can work with people the way they are, Bird, not the way you want them to be.”

  “You still have to look in mirrors.”

  “What’s mirrors to do with anything?”

  “If we’re due anything, we’re due the expenses.”

  “Expenses, hell! We’re due haulage, medical stuff, chemkit, and a fat salvage fee at minim, we’re due that whole damn ship, is what we’re due, Bird.”

  “It won’t work.”

  “Hell if it won’t work, Bird! I’ll show it to you in the code. You want me to show it to you in the code?”

  Bird looked put out with him. Bird said, with a sigh, “I know the rules.”

  Bird had him completely puzzled. He took a chance, asked: “Bird,—have I done something wrong?”

  “No. Just give me warning on that burn. I’m going to shoot some antibiotics into our passenger, get him a little more comfortable.”

  Ben said, vexed, figuring to argue it later, “Better keep a running tab on the stuff, if that’s the way you’re playing it.”

  “There isn’t any damn tab, Ben! Quit thinking like a computer. The guy can have kidney and liver damage, he can have fractures, he can be concussed. You can calc a nice gentle burn while you’re at it. We’re not doing any sudden moves with him.”

  “All right. Fine. Slow and easy.” Ben tapped the stylus at the keys, with temper boiling up in him as Bird left—downright hurt, when it came to it. He tapped it several times on the side of the board, shoved away from the toehold and caught up with Bird’s retreat. “Bird, dammit, what in hell have I done?”

  Bird looked at him as if he were adding things in his head.

  Maybe, Ben thought, maybe Bird just didn’t like to be argued with. Or maybe it was that pretty-boy face of Dekker’s. Dekker was a type he thoroughly detested, because for some people there didn’t need to be any sane reason to do them favors, didn’t matter they were dumb as shit or that they’d cut your throat for their advantage, people believed them because they looked good and they talked smooth. It suddenly dawned on him that Bird was acting soft-headed about this guy with no good reason; and he decided maybe Bird taking care of Dekker himself wasn’t a good idea at all. He said, quickly, quietly, “It’s the bank I’m worried about. And this guy’s intentions. He’s not in his right zone. He’s a long way from it. We don’t know him. Maybe he was thrown here, maybe he wasn’t. We don’t know what he is. He could be some drop-off from the rebels—”

  “There aren’t any jackers, Ben. And he isn’t any rebel. What’s he going to spy on? A ship you can see from deep out with any decent optics? You’ve heard too many stories.”

  “All right, all right, he’s one of the good guys. You want him tucked in safe and sound, you want a dose of broad-spectrum stuff and maybe some vitamins in him, I’ll take care of it. You set up the burn.”

  “You’re already running on it.”

  “I said I’ll take care of him!”

  Ben kited off toward the med cabinet, and Bird’s first thought was, So maybe I talked some human sense into him. And then, cynically: Maybe at least he figures he’s precarious with me right now, and covering his ass is all he’s doing. You don’t change a man that fast.

  Then he saw Ben fill a hypo and thought, God, he wouldn’t!

  Bird kicked off from the touch strip and sailed up beside Ben. “I’ll do it.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  Bird snatched at the bottle. It floated free. It turned label-side toward him as he caught it and it was antibiotic Ben had been loading.

  Ben scowled at him. “You’re acting crazy, Bird. You’re acting seriously crazy, you know that?”

  “I’ll handle it,” Bird said. “Just wait on that burn a few minutes.”

  Ben scowled at him, shoved off from the cabinet and sailed backward toward the workstation. Offended, Bird thought, with a twinge of irritation and of conscience at once—not sure what Ben really had intended. Ben had no patience or sympathy for Dekker or anyone else—so he’d thought.

  Or was it just plain jealousy Ben was showing?

  Ben belted back in at his keyboard. Ben was not looking at him, pointedly not looking at him.

  Bird kicked off to the side, drifted up to Dekker—Dekker looked to be asleep, Bird hoped that was all. At least he’d given up asking what time it was. Bird popped him on the arm with the back of one hand.

  Dekker waked with a start and an outcry.

  “Polybact,” Bird said, showing him the needle. “You got any allergies?”

  Dekker shook his head muzzily. Bird gave him the shot, snagged the Citrisal pack out of the pipes where air currents had sent it, uncapped the stem and put it in Dekker’s mouth.

  Dekker took a sip or two. Turned his head. “That’s all.”

  “We’re going to do a test burn. After that we’ll be doing a 140, going to catch a beam home. Has to be our Base, understand, unless we get other instructions. We’re out of R2.”

  Dekker looked at him hazily. “No. No hospital. 79, 709, 12. That’s where we were. We had a find—big find. Big find. I’ll sign it to you. Just go there. Pick my partner up.”

  “Your partner was outside when the accident happened?”

  Dekker nodded.

  “What happened? Catch a rock?” It happened. Usually to new crews.

  Another nod. Dekker’s eyes were having trouble tracking. “Kilometer wide. Iron content.”

  Freerunning miners didn’t find nickel-iron rocks that big. Rocks that big had been mapped by optics: those rocks all had long-standing numbers, they belonged to the company, and if they were rich, they got ‘drivers assigned to them, they got chewed in pieces, and they streamed to the recovery zone at the Well by bucketloads. But Bird didn’t argue that point: Dekker didn’t seem highly reasonable at the moment, and he only said, “A whole k wide. You’re sure of that.”

  “It’s the truth,” Dekker said. “We got a tag on it. Uncharted rock. You can have it, if you’ll go back there and find her.”

  “Cory’s a her.”

  “Cory. Yes.” He was going out again. “God, go back. Go back there, listen to me, anything you want…”

  “You want another sip?” Bird asked, but Dekker was out again, gone. Bird shoved off and arrowed down to grab a handhold by Ben’s workstation, but Ben said:

  “I’m already ahead of you. Man said 79, 709, 12? No signal in that direction but the ‘driver.”

  Nothing but the ‘driver, Bird thought. God. “Hear any tag?”

  Ben shook his head.

  Bird bit his lip, wondering—

  Wondering, dammit, how long that particular ‘driver had been there. A while, damned sure. But Mama only told you what you needed. You could work out the rest from what you could gather with your own ears and your radar, but who wanted to?

  Who, in a question about a company tag and a private claim,—wanted to?

  Ben said in a low voice, “Do you suppose that fool tried to skim the company on a rock that size?”

  Bird thought, I want out of here.

  But what he argued to Ben was: “We just don’t ask. We don’t know anything and we sure as hell aren’t getting in their way. Whatever claim’s out there already has a ‘driver attached.”

  “Makes other claims kind of moot, doesn’t it?”

  “Don’t even ask.”

  Company prerogatives, secret company codes and direct accesses—company ships could talk back and forth at will; bet your life they could.

  And count that that ‘driver ship was armed—if you counted a kilometer-long mass driver as a lethal weapon, and Bird personally did. You didn’t want to argue right of way or ownership with a ‘driver captain. They were ASTEX to the core and they were a breed—next to God.

  Ben said, “Told you we shoul
d have left this guy on the other side of the lock. It’s still not too late.”

  “Cut the jokes. It wasn’t funny the first time.”

  “Bird, there’s a hell of a lot more than he’s telling. Big find, hell. They were skimming a company claim.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Well, that’s all I want to know. Suddenly I’m damn glad we haven’t been talking to that ‘driver. I don’t like this, damn, I don’t.”

  “I don’t know anything. You don’t know anything. We didn’t look at that log. Thank God. Let’s just get us out of here.”

  “We could offer to give evidence.”

  “We don’t know what we’re swearing to. We don’t know what happened.”

  “We could look in that log.”

  “Sure, a skimmer’s going to log his moves. What’s he going to write? ‘1025 and we just blew a chip off a 1 k rock’? If we touch that panel over there we’ll leave a record of that access, and maybe that’s not a good idea. Do I spell it out? Don’t be a fool.”

  “I can fix that log. I think I can bypass that access record if you really want to know.”

  “Don’t depend on it. ‘Think’ isn’t good enough. No. We don’t run that risk. Best claim we’ve got is that we haven’t seen those records and we don’t know a thing. We don’t have a problem if we just keep clean. No shady stuff. Nothing. Clean, Ben.”

  “Knock that guy in the head,” Ben muttered. “Be sure there’s no questions. Then there’s no problem.”

  God, he thought. Is that what they teach this generation?

  The ship jolted.

  Dekker yelled aloud, struggling to get free. Someone—a familiar voice now—shouted at him to shut up.

  Another, gentler, said, “That was just getting in position, Dekker. Take it easy.”

  He had another blank spot then, woke up with the nightmare feeling of increasing g, not knowing where it was going to stop, or what had started it. Something pressed into his back and he thought, God, we’re spinning—

  “Cory!” he yelled.

  “Shut up, dammit!”

  “Dekker.” This came gently then, with a touch at his shoulder. A smell of something cooked. Freefall. He blinked and looked at the gray-haired man, who let a foil packet of something drift near his face.