Devil to the Belt (v1.1) Page 5

  “We’ve done our position,” the man said to him, he couldn’t remember the name, and then did. Bird. Bird was the good one. Bird was the one who didn’t want to kill him. “We’re going to catch our beam tomorrow and we’re going home. Seems Mama thinks we’re in no hurry or something, damn her. I’ll let you loose if you can keep awake.” Another pat on the shoulder. “You know you’ve been off your head a little.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Shush,” Bird said, “don’t go asking that.”

  “I want to know—”

  Bird put a hand on his mouth. “Don’t do that,” Bird said, looking him in the eyes. “Don’t do that, son. You don’t need to know. You really don’t need to know. Your partner’s just lost, that’s all. A long time ago. There’s nothing anybody can do for her.”

  He didn’t want to believe that. He didn’t want to wake up again, but Bird caught the packet drifting in front of his face and held the tube to his mouth, insisting.

  He took a little. It was warm, it was soup, it was salty as hell. He turned his head away, and Bird let it go, leaving a tiny planetesimal of soup cooling in the air, drifting away with the current. Bird brushed at it, caught it in his hand, wiped it on his sleeve.

  Blood everywhere, shining dark drops…

  Everything was stable. Clean and quiet. Nothing had ever gone wrong here. Nothing had ever been wrong. He kept his eyes open for fear of the dark behind them and tried another sip of what Bird was offering him, while the first was hitting his stomach with an effect he was not yet sure of.

  Why am I here? he asked himself. What is this place? This isn’t my ship. What am I doing here?

  Maybe he asked out loud. He didn’t keep track of things. “To Refinery Two,” Bird told him.

  He shook his head. He got a breath and thought, Cory’s still in the ship, they’ve left Cory back in the ship—

  He reminded himself, he could do it now with only a cold, strange calm: No, Cory’s dead—Not that he could remember. He kept telling himself that over and over, but he could not remember. She was still there. She was wondering what had happened to him. She was trusting him to do the right thing, the smart thing. She was waiting for him to pick her up…

  The dark-headed one, the young one, Ben, rose into his vision, carrying a length of thin cable and a davies clip. Ben hung in front of his face and reached behind his neck with the cable.

  “Hell!” he yelled, and used a knee, but Ben grabbed a handful of his coveralls and it missed its target.

  Oh, shit, he thought then, looking Ben in the face. He thought Ben would kill him.

  Bird said, from the other side, “Easy, son. It’s temporary. Hold still.”

  He had thought Bird was all right. But Bird held him still and Ben got the cable around his neck. The clip clicked.

  “There,” Ben said. “You can reach the necessaries… reach anything in this ship but the buttons. And you don’t really want those, do you?”

  He stared eye to eye at Ben and wondered if Ben was waiting to kill him while Bird was asleep. He remembered hearing them talk. He wondered whether Ben was going to hit him right now.

  “You understand me?” Ben asked.

  He nodded, scared, and likewise clear-headed in a tight-focused, adrenaline-edged way. He stayed very still while Ben started untaping his left wrist from the pipe. He didn’t think either ahead or backward. It was just himself and Ben, and the old man saying, holding tightly to his shoulder, “I apologize. I sincerely apologize about this, son. But we can’t have you wandering around off your head. Ben’s not a bad guy. He really isn’t.”

  He remembered what he’d overheard. He had thought Bird wanted to keep him alive, and now he wasn’t sure either one of them was sane.

  Ben freed his left arm. Bird untied the right. Moving both at once hurt his chest, hurt his back, hurt everything so much his eyes teared.

  Ben went away forward. Bird stayed behind, put a hand on his shoulder. “No difference between our config and yours, the standard rig, by what I saw. Anything you can reach, you can use. Wouldn’t use the spinner with that cable attached, understand, but you got g while you were tumbling, God knows probably more than enough. Your stimsuit’s clean, but you’d as glad be free of it a day or so, wouldn’t you? You’re probably sore as hell.—Right? Just don’t try to use the shower, cable won’t let it seal, we’ll have water everywhere. Anything else you got free run of. Copy that?”

  “Yeah.”

  Bird gathered up the trailing cable, put it in his hand, closed his fist on it. “When you’re moving about the cabin, do kind of keep a grip on that. We don’t want you hurt. Hear? Don’t want that cable to pull you up short. We’re not going to do a burn without we warn you, but all the same, you keep a hand to that. Hold on to it.”

  Just too many things had happened to him. He could not figure what his situation was or what they wanted. He shoved off, drifted away from the bulkhead to get the packet of soup that had come adrift. Braking with his arm against a pipe was almost more than he could do. He let go the cable, confused, and banged his head.

  Someone caught his foot and pulled, gently. It turned him as he came down and he saw Bird with a packet of soup in his own hands.

  “There’s solid food,” Bird said, “when you can handle it. Use anything from the galley you need. You got pretty dehydrated.”

  He hated all this past tense, implying a major piece of time he didn’t remember. From moment to moment he told himself Cory was gone, and every time he did that he felt a sense of panic. He brushed a touchpad with his foot, stopped, drank a sip and watched Bird sip from his own packet. He kept thinking, They’re lying to me, they’re not taking me home…

  Finally he asked Bird, “What ‘driver is it out there?”

  “What about a ‘driver?”

  “You were talking about a ‘driver. What ‘driver were you talking about?”

  Ben yelled up from below, “Don’t tell him a damn thing, Bird. He hasn’t earned it.”

  He looked from Ben down at the workstation up to Bird, resting by the bulkhead.

  “Ben’s excitable,” Bird said. “Just have your breakfast. Or supper, as may be.”

  But Ben was drifting up to them. Ben braked with the shove of a hand against the conduits. “I’d like to know,” Ben said, “what you’ve got to pay for this trip. Eat our food, breathe our air, take up our time and our fuel. We’re aborting a run for you. We just got effin’ started and we’re headed back to Base, damn near zeroed on your account, mister. You got any assets to pay for this? Or just debts?”

  “We have money,” he said, and then knew he shouldn’t have said that to these people. He said, desperately catching up the thread of his thought—he hoped he hadn’t lost anything between: “So what ‘driver is it?”

  Ben said, “How much money?”

  “Ben,” Bird said.

  “I want,” he said carefully, “I want you to call that ‘driver and ask about my partner.”

  “Ask what about your partner?” Ben asked.

  “Ask if they—” He stuttered on the thought. He never stuttered, and still he could not get it out. “—if they p-picked her up.”

  “So why should they? What were you doing here, poaching in another Refinery’s zone?”

  “We w-weren’t.” Dammit. “It was.”

  “What do you mean, ‘it was’?”

  “Ben,” Bird said, and then, looking at him: “Forget he asked.”

  He didn’t understand. He was so weak he couldn’t track what they were saying from moment to moment, and hostile questions, zero g and unaccustomed food were all one confusion of balance and orientation. There was a constant buzz in his head that rose and fell like the fan-sounds. From moment to moment he knew Cory was alive, and from moment to moment he thought about the time and wanted to check his watch to be sure.

  But that was crazy. He began to know it was. The only hope Cory had now was that ‘driver ship. Maybe it had picked her up. Maybe i
t had.

  “He’s not telling the story he started with,” Ben said. “Man’s lying somewhere. A collision with a rock, he said. An explosion took one whole damn tank out. The other one’s got a bash you could park a skimmer in. You want to see the videotape, man? I can show you the tape.”

  “Didn’t hit a rock,” he said, shaking his head. He had no idea where this was going. He had no idea what they were accusing him of, whether this was going on record or what they wanted from him.

  “Why would it explode?”

  “The ‘driver clipped us.”

  “Facing away from the Well? Whose Zone were you in?”

  “Rl.”

  “ ‘Driver, hell. You ran it into a rock, didn’t you? Just plain ran it onto a rock.”

  “No.”

  “Ben,” Bird said, “take it easy. The guy’s confused.”

  “ ‘Take it easy.’—Some people with trouble deserve it, you know.”

  “We don’t know anything,” Bird said. “His memory isn’t going to be all that good, with what he’s been through.”

  “Looks healthy enough. Looks damned well healthy enough on our air and our food. Looks like he’s making real good progress.”

  Ben talked about claiming the ship, he recollected that—they were after the ship and they claimed they were taking him to R2, not home; now they were talking about other debts—

  They talked as if they wanted to put him to work for them. He had heard about Nouri. It had happened before in the Belt. Guys with all sorts of kinks went out in ships… and when they were ready to come in to Base, they might not want to take the evidence with them.

  God, he thought, and looked off toward nowhere. The only thing in the vicinity was that ‘driver ship. If they had never reported finding Cory—

  The instruments… something coming at him over the horizon—

  Explosion like a fist hit them. G-force. He reached after the fire controls.

  No power. Nothing…

  Ben left him. Bird left him. He saw Bird talking with Ben, holding on to Ben’s arm, he couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  Then Ben shouted, “We own that ship!” and Bird: “Just shut it down, Ben, shut it down, for God’s sake, Ben!”

  They started arguing again, yelling at each other about money, about what they were spending on him, and Bird took his part, saying, over and over again, “It’s not your damn decision, Ben!”

  He watched, turning so he could see, phasing in and out of clear awareness, the fan-sound going in his ears, the soup he had drunk lying queasy on his stomach. He was afraid at one point Ben was going to hit the old man, and that Ben was going to end up in control of the ship.

  The argument broke up. He grayed out a while. He came to with something near him and looked into a cyclopic glass lens, a camera pointed at his face, Ben’s face behind it. That scared him. He stared back, wondering whether Ben had a real kink or whether Ben was just a hobbyist. He was afraid to object. He just stared back and tried not to throw up.

  Then Ben cut the camera off and said, “Got you, you son of a bitch,” and drifted off.

  He thought, This guy’s crazy, he’s absolutely crazy… Ben wanted his ship. Ben wanted him dead. He had this cable around his neck, that Ben had put there. He was afraid to sleep after that, afraid Ben was going to do something stranger still, and adrenaline kept him focused for a while. But things started going away from him again, he was back in the dark with the tumbling and the pressure building in his head, and then he was back again with that lens in his face and Ben going crazier and crazier…

  He had no idea how long those times were or whether he had dreamed the business with the camera. When he looked, Bird was sleeping in a makeshift net rigged down toward the bow, and Ben was back at the workstation keyboard as if he had never moved, never had done anything in the least odd. He watched Ben for a while, wondering if he had hallucinated, wondering if it was safe to move with Bird asleep, because he was beginning to feel an acute need of going down to the head, and he was scared to do anything that Ben might conceivably object to.

  Finally he shoved off very slowly and drifted down feet first toward the shower/toilet.

  Ben looked around at him. He touched the other wall and caught the shower door, and Ben seemed not to care.

  Don’t use the shower, he remembered that—he kept the cable in his left hand the way Bird had said, but for a space he lost track of where he was again: then he was inside the shower where the toilet was, finishing his business. He thought for a panicked moment. They’re lying, this is our ship all along. It was even the same ribbed pattern on the green shower wall. He could feel it when he touched it, real as anything he knew. He thought: Cory can’t be dead, she isn’t dead, there isn’t any other ship—

  But there was the cable snaking out the door, there was the clip that wouldn’t come off—he tried to brace himself with his feet and his shoulders while he worked, he pulled the clip cover back to squeeze the jaws with his bare fingers, but he could get no leverage on it and all the while Cory was out there with no way to get back—

  He looked at his watch. It said 0638. It said, March 12. He thought, The damn watch is wrong, it can’t be March 12. I’m back where I started. Cory’s going to die. Oh, God—

  The clip cover slipped and he pinched his finger, bit his lip against the pain and thought, I’ve got to get rid of this, got to get hold of the ship, get the radio—

  He looked around him for leverage, anything that could double for a pliers and put a pinch on the jaws with the clip cover retracted. He tried the soap dispenser, pried the small panel up, worked himself around upside down with his foot braced against the wall, pulled the spring cover back from the jaws with the fingers of his left hand, and held the pressure point under the metal edge of the panel with the leverage of his right hand, pushing the panel edge down on the clip, hard as he could, trying not to let it slip—

  CHAPTER 3

  CAME a thump from the shower, and Ben thought to himself: He’s been in there a long time. He slipped his seatbelt off, shoved off in that direction and snatched a handhold at the shower corner, catching a hazy image of Dekker upside down and crosswise in the stall.

  What in hell? he wondered. He flung the door back—could make no sense at first of what Dekker was doing. Then he saw the bloody fingerprints on the locker door, the whole angle of Dekker’s neck and arm forcing the soap dispenser panel shut on the clip. Dekker let it go of a sudden, the panel banged, and Dekker came off the wall at him, grappling for a hold, trying, he realized in panic, to get the cable looped around his throat.

  He yelled, flailed out and caught the cable, their tumble winding them both into the cable Dekker was trying to get around his neck, and in sheer panic he hit him, hauled up on the cable and kept hitting him, hard as he could.

  “Ben!” Bird yelled. He half-heard it: he just kept pounding away, his fist gone numb, his breath so choked he had no idea whether he was snagged in the cable or not. Bird grabbed his arm, yelling, “You’re going to kill him!—Ben, dammit, stop!”

  He realized then that Dekker was no longer fighting. Bird pried him out of his grip, Dekker floating loose and limp. Bird shook at him again, said, “God, have you lost your mind?”

  Sympathy for a damned lunatic—no thanks for stopping Dekker from killing them. He was shaking from the scare Dekker had given him, he hurt from Dekker’s hitting him, and Bird took Dekker’s part.

  “That sonuvabitch tried to pry the clip loose!” he said, and shook free of Bird’s grip, grabbed Dekker, hauled him up again where the pipes and conduits were, and fumbled the roll of tape out of his hip pocket. Dekker was still limp as he started wrapping his wrist to a cold-water pipe, but he hurried, afraid he would come to.

  “Stop it!” Bird cried, and came up and shoved him away.

  His hand hurt. Bird was taking the lunatic’s part. So he went down and got into stores and dispensed himself a beer: he didn’t speak to Bird, he didn’t trust h
imself to say anything at the moment. His jaw was sore. A tooth felt loose. His lip was cut. He had never had a fight in school and it had not been his idea to have one this late in his life, except a guy wanted to kill him. He yelled up at Bird, “Don’t you let that sonuvabitch loose! Don’t you do it, Bird!”

  He took a gulp of beer, still shaking, his legs and arms jerking spasmodically, his breath so erratic he had trouble drinking. Not scared, mad, that was all. Damned mad. The guy tried to kill him and Bird shoved him off and started making sympathetic noises at the guy that had meant to do them both in. Bird owned the ship. Bird gave the orders. And Bird thought they could trust this sonuvabitch…

  “Toss me up a cold pack,” Bird yelled down.

  He did that: he opened up medical and sent it up to Bird and Bird didn’t even look at him.

  Bird cut the penlight. At least Dekker’s pupils were the same size and they both reacted, which was about all he knew to look for. Dekker was bleeding from the nose in little droplets. He mopped the air with his handkerchief, to keep it out of the filters, wiped Dekker’s chin, then caught the cold pack and applied it to Dekker’s face and the back of his neck.

  Dekker began to show signs of life, confused, struggling with the tape for a moment before he reached over with his free hand and started tearing at it. Bird grabbed that hand, restrained it, saying, so only Dekker could hear, “Easy, easy, just stay quiet, it’s all right. Just take it easy—you’re not doing any good that way. Cut it out, hear?”

  Dekker was breathing hard, staring at him or through him, he had no idea. Dekker wanted loose, couldn’t fault him for that—couldn’t be sure he was sane, either; and God only knew what was going on with Ben. Dekker gave a jerk at the wrist he was holding.

  “Uh-uh,” he said. “Just stay still. You leave that tape alone for a while. Hear? Just let it be.”

  Dekker said, “Liar.”

  “Yeah, right.” You went to sleep and things were halfway under control and you woke up with two guys trying to kill each other and it wasn’t highly likely to make sense. “You’re bleeding into our filters. Just stay still—damn!” as Dekker choked and sneezed beads of blood. He snagged them with the handkerchief, one-handed, pressed it against Dekker’s face. “I don’t know what you did, son. Did you do something to piss Ben off?”