Devil to the Belt (v1.1) (7 page)

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—

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 himself 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?”

Dekker only shook his head, denial, refusal, he had no idea. Dekker blew blood into the handkerchief, gasped a bubbly breath and mumbled, “Cory. Call Cory.”

“Not likely she’s answering.” He shoved Dekker’s hand at his face. “Hold that.” He snagged the ice-pack that was coming back after its impact with the wall, and gave Dekker that too. “Just keep the cold on it. If you’re going to bleed, bleed into the handkerchief, all right? Don’t blow at it. Just let it be.”

Dekker looked at him past the bloody handkerchief and the cold pack. Sane for a moment, maybe. Or just too miserable and too short of breath to be crazy for a while.

He collected himself and his headache and the remnant of his patience, shoved off and drifted down to Ben. Ben intended to keep his back to him, it seemed—so he turned, touched a cabinet and changed course. You got used to reading faces upside down or sideways. Ben’s was sour, upset, and Ben was trying not to notice being stared at—only drinking his beer and trying to be somewhere else.

“I got a problem,” he said. “Ben?”

“We both got a problem,” Ben said shortly, as if he was not going to say much else. But Ben said then: “The guy was trying to kill us. He damn near had that clip undone, with a panel edge for a pliers. What was he going to do then, huh, Bird? You reckon that?”

“God only. Just go easy. We got a long way back.”

“Go easy,” Ben scowled. “Listen, I saved and did without all my life to get that 20 k, you understand? Nobody ever handed me a break, nobody ever gave me a damn thing, and here we have the best break anybody could look for—”

“It doesn’t say we own that ship. It doesn’t.”

“God, Bird,—”

“We’ll be all right.” He could understand Ben’s panic, on that level: the 20 k was hard come by, all right, so was everything. “We won’t go under.”

“Go under! You’re old enough to know better, Bird. I put my whole life savings into this operation!”

“So have I,” he said shortly, and hauled himself down and turned so he could see Ben’s face rightwise up. “Thirty plus years’ worth. And listen to me: you don’t go hitting the guy again. He’s had enough knocks to the head.”

“So who is he? Who is he that you owe him a damn thing, Bird? Is there something about this guy I don’t know? Somewhere you’ve met this guy before?”

He looked at Ben with this feeling they were not communicating again: he listened to Ben’s single-minded craziness with the uncomfortable feeling he might yet have to take a wrench to his partner.

But just about the time he thought Ben might really blow, Ben gave this little wave of his hand and a shake of his head. “All right, all right, we’re going in, abort our run—forget it, forget I said anything.”

“What day is it?” Dekker asked from across the cabin. “Cory?
Cory
?”

“The 21st,” he told him. “May 21st.”

Ben raked his hand through his hair, rolled an anguished glance toward Bird. “I want rid of him. God only knows what happened to his partner. Or if there ever was a partner.”

“Cory?”

“Shut up!” Ben screamed at Dekker. “Just shut it up!”

Bird bit his lip and just kept it to himself. There were times you talked things over and there were times you didn’t, and Ben certainly didn’t act in any way to discuss things at the moment.

“Just get our confirm out of Base,” Bird said, and ventured a pat on Ben’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Ben. Hear?”

“Shut him up,” Ben begged him. “Just shut him up for a while.”

Dekker worked at the tape on his wrist, such as he could—his fingers were swollen, his ribs hurt, and he could not understand how he had gotten this way or whether he had done something to deserve being beaten and tied up like this—he flatly could not remember except the shower, the green ribbed shower, the watch—it was that day, something was going to happen to Cory—if it was that day… but Bird said May, not March.

January has thirty days. No, 31. February 28. March…

Thirty days hath September… April, March, and November…

“April,
May
, and November. Shut
up
!”

March 12. Thirty-one days. 21 less 12.

No, start in January. That’s 30, no, 31, and 28—or 29 if it’s leap year —is it leap year?

“It’s not a leap year!”

28 and 12—no, start again. Thirty days in January—

“It’s May efün’ 21st, Dekker!”

Reckoning backward—twenty-one days in May—

Couldn’t happen. Couldn’t be then—

“You reset my watch, damn you! You’re trying to drive me crazy!”

Bird came drifting up to him, put his hand on his shoulder, caught the cold pack that was drifting there and made him take it again. Bird said, quietly, on what previous subject he had no idea at all, “Time doesn’t matter now, son. Just take it easy. We’re about ready to catch our beam. You’ll hear the sail deploy in a bit.”

“Refinery Two,” he said. He remembered. He hoped he did. He hoped it wasn’t all to happen again.

“That’s right.” Another pat on his arm. Bird might be crazy as Ben, but he thought there was something decent in Bird. He let Bird tilt his head over and take a look at his eye, the right one, that was swelling and sore.

“Bird, do me a favor.”

“You’re short on favors right now, son. What?”

“Call my partner.”

“We’re doing all we can.”

He didn’t believe that. He especially didn’t believe it when Bird pulled another cable loop out of his pocket and grabbed his other wrist. He resisted that. He tried to shove Bird off, but when he exerted himself he kept graying out and losing his breath. “Let me go,” he asked Bird, quietly, so Ben wouldn’t hear. God, his ribs hurt. “Let me loose.”

“Can’t do that, son. Not today. Maybe not for a while. Ben says you’ve been bashing things.” The cable bit into his wrist and one clip snapped.

“Ben’s a liar!” No. He hadn’t meant to take that tack. He tried to amend it. A second clip snapped—woven steel cable looped around a pipe or something. He tried not to panic. He tried to be perfectly reasonable. “He’s right. I was off my head awhile. But I’m all right now. Tell him I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”

“I’ll do that.” Bird squeezed his shoulder in a kindly way. “Nobody’s going to hurt you, son. Nobody means you any harm. We just got three people in a little ship and you’re a little confused. Try to keep it a little quiet. You’ll be all right.”

The oxygen felt short. He tried not to panic. He didn’t want them to tell him he was confused. “Bird,” he said, before Bird could get away. “There’s a’driver right where I came from. Isn’t there?”

“I wouldn’t know that, son. I don’t know for sure where you came from.”

“79, 709, 12.”

Bird nodded slowly. “All right. Yes. There is a’driver near there.”

He found his breath shorter and shorter. He said, calmly, sanely, because he finally found one solid thing they both agreed on. “All right. I want you to call it. Ask about my partner.”

“You sure you
had
a partner, son?”

Reality kept getting away from him. Time and space and what had happened did. He fixed on Bird’s gray-stubbled face as the only reference he had. “Just call the’driver. Just ask them if they picked up my partner. That’s all I ask.”

“Son… I honestly don’t know what you might have been doing out there in a’driver’s assigned territory. You understand me?”

He didn’t. He shook his head.

“How long have you been in the Belt, son?”

“Couple years.” He wasn’t sure of that number any longer either. He was sure of nothing in regard to time. He thought again—look at my watch—got to know—which direction to reckon.

“Free runner?”

“Yeah.”

“You ever make any money at mining?”

Ben asked those kinds of questions. “Maybe.”

“Haven’t ever done any skimming, have you?”

His heart jumped. He shook his head emphatically, wanting Bird to believe him. “No.” He couldn’t remember what conversation they were in, what they had just said, why Bird was asking him a thing like that.

Bird said, “We’re just damn close to that’driver’s fire-path, understand, and if we got one accident, we sure don’t need another, you read me?”

Things were dark awhile. Bird gave him more of the soup, told him it was breakfast and they were all right. He wanted to think so, but he didn’t believe it any longer. He heard voices near him. He thought he remembered Bird asking him questions after that. He wasn’t sure. He dreamed he answered, and that Bird let him loose awhile to get to the toilet. But maybe that was the other time.

From time to time he remembered the collision. His muscles jumped, and then he would realize that was long past and he was still alive. “What time is it?” he asked, and Bird caught him by the side of the jaw, made him focus eye to eye.

“Son,
don’t
cross Ben again. Don’t ask him the time. Don’t ask me. Your friend’s dead. She’s
dead
, you understand me?”

Bird’s grip hurt. Bird was angry and he didn’t know why.

“We got the confirm from Base,” Ben shouted up.

“Yeah,” Bird called back, and patted Dekker’s face. “Got a draft coming from that vent. I’ll get you a blanket, tuck you in—we’re about to catch the beam.”

“Yeah,” he said. He was confused again. He thought that Bird had said that would be some time yet. But he’d given up knowing where they were. He hung there, nowhere for a while, listening to Bird move around. He heard hydraulics working, heard that series of sounds that meant a sail deploying. He thought, So we’re going in. He didn’t really believe it. It wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t possible any longer. He couldn’t come back from this. He just kept seeing the shower wall, the watch on his arm, perpetual loop, maybe because he was dead…