“You all right?” The monitor was beeping. “—No! Let him alone. It’s all right! Leave him the hell alone.”
Orderly was trying to intervene. He opened his eyes and looked toward the door, trying to calm his pulse rate, and Ben leaned over and put his hand on his shoulder. Squeezed hard.
“You get in that sim by yourself?”
“I don’t know.”
“Somebody put you there?”
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know, Ben. I just can’t remember.”
“Come on, Dek, think about it. You got into the core. You remember that? You had to get that far. What happened then?”
He shook his head. He kept seeing dark. Hashing lights. Green lines and gold. Heard Cory saying, Nothing you can do, Dek, nothing you can do...
They were back in The Hole. In his room behind the bar. Had a drawerful of pills....
He put a hand over his eyes, men stared at the ceiling and looked over at Ben again to be sure where he was and when he was. But the black kept trying to come back and the lines twisted and moved.
‘Driver ship, a k long. Loads of rock going to the Well at tremendous v.
Cory was dead. Dead a long time. So was Bird. He thought that Bird was dead. Fewer and fewer things were coming loose and drifting.
He pressed his hands over his eyes until it made sparks of color in the dark of virtual space. Red. Phosphenes. Was that what they said the lights were?
Spinning, of a sudden. He grabbed the bed. Ben said, “God, watch it!”
Something was beeping. Ben said, to someone at the door, “He had a dream, that’s all.”
“Want you there this afternoon,” Graff said to his Nav One; and to Saito.
Saito said, “This won’t be like our procedures. An answer-what’s-asked. This is Earth. Don’t mistake it.”
Graff took a sip of cooling coffee. “I couldn’t. The old man hasn’t sent us a hint, except Pollard, and Pollard doesn’t know anything. I don’t know if that’s a signal to raise that issue or not—but I can’t understand the silence. Unless the captain’s leaving me to take the grenade. Which I’d do. Little they could do anyway but transfer me back. But he should tell me.”
“No grenades,” Demas said. “—No chance of Dekker talking?”
“Pollard’s honestly trying. All I know.”
“You sure he’s the captain’s? He could be Tanzer’s.”
Graff remembered something he’d forgotten to say, gave a short laugh. “Pollard’s a native Belter.”
“You’re serious. Tanzer knows it?”
“Knows he’s a friend of Dekker’s. That has him the devil in Tanzer’s book. What’s more, this Belter claims he’s a Priority 10 tracked for Geneva.”
Demas’ brows went up.
Graff said, “Bright. Very bright. Computers. Top security computers.”
“Tanzer can’t snag a Priority like that.”
Saito said, “Not without an authorization. I doubt Tanzer can even access that security level to realize what he is.”
“The captain set up Pollard with a room in the hospital. I told him to stay to it and Dekker’s room and keep his head down. With a security clearance like that, he understands what quiet means, I think. He’s got an appointment waiting for him—if he can get out of here before he becomes a priority to Tanzer.”
“You signal him?”
“Every word I could prudently use. There were some I didn’t. Maybe I should have. But he’s UDC. You don’t know where it’ll go, ultimately.”
“No remote chance on Dekker?”
“No chance on this one. Too much to ask. They’ve requested the log. They’re going to ask questions on the carrier—they’ll want to ask questions about the trainees. But they won’t talk to them. They’re not scheduled. Trainees don’t talk to the EC. Trainees they’re designing those ships around don’t talk to the committee because the committee is only interested in finding a way that doesn’t admit we’re right. Another schitzy AI. Another budget fight.”
“The Earth Company makes a lot of money on shipbuilding,” Demas said. “Does that thought ever trouble your sleep?”
“It’s beginning to.”
The captain wanted to bust Demas up to a captaincy. Demas insisted he was staying with Keu. The argument was still going on. The fact was Demas hated administration and claimed he was a tactician, not a strategist, but Demas saw things. Good instincts, the man had.
Saito said, quietly: “Committee will be predominantly male, predominantly over fifty, and they won’t understand why the captain didn’t leave Fitz in charge and take me and Demas with him. That’s what you’re dealing with.”
Fitzroy, Helm One, was answering questions for the committee at Sol One. Graff said, glumly: “Tanzer’s threatening to make an issue out of their command rules.”
Demas shook his head. “Let him make it. That’ll get me to the stand surer than the nav stats would. And I don’t think he wants that.”
One could wish. But one couldn’t get technical with the legislative types. With the engineers, yes. “They’d talk to Demas. But the engineers couldn’t talk policy to the legislators. Couldn’t get through their own management.”
“I keep having this feeling they’re going to blindside us.”
“You’ll handle it. No question. Easy done.”
Keu’s silence was overall the most troublesome thing. Graff finished off his coffee, took the bolt and pocketed it. “Paperweight. Every paperpusher should have one. —Tell the construction boss I want to talk to him, in my office, right now.”
“Ought to give him the thing at max v,” Demas said.
“When we find the foreman who faked the parts count— I’d be willing.” Graff headed for the door, tossed his cup in the collection bin.
Ben was back. Ben had been in the hall a while. Ben sat down with his chair close to the bed, put his hand on his shoulder.
“How’re you doing, Dek?”
“All right.”
“You were remembering, you know that? Pete and Elly? You remember that?”
Ben scared him. “I was dreaming. Sorry, Ben.” If he was dreaming he could be in the Belt. Or the ship.
But Ben shook at his shoulder and said, “Dek, how did you get in the sim? What were you doing in there? I got to get out of here. I got twelve hours, Dek.”
Sim chamber. Pods spinning around and around. Racket. Echoes. Everything tried to echo. And Ben said he had twelve hours. He didn’t want Ben to leave. Ben came and Ben went, but as long as he knew there was a chance of Ben being there he knew what he was waking up to.
He said, “It’s June 20th, isn’t it? Isn’t it, Ben?”
Ben took a fistful of hospital gown, under his chin, and said, “Dekker, remember what fucking happened. I got to be on that shuttle. It’s my life at stake, you copy?”
He tried. Ben let him go, smoothed the covers, patted his shoulder. Didn’t ask him anything for a moment. Ben was upset and he earnestly tried to pull the sim chamber out of the dark for Ben. But it wasn’t there.
Just that fireball. Second sun. They said it wasn’t Wilhelmsen’s fault. Maybe it wasn’t. You died when you overran your limits.
“Target,” he said. Ben said, “What?”
He said, “Target. Missed one....”
CHAPTER 4
THE hearing was set up in A 109, not the biggest of the classrooms—dressed up with tables and a couple of UDC guards with sidearms—to do what, Graff asked himself bitterly, shoot down anybody who’d tell the truth out of turn?
Limited seating, they called it. No public access. That meant the workmen and the mechanics that worked for the EC, the vendors and the man who sold meat pies on 3-deck were barred, and those of them with security clearances still had to pass metal detectors. It meant that any military personnel showed if the committee knew they existed, and sent them passes: that meant ranking officers and the few like himself whose names were on the duty list the hour of the disaster. But there we
re passes issued for aides and for official representatives of the several services. And that meant the Fleet had Saito and Demas.
And the Shepherd trainees had Mitch and Jamil. They’d taken off the jewelry, taken off the earrings—couldn’t hide Jamil’s tattoos, but Jamil’s single strip of black hair was braided tight against his scalp, and both of them were as regulation as the Shepherds could manage.
There were the various heads of department, maintenance chiefs, the ones who had security clearances. There was a big carrier schematic on one screen, others showing details of the docking ports. And an undetailed model on the table. Just the flat saucer shape. Mania shape, the blue-skyers called it. He’d seen a picture of the sea-dwelling creature and he saw why. Thin in one aspect to present minimum profile to fire or to high-v dust when it needed, broad and flat to accommodate the engines and the crew, and to lie snug against a carrier’s frame.
Black painted model. The real thing was grayer, reflective ceramic. But they didn’t advertise the coating. Thirty crew aboard when, please God, they got past the initial trials, thirty crew, mostly techs, mostly working for the longscanner. Core crew was four. The essential stations. The command personnel. The ones whose interfaces were with the active ship controls and the ones they had to risk in the tests.
The carrier dropped into a star-system and launched the riders—trusting that real space ships, launched like missiles, with more firepower than ability to maneuver at v, could do their job and make a carrier’s presence-pattern a far, far more diffuse element for an enemy’s longscan computers.
And trusting the human mind could keep going for four hours on intermittent hyperfocus at that v with no shields, only a constantly changing VR HUD display and a fire-power adequate to take out what threatened it—if reactions were still hair-triggered after that length of time immersed in virtual space; if human beings still had consistent right reactions to a dopplered infostream of threat and non-threat and every missile launched and potentially launched. A longscan of a fractional c firefight looked like a plaid of intersecting probabilities, overlaid cones or tri-dee fans depending on your traveling viewpoint; and you overran conventional radar, even orders from your carrier all you had was calc, com, and emissions.
Put an Artificial Intelligence above the human in the decision loop? Use a trained pilot for no more than resource to his own Adaptive Assist systems, with no power to override? Like hell. Sir.
He took a seat next to Demas and Saito, he cast a look down the row at Mitch and Jamil, and let the comer of his mouth tighten, surreptitious acknowledgment of their effort at diplomacy.
The committee filed in. Over fifty, Saito had said, and all male. Not quite. But the balance of the genders was certainly tilted. There were a handful of anxious execs from the designers and military contractors, from Bauerkraftwerke, who had designed the rider frame and some of the hardware; Lendler Corp, simulator software; Intellitron, which produced the longscan for both carriers and riders; Terme Aerospatiale, which did the Hellburner engines; and Staatentek, responsible for integrative targeting systems, computers and insystem communications. All of which could be pertinent. Lendler and Intellitron and Terme Aerospatiale were all Earth Company, but God only knew what side they were on. They’d doubtless been talking up the military examiners since last night: there’d been a UDC briefing.
“That’s Bonner,” Saito whispered, indicating a white-haired shave-headed UDC officer. Gen. Patrick Bonner, Graff understood. Tanzer’s direct CO. Ultimate head over R&D, not a friend. And what was he saying to an HI! contractor, both of them smiling and laughing like old friends?
People got to their seats. Bonner gave a speech, long and winding, a tactic, Graff thought, designed to stultify the opposition. Or perhaps his own troops. Not here to fix blame, Bonner said. Here to determine what happened and what caused it.
Introductions. Graff found himself focusing on the walls, on the topographic details of Bonner’s receding hairline, the repeating pattern in the soundproofing, on the nervous fingers of the rep from Bauerkraftwerke, which tapped out a quiet rhythm on the table.
Statement of positions: Bauerkraftwerke insisted there was no structural flaw, that its engineers had reconstructed the accident and there was nothing to do with failure of the frame or the engines. Terme Aerospatiale agreed. Lendler said its simulation software wasn’t at fault. Staatentek, the patent holder of the local AI tetralogic, maintained that the random ordnance software, the communications, the targeting software, had not glitched. Nobody was at fault. Nothing was wrong.
But a redesign in favor of the tetralogic control couldn’t be ruled out.
Bangs and thumps again. “Ben?” Dekker called out. Ben had said he would be there. But he waked up in a corridor, on a gumey, with restraints he didn’t remember deserving. “Ben!”
A nurse patted his shoulder and said, “It’s all right, your friend’s just outside.”
He hated it when the illusions started agreeing with him.
He lay still then, listening to the rattle and clatter. Someone said, from over his head, “We’re going to take you in, now,” and he didn’t know where. He yelled, “Ben! Ben!”
And somebody said, “Better sedate him.”
“No,” he yelled. “No.” And promised them, “You don’t need to.”
“Are you going to be all right?” they asked him.
“Yeah,” he said, and lay there getting his breath. But there was a whine of hydraulics and a clank, and they shoved him into a tube, telling him: “You have to stay absolutely still...”
Like a spinner tube, it was. Like back in the belt, in the ship. He lay still the way they told him, but it got harder and harder to breathe.
Flash of light. Like the sun. He heard a beeping sound that reminded him—that reminded him—
“Elly—Elly, Wilhelmsen, don’t reorient, screw it, screw it, you’re past—”
“He’s panicking,” someone said.
He screamed, at the top of his lungs, “Wilhelmsen, you damned fool—”
Fifteen-minute recess. Break for restrooms and the corridor and the hospitality table.
Mitch moved close enough to say, “They’re dithering, sir.”
Graff said, “Ease down. Not here.”
“They’re saying it can’t be flown. That’s a damn lie.”
“Ease down, Mitch. Nothing we can do out here.” He had Saito at his elbow. He could see Tanzer down the hall with Bonner, in hot and heavy discussion.
Demas came back from the phone in the office. Said: “A word in private.”
Graff said, “Mitch. Be good,” and took Saito with him, farther up the hall. “You get him?”
“Couldn’t get hold of Pollard. Talked to Higgins. The neurosurgeon wanted to run another brain scan. Higgins and Evans agreed. Dekker went off the edge, he’s under sedation. Higgins says he remembers the accident. Nothing further. He may never be able to remember how he got in that pod.”
“Damn.”
“You’ve got to tell it plain, Helm.”
“Break it wide open? We don’t know what the captain wants. We don’t know and if it were safe to use FleetCom he would.”
Saito said, “It can’t be worse. At this point I’d advise going past protocol. Worst we can do is alienate Bonner and a few handpicked legislators who came out here with him. This is a set-up. But it has records. The contractors are here defending their systems. And there may be a few line-straddlers in the senatorial party.”
That was a point. Bonner was already alienated. This was likely a breakaway group of legislators Bonner favored putting in here to hear what Tanzer put together—but the fact that they let him talk at all was either a try at getting something incriminating out of him; or maybe, maybe there were members of the group that wanted more than one view. “God only knows what we’re dealing with. No Pollard, no Dekker. It’s a small hand we’re playing. All right. I’ll tell Mitch. Wraps are off.”
Past lunch and beyond, and Ben paced th
e waiting room. He’d read all the damned articles available to the reader, he’d become grudgingly informed in the latest in microbiologic engineering, the pros and cons of seasonally adjusted light/ dark cycles and temperature in station environments, the ethics of psychological intervention, and the consequences of weather adjustment in the hurricane season to the North American continent, not to mention five posture checks for low-g workers. He’d occupied himself making changes in a program he had stored on his personal card, he’d been four times at least to Dekker’s room to see if he was out from under sedation—he’d lost count. You could hear the clangor and rattle of lunch trays being collected—they had a damned lot of hurt and sick: people in here, people that had let a welder slip or gotten in the way of a robot loader arm, one guy who’d taken a godawful number of volts closing a hydraulic switch—he heard the gossip in the corridors coming and going, he was saturated with hospital gossip on who was missing what and how the guy with peritonitis was doing today and what was the condition of the limb reattachment in 109?
While the orderlies were having lunch.
Another trip out to Dekker’s room. Can’t wake him, Higgins said. We’ve gotten the blood pressure down now. But he’s tired. He’s just tired—
“I’ve got a shuttle pulling out tonight—tell the lieutenant I’ve done everything I can do. I want to see him. I’ve got to get out of here.”
Higgins said, “He’s involved in a hearing this afternoon. I don’t know if I can reach him. I’ve left two messages with his office.”
“The hell! Doctor, my luggage is still lost, I’m out of money for the damn vending machines—I never got a cafeteria authorization and I’m sick of potato chips—I never asked to come here, Dekker and I never were friends, dammit, I don’t know why I’m his keeper!”
Higgins lent him five. Which wasn’t the answer he wanted, but it was lunch, at least, and he wasn’t going to offend Higgins by turning it down. Supper, he wasn’t even going to think about.
Tanzer’s turn with the mike. Nobody from the Fleet on the panel and no chance, Graff thought, of doing anything about that, except refusing to allow Fleet personnel to testify and trying to make an issue of it—but he was in a Position on that too, being one of the people on the list to testify; and he hoped the sweat didn’t show.
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