Devil to the Belt (v1.1)

by C. J. Cherryh

  But he didn’t ask that, he didn’t think it was smart to ask, at this point. He got an elbow under him—they had him lying on a table freezing his ass off, and he only wanted to relieve the ache in his back. But a hand landed on his shoulder: it had a UDC uniform cuff. MP. He lay back and stared at the lights and froze in silence until the Fleet medic came back and stood over him.

  “Lieutenant’s orders: you go where you’re told to go, you don’t argue, you don’t say anything about the incident to anybody but our legal staff, you understand?”

  He said, burning with embarrassment, “Something about my mother on the news, can anybody for God’s sake find out what happened to my mother?”

  “Lieutenant’s aware of that. He’s making inquiries.”

  “What about the other guys? Pollard and Kady and Aboujib—”

  “They’re fine.”

  “They arrest them too?”

  “Riot and assault.” Parton looked across him, over his head. “Lieutenant wants him with his unit. The three he named.”

  “Kady and Aboujib are women.”

  “They’re his unit, sergeant.”

  Long silence. Then: “I’ll have to ask the major.”

  Age-old answer. Dekker shut his eyes. Figured they’d be a while asking and getting no. “It’s protecting me from Kady you better worry about,” he told them. Bad joke. Nobody was laughing. He wasn’t amused either. Meg had a record of some kind. Meg had just gotten it cleared, got a chance to fly again. Ben had his assignment in Stockholm....

  His mother used to say, You damned kid, everything you touch you break—

  You messed up my whole life, you self-centered little brat—why can’t you do right, why can’t you once in your life do something right, you damned screw-up?

  Long time he lay there freezing, with a knot in his gut, replaying that newscast for the information he could get out of it, telling himself they couldn’t prove anything on his mother, she’d at least got some kind of lawyer, so she wasn’t without help—

  He’d got a little money ahead, he’d saved it out of his pay, he wasn’t spending anything. He’d tried to give it to her before, for what he’d cost her, but she hadn’t wanted it. Maybe he could get Ben to send it to her. Maybe she’d take it from Ben—she was going to need funds fast, if she wasn’t drawing pay, she never got that far ahead of the bills, and even if she had free legal help, it wouldn’t pay for food...

  “Word is, he can’t go in a cell with the women,” the MP said. “Regulations. We can put him with Pollard....”

  He didn’t argue. Parton only said he’d report that refusal to the lieutenant.

  Parton left. The UDC medics got him up. The MPs locked a bracelet on his wrist that they said he wasn’t to mess with, and took him out and down the hall to the cells.

  Guys from his barracks yelled out, along the way, “Hey, Dek!” and he looked numbly to the side. Mason and Chiv were mere. Pauli. Hardesty. And across the aisle—a guy he didn’t know, familiar face, who looked murder at him. So he didn’t look. He walked where they wanted him, they took the cuffs off when he’d gotten to Ben’s cell and they opened the door and put him in.

  Ben gave him a sullen look. He didn’t figure Ben wanted to start a fight in front of the MPs. So he got over in the corner, mere being just a double bunk and a toilet, and Ben sitting on the bunk: he sank down on the floor with his back to the corner, feeling the bruises and feeling the silence from the bunk.

  MPs stood there a moment more looking at him. He had the fanciful notion that after they left Ben was going to get up and come over and kill him. But he didn’t truly think so. Hit him—yeah. He expected that. He even wanted it. Anything to stop him thinking about the mess he’d made.

  The MPs went away.

  Ben said, “The place is probably bugged.”

  Which meant Ben wouldn’t kill him—not in front of any cameras. He sat mere with his knees drawn up to his chest so tight he couldn’t move and felt numb.

  “You going to sit there?”

  He didn’t know what else to do. Didn’t care about climbing up to the top bunk. He was comfortable enough where he was—comfortable as he was going to get.

  “You sure got a way of finding it, you know that?”

  “Yeah,” he said. It cost to say, “Sorry, Ben,” but he did it, past the knot in his throat. He hadn’t said it often enough, maybe, over the years, and a lot of the people he should have said it to—it was too late to tell.

  Ben didn’t say anything for a while. Finally: “You break anything?”

  “No.” He wasn’t sure about the ribs, and the lately-broken arm and the shoulder ached like hell, but the meds hadn’t taped anything, or sent him back to hospital, so probably not. He just generally hurt.

  “Son of a bitch,” Ben muttered. Ben might hit him after all. Ben’s chances of getting out of here and back to his security clearance had sunk, maybe, as low as they could go. Ben had nothing to lose.

  Ben muttered, “Get out of the damn corner. You look like hell.”

  He made a tentative move of his legs. But he was wedged in. Couldn’t do it without more effort man he wanted to spend. So he shook his head, just wanted to be left in peace a while. Didn’t want an argument... or he just wanted this one to play itself out and come to some distracting conclusion.

  “Damn.” Ben got up, came over and grabbed him up by one wrist and the other, turned him back to the bunk and shoved him onto it.

  Bang went his head against the wall. He just rested where he’d hit and stared at Ben, Ben with this thoughtful expression he couldn’t figure out. Mad, he expected. But he didn’t want to deal with complexities or have Ben trying to con him. And Ben’s frown didn’t look as angry as Ben should. “You sick? You want the meds?”

  “I’ve had ‘em.” He curled into the corner where the bunk met the wall, tucked up and tried to project a thorough Leave me alone.

  Ben sat down, put a hand on his ankle and shook him. “You all right?”

  “Yeah.” He jerked his leg, Ben moved his hand, and he sat there with his arms across his gut, because he felt the pieces coming apart, the one reliable guy he knew was after him in a way that didn’t mean Ben had just gone friendly—oh, no, Ben had just changed the rules; Ben was after something, maybe his neck, maybe just after using him to get what he wanted: Belters were like that, that were born there. You could partner with them. You could deal with them. But you didn’t ever take for granted they thought the way you did.

  “Your mama’s in some kind of trouble, is she?”

  “Her trouble.”

  Ben said, “Sounds to me like Salazar.”

  They’d gotten altogether too friendly one watch, on the ship, on the trip out from the Belt. Their lives had been changing. Late one night he’d told Ben a lot of things he wished now he hadn’t. Early as the next wakeup, he’d known it was a mistake. “Leave it the hell alone, Ben. It’s not your business.”

  “Not my business. You are a son of a bitch, you know that, Dekker?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve been told.”

  “Listen, Dekker, —”

  “I said let it ride!”

  “What else does your mama have to do with MarsCorp?”

  “She fixes the damn circuits, all over Sol One. She’s an electrician—they don’t ask her politics or her religion before they send her into an office—maybe she screwed up a jot>—”

  “MarsCorp? Come on, Dekker.”

  “MarsCorp, the Vatican for all I know, I don’t know what she’s into, I don’t know what’s going on, they cut the damn news off, weren’t you listening?”

  “Dekker, —I want you to say nice things to the cops, I want you to use your head, I want you to say I’m sorry to the nice UDC guys and yessir to the colonel and don’t the hell get us in any more heat, you understand me?”

  “Yeah,” he said. Simple demands, he could cope with. He got his back into the corner and his knees tucked up out of Ben’s convenient reach.
Didn’t like guys touching him. He was sure Ben didn’t mean it any way but Pay Attention, but he didn’t like it. “It’s my fault. The whole damn thing’s my fault, I got that loud and clear, all right? I’m sorry you got involved.”

  Ben hit his foot. Another Pay Attention. “Dek-ooy, you are in deep shit here, have you noticed that? Stop thinking about your mama, you have got enough shit to occupy your time. I do not want you to screw up in front of the lieutenant, I do not want you to mouth off to the MPs, I do not want you to get us in deeper than we are. You copy that? Now, for all those watching, we are going to agree there is involved in this a Name that they won’t want in court, no more than they did when they the hell raked you into the Service and gave me my slot at TI. That Name is, let us agree, Salazar. So we are not going to court martial, we are not going to see any outside lawyers, we are behind the thickest fuckin’ security wall in the inner system, and I think it would be a most severely good idea not to antagonize the Fleet at this point, since the UDC is for some whimsical reason not all that happy with you. Do you follow?”

  Jaw wasn’t working all that well. He nodded. He couldn’t stop thinking about his mother. He couldn’t help thinking how a lot of people would be alive if he’d never existed and how people connected to him might have better lives now if he was dead and Salazar didn’t have anybody to go after.

  Ben said it right—Salazar couldn’t get a message to him through ordinary channels, so she sent one on the news. I’m here. I’m still waiting. I’ll get what you care about until I can get you....

  He didn’t track on everything Ben said—but that, that, he understood. He wanted to get to a phone. He wanted permission from someone to get a call out.

  Which was exactly what Salazar wanted. So he couldn’t do that. Couldn’t, dammit. Not without thinking more clearly than he was right now....

  Let her have him, maybe, do something so the Fleet would throw him out and all the Belter and Shepherd types who’d protected him wouldn’t want to, wouldn’t give a damn if he went to trial....

  Then, if they ever let him testify, he could tell mama Salazar to her face she’d killed her own kid. Only revenge Cory would ever have—unless you counted a few execs out of jobs. But they’d find others. The Company always found a place for the fools. Ben said so. And he believed it. They just promoted them sideways, somewhere they hadn’t a rep—yet. The Company took care of its own.

  “Severe mess,” Sal said with a shake of her braids. Meg concurred with that.

  “Sloppy place,” she said, looking around at a scarred, dirty cell. “The tank over at One is ever so nicer.” She felt a draft from a torn coat sleeve, and leaned her back against the wall, one leg tucked. They weren’t in prison coveralls. The Es-tab-lish-ment was still trying to figure what to do with them, she supposed, on grounds of her previous experience with such places. “D’ you s’pose the lieutenant has got a plan, or what-all?”

  “I sincerely do hope,” Sal said. Sal had an eye trying to swell shut. A cut lip. Sal did not look happy with her situation. Sal looked, in fact, intensely scared, now the adrenaline rush was gone and they were sitting in a cell with a riot charge over their heads.

  “It was a set-up,” Meg said. “Don’t you smell set-up? I never saw a room blow so fast. Just a skosh peculiar, they let Dek out and they run him back in, and MS so seriously important and all? We’re the ones they shagged a carrier to get here. Are they going to forget us? Nyet. Non.”

  Sal was still frowning. “Amnesia’s been known. Strikes people in office, most often. I hear they got no vaccine.”

  “Faith, Aboujib. Believe in justice.”

  Sal snorted. Almost laughed.

  “I believe, Kady, I believe we are in un beau de fuck-up here....”

  Truth was, she was scared too. But scared didn’t profit you anything when it came to judges and courts, and she’d said it to Sal—the Fleet hadn’t gone to all this trouble to invite them to a messhall brawl.

  “I believe in they hauled our asses a long, long way to haul Dek in out of the dark. That is a truly remarkable altruism, Aboujib.”

  “Des bugs.”

  “Bien certain they would. Bien certain someone’s playing games. Dekker’s mama lost her job. Does this rate news? Does this rate the peace movement lawyers giving interviews in front of the MarsCorp logo? Nyet. But there it was.”

  “You think somebody made it up? Faked it?”

  “Nyet. Peace movement, Aboujib. Peace movement is involved. Does not the antenna go up? Does not an old rab ask herself why and what if?”

  There was a spark of interest in Sal’s dark eye. The one that showed. Sal didn’t say a thing, but: “Rab is. The Corp is. Amen.”

  “That chelovek in the suit, that lawyer? That’s a plastic. You mark.”

  “Why’s he with Dekker’s mama?”

  Scary to think on. Truly scary. Sal looked at her. Sal as Belter as they came, and Shepherd; and how did you say the mother-well’s mind in Sal’s terms?

  “Think of helldeck. Think of all those preachers, them that want to save your soul. And they each got a different way.”

  Another snort. “Crazies.”

  “On Earth they got their right. That’s why they got it still on helldeck. On Earth you got a right to say and do. So they say and do. On Earth you can say a straight-line rock won’t hit you. And maybe it won’t. It might be too heavy. Might fell. You understand?”

  A straight-line rock was one thing to a Belter. Fall was a contradiction in terms. You didn’t have rocks on station, where things fell. And fall didn’t go straight-line. Thoughts and puzzlement chased through Sal’s expression, and rated a frown.

  “What I said. Crazy.”

  “A rock might fall on its own before it hit you. You got to know its size to know.”

  “Why’d it move?”

  “Because some crazy threw it at you. Bare-handed. But it might fall first.”

  “So. On station, naturlich.”

  “In the motherwell, everything’s like that. Gravity and friction are always in the numbers. Not a lot of blue-skyers can figure those numbers. Things just happen because they happen and sometimes they don’t happen and you don’t know why, so you were lucky or you weren’t. You don’t know. Very few can comp it. Ask a peacer what the answer is. He’ll tell you it’s not war. Ask him how you’ll get no war. He’ll say don’t make one. Half the time it works. You got, however, to convert the other side to this idea. Ask a peacer how to make peace. He’ll say, Don’t fight. Half the time that works too.”

  “Guy was going to beat hell out of Dek.”

  “Yeah, well, this rab did have such a thought. And I sincerely wasn’t going to sit and watch it.”

  “So why’re the peacers paying for a lawyer for Dekker’s mama?”

  “Peace on Earth’s like that rock. You got to calc things you don’t, in space. You got to ask, primarily, whose peace, whose way, how long? But Earthers don’t, generally. Blue-sky’s used to not caking all the factors.”

  “Trez sloppy,” Sal said.

  “The Corps don’t like you to calc all the numbers. Neither do the helldeck preachers. Listen all you like, you sojer-boys with the bugs. You sleep down with the Corp, you get up with fleas. How good’s your addition?”

  “There is no excuse,” Tanzer said, “there is no mitigating circumstance except your personal decision to release Dekker from hospital without psychiatric evaluation, without appropriate procedures. The man’s a fuse, lieutenant. You knew that. Or don’t you read your personnel reports?”

  Graff didn’t ask how Tanzer had. He said, patiently, standing in front of Tanzer’s desk: “Dekker didn’t do anything. He got up in a hurry and bumped a man he didn’t even know....”

  “This is a finger you want on the trigger of the most sophisticated weapons system ever devised? Can’t navigate from a chair in the messhall? Is that his problem?”

  “Your news service released a story without a next-of notice. Was that deliberate
?”

  “Is it a death situation? I think not. Your boy can’t tolerate a little stress? What in hell is he doing in this program? He blows and your whole side of the messhall comes out of the seats—”

  “Your man did the grabbing and the shoving. Don’t try that one. It was simultaneous. There are too many witnesses.”

  “Your witnesses were all in the middle of it. Your latest recruits were instigators. Is that what you call leadership? Is that what you call a cooperative relationship? Damned right, I don’t put all the blame on Dekker, / don’t blame the boy you dragged out of hospital and put into a high voltage situation, / blame the officer who made that boy a cause, which is damned well what you’ve done with your attitude and, for all I know, your direct statements to your command. You piled the pressure on that boy, you put those women in the middle of it, you set him up to draw fire—he was guaranteed to blow the first time he got any load more man he had. So his mama lost her job, damned right his mama lost her job—she was calling MarsCorp board members at two in the morning, threatening phone calls, you read me? She’s a spacecase—like mother, like son, if you want my opinion. It’s congenital!”

  “You have no basis for any such conclusion.”

  “Haven’t I? I’m telling you right now, right here, he’s never getting back in a cockpit and you aren’t giving any more orders in a UDC premise, not in the messhall, not the offices, not the classrooms, not the corridors or the hospital. Try that one, lieutenant. Take that one to your captain and see what he has to say.”

  He had no instructions how to play that one. He wasn’t a lawyer. He didn’t know whether Tanzer could legally do that. He wasn’t in charge of policy. He didn’t know whether he should use Fleet Security to guarantee access. It was down to that. The phone rang—thank God for two extra seconds to think while Tanzer jabbed a button and growled an irritable, “I’m not to be disturbed.”

  “Sir,” the secretary said, on intercom, “your line.”

  Unusual. Tanzer picked up the phone to listen in private and his expression smoothed out and went completely grim.

  “When?” Tanzer asked; and: “Any other information?” And, “Find out, dammit, however you have to.”