Finity's End - a Union-Alliance Novel (34 page)

"Maybe I'm a little old for fitting in," he said to Jeremy, with a bitterness that welled up black and real. "Maybe there isn't any fix for it. I don't belong here."

There could be a fix."

"There
isn't
. Get that through your head This is real. It isn't a game. I'm not playing games. Next batch of cousins lay a hand on me is going to be damn sorry. You can pass that word along. But I think they know that."

"You can't go fighting on board,"Jeremy said.

"It's not
my
choice."

"Well, nobody's going to fight you."

"Fine. Go on to work. Get. Go."

Jeremy lingered.

"I'm not damn pleased, Jeremy! Get your ass to work! I'll be there when I want to be there!"

Jeremy ducked out, fast. He'd upset the kid. Scared him, maybe—maybe upset his sense of justice.

He figured he should go face down the job, the cousins, the situation, rather than have it fester any longer. He reported to the laundry not too long after Jeremy, met Vince and Linda and didn't say a word about the last hour and all they'd been involved in together. Instead he went cheerfully about folding laundry and let them sweat about what he thought or what he'd do, Vince and Linda and Jeremy alike. He figured plenty of talking had gone on in the few minutes after Jeremy arrived and before he did, and that plenty of talking was going on elsewhere. He looked to get called by Legal or the captain at any moment, maybe with the whole junior crew, maybe solo.

What they'd done, hurt. It hurt for reasons that had nothing to do with the cut arm, the split knuckle and the cord-marks and the one blow
Chad
had gotten in on him. It hurt in a way he wouldn't have expected, because he truly
didn't
give an effective damn about his welcome or non-welcome on the ship. He didn't know why he should be upset as profoundly as he was.

"Or maybe it was just the injustice of it. Maybe it was having them take everything, for one reason and then once he got here and tried to make the best of it, to gang up and try to take his self-respect.

Because that was what they'd wanted to break. His dignity, His self-control. All those things he'd put up between him and a random universe. They'd struck consciously and deliberately at what kept him whole. And he couldn't tolerate that. They'd asked him to give up the last defenses he had, and turn himself over, and play their game, and he wouldn't do that, or give up his pride, not for anybody's asking.

If the junior captain, on A deck, wasn't supposed to know about a Welcome-in, the senior captains, on B deck, damn certain weren't supposed to know about such an event; or to have to question the junior captain's common sense or ability to command unless or until he gave them reason to think the junior command had made a mistake.

In a few years, JR was well aware, the ship's entire existence might ride on the wisdom of his decisions. Right now he found the entire crew's welfare still did, the welfare not alone of one Fletcher Neihart, or even of the junior crew in isolation from the rest, or of
Chad
, who was getting a broken tooth repaired in sickbay.

There
was
no isolation of juniors from seniors once things had gone wrong, and they had gone very seriously wrong.

"They jumped the gun and I didn't find out," Bucklin said, outside sickbay, when JR had answered the call, "until somebody cued me the laundry was empty. That was when I called you. And I had two places to look before I found where in the rim they were.
Chad
didn't want the tooth fixed. Oh, no.
Chad
didn't want a report filed with you, but I didn't give him that grace."

He heard out the whole story, the bucket of water, Sue's notion of getting a fast agreement out of an argumentative customer she'd been scared was too strong and too tall to handle:
Sue
had feared someone was going to get seriously hurt in a melee, and she'd taken action to assure Fletcher folded

Not a bad idea, if it had worked.

His call to Legal Affairs had gotten a call out for Fletcher, but Fletcher hadn't answered the call they sent. His hoped-for clandestine talk with Fletcher hadn't happened.
Chad
and the crew hadn't waited. Fletcher had been dragged down to the rim directly after Chad and the crew had approached him for a go-ahead, with the result they now had; and Fletcher's failing to respond to a call… that had assured that Madelaine was aware something odd was going on. It was a short jump from Madelaine's office to the Old Man's.

"I want Fletcher here."

"Fletcher seems undamaged," Bucklin said, but added, hastily, "but he'll be here."

JR walked into sickbay and stood, quietly, while senior cousin Mary B. finished the dental work.
Chad
rolled a disconsolate eye in the direction of judge and jury.

"There," Mary said, giving
Chad
a mirror. "Two stitches and a bond on the tooth.
Don't
eat hard candy today"

"Is he in pain?" JR asked Mary.

"He's numb," Mary said. "Hit a wall, so I hear."

"The wall hit back," JR said. "Would you call Charlie down?" Charlie was the medic of the watch, when he wasn't on com. "I'd like him and the wall both looked at."

Mary gave him an arch look and went to do that before she tidied up her equipment.

"You owe Mary some scrub time," he said as
Chad
climbed out of the chair. "About ten hours of scrub time, including her quarters, I'd say."

"Yes, sir."
Chad
's mouth was numb.
Chad
met his eyes without flinching, credit him that, JR thought. He just stood there a second, and
Chad
just stood.

"So?" JR said. "You jumped the gun on Bucklin, you got a little too enthusiastic in your goings-on, and Sue resourcefully chucked a bucket of water on Fletcher. Where did it go wrong?"

"I set him up," was what he guessed
Chad
said, past the deadening of the lip. "He didn't go along with it. He told us go to hell. Then Bucklin got him loose, and he took exception to me."

"Fletcher did."

"Yes, sir."

"So, was there a particular reason for him to take exception beyond that you set him up? Just the color of your eyes? The idea of the moment?"

"I don't know, sir, but I apologize, sir."

"Did you apologize to him?"

"He walked out, sir."

"Do the words fucked-up clearly apply here?"

"Yes, sir. Fairly fucked-up."

"Thank you." He caught Mary's nod. She'd snagged Charlie and the medic was coming down to give
Chad
the once-over.

Cousin Fletcher was not a slight young man. Neither was Chad, both of them towering over him by half a head There was the potential for cracked ribs, cracked teeth, or slightly more subtle damage, like the level of trust available within the crew.

"You go sit over there." A nod toward the medic's station, the sliding doors of which stood open, tables that were surgery when they had to be. "When Fletcher gets in here, I want no repetition of the problem, do we have it clear, Mr, Neihart?"

"Yes, sir, we do." It was a pathetic mumble. The stitches, two neat electronic clips, were going to smart when the painkiller wore off.

Bucklin showed up. With Fletcher. An undamaged Fletcher, to look at him. A brittle and angry Fletcher, ready to damn all of them to hell.

Jeremy trailed after, and hung about in the doorway.

"You," JR said, "out of here."

Jeremy vanished.

"You"—to Fletcher—"I want to talk to. Relax."

"Is this about the fight?"

Fletcher
would
manage to come at things head-on and with guns live. Not his best feature. "If you've got any arena for improvement, Fletcher, it's your slight tendency to meet people with a challenge, just one of those small problems I'm sure you can improve. At this particular moment I'm sure there's some reason for what I see here, which I'd rather not officially notice. How
are
you getting along, in general?"

"Fine."

"Jeremy's all right with you?"

"Fine. Just fine."

"No problems with Jeremy?"

"No."

"That's good. How about the rest of the crew?"

And that got a direct look of Fletcher's dark, same-genetics eyes.

"You know what happened."

"
Chad
's report." He nodded to the end of the room, where
Chad
sat on the end of a surgery table.

"I'm in here for a medical. Is that an excuse, or what? Or do I get another round with him?"

"I want a medical report And some common sense.
Listen
to me, Fletcher." The tone had Fletcher's attention to himself for about two heartbeats. "We have a tradition on this ship, welcome-in the new guy.
As you know
—" Another gathering of Fletcher's temper and Fletcher got past it. "Usually it's straight out of the nursery, transition into the crew. Jeremy was the last. Kidnap the kid, play a few pranks, a little ceremony, that's about the size of it. Two damn fools your size going at each other weren't in the plan." He couldn't tell Fletcher's state of mind at the moment. Fletcher's face was absolutely rigid. "It's a test—a test of your sense of humor among other things."

"I got a taste of your jokes."

"I understand so. There were some pretty light-weight kids involved in what went way out of parameters. You and
Chad
are a fair match. You kept it to that. I respect that. They
know
they took it too far. I frankly tried to dissuade them from the idea, but they wanted to welcome you in, in the serious sense, That's the tradition."

"Welcome, is it?"

"It's what they meant. Know us. Fall into the order of things. Find a place.
With
the crew. In the crew."

"It's a stupid tradition."

"It may be, but I'm asking you to take it the way it
should
have gone. No grudges. They've done what they insisted on doing. It's over. You're in."

"I don't
want
to be in."

"That's another problem, but they've no right now to treat you as an outsider. You understand that? There is a difference. And
they
made that difference, so
they
have to accept you in with whatever privilege I grant."

"Damn if I care. Sir."

"Calm down, I say. You've got a right to be mad, but if you exercise it you'll do yourself damage."

"More than they'd like to do? I don't think so. Welcome in, hell! I'm not welcome here! That's real clear!"

"It was a bad start. Best I could do. I wasn't going to leave you alone for your first jump; and me taking you in—that would put you in with the senior-juniors where you
don't
fit. That was my thinking. Jeremy's a good kid He reacts fast. He'd keep you out of trouble.
Do you want to be moved
?"

"Jeremy's fine." Fletcher seemed calmer, and stayed fixed on him without evidence of skittering off into temper. "No problems with him."

"You're sure. Even after what happened."

"He's a kid."

"He is a kid. On the other hand… you're not. And you are. Coming off a station where you don't cope with ship-time… you don't fit the ship's profile, that's what we say. You're not in our profile. It's hard to figure where to put you."

"That's too bad."

Fletcher had a way of trying to get under his skin. Or he outright didn't understand. And Charlie had shown up. Charlie—whose job was spacer bodies in all their diverse problems.

"Fletcher, I want you, first of all, to get checked out. Go right over there and sit down.
Chad
's been in getting his mouth fixed. No lasting damage.—Then, Charlie, if you'd check out
Chad
. We're looking for dents."

It meant both Fletcher and
Chad
sitting on two adjacent tables in the surgery, a traffic management pricklier than two rimrunners at a jump-point, and the same possibilities of shots fired. "I'm not going to ask for any handshaking," JR said, while
Chad
sat still and Fletcher stripped to the waist and got up on the other table, jaw set.

"Hurt?" Charlie had provoked a wince, pressing on ribs, then bent an arm, bringing a deeply gashed and bandaged forearm to view. "Lovely. So what did we have here?"

"We had a small discussion," JR answered for both participants. "Charlie, we have here one stationer, aged seventeen, one spacer,
Chad
, aged twenty. How old are we?"

"Which one?" Charlie asked, having a close look mean-while into Fletcher's right eye, preoccupied with inventory. "Our spacer is, what, a little short of seventeen?"

"Sixteen,"
Chad
muttered, "sir."

"So how old are we?" JR asked "For our stationer's benefit,—how old are we?"

Charlie backed off from the inspection of the other eye and gave Fletcher a slow scrutiny, the same, then, to
Chad
. "The stationer is a mature seventeen, probably having most of his height, not his ideal adult weight by about fifteen kilos. The spacer is a mature and very tall sixteen-year-old physique, grew, what was it? An inch since Bryant's?"

"Yessir,"
Chad
said

"And putting on a couple of kilos off Jeff's fancy desserts," Charlie said
Chad
blushed. He
was
putting it on around the middle. "But the stationer," Charlie said, "our stationer lad is a different maturity, been through puberty, long bones are stopping growth, secondary sexual traits normal at my last examination…" Fletcher's mouth was a thin line, he was staring at the edge of the table, possibly with a flush on Fletcher's face, but Charlie didn't proceed to the comparative clinical details. "Emotionally, however" Charlie said, "the equation is more different between them now than it will ever be in later life. Fletcher, at seventeen, has lived every day of his seventeen years. He's not grown up having the purge of emotional stress
Chad
's undergone every month or so in hyperspace: his experience hasn't been subject to that deboot.

It's all been continuous, interrupted only by ordinary nightly dreamstate and whatever psych counseling he's had." Fletcher shot Charlie a hard, burning look, which Charlie didn't look to see. "Our spacer, now, has seen twenty years of history; he was born during the War; he's seen combat for all his years. Our stationer's seen three less years and his station's been at peace, whatever internal events it's suffered. Our spacer's nineteenth and twentieth years were spent in a sixteen-year-old body in the last stages of puberty, and he's not expected to finish that process until he's at least twenty-one or twenty-two depending on our travel schedule; he won't be posted to adult crew until he's at least twenty-six or twenty-seven and won't enter apprenticeship until he gets at least another physical year's growth. Meanwhile our stationer's already past the growth spurt, the rapid changes in jaw, hair, primary and secondary sexual development. Body and hormones reach truce. He's pretty well started on his adult life, as stationers tend to be at his age.—On the other hand, when
Chad
reaches his ship-time twenties, advantage pitches in the other direction. Our spacer won't suffer the stress disease a stationer has: he
has
that monthly emotional purge, granted he's not one of the rare poor sods that comes out of jump depressed, and our
Chad
is not depressed. He'll be sixty station-years before he needs to think about rejuv, and look forty, with the historical experience of sixty, when our stationer who stayed on station-time for his first seventeen years is just a little sooner on rejuv. If he doesn't want to ache in the mornings," Charlie patted Fletcher's bare shoulder. "You survived. Congratulations. But let's put a better bandage on the elbow."