Devil to the Belt (v1.1) (11 page)

Hell, no. Not this old miner.

But a lot of years he had been coming back to 8, and he’d seen changes—or maybe he had felt livelier once upon a time. 8 these days echoed to footsteps, not to music and voices. The bright posters had all gone years ago, the month the company had gone over to paperless records-keeping. The company favored gray paint or institution green, except for pipes that came wrapped with hazard yellow and black.

You used to get the unofficial bills here too, the pasteups that would appear overnight—saying things like TOWNEY LIES and FREE PRATT & MARKS—Mama hadn’t liked those in the best days, nossir, the bills that said things like EQUAL ACCESS and the take-one flyers that used to give you the news the company wouldn’t. They’d all gone. No paper.

You still found the old barred circle, you still found PEACE and FREE EMIGRATION scratched in restroom plastic, right alongside the stuff you could figure Neanderthals must’ve carved in Stone Age bathrooms—you found MINIM and RABRAD and SCREW THE CORP, along with other helpful suggestions in the toilets… far more frequent here than down on helldeck, he guessed because sanding down the panels in light
g
made a bitch of a lot of dust, and spray paint was as bad. Or maybe it was because Security didn’t come up here much and the ordinary maintenance crews were contributing to it too. So the crud and the slogans stayed in the bathrooms, not even covered by paint, while 8-deck got nastier and dirtier and showed its age like some miners he knew.

He was in a sour mood—maybe the cops, maybe Ben’s stupid chance-taking with the datacard, maybe just that he was tired of the shit and tired of feeding a company that was trying to blow itself to hell; and right now specifically because the cops had their Personals, which meant he was stuck in the stimsuit and his day-old coveralls until the cops turned his kit loose: damned if he was going to buy new knee and ankle wraps at vending machine prices.

But he did buy a bottle of aspirin, a cheap men’s personals pack, and a far too expensive bottle of cologne: the hips were gone, the ankles were going, the hair was gray and thinning, but the essentials still worked and he did have hopes. He walked into the bar in the front of the ambitiously named Starbow Hotel and, with his card in the slot at the desk, punched Double and Guests Permitted.

In the midst of which transaction somebody grabbed him from behind and swung him around, clean off his feet.

“Hey!” he yelled, as the turn brought him face to face with dusky-skinned Sal Aboujib, who grabbed him the same as the one behind—

That
had
to be Meg Kady.

He hugged Sal back in this bouncing unstable minim-
g
dance. He said, “Damn, you’re both fools!”

But he’d hoped with all his heart they’d got his message.

“Old friend of Marcie Hager’s,” Ben said at the counter, down in Records. “Is she in?”

The clerk looked over his shoulder, looked at him, looked at the line that stretched out the door, said, uncertainly: “She might be.”

“Thanks,” he said warmly, smiled, and on an adrenaline rush and a dogged determination not to show the pain, walked cheerfully past the counter, through clerk territory and on back to the hallway: men in good suits didn’t stand in that line. Ben Pollard didn’t. He walked as far as an office that said
M. Hager, Technical Supervisor
, wiped the sweat off his face, rapped on the door, opened it and leaned in the doorway.

“Hello there, beautiful.”

Marcie Hager looked up from the desk, looked nonplussed for an instant. Then: “Ben Pollard. God, I thought you’d shipped out to Mars or something.”

“Mind if I sit?”

She said, after a second’s consideration, “Of course not. Come on in. Coffee?—Are you all right? You’re white.”

“First day back. Came down from 8.—You’re looking good.”

“Last time I saw you, you were in Assay.” Marcie got up, poured two instant coffees. “White? Sugar?—Back from where?”

“White. Plain.—Assay for a while. Then I bought into a ship.”

Marcie’s brows went up. Estimation of his finance clearly did. So did her interest. “Social call?”

He grinned, sat down with the coffee, said, after a deliberately slow sip, “I ran into a piece of luck. I thought you might be able to help me.”

You went to the company school, you learned what bought what from whom: some were cheap and some cost more than a freerunner could possibly pay, but you always kept track of your old classmates and, on call, you did favors such as Marcie Hager was about to—because favors got you favors, and that, for one thing, meant he didn’t have to stand in that line.

“Yeah?” Marcie said, and sat down and sipped her own coffee. “Sounds interesting.”

Meaning Marcie thought somebody with a ship equity four years out of school just might be going somewhere even a Technical Super in Records might find useful—even if freerunning was as high-risk an investment as there was, it was disposable cash and high-interest returns in the short term; and it was capital that a Technical Super in Records, with all her Access perks, couldn’t lay hands on—

But not as if Marcie was going to ask cold cash for favors. In Marcie’s position, subject to company scrutiny, you never left a datatrail.

“Just a little expediting. A claim for salvage. I don’t want to be at the bottom of the list of creditors. This guy owes us, big.”

Marcie’s left eyebrow titled. “Like in—major salvage.”

“Ship salvage.” He leaned back, eased a very sore set of muscles in his back, took another slow sip of coffee. “Number’s One’er Eighty-four Zebra.”

“Mmmn. Not from this zone, Benjie. That’s a
long
procedures delay. Where in
hell
have you been?”

“Yeah, well,—but—” He turned on his nicest smile. Rule One: you didn’t deal in plain words. Rule Two: you were careful about cash. Rule Three: you didn’t ask favors of prigs—but Marcie certainly wasn’t that.

Marcie said, “Just so you know,” and turned on her terminal. Marcie’s kind might not trade in cash, but Marcie said, while she was idly tapping her way through a chain of accesses, “What ever happened to Angie Windham, you know?”

“Don’t know. But you know Theo Pangoulis went bust? He bet everything he had on that shop—could have told him nothing succeeds in that location.”

Marcie scowled. That wasn’t the kind of offering you gave: they were seriously negotiating now, and her fingers stopped moving.

He said, “On the other hand, I do hear from Harmon Phillips.”

“Do you?”

“You know he’s on Aby Torrey’s staff. Up in Personnel.”

“That’s interesting,” Marcie said. “—Have you got your numbers ready?”

It was swill, but there was
g
enough to keep it in the glass and you in your seat if you sat easy, and there was sure as hell good company—the two prettiest sights in the belt, Bird swore: Soheila Aboujib, a grin gleaming on her dark face, her ears and fingers aglitter with her reserve bank account, laughed, elbowed Meg in the ribs and said, “He’s been out there too long.”

“Let me tell you,” he said—and did, in the light traffic of the Starbow’s autobar: they were in a crowd of dockers and tender- and pusher-jocks. The piped music adjusted itself up, affording a little privacy to people at the back corner table.

“Yow,” Meg said, when she had the essentials. “So Ben’s down in Admin, is he?”

“If he didn’t break a leg,” he said. “I tell you, I’m worried about him. He’s been acting like a crazy man from the time we linked on with that ship.”

“I dunno.” Meg was what the young folk called rab, and the hairdo this time was what his generation called amazing, shaved bare up the sides, red as fire atop, a mass of curls trailing down her neck and all these bangles on her ears. With Meg you’d never know what you’d see—sometimes it was braids and sometimes that hair turned colors. Meg Kady, she was, Hungarian on one side, Sol Station Irish on the other, Meg said—but sometimes it was Scots; and once, overheard in a bar, she’d said it was Portuguese Martian. God only knew about Sal Aboujib, who had a coffee complexion and coffee-black eyes: with Sal it was braids today, a hundred of them, with metal clips, but you never knew—sometimes that hair changed styles and colors too.

Either one of them was too pretty for a gray-haired, brittle-boned old wreck—had to be his brains they were after picking, he was sure: get him drunk and ask him questions, buy a dinner and try to get specific coordinates out of glum, close-to-the-chest Ben—neither one of which had ever been too successful. But you never figured what made friends: you just took up with people, found out who you could trust, and if you found a good one you kept those contacts polished, that was all—never could remember how they’d taken up with him—well before Ben, back when he’d been working with various hire-ons, something to do with a mixed-up drink order (he’d been far gone and so had they) and a game of pitch-the-penny in quarter
g
with a crowd of equally soused tender-jocks.

Never could remember who’d finally gotten the bill.

“From over the line?” Meg asked, regarding the strayed ship, and he said, “One’er number. Clean-talking kid, real young, maybe twenty, twenty-two. Partner’s dead out there. Tank blew. His partner was outside.”

“Brut bad luck,” Sal said with a shake of her braids. A little grimace. Then: “You seriously got rights on that ship?”

“Ben thinks so. Thinks so enough to risk his knees. He’s been working out for weeks. I figured he was going to pull this, but I did think he’d at least check in first.”

Meg said: “Want us to track him? We’ve been scuzzing along on 6, in no hurry, figuring on a friend showing up—could’ve done 3 two days ago. We can go down…”

“He’ll get back. If he doesn’t
I’ll
call the hospital.”

“You two feuding?”

“Ben gets a little over-anxious.”

“Yeah, well. That’s Ben.—But if it worked, if you did get salvage—can you just take the ship?”

“It’s not going to work. Company’ll find an angle. You watch.”

“Que sab?” Meg said. “But if it did—”

“Meg, he’s been damn crazy. Ever since we found that ship. I tell you, I was afraid—” He’d been too long away from a drink. He hadn’t dared indulge, on the return trip, and this one hit him like a hammer. He almost said: Afraid of him,—but that word could get back to Ben, and he didn’t want that. He said, instead, “Ben works real hard. But sometimes he gets to looking most at where he’s going, not what he’s doing.”

Meg reached out and laid a hand on his arm. “Yeah, well, cher, you want us to talk to him?”

“No, no, it’s between him and me. Let him get this bug out of his works. He’s going to find nothing but a string of bills to that ship’s account. It’s probably in hock for its last fuel bill. If we get expenses I’ll be happy.”

“Can’t blame him for trying,” Sal said. “Hell, I’d brut kill for a chance like that.”

You never knew on some things whether Sal was kidding.

“Look,” Meg said, squeezing his wrist. “What say you screw the med-regs, cancel here and come down to 6 with us?”

“Meg, my old knees—”

“Old, hell. We got a nice berth there at the Liberty Bell. You just stay here and collect Ben when he comes in. We’ll party tonight. Get the spooks out. We knew we were waiting for somebody.”

“Yeah,” said Sal. “Just give us a little time to clean up the room.”

“Clean up, for God’s sake—what are we? Strangers?”

Meg elbowed his arm, getting up. “Hey, we just got to get a few things out of it. Female vanity.”

He gave a shake of his head and sipped his bourbon. A few things out of the room. The things might well be male. But he charitably didn’t suggest that.

And it was (charitably) true Meg and Sal might do some feminine fussing-up in the place; and it was no real surprise that Meg and Sal might bounce a casual acquaintance or two in favor of him and Ben—they were simpatico, for some reason God only knew; they were also on
Trinidad’s
lease-list, though they were just in themselves, and in no position to take a ship out for another month or three.

“See you below,” they said, and went.

Pretty woman like that could’ve talked him down to helldeck tonight if she’d insisted: pretty woman like that—

Who lied like a company lawyer.

Meg was an ex-shuttle pilot, native to Sol Station (or Mars)—accused at Sol Station of political agitation (or arrested for smuggling, depending on how many Meg’d had). Either one in fact could’ve gotten her deported down to the motherwell if they’d gotten the evidence she’d evidently managed to dump. In either case, the company had (she said) invited her to leave places conveniently close to sources of luxuries. Meg had taken up with Sal when she got here—Sal herself had gotten bounced out of Institute pilot training, Sal never had said why, but it didn’t matter: there were a number of things Sal
would
have done, and you could take your pick. Sal was smart, she’d had at least her class 3 license, and by his reckoning, she had what the good numbers men had: she went past the numbers to
see
the Belt in her head. It was formal schooling and experience Sal lacked—and the way Sal had been getting it, in the School of Last Resort, you just hoped to live long enough.

He was sure the pair skimmed, occasionally—just clipped a little off another freerunner’s tag if they didn’t know him personally.

But not from their friends. Or if they had—he figured they’d pay it back when they had it to pay and never tell you they stole it. That was the kind they were, even Sal, who was real loose about a lot of things, and he counted that honest. Everybody got desperate enough sometime. He’d done it himself once or twice or three. And paid it back to the guys he’d done it to, without ever telling them he’d done it. He understood that kind of morality.

So he’d lease
Trinidad
to Meg and Sal now and again—a classier ship than they could generally get, with equipment other rigs didn’t have. They were learning. They took advice. He’d lease to them this time, if they’d been ready to go—he
liked
them, that was reason enough.

But all of a sudden there was this other ship: he’d seen that idea light up in their eyes—that if by some stroke of cosmic luck they did get a second ship, then
somebody
had to be leasing it, didn’t they, maybe on a primary basis? Surely he wasn’t going to sell it to the company. God only how far their imaginations took those two.