Finity's End - a Union-Alliance Novel (35 page)

"It's fine."

"Shut up, Fletcher," JR said. "Just sit still."

Fletcher sat, and gazed fixedly at the wall, endured the neoplasm Charlie shot on for a patch, and the bandaging.

"You can shower with that."

"Thanks."

"Go and thrive. You're released. Done. Unless JR wants you."

Fletcher slid down from the table and began to pull his clothing to rights, determinedly not looking at any of them, as Charlie moved on to
Chad
and the mouth.

It
was
hard to judge Fletcher's limits and capabilities. Add everything Charlie had said, plus bone-ignorant of safety procedures and any useful trade.

Try again, JR thought. "Difficult call, Fletcher. Difficult to judge where you are."

"Where I don't want to be, is the plain fact."

"You were right at the start of everything, were you?" He'd known intellectually that Fletcher was called up out of a study program. How adult it was, how much career it might be, was all guesswork to him. "Now a career restart."

"I'm not interested in a restart," Fletcher said.

And, frankly, Fletcher was late to be starting anything. At any given jump, the senior captain or third Helm or Scan or Com 1 might not wake up, and the senior-juniors would be møving up, into real posts. It could make bad, bad blood on that point if he couldn't finesse what Fletcher was, or might be. But he'd made his initial determination, a junior personnel decision, and it was his decision.

"Behind my unit and ahead of
Chad
's," he said, "there's no personnel from those years. No one survived.
That's
the problem. There's no one to assign you with, you're too far behind my set, and you and
Chad
, who'd be somebody to put you with, have just pounded hell out of each other. That makes things somewhat hard for me trying to put you somewhere constructive."

"How about back on Pell?" Fletcher asked, in hard, insubordinate challenge.

"Not my option. Not yours. I said you were
in
. I've got the job of finding you a spot. You want some senior privileges—" It was the damned drink incident at the bar that had touched off the mess, that and his failure to lay the law down absolutely on one side or the other. He was aware
Chad
was listening, and
Chad
would report exactly what the disposition was. So would he, faster than that. A memo would hit the individual mail-boxes within the hour. And this time he didn't count on their lifelong connections to straighten out the details: he knew where he'd assumed it would happen with Fletcher. It hadn't worked itself out; and decision, any decision, was better than no decision. "I'm creating a class of one. Solo. You want your unique privileges, you've got bar rights at family gatherings, but I'm insisting you stay in the approved junior-juniors' sleepovers and not overnight elsewhere during liberty. More than that—I'm giving you a duty.
You
take care of Jeremy, Vince, and Linda. It takes them off my hands and gives me and my team a break from junior-juniors."

Fletcher gave him a straight-on look, as if trying to decide where the stinger was.

"I don't know the regulations."

"They do. Jeremy won't con you, Vince will almost assuredly try." He made a shift of his eyes to
Chad
, who was getting off the table. And back to Fletcher. "You don't have to make apologies to each other. A love fest isn't required. I do expect civil behavior. And a concentrated effort to settle your differences."

Fletcher absorbed that observation in long silence. He looked across the gap at
Chad
, on whom Charlie had interrupted his examination.

"
Chad
," JR said, and
Chad
got down, jump suit bunched around his waist.

"Yessir."

"
Chad
, this is your cousin Fletcher."

"Yessir." It was a mumble, still.
Chad
drew a deep breath and offered his hand.

Fletcher took it, not smiling.

"Pretty good punch,"
Chad
said magnanimously.

Fletcher didn't say a thing. Just recovered his hand.

"Go on," JR said, and Fletcher left.

"Damn station prig,"
Chad
said when held gone. "But he sure learnt to fight somewhere"

"Evidently he did," JR said dryly, and
Chad
got back on the table and endured being poked and prodded.

"Ow,"
Chad
said.

It wasn't a perfect solution, but it tied things down. Charlie had put a finger on one significant matter. Tempers on what had been a burning issue almost always settled a little after jump: hyperspace straightened out perspectives, lowered emotional charges, made things seem trivial against the wider universe—acted, in most instances, like a mood elevator. Some quarrels just dissipated, grown too tenuous to maintain, and others fizzled after a few half-hearted spats the other side of where they'd been.

Unfortunately they weren't approaching a jump where things would cool down. They were on the inbound leg of the Mariner run, coming
into
port, where he had to turn junior-junior crew loose on a dockside that had notoriously little sense of humor with rule-breakers—a dockside made doubly hazardous because it was a border zone between Alliance and Union and a minefield of political sensitivities and touchy cops.

Finity
on a trade run as an ordinary merchanter was going to be damned conspicuous. He'd caught discussion among the senior crew, how various eyes were going to be watching her and her crew for signs that she wasn't really engaged in commerce, signs, he could fill in for himself, such as the absence of underage crew on the docks, when all other ships let their youngsters go to the game parlors and the approved kid haunts.

They had to let the junior-juniors go out there. They had to look normal. And he had to get them back again, in one piece.

Put Fletcher
in charge
of the juniors who'd more or less been in charge of
him
? It might straighten out the accidental kink that had developed in the order of things. He'd have Fletcher report to him once daily about the state of the juniors,
he'd
threaten Jeremy's life if they gave Fletcher a hard time, and he'd have a daily phone call from Fletcher coincidentally confirming Fletcher's own well-being and whereabouts, and necessitating the learning of rules and regulations—which would have galled Fletcher's independent soul if he'd asked Fletcher to report on himself, or to read the rule book and learn it.

It was as good as he could manage. Better than he'd hoped.

He went to B deck and filed a report with the Old Man's office, not a flattering one to himself. "I've put Fletcher in charge of the juniors," he began it. And explained there'd been an incident. He'd hoped not to face the Old Man directly, but unfortunately the robot wasn't taking calls.

Vince and Linda gave Fletcher a speculating look when he came back to the laundry. Jeremy stood and stared, his face grave and worried.

There wasn't enough work to keep them busy. There was nothing but cards. Fletcher made a pass about the area looking for work to do, anything to keep him from answering junior questions. But in his concentrated silence even Vince didn't blurt questions or smart-ass observations, maybe having learned he could get hurt

"Not enough work to justify four of us," Fletcher announced. "
You
handle what comes in. I'm going to the room."

"You better not," Jeremy said in a hushed voice. "You'll catch hell."

"It's my room," he said. "I'll go to it."

But the intercom speaker on the wall came on with: "
Fletcher
."

Jeremy dived for it. "He's here," Jeremy volunteered, as if that was the source of all help.

"Fletcher R., report to the senior captain's office."

"Shit," he said, and Jeremy instantly blocked the reply mike with his hand.

"He's coming," Jeremy said then. "He'll be right there."

"Going to catch hell," Vince muttered.

Fletcher thought of going to his room anyway, and letting the captain come to him. But, he told himself, this was the person he wanted to see, the person who should have seen
him
when he boarded and who never yet had bothered. This was the Goda'mighty important James Robert who'd built the
Alliance
and fought off the pirate Fleet, who finally found time for him, and who might be annoyed to the point of making his life hell and fighting him on his hopes of leaving this ship if he didn't report in.

"So where do I find him?" he asked Jeremy.

Vince, Linda
and
Jeremy answered, as if they were telling him the way to God.

"B7. There's these offices. All the captains. His is there, too."

Right near Legal. He knew his way. He walked out of the laundry station and down to the lift, rode it to B deck, trying not to let his temper get out of control, telling himself this
was
the man who could wreck him without trying.

Or finally understand the simple fact that he didn't want to be here, and maybe… maybe just let him go.

The kids' description matched reality, an office setup a lot like Legal, a front office where several senior crew worked at desks, all staff, offices to the side.

And JR.

"You set this up," he said to JR, and was ready to turn and walk out.

"I don't make the captain's appointments," JR said. "Report the situation? I was obliged to."

"Thank
you
," Fletcher said. So he wasn't to meet with the captain alone. He had JR for a witness, to confuse anything he wanted to say. It wasn't going to be an interview. It would be a reading of the rules.

He was here. He held onto his temper with both hands as JR opened the door and let him in.

The Old Man everybody referred to wasn't that old to look at him, that was the first impression he had as the Old Man looked up at him. He was prepared to deal with some dodderer, but the eyes that met him were dark and quick in a papery-skinned and lean face. The hand that reached out as the Old Man rose was young in shape, but the skin had that parchment quality he'd seen on the very long-rejuved. It felt like old fabric, smooth like that; and he realized he hadn't consciously decided to take the Old Man's hand. He just had, suddenly so wrapped in that question that he hadn't consciously noted whether JR had stayed or what the office was like, until the Old Man settled back behind his desk and left him standing in front of it. JR
had
stayed, and stood behind him, slightly to the side.

It wasn't a big office. There was a thing he recognized as a sailing ship's wheel on the wall between two cases of old and expensive books. There was a side table, and a chart on the wall above it, a map of stations and points that had lines on it in greater number than he'd ever seen.

Mostly there was the Old Man, who settled back in his chair and looked at him, just quietly observed him for a moment, not tempting him to blurt out anything in the way of charges or excuses prematurely.

Like a judge. Like a judge who'd been on the bench a long, long time.

"Fletcher," James Robert said, in a low, quiet voice, and made him wonder what the Old Man saw when he looked at him, whether he saw his mother, or was about to say so. "A new world, isn't it?"

He wasn't prepared for philosophy. Could have expected it, but it wasn't the angle his brain was set to handle. He stood there, thoughts gone blank, and the Old Man went on.

"We're glad to have you aboard. You've had a chance to see the ship. What do you think?"

What did he think? What did he
think
?

He drew in a breath, time enough for caution to reassert itself, and for a beleaguered brain to tell him not to go too far. And to stop at one statement.

"I think I don't belong here, sir."

"In what respect?" Quietly. Seriously.

List the reasons? God. "In respect of the fact I prepared myself to work on a planet. In respect of the fact I'm totally useless to you. In respect of the fact I'm no good anywhere except what I trained all my life to do"

"
What
did you train to do?"

"To work with the downers, sir." The man knew. And was trying to draw him out. While he had JR at his shoulder for an inhibition.

"It's what I want to do."

"What's the nature of that work?"

He wasn't prepared to give a detailed catalog of his jobs, either. "Agriculture. Archaeological research. Native studies. Planetary dynamics."

"All those things."

"I hadn't specialized yet."

"What
would
you have chosen?"

"Native Studies."

"Why that?"

"Because I want to understand the downers."

"Why would you want that?"

"Because I want to help them."

"How would you do that?"

Question begat question, backing him slowly toward a corner of the subject with truth in it, a truth he didn't want to tell.

"By being a fair administrator."

"Oh, an administrator. A fair one. Just what they need."

The tone had been so quiet the barb was in before he felt it.

"Yes, sir, it beats a bad one. And they've had
that
, too."

"I'm very aware. So you were going into Native Studies. Getting a jump on the administrator part, it seems. You'd formed acquaintances among the downers."

Bianca. It was the same thing Madelaine had hit him with. But now it had lost its shock value.

"Yes, sir. I did. I knew them before I went down. And there's nothing in the rules that covered that."

"I take it you checked."

"They're friends of mine! There's nothing I did that would harm them."

"Including going into the outback. Including endangering others. Including meeting with downer authorities."

He'd told that to the investigators. He remembered lying in the bed, and them recording everything he said. He'd had to explain the stick. That he hadn't stolen it. So it
hadn't
been all Bianca.

"Why," the captain asked him, "would you break the regulations?"

"Because you pushed me."

"We weren't there. I don't think so. You made a decision. You went where you were forbidden to go, you stole lifesupport cylinders—"

"One from each. If anybody got out there compromised it was their own stupidity. You can feel it in the masks. They'd be too light."

Was that a slight smile on the captain's face? He didn't take it for one. And JR was hearing entirely too much.

"You also," the captain said, "went out there to outwait us. Endangering your downers, about whom you care so much."

"Outwait you, yes. But not to endanger the downers."

"How do you know that?"

"Because it wouldn't."

"You were sure of that."

"I know them. I was looking for the two I knew."

There was a long silence then. James Robert leaned forward, elbows on the desk, fingers steepled in front of his lips. "Then," James Robert said, "you thought it wouldn't hurt them. You took conscious thought."

"Yes, sir. If I'd thought I'd do them any damage I'd have turned around and given up. Right then."

"Are you sure you didn't?"

"I am absolutely sure I didn't." He was scared, however, that the captain knew more than he was saying… about what he'd boarded with. He waited to be accused.

"You invaded a downer shrine, on your own decision."

"It's not a shrine." Had he
said
that part of it? God! He didn't know now what he
had
said to the investigators, or how much more they'd inferred. "It's a ritual site. There's a difference."

"That's what they say."

"Yes, sir." They knew what he'd brought aboard. They were going to take it away from him.

"And why did you go there?"

"A downer led me."

"Your friends did."

"No. A different one."

"And you still say you didn't do damage."

"I know I didn't. They accepted me there. They
brought
me there." There was more that he hadn't said, but he wasn't willing now for the Old Man to direct the conversation where he wanted it, chasing him into every corner of what he knew. "I talked to
Satin
."

"So have I," James Robert said.

For a moment he didn't believe it. And then did. This was James Robert who'd
been
on Pell when the foremost of downers had been on the station.

"I've
met
Satin," James Robert said. "An extraordinary creature. She went all the way to Mariner, and came back talking about war."

He was impressed. In spite of everything.

"Do you know," James Robert said, "they had no word for war until we told them?"

"She wasn't on
this
ship."

"On another merchanter ship. On a far more ordinary voyage. But even so she found the outside too threatening. She said the heavens were too troubled for hisa. She came back to her world, by what I understand, to sit by the Watchers and add her strength to the Watchers' strength. To dream the future."

A chill went over his arms. "What do
you
know about it?"

"I met her. I talked with her."

He was vastly more impressed with this man than he'd planned to be. He'd tried to act righteous and the man turned out to know things that made him look like the rules-infracting fool he knew in his heart he'd been. A fool that deserved booting from the program—as they'd done with him, so thoroughly that Quen couldn't even use reinstatement as a bribe.

Quen knew. Quen had told James Robert. And James Robert hadn't met with him until now, when he'd have thought the captain who sued for his return would have been at the head of the list.

"What I know," the captain said, "is the old ones sit by the Watchers and believe for the people. They
expect
things from the sky. Hell,
we
showed up. Something else might happen. There even might be peace. If you want my opinion, that's what she's looking for. That's why she went back."

"They say don't attribute anything to them. That we can't
know
what they're looking for."

"Bullshit. I know what she's looking for. All of us who dealt with her know what she's looking for. You don't look so blind, either."

His heart was beating very fast.

"And what's that?" he challenged the captain. "What do
you
know that they don't?"

"The meaning of not-war. We taught her the word for war. They didn't have it. But they don't have a word for peace either. And
that's
what she waits to see. She's got to be really old by now, in downer terms."

Silver. Like an image. The captain made Satin so real in his mind it hurt.

"Yes," he said. "She is."

"You know
what
this ship is, Fletcher, besides a recurring inconvenience in your life?"

"No." The captain preempted what he'd have said. Diverted talk to the ship. Which he didn't want.

"This ship," the captain said, "
your
ship, Fletcher, the way it was your mother's, is the oldest merchanter still working. It's the one that broke open the rebellion against the Earth Company. It had been started before, but we made it inevitable. Your predecessor helped make it happen."

"I know that." He didn't want a history lesson. He knew about this ship, God, he
knew
about this ship. He'd learned about his almost-immediate ancestor. This ship was armed, it went God knew where, it was a warship in disguise, and it was probably lying (he began to fear so, counting that carrier that had spooked the ship back at the last jump) when it claimed it was going back to merchant trade.