Heavy Time (26 page)

“Air’s free on Earth. Feet can go.”

“If you don’t mind dirt. And they got laws that say where you can go. I heard Bird say.”

“Yeah, well.” Meg walked a few more steps. Sal remembered then that, old business at Sol Station notwithstanding, Meg was a whole lot closer to blue sky than she ever could be, and she worried that maybe she’d cut Meg off with that zap about dirt.

But Meg went on as if she hadn’t taken offense: “That’s how it is for corp-rat execs, isn’t it? Air’s free wherever they are. Short for them is when they run out of their Chardonnay ’87—I know. Hell, I used to run that freight. I know what those sons of bitches are eating, them with their Venetian antiques and their mink bedspreads.”

“Venetian?”

“Italiano. Ochin expensiv. Fragil. Minks are fuzzy live crits. You wear their skins.”

Sal looked at her. Sometimes Meg scammed you when she was in a mood. Hard to be sure.

“No shit. I used to freight it. Pearls, fancy woods, stuff like that. If you skimmed that stuff, you could black market it to starships or you could sell it right back to guess where?”

Sal lifted a brow.

“I guess the corp-rat got his apartment furnished,” Meg said. “Or he got a cheaper source. SolCorp didn’t want me going to trial, hell no. They told me I could come here and fly for myself or I could pilot some pusher back and forth off Mars for good old EC if I sincerely didn’t want to go do mining.”

That was half what Meg had said and half what she’d never said—that she had been dealing black market with some exec, and it was that guy who’d blindsided her.

Things you found out, after this many years.

She liked Meg hell and away better than she had those years ago, that was sure—understood a good deal more of her thinking; but not all of it, never all of it, and she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know where Meg had been or what Meg had been trained to do. Dive into a planetary well or bring a ship out of one—the thought gave a Shepherd’s daughter the chills.

“So, well, Bird’s got a little ahead at this guy’s expense, he’s short—Bird’s not going to say no, isn’t going to make this guy ask, either. Machismo. Something like.

Fact is,
I’ve
been where this guy is and it makes me a skosh mad, Sal. It sincerely does.”

“Well, I’d agree with you I don’t like to see the guy screwed, hell, I put it on Mitch, and
they’re
bizzed about it—but they’re going to do a real fast hands-off after what he did. I’ll tell you the word I don’t like, Kady, it’s what I heard from Persky—the guy yelled out about Bird and Ben knowing a ’driver was out there—”

“Yeah, well, he was drunk.”

“Doesn’t matter if he was drunk, Kady, dammit, I got very scarce favor points with Mitch—”

“Screw Mitch.”

“Yeah, the hell with Mitch—Mitch’ll give me a choice, get out and away from Bird, that’s what he’ll tell me.”

“Would you do it?”

“It’s all over the damn ’deck what he said—”

“Tss. They drugged him stupid, Aboujib.”

“We got a live charge here, Kady. We can’t afford this.
They
can’t!”

“All right, I’ll tell you what Bird said to me. This is a confidence. Black-hole it.”

“Go.”

“ ’Driver’s sitting out there right where the accident happened. Dekker gave ’em the coordinates. Said he and his partner had found a big rock. Class B. That’s where that thing is sitting, chewing it up and spitting it at the Well, fast as it can. Few more months and it won’t be there.”

“Why in
hell
didn’t you tell me?”

“I
am
telling you. I found it out from Bird last night. That’s what you can see on those charts you lifted.”

“Shit!—But that doesn’t make sense. Something rolls in from Out There—yeah, rocks like that happen, but
we
don’t get ’em. Those things show up on optics.”

“So somebody slipped—assigned the kids to it. MamBitch can’t make a payout like that to a freerunner. You want to know how many’d be kiting out here?
Buying
passage out here? If it
was
iron, the way Dekker claimed, that’s a friggin’ national debt!”

She let a breath go between her teeth. “God.”

“You know MamBitch’s help. Some lowlevel fool in BM screws up, puts this freerunner out there and then his super finds out. And does any freerunner call in til he’s got his sample? Not the way you and I do it: we’re not having the Bitch say no, don’t pursue, and then have her hand the good stuff to her lapdogs… and give the kids credit for
some
savvy about the system. They wouldn’t trust the Bitch. They’d go on and sample it—get a solid assay on that thing.”

“Dangerous as
hell
for a ship their size. Maybe it
was
the rock that got ’em, maybe they were just rushed…”

“Possible. I dunno. The jeune fils isn’t thinking so.”

“And a rock like that—untagged—where’d it come from? Thing had to have an orbit way the hell and gone. And iron?”

“We don’t know shit what it was. We do know one kid is dead and MamBitch wiped the log. But those loads are going to hit the Well any day now. Drop
that
on Mitch.”

“I can drop it, for what it’s worth. But with a mouth like that—”

“Severely young, severely green, Aboujib. We can pull him in line.”

“Kady.”

“I’m telling you. Tell you something else. We
have
to pull him in line:
they
know where he was last night.”

“What are you talking about?”

“
MamBitch
, Aboujib. MamBitch. He
came
there. He checked in. He knows Bird and Ben—”

“Oh, God.”

“Yeah, ‘Oh, God.’ I’ve
been
through this. They’ve got a line on him. Not a short one, maybe, but that depends on what he gets into. And what are we going to tell Bird? Excuse us, Bird, but you sincerely got to pitch this guy out, on account of MamBitch is looking for trouble and on account of Sal’s slipped Ben’s charts to the Shepherds?”

“Dammit, why didn’t you say something?”

“How can I say what I didn’t know? I didn’t hear the word ‘’driver.’ I didn’t see those charts. I didn’t hear the word ‘rock’ til last shift—”

“Dammit!”

“You want another thought to sleep with? We’re going out of here in a couple weeks, and what’s
he
going to be doing—or saying—while we’re out there? Can we stop him?”

“God.”

“What’s Mitch going to say about that?”

“I don’t know!”

“We could shut him up for about three months, say.”

“What are you saying? Take him
with
?”

They walked past a noisy bar doorway. Meg said, the other side: “Well, here’s what I’m thinking: the jeune fils needs his license back. Say he passes the ops. He’s got to have board time. Couple hundred hours. Gets him off the ’deck. Gets him shut up.”

“Yeah, and where’s Ben in this figuring? Ben’ll
kill
that guy—”

“Who said Bird and Ben?”

“Oh, God. You’re out of your head, Kady.”

“Look. Bird’s got this debt—and
we
can pay it for him. We make it like a favor.

Then Bird’s got karma for us. So does this guy—who’s also from the motherwell.”

“Who’s also bent. And we get tagged with him!”

“Tell Mitch what we’re doing. Tell him we’re going to bend this guy around the right way. Do
they
want him now? I don’t think so. We can solve Dekker’s problem, solve Bird’s problem, solve Mitch’s problem.
Our
rep can’t get too badly bent.

That’s where we’re useful. We get this jeune fils’ sober attention and he’s no problem.”

Sal rolled her eyes.
Hell
of a situation wrapped around that ship that they were so close to—

Decorative is one thing, she thought. But where’s the payout?—Meg hands out this air-is-free and everybody-works-partners stuff, like the preacher folk. But what’s this guy really bring us?

They walked along, looking at displays in spex windows, in the deep bass rhythm of music blasting from the speakers, bouncing off the girders overhead.

She said to Meg: “I’ll tell you one thing, that chelovek better not have been skimming.
We
got rep enough. And he
damn
sure better not come into The Hole on drugs again. He really better not be that kind.”

“Couldn’t say that this morning,” Meg said.

“Couldn’t say he was on the beam, either. I hate those quiet types. No joke, Meg, if we get out there and he does go schitz—what in hell are we going to do? We don’t know we
can
get him straight. That guy could get severely strange out there. Then what do we do?”

“Keep him tied to the pipes, the way the guys did? I could go for that.”

She caught a breath. “Warped, Kady!”

“Well, hey,—he isn’t useless, is he?”

“Hell!”

“Gives Mitch three whole months. Do you want this jeune fils loose on the ’deck the way he is, talking about Bird and Ben and ’driver ships?”

“Point.”

“So we just got to figure how to sign him in with MamBitch.”

“What the hell do we call him? Ballast?”

Lascivious grin. “Systems redundancy?”

“Rude, Kady.”

“Yeah.” Meg grinned, with a sideways glance.

“Don’t con me! We got more than a small problem here. Say we get this guy straight, we
still
got him in the middle of things—we got Ben, who’s seriously put out, here… Ben’s
not
going to go easy on this, he’s
not
going to go shares with this guy.”

“Ben better not push Bird on this. Don’t expect him to figure it, just he shouldn’t push. Everybody needs some room sometime.”

“Serious room, here. Major with Ben, too.”

“He doesn’t have to work with Ben.”

“Who’s going to work with him? We got guys starving on the list, and any numbers man needing a pilot wants one who doesn’t see eetees, f’ God’s sake. That jeune fils made himself a rep yesterday that he’s got to live down a
long
time before they forget that—”

“There’s always Yoji Carpajias.”

“God.” Yoji was a great numbers man. But he didn’t bathe. “We’d have to steam and vac all over.”

“Yeah. But there is Yoji. There’s others. Leave Ben on prime with
Trinidad
. Us on prime with
Way Out
. If MamBitch lets Dekker re-certify, then quiet is exactly what she wants. And Dekker with his license back—is a whole lot more credible, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, and how do we keep a line on him? He’s poison right now. But we don’t know him. We don’t know
what
way he’s going to turn.”

“Dekker’s from Sol. He’s a lot more like Bird. You got to take into account he’ll do things for Bird-type reasons. He’s stuck by his partner, hasn’t he? He’ll owe us.

Major karma.”

The idea got through to her then, what Meg was saying. “Karma, hell. If Bird gives that sumbitch board-time, he can charge for it. Take it out of his hide, he can.

Either Dekker’s got finance to pay that time or Bird’s for sure got a pilot on a string.

That old sonuvabitch!”

“I don’t think that’s why Bird’s doing this.”

Sal gave Meg a look, thinking that through the loop a couple of times, wondering if she was following Meg through everything she’d been saying. “Yeah, but are
we
that crazy? Bird owns
Way Out
—but
we
own our time. We log that guy’s board-time, and we own him til he can pay his charges with us—that’s the law, that’s the only damn useful thing the Institute ever taught me. We debt that guy to us for time,
we
get him re-certified, and the company won’t friggin’ get him, how’s that for charitable?” She came to dead stop on the decking, hands in pockets, with a whole new idea taking shape. Mitch, and
Way Out
, and a deal higher-value cards to deal with. “Maybe that’s why MamBitch left the preacher-stuff out of pilot training, you think?”

Bad business, working null, floating around for hours on end compromising everything your heavy time was supposed to mend, but, hell, the meds who made the health and safety regulations hadn’t priced help these days. Zero unemployment, the company claimed, or near enough as didn’t count: and you could hire some real zeroes to come up and scrub, all right, but they’d play off on you and steal what wasn’t bolted on, and to Bird’s way of thinking and Ben’s as well, it was better to take the extra dock time, do the steam and vac themselves and see what damaged systems they could fudge past the inspectors that really could be repaired instead of replaced—turn it over to a refitter like Towney Brothers, and you’d have a one hell of a bill, not least because Towney was in the pocket of half a dozen suppliers.

A-men.

So they didn’t replace the shower, they just unbolted the panels and took them to the rent-a-shop on 3-deck where they could sand down the edges—no way you could tell it from new, once you screwed it back together. They took things apart and ported it down to 3, cleaned it and reassembled it, right down to the electronics.

And you steamed and you vacced, and steamed and vacced and took apart and put together. Likely Ben was learning more about a ship’s works than he’d ever opted for.

That was where Ben was right now, porting a big load of work down to 3 for the gals to handle or for them to do when they got down there after lunch.

Maybe they could put Dekker on time and board, if he could keep straight and if he was physically able: a miner pilot worth anything at all had to be a fair mechanic.

Meanwhile—

“Bird?” Meg said out of the ambient noise of the core. He missed his purchase on a bolt and caught his finger with the power driver. He said something he didn’t ordinarily say and sucked the wounded finger, looking around at the open hatch, which they had half shut and plastic sheeted to keep the warm air in and the dock noise out.

“Sorry.” Meg drifted in, held the plastic aside, pretty sight in that lacy blue sweater. She turned herself so they were looking at each other right side up. “I’m sorry, Bird.—You want some help with that?”

“Doing fine,” he said. He turned around again, seated the driver and put the screw home on the board he was re-installing. He took the next off the tacky-strip. “Aren’t you cold, woman? And who’s watching Dekker?”