Devil to the Belt (v1.1)

by C. J. Cherryh

  Sal said, “What do you go by?”

  “Dek—to friends.”

  “Dek.” Sal reached out across the table. “Sal. Aboujib, if you got to find me.”

  He hesitated, then made a snatch forward and solemnly shook Sal’s hand.

  Meg reached hers out. “Magritte Kady.” Cold fingers. Scared spitless. “Meg’ll page me anywhere. There’s only one on R2.—You been out of that room today?”

  “Lunch,” he said.

  “Any good?”

  He shrugged.

  Mike got the drinks over, fast, thank God, a merciful few beats without conversation. Dekker picked up his drink. Meg lifted her glass with a flourish.

  “Welcome to R2, Dek.”

  “Thanks,” he said faintly.

  “Thanks for the drinks.—You remember us at all?”

  He nodded.

  Sal said, “We’d better say, before anything else, we’re the ones that have Way Out leased.”

  He didn’t react at all to that, just kept looking at Sal.

  “I’m the pilot,” Meg said. “Sal’s my numbers man. You were the primary license on your team, right?”

  Dekker nodded glumly, watching them, every move. He held the rum in one hand, the other arm over the chair back. “Yeah. I was.”

  “Excuse.” She leaned her elbows on the table and cut down the distance. “Let’s be frank here. They busted your license. Bird and Ben claimed your ship—but they haven’t cut you off cold, either. They risked their financial asses saving your life. Understand? Lot of expenses.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So we got a lease on what used to be your ship, and probably you aren’t real happy with us.”

  Dekker said tonelessly: “Yeah, well. Not your fault. No hard feelings.”

  “But,” Sal butted in, “we got to thinking how we could do you and us both some good.”

  Meg said, quickly: “We figure you want your license reinstated. Which you got to have board time for. Which could be expensive, if you had to get it from the company—and you still might need some help to get past the bureaucrats.”

  Dekker gave her a quick, plain, a what-in-hell-are-you-up-to stare.

  “Chelovek,” she said quietly, because even in the bar, even with the music going, you had to worry about bugs lately, since the cops had searched the place, “you ran into real trouble—got ground up in the gears entirely, you and your partner.—Where are you from? Sol Station?”

  Dekker nodded.

  “Neo out here?”

  “Two years.” His jaw was set, not going to say a syllable more than he had to. Improvement on yesterday, she thought.

  “Brut put, Dek, you got yourself in one helluva mess, and there’s beaucou’ guys on R2 who’d pick your pocket the rest of the way. But as happens we’re not them, and Bird’s a blue-skyer, so he knows where you come from.—Not that we owe you, mind. But Bird doesn’t like to take advantage. There’s some things we can’t fix. But suppose we could—what’s prime business on your mind right now? What can we do most for you?”

  He shook his head, staring elsewhere.

  “Mad, I don’t blame you, jeune fils. But are you going to spite yourself? What can we do to even things up? Anything you need?”

  Another shake of the head.

  “Yeah, well. You know what the corp-rats want, don’t you?”

  That got a look, a nasty one.

  “They want you all theirs, jeune fils. They really don’t like the independents. Their charter makes ‘em have to accept us, but they got you right down to signing with the company.”

  “They won’t sign me with the company. I haven’t got a license.”

  “Oh, they’ll give it back to you, jeune fils. When you’re theirs. ASTEX regulations screwing you over and ASBANK ready to lend you money. What are you running on now? Mind my asking?”

  “Yeah, I mind.”

  “Good. Do mind. But do you want to get that license without them?”

  A little reaction there. Not a word.

  “We got a deal for you. You get time at our boards, you take our help, you, me, Sal, Bird and Ben, we all make our own little arrangement that gets you working again, gets you fed, boarded, and eventually reinstated. How’s that?”

  Interest, at last. Hostility. “Why? Goodness of your heart, rab?”

  “You pay us cash for our time if you can pay us, or you pay us a share plus lease after that—that’s Bird’s word on it, if you pass muster by Sal and me.”

  He looked somewhere else. She let the silence hang there a moment, then said: “We’re not hard to get along with, Dek. We’re fair good company.”

  “My partner’s dead, do you bloody mind?”

  Sal said, “She fond of you starving? Cold bitch jeune rab.”

  Dekker looked bloody death at her but Sal sailed right on:

  “But I’ll guess she wasn’t a cold bitch at that, and she wouldn’t like what you’re doing to yourself, if she was here, which she isn’t, nor will be hereafter. She’s signed off, man, we all do. Death’s life, you know, and it keeps on.”

  “Shove off.” Dekker pushed his chair back and got up. Meg did, laid a hand on his arm: he slung it off. Mike, over at the bar, was probably reaching for the length of pipe he kept.

  She said, quietly, lifting both hands, “Easy. Easy. No cops here. No offense. Help, here. That’s all.”

  “You’re an antique, you know it? You’re a friggin’ antique. Rab’s gone. You’re not in it anymore.”

  She actually felt a painful spark of interest—the jeune fils more lately from Sol and more in the current. “True?” She tilted her head, took a damn-you stance and said, “You got better, little plastic?”

  He was twenty, maybe—you wouldn’t tell it by the eyes; but the body, the way he let himself be jerked off course, scared as he was, that was all young fool. Maybe he didn’t really even want to care about what she thought now: he’d only attack blind, young-fool-like, and for just a single unquiet moment—knew she’d just attacked him back.

  “Come out of it. It’s the twenties.”

  “So? What’s the twenties got to offer us the ‘15 didn’t? Corp-rats in fancy suits? Here at R2’s still the teens. Maybe I don’t like your tomorrow, little corp-rat.”

  “It’s 2323 on Sol and they’re building warships to blow the human race to hell. Lot you changed, whole fuckin’ lot you changed!”

  “So what’s the word, little plastic?”

  “The word’s business suits, the word’s grab it before it goes. That’s Sol. That’s all the good you did.”

  Bitter news, no better than she already knew. But she balanced on the balls of her feet, hands in belt, shrugged and said, “It goes on, young rab. Didn’t we tell you, back in the ‘15, wake up! You’re going to fly for them?”

  “I’m not flying for anybody.”

  “You’ll be living off the corp-rat sandwich lines the rest of your life if you do the fool now. They’ll own you—and you’ll be flying some damn refinery pusher til you’re older than Bird.” She added quietly, gently: “Or you can sit down, jeune fils, listen to me, and use your brains for more than ballast.”

  He stood there without saying anything. Meg thought, with Sal in the tail of her eye, God’s sake, don’t move, Aboujib, keep your friggin’ mouth shut, kid’s going to blow if you draw breath.

  Dekker looked away from her, then, hooked a leg around his chair front and melted down into it.

  Meg heaved a sigh, sank into the chair next to him, where he had to look her in the eyes. “Let us make up, jeune rab. Let’s not do deal right now. Let’s just take you out on the ‘deck and show you the cheapshops.”

  “I don’t feel like it.”

  “Not far. Relax. We’re severely reprehensible, but we don’t take advantage. Won’t push you. Just a little walk.”

  Kid was scared white. And he managed not to look her in the eyes.

  “Come on,” she said. “You’ve seen too much of hospitals. Sal and I�
��d like to spend a little, see you get fixed up with a bit more’n a friggin’ plastic bag for a kit—like to stand you a few Personals, you copy? Even if you decide not to take the rest of our offer.”

  She figured Sal was having a stomach attack right now, knowing Sal. Meg, Sal’d say, you want to pass out tracts too?

  Dekker’s breathing grew calmer after a moment. He said, “Shove off.”

  “You telling us you want to go with the company. We should leave you alone, just stay out of your life?”

  A few more breaths. He picked up the glass with a shaking hand, drained it and set it down empty, except the ice. Then he nodded, and seemed to fall in on himself a little. “Yeah, all right, whatever.”

  Like they could chop him up in pieces if they wanted to, he didn’t care.

  She put her hand on the back of his chair, stood up, and he stood up. She showed him toward the door with: “Mike? Tell Bird we’re shopping.”

  And Sal, damn her, with the nerve of a dock-monkey, locked on to Dekker’s arm as they headed him out the door, saying, “I know this place. Absolute first-rate. You got to see. All right?”

  “Medium,” he told the dealer, embarrassed by his company, exhausted by the walk, not sure he wasn’t going to be had in various ways, some possibly dangerous—but he couldn’t prove it. He’d broken what Cory called Rule One, going off with Belters he didn’t at all know, into shops they did know, taking their word about who to deal with and who to trust—he didn’t know whether they were on Bird’s side of things or not. Ben’s, for all he knew, but they were having a good time and he was out of the funk he’d tried to sink into—

  Drifting, a little, maybe. But they’d gotten him moving, they’d made him mad, but they’d done more for his nerves than all of Visconti’s pills. He was alive. He was thinking about something besides Cory, overwhelmed with music, with colors and textures and excited, cheerful voices—

  He was halfway happy for a moment.

  “Now, no shiz, Pat, you give him our deal, now,” Sal told the guy, whatever that meant, and Meg called after him, “No corp-rad, now! Something serious!”

  The dealer brought back pants and a bulky sweater. The pants said medium. They were gray stretch and they didn’t half look medium. The price said 49.99, middling high for a cheapshop.

  “That’s too much,” he objected. The dealer whisked out another pair of pants with diagonal stripes, black and red, that looked like a rab’s nightmare. Laid that out with a blue sweater.

  “God,” Meg said, “not blue. Red. Can you match?”

  “Let’s try for coveralls,” he said. “Blue or gray. Something that fits.”

  “Oh, work stuff,” Meg said. “Dull, dull. No fun.—Try the gray pants, come on, Dek. You got the figure.”

  “Starvation,” he muttered. He told himself he should stop this, just get the coveralls traded for something that fit. But they were both set on him trying the gray, they shoved sweaters at him, and in their enthusiasm it was just easier to do it, make a fool of himself and prove once for all it wasn’t going to work.

  But the mirror showed him a walking rack of bones that actually didn’t look bad in the pants, and that could use a sweater twice its useful size to hide his thin shoulders.

  He wasn’t sure, though, about the big slash stripes on the sweater. He stepped out of the changing booth to get the dark blue one, self-conscious as hell, and the women made appreciative sounds. “Rab sweater,” Meg said. “Oh, I do like that.”

  He suffered a crisis of judgment, then, looking in the mirror outside the dressing-booth, and before he could reorganize, Sal said, “Suppose he’d fit those metal-gray boots? He’s got small feet.”

  He didn’t really want a wide striped sweater. He hadn’t set out to get metal-gray boots that belonged on a prostitute. He damned sure didn’t need the bracelet Sal shoved on him, but: “This is my treat,” Sal said. “Man, you got to. Push the sleeves up.”

  “I need work clothes worse. Blue. On my card—”

  “He’s trading in the coveralls,” Meg said to the dealer. “Can you just size him down?”

  “Yeah,” the dealer said, and hauled out a pair that said small. “If these don’t fit you can exchange. You’re a real small medium.”

  That wasn’t what a man wanted to hear, who’d worked hard enough getting the size in the first place. But he decided he might be, after the hospital. He got the bracelet. He bought some cheap underwear and a pair of thermals, a plain gray stimsuit, his old one having been washed to a rag—that was expensive; and he ended up with the blue sweater too, along with a pair of black pants (stretch, like the gray) and black docker’s boots, used. He was tired now, dizzy, and shaking in the knees; he was ready to go back to his room and collapse, the man was toting up the charge and he felt a moment of cold panic as those numbers rolled up.

  He wasn’t sure now what he’d just done, wasn’t even sure he dared wear what they’d talked him into: he’d had his turn with rab when he was thirteen—but not here, where rab was a statement he didn’t know how to deal with—where it was corporate or where it was a badge of things he didn’t understand…

  I’m a fool, he thought. He thought how Bird and Ben were going to look at him when he got back—and the rest of the boarders at The Hole, some of whom might take serious exception to a show-off with no license: he’d forgotten his troubles, they’d made him forget for a few dazed moments and damned well set him up.

  “I think we’d better go back,” he said, wanting time to think. His head was going around. But Meg said, “Neg, neg, you can’t go shaggy. Let’s get that hair trimmed.”

  “Cut off that pretty hair?” Sal said, the way he’d protested once himself—when he was thirteen. “No!”

  “Not all of it,” Meg said. “Come on, Dek. Let’s go get you fixed up. It’s on the way. Won’t take fifteen minutes.”

  “No,” he said.

  Which ended him up in a barber’s chair dizzy and remembering he’d missed at least one batch of pills, with two women telling a helldeck barber how he wasn’t to take too much off, “—except the sides,” Meg said.

  He’d given up. It was like the hospital. He was just too tired to fight on his own behalf, and they were right, the shoulder-length hair and the shadows under his eyes made him look like a mental case. If the cut was too extreme he could trim the top himself, with a packing-knife or something, God, he didn’t care right now, it was a place to sit down.

  Cory and he had cut each other’s hair, to save money, conservative, Martian trim—just practical. He watched what was happening in the mirror in front of him and kept thinking, in the strobe of the barbershop neon, Cory wouldn’t like this. Cory would get that disgusted, high-class look on her face and say, Really not your style, Dek.

  Cory’s first letters had told him she didn’t like the rab. When she’d sent her picture and he’d realized he had to send his back—with the long hair and wild colors and, God, the gold earring, he’d forgotten that—

  But he’d been thirteen. He’d seen a serious, soft-eyed girl as sober and as kind as the letters. So in another crisis of judgment he’d gone to a barber and borrowed a plain blue pullover—gotten a serious job, he’d forgotten that too—tried to hide it from his friends, but they found out and thought it was damned funny.

  He hadn’t had those friends after that. Hadn’t had many friends at all after that—except Cory; and he’d never met her face to face.

  Stupid way to be. He hadn’t planned it. He hadn’t been happy with his school, his work, with anything but flying. Worked the small pushers for the shipyard—he was supposed to be loading them: the health and safety regs didn’t let kids outside the dock there. But he’d got his class 3. And the super let him sub in until he was subbing in for a guy that ran a pusher into a load of plate steel…

  “… up the sides,” Meg said. “Yeah. Yeah!”

  Sal, with her metal-clipped braids, leaned to get a direct look at him, flashed a white grin and said, “Tha
t’s optimal!”

  It didn’t hurt a guy’s feelings to have a couple of women saying he looked good, but what was developing in the mirror in front of him was someone he’d never met before: it was 2315 again—but he wasn’t 11, he was 20—It was the way the deep-spacer had said, the one they’d gotten in to talk to the class back then: You live on wave-fronts. You live on a station, you ride the local wave—the time you know. You go somewhere else, it’s a different wave. Maybe a whole set of waves, coming from different places, different times. There’s an information wave. There’s fads. There’s goods. There’s ideas. They propagate at different rates.

  Some dumb kid had made a joke about propagation.

  The merchanter had said, dead-sober, So do stationers. Some shouldn’t. And there’d been this scary two beats of hostile quiet and an upset teacher, because that was what deep-spacers were notorious for, on station-call, and what stationers were fools to do—especially with deep-spacers, who moved on and didn’t care. Cory’s mother had—and look what came of it… a girl who’d made up her mind that Mars was irrelevant. Who said that rab was irrelevant. Cory had used to say: The rab can’t really change anything. They can’t build. They’re saying reform Earth’s politics—but it won’t work. Worlds are sinks, they’re pits where people learn little narrow ideas—Luna Base was a mistake. Mars Base was. Once we’d got off Earth we shouldn’t ever have sunk another penny in a gravity well—

  Cory had said more than once, I’d rather a miner ship for the rest of my life than be stuck on a planet—

  He focused on the mirror where it wasn’t Way Out’s cabin, it wasn’t Cory’s face he was seeing, and the thin, shadow-eyed stranger who got out of the chair looked like someone who might have a knife in his boot. He wasn’t sure Cory would recognize him. He wasn’t sure Cory would ever have liked him if she’d met him like this.

  “Serious rab,” Meg said, with a hand on his shoulder. She looked past his shoulder into the mirror, red hair, glitter and all. Sal was at his other side.

  He stared at the reflection, thinking, I’m lost. I don’t know where I am.