Devil to the Belt (v1.1)

by C. J. Cherryh

  Graff frowned, revising attitudes. He had no idea who his own father was, but his mother had had a cheerful account of possibilities, all from one ship—who had not the least liability in the matter: not for him and not for his cousins of the same stopover. Who might even be half-sibs, but who cared?

  Earth certainly did.

  “Mother,” said Saito, “has nothing to do with ship-loyalty. Not in the least. Unitary family. He grew up in a two- or three-room apartment alone with one woman. No sibs, no cousins, no other kin—not an abnormal situation. Not the local ideal either.”

  Claustrophobic, what he could feel about it. He watched Saito take a drink and sail the bottle back to him.

  “Dekker did not get on well in school,” Saito said. “Fell in with a group of young anti-socials—read, quasi-rab—and got caught vandalizing station life-support—a series of smokebomb incidents, as happened. One might assume it was their idea of political statement.”

  “A very stupid one.” He had read the file, though not with Saito’s interpretation. Sabotaging one’s own life-support hardly qualified as intelligence—and Dekker was far brighter than that. Or should have been.

  “He got very little education. It’s all classroom theory, mere. Very little hands-on. Dekker doesn’t learn by lecture. His episode with the court nearly had his mother fired and deported, for a minor out of control—”

  On a merchanter ship, it would have had the youngster scheduled for a station-drop and a go-over by psychs. Possibly with mother or cousin in tow, but not absolutely. There was no use for such a case aboard—

  But Dekker was not insane. Quite remarkably sane, considering his upbringing. Graff took a sip and frowned, passing it on to Demas.

  “She spent her personal bank account on lawyers and bond for the boy’s behavior,” Saito said. “She enrolled him in vocational training. Electronics, her own profession. He ducked out of that and got a position pushing freight. Lied about his age. Made very little money, but he was out of trouble. He went back to school—probably found out he needed the math for a license—and apparently became an upstanding citizen, though by this time he was in remedial in all his subjects....”

  “One brush with the rab. And no other troubles,” he said, “until the Belt.”

  “Until he absconded with Alyce Salazar’s daughter—with whom he’d been a correspondent since his return to school.”

  “Mmmn,” said Demas, “the miraculous reform.”

  “And no record there,” Saito said, “until Cory’s death. A model citizen. Solvent—”

  “On Ms. Salazar’s money.”

  “But solvent. A hard worker. He had been on Sol before he left. Had, one suspects, a habit of pushing himself beyond the legal limits on his license....”

  “Certainly a talent,” Graff murmured, thinking. .. “Why did no one at Sol ever Aptitude him?”

  “With that score in social responsibility, I don’t think anyone ever thought of tracking him for ops.”

  “A mortal waste.”

  “Earth has a million more who want the slot. They can afford human waste.”

  “Dekker’s a statistical anomaly.”

  “Especially in that population. But they didn’t recognize the profile. Sports or trouble, that was their analysis. And he was off the team very quickly. He wasn’t physically adept, of course. And temper didn’t serve him well. You do not frustrate that lad. But you know that.”

  Morbidly interesting, Graff thought, to know what a profile like his own might have meant—in the motherwell. “Pressure on the genome.”

  Demas muttered: “Emory? Or Wallingsford?”

  And Saito: “Don’t we fight this war for that distinction?”

  “Who knows why we fight? Because we stayed by the Company? But what’s the Company? Not wise, nor representative of the motherwell. Nothing I’ve met tells me that answer.” Demas passed the bottle again, to Saito.

  Graff asked, “Can we help his mother? We’ve civilians working in FSO. Maybe she could be employed there.”

  “There’s that peacer contact. She certainly won’t pass our security clearance with that attachment.”

  The bottle came back to him.

  “Because she’s naive and desperate, she’s a security risk? She wouldn’t have access to the FSO lunch schedule.”

  Saito said: “Being Dekker’s kin and outside our wall is a security risk. And there’s the vid. The Dekker affair may have died out of the media—but watch them remember it now. Command will be extremely reluctant to solidify that association. The peacer connection—”

  “Our employing her could be an interesting embarrassment to their side.”

  “And there’s the claim of harassing Salazar.”

  A most uncomfortable thought occurred to him. “You don’t think Salazar could have hired Ms. Dekker’s lawyer, to control both sides of the lawsuit?”

  “Not legal, of course—to pay both sides’ legal help. That much is true even in Sol System.”

  “Possible, though. Isn’t it? Their system of exchange makes a private transaction hard to trace.”

  “Oh, it’s even possible the peacer groups see Salazar as a way to their objectives; possible that the money is flowing to this conflict from the peace and the defense committees. Mars is relatively leftist, relatively isolationist. They see their interests remote from the EC as a whole. Pursue some of these groups deeply enough and you come out the door of their opposition.”

  “Moebius finance,” Demas said. “These groups survive on fund-raising. Particularly their executives and staff. How could these people survive without each other?”

  Completely paranoid.

  “The enemy of my enemy,” Demas said, and took the bottle up, “threatens both our livelihoods. And of course the Fleet is innocent in this game. Earth’s parliaments and congresses understand Mazian. Mazian gains command of R&D. Of Sol Two. God, one wonders what traded hands.”

  Graff thought privately, and dared not say, even to them: Our integrity. Our command. Mazian was going to fill the captaincies with his choices—

  Porey among the first.

  Fingers felt all right. Wasn’t sure about the ownership of the hand, though. Schitzy experience, that was. Meg held her eye from blinking with one set of fingers and tried to apply the pencil without blinding herself—Dek had been kind enough to make a supplies run from the quarters to the lab-dorm, only thing she’d asked of him last night: Get our makeup, God, we got to look like hell—

  “Dek was a skosh bizzed last night,” she said to Sal, who was putting earrings in, stealing a bit of mirror past her shoulder. “Don’t you think?”

  “Man’s doing all right.”

  “You?”

  You had to catch Sal like that, blindside. Sal met her eyes in the mirror, wide-open.

  “So, Aboujib?”

  Sal said, scowling, “Scared as I hoped to be, give me a damn field of Where-is-its? and a: Some of these things are rocks, Aboujib, and some of these things are missiles? I never memmed a field faster in my damned life—”

  “Pass?”

  “Hey. I didn’t have a heart attack. —Kady, I got seriously to talk to you about your sojer lessons. They’re severely real, these sumbitches.”

  She would have turned around. But mirrors was the best place to catch Sal. “Truth, Aboujib. You want to go back to tile Hamilton?”

  She saw the hesitation. The little nip of a lower Up. “Without?”

  And had this moment with her heart up in her throat. She’d passed, dammit, they’d told her. Finally got a chance at a ship and a guy she got on with, and, dammitall, here was Sal pulling in the other direction, she saw it plain.

  And it was a lot of hours with Sal, a lot of bad times and a lot of good, but on the other hand there was Dek—there was Dek, who—God....

  Sal’s frown had gone. The lower lip rolled out in a rueful sulk. “I dunno, Kady, I dunno how you talk me into these things.”

  “Aboujib, come serious. You
want to be back there.”

  “I tell you what. I want, I seriously want, a little damn couple finesses on that simulation. They got no them-check, there’s not a damn interset macro in there—maybe they been getting this thing from Shepherd types. Ought to ask a freerunner about rocks, Kady, ought to ask us how not to go boom in a fire-track—”

  “I’m not asking that.”

  “Well, I’m not the hell going back to the Hamilton. Leave you here with the guys?” Frivolous. Deliberate. The mask was back and Aboujib’s long eyes were half-lidded. “I lay you bets, Kady.” Flick of a nail against a large earring. “Ben didn’t flunk that mama. Not our Ben. Scare hell out of him the way they did me—and they get a class A per-for-mance. So with this child. Miner nerves, here. Don’t tell me fire-track. They’re saying I got to set up the positional? Somebody else is going to have his finger on the fire-button? Shit-all. I want the guns, Kady.”

  “Effin’ right I passed, Dek-boy. No question I’d pass if I wanted to. Ap-ti-tuded, hell, they put me in armscomp, are you satisfied?”

  Dekker wasn’t. He sincerely didn’t want that. He watched Ben shaving in this dormitory the labs afforded their test subjects and kept his chilled hands in his pockets.

  “Sorry doesn’t cover it. I know. But—”

  Ben looked around at him. “You’re worried, Dek-boy. Tell me why you’re worried.”

  He wasn’t sure he ought to say that either—since Ben didn’t know; since self-doubt was the deadliest creature you could take into the program. The program was full of egos. Ben’s was fairly healthy.

  “So what’s the matter?” Ben prodded him.

  He had to say something—because somebody would, back in barracks. “Say the Fleet has that new program—say they came up with this tape stuff...”

  “You mean what they gave us wasn’t reg?”

  He was supposed to be a fast thinker. He wasn’t doing well this morning. Mute as a rock, he was.

  “Look, Moonbeam, what in hell are they up to? Gives a guy a real uneasy feeling, that look of yours, and you’re the lousiest Har I know of.”

  “It’s supposed to work, that’s all I know.”

  Ben gave him a long, suspicious stare.

  “All I know,” Dekker said; and Ben said, “Hell if. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing but they want results. Fast. And the heat’s on my tail. But it doesn’t get to you guys. It doesn’t.”

  “Yeah? They put you in command, did they, of the whole friggin’ Fleet?”

  “No. Porey said it. They don’t want to lose another ship. And I swear to you, —I won’t lose another crew.”

  CHAPTER 12

  GLOWING lines converged. Dekker blinked sweat and the simulator manufactured an uncharted rock on split second Imminent for the carrier. Missed the bastard and redirect to take it out on the fly-Got it, got the beta target before the bloodflow caught up with his knees. Targets coming.

  Carrier showed up on the scope. That was the priority— your carrier showed and you got the come-home, and you were done, far as you could clear it a path, granted you could get through the effect shield without glitching.

  Soft and smooth—you got the slight buffet as you came through the shield, momentary LOS of everything on the boards and you had to know its v, the extent of those shields, how close you were going to be when you came through the envelope—damned close, damned close. Touch. Slight mismatch. Within tolerance. Probe caught. Mate.

  Power down.

  Good run, solid run. Not flashy, except that UO and making that shot. He could cut the sim, meltdown and unbelt, he’d earned it and a hot shower. Fine control when you’d been hyped was hell, and switch-off was the copilot’s job, if there’d been a co-pilot this sim—he wouldn’t lose points on that. But he was a fussy sumbitch. He set his switches. He set every effin’ one.

  Damn, it felt good. Felt solid.

  Home again.

  He shifted his legs as the pod opened and he could unbelt and drift out. Breath frosted, while sweat still ran under the flightsuit.

  Take that in your stats, Tanzer.

  Card game went on, Ben and Sal running up favor points on Almarshad’s and Mitch’s guys, and the spectators drifted down there. “Hey, Dek,” came back, but Dekker tried to ignore it and concentrate on his math and his set-targets for tomorrow’s run.

  Conversation floating back from the table said, “It’s one thing in sims. Live fire’s going to be something else.”

  “You just hit ‘em,” Ben said, and took a card. “Dots is dots.”

  “No way,” Wilson said. “Ask Wilhelmsen.”

  “They don’t have to,” Mitch said, and a chill ran through Dekker’s bones. He was thinking what to say to shut that up when Meg said, acidly, “Dunno a thing about Pete Fowler, mister. Nice guy, I s’pose, and I highly ‘predate his help, but he’s not the one does the thinking.”

  “Still not live fire, Kady.”

  “Ease off,” Dekker said, and shoved his chair back.

  “Hey,” Mitch said. “No offense.”

  “Doesn’t bother me,” Meg said, and dealt out cards. “Testosterone’s not the only asset going. Shepherds seriously got to rethink that.”

  “Meg,” Sal said.

  “Hey. I’m easy.”

  “You been easy, Kady.”

  Meg pursed her lips. “You a virgin, Mitch? I swear I don’t know.”

  “Hold it, hold it,” Ben said.

  “The program’s making a serious mistake,” Mitch said, “putting you girls in here. Tape can’t give you the wiring, Kady, there’s a reason they never pulled women in on this program—”

  “Yeah,” Meg said acidly. “Look at the scores, Mitch.”

  “Meg,” Dekker said.

  “Tape off a real pi-tut, Kady.”

  That tore it. “Mitch,” Dekker said.

  “No, no,” Meg said coolly, “not a problem, Dek. Man’s just upset.”

  “Bitch.”

  “Yo,” Sal said. “You want to match score- and score, Mitchell?” -

  “Just hold it,” Dekker said into the rising mutter from Mitch’s crew and Almarshad’s. “We don’t need this.”

  “We don’t need any damn tape,” Mitch said, “and we damn sure don’t need any tape off any women. Reactions aren’t there. You’re never going to see a female pilot on this ship, Kady, you don’t see ‘em in the carriers, you don’t see ‘em in the riders, and you’re never going to. You’ll crack under fire, you’re going to screw this whole damned program, on a rep you didn’t earn.”

  Meg said, with a riffle of cards, “Cher, you got a truly basic misconception, there. Ship’s aren’t shes, they’re hes— you got to make love to them the right way, got to keep ‘em collected so you both get there...”

  Laugh from some of the guys, thank God. Wasn’t funny at the table. Mitch was pissed. Mitch was being a son of a bloody bitch, was what he was being, hurt feelings, and a mouth that made you want to knock him sideways.

  But Mitch gathered up the cards Meg dealt. “You’re in over your head, Kady.”

  “Cher, I had a shuttle go dead once, lost a motor on lift, landed in the Seychelles, and that was a bitch. I haven’t sweated since.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Yeah. Tell me yours.”

  Mitch glowered a moment, then laid down a card and said, “Well-divers are fools.”

  “You got that,” Meg said. “I resigned it.”

  “Didn’t resign it,” Sal said. “They threw you out.”

  “Huh. I was getting tired of it. Too much same stuff. You seen Luna once, you’ve seen it. Big damn rock.”

  “Smug bitch,” Mitch said, in better humor. Dekker eased back and found himself shaking, he was so wound up. But Meg wasn’t. Cold as ice, or she hadn’t any nerves between her hands and her head. Couldn’t tell she might want to knife Mitch Mitchell—

  But he’d lay odds Mitch knew.

  “Damn, damn. You got a rhythm in thi
s thing.”

  See those programs, see how that infodump selected for the human operator, and how it prioritized—that, that was a serious question. They’d had a problem like that in TI, putting a human into the supercomputer neural-net, without letting it take over infoselection. This one sampled the human needs as well as the environment and it wasn’t doing all it could. The data behind it was fiatline. He pushed it, and it gave him the same input.

  “You’re not supposed to critique it, Pollard. Just stick to the manuals.”

  “Screw the—begging your pardon. But I worked on something like this. Staatentek program or independent?”

  “Classified.”

  He bit his lip. Didn’t raise the question of his clearance.

  “Just a minute, Pollard.”

  Just a minute was all right. He sat and stared at the screen that offered such interesting prospects: infodrop for the human decision and infocompression for the computer. Reality sampling against a chaos screen in a system Morrie Bird’s prize numbers man found achingly familiar, after a stint in TI’s securitized halls....

  Screw supply systems modeling, this thing talked to him with a familiar voice.

  This isn’t sim software, he thought. Main program’s elegant. This is real, isn’t it? Ignore the cheesy recorded randoms, son of a bitch—the system under this is a piece of work—

  He said, to the air, “Staatentek didn’t do this, did they?”

  No answer for a minute. Then a different voice; “Pollard. Leave the programs alone.”

  “You can feel the randoms. I didn’t have to look for them.”

  A pause. “That’s very good, Pollard. What would you suggest we do about it?”

  Obvious answer. To the obvious question. The Belt. The numbers. The charts. The feeling you got for the system— the way the rocks moved. Real rocks, with the Well perturbing what the Sun ruled....

  ... Shakespeare; and Bird...

  Ben, leave the damn charts—

  “Pollard? What would you do?”

  “I’m sure you have,” he said. “Use Sol.”

  “Or Pell. Or Viking. You haven’t met Tripoint, Pollard. Would you like to see Tripoint? That one’s an excellent example....”

  Balls hit and rebounded on the table. Ben walked around the other end, considering his next shot, gave a twitch of his shoulders, estimated an angle, and took careful aim with the cue.