Devil to the Belt

  “I’m telling you, I’m not taking them. I’m not showing. Let them court-martial me, it’s exactly what I want.”

  “Ben,—”

  Guys stopped by the table. C-Barracks. Techs. Mason, among them, nudged his shoulder with his tray. “Dek,” Mason said. “How you doing?”

  “All right,” he said, “pretty tired.”

  “Good to see you. Real good to see you....”

  “Pop-u-lar,” Ben said when Mason and his guys had moved on. “Just can’t figure how. All these people get to know you and they haven’t broken your neck.”

  “Ben,” Sal said, defending him. But it didn’t sting, couldn’t even say why, just—it didn’t. Ben didn’t ask for help, Ben didn’t ask for anything—Cory had been a lot like that. Ben was going to fight his way out of this mess on his own, and that was at least one piece of karma he wouldn’t have to worry about.

  “Best—” he started to say. And caught a name on the vid, sounded like Dekker. He picked up Sol Station, and... lodging a complaint—

  “Ms. Dekker, what specifically are you alleging?”

  God. It was. She looked—

  “Dek?” Meg asked, and turned around to look where he was looking, at the vid, at a woman in a crowd of reporters. Blond hair was faded. Face was lined. She didn’t look good, she didn’t look at all good...

  Something about MarsCorp, something about threats, an investigation into phone calls ... Some organization backing a suit—

  Sal said: “What’s going on?” and Meg: “Shhh.”

  He couldn’t track on it. Didn’t make sense. Something about losing her job, some civil rights organization launching a lawsuit in her name—

  “It’s his mother,” Ben said; he said, “Shut up, dammit, I can’t hear—” But he could see the background, see the MarsCorp logo, he knew that one—MarsCorp offices on Sol Station, police, reporters, some guy who said he was a lawyer—something about her son—

  Picture jumped, tore up. The local station cut in with the channel 2 program information crawl—but he wasn’t finished yet, wasn’t damned finished yet...

  “They cut it off!” He shoved the chair around to get up, get to a phone, saw the shadow of the tray and the sense of balance wasn’t there. He staggered, hit it, food went everywhere, cup bounced—”Shit!” He was flat off his balance, elbowed the guy trying to hold his feet, guy grabbed at him and he didn’t want a fight, he just wanted the phone. “Get out of my way!”

  “You son of a bitch!” The guy had his arm. Ben and Meg and Sal grabbed for him, Ben saying something about Let him go, the man’s upset; but the guy wasn’t letting him go, the guy swung him and he grabbed for a handhold on the UDC uniform, about the time there were a whole lot of other chairs clearing, and Fleet was all around them. A high voice yelled, “You damn fools, stop it—”

  Wasn’t any stopping it. The UDC guy hit him, and he hit the guy with everything he had, figuring it was the only blow he was going to get in—couldn’t hear anything, with guys coming over the tables, guys pushing and shoving and punches flying past his head—he didn’t want to be here, he wanted the damned phone, wanted the truth out of the station, that was all—

  Lights were flashing on and off, shouting filled his ears, fist rattled his skull and gray and red shot across his vision as arms came around him and hauled him out of it.

  He wasn’t breathing real well, couldn’t half see: he yelled after Meg and Sal in the melee, couldn’t tell who he was hitting when he tried to break free—

  “Dekker!” That was the lieutenant. So he was in deeper shit; but more imminently of a sudden, he had his wind cut off as they bent him over a table. Something cold clicked shut around his wrists. That scared him: he’d felt that before... and it got through to his brain that the guys holding him were the cops, and Graff s voice made him understand that help was here, the fight was over, and the lieutenant wanted him to stand still. He tried to; which meant they got the other wrist, locked the cuff on, and at least pulled him back off the table so he could get a breath...

  “The guy shoved him.” Meg’s voice rang out loud and dear. “Wasn’t Dek’s fault, he was just trying to get up — it was an emergency, f God’s sake. This ass wanted to argue right of way!”

  Guys started shouting all around, one side calling the other the liars.

  “Clear back!” Voice he knew but couldn’t place. His nose was running and he sniffed. Couldn’t say anything, just tried to breathe past the stuffy nose and the clog in his throat.

  “What happened here?” the Voice asked — he blinked the haze mostly clear and saw a lot of MPs, a lot of angry guys standing along the wall with more MPs and soldiers. What Happened Here? drew shouting from all around, Meg and Sal profane and high-pitched in the middle of it, how the guy’d bumped him, how his mother was in some kind of trouble on the news . . .

  Had to talk about his mother, God, he didn’t want an audience, didn’t want to talk about his mother in front of everybody. He tried to look elsewhere, and meanwhile the lieutenant was saying they’d better move this out of here, he’d take him in custody —

  Please God. Anywhere, fast.

  The other voice said: “I think we’d both better get this moved out of here,” and he made out the blurry face now for Captain Villy, with a knot of UDC MPs and a whole lot of trouble. They were holding Meg, and Sal, and Ben, among a dozen mixed others. “Move ‘em,” Villy said, and there were Fleet Security uniforms among the lot. He started to argue for Meg and Sal and Ben; but: “Dekker,” Graff said sharply, and said, “Do it.”

  He did it. He kept his head down and walked where they wanted him to, he heard Graff at the top of his lungs chewing out the rest of the guys in the messhall and Villanueva doing the same, telling them they were all dunned fools, telling them how they were on the same side.

  Yeah, he thought. Yeah. Tell ‘em that, lieutenant.

  Himself, he didn’t want to think what was going on back at Sol Station, didn’t want to think what he’d just done back there in the messhall; he kept his mouth shut all the way to the MP post, and inside; him, and Ben and a whole crowd of their guys and the UDC arrestees; but when they tried to take Meg and Sal into the back rooms:

  “I want Fleet Security—laissez, laissez, you sumbitch —ow!”

  And Sal screamed how she was going to file complaints for rape and brutality....

  The MPs got real anxious then. “Where’s Cathy?” one asked, and a guy got on the phone and started trying to scare up a female officer, while Meg argued with them about holding on to him, “Dammit, let him go, he’s just out of hospital, for God’s sake—man got up and bumped a tray, his mother was on the news—”

  God. “Meg, shut up. It doesn’t matter!”

  “That sumbitch shoved you!”

  At which the sumbitch with the custard all over him started yelling at Meg, somebody shoved, Sal started yelling, and he couldn’t do anything, he was cuffed, same as Ben was, same as the UDC guy was, except they’d made the mistake of not doing that with Meg and Sal.

  “Meg,” he yelled, “Afeg!”

  They got rough with Meg, they got rough with Sal, he kicked a guy where he saw a prime exposed target and they shoved him up against the wall, grabbed him by the hair and by the collar and shoved him into a chair.

  “She didn’t do anything,” he said, but nobody was listening to him. He said, “None of them did anything....”

  They got Meg and Sal out of the room. Ben and the other guy, too, and left one guy to stand and watch him. He was dizzy, the adrenaline still had his head going around, and his nose dripped a widening circle on his shirt. He tried to sniff it back, breathing alternate with that disgusting sensation; and in his head kept replaying as much as he’d heard on the vid about what was going on with his mother....

  A lawsuit, for God’s sake—but she wasn’t anybody to show up on vid, with lawyers from—what the hell organization was it?

  The Civil Liberty Association? He didn’t know who
they were, but she’d looked like hell, hair stringing around her ears, makeup a mess. He kept seeing her blinking at the strong lights and looking lost and angry. He knew that look. She’d worn it the last time she’d bailed him out of juvenile court.

  .../ don’t need any more trouble, she’d written him. Stop sending me money, I don’t want any more ties to you. I don’t want any more letters....

  He had never taken leave back to Sol One: there was a serious question, Legal Affairs had warned him from the beginning of his enlistment, whether once he came onto Sol Station where lawyers could get to him with papers, he could escape a civil process being served... or whether the Fleet could prevent him being arrested. The Fleet had put him behind a security wall only because having him on trial wouldn’t sit well with the Belt, where they mined the steel; and the EC cooperated because letting Cory Salazar’s case get to the media would raise questions about a whole long , laundry list of things about ASTEX and MarsCorp the Earth ‘ Company itself didn’t want washed in public. Anything to keep him out of court—

  Because damned right there was a connection between his mother and MarsCorp, it was Aim, it was Cory Salazar’s mother, who’d wanted to have a daughter, had one solo and tried to run that daughter’s life and now her afterlife as a personal vendetta against the pusher-jock who’d romanced her collegiate offspring out of her hands.

  Hell if that was the way it had been. Cory had dreamed of starships, Cory’d hated her mother’s laid-out course—college to a MarsCorp guaranteed success track—so much that Cory Wouldn’t run fast enough or far enough to escape it. Maybe starships had only been a kid’s romantic answer—but Cory had come to the Belt because she’d thought she could double and triple her money free mining—she’d lured him along for a pilot, and they’d nearly done it, until Cory ran head-on into the corrupt System her mama had wanted her to sit at the top of—and it killed her.

  That was the bloody truth. That was the thing Alyce Salazar wouldn’t see. He’d wanted to tell her so: he’d imagined how he’d say it if he got the chance, maybe talk to her sanely, maybe just grab her and shake some sense into mama, so she’d do something about the system that had killed Cory.

  But Legal Affairs had nixed any such move, said plainly, Don’t communicate with her. Don’t attempt to communicate with her. And made it an order.

  So now Alyce Salazar had communicated with his mother he knew that was the case, because his mother wasn’t dedicated to finding trouble, his mother was the absolute champion of Never get involved...

  The side door opened. A team of medics came in, with: “Let’s have a look at you,” so he sat where they wanted and let them look at his eyes with lights, and into his ears, and his mouth. They got the nosebleed stopped, at least, then said they’d better have him down in the clinic for a thorough go-over.

  “No,” he objected, suddenly panicked. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  But they took him anyway.

  Aboujib, assault with a weapon, incitement

  Basrami, assault

  Bissell, assault

  Blumgarten, assault, assault on an officer

  Brown, assault with a weapon

  Cannon, assault, incitement

  Dekker, instigation of riot, assault

  Franklin, assault with a weapon

  Hardesty, assault

  Hasseini, assault, verbal abuse of an officer

  Jacoby, assault with a weapon

  Kady, assault, assault on an officer

  Keever, assault, destruction of government property

  Mason, assault

  Mitchell, assault, assault on an officer

  Pauli, assault, incitement

  Pollard, assault with a weapon

  Rasmussen, verbal abuse; (hospital)

  Schwartz, assault

  Simmons, assault

  Vasquez, assault; (hospital)

  Zeeman, aggravated assault

  Graff read the list, handed it to Petrie, the junior out of Legal Affairs. “I want interviews, any way you can get them. Record everything. I want them now, I want any releases you can get, I want them an hour ago. And I want condition, instigator and perpetrator on our hospital cases.”

  “Yessir.” Petrie put the list in his case. The temper must be showing. Petrie didn’t stop for questions of his own. The door shut.

  Demas, resting against the counter, said, “Doesn’t seem there was anything premeditated: the channel 3 news boss recognized a correspondence of names on the Sol One news feed, suddenly realized it was sensitive, and jerked the report off the air—bad decision. Dekker happened to be in the messhall, the vid happened to be channel 3. Charlie Tyson happened to be behind him with a tray; Dekker jumped up—bang into the tray. Tyson blew up, Dekker blew, the whole messhall blew.”

  “I want a tape of that news broadcast, I want to know what’s going on with Dekker’s mother, I want to know what she’s involved in.”

  “You want it in capsule now?” Demas asked. “I’ve got the essentials.”

  “Go.”

  “Dekker’s mother got fired two days ago. She was a maintenance worker—electrician—for SolCorp. The maintenance office claimed incompetence—the record is apparently inaccessible—she claimed she was a victim of MarsCorp pressure inside the EC, claimed Salazar’s agents had been harassing her on the phone. She showed up in front of the MarsCorp office with lawyers and reporters, MarsCorp called Security, and a MarsCorp spokesman went on camera to charge Ms. Dekker with sabotage and threatening phone calls—apparently Ms. Dekker had been doing some work inside the MarsCorp sector and got some phone numbers, by what Ms. Salazar charges. Ms. Dekker claims they’ve been harassing her—calls on her off watch, that kind of thing. Ms. Dekker’s got some civil rights organization on her side, they’re charging Ms. Salazar used pressure to get Ms. Dekker’s job on personal grounds. End report.”

  “Harassing phone calls. Is Ms. Salazar on One?”

  “She was eight days ago, at the time Ms. Dekker claims she got two of the calls. She’s in London at the moment. Ms. Dekker claims she asked for a trace on the calls. The station office claims there was no such request and says their records show no calls to Ms. Dekker’s residence.” Demas folded his arms. “Ask how sophisticated Ms. Salazar’s employees might be.”

  “I take it there are ways to evade those records.”

  “Abundant methods—limited only by the sophistication of the operator and the equipment. This is a woman who maintains apartments in two space stations and a couple of world capitals, on two separate planets. I would not match a station electrician against her technical resources.”

  “We’ve been sleeping through this one. I need a structural chart of MarsCorp and the EC, With names and kinships.” Damn, the Security chief was—where else?—with the captain. “Can we get that through our own channels?”

  “We can try. It’s going to be a maze. Kinships, I’m not sure are going to be systematized anywhere. They’re illegal, remember—where it regards government contracts. Personal friendships are illegal.”

  “Are animosities?”

  A humorless laugh. “Unfortunately there’s no such rule. Among those cards on your desk is the Alyce Salazar file such as we have it—with Saito’s compliments. Some of the information may be in there. It’s going to take Legal Affairs to—”

  “—unravel the MarsCorp connections?”

  Demas nodded. “If they can.”

  “Meanwhile there’s the next shuttle to One. I want somebody on it. I want somebody to go personally to the captain’s office—if there still is an office—and get a report to him we’re sure isn’t intercepted. And I want some message back here that isn’t wearing a UDC uniform or Belter chain and claiming they don’t know a thing. I should have done it when Pollard came in here.”

  Demas looked thoughtful. “I’ll look up the schedule.”

  “Due in at 0900h on the 27th, out at 2030h the 29th, we’ve got a service hold for scheduled maintenance. They’re
claiming it’s booked full outbound. There’s always some contractor holding seats. If we’ve got any pull—get one.”

  He’d gotten used to being handled like a piece of meat. He’d gotten used to cameras and doctors and cops. They made a vid record of the new skin on his shoulder and the finger-marks on his arm. They asked him who’d hit him, he just shook his head, didn’t even have to come out of his haze to talk to them. They took samples of his hair, his skin, his blood, and whatever fluid they could wring out of his body; “Pulse rate just won’t go down,” one of them said. “That’s on his hospital records.”

  “What do you expect!” he asked, only time he’d opened his mouth except for a tongue depressor, and one of them said he should calm down.

  “Yeah,” he said. His stomach was upset from the poking around they were doing. He tried to go on timing out, just go away and blind himself with the lights and not to let his heart flutter, the way it felt it was doing. Couldn’t think about anything if you wanted to fake out the meds. Think of—

  Sol One. His mother’s apartment. But that was no good. His mother was in trouble, thanks to him...

  Way Out. But that ship was dead. Like Cory.

  Think of stupid stuff. Name the moons of Saturn. Jupiter had used to work, but he’d learned that real estate too intimately.

  Docking fire sequence for a miner ship. Range and rate of closing.

  Finally one said, “Name’s Parton. Fleet Medical. How are you doing, Lt. Dekker?”

  Fleet. He said, “The lieutenant agree with this?”

  “The lieutenant doesn’t agree with fighting.”

  So he was in trouble. With everybody. He slid a glance over to the wall, where he didn’t have to look at Parton or get in an argument, and wondered distractedly if he could get a word out of the news channel if he could just get permission to make a phone call. ...

  But the medic, Parton, was talking with the other medics— said, of the blood pressure, “Yeah, he does that. Doesn’t like hospitals. Doesn’t like UDC medics, if you want the plain truth....”

  Not real fond of any meds right now, —sir. Can I get up?