“Refused.” She turned her back, cutting him off as she began her work at the board. He waited, studying the tasteless combination of pale-blue walls and green carpet. He noticed a stripe of deeper blue on the wall, an arrow, and the word DOWN.
“The Lansing ship is secure. Are the co-ords in, Pappy?”
“They're in. Ready when you are.”
“Right. Ignition … thirty seconds. Feet on the ground, all of you!” The last of it went over an intercom, rattling off the walls through the empty heart of the ship. Wadie watched her hands move through a sequence on the panel, felt the light, familiar hand of gravity settle on his shoulders. And begin to bear down: His feet touched the floor, the drag against his legs continued, increasing past the point of familiarity, past the point of comfort. He backed up, caught hold of a bar along the wall, remembering thirty seconds of one gee on a Ringer ship, and realizing what it would be like for the next five hundred thousand seconds. Pain wrenched his muscles; the blue- on-blue streaked wall filled his vision DOWN.… His hands tightened, and he stood, enduring the pain, ignoring the heart that beat against his ribs like a fist.
He stood—and moved tentatively away from the wall, as the pressure bearing down on him stabilized. Dizziness made him sway, but he controlled it, balanced precariously as the captain and the old man rose from their seats. They looked toward him with expectant pity; the cat struggled out of the wall through a plastic porthole, made a circuit of his legs, licked his booted foot consolingly with her tongue. He folded his arms; looked down, and back at them across the room. He smiled, blandly.
The captain turned and walked out of the room. The cat bounded after her, tail flying like a banner.
“Abdhiamal, is it?” The old man came over to him, held out a hand. “My name's Welkin, navigator on the
Wadie nodded, shook his hand, wondered at his motive in offering it. He noticed that Welkin's hand was bright with golden rings, like Betha Torgussen's; and that his grip was strong and firm.… But the old man must be tough, if he could take one gee—ten meters per second squared, the gravity of Old Earth. This was what it had been like to live on Earth. A crash and Shadow Jack's pained “Hell!” rose from somewhere below them.
Fifty kiloseconds later Wadie climbed the empty stairwell, one step and then another—wanting to crawl and knowing there was no one to see it, but determined that he would keep control over something, if only his own dignity. He had investigated the lower levels of the ship's living area: the crew's quarters; the alien lushness of a hydroponics lab adapted to one gravity; the workshop—the last memory was almost a hunger. He had seen everything but the section on the second level, behind a sealed doorway where a warning light blinked red. And everywhere he had been stunned by the incredible waste—of water, of air, of living space—in a matrix of drab austerity that was primitive compared to the Demarchy's sophistication. He contemplated the irony in the idea that the Morningsiders considered themselves poor, when in some ways they were the richest people he had ever seen.
He reached the top of the stairs, leaned against the railing until the dizziness passed and his heartbeat slowed. His muscles ached dully when he stood, and when he moved pain burned in his trembling legs like a hot wire. He did his best to put his new clothes in order before he entered the control room.
The others were already there, watching something on the viewscreen. The captain and Welkin sat in chairs. Shadow Jack and the girl lay on the carpet, spreading their weight over the greatest area. The girl was trying to do pushups, her body rigid from the knees, as he looked in. He saw her elbows tremble, watched her collapse facedown on the cushion. She lay spread-eagled on the floor, defeated. “I can't.”
“Then don't,” Shadow Jack said, and more gently, “It'll be over soon, Bird Alyn; we don't have to get used to it.” He flipped playing cards out into the air, watching their incredibly swift plummet to the rug. “Look who finally woke up.” He looked back over his shoulder; the cat sidled past his head and sat down on the cards.
Wadie bowed casually, carefully keeping his balance. No one moved in return, and indignation rose in him until he remembered that he couldn't expect civility here. Pirates … He almost smiled, struck by the memory of what it had meant to be called a Belter, once, in the time when the only Asteroid Belt was Sol's. He studied the captain's face, clean now like her fair cropped hair; met something in her eyes that startled him. She glanced down, lighting a pipe. The tangy sweetness of whatever burned stirred memories in him, instinctive, of things he had never seen.
“At least you're a likelier-looking trade this time,” Welkin said.
Wadie looked down at the blue cotton work shirt, the blue denim pants that stopped ten centimeters short of his ankles. He had forced the pants neatly into his polished boots. The boots braced his legs, but weighted them down like lead. “At least I'm clean.” He stepped carefully over the doorsill and crossed the room, holding his head up, back straight. He reached the nearest swivel seat and lowered himself into it, leaned back easily, breathing again. The girl stared up at him, awed. Shadow Jack looked away with a frown; he muttered and pushed the cat, scattering cards.
“Captain …” Wadie turned in his seat, reordering his arguments. He stopped, as he realized what they had been watching on the screen. “You've been monitoring Demarchy communications?” Six separate images showed on the bright screen, each one a different broadcast frequency. He recognized a general newscast, three corporation hypes, two local arbitration debates.
The captain nodded. “It's been—enlightening.”
“Has there been anything about your ship from the Tirikis?”
“Yes, news items; and there was a—” She glanced back at the screen, as two of the broadcast segments suddenly disappeared, replaced by an octagonal star caught in a golden paisley, on a field of black. As they watched, the symbol blotted out the rest of the segments one by one. “What is this, Abdhiamal?”
“It's a call for a general meeting; any demarch who wants to participate can monitor the final debate, startin' now, and vote on the issues involved.” He remembered uneasily that it had been two hundred and fifty kiloseconds since they had left Mecca, more than two hundred and fifty kilosecs since his last report. “I expect this'll be the debate about your ship, and what happened at Mecca. The Tirikis started to promo the second we left the rock; and nobody's heard a word from me. I'd like to monitor the debate. And I'd like a chance to defend myself, if you'll give me an open channel.”
She put her pipe aside. “All right, I'll monitor the meeting. You can listen; but I can't let you speak.”
“Why not? Your ship's clear. And they can track you by your exhaust, they don't need a radio fix—”
“I don't need you telling them our plans. I'd rather let them guess.”
“Captain, I need to talk to them. This meetin' could mean my job.” They all looked at him, unresponsive. He swallowed his irritation. “You—experienced the communications network we've got; it's from before the war, and it still works as it should. It's what makes the Demarchy work—every demarch's got equal priority on it, and anybody with a gripe about anythin' can broadcast it. Everybody who's involved or interested can debate. If they need to, they take a general vote, and the vote is law.”
“Mob rule?” Welkin said. “The tyranny of the majority.”
“No.” He gestured at the slender golden teardrop on the screen, symbol of the hundred-and-forty-million- kilometer teardrop distribution of the trojan asteroids. “Not here. You can't get a mob together across millions of kilometers of space. It keeps the voters' self-interest confined to their own rock. They're independent as hell, and they're informed, and they judge. A jury of peers.”
“Then why would you be worried about losing your job?”
“Because I'm not there to defend myself; the Tirikis can claim anything, and if nobody hears different from me, what are they goin' to think, except that it's true? My boss will be answering them in my place, and he doesn't even know what's happened. If I can't tell them, I could take him down with me. The government floats on water, and if you rock the boat you drown.”
The captain leaned forward, pressing her hands together. “I'm sorry, Abdhiamal, but you should have considered that before you came with me. I can't afford to let you speak now.… Do you still want to listen in?”
