Hot Sky at Midnight

man had his nose in his visor almost constantly, rarely looking up at Carpenter. Carpenter had the impression that O’Reilly or O’Brien was presiding over two or three cases at once, taking information in from several computer outputs while listening with half an ear to the droning of the bailiffs in front of him.

There was a Level Seven Samurai man on hand as Carpenter’s representative, a squinty-eyed, sallow-faced fellow named Tedesco, pockmarked along his cheeks and forehead by some kind of allergic reaction to Screen. That the case should involve a Level Seven, that a Level Seven should have been waiting here all morning for Carpenter while he docked his ship and turned over his command, indicated to Carpenter that this was a serious business, that he might be in considerable trouble. But he was sure that once the investigating authorities understood the realities of the dilemma he had faced out there, everything would work out.

“Don’t say a thing until you’re asked to,” Tedesco told him, right at the outset. “And when you answer, be sure to answer straight to the point, no discursiveness. They hate discursiveness in a place like this.”

“Do I need a lawyer?” Carpenter asked.

“This isn’t a legal matter,” said Tedesco. “Not today. And if it becomes one, whatever counsel may be necessary will be provided for you by the Company. Meanwhile take your cues from me.”

“What kind of penalties am I facing here?”

“Disqualification from the Maritime Service. You would lose your sea ticket.” Tedesco’s voice was chilly. Everything about him radiated disdain for this whole affair, the sordid event at sea, the troublesome filing of charges against a captain by his crew, the deplorable need for a man of his august grade to be putting in time down here on the Oakland waterfront dealing with such a nasty squabble.

“What about my grade level in the Company?”

“That’s an internal Company matter. What’s going on here is a Port of Oakland matter. First things first; but I don’t think I need to tell you that it isn’t going to do much good for your slope to have been brought up on charges here like this. However, that remains to be—”

“442 docket 100-939399,” said O’Reilly or O’Brien suddenly, down at the remote other end of the tube, and banged a gavel. “Paul Carpenter, captain, suspended, stand forth and acknowledge.”

“Get up,” Tedesco murmured, but Carpenter was already on his feet.

It was very strange, being the focus of a disciplinary action like this. Carpenter felt like a schoolboy being reprimanded for some childish offense. Turning his ship over to Swenson, the relief captain, had been embarrassing enough, especially with Hitchcock and Rennett smirking triumphantly at him from the blister dome as he surrendered his software access; but there had at least been a sort of Conradian drama to that which made it tolerable, a theatrical solemnity. To stand here in this grotesque drafty spaghetti strand of a room, though, listening to the rain beat down on the metal roof and staring at a fat, bleary-eyed bureaucrat who didn’t seem even to be looking at him, but who nevertheless held the power to injure and perhaps cripple his career—it was humiliating, it was ridiculous, it was absurd.

One of the bailiffs—a woman who looked like an android, but apparently wasn’t—rose and ran through a thick skein of legalisms in a dull monotone. The charges—improper behavior, dereliction of duty, violation of regulation such-and-such and such-and-such. The accusers, named. His own crew. Some yatter about the temporary withdrawal of his maritime license pending examination of the incident. And on and on, five or ten minutes of dense technicalities that Carpenter soon found himself unable to follow.

“Entered,” O’Reilly or O’Brien said. “Remanded for evidential.” Bang of gavel. “Application for a 376.5 noted and denied. Application for a 793-sub one granted. Hearing date to be set and notification made.” Bang of gavel. Bang again. “Continued.” One last bang.

“That’s it,” Tedesco said. “You’re free to do as you wish, now. But don’t go outside the San Francisco area until this has been resolved.”

Tedesco began to leave the room.

“Wait a second,” Carpenter said. “Please. What was all that stuff he denied and approved? A 376-point- something, a 793-sub-something.”

“376.5 is a request for a dismissal of all charges. Routinely entered and just as routinely thrown out. 793- sub one is application for release on your own recognizance without bail. You got that because your record has been clean up till now.”

“Bail? I’m up on a criminal charge?”

“Purely an administrative investigation,” Tedesco said. “But there’s always the possibility of follow-ups, a criminal action, perhaps a civil action by the legal representatives of the castaways. The Port is responsible to the civil authorities for your continued presence until this has been resolved. We have made ourselves responsible to the Port, which is why no bail has been required, and therefore you are responsible to us to see to it that no breaches are incurred. We believe that we can count on your cooperation.”

“Of course. But if there are going to be further charges, other court proceedings beyond this one—”

“We don’t know that there will be. One thing at a time, all right, Carpenter? And if you don’t mind—”

“Please. I need to know something else.”

“Go on.”

“I still have Level Eleven privileges, right? Housing, living expenses?”

“Of course,” Tedesco said. “You haven’t been found guilty of anything, Carpenter. The Port is only trying to determine the truth of the charges that have been lodged against you. And the Company is behind you. Keep that in mind. The Company is behind you.” It was said without any warmth whatever, but it was the most reassuring thing Carpenter had heard since reaching port. The Company is behind you. His sullen and resentful crew, lacking any intelligent comprehension of the complexities he had faced out there in the Pacific, had landed him in this mess; but the Company, vast and mighty, would not allow a useful Level Eleven to be thrown to the wolves over an issue of class warfare. Carpenter was confident of that now. At the eventual hearing, he would demonstrate that a rescue had been entirely impossible, that it had been necessary for him to perform an act of what was essentially triage, weighing the survival of his own ship and people against the demands of those incompetent and mutinous strangers, and rather than sending everyone in both ships to destruction by overloading his little vessel he had reluctantly—oh, so reluctantly and painfully!—left the personnel of the Calamari Maru to fend for themselves in the sea. This was a difficult era, he would tell them, a time of hard choices. With the best will in the world he couldn’t have saved those people. He had had the best will in the world. It stood to reason that a man of his intelligence and good record would not lightheartedly have left shipwrecked sailors to die, if he had had any options otherwise. Surely Tedesco must see that. O’Brien, O’Leary, whatever his name was, he would be made to see it too. The charges would be dismissed.

When all of this was over, Carpenter thought, it probably would be incumbent upon Samurai to transfer him out of the Maritime Service, considering the way this sort of thing tended to attach itself to someone’s reputation, and he might lose a year or two’s slope, too; but they would find a post for him in some other division, and in the fullness of time everything would be all right.

Yes. In the fullness of time.

Meanwhile it was still raining torrentially. The air outside had a sweet, yeasty smell, almost pleasant, except that Carpenter felt sure that the fragrance was the result of the stirring into the atmosphere of some disagreeable and probably hazardous toxic crap that ordinarily would be lying dormant on the bosom of San Francisco Bay.

What now?

A place to stay, first.

When he had come down from Spokane to San Francisco to take this job, the Company had assigned him to the Company’s block of rooms at the Marriott Hilton, over on the Frisco waterfront. Since he was still a Level Ekven, presumably it was still all right for him to take a room there.

But when Carpenter called up Accommodations on his flex terminal and requested the Marriott, he was told that a booking had already been made for him at a hotel called the Dunsmuir, on the Oakland side of the bay. Something about that troubled him. Why not San Francisco? Why not the Marriott? He requested a transfer. No, he was told, he must go to the Dunsmuir.

And when he got there, he understood why. The Dunsmuir was a dump like the Manito in Spokane, where Carpenter had lived while he was a weatherman, only even worse—a dreary commercial hotel that seemed to be at least a century old, in a desolate one-time industrial zone, now largely abandoned, between Oakland Airport and the freeway. It had none of the flash of the Marriott, and none of the comfort, either. It was the sort of place