I must have looked doubtful because he gestured towards the dead popper. His voice had a sardonic quality. “I bandaged his wound…though the effort seems wasted.”
“He offered to help,” Joy added brightly.
I remembered the popper’s bandage, the expertise with which it had been applied, and got to my feet. The physician’s assistant watched me. He had thinning gray hair, a nose that looked larger than it should have, and about two days’ worth of stubble. I noticed that while his clothes were old, they were fastidiously clean, and had been fashionable once. His eyes were blue, as clear as a tropical sea, and free of fear. I got the feeling that everything that could happen to him already had. The choice was no choice at all.
“He shot her in the back, Doc. Do everything you can.”
The man nodded, knelt by Sasha’s side, and went to work. Metal flashed as he cut through blood-soaked fabric. Gauze appeared from the case by his side. Blood welled up and was wiped away. The entry wounds were high and to the right. Doc checked for exit wounds, found them, and slapped self-sealing premedicated pressure bandages over the holes. The bleeding stopped. He nodded his satisfaction, slipped a needle into her arm, and handed me a bag full of liquid. “Here, make yourself useful.”
There were words on the bag, but they defied my ability to read them. Whatever it was trickled down a tube and into Sasha’s body. Doc slipped his arms under the upper part of her body. “She’s stabilized, but who knows what’s happening on the inside. Could’ve nicked a lung. Help me move her.”
Joy had scrambled to my shoulder. I gave her the I.V. bag and slid my arms under Sasha’s legs. We carried her to a counter and laid her out. I took the I.V. bag and sent Joy for some water. I used it to wipe away the worst of the blood while Doc attached self-adhesive disks to various parts of her body and used a hand-held monitor to check her vital signs. Then, having nodded a couple of times, and mumbled to himself, he tended the bump on her forehead. The eyepatch was askew, and he fixed it. “What happened to her eye?”
“She sold it.”
He gave me the same look most people reserve for corpies. “Asshole.”
I gestured, and the I.V. bag swung back and forth. “You’ve got it all wrong, Doc! I didn’t have a thing to do with it!”
He started to reply but was interrupted by a third voice. “Freeze.”
I turned and found myself looking into the bore of a Colt Space Master. I was zero for two. My primary weapon was in its holster and the backup was stuck down the back of my pants. It might as well have been on Mars for all the good it would do me. The man with the gun was short, paunchy, and better dressed than the twelve or fifteen people gathered behind him. Something about the way he held the Colt told me he knew how to use it. His voice was calm. “Move it, Doc…you’re in the way.”
Doc shook his head and looked stubborn. “There’s been enough killing.”
The man was unmoved. “Tell it to Kirtz, Nichols, Chin, and a couple more. They’re dead.”
Doc shook his head slowly and turned into the line of fire. Training, or maybe it was instinct, told me to use that moment to pull a weapon, fire through Doc’s body, and drop the guy in his tracks. I listened to Doc instead. His voice was calm. “Kirtz, Nichols, and Chin took their chances and lost. It was self-defense, and you know it. You want the money? Well, there it is, lying over there. Help yourself.”
The man glanced towards the popper’s body, gave a slight inclination of his head, and backed in that direction. The crowd tripped over each other getting out of the way. I watched for guns and wondered if I could get to Sasha’s backup. It was sticking out of her waistband. All I needed was two, maybe three seconds to pull it and fire.
The man was good, and kept his eyes on me the whole time. The Colt never wavered as he knelt by the body, patted it down, and found the wallet. He thumbed it open, glanced at the contents, and nodded. “Okay…fair enough. How ‘bout it, chrome-dome? You willin’ to let it drift?”
I get tired of the “chrome-dome” thing at times but didn’t want to kill anyone over it. I nodded. “Fine with me.”
The crowd mumbled a little, angry at the loss of their friends, and resentful about the money. But the man knew what made them tick and pointed towards the boxes piled on the far side of the room. “Those boxes have food and god knows what else in ’em. I got a feelin’ the poppers ain’t comin’ back. Help yourselves.”
There was something akin to a stampede as the crowd headed for the boxes and tore them apart. The man smiled, made the gun disappear, and strolled our way. He held out his hand. It was hard as steel. “The name’s Dan. Dan Riler.”
“Max Maxon.”
“Glad to meet you, Max. Welcome to our little community. Sorry about your friend. Hope she’ll be okay.”
Doc took the I.V. bag. “She’d be a lot better if you took this conversation somewhere else.”
We stepped aside. I didn’t want to leave her, but couldn’t afford to ignore Riler either. “Yeah, I hope so too.”
Riler gestured towards the popper’s body. “Was I right? His friends won’t be back?”
I shook my head. “Nope. They jumped us at the other end of the barge. We stuffed their bodies into an ejection tube.”
Riler nodded agreeably. “Nice of you to clean up. They were a mean bunch. Boarded as a group. Checked us right away. Said they were looking for a man with a chromed head and a girl with an eyepatch.” Riler lifted an eyebrow. “Call me crazy, but it seems as if someone wants you dead.”
I ignored the invitation and shrugged. “Maybe it’s my deodorant or something.”
Riler laughed and gestured towards the scavenging crowd. They were like crows on a road kill. “Well, your troubles are over. For a while, anyway. There were some bad apples in the crowd, but you thinned ’em out, and the rest are too scared to attack head-on. Course you gotta sleep…and so do I. Tell you what…you watch my back, and I’ll watch yours.”
I looked at Sasha. The Doc had located an emergency stretcher and convinced two members of the crowd to carry it. The kid looked pale, real pale, and it scared me. Partly because I liked her, but partly because I needed her, and didn’t want to be alone. Yes, she had lied to me, yes, she had hidden things from me, but I hadn’t been lonely in a long time, and the thought of losing her made my gut feel empty. So I’d stay with her, do what I could to nurse her back to health, and hope for the best. But I had to sleep, and Riler’s offer made sense. I stuck out my hand. “You’ve got a deal.”
It took the better part of two hours to get Sasha down to the main deck, make a home for her among the crates, and settle in. She remained unconscious, which worried me, but didn’t seem to bother Doc. Or maybe it did, and he hid the fact. In any case, I felt as if I should stay awake but found it hard to do. So when Riler offered to stand watch, and suggested a nap, I took him at his word.
I was gone within seconds of putting my head down. I don’t think I dreamed right away, but who the hell knows? I know this though: Like some of my previous dreams, this one was real, or had been real, however you want to look at it. As with the previous dreams, this one picked up where the last left off.
The initial sensation was that of fighting my way up from a deep sleep, coming almost to the surface, but not breaking through. I heard voices, two of them, one male and one female. They were arguing. The man was against something and the woman was for it. “It isn’t right, I tell you…and that’s all there is to it.”
“Right?” the woman demanded. “Is war right? Is theft right? Because that’s what’s going on. He killed some of our friends, would’ve killed us, if the commandos hadn’t been here.”
“Two, three, or any number of wrongs don’t add up to a right,” the man responded stubbornly. “He’s a human being, and what you propose goes beyond all standards of decency.”
“And what would you know about decency?” the woman asked scathingly. “A man who lied, cheated, and stole his way out of the gutter? How dare you lecture me on right and wrong!”
“It’s true that I’ve done all these things and more,” the man replied calmly, “but none of my transgressions even come close to what you propose. I refuse to be part of it. More than that, I plan to tell the union.”
There was silence for a moment, as if the woman was thinking things over, followed by the muffled thud of a gas-propelled dart. I heard glass shatter, metal clang, and something go thump. I strained to open my eyes, struggled to see what had happened, but found that I couldn’t quite break through. I heard the woman say, “Asshole,” and felt darkness drag me down.
But I floated to the surface now and again, snatched whatever sensation was handy, and carried it with me. I felt movement, heard laughter, smelled feces, felt cold, tasted water, and experienced pain. Lots of pain. Pain from
