Ben said, “Not fair, man’s not up to this.”

Dekker looked as if he wanted holding on his feet, as was. But Dekker said, “Going to try for that tape, Ben. You want to test in?”

He threw a shocked look back at the doors, where roomfuls of walking dead were flying nonexistent ships. “To that? No way in hell. Non-com-ba-tant, do you read? No way the UDC is risking my talent in a damn missile. I’ll test for data entry before I do that—”

“What’s Stockholm got?” Sal asked. “They say Pell’s got a helldeck puts Sol to shame. Got eetees and everything.”

“Yeah?” He was unmoved. “I’ve seen pictures. Can’t be that good in bed.”

“Got real biostuffs, just like Earth. There’s Pell, there’s Mariner Station—”

“Yeah, there’s Cyteen going to blow us to hell or turn us into robots. Don’t need to go to Cyteen—our own service is trying to do it to us...”

Seriously gave him the willies, that did. Get into his mind and teach him which keys to push, would it?

A programmer didn’t need any damned help like that.

No answer, no answer, and no answer. Graff was beyond worrying. He was getting damned mad. And there was no place to trust but the carrier’s bridge, with the security systems engaged—but workmen had been everywhere, the UDC had very adept personnel as capable of screwing up a system as their own techs were of unscrewing it—and it was always a question, even here, who was one up on whom. “I know the captain knows about Dekker,” he said to Saito and Demas and Thieu—age-marked faces all; and the only reassurance he had. “Pollard, Aboujib, Kady all shipped in here—you’d think if he is moving them, they’d be couriering something, a message, two words from the captain—”

“Possibly,” Saito said, over the rim of her coffee cup, “he feared some shift of loyalty. Dekker is the key point. None of them have met in over a year. Friends and lovers fall out. And Pollard is UDC.”

“They came. Dekker’s leavetaking with Kady was— passionate to say the least. Pollard joined him here. Protocol says none of this is significant?”

“They’re not merchanter. That’s not what’s forming here.”

Puzzles, at the depth of things. Silence from the captain, when a word would have come profoundly welcome. He looked at Demas, he looked at Armsmaster Thieu, he looked at Saito. Com One. If Victoria spoke officially, it was Saito’s voice. If the Fleet spoke to Union or to blue-skyers, it was Saito, who made a study of words, and customs, and foreign exactitudes—and psychologies and expectations.

“What is forming?”

Saito shrugged. “That’s the question, isn’t it? I only point out—you can’t take our social structure as the end point of their evolution. Blue-skyers and Belters alike— their loyalties are immensely complex. Ship and Family don’t occur here. Only the basis for them. Difficult to say what they’d become.”

“Prehistory,” Demas murmured.

“Prejudice?” Saito asked softly.

“Not prejudice: just there’s no bridge between the cultures. The change was total. Their institutions are seminal to ours. But they don’t need kinships, they don’t need to function in that context. Their ancestors did. We’ve pulled our resource out of the cultural matrix—”

“Matrices. Wallingsfordian matrices.”

God, they were off on one of their arguments, splitting theoretical hairs. Demas was a hobbyist, and the carrier’s bulletin board had a growing collection of Demas’ and Saito’s observations on insystem cultures. He hadn’t come shipside for Wallingsfordians versus Kiimer or Emory.

“Saito. Is the captain setting up something you know about?”

A very opaque stare. “I’d tell you.”

“Unless you had other orders. Has the captain been in contact with you? Am I being set up?”

A moment more that Saito looked at him and never a flinch. “Of course not.”

CHAPTER 8

HARD day?” Villanueva asked, at the dessert bar, “Could say.” The one claim you could make for Earth’s vicinity was more varieties of sweet and spice than a man could run through in a year. And Graff personally intended to try during his tenure here—a tenure in which combat was beginning to look preferable. “What’s this one?” he asked of the line worker, but Villy said, “Raisin cake. Allspice, cinnamon, sugar, nutmeg—” “You have it down,” Graff was fencing. He was sure Villy wasn’t here entirely for the dessert. He didn’t want the lecture. He didn’t want the inquiry. He was, however, amazed at Villy’s culinary expertise.

Villy shrugged. “You guys always ask. —How’s Dekker doing?”

“All right till the colonel clipped him.” He weighed asking. He couldn’t stand the suspense. “Did he send you?”

Hesitation. “Could say that.”

“What’s he after?”

“He’s saying put the boy back into lower levels. Use Mitchell’s crew, use me and mine. He says he takes your point, no command substitutions, no crew subs until we get this thing operating.”

“Why doesn’t he make his own offers?”

“Seems us pi-luts talk better to each other, at least where it concerns capabilities. You want the truth—I suggested he lay off the substitutions.”

“Wish you could have done that earlier.”

Villanueva gave him a look back. “Truth is, I did.”

Graff picked up his tray and tracked Villy to the tables in the officers’ mess, said, “Do you mind?” and sat down opposite him before he had an answer.

“Be my guest,” Villy said.

There had to be looks from other tables, assessing their expressions, the length of their converse. Graff said, urgently, “It’s no deal, Villy. I can’t. Your colonel’s got no right to pull him—”

Do him credit, Villy didn’t even try to defend the technicality. “Mitchell’s crew and mine. No subs. When Dekker passes the medicals and the reaction tests—ask the colonel then. He’ll put him back on. Just wait till the boy quiets. For his own sake. For the program’s.”

“Whose medicals? Yours or ours?”

Villy evidently hadn’t considered that point. “I’ll talk to the colonel. Maybe we can arrange something. We can’t afford another set-back. You know it and I know it. We’ve got to pull this thing together before we lose it.”

“I’m willing. But I want the heat o/Dekker’s tail. The kid’s had enough.”

“No argument here.”

A bite of cake. Time to reflect. “Captain Villy, —do you personally know what happened in the pod access?”

Villy didn’t answer that one straightaway either. “If I knew it was us I wouldn’t say. If I didn’t know anything, I wouldn’t have an answer. What does that tell you?”

“You dance well.”

Villy laughed, not with much humor. Tapped the table with his finger. “We got the senatorial and the techs out of here. We’ve got the program back in our hands. We’re not going to get another design. That’s the word.”

First he’d heard. Had they won one? “No redesign?”

“That’s the whisper going down the line. Heard it from the Old Man, We don’t get the AI. Rumor is, we’re going for another run in the sims, try to build a stricter no-do into the pilot, not the machine.”

Graff leaned back, heart thumping. Took a breath. He couldn’t tell whether Villanueva was happy with that situation or not. “So what’s your opinion?”

“Go with it. That’s what I’m saying. Your best. And ours. We try to set the tape, best we can. Then we fly with it. —You won it, J-G. Enjoy it.”

The nickname was traveling. And he wasn’t sure he’d won anything: he’d gotten extremely wary of concessions from Tanzer’s office. But Villy said:

“We’re not happy with the situation—I don’t trust your tape-teaching, and that’s evidently what they’re leaning on, heavier and heavier. I don’t like the damn system, I still don’t think drugging down and walking through any situation is any cure for some kid hitting his personal wall—we can’t guarantee your reflexes, or mine, are going to be in every guy that’s ever going to run through this program.”