Bird whispered, “Hush. Hush, boy. So they’re lying. Don’t make trouble, if you have any hope of getting that license back.”

He didn’t remember he’d told Bird about his license. He couldn’t even remember how long he’d been sitting here, except his hand stung, which told him how long ago he’d hit Bird. Holes in his memory, the doctors said. Brain damage…

“Whatever’s happened,” Bird said quietly, still holding his arm, leaning close, “—whatever’s happened, son, we’re not against you. We want to help you. All right?”

He was alone in this place, he didn’t know anybody on R2 but Bird and Ben, a handful of doctors and Tommy. He sat there with Bird holding his wrist and keeping him anchored in reality, or he might go floating off right now. Bird said he wanted to help. Nobody else would, here; Belters didn’t; and he couldn’t get back to Rl—couldn’t go back home without Cory even if they’d send him. Their friends would say, Why did you let her die? Why didn’t you do something? And all those letters waiting from her mother…

“Guy’s gone,” the woman’s voice said.

“He’s on something.” Bird shook his arm. “Dekker, you on drugs?”

“Hospital,” he said. He was staring at something. He could see a haze. He had no idea why he was staring, or how he was going to come unlocked and move again, except if Bird would realize he was in trouble and bring him back…

Bird said, “Dekker?”

“Yeah?”

“Look, where are you staying?”

That question required some thinking. It brought the room a little clearer. “I don’t know,” he said, asking himself if it mattered at all. But Bird shook at his arm, saying, “Listen. You’re pretty fuzzed. How are you set? You got any funds?”

He tried to think about that, too. Recalled the 60-day delay—when he’d been on R2 longer than that, dammit, and he didn’t know why the bank had waited til he got out of hospital to start transferring his account. He had no idea how he’d even bought the beers a while back. He had no idea how 500-odd dollars had arrived in his account—whether it was his, or whether he just didn’t remember…

Bird said, “We could put you up a few days—not that we owe you, understand? Let’s be clear on that. But I don’t really blame you for coming in here mad, either. Maybe we can work something out, put the arm on a few guys that might help, you understand what I’m saying?”

It sounded better than Pranh or the rest of them had offered, better than the cops had given him. Bird had always seemed decent—Bird was the one who’d told him about the ‘driver.

“Out there,” he whispered, trying to turn his head and look Bird in the eyes to gauge his reaction, but he couldn’t manage the movement: “Out there—you saw. You remember what happened…”

Bird closed down harder on his wrist, numbing his fingers, hurting his arm, reminding him Bird had another face. “Better you concentrate on where you’re going, son, and not think about anything else. You can’t help your partner now. She’s gone. Best you can do is get yourself clear. You think about it. Your Cory would want you to use your head, wouldn’t she? She’d want you to be all right. Isn’t that what she’d say?”

That made him mad. Nobody had a right to put words in Cory’s mouth. She’d hate it like hell. But he couldn’t get back from where he was. He said, staring off into nowhere, “Screw you, Bird.”

“Yeah, well,” Bird said. “Try to help a guy—”

Another hand landed on his arm, pulled him around until he was looking at brown eyes, shaved head, dark red crest—rab, radrab, Shepherd or whatever she was, he didn’t know. He was fascinated—wary, too. He’d been rab once. But Cory hadn’t approved—Cory was too frugal, too Martian to waste money, she’d say, or to waste effort on the system, even screwing it.

That senator—Broden—saying, when they’d opened fire on the emigration riots—”No deals with the lawless rabble—”

Newsflashes, when he’d been—what? Ten? Twelve? First real political consciousness he’d ever had, seeing people shot down, blood smeared on glass doors…

Rab style and rabfad was one thing. Shepherds wore it modified, he guessed because it annoyed the exec, and they would. But this one, extreme as she was, with marks of age around her eyes—”You’re from Sol Station,” the woman said. “Right?”

“Yeah.”

She stared at him a long time. It felt like a long time. She might be thinking of trouble. Finally she said, her hand having replaced Bird’s on his wrist without his realizing. “Severely young, severely stupid, cher juene fils. Company’ll chew you up. Bird’s all right. If Bird’s telling you, you do. Or are you looking for MamBitch to save you? That’s fool. That’s sincerely primefool, petty cher.”

Rabspeak, from years ago. From before Cory. From a whole different life. Rabfad had turned into respectable fast-fad, except if you didn’t get it out of the trend shops, except if you were truly one of the troublemakers—

Dress like that on helldeck was a statement—a code he couldn’t cipher anymore, not what the colors were, what the earrings said, what the shave-job tied you to… like this woman, who looked him in the eyes and talked to him—as if she saw what he had been before Cory—a damned fool wearing colors and politics he hadn’t then known the meaning of—

A stupid kid, skuzzing around the station, no aims, nothing but mad and trouble on his mind—screw the system, make trouble, get high on the outside chance of getting caught—

He’d been so smart then, he’d known everything, known so much he’d gotten himself arrested, tracked into the System as a juvie Out of Parental Control—himself and his mother tagged for deportation to the well, til his mother paid everything she’d saved to get them both bailed out.

(God, Paul, you’ve been nothing but a disaster to me, you’ve done nothing but cost me from the time I knew I was carrying you—)

They’d put him in a youth program, special studies, writing letters to kids on Mars—

My name is Cory. I live at Mars Base…

“Hear me, jeune rab? Do you read?”

He said, “Yeah. I hear you.”

“Good,” Meg said, patted his face and looked away, at someone else. “Kid’s gone out. Beer’s not a good idea.”

Someone else came up close beside him. He could hear the footsteps. “Not doing real well, is he?”

He didn’t know that voice.

“Kid’s a little buzzed.” That was Bird. Something hit his face. Jolted him. “Dek-me-lad, pay attention. This here’s Mike Arezzo, owns The Hole.—Kid’s had a bad break. Just out of hospital.”

“This is the guy, huh?”

He could see this Mike when Mike moved back past Meg’s shoulder. But he couldn’t recognize him. He was only sure of Bird.

Then there was another voice he knew. “What in hell’s going on here?”

His heart turned over. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t think. Ben was on him, saying, “Call the cops, get this guy out of here…” and Bird said, “Calm down, Ben, just calm down.”

Ben was going to kill him.. He still couldn’t move.

Another voice said, clear and female, “Dekker, huh?”

Dark-skinned face. Hand holding his jaw, turning his head, making him look her in the eyes.

“Skuzzed out,” the dark woman said. She had a thousand braids, clipped with metal. She was right. He was entirely skuzzed out. He said, dim last try at sanity, “Trank. Hospital. Beer.”

She said: “Fool.”

Jack Malinski had grabbed Ben’s arm, him and Sal out shopping the ‘deck, just walking home; Malinski had said, “Ben, some guy just pasted your partner down at The Hole, talking wild about that ship you got—”

He’d run. He’d outright run, getting here, Sal racing along with him—gotten here out of breath. He’d thought it was some guy mad about the lease-list. But they got to the door of The Hole and it was Dekker, no question—Dekker, sitting in a chair at their regular table, and Bird getting up to grab his arm and pull him aside before he hit the bastard. “I got to talk to you,” Bird said, and when he said it that way, Ben had this sinking feeling he knew exactly what Bird was going to say in private, Bird with his damned stupid guilt about that ship.