see to Neill.
A blow at his legs staggered him and Neill and Deirdre moved all at once as
Curran tackled him from behind and weighed him down.
He twisted, struck where he had a moment’s leverage, over and over again—almost
flung himself up, but a wrench at his hair jerked him hard onto his back and
they had him pinned. “Out of it,” Neill ordered someone. “Out.” He kept up the
struggle, blind and wild, hunting any leverage, anything. “Look out.”
A blow smashed across his jaw, for a moment absorbing all his wit, a deep black
moment without organization: he knew they had his arms pinned, and his
coordination was gone.
“Look at me,” a male voice was saying. A shake at his hair, a hand slapping his
face and steadying it “You want to use sense, Stevens? What about the keys?”
There was blood in his mouth. He figured they would hit him again. He heaved to
get a hand loose.
A second blow.
“Stop it,” Neill’s voice. “Curran, stop it.”
Again the hand shook at his face. He was blind for the moment, everything lost
in dark. “You want to think it over, Stevens?”
He tried to move. The blood was shut off from his right hand; the left had life
in it. He heaved on that side, but the lighter weight on that arm was still
enough. “Curran.” That was Deirdre. “Curran, he’s out—stop it.”
A silence. His eyes began to clear. He stared into Curran’s bloody face, Neill
and Deirdre’s bodies in the corner of his eyes, holding onto his arms. “You
shouldn’t have hit him like that,” Neill said. “Curran, stop, you hear me, or
I’ll let him loose.”
Curran let go of his face. Stared down at him.
“He’s not going to give us anything,” Deirdre said. “We’ve got trouble, Curran.
Neill’s right”
“He’ll give it to us.”
“Curran, no.”
“What do you want, let him up, let him back at controls where he can do what we
can’t undo? No. No way. You’re right, we’ve got trouble.”
Sandor gave a heave, sensing a loosening of Deirdre’s arms. It failed; the hold
enveloped his arm, yielding, but holding. “Get Allison,” he said, having
difficulty talking. And then he recalled it was her door they were outside. She
might have heard it; and stayed out of it. The realization muddled through him
in the same tangled way as other impressions, painful and distant. “What do we
do?” Neill asked. “For God’s sake what do we do?”
“I think maybe we’d better get Allison,” Deirdre said.
“No,” Curran said. “No.” He took hold again of Sander’s bruised jaw. “You hear
me. You hear me. You’re thinking how to get rid of us, maybe; not the law—that’s
not your way, is it? Thinking of having an accident—like maybe others have had
on this ship. We’ll find you a comfortable spot; and we’ve got all the time we
like. But we’re coming to an agreement one way or the other. We’re having a look
at the records. At comp. At every nook and cranny of this ship. And maybe if we
don’t like what we find, we just call Mallory out there and turn you over to the
military. You can yell foul all you like: you think that’ll make a difference if
we swear to the contrary? Your word against ours—and what’s yours worth without
ours to back it? They’d chew you up and swallow you down—you think not?
He started shivering, not from fear, from shock: he was numb, otherwise, except
for a small quick area of shame. They picked him up off the floor and had to
hold him up for the moment; he got his feet under him, did nothing when Curran
grabbed his arm and pushed him into the wall. Then he hit, once and proper.
Curran hit the wall and came back off it. “No,” Neill yelled, and got in the way
of it. And suddenly Allison was there, the door open, and everything stopped
where it was.
No shock. Nothing of the kind. Sandor stared at her, a reproach.
“Sorry,” Curran said in a low voice. “Things seem to have gotten out of hand.”