“Not at the cost,” Graff said, and looked left at a sound that in no wise belonged in this place. “Saito, —“
“Medicinal,” Saito said. The bottle. Saito had just uncapped broke five regulations Graff could think of immediately: it was glass, it was private property in an ops area storage, it was liquid, it was alcoholic and it probably hadn’t passed local customs.
It was, however, null-stopped, and Saito sailed it his direction. “You’re not on call. Jean-Baptiste is on the line, we’re still on stand-down. You need your sleep and your morality won’t let you. So join the rest of us and turn it in.”
“So where do you do that? Fleet HQ? There must be a waiting line. It seems a damned busy traffic this year.”
“There’s nothing we can do. No help to the boy, ruining yourself. If we were attacked this instant you’re worthless. Best you know it beyond a doubt.”
He took a sip and made a face at the sting; and in the midst of his indignation, realized flavors still evolving on his tongue, an unfolding sensory sequence, the way Earthly flavors tended to do—nothing simple. Nothing exactly quantifiable. From instant to instant he liked and loathed the taste. He found it significant that the sensory overload could reach even through his present mood to say it was rich, it was expensive, it was—if you could synthesize it—only one of endless variations on which a whole trade flourished— from a gravity well in which Conrad Mazian had been sunk for weeks.
“This place corrupts,” he murmured. “It’s the motherwell of corruption. When did we forget what we came here to prevent?”
“Take another, J-G. Edmund Porey is in charge of the people in charge of the tape. He brought the tape, he brought the applications techs. They’re officially Carina crew.”
“What are we fighting to keep away from? What in hell are we fighting to keep out of Sol System?”
Demas caught the bottle that drifted from his hands, took a sip and sent it on to Saito, third leg of their drift-skewed triangle. Demas said, “I earnestly recommend sleep, J-G. Perhaps a night of thorough debauch—we might manage that. There’s absolutely nothing else we can do.”
“We can help the boy. We can at least do something about his next-of ‘s situation.”
“Technically Ingrid Dekker is not, you know, next-of. Pollard is. Dekker explicitly took her out of mat status…”
“For her safety. He knows the situation. That’s why he didn’t call on her.”
Saito frowned, cradled the bottle in her arms. “I’ve been over and over the Dekker file. There is a remote possibility someone at Sol One leaked the story about Dekker’s accident. The information was at Sol One via FleetCom and one can never assume there was no leak. One hopes not. But it’s remotely possible she might have found out, and she may have learned about Salazar’s proceedings against her son. She might have taken action of her own—but there is that last, troubling letter from the mother to Dekker—in his file….”
“In which she tells him not to communicate? But he disregarded it.” . “He doesn’t know we monitor these things.”
“He should suspect. —You think she may have attacked MarsCorp, in revenge for her son?”
“Difficult. Difficult case. Neither Cory Salazar nor Dekker had a father of record—not an uncommon situation for Mars, much less so for Sol One. Sol’s still very tied to the motherwell. In all senses. Ingrid Dekker had a son. Had she named a father, tests would have established paternity. That man would have had financial and legal liability—under local law.”
“Possibility she didn’t know?”
“Possibility she didn’t know or didn’t want to say. It would extend legal rights to the child. She took full financial responsibility. She had the child—again, her choice.”
Graff frowned, revising attitudes. He had no idea who his own father was, but his mother had had a cheerful account of possibilities, all from one ship—who had not the least liability in the matter: not for him and not for his cousins of the same stopover. Who might even be half-sibs, but who cared?
Earth certainly did.
“Mother,” said Saito, “has nothing to do with ship-loyalty. Not in the least. Unitary family. He grew up in a two- or three-room apartment alone with one woman. No sibs, no cousins, no other kin—not an abnormal situation. Not the local ideal either.”