Ben said remember. But he couldn’t remember any specific time in the sims. He could remember an examiner giving him his C-3. He could remember the first time he’d Men me boards. Remembered pushing beams at Sol. Supervisor had said all right, he could do that: he was under age, but they needed somebody who wouldn’t ram a mass into the station hull. His head was bandaged, his ribs were. His knees ached like hell, he thought because he had hit the counter, trying to hit the button, but he wasn’t sure of anything. You blinked and you got green numbers and lines, and if you followed them too far you never came back. Midrange focus. Back it up, all the way inside.
There’d been an accident and the ship had blown up. And his partners were dead. Or maybe never existed. It was a sim. Bright ball of nuclear fire. And he was here and they were in it, and it was all green glowing lines out there, whipping and snaking to infinity.
He remembered faces now. People he thought he liked— Bird. Meg and Sal. Cory, and Graff. Pete and Elly and Falcone. Faces. Voices. Falcone yelling, Hey, Dek, see you tomorrow.
But Falcone wouldn’t. Elly wouldn’t. They never would.
“You damn bastards!” he yelled. “Bastards!”
Interns came running, grabbed hold of him. “No,” he said, reminded what happened when he yelled. “No. Tommy!”
“Get the hypo,” one said, and he got a breath, he got a little sanity, said, “I’m not violent. I don’t need it. It’s all right. Let go, dammit! Get the doctor!”
They eased up. They stopped bruising his arms and just held him still.
“Just be quiet, sir. Just be quiet.”
“No shots. No damn shots.”
“Doctor’s orders, sir.”
“I don’t need one. I swear to you, I don’t need one.”
“Doctor says you’re not getting any rest, sir. You better have it. Just to be sure.”
He looked the intern in the face. Big guy, red face and freckles, lying across him. Out of breath. So was he. And two other large guys who were leaning on him and holding his legs.
“Sorry,” he said, between breaths. “Don’t want to give you guys trouble. I really don’t want to. I just don’t want any shot right now.”
“Sorry, too, sir. Doctor left orders. You don’t want to be any trouble. Right?”
“No,” he said. He shook his head. He made up his mind he had better change tactics. Agreeing with them got him out of this place. It would. It had. He couldn’t remember. It was only the drugs he had to worry about.
“Just hold still, sir. All right?”
“Yeah,” he said, and the hypo kicked against his arm. Stung like hell. His eyes watered.
He said, “You fuckin’ get off me. I can’t breathe. Let me up, dammit.”
“Soon’s you shut your eyes, sir. Just be quiet. You loosened a couple of John’s teeth yesterday. You remember?”
He didn’t remember. But he said, out of breath, “I’m sorry. Sorry about that. I’m better. A lot better.”
“That’s good, sir.”
“Friend of mine was here,” he said. But the drug was gathering thick about his brain. He said it again, afraid he might not remember when he waked. Or that it hadn’t happened at all.
He went to sleep when they drugged him and he waked up and he never knew where or when. He was going out now. He felt it happening. And he was scared as hell where he would wake up or what would be true or where the lines would lead him.
“Ben,” he cried, “Bird. Ben, come back— Ben, don’t go— they killed my partners, Ben, they fuckin’ killed us—“
“This isn’t validated,” the check-in clerk said, and slid the travel voucher across the desk in the .6 g of 8-deck. “You need an exit stamp.”
Ben took the voucher with a sinking heart. “What exit stamp? Nobody said anything about an exit stamp. There’s no exit stamp in the customs information.”
“It’s administrative, sir. Regulation. I have to have a stamp/’
“God. Look, call Sol One.”
“You do that from BaseCom,” the clerk said. And added without expression: “But you need an authorization from your CO to do that, sir.”