“Moebius finance,” Demas said. “These groups survive on fund-raising. Particularly their executives and staff. How could these people survive without each other?”
Completely paranoid.
“The enemy of my enemy,” Demas said, and took the bottle up, “threatens both our livelihoods. And of course the Fleet is innocent in this game. Earth’s parliaments and congresses understand Mazian. Mazian gains command of R&D. Of Sol Two. God, one wonders what traded hands.”
Graff thought privately, and dared not say, even to them: Our integrity. Our command. Mazian was going to fill the captaincies with his choices—
Porey among the first.
Fingers felt all right. Wasn’t sure about the ownership of the hand, though. Schitzy experience, that was. Meg held her eye from blinking with one set of fingers and tried to apply the pencil without blinding herself—Dek had been kind enough to make a supplies run from the quarters to the lab-dorm, only thing she’d asked of him last night: Get our makeup, God, we got to look like hell—
“Dek was a skosh bizzed last night,” she said to Sal, who was putting earrings in, stealing a bit of mirror past her shoulder. “Don’t you think?”
“Man’s doing all right.”
“You?”
You had to catch Sal like that, blindside. Sal met her eyes in the mirror, wide-open.
“So, Aboujib?”
Sal said, scowling, “Scared as I hoped to be, give me a damn field of Where-is-its? and a: Some of these things are rocks, Aboujib, and some of these things are missiles? I never memmed a field faster in my damned life—“
“Pass?”
“Hey. I didn’t have a heart attack. —Kady, I got seriously to talk to you about your sojer lessons. They’re severely real, these sumbitches.”
She would have turned around. But mirrors was the best place to catch Sal. “Truth, Aboujib. You want to go back to tile Hamilton?”
She saw the hesitation. The little nip of a lower Up. “Without?”
And had this moment with her heart up in her throat. She’d passed, dammit, they’d told her. Finally got a chance at a ship and a guy she got on with, and, dammitall, here was Sal pulling in the other direction, she saw it plain.
And it was a lot of hours with Sal, a lot of bad times and a lot of good, but on the other hand there was Dek—there was Dek, who—God….
Sal’s frown had gone. The lower lip rolled out in a rueful sulk. “I dunno, Kady, I dunno how you talk me into these things.”
“Aboujib, come serious. You want to be back there.”
“I tell you what. I want, I seriously want, a little damn couple finesses on that simulation. They got no them-check, there’s not a damn interset macro in there—maybe they been getting this thing from Shepherd types. Ought to ask a freerunner about rocks, Kady, ought to ask us how not to go boom in a fire-track—“
“I’m not asking that.’’
“Well, I’m not the hell going back to the Hamilton. Leave you here with the guys?” Frivolous. Deliberate. The mask was back and Aboujib’s long eyes were half-lidded. ‘7 lay you bets, Kady.” Flick of a nail against a large earring. “Ben didn’t flunk that mama. Not our Ben. Scare hell out of him the way they did me—and they get a class A per-for-mance. So with this child. Miner nerves, here. Don’t tell me fire-track. They’re saying I got to set up the positional? Somebody else is going to have his finger on the fire-button? Shit-all. I want the guns, Kady.”
“Effin’ right I passed, Dek-boy. No question I’d pass if I wanted to. Ap-ti-tuded, hell, they put me in armscomp, are you satisfied?”
Dekker wasn’t. He sincerely didn’t want that. He watched Ben shaving in this dormitory the labs afforded their test subjects and kept his chilled hands in his pockets.
“Sorry doesn’t cover it. I know. But—“
Ben looked around at him. “You’re worried, Dek-boy. Tell me why you’re worried.”
He wasn’t sure he ought to say that either—since Ben didn’t know; since self-doubt was the deadliest creature you could take into the program. The program was full of egos. Ben’s was fairly healthy.
“So what’s the matter?” Ben prodded him.