“And where do I get that?” You didn’t yell at clerks. It didn’t get you anything to yell at clerks. Ben said quietly, restrainedly: “My CO’s on Sol One—I need the UDC officer in charge.”
“This is a Fleet transport voucher.”
“I know it is,” Ben said. “But this uniform is UDC. Is it at all familiar to you? Where’s the UDC officer in charge?”
The clerk got a confused look, and focused behind him, where someone had come into the office, to stand in line was Ben’s initial reckoning; but whoever it was said, then, “Lt. Pollard?”
Voice he’d heard before. A long time ago. He turned around, a little careful in the .6g, saw a blue uniform and a black pullover, a thin, angular face and nondescript pale hair. Brass on the collar.
The trip out from the Belt. The Hamilton. And Jupiter’s well.
Graff. Fleet Lt. Jurgen Graff. Carrier pilot, junior grade.
“There’s an office free,” Graff said, meaning very evidently they should go there. Now. Urgently. A Fleet lieutenant wanted to talk to him, and he was stuck on Fleet orders in something that increasingly felt like a deliberate black hole?
“I’ve got a flight out of here at 1800. They’re talking about an exit stamp. I need some kind of clearance.”
“You don’t have a flight out of here. Not this one.”
He slowed down, so that Graff had to pull a stop and look at him. “Sir. I need this straightened out, with apologies, sir, but I’ve got a transfer order waiting for me back on Sol One, I was told not to communicate with my CO, I’m not Fleet personnel. I understand the interservice agreements, but—“
“Five minutes.”
“I’m UDC personnel. I want to see a UDC ranking officer. Sir. Now.”
“Five minutes,” Graff repeated. “You don’t want your friend screwed. Do you?”
“My friend— Sir, I don’t care what happens to my friend. I’ve got an appointment waiting for me back on Sol One, and if I lose it, I’m screwed. I’m just a little uneasy about this whole damn arrangement, —sir. This isn’t what I was told.”
“There’s another shuttle out the 22nd. 2100 hours.”
Ben caught a breath. Three days. But Graff’s moves meant business and you didn’t argue a security matter on the open dock—no. Even if it was blackmail. Extortion. Kidnapping.
Graff waited. He came ahead. He went with Graff into a freight office and Graff waved the lights on.
“Yes, sir?” he said.
“We need him,” Graff said. “We need him to remember.”
“Sir, I just graduated from TI. If I’m not back there for the interviews they’re going away. They’re going to assign those slots and I’m stuck teaching j-1 programming to a class full of wide-eyed button-pushers, —sir. Excuse me, but I’ve not been in contact with any officer in my chain of command, I’ve gone along with this on the FSO’s word it had notified my CO. I’m not sure at this point I’m not AWOL.”
“You’re not. You’re cleared.”
“I’ve got your word on that. I haven’t seen any order but the one that had me report to the FSO on One. What have you done to me?”
“You have my word. I’ll get a message to your CO.”
“You mean they haven’t?”
“I’ll double check. We’ve played poker, haven’t we, Mr. Pollard?”
“Yes, sir.” Days of poker. Him. Dekker. Graff. No damn thing else to do on a half-built carrier.
“This is poker,” Graff said. “For the major stakes. How is he?”
“What does it matter? What’s he into?”
“Say I need him sane.”
“He’s never been sane.”
“Don’t joke like that. In some quarters they might take you seriously.”
“I am serious. The guy’s good, but his tether on reality’s just a little frayed.”
“Maybe that’s what it takes to do what he does.”
He stood there close to Graff, looking into Graff’s sober face in this very unofficial office and suddenly wondering who and what Graff was talking about and what Dekker did regularly do that had put him where he was. He said, carefully, “Dekker got lost out in the Belt. Banged around a lot. Real disoriented.”
“We know that.”