He wanted to tell Meg no; and he wanted to believe that was the answer; but he couldn’t. He handed off at the lift, waited for them.
Sal said, “Dek, we’ll get it. Trez bitch, that machine. But we’ll get it, no problem.”
“Yeah.” First word he’d been able to get out. He punched the lift for exit level, snatched back a shaking hand toward his pocket.
Meg was looking at him, they all were, and he didn’t want to meet their eyes. He stared at the lift controls instead, watched the buttons light, listened to the quiet around him, just the lift thumping on the pressure seals.
“So?” Tanzer asked, on the phone; “Does this mean a runaround or does it mean you’ve found an answer to my question?”
“There is an answer, colonel. Negative. The orders come from outside this base. We cannot change policy.”
‘ ‘Policy, is it? Policy? Is that what we call it now, when nobody at this base can answer questions? What do you know, lieutenant? Anything?”
Graff censored what he knew, and what he thought, and said quietly, “I repeat, I’ve relayed your objections. They’ve been rejected. That’s the answer I have to convey, colonel, I’m sorry.”
“Damn you,” Tanzer said, and hung up.
He hung up. He sat for a long few moments with his hands folded in front of his lips and tried to think reasonably. No, he could not call the captain. FleetCom went through Porey now. No, he would not go running to his crew—and maybe that was pride and maybe it was distrust of his own reasoning at the moment. He was not command track. He was not in charge of policy. He was not in authority over this base, not in authority over strategy, and not in the decision loop that included the captain, who somehow, in some degree, had to know what was going on here—at least so far as Demas and Saito had said: they’d warned Keu, they’d pleaded with him, and Keu—had refused to rein Mazian back, had let Mazian make his promises and his assignments.
So what was there to say? The captain had refused to disapprove Porey’s command. The captain had refused Demas, refused Saito… who was he, to move Keu to do anything? Perhaps the captain was more farsighted, or more objective, or better informed.
Or more indifferent.
Porey was aware of Dekker’s problem? And Porey shoved Dekker and a novice crew toward mission prep?
Bloody damned hell\
“You blew it,” Porey said.
“Yessir,” Dekker said on a breath. “No excuses.”
“ ‘No excuses.’ I told you I wouldn’t hear excuses, and I wouldn’t hear ‘sorry.’ You’re the pilot, you had the say, if you weren’t ready you had no mortal business taking them in there.”
“Yessir.”
Porey’s hand came down on the desk. He jumped.
“Nerves, Mr. Dekker. What are you going to do about it?”
“Get my head straight, sir.”
Second blow of Porey’s hand. “You’re a damned expensive failure, you know that?”
You didn’t argue with Porey. The lieutenant had warned him. But too damned many people had told him that.
“I’m not a failure, sir.”
“Was that a success? Was taking trainees into mat sim and screwing them up a success?’
“No, sir.”
“Nothing’s the matter with you physically. The meds found nothing wrong with you. It’s in your head, Dekker. What did you claim after Wilhelmsen cracked up? That you knew better? Do you still know better?”
“Yessir.”
“Can you do the run he did?”
“Yessir.”
“You’re no use to me screwed up, you are no damned use, mister. I’ve got other crews. I’ve got other pilots. And let me tell you, if you don’t straighten yourself out damned fast, we’ve got one more way to salvage you. We’ve got one more tape we can use, which I haven’t, because you said you were better, because the techs said untrained personnel were better on tape, but if you’re no other good to anyone, Dekker, then we might just as well put you right down in that lab and input what might improve your performance. You know what I’m talking about?”
He guessed. He managed to say, “Yessir.”