“Yeah.”
“Hell of a bruise coming,” Sal muttered.
Dekker set his jaw again, didn’t exactly say go to hell, but that was the look he gave, along with the impression he might not be in control of his voice right now. When Dekker shut up, you either kept a grip on him or you got out of his way. So he kept his hand where it was, asked, civilly, “You still talking to him, Meg?” ,
“Wasn’t his fault, Ben.” Mistake. Meg sounded shaky herself, Meg had evidently gotten clipped worse than he thought, and that wobbly tone upset Dekker, he saw that. Dekker quit looking like a fight, just stared at the ceiling, gone moist-eyed and lock-jawed.
Great.
He gave Dekker another shove, risking explosion. “You want to, maybe, get a grip on it, Dek-boy? Or you want to schitz some more?’’
Dekker made a move for his wrist, not fast, just brushing him off. He let Dekker have his way, stood back and let Dekker sit up with his head down against his knees a moment, to wipe the embarrassment off his face.
“You know,” he said, pressing mat advantage, “you do got a serious problem, Dek. You busted Meg who’s trying to help you, the meds are bitching you’re pushing it too damned hard—you seriously got to get your head working » Dek-boy, and we got to have a talk. Meg, Sal, you want to leave him with me a minute?”
Dekker looked away, at the wall. Sal shoved Meg out of the room and Dekker didn’t look happy with the arrangement, didn’t look at him when the door shut, just sat in bed and stared elsewhere.
Towel on a chair. Ben got it and wrapped it around himself—wasn’t freezing his ass off, wasn’t matching physique with pretty-boy, either—wouldn’t effin’ be here arguing with him, except he was supposed to go back into pod-sims with a guy who couldn’t figure out what time it was.
“Just drop it,” Dekker said.
“Drop it, huh? Drop it? Wake me up in the Middle Of, and I should drop it? We’re getting back in that pod at 0900, I’m not seriously inclined to drop it!”
Dekker leapt up off the bed and shoved him. “Just fuck off! Fuck off, Ben, all right? —I’m resigning.”
Took a second for that to make sense. Didn’t look as if Dekker was going to shove him twice, didn’t look as if Dekker was anything but serious. Resign from the Fleet? You couldn’t. From the program? Moonbeam had cold feet of a sudden?
Serious problem here, damned serious problem, from a ; guy who had dragged him into this so deep he couldn’t see t out, whose neck he had every moral right to break already; Dekker was piling the reasons higher, except Dekker wasn’t exactly copacetic enough for a fight at the moment, and there were two women in the other room, primarily Meg, but Sal, too, who would take severe exception to his murdering the skuz.
“Resigning,” he echoed Dekker.
Dekker leaned an elbow against the wall, wiped his shave-job mop out of his eyes and muttered, “Before the sim. First thing I can get anybody on mainday.”
“When did this notion take you?”
Dekker’s jaw locked again, visibly. Knot of muscle. Nowhere stare. But you waited and it would unlock, sometimes in ways you didn’t want, but he waited. Dekker took a second swipe at his hair, and stood with his hand on the back of his neck.
“I haven’t got it, Ben, mat’s all. I’m schitzing out.”
“Yeah?” He wasn’t eager to climb into that pod with a lunatic, he didn’t know why in hell he had this urge to pull Dekker out of his funk and assure he was going to have to do that—it was instinct kept him here, to hold the seams of the partnership together, maybe, what they had right now being better than the hellish situation they could have. “Schitz I’m used to. You want to explain this new idea?”
“Doesn’t need explaining. I can’t cut it anymore. Can’t do it.”
“Nice of you.”
“Yeah.”
“Dekker, you are the absolute nicest son of a bitch I ever met, God, what do we do to deserve how nice you are? We are stuck in this fool’s outfit, they’re feeding us this damn experimental tape on account of they got it off your crew and you skuz out on us. Do you think they’re going to give up on the investment they got in us? —No, they’re going to put us out on the line with some only skosh saner fool and take stats on how long we take to make a fireball! Thanks, thanks ever-so for the big favor, Dek, and mercy for the vote of confidence, but you got to excuse us if we don’t all break into party, here.”