“The colonel’s office,” Porey said, shortly, and motioned him curtly to come along.
Quiet in the cell block, deathly quiet for a while. Then someone yelled: “Hey, Pauli.”
“Yeah?”
“You know that five you owe me?”
“Yeah?”
“Cancel it. You got that sumbitch.”
“That sumbitch is in here!” another voice yelled. “That sumbitch is going to whip you good, Basrami!”
“Yeah, you got a big chance of doing that, Charlie-boy.
How was dessert?”
“Your guy can’t navigate an aisle! What’s he good for, him and his fe-male pi-luts? Couple of Belter whores, what
I hear—“
Dekker stood at the bars, white-knuckled, Ben could see it from where he sat. From down the aisle Meg’s high, clear voice. “You a pi-lut, cher, or a mouth?”
“You come in here to save Dekker’s ass? Bed’s what you’re for, honey. It’s where you better stay.”
Ben winced. Meg’s voice:
“Fuck yourself, Charlie-boy, but don’t fuck with me. What are you, a tech or a pilot?”
“Pilot, baby, and you better stay to rock-picking. You’re
out of your league.”
Chorus of derision from one side of the cell-block. Shouts from the other. Dekker hit the cross-bar with his fist, muscle standing hard in his jaw, and from down the row, Meg
shouted:
“You got a bet, Charlie-boy.”
Wasn’t any way she wouldn’t take a challenge like that. Her and Sal. Ben felt his gut in a knot, saw Dekker lean his head against the bars, not saying anything, that was the danger signal in Dekker. And somebody down the row yelled,
“Hey, Dekker! You hearing this?”
Shouting over the top of it. Dekker had to answer, had to, way the rules worked, and Ben held his breath and crawled off the bunk, not sure what he was going to do if Dekker blew.
“Dekker? You hear?”
Man couldn’t talk. Ben added those numbers fast, yelled out: “He’s ignoring you, mouth! You’re boring.”
“Funny he had a lot to say when Chad bought it! That right, Dekker? That right?”
Ben shoved his arm, not hard. Dekker was frozen. Hard as ice. Staring into nothing. Other guys were yelling. Something hit the middle of the aisle and rattled to a stop. And Dekker looked like a guy hit in the gut, wasn’t saying anything, wasn’t defending himself, was letting others do it. Another shove wasn’t going to push him into thinking. God only knew what it might do. He had the look of a man on the edge of cracking and Ben didn’t know what to do with him, he didn’t know how to answer the catcalls and the shouting that was going on, he hoped to hell for the MPs to come in and break it up. Wasn’t any more from Meg. He could hear Sal’s voice in the middle of it, but he had a desperate feeling he was in a cell with half a problem and Sal had the other half…
“Hey, Custard Charlie,” somebody yelled. “You want to run the sims full hours? Take you on.”
That was a hit. Belters tagged you and you stayed tagged until you burned it off—and then it could come back years later.
“Take you on, take Dekker and his women on, any day, any day—what about it, Dekker? You got a voice, pretty-boy? Where’s your ladies?”
‘Ladies’ included one UDC shave-head in the mix, Ben figured, but he wasn’t going to get into it, wasn’t his business, wasn’t going to win a thing.
But Dekker came alive then, shouting, “We got enough of that Attitude, mister, we got too damn many dead with that Attitude. I liked Chad, you hear me, you son of a bitch? I liked him all right, it was your own CO set him up.” Dekker’s voice cracked. He wasn’t doing highly well right now, but at least the jaw had come unwired. He hit his fist on the bars, turned around and said to the ceiling or the walls, Ben didn’t think it was to him, “God, they’re making me crazy—they’re trying to make me crazy.”
Wouldn’t touch that line, Ben told himself, and held his breath, just stood out of the way while Dekker walked the length of the cell and back.