42
They tied Dekker's hands and blindfolded him, and then they plastered him, facedown, against a holdtight in a corner of the wall of the little air lock next to the control workstations. He didn't strive to get free. He might have done that, one way or another, but then what? He had too much to take in. He just listened to Toro Tanabe's ragged breathing, and to the conversations going on in the control chamber next to the lock, and he thought.
He didn't like his thoughts.
He could hear whisperings and murmurings as new people came into the room. He recognized some of the voices. Female voices. Annetta Bancroft's voice. Rima Consalvo's voice. Yen's voice. And the male voices of Jay-John Belster and Parker, the station chief.
He was not really surprised at any of the women; he had decided long since that Earthie women were a mystery past his understanding. What really astonished Dekker—shocked him—was that a Martian, a Martian, would so much as possess, much less ever threaten anyone else with, a gun. He could account for it in the case of an Earthified Martian like Jay-John Belster, perhaps, but even the station chief, even his boss, the very decent-seeming Jared Clyne—he didn't even count the Earthies like Yen Kupferfeld and Annetta Bancroft and the others—all of them seemed to take the use of a gun to keep Dekker DeWoe from doing anything they didn't desire as a perfectly normal exercise of authority.
When he felt a hand pulling him free, the next step, he expected, was to remove his blindfold and let him see again. It was. He blinked at the people before him. The station chief seemed to be gone, along with most of the Earthie men, but Belster and the three women were still there. "You're a pain in the ass, DeWoe," Belster said, reproaching him. "Why didn't you stay in the flare room the way you were supposed to?"
Dekker didn't answer that. Belster shrugged and passed the gun to Ven Kupferfeld. "He's all yours," he said. "We've got to get to the comm center."
"You heard the man." Ven grinned, waving the gun.
Dekker wasn't looking at the gun. He was looking at the two women he had made love with and the one he had known as a child. "You're crazy," he said. It wasn't a denunciation. It was the statement of a considered diagnosis.
"It's not what you think, Dekker," Annetta Bancroft said.
"I don't think it's just some simple cheating or selling test papers anymore, no," he agreed. "So what do I think, Annetta?"
She flushed. "Some violent scheme, I guess. Dropping a comet on Sunpoint or somewhere else on Mars—"
"No," he said positively, "I thought of that, but that couldn't be it. There are too many Martians here for that, and not even a psychotic like Jay-John Belster would do that. And it's not stealing a comet for the habitats, either, is it? So all that's left is that you're planning to bombard Earth."
"No!" Annetta said violently. "Nobody's going to get bombarded! Tell him, Ven."
Ven Kupferfeld shrugged. "Don't you think we've wasted enough time with this weakling?"
"Tell him!"
"Oh, all right. See, Dekker, I had hopes for you. You could have been useful to us," she said. "Not because of you. Because of that Queen Shit mother of yours; with you backing us up, it would have helped—afterward."
He looked around. Rima Consalvo was simply hanging there, apparently content to let the other two do the talking; Annetta Bancroft was biting her lip. "After what?" he demanded.
"It's the Japs," she said simply. "You know they're the ones who are making the trouble with their damn habitats. For you as much as for us. Maybe it's not too late for you to show some sense yet, quite. Don't you think you ought to help us stop them?"
Dekker blinked at her. "Stop them," he repeated wonderingly. But in order to stop them—
He closed his eyes, trying to shut out the images that came to him. He was remembering the way Chryse Planitia had looked when the first cometary fragments struck—empty Chryse Planitia. His stomach convulsed when he thought of such terrible violence repeated on Earth—on cities, human cities, containing the defenseless flesh of human beings—men, women, babies, everyone—smashed or incinerated as the ground itself erupted and boiled away, with molten droplets falling like hell's own rain for a hundred kilometers around. "You'll kill a billion people," he whispered, his lips dry.
"Oh, Dekker," Annetta sobbed, almost laughing, "do you think we'd do that? We're not going to let the comet strike, are we, Ven?"
"Of course not," Ven Kupferfeld said soothingly. "It's a bluff, Dekker."
"A bluff?"
"A military ruse." She smiled at him. "They'll cave in, I promise."
"And if they don't?"
She hesitated, looked at her watch, then said, "Dekker, do you remember the virt of the Battle of the Seven Days?"
"You keep asking me that. I saw it."
"I know you saw it, for God's sake. I don't know if you understood it. See, Robert E. Lee was protecting Richmond—"
"Ven," Annetta protested.
"Shut up, Annetta. I'm trying to explain something to our friend here. The reason McClellan didn't take Richmond was that Lee outsmarted him. And how did he do that?"
Dekker shook his head, looking at the gun in Ven's hand. Would it be right, he wondered, to take it away from her? Would Rima or Annetta interfere? And if he did get possession of it, then what?
"Pay attention, damn you! Lee knew McClellan would fall for his bluff, because Lee knew McClellan. They'd served together and he knew his man. He knew McClellan wasn't going to throw his main force forward when his right wing was under heavy attack, and he was right. McClellan fought it out where he was until his losses began to discourage him, and then he gave up and went back to Washington. And, see, Dekker, it's the same here. I know these people. I know they'll cave in."
She seemed to be talking to Annetta as much as to him, Dekker thought. "And then what?" he asked.
Annetta answered for her, "And then they sign a treaty," she said proudly. "They stop building new farm habitats; the Oort project goes on; our investments are worth something again!"
"And if they don't?"
Ven looked him over thoughtfully. "Why then," she said, "things get really lousy, don't they? But they will. I promise."
He said only, "You'd better get Toro Tanabe to a doctor. I don't like the way he sounds."
"Shit," Ven said in disgust. "All right. Rima, do you want to stay with him?"
Rima Consalvo looked at him almost fondly. "I guess not, actually," she said.
"Then it's up to you, Annetta." Ven looked at her watch again. "Just keep him locked up. The other stations will start asking questions any time now, so Rima and I'd better get up there and help answer them."