LINC wandered around the corridors only half aware of his surroundings and the greetings tossed at him by others he passed. Perhaps drawn by some unconscious instinct, he found himself finally in the observation room in the outer hull, from where he had gaze out across space that evening that seemed long ago now, when he arrived at Grayling.
At first he felt nothing but anger and the impulse to hit back By the code of the streets he had grown up in, there was nothing to think about. He had been wronged, and now he had the power to get even. To do otherwise would be not only weak but dishonorable. That was the way he did business. So why had he asked Weyer for time to think?
As the reflexive emotions subsided and relinquished control, he began to realize that other parts of him existed now that made it a more complex issue. He was no longer a creature of those streets. He was learning there were other ways of life, in which people practiced a different kind of business. That was what they had been forcing him to see at Coulie. He thought of Angelo and the things he had risked or given up in order to help those like Linc see. Why should Angelo have done that? By the old code, he owed none of them anything, stood to get nothing out of it. The answer could only be that there was much that was worthwhile to be gained by his code. Could Linc learn to understand that also?
And then Linc did something he had never been able to, or would even have comprehended, before in his life. He turned the situation around in his mind and tried not just to see it but to feel it from the other side.
It had been a low, cheap trick on Arvin's part, sure. But that had been another world ago, as Dr. Grober had said. This was now. Yes, Arvin had been mad enough and hurt enough and mean enough to want to deprive Linc of the thing that Linc had wanted most. But then Linc thought of the humiliation Arvin had chosen to eat in the campfire incident rather than risk being RPO'd, how he'd surprised everyone by the way he pulled his team together at Coulie. The chance for this new life was something that he desperately wanted too, every bit as much as Linc. And yet he had come to Weyer now, prepared to put all that on the line in order to set right what needed to be set right. Linc realized then what it must have taken for him to do that. The thug who had pushed Kew off the seat of the bus on the way up from Fresno would never have been capable of it. The enraged animal that had slunk away from the confrontation at the campfire couldn't have conceived of it. So Arvin had been learning and changing, too.
Then he thought back to Julie and the way they'd talked about how different their life would be out there. What kind of life would it be, he wondered, if, at his first test, he took with him in his mind everything they'd thought they were getting away from? What would it mean if he let revenge be his first meaningful choice before they had even begun. He tried to make himself think the way he imagined somebody who knew how to live out there in the Outzone would have to think . . . .
And suddenly there was nothing more to think about.
He got up, left the observation room, and headed back toward the Admin Section and Colonel Weyer's office.
"It was a different world then. We were all different people," Linc told the room. "I can't really see that there'd be a lot of point in dragging something back up now and making a big thing out of it, when it doesn't belong here. I think it took a lot of guts for him to come and say what he said, and that's the way we should be looking at it. If my case gets to be reconsidered . . . then that's good enough. I know that what he did was serious. But then, it's Arvin who's trying to put things right too. I'd prefer it be left at that . . . . Sir."
"I take it, then, that your own recommendation would be for leniency in view of changed circumstances," Weyer said.
Linc closed his eyes, hoped it was for the best, and nodded. "That's right, sir."
"Thank you, Cadet Marani. You are dismissed."
And that was when Linc learned something else. The look he got from Arvin as he left the room was worth more than any satisfaction he could have felt from seeing him destroyed.
The verdict was announced the next day. Since the incident had occurred before Arvin's admission to the service, he had not been under the jurisdiction of the Outzone's armed forces, and there was therefore no case to answer. The matter was closed. Linc had seen enough before to have no doubt that had they wished to do so, the lawyers could have found equally good reasons for ruling completely the other way.
As for Linc, he was told his situation was to be reviewed, and he would be advised of the outcome shortly. In the meantime his place on the Neil A. Armstrong was confirmed, as were the places of the other cadets who had made senior. So was Julie's. Both of them would be going to Coombe, on the Jovian moon Callisto, the main transit base that most of the new arrivals to the Outzone passed through. Prior to the launch date, he was entitled to a five-day special leave to Earth to say farewells and so on. Since Julie had no family of her own she particularly wanted to visit, she readily agreed to accompany him. And his relationship with Arvin had changed so much that Linc invited him to go along too.
It wasn't just a celebration of their new buddiness and friendship. Linc figured that if he was going back to the neighborhood he'd come from, it might be wise to take along all the backup he could get.