You’re not sick, Lydia’s voice said in his mind, you’re sad. Grieving. The lump in your throat. The hollow space behind your sternum. The empty feeling in your stomach no matter how much beer you put there. That’s grief.
“Huh,” Amos said out loud.
“Need something, buddy?” the bartender asked with professional disinterest.
“Another,” Amos said, pointing at the half-full beer he still had.
You don’t process grief well, another voice said. Holden, this time. That was the truth. That’s why Amos trusted the captain. When he said something, it was because he believed it. No need to analyze it or figure out what he really meant by it. Even when the captain fucked up, he was acting in good faith. Amos hadn’t met many people like that.
The only really strong emotion Amos had felt in longer than he could remember was anger. That was always there, waiting for him. Processing his grief that way was simple and direct. He understood it. The man sitting a few stools away at the bar had the rough, rawboned look of a rock jock. He’d been nursing the same beer for an hour. Every time Amos ordered another, the man shot him a glance that was half annoyance, half envy. Coveting his apparently bottomless credit account. It would be so easy. Say something to him, cutting and loud, put him in a position where backing down embarrassed him in front of everyone. The poor fucker would feel obligated to take the bait, and then Amos would be free to process his grief all over the guy. Some time in stir might even be a nice way to unwind.
That guy didn’t kill Lydia, Holden’s voice said. But maybe someone else did, Amos thought. And I need to find out.
“Need to cash out here, amigo,” Amos said to the bartender, waving his hand terminal at him. He pointed at the rock jock. “Put that guy’s next two on my tab.”
The rock jock frowned, looking for the insult, but when he couldn’t find it he said, “Thanks, brother.”
“Anytime, hermano. You be safe out there.”
“Sa sa,” the jock
said, finishing off his beer and reaching for one of the two Amos had just bought. “Do the same, sabe dui?”
Amos missed his bunk on the Roci.
The long-haul transport was named the Lazy Songbird, but its birdlike qualities began and ended at the white letters painted on its side. From the outside, it looked like a giant garbage can with a drive cone on one end and a tiny ops deck on the other. From the inside, it looked like the inside of a giant garbage can except that it was divided into twelve decks, fifty people to a deck.
The only privacy to be had was thin curtains in the shower stalls, and people only ever seemed to use the head when uniformed crew members were around.
Ah, Amos thought, Prison rules.
He selected a bunk, just a crash couch with a little storage under it and a tiny entertainment screen on the bulkhead next to it, as far from the head and the commissary as possible. He tried to stay out of high traffic areas. The people sharing his space were a family of three on one side, and an ancient crone on the other.
The crone spent the entire flight high on little white pills, staring at the ceiling all day and tossing and sweating through fever dreams all night. Amos introduced himself to her. She offered him some pills. He declined. This ended their association.
The family on the other side was much nicer. Two men in their early thirties and their daughter of about seven. One of the men was a structural engineer named Rico. The other a stay-at-home dad called Jianguo. The girl’s name was Wendy. They eyed Amos with some suspicion when he first claimed the bunk, but he smiled and shook their hands and bought Wendy an ice cream bar from a commissary vending machine and then didn’t follow up by being creepy. He knew what men who had too much interest in little kids were like, and so he knew how not to ever be mistaken for one of them.
Rico was traveling to Luna to take one of the new job openings at the Bush orbital shipyards. “Lots of coyos heading downwell. Beaucoup jobs now, everybody trying to grab a ring for themselves. New colonies. New worlds.”
“That’ll dry up when the rush dies down,” Amos said. He was lying back on his couch, half listening to Rico rattle on, half watching a video feed on his wall screen with the sound off.
Rico gave a Belter shrug of the hands and tilted his head toward his daughter, sleeping in her bunk. “For her, sabe? Later is for later. For now I put some yuan aside. School, ring trip, whatever she needs.”
“I hear that. Later is later.”
“Oh, hey, they’re cleaning the head. Gonna grab a shower.”
“What’s with that, man?” Amos asked. “What’s the rumpus?”
Rico cocked his head, like Amos had asked why space was a vacuum. In fairness, Amos knew the answer, but it was interesting to see whether Rico did too. “Long-haul gangs, coyo. Price of flying on the cheap. Sucks to be poor.”
“The crew watches for that shit, right? Anyone gets in a tussle, they gas us all, tie up the perps. No fuss, no muss.”
“Don’t watch the showers. No cameras. If you don’t pay when the shakedown comes, that’s where they get you. Better to go when crew is around.”
“No shit,” Amos said, pretending surprise. “Haven’t seen the shakedown yet.”
“You will, hombre. Watch Jian and Wendy while I’m out, yeah?”