Dark Benediction

“Cripple the ship. Look, there’s nothing else we can do on our own. We’ve got no orders from the Party. Right before we break camp, at sundown, we cripple the ship. Something they can’t fix without help from the base.”

“Leave them stuck out here?”

“Only for a day or two. Till the Party takes over the base. Then we send a few wagons out here after dark and pick up the wenches. Who gets credit for dames showing up? The Party. Besides, it’s the only thing we dare do without orders. We can’t be sure what’d happen if Parkeson walked in with a bunch of Algerian whores about the time the show’s supposed to start. And says, ‘Here, boys, look what Daddy brought.’”

“Parkeson hasn’t got the guts.”

“The hell he hasn’t. He’d say that out of one side of his mouth. Out of the other side, he’d be dictating a vigorous protest to the WP for allowing such things to get clearance for blasting off, making it sound like they’re at fault. That’s just a guess. We’ve got to keep those women out of Crater City until, we’re sure, though. And there’s only one way: cripple the ship.”

There were five or six voices in the discussion, and Relke recognized enough of them to understand dimly that a cell meeting was in progress. His mind refused to function clearly, and at times the voices seemed to be speaking in senseless jargon, although the words were plain enough. His head throbbed and he had bitten a piece out of the end of his tongue. He felt as if he were lying stretched out on a bed of jagged rocks, although there was only the smooth floor under his battered person.

Giselle cried out from the next room and beat angrily on the door.

Quite mindlessly, and as if his body were being directed by some whimsical puppet master, Relke’s corpse suddenly clambered to its feet and addressed itself to the startled conspirators.

“Goddam it, gentlemen, can’t you let the lady out to use the trapper?”

They hit him over the head with a jack handle.

He woke up again. This time he was in the bunkroom. A faint choking sound made him look up. Giselle sat on the foot of the bed, legs tightly crossed, face screwed up. She was trying to cry.

“Use an onion,” he told her thickly, and sat up. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s Monday now.”

“Where are they?”

“They left. We’re locked in.”

He fell back with a groan. A stitch in his side felt like a broken rib. He turned his face to the wall. “What’s so great about Monday?” he muttered.

“Today the others are taking their vows.”

When he woke up again, Novotny was watching him from the foot of the bed. The girl was gone. He sat up and fell back with a groan.

“Fran,” he said.

“It wasn’t Fran, it was a hustler,” said Joe. “I had Beasley take her back. Who busted you?”

“Larkin and Kunz.”

“It’s a good thing.”

“What?”

“They saved me the trouble. You ran off with the jeep.”

“Sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. Just watch yourself, that’s all.”

“I wanted to see what it was like, Joe.”

“What? Playing house with a wench?”

He nodded.

“What was it like?”

“I don’t know.”

“You woke up calling her Fran.”

“I did?”

“Yah. Before you start feeling that way, you better ask Beasley what they did together on the rug while you were asleep, Romeo.”

“What?”

“She really knows some tricks. Mme. d’Annecy really educates her girls. You been kissing and cooing with her, Relke?”

“I’m sick, Joe. Don’t.”

“By the way, you better not go back. The Madame’s pretty sore at you.”

“Why?”

“For keeping the wench gone so long. There was going to be a show. You know, a circus. Giselle was supposed to be in it. You might say she had the lead role.”

“Who?”

“Giselle. Still feel like calling her Fran?—Hey! if you’re going to vomit, get out of bed.”

Relke staggered into the latrine. He was gone a long time.

“Better hurry up,” Novotny called. “Our shift goes on in half an hour.”

“I can’t go on, Joe.”

“The hell you can’t. Unless you want to be sent up N.L.D. You know what they do to N.L.D. cases.”

“You wouldn’t report me N.L.D.”

“The hell I wouldn’t, but I don’t have to.”

“What do you mean?”

“Parkeson’s coming, with a team of inspectors. They’re probably already here, and plenty sore.”

“About the ship? The women?”

“I don’t know. If the Commission hear about those bats, there’ll be hell to pay. But who’ll pay it is something else.”

Relke buried his face in his hands and tried to think. “Joe, listen. I only half remember, but… there was a cell meeting here.”

“When?”

“After Larkin and Kunz worked me over. Some guys came in, and…”

“Well?”

“It’s foggy. Something about Parkeson taking the women back to Crater City.”

“Hell, that’s a screwy idea. Who thinks that?”

Relke shook his head and tried to think. He came out of the latrine mopping his face on a towel. “I’m trying to remember.”

Joe got up. “All right. Better get your suit. Let’s go pull cable.”

The lineman breathed deeply a few times and winced at the effect. He went to get his suit out of the hangar, started the routine safety check, and stopped halfway through. “Joe, my suit’s been cut.”