Miles, Mutants and Microbes - Lois McMaster Bujold [34]
Bannerji stood a moment, then turned to his own desk and keyed open the drawer with his personal palm-lock. The unregistered pistol nestled in its own locked box, its shoulder holster coiled around it like a sleeping snake. By the time Bannerji had buckled it on and shrugged his uniform jacket back over it, he was feeling much better. He turned decisively to greet his patrolmen reporting for duty.
Chapter 5
Leo paused outside the airseal doors to the Habitat's infirmary to gather his nerve. He had been secretly relieved when a frantic call from Pramod had pulled him, shaking inside, away from the excruciating interrogation of Silver; as secretly ashamed of his relief. Pramod's problem—fluctuating power levels in his beam welder, traced at last to poisoning of the electron-emitting cathode by gas contamination—had occupied Leo for a time, but with the welding show over, shame had driven him back here.
So what are you going to do for her at this late hour? his conscience mocked him. Assure her of your continued moral support, as long as it doesn't involve you in anything inconvenient or unpleasant? What a comfort. He shook his head, tapped the door control.
Leo drifted silently past the medtech's station without signing in. Silver was in a private cubicle, a quarter-wedge of the infirmary's circumference at the very end of the module. The distance had helped muffle the yelling and crying.
Leo peered through the observation window. Silver was alone, floating limply in the locked sleep restraints against the wall. In the light from the fluoros her face was greenish, pale and damp. Her eyes seemed drained of their sparkling blue color, blurred leaden smudges. A yet-unused spacesick sack was clutched, hot and wrinkled, in an upper hand.
Sickened himself, Leo glanced up the corridor to be sure he was still unobserved, swallowed the clot of impotent rage growing in his throat, and slipped inside.
"Uh . . . hi, Silver," Leo began with a weak smile. "How you doing?" He cursed himself silently for the inanity of his own words.
Her smeary eyes found and focused on him uncomprehendingly. Then, "Oh. Leo. I think I was asleep for . . . for a while. Funny dreams . . . I still feel sick."
The drug must be wearing off. Her voice had lost the slurred, dreamy quality it had had during the interrogation earlier; now it was small and tight and self-aware. She added with a quaver of indignation, "That stuff made me throw up. And I've never thrown up before, not ever. It made me."
There were, Leo had learned, the most intense social inhibitions against vomiting in free fall, in Silver's little world. She would probably have been far less embarrassed at being stripped naked in public.
"It wasn't your fault," he hastened to reassure her.
She shook her head, her hair waving in lank strands unlike its usual bright aureole, her mouth pinched. "I should have—I thought I could . . . the Red Ninja never told his enemies his secrets, and they drugged and tortured him both!"
"Who?" asked Leo, startled.
"Oh . . . !" Silver's voice flattened to a wail. "They found out about our books, too! This time they'll find them all. . . ." Her lashes clotted with tears that could not fall, but only accumulate until blotted away. When her eyes widened to stare at Leo in a horrified realization, two or three droplets flew off in shimmering tangents. "And now Mr. Van Atta thinks Ti must have known Tony and Claire were on his shuttle—collusion—he says he's going to get Ti fired! And he'll find Tony and Claire down there—I don't know what he'll do to them. I've never seen Mr. Van Atta so angry."
Leo's set jaw had ground his smile to a grimace. Still he tried to speak reasonably. "But you told them—under drugs—that Ti didn't know, surely."
"He didn't believe it. Said I was lying."
"But that would be logically inconsistent—" Leo began, cut himself short. "No, you're right, that wouldn't faze him. God, what an asshole."
Silver's mouth