“We thought you might hurt yourself otherwise.”

He sighed. “Where am I?”

“In the hospital.”

“Where?”

“On Fadeaway.”

“Which is?”

“Uh-orbiting Earth?” The medic righted his chair and put one foot on it. He offered a cigarette to Virgil.

“No thanks. You haven’t been around hospital patients much, have you?”

“Most people here just up and die. They don’t linger.”

Pump. Suck what info you can before he realizes. “Don’t linger?”

The medic nodded. Tall, probably spaceborn, he towered over Virgil’s bed.

“Yeah, most of us’d rather die fast when we have to. There’s enough of a strain on Fadeaway’s system as it is. Not that there are so many veterans left here, but a lot of equipment was already damaged when we homesteaded this dump and we can’t repair it without material. Which we don’t have any ships to retrieve anyway.” He ground out his half-smoked cigarette on the floor. “Which is why your-” He looked at Virgil, then frowned and said nothing more.

They want Circus. Leave me here with Master Snoop and go off to the Belt for gelt of steel. You have to play this right. Have to get back. Back to Circus. Back to Delia. Get out.

“I’m a prisoner, then?”

The medic punched a couple of buttons on the wall console.

The Pharmaceutic’s face appeared. “What?” he asked.

“Bailey, sir. Patient requests his status.”

The old man nodded. “Straight, straight. I’ll be down in a minute.”

“You’re late.” Virgil slid his right hand away from his left wrist, working it across his chest under the straps.

“Your pulse is just fast,” said the Pharmaceutic, sliding a miniscrim back into his breast pocket. “If we’re done with showing off, we can talk.” He closed the door behind him and glanced at Bailey. The medic nodded and left the room.

“My name’s Derek Vane. Master Pharmaceutic for Fadeaway. Which one are you?”

“Which one?” Virgil blinked his eyes and twisted about to watch Vane.

“I mean, what’s your name?”

“Ben? How’d you got inside?” Ben made flesh. Ben following me, a ship in human vessel, asking the same question.

“I’m not Ben. I’m Derek. Tell me about yourself.”

Have to focus. This is too dangerous to screw up. “I’m Virgil Grissom Kinney. Sorry if I seem a bit disoriented. I’ve been through a lot.” A lot a lot a lot a lot.

“Yes, you’ve been having some blackouts recently.”

He watches me too closely. He must know about the dead man inside me, if he’s with Master Snoop. Won’t hurt to let him know I know, will it? Stupid-you’re his prisoner anyway.

“Yeah,” Virgil said. “It’s the RNA injection I got before leaving Earth. Possibly a sensitivity to some impurity.” He nods- he doesn’t believe a word of it.

“Possibly, possibly.”

This is getting nowhere. “When can I go back to Circus Galacticus?”

Vane kept nodding. “There’s a problem.” He stopped nodding and pulled the miniscrim from his pocket. Handing it to Virgil, he said, “Hit recall two twenty-three forty-seven.” Virgil touched the numbers as told and craned his neck to read what appeared.

“It’s coming at us under fifty gravities acceleration,” Vane said. “It’ll be here in less than forty hours. There’s somebody out there in trans-Pluto orbit who’s pretty damned interested enough in something here-and I’m betting it’s you and Circus. They’re burning a hell of a lot of anti-matter just to get here fast. Why they’re not using a Valli, I can’t figure, if they’re the same people we suspect. Commander Powell thinks we’re in danger. You can see why we can’t let you go just yet.”

Nodding, Virgil strained at the straps across his chest. “I’m not such a threat that you’ve got to keep me tied down, am I?”

“Nobody cares about old soldiers, but most of us have been trained to avoid risks. We’d like to make a few preparations for the possibility of an attack. If you could tell your ship that we’re going to power up our lasers for purely defensive purposes-”

Virgil narrowed his gaze. “I like to avoid risks, too. I’m not going to have you take my ship. If that leaves us at a standoff, that’s just fine.” So hard to figure out strategies. I know now that they won’t kill me. Not if they think I have the code. And they’ll never crack it. I’ll die my own way…

Vane took the miniscrim back and tapped it idly against his fingers. His brown eyes blinked twice. “A stalemate based on fear. Kind of a sad situation.”

“I want to get back to my ship.”

“I’m afraid you’re out of deals there.”

Virgil strained again, the straps holding him taut.

“Then I am a prisoner.”

“There still exists-on scrim, at least-a condition of war between the Triplanetary Co-Prosperity Alliance and the Infernals.”

“You mean the Recidivists and the Autarchists?”

“That’s the Belter’s propaganda.”

Virgil smiled and shook his head. Got to get out. I can’t let them see the slightest-“Hmm.”

Vane looked at the man lying before him and saw his face turn implacable. Virgil seemed a million kilometers away. His thoughts, though, lay nearly one and a half astronomical units away.

“Perhaps we can arrange a pact.” Virgil casually scratched his shaven scalp and relaxed. Show calm, think it through.

“I can listen, but only Commander Powell can make any deals.”

“Bring him in, then.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Vane left and Bailey returned, watching over the prisoner until Powell stormed in and leaned over the bed. He smelled of bacon and coffee.

“We’re fighting a thirty-eight hour deadline, so we’re open to deals. What?”

Virgil looked over the man-graying hair cropped short, gray eyes that must have seen enough of the brutal life of war, and space-damaged skin combined to make Powell look like a weary seaman.

I have to proceed carefully… “Let me access your library and read up on recent history. If it matches what you’ve told me and I find I can trust you, the ship’s yours for a set amount of time to be determined.”

Powell barely hesitated. “Our library only goes up to Twenty-One Fifty-Eight. After that, there’s only the habitat’s log, input by me. It’s all open to you. You must make your decision by twenty-hundred tomorrow or we’ll be forced to seize Circus by force.

Virgil nodded. “Untie me and bring me a scrim.”

Can’t ask for it too soon. Have to wait a few hours.

Virgil avoided requesting astrophysical information and called up the history section. The attendant, Bailey, had raised his bed and freed up his right hand so that he could operate the scrim’s library controls. After several hours of reading, watching and listening, he turned off the scrim and laid his head back.

The recent history of the System made the fall of Rome look calm and restful. Dante Houdini Brennen in 2116 had not possessed the vantage on the war gained by historians in subsequent decades. The causes of Earth’s degeneration into statism were manifold. The planet’s near trillion inhabitants-previously well-supplied with necessities from the Moon and the Belt habitats-saw extreme danger in the cessation of intrasystem trade. The constant Terran demand for raw materials and goods fabricated in deep space at zero-gee could not be interrupted for the length of time necessary for Earth businesses to begin work in the Belt.

Someone did have the brains to purchase obsolete equipment already in the Belt and crew it. By then, though, someone else had put deep thrust engines on a freighter, armed it with a bevawatt laser and his own private army, and headed for Ceres Beta. Other potential looters followed.

Organization for such an aggressively invasive undertaking resulted in bureaucracy, with all its entrenched interests. The interests gained supporters among the nervous billions. When the supporters began to crush dissenters and neutral alike, a State had-once again-arisen. Mars, far enough from Earth almost to be considered a Belter outpost, remained steadfastly neutral, which meant they were on both sides, selling. Luna, settled by rough-and-tumble frontiersmen, declared solidarity with the Belt. The Earth-Moon war lasted eight years, ending in a bitter, bloody stalemate.