Free The Pleasure Tube by Robert Onopa Page B

"SectorGold. Casa del... Christ, Voorst, what are you doing with a local residence in SectorGold? I'm in Green, what are you doing in SectorGold?"
    It is a nice moment. Taylor sucks on his pipe, glaring at the screen.
    "I was with a woman," I say. "She was taken away from me. What do you know about that?'
    "... well, I'm in Green," Taylor says, expelling a breath. "Christ, Voorst." He looks at me and his expression twists another way. "That black girl, West Indian? She was working for us."
    "She was?" I ask, my heart sinking. "She was working for you?"
    "I'm not saying," Taylor tells me, beginning to drum his fingers on the table, "that she was doing a very good job. Look, Voorst, SciCom takes precedence over military, let's not press it. They obviously resent that fact, they're always splitting hairs over authority flows. We don't like to abuse our prerogative."
    "Well, you have been," I say, thinking, She lied— straight-faced lied.
    "I'm going to insist on your cooperation. This is an important enough project, a project everyone, even the military, eventually benefits from...."
    "Would you say Cooper benefited?' I ask, my anger rising. "I'm fed up. You ask questions you have no right to ask; my personal belongings have been searched. Maybe you benefit from that, but I don't see what you've done for anyone's welfare. Cooper was a little odd, but he was no suicidal psychotic."
    "We had no control over that. He did it himself, Voorst."
    "Whose care was he under, Taylor? I've felt different since I left Guam, you know that? I'm not so tired any more. Cooper's whole boring report identified the cause of the accident as an impact event, unknown interstellar material. Why do you need another report? We had that from the beginning. You can find it in every tape from the mission. I've told you time and time again that squares with my recollection, and Werhner's, and Tamashiro's, and Levsky's. And Cooper's, right? But Cooper's not alive to defend his report."
    "You jump to conclusions, Voorst. Your conclusions color everything you say. You're a walking example of Heisenberg's Effect, I've observed that, though for your sake I haven't put it on record. Let me remind you that we draw the conclusions. Of course there was an impact event. What I'm concerned about is why there was impact."
    Then Werhner's right, I think, it's SciCom itself, not the dome crew, that should be investigated. Which Taylor must know as well as I do. "It's my conclusions about what you're doing that bother you," I say, "not my conclusions about what happened. Look, have you ever actually finished a debriefing? Or does the crew finally die of old age?"
    Taylor tells Mancek to get my things from the local residence, to which they've been transferred. I think how I might have been going there with Collette; sigh.
    "Don't touch my bag," I say to them both, "or you're going to deal with military police. It may be only a technicality, but I'm staying here."
    "Voorst, you don't want to do that," Taylor says angrily, his forehead tightening. My bluff hand—and thinking of it that way, I raise the stakes.
    "Don't tell me what I want. Release my program or you're going to have to restrain me from using that alarm console outside. I'm serious, Taylor, I mean what I say. It's already serious enough for me."
    There is another long moment of silence. Taylor glares at me but then leans back. "You really want to stay here," he sighs. "I can countermand your status, Voorst, I can have that done." Forward again over the console, Taylor looks at his wristwatch, punches through a program, scowls. "Well, it's going to take three more days. So Monday. In three days' time I can wallpaper you with authorizations."
    Taylor looks at me blackly. He has said it himself; three days' time. I look him straight in the eye; we both know I am not going with him until Monday.
    "And I'll file an appeal to sustain leave," I say.
    "Good luck," Taylor says flatly, whacking his cold pipe against the