The skies were clear for the morning, only a few fleecy puffs overhead and a line of them marshaling themselves across the northern horizon, beyond the river. It was a long view; it usually needed a day and a half for the horizon clouds to come down to Downbelow base, and they planned to take advantage of that break, patching the washout which had cut them off from base four and all the further camps down the chain. It was, they hoped, the last of the storms of winter. The buds on the trees were swelling to bursting, and the grain sprouts, crowded by flood against the crossed-beam lattices in the fields, would soon want thinning and transplanting to their permanent beds. Main base would be the first to dry out; and then the bases downriver. The river was some bit lower today, so the report came in from the mill.
Emilio saw the supply crawler off on its way down the muddy road downriver, and turned his back, walked the slow, well-trampled way toward higher ground and the domes sunk in the hills, domes which had gotten to be twice as numerous as before, not to mention those that had transferred down the road. Compressors thunked along out of rhythm, the unending pulse of humanity on Downbelow. Pumps labored, adding to the thumping, belching out the water which had seeped into the domes despite their best efforts to waterproof the floors, more pumps working down by the mill dikes and over by the fields. They would not cease until the logs in the fields stood clear.
Spring. Probably the air smelled delightful to a native. Humans had little impression of it, breathing in wet hisses and stops through the masks. Emilio found the sun pleasant on his back, enjoying that much of the day. Downers skipped about, carrying out their tasks with less address than exuberance, would rather make ten scurrying trips with a handful than one uncomfortable, laden passage to anywhere. They laughed, dropped what light loads they bore to play pranks on any excuse. He was frankly surprised that they were still at work with spring coming on so in earnest. The first clear night they had kept all the camp awake with their chatter, their happy pointing at the starry heavens and talking to the stars; the first clear dawn they had waved their arms to the rising sun and shouted and cheered for the coming light — but humans had gone about with a brighter mood that day too, with the first clear sign of winter’s ending. Now it was markedly warmer. The females had turned smugly alluring and the males had turned giddy; there was a good deal of what might be Downer singing from the thickets and the budding trees on the hills, trills and chatter and whistles soft and sultry.
It was not as giddy as it would get when the trees sprang into full bloom. There would come a time that the hisa would lose all interest in work, would set off on their wanderings, females first and solitary, and the males doggedly following, to places where humans did not intrude. A good number of the third-season females would spend the summer getting rounder and rounder — at least as round as the wiry hisa became — to give birth in winter, snugged away in hillside tunnels, little mites all limbs and ruddy baby fur, who would be scampering about on their own in the next spring, what little humans saw of them.
He passed the hisa games, walked up the crushed rock pathway to Operations, the dome highest on the hill. His ears picked up a crunching on the rocks behind him, and he looked back to find Satin limping along in his wake, arms out for balance, bare feet on sharp stones and her imp’s face screwed up in pain from the path designed for human boots. He grinned at the imitation of his strides. She stood and grinned at him, unusually splendid in soft pelts and beads and a red rag of synthetic cloth.
“Shuttle comes, Konstantin-man.”
It was so. There was a landing due on this clear day. He had promised her, despite good sense, despite axioms that world-synched pairs were unstable in the spring season, that she and her mate might work a term on-station. If there was a Downer who had staggered about under too-heavy loads, it was Satin. She had tried desperately to impress him… See, Konstantin-man, I work good.
“Packed to go,” he observed of her. She displayed the several small bags of no-knowing-what which she had hung about her person, patted them and grinned delightedly.
“I packed.” And then her face went sad, and she held out her open arms. “Come love you Konstantin-man, you and you friend.”
Wife. The hisa had never figured out husband and wife. “Come in,” he bade her, touched by such a gesture. Her eyes lit with pleasure. Downers were discouraged even from the vicinity of the Operations dome. It was very rare that one was invited inside. He walked down the wooden steps, wiped his boots on the matting, held the door for her and waited for her to adjust her own breather from about her neck before he opened the inner seal.
A few working humans looked up, stared, some frowning at the presence, went back to their jobs. A number of the techs had offices in the dome, divided off by low wicker screens; the area he shared with Miliko was farthest back, where the only solid wall in the great dome afforded him and Miliko private residential space, a ten-foot section with a woven mat floor, sleeping quarters and office at once. He opened that door beside the lockers and Satin followed him in, staring about her as if she could not absorb the half of what she saw. Not used to roofs, he thought, imagining how great a change it was going to be for a Downer suddenly shipped to station. No winds, no sun, only steel about, poor Satin.
“Well,” Miliko exclaimed, looking up from the spread of charts on their bed.
“Love you,” Satin said, and came with absolute confidence, embraced Miliko, hugged her cheek-to-cheek around the obstacle of the breather.
“You’re going away,” said Miliko.
“Go to you home,” she said. “See Bennett home.” She hesitated, folded hands diffidently behind her, bobbed a little, looking from one to the other of them. “Love Bennett-man. See he home. Fill up eyes he home. Make warm, warm we eyes.”
Sometimes Downer talk made little sense; sometimes meanings shot through the babble with astonishing clarity. Emilio gazed on her with somewhat of guilt, that for as long as they had dealt with Downers, there was none of them who could manage more than a few of the chattering Downer words. Bennett had been best at it.
The hisa loved gifts. He thought of one, on the shelf by the bed, a shell he had found by the riverside. He got it and gave it to her and her dark eyes shone. She flung her arms about him.
“Love you,” she announced.
“Love you too, Satin,” he told her. And he put his arms about her shoulders, walked her out through the outer offices to the lock, set her through. Beyond the plastic she opened the outer door, took her mask off and grinned at him, waved her hand.
“I go work,” she told him. The shuttle was due. A human worker would not have been working on the day he was leaving assignment; but Satin headed away with a slam of the flimsy door and anxious enthusiasm, as if at this late date someone’s mind could be changed.
Or perhaps it was unfair to attach to her any human motives. Perhaps it was joy, or gratitude. Downers understood no wages; gifts, they said.
Bennett Jacint had understood them. The Downers tended that grave. Laid shells there, perfect ones, skins, set up the strange knobby sculptures that meant something important to them.
He turned, walked back through the operations center, to his own quarters and Miliko. He took off his jacket, hung it on the peg, breather still about his neck, an ornament they all wore from the time clothing went on in the morning till it went off at night.
“Got the weather report from station,” Miliko said. “We’re going to catch it again in a day or so after the next one hits us. There’s a big storm brewing out to sea.”
He swore; so much for hopes of spring. She made a place for him among the charts on the bed and he sat down and looked at the damages she had red-penciled, flood areas station was able to show them, down the long chains of beads which were the camps they had established, along unpaved, hand-hacked roads.
“Oh, it’s going to get worse,” Miliko said, showing him the topographical chart. “Comp projects enough rain with this one to get us flood in the blue zones again. Right up to base two’s doorstep. But most of the roadbed should be above the floodline.”
Emilio scowled, expelled a soft breath. “We’ll hope.” The road was the important thing; the fields would flood for weeks more without harm except to their schedules. Local grains thrived on the water, depended on it in the initial stages of their natural cycles. The lattices kept young plants from going downriver. It was human machinery and human tempers which suffered most. “Downers have the right idea,” he said. “Give up during the winter rains, wander off when the trees bloom, make love, nest high and wait for the grain to ripen.”
Miliko grinned, still marking her charts.
He sighed, unregarded, pulled over the slab of plastic which served him as a writing desk and started making out personnel assignments, rearranging priorities with the equipment. Perhaps, he thought, perhaps if he pleaded with the Downers, arranged some special gifts, they would hang on a little longer before their seasonal desertion. He regretted losing Satin and Bluetooth; the pair of them had been of enormous help, persuading their fellows in outright argument when it came to something their Konstantin-man wanted very badly. But that went both ways; Satin and Bluetooth wanted to go; They wanted something now in his power to give, and it was their time to have their way, before their spring came on them and they passed all self-control.
They were dispersing old hands and trainees and Q assignees down the road to each of the new bases, trying to keep proportions which would not leave staff vulnerable to riot; trying to make the Q folk into workers, against their belief that they were being used; tried to work with morale — it was the willing ones they moved out, and the surliest main base had to keep, in that one huge dome, many times enlarged and patched onto until dome was a misnomer — it spread irregularly over the next hill, a constant difficulty to them. Human workers occupied the several domes next; choice ones, comfortable ones — they were always reluctant to be transferred out to more primitive conditions at the wells or the new camps, alone with the forest and the floods and Q and strange hisa.
Communication was always the problem. They were linked by com; but it was still lonely out there. Ideally they wanted aircraft links; but the one flimsy aircraft they had built some years back had crashed on the landing field two years ago… light aircraft and Downbelow’s storms did not agree. Hacking a landing site for shuttles… that was on the schedule, at least for base three, but the cutting of trees had to be worked out with the Downers, and that was touchy. With the tech level they managed onworld, crawlers were still the most efficient way of getting about, patient and slow as the pace of life on Downbelow had always been, chugging away through mud and flood to the wonderment and delight of Downers. Petrol and grains, wood and winter vegetables, dried fish, an experiment in domesticating the knee-high pitsu, which Downers hunted… (You bad, Downers had declared in the matter, make they warm in you camp and you eat, no good this thing. But Downers at base one had become herders, and they had all learned to eat domestic meat. Lukas had ordered it, and this was one Lukas project that had worked well.) Humans on Downbelow fared well enough equipped and fed themselves and station, even with the influx they had gotten. That was no small task. The manufacturies up on station and the manufactories here on Downbelow were working nonstop. Self-sufficiency, to duplicate every item they normally imported, to fill every quota not alone for themselves but for the overburdened station, and to stockpile what they could… it was all falling into their laps here on Downbelow, the excess population, the burden of station-bred people, their own and refugees, who had never set foot on a world. They could no longer depend on the trade which had once woven Viking and Mariner, Esperance and Pan-Paris and Russell’s and Voyager and others into a Great Circle of their own, supplying each others’ needs. None of the other stations could have gone it alone; none had the living world it took — a living world and hands to manage it. There were plans on the board now, the first crews moved, to go for the onworld mining they had long delayed, duplicating materials already available in Pell system at large… just in case things got worse than anyone wanted to think. They would get massive new programs underway this summer, when Downers were receptive to approach again; get it well moving in fall, when the Downers hit their working season, when cool winds made them think of winter again and they seemed never to rest, working for humans and working to carry soft mosses into their tunnels in the wooded hills.
Downbelow was due to change. Its human population had quadrupled. He mourned it; Miliko did. They had gridded off areas already… Miliko’s ever-present charts — places which no human should ever touch, the beautiful places, the sites they knew for holy and the places vital to the cycles of hisa and wild things alike.
Ram it through council in their own generation, even this year, before the pressures mounted. Set up protections for the things which had to endure. The pressure was already with them. Scars were already on the land, the smoke of the mill, the stumps of trees, the ugly domes and fields imposed on the riverside and being hacked out all along the muddy roads. They had wanted to beautify it as they went, make gardens, camouflage roads and domes — and that chance was gone.
They would not, he and Miliko were resolved together, would not let more damage happen. They loved Downbelow, the best and the worst of it, the maddening hisa and the violence of the storms. There was always the station for human refuge; antiseptic corridors and soft furniture were always waiting. But Miliko thrived here as he did; they made pleasant love at night with the rain pattering away on the plastic dome, with the compressors mumping away in the dark and Downbelow’s night creatures singing madly just outside. They enjoyed the changes the sky made hour by hour, and the sound of the wind in the grass and the forest about them, laughed at Downer pranks and ruled the whole world, with power to solve everything but the weather.
They missed home, missed family and that different, wider world; but they talked otherwise… had talked even of building a dome to themselves, in their spare time, in years to come, when homes could be built here, a hope which had been closer a year or so ago, when the Downbelow establishment had been quiet and easy, before Mallory and the others had come, before Q.
Now they simply figured how to survive at the level at which they were living. Moved population about under guard for fear of what that population might try to do. Opened new bases at the most primitive level, ill-prepared. Tried to care for the land and the Downers at once, and to pretend that nothing was amiss on station.
He finished the assignments, walked out and handed them to the dispatcher, Ernst, who was also accountant and comp man… they all did a multitude of jobs. He walked back again into his bedroom office, surveyed Miliko and her lapful of charts. “Want lunch?” he asked. He reckoned on going to the mill in the afternoon, hoped now for a quiet cup of coffee and first access to the microwave which was the dome’s other luxury of rank… time to sit and relax.
“I’m nearly done,” she said.
A bell rang, three sharp pulses, disarranging the day. The shuttle was coming in early; he had assumed it for the evening slot. He shook his head. “There’s still time for lunch,” he said.
The shuttle was down before they were done. Everyone in Operations had come to the same conclusion, and the dispatcher, Ernst, directed things between bites of sandwich. It was a hard day for everyone.
Emilio swallowed the last bite, drank the last of his coffee and gathered up his jacket. Miliko was putting hers on.
“Got us some more Q types,” Jim Ernst said from the dispatch desk; and a moment later, loudly enough to carry through all the dome: “Two hundred of them. They’ve got them jammed in that frigging hold like dried fish. Shuttle, what are we supposed to do with them?”
The answer crackled back, garble and a few intelligible words. Emilio shook his head in exasperation and walked over to lean above Jim Ernst. “Advise Q dome they’re going to have to accept some crowding until we can make some more transfers down the road.”
“Most of Q is home at lunch,” Ernst reminded him. As policy, they avoided announcements when all of Q was gathered. They were inclined to irrational hysteria. “Do it,” he told Ernst, and Ernst relayed the information.
Emilio pulled the breather up and started out, Miliko close behind him.
The biggest shuttle had come down, disgorging the few items of supply they had requested from station. Most of the goods flowed in the other direction, canisters of Downbelow products waiting in the warehouse domes to be loaded and taken up to feed Pell.
The first of the passengers came down the ramp as they reached the landing circle beyond the hill, crushed-looking folk in coveralls, who had probably been frightened to death in transfer, jammed into a cargo hold in greater number than should have been… certainly in greater number than they needed on Downbelow all at one moment. There were a few more prosperous-looking volunteers… losers in the lottery process; they walked aside. But guards off the shuttle waited with rifles to herd the Q assignees into a group. There were old people with them, and a dozen young children at least, families and fragments of families if it held to form, all such folk as did not survive well in station quarantine. Humanitarian transfer. People like this took up space and used a compressor, and by their classification could not be trusted near the lighter jobs, those tasks involving critical machinery. They had to be assigned manual labor, such of it as they could bear. And the children — at least there were none too young to work, or too young to understand about wearing the breathers or how to change a breather cylinder in a hurry.
“So many fragile ones,” Miliko said. “What does your father think we are down here?”
He shrugged. “Better than Q Upabove, I suppose. Easier. I hope those new compressors are in the load; and the plastic sheeting.”
“Bet they’re not,” Miliko said dourly.
There was a shrieking from over the hill toward base and the domes, Downer screeches, not an uncommon thing; he looked over his shoulder and saw nothing, and paid it no mind. The disembarking refugees had stopped at the sound. Staff moved them on.
The shrieking kept up. That was not normal. He turned, and Miliko did. “Stay here,” he said, “and keep a hand on matters.”
He started running up the path over the hill, dizzy at once with the breather’s limitations. He crested the rise and the domes came into sight, and there was in front of huge Q dome, what had the look of a fight, a ring of Downers enclosing a human disturbance, more and more Q folk boiling out of the dome. He sucked air and ran all out, and one of the Downers broke from the group below, came running with all-out haste… Satin’s Bluetooth: he knew the fellow by the color of him, which was uncommonly red-brown for an adult. “Lukas-man,” Bluetooth hissed, falling in by him as he ran, bobbing and dancing in his anxiety. “Lukas-mans all mad.”
That took no translation. He knew the game when he saw the guards there… Bran Hale and crew, the field supervisors; there was a knot of shouting Q folk and the guards had guns leveled. Hale and his men had gotten one youth away from the group, ripped his breather off so that he was choking, would stop breathing if it kept up. They held the fainting boy among them as hostage, a gun on him, holding rifles on the others, and the Q folk and the Downers on the edges were screaming.
“Stop that!” Emilio shouted. “Break it up!” No one regarded him, and he waded in alone, Bluetooth hanging back from him. He pushed men with rifles and had to push more than once, realizing all at once that he had no gun, that he was bare-handed and alone and that there were no witnesses but Downers and Q.
They gave ground. He snatched the boy from those who held him and the boy collapsed to the ground; he knelt down, feeling his own back naked, picked up the breather that lay there and got it over the boy’s face, pressed it there. Some of the Q folk tried to close in and one of Hale’s men fired at their feet.
“No more of that!” Emilio shouted. He stood up, shaking in every muscle, staring at the several score Q workers outside, at others still jammed by their own numbers within the dome. At ten armed men who had rifles leveled. He was shaking in every muscle, thinking of riot, of Miliko just over the hill, of having them close in on him. “Back up,” he yelled at Q. “Ease off!” And rounded on Bran Hale… young, sullen and insolent. “What happened here?”
“Tried to escape,” Hale said. “Mask fell off in the fight Tried to get a gun.”
“That’s a lie,” the Q folk shouted in a babble of variants, and tried to drown Hale’s voice.
“Truth,” Hale said. “They don’t want more refugees in their dome. A fight started and this troublemaker tried to bolt. We caught him.”
There was a chorus of protest from the Q folk. A woman in the fore was crying.
Emilio looked about him, having difficulty with his own breathing. At his feet the boy had seemed to come to, writhing and coughing. The Downers clustered together, dark eyes solemn.
“Bluetooth,” he said, “what happened?”
Bluetooth’s eyes shifted to Bran Hale’s man. No more than that
“Me eyes see,” said another voice. Satin strode through, braced herself with several bobs of distress. Her voice was high-pitched, brittle. “Hale push he friend, hard with gun, Bad push she.”
There were shouts from Hale’s side, derision; shouts from the Q side. He yelled for quiet. It was not a lie. He knew Downers and he knew Hale. It was not a lie. “They took his breather?”
“Take.” Satin said, and clamped her mouth firmly shut. Her eyes showed fear.
“All right.” Emilio sucked in a deep breath, looked directly at Bran Kale’s hard face. “We’d better continue this discussion in my office.”
“We talk right here,” Hale said. He had his crowd about him. His advantage. Emilio matched him stare for stare; it was all he could do, with no weapons and no force to back him. “Downer’s word,” Hale said, “isn’t testimony. You don’t insult me on any Downer’s word, Mr. Konstantin, no sir.”
He could walk away, back down. Surely Operations and the regular workers could see what was going on. Maybe they had looked out from their domes and preferred not to see. Accidents could happen, in this place, even to a Konstantin. For a long time the authority on Downbelow had been Jon Lukas and his hand-picked men. He could walk away, maybe reach Operations, call help for himself from the shuttle, if Hale let him; and it would be told for the rest of his life how Emilio Konstantin handled threats, “You pack,” he said softly, “and you be on that shuttle when it leaves. All of you.”
“On a Downer bitch’s word?” Hale lost his dignity, chose to shout. He could afford to. Some of the rifles had turned his way.
“Get out,” Emilio said, “on my word. Be on that shuttle. Your tour here is over.”
He saw Hale’s tension, the shift of eyes. Someone did move. A rifle went off, sizzled into the mud. One of the Q men had struck it down. There was a second when it looked like riot.
“Out!” Emilio repeated. Suddenly the balance of power was shifted, Young workers were to the fore of Q, and their own gang boss, Wei. Hale shifted eyes left and right, remeasured things, finally gave a curt nod to his companions. They moved out. Emilio stood watching them in their swaggering retreat to the common barracks, even yet not believing that trouble was over. Beside him, Bluetooth let out a long hiss, and Satin made a spitting sound. His own muscles were quivering with the fight that had not happened. He heard a sough of air, the dome sagging as the rest of Q surged out, all three hundred of them, breaching their lock wide open. He looked at them, alone with them. “You take those new transfers into your dome and you take them in without bickering and without argument. We’ll make new diggings; you will and they will, quick as possible. You want them to sleep in the open? Don’t you give me any nonsense about it.”
“Yes, sir,” Wei answered after a moment. The woman who had been crying edged forward. Emilio stepped back and she bent down to help the stricken boy, who was struggling to sit up: mother, he reckoned. Others came and helped the boy up. There was a good deal of commotion about it.
Emilio grasped the youth’s arm. “Want you in for a medical,” he said. “Two of you take him over to Operations.”
They hesitated. Guards were supposed to escort them. There were no guards, he realized in that instant. He had just ordered all the security forces in main base offworld.
“Go on inside,” he said to the rest. “Get that dome normalized; I’ll talk to you about it later.” And while he had their attention: “Look around you. There’s all of a world here, blast you all. Give us help. Talk to me if there’s some complaint. I’ll see you get access. We’re all crowded here. All of us. Come look at my quarters if you think otherwise; I’ll give some of you the tour if you don’t believe me. We live like this because we’re building. Help us build, and it can be good here, for all of us.”
Frightened eyes stared at him… no belief. They had come in on overcrowded, dying ships; had been in Q on-station; lived here, in mud and close quarters, moved about under guns. He let go his breath and his anger.
“Go on,” he said. “Break it up. Get about your business. Make room for those people.”
They moved, the boy and a couple of the young men toward Operations, the rest back into their dome. The flimsy doors closed in sequence this time, locking them through, group after group, until all were gone, and the deflated dome crest began to lose some of its wrinkles as the compressor thumped away.
There was a soft chattering, a bobbing of bodies. The Downers were still with him. He put out his hand and touched Bluetooth. The Downer touched his hand in turn, a calloused brush of flesh, bobbed several times in the residue of excitement. At his other side stood Satin, arms clenched about her, her dark eyes darker still, and wide.
All about him, Downers, with that same disturbed look. Human quarrel, violence, alien to them. Downers would strike in a moment’s anger, but only to sting. He had never seen them quarrel in groups, had never seen weapons… their knives were only tools and hunting implements. They killed only game. What did they think, he wondered; what did they imagine at such a sight, humans turning guns on each other?
“We go Upabove,” Satin said.
“Yes,” he agreed. “You still go. It was good, Satin, Bluetooth, all of you, it was good you came to tell me.”
There was a general bobbing, expressions of relief among all the hisa, as if they had not been sure. The thought occurred to him that he had ordered Hale and his men off on that same shuttle… that human spite might still make things uncomfortable.
“I’ll talk to the man in charge of the ship,” he told them. “You and Hale will be in different parts of the ship. No trouble for you. I promise.”
“Good-good-good,” Satin breathed, and hugged him. He stroked her shoulder, turned and received an embrace from Bluetooth as well, patted his rougher pelt. He left them and started toward the crest of the hill, on the track to the landing site, and stopped at the sight of several figures standing there.
Miliko. Two others. All had rifles. He felt a sudden surge of relief to think he had had someone at his back after all. He waved his hand that it was all right, hastened toward them. Miliko came quickest, and he hugged her. Miliko’s two companions caught up, two guards off the shuttle. “I’m sending some personnel up with you,” he said to them. “Discharged, and I’m filing charges. I don’t want them armed. I’m also sending up some Downers, and I don’t want the two groups near each other, not at any time.”
“Yes, sir.” The two guards were blank of comment, objected to nothing.
“You can go back,” he said. “Start moving the assignees this way; it’s all right”
They went about their orders. Miliko kept the rifle she had borrowed of someone, stood against his side, her arm tight about him, his about her.
“Hale’s lot,” he said. “I’m packing them all off.”
“That leaves us no guards.”
“Q wasn’t the trouble. I’m calling station about this one.” His stomach tightened, reaction beginning to settle on him. “I guess they saw you on the ridge. Maybe that changed their minds.”
“Station’s got a crisis alert. I thought sure it was Q. Shuttle called station central.”
“Better get to Operations then and cancel it” He drew her about; they walked down the slope in the direction of the dome. His knees were water.
“I wasn’t up there,” she said.
“Where?”
“On the ridge. By the time we arrived up there, there were just Downers and Q.”
He swore, marveling then that he had won that bluff. “We’re well rid of Bran Hale,” he said.
They reached the trough among the hills, walked the bridge over the water hoses and up again, across to Operations. Inside, the boy was submitting to the medic’s attention and a pair of techs was standing armed with pistols, keeping a nervous watch on the Q folk who had brought him in. Emilio motioned a negative to them. They cautiously put them away, looked unhappy with the whole situation.
Carefully neutral, Emilio thought. They would have gone with any winner of the quarrel out there, no help to him. He was not angry for it, only disappointed.
“You all right, sir?” Jim Ernst asked.
He nodded, stood watching, with Miliko beside him. “Call station,” he said after a moment. “Report it settled.”
They nestled in together, in the dark space humans had found for them, in the great empty belly of the ship, a place which echoed fearfully with machinery. They had to use the breathers, first of what might be many discomforts. They tied themselves to the handholds, as humans had warned them they must, to be safe, and Satin hugged Bluetooth-Dahit-hos-me, hating the feel of the place and the cold and the discomfort of the breathers, and most of all fearing because they were told that they must tie themselves for safety. She had not thought of ships in terms of walls and roofs, which frightened her. Never had she imagined the flight of the ships as something so violent they might be dashed to death, but as something free as the soaring birds, grand and delirious. She shivered with her back against the cushions humans had given them, shivered and tried to cease, felt Bluetooth shiver too.
“We could go back,” he said, for this was not of his choosing.
She said nothing, clamped her jaw against the urge to cry that yes, they should, that they should call the humans and tell them that two very small, very unhappy Downers had changed their minds.
Then there was the sound of the engines. She knew what that was… had heard it often. Felt it now, a terror in her bones.
“We will see great Sun,” she said, now that it was irrevocable. “We will see Bennett’s home.”
Bluetooth held her tighter. “Bennett,” he repeated, a name which comforted them both. “Bennett Jacint.”
“We will see the spirit-images of the Upabove,” she said.
“We will see the Sun.” There was a great weight on them, a sense of moving, of being crushed at once. His grip hurt her; she held to him no less tightly. The thought came to her that they might be crushed unnoticed by the great power which humans endured; that perhaps humans had forgotten them here in the deep dark of the ship. But no, Downers came and went; hisa survived this great force, and flew, and saw all the wonders which inhabited the Upabove, walked where they might look down on the stars and looked into the face of great Sun, filled their eyes with good things.
This waited for them. It was now the spring, and the heat had begun in her and in him; and she had chosen the Journey she would make, longer than all journeys, and the high place higher than all high places, where she would spend her first spring.
The pressure eased; they still held to each other, still feeling motion. It was a very far flight, they had been warned so; they must not loose themselves until a man came and told them. The Konstantin had told them what to do and they would surely be safe. Satin felt so with a faith which increased as the force grew less and she knew that they had lived. They were on their way. They flew.
She clutched the shell which Konstantin had given her, the gift which marked this Time for her, and about her was the red cloth which was her special treasure, the best thing, the honor that Bennett himself had given her a name. She felt the more secure for these things, and for Bluetooth, for whom she felt an increasing fondness, true affection, not the springtime heat of mating. He was not the biggest and far from the handsomest, but he was clever and clear-headed.
Not wholly. He dug in one of the pouches he carried, brought out a small bit of twig, on which the buds had burst… moved his breather to smell it, offered it to her. It brought with them the world, the riverside, and promises.
She felt a flood of heat which turned her sweating despite the chill. It was unnatural, being so close to him and not having the freedom of the land, places to run, the restlessness which would lead her further and further into the lonely lands where only the images stood. They were traveling, in a strange and different way, in a way that great Sun looked down upon all the same, and so she needed do nothing. She accepted Bluetooth’s attentions, nervously at first, and then with increasing easiness, for it was right The games they would have played on the face of the land, until he was the last male determined enough to follow where she led… were not needed. He was the one who had come farthest, and he was here, and it was very right
The motion of the ship changed; they held each other a moment in fear, but this men had warned them of, and they had heard that there was a time of great strangeness. They laughed, and joined, and ceased, giddy and delirious. They marveled at the bit of blossoming twig which floated by them in the air, which moved when they batted at it by turns. She reached carefully and plucked it from the air, and laughed again, letting it free.
“This is where Sun lives,” Bluetooth surmised. She thought that it must be so, imagined Sun drifting majestically through the light of his power, and themselves swimming in it, toward the Upabove, the metal home of humans, which held out arms for them. They joined, and joined again, in spasms of joy.
After long and long came another change, little stresses at the bindings, very gentle, and by and by they began to feel heavy again.
“We are coming down,” Satin thought aloud. But they stayed quiet, remembering what they had been told, that they must wait on a man to tell them it was safe.
And there was a series of jolts and terrible noises, so that their arms clenched about each other; but the ground was solid under them now. The speaker overhead rang with human voices giving instructions and none of them sounded frightened, rather as humans usually sounded, in a hurry and humorless. “I think we are all right,” Bluetooth said.
“We must stay still,” she reminded him.
“They will forget us.”
“They will not,” she said, but she had doubts herself, so dark the place was and so desolate, just a little light where they were, above them.
There was a terrible clash of metal. The door through which they had come in opened, and there was no view of hills and forest now, but of a ribbed throatlike passage which blasted cold air at them.
A man came up it, dressed in brown, carrying one of the handspeakers. “Come on,” he told them, and they made haste to untie themselves. Satin stood up and found her legs shaking; she leaned on Bluetooth and he staggered too.
The man gave them gifts, silver cords to wear. “Your numbers,” he said. “Always wear them.” He took their names and gestured out the passage. “Come with me. We’ll get you checked in.”
They followed, down the frightening passage, out into a place like the ship belly where they had been, metal and cold, but very, very huge. Satin stared about her, shivering. “We are in a bigger ship,” she said. “This is a ship too.” And to the human: “Man, we in Upabove?”
“This is the station,” the human said.
A hint of cold settled on Satin’s heart. She had hoped for sights, for the warmth of Sun. She chided herself to patience, that these things would come, that it would yet be beautiful.
The apartment was tidied, the odds and ends rucked into hampers. Damon shrugged into his jacket, straightened his collar, Elene was still dressing, fussing at a waistline that — perhaps — bound a little. It was the second suit she had tried, She looked frustrated with this one too. He walked up behind her and gave her a gentle hug about the middle, met her eyes in the mirror. “You look fine. So what if it shows a little?”
She studied them both in the mirror, put her hand on his. “It looks more like I’m gaining weight.”
“You look wonderful,” he said, expecting a smile. Her mirrored face stayed anxious. He lingered a moment, held her because she seemed to want that. “Is it all right?” he asked. She had, perhaps, overdone, had gone out of her way to look right, had gotten special items from commissary… was nervous about the whole evening, he thought. Therefore the effort. Therefore the fretting about small things. “Does having Talley come here bother you?”
Her fingers traced his slowly. “I don’t think it does. But I’m not sure I know what to say to him. I’ve never entertained a Unioner.”
He dropped his arms, looked her in the eyes when she turned about. The exhausting preparations… all the anxiety to please. It was not enthusiasm. He had feared so. “You suggested it; I asked were you sure. Elene, if you felt in the least awkward in it — ”
“He’s ridden your conscience for over three months. Forget my qualms. I’m curious; shouldn’t I be?”
He suspected things… a more-than-willingness to accommodate him, that balance sheet Elene kept; gratitude, maybe; or her way of trying to tell him she cared. He remembered the long evenings, Elene brooding on her side of the table, he on his, her burden Estelle and his — the lives he handled. He had talked about Talley a certain night he ended up listening to her instead; and when the chance came — such gestures were like Elene: he could not remember bringing her another problem but that. So she took it, tried to solve it, however hard it was. Unioner. He had no way of knowing what she felt under those circumstances. He had thought he knew.
“Don’t look that way,” she said. “I’m curious, I said. But it’s the social situation. What do you say? Talk over old times? Have we possibly met before, Mr. Talley? Exchanged fire, maybe? Or maybe we talk over family… How’s yours, Mr, Talley? Or maybe we talk about hospital. How have you enjoyed your stay on Pell, Mr. Talley?”
“Elene — ”
“You asked.”
“I wish I’d known how you felt about it.”
“How do you feel about it — honestly?”
“Awkward,” he confessed, leaned against the counter. “But, Elene — ”
“If you want to know what I feel about it — I’m uneasy. Just uneasy. He’s coming here, and he’ll be here for us to entertain, and frankly, I don’t know what we’re going to do with him.” She turned to the mirror and tugged at the waistline. “All of which is what I think. I’m hoping he’ll be at ease and we’ll all have a pleasant evening.”
He could see it otherwise… long silences. “I’ve got to go get him,” he said. “He’ll be waiting.” And then with a happier thought: “Why don’t we go up to the concourse? Never mind the things here; it might make things easier all round, neither of us having to play host”
Her eyes lightened. “Meet you there? I’ll get a table. There’s nothing that can’t go in the freeze.”
“Do it.” He kissed her on the ear, all that was available, and gave her a pat, headed out in haste to make up the time.
The security desk sent a call back for Talley and he was quick in coming down the hall… a new suit, everything new. Damon met him and held out his hand. Talley’s face took on a different smile as he took it, quickly faded.
“You’re already checked out,” Damon told him, and gathered up a small plastic wallet from the desk, gave it to him. “When you check in again, this makes it all automatic. Those are your id papers and your credit card, and a chit with your comp number. You memorize the comp number and destroy the chit.”
Talley looked at the papers inside, visibly moved. “I’m discharged?” Evidently staff had not gotten around to telling him. His hands trembled, slender fingers shaking in their course over the fine-printed words. He stared at them, taking time to absorb the matter, until Damon touched his sleeve, drew him from the desk and down the corridor.
“You look well,” Damon said. It was so. Their images reflected back from the transport doors ahead, dark and light, his own solid, aquiline darkness and Talley’s pallor like illusions. Of a sudden he thought of Elene, felt the least insecurity in Talley’s presence, the comparison in which he felt all his faults… not alone the look of him, but the look from inside, that stared at him guiltless… which had always been guiltless.
What do I say to him? He echoed Elene’s ugly questions, Sorry? Sorry I never got around to reading your folder? Sorry I executed you … we were pressed for time? Forgive me …usually we do better?
He opened the door and Talley met his eyes in passing through. No accusations, no bitterness. He doesn’t remember. Can’t.
“Your pass,” Damon said as they walked toward the lift, “is what’s called white-tagged. See the colored circles by the door there? There’s a white one too. Your card is a key; so’s your comp number. If you see a white circle you have access by card or number. The computer will accept it. Don’t try anything where there’s no white. You’ll have alarms sounding and security running in a hurry. You know such systems, don’t you?”
“I understand.”
“You recall your comp skills?”
A few spaces of silence. “Armscomp is specialized. But I recall some theory.”
“Much of it?”
“If I sat in front of a board… probably I would remember.”
“Do you remember me?”
They had reached the lift. Damon punched the buttons for private call, privilege of his security clearance: he wanted no crowd. He turned, met Talley’s too-open gaze. Normal adults flinched, moved the eyes, glanced this way and that, focused on one and the other detail. Talley’s stare lacked such movements, like a madman’s, or a child’s, or a graven god’s.
“I remember you asking that before,” Talley said. “You’re one of the Konstantins. You own Pell, don’t you?”
“Not own. But we’ve been here a long time.”
“I haven’t, have I?”
An undertone of worry. What is it, Damon wondered with a crawling of his own skin, what is it to know bits of your mind are gone? How can anything make sense? “We met when you came here. You ought to know… I’m the one who agreed to the Adjustment. Legal Affairs office. I signed the commitment papers.”
There was then a little flinching. The car arrived; Damon put his hand inside to hold the door. “You gave me the papers,” Talley said. He stepped inside, and Damon followed, let the door close. The car started moving to the green he had coded. “You kept coming to see me. You were the one who was there so often — weren’t you?”
Damon shrugged. “I didn’t want what happened; I didn’t think it was right. You understand that.”
“Do you want something of me?” Willingness was implicit in the tone — at least acquiescence — in all things, anyway.
Damon returned the stare. “Forgiveness, maybe,” he said, cynical.
“That’s easy.”
“Is it?”
“That’s why you came? That’s why you came to see me? Why you asked me to come with you now?”
“What did you suppose?”
The wide-field stare clouded a bit, seemed to focus. “I have no way to know. It’s kind of you to come.”
“Did you think it might not be kind?”
“I don’t know how much memory I have. I know there are gaps. I could have known you before. I could remember things that aren’t so. It’s all the same. You did nothing to me, did you?”
“I could have stopped it.”
“I asked for Adjustment… didn’t I? I thought that I asked.”
“You asked, yes.”
“Then I remember something right. Or they told me. I don’t know. Shall I go on with you? Or is that all you wanted?”
“You’d rather not go?”
A series of blinks. “I thought — when I wasn’t so well — that I might have known you. I had no memory at all then. I was glad you came. It was someone… outside the walls. And the books… thank you for the books. I was very glad to have them.”
“Look at me.”
Talley did so, an instant centering, a touch of apprehension.
“I want you to come. I’d like you to come. That’s all.”
“To where you said? To meet your wife?”
“To meet Elene. And to see Pell. The better side of it.”
“All right.” Talley’s regard stayed with him. The drifting, he thought… that was defense; retreat. The direct gaze trusted. From a man with gaps in his memory, trust was all-encompassing.
“I know you,” Damon said. “I’ve read the hospital proceedings, I know things about you I don’t know about my own brother. I think it’s fair to tell you that.”
“Everyone’s read them.”
“Who — everyone?”
“Everyone I know. The doctors… all of them in the center.”
He thought that over. Hated the thought that anyone should submit to that much intrusion. “The transcripts will be erased.”
“Like me.” The ghost of a smile quirked Talley’s mouth, sadness.
“It wasn’t a total restruct,” Damon said. “Do you understand that?”
“I know as much as they told me.”
The car was coming slowly to rest in green one. The doors opened on one of the busiest corridors in Pell. Other passengers wanted in; Damon took Talley’s arm, shepherded him through. Some few heads turned at their presence in the crowd, the sight of a stranger of unusual aspect, or the face of a Konstantin… mild curiosity. Voices babbled, undisturbed. Music drifted from the concourse, thin, sweet notes. A few of the Downer workers were in the corridor, tending the plants which grew there. He and Talley walked with the general flow of traffic, anonymous within it
The hall opened onto the concourse, a darkness, the only light in it coming from the huge projection screens which were its walls: views of stars, of Downbelow’s crescent, of the blaze of the filtered sun, the docks viewed from outside cameras. The music was leisurely, an enchantment of electronics and chimes and sometime quiver of bass, balanced moment by moment to the soft tenor of conversation at the tables which filled the center of the curving hall. The screens changed with the ceaseless spin of Pell itself, and images switched in time from one to another to the screens which extended from floor to lofty ceiling. The floor and the tiny human figures and the tables alone were dark.
“Quen-Konstantin,” he said to the young woman at the counter by the entry. A waiter at once moved to guide them to the reserved table.
But Talley had stopped. Damon looked back, found him staring about at the screens with a heart-open look on his face. “Josh,” Damon said, and when he did not react, gently took his arm. “This way.” Balance deserted some newcomers to the concourse, difficulty with the slow spin of the images which dwarfed the tables. He kept the grip all the way to the table, a prime one on the margin, with unimpeded view of the screens.
Elene rose at their arrival. “Josh Talley,” Damon said. “Elene Quen, my wife.”
Elene blinked. Most reacted to Talley. Slowly she extended her hand, which he took. “Josh, is it? Elene.” She settled back to her chair and they took theirs. The waiter stood expectantly. “Another,” she said.
“Special,” Damon said, looked at Talley. “Any preference? Or trust me.”
Talley shrugged, looking uncomfortable.
“Two,” Damon said, and the waiter vanished. He looked at Elene. “Crowded, this evening.”
“Not many residents go to the dockside lately,” Elene said. That was so; the beached merchanters had staked out a couple of the bars exclusively, a running problem with security.
“They serve dinner here,” Damon said, looking at Talley. “Sandwiches, at least.”
“I’ve eaten,” he said in a remote tone, fit to stop any conversation.
“Have you,” Elene asked, “spent much time on stations?”
Damon reached for her hand under the table, but Talley shook his head quite undisturbed.
“Only Russell’s.”
“Pell is the best of them.” She slid past that pit without looking at it. One shot declined, Damon thought, wondering if Elene meant what she did. “Nothing like this at the others.”
“Quen… is a merchanter name.”
“Was. They were destroyed at Mariner.”
Damon clenched his hand on hers in her lap. Talley stared at her stricken. “I’m sorry.”
Elene shook her head. “Not your fault, I’m sure. Merchanters get it from both sides. Bad luck, that’s all.”
“He can’t remember,” Damon said.
“Can you?” Elene asked.
Talley shook his head slightly.
“So,” Elene said, “It’s neither here nor there. I’m glad you could come. The Deep spat you out; only a stationer’d dice with you?”
Damon remained perplexed, but Talley smiled wanly, some remote joke he seemed to comprehend.
“I suppose so.”
“Luck and luck,” Elene said, glanced aside at him and tightened her hand. “You can dice and win on dockside, but old Deep loads his. Carry a man like that for luck. Touch him for it. Here’s to survivors, Josh Talley.”
Bitter irony? Or an effort at welcome? It was merchanters’ humor, impenetrable as another language. Talley seemed relaxed by it. Damon drew back his hand, and settled back. “Did they discuss the matter of a job, Josh?”
“No.”
“You are discharged. If you can’t work, station will carry you for a while. But I did arrange something tentatively, that you can go to of mornings, work as long as you feel able, go back home by noon, maindays. Would that appeal to you?”
Talley said nothing, but the look on his face, half-lit in the image of the sun… it was nearest now, in the slow rotation… wanted it, hung on it. Damon leaned his arms on the table, embarrassed now to give the little that he had arranged. “A disappointment, perhaps. You have higher qualifications. Small machine salvage, a job, at least… on your way to something else. And I’ve found a room for you, in the old merchanter’s central hospice, bath but no kitchen… things are incredibly tight. Your job credit is guaranteed by station law to cover basic food and lodging. Since you don’t have a kitchen, your card’s good in any restaurant up to a certain limit There are things you have to pay for above that… but there’s always a schedule in comp to list volunteer service jobs, that you can apply for to get extras. Eventually station will demand a full day’s work for board and room, but not till you’re certified able. Is that all right with you?”
“I’m free?”
“For all reasonable purposes, yes.” The drinks arrived. Damon picked up his frothy concoction of summer fruit and alcohol, watched with interest as Talley sampled one of the delicacies of Pell and reacted with pleasure. He sipped at his own.
“You’re no stationer,” Elene observed after some silence. Talley was gazing beyond them, to the walls, the slow ballet of stars. You don’t get much view on a ship, Elene had said once, trying to explain to him. Not what you’d think. It’s the being there; the working of it; the feel of moving through what could surprise you at any moment. It’s being a dust speck in that scale and pushing your way through all that Empty on your own terms, that no world can do and nothing spinning around one. It’s doing that, and knowing all the time old goblin Deep is just the other side of the metal you’re leaning on. You stationers like your illusions. And world folk, blue-skyers, don’t even know what real is.
He felt a chill suddenly, felt apart, with Elene and a stranger across the table making a set of two. His wife and the god-image that was Talley. It was not jealousy. It was a sense of panic. He drank slowly. Watched Talley, who looked at the screens as no stationer did. Like a man remembering breathing.
Forget station, he had heard in Elene’s voice. You’ll never be content here. As if she and Talley spoke a language he did not, even using the same words. As if a merchanter who had lost her ship to Union could pity a Unioner who had lost his, beached, like her. Damon reached out beneath the table, sought Elene’s hand, closed it in his. “Maybe I can’t give you what you most want,” he said to Talley, resisting hurt, deliberately courteous. “Pell won’t hold you forever now, and if you can find some merchanter to take you on after your papers are entirely clear… that’s open too someday in the future. But take my advice, plan for a long stay here. Things aren’t settled and the merchanters are moving nowhere but to the mines and back.”
“The long-haulers are drinking themselves blind on dock-side,” Elene muttered. “We’ll run out of liquor before we run out of bread on Pell. No, not for a while. Things will get better. God help us, we can’t contain what we’ve swallowed forever.”
“Elene.”
“Isn’t he on Pell, too?” she asked. “And aren’t we all? His living is tied up with it.”
“I would not,” Talley said, “harm Pell.” His hand moved on the table, a slight tic. It was one of the few implants, that aversion. Damon kept his mouth shut on the knowledge of the psych block; it was no less real for being deep-taught Talley was intelligent; possibly even he could figure eventually what had been done to him.
“I — ” Talley made another random motion of his hand, “don’t know this place. I need help. Sometimes I’m not sure how I got into this. Do you know? Did I know?”
Bizarre connection of data. Damon stared at him disquietedly, for a moment afraid that Talley was lapsing into some embarrassing sort of hysteria, not sure what he was going to do with him in this public place.
“I have the records,” he answered Talley’s question, “That’s all the knowledge I have of it.”
“Am I your enemy?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I remember Cyteen.”
“You’re making connections I’m not following, Josh.”
Lips trembled. “I don’t follow them either.”
“You said you needed help. In what, Josh?”
“Here. The station. You won’t stop coming by — ”
“You mean visiting you. You won’t be in the hospital anymore.” Suddenly the sense of it dawned on him, that Talley knew that. “You mean do I set you up with a job and cut you loose on your own? No. I’ll call you next week, depend on it.”
“I was going to suggest,” Elene said smoothly, “that you give Josh comp clearance to get a call through to the apartment. Troubles don’t keep office hours and one or the other of us would be able to untangle situations. We are, legally, your sponsors. If you can’t get hold of Damon, call my office.”
Talley accepted that with a nod of his head. The shifting screens kept their dizzying course. They did not say much for a long time, listened to the music and nursed that round of drinks into a second.
“It would be nice,” Elene said finally, “if you’d come to dinner at the end of the week… chance my cooking. Have a game of cards. You play cards, surely.”
Talley’s eyes shifted subtly in his direction, as if to ask approval. “It’s a long-standing card night,” Damon said. “Once a month my brother and his wife would cross shifts with ours. They were on alterday… transferred to Downbelow since the crisis. Josh does play,” he said to Elene.
“Good.”
“Not superstitious,” Talley said.
“We won’t bet,” Elene said.
“I’ll come.”
“Fine,” she said; and a moment later Josh’s eyes half-lidded. He was fighting it, came around in an instant. All the tension was out of him.
“Josh,” Damon said, “you think you can walk out of here?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, distressed.
Damon rose, and Elene did; very carefully Talley pushed back from the table and navigated between them… not the two drinks, Damon thought, which had been mild, but the screens and exhaustion. Talley steadied once in the corridor and seemed to catch his breath in the light and stability out there. A trio of Downers stared at them round-eyed above the masks.
They both walked him to the lift and rode with him back to the facility in red, returned him through the glass doors and into the custody of the security desk. They were into alterday now and the guard on duty was one of the Mullers.
“See he gets settled all right,” Damon said. Beyond the desk, Talley paused, looked back at them with curious intensity, until the guard came back and drew him down the corridor.
Damon put his arm about Elene and they started their own walk home. “It was a good thought to ask him,” he said.
“He’s awkward,” Elene said, “but who wouldn’t be?” She followed him through the doors into the corridor, walked hand in hand with him down the hall. “The war has nasty casualties,” she said. “If any Quens could have come through Mariner… it would be that, just the other side of the mirror, wouldn’t it? — for one of my own. So, God help us, help him. He could as well be one of ours.”
She had drunk rather more than he… grew morose whenever she did so. He thought of the baby; but it was not the moment to say anything hard with her. He gave her hand a squeeze, ruffled her hair, and they headed home.
Marsh had not yet arrived, not baggage or man. Ayres settled in with the others, chose his room of the four which opened by sliding partitions onto a central area, the whole thing an affair of movable panels, white, on silver tracks. The furniture was on tracks, spare, efficient, not comfortable. It was the fourth such change of lodging they had suffered in the last ten days, lodging not far removed from the last, not visibly different from the last, no less guarded by the young mannequins, ubiquitous, and armed, in the corridors… the same for the months they had been at this place before the shifting about started.
They did not, in effect, know where they were, whether on some station near the first or orbiting Cyteen itself. Questions obtained only evasions. Security, they said of the moves, and: Patience. Ayres maintained calm before his companion delegates, the same as he did before the various dignitaries and agencies, both military and civilian — if that had any distinction in Union — which questioned them, interrogations and discussions both singly and in a group. He had stated the reasons and the conditions of their appeal for peace until the inflections of his voice became automatic, until he had memorized the responses of his companions to the same questions; until the performance became just that, performance, an end in itself, something which they might do endlessly, to the limit of the patience of their hosts/interrogators. Had they been negotiating on Earth, they would have long since given up, declared disgust, applied other tactics; that was not an option here. They were vulnerable; they did as they could. His companions had borne themselves well in this distressing circumstance… save Marsh. Marsh grew nervous, restless, tense.
And it was of course Marsh the Unionists singled out for particular attention. When they were in single session, Marsh was gone from their midst longest; in the four times they had been shifted lately, Marsh was the last to move in. Bela and Dias had not commented on this; they did not discuss or speculate on anything. Ayres did not remark on it, settling in one of the several chairs in the living area of their suite and picking up from the inevitable vid set the latest propaganda the Unionists provided for their entertainment: either closed-circuit, or if it were station vid, it indicated mentalities incredibly tolerant of boredom — histories years old, accounts cataloging the alleged atrocities committed by the Company and the Company Fleet.
He had seen it all before. They had requested access to the transcripts of their own interviews with the local authorities, but these were denied them. Their own facilities for making such records, even writing materials, had been stolen from their luggage, and their protests were deferred and ignored. These folk had an utter lack of respect for diplomatic conventions… typical, Ayres thought, of the situation, of authority upheld by rifle-bearing juveniles with mad eyes and ready recitations of regulations. They most frightened him, the young, the mad-eyed, the too-same young ones. Fanatic, because they knew only what was poured into their heads. Put in on tape, likely, beyond reason. Don’t talk with them, he had warned his companions. Do whatever they ask and make your arguments only to their superiors.
He had long since lost the thread of the broadcast. He cast a look up and about, where Dias sat with her eyes fixed on the screen, where Bela played a game of logic with makeshift pieces. Surreptitiously Ayres looked at his watch, which he had tried to synch with the hours of the Unionists, which were not Earth’s hours, nor Pell’s, nor the standard kept by the Company. An hour late now. An hour since they had arrived here.
He bit at his lips, doggedly turned his mind to the material on the screen, which was no more than anesthetic, and not even effective at that: the slanders, they had gotten used to. If this was supposed to annoy them, it did not.
There was, eventually, a touch at the door. It opened. Ted Marsh slipped in, carrying his two bags; there was a glimpse of two young guards in the corridor, armed. The door closed.
Marsh walked through with his eyes downcast, but all the bedroom doors were slid closed. “Which?” he asked, compelled to stop and ask of them.
“Other side, other way,” Ayres said. Marsh slung back across the room and set his bags down at that door. His brown hair fell in disorder, thin strands about his ears; his collar was rumpled. He would not look at them. All his movements were small and nervous.
“Where have you been?” Ayres asked sharply, before he could escape.
Marsh darted a look back. “Foulup in my assignment here. Their computer had me listed somewhere else.”
The others had looked up, listened. Marsh stared at him and sweated.
Challenge the lie? Show distress? The rooms were all monitored; they were sure of it. He could call Marsh a liar, and make clear that the game was reaching another level. They could… his instincts shrank from it… take the man into the bathroom and drown the truth out of him as efficiently as Union could question him. Marsh’s nerves could hardly stand up to them if they did so. The gain was questionable on all fronts.
Perhaps… pity urged at him… Marsh was keeping his ordered silence. Perhaps Marsh wanted to confide in them and obeyed his orders for silence instead, suffering in loyalty. He doubted it. Of course the Unionists had settled on him… not a weak man, but the weakest of their four. Marsh glanced aside, carried his bags into his room, slid the door shut
Ayres refused even to exchange glances with the others. The monitoring was probably visual as well, and continuous. He faced the screen and watched the vid.
Time was what they wanted, time gained by this means or gained by negotiations. The stress was thus far bearable. They daily argued with Union, a changing parade of officials. Union agreed to their proposals in principle, professed interest, talked and discussed, sent them to this and that committee, quibbled on points of protocol. On protocol, when materials were stolen from their luggage! It was all stalling, on both sides, and he wished he knew why, on theirs.
Military action was surely proceeding, something which might not benefit their side in negotiation. They would get the outcome dropped in their laps at some properly critical phase, would be expected to cede something further.
Pell, of course. Pell was the most likely cession to ask; and that could not be allowed. The surrender of Company officers to Union’s revolutionary justice was another likely item. Not feasible in fact, although some meaningless document could be arranged in compromise: outlawry, perhaps. He had no intention of signing Fleet personnel lives away if he could help it, but a yielding of objection on prosection of some station officials classed as state enemies… that might have to be. Union would do as it wished anyway. And what happened this far remote would have little political impact on Earth. What the visual media could not carry into living rooms, the general public could not long remain exercised about. Statistically, a majority of the electorate could not or did not read complicated issues; no pictures, no news; no news, no event; no great sympathy on the part of the public nor sustained interest from the media: safe politics for the Company. Above all they could not jeopardize the majority they had won on other issues, the half century of careful maneuvering, the discrediting of Isolationist leaders… the sacrifices already made. Others were inevitable.
He listened to the idiot vid, searched the propaganda for evidence to clarify the situation, listened to the reports of Union’s alleged benefits to its citizens, its vast programs of internal improvement. Of other things he would wish to know, the extent of Union territory in directions other than Earthward, the number of bases in their possession, what had happened at the fallen stations, whether they were actively developing further territories or whether the war had effectively engaged their resources to the utmost… these pieces of information were not available. Nor was there information to indicate just how extensive the rumored birth-labs were, what proportion of the citizenry they produced, or what treatment those individuals received. A thousand times he cursed the recalcitrance of the Fleet, of Signy Mallory in particular. No knowing ultimately whether his course had been the right one, to exclude the Fleet from his operation. No knowing what would have happened had the Fleet fallen in line. They were now where they must be, even if it was this white set of rooms like all the other white sets of rooms they had experienced; they were doing what they had to — without the Fleet, which could have given them negotiating strength (minor), or proven a frighteningly random third side in the negotiations. The stubbornness of Pell had not helped; Pell, which chose to placate the Fleet. With support from the station they might have had some impact on the mentality of such as Mallory.
Which still returned to the question whether a Fleet which considered its own interests paramount could be persuaded to anything. Mazian and his like could never be controlled for the length of time it would take Earth to prepare defense. They were not, he reminded himself, not Earthborn; not regulation-followers, to judge by his sight of them. Like the scientific personnel who had reacted to Earth’s emigration bans and summons homeward back in the old days… by deserting further Beyond. To Union, ultimately. Or to be like the Konstantins, who had been tyrants so long in their own little empire that they felt precious little responsibility toward Earth.
And… this terrified him, when he let himself think about it… he had not expected the difference out there, had not expected the Union mentality, which seemed to slant off toward some angle of behavior neither parallel nor quite opposite to their own. Union tried to break them down… this bizarre game with Marsh, which was surely a case of divide and conquer. Therefore he refused to engage Marsh. Marsh, Bela, and Dias did not have detailed information in them; they were simply Company officers, and what they knew was not that dangerous. He had sent back to Earth the two delegates who, like himself, knew too much; sent them back to say that the Fleet could not be managed, and that stations were collapsing. That much was done. He and his companions here played the game they were given, maintained monastic silence at all times, suffered without comment the shifts in lodging and the disarrangements which were meant to unbalance them — a tactic merely aimed at weakening them in negotiation, Ayres hoped, and not that more dire possibility, that it presaged a seizure of their own persons for interrogation. They went through the motions, hoped that they were closer to success on the treaty than they had been.
And Marsh moved through their midst, sat in their sessions, regarded them in private with a bruised, disheveled look, without their moral support… because to ask reasons or offer comfort was to breach the silence which was their defensive wall. Why? Ayres had written once on a plastic tabletop by Marsh’s arm. In the oil of his fingertip, something he trusted no lens could pick up. And when that had gained no reaction: What? Marsh had erased both, and written nothing, turned his face away, his lips trembling in imminent breakdown. Ayres had not repeated the question.
Now at length he rose, walked to Marsh’s door, slid it open without knocking.
Marsh sat on his bed, fully clothed, arms locked across his ribs, staring at the wall, or beyond it
Ayres walked over to him, bent down by his ear. “Concisely,” he said in the faintest of whispers, not sure even that would fail to be heard, “what do you think is going on? Have they been questioning you? Answer me.”
A moment passed. Marsh shook his head slowly.
“Answer,” Ayres said.
“I am singled out for delays,” Marsh said, a whisper that stammered. “My assignments are never in order. There’s always some mixup. They keep me sitting and waiting for hours. That’s all, sir.”
“I believe you,” Ayres said. He was not sure he did, but he offered it all the same, and patted Marsh’s shoulder. Marsh broke down and cried, tears pouring down a face which struggled to be composed. The supposed cameras… they were eternally conscious of the cameras they believed to be present
Ayres was shaken by this, the suspicion that they themselves were Marsh’s tormentors, as much as Union. He left the room and walked back into the other. And swelling with anger he stopped amid the room, turned his face up to the complicated crystal light fixture which was his chiefest suspicion of monitoring. “I protest,” he said sharply, “this deliberate and unwarranted harassment.”
Then he turned and sat down, watched the vid again. His companions had reacted no more than to look up. The silence resumed.
There was no acknowledgment of the incident the next morning, in the arrival of the day’s schedule, carried by a gun-wearing mannequin.
Meeting 0800, it informed them. The day was starting early. There was no other information, not topic nor with whom nor where, not even mention for arrangements of lunch, which were usually included. Marsh came out of his room, shadow-eyed as if he had not slept “We don’t have much time for breakfast,” Ayres said; it was usually delivered to their quarters at 0730, and it was within a few minutes of that time.
The light at the door flashed a second time. It opened from the outside, no breakfast, rather a trio of the mannequin-guards.
“Ayres,” one said. Just that, without courtesies. “Come.”
He bit back a reply. There was no arguing with them; he had told his people so. He looked at the others, went back and got his jacket, playing the same game, taking time and deliberately irritating those waiting on him. When he reckoned that he had delayed as long as made the point he came alone to the door and into the custody of the young guards.
Marsh, he could not help thinking. What was their game with Marsh?
They brought him down the corridor in the correct direction for the lift, through the lift-sequence and halls without marking or designation, into the conference rooms and offices, which relieved his immediate apprehensions. They entered a familiar room, and passed through into one of the three interview rooms they used. Military this time. The silver-haired man at the small circular table had metal enough studding the pocket-flap of his black uniform to have made up the ranks of the last several he had talked to combined. Insane pattern of insignia. No knowing what, precisely, the intricate emblems represented… amusing on one level, that Union had managed to evolve so complex a system of medals and insignia, as if all that metal were meant to impress. But it was authority, and power; and that was not amusing at all.
“Delegate Ayres.” The gray-haired man… gray with rejuv, by the scarcely lined vigor of the face, a drug entirely common out here… available on Earth only in inferior substitutes… rose and offered his hand. Ayres took it solemnly. “Seb Azov,” the man introduced himself. “From the Directorate. Pleasure to meet you, sir.”
The central government; the Directorate was, he had learned, now a body of three hundred twelve: whether this related to the number of stations and worlds in some proportion, he was not aware. It met not only on Cyteen but elsewhere; and how one got into it, he did not know. This man was, beyond doubt, military.
“I regret,” Ayres said coldly, “to begin our acquaintance with a protest, citizen Azov, but I refuse to talk until a certain matter is cleared up.”
Azov lifted bland brows, sat down again. “The matter, sir?”
“The harassment to which one of my party is being subjected.”
“Harassment, sir?”
He was, he knew, supposed to lose his composure, give way to nervousness or anger. He refused either. “Delegate Marsh and your computer seem to find difficulty locating his room assignments, remarkable, since we are inevitably lodged together. I rate your technical competency above that. I am unable to name it anything but harassment that this man is kept waiting hours while alleged discrepancies are sorted out. I maintain that this is harassment designed to lessen our efficiency through exhaustion. I complain of other tactics, such as the inability of your staff to provide us recreational opportunity or room for exercise, such as the inevitable insistence of your staff that they lack authorizations, such as the evasive responses of your staff when we make an inquiry regarding the name of this base. We were promised Cyteen. How are we to know whether we are speaking to authorized persons or merely to low-level functionaries of no competency or authority to negotiate the serious matters on which we have come? We have traveled a far distance, citizen, to settle a grievous and dangerous situation, and we have received precious little cooperation from the persons we have met here.”
It was not improvisation. He had prepared the speech for an occasion of opportunity, and the visible brass presented the target. Clearly, Azov was a little taken aback by the attack. Ayres maintained a front of anger, the best miming he had yet done, for he was terrified. His heart hammered against his ribs and he hoped his color had not changed perceptibly.
“It will be attended,” Azov said after a moment.
“I should prefer,” said Ayres, “stronger assurance.”
Azov sat staring at him a moment. “Take my word,” he said in a tone that quivered with force, “you will be satisfied. Will you sit, sir? We have some business at hand. Accept my personal apology for the inconvenience to delegate Marsh; it will be investigated and remedied.”
He considered walking out, considered further argument, considered the man in front of him, and took the offered chair. Azov’s eyes fixed on him with, he thought, some measure of respect
“On your word, sir,” Ayres said.
“I regret the matter; I can say little more at the moment There is a pressing matter regarding the negotiations; we’ve come upon what you might call… a situation.” He pressed a button on the table console. “Kindly send in Mr. Jacoby.”
Ayres looked toward the door, slowly, betraying no strong anxiety, although he felt it. The door opened; a man in civilian clothing came in… civilian, not the uniforms or uniform-like suits which had distinguished all who had previously dealt with them.
“Mr. Segust Ayres, Mr. Dayin Jacoby of Pell Station. I understand you’ve met.”
Ayres rose, extended his hand to this arrival in cold courtesy, liking it all less and less. “A casual meeting, perhaps; forgive me, I don’t remember you.”
“Council, Mr. Ayres.” The hand gripped his and withdrew without warmth. Jacoby accepted the gestured offer of the third chair at the round table.
“A three-cornered conference,” Azov murmured. “Your terms, Mr. Ayres, claim Pell and stations in advance of it as the territory you wish to protect. This doesn’t seem to be in accord with the wishes of the citizens of that station… and you are on record as supporting the principle of self-determination.”
“This man,” Ayres said without looking at Jacoby, “is no one of consequence on Pell and has no authority to make agreements. I suggest you consult with Mr. Angelo Konstantin, and send appropriate inquiries to the station council. I don’t in fact know this person, and as for any claim he makes to be on the council, I can’t attest to their validity.”
Azov smiled. “We have an offer from Pell which we are accepting. This does throw into question the proposals under discussion, since without Pell, you would be laying claim to an island within Union territory — stations which, I must tell you, are already part of Union territory, by similar decisions. You have no territory in the Beyond. None.”
Ayres sat still, feeling the blood draining from his extremities. “This is not negotiation in good faith.”
“Your Fleet is now without a single base, sir. We have utterly cut them off. We call on you to perform a humanitarian act; you should inform them of the fact and of their alternatives. There’s no need for the loss of ships and lives in defense of a territory which no longer exists. Your cooperation will be appreciated, sir.”
“I am outraged,” Ayres exclaimed.
That may be,“ Azov said. ”But in the interest of saving lives, you may choose to send that message.“
“Pell has not ceded itself. You’re likely to find the real situation different from what you imagine, citizen Azov, and when you wish better terms from us, when you want that trade which might profit us both, consider what you’re throwing away.”
“Earth is one world.”
He said nothing. Had nothing to say. He did not want to argue the desirability of Earth.
“The matter of Pell,” said Azov, “is an easy one. Do you know the vulnerability of a station? And when the will of the citizenry supports those outside, a very simple matter. No destruction; that’s not our purpose. But the Fleet will not operate successfully in the absence of a base… and you hold none. We sign the articles you ask, including the arrangement of Pell as a common meeting point — but in our hands, not yours. No difference, really… save in the observance of the will of the people… which you claim to hold so dear.”
It was better than it might have been; but it was designed to appear so. “There are,” he said, “no representatives of the citizens of Pell here, only a self-appointed spokesman. I would like to see his letters of authorization.”
Azov gathered up a leather-bound folder from before him. “You might be interested in this, sir: the document you offered us… signed by the government and Directorate of Union, and the council, precisely as you worded it… abstracting the control of stations which are now in our hands, and a few minor words regarding the status of Pell: the words ’under Company management’ have been struck, here and on the trade document. Three small words. All else is yours, precisely as you gave it. I understand that you are, due to distances, empowered to sign on behalf of your governments and the Company.”
Refusal was on his lips. He considered it, as he was in the habit of considering what slipped from him. “Subject to ratification by my government. The absence of those words would cause distress.”
“I hope that you will urge them to acceptance, sir, after reflection.” Azov laid the folder on the table and slid it toward him. “Examine it at your leisure. From our side, it is firm. All the provisions you desired, all the provisions, to put it frankly, that you can possibly ask, since your territories do not exist.”
“I frankly doubt that”
“Ah. That is your privilege. But doubt doesn’t alter fact, sir. I suggest that you content yourself with what you have won… trade agreements which will profit us all, and heal a long breach. Mr. Ayres, what more in reason do you think you can ask? That we cede what the citizens of Pell are willing to give us?”
“Misrepresentation.”
“Yet you lack any means to investigate, thus confessing your own limitations of control and possession. You say the government which sent you from Earth has undergone profound changes, and that we must deal with you as a new entity, forgetting all past grievances as irrelevant. Does this new entity… propose to meet our signing of their document with further demands? I would suggest, sir, that your military strength is at a low ebb… that you have no means to verify anything, that you were obliged to come here in a series of freighters at the whim of merchanters. That a hostile posture is not to the good of your government”
“You are making threats?”
“Stating realities. A government without ships, without control of its own military and without resources… is not in a position to insist that its document be signed without changes. We have abstracted meaningless clauses and three words, leaving the government of Pell essentially in the hands of whatever government the citizens of Pell choose to establish; and is this a fit matter for objection on the part of the interest you represent?”
Ayres sat still a moment. “I have to consult with others of my delegation. I don’t choose to do so with monitoring in progress.”
“There is no monitoring.”
“We believe to the contrary.”
“Again you are without means to verify this one way or the other. You must proceed as best you can.”
Ayres took the folder. “Don’t expect me or my staff at any meetings today. We’ll be in conference.”
“As you will.” Azov rose, extended his hand. Jacoby remained seated and offered no courtesy.
“I don’t promise signature.”
“A conference. I quite understand, sir. Pursue your own course; but I should suggest that you seriously consider the effects of refusing this agreement. Presently we consider our border to be Pell. We’re leaving you the Hinder Stars, which you may, if you wish, develop to your profit. In case of failure of this agreement, we shall set our own boundaries, and we will be direct neighbors.”
His heart was beating very hard. This was nearing ground he did not want to discuss at all.
“Further,” said Azov, “should you wish to save the lives of your Fleet and recover those ships, we’ve added to that folder a document of our own. Contingent on your agreement to attempt recall of the Fleet, and your order to them to withdraw to the territories you have taken for your boundary by the signature of this treaty, we will drop all charges against them and against other enemies of the state which you may name. We’ll permit them to withdraw under our escort and to accompany you home, although we understand that this is at considerable hazard to our side.”
“We are not aggressive.”
“We could better believe that did you not refuse to call off your ships, which are presently attacking our citizens.”
“I’ve told you flatly that I have no command over the Fleet and no power to recall it”
“We believe that you might use considerable influence. We will make facilities available to you for the transmission of a message… the cessation of hostilities will follow the Fleet ceasefire.”
“We’ll consider the matter.”
“Sir.”
Ayres bowed, turned, walked out, met by the ever-present young guards, who began to guide him elsewhere among the offices. “The other meeting has been canceled,” he informed them. “We go back to my quarters. All my companions do.”
“We have our orders,” the foremost said, which was all they ever said. It would be straightened out only when they reached the site of the 0800 meeting and gathered the whole party, a new group of young guards then to guide them back, long waiting in between while things were cleared through channels. This was always the way of things, inefficiency meant to drive them mad.
His hand sweated on the leather of the folder he was given, the folder with the documents signed by the government of Union. Pell, lost. A chance to recover at least the Fleet and a proposal which might destroy it. He much feared that the government of Union was planning further ahead than Earth imagined. The Long View. Union had been born with it. Earth was only now acquiring it. He felt transparent and vulnerable. We know you’re stalling, he imagined the thoughts behind Azov’s broad, powerful face. We know you want to gain time; and why; and for now it suits us too, a trifling agreement we and you will abrogate at earliest convenience.
Union had swallowed all it meant to digest… for now.
They could not afford debate, could not raise deadly issues in a privacy they probably did not have. Sign it and carry it home. What he had in his head was the important matter. They had learned the Beyond; it was about them in the person of soldiers with a single face and virtually a single mind; in the defiance of Norway’s captain, the arrogance of the Konstantins, the merchanters who ignored a war that had been going on all about them for generations… attitudes Earth had never understood, that different powers rule out here, different logic.
Generations which had shaken the dust of Earth from off their feet.
Getting home — by signing a meaningless paper Mazian would never heed, no more than Mallory would come to heel for the asking — getting back alive was the important thing, to make understood what he had seen. For that he would do the necessary things, sign a lie and hope.
The daily ton of disasters extended even to regions beyond station. Angelo Konstantin rested his head on his hand and studied the printout in front of him. A seal blown on Centaur Mine, on Pell IV’s third moon… fourteen men killed. Fourteen — he could not help the thought — skilled, cleared workers. They had humanity rotting in its own filth the other side of Q line, and they had to lose the like of these instead. Lack of supply, old parts, things which should have been replaced being rigged to keep working. A quarter credit seal gave way and fourteen men died in vacuum. He typed through a memo to locate workers among Pell techs who could replace the lost ones; their own docks were going idle… jammed with ships on main berths and auxiliaries, but very little moving in or out… and the men were better out there in the mines where their expertise could do some good.
Not all the transferred workers had necessary skills at what they were set to do. A worker had been killed on Downbelow, crushed trying to direct a crawler out of the mud where an inexperienced partner had driven it. Condolences had to be added to those Emillio had already written to the family on-station.
There were two more murders known in Q, and a body had been found adrift in the vicinity of the docks. Supposedly the victim had been vented alive. Q was blamed. Security was trying to get id on the victim, but there was considerable mutilation of the body.
There was a case of another kind, a lawsuit involving two longtime resident families sharing quarters in alterday rotation. The original inhabitants accused the newcomers of pilferage and conversion. Damon sent him the case as an example of a growing problem. Some council action was going to have to be taken in legislation to make responsibilities clear in such cases.
A docksider newly assigned to his post was in hospital, half killed by the crew of the militarized merchanter Janus. The militarized crews demanded merchanter privileges and access to bars, against some stationer authorities who tried to put them under military discipline. The bones would mend; the relations between station-side officers and the merchanter crews were in worse condition. The next stationer officer who went out with the patrols was looking to get his throat cut. Merchanter families were not used to strangers aboard.
No station personnel to be assigned to militia ships without permission of ship’s captain, he sent to the militia office. Militia ships will patrol under their own officers pending resolution of morale difficulties.
That would create anguish in some quarters. It would create less than a mutiny would, a merchanter ship against the station authority which tried to direct it. Elene had warned him. He found occasion now to take that advice, an emergency in which stationmaster could override council’s ill-advised desire to keep its thumb on the armed freighters.
There were petty crises in supply. He stamped authorizations where needed, some after the fact, approval on local supervisors’ ingenuity, particularly in the mines. He blessed skilled subordinates who had learned to ferret hidden surpluses out of other departments.
There was need for repair in Q and security asked authorization for armed forces to seal and clear orange three up to the forties, for the duration of the construction, which meant moving out barracksful of residents. It was rated urgent but not life-threatening; taking a repair crew in without sealing the area was. He stamped it Authorized. Shutting down the plumbing in that sector instead threatened them with disease.
“A merchanter captain Ilyko to see you, sir.”
He drew in his breath, stabbed at the button on the console, calling the woman in. The door opened, admitted a huge woman, grayed and seamed with years rejuv had not caught in time. Or perhaps she was in the decline… the drugs would not hold it off forever. He gestured to a chair; the captain took it gratefully. She had sent the interview request an hour ago, while the ship was coming in. She came from Swan’s Eye, a can-hauler out of Mariner. He knew the locals, but not this woman. She was one of their own now, militarized; the blue sleeve cord was the insignia she wore to indicate as much.
“What’s the message,” he asked, “and from whom?”
The old woman searched her jacket and extracted an envelope, leaned heavily forward to lay it on his desk. “From the Olvigs’ Hammer,” she said. “Out of Viking. Flashed us out there and gave us this hand-to-hand. They’re going to be out of station scan a while… afraid, sir. They don’t like what they see at all.”
“Viking.” Word of that disaster had come in long ago. “And where have they been since then?”
Their message might make it clearer; but they claim to have taken damage clearing Viking. Short-jumped and hung out in nowhere. That’s their story. And they’re scarred up for sure, but they’ve got a load. We should have been so lucky when we ran. Then we wouldn’t be running militia service, would we, sir, for dock charges?“
“You know what’s in this?”
“I know,” she said. “There’s something on the move. Push is coming to shove, Mr. Konstantin. The way I reckon it… Hammer tried a jump Unionside and didn’t find it so good over there after all; Union tried to grab her, it seems, and she ran for it. She’s scared of the same thing here. Wanted me to come in ahead of her and bring the message, so’s she won’t have her hands dirty with it. Consider her position if Union figures she blew the whistle on them. Union’s moving.”
Angelo regarded the woman, the round face and deep-sunken dark eyes. Nodded slowly. “You know what happens here if your crew talks on station or elsewhere. Makes it very hard on us.”
“Family,” she said. “We don’t talk to outsiders.” The black eyes fixed steadily on him. “I’m militia, Mr. Konstantin, because we had the bad luck to come in with no load and you laid a charge on us; and because there’s nowhere else. Swan’s Eye isn’t one of the combine haulers; got no reserve and no credit here like some. But what’s credit, eh, Mr. Konstantin, if Pell folds? From here on, never mind the credits in your bank; I want supplies in my hold.”
“Blackmail, captain?”
“I’m taking my crew back out there on patrol and we’re going to watch your perimeter for you. If we see any Union ships we’ll flash you word in a hurry and jump fast. A can-hauler isn’t up to seek-and-dodge with a rider ship, and I’m not going to do any heroics. I want the same advantage Pell crews have, that have food and water hoarded up off the manifests.”
“You charge there’s hoarding?”
“Mr. stationmaster, you know there’s hoarding by every ship that’s attached to some station-side concern, and you’re not going to antagonize those combines by investigating, are you? How many of your station-side officers get their uniforms dirty checking the holds and tanks visually, eh? I’m flat and I’m asking the same break for my family the others got by being combine. Supplies. Then I go back out on the line.”
“You’ll get them.” He turned then and there and keyed it through on priority. “Be off this station as quickly as possible.”
She nodded when he had done and faced her again. “Fair done, Mr. Konstantin.”
“Where will you jump, captain, if you have to?”
“The cold Deep. Got me a place I know, out in the dark. Lots of freighters do, you know that, Mr. Konstantin? Long, lean years coming if the push breaks through. Union will patronize them that were Union long before. Lie low and hope they need ships bad, if it comes. New territories would stretch them thin and they’d need it. Or slink Earthward. Some would.”
Angelo frowned. “You think it’s really coming.”
She shrugged. “Feel the draft, stationmaster. Wouldn’t be on this station for any bribe if the line don’t hold.”
“A lot of the merchanters hold your opinions?”
“We’ve been ready,” she said in a low voice, “for half a hundred years. Ask Quen, stationmaster. You looking for a place, too?”
“No, captain.”
She leaned back and nodded slowly. “My respects to you for it, stationmaster. You can believe we won’t jump without giving an alarm, and that’s more than some of our class will do.”
“I know that it’s a heavy risk for you. And you’ve got your supplies, all you need. Anything more?”
She shook her head, a slight flexing of her bulk. She gathered herself to her wide-braced feet. “Wish you luck,” she said, and offered her hand. “Wish you luck. All the merchanters that are here and not on the other side of the line — picked their side against the odds; them that still meet out in the dark and get you supplies right out of Union — they don’t do it all for profit. No profit here. You know that, Mr. stationmaster? It would have been easier on the other side… in some ways.”
He shook her thick hand. “Thank you, captain.”
“Huh,” she said, and shrugged self-consciously, waddled out.
He took the message, opened it. It was a handwritten note, a scrawl. Back from Unionside. Carriers orbiting at Viking, four, maybe more. Rumor says Mazian’s on the run, ships lost: Egypt, France, United States, maybe others. Situation falling apart. It was not signed, had no ship’s name attached. He studied the message a moment, then rose and finger-keyed the safe, put the paper in, and locked it. His stomach was unsettled. Observers could be wrong. Information could be planted, rumors started deliberately. This ship would not come in. Hammer would observe a while, possibly come in, possibly run; any attempt to drag them in for direct questioning would be bad politics with other merchanters. Freighters circled Pell, hoping for food, for water, consuming station supplies, using up combine credit, which they had to honor for fear of riot: old debts, to vanished stations. Using up station supplies rather than the precious hoards which they had conserved aboard… against the day they might have to run. Some brought in supplies, true; but more consumed them.
He keyed through to the desk outside. “I’m closing up for the day,” he said, “I can be reached at home. If it can’t wait, I’ll come back.”
“Yes, sir,” the murmur came back. He gathered up a few of his less disturbing papers, put them in his case, put on his jacket, and walked out with a nod of courtesy to his secretary, to the several officials who had their offices in the same room, and entered the corridor outside.
He had been working late the last several days; was due at least the chance to work in greater comfort, to read the caseful of documents without interruption. He had had trouble on Downbelow: Emilio had shipped it all station-side last week with a scathing denunciation of the personnel involved and the policies they represented. Damon had urged the troublemakers shipped out to the mining posts — a quick way to fill up the needed number of workers. Counsel for the defense protested prejudice in the Legal Affairs office, and urged clearing of the tainted service records with full reinstatment. It had flared into something bitter. Jon Lukas had made offers, made demands; they finally had that settled. Presently he had fifty files on Q residents being processed out as provisionals. He thought of stopping by the executive lounge for a drink on the way, doing some of the paperwork there, taking his mind off what still had him sweating. He had a pager in his pocket, was never without it, even with com to rely on. He thought about it.
He went home, that little distance down blue one twelve, quietly opened the door.
“Angelo?”
Alicia was awake, then. He shed his case and his jacket on the chair by the door. “I’m home,” he said, smiled dutifully at the old Downer female who came out of Alicia’s room to pat his hand and welcome him. “Good day, Lily?”
“Have good day,” Lily affirmed, grinning her gentle smile. She made herself noiseless in gathering up what he had put down, and he walked back into Alicia’s room, leaned down over her bed and kissed her. Alicia smiled, still as she was always still on the immaculate linens, with Lily to tend her, to turn her, to love her with the devotion of many years. The walls were screens. About the bed the view was of stars, as if they hung in mid-space; stars, and sometimes the sun, the docks, the corridors of Pell; or pictures of Downbelow woods, the base, of the family, of all such things as gave her pleasure. Lily changed the sequences for her.
“Damon came by,” Alicia murmured. “He and Elene. For breakfast. It was nice. Elene’s looking well. So happy.”
Often they stopped by, one or the other of them… especially with Emilio and Miliko out of reach. He remembered a surprise, a tape he had dropped into his jacket pocket for fear of forgetting it “Had a message from Emilio. I’ll play it for you.”
“Angelo, is something wrong?”
He stopped in mid-breath and shook his head ruefully. “You’re sharp, love.”
“I know your face, love. Bad news?”
“Not from Emilio. Things are going very well down there; much better. He reports considerable progress with the new camps. They haven’t had any trouble out of Q personnel, the road is through to two, and there’s a number willing to transfer down the line.”
“I think I get only the better side of the reports. I watch the halls. I get that too, Angelo.”
He gently turned her head for her, so that she could look at him more easily. “War’s heating up,” he said. “Is that grim enough?”
The beautiful eyes… still beautiful, in a thin, pale face… were vital and steady. “How close now?”
“Just merchanters getting nervous. Not at all close; there’s no sign of that. But I’m concerned about morale.”
She moved her eyes about, a gesture at the walls. “You make all my world beautiful. Is it beautiful… out there?”
“No harm has come to Pell. There’s nothing imminent. You know I can’t lie to you.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, the clean, smooth sheets, took her hand. “We’ve seen the war get hot before and we’re still here.”
“How bad is it?”
“I talked to a merchanter a few moments ago, who talked about merchanter attitudes; spoke about places out in the Deep, good for sitting and waiting. Thought comes to me, do you know, that there are other stations of a kind, more than Pell left; chunks of rock in unlikely places… things merchanters know about. Maybe Mazian; surely Mazian. Just places where ships know to go. So if there are storms… there are havens, aren’t there? If it comes down to any bad situation, we do have some choices.”
“You’d leave?”
He shook his head. “Never. Never. But there’s still a chance of talking the boys into it, isn’t there? We persuaded one to Downbelow; work on your youngest; work on Elene… she’s your best hope. She has friends out there; she knows, and she could persuade Damon.” He pressed her hand. Alicia Lukas-Konstantin needed Pell, needed the machinery, equipment a ship could not easily maintain. She was wedded to Pell and the machines. Any transfer of her entourage of metal and experts would be public, doomsday headlined on vid. She had reminded him of that. I am Pell she had laughed, not laughing. She had been, once, beside him. He was not leaving. In no wise did he consider that, without her, abandoning what his family had built over the years, what they had built, together. “It’s not close,” he said again. But he feared it was.
Jon Lukas gathered the pertinent papers together, glared up at the men who crowded his dock-front office. Glared for a long moment to make the point. He laid the papers down on the front of the desk and Bran Hale gathered them up and passed them to the rest of the men.
“We appreciate it,” Hale said.
“Lukas Company has no need of employees. You understand that. Make yourselves useful. This is a personal favor, a debt, if you like. I appreciate loyalty.”
“There’ll be no trouble,” Hale said.
“Just stay low. Temper cost you your security clearance. You won’t exercise that temper working for me. I warned you. I warned you when we worked together on Down-below…”
“I remember,” Hale said. “But we were run off, Mr, Lukas, for personal reasons. Konstantin was looking for an excuse. He’s changing your policies, tearing up things, disarranging everything you’ve done. And we tried, sir.”
“Can’t help that,” Jon said. “I’m not down there. I’m not running things. And now you’re not. I’d rather Jacoby could have gotten you off with something lighter, but there you are. You’re in private employ now.” He leaned back at the desk. “I could need you,” he said soberly. “Figure on that too. So it could have turned out worse for you… station life now, no more mud, no more headaches from bad air. You work for the company at whatever comes up and you use your heads. You’ll do all right”
“Yes, sir,” Hale said.
“And, Lee…” Jon looked at Lee Quale, a level, sober stare. “You may be standing guard on Lukas property from time to time. You just may have a gun on your person. And you don’t fire it. You know how close you came to Adjustment on that account?”
“Bastard hit the barrel,” Quale muttered.
“Damon Konstantin runs Legal Affairs. Emilio’s brother, man. Angelo’s got it all in his pocket. If he’d had a better case he’d have sent you through the mill. Think about the odds the next time you cross the Konstantins on your own.”
The door opened. Vittorio slipped in, ignoring his instant frown of discouragement. Vittorio came up beside his chair, leaned close to his ear.
“Man came in,” Vittorio whispered. “Off a ship named Swan’s Eye.”
“I don’t know any Swan’s Eye,” he hissed back. “He can wait.”
“No,” Vittorio persisted, leaned close a second time. “Listen to me. I’m not sure he’s authorized.”
“How, not authorized?”
“Papers. I’m not sure he’s supposed to be on station at all He’s out there. I don’t know what to do with him.”
Jon drew a quick breath, suddenly cold. An office full of witnesses. A dock full of them. “Send him in,” he said. And to Hale and the others: “Go on outside. Fill out the papers and hand them to personnel. Take whatever they give you for today. Go on.”
There were dark looks from them, suspicion of offense. “Come on,” Hale said, shepherding the others out. Vittorio hastened out after them, vanished, leaving the door open.
A moment later a man merchanter-clad slipped through and closed it. Like that, closed it. No fear, no furtiveness in that move. As if he commanded. An ordinary face, a thirtyish man of no distinction at all. His manner was cold and quiet.
“Mr. Jon Lukas,” the newcomer said.
“I’m Jon Lukas.”
Eyes lifted meaningfully to the overhead, about the walls.
“No monitoring,” Jon said, short of breath. “You walk in here in public and you’re afraid of monitoring?”
“I need a cover.”
“What’s your name. Who are you?”
The man walked forward and wrenched a gold ring from his finger, took a station id card from his pocket, laid both on the desk in front of him.
Dayin’s.
“You made a proposal,” the man said.
Jon sat frozen.
“Get me cover, Mr. Lukas.”
“Who are you?”
“I came on Swan’s Eye. Time’s limited. They’ll take on supplies and head out.”
“Name, man. I don’t deal with nonentities.”
“Give me a name. A man of your own to walk onto Swan’s Eye. A hostage, one who can deal in your name if need be. You have a son.”
“Vittorio.”
“Send him.”
“He’d be missed.”
The newcomer stared at him, coldly adament. Jon pocketed card and ring, reached a numb hand for the intercom. “Vittorio.”
The door opened. Vittorio slipped in, eyes quick with apprehension, let the door close again.
“The ship that brought me,” the man said, “will take you, Vittorio Lukas, to a ship called Hammer, out on the peripheries; and you needn’t have apprehensions of the crew of either. They’re trusted, all of them. Even the captain of Swan’s Eye has a powerful interest in your safety… wanting her own family back. You’ll be safe enough.”
“Do as he says,” Jon said. Vittorio’s face was the color of paste.
“Go? Like that?”
“You’re safe,” Jon said. “You’re precious well safe… safer than you’d be here, not when it comes to what it’s coming to. Your papers, your card, your key. Give them to him. Go on Swan’s Eye with one of the deliveries. Just don’t look guilty and don’t get off. It’s easy enough.”
Vittorio simply stared at him.
“You’re safe, I assure you,” the stranger said. “You go out there, sit, wait. Act as liaison with our operations.”
“Our.”
“I’m told you understand me.”
Vittorio reached to his pocket, handed over all his papers. There was a numb terror on his face. “Comp number,” the other prompted; Vittorio wrote it down for him on the desk-pad.
“You’re all right,” Jon said. “I’m telling you you’re better off there than here.”
“That’s what you told Dayin.”
“Dayin Jacoby is quite well,” the stranger said.
“Don’t foul it up,” Jon said. “Get your wits together. You foul it up out there and we’ll all be in for Adjustment You read me clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Vittorio said faintly. Jon gave him a nod toward the door, dismissal. Vittorio tentatively held out a hand toward him. He took it perfunctorily — could not, even now, like this son of his. Came closest in this moment, perhaps, that Vittorio proved of some real service to him.
“I appreciate it,” he muttered, feeling some courtesy would salve wounds. Vittorio nodded.
“This dock,” the stranger said, sorting through Vittorio’s papers. “Berth two. And hurry about it.”
Vittorio left. The stranger slipped the papers and the comp number into his own pocket.
“Use of the number periodically should satisfy comp,” the man said.
“Who are you?”
“Jessad will do,” the man replied. “Vittorio Lukas, I suppose, when it comes to comp. What’s his residence?”
“Lives with me,” Jon said, wishing otherwise.
“Anyone else? Any woman, close friends who’ll not be sympathetic…?
“The two of us.”
“Jacoby indicated as much. Residence with you… very convenient. Will it excite comment if I walk there in this clothing?”
Jon sat down on the edge of his desk, mopped his face with his hand.
“No need to be distressed, Mr. Lukas.”
“They — the Union Fleet — they’re moving in?”
“I’m to arrange certain things. I’m a consultant, Mr. Lukas. That would be an apt term. Expendable. A man, a ship or two… small risk against the gain. But I do want to live, you understand, and I propose not to be expended… without satisfaction for it. Just so you don’t suffer a change of heart, Mr. Lukas.”
“They’ve sent you in here… with no backing — ”
“Backing in plenty when it comes. We’ll talk tonight, in residence. I’m quite in your hands. I understand there’s no strong bond between yourself and your son.”
Heat flushed his face. “No business of yours, Mr. Jessad.”
“No?” Jessad looked him slowly up and down. “It’s coming, you can be sure of that. You’ve bid to be on the winning side. To do certain services… in return for position. I’ll be evaluating you. Very businesslike. You take my meaning. But you’ll do well to take my orders, to do nothing without my advice. I have a certain expertise in this situation. I’m advised that you don’t permit domestic monitoring; that Pell is very adamant on this point; that there’s no apparatus.”
“There isn’t,” Jon said, swallowing heavily. “It’s very much against the law.”
“Convenient. I’d hate to walk in under camera. The clothes, Mr. Lukas. Acceptable in your corridors?”
Jon turned, searched his desk, found the appropriate form, his heart pounding all the while. If the man should be stopped, if there were suspicion, his signature on the document… but it was already too late. If Swan’s Eye were boarded and searched, if someone noticed that Vittorio failed to leave it before it undocked… “Here,” he said, tearing off the pass. “This isn’t to show anyone unless you’re stopped by security.” He pushed the com buttom and leaned over the mike. “Bran Hale still out there? Get him in here. Alone.”
“Mr. Lukas,” Jessad said, “we don’t need other parties to this.”
“You asked advice about the corridors. Take it. If you’re stopped, your story is that you’re a merchanter whose papers were stolen. You’re on your way to talk to administration about it, and Kale’s your escort. Give me Vittorio’s papers. I can carry them. You daren’t be caught with them, with that story. I’ll straighten it all out when I get to the apartment this evening.”
Jessad handed them over in return for the pass. “And what do they do with merchanters whose papers get stolen?”
“They call in their whole ship’s family and it’s a very great deal of commotion. You could end up in detention and Adjustment if things go that far, Mr. Jessad. But stolen papers are known here, and it’s a better cover than your plan. If it happens, go along with everything and trust my judgment. I have ships. I can arrange something. Claim you’re off Sheba. I know the family.”
The door opened. Bran Hale stood there, and Jessad shut his mouth on whatever he would have said.
“Trust me,” Jon repeated, relishing his discomfiture. “Bran, you’re useful already. Walk this man to my apartment.” He fished in his pocket after the manual guest key.
“See him there and inside and sit with my guest until I come, will you? Could be a long while. Make yourself free in the place. And if you get stopped, he has a different story. You just follow his cue, all right?”
Hale’s eyes took in Jessad, flicked back to him. Intelligent man, Hale. He nodded, without asking questions.
“Mr. Jessad,” Jon murmured, “you can trust this man to see you there.”
Jessad smiled tautly, offered his hand. Jon took it, a dry grip of a man of no normal nerves. Hale showed him out and Jon stood by his desk, watching both of them depart. The staff in the outer office were all like Hale, Lukas people, administrative level and trustworthy. Men and women he had chosen… and not one of them was likely to be doubling on the Konstantin payroll: he had always seen to that. He was still anxious. He turned from the view of the door to the sideboard, poured himself a drink, for however unruffled Jessad was, his own hands were shaking from the encounter and the possibilities in it. A Unionist agent. It was farce, a too elaborate result of his intrigue with Jacoby. He had sent out a tentative feeler and someone had raised the stakes in the game to a ridiculous level.
Union ships were coming. Were very close, that they would take the enormous chance of sending in someone like Jessad. He resumed his seat at his desk, holding the drink, sipped at it, trying to pull his thoughts into coherency. The proposed deception of comp could not go on. He reckoned the life of the Jessad/Vittorio charade in days, and if something went wrong he would be the one quickest caught, not Jessad, who was not in comp. Jessad was expendable in Union plans, perhaps, but he was more so.
He drank, trying to think.
Seized up paper with sudden inspiration, more forms, started the call-up procedure for a short-hauler. There were crews in Lukas employ who would not talk, like Sheba, men who would take a ship out and carry a ghost aboard, falsify manifests, falsify crew or passenger listings… the tracing of the black market routes had turned up all manner of interesting data that some captains did not want known. So this afternoon another ship would go out to the mines, and Vittorio’s comp number could be changed into the station log.
A little ripple, a ship moving; no one paid attention to short-haulers. Out to the mines and back again, a ship incapable of threatening security because it lacked speed and star capacity and weapons. He might still have some questions to answer from Angelo, but he knew all the right answers to give. He transmitted the order to comp, watched in satisfaction as comp swallowed the order and sent out notification to Lukas Company that any ship moving had to carry some station items to the mines free-freighted. Ordinarily he would have kicked hard at the size of the assessment for free transport; it was outrageous. He keyed back at it: Accepted ¼ station lading; will depart 1700md.
Comp took it. He leaned back with a great sigh of relief, his heart settling down to a more reasonable rhythm. Personnel was an easy matter; he knew his better men.
He set to work again, pulling names from comp, choosing the crew, a merchanter family long in Lukas’s pay. “Send the Kulins in the moment they hit the office,” he told his secretary over the com. “There’s a commission waiting for them. Make it out and hurry about it. Scramble together anything we’ve meant to freight out, and get it going; then get an extra dock crew to make a pickup from station lading for free-freighting, no quarrels, take whatever they’re given and get back here. You make sure those papers are flawless and that there’s no snag… absolutely no snag… in comp entries. You understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” the answer came back. And a moment later: “Contact made with the Kulins. They’re on their way and thank you for the commission, sir.”
Annie was convenient, a ship comfortable enough for a prolonged tour of Lukas mine interests. Small enough for obscurity. He had taken such tours in his youth, learning the business. So Vittorio might. He sipped at his drink and thumbed the papers on his desk, fretting.
Josh sank down to the matting, sat, collapsed backward, in the gym’s reduced G. Damon leaned over him, hands on bare knees, the suspicion of amusement on his face.
“I’m done,” Josh said when he had a breath; his sides hurt. I’d exercised, but not this much.“
Damon sank to his knees by him on the mat, hunched and himself hard-breathing. “Doing all right, anyhow. I’m ready to call it.” He sucked air and let out a slower breath, grinned at him. “Need help?”
Josh grunted and rolled over, heaved himself up on one arm, gathered himself gracelessly to his feet, shaking in every muscle and conscious of the men and women in better form who passed them on the steep track which belted all Pell’s inner core. It was a crowded place, echoing with shouted conversation. It was freedom, and the worst there was to fear here was a little laughter. He would have kept going if he could… had already run longer than he should, but he hated to have the time end.
His knees shook, and his belly ached. “Come on,” Damon said, rising with more ease. Damon caught his arm and guided him toward the dressing rooms. “Take a steam bath, a chance to get the knots out at least. I’ve got a little while before I have to get back to the office.”
They went into the chaotic locker room, stripped and tossed the clothing into the common laundry. Towels were stacked there for the taking. Damon tossed a couple at him and showed him into the door marked steam, through a quick shower into a series of cubbyholes obscured by vapor, down a long aisle. Most places were occupied. They found a few vacant toward the end of the row, took one in the middle and sat down on the wooden benches. So much water to waste… Josh watched Damon dip up water and pour it on his head, cast the rest on a plate of hot metal until the steam boiled up and obscured him in a white cloud. Josh doused himself after similar fashion, mopped with the towel, short of breath and dizzy in the heat
“You all right?” Damon asked him.
He nodded, anxious not to spoil the time, anxious all the while he was with Damon. He desperately tried to maintain his balance, walking the line of too much trust on the one side and on the other — a terror of trusting anyone. He hated being alone… had never… sometimes certainties flashed out of his tattered memory, firm as truth… had never liked being alone. Damon would tire of him. The novelty would wear off. Such company as his had to pall after a while.
And then he would be alone, with half his mind and a token freedom, in this prison that was Pell.
“Something bothering you?”
“No.” And desperately, to change the subject, for Damon had complained he lacked company coming to the gym: “I’d thought Elene would meet us here.”
“Pregnancy is beginning to slow her down a little. She’s not feeling up to it.”
“Oh.” He blinked, looked away. It was an intimacy, such a question; he felt like an intruder — naive in such things. Women, he thought he had known, but not pregnant ones, not a relationship — as it was between Damon and Elene — full of permanencies. He remembered someone he had loved. Older. Dryer. Past such things. A boy’s love. He had been the child. He tried to follow the threads where they led, but they tangled. He did not want to think of Elene in that regard. Could not. He recalled warnings… psychological impairment, they had called it. Impairment…
“Josh… are you all right?”
He blinked again, which could become a nervous tic if he let it.
“Something’s eating at you.”
He made a helpless gesture in reply, not wanting to be trapped into discussion. “I don’t know.”
“You’re worried about something.”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t trust me?”
The blink obscured his vision. Sweat was dripping into his eyes. He mopped his face.
“All right,” Damon said, as if it were.
He got up, walked to the door of the wooden cubicle, anything to put distance between them. His stomach was heaving.
“Josh.”
A dark place, a close place… he could run, clear this closeness, these demands on him. That would get him arrested, sent back to hospital, into the white walls.
“Are you scared?” Damon asked him plainly.
It hit as close to the mark as any other word. He made a helpless gesture, uncomfortable. Elsewhere the noise of other voices became like silence, a roar in which their own cell was remote.
“You figure what?” Damon asked. “That I’m not honest with you?”
“No.”
“That you can’t trust me?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
He was close to being sick. He hit that barrier when he crossed his conditioning… knew what it was.
“I wish,” Damon said, “that you’d talk.”
He looked back, his back to the wooden partition. “You’ll stop,” he said numbly, “when you get tired of the project.”
“Stop what? Are you back on that desertion theme again?”
“Then what do you want?”
“You think you’re a curiosity.” Damon asked him, “or what?”
He swallowed the bile risen in his throat
“You get that impression, do you,” Damon asked, “from Elene and me?”
“Don’t want to think that,” he managed to say finally. “But I am a curiosity, whatever else.”
“No,” Damon said.
A muscle in his face began to jerk. He reached for the bench, sat down, tried to stop the tic. There were pills; he was no longer on them. He wished he were, to be still and not to think. To get out of here, break off this probing at him.
“We like you,” Damon said. “Is something wrong with that?”
He sat there, paralyzed, his heart hammering.
“Come on,” Damon said, gathering himself up. “You’ve had enough heat.”
Josh pulled himself to his feet, finding his knees weak, his sight blurring from the sweat and the temperature and the reduced G. Damon offered a hand. He flinched from it, walked after Damon down the aisle and into the showers at the end of the room.
The cooler mist cleared his head somewhat; he stayed in the stall a few moments longer than need be, inhaled the cooling air, came out again somewhat calmed, walked towel-wrapped into the locker room again. Damon was behind him. “I’m sorry,” he told Damon, for things in general.
“Reflexes,” Damon said. He frowned intensely, caught his arm before he could turn aside. Josh flinched back against the locker so hard it echoed.
A dark place. A chaos of bodies. Hands on him. He jerked his mind away from it, leaned shivering against the metal, staring into Damon’s anxious face.
“Josh?”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m sorry.”
“You look like you’re going to pass out. Was it the heat?”
“Don’t know,” he murmured. “Don’t know.” He reached toward the bench, sat down to catch his breath. It was better after a moment The dark receded. “I am sorry.” He was depressed, convinced Damon would not long tolerate him. The depression spread. “Maybe I’d better check back into the facility.”
“That bad?”
He did not want to think of his own room, the barren apartment in hospice, blank-walled, cheerless. There were people he knew in the hospital, doctors who knew him, who could deal with these things, and whose motives he knew were limited to duty.
“I’ll call the office,” Damon said, “and tell them I’m going to be late. ”I’ll take you to the hospital if you feel you need it.“
He rested his head on his hands. “I don’t know why I do this,” he said. “I’m remembering something. I don’t know what. It hits me in the stomach.”
Damon sat down astride the bench, just sat, and waited on him.
“I can figure,” Damon said finally, and he looked up, recalling uneasily that Damon had had access to all his records. “What do you figure?”
“Maybe it was a little close in there. A lot of the refugees panic at crowding. It’s scarred into them.”
“But I didn’t come in with the refugees,” he said. “I remember that.”
“And what else?”
A tic jerked at his face. He rose, began to dress, and after a moment Damon did likewise. Other men came and went about them. Shouts from outside reached into the room when the door opened, the ordinary noise of the gym.
“Do you really want me to take you to the hospital?” Damon asked finally.
He shrugged into his jacket “No. I’ll be all right.” He judged that such was the case, although his skin was still drawn in chill the clothes should have warmed away. Damon frowned, gestured toward the door. They walked out into the cold outer chamber, entered the lift with half a dozen others, rode it the dizzying straight drop into outer-shell G. Josh drew a deep breath, staggered a little in walking off, stopped as the flow of traffic swirled about him.
Damon’s hand closed on his elbow, moved him gently in the direction of a seat along the corridor wall. He was glad to sit down, to rest a moment and watch the people pass them. They were not on Damon’s office level, but on a green one.
The strains of music from the concourse floated out to them from the far end. They should have ridden it on down… had stopped, Damon’s idea. Near the track around to the hospital, he reasoned. Or just a place to rest He sat, taking his breath.
“A little dizzy,” he confessed.
“Maybe it would be better if you went back at least for a checkup. I should never have encouraged you to this.”
“It’s not the exercise.” He bent, rested his head in his hands, drew several quiet breaths, straightened finally. “Damon, the names… you know the names in my records. Where was I born?”
“Cyteen.”
“My mother’s name… do you know it?” Damon frowned. “No. You didn’t say; mostly you talked about an aunt. Her name was Maevis.”
The older woman’s face came to him again, a warm rush of familiarity. “I remember.”
“Had you forgotten even that?”
The tic came back to his face. He tried not to acknowledge it, desperate for normalcy. “I have no way to know, you understand, what’s memory and what’s imagination, or dreams. Try dealing with things when you don’t know the difference and can’t tell.”
“The name was Maevis.”
“Yes. You lived on a farm.”
He nodded, treasuring a sudden glimpse of sunlit road, a weathered fence — he was often on that road in his dreams, bare feet in slick dust, a house, a prefab and peeling dome… many such, field upon field, ripe gold in the sun. “Plantation. A lot larger than a farm. I lived there… I lived there until I went into the service school. That was the last time I was ever on a world — wasn’t it?”
“You never mentioned any other.”
He sat still a moment, holding onto the image, excited by it, by something beautiful and warm and real. He tried to recover details. The size of the sun in the sky, the color of sunsets, the dusty road that led to and from the small settlement. A large, soft, comfortable woman and a thin, worried man who spent a lot of time cursing the weather. The pieces fit, settled into place. Home. That was home. He ached after it. “Damon,” he said, gathering courage — for there was more than the pleasant dream. “You don’t have any reason to lie to me, do you? But you did — when I asked you for the truth a while ago — about the nightmare. Why?”
Damon looked uncomfortable.
“I’m scared, Damon. I’m scared of lies. Do you understand that? Scared of other things.” He stammered uncontrollably, impatient with himself, with muscles that jerked and a tongue that would not frame things and a mind like a sieve. “Give me names, Damon. You’ve read the record. I know you have. Tell me how I got to Pell.”
“When Russell’s collapsed. Like everyone else.”
“No. Starting with Cyteen. Give me names.”
Damon laid an arm along the back of the bench, faced him, frowning. “The first service you mentioned was a ship named Kite. I don’t know how many years; maybe it was the only ship. You’d been taken off the farm, I take it, into the service school, whatever you call the place, and you were trained in armscomp. I take it that the ship was a very small one.”
“Scout and recon,” he murmured, and saw in his mind the exact boards, the cramped interior of Kite, where the crew had to hand-over-hand their way in zero G. A lot of time at Fargone Station; a lot of time there — and out on patrol; out on missions just looking for what they could see. Kitha… Kitha and Lee… childlike Kitha — he had had particular affection for her. And Ulf. He recovered faces, glad to remember them. They had worked close — in more than one sense, for the dartships had no cabins, no privacy. They had been together… years. Years.
Dead now. It was like losing them again.
Watch it! Kitha had yelled; he had yelled something too, realizing they were blind-spotted; Ulf’s mistake. He sat helpless at his board, no guns that would bear on the threat. He flinched from it.
“They picked me up,” he said. “Someone did.”
“A ship named Tigris hit you,” Damon said. “Ridership. But it was a freighter in the area that homed in on your capsule signal.”
“Go on.”
Damon stayed silent a moment as if he were thinking on it, as if he would not. He grew more and more anxious, his stomach taut. “You were brought onto station,” Damon said finally, “aboard a merchanter — a stretcher case, but no injuries. Shock, cold, I suppose… your life-support had started to fade, and they nearly lost you.”
He shook his head. That much was blank, remote and cold. He recalled docks, doctors; interrogation, endless questions.
Mobs. Shouting mobs. Docks and a guard falling. Someone had coldly shot the man in the face, while he lay on the ground stunned. Dead everywhere, trampled, a surge of bodies before him and men about him — armored troops.
They’ve got guns! someone had shouted. And panic broke out.
“You were picked up at Mariner,” Damon said. “After it blew, when they were hunting Mariner survivors.”
“Elene — ”
“They questioned you at Russell’s,” Damon said softly, doggedly. “They were facing — I don’t know what. They were frightened, in a hurry. They used illegal techniques… like Adjustment. They wanted information out of you, timetables, ship movements, the whole thing. But you couldn’t give it to them. You were on Russell’s when the evacuation began, and you were moved to this station. That’s what happened.”
A dark umbilical from station to ship. Troops and guns.
“On a warship,” he said.
“Norway.”
His stomach knotted. Mallory. Mallory and Norway. Graff. He remembered. Pride… died there. He became a nothing. Who he was, what he was… they had not cared, among the troops, the crew. It was not even hate, but bitterness and boredom, cruelty in which he did not matter, a living thing that felt pain, felt shame… screamed when the horror became overwhelming, and realizing that there was no one at all who cared — stopped screaming, or feeling, or fighting.
Want to go back to them? He could hear even the tone of Mallory’s voice. Want to go back? He had not wanted that. Had wanted nothing, then, but to feel nothing.
This was the source of the nightmares, the dark, confused figures, the thing that wakened him in the night
He nodded slowly, accepting that.
“You entered detention here,” Damon said. “You were picked up; Russell’s; Norway; here. If you think we’ve thrown anything false into your Adjustment… no. Believe me. Josh?”
He was sweating. Felt it. “I’m all right,” he said, although it was hard, for a moment, to draw breath. His stomach kept heaving. Closeness — emotional or physical — was going to do this to him; he identified it now. Tried to control it.
“Sit there,” Damon said, rose before he could object, and went into one of the shops along the hall. He rested there obediently, head against the wall behind him, his pulse easing finally. It occurred to him that it was the first time he had been loose alone, save for the track between his job and his room in the old hospice. Being so gave him a peculiarly naked feeling. He wondered if those who passed knew who he was. The idea frightened him.
You will remember some things, the doctor had told him, when they stopped the pills. But you can get distance from them. Remember some things.
Damon came back, bringing two cups of something, sat down, and offered one to him. It was fruit juice and something else, iced and sugared, which soothed his stomach. “You’re going to be late getting back,” he recalled.
Damon shrugged and said nothing.
“I’d like — ” To his intense shame, he stammered. “ — to take you and Elene to dinner. I have my job now. I have some credit above my hours.”
Damon studied him a moment. “All right. I’ll ask Elene.”
It made him feel a great deal better. “I’d like,” he said further, “to walk back home from here. Alone.”
“All right.”
“I needed to know… what I remember. I apologize.”
“I’m worried for you,” Damon said, and that profoundly touched him.
“But I walk by myself.”
“What night for dinner?”
“You and Elene decide. My schedule is rather open.”
It was poor humor. Damon dutifully smiled at it, finished his drink. Josh sipped the last of his and stood up. “Thank you.”
“I’ll talk to Elene. Let you know the date tomorrow. Take it easy. And call me if you need.”
Josh nodded, turned, walked away, among the crowds who… might… know his face. Like those on the docks, in his memory: crowds. It was not the same. It was a different world and he walked in it, down his own portion of hall as the newfound owner of it… walked to the lift along with those born to Pell, stood with them waiting on the lift car as if he were ordinary.
It came. “Green seven.” He spoke up for himself when the press inside cut him off from the controls and someone kindly pressed it for him. Shoulder to shoulder in the car. He was all right. It whisked him down to his own level. He excused his way past passengers who gave him not a second glance, stood in his own corridor, near the hospice.
“Talley,” someone said, startling him. He glanced to his right, at uniformed security guards. One nodded pleasantly to him. His pulse raced and settled. The face was distantly familiar. “You live here now?” the guard asked him.
“Yes,” he said, and in apology: “I don’t remember well… from before. Maybe you were there when I came in.”
“I was,” the guard said. “Good to see you came out all right.”
He seemed to mean it. “Thank you,” Josh said, walked on his way and the guards on theirs. The dark which had advanced retreated.
He had thought them all dreams. But I don’t dream it, he thought. It happened. He walked past the desk at the entry to the hospice, down the corridor inside to number 18. He used his card. The door slid aside and he walked into his own refuge, a plain, windowless place… a rare privilege, from what he had heard of vid about the overcrowding everywhere. More of Damon’s arranging.
Ordinarily he would turn on the vid, using its noise to fill the place with voices, for dreams filled the silences.
He sat down now on the bed, simply sat there a time in the silence, probing the dreams and the memories like half-healed wounds. Norway.
Signy Mallory.
Mallory.
There were no disasters. Jon stayed in the office, rearmost of all the offices, took normal calls, worked his routine of warehousing reports and records, trying in one harried corner of his mind to map out what to do if the worst happened.
He stayed later than usual, after the lights had dimmed slightly on the docks, after a good deal of the first shift staff had left for the day and the mainday activity had settled down… just a few clerks out in the other offices to answer com and tend things till the alterday staff came in. Swan’s Eye went out unchallenged at 1446; Annie and the Kulins left with Vittorio’s papers at 1703, without question or commotion more than the usual close inquiries about schedules and routing, for the militia. He breathed easier then.
And when Annie had long since cleared the vicinity of the station, beyond any reasonable chance of protest, he took his jacket, locked up, and headed home.
He used his card at the door, to have every minutest record in comp as it should be… found Jessad and Hale sitting opposite one another in silence, in his living room. There was coffee, soothing aroma after the afternoon tension. He sank into a third chair and leaned back, taking possession of his own home.
“I’ll have some coffee,” he told Bran Hale. Hale frowned and rose to go fetch it. And to Jessad: “A tedious afternoon?”
“Gratefully tedious,” Jessad said softly. “But Mr. Hale has done his best to entertain.”
“Any trouble getting here?”
“None,” Hale said from the kitchen. He brought back the coffee, and Jon sipped at it, realized Hale was waiting.
Dismiss him… and sit alone with Jessad. He was not eager for that. Neither was he eager to have Hale talking too freely, here or elsewhere. “I appreciate your discretion,” he told Hale. And with a careful consideration: “You know there’s something up. You’ll find it worth your while more than monetarily. Only see you keep Lee Quale from indiscretions. I’ll fill you in on it as soon as I find out more. Vittorio’s gone. Dayin’s… lost. I’ve need of some reliable, intelligent assistance. You read me, Bran?”
Hale nodded.
“I’ll talk with you about this tomorrow,” he said then very quietly. “Thank you.”
“You all right here?” Hale asked.
“If I’m not,” he said, “you take care of it. Hear?”
Hale nodded, discreetly left. Jon settled back with somewhat more assurance, looked at his guest, who sat easily in front of him.
“I take it you trust this person,” Jessad said, “and that you want to promote him in your affairs. Choose your allies wisely, Mr. Lukas.”
“I know my own.” He drank a sip of the scalding coffee. “I don’t know you, Mr. Jessad or whatever your name is, Your plan to use my son’s id I can’t permit. I’ve arranged a different cover… for him. A tour of Lukas interests: a ship’s outbound for the mines and his papers are on it.”
He expected outrage. There was only a polite lift of the brows. “I have no objection. But I shall need papers, and I don’t think it wise to expose myself to interrogation obtaining them.”
“Papers can be gotten. That’s the least of our problems.”
“And the greatest, Mr. Lukas?”
“I want some answers. Where’s Dayin?”
“Safe behind the lines. No cause for worry. I’m sent as a contingency… an assumption that this offer is valid. If not, I shall die… and I hope that’s not the case.”
“What can you offer me?”
“Pell,” Jessad said softly. “Pell, Mr. Lukas.”
“And you’re prepared to hand it to me.”
Jessad shook his head. “You’re going to hand it to us, Mr. Lukas. That’s the proposal. I’ll direct you. Mine is the expertise… yours the precise knowledge of this place. You’ll brief me on the situation here.”
“And what protection have I?”
“My approval.”
“Your rank?”
Jessad shrugged. “Unofficial. I want details. Everything from your shipping schedules to the deployment of your ships to the proceedings of your council… to the least detail of the management of your own offices.”
“You plan to live in my apartment the whole time?”
“I find little reason to stir forth. Your social schedule may suffer for it. But is there a safer place to be? This Bran Hale — a discreet man?”
“Worked for me on Downbelow. He was fired down there for upholding my policies against the Konstantins. Loyal.”
“Reliable?”
“Hale is. Of some of his crew I have some small doubt… at least regarding judgment”
“You must take care, then.”
“I am.”
Jessad nodded slowly. “But find me papers, Mr. Lukas. I feel much more secure with them than without.”
“And what happens to my son?”
“Concerned? I’d thought there was little love lost there.”
“I asked the question.”
“There’s a ship holding far out… one we’ve taken, registered to the Olvig merchanter family, but in fact military. The Olvigs are all in detention… as are most of the people of Swan’s Eye. The Olvig ship, Hammer, will give us advance warning. And there’s not that much time, Mr. Lukas. First… will you show me a sketch of the station itself?”
Mine is the expertise. An expert in such affairs, a man trained for this. A terrible and chilling thought came on him, that Viking had fallen from the inside; that Mariner on the other hand… had been blown. Sabotage. From the inside. Someone mad enough to kill the station he was on… or leaving.
He stared into Jessad’s nondescript face, into eyes quite, quite implacable, and reckoned that on Mariner there had been such a person as this.
Then the Fleet had shown up, and the station had been deliberately destroyed.
There were still people standing in line outside, a queue stretching down the niner hall out onto the dock. Vassily Kressich rested his head against the heels of his hands as the most recent went out in the ungentle care of one of Coledy’s men, a woman who had shouted at him, who had complained of theft and named one of Coledy’s gang. His head ached; his back ached. He abhorred these sessions, which he held, nevertheless, every five days. It was at least a pressure valve, this illusion that the councillor of Q listened to the problems, took down complaints, tried to get something done. About the woman’s complaint… little remedy. He knew the man she had named. Likely it was true. He would ask Nino Coledy to put the lid on him, perhaps save her from worse. The woman was mad to have complained. A bizarre hysteria, perhaps, that point which many reached here, when anger was all that mattered. It led to self-destruction.
A man was shown in. Redding, next in line. Kressich braced himself inwardly, leaned back in his chair, prepared for the weekly encounter. “We’re still trying,” he told the big man.
“I paid,” Redding said. “I paid plenty for my pass.”
“There are no guarantees in Downbelow applications, Mr. Redding. The station simply takes those it has current need of. Please put your new application on my desk and I’ll keep running it through the process. Sooner or later there’ll be an opening — ”
“I want out!”
“James!” Kressich shouted in panic.
Security was there instantly. Redding looked about wildly, and to Kressich’s dismay, reached for his waistband. A short blade flashed into his hand, not for security… Redding turned from James — for him.
Kressich flung himself backward on the chair’s track. Des James hurled himself on Redding’s back. Redding sprawled face down on the desk, sending papers everywhere, slashing wildly as Kressich scrambled from the chair and against the wall. Shouting erupted outside, panic, and more people poured into the room.
Kressich edged over as the struggle came near him. Redding hit the wall. Nino Coledy was there with the others. Some wrestled Redding to the ground, some pushed back the torrent of curious and desperate petitioners. The mob waved forms they hoped to turn in. “My turn!” some woman was shrieking, brandishing a paper and trying to reach the desk. They herded her out with the others.
Redding was down, pinned by three of them. A fourth kicked him in the head and he grew quieter.
Coledy had the knife, examined it thoughtfully and pocketed it, a smile on his scarred young face.
“No station police for him,” James said.
“You hurt, Mr. Kressich?” Coledy asked.
“No.” He discounted bruises, felt his way to his desk. There was still shouting outside. He pulled the chair up to the desk again and sat down, his legs shaking. “He talked about having paid money,” he said, knowing full well what was going on, that the forms came from Coledy and cost whatever the traffic would bear. “He’s got a bad record with station and I can’t get him a pass. What do you mean selling him an assurance?”
Coledy turned a slow look from him to the man on the floor and back again. “Well, now he’s got a bad mark with us, and that’s worse. Get him out of here. Take him out down the hall, the other way.”
“I can’t see any more people,” Kressich moaned, resting his head against his hands. “Get them out of here.”
Coledy walked into the outer corridor. “Clear it out!”
Kressich could hear him shouting above the cries of protest and the sobbing. Some of Coledy’s men began to make them move… armed, some of them, with metal bars. The crowd gave back, and Coledy returned to the office. They were taking Redding out the other door, shaking him to make him walk, for he was beginning to recover, bleeding from the temple in a red wash which obscured his face.
They’ll kill him, Kressich thought. Somewhere in the less trafficked hours, a body would find its way somewhere to be found by station. Redding surely knew it. He was trying to fight again, but they got him out and the door closed.
“Mop that up,” Coledy told one of those who remained, and the man searched for something to clean the floor. Coledy sat down again on the edge of the desk.
Kressich reached under it, brought out one of the bottles of wine with which Coledy supplied him. Glasses. He poured two, sipped at the Downer wine and tried to warm the tremors from his limbs, the twinges of pain from his chest. “I’m too old for this,” he complained.
“You don’t have to worry about Redding,” Coledy told him, picking up his glass.
“You can’t create situations like that,” Kressich snapped. “I know what you’re up to. But don’t sell the passes where there’s no chance I’ll be able to get them.”
Coledy grinned, an exceedingly unpleasant expression. “Redding would ask for it sooner or later. This way he paid for the privilege.”
“I don’t want to know,” Kressich said sourly. He drank a large mouthful of the wine. “Don’t give me the details.”
“We’d better get you to your apartment, Mr. Kressich. Keep a little watch on you. Just till this matter is straightened out.”
He finished the wine at his own rate. One of the youths in Coledy’s group had gathered up the stack of papers the struggle had scattered about the floor, and laid it on his desk. Kressich stood up then, his knees still weak, averted his eyes from the blood which had tracked on the matting.
Coledy and four of his men escorted him, through that same back door which had received Redding and his guards. They walked down the corridor into the sector in which he maintained his small apartment, and he used his manual key… comp had cut them off and nothing worked here but manual controls.
“I don’t need your company,” he said shortly. Coledy gave him a wry and mocking smile, parodied a bow.
“Talk with you later,” Coledy said.
Kressich went inside, closed the door again by manual, stood there with nausea threatening him. He sat down finally, in the chair by the door, tried to stay still a moment.
Madness accelerated in Q. The passes which were hope for some to get out of Q only increased the despair of those left behind. The roughest were left, so that the temperature of the whole was rising. The gangs ruled. No one was safe who did not belong to one of the organizations… man or woman, no one could walk the halls safely unless it was known he had protection; and protection was sold… for food or favors or bodies, whatever the currency available. Drugs… medical and otherwise… made it in; wine did; precious metals, anything of value… made it out of Q and into station. Guards at the barriers made profits.
And Coledy sold applications for passes out of Q, for Downbelow residency. Sold even the right to stand in the lines for justice. And anything else that Coledy and his police found profitable. The protections gang reported to Coledy for license.
There was only the diminishing hope of Downbelow, and those rejected or deferred became hysterical with the suspicion that there were lies recorded about them in station files, black marks which would keep them forever in Q. There were a rising number of suicides; some gave themselves to excesses in the barracks halls which became sinks of every vice. Some committed the crimes, perhaps, of which they feared they were accused; and some became the victims.
“They kill them down there,” one young man had cried, rejected. “They don’t go to Downbelow at all; they take them out of here and kin them, that’s where they go. They don’t take workers, they don’t take young men, they take old people and children out, and they get rid of them.”
“Shut up!” others had cried, and the youth had been beaten bloody by three others in the line before Coledy’s police could pull him out; but others wept, and still stood in line with their applications for passes clutched in their hands.
He could not apply to go. He feared some leak getting back to Coledy if he put in an application for himself. The guards were trading with Coledy, and he feared too much. He had his black market wine, had his present safety, had Coledy’s guards about him so that if anyone was harmed in Q, it would not be Vassily Kressich, not until Coledy suspected he might be trying to break from him.
Good came of what he did, he persuaded himself. While he stayed in Q, while he held the fifth-day sessions, while he at least remained in a position to object to the worst excesses. Some things Coledy would stop. Some things Coledy’s men would think twice about rather than have an issue made of them. He saved something of order in Q. Saved some lives. Saved a little bit from the thing Q would become without his influence.
And he had access to the outside… had that hope, always, if the situation here became truly unbearable, when the inevitable crisis came… he could plead for asylum. Might get out. They would not put him back to die. Would not.
He rose finally, hunted out the bottle of wine he had in the kitchen, poured himself a quarter of it, trying not to think of what had happened, did happen, would happen.
Redding would be dead by morning. He could not pity him, saw only the mad eyes of the man staring at him as he lunged across the desk, scattering papers, slashing at him with the knife… at him, and not at Coledy’s guards.
As if he were the enemy.
He shuddered, and drank his wine.
Change of workers. Satin stretched aching muscles as she entered the dimly lit habitat, stripped off the mask and washed fastidiously in the cool water of the basin provided for them. Bluetooth (never far from her, day or night) followed and squatted down on her mat, rested his hand on her shoulder, his head against her. They were tired, very tired, for there had been a great load to move this day, and although the big machines did most of the work, it was Downer muscle which set the loads on the machines and humans who did the shouting. She took his other hand and turned it palm up, mouthed the sore spots, leaned close and gave a lick to his cheek where the mask had roughed the fur.
“Lukas-men,” Bluetooth snarled. His eyes were fixed straight forward and his face was angry. They had worked for Lukas-men this day, some who had given the trouble Downbelow, at the base. Satin’s own hands hurt and shoulders ached, but it was Bluetooth she worried for, with this look in his eye. It took much to stir Bluetooth to real temper. He tended to think a great deal, and while he was thinking, found no chance to be angry, but this time, she reckoned he was doing both, and when he did lose his temper, it would be bad for him, among humans, with Lukas-men about. She stroked his coarse coat and groomed him until he seemed calmer.
“Eat,” she said. “Come eat.”
He turned his head to her, lipped her cheek, licked the fur straight and put his arm about her. “Come,” he agreed, and they got up and walked through the metal runnel to the big room, where there was always food ready. The young ones in charge here gave them each a generous bowlful, and they retreated to a quiet corner to eat. Bluetooth managed good humor at last, with his belly full, sucked the porridge off his fingers in contentment. Another male came trailing in, got his bowl and sat down by them, young Bigfellow, who grinned companionably at them, consumed one bowl of porridge and went back after his second.
They liked Bigfellow, who was not too long ago from Downbelow himself, from their own riverside, although from another camp and other hills. Others gathered when Bigfellow came back, more and more of them, a bow of warmth facing the corner they sat in. Most among them were seasonal workers, who came to the Upabove and returned to Downbelow again, working with their hands and not knowing much of the machines: these were warm toward them. There were other hisa, beyond this gathering of friends, the permanent workers, who did not much speak to them, who sat to themselves in the far corner, who sat much and stared, as if their long sojourning among humans had made them into something other than hisa. Most were old. They knew the mystery of the machines, wandered the deep runnels and knew the secrets of the dark places. They always stayed apart.
“Speak of Bennett,” Bigfellow asked, for he, like the others who came and went, whatever the camp which had sent them on Downeblow, had passed through the human camp, had known Bennett Jacint; and there had been great mourning in the Upabove when the news of Bennett’s death had come to them.
“I speak,” Satin said, for she, newest here, had the telling of this tale, among tales that the hisa told in this place, and she warmed quickly to the story. Every evening since their coming, the talk had not been of the small doings of the hisa, whose lives were always the same, but of the doings of the Konstantins, and how Emilio and his friend Miliko had made the hisa smile again… and of Bennett who had died the hisa’s friend. Of all who had come to the Upabove to tell this tale, there was none to tell it who had seen, and they made her tell it again and again.
“He went down to the mill,” she said, when she came to that sad time in the story, “and he tells the hisa there no, no, please run, humans will do, humans will work so river takes no hisa. And he works with his own hands, always, always, Bennett-man would work with his own hands, never shout, no, loves the hisa. We gave him a name — I gave, because he gave me my human name and my good spirit. I call him Comes-from-bright.”
There was a murmuring at this, appreciation and not censure, although it was a spirit-word for Sun himself. Hisa wrapped their arms about themselves in a shiver, as they did each time she told this.
“And the hisa do not leave Bennett-man, no, no. They work with him to save the mill. Then old river, she is angry with humans and with hisa, always angry, but most angry because Lukas-mans make bare her banks and take her water. And we warn Bennett-man he must not trust old river, and he hears us and come back; but we hisa, we work, so the mill will not be lost and Bennett not be sad. Old river, she come higher, and takes the posts away; and we shout quick, quick, come back! for the hisa who work. I-Satin, I work there, I see.” She thumped her chest and touched Bluetooth, embellishing her tale. “Bluetooth and Satin, we see, we run to help the hisa, and Bennett and good mans his friends, all, all run to help them. But old river, she drinks them down, and we come too late in running, all too late. The mill breaks, ssst! And Bennett he reaches for hisa in arms of old river. She takes him too, with mans who help. We shout, we cry, we beg old river give Bennett back; but she takes him all the same. All hisa she gives back, but she takes Bennett-man and his friends. Our eyes are filled with this. He dies. He dies when he holds out arms for the hisa, his good heart makes him die, and old river, bad old river she drink him down. Humans find him and bury him. I set the spirit-sticks above him and gave him gifts. I come here, and my friend Bluetooth comes, because it is a Time. I come here on pilgrimage, where is Bennett’s home.”
There was a murmured approval, a general swaying of the bodies which ringed them. Eyes glistened with tears.
And a strange and fearful thing had happened, for some of the strange Upabove hisa had moved into the back fringes of the crowd, themselves swaying and watching.
“He loves,” one of them said, startling others. “He loves the hisa.”
“So,” she agreed. A knot swelled into her throat at this admission from one of the terrible strange ones, that they listened to the burden of her heart. She felt among her pouches, her spirit-gifts. She brought out the bright cloth, and held it in gentle fingers. “This is my spirit-gift, my name he gives me.”
Another swaying and a murmur of approval.
“What is your name, storyteller?”
She hugged her spirit-gift close to her breast and stared at the strange one who had asked, drew in a great breath. Storyteller. Her skin prickled at such an honor from the strange Old One. “I am Sky-sees-her. Humans call me Satin.” She reached a caressing hand to Bluetooth.
“I am Sun-shining-through-clouds,” Bluetooth said, “friend of Sky-sees-her.”
The strange one rocked on his haunches, and by now all the strange hisa had gathered, to a muttering of awe among the others, who gave way to leave an open space between them and her.
“We hear you speak of this Comes-from-bright, this Bennett-man. Good, good, was this human, and good you gave him gifts. We make your journey welcome, and honor your pilgrimage, Sky-sees-her. Your words make us warm, make warm our eyes. Long time we wait.”
She rocked forward, respecting the age of the speaker, and his great courtesy. There were increasing murmurs among the others. “This is the Old One,” Bigfellow whispered at her shoulder. “He does not speak to us.”
The Old One spat, brushed his coat disdainfully. “The storyteller speaks sense. She marks a Time with her journey. She walks with her eyes open, not only her hands.”
“Ah,” the others murmured, taken aback, and Satin sat dismayed.
“We praise Bennett Jacint,” the Old One said. “He makes us warm to hear these things.”
“Bennett-man is our human,” Bigfellow said staunchly. “Downbelow human: he sent me here.”
“Loved us,” another said, and another: “All loved him.”
“He defended us from Lukases,” Satin said. “And Konstantin-man is his friend, sends me here for my spring, for pilgrimage; we meet by Bennett’s grave. I come for great Sun, to see his face, to see the Upabove. But, Old One, we see only machines, no great brightness. We work hard, hard. We do not have the blossoms or the hills, my friend and I, no, but we still hope. Bennett says here is good, here is beautiful; he says great Sun is near this place. We wait to see, Old One. We asked for the images of the Upabove, and no one here has seen them. They say that humans hide them away from us. But we still wait, Old One.”
There was long silence, while Old One rocked to and fro. Finally he ceased, and held up a bony hand. “Sky-sees-her, the things you seek are here. We visit there. The images stand in the place where human Old Ones meet, and we have seen them. Sun watches over this place, yes, that is true. Your Bennett-man did not deceive you. But there are things here that will make your bones cold, storyteller. We do not speak these secret things. How will hisa Downbelow understand them? How will they bear them? Their eyes do not see. But this Bennett-man made warm your eyes and called you. Ah! long we wait, long, long, and you make warm our hearts to welcome you.
“Ssst! Upabove is not what it seems. The images of the plain we remember. I have seen them. I have slept by them and dreamed dreams. But the images of Upabove… they are not for our dreaming. You tell us of Bennett Jacint, and we tell you, storyteller, of one of us you do not see: Lily, humans call her. Her name is Sun-smiles-on-her, and she is the Great Old One, many more than my seasons. The images we gave humans have become human images, and near them a human dreams in the secret places of the Upabove, in a place all bright. Great Sun comes to visit her… never moves she, no, for the dream is good. She lies all in bright, her eyes are warm with Sun; the stars dance for her; she watches all the Upabove on her walls, perhaps watches us in this moment. She is the image which watches us. The Great Old One cares for her, loves her, this holy one. Good, good is her love, and she dreams us all, all the Upabove, and her face smiles forever upon great Sun. She is ours. We call her Sun-her-friend.”
“Ah,” the gathering murmured, stunned at such a thing, one mated to great Sun himself. “Ah,” Satin murmured with the others, hugged herself and shivering, leaned forward. “Shall we see this good human?”
“No,” said Old One shortly. “Only Lily goes there. And myself. Once. Once I saw.”
Satin sank back, profoundly disappointed.
“Perhaps there is no such human,” Bluetooth said.
Now Old One’s ears lay back, and there was an intake of breath all about them.
“It is a Time,” said Satin, “and my journey. We come very far, Old One, and we cannot see the images and we cannot see the dreamer; we have not yet found the face of Sun.”
Old One’s lips pursed and relaxed several times. “You come. We show you. This night you come; next night others… if you are not afraid. We show you a place. It has no humans in it for a short time. One hour. Human counting. I know how to reckon. You come?”
From Bluetooth there was not a sound. “Come,” Satin said, and felt his reluctance as she tugged at his arm. Others would not. There were none so daring… or so trusting of the strange Old One.
Old One stood up, and two of his company with him. Satin did, and Bluetooth stood up more slowly.
“I go too,” Bigfellow said, but none of his companions came with him to join them.
Old One surveyed them with a curious mockery, and motioned them to come, down the tunnels, into the further ways, tunnels where hisa could move without masks, dark places where one must climb far on thin metal and where even hisa must bend to walk.
“He is mad,” Bluetooth hissed finally into her ear, panting. “And we are mad to follow this deranged Old One. They are all strange who have been here long.”
Satin said nothing, not knowing any argument but her desire. She feared, but she followed, and Bluetooth followed her. Bigfellow trailed along after all of them. They panted when they must go a long way bent or climb far. It was a mad strength that the Old One and his two fellows had, as if they were used to such things and knew where they were going.
Or perhaps — the thought chilled her bones — it was some bizarre humor of the Old One to strand them deep in the dark ways, where they might wander and die lost, to teach the others a lesson.
And just as she was becoming convinced of that fear, the Old One and his companions reached a stopping place and drew up their masks, indicating that they were at a place which would break into human air. Satin swept hers up to her face and Bluetooth and Bigfellow did so only just in time, for the door behind them closed and the door before them opened on a bright hall, white floors and the green of growing things, and here and there scattered humans coming and going in the lonely large space… nothing like the docks. Here was cleanliness and light, and vast dark beyond them, where Old One wished to lead them.
Satin felt Bluetooth slip his hand into hers, and Bigfellow hovered close to both of them as they followed, into a darkness even vaster than the bright place they had left, where there were no walls, only sky.
Stars shifted about them, dazzling them with the motion, magical stars which changed from place to place, burning clear and more steadily than ever Downbelow saw them. Satin let go the hand which held hers and walked forward in awe, gazing about her.
And suddenly light blazed forth, a great burning disc spotted with dark, flaring with fires.
“Sun,” Old One intoned.
There was no brightness, no blue, only dark and stars and the terrible close fire. Satin trembled.
“There is dark,” Bluetooth objected. “How can there be night where Sun is?”
“All stars are kindred of great Sun,” said Old One. “This is a truth. The brightness is illusion. This is a truth. Great Sun shines in darkness and he is large, so large we are dust. He is terrible, and his fires frighten the dark. This is truth. Sky-sees-her, this is the true sky: this is your name. The stars are like great Sun, but far, far from us. This we have learned. See! The walls show us the Upabove itself, and the great ships, the outside of the docks. And there is Downbelow. We are looking on it now.”
“Where is the human camp?” Bigfellow asked. “Where is old river?”
“The world is round like an egg, and some of it faces away from Sun; this makes night on that side. Perhaps if you looked closely you might see old river; I have thought so. But never the human camp. It is too small on the face of Down-below.”
Bigfellow hugged himself and shivered.
But Satin walked among the tables, walked into the clear place, where great Sun shone in his truth, overcoming the dark… terrible he was, orange like fire, and filling all with his terror.
She thought of the dreaming human called Sun-her-friend, whose eyes were forever warmed with that sight, and the hair lifted on her nape.
And she stretched wide her arms and turned, embracing all the Sun, and his far kindred, lost in them, for she had come to the Place which she had journeyed to find. She filled her eyes with the sight, as Sun looked at her, and she could never be the same again, forever.
Norway was not the first to come flashing into the vicinity of that dark, planet-sized piece of rock and ice, visible only as it occluded stars. Others had preceded her to this sunless rendezvous. Omicron was a wanderer, a bit of debris between stars, but its location was predictable and it provided mass enough to home in on out of jump… a place as nowhere as it was possible to be, a chance finding by Sung of Pacific long ago, used by the Fleet since then. It was one of those bits that the sublight freighters had dreaded, which jumpships with private business to conduct… cherished and kept secret
Sensors were picking up activity, multiple ship presence, transmissions out of this forever-night. Computer talked to computer as they came in; and Signy Mallory kept her eyes flickering from one to the other bit of telemetry, fighting the hypnotism that so easily set in from jump and the necessary drugs. She hurled Norway into realspace max, heading for those signals and out of the jump range with the sense of something on her tail, trusted her crew’s accuracy and aimed with the ship underway, the flickering few minutes of heart-in-throat transit near C, where all they had was approximation.
She cut it back quickly, started dumping velocity, no comfortable process, and the slightly speed-mad telemetry and slightly drug-mad human brain fought for precise location; overestimate that dump and she could take Norway right into that rock or into another ship.
“Clear, clear, all in now but Europe and Libya,” com reported.
No mean feat of navigation, to find Omicron so accurately, to come in within middle scan, right in the jump range, after a start from near Russell’s, far away. Fail their time, and they would have been in the jump range when something else came in, and that was disaster. “Good job,” she sent to all stations, looking at the reckoning Graff flashed to her center screen: “Two minutes off mark but dead on distance; can’t cut it much closer at our starting range. Good signals being received. Stand by.”
She took her pattern in relation to Omicron, checked through data; within the half hour there was a signal from Libya, which had just come in. Europe came in a quarter hour after that, from another plane.
That was the tale of them, then. They were in one place, at one time, which they had not been since their earliest operations. Unlikely as it was Union would come on them in strength here, they were still nervous.
Computer signal came in from Europe. They were given breathing space, to rest. Signy leaned back, took the com plug from her ear, unharnessed and got up finally while Graff moved to the post she had vacated. They were not at the disadvantage of some: Norway was one of the mainday ships… her main command staff on the schedule they were following now. Others, Atlantic, Africa, and Libya, were alter-day, so that strike hours were never remotely predictable, so that there were ships with their main crews available on either schedule. But they were all mainday now, a synchronization they had never undergone, and the alterday captains did the suffering, jump and reversed hours combined.
“Take over,” she bade Graff, wandered back through the aisle, touched a shoulder here and there, walked back to her own nook in the corridor… passed it by. She walked on back instead to crew quarters, looked in on them, alterday crew, most drugged senseless, to get their rest despite jump. A few, having an aversion to that procedure, were awake, sat in the crew mainroom looking better than they probably felt. “All stable.” she told them. “Everyone all right?”
They avowed so. They would drag out now, safe and peacefully. She left them to do that, took the lift down to the outershell and the troop quarters, walked the main corridor behind the suiting area, stopped in one barracks after another, where she interrupted knot after knot of men and women sitting and trading speculations on their prospects… guilty looks and startled ones, troopers springing to their feet in dismay to find themselves under her scrutiny, a frantic groping after bits of clothing, a hiding of this and that which might be disapproved; she did not, but the crew and troops had some quaint reticences. Some here too slept drugged, unconscious in their bunks; most did not… gambled, in many a compartment, while the ship shot her own dice with the Deep, while flesh and ship seemed to dissolve and the game continued on the other side of a far-stretched moment.
“Going to be a bit slow down here,” she would say in each case. “We’re in pattern and we’re all stable; at your ease down here, but keep yourselves within a minute’s prep for moving. No reason to think there’s a problem, but we take no chances.”
Di Janz intercepted her in the main corridor after the third such visit, nodded courtesy, walked with her through this private domain of his, seeming pleased in her presence among his command. Troops braced when Di walked with her, came to blank attention. Best, she thought, to pull the pretended inspection, just to let them know command had not forgotten them down here. What was coming was the kind of operation the troops dreaded, a multiple-ship strike, which raised the hazard of getting hit. And the troops had to ride it out blind, useless, jammed in the small safety the inner structure of the ship could afford them. There were no braver when it came to walking into possible fire, boarding a stopped merchanter, landing in some ground raid; and they took in stride the usual strike, Norway sweeping in alone, hit and run. But they were nervous now… she had heard it in the muttered comments which filtered over open com — always open: Norway tradition, that they all knew what was going on, down to the newest trooper. They obeyed, would obey, but their pride was hurt in this new phase of the war, in which they had no use. Important to be down here now, to make the gesture. Queasy as they were with jump and drugs, they were at their lowest, and she saw eyes brighten at a word, a touch on the shoulder in passing. She knew them by name, every one, called them by name, one and another of them. There was Mahler, whom she had taken from Russell’s refugees, looking particularly sober and no little frightened; Kee, from a merchanter; Di had come years ago, the same way. Many, many more. Some of them were rejuved, like her, had known her for years… knew the score as well, too, she reckoned, as well as any of them knew it. Bitter to them that this critical phase was not theirs, could not be.
She walked the dark limbo of the forward hold, round the cylinder rim, into the eitherway world of the ridership crews, a place like home, a memory of other days, when she had had her quarters in such a place, this bizarre section where the crews of the insystem fighters, their mechanics, prep crews, lived in their own private world. A whole other command existed here, right way up at the moment, under rotation, ceiling down the rare times they were docked. Two of the eight crews were here, Quevedo’s and Almarshad’s, of Odin and Thor; four were off duty; two were riding null up in the frame… or inside their ships, because locking crews through the special lift out of the rotation cylinder took one rotation of the hull, and they could not spare that time if they jumped into trouble. Riding null through jump — she recalled that experience well enough. Not the pleasantest way to travel, but it was always someone’s job. They had no intent to deploy the riders here at Omicron, or two more sets of them would have been up there in the can, as they called it, in that exile. “All’s as it should be,” she said to those in demi-prep. “Rest, relax, keep off the liquor; we’re still on standby and will be while we’re here. Don’t know when we’ll be ordered out or with how much warning. Could have to scramble, but far from likely. My guess is we don’t make mission jump without some time for rest. This operation is on our timetable, not Union’s.”
There was no quibble. She took the lift up to main level, walked the shorter distance around to number one corridor, her legs still rubbery, but the drugs were losing their numbing effect. She went to her own office/quarters, paced the floor a time, finally lay down on the cot and rested, just to shut her eyes and let the tension ebb, the nervous energy that jump always threw into her, because usually it meant coming out into combat, snapping decisions rapidly, kill or die.
Not this time; this was the planned one, the thing to which they had been moving for months of small strikes, raids that had taken out vital installations, that had harried and destroyed where possible.
Rest a while; sleep if they could. She could not. She was glad when the summons came.
It was a strange feeling, to stand again in the corridors of Europe, stranger still to find herself in the company of all the others seated in the flagship’s council room… an eerie and panicky feeling, this meeting of all of them who had been working together unmet these many years, who had so zealously avoided each other’s vicinities except for brief rendezvous for the passing of orders ship to ship. In recent years it was unlikely that Mazian himself had known where all his fleet was, whether particular ships survived the missions on which they were sent… or what mad operations they might be undertaking solo. They had been less a fleet than a guerrilla operation, skulking and striking and running.
Now they were here, the last ten, the survivors of the maneuvers — herself; Tom Edger of Australia, lean and grim-faced; big Mika Kreshov of Atlantic, perpetually scowling; Carlo Mendez of North Pole, a small, dark man of quiet manner. There was Chenel of Libya, who had gone on rejuv — his hair had turned entirely silver since she had seen him a year ago; there was dark-skinned Porey of Africa, an incredibly grim man… cosmetic surgery after wounds was not available in the Fleet. Keu of India, silk-soft and confident; Sung of Pacific, all efficiency; Kant of Tibet, another of Sung’s stamp.
And Conrad Mazian. Silver-haired with rejuv, a tall, handsome man in dark blue, who leaned his arms on the table and swept a slow glance over them. It was intended for effect; possibly it was sincere affection, that open look. Dramatic sense and Mazian were inseparable; the man lived by it. Knowing him, knowing the manner of him, Signy still found herself drawn in by the old excitement.
No preliminaries, no statement of welcome, just that look and a nod. “Folders are in front of you,” Mazian said. “Closest security: codes and coordinates are in those. Carry them back with you and familiarize your key personnel with the details, but don’t discuss anything ship to ship. Key your comps for alternatives A, B, C, and so on, and go to them by that according to the situation. But we don’t reckon to be using those alternatives. Things are set up as they should be. Schematic — ” He called an image to the screen before them, showed them the familiar area of their recent operations, which by stripping away vital personnel and leaving chaos on the stations left one lone untampered station like the narrowing of a funnel toward Pell, toward the wide straggle of Hinder Stars. One station. Viking. Signy had figured the pattern long since, the tactic old as Earth, old as war, impossible for Union to resist, for they could not allow vacuum in power, could not allow the stations they had struggled to gain to fall into disorder, plundered of technicians and directors and security forces, deliberately allowed to collapse. Union had started this game of station-taking. So they had rammed stations down Union’s throat; Union had then to move in or have stations lost, had to supply techs and other skilled personnel, to replace the ones evacuated. And ships to guard them, quickly, one after the other. Union had had to stretch even its monster capacity to hold what it had been given to digest.
It had had to take Viking whole, with all the internal complications of a station never evacuated… take it latest, because by ramming stations down Union’s gullet in their own rapid sequence, they had dictated the sequence and direction of Union’s moves of ships and personnel.
Viking had been last.
Central to the others, with desolation about it, stations struggling to survive.
“All indication is,” Mazian said softly, “that they have decided to fortify Viking; logical choice: Viking’s the only one with its comp files complete, the only one where they’ve had a chance to round up all the dissidents, all the resistance, where they could apply their police tactics and card everyone, instantly. Now it’s all clean, all sanitary for their base of operations; we’ve let them throw a lot into it; we take out Viking, and hit at the others, that are hanging by a thread in terms of viability… and then there’s nothing but far waste between us and Fargone; between Pell and Union. We make expansion inconvenient, costly; we herd the beast to its wider pastures in the other direction… while we can. You have your specific instructions in the folders. The fine details may have to be improvised within certain limits, according to what might turn up in your sectors. Norway, Libya, India, unit one; Europe, Tibet, Pacific, two; North Pole, Atlantic, Africa, three; Australia has its own business. If we’re lucky we won’t face anything at our rear, but every contingency is covered. This is going to be a long session; that’s why I let you rest. We’ll simulate until there are no more questions.”
Signy drew a slow breath and released it, opened the folder and in the silence Mazian afforded them to do so, scanned the operation as it was set up, her lips pressed to a thinner and thinner line. No need for drill: they knew what they were about, variations on old themes they had all run separately. But this was navigation that would try all their skill, a mass strike, a precision of arrival not synched, but separate, disaster if jumpships came near each other, if an object of mass like the enemy just happened to be in the vicinity. They were going to flash in close enough to Viking to give the opposition no options, skin the hair off disaster. The presence of any enemy ship where it statistically ought not to be, the deployment of ships out from station in unusual configurations… all manner of contingencies. They took into account too the positions of worlds and satellites in the system on their arrival date, to screen themselves where possible. To flash out of jump space with nerves still sluggish, to haul dazed minds into action and try to plot instantly the location of friend and enemy, to coordinate an attack so precisely that some of them were going to overjump Viking and some underjump it, come in from all sides at once, from the same start -
They had one advantage over Union’s sleek, new ships, the fine equipment, the unscarred young crews, tape-trained, deeptaught with all the answers. The Fleet had experience, could move their patched ships with a precision Union’s fine equipment had not yet matched, with nerve Union conservatism and adherence to the book discouraged in its captains.
They might lose a carrier in this kind of operation, maybe more than one, come jolting in too close, take each other out The odds were in favor of its happening. They rode Mazian’s Luck… that it would not. That was their edge, that they would do what no one sane could do, and shock aided them.
The schematics appeared, one after the other. They argued, for the most part listened and accepted, for there was little to which they wished to object. They shared a meal, returned to the briefing room, argued the last round.
“One day for rest,” Mazian said. “We go at maindawn, day after tomorrow. Set it up in comp; check and doublecheck.”
They nodded, parted company, each to his own ship, and there was a peculiar flavor to the parting as well… that when next they met, they would be fewer.
“See you in hell,” Chenel muttered, and Porey grinned.
A day to get it all into comp; and the appointment was waiting.
Ayres awoke, not sure what had wakened him in the quiet of their apartments. Marsh had gotten back… the latest fright they had had, when he failed to rejoin them after recreation. Tension afflicted Ayres. He realized that for some time he had slept tense, for his shoulders hurt and his hands were clenched, and he lay still now with sweat gathered on his face, not sure what had caused it
The war of nerves had not ceased. Azov had what he wanted, a message calling Mazian in. They quibbled now over some points of secondary agreements, for the future of Pell, which Jacoby professed to hand to Union. They had their recreation time, that much, but they were detained in conferences, harassed by petty tactics the same as before. It was as if all his appeal to Azov had only aggravated the situation, for Azov was not accessible for the last five days… gone, the lesser authorities insisted, and the difficulties raised for them now had the taint of malice.
Someone was astir outside. Soft footsteps. The door slid back unannounced. Dias’s silhouette leaned into it. “Segust,” she said. “Come. You must come. It’s Marsh.”
He rose and reached for his robe, then followed Dias. Karl Bela was stirring him from his room likewise, next door to him. Marsh’s room was across the sitting room, next to Dias’s, and the door was open.
Marsh hung, gently turning, by his belt looped from a hook which had held a movable light. The face was horrible. Ayres froze an instant, then dragged back the chair which had slid on its track, climbed up, and tried to get the body down. They had no knife, had nothing with which they might cut the belt. It was imbedded in Marsh’s throat and he could not get it free and support the body at once. Bela and Dias tried to help, holding the knees, but that was no good.
“We’ve got to call security,” Dias said.
Ayres climbed down from the chair, hard-breathing, stared at them.
“I might have stopped him,” Dias said. “I was still awake. I heard the moving about, a great deal of noise. Then strange sounds. When they had stopped so suddenly and so long — I finally got up to see.”
Ayres shook his head, looked at Bela then stalked out to the sitting room and the com panel by the door, punched through a request to security. “One of us is dead,” he said. “Put me through to someone in charge.”
“Request will be relayed,” the answer came back. “Security is on its way.”
The contact went dead, no more informative than usual. Ayres sat down, head in hands, tried not to think of Marsh’s horrible corpse slowly spinning in the next compartment. It had been coming; he had feared worse, that Marsh would break down in his tormentors’ hands. A brave man after his own fashion, he had not broken. Ayres tried earnestly to believe that he had not.
Or guilt, perhaps? Remorse might have driven him to suicide.
Dias and Bela sat down nearby, waited with him, faces stark and somber, hair disordered from sleep. He tried to comb his own with his fingers.
Marsh’s eyes. He did not want to think of them. A long time passed. “What’s keeping them?” Bela wondered, and Ayres recovered sense enough to glance up harshly at Bela, reprimand for that show of humanity. It was the old war; it continued even in this, especially after this. “Maybe we should go back to bed,” Dias said. At other times, in other places, a mad suggestion. Here it was sanity. They needed their rest. A systematic effort was being made to deprive them of it. A little more and they would all be like Marsh.
“Probably they will be late,” he agreed aloud. “We might as well.”
They quietly, as if it were the sanest thing in the world, retired to their separate rooms. Ayres took off his robe and hung it over the chair by his bed, reckoning anew that he was proud of his companions, who held up so well, and that he hated — hated Union. It was not his business to hate, only to get results. Marsh at least was free. He wondered what Union did with their dead. Ground them up, perhaps, for fertilizer. That would be typical of such a society. Economical. Poor Marsh.
It was guaranteed that Union would be perverse. He had no sooner settled into bed, reduced his mind to a level that excluded clear thought, closed his eyes in an attempt at sleep, than the outer door whisked open, the tread of booted feet sounded in the sitting room, his door was rudely pulled back and armed soldiers stood silhoutted against the light.
With studied calm, he rose to his feet
“Dress,” a soldier said.
He did so. There was no arguing with the mannequins.
“Ayres,” the soldier said, motioning with his rifle. They had been moved out of the apartment to one of the offices, he and Bela and Dias, made to sit for at least an hour on hard benches, waiting for someone of authority, who was promised them. Presumably security needed to examine the apartment in detail. “Ayres,” the soldier said a second time, this time harshly, indicating that he should rise and follow.
He did so, leaving Dias and Bela with a touch of apprehension in the parting. They would be bullied, he thought, perhaps even accused of Marsh’s murder. He was about to be, perhaps.
Another means of breaking their resistance, only, he thought. He might be in Marsh’s place; he was the one separated from the others.
He was taken out of the office, brought among a squad of soldiers in the outer corridor, hastened farther and farther from the offices, from all the ordinary places, taken down in a lift, marched along another hall. He did not protest. If he stopped, they would carry him; there was no arguing with these mentalities, and he was too old to submit to being dragged down a hall.
It was the docks… the docks, crowded with military, squad upon squad of armed troops, and ships loading. “No,” he said, forgetting all his policy, but a rifle barrel slammed against his shoulders, and moved him on, across the ugly utilitarian decking, up to the ramp and umbilical which linked some ship to the dock. Inside, then; the air was, if anything, colder than it was on the docks.
They passed three corridors, a lift, numerous doors. The door at the end was open and lighted, and they brought him in, into the steel and plastic of shipboard furnishings, sloping shapes, chairs of ambiguous design, fixed benches, decks of far more obvious curve than those of the station, everything cramped and angles strange. He staggered, unused to the footing, looked in surprise at the man seated at the table.
Dayin Jacoby rose from a chair to welcome him.
“What’s going on?” he asked of Jacoby.
“I really don’t know,” Jacoby told him, and it seemed the truth. “I was roused out last night and brought aboard. I’ve been waiting in this place half an hour.”
“Who’s in charge here?” Ayres demanded of the mannequins. “Inform him I want to speak with him.”
They did nothing, only stood, rifles braced all at the same drill angle. Ayres slowly sat down, as Jacoby did. He was frightened. Perhaps Jacoby himself was. He lapsed into his long habit of silence, finding nothing to say to a traitor at any event. There was no polite conversation possible.
The ship moved, a crash echoing through the hull and the corridors and disturbing them from their calm. Soldiers reached for handholds as the moment of queasy null came on them. Freed of station’s grav, they had a moment yet to acquire their own, as ship’s systems took over. Clothes crawled unpleasantly, stomachs churned; they were convinced of imminent falling, and the falling when it came was a slow settling.
“We’ve left,” Jacoby muttered. “It’s come, then.”
Ayres said nothing, thinking in panic of Bela and Dias, left behind. Left.
A black-clad officer appeared in the doorway, and another behind him.
Azov.
“Dismissed,” Azov said to the mannequins, and they went out in silent order. Ayres and Jacoby rose at once.
“What’s going on?” Ayres asked directly. “What is this?”
“Citizen Ayres,” said Azov, “we are on defensive maneuvers.”
“My companions — what about them?”
“They are in a most secure place, Mr. Ayres. You’ve provided us the message we desired; it may prove of use, and therefore you’re with us. Your quarters are adjoining, just down that corridor. Kindly confine yourself there.”
“What’s happening?” he demanded, but the aide took him by the arm and escorted him to the door. He seized the frame and resisted, casting a look back at Azov. “What’s happening?”
“We are preparing,” Azov said, “to deliver Mazian your message. And it seems fit for you to be at hand… if further questions are raised. The attack is coming; I make my guess where, and that it will be a major one. Mazian doesn’t give up stations for nothing; and we’re going, Mr. Ayres, to put ourselves where he has obliged us to stand… up the wager, as it were. He’s left us no choice, and he knows it; but of course, it’s earnestly to be hoped that he will regard the authority you have to recall him. Should you wish to prepare a second, even more forceful message, facilities will be provided you.”
“To be edited by your experts.”
Azov smiled tautly. “Do you want the Fleet intact? Frankly I doubt you can recover it. I don’t think Mazian will regard your message; but as he finds himself deprived of bases, you may yet have a humanitarian role to fill.”
Ayres said nothing. He reckoned silence even now the wisest course. The aide took him by the arm and drew him back down the corridor, showed him into a barren compartment of plastic furniture, and locked the door.
He paced a time, what few paces the compartment allowed. In time he yielded to the weariness in his knees and sat down. He had managed badly, he thought Dias and Bela were… wherever they were — on a ship or still on the station, and what station they had been on he still did not know. Anything might happen. He sat shivering, suddenly realizing that they were lost, that soldiers and ships were aimed at Pell and Mazian… for Jacoby was brought along too. Another — humanitarian — function. In his own stupidity he had played to stay alive, to get home. It looked less and less likely. They were about to lose it all.
“A peace has been concluded,” he had said in the simple statement he had permitted to be recorded, lacking essential codes. “Security council representative Segust Ayres by authority of the Earth Company and the security council requests the Fleet make contact for negotiation.”
It was the worst of all times for major battle to be joined. Earth needed Mazian where he was, with all his ships, striking at random at Union, a nuisance, making it difficult for Union to extend its arm Earthward.
Mazian had gone mad… against Union’s vast extent, to launch the few ships he had, and to engage on a massive scale and lose. If the Fleet was wiped out, then Earth was suddenly out of the time he had come here to win. No Mazian, no Pell, and everything fell apart
And might not a message of the sort he had framed provoke some rash action, or confound maneuvers already in progress, lessening the chance of Mazian’s success even further?
He rose, paced again the bowed floor of what looked to be his final prison. A second message then. An outrageous demand. If Union was as self-convinced as the mannequins, as humorlessly convinced of their purpose, they might let it pass if it fit their demands.
“Considering merger of Company interest with Union in trade agreements,” he composed in his head. “Negotiations far advanced; as earnest of good faith in negotiations, cease all military operations; cease fire and accept truce. Stand by for further instructions.”
Treachery… to drive Mazian into retreat, into the kind of scattered resistance Earth needed at this stage. It was the only hope.