Downbelow Station Part 15

"Mr. Talley," said one of the police, "will you come with us, please?" He realized the wrench in his hand as a weapon, carefully laid it on the counter, wiped his hand on his coveralls, and stood up. "Where are you going?" the girl beside him asked. He had never known her name.

Her plain face was distressed. "Where are you going?" He did not answer, not knowing. One of the police took him by the arm and brought him away down the aisle and up the side of the shop to the door, They were all staring. "Quiet," the supervisor said. There was a general murmuring. The police and the troops brought him outside into the corridor and stopped there. The door closed, and a troop officer, in body armor only, faced him to the wall and searched him.

The man took his papers from his pocket. He faced about again when they let him and stood with his back against the wall, watching the officer go through the papers. Atlantic, their insignia said. A sick terror worked in him. Company soldiers had the papers in their hands, and they were all his claim to harmlessness, proof of what he had been through, that he was no danger to anyone. He reached out to recover them and the officer held them out of reach. Mazianni. The shadow came back.He withdrew his hand, remembering other encounters, his heart pounding. "I have a pa.s.s," he said, trying to keep the tic from his face, which came when he was upset. "It's with the papers. You can see I work here. I'm supposed to be here."

"Mornings only."

"We were all held," he said. "We were all held over. Check the others. We're all from morning shift."

"You'll come with us," one of the troopers said.

"Ask Damon Konstantin. He'll tell you. I know him. h.e.l.l tell you that I'm all right."

That delayed them. "I'll make a note of that," the officer said. "It's possibly true," said one of the station police. "I've heard something like that. He's a special case."

"We have our orders. Comp spat him out; we have to clear the matter. You lock him up in your facilities or we lock him up in ours." Josh opened his mouth to state a preference. "We'll take him," the policeman said before he could plead.

"My papers," Josh said. He stammered and flushed with shame. Some reactions were still too much to control. He held out a demanding hand for his papers and it shook visibly. "Sir."

The officer folded them and carefully put them into his belt-kit. "He doesn't need them. He's not going anywhere. You take him and put him away, and you have him available if any of us want him, you understand that? He may go into Q later, but not till command's had a chance to review it" "Understood," the policeman said crisply. He seized Josh's arm, led him down the corridor. The troops walked behind, and finally, at an intersection of corridors, their path and that of the troops diverged. But there were Mazianni at every visible hallway. He felt cold and exposed... felt profound relief when the police stopped at a lift and took him into the car alone; they were, for that ride up and around to red sector one, without the troops.

"Please call Damon Konstantin," he asked of them. "Or Elene Quen. Or anyone in their offices. I know the numbers."

There was silence for most of the ride.

"We'll report it through channels," one said finally, without looking at him. The lift stopped, red one. Security zone. He walked out between them, through the transparent part.i.tion and to the desk at the entry. Troops were inside this office too, armored and armed, and that sent a wave of panic through him, for he had hoped that in this place at least he was under station authority. "Please," he said at the desk, while they were checking him in. He knew the young officer in charge; he had been here when he was a prisoner. He remembered. He leaned forward toward him and lowered his voice, desperately. "Please call the Konstantins. Let them know I'm here."

Here too there was no answer, only an uncomfortable shift of the eyes away from him. They were afraid, all the stationers-terrified of the armed troops. Soldiers drew him away from the desk, led him down the corridor to the detention cells, put him into one, barren and white and furnished only with sanitary facilities and a white bench extruded from the walls. They delayed to search him again, strip search this time, and left him his clothing on the floor. He dressed, sank down finally onto the bench, tucked his feet up and rested his head against his knees, tired from his long working and knotted up with fear.

iMerchanter ship Hammer: in deep s.p.a.ce; 1700 hrs.

Vittorio Lukas rose from his seat and walked the curve of Hammer's dingy bridge, hesitated at the twitch of the stick in the hand of the Unioner who continually kept an eye on him. They would not let him come within reach of controls; in this tiny, steeply curved rotation cylinder-most of Hammer's unlovely ma.s.s was a null-G belly, aft-there was a line on the tiles, marked in tape, which circ.u.mscribed his prison. He had not discovered yet what would happen if he crossed it without being called; he never meant to find out. He was allowed most of the circuit of the cylinder, the crew quarters where he slept; the tiny main-room section... and this far into the operations area. From here he could make out one of the screens and see scan past the tech's shoulder; he lingered, staring at it, at the backs of men and women in merchanter dress who were not merchanters, his belly still queasy from drugs and his nerves crawling from jump. He had spent most of the day throwing up his insides. The captain was standing watching the screens, saw him, beckoned him. Vittorio hesitated; at a second signal came walking ahead into that forbidden operations zone, not without a backward glance at the man with the stick. He accepted the captain's friendly hand on his shoulder as he took a closer look at scan; prosperous looking sort, this man... might have been a Pell businessman, urged his crew rather than snapping orders. They all treated him well enough, even with politeness. It was his situation and the potentials in it which had him terrified. Coward, his father would say in disgust. It was true. He was. This was no place and no company for him.

"We're moving back soon now," the man said... Bla.s.s, his name was, Abe Bla.s.s.

"Didn't jump far, just enough to stay out of Mazian's way. Relax, Mr. Lukas.

Your stomach treating you better now?"

He said nothing. The mention of his malaise brought a spasm to his gut. "Nothing's wrong," Bla.s.s said softly, hand still on his shoulder. "Absolutely nothing, Mr. Lukas. Mazian's arrival doesn't trouble us." He looked at the man. "And what if the Fleet spots us when we come in again?" "We can always jump," Bla.s.s said. "Swan's Eye won't have strayed from her post; and Ilyko won't talk; she knows where her interests lie. Just rest easy, Mr. Lukas. You still seem to have some apprehensions of us."

"If my father on Pell is compromised..."

"That won't be likely to happen. Jessad knows what he's doing. Believe me. It's all planned for. And Union takes care of its friends." Bla.s.s patted the shoulder. "You're doing very well for a first jump. Take an old timer's advice and don't push yourself. Just relax. Go on back to the main room and I'll talk to you as soon as our move in is plotted."

"Sir," he murmured, and did as he was told, wandering past the guard back up the curving deck to the deserted main room. He took a seat at the molded table/bench arrangement, leaned his arm on the table, swallowed heavily. It was not all nausea from jump. He was terrified. Make a man of you, he could hear his father saying. He seethed with misery. He was what he was, and he did not belong here, with the likes of Abe Bla.s.s and these grim very-same people. His father had made him expendable. If he were ambitious he would try to make points for himself in these circ.u.mstances, ingratiate himself with Union. He did not. He knew his abilities and his limits, and he wanted Roseen, wanted his comforts, wanted a good drink he could not have with the drugs filling his system.

It was not going to work, none of it; and they would s.n.a.t.c.h him Unionside where everyone walked in step, and that would be the end of everything he knew. He feared changes. What he had at Pell was good enough. He had never asked much of life or of anyone, and the thought of being out here in the center of nothing at all... gave him nightmares.

But he had no choices. His father had seen to that.

Bla.s.s came finally, sat down and solemnly spread charts on the table and explained things to him as if he were someone of consequence to the mission. He looked at the diagram and tried to understand the premises of this shifting about through nothing, when he could not in fact understand where they were, which was essentially nowhere.

"You should feel very confident," Bla.s.s said. "I a.s.sure you you're in a far safer place than the station is right now."

"You're a very high officer in Union," he said, "aren't you? They wouldn't send you like this... otherwise."

Bla.s.s shrugged.

"Hammer and Swan's Eye ... all the ships you've got near Pell?"

Bla.s.s shrugged again. That was his answer.

Chapter Six.

Maintenance access white 9-1042; 2100 hrs.

The men had come and gone for a long time, men-in-sh.e.l.ls, carrying guns. Satin shivered and tucked further back into the shadows by the cargo lift. They were many who had run when the Lukas directed, who had run again when the stranger men came, by the ways that the hisa could use, the narrow ways, the dark tunnels where hisa could breathe without masks and men could not. Men of the Upabove knew these ways but they had not yet shown them to the strangers, and hisa were safe, though some of them cried deep in the dark, deep, deep below, so that men would not hear.

There was no hope here. Satin pursed her lips and sidled backward in a crouch, waited while the air changed, scampered back into safe darkness. Hands touched her. There was male-scent. She hissed in reproof and smelt after the one who was hers. Arms folded her about. She laid her head wearily against a hard shoulder, comforting as she was comforted. Bluetooth offered her no questions. He knew that there was no better news, for he had said as much when she had insisted on going out to see.

It was trouble, bad trouble. Lukases spoke and gave orders, and strangers threatened. Old One was not here... none of the long-timers were, having gone somewhere about their own business, to the protection of important things, Satin reckoned. To duties ordered by important humans and perhaps duties which regarded hisa.

But they had disobeyed, had not gone to the supervisors, no more than the Old Ones had gone, who also hated Lukases.

"Go back?" someone asked finally.

They would be in trouble if they turned themselves in after running. Men would be angry with them, and the men had guns. "No," she said, and when there was muttering to the contrary, Bluetooth turned his head to spit a surlier negative. "Think," he said. "We go there, men can be there, bad trouble."

"Hungry," another protested.

No one answered.

Men might take their friendship from them for what they had done. They realized that clearly now. And without that friendship, they might be on Downbelow always. Satin thought of the fields of Downbelow, the soft clouds she had once thought solid enough to sit on, the rain and the blue sky and the gray-green-blue leaves, the flowers and soft mosses... most of all the air which smelled of home. Bluetooth dreamed of that, perhaps, as the heat of her spring faded, and she had not quickened, being young, in her first adult season. Bluetooth saw things now with a clearer head. He mourned the world at times. At times she did. But to be there always and forever... Sky-sees-her, that was her name; and she had seen truth. The blue was false, a cover stretched out like a blanket; truth was black distances, and the face of great Sun shining in the dark. Truth would always hang above them. Without the favor of humans, they would return to Downbelow without hope, forever and ever to know themselves shut off from the sky. There was no home now, not now that they had looked upon Sun.

"Lukases go away sometime," Bluetooth murmured against her ear. She burrowed her head against him, trying to forget that she was hungry and thirsty, and did not answer him.

"Guns," said another voice, near them. "They will shoot us and we will lose ourselves forever."

"Not if we stay here," said Bluetooth, "and do what I said." "They are not our humans," said Bigfellow's deep voice. "Hurt our humans, these."

"This is a man-fight," Bluetooth returned. "Nothing for the hisa." A thought came. Satin lifted her head. "Konstantins. Konstantin-fight, this. We will find Konstantins, ask what to do. Find Konstantins, find Old Ones too, near Sun's Place."

"Ask Sun-her-friend," another exclaimed. "She must know."

"Where is Sun-her-friend?"

There was silence. No one knew. The Old Ones preserved that secret. "I will find her." That was Bigfellow. He wriggled close to them, reached out a hand to her shoulder in the dark. "I go many places. Come. Come." She drew in her breath, lipped uncertainly at Bluetooth's cheek. "Come," Bluetooth agreed suddenly, drawing her by the hand. Bigfellow hastened off just ahead, a pattering of feet in the dark. They went after him and others followed, up the dark corridors and the ladders and the narrow places, where sometimes there was light and most times not. Some fell behind, for they went among pipes and in cold places and places which burned their bare feet, and past machinery which thundered with ominous powers.

Bluetooth pushed into the lead at times, letting go her hand; at times Bigfellow shoved him aside and went first again. Satin doubted in fact that Bluetooth had the least idea where he was going or what way would lead them to Sun-her-friend; to the Sun's Place they had been, and dimly she had that sense she had on the earth, that said in her heart what way a place should be... up was true; she thought that it should be left... but sometimes the tunnels did not bend left; and they wound. The two males pushed ahead, one and then the other, until they were all panting and stumbling; more and more fell behind; and at last the one behind her caught her hand, pleaded by that gesture... but Bluetooth and Bigfellow pushed on and she was losing them. She parted from the last of their followers and kept going, trying to overtake them.

"No more," she pleaded when she had caught them on the metal steps. "No more, let us go back. You are lost."

Bigfellow would not heed. Panting, he edged higher; she tugged at Bluetooth and he hissed in frustration and went after Bigfellow. Madness. Madness had settled on them. "You show me nothing!" she wailed. She bounced in despair and hastened after, panting, trying to reason with them, who had pa.s.sed beyond reasoning. They pa.s.sed panels and doors where they might have gotten out into the open; all these they rejected... but at last they came to a place where they were faced with choices, where a light burned blue above a door; where the ladders extended everywhere, up and down and in three other directions. "Here," Bigfellow said after a little hesitation, feeling of the b.u.t.tons at the lighted door. "Here is a way."

"No," Satin moaned. "No," Bluetooth objected too, perhaps recovering his senses; but Bigfellow pushed the first b.u.t.ton and slipped into the air chamber when the door opened. "Come back," Bluetooth exclaimed, and they scrambled to stop him, who was mad with the rivalry, who did this for her, and for nothing else. They went in after him; the door closed at their backs. The second door opened under Bigfellow's hand as they caught up with him, and there was light-it blinded. And suddenly guns fired and Bigfellow went down in the doorway with a smell of burning. He cried and shrieked horribly, and Bluetooth whirled and hit the other door b.u.t.ton, his hard arm carrying her with him as the door opened and wind surged about them. Man-voices bellowed over a sudden wail of alarms, silenced as the door closed. They hit the ladders and ran, ran blindly down and through the darkways, deep, deep into the dark. They dragged their breathers down, but the air smelt wrong. They finally stopped their running, sweating and shivering. Bluetooth rocked and moaned with pain in the dark, and Satin searched him for a wound, found his fingers locked on his upper arm. She licked the sore place, which was hot and burned, soothed it as best she could, hugged him and tried to still the rage which had him trembling. They were lost, both lost in the darkways; and Bigfellow was horribly dead, and Bluetooth sat and hissed with pain and anger, muscles hard and quivering. But in a moment he shook himself, lipped at her cheek, shivered as she put her arms about him. "O let us go home," he whispered. "O let us go home, Tam-utsa-pitan, and no more see humans. No machines, no fields, no man-work, only hisa always and always. Let us go home."

She said nothing. The disaster was hers, for she had suggested, and Bigfellow had wanted her and Bluetooth had risen to the challenge of his daring, as if they had been in the high hills. Her disaster, her doing. Now Bluetooth himself spoke of leaving her dream, unwilling to follow her further. Tears filled her eyes, doubts for herself, loneliness, that she had walked too far. Now they were in worse trouble, for to find themselves they must go up again to the man-places and open a door and beg help, and they had seen the result of that. They held each other and did not stir from where they were. ii Mallory looked tired, a hollowness to her eyes as she paced the aisles of command central, countless circuits of it, while her troops stood guard. Damon watched her, himself leaning against a counter, hungry and tired himself, but it was, he reckoned, nothing to what the Fleet personnel must be feeling, having gone through jump, pa.s.sing from that to this tedious police duty; workers, never relieved at their posts, looked haggard, muttered timid complaints... but there was no other shift for these troops.

"Are you going to stay here all night?" he asked her.

She turned a cold look on him, said nothing, walked on. He had watched her for some hours, a foreboding presence in the center. She had a way of moving that made no noise, no swagger, no, but it was, perhaps, the unconscious a.s.sumption that anyone in her way would move. They did. Any tech who had to get up did so only when Mallory was patroling some other aisle. She had never made a threat-spoke seldom, mostly to the troopers, about what, only she and they knew. She was even, occasionally and before the hours wore on, pleasant. But there was no question the threat was there. Most residents on-station had never seen close up the kind of gear that surrounded Mallory and her troops; had never touched a gun with their own hands, would be hard put to describe what they saw. He noted three different models in this small selection alone, light pistol; long-barreled ones; heavy rifles, all black plastics and ominous symmetries; armor, to diffuse the burn of such weapons... that gave the troops the same deadly machined look as the rest of the gear, no longer human. It was impossible to relax with such among them.

A tech rose at the far side of the room, looked over her shoulder as if to see if any of the guns had moved... walked down the aisle as if it were mined. Gave him a printed message, retreated at once. Damon held the message in his hand unread, conscious of Mallory's interest. She had stopped pacing. He found no way to avoid attention, unfolded the paper and read it psscia/ pacpakonstant indamon/ au1-1-1-1-1/1030/ 10/4/52/2136md/0936a/start/talley papers confiscated and talley arrested by fleet order/ sec office given choice local detention or military intervention/talley confined this post/ talley request message sent konstantin family/ herein complied/request instruction/request policy clarification/ saundersredoneseccom/ enditenditendit.

He looked up, pulse racing, caught between relief it was nothing worse and distress for what it was. Mallory was looking straight at him, a curious, challenging interest on her face. She walked over to him. He considered an outright lie, hoping she would not insist on the message and make an issue of it. He considered what he knew of her and reckoned otherwise. "There's a friend of mine in trouble," he said. "I need to leave and go see about him."

"Trouble with us?"

He considered the lie a second time. "Something like."

She held out her hand. He did not offer the message.

"Perhaps I can help." Her eyes were cold and her hand stayed extended, palm up. "Do we a.s.sume," she asked when it was not forthcoming, "that this is something embarra.s.sing to station? Or do we make further a.s.sumptions?" He handed over the paper, while there were choices at all. She scanned it, seemed perplexed for a moment, and gradually her face changed. "Talley," she said. "Josh Talley?"

He nodded, and she pursed her lips.

"A friend of the Konstantins. How times do change."

"He's Adjusted."

The eyes flickered.

"His own request," he said. "What else did Russell's leave him?" She kept looking at him, and he wished that there were somewhere else to look, and somewhere else to be. Adjustment spilled things. It thrust Pell and her into an intimacy he did not want... which too clearly she did not want-those records on station.

"How is he?" she asked.

He found even the asking bizarrely ugly, and simply stared. "Friendship," she said. "Friendship, and from such opposite poles. Or is it patronage? He asked for Adjustment, and you gave it to him; finished what Russell's started... I detect offended sensibilities, do I not?" "We're not Russell's."

A smile to which the eyes gave the lie. "How bright a world, Mr. Konstantin, where there's still such outrage. And where Q exists... on the same station. Within arm's reach one of the other, and administered by your office. Or maybe Q itself is misplaced compa.s.sion. I suspect you must have created that h.e.l.l by half-measures. By exercise of your sensibilities. Your private object of outrage, this Unioner? Your apology to morality... or your statement on the war, Mr. Konstantin?"

"I want him out of detention. I want his papers back. He has no politics any longer."

No one talked to Mallory that way; plainly no one did. After a long moment she broke contact with his eyes, a dismissal, nodded slowly. "You're accountable?" "I make myself accountable."

"On that understanding... No. No, Mr. Konstantin, you don't go. You don't need to go in person. I'll clear him through Fleet channels, send him home... on your a.s.surance things are as you say."

"You can see the records if you want."

"I'm sure they'd contain nothing of news." She waved a hand, a signal to someone behind him, a tiny move. His spine crawled with the sudden realization there had been a gun at his back. She walked over to the com console, leaned over the tech and keyed through to the Fleet channel. "This is Mallory. Release the papers and person of Joshua Talley, in station detention. Relay to appropriate authorities, Fleet and station. Over."

The acknowledgment came back, impersonal and uninterested. "May I," Damon asked her, "may I send a call to him? He'll need some clear instruction..." "Sir," one of the techs nearby said, facing about in her place. "Sir-" He glanced distractedly at the anguished face.

"A Downer's been shot, sir, in green four."

The breath went out of him. For a moment his mind refused to work.

"He's dead, sir."

He shook his head, sick at his stomach, turned and glared at Mallory. "They don't hurt anything. No Downer ever lifted a hand to a human except to escape, in panic. Ever."

Mallory shrugged. "Past mending now, Mr. Konstantin. Get on about your own business. Someone slipped and fired; there was a no-shoot order. It's our business, not yours. Our own people will take care of it." "They're people, captain."

"We've shot people too," Mallory said, unruffled. "Get on about your business, I say. This matter is under martial law, and I'll settle it." He stood still. Everywhere in the center faces were turned toward them, and the boards flashed with neglected lights. "Get to work," he ordered them sharply, and backs turned at once. "Get a station medic to that area." "You try my patience," Mallory said.

"They are our citizens."

"Your citizenship is broad, Mr. Konstantin."

"I'm telling you-they're terrified of violence. If you want chaos on this station, captain, panic the Downers."

She considered the point, nodded finally, without rancor. "If you can mend the situation, Mr. Konstantin, see to it. And go where you choose." Just that. Go. He started away, glanced back with sudden dread of Mallory, who could cast away a public argument. He had lost, had let anger get the better of him... and go, she said, as if her pride were nothing. He left, with the disturbed feeling that he had done something desperately dangerous.

"Clear Damon Konstantin for pa.s.sage," Mallory's voice thundered through the corridors, and troops who had made to challenge him did not. iii He ran, leaving the lift on green four, his id and card in hand, flashed both at a zealous trooper who tried to bar his way, and won through. Troops were gathered ahead, blocking off all view. He ran up and, roughly seized, showed the card and pushed his way past the troopers.

"Damon." He heard Elene's voice before he saw her, swung about and met her arms in the press of armored troops, hugged her in relief.

"It's one of the temporaries," she said, "a male named Bigfellow. Dead." "Get out of here," he wished her, not trusting the troops' good sense. He looked beyond her. There was a good deal of blood on the floor at the access doorway. They had gotten the dead Downer into a bodybag and onto a stretcher for removal.

Elene, her arm linked with his, showed no inclination to leave. "Doors got him," she said. "But the shot may have killed him first.-Lt. Vanars, off India" she murmured, for a young officer urged his way toward them. "In charge of this unit."

"What happened?" Damon asked the lieutenant. "What happened here?"

"Mr. Konstantin? A regrettable error. The Downer appeared unexpectedly." "This is Pell, lieutenant, full of civilians. The station will want a full report on this."

"For the safety of your station, Mr. Konstantin, I'd urge you to review your security procedures. Your workers blew the lock. That cut the Downer in half, when the emergency seal went; someone had that inner door open out of sequence. How far do these tunnels go? Everywhere?"

"They've run," Elene said quickly, "down, away from here. They're probably temporaries and they don't know the tunnels well. And they're not about to come out again with the threat of guns out here. They'll hide down there till they die."

"Order them out," Vanars said.

"You don't understand the Downers," Damon said.