Downbelow Station Part 23

iPell: station central; 2130 hrs. md.; 0930 hrs. a.

"But there's no need," Porey said softly, his dark, scarred face implacable, "there's no further need for your presence, Mr. Lukas. You've done your civic duty. Now go back to your quarters. One of my people will be sure you get there safely."

Jon looked about at the control center, at the several troopers who stood there, with the safeties off the rifles, with eyes constantly on the fresh shift of techs who managed the controls, the others under guard for the night. He gathered himself to pa.s.s orders to the comp chief, stopped cold as a trooper made a precise move, a hollow sc.r.a.pe of armor, a lowered rifle. "Mr. Lukas," Porey said, "people are shot for ignoring orders."

"I'm tired," he said nervously. "I'm glad to go, sir. I don't need the escort." Porey motioned. One of the troopers by the door stood smartly aside, waiting for him. Jon walked out, the trooper treading behind him at first and then beside him, an unwanted companion. They pa.s.sed other troops back on guard in quiet, riot-scarred blue one.

More of the Fleet was docking. They had drawn in to a tighter perimeter, decided finally to dock, which seemed to him military insanity, a risk he did not understand. Mazian's risk. His now. Pell's, because Mazian was back. Perhaps-he found it hard to think-Union had been beaten badly. Perhaps there were things kept secret. Perhaps there would be delay in the Union takeover. It worried him, the thought that Mazian's rule might be long. Suddenly troops exited the lift ahead into blue one, troops bearing a different insigna. They intercepted him, presented his escort with a slip of paper. "Come with us," one ordered.

"I was instructed by captain Porey-" he objected, but another nudged him with a gun barrel and moved him toward the lift. Europe, their badges said. Europe troops. Mazian had come in.

"Where are we going?" he asked in panic. They had left the Africa trooper behind. "Where are we going?"

There was no answer. It was deliberate bullying. He knew where they were going... had his suspicions confirmed when, after descent in the lift, he was walked down the blue niner corridor, out onto the docks, toward the glowing access tube of a docked ship.

He had never been aboard a warship. It was cramped as a freighter for all its exterior size. It made him claustrophobic. The rifles in the hands of the troopers at his back gave him no more comfort, and whenever he would hesitate, turning left, entering the lift, they would push him with the rifle barrels. He was sick with fear.

They knew, he kept thinking. He kept trying to persuade himself it was military courtesy, that Mazian chose to meet him as new stationmaster, that Mazian wished to bluff or bully. But from this place they could do what they pleased. Could vent him out a waste chute and he would be indistinguishable from the hundreds of other bodies which now drifted, frozen, a nuisance in the station's vicinity for the skimmers to freeze together and boost off. No difference at all. He tried to pull his wits together, reckoning that he survived by them now or not at all.

They showed him off the lift into a corridor with troops standing guard in it, into a room wider than most, with a vacant round table. Made him sit down in one of the chairs there. Stood waiting with the rifles over their arms. Mazian came in, in plain and somber blue, haggard of face. Jon rose to his feet in respect; Conrad Mazian gestured him to sit down again. Others filed in to take their places at the table, Europe officers, none of the captains. Jon darted glances from one to the next "Acting stationmaster," Mazian said quietly. "Mr. Lukas, what happened to Angelo Konstantin?"

"Dead," Jon said, trying to suppress all but innocent reactions. "Rioters broke into station offices. Killed him and and his staff."

Mazian only stared at him, utterly unmoved. He sweated. "We think," Jon said further, guessing at the captain's thoughts, "that there may have been conspiracy-the strike at other offices, the opening of the door into Q, the timing of it all. We are investigating."

"What have you found?"

"Nothing as yet. We suspect the presence of Union agents pa.s.sed somehow into station during the processing of refugees. Some were let through, may have had friends or relatives left back in Q. We're puzzled as yet how contacts were pa.s.sed. We suspect connivance of the barrier guards... black market connections." "But you haven't found anything."

"Not yet."

"And won't very quickly, will you, Mr. Lukas?"

His heart began beating very fast. He kept panic from his face; he hoped he succeeded at it. "I apologize for the situation, captain, but we've been kept rather busy, coping with riot, with the damage to station... lately working at the orders of your captains Mallory and..." "Yes. Bright move, the means you used to clear the halls of riot; but then it had quieted a little by then, hadn't it? I understand there were Q residents let into central."

Jon found breathing difficult. There was a prolonged silence. He could not think of words. Mazian pa.s.sed a signal to one of the guards at the door.

"We were in crisis," Jon said, anything to fill that terrible silence. "I may have acted high-handedly, but we were presented a chance to get control of a dangerous situation. Yes, I dealt with the councillor from that area, not, I think, involved in the situation, but a calming voice... there was no one else at the-"

"Where is your son, Mr. Lukas?"

He stared.

"Where is your son?"

"Out at the mines. I sent him out on a shorthauler on a tour of the mines. Is he all right? Have you had word of him?"

"Why did you send him, Mr. Lukas?"

"Frankly, to get him off the station."

"Why?"

"Because he had lately been in control over the station offices while I was stationed on Downbelow. After three years there was some question of loyalties and authorities and channels of communication within the company offices here. I thought a brief absence might straighten things out, and I wanted someone out there in the mine offices who could take over if communications were interrupted. A policy move. For internal reasons and for security." "It wasn't to balance the presence on-station of a man named Jessad?" His heart came close to stopping. He shook his head calmly. "I don't know what you're talking about, Captain Mazian. If you'd be so good as to tell me the source of your information-" Mazian gestured and someone entered the room. Jon looked and saw Bran Hale, who evaded his eyes.

"Do you know each other?" Mazian asked.

"This man," Jon said, "was discharged on Downbelow for mismanagement and mutiny. I considered a previous record and hired him. I'm afraid my confidence may have been misplaced."

"Mr. Hale approached Africa with some thought of enlistment... claimed to have certain information. But you flatly deny knowing a man named Jessad." "Let Mr. Hale speak for his own acquaintances. This is a fabrication."

"And one Kressich, councillor of Q?"

"Mr. Kressich was, as I explained, in the control center."

"So was this Jessad."

"He might have been one of Kressich's guards. I didn't ask their names."

"Mr. Hale?"

Bran Hale put on a grim face. "I stand by my story, sir." Mazian nodded slowly, carefully drew his pistol. Jon thrust back from the table, and the men behind him slammed him back into the chair. He stared at the pistol, paralyzed.

"Where is Jessad? How did you make contact with him? Where would he have gone?"

"This fiction of Hale's-"

The safety went off the pistol audibly.

"I was threatened," Jon breathed. "Threatened into cooperation. They've seized a member of my family."

"So you gave them your son."

"I had no choice."

"Hale," Mazian said, "you and your companions and Mr. Lukas may go into the next compartment. And we'll record the proceedings. We'll let you and Mr. Lukas settle your argument in private, and when you've resolved it, bring him back again."

"No," Jon said. "No. I'll give you the information, all that I know." Mazian waved his hand in dismissal, Jon tried to hold to the table. The men behind him hauled him to his feet. He resisted, but they brought him along, out the door, into the corridor. Hale's whole crew was out there. "They'll serve you as well," Jon shouted back into the room where the officers of Europe still sat. "Take him in and he'll serve you the same way. He's lying!" Hale grasped his arm, propelled him into the room which waited for them. The others crowded after. The door closed.

"You're crazy," Jon said. "You're crazy, Hale."

"You've lost," Hale said. iii Merchanter Finity's End: deep s.p.a.ce; 2200 hrs. md; 1000 hrs. a. The wink of lights, the noise of ventilators, the sometime sputter of com from other ships-all of this had a dreamlike familiarity, as if Pell had never existed, as if it were Estelle again and the folk about her might turn and show familiar faces, known from childhood. Elene worked her way through the busy control center of Finity's End and pressed herself into the nook of an overhanging console to obtain a view of scan. Her senses were still muzzy with drugs. She pressed her hand to her belly, feeling unaccustomed nausea. Jump had not hurt the child... would not. Merchanters had proven that time and again, merchanter women with strong const.i.tutions and lifelong habituation to the stresses; it was nine-tenths nerves, and the drugs were not that heavy. She would not lose it, would not even think of it. In time her pulse settled again from the short walk from main room, the waves of sickness receded. She watched scan acquire another blip. Merchanters were coming into the null point by drift, the way they had left Pell, frantically gathering all the reals.p.a.ce speed they could on entry to keep ahead of the incomers who were rolling in like a tide on a beach. All it needed was someone overshooting minimum, some over hasty a.s.s coming into reals.p.a.ce too close to the point, and they and the newcomer would cease to exist in any rational sense, shredded here and there. She had always thought it a peculiarly nasty fate. They would ride for the next few minutes still with that end a very real possibility.

But they were coming in greater and greater numbers now, finding their way into this refuge in reasonable order. They might have lost a few pa.s.sing through the battle zone; she could not tell.

Nausea hit again. It came and went. She swallowed several times in calm determination to ignore it, turned a jaundiced eye on Neihart, who had left the controls of the ship to his son and came to see to her. "Got a proposition," she said between swallows. "You let me have com again. No running from here. Take a look at what's following us, captain. Most of the merchanters that ever ran freight for Company stations. That's a lot of us, isn't it? And if we want to, we can reach further than that." "What do you have in mind?"

"That we stand up and safeguard our own interests. That we start asking ourselves hard questions before we scatter out of here. We've lost the stations we served. So do we let Union swallow us up, dictate to us... because we become outmoded next to their clean new state-run ships? And they could take that idea into their heads if we come to them begging license to serve their stations. But while things are uncertain, we've got a vote and a voice, and I'm betting some of the so-named Union merchanters can see what's ahead too, clear as we can. We can stop trade-all worlds, all stations-we can shut them down. Half a century of being pushed around, Neihart, half a century of being mark for any warship not in the mood to regard our neutrality. And what do we get when the military has it all? You want to give me com access?"

Neihart considered a long moment. "When it goes sour, Quen, word will spread far and wide what ship spoke out for it. It's trouble for us." "I know that," Elene said hoa.r.s.ely. "But I'm still asking it." "You've got com if you want it." iv Pell: Blue Dock; aboard Norway; 2400 hrs. md.; 1200 hrs. a. Signy turned restlessly and came up against a sleeping body, a shoulder, an inert arm. Who it was she did not remember for a moment, in her half-asleep confusion. Graff, she decided finally, Graff. She settled comfortably again, against him. They had come offshift together. She kept her eyes open on the dark wall for a moment, the row of lockers, in the starlight glow of the light overhead-not liking the images she saw against her lids, the remembered reek of dying in her nostrils, that she could not bathe away.

They held Pell. Atlantic and Pacific made their lonely patrol with all the riders in the fleet, so that they dared sleep. She earnestly wished it were Norway on patrol. Poor Di Janz was in command over the docks, sleeping in the forward access when he got sleep at all. Her troops were scattered throughout the docks, in a dark mood. Seventeen wounded and nine killed in the Q outbreak did not improve their att.i.tude. They would stand watch one shift on and the other off and keep on doing it. Beyond that, she made no plans. When the Union ships came in, they would come, and the Fleet would react as they had been doing in places of odds as bad as this... fire at the reachable targets and keep the remaining options open as long as possible. Mazian's decision, not hers. She closed her eyes finally, drew a deliberately peaceful breath. Graff stirred against her, settled again, a friendly presence in the dark. v Pell: sector blue one, number 0475; 2400 hrs. md.; 1200 hrs. a. "She sleep," Lily said. Satin drew in a breath and settled her arms about her knees. They had pleased Sun-her-friend; the Dreamer had wept for joy to hear the news that Bluetooth had brought, the Konstantin-man and his friend safe... so, so awesome the sight of tears on that tranquil face. All the hisa's hearts had hurt within them until they understood it was happiness... and a warmth had sat within the dark and lively eyes, that they had crowded close to see. Love you, the Dreamer had whispered, love you every one. And: Keep him safe. Then at last she smiled, and closed her eyes.

"Sun-shining-through-clouds." Satin nudged Bluetooth and he who had been zealously grooming himself-trying vainly to bring order to his coat, for respect of this place-looked toward her. "You go back, go and set your own eyes on this young Konstantin-man. Upabove hisa are one thing; but you are very quick, very clever Downbelow hunter. You watch him, come and go." Bluetooth cast an uncertain look at Old One and at Lily.

"Good," Lily agreed. "Good, strong hands. Go."

He preened diffidently, a young male, but others gave him place; Satin regarded him with pride, that even the old strange ones saw worth in him. And truth: there was keen good sense in her friend. He touched the Old Ones and touched her, quietly excused himself toward the outside of the gathering. And the Dreamer slept, safe in their midst, although a second time humans had fought humans and the secure world of the Upabove had rocked like a leaf on the breast of river. Sun watched over her, and the stars still burned about them.

Chapter Six.

Downbelow: 10/11/52; local day The trucks moved at a lumbering pace through the clear area, forlorn, collapsed domes, the empty pens, and above all the silence of the compressors, telling a tale of abandonment. Base one. First of the camps after main base. Lock doors banged loosely, unfastened, in a slight wind. The weary column straggled now, all looking at the desolation, and Emilio looked on it with a pang in his own heart, this thing that he had helped to build. No sign of anyone staying here. He wondered how far down the road they were, and how they fared. "Hisa watch here too?" he asked of Bluetooth, who, almost alone of hisa, still remained with the column, beside him and Miliko. "We eyes see," Bluetooth answered, which told him less than he wanted.

"Mr. Konstantin." A man came up from the back, walked along with him, one of the Q workers. "Mr. Konstantin, we have to rest."

"Past the camp," he promised. "We don't stay in the open longer than we can help, all right? Past the camp."

The man stood still and let the column pa.s.s and his own group overtake him. Emilio gave Miliko's shoulder a weary pat, increased his own pace to overtake the two crawlers ahead of the column; he pa.s.sed one in the clearing, overtook the other as they reached the farther road, got the driver's attention and signed him half a kilometer halt. He stopped then and let the column move until he was even with Miliko. He reckoned that some of the older workers and the children might be at the end of their strength. Even walking with the breathers was about the limit of exertion they could take over this number of hours. They kept stopping for rest and the requests grew more and more frequent. They began to straggle as it was, some of them stringing further and further behind. He drew Miliko aside, and watched the line pa.s.s. "Rest ahead," he told each group as they pa.s.sed. "Keep on till you get there." In time the back of the column came in sight, a draggled string of walkers. The older ones, patient and doggedly determined, and a couple of staffers who walked last of all. "Anyone left?" he asked, and they shook their heads.

And suddenly a staffer was coming down the winding road from the other end of the column, jogging, staggering into other walkers, as the line erupted with questions. Emilio broke into a run with Miliko in his wake, intercepting the man.

"Com got through," the runner gasped, and Emilio kept running, the slanted margins of the road, up the tree-curtained windings until he saw the trucks and people ma.s.sed about them. He circled through the trees and worked his way through the crowd, which broke to let him, toward the lead truck, where Jim Ernst sat with the com and the generator. He scrambled up onto the bed, among the baggage and the bales and the older folk who had not walked, worked his way through to the place where Ernst sat, stood still as Ernst turned to him with one hand pressing the plug to his ear and a look in his eyes that promised nothing but pain.

"Dead," Ernst said. "Your father... riot on the station."

"My mother and brother?"

"No word. No word on any other casualties. Military's sending. Mazian's Fleet.

Wants contact with us. Do I answer?"

Shaken, he drew in a breath, aware of silence in the nearest crowd, of people staring up at him, of a handful of old Q residents on the truck itself looking at him with eyes as solemn as the hisa images.

Someone else scrambled up onto the truckbed and waded through, flung an arm about him. Miliko. He was grateful... shivered slightly with exhaustion and delayed shock. He had antic.i.p.ated it. It was only confirmation. "No," he said. "Don't answer." A murmur started in the crowd; he turned on it. "No word on any other casualties," he shouted, drowning that in a hurry. "Ernst, tell them what you picked up."

Ernst stood up, told them. He hugged Miliko against him. Miliko's parents and sister were up there, cousins, uncles and aunts. The Dees might survive or, equally, they might die unnoted by the dispatches: there was more hope for the Dees. They were not targets like the Konstantins.

The Fleet had seized control, imposed martial law, Q-Ernst hesitated and doggedly continued, before all the uplifted faces below-Q had rioted and gotten across the line, with widespread destruction and loss of life, stationers and Q both.

One of the old Q residents was crying. Perhaps, Emilio acknowledged painfully, perhaps they too had people for whom to worry.

He looked down on row after row of solemn faces, his own staff, workers, Q, a scattering of hisa. No one moved now. No one said anything. There was only the wind in the leaves overhead and the rush of the river beyond the trees. "So they're going to be here," he said, trying to keep his voice steady, "they're going to be back here wanting us to grow crops for them and work the mills and the wells; and Company and Union are going to fight back and forth, but it's not Pell anymore, not in their hands, when what we grow can be taken to fill their holds. When our own Fleet comes down here and works us under guns... what when Union comes after them? What when they want more work, and more, and there's no more say any of us has in what happens to Downbelow? Go back if you like; work for Porey until Union gets here. But I'm going on." "Where, sir?" That was the boy-he had forgotten the name-the one Hale had bullied the day of the mutiny. His mother was by him, in the circle of his arm. It was not defiance, but a plain question.

"I don't know," he admitted. "Wherever the hisa can show us that's safe, if there is any such place. To live there. To dig in and live. Grow our crops for ourselves."

A murmur ran among them. Fear... was always at the back of things for those who did not know Downbelow, fear of the land, of places where man was a minority. Men who were unconcerned by hisa on-station grew afraid of them in the open land, where men were dependent and hisa were not. A lost breather, a failure... they died of such things on Downbelow. The cemetery back at main base had grown as the camp did.

"No hisa," he said again, "ever harmed a human. And that despite things we've done, despite that we're the aliens here." He climbed down from the truck, hit the yielding ruts of the road, lifted his hands for Miliko, knowing she at least was with him. She jumped down, and questioned nothing. "We can set you up in the camp back there," he said. "Do that much for you at least, those of you that want to take your chances with Porey. Get the compressors running for you." "Mr. Konstantin."

He looked up. It was one of the oldest women, from the truckbed. "Mr. Konstantin, I'm too old to work like that back there. I don't want to stay behind."

"Lot of us going on," a male voice said.

"Anyone going back?" one of the Q foremen asked. "We need to send one of the trucks back with anyone?"

There was silence. Shaking of heads. Emilio stared at the lot of them, simply tired. "Bounder," he said, looking to one of the hisa who waited by the forest edge. "Where is Bounder? I need him."

Bounder came, out from among the trees, on the slope of the hill. "You come," Bounder shouted down, beckoning up toward the hill and the trees. "All come now."

"Bounder, we're tired. And we need the things on the trucks. If we go that way we can't take the trucks and some of us aren't able to walk. Some are sick, Bounder."

"We carry sick, many, many hisa. We steal good things on trucks, teach we good, Konstantin-man. We steal for you. You come."

He looked back at the others, at dismayed and doubtful faces. Hisa surrounded them. More and more came out of the woods, even some with young, which humans rarely saw. It was trust, that such came out among them. All of the company sensed it, perhaps, for there was no protest. They helped the old and the unwell down from the trucks. Strong young hisa made slings of their hands for them; others heaved down the supplies and the equipment "And what when they get scan after us?" Miliko murmured unhappily. "We've got to get deep cover, fast."

"Takes sensitive scan to tell human from hisa. Maybe they won't find it profitable to go after us... yet."

Bounder reached him, took his hand, wrinkled his nose at him in a hisa wink.

"You come with."

They were not good for a long walk, however much the news had put the strength of fright into them. A little while climbing uphill and down through woods and bracken and they were all panting and some being carried who had started out walking. A little more and the hisa themselves began to slow the pace. And at length, when the number of humans they were having to carry grew more than they could manage, they called halt and themselves stretched out to sleep in the bracken.

"Find cover," Emilio urged Bounder. "Ships will see us, not good, Bounder."

"Sleep now," Bounder said, curling up, and nothing would stir him or the others. Emilio sat staring at him helplessly, looked out over all the hillside while humans and hisa lay down where they had dropped their bundles, curled up in their blankets some of them, others of them too weary to spread them. He used his own for a pillow, lay down on Miliko's, gathered her against him there under the sun that slanted down through the leaves. Bounder snuggled up to them and put an arm about him. He let himself go, slept, a weary, healthy sleep. And he waked with Bounder shaking him and Miliko squatting with her arms across her knees, with a light fog moistening the leaves, late, late day, and cloud, and threatening rainfall. "Emilio. I think you should wake up. I think it's some very important hisa."

He rolled onto the other arm, gathered himself to his knees, squinting in the cold mist as other humans were waking all about him. They were Old Ones who had come from among the trees, hisa with white abundantly salting their fur, three of them. He rose and bowed to them, which seemed right, in their land and in their woods.

Bounder bowed and bobbed and seemed more sober than he was wont. "No talk human talk, they," Bounder said. "They say come with."

"We're coming," he said. "Miliko, rouse them out." She went, with quiet words spoke to the few still sleeping, and the word ran through all the number down the hill, weary, damp humans gathering up their baggage and their persons. There were even more hisa arriving. The woods seemed alive with them, every trunk in the woods likely to conceal a flitting brown body.

The Old Ones melted off through the woods. Bounder delayed until they were ready, and then started off, and Emilio took Miliko's blanket roll on his own shoulder and followed after.

At any hint of a human limping as they went, brushing through damp leaves and dripping branches, there were hisa to help, hisa to take them by the hand and chatter sympathetically, even those who could not understand human speech; after them came others, hisa thieves, bearing the inflatable dome and the compressors and the generators and their food and whatever else they could strip from the trucks, whether or not they themselves could possibly understand the use of it, like a brown horde of scavenger insects.

Night came on them, and much of it they walked, resting when they must, stringing through the wood, but hisa guided them so that none might stray, and snuggled close about them when they stopped so that the chill was not so bad. And once there was a thunder in the heavens that had nothing to do with the rain.

"Landing," the word pa.s.sed from one to the other. The hisa asked no questions.

Their keen ears might have picked it up long ago.