Downbelow Station Part 25

Signy bit her lip, gnawed at it, finally leaned forward. "I volunteer for that one. Let Kreshov sit it out."

"No," Mazian said, and quickly held up a pacifying hand. "Not with any disparagement, far from it. Your work here is vital and you're doing an excellent job at it. Atlantic makes the patrol. Herds a few haulers into line and restores station traffic. Blow one if you have to, Mika. You understand that. And pay them in Company scrip."

There was general laughter. Signy stayed sour. "Captain Mallory," Mazian said, "you seem discontent."

"Shootings depress me," she said cynically. "So does piracy."

"Another policy debate?"

"Before taking on any large-scale operations of that kind, I'd like to see some effort toward conscripting the short-haulers, not blowing them. They stood with us against Union."

"Couldn't get out of the way. There's a far difference, Mallory." "That should be remembered... which of them were out there with us. Those ships should be approached differently."

Mazian was not in a mood for listening to her reasons, not today. He had a high flush in his cheeks and his eyes were dark. "Let me get through the orders, old friend. That's taken into consideration. Any merchanter in that category will obtain special privileges when docked at station; and we presume any merchanter in that category will not be among those out there refusing our orders to move in."

She nodded, carefully erased the resentment from her face. There was danger in upstaging Mazian. He had an enormous vanity. It overbalanced his better qualities on occasion. He would do what was sensible. He always had. But sometimes the anger lingered-long.

"I'd like to point out," Porey's deep voice interjected, "contrary to Captain Mallory's expectations of local help, we have a problem case in the Downbelow operation. Emilio Konstantin snaps his fingers and gets what he wants out of his workers down there. It gets us the supplies we need and we put up with it. But he's waiting. He's just waiting; and he knows right now he's a necessity. If we get those short-haulers involved at station we've got other potential Konstantin types, only they'll be up here with us, berthed right beside our ships." "They're not likely to jeopardize Pell," Keu said.

"And what if one of them is Unionist? We know well enough that they've infiltrated the merchanters."

"It's a point worth considering," Mazian said. "I've thought about it... which is one reason, Captain Mallory, why I'm reluctant to take strong steps to recruit those haulers. There are potential problems. But we need the supplies, and some of them aren't available elsewhere. We put up with what we have to." "So we make an example," Kreshov said. "Shoot the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He's trouble waiting to happen."

"Right now," Porey said slowly, "Konstantin and his crew work eighteen hours a day... efficient work, quick, skilled and smooth. We don't get that by other methods. He gets dealt with when it's workable without him." "Does he know that?"

Porey shrugged. "I'll tell you the hold we've got on Mr. Emilio Konstantin. Got ourselves a site with a lot of Downers and the rest of the human inhabitants, all in one place. All one target. And he knows it."

Mazian nodded. "Konstantin's a minimal problem. We have worse worries. And that's the second matter on the table. If we can forbear another raid on our own troops... I'd rather concentrate on the whereabouts of station-side subversives and fugitive staff."

Signy's face heated. She kept her voice calm. "The new system is moving into full use as quickly as possible. Mr. Lukas is cooperating. We've identified and carded 14,947 individuals as of this morning. That's with a completely new card system and new individual codes with voice locks on some facilities. I'd like better, but Pell units aren't designed for it. If they had been, we wouldn't have had this security problem in the first place."

"And the chances that you may have carded this Jessad person?" "No. No reasonable likelihood. Most or all of our fugitives are moving into the uncarded areas, where their stolen cards still work... for the time being. We'll find them. We've got a sketch of Jessad and actual photos of the others. I estimate another week or two to begin the final push." "But all the operations areas are secure?"

"The security arrangements for Pell central are laughable. I've made recommendations for construction there."

Mazian nodded. "When we get workers off damage repair. Personnel security?" "The notable exception is the Downer presence in the sealed area of blue one four. Konstantin's widow. Lukas's sister. She's a hopeless invalid, and the Downers are cooperative in anything while it a.s.sures her welfare." "That's a gap," Mazian said.

"I've got a com link to her. She cooperates fully in dispatching Downers to necessary areas. Right now she's of some use, as her brother is." "While both are," Mazian said. "Same condition."

There were details, stats, tedious matters which could have been traded back and forth by comp. Signy endured it grim-faced, nursing a headache and a blood pressure that distended the veins in her hands, while she made meticulous notes and contributed stats of her own.

Food; water; machine parts... they were taking on a full load, every ship, fit to run again if it came to that. Repairing major damage and going ahead with minor repairs that had been long postponed in the operation leading up to the push. Total refitting, while keeping the Fleet as mobile as possible. Supply was the overwhelming difficulty. Week by week the hope that the more daring of the long-haulers would come venturing in diminished. They were seven carriers, holding a station and a world, but with only short-haulers to supply them, with their only source of some machined items-the supplies those very haulers had aboard for their own use.

They were pent in, under siege, without merchanters to aid them, the long-haulers who had freely come and gone during the worst of the war. Could not now hope to reach to the Hinder Star stations... of which there was precious little remaining, mothballed, stripped, some probably gone unstable-a long, long time without regulation. Warships alone could not do the heavy cross-jump hauling major construction required. Without the long-haul merchanters, Pell was the only working station left them but Sol itself.

Unwelcome thoughts occurred to her as she sat there, as they had been occurring regularly since the Pell operations began to go sour. She looked up from time to time, at Mazian, at Tom Edger's thin, preoccupied face. Edger's Australia partnered with Europe more often than any other... an old, old team. Edger was second in seniority as she was third; but there was a vast gulf between second and third. Edger never spoke in council. Never had a thing to say. Edger did his talking with Mazian in private, sharing counsels, the power at the side of the throne, as it were; she had long suspected so. If there was any man in the room who really knew Mazian's mind, it was Edger.

The only station but Sol.

So they were three who knew, she reckoned glumly, and kept her mouth shut on it. They had come a long way... from Company Fleet to this. It was going to be a vast surprise to those Company b.a.s.t.a.r.ds on Earth and Sol Station, having a war brought to their doorstep... having Earth taken as Pell had been. And seven carriers could do it, against a world which had given up starflight, which had, like Pell, only short-haulers and a few in-system fighters at its command... with Union coming in on their heels. It was a gla.s.s house, Earth. It could not fight... and win.

She lost no sleep over it. Did not plan to. More and more she was convinced that the whole Pell operation was busywork, that Mazian might be doing precisely what she had advised all along, keeping the troops busy, keeping even his crews and captains busy, while the real operation here was that on Downbelow and what he proposed with the mines and short-haulers, the gathering of supplies, the repairs, the sorting of station personnel for identification and capture of all those fugitives who might surface and make takeover easy and cheap for Union. Her job.

Only here there were no merchanters to be pressed into duty as transport, and no carrier was going to let itself become a refugee ship. Could not. Had no room. It was no wonder that Mazian was not talking, was refusing to say anything about contingency plans which were, under numerous pretexts, already swinging into operation. A scenario constructed itself: station comp blown, for they had all the new comp keys; Downbelow base thrown into chaos by the elimination of the one man who was holding it together and the execution of all those gathered mult.i.tudes of humans and Downers so that Downers would never work for humans again; the station itself thrown into descending orbit; and themselves running for a jump point with a screen of short-haulers that could only serve as navigation hazards. Jump for the Hinder Stars, and in quick succession, for Sol itself- While Union had to decide whether to save itself a stationful of people and a base, and to battle the chaos on Downbelow which could starve the station out even with rescue... or to let Pell die and go for a strike unenc.u.mbered, having no base behind them closer than Viking... a vast, vast distance to Earth. b.a.s.t.a.r.d, she hailed Mazian privately, with a glance under her brows. It was typical of Mazian that he worked moves ahead of the opposition and thought the unthinkable. He was the best. He always had been. She smiled at him when he fed them dry, precise orders about cataloging, and had the satisfaction of seeing the great Mazian for a moment lose the thread of his thought. He recovered it, went on, looked at her from time to time with perplexity and then with greater warmth.

So now a.s.suredly they were three who knew.

"I'll be frank with you," she said to the men and women who a.s.sembled kneeling and standing in the lower deck suiting room, the only place on Norway she could get most of the troops a.s.sembled with an un.o.bstructed view, jammed shoulder to shoulder as they were. "They're not happy with us. Mazian himself isn't happy with the way I've run this ship. Seems none of you is on the List. Seems none of us is involved with the market. Seems other crews are upset with you and me, and there are rumors flying about tampering with the list, about a deliberate tipoff due to some black market rivalry between Norway and other ships... Quiet! So I'm given orders, from the top. You get liberties, on the same schedule and on the same terms as other troops; you get duty on their schedule too. I'm not going to comment, except to compliment you on doing an excellent job; and to tell you two more things: I felt complimented on behalf of this whole ship that there was not a Norway name involved in that blue section mess; second... I ask you to avoid argument with other units, whatever rumors are pa.s.sed and however you're provoked. Apparently there is some hard feeling, for which I take personal responsibility. Apparently... well, leave that unsaid. Questions?" There was deathly silence. No one moved.

"I'll trust you'll pa.s.s the news to the incoming watch before I get the chance to do it in person. My apologies, my personal apologies, for what is apparently construed by others as unfairness to the people under my command. Dismissed." Still no one moved. She turned on her heel, walked away toward the lift, for the main level and her own quarters.

"Vent 'em," a voice muttered audibly in her wake. She stopped dead, with her back to them.

"Norway!" someone shouted; and another; "Signy!" In a moment the whole ship echoed.

She started walking again for the open lift, drew a deep breath of satisfaction for all the casual swing to her step. Vent him indeed, if even Conrad Mazian thought he could put his hand to Norway. She had started with the troops; Di Janz would have something to say to them too. What threatened Norway's morale threatened lives, threatened the reflexes they had built up over years. And her pride. That too. Her face was still burning as she strode into the lift and pushed the b.u.t.ton. The shouts echoing in the corridors were salve for her pride, which was, she admitted to herself, as vast as Mazian's. Follow orders indeed; but she had calculated the effect on the troops and on her crew; and no one gave her orders regarding what happened within Norway itself. Not even Mazian.

Chapter Two.

Pell: sector green nine; 1/6/53 The downer was with him again, a small brown shadow, not altogether unusual in the traffic in nine. Josh paused in the riot-scarred corridor, put his foot on a molding, pretended to adjust the top of his boot. The Downer touched his arm, wrinkled its nose in bending and peering up at his face. "Konstantin-man all right?"

"All right," he said. It was the one called Bluetooth, who was on their heels almost daily, managing to carry messages to and from Damon's mother. "We've got a good place to hide now. No more trouble. Damon's safe and the man's making no more trouble."

The furred powerful hand sought his, forced an object into it. "You take Konstantin-man? She give, say need."

The Downer slipped away in the traffic as quickly as he had come. Josh straightened, resisting the temptation to look about or to look at the metal object until he was some distance down the corridor. It turned out to be a brooch, metal that might be real gold. He pocketed it for the treasure it was to them, something salable on the market, something that needed no card, that would bribe someone unbribable by other means... like the owner of their current lodgings. Gold had uses other than jewelry: rare metals were worth lives-the going rate. And the day was coming when it would take greater and greater persuasion to keep Damon hidden. A woman of vast good sense, Damon's mother. She had ears and eyes, in every Downer who flitted harmlessly through the corridors, and she knew their desperation-offered still a refuge that Damon would not take, because he above all did not want the Downer system subject to search. The net was closing on them. The area of usable corridors grew less and less. A new system was being installed, new cards, and the sections the troops cleared stayed cleared. Those within a section when the troops sealed it were rounded up, checked against the wanted lists, and given new id's... most of them. Some vanished, period. And the new card system hit the market harder and harder, the nearer it got. The value of cards and papers plummeted, for they would be valid only until the changeover was complete, and people were already getting shy of the old ones. Now and again an alarm went off, silent, somewhere in comp; and troops would come to some establishment and start trace procedure on someone they wanted... as if most of the people in unsecure sections were using their own cards. But the troops asked questions and checked id's when they were roused-kept the areas open to their raids, kept the populace terrorized and suspicious each of the other, and that served Mazian's purpose. It also gave them a livelihood. It was their stock-in-trade, his and Damon's, the purification of cards. It was their value within the system of the black market. A buyer wanted to check the worth of a stolen card, a new purchaser wanted to be sure that a card would not ring alarms in comp, someone wanted the bank code number to get at a.s.sets... the bars and sleepovers in the docks did not match up faces and id's, not at all. And Damon had the access numbers to do it. He had learned them too, so that they worked a partnership and neither of them had to venture into the corridors on too regular a basis. They had it down to a science... using the Downer tunnels and even crossing through the section barriers-Bluetooth had shown them how-so that no single comp terminal would have a series of inquiries. They had never triggered an alarm, even though some of the cards had been dangerously hot. They were good; they had a trade-ironically of Mazian's creation-which fed and housed and hid them with all the protections the market could offer its valuable operators. He had at the moment a pocketful of cards, each of which he knew by value according to the level of clearance and how much was in the credit account. Nothing in the latter, in most instances. Families of missing persons had gotten wise very quickly, and station comp had taken to honoring family requests that an account be frozen from access by a particular number... so rumor ran, and it was probably true. Most cards now were trouble. He had a few usable ones in the lot and a collection of code numbers. Cards which had belonged to single persons or independent accounts were the only ones still good.

But there were omens of more rapid change. It was his imagination, perhaps, but the corridors on all levels of green seemed more crowded today. It might well be so. All those who dared not submit to id and re-carding had crowded persistently into smaller and smaller s.p.a.ces... green and white remained open sectors, but he personally had gotten nervous about white, not wanting to go into it longer than he must... had heard no rumors himself, but there was something in the air, something that reckoned another area was about to go under seal... and white was likeliest.

Green was the section with the big concourses, and the fewest troublesome bottlenecks where determined resistance could fight from room to room and hall to hall-if it came to fighting. He rather imagined another end for them, that when all the problems Mazian had on Pell were neatly herded into one last section, they would simply blow it, vent the section with doors wide open, and they would die without appeal and without a chance. A few crazed souls had gotten pressure suits, the hottest item on the black market, and hovered near them, armed and wild-eyed, hoping to survive against all logic. Most of them simply expected to die. There was a desperate atmosphere in all of green, while those who had finally reconciled themselves to capture voluntarily moved into white. Green and white grew stranger and stranger, with walls graffiti'd with bizarre slogans, some obscene, some religious, some pathetic. We lived here, one said. That was all.

All but a very few lights in the corridors had been broken out, so that everything was twilight, and station no longer dimmed lights for mainday/alterday shifts; it would have become dangerously dark. There were some side corridors where all the lights were out, and no one went into those lairs unless he belonged there-or was dragged screaming into them. There were gangs, who fought each other for power. The weaker souls clung to them, paid them all their resources, not to be harmed, and perhaps to have the chance to harm others. Some of the gangs had started in Q. Some were Pell gangs which formed in defense and undertook other business ventures. He feared them indiscriminately, feared their unreasoning violence most of all. He had let his beard grow, let his hair grow, walked with a slouch and acquired as much dirt as possible, changed his face subtly with cosmetic... that commodity sold high on the market too. If there was any comedy in this grim place it was that most of these folk hereabouts were doing exactly the same thing, that the section was full of men and women who desperately did not want to be recognized, and who avoided each others' eyes in a perpetual flinching as they walked the halls... some who swaggered and tried to threaten, unless troops were at hand... more who flitted like downcast ghosts, scurrying along in evident hope no one would set a hue and cry after them.

Perhaps he had changed so much in appearance that no one did recognize him. No one had yet pointed a finger at him or at Damon in public. There was some loyalty left on Pell, perhaps-or their involvement with the market protected them, or others who knew them were just too frightened to start something. Some of the gangs were linked into the market.

Occasional troopers walked in the halls, some back in nine two, no less common than Downers about their business. Green dock was still open as far as the end of white dock; and Africa and occasionally Atlantic or Pacific occupied the first two berths of green, while the other ships berthed in blue dock, and troops came and went freely through the personnel access beside the section seals on that end of green. Troops entered green and white on liberty or on duty, mingling with the condemned... and the condemned knowing that all they had to do to escape was to go up to those troops or to the cleared-area access doors and turn themselves in. Some did not believe that the Mazianni would decompress the section, simply because of that close and almost friendly a.s.sociation. Troopers shed their armor on liberty, walked about laughing and human, hung out in the bars... staked out a couple of establishments for themselves, it was true... but mingled in other bars, turned an occasional benevolent smile on the market. So much the easier to handle the victims until it came, Josh reckoned. They still had choices left, played the game with the troops, dodged and struggled... but all it took was a b.u.t.ton pushed somewhere in central, no personal contact, no watching faces as they died. All clinical and distant. He and Damon planned, wild and futile schemes. Damon's brother was rumored to be alive. They talked of stowing away on one of the shuttles, taking one over, getting to Downbelow and into the bush. They had as likely a chance of stealing a shuttle from armed troops as they did of walking to Downbelow, but the planning occupied their minds and gave them hope. And more realistic... they could try to pa.s.s the seals into the cleared sections, and chance the alarm-rigged access doors, regimented security, checkpoints at every corner and card use at every move... that was the way of life over there. Mallory's doing. They had been checking it out. Too many men-with-guns, was Bluetooth's warning. Cold they eyes.

Cold indeed.

And meanwhile there was the market and there was Ngo's. He approached the bar along green nine, not by the tunnel ways which led to the corridor outside Ngo's back door, for that was for emergencies and Ngo had no love for anyone using the back way without cause... wanted no one seen in the main room who had not come in by the front door and wanted no access alarms going off in comp. Ngo's was a place where the market flourished, and as such it tried to be cleaner than most, one of almost a score of bars and entertainment concessions along green dock and the niner access which had once thrived in the traffic of merchanters... a line of sleepovers and vid theaters and lounges and restaurants and one anomalous chapel completing the row. Most of the bars were open; the theaters and the chapel and some of the sleepovers were burned out sh.e.l.ls, but the bars functioned, most like Ngo's, as restaurants as well, the channels through which station still fed the population, arid black-market food augmented what the station was willing to supply.

He cast cautious glances one way and the other as he approached the front and ever-wide door of Ngo's, not obvious looks around, but a rhythm of walking and looking as a man might who was simply making up his mind which bar he wanted. A face caught his eye, abruptly, heart-stoppingly. He delayed a half a beat and looked toward Mascari's, across the corridor at the emptying of nine onto the docks. A tall man who had been standing there suddenly moved and darted within Mascari's.

Dark obscured his vision, a flash of memory so vivid he staggered and forgot all his pattern. He was vulnerable for that instant, panicked... turned for Ngo's doorway blindly and went inside, into the dim light and pounding music and the smells of alcohol and food and the unwashed clientele. The old man himself was tending bar. Josh went to the counter and leaned there, asked for a bottle. Ngo gave it to him, no asking for his card. That all came later, in the back room. But his hand shook in taking the bottle, and Ngo's quick hand caught his wrist. "Trouble?"

"Close one," he lied... and perhaps not a lie. "I got clear. Gang trouble. Don't worry. No one tracked me. Nothing official."

"You better be sure."

"No problem. Nerves. It's nerves." He clutched the bottle and walked away toward the back, stopped a moment against the back doorway that led into the kitchen and waited to be sure his exit was not observed.

One of the Mazianni, maybe. His heart still pounded from the encounter. Someone with Ngo's under surveillance. No. His imagination. The Mazianni did not to need to be so subtle. He unstopped the bottle and drank from it, Downer wine, cheap tranquilizer. He took a second long drink and began to feel better. He experienced such flashes... not often. They were always bad. Anything could trigger it, usually some small and silly thing, a smell, a sound, a momentary wrong way of looking at a familiar thing or ordinary person... That it should have happened in public-that most disturbed him. It could have attracted notice. Maybe it had. He resolved not to go out again today. Was not sure about tomorrow. He took a third drink and a last look over the patrons at the dozen tables, then slipped back into the kitchen, where Ngo's wife and son were cooking up the orders. He paid them a casual glance, received sullen stares in return, and walked on through to the storeroom.

He pushed the door open on manual. "Damon," he said, and the curtain at the rear of the cabinets opened. Damon came out and sat down among the canisters they used for furniture, in the light of the batteried lamp they used to escape comp's watchful economy and infallible memory. He came and sank down wearily, gave Damon the bottle and Damon took a drink. Unshaven, both of them, with the look of the unwashed, depressed crowds which collected down here. "You're late," Damon said. "You trying to give me ulcers?" He fished the cards out of his pocket, arranged them by memory, made quick notes with a grease pencil before he should forget. Damon gave him paper and he wrote the details for each one, and Damon did not talk to him the while. Then it was done, his memory spilled, and he laid the batch on top of the next canister and reached for the wine bottle. He drank and set it down. "Met Bluetooth. Said your mother's fine. Give you this." He drew the brooch from his pocket and watched as Damon took it into his hands with that melancholy look that told him it might have some meaning beyond the gold itself. Damon nodded glumly and pocketed it; he did not much speak of his family, living or dead, not in reminiscence.

"She knows," Damon said, "she knows what it's coming to. She can see it from her vid screens, hear it from the Downers... Did Bluetooth say anything specific?" "Only that your mother thought we needed it."

"No word of my brother?"

"It didn't come up. We weren't in a place we could talk, the Downer and I."

Damon nodded, drew a deep breath and leaned his elbows on his knees, head bowed.

Damon lived for such news. When it failed him his spirits fell, and it hurt.

Hurt both of them. He felt as if he had dealt the wound. "It's getting tight out there," Josh said. "Lots of anxiety. I delayed a little along the way, listening, but no news; everyone's scared but no one knows anything."

Damon lifted his head, took the bottle, drank down half the remaining wine, hardly a swallow. "Whatever we're going to do, we've got to do soon. Either go into the secured sections... or try for the shuttle. We can't go on here." "Or make ourselves a bubble in the tunnels," he said. In his reckoning, it was the only realistic idea. Most humans were pathologically frightened of the tunnels. What few humans who would try them... maybe they could fight them off. They had the guns. Might be able to live there. But they were about out of time... for any choices. It was not an existence to look forward to. And maybe we'll be lucky, he thought miserably, looking at Damon, who looked at the floor, lost in his own thoughts. Maybe they'll just blow the area.

The storeroom door opened. Ngo came in on them, walked up and gathered up the cards, read through the notations, pursed his wrinkled mouth and frowned. "You're sure?"

"No mistakes."

Ngo muttered unhappily at the quality of the merchandise, as if they were at fault, started to leave.

"Ngo," Damon said, "heard a rumor the market's going for the new paper. That so?"

"Where did you hear that?"

Damon shrugged. "Two men talking in front. That true, Ngo?" "They're dreaming. You see a way to get your hands into the new system, you tell me."

"I'm thinking on it."

Ngo muttered to himself and left "That so?" Josh asked.

Damon shook his head. "Thought I might jar something loose. Ngo won't shake or there's no way anyone knows."

"I'd bet on the latter."

"So would I." Damon set his hands on his knees, sighed, looked up. "Why don't we go out and get something to eat? No one out there who's trouble, is there?" The memory which had left him came back with dark force. He opened his mouth to say something, and of a sudden came a rumbling which shook the floor, a boom and crash which overrode screams from outside.

"The seals," Damon exclaimed, on his feet. Cries continued, wild screams, chairs overturning in the front room. Damon rushed for the storeroom door and Josh ran with him, out as far as the back door, where Ngo and his wife and son had scrambled to get out, Ngo with his market records in hand. "No," Josh exclaimed, "Wait... that would have been the doors to white... we're sealed-but there were troops up at nine two-they wouldn't have troops in here if they were going to push the b.u.t.ton-" "Com," Ngo's wife exclaimed. There was an announcement coming through the vid unit in the front room. They rushed in that direction, into the restaurant area, where a handful of people were cl.u.s.tered about the vid and a looter was busy gathering an armful of bottles from the bar. "Hey!" Ngo shouted in outrage, and the man s.n.a.t.c.hed two more and ran.

It was Jon Lukas on the screen. It always was when Mazian had an official announcement to station. The man had become a skeleton, a pitiable shadow-eyed skeleton. "... been sealed off," Lukas was saying. "White-area residents and others who wish to leave will be permitted to leave. Go to the green dock access and you will be permitted to pa.s.s."

"They're herding all the undesirables in here," Ngo said. Sweat stood on his wrinkled face. "What about us who work here, Mr. Stationmaster Lukas? What about us honest people caught in here?"

Lukas repeated all the announcement. It was probably a recording; doubtful if they ever let the man on live.

"Come on," Damon said, hooking Josh's arm. They walked out the front door and around the corner onto green dock, walked far along the upward curve, where a great ma.s.s of people had gathered looking toward white. They were not the only ones. There were troops, moving out along the far-side wall, by the berths and gantries.

"Going to be shooting," Josh muttered. "Damon, let's get out of here."

"Look at the doors. Look at the doors."

He did look. The ma.s.sive valves were tightly joined. The personnel access at the side was not open. It did not open.

"They're not going to let them through," Damon said. "It was a lie... to get the fugitives to the docks over there."

"Let's get back," Josh pleaded with him.

Someone fired; their side, the troops-a barrage came over their heads and into the shopfronts. People shrieked and shoved, and they fled with it, down the dock, into nine, into Ngo's doorway, while riot surged past and down the hall. A few others tried to follow them, but Ngo rushed up with a stick and fended them off, all the while shrieking curses at the two of them for running in with trouble after them.

They got the door closed, but the crowd outside was more interested in running, the path of least resistance. The room lights came on full, on a room full of tangled chairs and spilled dishes.

In silence Ngo and his family began cleaning up. "Here," Ngo said to Josh, and thrust a wet, stew-soiled rag at him. Ngo turned a second frowning look on Damon, although he did not order: a Konstantin still had some privilege. But Damon started picking up dishes and straightening chairs and mopping with the rest of them.

It grew quiet outside again, with an occasional pounding at the door. Faces stared at them through the plastic window, people simply wanting in, exhausted and frightened people, wanting the service of the place. Ngo opened the doors, cursed and shouted, let them in, set himself behind the bar and started doling out drinks with no regard to credit for the moment. "You pay," he warned all and sundry. "Just sit down and we'll make out the tickets." Some left without paying; some did sit down. Damon took a bottle of wine and drew Josh to a table in the farthest corner, where there was a short ell. It was their usual place, which had a view of the front door and un.o.bstructed access to the kitchen and their hiding places. The com music channel had come on again, playing something wistfully soothing and romantic. Josh leaned his head against his hands and wished he dared be drunk. He could not be. There were the dreams. Damon drank. Eventually it seemed to be enough, for Damon's shadowed eyes had an anesthetized haze which he envied. "I'm going out tomorrow," Damon said. "I've sat in that hole enough... I'm going out, maybe talk to a few people, try to make some contacts. There's got to be someone who hasn't cleared out of green. Someone who still owes my family some favors."

He had tried before. "We'll talk about it," Josh said. Ngo's son served them dinner, stew, stretched as far as possible. Josh sipped a spoonful of it, nudged Damon with his foot when he sat there. Damon gathered up his spoon and ate, but his mind still seemed elsewhere. Elene, perhaps. Damon spoke her name sometimes in his sleep. Sometimes his brother's. Or maybe he was thinking of other things, lost friends. People probably dead. He was not going to talk; Josh knew that. They spent long hours in silences, in their separate pasts. He thought of his own happier dreams, pleasant places, a sun-lit road, dusty grain fields on Cyteen, people who had loved him, faces that he had known, old friends, old comrades, far from this place. The hours were filled with it, the long, solitary hours each of them spent in hiding, the nights, with music from Ngo's front room jarring the walls most of the hours of mainday and alter-day, numbing, constant, or saccharine and pervasive. They stole sleep in the quiet times, lay listlessly in others. He did not intrude on Damon's fancies, nor Damon on his. Never denied the importance of them, which were the best comfort they had in this place. One thing they no longer considered, and that was either of them turning himself in. They had Lukas's face before them, that death's-head forewarning of Mazian's dealing with his puppets. If Emilio Konstantin was still alive as rumor said... privately Josh wondered if it was good news or bad. And that too he did not say. "I hear," Damon said finally, "that maybe some of the Mazianni crew are on the take. I wonder if they could be bribed for more than goods. If there are holes in their new system."

"That's crazy. It's not in their interests. It's not a sack of flour you're talking about. Ask that kind of question and we'll have them on us." "Probably you're right."

Josh pushed the bowl back and stared at the rim of it They were running out of time, that was all. In the sealing of white... they were sealed too. All it took now was a sweep starting from the dock or from green one, checking in those who were willing to surrender, shooting down those who were not. When they had white in order... it came. And it was beginning over there. Was already underway.

"I'd have to make the approach to the Fleet," Josh said finally. "The troops would more likely recognize you than me. As long as I stay away from Norway troops..." Damon was silent a moment, perhaps weighing odds. "Let me try another thing. Let me think about it. There's got to be a way onto the shuttles. I'm going to check out the dock crews, find out who's working there."

It was not going to work. It had always been a mad idea.

iMerchanter Finity's End; deep s.p.a.ce; 1/6/53 Another merchanter in. Arrivals were not unusual. Elene heard the report and got up from her couch, walked Finity's narrow s.p.a.ces to see what Wes Neihart had on scan.

"What's the deal here?" a thin voice asked in due time. The freighter had jumped in at a respectful distance, fully cautious; it would take her a while to work her way in out of the jump range. Elene sat down at the second seat at the scan, feeling after the cushion. Her thickening body vexed her subconsciously; it was a nuisance she had learned to live with. The baby was kicking, an internal and unpredictable companionship. Quiet, she thought at him, winced and concentrated on scan. Other Neiharts moved in to see.

"Someone going to answer me?" the newcomer asked, much closer now.

"Give me id," said the voice of another ship. "This is Little Bear, merchanter.

Who are you? Keep coming; just give us id."

The answer time pa.s.sed, still shorter now; and other merchanters had started to move. There was a gathering bunch of observers on Finity's bridge. "Don't like this one," someone muttered.

"This is Genevieve out of Unionside, from Fargone. Rumor has it we've got something going on here. What's the situation?"