Downbelow Station Part 27

"Speculate what you want. I get you whatever accesses you need. You make plans to get us a way off this station."

Gabriel nodded slowly.

"I've got to get back," Josh said. "Start it moving. There's not much time."

"Shuttles dock in red sector now."

"I can get you there. I can get you anywhere you want. What we need is force enough to take it when we do get there."

"While the Mazianni are busy?"

"While they're busy. There are ways." He stared a moment at Gabriel. "You're going to blow this place. When?"

Gabriel seemed to weigh answering at all. "I'm not suicide-p.r.o.ne. I want a way off as badly as anyone here, and there's not a chance that Hammer can get to us this time. A shuttle, a capsule, anything that stands a chance of staying in orbit long enough..." "All right," Josh said. "You know where to find me." "Is there a shuttle docked there now?"

"I'll check into it," he said, and rose, felt his way past the shadowy arch and out into the noise of the outside, where Coledy and his man and Kressich rose from a nearby table in some apprehension; but Gabriel had come out behind him. They let him pa.s.s. He wove his way among the tables, past heads which stayed bowed over drinks and dinners, shoulders which stayed turned. Outside air hit him like a wall of cold and light. He drew a breath, tried to clear his head, while the floor kept developing lattices of shadow, flashes of here and there, truth and untruth.

Cyteen was a lie. He was. Part of him functioned like the automaton he reckoned himself bred to be... he acknowledged instincts he had never trusted, not knowing why he had them-drew another breath, trying to think, while his body navigated its way across the corridor and sought cover.

Only when he had gotten back to his cold dinner on the back table in Ngo's, when he sat in that familiar place with his back to the corner and the reality of Pell came and went at the bar in front of him, the numbness began to leave him. He thought of Damon, one life, one life he might have the power to save. He killed. That was what he was created to do. That was why the like of himself and Gabriel existed at all. Joshua and Gabriel. He understood the wry humor in their names, swallowed at a knot in his throat. Labs. That was the white void he had lived in, the whiteness in his dreams. Carefully insulated from humanity. Tape-taught... given skills; given lies to tell-about being human. Only there was a flaw in the lies... that they were fed into human flesh, with human instincts, and he had loved the lies.

And lived them in his dreams.

He ate the dinner, which kept sticking in his throat, washed it down with cold coffee, poured another cup from the thermal pitcher. He might get Damon off. The rest had to die. To get Damon out he had to keep quiet, and Gabriel had to mislead the others following him, promise them all life, promise them help which would never come. They would all die, except himself and Gabriel, and Damon. He wondered how he should persuade Damon to leave... or if he could. If he must use reason... what reason? Alicia Lukas-Konstantin. He thought of her, who had helped him in the process of helping Damon. She could never leave. And the guards who had given him money in hospital; and the Downer who followed them about and watched over them; and the people who had survived the h.e.l.l of the ships and of Q; and the men and the women and the children... He wept, leaning against his hands, while somewhere deep inside were instincts which functioned in cold intelligence, knowing how to kill a place like Pell, knowing that it was the only reason he existed.

The rest he no longer believed.

He wiped his eyes, drank the coffee, sat and waited.

iUnion carrier Unity: deep s.p.a.ce; 1/8/53 The dice rolled, came up two, and Ayres shrugged morosely, while Dayin Jacoby marked down another set of points and Azov set up for another round. The two guards always a.s.signed here in the lower-deck main room sat watching from the benches against the wall, their young and flawless faces quite pa.s.sionless. He and Jacoby, and rarely Azov, played for imaginary points, pledged against real credits when they reached some civilized point together; and that, Ayres thought, was an element as chancy as the dice rolls.

Tedium was the only present enemy. Azov grew sociable, sat black-clad and grim at the table, played with them, for he would not bend and gamble with his crew. Perhaps the mannequins amused themselves elsewhere. Ayres could not imagine it. Nothing touched them, nothing illumined those dull, hateful eyes. Only Azov... joined them from time to time as they sat in the main room, eight and nine hours a tedious day of sitting, for there was no work to do, no exercise to be had. Mostly they sat in the one room freely allowed them, and talked... finally talked. Jacoby had no restraint in his conversation; the man poured out confidences of his life, his affairs, his att.i.tudes. Ayres resisted Jacoby's and Azov's attempts to draw him out to talk about his homeworld. There was danger in that. But all the same he talked... about his impressions of the ship, about the present situation, about anything and everything he could feel was harmless; about abstracts of law and economic theory, in which he and Jacoby and Azov himself shared some expertise... joked lightly which currency they should pay their bets in; Azov laughed outright. It was inexpressible relief to have someone to talk to, and to exchange pleasantries with someone. He had a bond with Jacoby... like that of kinship, unchosen, but inescapable. They were each other's sanity. He began at last to conceive such an attachment to Azov, finding him sympathetic and possessed of humor. There was danger in this, and he knew it. Jacoby won the next round. Azov patiently marked down the points, turned to the mannequins. "Jules. A bottle here, would you?"

One rose and left on the errand. "I rather thought they had numbers," Ayres said under his breath; they had already had one bottle. And then he repented the frankness.

"There's much in Union you don't see," Azov said. "But you may get the chance." Ayres laughed, and suddenly cold hit his belly. How? stuck in his throat. They had drunk too much together. Azov had never admitted to his nation's ambitions, to any designs beyond Pell. He let his expression change ever so slightly, and in that moment Azov's did too... mutual dismay, a moment which lasted too long, slow-motion, alcohol-fumed, with Jacoby a third unwilling partic.i.p.ant. Ayres laughed again, an effort, tried not to show his guilt, leaned back in his chair and stared at Azov. "What, do they gamble too?" he asked, trying to mislead the meaning.

Azov pressed his lips to a thin line, looked at him from under one silvery brow, smiled as if he were dutifully amused.

I am not going home, Ayres thought despairingly. There will be no warning. That was his meaning.

iiPell: Downer tunnels; 1/8/53; 1830 hrs.

The dark place shifted with many bodies. Damon listened, started as he heard one moving near him, and again as a hand touched his arm in the blackness of the tunnel. He angled the lamp that way, shivering in the chill. "I Bluetooth," the familiar voice whispered. "You come see she?" Damon hesitated, long, looked toward the ladders which stretched like spiderweb out of the range of the lamp he carried. "No," he said sorrowfully. "No. I only walk through. I've been to white section. I only want to go through." "She ask you come. Ask. Ask all time."

"No," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely, thinking that there were fewer and fewer times, that soon there would be no chance at all. "No, Bluetooth. I love her and I won't. Don't you know, it would be danger to her if I came there? The men-with-guns would come in. I can't. I can't, much as I want to." The Downer's warm hand patted his, lingered. "You say good thing." He was surprised. A Downer reasoned, and though he knew that they reasoned, it surprised him to hear that train of thought follow human lines. He took the Downer's hand and squeezed it, grateful for Bluetooth's presence in an hour when there was little other comfort. He sank down on the metal steps, drew a quiet breath through the mask... drew comfort where it was to be had, to sit a moment safe from unfriendly eyes, with what had become, across all other differences, a friend. The hisa squatted on the platform before him, dark eyes glittering in the indirect light, patted his knee, simply companionable. "You watch me," Damon said, "all the time."

Bluetooth bobbed slightly, agreement.

"The hisa are very kind," Damon said. "Very good." Bluetooth tilted his head and wrinkled his brow. "You she baby." Families were a very difficult concept for hisa. "You 'Licia baby."

"I was, yes."

"She you mother."

"She is."

"Milio she baby."

"Yes."

"I love he."

Damon smiled painfully. "No halfway with you, is there, Bluetooth? All or nothing. You're a good fellow. How much do the hisa know? Know other humans... or only Konstantins? I think all my friends are dead, Bluetooth. I've tried to find them. And either they're hiding or they're dead."

"Make me eyes sad, Damon-man. Maybe hisa find, tell we they name."

"Any of the Dees. Or the Ushants. The Mullers."

"I ask. Some know maybe." Bluetooth laid a finger on his own flat nose. "Find they."

"By that?"

Bluetooth reached out a tentative hand and stroked the stubble on his face. "You face like hisa, you smell same human."

Damon grinned, amused in spite of his depression. "Wish I did look like a hisa.

Then I could come and go. They nearly caught me this time."

"You come here 'fraid," Bluetooth said.

"You smell fear?"

"I see you eyes. Much pain. Smell blood, smell run hard." Damon turned the back of his elbow to the light, a painful sc.r.a.pe that had torn through the cloth. It had bled. "Hit a door," he said.

Bluetooth edged forward. "I make stop hurt."

He recalled hisa treating their own hurts, shook his head. "No. But can you remember the names I asked?"

"Dee. Ushant. Mul-ler."

"You find them?"

"Try," Bluetooth said. "Bring they?"

"Come bring me to them. The men-with-guns are closing the tunnels into white, you know that?"

"Know so. We Downers, we walk in big tunnels outside. Who look at we?" Damon drew a deep breath against the mask, stood up again on the dizzying steps, hugged the hisa with one arm as he picked up the lamp. "Love you," he murmured. "Love you," Bluetooth said, and scampered away into the dark, a slight moving, a vibration on the metal stairs.

Damon felt his own way further, counting his turns and levels. No recklessness. He had come close enough, trying to enter white. He had rung an alarm over in white. He had a sickly fear it might bring investigation into the tunnels, trouble on the Downers, on his mother, on all of them. He still felt the tremor in his knees, although he had not hesitated to shoot when he had to; had fired on an unarmored guard; might have killed him; had meant to. That sickened him.

And he still hoped he had, that the alarm had not involved his name. That the witness was dead.

He was still shaking when he reached the access to the corridor outside Ngo's. He entered the narrow lock, tugged down his mask, used the security-cleared card he reserved only for extreme emergency. It opened without alarms. He hurried down the narrow, deserted hall, used a manual key to open the back door itself. Ngo's wife turned from the kitchen counter and stared at him, darted out into the main room. Damon let the door close behind him, opened the storeroom door to toss the breather mask in. He had forgotten it in his panic, brought it through with him. That was the measure of his wit. He went to the kitchen sink and washed his hands, his face, tried to wash the stink of blood and fear and memory off him.

"Damon."

"Josh." He turned a weary glance toward the door to the front room, dried his face on the towel hanging there. "Trouble." He went past Josh into the front room, walked to the bar and leaned against it. "Bottle?" he asked of Ngo. "You come in that door again..." Ngo hissed unhappily.

"Emergency," Damon said. Josh caught his arm gently from the side. "Never mind the drink for a moment," Josh said. "Damon. Come over here. I want to talk to you."

He came, back into the alcove which was their territory. Josh backed him into the corner, out of sight of the other patrons who ate in the place. There was the clink of plates in the kitchen, where Ngo's wife had retreated, with her son. The room smelled of Ngo's inevitable stew. "Listen," Josh said when they had sat down, "I want you to come with me across the corridor. I've found a contact I think can help us."

He heard it and still it took a moment to sink in. "Who have you been talking to? Who do you know?"

"Not me. Someone who recognized you. Who wants your help. I don't know the whole story. A friend of yours. There's an organization... stretches out among the Q folk and Pell. A number of people who know you might have the skill to help them."

He tried to absorb it. "You know what a candle's chance we have with a Q mob-against troops?-and why go to you? Why you, Josh? Maybe they're afraid I'd recognize faces and know something. I don't like this." "Damon. How much time can we have? It's a chance. Everything's a risk at this point. Come with me. Please come with me."

"They're going to be checking all over white. I stumbled into an alarm over there... may have killed someone. They're going to be stirred up, searching for someone using accesses..." "Then how much time can we have left to think it over? If we don't-" He stopped, looked sharply about at Ngo's wife, who brought them bowls of stew, setting them on the table. "We're going somewhere. Keep it hot for us." Dark eyes stared at them both. Quietly, as everything about the woman was quiet, she gathered up the bowls and took them to another table. "Won't take long to find out," Josh said. "Damon. Please."

"What are they talking of doing? Rushing central?"

"Causing trouble. Getting to the shuttle. Setting up resistance on Downbelow... a small number of us. Damon, it all relies on your knowledge. Your skill with comp, and your knowledge of the pa.s.sages."

"They have a pilot?"

"I think there's someone who is, yes."

He tried to gather his wits. Shook his head. "No."

"What do you mean, no? You talked about a shuttle. You planned for it." "Not to have another riot on the station. Not with more people killed, in a plan that's never going to work..." "Come and talk to them. Come with me. Or don't you trust me? Damon, how long can we wait on chances? You haven't even heard it out." He let go his breath. "I'll come," he said. "They're going to start checking id's in green soon enough, I'm afraid. I'll talk to them. Maybe I know better ways. Quieter ones. How far is this place?"

"Mascari's."

"Across the corridor."

"Yes. Come on."

He came, out amongst the tables, past the bar.

"You," Ngo said sharply as they pa.s.sed. He stopped. "You don't come back here if you bring trouble. You hear me? I helped you. I don't want that kind of pay for it. You hear me?"

"I hear," Damon said. There was no time to smooth it over. Josh waited by the front door. He walked out to join him, looked left and right and crossed the corridor with him into the noisier and darker interior of Mascari's. A man at the left of the entry rose and joined them. "This way," the man said, and because Josh went without question, Damon swallowed his protests and went with them, to the far side of the room, which was so dark it was hard to avoid chairs.

A dim light burned in a curtained alcove. They went inside, he and Josh, but their guide vanished.

And in another moment a second man came in at their backs, young and scar-faced. Damon did not know him. "They're coming," the young man said, and quickly the curtains moved again, admitted two more to the alcove. "Kressich," Damon muttered. The other was not familiar to him.

"You know Mr. Kressich?" the newcomer asked.

"Only by sight. Who are you?"

"Name's Jessad... Mr. Konstantin, is it? The younger Konstantin?" Recognition of any kind made him nervous. He looked at Josh, finding discrepancies, bewildered. They were supposed to know him. This man should not be surprised.

"Damon," Josh said, "this man is from Q. Let's talk details. Sit down." He did so, at the small table, uncertain and apprehensive as the others settled with him. A second time he looked at Josh. He trusted Josh. Trusted him with his life. Would hand him his life at the asking, having no better use for it. And Josh had lied to him. Everything he knew of the man insisted Josh was lying. Are we under some threat? he wondered wildly, seeking some cause for this charade. "What kind of proposal are we talking about?" he asked, wishing only that he could get himself out of here, and get Josh out, and get it all straight.

"When Josh said that he had contacts," Jessad said slowly, "I didn't suspect who. You're far better than I dared hope."

"Am I?" He resisted the temptation to look again in Josh's direction. "What precisely do you hope, Mr. Jessad from Q?"

"Josh didn't tell you?"

"Josh said I'd want to talk to you."

"About finding a way to get this station back into your hands?" He did not change expression in the least. "You think you have the means to do that."

"I have men," Kressich interjected. "Coledy does. We can raise a thousand men in five minutes."

"You know what would happen then," Damon said. "We'd have ourselves neck deep in troopers. Bodies in the corridors, if they didn't vent us all." "You know," Jessad said quietly, "that the whole station is theirs. To do with as they please. Except for you, there's no authority to speak for the old Pell. Lukas... is done. He says only what Mazian hands him to read. Has guards about him everywhere. One choice is bodies in the corridors, true. The other is what they've given Lukas, isn't it? They'd give you prepared speeches to read too. They'd let you alternate with Lukas, or outright dispose of you. After all, they do have Lukas, and he takes orders... doesn't he?"

"You put it neatly, Mr. Jessad." And what about the shuttle? he thought, leaning back in his chair. He looked at Josh, who met his eyes with a troubled stare. He glanced back again. "What's your proposal?"

"You get us access to central. We take care of the rest"

"It'll never work," Damon said. "We've got warships out there. You can't hold them off by holding central. They'd blow us; don't you count on that?" "I have means to make sure it works."

"So let's have it. Make your proposal, flat, and let me have the night to think about it."

"Let you walk around knowing names and faces?"

"You know mine," he reminded Jessad, and obtained a slight flicker of the eyes.

"Trust him," Josh said. "It will work."

Something crashed outside, even over the music. The curtains came inward, with Coledy, who landed atop the table with a hole burned in his forehead. Kressich sprang up shrieking in terror. Damon hurled himself back, hit the wall with Josh beside him, and Jessad clawed for a pocket. Shrieks punctuated the music outside, and armored troops with leveled rifles filled the doorway of the alcove.

"Stand still!" one ordered.

Jessad whipped out the gun. A rifle fired, and there was a burned smell as Jessad hit the floor, twitching. Damon stared at the troopers and the leveled rifles in dazed horror. Josh, at his side, did not move. A trooper hauled another man in by the collar-Ngo, who flinched from Damon's stare and looked apt to be sick.

"These the ones?" the trooper asked.

Ngo nodded. "Made me hide them out. Threatened me. Threatened my family. We want to go over to white. All of us."

"Who's this one?" The trooper nodded toward Kressich.

"Don't know," Ngo said. "Don't know him. Don't know these others."