Downbelow Station Part 6

"I go work," she told him. The shuttle was due. A human worker would not have been working on the day he was leaving a.s.signment; but Satin headed away with a slam of the flimsy door and anxious enthusiasm, as if at this late date someone's mind could be changed.

Or perhaps it was unfair to attach to her any human motives. Perhaps it was joy, or grat.i.tude. Downers understood no wages; gifts, they said. Bennett Jacint had understood them. The Downers tended that grave. Laid sh.e.l.ls there, perfect ones, skins, set up the strange k.n.o.bby sculptures that meant something important to them.

He turned, walked back through the operations center, to his own quarters and Miliko. He took off his jacket, hung it on the peg, breather still about his neck, an ornament they all wore from the time clothing went on in the morning till it went off at night.

"Got the weather report from station," Miliko said. "We're going to catch it again in a day or so after the next one hits us. There's a big storm brewing out to sea."

He swore; so much for hopes of spring. She made a place for him among the charts on the bed and he sat down and looked at the damages she had red-penciled, flood areas station was able to show them, down the long chains of beads which were the camps they had established, along unpaved, hand-hacked roads. "Oh, it's going to get worse," Miliko said, showing him the topographical chart. "Comp projects enough rain with this one to get us flood in the blue zones again. Right up to base two's doorstep. But most of the roadbed should be above the floodline."

Emilio scowled, expelled a soft breath. "We'll hope." The road was the important thing; the fields would flood for weeks more without harm except to their schedules. Local grains thrived on the water, depended on it in the initial stages of their natural cycles. The lattices kept young plants from going downriver. It was human machinery and human tempers which suffered most. "Downers have the right idea," he said. "Give up during the winter rains, wander off when the trees bloom, make love, nest high and wait for the grain to ripen." Miliko grinned, still marking her charts.

He sighed, unregarded, pulled over the slab of plastic which served him as a writing desk and started making out personnel a.s.signments, rearranging priorities with the equipment. Perhaps, he thought, perhaps if he pleaded with the Downers, arranged some special gifts, they would hang on a little longer before their seasonal desertion. He regretted losing Satin and Bluetooth; the pair of them had been of enormous help, persuading their fellows in outright argument when it came to something their Konstantin-man wanted very badly. But that went both ways; Satin and Bluetooth wanted to go; They wanted something now in his power to give, and it was their time to have their way, before their spring came on them and they pa.s.sed all self-control. They were dispersing old hands and trainees and Q a.s.signees down the road to each of the new bases, trying to keep proportions which would not leave staff vulnerable to riot; trying to make the Q folk into workers, against their belief that they were being used; tried to work with morale-it was the willing ones they moved out, and the surliest main base had to keep, in that one huge dome, many times enlarged and patched onto until dome was a misnomer-it spread irregularly over the next hill, a constant difficulty to them. Human workers occupied the several domes next; choice ones, comfortable ones-they were always reluctant to be transferred out to more primitive conditions at the wells or the new camps, alone with the forest and the floods and Q and strange hisa. Communication was always the problem. They were linked by com; but it was still lonely out there. Ideally they wanted aircraft links; but the one flimsy aircraft they had built some years back had crashed on the landing field two years ago... light aircraft and Downbelow's storms did not agree. Hacking a landing site for shuttles... that was on the schedule, at least for base three, but the cutting of trees had to be worked out with the Downers, and that was touchy. With the tech level they managed onworld, crawlers were still the most efficient way of getting about, patient and slow as the pace of life on Downbelow had always been, chugging away through mud and flood to the wonderment and delight of Downers. Petrol and grains, wood and winter vegetables, dried fish, an experiment in domesticating the knee-high pitsu, which Downers hunted... (You bad, Downers had declared in the matter, make they warm in you camp and you eat, no good this thing. But Downers at base one had become herders, and they had all learned to eat domestic meat. Lukas had ordered it, and this was one Lukas project that had worked well.) Humans on Downbelow fared well enough equipped and fed themselves and station, even with the influx they had gotten. That was no small task. The manufacturies up on station and the manufactories here on Downbelow were working nonstop. Self-sufficiency, to duplicate every item they normally imported, to fill every quota not alone for themselves but for the overburdened station, and to stockpile what they could... it was all falling into their laps here on Downbelow, the excess population, the burden of station-bred people, their own and refugees, who had never set foot on a world. They could no longer depend on the trade which had once woven Viking and Mariner, Esperance and Pan-Paris and Russell's and Voyager and others into a Great Circle of their own, supplying each others' needs. None of the other stations could have gone it alone; none had the living world it took-a living world and hands to manage it. There were plans on the board now, the first crews moved, to go for the onworld mining they had long delayed, duplicating materials already available in Pell system at large... just in case things got worse than anyone wanted to think. They would get ma.s.sive new programs underway this summer, when Downers were receptive to approach again; get it well moving in fall, when the Downers. .h.i.t their working season, when cool winds made them think of winter again and they seemed never to rest, working for humans and working to carry soft mosses into their tunnels in the wooded hills. Downbelow was due to change. Its human population had quadrupled. He mourned it; Miliko did. They had gridded off areas already... Miliko's ever-present charts-places which no human should ever touch, the beautiful places, the sites they knew for holy and the places vital to the cycles of hisa and wild things alike.

Ram it through council in their own generation, even this year, before the pressures mounted. Set up protections for the things which had to endure. The pressure was already with them. Scars were already on the land, the smoke of the mill, the stumps of trees, the ugly domes and fields imposed on the riverside and being hacked out all along the muddy roads. They had wanted to beautify it as they went, make gardens, camouflage roads and domes-and that chance was gone. They would not, he and Miliko were resolved together, would not let more damage happen. They loved Downbelow, the best and the worst of it, the maddening hisa and the violence of the storms. There was always the station for human refuge; antiseptic corridors and soft furniture were always waiting. But Miliko thrived here as he did; they made pleasant love at night with the rain pattering away on the plastic dome, with the compressors mumping away in the dark and Downbelow's night creatures singing madly just outside. They enjoyed the changes the sky made hour by hour, and the sound of the wind in the gra.s.s and the forest about them, laughed at Downer pranks and ruled the whole world, with power to solve everything but the weather.

They missed home, missed family and that different, wider world; but they talked otherwise... had talked even of building a dome to themselves, in their spare time, in years to come, when homes could be built here, a hope which had been closer a year or so ago, when the Downbelow establishment had been quiet and easy, before Mallory and the others had come, before Q. Now they simply figured how to survive at the level at which they were living. Moved population about under guard for fear of what that population might try to do. Opened new bases at the most primitive level, ill-prepared. Tried to care for the land and the Downers at once, and to pretend that nothing was amiss on station.

He finished the a.s.signments, walked out and handed them to the dispatcher, Ernst, who was also accountant and comp man... they all did a mult.i.tude of jobs. He walked back again into his bedroom office, surveyed Miliko and her lapful of charts. "Want lunch?" he asked. He reckoned on going to the mill in the afternoon, hoped now for a quiet cup of coffee and first access to the microwave which was the dome's other luxury of rank... time to sit and relax. "I'm nearly done," she said.

A bell rang, three sharp pulses, disarranging the day. The shuttle was coming in early; he had a.s.sumed it for the evening slot. He shook his head. "There's still time for lunch," he said.

The shuttle was down before they were done. Everyone in Operations had come to the same conclusion, and the dispatcher, Ernst, directed things between bites of sandwich. It was a hard day for everyone.

Emilio swallowed the last bite, drank the last of his coffee and gathered up his jacket. Miliko was putting hers on.

"Got us some more Q types," Jim Ernst said from the dispatch desk; and a moment later, loudly enough to carry through all the dome: "Two hundred of them. They've got them jammed in that frigging hold like dried fish. Shuttle, what are we supposed to do with them?"

The answer crackled back, garble and a few intelligible words. Emilio shook his head in exasperation and walked over to lean above Jim Ernst. "Advise Q dome they're going to have to accept some crowding until we can make some more transfers down the road."

"Most of Q is home at lunch," Ernst reminded him. As policy, they avoided announcements when all of Q was gathered. They were inclined to irrational hysteria. "Do it," he told Ernst, and Ernst relayed the information. Emilio pulled the breather up and started out, Miliko close behind him. The biggest shuttle had come down, disgorging the few items of supply they had requested from station. Most of the goods flowed in the other direction, canisters of Downbelow products waiting in the warehouse domes to be loaded and taken up to feed Pell.

The first of the pa.s.sengers came down the ramp as they reached the landing circle beyond the hill, crushed-looking folk in coveralls, who had probably been frightened to death in transfer, jammed into a cargo hold in greater number than should have been... certainly in greater number than they needed on Downbelow all at one moment. There were a few more prosperous-looking volunteers... losers in the lottery process; they walked aside. But guards off the shuttle waited with rifles to herd the Q a.s.signees into a group. There were old people with them, and a dozen young children at least, families and fragments of families if it held to form, all such folk as did not survive well in station quarantine. Humanitarian transfer. People like this took up s.p.a.ce and used a compressor, and by their cla.s.sification could not be trusted near the lighter jobs, those tasks involving critical machinery. They had to be a.s.signed manual labor, such of it as they could bear. And the children-at least there were none too young to work, or too young to understand about wearing the breathers or how to change a breather cylinder in a hurry.

"So many fragile ones," Miliko said. "What does your father think we are down here?"

He shrugged. "Better than Q Upabove, I suppose. Easier. I hope those new compressors are in the load; and the plastic sheeting." "Bet they're not," Miliko said dourly.

There was a shrieking from over the hill toward base and the domes, Downer screeches, not an uncommon thing; he looked over his shoulder and saw nothing, and paid it no mind. The disembarking refugees had stopped at the sound. Staff moved them on.

The shrieking kept up. That was not normal. He turned, and Miliko did. "Stay here," he said, "and keep a hand on matters."

He started running up the path over the hill, dizzy at once with the breather's limitations. He crested the rise and the domes came into sight, and there was in front of huge Q dome, what had the look of a fight, a ring of Downers enclosing a human disturbance, more and more Q folk boiling out of the dome. He sucked air and ran all out, and one of the Downers broke from the group below, came running with all-out haste... Satin's Bluetooth: he knew the fellow by the color of him, which was uncommonly red-brown for an adult. "Lukas-man," Bluetooth hissed, falling in by him as he ran, bobbing and dancing in his anxiety. "Lukas-mans all mad."

That took no translation. He knew the game when he saw the guards there... Bran Hale and crew, the field supervisors; there was a knot of shouting Q folk and the guards had guns leveled. Hale and his men had gotten one youth away from the group, ripped his breather off so that he was choking, would stop breathing if it kept up. They held the fainting boy among them as hostage, a gun on him, holding rifles on the others, and the Q folk and the Downers on the edges were screaming.

"Stop that!" Emilio shouted. "Break it up!" No one regarded him, and he waded in alone, Bluetooth hanging back from him. He pushed men with rifles and had to push more than once, realizing all at once that he had no gun, that he was bare-handed and alone and that there were no witnesses but Downers and Q. They gave ground. He s.n.a.t.c.hed the boy from those who held him and the boy collapsed to the ground; he knelt down, feeling his own back naked, picked up the breather that lay there and got it over the boy's face, pressed it there. Some of the Q folk tried to close in and one of Hale's men fired at their feet. "No more of that!" Emilio shouted. He stood up, shaking in every muscle, staring at the several score Q workers outside, at others still jammed by their own numbers within the dome. At ten armed men who had rifles leveled. He was shaking in every muscle, thinking of riot, of Miliko just over the hill, of having them close in on him. "Back up," he yelled at Q. "Ease off!" And rounded on Bran Hale... young, sullen and insolent. "What happened here?" "Tried to escape," Hale said. "Mask fell off in the fight Tried to get a gun." "That's a lie," the Q folk shouted in a babble of variants, and tried to drown Hale's voice.

"Truth," Hale said. "They don't want more refugees in their dome. A fight started and this troublemaker tried to bolt. We caught him." There was a chorus of protest from the Q folk. A woman in the fore was crying. Emilio looked about him, having difficulty with his own breathing. At his feet the boy had seemed to come to, writhing and coughing. The Downers cl.u.s.tered together, dark eyes solemn.

"Bluetooth," he said, "what happened?"

Bluetooth's eyes shifted to Bran Hale's man. No more than that "Me eyes see," said another voice. Satin strode through, braced herself with several bobs of distress. Her voice was high-pitched, brittle. "Hale push he friend, hard with gun, Bad push she."

There were shouts from Hale's side, derision; shouts from the Q side. He yelled for quiet. It was not a lie. He knew Downers and he knew Hale. It was not a lie. "They took his breather?"

"Take." Satin said, and clamped her mouth firmly shut. Her eyes showed fear. "All right." Emilio sucked in a deep breath, looked directly at Bran Kale's hard face. "We'd better continue this discussion in my office." "We talk right here," Hale said. He had his crowd about him. His advantage. Emilio matched him stare for stare; it was all he could do, with no weapons and no force to back him. "Downer's word," Hale said, "isn't testimony. You don't insult me on any Downer's word, Mr. Konstantin, no sir." He could walk away, back down. Surely Operations and the regular workers could see what was going on. Maybe they had looked out from their domes and preferred not to see. Accidents could happen, in this place, even to a Konstantin. For a long time the authority on Downbelow had been Jon Lukas and his hand-picked men. He could walk away, maybe reach Operations, call help for himself from the shuttle, if Hale let him; and it would be told for the rest of his life how Emilio Konstantin handled threats, "You pack," he said softly, "and you be on that shuttle when it leaves. All of you."

"On a Downer b.i.t.c.h's word?" Hale lost his dignity, chose to shout. He could afford to. Some of the rifles had turned his way.

"Get out," Emilio said, "on my word. Be on that shuttle. Your tour here is over."

He saw Hale's tension, the shift of eyes. Someone did move. A rifle went off, sizzled into the mud. One of the Q men had struck it down. There was a second when it looked like riot.

"Out!" Emilio repeated. Suddenly the balance of power was shifted, Young workers were to the fore of Q, and their own gang boss, Wei. Hale shifted eyes left and right, remeasured things, finally gave a curt nod to his companions. They moved out. Emilio stood watching them in their swaggering retreat to the common barracks, even yet not believing that trouble was over. Beside him, Bluetooth let out a long hiss, and Satin made a spitting sound. His own muscles were quivering with the fight that had not happened. He heard a sough of air, the dome sagging as the rest of Q surged out, all three hundred of them, breaching their lock wide open. He looked at them, alone with them. "You take those new transfers into your dome and you take them in without bickering and without argument. We'll make new diggings; you will and they will, quick as possible. You want them to sleep in the open? Don't you give me any nonsense about it." "Yes, sir," Wei answered after a moment. The woman who had been crying edged forward. Emilio stepped back and she bent down to help the stricken boy, who was struggling to sit up: mother, he reckoned. Others came and helped the boy up. There was a good deal of commotion about it.

Emilio grasped the youth's arm. "Want you in for a medical," he said. "Two of you take him over to Operations."

They hesitated. Guards were supposed to escort them. There were no guards, he realized in that instant. He had just ordered all the security forces in main base offworld.

"Go on inside," he said to the rest. "Get that dome normalized; I'll talk to you about it later." And while he had their attention: "Look around you. There's all of a world here, blast you all. Give us help. Talk to me if there's some complaint. I'll see you get access. We're all crowded here. All of us. Come look at my quarters if you think otherwise; I'll give some of you the tour if you don't believe me. We live like this because we're building. Help us build, and it can be good here, for all of us."

Frightened eyes stared at him... no belief. They had come in on overcrowded, dying ships; had been in Q on-station; lived here, in mud and close quarters, moved about under guns. He let go his breath and his anger. "Go on," he said. "Break it up. Get about your business. Make room for those people."

They moved, the boy and a couple of the young men toward Operations, the rest back into their dome. The flimsy doors closed in sequence this time, locking them through, group after group, until all were gone, and the deflated dome crest began to lose some of its wrinkles as the compressor thumped away. There was a soft chattering, a bobbing of bodies. The Downers were still with him. He put out his hand and touched Bluetooth. The Downer touched his hand in turn, a calloused brush of flesh, bobbed several times in the residue of excitement. At his other side stood Satin, arms clenched about her, her dark eyes darker still, and wide.

All about him, Downers, with that same disturbed look. Human quarrel, violence, alien to them. Downers would strike in a moment's anger, but only to sting. He had never seen them quarrel in groups, had never seen weapons... their knives were only tools and hunting implements. They killed only game. What did they think, he wondered; what did they imagine at such a sight, humans turning guns on each other?

"We go Upabove," Satin said.

"Yes," he agreed. "You still go. It was good, Satin, Bluetooth, all of you, it was good you came to tell me."

There was a general bobbing, expressions of relief among all the hisa, as if they had not been sure. The thought occurred to him that he had ordered Hale and his men off on that same shuttle... that human spite might still make things uncomfortable.

"I'll talk to the man in charge of the ship," he told them. "You and Hale will be in different parts of the ship. No trouble for you. I promise." "Good-good-good," Satin breathed, and hugged him. He stroked her shoulder, turned and received an embrace from Bluetooth as well, patted his rougher pelt. He left them and started toward the crest of the hill, on the track to the landing site, and stopped at the sight of several figures standing there. Miliko. Two others. All had rifles. He felt a sudden surge of relief to think he had had someone at his back after all. He waved his hand that it was all right, hastened toward them. Miliko came quickest, and he hugged her. Miliko's two companions caught up, two guards off the shuttle. "I'm sending some personnel up with you," he said to them. "Discharged, and I'm filing charges. I don't want them armed. I'm also sending up some Downers, and I don't want the two groups near each other, not at any time."

"Yes, sir." The two guards were blank of comment, objected to nothing. "You can go back," he said. "Start moving the a.s.signees this way; it's all right" They went about their orders. Miliko kept the rifle she had borrowed of someone, stood against his side, her arm tight about him, his about her. "Hale's lot," he said. "I'm packing them all off."

"That leaves us no guards."

"Q wasn't the trouble. I'm calling station about this one." His stomach tightened, reaction beginning to settle on him. "I guess they saw you on the ridge. Maybe that changed their minds."

"Station's got a crisis alert. I thought sure it was Q. Shuttle called station central."

"Better get to Operations then and cancel it" He drew her about; they walked down the slope in the direction of the dome. His knees were water. "I wasn't up there," she said.

"Where?"

"On the ridge. By the time we arrived up there, there were just Downers and Q." He swore, marveling then that he had won that bluff. "We're well rid of Bran Hale," he said.

They reached the trough among the hills, walked the bridge over the water hoses and up again, across to Operations. Inside, the boy was submitting to the medic's attention and a pair of techs was standing armed with pistols, keeping a nervous watch on the Q folk who had brought him in. Emilio motioned a negative to them. They cautiously put them away, looked unhappy with the whole situation. Carefully neutral, Emilio thought. They would have gone with any winner of the quarrel out there, no help to him. He was not angry for it, only disappointed. "You all right, sir?" Jim Ernst asked.

He nodded, stood watching, with Miliko beside him. "Call station," he said after a moment. "Report it settled." ii They nestled in together, in the dark s.p.a.ce humans had found for them, in the great empty belly of the ship, a place which echoed fearfully with machinery. They had to use the breathers, first of what might be many discomforts. They tied themselves to the handholds, as humans had warned them they must, to be safe, and Satin hugged Bluetooth-Dahit-hos-me, hating the feel of the place and the cold and the discomfort of the breathers, and most of all fearing because they were told that they must tie themselves for safety. She had not thought of ships in terms of walls and roofs, which frightened her. Never had she imagined the flight of the ships as something so violent they might be dashed to death, but as something free as the soaring birds, grand and delirious. She shivered with her back against the cushions humans had given them, shivered and tried to cease, felt Bluetooth shiver too.

"We could go back," he said, for this was not of his choosing. She said nothing, clamped her jaw against the urge to cry that yes, they should, that they should call the humans and tell them that two very small, very unhappy Downers had changed their minds.

Then there was the sound of the engines. She knew what that was... had heard it often. Felt it now, a terror in her bones.

"We will see great Sun," she said, now that it was irrevocable. "We will see Bennett's home."

Bluetooth held her tighter. "Bennett," he repeated, a name which comforted them both. "Bennett Jacint."

"We will see the spirit-images of the Upabove," she said. "We will see the Sun." There was a great weight on them, a sense of moving, of being crushed at once. His grip hurt her; she held to him no less tightly. The thought came to her that they might be crushed unnoticed by the great power which humans endured; that perhaps humans had forgotten them here in the deep dark of the ship. But no, Downers came and went; hisa survived this great force, and flew, and saw all the wonders which inhabited the Upabove, walked where they might look down on the stars and looked into the face of great Sun, filled their eyes with good things.

This waited for them. It was now the spring, and the heat had begun in her and in him; and she had chosen the Journey she would make, longer than all journeys, and the high place higher than all high places, where she would spend her first spring.

The pressure eased; they still held to each other, still feeling motion. It was a very far flight, they had been warned so; they must not loose themselves until a man came and told them. The Konstantin had told them what to do and they would surely be safe. Satin felt so with a faith which increased as the force grew less and she knew that they had lived. They were on their way. They flew. She clutched the sh.e.l.l which Konstantin had given her, the gift which marked this Time for her, and about her was the red cloth which was her special treasure, the best thing, the honor that Bennett himself had given her a name. She felt the more secure for these things, and for Bluetooth, for whom she felt an increasing fondness, true affection, not the springtime heat of mating. He was not the biggest and far from the handsomest, but he was clever and clear-headed.

Not wholly. He dug in one of the pouches he carried, brought out a small bit of twig, on which the buds had burst... moved his breather to smell it, offered it to her. It brought with them the world, the riverside, and promises. She felt a flood of heat which turned her sweating despite the chill. It was unnatural, being so close to him and not having the freedom of the land, places to run, the restlessness which would lead her further and further into the lonely lands where only the images stood. They were traveling, in a strange and different way, in a way that great Sun looked down upon all the same, and so she needed do nothing. She accepted Bluetooth's attentions, nervously at first, and then with increasing easiness, for it was right The games they would have played on the face of the land, until he was the last male determined enough to follow where she led... were not needed. He was the one who had come farthest, and he was here, and it was very right The motion of the ship changed; they held each other a moment in fear, but this men had warned them of, and they had heard that there was a time of great strangeness. They laughed, and joined, and ceased, giddy and delirious. They marveled at the bit of blossoming twig which floated by them in the air, which moved when they batted at it by turns. She reached carefully and plucked it from the air, and laughed again, letting it free.

"This is where Sun lives," Bluetooth surmised. She thought that it must be so, imagined Sun drifting majestically through the light of his power, and themselves swimming in it, toward the Upabove, the metal home of humans, which held out arms for them. They joined, and joined again, in spasms of joy. After long and long came another change, little stresses at the bindings, very gentle, and by and by they began to feel heavy again. "We are coming down," Satin thought aloud. But they stayed quiet, remembering what they had been told, that they must wait on a man to tell them it was safe. And there was a series of jolts and terrible noises, so that their arms clenched about each other; but the ground was solid under them now. The speaker overhead rang with human voices giving instructions and none of them sounded frightened, rather as humans usually sounded, in a hurry and humorless. "I think we are all right," Bluetooth said.

"We must stay still," she reminded him.

"They will forget us."

"They will not," she said, but she had doubts herself, so dark the place was and so desolate, just a little light where they were, above them. There was a terrible clash of metal. The door through which they had come in opened, and there was no view of hills and forest now, but of a ribbed throatlike pa.s.sage which blasted cold air at them.

A man came up it, dressed in brown, carrying one of the handspeakers. "Come on," he told them, and they made haste to untie themselves. Satin stood up and found her legs shaking; she leaned on Bluetooth and he staggered too. The man gave them gifts, silver cords to wear. "Your numbers," he said. "Always wear them." He took their names and gestured out the pa.s.sage. "Come with me. We'll get you checked in."

They followed, down the frightening pa.s.sage, out into a place like the ship belly where they had been, metal and cold, but very, very huge. Satin stared about her, shivering. "We are in a bigger ship," she said. "This is a ship too." And to the human: "Man, we in Upabove?"

"This is the station," the human said.

A hint of cold settled on Satin's heart. She had hoped for sights, for the warmth of Sun. She chided herself to patience, that these things would come, that it would yet be beautiful.

iiPell: blue sector five: 9/2/52 The apartment was tidied, the odds and ends rucked into hampers. Damon shrugged into his jacket, straightened his collar, Elene was still dressing, fussing at a waistline that-perhaps-bound a little. It was the second suit she had tried, She looked frustrated with this one too. He walked up behind her and gave her a gentle hug about the middle, met her eyes in the mirror. "You look fine. So what if it shows a little?"

She studied them both in the mirror, put her hand on his. "It looks more like I'm gaining weight."

"You look wonderful," he said, expecting a smile. Her mirrored face stayed anxious. He lingered a moment, held her because she seemed to want that. "Is it all right?" he asked. She had, perhaps, overdone, had gone out of her way to look right, had gotten special items from commissary... was nervous about the whole evening, he thought. Therefore the effort. Therefore the fretting about small things. "Does having Talley come here bother you?" Her fingers traced his slowly. "I don't think it does. But I'm not sure I know what to say to him. I've never entertained a Unioner." He dropped his arms, looked her in the eyes when she turned about. The exhausting preparations... all the anxiety to please. It was not enthusiasm. He had feared so. "You suggested it; I asked were you sure. Elene, if you felt in the least awkward in it-" "He's ridden your conscience for over three months. Forget my qualms. I'm curious; shouldn't I be?"

He suspected things... a more-than-willingness to accommodate him, that balance sheet Elene kept; grat.i.tude, maybe; or her way of trying to tell him she cared. He remembered the long evenings, Elene brooding on her side of the table, he on his, her burden Estelle and his-the lives he handled. He had talked about Talley a certain night he ended up listening to her instead; and when the chance came-such gestures were like Elene: he could not remember bringing her another problem but that. So she took it, tried to solve it, however hard it was. Unioner. He had no way of knowing what she felt under those circ.u.mstances. He had thought he knew.

"Don't look that way," she said. "I'm curious, I said. But it's the social situation. What do you say? Talk over old times? Have we possibly met before, Mr. Talley? Exchanged fire, maybe? Or maybe we talk over family... How's yours, Mr, Talley? Or maybe we talk about hospital. How have you enjoyed your stay on Pell, Mr. Talley?"

"Elene-"

"You asked."

"I wish I'd known how you felt about it."

"How do you feel about it-honestly?"

"Awkward," he confessed, leaned against the counter. "But, Elene-" "If you want to know what I feel about it-I'm uneasy. Just uneasy. He's coming here, and he'll be here for us to entertain, and frankly, I don't know what we're going to do with him." She turned to the mirror and tugged at the waistline. "All of which is what I think. I'm hoping he'll be at ease and we'll all have a pleasant evening."

He could see it otherwise... long silences. "I've got to go get him," he said. "He'll be waiting." And then with a happier thought: "Why don't we go up to the concourse? Never mind the things here; it might make things easier all round, neither of us having to play host" Her eyes lightened. "Meet you there? I'll get a table. There's nothing that can't go in the freeze."

"Do it." He kissed her on the ear, all that was available, and gave her a pat, headed out in haste to make up the time.

The security desk sent a call back for Talley and he was quick in coming down the hall... a new suit, everything new. Damon met him and held out his hand. Talley's face took on a different smile as he took it, quickly faded. "You're already checked out," Damon told him, and gathered up a small plastic wallet from the desk, gave it to him. "When you check in again, this makes it all automatic. Those are your id papers and your credit card, and a chit with your comp number. You memorize the comp number and destroy the chit." Talley looked at the papers inside, visibly moved. "I'm discharged?" Evidently staff had not gotten around to telling him. His hands trembled, slender fingers shaking in their course over the fine-printed words. He stared at them, taking time to absorb the matter, until Damon touched his sleeve, drew him from the desk and down the corridor.

"You look well," Damon said. It was so. Their images reflected back from the transport doors ahead, dark and light, his own solid, aquiline darkness and Talley's pallor like illusions. Of a sudden he thought of Elene, felt the least insecurity in Talley's presence, the comparison in which he felt all his faults... not alone the look of him, but the look from inside, that stared at him guiltless... which had always been guiltless.

What do I say to him? He echoed Elene's ugly questions, Sorry? Sorry I never got around to reading your folder? Sorry I executed you ... we were pressed for time? Forgive me ...usually we do better?

He opened the door and Talley met his eyes in pa.s.sing through. No accusations, no bitterness. He doesn't remember. Can't.

"Your pa.s.s," Damon said as they walked toward the lift, "is what's called white-tagged. See the colored circles by the door there? There's a white one too. Your card is a key; so's your comp number. If you see a white circle you have access by card or number. The computer will accept it. Don't try anything where there's no white. You'll have alarms sounding and security running in a hurry. You know such systems, don't you?"

"I understand."

"You recall your comp skills?"

A few s.p.a.ces of silence. "Armscomp is specialized. But I recall some theory."

"Much of it?"

"If I sat in front of a board... probably I would remember."

"Do you remember me?"

They had reached the lift. Damon punched the b.u.t.tons for private call, privilege of his security clearance: he wanted no crowd. He turned, met Talley's too-open gaze. Normal adults flinched, moved the eyes, glanced this way and that, focused on one and the other detail. Talley's stare lacked such movements, like a madman's, or a child's, or a graven G.o.d's.

"I remember you asking that before," Talley said. "You're one of the Konstantins. You own Pell, don't you?"

"Not own. But we've been here a long time."

"I haven't, have I?"

An undertone of worry. What is it, Damon wondered with a crawling of his own skin, what is it to know bits of your mind are gone? How can anything make sense? "We met when you came here. You ought to know... I'm the one who agreed to the Adjustment. Legal Affairs office. I signed the commitment papers." There was then a little flinching. The car arrived; Damon put his hand inside to hold the door. "You gave me the papers," Talley said. He stepped inside, and Damon followed, let the door close. The car started moving to the green he had coded. "You kept coming to see me. You were the one who was there so often-weren't you?"

Damon shrugged. "I didn't want what happened; I didn't think it was right. You understand that."

"Do you want something of me?" Willingness was implicit in the tone-at least acquiescence-in all things, anyway.

Damon returned the stare. "Forgiveness, maybe," he said, cynical.

"That's easy."