"Nerve, yes, if the planning makes sense."
"There's a man on this station named Kressich."
He sucked in a slow breath, the drink resting in his hand against the chair arm. "Vassily Kressich, elected councillor of Q. How do you know him?"
"Dayin Jacoby gave us the name ... as the councillor from that zone; and we have files. This man Kressich ... comes from Q when the council meets. He then has a pass which will let him do so, or is it visual inspection?"
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"Both. There are guards."
"Can those who do the inspecting be bribed?"
"For some things, yes. But stationers, Mr. Whoever-you-are, have a natural reluctance to doing anything to damage the station they're living in. You can get drugs and liquor into Q; but a man ... a guard's conscience about a case of liquor and his instinct for self-preservation are two different things."
"Then we'll have to keep any conference with him brief, won't we?"
"Not here."
"That's up to you. Perhaps the lending of an ID and papers. I'm sure among your many faithful employees something can be arranged, some apartment near the Q zone...."
"What kind of conference are you talking about? And what are you looking for from Kressich? The man is spineless."
"How many employees do you have in all," Jessad asked, "as faithful and trusted as these men here? Men who might take risks, who might kill? We have need of that sort."
Jon cast a look at Bran Hale, feeling short of breath. Back again. "Well, Kressich isn't the type, I'll tell you."
"Kressich has contacts. Can a man stay seated atop that monster of Q
without them?"
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ii
Pell: sector green seven: merchanter's hospice; 2241 hrs.
Com buzzed. The light was on, a call coming through. Josh looked at it across his room, stopped in his pacing. They had let him go. Go home, they had said, and he had done so, through corridors guarded by police and Mazianni. They knew at this moment where he was. And now someone was calling his room, hard after his arrival.
The caller insisted; the red light stayed on, blinking. He did not want to answer, but it might be detention checking to be sure he had gotten here.
He was afraid not to respond to it. He crossed the room and pushed the reply button.
"Josh Talley," he said into the mike.
"Josh. Josh, it's Damon. Good to hear your voice. Are you all right?"
He leaned against the wall, caught his breath.
"Josh?"
"I'm all right. Damon, you know what happened."
"I know. Your message got to me. I've taken personal responsibility for you. You're coming to our apartment tonight. Pack what you need. I'm coming there after you."
"Damon, no. No. Stay out of this."
"We've talked it over; it's all right. No argument."
"Damon, don't. Don't let it get on their records...."
"We're your legal sponsors as it is, Josh. It's already on the records."
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"Don't."
"Elene and I are on our way."
The contact went dead. He wiped his face. The knot which had been at his stomach had risen into his throat. He saw no walls, nothing of where he was. It was all metal, and Signy Mallory, young face and age-silvered hair, and eyes dead and oldest of all. Damon and Elene and the child they wanted ... they prepared to put everything at risk. For him.
He had no weapons. Needed none, if it were to be himself and her alone, as it had been in her quarters. He had been dead then, inside. Had existed, hating his existence. The same kind of paralysis beckoned now ... to let things be, accept, take cover where it was offered; it was always easier. He had not threatened Mallory, having had nothing to fight for.
He pushed from the wall, felt of his pocket, making sure his papers were there. He walked into the hall and through it past the unmanned front desk of the hospice, out into the open where the guards stood. One of the local security started to challenge him. He looked frantically down the corridor where a trooper stood.
"You!" he shouted, disturbing the vacant quiet of the hall. Police and trooper reacted, the trooper with leveled rifle and a suddenness which had almost been a pulled trigger. Josh swallowed tightly, held his hands in plain view. "I want to talk with you."
The rifle motioned. He walked with hands still wide at his sides, toward the armored trooper and the dark muzzle. "Far enough," the trooper said.
"What is it?"
The insignia was Atlantic's. "Mallory of Norway, " he said. "We're good friends. Tell her Josh Talley wants to talk with her. Now."
The trooper had a disbelieving look, a scowl finally. But he balanced the rifle in the crook of his arm and reached for his com button. "I'll relay to the Norway duty officer," he said. "You'll be going in, in either case—
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your way, if she does know you, and on general investigation if she doesn't."
"She'll see me," he said.
The trooper pushed the com button and queried. What came back came privately over his helmet com, but his eyes flickered. "Check it, then," he said to Norway. And after a moment more: "Command central. Got it.
Out." He hooked the com unit to his belt again, and motioned with the rifle barrel. "Keep walking down that hall and go up the ramp. That trooper down there will take you in charge and see you talk to Mallory."
He went, walking quickly, for he did not reckon it would take Damon and Elene long to reach the hospice.
They searched him. Of course they would do so. He endured it for the third time this day, and this time it did not bother him. He was cold inside, and outer things did not trouble him. He straightened his clothes and walked with them up the ramp, past sentries at every level. On green two they entered a lift and rode it the short rise and traverse into blue one.
They had not even asked for his papers, had scarcely looked at them more than to be sure that the folder held nothing but papers.
They walked a short distance back along the matting-carpeted hall. There was a reek of chemicals in the air. Workmen were busy peeling all the location signs. The windowed section further, crammed with comp equipment and with a few techs moving about, was specially guarded.
Norway troops. They opened the door and let him and his guards in, into station central, among the aisles of busy technicians.
Mallory, seated at the end of the counters, rose to meet him, smiled coldly at him, her face haggard. "Well?" she said.
He had thought the sight of her would not affect him. It did. His stomach wrenched. "I want to come back," he said, "on Norway."
"Do you?"
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"I'm no stationer; I don't belong here. Who else would take me?"
Mallory looked at him and said nothing. A tremor started in his left knee; he wished he might sit down. They would shoot him if he made a move; he thoroughly believed that they would. The tic threatened his composure, jerked at the side of his mouth when she turned away a moment and glanced back again. She laughed, a dry chuckle. "Konstantin put you up to this?"
"No."
"You've been Adjusted. That so?"
The stammer tied his tongue. He nodded.
"And Konstantin makes himself responsible for your good behavior."
It was all going wrong. "No one's responsible for me," he said, stumbling on the words. "I want a ship. If Norway is all I've got, then I'll take it." He had to look at her directly, at eyes which flickered with imagined thoughts, things which were not going to be said here, before the troopers.
"You search him?" she asked the guards.
"Yes, ma'am."
She stood thinking a long moment, and there was no smile, no laughter.
"Where are you staying?"
"A room in the old hospice."
"The
Konstantins provide it?"
"I work. I pay for it."
"What's your job?"
"Small salvage."
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An expression of surprise, of derision.
"So I want out of it," he said. "I figure you owe me that."
There was interruption, movement behind him, which stopped. Mallory laughed, a bored, weary laugh, and beckoned to someone. "Konstantin.
Come on in. Come get your friend."
Josh turned. Damon and Elene were both there, flushed and upset and out of breath. They had followed him. "If he's confused," Damon said, "he belongs in the hospital." He came and laid a hand on Josh's shoulder.
"Come on. Come on, Josh."
"He's not confused," Mallory said. "He came here to kill me. Take your friend home, Mr. Konstantin. And keep a watch on him, or I'll handle matters my way."
There was stark silence.
"I'll see to it," Damon said after a moment. His fingers bit into Josh's shoulder. "Come on. Come on."
Josh moved, walked with him and Elene, past the guards, out and down the long corridor with the work crews and the chemical smell; the doors of central closed behind him. Neither of them said anything. Damon's grip shifted to his elbow and they took him into a lift, rode it down the short distance to five. There were more guards in this hall, and station police.
They passed unchallenged into the residential halls, to Damon's own door.
They brought him inside and closed the door. He stood waiting, while Damon and Elene went through the routine of turning on lights, and taking off jackets.
"I'll send for your clothes," Damon said shortly. "Come on, make yourself at home."
It was not the welcome he deserved. He picked a leather chair, mindful of his grease-stained work clothes. Elene brought him a cool drink and he sipped at it without tasting it.
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Damon sat down on the arm of the chair next to his.Temper showed. Josh accepted that, found a place at his feet to stare at.
"You ran us a circular chase," Damon said. "I don't know how you got past us but you managed it."
"I asked to go."
Whatever Damon would have wanted to say, he swallowed. Elene came over and sat down on the couch opposite him.
"So what did you have in mind?" Damon asked evenly.
"You shouldn't have gotten involved. I didn't want you involved."
"So you ran from us?"
He shrugged.
"Josh— did you mean to kill her?"
"Eventually. Somewhere. Sometime."
They found nothing to say. Damon finally shook his head and looked away, and Elene came over behind Josh's chair, laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.
"It didn't work," Josh said finally, tripping on the words. "It went everyway wrong. I'm afraid now she thinks you put me up to it. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry."
Elene's hand brushed his hair, descended again to his shoulder. Damon simply stared at him as if he were looking at someone he had never seen before. "Don't you ever," Damon said, "think of doing that again."
"I didn't want you two hurt. I didn't want you taking me in with you. Think how it looks to them— you, with me."
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"You think Mazian runs this station all of a sudden? And you think a captain in the Fleet is going to break relations with the Konstantins, whose cooperation Mazian needs ... in a personal feud?"
He thought that over. It made sense in a way he wanted to believe, and therefore he suspected it.
"It's not going to happen," Damon said. "So forget about it. No trooper is about to walk into this apartment, you can depend on it. Just don't give them excuses for wanting to. And you came close. You understand that?
The worst thing you can do is give them a pretext. Josh, it was Mallory's order that got you out of detention. I asked it. She did it a second time back there ... as a favor. Don't depend on a third."
He nodded, shaken.
"Have you eaten today?"
He considered, confused, finally thought back to the sandwich, realized that at least part of his malaise was lack of food. "Missed supper," he said.
"I'll get you some clothes of mine that will fit. Wash up, relax. We'll go back to your apartment tomorrow morning and get whatever you need."
"How long am I going to stay here?" he asked, turning his head to look at Elene and back at Damon. It was a small place. He was aware of the inconvenience. "I can't move in on you."
"You stay here until it's safe," Damon said. "If we have to make further arrangements, we will. In the meantime I'm going to do some review on your papers or whatever excuse I can contrive that will excuse your spending the next few working days in my office."
"I don't go back to the shop?"
"When this is settled. Meanwhile we're not going to let you out of our sight. We made it clear they'll have to create a major incident to touch 291
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you. I'll put my father onto it too, so that no one in either office gets caught by a surprise request. Just, please, don't provoke anything."
"No," he agreed. Damon gave a jerk of his head back toward the hall. He rose and went with Damon, and Damon searched an armload of clothing out of the lockers outside the bath. He went into the bath, bathed and felt better, clean of the memory of the detention cell, wrapped himself in the soft robe Damon had lent him, and came out to the aroma of supper cooking.
They ate, crowded at the table, exchanged what they had seen in their separate sections. He could talk without anxiousness finally, now that the nightmare was on him, and he was no longer alone in it.
He chose the far corner of the kitchen, made himself a pallet on the floor, out of the amazing abundance of bedding Elene urged on him. We'll get a cot by tomorrow, she promised him. At least, a hammock. He settled down in it, heard them settle in the living room, and felt safe, believing finally what Damon had told him ... that he was in a refuge even Mazian's Fleet could not breach.
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8
Downbelow: Africa landing probe, main base;
2400 hrs. md.; 1200 hrs. a; local daylight
Emilio leaned back in the chair and stared resolutely at Porey's scowl, waited, while the scarred captain made several notes on the printout before him, and pushed it back across the table at him. Emilio gathered it up, leafed through the supply request, nodded slowly.
"It may take a little time," he said.
"At the moment," said Porey, "I am simply relaying reports and acting on instructions. You and your staff are not cooperating. Go on with that as long as you please."
They sat in the small personnel area of Porey's ship, flat-decked, never meant for prolonged space flight. Porey had had his taste of Downbelow air, and of their domes and the dust and the mud, and retreated to his ship in disgust, calling him in instead of visiting the main dome. And that would have suited him well, if it had only taken the troops away as well; it had not. They were still outside, masked and armed. Q and the residents as well worked the fields under guns.
"I also am receiving instructions," Emilio said, "and acting on them. The best that we can do, captain, is to acknowledge that both sides are aware of the situation, and your reasonable request will be honored. We are both under orders."
A reasonable man might have been placated. Porey was not. He simply scowled. Perhaps he resented the order which had put him on Downbelow; perhaps it was his natural expression. Likely he was short of sleep; the short intervals at which the troops outside were being relieved indicated they had not come in fresh, and Porey's crew had been in evidence, not Porey— alterday crew, perhaps. "Take your time," Porey repeated, and it 293
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was evident that he would remember the time taken— the day that he had the chance to do things his own way.
"By your leave," Emilio said,
received no courtesy, and stood up and walked out. The guards let him go, down the short corridor and via lift to the ship's big belly, where lift functioned as lock, into Downbelow atmosphere. He drew up his mask and walked down the lowered ramp into the cool wind.
They had not yet sent occupation forces to the other camps. He reckoned that they would like to, but that their forces were limited, and there were no landing areas at those sites. As for Porey's demand for supplies, he reckoned he could come up with the requested amount; it scanted them, certainly scanted station, but their balking and the stripped domes, he reckoned, had at least gotten the Fleet's demand down to something tolerable.
Situation improved, his father's most recent message had been. No evacuation planned. Fleet contemplating permanent base at Pell.
That was not the best news. It was not the worst. All his life he had figured on the war as a debt which had to come due someday, in some generation.
That Pell could not keep its neutrality forever. While the Company agents had been with them, he had hoped, forlornly, that some outside force might be prepared to intervene. It was not. They had Mazian, instead, who was losing the war Earth would not finance, who could not protect a station that might decide to finance him, who knew nothing of Pell, and cared nothing for Downbelow's delicate balances.
Where are the Downers? the troops had asked. Frightened by strangers, he had answered. There was no sign of them. He did not plan that there should be. He tucked Porey's supply request into his jacket pocket and walked the path up and over the hill. He could see the troops standing here and there among the domes, rifles evident; could see the workers far off among the fields, all of them, turned out to work regardless of schedules or age or health. Troops were down at the mill, at the pumping station.
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