Downbelow Station tau-3

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  Emilio made an ironic sweep of his free hand, offering the domes, plundered domes. Porey would not be amused, he reckoned. Certain hand-kept books had disappeared too. He was afraid, for himself, for Miliko… for the men and women of this base and others; not least of all for the hisa, who had never seen war.

  “You will remain on this world,” Porey said, “to assist us in whatever ways are necessary.”

  Emilio smiled tautly and pressed Miliko’s hand. It was arrest, nothing less than that. His father’s message, rousing him out of sleep, had given him time. About him were workers who had never asked to be put in this position, who had been volunteered for this service. He relied less on their silence than on the hisa’s speed. It was even possible that the military would put him under more direct restraint. He thought of his family on the station, the possibility of Pell being evacuated, and of Mazian’s men making deliberate ruin of Downbelow itself in a pullout, destroying what they did not want Union to get their hands on, impressing all the able-bodied into the Fleet. They would put guns in hisa’s hands if it would get them lives to throw against Union.

  “We’ll discuss the matter,” he answered, “captain.”

  “Arms will be turned over to my troops. Personnel will submit to search.”

  “I suggest discussion, captain.”

  Porey gestured sharply. “Bring them inside.”

  The troops started for them. Miliko’s hand clenched on his. He took the initiative and they walked forward on their own, suffered themselves to be spot-searched and brought up the ramp into the glare of the ship’s interior, where Porey waited.

  Emilio stopped at the upper end of the ramp, with Miliko beside him. “We have the responsibility for this base,” he said. “I don’t want to make public issue of it. Very quietly, I’ll comply with reasonable needs of your forces.”

  “You are making threats, Mr. Konstantin.”

  “I’m making a statement, sir. Tell us what you want. I know this world. Military intervention in a working system would have to take valuable time to establish its own ways, and in some cases, intervention could be destructive.”

  He stared into Porey’s scar-edged eyes, well read that this was a man who did not like to be defied. Who was personally dangerous.

  “My officers will go with you,” Porey said, “to get the records.”

  Chapter Five

  i

  Pell: sector white two; 1700 hrs.

  Police had come in, quiet men, who stood by the door and talked to the supervisor. Josh saw them from under his brows and kept his head down, his fingers never missing a turn of the piece he was removing. The young girl by him had stopped outright, nudged him hard in the ribs.

  “Hey,” she said. “Hey, it’s police.”

  Five of them. Josh ignored the blows in his ribs and she only jabbed him the harder.

  Above them the com screen came on. The light caught his eyes and he looked up for an instant at another general announcement, for the return of limited freedom of passage in green section. He ducked his head and resumed work.

  “They’re looking this way,” the girl said.

  They were. They were making gestures in this direction, Josh shot a look up and down again, up once more, for troops had come in, armored. Company soldiers. Mazianni. “Look,” the girl said. He set himself back to work. The silken voice of central continued over the com, promising that it was all safe. He stopped believing it.

  Footsteps were in the aisle, coming from the other side, heavy steps and many of them. They reached him and stopped behind him. He kept working in a last, feverish hope. Damon, he thought, wished. Damon!

  A hand touched his shoulder and made him turn. He stared up into the supervisor’s face, unfocused, on the security police from the station and a soldier in the armor and insignia of Mazian’s Fleet.

  “Mr. Talley,” said one of the police, “will you come with us, please?”

  He realized the wrench in his hand as a weapon, carefully laid it on the counter, wiped his hand on his coveralls, and stood up.

  “Where are you going?” the girl beside him asked. He had never known her name. Her plain face was distressed. “Where are you going?”

  He did not answer, not knowing. One of the police took him by the arm and brought him away down the aisle and up the side of the shop to the door, They were all staring. “Quiet,” the supervisor said. There was a general murmuring. The police and the troops brought him outside into the corridor and stopped there. The door closed, and a troop officer, in body armor only, faced him to the wall and searched him.

  The man took his papers from his pocket. He faced about again when they let him and stood with his back against the wall, watching the officer go through the papers. Atlantic, their insignia said. A sick terror worked in him. Company soldiers had the papers in their hands, and they were all his claim to harmlessness, proof of what he had been through, that he was no danger to anyone. He reached out to recover them and the officer held them out of reach. Mazianni. The shadow came back.He withdrew his hand, remembering other encounters, his heart pounding. “I have a pass,” he said, trying to keep the tic from his face, which came when he was upset. “It’s with the papers. You can see I work here. I’m supposed to be here.”

  “Mornings only.”

  “We were all held,” he said. “We were all held over. Check the others. We’re all from morning shift.”

  “You’ll come with us,” one of the troopers said.

  “Ask Damon Konstantin. He’ll tell you. I know him. Hell tell you that I’m all right.”

  That delayed them. “I’ll make a note of that,” the officer said.

  “It’s possibly true,” said one of the station police. “I’ve heard something like that. He’s a special case.”

  “We have our orders. Comp spat him out; we have to clear the matter. You lock him up in your facilities or we lock him up in ours.”

  Josh opened his mouth to state a preference. “We’ll take him,” the policeman said before he could plead.

  “My papers,” Josh said. He stammered and flushed with shame. Some reactions were still too much to control. He held out a demanding hand for his papers and it shook visibly. “Sir.”

  The officer folded them and carefully put them into his belt-kit. “He doesn’t need them. He’s not going anywhere. You take him and put him away, and you have him available if any of us want him, you understand that? He may go into Q later, but not till command’s had a chance to review it”

  “Understood,” the policeman said crisply. He seized Josh’s arm, led him down the corridor. The troops walked behind, and finally, at an intersection of corridors, their path and that of the troops diverged.

  But there were Mazianni at every visible hallway. He felt cold and exposed… felt profound relief when the police stopped at a lift and took him into the car alone; they were, for that ride up and around to red sector one, without the troops.

  “Please call Damon Konstantin,” he asked of them. “Or Elene Quen. Or anyone in their offices. I know the numbers.”

  There was silence for most of the ride.

  “We’ll report it through channels,” one said finally, without looking at him.

  The lift stopped, red one. Security zone. He walked out between them, through the transparent partition and to the desk at the entry. Troops were inside this office too, armored and armed, and that sent a wave of panic through him, for he had hoped that in this place at least he was under station authority.

  “Please,” he said at the desk, while they were checking him in. He knew the young officer in charge; he had been here when he was a prisoner. He remembered. He leaned forward toward him and lowered his voice, desperately. “Please call the Konstantins. Let them know I’m here.”

  Here too there was no answer, only an uncomfortable shift of the eyes away from him. They were afraid, all the stationers — terrified of the armed troops. Soldiers drew him away from the desk, led him down the corridor to th
e detention cells, put him into one, barren and white and furnished only with sanitary facilities and a white bench extruded from the walls. They delayed to search him again, strip search this time, and left him his clothing on the floor.

  He dressed, sank down finally onto the bench, tucked his feet up and rested his head against his knees, tired from his long working and knotted up with fear.

  ii

  Merchanter ship Hammer: in deep space; 1700 hrs.

  Vittorio Lukas rose from his seat and walked the curve of Hammer’s dingy bridge, hesitated at the twitch of the stick in the hand of the Unioner who continually kept an eye on him. They would not let him come within reach of controls; in this tiny, steeply curved rotation cylinder — most of Hammer’s unlovely mass was a null-G belly, aft — there was a line on the tiles, marked in tape, which circumscribed his prison. He had not discovered yet what would happen if he crossed it without being called; he never meant to find out. He was allowed most of the circuit of the cylinder, the crew quarters where he slept; the tiny main-room section… and this far into the operations area. From here he could make out one of the screens and see scan past the tech’s shoulder; he lingered, staring at it, at the backs of men and women in merchanter dress who were not merchanters, his belly still queasy from drugs and his nerves crawling from jump. He had spent most of the day throwing up his insides.

  The captain was standing watching the screens, saw him, beckoned him. Vittorio hesitated; at a second signal came walking ahead into that forbidden operations zone, not without a backward glance at the man with the stick. He accepted the captain’s friendly hand on his shoulder as he took a closer look at scan; prosperous looking sort, this man… might have been a Pell businessman, urged his crew rather than snapping orders. They all treated him well enough, even with politeness. It was his situation and the potentials in it which had him terrified. Coward, his father would say in disgust. It was true. He was. This was no place and no company for him.

  “We’re moving back soon now,” the man said… Blass, his name was, Abe Blass. “Didn’t jump far, just enough to stay out of Mazian’s way. Relax, Mr. Lukas. Your stomach treating you better now?”

  He said nothing. The mention of his malaise brought a spasm to his gut.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Blass said softly, hand still on his shoulder. “Absolutely nothing, Mr. Lukas. Mazian’s arrival doesn’t trouble us.”

  He looked at the man. “And what if the Fleet spots us when we come in again?”

  “We can always jump,” Blass said. “Swan’s Eye won’t have strayed from her post; and Ilyko won’t talk; she knows where her interests lie. Just rest easy, Mr. Lukas. You still seem to have some apprehensions of us.”

  “If my father on Pell is compromised…”

  “That won’t be likely to happen. Jessad knows what he’s doing. Believe me. It’s all planned for. And Union takes care of its friends.” Blass patted the shoulder. “You’re doing very well for a first jump. Take an old timer’s advice and don’t push yourself. Just relax. Go on back to the main room and I’ll talk to you as soon as our move in is plotted.”

  “Sir,” he murmured, and did as he was told, wandering past the guard back up the curving deck to the deserted main room. He took a seat at the molded table/bench arrangement, leaned his arm on the table, swallowed heavily.

  It was not all nausea from jump. He was terrified. Make a man of you, he could hear his father saying. He seethed with misery. He was what he was, and he did not belong here, with the likes of Abe Blass and these grim very-same people. His father had made him expendable. If he were ambitious he would try to make points for himself in these circumstances, ingratiate himself with Union. He did not. He knew his abilities and his limits, and he wanted Roseen, wanted his comforts, wanted a good drink he could not have with the drugs filling his system.

  It was not going to work, none of it; and they would snatch him Unionside where everyone walked in step, and that would be the end of everything he knew. He feared changes. What he had at Pell was good enough. He had never asked much of life or of anyone, and the thought of being out here in the center of nothing at all… gave him nightmares.

  But he had no choices. His father had seen to that.

  Blass came finally, sat down and solemnly spread charts on the table and explained things to him as if he were someone of consequence to the mission. He looked at the diagram and tried to understand the premises of this shifting about through nothing, when he could not in fact understand where they were, which was essentially nowhere.

  “You should feel very confident,” Blass said. “I assure you you’re in a far safer place than the station is right now.”

  “You’re a very high officer in Union,” he said, “aren’t you? They wouldn’t send you like this… otherwise.”

  Blass shrugged.

  “Hammer and Swan’s Eye … all the ships you’ve got near Pell?”

  Blass shrugged again. That was his answer.

  Chapter Six

  i

  Maintenance access white 9-1042; 2100 hrs.

  The men had come and gone for a long time, men-in-shells, carrying guns. Satin shivered and tucked further back into the shadows by the cargo lift. They were many who had run when the Lukas directed, who had run again when the stranger men came, by the ways that the hisa could use, the narrow ways, the dark tunnels where hisa could breathe without masks and men could not. Men of the Upabove knew these ways but they had not yet shown them to the strangers, and hisa were safe, though some of them cried deep in the dark, deep, deep below, so that men would not hear.

  There was no hope here. Satin pursed her lips and sidled backward in a crouch, waited while the air changed, scampered back into safe darkness. Hands touched her. There was male-scent. She hissed in reproof and smelt after the one who was hers. Arms folded her about. She laid her head wearily against a hard shoulder, comforting as she was comforted. Bluetooth offered her no questions. He knew that there was no better news, for he had said as much when she had insisted on going out to see.

  It was trouble, bad trouble. Lukases spoke and gave orders, and strangers threatened. Old One was not here… none of the long-timers were, having gone somewhere about their own business, to the protection of important things, Satin reckoned. To duties ordered by important humans and perhaps duties which regarded hisa.

  But they had disobeyed, had not gone to the supervisors, no more than the Old Ones had gone, who also hated Lukases.

  “Go back?” someone asked finally.

  They would be in trouble if they turned themselves in after running. Men would be angry with them, and the men had guns. “No,” she said, and when there was muttering to the contrary, Bluetooth turned his head to spit a surlier negative. “Think,” he said. “We go there, men can be there, bad trouble.”

  “Hungry,” another protested.

  No one answered.

  Men might take their friendship from them for what they had done. They realized that clearly now. And without that friendship, they might be on Downbelow always. Satin thought of the fields of Downbelow, the soft clouds she had once thought solid enough to sit on, the rain and the blue sky and the gray-green-blue leaves, the flowers and soft mosses… most of all the air which smelled of home. Bluetooth dreamed of that, perhaps, as the heat of her spring faded, and she had not quickened, being young, in her first adult season. Bluetooth saw things now with a clearer head. He mourned the world at times. At times she did. But to be there always and forever…

  Sky-sees-her, that was her name; and she had seen truth. The blue was false, a cover stretched out like a blanket; truth was black distances, and the face of great Sun shining in the dark. Truth would always hang above them. Without the favor of humans, they would return to Downbelow without hope, forever and ever to know themselves shut off from the sky. There was no home now, not now that they had looked upon Sun.

  “Lukases go away sometime,” Bluetooth murmured against her ear.

  She
burrowed her head against him, trying to forget that she was hungry and thirsty, and did not answer him.

  “Guns,” said another voice, near them. “They will shoot us and we will lose ourselves forever.”

  “Not if we stay here,” said Bluetooth, “and do what I said.”

  “They are not our humans,” said Bigfellow’s deep voice. “Hurt our humans, these.”

  “This is a man-fight,” Bluetooth returned. “Nothing for the hisa.”

  A thought came. Satin lifted her head. “Konstantins. Konstantin-fight, this. We will find Konstantins, ask what to do. Find Konstantins, find Old Ones too, near Sun’s Place.”

  “Ask Sun-her-friend,” another exclaimed. “She must know.”

  “Where is Sun-her-friend?”

  There was silence. No one knew. The Old Ones preserved that secret.

  “I will find her.” That was Bigfellow. He wriggled close to them, reached out a hand to her shoulder in the dark. “I go many places. Come. Come.”

  She drew in her breath, lipped uncertainly at Bluetooth’s cheek.

  “Come,” Bluetooth agreed suddenly, drawing her by the hand. Bigfellow hastened off just ahead, a pattering of feet in the dark. They went after him and others followed, up the dark corridors and the ladders and the narrow places, where sometimes there was light and most times not. Some fell behind, for they went among pipes and in cold places and places which burned their bare feet, and past machinery which thundered with ominous powers.

  Bluetooth pushed into the lead at times, letting go her hand; at times Bigfellow shoved him aside and went first again. Satin doubted in fact that Bluetooth had the least idea where he was going or what way would lead them to Sun-her-friend; to the Sun’s Place they had been, and dimly she had that sense she had on the earth, that said in her heart what way a place should be… up was true; she thought that it should be left… but sometimes the tunnels did not bend left; and they wound. The two males pushed ahead, one and then the other, until they were all panting and stumbling; more and more fell behind; and at last the one behind her caught her hand, pleaded by that gesture… but Bluetooth and Bigfellow pushed on and she was losing them. She parted from the last of their followers and kept going, trying to overtake them.