In the Company of Others

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Grant wasn’t buying it. “Just mind yourself, Malley—that’s all I care about.” He saluted Gail in a way that left no doubt of his disapproval, then spun and marched out of the room.

  “Is he always like that?”

  Gail gazed at the device lying in front of her on the stained desktop, making no move to touch it. Any contact with it would doubtless trigger both an ear-splitting alarm and most regrettable action from those waiting outside. “He feels I take unnecessary risks,” she explained, unsure why she didn’t want Grant misjudged by this man.

  “Do you?”

  “No,” Gail said frankly. “I only take the necessary ones.”

  “Such as coming here, looking for Aaron.” Malley leaned back, stretching out legs with thighs each broader than her waist. The chair gave one last protest then was silent. Malley was probably used to furniture complaining. “Do you mind?” he asked her, tapping one of his shoulder pads.

  Gail steepled her fingers and rested her chin on their tips. “By all means, make yourself comfortable, Mr. Malley.”

  He unclipped the straps crossing his chest and upper body, then lifted the entire mass over his head. For an instant, Gail thought he planned to toss it into a corner, then he grinned at her and put it down on the floor with only a muted ring of metal to metal. “Mustn’t get your soldiers imagining I’m throwing things at you.”

  Taking off the pads, Malley shed years as well—his shoulders still unusually broad and overmuscled to Gail’s eyes, but now more in proportion to the rest of his body. Where the fabric covering his upper arms had worn through, the skin showed overlapping patterns of bruising, some brownish yellow, the latest an angry purple, as though he routinely hoisted heavy objects up on his shoulders without care. Coupled with the strong, fiercely intelligent lines of his face, he was a paradox Gail found inconveniently fascinating. She put it down to the rarity of sweaty manual laborers in her life and schooled her expression carefully.

  After all, here was a source of information potentially more useful than anything Grant’s experts could scavenge from Thromberg itself. She started with the practical. “You didn’t want me to talk about those ships outside the station. Why?”

  Malley kept his easy smile, but she thought his brown eyes hardened. “No,” he rumbled. “That’s not how this is going to work, Dr. Smith.”

  She blinked. “Pardon . . . ?”

  “First, you owe me the dibs I’m losing being here and not on my shift.” He waited for Gail to nod, then went on in determined voice: “Second, I want you to arrange a meeting between me and your pet, Sector Administrator Forester.”

  Gail blinked. “Why?”

  “I was hauled up here on the pretense I’d get a chance to express my opinions on how things are being done on my floor. Well, I want that chance.”

  She kept from smiling at this, merely nodding again.

  “Good.” Malley brought his big hands up and locked them behind his neck. “Then there’s only one more item to clear up, Dr. Smith.”

  “And that is?”

  “What the hell makes you think I’ll talk to an Earther about my friend, my home, or anything else, for that matter?”

  Not an outright refusal, Gail decided. A challenge. There were stakes involved here she didn’t know, but at least Malley wasn’t leaving—yet. There had to be something he either wanted, or needed. She thought it highly unlikely he’d simply tell her what that something was.

  “I appreciate your candor, Mr. Malley,” she began, more cautious than she’d ever been with Reinsez—or Grant, for that matter—suspecting Malley of a different level of intellect, as well as being fully aware his was a personality forged under circumstances completely alien to her own. She dared not underestimate him. “While I’ve many questions, they can keep. It’s only my curiosity, after all.” Gail smiled, just enough to deprecate her own words. “If you’re uncomfortable talking to me, I can give you a message for Mr. Pardell. You can go back to your work immediately.”

  Malley closed his eyes almost to slits, as though this helped him read her face—or as though he was daydreaming. “Oh, I’m a curious man, myself. Curious why Dr. Gail Smith, Head of the Department of Xenoecology and formerly lead researcher in xenobiological warfare—both at Titan University, Sol System—wants so badly to find one man. Badly enough to risk her neck and ship—not to mention potentially ignite a riot on Thromberg Station.”

  “You know my work?” Hearing the surprise in her own voice, Gail could have bitten her tongue. He’d thrown her off-balance again. Damn him.

  “Information gets out here, if little else,” Malley announced as if he hadn’t noticed. “I’ve read your last eight papers—of those Titan allowed to go public, anyway. Some of your findings were interesting.”

  Gail wasn’t sure if she was appalled or offended. “Some?”

  He opened his eyes again, his expression one of guileless innocence. She wasn’t fooled, being an expert in that expression herself. “While I’d enjoy discussing the finer points with you someday, let’s leave it that I don’t see any possible connection between your legitimate research on the Quill and Aaron Pardell. Which leaves me wondering what line of inquiry you aren’t publishing—and how much risk to Aaron, and this station, you’d consider necessary to further it.”

  Gail almost slammed her hand down on the alarm, more than ready to have Grant and his troops grab this complacent, obstinate, overstuffed lump of a man and drag him on board the Seeker where they had the means to get answers to any question they wished. She wasn’t sure which stopped her: imagining the triumphant “I told you so” on Grant’s face, or the potential for violence from the hundreds of stationers milling between this office and the air lock.

  “You could try telling me the truth, Dr. Smith,” Malley suggested, the corners of eyes wrinkling good humoredly, as if he knew and relished her frustration.

  “Trust you, Mr. Malley, with my life’s work—just like that?” Gail was so far from self-control she barely managed to get the words out. “You have no idea—”

  “And neither do you, Dr. Smith,” he countered, suddenly revealing the extent of his own emotion, feet thudding to the floor plates as he sat upright, massive arms swinging down with his hands tightened into fists. “You dock as though you own the place. You expect us to jump at your whim. And you have the gall to think I’d betray my friend for a day’s dibs and a chance to shout at Forester. Think again!”

  “I could have you hauled on my ship—”

  Before Gail could finish her sentence, Malley was on his feet with that speed she found so unlikely in such a huge man, looming over the desk. He pushed the alarm within reach of her fingers as he put his face within a handbreadth of hers. His voice was incredibly low and utterly cold: “And I could snap your neck before your precious Earther grunts came through that door.”

  Gail believed him—he’d only need one hand—but she matched his glare with one of her own, refusing to retreat despite the hairs rising on the back of her neck. “That comes under necessary risk, doesn’t it?” she said coolly.

  She caught him off-balance, for once. Malley’s teeth flashed in another of his mercurial grins and he straightened, then pretended to bow to her. “You don’t lack for spine, Dr. Smith.”

  Since hers currently felt remarkably like a liquid, Gail fixed her expression into something approximately pleasant. “Nor do you. You know they’d kill you.”

  Malley shrugged. “They’d try,” he corrected gently, with the sublime confidence of someone who probably hadn’t lost a battle on his own turf in years. Gail didn’t bother explaining that Grant and his people wouldn’t fight fair—he probably knew.

  And this wasn’t a man to have as an enemy, she realized abruptly. As an ally, he’d be indispensable. There was only one way and, once Gail saw it clearly, she didn’t hesitate. “You say you want the truth, Mr. Malley. Fine. But know this: that truth’s more dangerous to the stability of your station than any conflict between us cou
ld be.”

  “I’m the best judge of that, Dr. Smith.” His lips were still tight, but she had his interest. She was sure of it. “And I won’t promise to keep your secrets. Not if they’ll harm anyone on or off Thromberg.”

  “If you’re the man I think you are,” Gail said bluntly, “once you know why I’m here, what I’m hoping to accomplish, you’ll keep it to yourself. I’ve no worries there.” She paused, then went on with an urge to honesty she was usually able to resist: “But I have to warn you,” she went on. “What I’m going to tell you will put a burden on you and on your friendship with Aaron Pardell—”

  What he might have answered, Gail didn’t find out. As she drew a breath to continue speaking, there was a commotion at the door to the office. A flustered-looking Grant burst in, managing to stay ahead, barely, of what appeared to be an angry delegation of stationers led by Administrator Forester himself. Behind, they could see the four other Earthers surrounded by stationer gray.

  Malley sat back down and stretched out his legs once more. “Dr. Smith,” he told her, “welcome to Thromberg Station.”

  Chapter 9

  HUGH Malley hadn’t returned to his work, his hideyhole, or his assigned quarters by night, odd-cycle. Pardell ignored the changing rhythms in the corridors—and coming through the walls of Sammie’s Tavern—that marked the swing from day to night for some, night to day for the rest. It was no longer fifty/fifty, as in the beginning. There were always deaths, some years more than others. There weren’t replacements. Fate had taken more from odd-cycle, so its night was a little less peaceful, a little more intruded on, year by year, by those whose clocks woke them and sent them to work instead. One day, if nothing changed, they’d blend back to one clock and watch for time to end in synchrony.

  Pardell shook off the reverie. Malley wasn’t back. No need to expose himself hunting the news—it arrived on the feet of odd-cycle folks coming in for a last drink and left with those even-cycle folks who liked starting their day as they ended it. It’d take no more than an hour to spread throughout Outward Five.

  Speculation? Ah, that ran more than walked. Didn’t help there was scuttlebutt from the third cousin of someone’s aunt who happened to be on the stern docking ring and who saw Malley with the Earthers. No, thought Pardell, rubbing his eyes and stifling a yawn, that hadn’t helped at all.

  Hard to sort the many versions into possible or nots. Anything could be true, with that woman and her ship leeched to Thromberg. Stories so far had ranged from Malley being shot, to his entering the Earther ship and not leaving it. Those two, at least, Pardell didn’t believe for an instant. The dock would have exploded at the least violence to one of their own—and Malley enter an air lock?

  Pardell rolled over in the bed Tanya’d lent him, pulling a blanket over a shoulder, feeling suddenly as cold as any time he’d been Outside. Malley’d been in an air lock exactly once. The time his dying mother tossed the two of them in one for safety. Pardell closed his eyes, remembering in spite of himself . . .

  ... It had been like some game or a reader story at first—something new happening, a change in routine. The boys had taken it that way; children do. The corridor main lights had been kicked out by Admin, hoping to stop people moving to and fro, but that only added to their trembling excitement. Mrs. Malley had made them put on their suits—a chance for Aaron to show off his skills, giving his friend lots of unasked-for advice. He and Hugh—she was the only one who called her son by his given name—had jousted with their boots, until Mrs. Malley hushed them, made them finish suiting up, and took them to hide in the abandoned aft docking ring.

  Where did the riot start? Who died first? No one lived to explain it to those who survived. The thread of violence that reached the Malleys wasn’t even part of the main struggle, just a pack of would-be looters being chased by the more righteous and better-fed. The boys and Malley’s mother had been caught in a vicious crossfire probably neither side later remembered. Neither accepted the blame, for sure.

  Mrs. Malley had pushed them into the nearest air lock. Pardell could still feel the pain of her emotions through him when he recalled that day, as though her hands had burned through his suit, driving him to do anything to save her son and himself, feelings intensifying even as her hands slipped down his back and away.

  She’d loved them both.

  And he’d done it, sealing the air lock, ignoring Malley’s screams and pleas to let him out, to let him go back to her. Both of them being in suits, at least he’d been safe from feeling Malley’s wild grief as well as his own.

  He’d done it, rapping out the code, opening the outer door, grateful to the quick-thinking ’sider guard who’d grabbed his hysterical friend and hauled him to the safety of vacuum. They’d been saved. Pardell had lain back on Thromberg’s white outer plates, soothed by the infinite darkness in almost every direction, shuddering as much with relief as grief. Malley had clung to the guard in absolute, blind terror, losing in one instant not only his mother, but everything that defined his universe.

  Malley had never, ever, been able to go near an air lock since. . . .

  No, Pardell thought, tasting the nightmare again, his friend wasn’t on the Earther ship. Not unless they’d drugged or overpowered him somehow.

  She was capable of that, he didn’t doubt it, but there was no reason. What possible gain could having Malley on her ship provide? To wring the truth from him—another popular rumor? Easier to take him to the Admin offices and let Forester try to bore Malley into confession.

  “Psst. Aaron. You awake?”

  “Yes,” he whispered, mindful of the others sleeping in this side of the storeroom. He rolled to his feet, dropping the blanket and squinting in the dim light. It was Silvie, Sammie’s daughter and Tanya’s mother. “There’s news? Real news?”

  She chuckled softly at his qualification. “Not about Malley—although I do like the latest, the one saying he planted a big kiss on the Earther right in front of all and she didn’t look too worried about it.”

  Pardell stifled a laugh. “That sounds like something Malley’d pull. But I don’t see the Earther taking it so well.”

  He followed Silvie’s silhouette to the slit in the curtain and out into the lit section of the long room. There were people he knew gathered there, a couple of faces less familiar than the others. Most were older, the type that were easier to peg as immie or stationer if you knew the signs. No ’siders, other than himself. No surprise there.

  No room to spare either. They’d pushed aside the beer crates to make a half circle where the oldest sat shoulder to shoulder. He must have slept after all to have missed these preparations, although moving things quietly was something you learned about the same time as learning to walk. Others waited cross-legged on the floor. A few stood, making a shadowed back row beyond the lights.

  Room for him, of course. Pardell stepped forward, nodding thanks as they moved completely out of his way when for one of their own they’d simply turn a bit and make a joke of not stepping on toes. He knew where they wanted him. They’d left one crate waiting in the middle, under the brightest light. He sat on it, keeping his back straight as he’d been taught, resting his hands in plain sight on his thighs.

  Sammie still wore his apron—it was a busy time in his tavern and doubtless he was planning to be back there as soon as business was done here. Whatever business that might be, Pardell told himself, wishing he’d thought to at least run his fingers through his hair first and blinking grit from his eyes.

  “You all know Aaron Raner’s son,” Sammie introduced him briskly. “I’ve told you what went on last night, with the Earther Smith and Administrator Forester.”

  “Half of us were there, y’old fool!” came from the back row.

  “Surprised you remembered, Warren,” retorted another voice. There was a rill of laughter, quickly muted.

  Sammie chose to ignore the byplay. “This meeting’s been called to hear Aaron Pardell’s request to contact these Earthers hims
elf. He knows he needs your permission,” this slightly louder to be heard over a murmur of low voices—an unhappy murmur. “Tell them your reasons, Aaron,” he told Pardell. “Tell them what you want to do.”

  Their sudden attentive silence wasn’t comforting. Pardell was used to trying to fade into crowds, not being the center of all eyes. He struggled to find his voice, coughed once, then finally got to his feet. “Thank you, Sammie. Everyone. I didn’t think so many would—” care, was the word trembling on his lips. He changed it to “—take the time to hear my request.

  “What I’m asking is permission to find out why this Earther came looking for me, what she wants. A comm link would be enough. I’ve no need to meet her face-to-face.”

  Someone in the back called out: “Didn’t you see those dimples, Pardell?” and was shushed. But the comment broke some of the tension.

  Pardell couldn’t quite smile, but he felt a little more at ease. These were family, in the sense that most were Raner’s friends, even if they’d likely come more in curiosity about the Earther than interest in a lone ’sider. “I saw them, thanks. I’m more concerned with what she’s done with Hugh Malley.”

  There were, surprisingly enough, no ribald suggestions following that. Perhaps they shared his worry. Or had some respect for Roy Malley, Hugh’s uncle and sole blood relation away from Sol System. Pardell could see Roy out of the corner of his left eye, seated, as usual, closest to the door. The eldest Malley was a sour, silent man, prone to either dismiss or criticize anyone younger or who hadn’t stepped on dirt sometime in their past. Seeing Roy here—well, that meant Malley’s absence was something at least one other took seriously.

  “So it’s Malley you’re worrying about, is it? Here I thought you were planning to ask for a ticket home.”

  Pardell squinted but couldn’t see who’d asked the question. Didn’t matter—they all waited for his answer. His hopes? They wouldn’t serve him well here. Or Malley. He shrugged. “You know where my home is,” he said flatly, a bitter taste on his tongue. “Think this Earther plans to fix up the ’Mate?” Pardell paused and looked around at as many of them as he could see, finally resting his eyes on Sammie. “Sure, she talked about a job for me. We all know it was an Earther lie to draw me out. But why? Why me?”