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i
Pell: 5/28/52
Damon looked over the report on his desk. It was not the procedure he was used to, the martial law which existed in Q. It was rough and quick, and came across his desk with a trio of film cassettes and a stack of forms condemning five men to Adjustment.
He viewed the film, jaw clenched, the scenes of riot leaping across the large wall-screen, flinched at recorded murder. There was no question of the crime or the identification. There was, in the stack of cases which had flooded the LA office, no time for reconsiderations or niceties. They were dealing with a situation which could bring the whole station down, turn it all into the manner of thing that had come in with Hansford. Once life-support was threatened, once men were crazy enough to build bonfires on a station dock… or go for station police with kitchen knives… He pulled the files in question, keyed up printout on the authorization. There was no fairness in it, for they were the five the security police had been able to pull across the line, five out of many more as guilty. But they were five who would not kill again, nor threaten the frail stability of a station containing many thousands of lives. Total Adjustment, he wrote, which meant personality restruct. Processing would turn up injustice if he had done one. Questioning would determine innocence if any existed at this point. He felt foul in doing what he did, and frightened. Martial law was far too sudden. His father had agonized the night long in making one such decision after a board had passed on it.
A copy went to the public defender’s office. They would interview in person, lodge appeals if warranted. That procedure too was curtailed under present circumstance. It could be done only by producing evidence of error; and evidence was in Q, unreachable. Injustices were possible. They were condemning on the word of police under attack and the viewing of film which did not show what had gone before. There were five hundred reports of theft and major crimes on his desk when before there had been a Q, they might have dealt with two or three such complaints a year. Comp was flooded with data requests. There had been days of work done on id’s and papers for Q, and all of that was scrapped. Papers had been stolen and destroyed to such an extent in Q that no paper could be trusted to be accurate. Most of the claims to paper were probably fradulent, and loudest from the dishonest. Affidavits were worthless where threat ruled. People would swear to anything for safety. Even the ones who had come in good order were carrying paper they had no confirmation on: security confiscated cards and papers to save those from theft, and they were passing some few out where they were able to establish absolute id and find a station-side sponsor for them—but it was slow, compared to the rate of influx; and main station had no place to put them when they did. It was madness. They tried with all their resources to eliminate red tape and hurry; and it just got worse.
“Tom,” he keyed, a private note to Tom Ushant, in the defender’s office, “if you get a gut feeling that something’s wrong in any of these cases, appeal it back to me regardless of procedures. We’re putting through too many condemnations too fast; mistakes are possible. I don’t want to find one out after processing starts.”
He had not expected reply. It came through. “Damon, look at the Talley file if you want something to disturb your sleep. Russell’s used Adjustment.” “You mean he’s been through it?”
“Not therapy. I mean they used it questioning him.” “I’ll look at it.” He keyed out, hunted the access number, pulled the file in comp display. Page after page of their own interrogation data flicked past on the screen, most of it uninformative: ship name and number, duties… an armscomper might know the board in front of him and what he shot at, but little more. Memories of home then… family killed in a Fleet raid on Cyteen system mines; a brother, killed in service—reason enough to carry grudges if a man wanted to. Reared by his mother’s sister on Cyteen proper, a plantation of sorts… then a government school, deep-teaching for tech skills. Claimed no knowledge of higher politics, no resentments of the situation. The pages passed into actual transcript, uncondensed, disjointed ramblings… turned to excruciatingly personal things, the kind of intimate detail which surfaced in Adjustment, while a good deal of self was being laid bare, examined, sorted. Fear of abandonment, that deepest; fear of being a burden on his relatives, of deserving to be abandoned: he had a tangled kind of guilt about the loss of his family, had a pervading fear of it happening again, in any involvement with anyone. Loved the aunt. Took care of me, the thread of it ran at one point. Held me sometimes. Held me … loved me. He had not wanted to leave her home. But Union had its demands; he was supported by the state, and they took him, when he came of age. After that, it was state-run deep-teach, taped education, military training and no passes home. He had had letters from the aunt for a while; the uncle had never written. He believed the aunt was dead now, because the letters had stopped some years ago.
She would write, he believed. She loved me. But there were deeper fears that she had not; that she had really wanted the state money; and there was guilt, that he had not come home; that he had deserved this parting too. He had written to the uncle and gotten no answer. That had hurt him, though he and the uncle had never loved each other. Attitudes, beliefs… another wound, a broken friendship; an immature love affair, another case in which letters stopped coming, and that wound involved itself with the old ones. A later attachment, to a companion in service… uncomfortably broken off. He tended to commit himself to a desperate extent. Held me, he repeated, pathetic and secret loneliness. And more things. He began to find it. Terror of the dark. A vague, recurring nightmare: a white place. Interrogation. Drugs. Russell’s had used drugs, against all Company policy, against all human rights—had wanted badly something Talley simply did not have. They had gotten him from Mariner zone—from Mariner—transferred to Russell’s at the height of the panic. They had wanted information at that threatened station; had used Adjustment techniques in interrogation. Damon rested his mouth against his hand, watched the fragmentary record roll past, sick at his stomach. He felt ashamed at the discovery, naive. He had not questioned Russell’s reports, had not investigated them himself; had had other things on his hands, and staff to take care of that matter; had not—he admitted it—wanted to deal with the case any more than he absolutely had to. Talley had never called him. Had conned him. Had held himself together, already unstrung from previous treatment, to con Pell into doing the only thing that might put an end to his mental hell. Talley had looked him straight in the eye and arranged his own suicide.
The record rambled on… from interrogation under drugs to chaotic evacuation, with stationer mobs on one side and the military threatening him on the other. And what it had been, what had happened during that long voyage, a prisoner on one of Mazian’s ships… Norway … and Mallory.
He killed the screen, sat staring at the stack of papers, the unfinished condemnations. After a time he set himself to work again, his fingers numb as he signed the authorizations.
Men and women had boarded at Russell’s Star, folk who, like Talley, might have been sane before it all started. What had gotten off those ships, what existed over in Q… had been made, of folk no different than themselves. He simply pushed the destruct on lives like Talley’s, which were already gone. On men like himself, he thought, who had gone over civilized limits, in a place where civilization had stopped meaning anything.
Mazian’s Fleet—even they, even the likes of Mallory—had surely started differently.
“I’m not going to challenge,” Tom told him, over a lunch they both drank more than ate.
And after lunch he went to the small Adjustment facility over in red, and back into the treatment area. He saw Josh Talley. Talley did not see him, although perhaps it would not have mattered. Talley was resting at that hour, having eaten. The tray was still on the table, and he had eaten well. He sat on the bed with a curiously washed expression on his face, all the lines of strain erased. ii Angelo looked up at the aide, took the report of the ship outbound and scanned the manifest, looked up. “Why Hansford?”
The aide shifted his weight, distressed. “Sir?”
“Two dozen ships idle and Hansford has a commission to launch? Unfitted? And with what crew?”
“I think crew was hired off the inactive list, sir.”
Angelo leafed through the report. “Lukas Company. Viking-bound with a stripped ship and a dock-bound crew and Dayin Jacoby for a passenger? Get Jon Lukas on the com.”
“Sir,” the aide said, “the ship has already left dock.”
“I can see the time. Get me Jon Lukas.”
“Yes, sir.”
The aide went out. In moments the screen on the desk went bright and Jon Lukas came on. Angelo took a deep breath, calmed himself, angled the report toward the pickup. “See that?”
“You have a question?”
“What’s going on here?”
“We have holdings at Viking. Business to carry on. Shall we let our interest there sink into panic and disorder? They’re due some reassurance.” “With Hansford?”
“We had an opportunity to engage a ship at below standard. Economics, Angelo.”
“Is that all?”
“I’m not sure I take your meaning.”
“She carried nothing like full cargo. What kind of commodity do you plan to pick up at Viking?”
“We carry as much as we can with Hansford in her present condition. She’ll refit there, where facilities are less crowded. Refitting is the hire for which we got her use, if you must know. What she carries will pay the bill; she’ll lade full on return, critical supplies. I’d think you’d be pleased. Dayin is aboard to supervise and to administer some business at our Viking office.” “You’re not minded, are you, that this full lading include Lukas Company personnel… or others? You’re not going to sell passage off Viking. You’re not going to pull that office out.”
“Ah. That’s your concern.”
“That has to be my concern when ships go out of here with no sufficient cargo to justify their moving, headed for a population we can’t handle if it panics. I’m telling you, Jon, we can’t take chances on some loose talk or some single company pulling its favored employees out and starting a panic on another station. You hear me?”
“I did discuss the matter with Dayin. I assure you our mission is supportive.
Commerce has to continue, doesn’t it, or we strangle. And before us, Viking. Stations they rely on have collapsed. Let Viking start running into shortages and they may be here in our laps with no invitation. We’re taking them foodstuffs and chemicals; nothing Pell may run short of… and we have the only two usable holds on the ship fully loaded. Is every ship launched subject to this inquisition? I can provide you with the company books if you want to see them. I take this amiss. Whatever our private feelings, Angelo, I think Dayin deserves commendation for being willing to go out there under the circumstances. It doesn’t deserve a fanfare—we asked for none—but we would have expected something other than accusations. Do you want the books, Angelo?” “Hardly. Thank you, Jon, and my apologies. So long as Dayin and your ship’s master appreciate the hazards. Every ship that launches is going to be scrutinized, yes. Nothing personal.”
“Any questions you have, Angelo, so long as they’re equally applied. Thank you.” “Thank you, Jon.” Jon keyed out. Angelo did so, sat staring at the report, riffled through it, finally signed the authorization after the fact and dumped it into the Record tray; all the offices were running behind. Everyone. They were using too many man-hours and too much comp time on the Q processing. “Sir.” It was his secretary, Mills. “Your son, sir.”
He keyed acceptance of a call, looked up in some surprise as the door opened instead and Damon walked in. “I brought the processing reports myself,” Damon said. He sat down, leaned on the desk with both arms. Damon’s eyes looked as tired as he himself felt, which was considerable. “I’ve processed five men into Adjustment this morning.”
“Five men isn’t a tragedy,” Angelo said wearily. “I’ve got a lottery process set up for comp to pick who goes and stays on station. I’ve got another storm on Downbelow that’s flooded the mill again, and they’ve just found the victims from the last washout. I’ve got ships pulling at the tether now that the panic’s worn down, one that’s just slipped, two more to go tomorrow. If rumor has it that Mazian’s chosen Pell for a refuge, where does that leave the remaining stations? What when they panic and head here by the shipload? And how do we know that someone isn’t out there right now, selling passage to more frightened people? Our life-support won’t take much more.” He gestured loosely toward a stack of documents. “We’re going to militarize what freighters we can, by some pretty strong financial coercion.”
“To fire on refugee ships?”
“If ships come in that we can’t handle—yes. I’d like to talk to Elene sometime today; she’d be the one to make the initial approach to the merchanters. I can’t muster sympathy for five rioters today. Forgive me.” His voice cracked. Damon reached across the desk, caught his wrist and pressed it, let it go again. “Emilio needs help down there?”
“He says not. The mill’s a shambles. Mud everywhere.”
They find all of them dead?“
He nodded. “Last night. Bennett Jacint and Ty Brown; Wes Kyle yesterday noon… this long, to hunt the banks and the reeds. Emilio and Miliko say morale is all right, considering. The Downers are building dikes. More of them have been anxious for human trade; I’ve ordered more let into base and I’ve authorized some of the trained ones into maintenance up here: their life-support is in good shape, and it frees up some techs we can upgrade. I’m shuttling down every human volunteer who’ll go, and that means even trained dock hands; they can handle construction equipment. Or they can learn. It’s a new age. A tighter one.” He pressed his lips together, sucked in a long breath. “Have you and Elene thought of Earth?”
“Sir?”
“You, your brother, Elene and Miliko—think about it, will you?”
“No,” Damon said. “Pull out and run? You think that’s what it’s coming to?” “Figure the odds, Damon. We didn’t get help from Earth, just observers. They’re figuring on cutting their losses, not sending us reinforcements or ships. No. We’re just settling lower and lower. Mazian can’t hold forever. The shipyards at Mariner… were vital. It’s Viking soon; and whatever else Union reaches out to take. Union’s cutting the Fleet off from supply; Earth already has. We’re out of everything but room to run.”
“The Hinder Stars—you know there’s some talk about reopening one of those stations—” “A dream. We’d never have the chance. If the Fleet goes… Union would make it a target, same as us, just as quickly. And selfishly, completely selfishly, I’d like to see my children out of here.”
Damon’s face was very white. “No. Absolutely no.” “Don’t be noble. I’d rather your safety than your help. Konstantins won’t fare well in years to come. It’s mindwipe if they take us. You worry about your criminals; consider yourself and Elene. That’s Union’s solution… puppets in the offices; lab-born populations to fill up the world… they’ll plow up Downbelow and build. Heaven help the Downers, I’d cooperate with them… so would you… to keep Pell safe from the worst excesses; but they won’t have things that easy way. And I don’t want to see you in their hands. We’re targets. I’ve lived all my life in that condition. Surely it’s not asking too much that I do one selfish thing—that I save my sons.”
“What did Emilio say?”
“Emilio and I are still discussing it.”
“He told you no. Well, so do I.”
“Your mother will have a word with you.”
“Are you sending her?”
Angelo frowned. “You know that’s not possible.”
“So. I know that. And I’m not going, and I don’t think Emilio will choose to either. My blessing to him if he does, but I’m not.”
“Then you don’t know anything,” Angelo said shortly. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“We won’t,” Damon said. “If we pulled out, panic would set in here. You know that. You know how it would look, besides that I won’t do it in the first place.”
It was true; he knew that it was.
“No,” Damon said again, and laid his hand atop his father’s, rose and left. Angelo sat, looked toward the wall, toward the portraits which stood on the shelf, a succession of tridee figures… Alicia before her accident; young Alicia and himself; a succession of Damons and Emilios from infancy to manhood, to wives and hopes of grandchildren. He looked at all the figures assembled there, at all the gathered ages of them, and reckoned that the good days hereafter would be fewer.
After a fashion he was angry with his boys; and after another… proud. He had brought them up what they were.
Emilio, he wrote to the succession of images, and the son on Downbelow, your brother sends his love. Send me what skilled Downers you can spare. I’m sending you a thousand volunteers from the station; go ahead with the new base if they have to backpack equipment in. Appeal to the Downers for help, trade for native foodstuffs. All love.
And to security: Process out the assuredly nonviolent. We’re going to shift them to Downbelow as volunteers.
He reckoned, even as he did it, where that led; the worst would stay on station, next the heart and brain of Pell. Transfer the outlaws down and keep the heel on them; some kept urging it. But fragile agreements with the natives, fragile self-respect for the techs who had been persuaded to go down there in the mud and the primitive conditions… it could not be turned into a penal colony. It was life. It was the body of Pell, and he refused to violate it, to ruin all the dreams they had had for its future.
There were dark hours when he thought of arranging an accident in which all of Q might decompress. It was an unspeakable idea, a madman’s solution, to kill thousands of innocent along with the undesirables… to take in these shiploads one after the other, and have accident after accident, keeping Pell free of the burden, keeping Pell what it was. Damon lost sleep over five men. He had begun to meditate on utter horror.
For that reason too he wanted his sons gone from Pell. He thought sometimes that he might actually be capable of applying the measures some urged, that it was weakness that prevented him, that he was endangering what was good and whole to save a polluted rabble, out of which reports of rape and murder came daily. Then he considered where it led, and what kind of life they all faced when they had made a police state of Pell, and recoiled from it with all the convictions Pell had ever had.
“Sir,” a voice cut in, with the sharper tone of transmissions from central.
“Sir, we have inbound traffic.”
“Give it here,” he said, and swallowed heavily as the schematic reached his screen. Nine of them. “Who are they?”
“The carrier Atlantic,” the voice of central returned. “Sir, they have eight freighters in convoy. They ask to dock. They advise of dangerous conditions aboard.”
“Denied,” Angelo said. “Not till we get an understanding.” They could not take so many; could not; not another lot like Mallory’s. His heart sped, hurting him. “Get me Kreshov on Atlantic. Get me contact.”
Contact was refused from the other end. The warship would do as it pleased.
There was nothing they could do to prevent it.
The convoy moved in, silent, ominous with the load it bore, and he reached for the alert for security.
iii
Downbelow: main base; 5/28/52
The rain still came down, the thunder dying. Tam-utsa-pi-tan watched the humans come and go, arms locked about her knees, her bare feet sunk in mire, the water trickling slowly off her fur. Much that humans did made no sense; much that humans made was of no visible use, perhaps for the gods, perhaps that they were mad; but graves… this sad thing the hisa understood. Tears, shed behind masks, the hisa understood. She watched, rocking slightly, until the last humans had gone, leaving only the mud and the rain in this place where humans laid their dead.
And in due time she gathered herself to her feet and walked to the place of cylinders and graves, her bare toes squelching in the mud. They had put the earth over Bennett Jacint and the two others. The rain made of the place one large lake, but she had watched; she knew nothing of the marks humans made for signs to themselves, but she knew the one.
She carried a tall stick with her, which Old One had made. She came naked in the rain, but for the beads and the skins which she bore on a string about her shoulder. She stopped above the grave, took the stick in both her hands and drove it hard into the soft mud; the spirit-face she slanted so that it looked up as much as possible, and about its projections she hung the beads and the skins, arranging them with care, despite the rain which sheeted down. Steps sounded near her in the puddles, the hiss of human breath. She spun and leapt aside, appalled that a human had surprised her ears, and stared into a breather-masked face.
“What are you doing?” the man demanded.
She straightened, wiped her muddy hands on her thighs. To be naked thus embarrassed her, for it upset humans. She had no answer for a human. He looked at the spirit-stick, at the grave offerings… at her. What she could see of his face seemed less angry than his voice had promised. “Bennett?” the man asked of her.
She bobbed a yes, distressed still. Tears filled her eyes, to hear the name, but the rain washed them away. Anger… that too she felt, that Bennett should die and not others.
“I’m Emilio Konstantin,” he said, and she stood straight at once, relaxed out of her fight-flight tenseness. “Thank you for Bennett Jacint; he would thank you.” “Konstantin-man.” She amended all her manner and touched him, this very tall one of a tall kind. “Love Bennett-man, all love Bennett-man. Good man. Say he friend. All Downers are sad.” He put a hand on her shoulder, this tall Konstantin-man, and she turned and put her arm about him and her head against his chest, hugged him solemnly, about the wet, awful-feeling yellow clothes. “Good Bennett make Lukas mad. Good friend for Downers. Too bad he gone. Too, too bad, Konstantin-man.”
“I’ve heard,” he said. “I’ve heard how it was here.”
“Konstantin-man good friend.” She lifted her face at his touch, looked fearlessly into the strange mask which made him very horrible to see. “Love good mans. Downers work hard, work hard, hard for Konstantin. Give you gifts. Go no more away.”
She meant it. They had learned how Lukases were. It was said in all the camp that they should do good for the Konstantins, who had always been the best humans, gift-bringers more than the hisa could give. “What’s your name?” he asked, stroking her cheek. “What do we call you?” She grinned suddenly, warm in his kindness, stroked her own sleek hide, which was her vanity, wet as it was now. “Humans call me Satin,” she said, and laughed, for her true name was her own, a hisa thing, but Bennett had given her this, for her vanity, this and a bright bit of red cloth, which she had worn to rags and still treasured among her spirit-gifts.
“Will you walk back with me?” he asked, meaning to the human camp. “I’d like to talk with you.”
She was tempted, for this meant favor. And then she sadly thought of duty and pulled away, folded her arms, dejected at the loss of love. “I sit,” she said. “With Bennett.”
“Make he spirit look at the sky,” she said, showing the spirit-stick, explaining a thing the hisa did not explain. “Look at he home.” “Come tomorrow,” he said. “I need to talk to the hisa.” She tilted back her head, looked at him in startlement. Few humans called them what they were. It was strange to hear it. “Bring others?” “All the high ones if they will come. We need hisa Up-above, good hands, good work. We need trade Downbelow, place for more men.” She extended her hand toward the hills and the open plain, which went on forever.
“There is place.”
“But the high ones would have to say.”
She laughed. “Say spirit-things. I-Satin give this to Konstantin-man. All ours.
I give, you take. All trade, much good things; all happy.” “Come tomorrow,” he said, and walked away, a tall strange figure in the slanting rain. Satin-Tam-utsa-pitan sat down on her heels with the rain beating upon her bowed back and pouring over her body, and regarded the grave, with the rain making pocked puddles above it.
She waited. Eventually others came, less accustomed to men. Dalut-hos-me was one such, who did not share her optimism of them; but even he had loved Bennett.
There were men and men. This much the hisa had learned
She leaned against Dalut-hos-me, Sun-shining-through-clouds, in the dark evening of their long watch, and by this gesture pleased him. He had begun laying gifts before her mat in this winter season, hoping for spring. “They want hisa Upabove,” she said. “I want to see the Upabove. I want this.”
She had always wanted it, from the time that she had heard Bennett talk of it.
From this place came Konstantins (and Lukases, but she dismissed that thought). She reckoned it as bright and full of gifts and good things as all the ships which came down from it, bringing them goods and good ideas. Bennett had told them of a great metal place holding out arms to the Sun, to drink his power, where ships vaster than they had ever imagined came and went like giants. All things flowed to this place and from it; and Bennett had gone away now, making a Time in her life under the Sun. It was a manner of pilgrimage, this journey she desired to mark this Time, like going to the images of the plain, like the sleep-night in the shadow of the images.
They had given humans images for the Upabove too, to watch there. It was fit, to call it pilgrimage. And the Time regarded Bennett, who came from that journey. “Why do you tell me?” Dalut-hos-me asked.
“My spring will be there, on Upabove.”
He nestled closer. She could feel his heat. His arm went about her. “I will go,” he said.
It was cruel, but the desire was on her for her first traveling; and his was on him, for her, would grow, as gray winter passed and they began to think toward spring, toward warm winds and the breaking of the clouds. And Bennett, cold in the ground, would have laughed his strange human laughter and bidden them be happy.
So always the hisa wandered, of springs, and the nesting.
iv
Pell: sector blue five: 5/28/52
It was frozen dinner again. Neither of them had gotten in till late, numb with the stresses of the day—more refugees, more chaos. Damon ate, looked up finally realizing his self-absorbed silence, found Elene sunk in one of her own… a habit, lately, between them. He was disturbed to think of that, and reached across the table to lay his hand on hers, which rested beside her plate. Her hand turned, curled up to weave with his. She looked as tired as he. She had been working too long hours—more than today. It was a remedy of sorts… not to think. She never spoke of Estelle. She did not speak much at all. Perhaps, he thought, she was so much at work there was little to say. “I saw Talley today,” he said hoarsely, seeking to fill the silence, to distract her, however grim the topic. “He seemed… quiet. No pain. No pain at all.” Her hand tightened. “Then you did right by him after all, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think there is a way to know.”
“He asked.”
“He asked,” he echoed.
“You did all you could to be right. That’s all you can do.”
“I love you.”
She smiled. Her lips trembled until they could no longer hold the smile.
“Elene?”
She drew back her hand. “Do you think we’re going to hold Pell?”
“Are you afraid not?”
“I’m afraid you don’t believe it.”
“What kind of reasoning is that?”
“Things you won’t discuss with me.”
“Don’t give me riddles. I’m not good at them. I never was.”
“I want a child. I’m not on the treatment now. I think you still are.” Heat rose to his face. For half a heartbeat he thought of lying. “I am. I didn’t think it was time to discuss it. Not yet.”
She pressed her lips tightly together, distraught.
“I don’t know what you want,” he said. “I don’t know. If Elene Quen wants a baby, all right. Ask. It’s all right. Anything is. But I’d hoped it would be for reasons I’d know.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’ve done a lot of thinking. I’ve watched you. But you haven’t done any of it aloud. What do you want? What do I do? Get you pregnant and let you go? I’d help you if I knew how. What do I say?”
“I don’t want to fight. I don’t want a fight. I told you what I want.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I don’t want to wait anymore.” Her brow furrowed. For the first time in days he had the feeling of contact with her eyes. Of Elene, as she was. Of something gentle. “You care,” she said. “I see that.”
“Sometimes I know I don’t hear all you say.”
“On ship… it’s my business, having a child or not. Ship family is closer in some things and further apart in others. But you with your own family… I understand that. I respect it.”
“Your home too. It’s yours.”
She managed the faintest of smiles, an offering, perhaps. “So what do you say to it?”
Offices of station planning were giving out dire warnings, advice otherwise, pleadings otherwise. It was not only the establishment of Q. There was the war, getting nearer. All rules applied to Konstantins first. He simply nodded. “So we’re through waiting.”
It was like a shadow lifting. Estelle’s ghost fled the place, the small apartment they had drawn in blue five, which was smaller, into which their furnishings did not fit, where everything was out of order. It was all at once home, the hall with the dishes stowed in the clothing lockers and the living room which was bedroom by night, with boxes lashed in the corner, Downer wickerwork, with what should have gone into the hall lockers. They lay in the bed that was the daytime couch. And she talked, lying in his arms, for the first time in weeks talked, late into the night, a flow of memories she had never shared with him, in all their being together. He tried to reckon what she had lost in Estelle: her ship; she still called it that. Brotherhood, kinship. Merchanter morals, the stationer proverb ran; but he could not see Elene among the others, like them, rowdy merchanters offship for a dockside binge and a sleepover with anyone willing. Could never believe that. “Believe it,” she said, her breath stirring against his shoulder. “That’s the way we live. What do you want instead? Inbreeding? They were my cousins on that ship.”
“You were different,” he insisted. He remembered her as he had first seen her, in his office on a matter involving a cousin’s troubles… always quieter than the others. A conversation, a re-meeting; another; a second voyage… and Pell again. She had never gone bar-haunting with her cousins, had not made the merchanter hangouts; had come to him, had spent those days on station with him. Failed to board again. Merchanters rarely married. Elene had. “No,” she said. “You were different.”
“You’d take anyone’s baby?” The thought troubled him. Some things he had never asked Elene because he thought he knew. And Elene had never talked that way. He began, belatedly, to revise all he thought he knew; to be hurt, and to fight that. She was Elene; that quantity he still believed in, trusted. “Where else could we get them?” she asked, making strange, clear sense. “We love them, do you think not? They belong to the whole ship. Only now there aren’t any.” She could talk of that suddenly. He felt the tension ebb, a sigh against him. “They’re all gone.”
“You called Elt Quen your father; Tia James your mother. Was it that way?” “He was. She knew.” And a moment later. “She left a station to go with him. Not many will.”
She had never asked him to. That thought had never clearly occurred to him. Ask a Konstantin to leave Pell… he asked himself if he would have, and felt a deep unease. I would have, he insisted. I might have. “It would be hard,” he admitted aloud. “It was hard for you.”
She nodded, a movement against his arm.
“Are you sorry, Elene?”
A small shake of her head.
“It’s late to talk about things like this,” he said. “I wish we had. I wish we’d known enough to talk to each other. So many things we didn’t know.” “It bother you?”
He hugged her against him, kissed her through a veil of hair, brushed it aside. He thought for a moment of saying no, decided then to say nothing. “You’ve seen Pell. You realize I’ve never set foot on a ship bigger than a shuttle? Never been out from this station? Some things I don’t know how to look at, or even how to imagine the question. You understand me?”
“Some things I don’t know how to ask you either.”
“What would you ask for?”
“I just did.”
“I don’t know how to say yes or no. Elene, I don’t know if I could have left Pell. I love you, but I don’t know that I could have done that—after so short a time. And that bothers me. That bothers me, if it’s something in me that it never occurred to me… that I spent all my planning trying to think how to make you happy on Pell…” “Easier for me to stay a time… than for a Konstantin to uproot himself from Pell; pausing’s easy, we do it all the time. Only losing Estelle I never planned. Like what’s out there, you never planned. You’ve answered me.” “How did I answer you?”
“By what it is that bothers you.”
That puzzled him. We do it all the time. That frightened him. But she talked more, lying against him, about more than things… deep feelings; the way childhood was for a merchanter; the first time she had set foot on a station, aged twelve and frightened by rude stationers who assumed any merchanter was fair game. How a cousin had died on Mariner years back, knifed in a stationer quarrel, not even comprehending a stationer’s jealousy that had killed him. And an incredible thing… that in the loss of her ship, Elene’s pride had suffered; pride … the idea set him back, so that for some time he lay staring at the dark ceiling, thinking about it.
The name was diminished… a possession like the ship. Someone had diminished it and too anonymously to give her an enemy to get it back from. For a moment he thought of Mallory, the hard arrogance of an elite breed, the aristocracy of privilege. Sealed worlds and a law unto itself, where no one had property, and everyone had it: the ship and all who belonged to it. Merchanters who would spit in a dockmaster’s eye made grumbling retreat when a Mallory or a Quen ordered it. She felt grief at losing Estelle. That had to be. But shame too… that she had not been there when it mattered. That Pell had set her in the dockside offices where she could use that reputation the Quens had; but now there was nothing at her back, nothing but the reputation she had not been there to pay for. A dead name. A dead ship. Maybe she detected pity from other merchanters. That would be bitterest of all.
One thing she had asked of him. He had cheated her of it without discussing it.
Without seeing.
“The first child,” he murmured, turning his head on the pillow to look at her, “goes by Quen. You hear me, Elene? Pell has Konstantins enough. My father may sulk; but he’ll understand. My mother will. I think it’s important it be that way.”
She began to cry, as she had never cried in his presence, not without resisting it. She put her arms about him and stayed there, till morning.