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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.
“No more,” she pleaded when she had caught them on the metal steps. “No more, let us go back. You are lost.”
Bigfellow would not heed. Panting, he edged higher; she tugged at Bluetooth and he hissed in frustration and went after Bigfellow. Madness. Madness had settled on them. “You show me nothing!” she wailed. She bounced in despair and hastened after, panting, trying to reason with them, who had passed beyond reasoning. They passed panels and doors where they might have gotten out into the open; all these they rejected… but at last they came to a place where they were faced with choices, where a light burned blue above a door; where the ladders extended everywhere, up and down and in three other directions. “Here,” Bigfellow said after a little hesitation, feeling of the buttons at the lighted door. “Here is a way.”
“No,” Satin moaned. “No,” Bluetooth objected too, perhaps recovering his senses; but Bigfellow pushed the first button and slipped into the air chamber when the door opened. “Come back,” Bluetooth exclaimed, and they scrambled to stop him, who was mad with the rivalry, who did this for her, and for nothing else. They went in after him; the door closed at their backs. The second door opened under Bigfellow’s hand as they caught up with him, and there was light—it blinded. And suddenly guns fired and Bigfellow went down in the doorway with a smell of burning. He cried and shrieked horribly, and Bluetooth whirled and hit the other door button, his hard arm carrying her with him as the door opened and wind surged about them. Man-voices bellowed over a sudden wail of alarms, silenced as the door closed. They hit the ladders and ran, ran blindly down and through the darkways, deep, deep into the dark. They dragged their breathers down, but the air smelt wrong. They finally stopped their running, sweating and shivering. Bluetooth rocked and moaned with pain in the dark, and Satin searched him for a wound, found his fingers locked on his upper arm. She licked the sore place, which was hot and burned, soothed it as best she could, hugged him and tried to still the rage which had him trembling. They were lost, both lost in the darkways; and Bigfellow was horribly dead, and Bluetooth sat and hissed with pain and anger, muscles hard and quivering. But in a moment he shook himself, lipped at her cheek, shivered as she put her arms about him. “O let us go home,” he whispered. “O let us go home, Tam-utsa-pitan, and no more see humans. No machines, no fields, no man-work, only hisa always and always. Let us go home.”
She said nothing. The disaster was hers, for she had suggested, and Bigfellow had wanted her and Bluetooth had risen to the challenge of his daring, as if they had been in the high hills. Her disaster, her doing. Now Bluetooth himself spoke of leaving her dream, unwilling to follow her further. Tears filled her eyes, doubts for herself, loneliness, that she had walked too far. Now they were in worse trouble, for to find themselves they must go up again to the man-places and open a door and beg help, and they had seen the result of that. They held each other and did not stir from where they were. ii Mallory looked tired, a hollowness to her eyes as she paced the aisles of command central, countless circuits of it, while her troops stood guard. Damon watched her, himself leaning against a counter, hungry and tired himself, but it was, he reckoned, nothing to what the Fleet personnel must be feeling, having gone through jump, passing from that to this tedious police duty; workers, never relieved at their posts, looked haggard, muttered timid complaints… but there was no other shift for these troops.
“Are you going to stay here all night?” he asked her.
She turned a cold look on him, said nothing, walked on. He had watched her for some hours, a foreboding presence in the center. She had a way of moving that made no noise, no swagger, no, but it was, perhaps, the unconscious assumption that anyone in her way would move. They did. Any tech who had to get up did so only when Mallory was patroling some other aisle. She had never made a threat—spoke seldom, mostly to the troopers, about what, only she and they knew. She was even, occasionally and before the hours wore on, pleasant. But there was no question the threat was there. Most residents on-station had never seen close up the kind of gear that surrounded Mallory and her troops; had never touched a gun with their own hands, would be hard put to describe what they saw. He noted three different models in this small selection alone, light pistol; long-barreled ones; heavy rifles, all black plastics and ominous symmetries; armor, to diffuse the burn of such weapons… that gave the troops the same deadly machined look as the rest of the gear, no longer human. It was impossible to relax with such among them.
A tech rose at the far side of the room, looked over her shoulder as if to see
if any of the guns had moved… walked down the aisle as if it were mined. Gave
him a printed message, retreated at once. Damon held the message in his hand
unread, conscious of Mallory’s interest. She had stopped pacing. He found no way
to avoid attention, unfolded the paper and read it
psscia/ pacpakonstant indamon/ au1-1-1-1-1/1030/
10/4/52/2136md/0936a/start/talley papers confiscated and talley arrested by fleet order/ sec office given choice local detention or military intervention/talley confined this post/ talley request message sent konstantin family/ herein complied/request instruction/request policy clarification/ saundersredoneseccom/ enditenditendit.
He looked up, pulse racing, caught between relief it was nothing worse and distress for what it was. Mallory was looking straight at him, a curious, challenging interest on her face. She walked over to him. He considered an outright lie, hoping she would not insist on the message and make an issue of it. He considered what he knew of her and reckoned otherwise. “There’s a friend of mine in trouble,” he said. “I need to leave and go see about him.”
“Trouble with us?”
He considered the lie a second time. “Something like.”
She held out her hand. He did not offer the message.
“Perhaps I can help.” Her eyes were cold and her hand stayed extended, palm up. “Do we assume,” she asked when it was not forthcoming, “that this is something embarrassing to station? Or do we make further assumptions?” He handed over the paper, while there were choices at all. She scanned it, seemed perplexed for a moment, and gradually her face changed. “Talley,” she said. “Josh Talley?”
He nodded, and she pursed her lips.
“A friend of the Konstantins. How times do change.”
“He’s Adjusted.”
The eyes flickered.
“His own request,” he said. “What else did Russell’s leave him?” She kept looking at him, and he wished that there were somewhere else to look, and somewhere else to be. Adjustment spilled things. It thrust Pell and her into an intimacy he did not want… which too clearly she did not want—those records on station.
“How is he?” she asked.
He found even the asking bizarrely ugly, and simply stared. “Friendship,” she said. “Friendship, and from such opposite poles. Or is it patronage? He asked for Adjustment, and you gave it to him; finished what Russell’s started… I detect offended sensibilities, do I not?” “We’re not Russell’s.”
A smile to which the eyes gave the lie. “How bright a world, Mr. Konstantin, where there’s still such outrage. And where Q exists… on the same station. Within arm’s reach one of the other, and administered by your office. Or maybe Q itself is misplaced compassion. I suspect you must have created that hell by half-measures. By exercise of your sensibilities. Your private object of outrage, this Unioner? Your apology to morality… or your statement on the war, Mr. Konstantin?”
“I want him out of detention. I want his papers back. He has no politics any longer.”
No one talked to Mallory that way; plainly no one did. After a long moment she broke contact with his eyes, a dismissal, nodded slowly. “You’re accountable?” “I make myself accountable.”
“On that understanding… No. No, Mr. Konstantin, you don’t go. You don’t need to go in person. I’ll clear him through Fleet channels, send him home… on your assurance things are as you say.”
“You can see the records if you want.”
“I’m sure they’d contain nothing of news.” She waved a hand, a signal to someone behind him, a tiny move. His spine crawled with the sudden realization there had been a gun at his back. She walked over to the com console, leaned over the tech and keyed through to the Fleet channel. “This is Mallory. Release the papers and person of Joshua Talley, in station detention. Relay to appropriate authorities, Fleet and station. Over.”
The acknowledgment came back, impersonal and uninterested. “May I,” Damon asked her, “may I send a call to him? He’ll need some clear instruction…” “Sir,” one of the techs nearby said, facing about in her place. “Sir—” He glanced distractedly at the anguished face.
“A Downer’s been shot, sir, in green four.”
The breath went out of him. For a moment his mind refused to work.
“He’s dead, sir.”
He shook his head, sick at his stomach, turned and glared at Mallory. “They don’t hurt anything. No Downer ever lifted a hand to a human except to escape, in panic. Ever.”
Mallory shrugged. “Past mending now, Mr. Konstantin. Get on about your own business. Someone slipped and fired; there was a no-shoot order. It’s our business, not yours. Our own people will take care of it.” “They’re people, captain.”
“We’ve shot people too,” Mallory said, unruffled. “Get on about your business, I say. This matter is under martial law, and I’ll settle it.” He stood still. Everywhere in the center faces were turned toward them, and the boards flashed with neglected lights. “Get to work,” he ordered them sharply, and backs turned at once. “Get a station medic to that area.” “You try my patience,” Mallory said.
“They are our citizens.”
“Your citizenship is broad, Mr. Konstantin.”
“I’m telling you—they’re terrified of violence. If you want chaos on this station, captain, panic the Downers.”
She considered the point, nodded finally, without rancor. “If you can mend the situation, Mr. Konstantin, see to it. And go where you choose.” Just that. Go. He started away, glanced back with sudden dread of Mallory, who could cast away a public argument. He had lost, had let anger get the better of him… and go, she said, as if her pride were nothing. He left, with the disturbed feeling that he had done something desperately dangerous.
“Clear Damon Konstantin for passage,” Mallory’s voice thundered through the corridors, and troops who had made to challenge him did not. iii He ran, leaving the lift on green four, his id and card in hand, flashed both at a zealous trooper who tried to bar his way, and won through. Troops were gathered ahead, blocking off all view. He ran up and, roughly seized, showed the card and pushed his way past the troopers.
“Damon.” He heard Elene’s voice before he saw her, swung about and met her arms in the press of armored troops, hugged her in relief.
“It’s one of the temporaries,” she said, “a male named Bigfellow. Dead.” “Get out of here,” he wished her, not trusting the troops’ good sense. He looked beyond her. There was a good deal of blood on the floor at the access doorway. They had gotten the dead Downer into a bodybag and onto a stretcher for removal.
Elene, her arm linked with his, showed no inclination to leave. “Doors got him,” she said. “But the shot may have killed him first.—Lt. Vanars, off India” she murmured, for a young officer urged his way toward them. “In charge of this unit.”
“What happened?” Damon asked the lieutenant. “What happened here?”
“Mr. Konstantin? A regrettable error. The Downer appeared unexpectedly.” “This is Pell, lieutenant, full of civilians. The station will want a full report on this.”
“For the safety of your station, Mr. Konstantin, I’d urge you to review your security procedures. Your workers blew the lock. That cut the Downer in half, when the emergency seal went; someone had that inner door open out of sequence. How far do these tunnels go? Everywhere?”
“They’ve run,” Elene said quickly, “down, away from here. They’re probably temporaries and they don’t know the tunnels well. And they’re not about to come out again with the threat of guns out here. They’ll hide down there till they die.”
“Order them out,” Vanars said.
“You don’t understand the Downers,” Damon said.
“Get them all out of the tunnels. Seal them up.”
“Pell’s maintenance is in those tunnels, lieutenant; and our Downer workers live in that network, with their own atmospheric system. The tunnels can’t shut down. I’m going in there,” he said to Elene. “They may answer.”
She bit her lip. “I’m staying right here,” she said, “till you come out.” There were objections he would have made. It was not the place for them. He shot a look at Vanars. “It may take me a while. Downers aren’t a negotiable matter on Pell. They’re frightened, and they can get into places they can die in and cause us real trouble. If I get into trouble, contact station authorites, don’t send troops in; we can deal with them. If another gun goes off in their vicinity we may not have a maintenance system, sir. Our life-support and theirs are linked, a system in precise balance.”
Vanars said nothing. Did not react. It was impossible to know if reason meant anything with him or the rest of them. He squeezed Elene’s hand, drew away, and shouldered his way past the armored troops, tried to avoid stepping in a dark pool of blood as he carded open the lock.
The door opened, closed behind him, started its cycle automatically. He reached for the human breathing gear which always hung on the right of entry of such chambers, slipped it on before the effects became severe. His breath took on the suck and hiss he associated subconsciously with Downer presence, loud in the metal chamber. He opened the inner door and the echo came back out of far depths. He had a dim blue light where he was, but he paused to unlock the compartment by the door and take out a lamp. The powerful beam cut through the dark into a web of steel.
“Downers!” he called, his voice echoing hollowly down and down. He felt the cold as he walked through the door and let it seal, stood on the joining platform from which the ladders ran in all directions. “Downers! It’s Damon Konstantin! Do you hear me? Call out if you hear me.”
The echoes died very slowly, depth upon depth.
“Downers?”
A moan drifted up out of the dark, an echoing keening which stirred the hairs at his nape. Anger?
He went further, gripping the light with one hand, the thin rail with the other, stopped and listened. “Downers?”
Something moved in the dark depths. Soft footfalls rang very softly on metal far below. “Konstantin?” an alien voice lisped. “Konstantin-man?” “It’s Damon Konstantin,” he called again. “Please come up. No guns. It’s safe.” He stayed still, feeling the slight tremor in the scaffolding as feet trod it far down in the dark. He heard breathing, and his eyes caught the light far below, shimmer like illusion. There was an impression of fur, and another glimmer of eyes, ascending by stages. He stayed very still, one man, and fragile in these dark places. They were not dangerous… but no one had attacked them with guns before.
They came, more distinct in his hand-held light, bedraggled and struggling up the last stage, panting, the one hurt and the other wide-eyed with terror. “Konstantin-man,” that one said with a quavering lisp. “Help, help, help.” They held out hands, pleading. He set the lamp down on the grating on which he stood and accepted them as children, touched the male very carefully, for the poor fellow was bleeding all down his arm and drew back his lips in a fretful snarl.
“All right,” he assured them. “You’re safe, you’re safe now. I’ll get you out.” “Scared, Konstantin-man.” The female stroked her mate’s shoulder and looked from one to the other of them with round, shadowed eyes. “All hide gone find no path.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“More, more, more we, dead hungry, dead ’fraid. Please help we.”
“Call them.”
She touched the male, a gesture eloquent of worry. The male chattered something to her, pushed at her, and she reached and touched at Damon. “I’ll wait,” Damon assured her. “I wait here. All safe.” “Love you,” she said in a breath, and scrambled back down with a ringing of the metal steps, lost at once in the dark. In a moment more, shrieks and trills sounded out into the depths until the echoes redoubled; voices woke out of other places, male and female, deep and high, until all the depths and dark went mad. A shriek erupted by him: the male shouted something down. They came in the silence which followed, ringings of steps on the metal deep below, callings occasionally echoing sharply and moanings rising which stirred the scalp. The female came running back to stroke her mate’s shoulder and to touch his hands. “I Satin, I call. Make he all right, Konstantin-man.” “They have to come through the lock few at a time, you understand, careful of the lock.”
“I know lock,” she said. “I careful. Go, go, I bring they.” She was already hastening down again. Damon put his arm about the male and brought him into the lock, dragged his mask up for him, for the fellow was muzzy with shock, snarling with pain but making no attempt to snap or strike. The next door opened, on the flare of light and armed men, and the Downer started within the circle of his arm, snarled and spat, yielded to a reassuring hug. Elene was there, breaking through the troops, holding her hands out to help.
“Get the troops back,” Damon snapped, light-blinded and unable to distinguish Vanars. “Out of the way. Quit waving guns at them.” He urged the Downer to sit on the floor by the wall, and Elene was ordering the medic over. “Back these troops out of here!” Damon said again. “Leave us to it!” An order was passed. To his great relief the India troopers began to pull back, and the Downer sat still, with some persuasion yielded his injured arm to examination as the medic knelt down with his kit. Damon tugged his own mask down, stifling in it, squeezed Elene’s hand as she bent down beside him. The air stank of sweating, frightened Downer, a pungent muskiness. “Name’s Bluetooth,” the medic said, checking the tag. He made a few swift notes and began gently to treat the injury. “Burn and hemorrhage. Minor, except for shock.”
“Drink,” Bluetooth pleaded, and reached for the kit. The medic rescued it and quietly promised him water when they could find some. The lock opened, yielded up a near dozen Downers. Damon stood up, reading panic in their looks. “I’m Konstantin,” he said at once, for the name carried importance with the Downers. He met them with outstretched hands, suffered himself to be hugged by sweating, shock-hazed Downers, gentle enfoldings of powerful furred arms. Elene welcomed them likewise, and in a moment another lockful had spilled out, making a knot which filled the corridor and outnumbered the troops who stood in the end of the hall. The Downers cast anxious looks in that direction, but kept together. Another lockful, and Bluetooth’s mate was with them, chattering anxiously until she had found him. Vanars came among them, quite without swagger in this brown-furred flood.
“You’re requested to get them to a secure area as quickly as possible,” Vanars said.
“Use your com and clear us passage via the emergency ramps via four through nine to the docks,” Damon said. “Their habitat is accessible from there; we’ll escort them back. That’s quickest and safest for all concerned.” He did not wait for Vanars’s comment in the matter, but waved an arm at the Downers. “Come,” he said, and they fell silent and began to move. Bluetooth, his arm done up in a white bandage, scrambled up not to be left, and chattered something to the others. Satin added her own voice, and there was a general and sudden cheerfulness among the Downers. He walked, hand in hand with Elene, and the Downers strode along about and behind them with the peculiar accompaniment of the breather-sounds, moving gladly and quickly. The few guards along their route stayed very still, suddenly in the minority, and Downers chattered with increasing freedom among themselves as they reached the end of the hall and entered the spiraling broad ramp which led to doors on all the nine levels. An arm snaked about Damon’s left as they descended; he looked and it was Bluetooth, and Satin was with him, so that they came four abreast down the ramp, bizarre company… five, for another had joined hands with Elene on the right. Satin cried something. A chorus answered. Again she spoke, her voice echoing in the heights and depths; and again the chattering chorus thundered out, with a bounce in steps about them. Another yelled from the rear; and voices answered; and a second time. Damon tightened his hand on Elene’s, at once stirred and alarmed at this behavior, but the Downers were content to walk with him, shouting what had begun to sound like a marching chant.
They broke into green nine, and marched down the long hall… entered the docks with a great shout, and the echoes rang. The line of troops which guarded the ship accesses stirred ominously, but no more than that. “Stay with me,” Damon ordered his companions sternly, and they did so, up the curving horizon into the area of their habitat, and there to a parting. “Go,” he told them. “Go and mind you be careful. Don’t scare the men with guns.”
He had expected them to run, scampering free as they had begun to do about him. But one by one they came and wished to hug him and Elene, with tender care, so that the parting took some little time.
Last, Satin and Bluetooth, who hugged and patted them. “Love you,” Bluetooth said. “Love you,” said Satin, in her turn.
No word, no question about the dead one. “Bigfellow was lost,” Damon told them, although he was sure by Bluetooth’s burn that they had been somewhere involved in the matter. “Dead.”
Satin bobbed a solemn agreement “You send he home, Konstantin-man.” “I’ll send,” he promised. Humans died, and did not merit transport. They had no strong ties to this soil, or to any soil, a vague distressed desire toward burying, but not at inconvenience. This was inconvenient, but so was it to be murdered far from home. “I’ll see it’s done.”
“Love you,” she said solemnly, and hugged him a second time, laid her hand most gently on Elene’s belly, and walked away with Bluetooth, running after a moment to the lock which led to their own tunnels.
It left Elene standing with her own hand to her stomach and a dazed stare at him. “How could she know?” Elene asked with a bewildered laugh. It disturbed him too.
“It shows a little,” he said.
“To one of them?”
“They don’t get large,” he said. And looking past her, to the docks, and the lines of troops. “Come on. I don’t like this area.”
She looked where he had, to the soldiers and the more motley groups which ranged the upcurving horizon of the docks, near the bars and restaurants. Merchanters, keeping an eye on the military, on a dock which had been taken away from them. “Merchanters have owned this place since Pell began,” she said, “and the bars and the sleepovers. Establishments are shutting down, and Mazian’s troops won’t be happy. Freighter crews and Mazian’s… in one bar, in one sleep-over—station security had better be tight when any of those troops go on liberty.” “Come on,” he said, taking her arm. “I want you out of this. Running out here, going out into that corridor with the Downers—” “Where were you?” she shot back. “Down in the tunnels.” “I know them.”
“So I know the docks.”
“So what were you doing up in four?”
“I was down here when the call came; I asked Keu for a pass and got one, got his lieutenant to cooperate with dock offices; I was doing my job, thank you; and when the call came through Fleet com, I got Vanars up there before someone else got shot.”
He hugged her gratefully, walked with her around the turn into blue nine, another barren vista of troops stationed at intervals and no one in the corridors.
“Josh,” he said suddenly, dropping his arm.
“What?”
He kept his pace, headed for the lift, gathered his papers from his pocket, but they were India troops, and they were waved through. “Josh got picked up. Mallory knows he’s here and where he is.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Mallory agreed to release him. They may have let him loose already. I’ve got to
check comp and find out where he is, whether still in detention or back at his
apartment”
“He could sleepover with us.”
He said nothing, thinking about that.
“Which of us,” she asked, “is really going to sleep easy otherwise?” “Not much sleep with him around either. We’ll be jammed up in that apartment. As good have him in bed with us.”
“So I’ve slept crowded. So it could drag on more than one night. If they get their hands on him—” “Elene. It’s one thing if station handles a protest. There are things in this, personal things with Josh…” “Secrets?”
“Things that don’t bear the light. Things Mallory might not want out, you understand me? She’s dangerous. I’ve talked to multiple murderers less cold-blooded.”
“Fleet captain. It’s a breed, Damon. Ask any merchanter. You know there’re probably kin of the merchanters on-station standing in those lines, but they’ll not break formation to hail their own mothers, no. What the Fleet takes… doesn’t come back. You don’t tell me anything I don’t know about the Fleet. I can tell you that if we want to do something we should do it. Now.” “If we bring him in with us, we risk having that act in Fleet files…” “I think I know what you want to do.”
She had her own stubbornness. He reckoned matters, stopped at the lift, his hand on the button. “I figure we’d better get him,” he said. “So,” she said. “Thought so.”