Chapter Three

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i

Pell: green sector nine; 1/8/53; 1800 hrs.

Rumors floated all of green, but there was no sign of a shutdown, no searches, no imminent crisis. Troops came and went to the usual places. The dock-front bars rocked to loud music and troops on liberty relaxed, drank, some even openly intoxicated. Josh took a cautious look out the doorway of Ngo’s and ducked back in again as a squad of more businesslike troops headed up the hall, armored, sober, and with definite intentions. It made him somewhat nervous, as all such movements did when Damon was out of his sight. He endured the waiting under cover, his turn to sweat out the day in Ngo’s storeroom, haunting the front room only at mealtimes… but it was suppertime, and late, and he was beginning to worry intensely. Damon had insisted on going yesterday and this day, following up leads, hunting a contract—talking to people and risking trouble.  Josh paced and fretted, realized he was pacing and that Ngo was frowning at him from the bar. He tried to quiet himself, finally walked casually back to the alcove, leaned his head into the kitchen and asked Ngo’s son for dinner.  “How many?” the boy asked.

“One,” he said. He needed the excuse to stay out in the front room. Reckoned when Damon got back he could order a refill and another helping. Their credit was good, the one comfort of their existence. Ngo’s son waved a spoon at him, wishing him to get out.

He went to the accustomed table and sat down, looked toward the door again. Two men had come in, nothing unusual. But they were looking around too, and they started coming toward the back. He ducked his head and tried to camouflage himself in the shadow; market types, perhaps… some of Ngo’s friends—but the move alarmed him. And they paused by his table, pulled a chair back. He looked up in apprehension as one of them sat down and the other kept standing.  “Talley,” the seated man said, young, hard-faced with a burn scar across the jaw. “You’re Talley, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know any Talley. You’re mistaken.”

“Want you to come outside for a moment. Just come to the door.”

“Who are you?”

There’s a gun on you. I suggest you move.“

It was the long expected nightmare. He thought of what he could do, which was to get himself shot. Men died in green every day, and there was no law except the troops, which he did not need either. These were not Mazianni. It was something else.

“Move.”

He rose, walked clear of the table. The second man took his arm and guided him to the door, to the brighter light of the outside.

“Look over there,” the man at his back said. “Look at the doorway directly across the corridor. Tell me if I’ve got the wrong man.” He looked. It was the man he had seen before, the one watching him. His vision blurred and nausea hit his gut, conditioned reflex.

He knew the man. The name would not come to him, but he knew him. His escort took him by the elbow and walked him in that direction, across the corridor and as the other went inside, took him into the dark interior of Mascari’s, into the mingled effluvium of liquor and sweat and floor-jarring music. Heads turned, of those in the bar, who could see him better than his unadjusted eyes could see them for the moment, and he panicked, not alone at being recognized, but knowing that there was something in this place which he recognized, when he ought to know nothing on Pell, not after that fashion, not across the gulf he had crossed.

He was pushed to the leftmost corner of the room, to one of the closed booths.  Two men stood there, one a hangdog middle-aged man who rang no alarms with him… and the other… the other… Sickness hit him, conditioning assaulted. He groped for the back of a cheap plastic chair and leaned there.

“I knew it was you,” the man said. “Josh? It is you, isn’t it?”

“Gabriel.” The name shot out of his blocked past, and whole structures tumbled.  He swayed against the chair, seeing again his ship… his ship, and his companions… and this man… this man among them… “Jessad,” Gabriel corrected him, took his arm and looked at him strangely.  “Josh, how did you get here?”

“Mazianni.” He was being drawn into the curtained alcove, a place of privacy, a trap. He half turned, found the others barring the way out, and in the shadow when he looked back he could hardly make out Gabriel’s face… as it had looked in the ship, when they had parted company—when he had transferred Gabriel to Blass, on Hammer, near Mariner. Gabriel’s hand rested gently on his shoulder, pushing him into a chair at a small circular table. Gabriel sat down opposite him and leaned forward.

“My name here is Jessad. These gentlemen—Mr. Coledy and Mr. Kressich—Mr.  Kressich was a councillor on this station, when there was a council. You’ll excuse us, sirs. I want to talk to my friend. Wait outside. See we get privacy.” The others withdrew, and they were alone in the dim light of a fading bulb. He did not want to be alone with this man. But curiosity kept him seated, more than the fear of Coledy’s gun outside, a curiosity with the foreknowledge of pain in it, like worrying at a wound.

“Josh?” Gabriel/Jessad said. “We’re partners, aren’t we?” It might be a trick, might be truth. He shook his head helplessly. “Mindwipe. My memory—” Gabriel’s face contracted in seeming pain, and he reached out and caught him by the arm. “Josh… you came in, didn’t you? You tried to make the pickup. Hammer got me out when it went wrong. But you didn’t know that, did you? You took Kite in and they got you. Mindwipe… Josh, where are the others? Where are the rest of us, Kitha and—

He shook his head, cold inside, void. “Dead. I can’t remember clearly. It’s gone.” He was close to being sick for a moment, freed his hand and rested his mouth against it, leaning on the table, trying to subdue the reactions.  “I saw you,” Gabriel said, “in the corridor. I didn’t believe it. But I started asking questions. Ngo won’t tell whom you’re with… but it’s someone else they’re after, isn’t it? You’ve got friends here. A friend. Haven’t you? It’s not one of us… it’s someone else. Isn’t it?”

He could not think. Old friendships and new warred with each other. His belly was knotted up with contradictions. Fear for Pell… they had put that into him.  And killing stations… was Gabriel’s function. Gabriel was here, as he had been at Mariner—

Elene and Estelle. Estelle had died at Mariner.

“Isn’t it?”

He jerked, blinked at Gabriel.

“I need you,” Gabriel hissed. “Your help. Your skills…”

“I was nothing,” he said. The suspicion that he was lied to grew stronger still.  The man knew him and claimed things that were not so, were never so. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We were a team, Josh.”

“I was an armscomper, on the probe ship…”

“The undertapes.” Gabriel seized his wrist, shook at him violently. “You’re Joshua Talley, special services. Deep-taught for that. You came out of the labs on Cyteen…” “I had a mother, a father. I lived on Cyteen with my aunt. Her name was—” “Out of the labs, Josh. They trained you on all levels. Gave you false tapes, a fiction, a fake… something to lie on the surface, lies you could tell and convince them if you had to. And it’s surfaced, hasn’t it? It’s covered everything.”

“I had a family. I loved them—”

“You’re my partner, Josh. We came out of the same program. We were built for the same job. You’re my backup. We’ve worked together, station after station, recon and operations.”

He tore free of Gabriel’s grip, blinked, blinded by a wash of tears. It began to shred, irretrievable, the farm, the sunny landscape, childhood—

“We’re lab-born,” Gabriel continued. “Both of us. Anything else… any other memory… they put it into us on tape and they can put something else in the next time. Cyteen was real; I’m real… until they change the tapes. Until I become something else. They’ve messed with your mind. Josh. They’ve buried the only thing that’s real. You gave them the lie and it washed right into your memory.  But the truth’s there. You know comp. You’ve survived here. And you know this station.”

He sat still, his lips pressed against the back of his hand, tears rolling down his face, but he was not crying. He was numb, and the tears kept coming. “What do you want me to do?”

“What can you do? Who are your contacts? It’s not among the Mazianni, is it?”

“No.”

“Who?”

He sat unmoving for a moment. The tears stopped, the well of them dried up somewhere inside. All his memory seemed white, station detention and some far distant place confounded in his memory, white cells, and uniformed attendants, and he knew finally that he had been happy enough in detention because it was home, the universal institution, alike on either side of the lines of politics and war. Home. “Suppose I work it my way,” he said. “Suppose I talk to my contact, all right? I might be able to get some help. It’ll cost you.” “How, cost?”

He leaned back in the chair, nodded toward the outside of the booth, where Coledy and Kressich waited. “You have pull of your own, don’t you? Suppose I contribute my share. What have you got? Suppose I could get you most anything on this station… and I don’t have the muscle to handle it.” “I’ve got that,” Gabriel said.

“I’ve got the other. Only there’s one thing I want that I can’t carry off without force. A shuttle. A run to Downbelow when it comes off.” Gabriel sat silent a moment. “You’ve got that kind of access?”

“I told you I had a friend. And I want off.”

“You and I might take that option.”

“And this friend of mine.”

“The one you’re working the market with?”

“Speculate what you want. I get you whatever accesses you need. You make plans to get us a way off this station.”

Gabriel nodded slowly.

“I’ve got to get back,” Josh said. “Start it moving. There’s not much time.”

“Shuttles dock in red sector now.”

“I can get you there. I can get you anywhere you want. What we need is force enough to take it when we do get there.”

“While the Mazianni are busy?”

“While they’re busy. There are ways.” He stared a moment at Gabriel. “You’re going to blow this place. When?”

Gabriel seemed to weigh answering at all. “I’m not suicide-prone. I want a way off as badly as anyone here, and there’s not a chance that Hammer can get to us this time. A shuttle, a capsule, anything that stands a chance of staying in orbit long enough…” “All right,” Josh said. “You know where to find me.” “Is there a shuttle docked there now?”

“I’ll check into it,” he said, and rose, felt his way past the shadowy arch and out into the noise of the outside, where Coledy and his man and Kressich rose from a nearby table in some apprehension; but Gabriel had come out behind him.  They let him pass. He wove his way among the tables, past heads which stayed bowed over drinks and dinners, shoulders which stayed turned.  Outside air hit him like a wall of cold and light. He drew a breath, tried to clear his head, while the floor kept developing lattices of shadow, flashes of here and there, truth and untruth.

Cyteen was a lie. He was. Part of him functioned like the automaton he reckoned himself bred to be… he acknowledged instincts he had never trusted, not knowing why he had them—drew another breath, trying to think, while his body navigated its way across the corridor and sought cover.

Only when he had gotten back to his cold dinner on the back table in Ngo’s, when he sat in that familiar place with his back to the corner and the reality of Pell came and went at the bar in front of him, the numbness began to leave him.  He thought of Damon, one life, one life he might have the power to save.  He killed. That was what he was created to do. That was why the like of himself and Gabriel existed at all. Joshua and Gabriel. He understood the wry humor in their names, swallowed at a knot in his throat. Labs. That was the white void he had lived in, the whiteness in his dreams. Carefully insulated from humanity.  Tape-taught… given skills; given lies to tell—about being human.  Only there was a flaw in the lies… that they were fed into human flesh, with human instincts, and he had loved the lies.

And lived them in his dreams.

He ate the dinner, which kept sticking in his throat, washed it down with cold coffee, poured another cup from the thermal pitcher.  He might get Damon off. The rest had to die. To get Damon out he had to keep quiet, and Gabriel had to mislead the others following him, promise them all life, promise them help which would never come. They would all die, except himself and Gabriel, and Damon. He wondered how he should persuade Damon to leave… or if he could. If he must use reason… what reason?  Alicia Lukas-Konstantin. He thought of her, who had helped him in the process of helping Damon. She could never leave. And the guards who had given him money in hospital; and the Downer who followed them about and watched over them; and the people who had survived the hell of the ships and of Q; and the men and the women and the children… He wept, leaning against his hands, while somewhere deep inside were instincts which functioned in cold intelligence, knowing how to kill a place like Pell, knowing that it was the only reason he existed.

The rest he no longer believed.

He wiped his eyes, drank the coffee, sat and waited.

ii

Union carrier Unity: deep space; 1/8/53

The dice rolled, came up two, and Ayres shrugged morosely, while Dayin Jacoby marked down another set of points and Azov set up for another round. The two guards always assigned here in the lower-deck main room sat watching from the benches against the wall, their young and flawless faces quite passionless. He and Jacoby, and rarely Azov, played for imaginary points, pledged against real credits when they reached some civilized point together; and that, Ayres thought, was an element as chancy as the dice rolls.

Tedium was the only present enemy. Azov grew sociable, sat black-clad and grim at the table, played with them, for he would not bend and gamble with his crew.  Perhaps the mannequins amused themselves elsewhere. Ayres could not imagine it.  Nothing touched them, nothing illumined those dull, hateful eyes. Only Azov… joined them from time to time as they sat in the main room, eight and nine hours a tedious day of sitting, for there was no work to do, no exercise to be had.  Mostly they sat in the one room freely allowed them, and talked… finally talked.  Jacoby had no restraint in his conversation; the man poured out confidences of his life, his affairs, his attitudes. Ayres resisted Jacoby’s and Azov’s attempts to draw him out to talk about his homeworld. There was danger in that.  But all the same he talked… about his impressions of the ship, about the present situation, about anything and everything he could feel was harmless; about abstracts of law and economic theory, in which he and Jacoby and Azov himself shared some expertise… joked lightly which currency they should pay their bets in; Azov laughed outright. It was inexpressible relief to have someone to talk to, and to exchange pleasantries with someone. He had a bond with Jacoby… like that of kinship, unchosen, but inescapable. They were each other’s sanity. He began at last to conceive such an attachment to Azov, finding him sympathetic and possessed of humor. There was danger in this, and he knew it.  Jacoby won the next round. Azov patiently marked down the points, turned to the mannequins. “Jules. A bottle here, would you?”

One rose and left on the errand. “I rather thought they had numbers,” Ayres said under his breath; they had already had one bottle. And then he repented the frankness.

“There’s much in Union you don’t see,” Azov said. “But you may get the chance.” Ayres laughed, and suddenly cold hit his belly. How? stuck in his throat. They had drunk too much together. Azov had never admitted to his nation’s ambitions, to any designs beyond Pell. He let his expression change ever so slightly, and in that moment Azov’s did too… mutual dismay, a moment which lasted too long, slow-motion, alcohol-fumed, with Jacoby a third unwilling participant.  Ayres laughed again, an effort, tried not to show his guilt, leaned back in his chair and stared at Azov. “What, do they gamble too?” he asked, trying to mislead the meaning.

Azov pressed his lips to a thin line, looked at him from under one silvery brow, smiled as if he were dutifully amused.

I am not going home, Ayres thought despairingly. There will be no warning. That was his meaning.

iii

Pell: Downer tunnels; 1/8/53; 1830 hrs.

The dark place shifted with many bodies. Damon listened, started as he heard one moving near him, and again as a hand touched his arm in the blackness of the tunnel. He angled the lamp that way, shivering in the chill.  “I Bluetooth,” the familiar voice whispered. “You come see she?” Damon hesitated, long, looked toward the ladders which stretched like spiderweb out of the range of the lamp he carried. “No,” he said sorrowfully. “No. I only walk through. I’ve been to white section. I only want to go through.” “She ask you come. Ask. Ask all time.”

“No,” he whispered hoarsely, thinking that there were fewer and fewer times, that soon there would be no chance at all. “No, Bluetooth. I love her and I won’t. Don’t you know, it would be danger to her if I came there? The men-with-guns would come in. I can’t. I can’t, much as I want to.” The Downer’s warm hand patted his, lingered. “You say good thing.” He was surprised. A Downer reasoned, and though he knew that they reasoned, it surprised him to hear that train of thought follow human lines. He took the Downer’s hand and squeezed it, grateful for Bluetooth’s presence in an hour when there was little other comfort. He sank down on the metal steps, drew a quiet breath through the mask… drew comfort where it was to be had, to sit a moment safe from unfriendly eyes, with what had become, across all other differences, a friend. The hisa squatted on the platform before him, dark eyes glittering in the indirect light, patted his knee, simply companionable.  “You watch me,” Damon said, “all the time.”

Bluetooth bobbed slightly, agreement.

“The hisa are very kind,” Damon said. “Very good.” Bluetooth tilted his head and wrinkled his brow. “You she baby.” Families were a very difficult concept for hisa. “You ’Licia baby.”

“I was, yes.”

“She you mother.”

“She is.”

“Milio she baby.”

“Yes.”

“I love he.”

Damon smiled painfully. “No halfway with you, is there, Bluetooth? All or nothing. You’re a good fellow. How much do the hisa know? Know other humans… or only Konstantins? I think all my friends are dead, Bluetooth. I’ve tried to find them. And either they’re hiding or they’re dead.”

“Make me eyes sad, Damon-man. Maybe hisa find, tell we they name.”

“Any of the Dees. Or the Ushants. The Mullers.”

“I ask. Some know maybe.” Bluetooth laid a finger on his own flat nose. “Find they.”

“By that?”

Bluetooth reached out a tentative hand and stroked the stubble on his face. “You face like hisa, you smell same human.”

Damon grinned, amused in spite of his depression. “Wish I did look like a hisa.

Then I could come and go. They nearly caught me this time.”

“You come here ’fraid,” Bluetooth said.

“You smell fear?”

“I see you eyes. Much pain. Smell blood, smell run hard.” Damon turned the back of his elbow to the light, a painful scrape that had torn through the cloth. It had bled. “Hit a door,” he said.

Bluetooth edged forward. “I make stop hurt.”

He recalled hisa treating their own hurts, shook his head. “No. But can you remember the names I asked?”

“Dee. Ushant. Mul-ler.”

“You find them?”

“Try,” Bluetooth said. “Bring they?”

“Come bring me to them. The men-with-guns are closing the tunnels into white, you know that?”

“Know so. We Downers, we walk in big tunnels outside. Who look at we?” Damon drew a deep breath against the mask, stood up again on the dizzying steps, hugged the hisa with one arm as he picked up the lamp. “Love you,” he murmured.  “Love you,” Bluetooth said, and scampered away into the dark, a slight moving, a vibration on the metal stairs.

Damon felt his own way further, counting his turns and levels. No recklessness.  He had come close enough, trying to enter white. He had rung an alarm over in white. He had a sickly fear it might bring investigation into the tunnels, trouble on the Downers, on his mother, on all of them. He still felt the tremor in his knees, although he had not hesitated to shoot when he had to; had fired on an unarmored guard; might have killed him; had meant to.  That sickened him.

And he still hoped he had, that the alarm had not involved his name. That the witness was dead.

He was still shaking when he reached the access to the corridor outside Ngo’s.  He entered the narrow lock, tugged down his mask, used the security-cleared card he reserved only for extreme emergency. It opened without alarms. He hurried down the narrow, deserted hall, used a manual key to open the back door itself.  Ngo’s wife turned from the kitchen counter and stared at him, darted out into the main room. Damon let the door close behind him, opened the storeroom door to toss the breather mask in. He had forgotten it in his panic, brought it through with him. That was the measure of his wit. He went to the kitchen sink and washed his hands, his face, tried to wash the stink of blood and fear and memory off him.

“Damon.”

“Josh.” He turned a weary glance toward the door to the front room, dried his face on the towel hanging there. “Trouble.” He went past Josh into the front room, walked to the bar and leaned against it. “Bottle?” he asked of Ngo.  “You come in that door again…” Ngo hissed unhappily.

“Emergency,” Damon said. Josh caught his arm gently from the side.  “Never mind the drink for a moment,” Josh said. “Damon. Come over here. I want to talk to you.”

He came, back into the alcove which was their territory. Josh backed him into the corner, out of sight of the other patrons who ate in the place. There was the clink of plates in the kitchen, where Ngo’s wife had retreated, with her son. The room smelled of Ngo’s inevitable stew. “Listen,” Josh said when they had sat down, “I want you to come with me across the corridor. I’ve found a contact I think can help us.”

He heard it and still it took a moment to sink in. “Who have you been talking to? Who do you know?”

“Not me. Someone who recognized you. Who wants your help. I don’t know the whole story. A friend of yours. There’s an organization… stretches out among the Q folk and Pell. A number of people who know you might have the skill to help them.”

He tried to absorb it. “You know what a candle’s chance we have with a Q mob—against troops?—and why go to you? Why you, Josh? Maybe they’re afraid I’d recognize faces and know something. I don’t like this.” “Damon. How much time can we have? It’s a chance. Everything’s a risk at this point. Come with me. Please come with me.”

“They’re going to be checking all over white. I stumbled into an alarm over there… may have killed someone. They’re going to be stirred up, searching for someone using accesses…” “Then how much time can we have left to think it over? If we don’t—” He stopped, looked sharply about at Ngo’s wife, who brought them bowls of stew, setting them on the table. “We’re going somewhere. Keep it hot for us.” Dark eyes stared at them both. Quietly, as everything about the woman was quiet, she gathered up the bowls and took them to another table.  “Won’t take long to find out,” Josh said. “Damon. Please.”

“What are they talking of doing? Rushing central?”

“Causing trouble. Getting to the shuttle. Setting up resistance on Downbelow… a small number of us. Damon, it all relies on your knowledge. Your skill with comp, and your knowledge of the passages.”

“They have a pilot?”

“I think there’s someone who is, yes.”

He tried to gather his wits. Shook his head. “No.”

“What do you mean, no? You talked about a shuttle. You planned for it.” “Not to have another riot on the station. Not with more people killed, in a plan that’s never going to work…” “Come and talk to them. Come with me. Or don’t you trust me? Damon, how long can we wait on chances? You haven’t even heard it out.” He let go his breath. “I’ll come,” he said. “They’re going to start checking id’s in green soon enough, I’m afraid. I’ll talk to them. Maybe I know better ways. Quieter ones. How far is this place?”

“Mascari’s.”

“Across the corridor.”

“Yes. Come on.”

He came, out amongst the tables, past the bar.

“You,” Ngo said sharply as they passed. He stopped. “You don’t come back here if you bring trouble. You hear me? I helped you. I don’t want that kind of pay for it. You hear me?”

“I hear,” Damon said. There was no time to smooth it over. Josh waited by the front door. He walked out to join him, looked left and right and crossed the corridor with him into the noisier and darker interior of Mascari’s.  A man at the left of the entry rose and joined them. “This way,” the man said, and because Josh went without question, Damon swallowed his protests and went with them, to the far side of the room, which was so dark it was hard to avoid chairs.

A dim light burned in a curtained alcove. They went inside, he and Josh, but their guide vanished.

And in another moment a second man came in at their backs, young and scar-faced.  Damon did not know him. “They’re coming,” the young man said, and quickly the curtains moved again, admitted two more to the alcove.  “Kressich,” Damon muttered. The other was not familiar to him.

“You know Mr. Kressich?” the newcomer asked.

“Only by sight. Who are you?”

“Name’s Jessad… Mr. Konstantin, is it? The younger Konstantin?” Recognition of any kind made him nervous. He looked at Josh, finding discrepancies, bewildered. They were supposed to know him. This man should not be surprised.

“Damon,” Josh said, “this man is from Q. Let’s talk details. Sit down.” He did so, at the small table, uncertain and apprehensive as the others settled with him. A second time he looked at Josh. He trusted Josh. Trusted him with his life. Would hand him his life at the asking, having no better use for it. And Josh had lied to him. Everything he knew of the man insisted Josh was lying.  Are we under some threat? he wondered wildly, seeking some cause for this charade. “What kind of proposal are we talking about?” he asked, wishing only that he could get himself out of here, and get Josh out, and get it all straight.

“When Josh said that he had contacts,” Jessad said slowly, “I didn’t suspect who. You’re far better than I dared hope.”

“Am I?” He resisted the temptation to look again in Josh’s direction. “What precisely do you hope, Mr. Jessad from Q?”

“Josh didn’t tell you?”

“Josh said I’d want to talk to you.”

“About finding a way to get this station back into your hands?” He did not change expression in the least. “You think you have the means to do that.”

“I have men,” Kressich interjected. “Coledy does. We can raise a thousand men in five minutes.”

“You know what would happen then,” Damon said. “We’d have ourselves neck deep in troopers. Bodies in the corridors, if they didn’t vent us all.” “You know,” Jessad said quietly, “that the whole station is theirs. To do with as they please. Except for you, there’s no authority to speak for the old Pell.  Lukas… is done. He says only what Mazian hands him to read. Has guards about him everywhere. One choice is bodies in the corridors, true. The other is what they’ve given Lukas, isn’t it? They’d give you prepared speeches to read too.  They’d let you alternate with Lukas, or outright dispose of you. After all, they do have Lukas, and he takes orders… doesn’t he?”

“You put it neatly, Mr. Jessad.” And what about the shuttle? he thought, leaning back in his chair. He looked at Josh, who met his eyes with a troubled stare. He glanced back again. “What’s your proposal?”

“You get us access to central. We take care of the rest”

“It’ll never work,” Damon said. “We’ve got warships out there. You can’t hold them off by holding central. They’d blow us; don’t you count on that?” “I have means to make sure it works.”

“So let’s have it. Make your proposal, flat, and let me have the night to think about it.”

“Let you walk around knowing names and faces?”

“You know mine,” he reminded Jessad, and obtained a slight flicker of the eyes.

“Trust him,” Josh said. “It will work.”

Something crashed outside, even over the music. The curtains came inward, with Coledy, who landed atop the table with a hole burned in his forehead. Kressich sprang up shrieking in terror. Damon hurled himself back, hit the wall with Josh beside him, and Jessad clawed for a pocket. Shrieks punctuated the music outside, and armored troops with leveled rifles filled the doorway of the alcove.

“Stand still!” one ordered.

Jessad whipped out the gun. A rifle fired, and there was a burned smell as Jessad hit the floor, twitching. Damon stared at the troopers and the leveled rifles in dazed horror. Josh, at his side, did not move.  A trooper hauled another man in by the collar—Ngo, who flinched from Damon’s stare and looked apt to be sick.

“These the ones?” the trooper asked.

Ngo nodded. “Made me hide them out. Threatened me. Threatened my family. We want to go over to white. All of us.”

“Who’s this one?” The trooper nodded toward Kressich.

“Don’t know,” Ngo said. “Don’t know him. Don’t know these others.”

“Take them out,” the officer said. “Search them. Dead ones too.” It was over. A hundred thoughts poured through Damon’s mind… going for the gun in his pocket—running for it, as far as he could get before they shot him down.

And Josh… and his mother and his brother…

They laid hands on him, turned him against the wall and made him spread his limbs, him and Josh beside him, and Kressich. They searched his pockets and took the cards and the gun, which in itself was cause for a shooting on the spot They turned him about again, back to the wall, and looked at him more carefully.  “You’re Konstantin?”

He gave no answer. One hit him in the belly and doubled him, and he flung himself at the man shoulder-on and low, carried him and a chair over under the table. A boot slammed into his back and he was trampled in a fight which broke above him. He tore free of the man he had stunned, tried to claw his way to his feet by the table rim, and a shot burned past his shoulder, hit Kressich in the stomach.

A rifle clubbed him. His knees loosened, refusing to drive him to his feet; a second blow, on the arm stretched on the table. He went out, doubled as a boot slammed into him, stayed doubled against the blows until they knocked him half senseless. Then they hauled him up between two of them. “Josh,” he said dazedly.  “Josh!”

They had Josh up too, slumped between two of them, trying to shake him into life, and he managed to get his feet under him. His head rolled drunkenly. He was bleeding from the temple. For Kressich there was no use in urging; he was still moving, gut-shot and bleeding fast. They were leaving him.  Damon looked about as they were taken out into the main room. Ngo had fled or they had taken him. The patrons had fled. There was only a scattering of corpses, and a few troops standing about with rifles.  The troops hauled him and Josh outside, into the corridor. A few at Ngo’s stood outside to stare as they were marched along and Damon turned his face aside, shamed to be publicly paraded in his arrest.

He thought they would be taken to the ships across the docks. And then they turned the corner onto the docks and headed left, and he realized otherwise.  There was a bar the troops had taken for themselves, a headquarters, a place civs avoided.

Music, drugs, liquor—anything the civ sector had to offer—Damon stared numbly as they were hauled inside, into a lowering smoke and a thunder of music. A desk was there, incredibly enough, a concession to something official. The troops brought them to it and a man carrying a drink sat down and looked them over.  “Got ourselves something here,” said the leader of the group which had brought them in. “Fleet’s looking for these two. Konstantin, this one. And we’ve got ourselves a Unioner here. Adjusted man, the rumor says… but Pell did the Adjusting.”

“Unioner.” The sergeant at the desk looked past Damon, grinned unpleasantly at Josh. “And how did the likes of you get onto Pell? Got a good story, Union man?” Josh said nothing.

“I do,” a harsh voice said from the door, fit to shake the walls. “He’s Norway property.”

Laughter and conversation stopped, if not the music. The newcomers, armored as most in this place were not, came in with a brusqueness that startled the rest.  “Norway” someone muttered. “Get out of here, Norway bastards.”

“What’s your name?” the newcomer bellowed.

“Or you shoot all of us?” someone else said.

The short man with the loud voice punched the com button at his shoulder and spoke something the music drowned, turned and waved his hand at the dozen troopers with him, who fanned out. He looked then at the rest, a slow circuit of the room. “You’re none of you in fit condition to handle anything. Straighten up this den. Any of our people in here I’ll skin ’em. Is there?” “Try down the row,” someone shouted. “This is Australia territory. Norway’s got no call to be putting us on report.”

“Hand the prisoners over,” the short man said. No one moved. Rifles of the Norway troops leveled, and there were outcries of shock and rage from the Australia troopers. Damon stood with his vision hazing as two of the dozen moved in on him and Josh, as a rough grip seized his right arm and jerked him from the hand which held him, hauled him along toward the door. Josh came without struggling. He did. As long as they were together… it was the most they had left.

“Get them out,” the little man bellowed at his troops. They were pushed and hastened outside; two troopers stayed with their officer, in the bar. It was not until they were passing the niner corridor that other troops intercepted them, other Norway troopers.

“Get to the Australia post,” one yelled at the others, a woman’s voice.  “McCarthy’s. Di’s got them all at rifle point. He needs some numbers in there, fast.”

The troopers headed past them at a run. Four of those escorting them kept on, taking them toward the blue dock access door, where guards stood.  “Pass us through,” the officer of their escort demanded. “We’ve got a potential riot situation back there.”

The guards were Australia. The lettering and emblem proclaimed it. Reluctantly the squad opened the emergency doors and let them through the passage.  Thereafter was blue dock, where Norway occupied a berth next India, Australia, and Europe. Damon walked, beginning to feel shock from his injuries, if not pain. There was only the military here, troops coming and going, supply bales being loaded by military crews in fatigues.

Norway’s access tube gaped before them. They walked the ramp, into the passage, passed through that chill into the airlock. Others met them, troops all with Norway’s emblem.

“Talley,” one said with a surprised grin. “Welcome back, Talley.” Josh bolted. He made it as far as the middle of the access tube before they caught him.

iv

Pell: Norway; blue dock; 1/8/53; 1930 hrs.

Signy looked up from her desk, for a moment dialed down the com noise, the reports of her troops on the docks and elsewhere. She gave a quizzical smile at the guards and at Talley. He was considerably the worse for wear… unshaven, diry, bloody. There was a swelling on his jaw.

“Come to see me?” she mocked him. “I hadn’t thought you’d ask again.” “Damon Konstantin… they’ve got him aboard. The troops have got him. I thought you’d want to talk to him.”

That perplexed her. “You’re trying to turn him in, are you?”

“He’s here. We both are. Get him out of there.”

She leaned back, looked curiously at him. “So you do talk straight,” she said.

“You never talked.”

And now he had nothing to say.

“They played games with your mind,” she observed. “And now you’re a friend of Konstantin’s, are you?”

“I appeal to you,” he said in a faint voice.

“On what grounds?”

“Reason. He’s useful to you. And they’ll kill him.”

She regarded him from half-lidded eyes. “Glad to be back, are you?” There was a call blinking, which was something com evidently could not handle.  She dialed up the sound and punched it through. “There’s a fight broken out,” she heard, “at McCarthy’s.”

“Di out of there?” she asked. “Give me Di.”

“Busy,” she heard. She waved a hand at the guards, dismissing the business of Talley. Another light was flashing.

“Mallory!” Talley shouted at her, being forced out the door.

“Europe’s wanting you,” Com said. “Mazian’s on.”

She punched through. They had gotten Talley out, to lock him up somewhere, she hoped.

“Mallory here, Europe.”

“What’s going on over there?”

“I’ve got trouble on the dock, sir. Janz needs instruction, by your leave, sir.”

She punched out on him. “He’s down,” she was hearing on another channel.

“Captain, Di’s shot.”

She clenched a fist and held it back from the unit “Get him out, get him out, what officer am I talking to?”

“This is Uthup,” a woman’s voice came back. “One of Australia’s shot Di.”

She punched another button. “Get me Edger. Quick!”

“We’re through the door,” she heard from Uthup. “We got Di.”

“General alert Norway troops. We have dock trouble. Get out there!”

“Edger here,” she heard. “Mallory, call your hounds in.”

“Call yours in, Edger, or I’ll shoot them on sight. They’ve shot Di Janz.” “I’ll stop it,” he said, and cut out. alert was sounding in Norway’s corridors, a raucous klaxon, blue lights flashing. Boards and screens in her office were coming to life as the ship turned out to emergency ready.  “We’re coming in,” Uthup’s voice came back. “He’s still with us, captain.”

“Get him in, Uthup, get him in.”

“Going down there, captain.” That was Graff, heading to the dock. She started pushing buttons, hunting a visual and cursing at the techs; someone should have it on vid. She found it, the group coming in carrying more than one of their number, Norway troops pouring out onto the dock in haste and taking up positions around the umbilicals and access. “Get med on the com,” she ordered.  “Med’s ready,” she heard, watched a familiar figure reach the troops and take charge. Graff was out there. She found leisure for a quieter breath.  “Europe’s still holding,” com advised her. She punched that channel.

“Captain Mallory. What war are you fighting out there?” “I don’t know yet, sir. I’m going to find out as soon as I can get my troops aboard.”

“You’ve got Australia’s prisoners. Why?”

“Damon Konstantin’s one, sir. I’ll be back in touch as soon as I can get a word out of Janz. Your leave, sir.”

“Mallory.”

“Sir?”

“Australia has two casualties. I want a report.”

“I’ll get one to you when I can learn what happened, sir. In the meanwhile I’m dispatching troops to green dock before we have some sort of trouble with civs over there.”

“India is moving forces in. Leave it at that, Mallory, and keep your troops out of there. Off the docks. Pull them all. I want to see you at soonest, hear?” “With a report, sir. By your leave, sir.”

The light and the contact winked out. She slammed her fist onto the console and shoved the chair back, headed for the cubbyhole of a surgery in the half corridor off from the main lift topside.

It was not as bad as she had feared. Di kept a steady pulse under the medic’s ministrations, showing no signs of leaving them. Chest wound, a few burns. There was a great deal of blood, but she had seen far worse. A chance shot, in an armor joint. She stalked over to the door where Uthup stood, smeared with blood from head to foot of her armor. “Get your filthy selves out of here,” she said, herding them out into the corridor. “It’s going sterile in there. Who shot first?”

“Australia bitch, drunk and disorderly.”

“Captain.”

“Captain,” Uthup said thinly.

“You hit, Uthup?”

“Burns, captain. I’ll check in when they’re done with the major and the others, by your leave.”

“I tell you to stay out of that territory?”

“Heard over com they’d picked up Konstantin and Talley, captain. A sergeant was in charge and they were drunk as stationside merchanters in there. The major went in and they said it was off-limits to us.”

“Enough said,” she muttered. “I want a report, trooper Uthup; and I’ll back you on it. I’d have skinned you if you’d backed away from Edger’s bastards. Quote me on that where you like.” She walked off, through the troops in the corridor.  “It’s all right, Di’s in one piece. Get yourselves out of here and let the meds work. Get back to quarters. I’m going to have a word with Edger, but if you or any of the others take to the docks I’ll shoot you with my own hand. That’s my word on it. Get below!”

They scattered. She walked forward to the bridge, looked about her at the crew who had gotten to stations. Graff was there, himself liberally bloodstained.  “Clean yourself up,” she said. “Mind your stations. Morio, get back there and interview trooper Uthup and anyone else in that detachment; I want names and id’s on those Australia troops. I want a formal complaint and I want it now.” “Captain,” Morio acknowledged the order.

He left in haste; she stood on the bridge and looked about until heads turned to their work. Graff had left to put himself in order. She continued to pace the aisle until she realized she was doing it and stood still.  There was the matter of showing up on Mazian’s deck. There was blood on her uniform, Di’s blood. She decided finally to go and not to clean up.  “Graff’s in command,” she said brusquely. “McFarlane. I need an escort over to Europe. Move it.”

She started for the lift, hearing the order echoing in the corridors. Troops met her in the exit corridor, fifteen of them in full rig. She walked out through the troops which guarded the access ramp on the docks. She had no armor. It was a secure dock and she was not supposed to need any, but at the moment she would have felt safer walking green dock naked.

v

Pell: Europe; blue dock; 1/8/53; 2015 hrs.

Mazian was not late showing up, not this time. It was an audience of two, herself and Tom Edger, and Edger had gotten there first. That was expected.  “Sit down,” Mazian told her. She took a chair on the opposite side of the conference table from Edger. Mazian had his own. at the head, leaned on his folded arms, glared at her. “Well? Where’s the report?” “It’s coming,” she said. “I’m taking the time to interview and collect positive id’s. Di took names and numbers before they shot him.” “Your orders that sent him in there?”

“My standing orders to my troops that they don’t back off from trouble if it sets itself in front of them. Sir, my people have been systematically harassed since the incident with Goforth. I shot the man, and my people are harassed, shouldered, subtle stuff, until someone got too drunk to know the difference between harassment and outright mutiny. A trooper was asked for her number and directly refused to give it. She was arrested and she drew her gun and opened fire on an officer.”

Mazian looked at Edger and back again. “I hear another story. That your troops are encouraged to stick together. That they’re still under your orders even on supposed liberty. That they go in squads and under officers and throw their weight around the dock. That the whole operation of Norway troops and personnel is insubordinate and provocative, direct defiance of my order.” “I have given my troops no duties during their liberties. If they’re going in groups it’s for self-protection. They’re set upon in bars that are open to all but Norway personnel. That kind of behavior is encouraged among other crews. You have my complaint of that matter on your desk as of last week.” Mazian sat and stared a moment, tapped the table in front of him, a slow, nervous gesture. Lastly he looked toward Edger.

“I’ve hesitated to file a protest,” Edger said. “But there’s a bad atmosphere building out there. Apparently there’s some difference of opinion about how the Fleet as a whole is ordered. Ship loyalties—loyalties to certain captains—are encouraged in some quarters, for reasons I refuse to guess at, perhaps by certain captains.”

Signy sucked air and slammed her hands down, all but out of her chair before colder sense asserted itself. Much colder. Edger and Mazian had always been close… were close, she had long suspected, in a way in which she could not intervene. She evened her breath, leaned back, looked only at Mazian. It was war; it was as narrow a chute as ever Norway had run, the straits of Mazian’s ambition, and Edger’s. “There is something vastly amiss,” she said, “when we start shooting at each other. By your leave… we’re the oldest in the Fleet, the longest survivors. And I’ll tell you plainly I know what’s afoot and I’ve played your charade, gone on with this station organization, which isn’t going to have any importance whatsoever when the Fleet moves. I’ve done your make-work operations and done them well. I’ve said no word to my troops or my crew about what I know; and I get the drift of things, that the troops are allowed to do what they like on this station because in the long run it doesn’t matter.  Because Pell has stopped mattering, and the survival of it is now contrary to our interests. We’re aiming at something different now. Or maybe we always were, and you’ve moved us to it by degrees, never to shock us too much, when you finally propose what it is you really have in mind, the only choice you’ve left us with. Sol, isn’t it? Earth. And it’s going to be a long run and dangerous, with plenty of trouble when we get there. The Fleet—takes over the Company. So maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s the only thing to do. Maybe it makes sense and it began to make sense a long time ago, when the Company quit backing us. But we don’t get there if Pell destroys the disciplines on which this Fleet has functioned for decades. We don’t get there if the units of it are homogenized into something that can’t work apart. And that’s what this harassment does. It tells me how to run Norway. If that starts, then it all breaks down. You take from the troops their badges and their designations, their identification and their spirit and it goes, it all goes… and whatever you call it, that’s what’s in progress out there, when a ship is made to conform to a standard against every rule they’ve ever known, when captains in this Fleet are subtly encouraging their troops to the harassment of mine, and they’re taking to it, in the absence of another enemy. The Fleet as a whole hasn’t existed in decades, but that was our strength… the latitude to do what had to be done, across all this vast distance. Homogenize us and we become predictable. And few as we are… then we’re done.”

“Amazing,” Mazian said softly, “that somehow you end up arguing for separation of the crews, when you’re the one complaining about lack of discipline. You’re an amazing sophist.”

“I’m being ordered to fall in line, to change every policy and order that exists on my ship. My troops perceive that as an insult to Norway, and they resent it.  What else do you expect, sir?”

“The attitude of the troops rather reflects that of the officers in charge and of the captain, doesn’t it? Maybe you’ve encouraged it.” “And maybe what happened in that bar was encouraged.”

“Sir.”

“With all respect—sir.”

“Your men moved in and removed prisoners from the custody of the troops who performed the arrest. Credit-snatching, doesn’t it seem so?” “Removed prisoners from a drunken body of libertied troops in a bar.”

“Dock headquarters,” Edger muttered. “Tell it clear, Mallory.” “The troops were drunk and disorderly in your dock headquarters, and one of the prisoners involved was Norway property. There was no commissioned officer in this dock headquarters. And the other prisoner was valuable and one my make-work operation on the docks would find useful. The question is why the prisoners were taken to that so-named headquarters at all, instead of to the blue dock facilities or to the nearest ship, which was Africa.”

“The arresting troops were reporting to their sergeant. Who was present, when your troop major broke into the place.”

“I suggest that that attitude is contributory to the atmosphere in which Maj.  Janz was shot. If that was dock headquarters, Maj. Janz was fully entitled to walk in there and assume command of the situation. But he was told outright on entering that the so-named dock headquarters was staked out as Australia territory; the Australia sergeant present did not object to that insubordination. Now is a troop headquarters to be the private preserve of one ship, or what? Can it be that other captains are urging their crews to separatism?”

“Mallory,” Mazian cautioned her.

“The point, sir: Maj. Janz gave a proper order for surrender of the prisoners to his custody and received no cooperation from the Australia sergeant, who contributed to the trouble.”

“Two of my troopers were killed in that exchange,” Edger said tautly, “and how it started is still under inquiry.”

“From my side also, Captain. I expect the information momentarily and I’ll see that you get a copy when it goes in.”

“Captain Mallory,” Mazian said, “you make that report to me. At the soonest. As for the prisoners, I don’t care what you do with them. Whether they’re here or there is not the issue. Dissension is. Ambition … on the part of individual captains of the Fleet… is an issue. Whether you like it or not, Captain Mallory, you will walk in line. You’re right, we’ve operated separately, and now we have to work as a body. And certain free spirits among us are having trouble with that. Don’t like taking orders. You’re valuable to me. You see through to the heart of a matter, don’t you? Yes, it’s Sol. And by telling me that, you hope to be on the inside of councils, don’t you? You want to be consulted. Want to be in the line of succession, maybe. That’s very well. But to get there, captain, you have to learn to walk in line.”

She sat still, returned Mazian’s stare. “And not know where I’m going?”

“You know where we’re going. You said as much.” “All right,” she said quietly. “I’m not adverse to taking orders.” She looked pointedly at Tom Edger and back again to Mazian. “I take them as well as others.  We may not have worked partners in the past; but I’m willing.”

Mazian nodded, his handsome, actor’s face quite, quite affectionate. “Good.  Good. So it’s settled.” He rose, went to the sideboard, pulled a brandy flask from its clamps and glasses from the cabinet and poured. He brought the glasses back, set them before him, slid them in either hand to Edger and to her. “I hope it will be settled once for all,” he said, sipping at his drink. “And I mean it should be. Any further complaints?”

There might be some from Tom Edger. She saw him sulk while she drank the liquid fire of the brandy. She smiled slightly. Edger did not respond.  “The other matter you brought up,” Mazian said, “the disposition of the station—is the case. Yes. And I’ll trust that information doesn’t go beyond present company.”

Hence this show, she thought. “Yes, sir,” she said.

“No formalities. In time all the captains will be given their instructions.  You’re a strategist, in many ways the best. You would have been brought in early. You know that. Would have been already, but for the unfortunate incident with Goforth and the market operation.”

Heat flushed her face. She set the glass down.

“Temper, old friend,” Mazian said softly. “I have one too. I know my faults. But I can’t have you split from me. Can’t afford it. We’re getting ready to move.  Within the week. Loading’s nearly finished. And we move before Union expects it… take the initiative, give them a problem.”

“Pell.”

“Just so.” He finished his brandy. “You have Konstantin. He can’t go back; we have to take out Lukas too. All those techs working and in detention. Anyone who could possibly manage comp and central and get Pell back into order. You rig it to collapse and you don’t leave anyone alive who could correct it. And particularly Konstantin; he’s dangerous in two regards, comp and publicity. Vent him.”

She smiled tautly. “When?”

“He’s already a liability. Nothing public. No display. Porey will see to the other one—to Emilio Konstantin. Clean wipe, Signy. Nothing left of help to Union. No refugees from this place.”

“I understand you. I’ll do the disposal.”

“You and Tom, for all your bickering, have done a good job. I was very worried about having Konstantin unaccounted for. You’ve done an excellent job. I mean that.”

“I knew what you were up to,” she said levelly. “So the comp is already set up that way; a key signal can scramble it completely. A couple more of the comp operators are still missing. I’m fixing to shut down green tomorrow. They’ll surrender or I vent the section and that fixes it anyway. I’ve got prints on the missing operators. I’ll pull in the informer Ngo and his lot. Ask questions and pinpoint what I can before we move. If agents can pull the comp people out so we’re absolutely sure, so much the better.”

“My men will cooperate,” Edger said.

She nodded.

“That’s the way,” Mazian said cheerfully. “That’s the kind of thing I expect from you, Signy; no more of this quarreling over prerogatives. Now will the two of you get about it?”

Signy finished her glass, rose. Edger did. She smiled and nodded at Mazian, but not at Edger, and walked out with a deliberate lightness.  Bastard, she thought. She did not hear Edger’s steps behind her. When she entered the lift and started down to meet her escort, Edger was not with her. He had stayed behind to talk to Mazian. Whore.

The lift whisked her down to exit level. Her troops were where she had left them, ramrod stiff and carefully avoiding any altercation with Europe troops who came and went in the suiting room. A trio of Europers were there with smiles which wiped themselves at once when she walked out among them.  She gathered up her escort and stalked out the lock, down the access to the dock, to the waiting lines of her own troops.  vi Pell; Norway; blue dock; 1/8/53; 2300 hrs. md.; 1100 hrs. a.  It was better when she had had a chance to relax, to bathe, to get the dock mess straightened out and the reports written.

She cherished no illusions that there would be anything done to the Australia trooper who had fired on Di and lived… not, at least, officially: but that woman would do well not to walk alone where Norway troops were docked, as long as she lived.

Di was all right, out of surgery and burning mad. That was healthy. He had a splice in a rib and a good deal of the blood in him was borrowed, but he was able to face vid and curse with coherency. It helped her spirits. Graff was with him, and there was a list of officers and crew willing to sit and keep Di quiet, a show of concern which would greatly disturb Di if he realized the extent of it.

Peace. A few hours’ worth, until tomorrow, and operations in green. She propped her feet on her bed, sitting sideways at the desk in her own quarters, cross-handedly poured herself a second drink. She rarely had a second. When she did it went to thirds and fourths and fifths, and she wished Di or Graff were here, to sit and talk. She would go sit with them, but Di had a head of steam he was willing to let off, which would have his blood pressure up telling her the tale. No good for Di.

There were other diversions. She sat and thought a while, and, hesitating between the two, finally punched up the guard station. “Get Konstantin in here.” They acknowledged. She sat back and sipped the drink, keyed in on this station and that to be sure that operations were going as they should and that the anger below decks stayed smothered. The drink failed to tranquilize; she still felt the urge to pace the floor, and there was not, even here, much floor to pace.

Tomorrow…

She dragged her mind back from that. One hundred twenty-eight dead civs in stabilizing white sector. It was going to be far worse in green, where all who had real reason to fear identification had taken cover. They could vent it if the two comp-skilled techs could not be turned up in time; indeed they could. It was the sensible solution; a quick death, if indiscriminate; a means to be sure they had all the fugitives… and more merciful to those individuals than to be left on a deteriorating station. Hansford on a grand scale, that was the gift they would leave Union, rotting bodies and the stench, the incredible stench of it… The door opened. She looked up at three troopers and at Konstantin—cleaned up, wearing brown fatigues, bearing a few patches on his face the meds had done. Not bad, she thought remotely, leaned forward on one arm. “Want to talk?” she asked him. “Or otherwise?”

He did not answer, but he showed no disposition to quarrel. She waved the troopers out. The door closed and Konstantin still stood there staring at something other than her.

“Where’s Josh Talley?” he asked finally.

“Somewhere aboard. There’s a glass in the cabinet over there. Want a drink?” “I want,” he said, “to be set out of here. To have this station handed over to its own lawful government. To have an accounting of the citizens you’ve murdered.”

“Oh,” she said, laughed a breath and reassessed young Konstantin. Smiled sourly and pushed her foot against the bed, sending her chair back a bit. She gestured to the bed, a place for him to sit. “You want,” she said. “Sit down. Sit down, Mr. Konstantin.”

He did so. He stared at her with his father’s mad dark stare.

“You don’t really have any such illusions,” she asked him, “Do you?”

“None.”

She nodded, regretting him. Fine face. Young. Well-spoken; well-made. He and Josh were much alike. There were wastes in this war that sickened her. Young men like this turned into corpses. If he were anyone else… but his name happened to be Konstantin, and that doomed him. Pell would react to that name; and he had to go. “Want the drink?”

He did not refuse it. She passed him her own glass, kept the bottle for herself.

“Jon Lukas stays as your puppet,” he said. “Does he?”

There was no need to torment him with the truth. She nodded. “He takes orders.”

“You’re moving against green next?”

She nodded.

“Let me talk to them on com. Let me try to reason with them.”

“To save your life? Or to replace Lukas? It won’t work.”

“To save theirs.”

She stared at him a long, bleak moment.

“You’re not going to surface, Mr. Konstantin. You’re to vanish very quietly. I think you know that.” There was a gun at her hip; she rested her hand on it as she sat, reckoning that he would not, but in case. “Let’s say if I can find two individuals, I won’t vent the section. Names are James Muller and Judith Crowell. Where are they? If I could locate them right off… it would save lives.” “I don’t know.”

“Don’t know them?”

“Don’t know where they are. I don’t think they’re still alive, if they’re supposed to be in green. I know the section too well; had means to have found them if they were there.”

“I’m sorry for that,” she said. “I’ll do what I can as reasonably as I can.  Promise you that. You’re a civilized man, Mr. Konstantin. A vanished breed. If I could find a way to get you out of this I’d do it, but I’m hemmed in on all sides.”

He said nothing. She kept an eye to him, sipped a mouthful from the bottle. He drank from the glass.

“What about the rest of my family?” he asked at last

Her mouth twisted. “Quite safe. Quite safe, Mr. Konstantin. Your mother does everything we ask and your brother is harmless where he is. The supplies arrive on schedule and we have no reason to object to his presence down there. He’s another civilized man, one—fortunately—without access to large crowds and sophisticated systems where our ships are docked.”

His lips trembled. He drank the last remaining in the glass. She leaned forward and poured him more of the liquor. Took a deliberate chance in leaning close to him. It was gambling; it evened scales. It was time to call it quits. If he outlived tomorrow he would learn too much of what would happen and that was cruelty. There was a sour taste in her mouth the brandy would not cure. She pushed the bottle at him. “Take it with you,” she said, “I’ll let you go back to your quarters now. My regards to you, Mr. Konstantin.” Some men would have protested, cried and pleaded; some would have gone for her throat, a way of hastening matters. He rose and went to the door without the bottle, looked back when it would not open.

She keyed the duty officer. “Pick up the prisoner.” The acknowledgment came back. And on a second thought: “Bring Josh Talley while you’re at it.” That brought a flicker of panic to Konstantin’s eyes. “I know,” she said. “He’s minded to kill me. But then he’s undergone some changes, hasn’t he?” “He remembers you.”

She pursed her lips, smiled then without smiling. “He’s alive to remember. Isn’t he?”

“Let me talk to Mazian.”

“Hardly practical. And he won’t agree to hear you. Don’t you know, Damon Konstantin, he’s the source of your troubles? My orders come from him.” “The Fleet belonged to the Company once. It was ours. We believed in you. The stations—all of us—believed in you, if not in the Company. What happened?” She glanced down without intending to, found it difficult to look up again and meet his ignorant eyes.

“Someone’s insane,” Konstantin said.

Quite possibly, she thought. She leaned back in the chair and found nothing to say.

“There’s more than the other stations involved at Pell,” he said. “Pell was always different. Take my advice, at least. Leave my brother in permanent charge on Downbelow. You’ll get more out of the Downers if you do things the slow way.  Let him manage them. They’re not easy to understand, but they don’t understand us easily either. They’ll work for him. Let them do things their own way and they’ll do ten times the work. They don’t fight. They’ll give you anything you ask for, if you ask and don’t take.”

“Your brother will be left there,” she said.

The light by the door flashed. She keyed it open. They had brought Josh Talley.  She sat watching… a quiet exchange of glances, an attempt to question without asking questions… “Are you all right?” Josh asked. Konstantin nodded.  “Mr. Konstantin is leaving,” she said. “Come in, Josh. Come on in.” He did so, with a backward anxious look at Konstantin. The door closed between them. Signy reached again for the bottle, added to the glass which Konstantin had left on the side of the desk.

Josh too was cleaner, and the better for it. Thin. His cheeks had gone very hollow. The eyes—were alive.

“Want to sit down?” she asked. From him she did not know what to expect. He had always been acquiescent, in everything. Now she watched, anticipating some act of craziness, remembering the time he had come to find her on the station, his shouting at her from the doorway. He sat down, quiet as he had ever been. “Old times,” she said, and drank. “He’s a decent man, is Damon Konstantin.” “Yes,” Josh said.

“Still interested in killing me?”

“There’s worse than you.”

She smiled grimly and the smile faded. “Know a pair named Muller and Crowell?

Know anyone by those names?”

“The names mean nothing to me.”

“Have any contacts on Pell who could handle station comp?”

“No.”

“That’s the sole official question. I’m sorry you don’t know.” She sipped at the glass. “Considering Konstantin’s welfare has you on good behavior. That it?” No answer. But it was truth. She watched his eyes and reckoned well that it was.

“I wanted to ask you the question,” she said. “That’s all.”

“Who are they… the people you want? Why? What have they done?”

Questions. Josh had never questioned. “Adjustment agreed with you,” she said.

“What were you up to when Australia’s men waded in on you?”

Silence.

“They’re dead, Josh. Does it matter now?”

His eyes went unfocused, the old absent look… back again. Beautiful, she thought of him, as she had thought a thousand times. And he was another one there was no sparing. She had thought she might, had reckoned without his sanity. When Konstantin went, he would become very dangerous. Tomorrow, she thought. It should be done tomorrow, at least.

“I’m Union,” he said. “Not a regular… not what the records showed. Special services. You brought me here yourself. And there was another one of us who found his own way on… the way he did at Mariner. His name was Gabriel. And he ruined Pell. He acted against you, never the Konstantins. He and his operation assassinated Damon’s family, lost him his wife… how it all went, I don’t know. I didn’t do it to him. But whatever the assumptions you’ve made, the power you’ve set in control of the station now… was bribed to murder by Gabriel. I know because I know the tactics. You’ve got the wrong man under arrest, Mallory. Your man Lukas was Gabriel’s before he was yours.”

The alcohol left her brain with cold suddenness. She sat with the glass in hand and stared into Josh’s pale eyes and found her breath short. “This Gabriel… where is he?”

“Dead. You got the head of it. Him. A man named Coledy; another named Kressich;

Gabriel. Station knew him as Jessad. They were killed by the troops that took us. Damon didn’t know… didn’t know a thing about it. You think he’d have been there meeting with them if he’d known they killed his father?” “But you got him there.”

“I got him there.”

“He knew about you?”

“No.”

She drew a deep breath, let it go. “You think it makes a difference to us, how Lukas got there? He’s ours.”

“I tell you so you know it’s finished. That there’s nothing more to go after.

You’ve won. There’s no need for any more killing.”

“I should take a Unioner’s word there’s nothing more to hunt?” No answer. He was not slipping off into nowhere. The eyes were very much alive, full of pain.

“It was quite an act, Josh, that you put on with me.” “No act. I’m born for what I do. My whole past is tapes. I had nothing when they got through with me on Russell’s. I’m one of the hollow men, Mallory. Nothing real. Nothing inside. I belong to Union because my brain was programmed that way. I have no loyalties.”

“But one, maybe.”

“Damon,” he said.

She considered the matter. Drained the glass until her eyes stung. “So why did you get him involved with this Gabriel?”

“I thought I saw a way to get us off Pell. To get a shuttle for Downbelow. I have a proposition for you.”

“I think I know.”

“You’re in a position to get a man on a downbound shuttle… easily. Get him out of here if nothing else.”

“What, not back in control of Pell?”

“You said it yourself. Lukas’s mouth moves when you supply the words. That’s all you want. All you ever wanted. Get him out of here. Safe. What does it cost you?”

He knew what was ahead, at least where it regarded Konstantin’s chances. She looked up at him and down at the glass again. “For your gratitude? You imply a certain soft-headedness on my part, don’t you? Quite a trade. Does any deep-teach work with you?”

“Eventually, I imagine. What did you have in mind?”

She pushed the button. “Take him back.”

“Mallory—” Josh said.

“I’ll think on your deal,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”

“Can I talk to him?”

She thought about that. Nodded finally. “That’s cheap. You going to tell him how things were?”

“No,” he said in a thin voice. “I don’t want him to know any of it. In small things, Mallory, I trust you.”

“And hate my guts.”

He stood up, shook his head, looking down at her. The door light flashed.  “Out,” she said. And to the trooper who appeared in the doorway: “Put him with his friend. Give them any reasonable comfort they ask for.” Josh left with the guard. The door closed and locked. She sat still, moved finally to prop her feet on the bed.

The thought had occurred to her that a Konstantin could be useful at a later stage of the war; if Union took the bait; if Union seized Pell and restored it.  Then it might be useful to produce a Konstantin, in their hands—if he were like Lukas; but he was not. There was no use for him. Mazian would never go for it.  The shuttle was one way out of the dilemma. And the thing would not be known—if the Fleet moved out soon. A long time before Union could ferret young Konstantin out of the bush. Long enough for the rest of the plan to work, Pell to die, depriving Union of a base, or live, causing Union organizational trouble. Josh’s idea might work. Might. She reached and poured yet another drink, sat with her hand white-knuckled round the glass.

Union operative. She was frankly embarrassed. Outraged. Wryly amused. She had some capacity for humility.

And that was what the Beyond came to be—a renegade Fleet and a world that bred creatures like Josh.

Who could do what Josh did. What Gabriel/Jessad had tried to do.

What they prepared to do.

She sat with arms folded, staring at the desktop. At last she sipped at the drink, reached and keyed the in-built comp. Troop assignments?  Locations and lists came back. They were all on the ship except the dozen guarding the access to the ship itself. She keyed the duty officer.  Ben, take a walk outside and bring in those twelve we’ve got on the dock. Don’t use the com. Report to me on comp when you’ve done that.  New code. Crew assignments?

They flashed back to her. The alterday crew was on duty. Graff was still with Di.

She keyed into com and started with Graff. “Get to the bridge,” she said. “Put a medic with Di. Di, stay quiet.”

She started keying pager calls through comp for others; had gotten to armscomper Tiho when the duty officer keyed back mission accomplished. The armscomper keyed message received. She took a final sip and stood up, remarkably clearheaded. At least the deck did not pitch.

She shrugged on her jacket and walked out and down the corridor to the bridge, stood there and looked about her as bewildered mainday and alterday crew turned and stared back at her.

“Open intraship,” she said. “All stations and quarters, every speaker.”

The com tech pushed the main switch.

“They ran us off the docks,” she said, clipping a button mike to her collar, as she did when they were on casual op. She reached her own station, the control post beside Graff’s, central to the bowed aisles. “Everyone’s aboard. Crew, troops, everyone’s aboard. Mainday to stations, alterday to backup. Flash battle stations. I’m pulling us out of here.”

There was stunned silence for a moment. No one moved. Suddenly everyone did, shifting seats, reached for controls and com, techs scrambling for the lateral posts shut down during dock. Boards hummed, tilting for use. Lights flashed red overhead and the siren went.

“No undock, rip her loose.” She flung herself back into her own cushion, reached for straps. She would have taken helm herself, but she did not, at the moment, trust her reflexes. “Mr. Graff, skin her by Pell and take her out bearing…” She sucked air. “Bearing nowhere at all. I’ll take her then.” “Instructions,” Graff asked calmly. “If fired on do we fire?”

“No holds barred, Mr. Graff. Take her out.”

There were questions coming in via ship’s com, troop officers belowdecks wanting to know the emergency. The riders were on patrol. There was no bringing them in for consultation. There was no bringing them in at all. Graff was running his final check, setting up his sequence of orders, checking the positions of everything and making sure comp had it. Screens flashed a proposed course, a chute over Pell incredibly close to atmosphere, a whip behind the world and gone.

“Execute,” Graff said.

There was a crash, the lock seal, the emergency disengage; and a jolt that wrenched them out of Pell’s slow spin. They hammered into a zenith rise and mains cut in, slammed them over station. Something hit the hull and slid: trailing connection. They kept accelerating with Downbelow’s dark side looming at them.

“Mallory!” a voice shouted over ship-to-ship.

It was alterday. Captains were abed. Crews and troops were scattered on the dock and they had breached umbilicals… She clenched her teeth as Norway hurtled over Pell’s far rim and headed for a course closer to a planet than comfortable. Held her breath and listened to the curses that crackled over com.

Pacific and Atlantic were ordered to intercept. They had not a prayer of getting into line in time, the rest of the Fleet in the way; and Norway had Downbelow coming up for cover. Australia was breaking loose from station, with no obstructions between them, and that was the danger. “Armscomp,” she ordered.  “Aft screens. That’s Edger. Get him.”

No acknowledgment; Tiho reached for switches in rapid motion and lights flashed, screens shaping it up.

They had no riders for tail cover. Australia had none for bow. Norway’s combat seals went into place, segmenting them. G was increasing as cylinder synch calculated maneuver-possible. Over com came a frantic query from one of their own riders, asking instructions. She gave no answers.  Downbelow loomed in vid and they were still accelerating all out. Approach warnings were flashing. Australia was the bigger ship, the more at hazard.  Screens and lights flashed. They were fired on.

iv

Pell; blue dock; Europe; 2400 hrs. md; 1200 a.

“No.” Mazian hovered by his post, a hand pressed to the earplug while his bridge swirled in chaos. “Hold where you are, hold for troop pickup. Warn all troops blue dock is breached. Pick up any trooper on green no matter what ship. Over.” Acknowledgments crackled back. Pell was in chaos, a whole dock breached, air rushing out the umbilicals, pressure dropped. Debris floated between Europe and India, troopers who had been on the dock, dead and drifting, sucked out when an access two meters by two was ripped from its moorings without warning. The dock was void. Everything had gone. Ships’ locks had closed automatically the instant the depressurization hit, cutting off even those closest to safety.  “Keu,” he said, “report.”

“I have given the necessary orders,” the imperturbable voice came back. “All troops on Pell are moving for green.”

“On the run… Porey, Porey are you still in link?”

“This is Porey. Over.”

“Pass orders: destroy Downbelow base and execute all workers.”

“Yes, sir,” Porey said. Anger vibrated through his tone. “Done.”

Mallory, Mazian thought, a word which had become a curse, an obscenity.  Orders were not yet disseminated, plans not firm. They had to assume the worst now and act on it. Disrupt the station’s controls. Get the troops off and run for it… they had to have them. Ruin anything useful.  Sun. Earth. It had to be now.

And Mallory… if once they could get their hands on her… viii Pell central; 2400 hrs. md; 1200 a.

Jon Lukas turned from devastation on the screens to chaos on the boards, techs scrambling frantically to relay calls to damage control and security.  “Sir,” one asked him, “sir, there’re troops trapped in blue, a sealed compartment. They want to know when we can get to them. They want to know how long.”

He froze. He had stopped having answers. The instructions did not come. There were only the guards, who were always about him, Hale and his comrades who were always with him, day and night, his personal and unshakable nightmare.  They had their rifles on the techs now. He turned, looked at Hale to appeal to him to use the helmet com to contact the Fleet, to ask information, whether it was attack or malfunction, or what had sent a Fleet carrier ripping over their heads and three others on its tail. Of a sudden Hale and his men stopped, all at the same time, listening to something only they could hear. And all at once they turned, leveled rifles.

“No!” Jon screamed.

They fired.  ix Downbelow main base; 2400 hrs. md.; 1200 a.; local night There was little chance for sleep. They took it when they could, man and hisa, crouched the one in Q dome and the other in the mud outside, sleeping as best they might, shift by shift in their clothes, in the same mud-caked, stinking blankets, what sleep they were allowed. The mills never stopped; and the work went on day and night.

The flimsy doors of the lock slammed, one after the other, and Emilio lay stiff and still, apprehension confirmed—a sound had wakened him. It was not time to wake, surely it was not time. It seemed only minutes ago that he had lain down to sleep. He heard the patter of rain overhead; heard a number of boots crunching the gravel outside. There was no shuttle down; they roused both shifts of them out only for loading.

“Up and out,” a trooper shouted.

He moved. He heard moans about him, the other men wakened, winced in the strong light which swept over them. He rolled out of the cot, grimaced with the pain of strained muscles and blistered feet onto which he pulled water-stiffened boots.  Fear worked in him, small things wrong, different from other nighttime rousings.  He fastened his clothing, put on his jacket, groped at his throat for the breather mask which always hung there. Light hit his face again, drew groans of misery from others. He walked for the door among others who were going; outside, through the second door, up the wooden steps to the path. More lights in his face. He flung his arm up to shield his eyes.

“Konstantin. Round up the Downers.”

He tried to see past the lights, eyes watering… on a second try made out shadows beyond, others of their number brought up from the mills. Shuttle had to be coming down. It must be. No need to panic.

“Get the Downers.”

“All of you out,” someone inside shouted; the doors opened then straight through, deflating the dome crest as all others were herded out at gunpoint A hand found his, childlike. He looked down. It was Bounder. The Downers were up. All the other hisa had gathered, bewildered by the lights and the hard voices invoking their name.

“All of them out now?” a trooper asked another. “We got them all,” the other said.

The tone of it was wrong. Ominous. Details became strangely clear, like the moment of a long fall, an accident, a time stretched thin… Rain and the lights, the glistening of water on armor… he saw them move… rifles lift… “Hit them!” he yelled, and flung himself at the line. A shot popped into his leg and he hit the barrel, shoving it aside, following armored arms to armored body.  He bore the man over, ripped for the mask while armored fists flailed, battered his head. Rifles went off; bodies hit the ground about him. He scooped up a handful of mud, Downbelow’s own armament, slammed it into armor faceplate, into the breather intake, found a throat under the armor rings and kept after it while shouts and Downer shrieks rang through the rain.  A shot went overhead and the man under him stopped fighting. He scrabbled in the thick mud for the rifle, rolled with it and looked up into a gun leveling at his face; he squeezed the trigger and slagged it before it aimed, the trooper staggering under fire from another quarter, screaming in the pain of diffused burns. Fire from behind, near the dome. He fired at anything in armor, heard Downer shrieks.

Light hit him; they were spotted. He rolled again, fired for the light, no skill at aiming, but it went down.

“Run,” a hisa voice shrieked at him. “All run. Quick, quick.” He tried to get to his feet. A hisa seized him up and dragged him until another could help, into cover by the dome, where his own men had taken cover. Fire was coming back at them from the hill, the path which led to the landing field, their ship.

“Stop them!” he yelled at whatever of his men could hear. “Cut them off!” He managed a limping run, a little distance; shots hissed into the puddles about him. He slowed as others of his men kept going, tried to keep going.  “You come,” a hisa shrieked. “You come me.”

He fired as he could, ignoring the hisa that wanted him to retreat to the woods.  Fire came back and a man of his fell, and fire started coming from the flanking woods, hitting the troops, driving them to run again, and he limped after. The troops had reached the hillcrest, disappeared over the shoulder of the hill; had surely called for help, reinforcements, for the probe’s big guns to be trained on that path to meet them the moment they charged over it. Emilio cursed tearfully, used the rifle for a crutch, and some of his men kept going still.  “Keep low,” he yelled, and struggled further, with visions of the ship lofting, of all the helpless thousands who waited by the images. The troops had distance on them, and armor that protected them, and once over that hill… They came up over it. Fire lit the dark, and most of his men flung themselves down at once, squirming back to cover from a fire they could not face. He crouched, came as far as he could, lay on his belly to look down from the hill into the fire of the heavy guns. The ground itself began to steam downslope. He saw troops regrouping against the probe’s lighted hatch, under an umbrella of fire that laced the slope, beams steaming through the rain and boiling earth as well as water. The troops could reach that safe haven; the ship would loft and hit them from overhead… nothing, nothing that they could do.  Shadow flooded toward the field, behind the lines of rallying troopers, like illusion, the pouring of a black tide toward that hatch. The troops silhouetted in the hatchway saw it, fired… must have called the others; they started turning and Emilio opened up fire on their backs, heart-chilled with the sudden realization what it was, what that other force must be. He scrambled to his knees, trying to get a shot at the troops in the open hatchway despite the beams slicing the hillside. The dark flood kept coming over their own fallen, carried the doorway, and suddenly gave way, retreating desperately.  Fire bloomed in the hatchway, spread and swept through the troops and the attackers; the sound came, and the shock hit his bones. He sprawled in the mud and lay there. Firing had stopped. There was silence… no more war, only the patter of rain in the puddles.

Downers babbled and chattered and scurried up behind him. He tried to gain his feet, meaning to get down there, where people of his own had fallen, blasting that hatchway.

Then the ship’s lights came back on, and the engines rumbled, and it began to fire again, guns sweeping the slope.

Still alive. He raged at it, hardly felt the hands which crept about his arms and sides and tried to carry him… Downers, bent doggedly on helping him, chattering and pleading with him.

Then the ship shut down both the firing and the engines. Rested dormant, lights winking, but with the hatch gaping dark and fire-blackened.  Downers pulled him away, threw arms about him as he tried to stand, and dragged him when his leg went out from under him. A hisa’s thin hand patted his cheek.  “You all right, you all right,” a voice pleaded. Bounder’s. They crossed behind the hill, hisa gathering up more of the dead and wounded, and suddenly human figures were coming toward them out of the woods, humans and hisa together.  “Emilio!” he heard, Miliko’s voice. Others were running toward him behind her… Men and women left behind… he struggled for a few running steps and reached her, hugged her insanely, with the taste of despair in his mouth.  “Ito,” she said, “Ernst—they got them. The blast jammed their hatch.”

“They’ll get us,” he said. “They’ll call down the bigger stuff.” “No. Got a com station in the bush; one message… one fast message to base two com unit at the gathering… it’ll get them out of there. We got them.” He let go, because he could, began to fade—looked back toward the ship, invisible behind the hill; there was another flare of engines, ominous thunder, a desperate ship trying only to save itself.

“Hurry,” she said, trying to help him walk. He came, hisa hovering all about them. “Hurry,” the hisa kept saying, over and over again, surrounding all of them, some walking, others silent, carried by the hisa, over the face of the hill and beyond, deep among the rain-dripping trees, up into the hills… they kept moving until sense grayed and blackened and he sank down into wet bracken, was hauled up again by a dozen strong hands and carried at the last almost running. There was a hole in the hillside, a place among the rocks.  “Miliko,” he said, irrationally fearing the dark, close tunnel. They took him into it, and let him down, and in a moment arms gathered him up again and held him, rocking gently, Miliko’s voice whispering into his ear. “We’re all right,” she kept saying. “The tunnels will hold us all… the deep winter burrows, deep in all the hills… we’re all right.”