Downbelow Station (36 page)

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i

Pell: sector white four: 2230 hrs.

Jon lukas walked nervously through the vacant halls, despite the pass Keu had given to all of them in the council chambers. Troops might be withdrawn progressively starting at maindawn, they had been promised. Had to, he reckoned.
 
Some of them were already being rotated off to rest, some Fleet crew, armorless, taking up guard in their places. It was all quiet; he was not even challenged but once, at the lift exit, and he walked to his door, used his card to open it.
 
The front room was deserted. His heart lurched with the immediate fear that his unbidden guest had strayed; but then Bran Hale appeared in the hall by the kitchen and looked relieved to see him.

“All right,” Hale said, and Jessad came out, and two others of Hale’s men after him.

“About time,” Jessad said. “This was growing tedious.” “It’s going to stay that way,” Jon said peevishly. “Everyone has to stay here tonight: Hale, Daniels, Clay… I’m not having my apartment door pour a horde of visitors out under the troops’ noses. They’ll be gone come morning.” “The Fleet?” Hale asked.

“The troops in the halls.” Jon went to the kitchen bar, examined a bottle which had been full when he left it and which now had two fingers remaining. He poured himself a drink and sipped it with a sigh, his eyes stinging with exhaustion. He walked over to the chair he favored and sank down as Jessad took his place opposite, across the low table, and Hale and his men rummaged at the bar for another bottle. “I’m glad you were prudent,” he said to Jessad. “I was worried.” Jessad smiled, cat-eyed. “I surmise you were. That for a moment or two you thought of solutions. Maybe you’re still thinking in that line. Shall we discuss it?”

Jon frowned, slid a glance at Hale and his men. “I trust them more than you, and that’s a fact.”

“It’s likely you thought of being rid of me,” Jessad said. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if you aren’t right now more concerned about where rather than if. You might get away with it entirely. Probably you would.” The directness disturbed him. “Since you bring it up yourself, I suppose you’ve got a counter proposal.”

The smile persisted. “One: I’m no present hazard; you may want to think matters over. Two: I am undismayed by Mazian’s arrival.”

“Why?”

“Because that contingency is covered.”

Jon lifted the glass to his lips and took a stinging swallow. “By what?”

“When you jump to land in the Deep, Mr. Lukas, you can do it three safe ways:

not throw much into the jump in the first place… if you’re in regions you know very, very well; or use a star’s G to pull you up; or—if you’re good—the mass in some null point. A lot of junk in Pell’s vicinity, you know that? Nothing very big, but big enough.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Union Fleet, Mr. Lukas. Do you think there’s no reason Mazian has his ships grouped for the first time in decades? Pell’s all they have left; and the Union Fleet is out there, just as they sent me ahead, knowing where they’d come.” Hale and his men had gathered, settled on the couch and along the back of it.
 
Jon shaped the situation in his mind, Pell a battle zone, the worst of all scenarios.

“And what happens to us when it’s discovered there’s no way to dislodge Mazian?” “Mazian can be driven off. And when that’s done he has no bases at all. He’s done; and we have peace, Mr. Lukas, with all the rewards of it. That’s why I’m here.”

“I’m listening.”

“Officials have to be taken out. The Konstantins have to be taken out. You have to be set in their place. Have you the nerve for that, Mr. Lukas, despite relationships? I understand there’s a—kinship involved here; yourself, Konstantin’s wife—” He clamped his lips together, flinching as he always did, from the thought of Alicia as she was now. Could not face that. Had never been able to stomach it.
 
It was not life, linked to those machines. Not life. He wiped at his face. “My sister and I don’t speak. Haven’t, for years. She’s an invalid; Dayin would have told you that.”

“I’m aware of it. I’m talking about her husband, her sons. Have you the nerve, Mr. Lukas?”

“Nerve, yes, if the planning makes sense.”

“There’s a man on this station named Kressich.”

He sucked in a slow breath, the drink resting in his hand against the chair arm.

“Vassily Kressich, elected councillor of Q. How do you know him?” “Dayin Jacoby gave us the name… as the concillor from that zone; and we have files. This man Kressich… comes from Q when the council meets. He then has a pass which will let him do so, or is it visual inspection?” “Both. There are guards.”

“Can those who do the inspecting be bribed?”

“For some things, yes. But stationers, Mr. Whoever-you-are, have a natural reluctance to doing anything to damage the station they’re living in. You can get drugs and liquor into Q; but a man… a guard’s conscience about a case of liquor and his instinct for self-preservation are two different things.” “Then we’ll have to keep any conference with him brief, won’t we?”

“Not here.”

“That’s up to you. Perhaps the lending of an id and papers. I’m sure among your many faithful employees something can be arranged, some apartment near the Q zone—” “What kind of conference are you talking about? And what are you looking for from Kressich? The man is spineless.”

“How many employees do you have in all,” Jessad asked, “as faithful and trusted as these men here? Men who might take risks, who might kill? We have need of that sort.”

Jon cast a look at Bran Hale, feeling short of breath. Back again. “Well, Kressich isn’t the type, I’ll tell you.”

“Kressich has contacts. Can a man stay seated atop that monster of Q without them?” ii Pell: sector green seven: merchanter’s hospice; 2241 hrs.
 
Com buzzed. The light was on, a call coming through. Josh looked at it across his room, stopped in his pacing. They had let him go. Go home, they had said, and he had done so, through corridors guarded by police and Mazianni. They knew at this moment where he was. And now someone was calling his room, hard after his arrival.

The caller insisted; the red light stayed on, blinking. He did not want to answer, but it might be detention checking to be sure he had gotten here. He was afraid not to respond to it. He crossed the room and pushed the reply button.
 
“Josh Talley,” he said into the mike.

“Josh. Josh, it’s Damon. Good to hear your voice. Are you all right?”

He leaned against the wall, caught his breath.

“Josh?”

“I’m all right. Damon, you know what happened.”

“I know. Your message got to me. I’ve taken personal responsibility for you.
 
You’re coming to our apartment tonight. Pack what you need. I’m coming there after you.”

“Damon, no. No. Stay out of this.”

“We’ve talked it over; it’s all right. No argument.”

“Damon, don’t. Don’t let it get on their records…”

“We’re your legal sponsors as it is, Josh. It’s already on the records.”

“Don’t.”

“Elene and I are on our way.”

The contact went dead. He wiped his face. The knot which had been at his stomach had risen into his throat. He saw no walls, nothing of where he was. It was all metal, and Signy Mallory, young face and age-silvered hair, and eyes dead and oldest of all. Damon and Elene and the child they wanted… they prepared to put everything at risk. For him.

He had no weapons. Needed none, if it were to be himself and her alone, as it had been in her quarters. He had been dead then, inside. Had existed, hating his existence. The same kind of paralysis beckoned now… to let things be, accept, take cover where it was offered; it was always easier. He had not threatened Mallory, having had nothing to fight for.

He pushed from the wall, felt of his pocket, making sure his papers were there.
 
He walked into the hall and through it past the unmanned front desk of the hospice, out into the open where the guards stood. One of the local security started to challenge him. He looked frantically down the corridor where a trooper stood.

“You!” he shouted, disturbing the vacant quiet of the hall. Police and trooper reacted, the trooper with leveled rifle and a suddenness which had almost been a pulled trigger. Josh swallowed thickly, held his hands in plain view. “I want to talk with you.”

The rifle motioned. He walked with hands still wide at his sides, toward the armored trooper and the dark muzzle. “Far enough,” the trooper said. “What is it?”

The insignia was Atlantic’s. “Mallory of Norway” he said. “We’re good friends.

Tell her Josh Talley wants to talk with her. Now.”

The trooper had a disbelieving look, a scowl finally. But he balanced the rifle in the crook of his arm and reached for his com button. “I’ll relay to the Norway duty officer,” he said. “You’ll be going in, in either case—your way, if she does know you, and on general investigation if she doesn’t.” “She’ll see me,” he said.

The trooper pushed the com button and queried. What came back came privately over his helmet com, but his eyes flickered. “Check it, then,” he said to Norway. And after a moment more: “Command central. Got it. Out.” He hooked the com unit to his belt again, and motioned with the rifle barrel. “Keep walking down that hall and go up the ramp. That trooper down there will take you in charge and see you talk to Mallory.”

He went, walking quickly, for he did not reckon it would take Damon and Elene long to reach the hospice.

They searched him. Of course they would do so. He endured it for the third time this day, and this time it did not bother him. He was cold inside, and outer things did not trouble him. He straightened his clothes and walked with them up the ramp, past sentries at every level. On green two they entered a lift and rode it the short rise and traverse into blue one. They had not even asked for his papers, had scarcely looked at them more than to be sure that the folder held nothing but papers.

They walked a short distance back along the matting-carpeted hall. There was a reek of chemicals in the air. Workmen were busy peeling all the location signs.
 
The windowed section further, crammed with comp equipment and with a few techs moving about, was specially guarded. Norway troops. They opened the door and let him and his guards in, into station central, among the aisles of busy technicians.

Mallory, seated at the end of the counters, rose to meet him, smiled coldly at him, her face haggard. “Well?” she said.

He had thought the sight of her would not affect him. It did. His stomach wrenched. “I want to come back,” he said, “on Norway.” “Do you?”

“I’m no stationer; I don’t belong here. Who else would take me?” Mallory looked at him and said nothing. A tremor started in his left knee; he wished he might sit down. They would shoot him if he made a move; he thoroughly believed that they would. The tic threatened his composure, jerked at the side of his mouth when she turned away a moment and glanced back again. She laughed, a dry chuckle. “Konstantin put you up to this?”

“No.”

“You’ve been Adjusted. That so?”

The stammer tied his tongue. He nodded.

“And Konstantin makes himself responsibile for your good behavior.” It was all going wrong. “No one’s responsible for me,” he said, stumbling on the words. “I want a ship. If Norway is all I’ve got, then I’ll take it.” He had to look at her directly, at eyes which flickered with imagined thoughts, things which were not going to be said here, before the troopers, “You search him?” she asked the guards.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She stood thinking a long moment, and there was no smile, no laughter. “Where are you staying?”

“A room in the old hospice.”

“The Konstantins provide it?”

“I work. I pay for it.”

“What’s your job?”

“Small salvage.”

An expression of surprise, of derision.

“So I want out of it,” he said. “I figure you owe me that.” There was interruption, movement behind him, which stopped. Mallory laughed, a bored, weary laugh, and beckoned to someone. “Konstantin. Come on in. Come get your friend.”

Josh turned. Damon and Elene were both there, flushed and upset and out of breath. They had followed him. “If he’s confused,” Damon said, “he belongs in the hospital.” He came and laid a hand on Josh’s shoulder. “Come on. Come on, Josh.”

“He’s not confused,” Mallory said. “He came here to kill me. Take your friend home, Mr. Konstantin. And keep a watch on him, or I’ll handle matters my way.” There was stark silence.

“I’ll see to it,” Damon said after a moment. His fingers bit into Josh’s shoulder. “Come on. Come on.”

Josh moved, walked with him and Elene, past the guards, out and down the long corridor with the work crews and the chemical smell; the doors of central closed behind them. Neither of them said anything. Damon’s grip shifted to his elbow and they took him into a lift, rode it down the short distance to five. There were more guards in this hall, and station police. They passed unchallenged into the residential halls, to Damon’s own door. They brought him inside and closed the door. He stood waiting, while Damon and Elene went through the routine of turning on lights, and taking off jackets.

“I’ll send for your clothes,” Damon said shortly. “Come on, make yourself at home.”

It was not the welcome he deserved. He picked a leather chair, mindful of his grease-stained work clothes. Elene brought him a cool drink and he sipped at it without tasting it.

Damon sat down on the arm of the chair next to his. Temper showed. Josh accepted that, found a place at his feet to stare at.

“You ran us a circular chase,” Damon said. “I don’t know how you got past us but you managed it.”

“I asked to go.”

Whatever Damon would have wanted to say, he swallowed. Elene came over and sat down on the couch opposite him.

“So what did you have in mind?” Damon asked evenly.

“You shouldn’t have gotten involved. I didn’t want you involved.”

“So you ran from us?”

He shrugged.