Downbelow Station (55 page)

It was not going to work. It had always been a mad idea.

ii

Merchanter Finity’s End; deep space; 1/6/53

Another merchanter in. Arrivals were not unusual. Elene heard the report and got up from her couch, walked Finity’s narrow spaces to see what Wes Neihart had on scan.

“What’s the deal here?” a thin voice asked in due time. The freighter had jumped in at a respectful distance, fully cautious; it would take her a while to work her way in out of the jump range. Elene sat down at the second seat at the scan, feeling after the cushion. Her thickening body vexed her subconsciously; it was a nuisance she had learned to live with. The baby was kicking, an internal and unpredictable companionship. Quiet, she thought at him, winced and concentrated on scan. Other Neiharts moved in to see.

“Someone going to answer me?” the newcomer asked, much closer now.

“Give me id,” said the voice of another ship. “This is Little Bear, merchanter.

Who are you? Keep coming; just give us id.”

The answer time passed, still shorter now; and other merchanters had started to move. There was a gathering bunch of observers on Finity’s bridge.
 
“Don’t like this one,” someone muttered.

“This is Genevieve out of Unionside, from Fargone. Rumor has it we’ve got something going on here. What’s the situation?”

“Let me take it,” another voice broke in. “Genevieve, this is Pixie II. Let me talk to the old man, all right, young fellow?”

There was a silence beyond what should have been. Elene’s heart started pumping overtime, and she swung about with an awkward and frantic wave at Neihart, but the general alert was already on its way, Neihart passing the signal to his nephew at comp.

“This is Sam Denton on Genevieve,” the voice returned.

“Sam, what’s my name?”

“Soldiers here,” Genevieve sputtered, and the voice went off very quickly. Elene reached frantically after com as communications everywhere crackled orders to stand or be fired on.

“Genevieve. Genevieve, this is Quen of Estelle. Answer.” No one fired. On scan, ships, the hundreds of ships drifting within the null point range, sat reoriented to embrace the intruder.

“This is Union Lt. Marn Oborsk,” a voice returned at last. “Aboard Genevieve.
 
This ship will destruct before capture. The Dentons are aboard. Confirm your identity. The Quens are dead. Estelle is a dead ship. What ship are you?” “Genevieve, you are not in a position to make demands. Put the Dentons off their ship.”

Again a long pause. “I want to know who I’m talking to.” She let the silence ride for a moment. About her there was frantic activity on the bridge. Guns were being aimed, the relative positions calculated for speed, drift, and the probable sly use of docking jets to increase it. “This is Quen speaking. We demand you set the Dentons off that ship. We tell you this: that if Union sets its hands on another merchanter, there’s going to be the devil let loose. That the port of origin of any ship attacking or appropriating a merchanter vessel will be subject to the full sanctions of our alliance. That’s the name of what’s going on out here. Look your fill, Lt. Oborsk. We’re spreading. We outnumber your warships. If you want a kilo of commerce moved anywhere, from now on you deal with us.”

“What ship is speaking?”

They might have started shooting instead of talking. Calm them down; Keep them steady. She wiped her face and rolled a glance at Neihart, who nodded: they had them comped. “Quen is all you need to know, lieutenant. You’re far outnumbered.
 
How did you find this place? Did you get it out of the Dentons? Or did just the wrong ship contact you? I’ll tell you this: the merchanter’s alliance will deal as a unit. And if you want real trouble, sir, you go lay hands on another merchanter vessel. You and Mazian’s Fleet can do what you like to each other.
 
We’re not Company and we’re not Union. We’re the third side in this triangle and from now on we negotiate in our own name.”

“What is in progress here?”

“Are you able to negotiate or carry messages on your side?”

There was long delay.

“Lieutenant,” she pursued, “when authorized negotiators are willing to approach us we are fully prepared to talk with you. In the meantime kindly put the Dentons off. If you are willing to talk reasonably you’ll find us amiable; if on the other hand… harm comes to any merchanter, reprisals will be made for it. And that is a promise.”

There was the requisite silence. “This is Sam Denton,” another voice said finally. “I’m instructed to tell you that this ship is going to put about and that there is a destruct aboard. Got the whole family on here, Quen. That’s truth too.”

Of a sudden there was breakup. She flashed a look at vid and telemetry, saw the flare registered, suddenly grow, become a wash there was no mistaking even on vid. Her stomach tightened and the baby moved… she put her hand on the spot and stared at the screens in a moment of nausea, while static kept coming in.
 
A hand descended on her shoulder, Neihart’s.

“Who fired?” she asked.

“This is Pixy II,” a voice came back, rough and thick. “I did. They were nosing zenith toward the gap; engines flared. They’d have carried out too much.” “We cope, Pixy.”

“Going in,” another ship sent. “Going to search the area.” There was at least the possibility of a capsule… that Union might have allowed the Denton children to shelter there, for safety. There was not much chance that a capsule could have survived that.

Like Estelle, at Mariner. Like that. They were not going to find anything.
 
Other blips were showing up, ghostly presences in the sunless dark of the point, defined only as blips on scan, or by the sometime flick of runnings lights or a shadow on vid, occulting stars. They were friendly—hundreds of ships moving into the search area. “We’re in it now,” Neihart murmured; “Union won’t rest.” But they all knew that, from the time the word had gone out, from the time merchanters had begun to pass to merchanters the word where to come and the name that summoned them… a dead ship, and a dead name—from a disaster they all knew.
 
Inevitable that Union get wind of it; by now Union was surely noticing the curious absence of ships from their stations, merchanters who did not come in on schedule. They were panicking perhaps, perceiving disappearances in zones where it could not be military action, with Mazian tied up at Pell. Union had appropriated ships—they had proven that—and before this ship came, it might have given its course to others. The next step was a warship sent in here… if Union could spare one from Pell.

And the word had not sped only to Union space. It had gone to Sol—for Winifred had recalled her Earthly ties, dumped her cargo, ridding herself of mass to jump as far as possible… had undertaken that long and uncertain journey to what welcome they did not know. Tell them about Mariner. Elene had asked of them. And Russell’s and Viking and Pell. Make them understand. They did it dutifully, because they had once been Earth’s. But it was gesture only. There was no answer coming.

They did not find a capsule, only debris and wreckage.

iii

Downbelow: hisa sanctuary 1/6/53; local night

The hisa had been coming and going from the beginning, quiet migration in and out of the gathering at the foot of the images, hushed and sober movement, by ones and twos and reverently, in respect to the dreamers who gathered there by the thousands. By day and by night they had come, carrying food and water, doing small and necessary things.

There were domes for humans now, diggings made by Downer labor, and compressors thumped away with the pulse of life, rude, patched domes unlovely… but they gave shelter to the old and to the children, and to all the rest of them as brief summer yielded to fall, as skies clouded and the days full of sun and the nights of stars grew fewer.

Ships overflew them, shuttles on their runs going and coming; they were accustomed to this, and it no longer frightened them.
 
You must not gather even the woods, Miliko had explained to the Old Ones through interpreters. Their eyes see warm things, even through trees. Deep earth can hide hisa, oh, very deep. But they see even when Sun doesn’t shine.
 
Downer eyes had gotten very round at that. They had talked among themselves.

Lukases, they had muttered. But they had seemed to understand.
 
She had talked day upon day to the Old Ones, talked until she was hoarse and she exhausted her interpreters, tried to make them understand what they faced, and when she would tire, alien hands would pat her arms and her face and round hisa eyes look at her with profound tenderness, all, sometimes, that they could do.
 
And humans… by night she came to them. There was Ito, and Ernst and others, who grew moodier and moodier—Ito because all the other officers had gone with Emilio; and Ernst, a small man, who had not been chosen; and one of the strongest men of all the camps, Ned Cox, who had not volunteered in the first place… and began to be ashamed. There was a kind of contagion that spread among them, shame perhaps, when they heard news from main base, that told of nothing but misery. About a hundred sat outside the domes, choosing the cold weather and the reliance on breathers as if by rejecting comfort they proved something to each other and to themselves. They had grown silent, and their eyes were, as the Downers said, bright and cold. Day and night… in this sanctuary, in the place of hisa images… they sat in front of the domes in which others lived, in which others were all too eager to take their turns—they could not all get in at once.
 
They stayed because they must; any desertion would be noted from the sky. They had elected sanctuary, and there was nothing left to do but to sit and think of the others. Thinking. Measuring themselves.

Dreaming, the hisa called it. It was what hisa came to do.
 
Use sense, Miliko had told them in the first days, when they were most restless, talking wildly about action. We’re to wait.

Wait on what? Cox had asked, and that began to haunt her own dreams.

This night, hisa were coming down the slope who had been sent for… days before.
 
This night she sat with the others and watched them come, hands in her lap, watched small, distant bodies moving in the starless dark of the plain, sat with a curious tautness in her gut, and a tightness in her throat. Hisa… to fill up the number of humans, so that those who scanned the camp would find it undiminished. She carried the gun in a waterproof pocket; dressed warmly; still shivered in the uncertainty of things. Care for the hisa: that was what she was left to do; but go, the hisa themselves had told her. You heart hurt. You eyes cold like they.

Go or lose the people she commanded. She could no longer hold them otherwise.
 
Are you afraid to be left? she had asked the humans who would remain, the quiet, retiring ones, the old, the children, those men and women unlike those who sat outside—families and people with loved ones and those who were, perhaps, saner.
 
She felt guilt for them. She was supposed to protect them and she could not; could not really even lead that band outside—she simply ran ahead of their madness. Many of these who would remain were Q, refugees, who had seen too much of horror, and were too tired, and had never asked to be down here at all. She imagined they must be afraid. The hisa elders could be perversely strange, and while Pell folk were used to hisa, they were still alien to these people. No, one old woman had said. For the first time since Mariner I’m not afraid. We’re safe here. Not from the guns, maybe, but from being afraid. And other heads had nodded, and eyes stared at her with the patience of the hisa images.
 
Now hisa moved near them where they sat… a small group of hisa, who came first to her and to Ito, and they stood up, looked back on the others who waited.
 
“See you,” Miliko said, and heads nodded, in silence.
 
Several more were chosen, the hisa taking those they would, and slowly, in the dark, they walked that track across and up the slope, as others would come down, in small groups. One hundred twenty-three humans would go this night; and as many hisa come to join the camp in their place. She hoped that the hisa understood. They had seemed to, finally, eyes lighting with merriment at the joke on the humans who looked down to spy on them.
 
They went by the quickest route, passed other hisa on the way down, who called out cheerfully to them… and she walked at a human’s best pace, panting, dizzy, resolved not to rest, for a hisa would not rest; and so they had all agreed to do it. She staggered as they made the final climb into the forest margin helped by the young hisa females who hovered about them… She-walks-far was one, and Wind-in-trees another, and more whose names she could not quite fathom nor the hisa say. Quickfoot, she had named the one and Whisper the other, for they set great store by human names. She had tried the names they called themselves, to please them as they walked, but her tongue could not master them and her attempts sent the hisa into nose-wrinkling gales of laughter.
 
They rested until the sun came up, in the trees and the bracken, and under a rocky ledge. By daylight they set out again, she and Ito and Ernst and the hisa who guided them, as other hisa had led others of them into the forest now, elsewhere. The hisa moved as if there were no enemies in all the world, with prank-playing, and once an ambush which stopped their hearts… Quickfoot’s joke.
 
Miliko frowned, and when the other humans did, the hisa caught the mood and grew quieter, seeming perplexed. Miliko caught Whisper by the hand and tried earnestly and once more to make sense to her, who knew less human speech than those hisa they were accustomed to deal with.

“Look.” At last she grew desperate, seized a stick and crouched down, ripped up living and dead bracken to make a clear spot. She jabbed the stick at the ground. “Konstantin-man camp.” She drew a line. “River.” It was not likely, knowledgeable men said, that any drawn symbol was going to penetrate hisa imagination; it was not in their approach to things, lines and marks bearing no relationship to the real object. “We make circle, so, we eyes watch human camp.
 
See Konstantin. See Bounder.”