In the Company of Others (16 page)

When the small, cluttered space was emptied except for themselves, she claimed the only chair behind a desk and gestured Malley to take the one opposite. As he sat, the chair groaning in protest, Gail gestured to the rest to leave them.

Predictably, after nodding an okay to his people and watching them file out, Grant didn't budge. Gail waited. Malley looked from one to the other, definitely amused now. Finally, Grant took a quick step forward, bringing something from his pocket to place firmly on the desk in front of her. Then he turned to Malley and said: “I'm on the other side of the only exit, Stationer. Don't forget that.”

Instead of a sneer, which Grant probably expected—
and deserved, the melodramatic oaf
—Malley's face turned quite serious. “She's safer here, with me, than anywhere on this station,” he told the obviously angry officer. “A conversation—that's all.”

Grant wasn't buying it. “Just mind yourself, Malley—that's all I care about.” He saluted Gail in a way that left no doubt of his disapproval, then spun and marched out of the room.

“Is he always like that?”

Gail gazed at the device lying in front of her on the stained desktop, making no move to touch it. Any contact with it would doubtless trigger both an ear-splitting alarm and most regrettable action from those waiting outside. “He feels I take unnecessary risks,” she explained, unsure why she didn't want Grant misjudged by this man.

“Do you?”

“No,” Gail said frankly. “I only take the necessary ones.”

“Such as coming here, looking for Aaron.” Malley leaned back, stretching out legs with thighs each broader than her waist. The chair gave one last protest then was silent. Malley was probably used to furniture complaining. “Do you mind?” he asked her, tapping one of his shoulder pads.

Gail steepled her fingers and rested her chin on their tips. “By all means, make yourself comfortable, Mr. Malley.”

He unclipped the straps crossing his chest and upper body, then lifted the entire mass over his head. For an instant, Gail thought he planned to toss it into a corner, then he grinned at her and put it down on the floor with only a muted ring of metal to metal. “Mustn't get your soldiers imagining I'm throwing things at you.”

Taking off the pads, Malley shed years as well—his shoulders still unusually broad and overmuscled to Gail's eyes, but now more in proportion to the rest of his body. Where the fabric covering his upper arms had worn through, the skin showed overlapping patterns of bruising, some brownish yellow, the latest an angry purple, as though he routinely hoisted heavy objects up on his shoulders without care. Coupled with the strong, fiercely intelligent lines of his face, he was a paradox Gail found inconveniently fascinating. She put it down to the rarity of sweaty manual laborers in her life and schooled her expression carefully.

After all, here was a source of information potentially more useful than anything Grant's experts could scavenge from Thromberg itself. She started with the practical. “You didn't want me to talk about those ships outside the station. Why?”

Malley kept his easy smile, but she thought his brown eyes hardened. “No,” he rumbled. “That's not how this is going to work, Dr. Smith.”

She blinked. “Pardon . . . ?”

“First, you owe me the dibs I'm losing being here and not on my shift.” He waited for Gail to nod, then went on in determined voice: “Second, I want you to arrange a meeting between me and your pet, Sector Administrator Forester.”

Gail blinked. “Why?”

“I was hauled up here on the pretense I'd get a chance to express my opinions on how things are being done on my floor. Well, I want that chance.”

She kept from smiling at this, merely nodding again.

“Good.” Malley brought his big hands up and locked them behind his neck. “Then there's only one more item to clear up, Dr. Smith.”

“And that is?”

“What the hell makes you think I'll talk to an Earther about my friend, my home, or anything else, for that matter?”

Not an outright refusal
, Gail decided.
A challenge.
There were stakes involved here she didn't know, but at least Malley wasn't leaving—yet. There had to be something he either wanted, or needed. She thought it highly unlikely he'd simply tell her what that something was.

“I appreciate your candor, Mr. Malley,” she began, more cautious than she'd ever been with Reinsez—or Grant, for that matter—suspecting Malley of a different level of intellect, as well as being fully aware his was a personality forged under circumstances completely alien to her own. She dared not underestimate him. “While I've many questions, they can keep. It's only my curiosity, after all.” Gail smiled, just enough to deprecate her own words. “If you're uncomfortable talking to me, I can give you a message for Mr. Pardell. You can go back to your work immediately.”

Malley closed his eyes almost to slits, as though this helped him read her face—or as though he was daydreaming. “Oh, I'm a curious man, myself. Curious why Dr. Gail Smith, Head of the Department of Xenoecology and formerly lead researcher in xenobiological warfare—both at Titan University, Sol System—wants so badly to find one man. Badly enough to risk her neck and ship—not to mention potentially ignite a riot on Thromberg Station.”

“You know my work?” Hearing the surprise in her own voice, Gail could have bitten her tongue. He'd thrown her off-balance again.
Damn him.

“Information gets out here, if little else,” Malley announced as if he hadn't noticed. “I've read your last eight papers—of those Titan allowed to go public, anyway. Some of your findings were interesting.”

Gail wasn't sure if she was appalled or offended. “Some?”

He opened his eyes again, his expression one of guileless innocence. She wasn't fooled, being an expert in that expression herself. “While I'd enjoy discussing the finer points with you someday, let's leave it that I don't see any possible connection between your legitimate research on the Quill and Aaron Pardell. Which leaves me wondering what line of inquiry you aren't publishing—and how much risk to Aaron, and this station, you'd consider
necessary
to further it.”

Gail almost slammed her hand down on the alarm, more than ready to have Grant and his troops grab this complacent, obstinate, overstuffed lump of a man and drag him on board the
Seeker
where they had the means to get answers to any question they wished. She wasn't sure which stopped her: imagining the triumphant “I told you so” on Grant's face, or the potential for violence from the hundreds of stationers milling between this office and the air lock.

“You could try telling me the truth, Dr. Smith,” Malley suggested, the corners of eyes wrinkling good humoredly, as if he knew and relished her frustration.

“Trust you, Mr. Malley, with my life's work—just like that?” Gail was so far from self-control she barely managed to get the words out. “You have no idea—”

“And neither do you, Dr. Smith,” he countered, suddenly revealing the extent of his own emotion, feet thudding to the floor plates as he sat upright, massive arms swinging down with his hands tightened into fists. “You dock as though you own the place. You expect us to jump at your whim. And you have the gall to think I'd betray my friend for a day's dibs and a chance to shout at Forester. Think again!”

“I could have you hauled on my ship—”

Before Gail could finish her sentence, Malley was on his feet with that speed she found so unlikely in such a huge man, looming over the desk. He pushed the alarm within reach of her fingers as he put his face within a handbreadth of hers. His voice was incredibly low and utterly cold: “And I could snap your neck before your precious Earther grunts came through that door.”

Gail believed him—
he'd only need one hand
—but she matched his glare with one of her own, refusing to retreat despite the hairs rising on the back of her neck. “That comes under necessary risk, doesn't it?” she said coolly.

She caught him off-balance, for once. Malley's teeth flashed in another of his mercurial grins and he straightened, then pretended to bow to her. “You don't lack for spine, Dr. Smith.”

Since hers currently felt remarkably like a liquid, Gail fixed her expression into something approximately pleasant. “Nor do you. You know they'd kill you.”

Malley shrugged. “They'd try,” he corrected gently, with the sublime confidence of someone who probably hadn't lost a battle on his own turf in years. Gail didn't bother explaining that Grant and his people wouldn't fight fair—he probably knew.

And this wasn't a man to have as an enemy
, she realized abruptly. As an ally, he'd be indispensable. There was only one way and, once Gail saw it clearly, she didn't hesitate. “You say you want the truth, Mr. Malley. Fine. But know this: that truth's more dangerous to the stability of your station than any conflict between us could be.”

“I'm the best judge of that, Dr. Smith.” His lips were still tight, but she had his interest. She was sure of it. “And I won't promise to keep your secrets. Not if they'll harm anyone on or off Thromberg.”

“If you're the man I think you are,” Gail said bluntly, “once you know why I'm here, what I'm hoping to accomplish, you'll keep it to yourself. I've no worries there.” She paused, then went on with an urge to honesty she was usually able to resist: “But I have to warn you,” she went on. “What I'm going to tell you will put a burden on you and on your friendship with Aaron Pardell—”

What he might have answered, Gail didn't find out. As she drew a breath to continue speaking, there was a commotion at the door to the office. A flustered-looking Grant burst in, managing to stay ahead, barely, of what appeared to be an angry delegation of stationers led by Administrator Forester himself. Behind, they could see the four other Earthers surrounded by stationer gray.

Malley sat back down and stretched out his legs once more. “Dr. Smith,” he told her, “welcome to Thromberg Station.”

HUGH Malley hadn't returned to his work, his hideyhole, or his assigned quarters by night, odd-cycle. Pardell ignored the changing rhythms in the corridors—and coming through the walls of Sammie's Tavern—that marked the swing from day to night for some, night to day for the rest. It was no longer fifty/fifty, as in the beginning. There were always deaths, some years more than others. There weren't replacements. Fate had taken more from odd-cycle, so its night was a little less peaceful, a little more intruded on, year by year, by those whose clocks woke them and sent them to work instead. One day, if nothing changed, they'd blend back to one clock and watch for time to end in synchrony.

Pardell shook off the reverie. Malley wasn't back. No need to expose himself hunting the news—it arrived on the feet of odd-cycle folks coming in for a last drink and left with those even-cycle folks who liked starting their day as they ended it. It'd take no more than an hour to spread throughout Outward Five.

Speculation? Ah, that ran more than walked. Didn't help there was scuttlebutt from the third cousin of someone's aunt who happened to be on the stern docking ring and who saw Malley with the Earthers.
No
, thought Pardell, rubbing his eyes and stifling a yawn,
that hadn't helped at all.

Hard to sort the many versions into possible or nots. Anything could be true, with that woman and her ship leeched to Thromberg. Stories so far had ranged from Malley being shot, to his entering the Earther ship and not leaving it. Those two, at least, Pardell didn't believe for an instant. The dock would have exploded at the least violence to one of their own—and Malley enter an air lock?

Pardell rolled over in the bed Tanya'd lent him, pulling a blanket over a shoulder, feeling suddenly as cold as any time he'd been Outside. Malley'd been in an air lock exactly once. The time his dying mother tossed the two of them in one for safety. Pardell closed his eyes, remembering in spite of himself . . .

... It had been like some game or a reader story at first—something new happening, a change in routine. The boys had taken it that way; children do. The corridor main lights had been kicked out by Admin, hoping to stop people moving to and fro, but that only added to their trembling excitement. Mrs. Malley had made them put on their suits—a chance for Aaron to show off his skills, giving his friend lots of unasked-for advice. He and Hugh—she was the only one who called her son by his given name—had jousted with their boots, until Mrs. Malley hushed them, made them finish suiting up, and took them to hide in the abandoned aft docking ring.

Where did the riot start? Who died first? No one lived to explain it to those who survived. The thread of violence that reached the Malleys wasn't even part of the main struggle, just a pack of would-be looters being chased by the more righteous and better-fed. The boys and Malley's mother had been caught in a vicious crossfire probably neither side later remembered. Neither accepted the blame, for sure.

Mrs. Malley had pushed them into the nearest air lock. Pardell could still feel the pain of her emotions through him when he recalled that day, as though her hands had burned through his suit, driving him to do anything to save her son and himself, feelings intensifying even as her hands slipped down his back and away.

She'd loved them both.

And he'd done it, sealing the air lock, ignoring Malley's screams and pleas to let him out, to let him go back to her. Both of them being in suits, at least he'd been safe from feeling Malley's wild grief as well as his own.