Downbelow Station

“If I’m not,” he said, “you take care of it. Hear?”

Hale nodded, discreetly left. Jon settled back with somewhat more assurance, looked at his guest, who sat easily in front of him.

“I take it you trust this person,” Jessad said, “and that you want to promote him in your affairs. Choose your allies wisely, Mr. Lukas.”

“I know my own.” He drank a sip of the scalding coffee. “I don’t know you, Mr. Jessad or whatever your name is, Your plan to use my son’s id I can’t permit. I’ve arranged a different cover… for him. A tour of Lukas interests: a ship’s outbound for the mines and his papers are on it.”

He expected outrage. There was only a polite lift of the brows. “I have no objection. But I shall need papers, and I don’t think it wise to expose myself to interrogation obtaining them.”

“Papers can be gotten. That’s the least of our problems.”

“And the greatest, Mr. Lukas?”

“I want some answers. Where’s Dayin?”

“Safe behind the lines. No cause for worry. I’m sent as a contingency… an assumption that this offer is valid. If not, I shall die… and I hope that’s not the case.”

“What can you offer me?”

“Pell,” Jessad said softly. “Pell, Mr. Lukas.”

“And you’re prepared to hand it to me.”

Jessad shook his head. “You’re going to hand it to us, Mr. Lukas. That’s the proposal. I’ll direct you. Mine is the expertise… yours the precise knowledge of this place. You’ll brief me on the situation here.”

“And what protection have I?”

“My approval.”

“Your rank?”

Jessad shrugged. “Unofficial. I want details. Everything from your shipping schedules to the deployment of your ships to the proceedings of your council… to the least detail of the management of your own offices.”

“You plan to live in my apartment the whole time?”

“I find little reason to stir forth. Your social schedule may suffer for it. But is there a safer place to be? This Bran Hale — a discreet man?”

“Worked for me on Downbelow. He was fired down there for upholding my policies against the Konstantins. Loyal.”

“Reliable?”

“Hale is. Of some of his crew I have some small doubt… at least regarding judgment”

“You must take care, then.”

“I am.”

Jessad nodded slowly. “But find me papers, Mr. Lukas. I feel much more secure with them than without.”

“And what happens to my son?”

“Concerned? I’d thought there was little love lost there.”

“I asked the question.”

“There’s a ship holding far out… one we’ve taken, registered to the Olvig merchanter family, but in fact military. The Olvigs are all in detention… as are most of the people of Swan’s Eye. The Olvig ship, Hammer, will give us advance warning. And there’s not that much time, Mr. Lukas. First… will you show me a sketch of the station itself?”

Mine is the expertise. An expert in such affairs, a man trained for this. A terrible and chilling thought came on him, that Viking had fallen from the inside; that Mariner on the other hand… had been blown. Sabotage. From the inside. Someone mad enough to kill the station he was on… or leaving.

He stared into Jessad’s nondescript face, into eyes quite, quite implacable, and reckoned that on Mariner there had been such a person as this.

Then the Fleet had shown up, and the station had been deliberately destroyed.

v

Pell: Q zone: orange nine; 1900 hrs.

There were still people standing in line outside, a queue stretching down the niner hall out onto the dock. Vassily Kressich rested his head against the heels of his hands as the most recent went out in the ungentle care of one of Coledy’s men, a woman who had shouted at him, who had complained of theft and named one of Coledy’s gang. His head ached; his back ached. He abhorred these sessions, which he held, nevertheless, every five days. It was at least a pressure valve, this illusion that the councillor of Q listened to the problems, took down complaints, tried to get something done. About the woman’s complaint… little remedy. He knew the man she had named. Likely it was true. He would ask Nino Coledy to put the lid on him, perhaps save her from worse. The woman was mad to have complained. A bizarre hysteria, perhaps, that point which many reached here, when anger was all that mattered. It led to self-destruction.

A man was shown in. Redding, next in line. Kressich braced himself inwardly, leaned back in his chair, prepared for the weekly encounter. “We’re still trying,” he told the big man.

“I paid,” Redding said. “I paid plenty for my pass.”

“There are no guarantees in Downbelow applications, Mr. Redding. The station simply takes those it has current need of. Please put your new application on my desk and I’ll keep running it through the process. Sooner or later there’ll be an opening — ”

“I want out!”

“James!” Kressich shouted in panic.

Security was there instantly. Redding looked about wildly, and to Kressich’s dismay, reached for his waistband. A short blade flashed into his hand, not for security… Redding turned from James — for him.

Kressich flung himself backward on the chair’s track. Des James hurled himself on Redding’s back. Redding sprawled face down on the desk, sending papers everywhere, slashing wildly as Kressich scrambled from the chair and against the wall. Shouting erupted outside, panic, and more people poured into the room.

Kressich edged over as the struggle came near him. Redding hit the wall. Nino Coledy was there with the others. Some wrestled Redding to the ground, some pushed back the torrent of curious and desperate petitioners. The mob waved forms they hoped to turn in. “My turn!” some woman was shrieking, brandishing a paper and trying to reach the desk. They herded her out with the others.

Redding was down, pinned by three of them. A fourth kicked him in the head and he grew quieter.

Coledy had the knife, examined it thoughtfully and pocketed it, a smile on his scarred young face.

“No station police for him,” James said.

“You hurt, Mr. Kressich?” Coledy asked.

“No.” He discounted bruises, felt his way to his desk. There was still shouting outside. He pulled the chair up to the desk again and sat down, his legs shaking. “He talked about having paid money,” he said, knowing full well what was going on, that the forms came from Coledy and cost whatever the traffic would bear. “He’s got a bad record with station and I can’t get him a pass. What do you mean selling him an assurance?”

Coledy turned a slow look from him to the man on the floor and back again. “Well, now he’s got a bad mark with us, and that’s worse. Get him out of here. Take him out down the hall, the other way.”

“I can’t see any more people,” Kressich moaned, resting his head against his hands. “Get them out of here.”

Coledy walked into the outer corridor. “Clear it out!”

Kressich could hear him shouting above the cries of protest and the sobbing. Some of Coledy’s men began to make them move… armed, some of them, with metal bars. The crowd gave back, and Coledy returned to the office. They were taking Redding out the other door, shaking him to make him walk, for he was beginning to recover, bleeding from the temple in a red wash which obscured his face.

They’ll kill him, Kressich thought. Somewhere in the less trafficked hours, a body would find its way somewhere to be found by station. Redding surely knew it. He was trying to fight again, but they got him out and the door closed.

“Mop that up,” Coledy told one of those who remained, and the man searched for something to clean the floor. Coledy sat down again on the edge of the desk.

Kressich reached under it, brought out one of the bottles of wine with which Coledy supplied him. Glasses. He poured two, sipped at the Downer wine and tried to warm the tremors from his limbs, the twinges of pain from his chest. “I’m too old for this,” he complained.

“You don’t have to worry about Redding,” Coledy told him, picking up his glass.

“You can’t create situations like that,” Kressich snapped. “I know what you’re up to. But don’t sell the passes where there’s no chance I’ll be able to get them.”

Coledy grinned, an exceedingly unpleasant expression. “Redding would ask for it sooner or later. This way he paid for the privilege.”

“I don’t want to know,” Kressich said sourly. He drank a large mouthful of the wine. “Don’t give me the details.”

“We’d better get you to your apartment, Mr. Kressich. Keep a little watch on you. Just till this matter is straightened out.”

He finished the wine at his own rate. One of the youths in Coledy’s group had gathered up the stack of papers the struggle had scattered about the floor, and laid it on his desk. Kressich stood up then, his knees still weak, averted his eyes from the blood which had tracked on the matting.

Coledy and four of his men escorted him, through that same back door which had received Redding and his guards. They walked down the corridor into the sector in which he maintained his small apartment, and he used his manual key… comp had cut them off and nothing worked here but manual controls.

“I don’t need your company,” he said shortly. Coledy gave him a wry and mocking smile, parodied a bow.

“Talk with you later,” Coledy said.