“Damon Konstantin… yourself, if you will. You can be of help.”
Mazian left, taking a few of the escort with him, for a general tour of the area, or more than likely, further operations, the taking of other sections, like the core and its machinery. Jan Meyis,
“The command center,” she directed Konstantin, and he showed her out the door with incongruous and natural courtesy, tending the way they had come in.
Not a word from him; his face was set and hard.
“Your wife back there?” Signy asked. She collected details… on those of consequence. “Who?”
“My wife.”
“Who?”
“Elene Quen.”
That startled her. “Station family?”
“The Quens. Off
“She’s lost. You know that.”
“We know.”
“Pity. Children, you two?”
It was a moment before he answered that one. “On the way.”
“Ah.” The woman had been a little heavy. “There are two of you Konstantin boys, aren’t there?”
“I have a brother.”
“Where is he?”
“On Downbelow.” The expression was more and more anxious.
“There’s nothing to worry about.”
“I’m not worrying.”
She smiled, mocking him.
“Are your forces on Downbelow too?” he asked.
She kept the smile, saying nothing. “I recall you’re from Legal Affairs.”
“Yes.”
“So you’d know quite a few of the comp accesses for personnel records, wouldn’t you?”
He shot her a look that wasn’t frightened. Angry. She looked to the corridor ahead, where troops guarded the windowed complex of central. “We’re assured your cooperation,” she reminded him.
“Is it true that we were ceded?”
She smiled still, reckoning the Konstantins, if anyone, to have their wits about them, to know their value and that of Pell. “Trust me,” she said with irony. command central, a sign said, with an arrow pointing; communications, another; blue one, 01-0122. “Those signs” she said, “come down. Everywhere.”
“Can’t.”
“And the color keys.”
“The station is too confusing — even residents could get lost — the halls mirror-image, and without our color-keys…”
“So in my ship, Mr. Konstantin, we don’t mark corridors for intruders.”
“We have children on this station. Without the colors…”
“They can learn,” she said. “And the signs all come off.”
Station central lay open before them… occupied by troops. Rifles swung anxiously as they entered, then recentered. She looked all about the command center, the row upon row of control consoles, the technicians and station officers who worked there. Troops visibly relaxed at her presence. Civs at their posts looked relieved as well — at that of young Konstantin, she reckoned; for that purpose she had brought him.
“It’s all right,” Signy said to the troops and the civs. “We’ve reached an accommodation with the stationmaster and the council. We’re not evacuating Pell. The Fleet is setting up a base here, one we’re not going to give up. No way Union’s coming in here.”
A murmur went among the civs, eyes meeting eyes with subdued looks of relief. From hostages they were suddenly allies. The troops had grounded their rifles.
“
“Show me about,” she said to Damon Konstantin.
He walked about the control center with her, quietly named the posts, the personnel who filled them, many of whom she would remember; she was good at that when she wanted to be. She stopped a moment and looked about her, at the screens, the rotating schematic Downbelow, dotted with green and red points. “Bases?” she asked.
“We’ve got several auxiliary sites,” he said, “trying to absorb and feed what you left us.”
“Q?” She saw the monitor on that section too, seething human mass battering at a sealed door. Smoke. Debris. “What do you do with them?”
“You didn’t give us that answer,” he replied. Few took that tone with her. It amused her.
She listened, looked about her at the grand complex, bank upon bank, boards with functions alien to those of a starship. This was commerce and the maintenance of a centuries-old orbit, cataloging of goods and manufacture, of internal and onworld populations, native and human… a colony, busy with mundane life. She surveyed it with a slow intake of breath, a sense of ownership. This was what they had fought to keep alive.
Com central came through suddenly, an announcement from council. “… wish to assure station residents,” said Angelo Konstantin, with council chambers in the background, “that no evacuation of this station will take place. The Fleet is here for our protection…”
Their world.
It only remained to put it in order.
Chapter Four
Morning was near, a red line on the horizon. Emilio stood in the open, breath paced evenly through the mask, wearing a heavy jacket against the perpetual chill of nights at this latitude and elevation. The lines moved in the dark, quietly, bowed figures hastening with loads like insects saving eggs from flood, outward, out of all the storage domes.
The human workers still slept, those in Q and those of the residents’ domes. Only a few staff helped in this. His eyes could spot them here and there about the landscape of low domes and hills, tall shadows among the others.
A small, panting figure scurried up to him, gasped a naked breath. “Yes? Yes, you send, Konstantin-man?”
“Bounder?”
“I Bounder.” The voice hissed around a grin. “Good runner, Konstantin-man.”
He touched a wiry, furred shoulder, felt a spidery arm twine with his. He took a folder paper from his pocket, gave it into the hisa’s callused hand. “Run, then,” he said. “Carry this to all human camps, let their eyes see, you understand? And tell all the hisa. Tell them all, from the river to the plain; tell them all send their runners, even to hisa who don’t come in human camps. Tell them be careful of men, trust no strangers. Tell them what we do here. Watch, watch, but don’t come near until a call they know. Do the hisa understand?”
“Lukases come,” the hisa said. “Yes. Understand, Konstantin-man. I
“Go,” he said. “Run, Bounder.”
Hard arms hugged him, with that frightening easy strength of the hisa. The shadow left him into the dark, flitted,
Word sped. It could not be recalled, not so easily.
He stood still, watched the other human figures on the hillside. He had given his staff orders and refused to confide in them, wishing to spare them responsibility. The storage domes were mostly empty now, all the supplies they had contained taken deep into the bush. Word sped along the river, by ways which had nothing to do with modern communications, nothing which listeners could monitor, word which sped with a hisa’s speed and would not be stopped at any order from the station or those who held it. Camp to camp, human and hisa, wherever hisa were in touch one with the other.
A thought struck him… that perhaps never before Man had the hisa had reason to talk to others of their kind in this way; that never to their knowledge was there war, never unity among the scattered tribes, but somehow knowledge of Man had gotten from one place to the other. And now humans sent a message through that strange network. He imagined it passing on riverbanks and in the brush, by chance meetings and by purpose, with whatever purpose moved the gentle, bewildered hisa.
And over all the area of contact, hisa would steal, who had no concept of theft; and leave their work, who had no concept of wages or of rebellion.
He felt cold, wrapped as he was in layers of clothing, well insulated against the chill breeze. He could not, like Bounder, run away. Being Konstantin and human, he stood waiting, while advancing dawn picked out the lines of burdened workers, while humans from the other domes began to stir out of sleep to discover the
