Downbelow Station

wished to bluff or bully. But from this place they could do what they pleased. Could vent him out a waste chute and he would be indistinguishable from the hundreds of other bodies which now drifted, frozen, a nuisance in the station’s vicinity for the skimmers to freeze together and boost off. No difference at all. He tried to pull his wits together, reckoning that he survived by them now or not at all.

They showed him off the lift into a corridor with troops standing guard in it, into a room wider than most, with a vacant round table. Made him sit down in one of the chairs there. Stood waiting with the rifles over their arms.

Mazian came in, in plain and somber blue, haggard of face. Jon rose to his feet in respect; Conrad Mazian gestured him to sit down again. Others filed in to take their places at the table, Europe officers, none of the captains. Jon darted glances from one to the next

“Acting stationmaster,” Mazian said quietly. “Mr. Lukas, what happened to Angelo Konstantin?”

“Dead,” Jon said, trying to suppress all but innocent reactions. “Rioters broke into station offices. Killed him and and his staff.”

Mazian only stared at him, utterly unmoved. He sweated.

“We think,” Jon said further, guessing at the captain’s thoughts, “that there may have been conspiracy — the strike at other offices, the opening of the door into Q, the timing of it all. We are investigating.”

“What have you found?”

“Nothing as yet. We suspect the presence of Union agents passed somehow into station during the processing of refugees. Some were let through, may have had friends or relatives left back in Q. We’re puzzled as yet how contacts were passed. We suspect connivance of the barrier guards… black market connections.”

“But you haven’t found anything.”

“Not yet.”

“And won’t very quickly, will you, Mr. Lukas?”

His heart began beating very fast. He kept panic from his face; he hoped he succeeded at it. “I apologize for the situation, captain, but we’ve been kept rather busy, coping with riot, with the damage to station… lately working at the orders of your captains Mallory and…”

“Yes. Bright move, the means you used to clear the halls of riot; but then it had quieted a little by then, hadn’t it? I understand there were Q residents let into central.”

Jon found breathing difficult. There was a prolonged silence. He could not think of words. Mazian passed a signal to one of the guards at the door.

“We were in crisis,” Jon said, anything to fill that terrible silence. “I may have acted high-handedly, but we were presented a chance to get control of a dangerous situation. Yes, I dealt with the councillor from that area, not, I think, involved in the situation, but a calming voice… there was no one else at the — ”

“Where is your son, Mr. Lukas?”

He stared.

“Where is your son?”

“Out at the mines. I sent him out on a shorthauler on a tour of the mines. Is he all right? Have you had word of him?”

“Why did you send him, Mr. Lukas?”

“Frankly, to get him off the station.”

“Why?”

“Because he had lately been in control over the station offices while I was stationed on Downbelow. After three years there was some question of loyalties and authorities and channels of communication within the company offices here. I thought a brief absence might straighten things out, and I wanted someone out there in the mine offices who could take over if communications were interrupted. A policy move. For internal reasons and for security.”

“It wasn’t to balance the presence on-station of a man named Jessad?”

His heart came close to stopping. He shook his head calmly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Captain Mazian. If you’d be so good as to tell me the source of your information — ”

Mazian gestured and someone entered the room. Jon looked and saw Bran Hale, who evaded his eyes.

“Do you know each other?” Mazian asked.

“This man,” Jon said, “was discharged on Downbelow for mismanagement and mutiny. I considered a previous record and hired him. I’m afraid my confidence may have been misplaced.”

“Mr. Hale approached Africa with some thought of enlistment… claimed to have certain information. But you flatly deny knowing a man named Jessad.”

“Let Mr. Hale speak for his own acquaintances. This is a fabrication.”

“And one Kressich, councillor of Q?”

“Mr. Kressich was, as I explained, in the control center.”

“So was this Jessad.”

“He might have been one of Kressich’s guards. I didn’t ask their names.”

“Mr. Hale?”

Bran Hale put on a grim face. “I stand by my story, sir.”

Mazian nodded slowly, carefully drew his pistol. Jon thrust back from the table, and the men behind him slammed him back into the chair. He stared at the pistol, paralyzed.

“Where is Jessad? How did you make contact with him? Where would he have gone?”

“This fiction of Hale’s — ”

The safety went off the pistol audibly.

“I was threatened,” Jon breathed. “Threatened into cooperation. They’ve seized a member of my family.”

“So you gave them your son.”

“I had no choice.”

“Hale,” Mazian said, “you and your companions and Mr. Lukas may go into the next compartment. And we’ll record the proceedings. We’ll let you and Mr. Lukas settle your argument in private, and when you’ve resolved it, bring him back again.”

“No,” Jon said. “No. I’ll give you the information, all that I know.”

Mazian waved his hand in dismissal, Jon tried to hold to the table. The men behind him hauled him to his feet. He resisted, but they brought him along, out the door, into the corridor. Hale’s whole crew was out there.

“They’ll serve you as well,” Jon shouted back into the room where the officers of Europe still sat. “Take him in and he’ll serve you the same way. He’s lying!”

Hale grasped his arm, propelled him into the room which waited for them. The others crowded after. The door closed.

“You’re crazy,” Jon said. “You’re crazy, Hale.”

“You’ve lost,” Hale said.

iii

Merchanter Finity’s End: deep space; 2200 hrs. md; 1000 hrs. a.

The wink of lights, the noise of ventilators, the sometime sputter of com from other ships — all of this had a dreamlike familiarity, as if Pell had never existed, as if it were Estelle again and the folk about her might turn and show familiar faces, known from childhood. Elene worked her way through the busy control center of Finity’s End and pressed herself into the nook of an overhanging console to obtain a view of scan. Her senses were still muzzy with drugs. She pressed her hand to her belly, feeling unaccustomed nausea. Jump had not hurt the child… would not. Merchanters had proven that time and again, merchanter women with strong constitutions and lifelong habituation to the stresses; it was nine-tenths nerves, and the drugs were not that heavy. She would not lose it, would not even think of it. In time her pulse settled again from the short walk from main room, the waves of sickness receded. She watched scan acquire another blip. Merchanters were coming into the null point by drift, the way they had left Pell, frantically gathering all the realspace speed they could on entry to keep ahead of the incomers who were rolling in like a tide on a beach. All it needed was someone overshooting minimum, some over hasty ass coming into realspace too close to the point, and they and the newcomer would cease to exist in any rational sense, shredded here and there. She had always thought it a peculiarly nasty fate. They would ride for the next few minutes still with that end a very real possibility.

But they were coming in greater and greater numbers now, finding their way into this refuge in reasonable order. They might have lost a few passing through the battle zone; she could not tell.

Nausea hit again. It came and went. She swallowed several times in calm determination to ignore it, turned a jaundiced eye on Neihart, who had left the controls of the ship to his son and came to see to her.

“Got a proposition,” she said between swallows. “You let me have com again. No running from here. Take a look at what’s following us, captain. Most of the merchanters that ever ran freight for Company stations. That’s a lot of us, isn’t it? And if we want to, we can reach further than that.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“That we stand up and safeguard our own interests. That we start asking ourselves hard questions before we scatter out of here. We’ve lost the stations we served. So do we let Union swallow us up, dictate to us… because we become outmoded next to their clean new state-run ships? And they could take that idea into their heads if we come to them begging license to serve their stations. But while things are uncertain, we’ve got a vote and a voice, and I’m betting some of the so- named Union merchanters can see what’s ahead too, clear as we can. We can stop trade — all worlds, all stations — we can shut them down. Half a century of being pushed around, Neihart, half a century of being mark for any warship not in the mood to regard our neutrality. And what do we get when the military has it all? You want to give me com access?”

Neihart considered a long moment. “When it goes sour, Quen, word will spread far and wide what ship spoke out for it. It’s trouble for us.”