Downbelow Station

“The seals,” Damon exclaimed, on his feet. Cries continued, wild screams, chairs overturning in the front room. Damon rushed for the storeroom door and Josh ran with him, out as far as the back door, where Ngo and his wife and son had scrambled to get out, Ngo with his market records in hand.

“No,” Josh exclaimed, “Wait… that would have been the doors to white… we’re sealed — but there were troops up at nine two — they wouldn’t have troops in here if they were going to push the button — ”

“Com,” Ngo’s wife exclaimed. There was an announcement coming through the vid unit in the front room. They rushed in that direction, into the restaurant area, where a handful of people were clustered about the vid and a looter was busy gathering an armful of bottles from the bar. “Hey!” Ngo shouted in outrage, and the man snatched two more and ran.

It was Jon Lukas on the screen. It always was when Mazian had an official announcement to station. The man had become a skeleton, a pitiable shadow-eyed skeleton. “… been sealed off,” Lukas was saying. “White-area residents and others who wish to leave will be permitted to leave. Go to the green dock access and you will be permitted to pass.”

“They’re herding all the undesirables in here,” Ngo said. Sweat stood on his wrinkled face. “What about us who work here, Mr. Stationmaster Lukas? What about us honest people caught in here?”

Lukas repeated all the announcement. It was probably a recording; doubtful if they ever let the man on live.

“Come on,” Damon said, hooking Josh’s arm. They walked out the front door and around the corner onto green dock, walked far along the upward curve, where a great mass of people had gathered looking toward white. They were not the only ones. There were troops, moving out along the far-side wall, by the berths and gantries.

“Going to be shooting,” Josh muttered. “Damon, let’s get out of here.”

“Look at the doors. Look at the doors.”

He did look. The massive valves were tightly joined. The personnel access at the side was not open. It did not open.

“They’re not going to let them through,” Damon said. “It was a lie… to get the fugitives to the docks over there.”

“Let’s get back,” Josh pleaded with him.

Someone fired; their side, the troops — a barrage came over their heads and into the shopfronts. People shrieked and shoved, and they fled with it, down the dock, into nine, into Ngo’s doorway, while riot surged past and down the hall. A few others tried to follow them, but Ngo rushed up with a stick and fended them off, all the while shrieking curses at the two of them for running in with trouble after them.

They got the door closed, but the crowd outside was more interested in running, the path of least resistance. The room lights came on full, on a room full of tangled chairs and spilled dishes.

In silence Ngo and his family began cleaning up. “Here,” Ngo said to Josh, and thrust a wet, stew-soiled rag at him. Ngo turned a second frowning look on Damon, although he did not order: a Konstantin still had some privilege. But Damon started picking up dishes and straightening chairs and mopping with the rest of them.

It grew quiet outside again, with an occasional pounding at the door. Faces stared at them through the plastic window, people simply wanting in, exhausted and frightened people, wanting the service of the place.

Ngo opened the doors, cursed and shouted, let them in, set himself behind the bar and started doling out drinks with no regard to credit for the moment. “You pay,” he warned all and sundry. “Just sit down and we’ll make out the tickets.” Some left without paying; some did sit down. Damon took a bottle of wine and drew Josh to a table in the farthest corner, where there was a short ell. It was their usual place, which had a view of the front door and unobstructed access to the kitchen and their hiding places. The com music channel had come on again, playing something wistfully soothing and romantic.

Josh leaned his head against his hands and wished he dared be drunk. He could not be. There were the dreams. Damon drank. Eventually it seemed to be enough, for Damon’s shadowed eyes had an anesthetized haze which he envied.

“I’m going out tomorrow,” Damon said. “I’ve sat in that hole enough… I’m going out, maybe talk to a few people, try to make some contacts. There’s got to be someone who hasn’t cleared out of green. Someone who still owes my family some favors.”

He had tried before. “We’ll talk about it,” Josh said.

Ngo’s son served them dinner, stew, stretched as far as possible. Josh sipped a spoonful of it, nudged Damon with his foot when he sat there. Damon gathered up his spoon and ate, but his mind still seemed elsewhere.

Elene, perhaps. Damon spoke her name sometimes in his sleep. Sometimes his brother’s. Or maybe he was thinking of other things, lost friends. People probably dead. He was not going to talk; Josh knew that. They spent long hours in silences, in their separate pasts. He thought of his own happier dreams, pleasant places, a sun-lit road, dusty grain fields on Cyteen, people who had loved him, faces that he had known, old friends, old comrades, far from this place. The hours were filled with it, the long, solitary hours each of them spent in hiding, the nights, with music from Ngo’s front room jarring the walls most of the hours of mainday and alter-day, numbing, constant, or saccharine and pervasive. They stole sleep in the quiet times, lay listlessly in others. He did not intrude on Damon’s fancies, nor Damon on his. Never denied the importance of them, which were the best comfort they had in this place.

One thing they no longer considered, and that was either of them turning himself in. They had Lukas’s face before them, that death’s-head forewarning of Mazian’s dealing with his puppets. If Emilio Konstantin was still alive as rumor said… privately Josh wondered if it was good news or bad. And that too he did not say.

“I hear,” Damon said finally, “that maybe some of the Mazianni crew are on the take. I wonder if they could be bribed for more than goods. If there are holes in their new system.”

“That’s crazy. It’s not in their interests. It’s not a sack of flour you’re talking about. Ask that kind of question and we’ll have them on us.”

“Probably you’re right.”

Josh pushed the bowl back and stared at the rim of it They were running out of time, that was all. In the sealing of white… they were sealed too. All it took now was a sweep starting from the dock or from green one, checking in those who were willing to surrender, shooting down those who were not.

When they had white in order… it came. And it was beginning over there. Was already underway.

“I’d have to make the approach to the Fleet,” Josh said finally. “The troops would more likely recognize you than me. As long as I stay away from Norway troops…”

Damon was silent a moment, perhaps weighing odds. “Let me try another thing. Let me think about it. There’s got to be a way onto the shuttles. I’m going to check out the dock crews, find out who’s working there.”

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