He did not refuse it. She passed him her own glass, kept the bottle for herself.
“Jon Lukas stays as your puppet,” he said. “Does he?”
There was no need to torment him with the truth. She nodded. “He takes orders.”
“You’re moving against green next?”
She nodded.
“Let me talk to them on com. Let me try to reason with them.”
“To save your life? Or to replace Lukas? It won’t work.”
“To save theirs.”
She stared at him a long, bleak moment.
“You’re not going to surface, Mr. Konstantin. You’re to vanish very quietly. I think you know that.” There was a gun at her hip; she rested her hand on it as she sat, reckoning that he would not, but in case. “Let’s say if I can find two individuals, I won’t vent the section. Names are James Muller and Judith Crowell. Where are they? If I could locate them right off… it would save lives.”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know them?”
“Don’t know where they are. I don’t think they’re still alive, if they’re supposed to be in green. I know the section too well; had means to have found them if they were there.”
“I’m sorry for that,” she said. “I’ll do what I can as reasonably as I can. Promise you that. You’re a civilized man, Mr. Konstantin. A vanished breed. If I could find a way to get you out of this I’d do it, but I’m hemmed in on all sides.”
He said nothing. She kept an eye to him, sipped a mouthful from the bottle. He drank from the glass.
“What about the rest of my family?” he asked at last
Her mouth twisted. “Quite safe. Quite safe, Mr. Konstantin. Your mother does everything we ask and your brother is harmless where he is. The supplies arrive on schedule and we have no reason to object to his presence down there. He’s another civilized man, one — fortunately — without access to large crowds and sophisticated systems where our ships are docked.”
His lips trembled. He drank the last remaining in the glass. She leaned forward and poured him more of the liquor. Took a deliberate chance in leaning close to him. It was gambling; it evened scales. It was time to call it quits. If he outlived tomorrow he would learn too much of what would happen and that was cruelty. There was a sour taste in her mouth the brandy would not cure. She pushed the bottle at him. “Take it with you,” she said, “I’ll let you go back to your quarters now. My regards to you, Mr. Konstantin.”
Some men would have protested, cried and pleaded; some would have gone for her throat, a way of hastening matters. He rose and went to the door without the bottle, looked back when it would not open.
She keyed the duty officer. “Pick up the prisoner.” The acknowledgment came back. And on a second thought: “Bring Josh Talley while you’re at it.”
That brought a flicker of panic to Konstantin’s eyes. “I know,” she said. “He’s minded to kill me. But then he’s undergone some changes, hasn’t he?”
“He remembers you.”
She pursed her lips, smiled then without smiling. “He’s alive to remember. Isn’t he?”
“Let me talk to Mazian.”
“Hardly practical. And he won’t agree to hear you. Don’t you know, Damon Konstantin, he’s the source of your troubles? My orders come from him.”
“The Fleet belonged to the Company once. It was
She glanced down without intending to, found it difficult to look up again and meet his ignorant eyes.
“Someone’s insane,” Konstantin said.
“There’s more than the other stations involved at Pell,” he said. “Pell was always different. Take my advice, at least. Leave my brother in permanent charge on Downbelow. You’ll get more out of the Downers if you do things the slow way. Let him manage them. They’re not easy to understand, but they don’t understand us easily either. They’ll work for him. Let them do things their own way and they’ll do ten times the work. They don’t fight. They’ll give you anything you ask for, if you ask and don’t take.”
“Your brother will be left there,” she said.
The light by the door flashed. She keyed it open. They had brought Josh Talley. She sat watching… a quiet exchange of glances, an attempt to question without asking questions… “Are you all right?” Josh asked. Konstantin nodded.
“Mr. Konstantin is leaving,” she said. “Come in, Josh. Come on in.”
He did so, with a backward anxious look at Konstantin. The door closed between them. Signy reached again for the bottle, added to the glass which Konstantin had left on the side of the desk.
Josh too was cleaner, and the better for it. Thin. His cheeks had gone very hollow. The eyes — were alive.
“Want to sit down?” she asked. From him she did not know what to expect. He had always been acquiescent, in everything. Now she watched, anticipating some act of craziness, remembering the time he had come to find her on the station, his shouting at her from the doorway. He sat down, quiet as he had ever been. “Old times,” she said, and drank. “He’s a decent man, is Damon Konstantin.”
“Yes,” Josh said.
“Still interested in killing me?”
“There’s worse than you.”
She smiled grimly and the smile faded. “Know a pair named Muller and Crowell? Know anyone by those names?”
“The names mean nothing to me.”
“Have any contacts on Pell who could handle station comp?”
“No.”
“That’s the sole official question. I’m sorry you don’t know.” She sipped at the glass. “Considering Konstantin’s welfare has you on good behavior. That it?”
No answer. But it was truth. She watched his eyes and reckoned well that it was.
“I wanted to ask you the question,” she said. “That’s all.”
“Who are they… the people you want? Why? What have they done?”
Questions. Josh had never questioned. “Adjustment agreed with you,” she said. “What were you up to when
Silence.
“They’re dead, Josh. Does it matter now?”
His eyes went unfocused, the old absent look… back again. Beautiful, she thought of him, as she had thought a thousand times. And he was another one there was no sparing. She had thought she might, had reckoned without his sanity. When Konstantin went, he would become very dangerous. Tomorrow, she thought. It should be done tomorrow, at least.
“I’m Union,” he said. “Not a regular… not what the records showed. Special services. You brought me here yourself. And there was another one of us who found his own way on… the way he did at Mariner. His name was Gabriel. And he ruined Pell.
The alcohol left her brain with cold suddenness. She sat with the glass in hand and stared into Josh’s pale eyes and found her breath short. “This Gabriel… where is he?”
“Dead. You got the head of it. Him. A man named Coledy; another named Kressich; Gabriel. Station knew him as Jessad. They were killed by the troops that took us. Damon didn’t know… didn’t know a thing about it. You think he’d have been there meeting with them if he’d known they killed his father?”
“But you got him there.”
“I got him there.”
“He knew about you?”
“No.”
She drew a deep breath, let it go. “You think it makes a difference to us, how Lukas got there? He’s ours.”
“I tell you so you know it’s finished. That there’s nothing more to go after. You’ve won. There’s no need for any more killing.”
“I should take a Unioner’s word there’s nothing more to hunt?”
No answer. He was not slipping off into nowhere. The eyes were very much alive, full of pain.
“It was quite an act, Josh, that you put on with me.”
“No act. I’m born for what I do. My whole past is tapes. I had nothing when they got through with me on Russell’s. I’m one of the hollow men, Mallory. Nothing real. Nothing inside. I belong to Union because my brain was programmed that way. I have no loyalties.”
“But one, maybe.”
“Damon,” he said.
She considered the matter. Drained the glass until her eyes stung. “So why did you get him involved with this Gabriel?”
“I thought I saw a way to get us off Pell. To get a shuttle for Downbelow. I have a proposition for you.”
“I think I know.”
“You’re in a position to get a man on a downbound shuttle… easily. Get him out of here if nothing else.”
“What, not back in control of Pell?”
