But I was delighted when one day I found Ennis Severeth Gilleys asking for me in Transport. “I’m released from contract, sister,” he said, after we’d hugged spectacularly, knocking over three mugs of coffee, “and looking for honest work. Or any other kind. Could you put me up here, do you think? It’d be nice to see a face from home, you know.”
“I don’t have any pull with the supervisors here,” I warned.
“Ah, but you could try. I have great faith in you, Keylinn O’Malley Murtagh. You know someone who knows someone—who must know someone. And we’re practically comrades of the road, you know.”
I laughed. “I know nothing of the kind.”
“Comrades of the road” is a Graykey phrase referring to legendary heroes who shared adventures together. I hardly thought we qualified.
But I went to see Tal in his secret office up in the high decks. He looked up when I entered and raised an eyebrow, for it was unusual in those days for me to come without being called.
“I want you to get a posting,” I said, “for the other Graykey from Baret Station. His name is Ennis Severeth Gilleys, and he’s waiting down in Transport now.”
I realized somewhat belatedly that this was the first personal desire he had ever heard me express. He put down his papers and regarded me.
“I don’t like to use my influence with Adrian. It calls too much attention to me.”
“But you do use it when it suits you.”
“Yes.” He ran a finger along a pen thoughtfully. Thoughtfully how? I dipped briefly into tarethi water, trying to extrapolate. He’d wanted me back up to speed, and now here I was, not only talking to him but asking him for a favor; which made him one point up in the Graykey game. Nevertheless, he would be cautious. “This is the Graykey you told me about who helped you get into the Kestrel.” He did not hesitate to say the name of the ship, apparently unafraid that I might blanch or refuse food again.
I said, “Yes, this is the one. He helped get you out, too.”
“Does he have any reason to believe I’m an Aphean?” I thought back to my checking of Tal’s lenses while he was unconscious. Ennis hadn’t seen. “No. To the best of my knowledge.”
“But he may well hear things while he’s here. And apparently Graykey have heard of Apheans, unlike most of the rest of the universe. What happens when he leaves, and mentions it to people?”
“He won’t, if he takes an oath. I’ll make him take it.” An oath from a Graykey is better than a raftload of locks in the outside world; but Tal might not see it so. Although it would no doubt occur to him how easily Ennis Severeth Gilleys might be gotten rid of in a Transport accident, if he seemed at all unreliable.
“This would be a favor, for you personally.” It was not a clarification, but a warning.
“I suppose it would.”
The idea depressed me, and with reason. Tal smiled. I wondered whether he was beginning to like me; there was a frightening thought.
He said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
SECTION
THREE
:
The False Knight
On the Road
Chapter 23
The rat is the concisest tenant.
He pays no rent,—
Repudiates the obligation,
On schemes intent.
Balking our wit
To sound or circumvent,
Hate cannot harm
A foe so reticent.
Neither decree
Prohibits him,
Lawful as
Equilibrium.
EMILY DICKINSON
The last remains of winter turned to spring on the Diamond, at a daily median temperature of sixty-four degrees Fahrenheit as provided for by the Ministry of Climate Control. The internal heaters for individual residences were cut off on schedule on April 30. The temperature in homes and shops tended to remain a few degrees warmer even without the help, based on the size of the room and the number of people occupying it. Indoor capes came back into fashion on the upper levels, and jackets on the lower ones.
Techs taking a year or two’s work on the Diamond were usually not happy with the slavish adherence to Earth cycles—most Cities techs were station-bom, and had they wished to experience temperature variations they could have shipped out to a planet. Moreover, the use of a 24-hour day was particularly idiotic. Study after study had shown that the vast majority of humans had internal clocks that ran closer to 25 hours, and that in a long-term situation they adapted well to a 36-hour day with 10 hours of sleep. Baret Station used a 30-hour day, but at least they had the excuse of trying to match the natural cycle of Baret Two. The Diamond had nothing but tradition behind its calendar.
For the Diamond that was quite enough. From time to time troublemakers tried to explain that their seasons mirrored only a narrow bandwidth of old Earth’s latitude (no one cared). There had been an alarming movement three centuries previously that attempted to establish a 25-hour day. But the Ecclesiastical Council had fought a successful holding action, pointing out that a currently reckoned lifetime of 80 years came to 29,220 24-hour days, but only 28,002.5 25-hour days. That reduction in one’s allotted span stemmed from a fifteen-day loss each standard year, and massive rallies were held in Helium Park on the Diamond and Sawyer Square on Opal, protesting the loss of life. And so throughout the Cities people rose for their shifts, splashed water on their faces, and looked at the deep circles under their eyes as their ancestors had throughout Earth’s history. They would have fought any other way.
Had they been consulted, there was one group that might have disagreed with these cycles, or at least the seasonal side of them. The ghosts, as always, had had a hard winter.
Eight of them gathered now in a makeshift room of sheetrock and plastic, on a ghost road that ran from H deck to
