Downbelow Station Part 26

"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 pa.s.sing 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, s.h.i.+ps, the hundreds of s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+p will destruct before capture. The Dentons are aboard. Confirm your ident.i.ty. The Quens are dead. Estelle is a dead s.h.i.+p. What s.h.i.+p are you?" "Genevieve, you are not in a position to make demands. Put the Dentons off their s.h.i.+p."

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 s.h.i.+p. We tell you this: that if Union sets its hands on another merchanter, there's going to be the devil let loose. That the port of origin of any s.h.i.+p attacking or appropriating a merchanter vessel will be subject to the full sanctions of our alliance. That's the name of what's going on out here. Look your fill, Lt. Oborsk. We're spreading. We outnumber your wars.h.i.+ps. If you want a kilo of commerce moved anywhere, from now on you deal with us."

"What s.h.i.+p is speaking?"

They might have started shooting instead of talking. Calm them down; Keep them steady. She wiped her face and rolled a glance at Neihart, who nodded: they had them comped. "Quen is all you need to know, lieutenant. You're far outnumbered. How did you find this place? Did you get it out of the Dentons? Or did just the wrong s.h.i.+p contact you? I'll tell you this: the merchanter's alliance will deal as a unit. And if you want real trouble, sir, you go lay hands on another merchanter vessel. You and Mazian's Fleet can do what you like to each other. We're not Company and we're not Union. We're the third side in this triangle and from now on we negotiate in our own name."

"What is in progress here?"

"Are you able to negotiate or carry messages on your side?"

There was long delay.

"Lieutenant," she pursued, "when authorized negotiators are willing to approach us we are fully prepared to talk with you. In the meantime kindly put the Dentons off. If you are willing to talk reasonably you'll find us amiable; if on the other hand... harm comes to any merchanter, reprisals will be made for it. And that is a promise."

There was the requisite silence. "This is Sam Denton," another voice said finally. "I'm instructed to tell you that this s.h.i.+p is going to put about and that there is a destruct aboard. Got the whole family on here, Quen. That's truth too."

Of a sudden there was breakup. She flashed a look at vid and telemetry, saw the flare registered, suddenly grow, become a wash there was no mistaking even on vid. Her stomach tightened and the baby moved... she put her hand on the spot and stared at the screens in a moment of nausea, while static kept coming in. A hand descended on her shoulder, Neihart's.

"Who fired?" she asked.

"This is Pixy II," a voice came back, rough and thick. "I did. They were nosing zenith toward the gap; engines flared. They'd have carried out too much." "We cope, Pixy."

"Going in," another s.h.i.+p sent. "Going to search the area." There was at least the possibility of a capsule... that Union might have allowed the Denton children to shelter there, for safety. There was not much chance that a capsule could have survived that.

Like Estelle, at Mariner. Like that. They were not going to find anything. Other blips were showing up, ghostly presences in the sunless dark of the point, defined only as blips on scan, or by the sometime flick of runnings lights or a shadow on vid, occulting stars. They were friendly-hundreds of s.h.i.+ps moving into the search area. "We're in it now," Neihart murmured; "Union won't rest." But they all knew that, from the time the word had gone out, from the time merchanters had begun to pa.s.s to merchanters the word where to come and the name that summoned them... a dead s.h.i.+p, and a dead name-from a disaster they all knew. Inevitable that Union get wind of it; by now Union was surely noticing the curious absence of s.h.i.+ps from their stations, merchanters who did not come in on schedule. They were panicking perhaps, perceiving disappearances in zones where it could not be military action, with Mazian tied up at Pell. Union had appropriated s.h.i.+ps-they had proven that-and before this s.h.i.+p came, it might have given its course to others. The next step was a wars.h.i.+p sent in here... if Union could spare one from Pell.

And the word had not sped only to Union s.p.a.ce. It had gone to Sol-for Winifred had recalled her Earthly ties, dumped her cargo, ridding herself of ma.s.s to jump as far as possible... had undertaken that long and uncertain journey to what welcome they did not know. Tell them about Mariner. Elene had asked of them. And Russell's and Viking and Pell. Make them understand. They did it dutifully, because they had once been Earth's. But it was gesture only. There was no answer coming.

They did not find a capsule, only debris and wreckage.

iiDownbelow: hisa sanctuary 1/6/53; local night The hisa had been coming and going from the beginning, quiet migration in and out of the gathering at the foot of the images, hushed and sober movement, by ones and twos and reverently, in respect to the dreamers who gathered there by the thousands. By day and by night they had come, carrying food and water, doing small and necessary things.

There were domes for humans now, diggings made by Downer labor, and compressors thumped away with the pulse of life, rude, patched domes unlovely... but they gave shelter to the old and to the children, and to all the rest of them as brief summer yielded to fall, as skies clouded and the days full of sun and the nights of stars grew fewer.

s.h.i.+ps overflew them, shuttles on their runs going and coming; they were accustomed to this, and it no longer frightened them. You must not gather even the woods, Miliko had explained to the Old Ones through interpreters. Their eyes see warm things, even through trees. Deep earth can hide hisa, oh, very deep. But they see even when Sun doesn't s.h.i.+ne. Downer eyes had gotten very round at that. They had talked among themselves.

Lukases, they had muttered. But they had seemed to understand. She had talked day upon day to the Old Ones, talked until she was hoa.r.s.e and she exhausted her interpreters, tried to make them understand what they faced, and when she would tire, alien hands would pat her arms and her face and round hisa eyes look at her with profound tenderness, all, sometimes, that they could do. And humans... by night she came to them. There was Ito, and Ernst and others, who grew moodier and moodier-Ito because all the other officers had gone with Emilio; and Ernst, a small man, who had not been chosen; and one of the strongest men of all the camps, Ned c.o.x, who had not volunteered in the first place... and began to be ashamed. There was a kind of contagion that spread among them, shame perhaps, when they heard news from main base, that told of nothing but misery. About a hundred sat outside the domes, choosing the cold weather and the reliance on breathers as if by rejecting comfort they proved something to each other and to themselves. They had grown silent, and their eyes were, as the Downers said, bright and cold. Day and night... in this sanctuary, in the place of hisa images... they sat in front of the domes in which others lived, in which others were all too eager to take their turns-they could not all get in at once. They stayed because they must; any desertion would be noted from the sky. They had elected sanctuary, and there was nothing left to do but to sit and think of the others. Thinking. Measuring themselves.

Dreaming, the hisa called it. It was what hisa came to do. Use sense, Miliko had told them in the first days, when they were most restless, talking wildly about action. We're to wait.

Wait on what? c.o.x had asked, and that began to haunt her own dreams.

This night, hisa were coming down the slope who had been sent for... days before. This night she sat with the others and watched them come, hands in her lap, watched small, distant bodies moving in the starless dark of the plain, sat with a curious tautness in her gut, and a tightness in her throat. Hisa... to fill up the number of humans, so that those who scanned the camp would find it undiminished. She carried the gun in a waterproof pocket; dressed warmly; still s.h.i.+vered in the uncertainty of things. Care for the hisa: that was what she was left to do; but go, the hisa themselves had told her. You heart hurt. You eyes cold like they.

Go or lose the people she commanded. She could no longer hold them otherwise. Are you afraid to be left? she had asked the humans who would remain, the quiet, retiring ones, the old, the children, those men and women unlike those who sat outside-families and people with loved ones and those who were, perhaps, saner. She felt guilt for them. She was supposed to protect them and she could not; could not really even lead that band outside-she simply ran ahead of their madness. Many of these who would remain were Q, refugees, who had seen too much of horror, and were too tired, and had never asked to be down here at all. She imagined they must be afraid. The hisa elders could be perversely strange, and while Pell folk were used to hisa, they were still alien to these people. No, one old woman had said. For the first time since Mariner I'm not afraid. We're safe here. Not from the guns, maybe, but from being afraid. And other heads had nodded, and eyes stared at her with the patience of the hisa images. Now hisa moved near them where they sat... a small group of hisa, who came first to her and to Ito, and they stood up, looked back on the others who waited. "See you," Miliko said, and heads nodded, in silence. Several more were chosen, the hisa taking those they would, and slowly, in the dark, they walked that track across and up the slope, as others would come down, in small groups. One hundred twenty-three humans would go this night; and as many hisa come to join the camp in their place. She hoped that the hisa understood. They had seemed to, finally, eyes lighting with merriment at the joke on the humans who looked down to spy on them. They went by the quickest route, pa.s.sed other hisa on the way down, who called out cheerfully to them... and she walked at a human's best pace, panting, dizzy, resolved not to rest, for a hisa would not rest; and so they had all agreed to do it. She staggered as they made the final climb into the forest margin helped by the young hisa females who hovered about them... She-walks-far was one, and Wind-in-trees another, and more whose names she could not quite fathom nor the hisa say. Quickfoot, she had named the one and Whisper the other, for they set great store by human names. She had tried the names they called themselves, to please them as they walked, but her tongue could not master them and her attempts sent the hisa into nose-wrinkling gales of laughter. They rested until the sun came up, in the trees and the bracken, and under a rocky ledge. By daylight they set out again, she and Ito and Ernst and the hisa who guided them, as other hisa had led others of them into the forest now, elsewhere. The hisa moved as if there were no enemies in all the world, with prank-playing, and once an ambush which stopped their hearts... Quickfoot's joke. Miliko frowned, and when the other humans did, the hisa caught the mood and grew quieter, seeming perplexed. Miliko caught Whisper by the hand and tried earnestly and once more to make sense to her, who knew less human speech than those hisa they were accustomed to deal with.

"Look." At last she grew desperate, seized a stick and crouched down, ripped up living and dead bracken to make a clear spot. She jabbed the stick at the ground. "Konstantin-man camp." She drew a line. "River." It was not likely, knowledgeable men said, that any drawn symbol was going to penetrate hisa imagination; it was not in their approach to things, lines and marks bearing no relations.h.i.+p to the real object. "We make circle, so, we eyes watch human camp. See Konstantin. See Bounder."

Whisper nodded, suddenly enthusiastic, a quick bob of her whole body on her haunches. She pointed back in the direction of the plain. "They... they... they," she said, and s.n.a.t.c.hed the stick, waved it at the sky with the nearest thing to menace she had ever seen in a hisa. "Bad they," she said, and hurled the stick at the sky, bounced several times, clapped her hands and struck her breast with her palms. "I friend Bounder."

Bounder's mate. Miliko stared at the young female's intense expression, suddenly understanding, and Whisper seized her hand, patted it. Quickfoot patted her shoulder. There was a quick sputtering of conversation among all the hisa, and they suddenly seemed to take a decision, separated by pairs and each seized a human by the hand.

"Miliko," Ito protested.

"Trust them; let's go with it. Hisa won't get lost; they'll keep us in touch and get us back again when we have to. I'll send a message to you. Wait on it." The hisa were anxiously urging them apart, each a separate way. "Take care," Ernst said, looking back; and trees came between. She, Ernst, and Ito had guns, half the guns there were on all of Downbelow, except the troops' and the other three were coming. Six guns and a little of the blasting materials for moving stumps-that was their whole a.r.s.enal. Go quietly, no more than three together, she had urged the hisa constantly, trying to keep their movements ordinary in human scan; and by threes the hisa had taken them, by their curious logic: she and Whisper and Quickfoot, three humans and six hisa, and now three units of three headed apart in haste.

No more pranks. Suddenly Quickfoot and Whisper were very serious indeed, slipping through the brush, turning this time to caution her when she made what their sensitive ears thought too much noise. The hiss of the breather she could not help, but she took care to break no branch, imitating the hisa's own gliding steps, their stop and start swiftness, as if-the thought reached her finally-as if they were teaching her.

She rested when she must, and only then; once fell, hard, from walking too long, and the hisa scrambled to pick her up and to pat her face and stroke her hair. They held her as they did each other, tucked her up with their warmth, for the sky was clouding and the wind was chill. It started to rain. She rose as soon as she could, insisted on their pace. "Good, good," they said. "You good." And by afternoon more met them, more females and two males. There was no sign of them one moment and then they came from a little hill within the woods, and from out of the trees and leaves like brown shadows in the misting rain, the water beading like jewels on their pelts. Whisper and Quickfoot spoke to them, their arms about her, and had an answer.

"Say... far walk they place. Hear. Come. Many come. They eyes warm see you, Mihan-tisar."

There were twelve of them. One by one they came and touched Miliko's hands and hugged her, and bobbed and bowed in solemn courtesy. What Whisper said was long, and drew long answers from one and the other.

"They see," Quickfoot said, listening while Whisper talked. "They see human place. Hisa there hurt. Human hurt."

"We've got to go there," Miliko said, touching her heart "All my humans, go there, sit on hills, watch. You understand? Hear good?" "Hear," Quickfoot said, and seemed to translate.

The others started walking, leading the way; and what they should all do when they got there she did not know. Ito's madness and that of the others frightened her. Six pistols could not take a shuttle, nor the rest of them when they should come... unarmed and by no means able to go against armored, heavy-armed troops. They could only watch, and be there, and hope.

They walked throughout the day, with rain sifting cold through the leaves and the wind shaking drops down on them when it was not actually raining. Streams were up, bubbling freely; they pa.s.sed into wilder and wilder thicket. "Human place," she reminded them finally, despairing. "We have to go to the human camp."

"Go human place," Whisper confirmed, and in the next moment she was gone, slipping through the brush with such speed she tricked the eyes. "Run good," Quickfoot a.s.sured her. "Make Bounder walk far get she. Many he fall, she walk."

Miliko frowned, perplexed, as much of hisa chatter was perplexing. But Whisper was off about sober business, that much seemed likely, and she struggled to keep moving.

At long last she saw a break in the trees, staggered toward it with the last of her strength, for there was smoke, the smoke of the mills, and soon after that she could make out the twilit glimmer of a dome. She sank to her knees at the edge of the woods, took a moment to realize where she was. She had never seen the camp from this angle before, high in the hills. She leaned there with Quickfoot patting her shoulder, for she was gasping and her vision kept clouding. She felt after the three spare cylinders she had in her left pocket and hoped she had not ruined the one in the mask. She had reckoned they could live out here for weeks; they could not be using them up like that. The sun was going. She saw the lights go on in the camp, and as she worked out on the edge of an eroded overhang, she could see figures moving out there under the lights, a burdened line toiling back and forth, back and forth between the mill and the road.

"She come," Quickfoot told her suddenly; Miliko looked back, suddenly missed the others, who had been behind them in the trees and now were nowhere in sight; blinked again as the brush parted and Whisper dropped to her haunches panting. "Bounder," Whisper breathed, rocking with her breaths. "He hurt, he hurt work hard. Konstantin-man hurt. Give, give you."

She had a bit of paper clenched in her wet, furry fist. Miliko took it, smoothed out the sodden sc.r.a.p very carefully, with the drizzle soaking it afresh and making it fragile as tissue. She had to bend very close and angle it to read it in the twilight... crabbed words and twisted.

"It's pretty... bad here. Won't pretend not. Stay out. Stay away. Please. I told you what to do. Scatter and keep out of their hands... fear... they... maybe won't... maybe want... want more workers... I'm all right. Please... go back... stay out of trouble."

The two hisa looked at her, dark eyes perplexed. Marks on paper-it was confusing to them. "Did anyone see you?" she asked. "Man see you?" Whisper pursed her lips. "I Downer," she said scornfully. "Many Downer come here. Carry sack, Downer. Bring mill, Downer. Bounder there, human see I, don't see. Who I? I Downer. Bounder say you friend hurt work hard; mans kill mans; he say love you."

"Love him too." She tucked the precious note within her jacket, crouched within the leaves with her hood pulled over her head and her hand within her pocket on the b.u.t.t of the pistol.

There was no action they could take that might not make things worse... that might not mean the lives of everyone down there. Even if they could take one of the s.h.i.+ps... it would only bring reprisals down on them. Ma.s.sive strike. Here. Back at the shrine. Lives for lives. Emilio worked down there to save Downbelow... to save what of it they could. And the last thing he wanted was some quixotic move from them.

"Quickfoot," she said, "you run, find Downers, find all humans with me, understand. Tell them... Miliko talks with Konstantin-man; tell all wait, wait, make no trouble."

Quickfoot tried to repeat it, muddled, not knowing all the words. Quietly, patiently, Miliko tried again... and finally Quickfoot bobbed a.s.sent. "Tell they sit," Quickfoot said excitedly. "You talk Konstantin-man." "Yes," she said. "Yes." And Quickfoot fled.

The Downers could come and go. Mazian's men did not, as Whisper said, see any difference in them, could not tell them apart. And that was the only hope they had, to keep communication between them, to let the men down there know that they were not alone. Emilio knew she was there. Maybe, for all he wished her elsewhere, that was some comfort.

Chapter Three.

Pell: green sector nine; 1/8/53; 1800 hrs.

Rumors floated all of green, but there was no sign of a shutdown, no searches, no imminent crisis. Troops came and went to the usual places. The dock-front bars rocked to loud music and troops on liberty relaxed, drank, some even openly intoxicated. Josh took a cautious look out the doorway of Ngo's and ducked back in again as a squad of more businesslike troops headed up the hall, armored, sober, and with definite intentions. It made him somewhat nervous, as all such movements did when Damon was out of his sight. He endured the waiting under cover, his turn to sweat out the day in Ngo's storeroom, haunting the front room only at mealtimes... but it was suppertime, and late, and he was beginning to worry intensely. Damon had insisted on going yesterday and this day, following up leads, hunting a contract-talking to people and risking trouble. Josh paced and fretted, realized he was pacing and that Ngo was frowning at him from the bar. He tried to quiet himself, finally walked casually back to the alcove, leaned his head into the kitchen and asked Ngo's son for dinner. "How many?" the boy asked.

"One," he said. He needed the excuse to stay out in the front room. Reckoned when Damon got back he could order a refill and another helping. Their credit was good, the one comfort of their existence. Ngo's son waved a spoon at him, wis.h.i.+ng him to get out.

He went to the accustomed table and sat down, looked toward the door again. Two men had come in, nothing unusual. But they were looking around too, and they started coming toward the back. He ducked his head and tried to camouflage himself in the shadow; market types, perhaps... some of Ngo's friends-but the move alarmed him. And they paused by his table, pulled a chair back. He looked up in apprehension as one of them sat down and the other kept standing. "Talley," the seated man said, young, hard-faced with a burn scar across the jaw. "You're Talley, aren't you?"

"I don't know any Talley. You're mistaken."

"Want you to come outside for a moment. Just come to the door."

"Who are you?"

There's a gun on you. I suggest you move."

It was the long expected nightmare. He thought of what he could do, which was to get himself shot. Men died in green every day, and there was no law except the troops, which he did not need either. These were not Mazianni. It was something else.

"Move."

He rose, walked clear of the table. The second man took his arm and guided him to the door, to the brighter light of the outside.

"Look over there," the man at his back said. "Look at the doorway directly across the corridor. Tell me if I've got the wrong man." He looked. It was the man he had seen before, the one watching him. His vision blurred and nausea hit his gut, conditioned reflex.

He knew the man. The name would not come to him, but he knew him. His escort took him by the elbow and walked him in that direction, across the corridor and as the other went inside, took him into the dark interior of Mascari's, into the mingled effluvium of liquor and sweat and floor-jarring music. Heads turned, of those in the bar, who could see him better than his unadjusted eyes could see them for the moment, and he panicked, not alone at being recognized, but knowing that there was something in this place which he recognized, when he ought to know nothing on Pell, not after that fas.h.i.+on, not across the gulf he had crossed.

He was pushed to the leftmost corner of the room, to one of the closed booths. Two men stood there, one a hangdog middle-aged man who rang no alarms with him... and the other... the other... Sickness. .h.i.t him, conditioning a.s.saulted. He groped for the back of a cheap plastic chair and leaned there.

"I knew it was you," the man said. "Josh? It is you, isn't it?"

"Gabriel." The name shot out of his blocked past, and whole structures tumbled. He swayed against the chair, seeing again his s.h.i.+p... his s.h.i.+p, and his companions... and this man... this man among them... "Jessad," Gabriel corrected him, took his arm and looked at him strangely. "Josh, how did you get here?"

"Mazianni." He was being drawn into the curtained alcove, a place of privacy, a trap. He half turned, found the others barring the way out, and in the shadow when he looked back he could hardly make out Gabriel's face... as it had looked in the s.h.i.+p, when they had parted company-when he had transferred Gabriel to Bla.s.s, on Hammer, near Mariner. Gabriel's hand rested gently on his shoulder, pus.h.i.+ng him into a chair at a small circular table. Gabriel sat down opposite him and leaned forward.

"My name here is Jessad. These gentlemen-Mr. Coledy and Mr. Kressich-Mr. Kressich was a councillor on this station, when there was a council. You'll excuse us, sirs. I want to talk to my friend. Wait outside. See we get privacy." The others withdrew, and they were alone in the dim light of a fading bulb. He did not want to be alone with this man. But curiosity kept him seated, more than the fear of Coledy's gun outside, a curiosity with the foreknowledge of pain in it, like worrying at a wound.

"Josh?" Gabriel/Jessad said. "We're partners, aren't we?" It might be a trick, might be truth. He shook his head helplessly. "Mindwipe. My memory-" Gabriel's face contracted in seeming pain, and he reached out and caught him by the arm. "Josh... you came in, didn't you? You tried to make the pickup. Hammer got me out when it went wrong. But you didn't know that, did you? You took Kite in and they got you. Mindwipe... Josh, where are the others? Where are the rest of us, Kitha and- He shook his head, cold inside, void. "Dead. I can't remember clearly. It's gone." He was close to being sick for a moment, freed his hand and rested his mouth against it, leaning on the table, trying to subdue the reactions. "I saw you," Gabriel said, "in the corridor. I didn't believe it. But I started asking questions. Ngo won't tell whom you're with... but it's someone else they're after, isn't it? You've got friends here. A friend. Haven't you? It's not one of us... it's someone else. Isn't it?"

He could not think. Old friends.h.i.+ps and new warred with each other. His belly was knotted up with contradictions. Fear for Pell... they had put that into him. And killing stations... was Gabriel's function. Gabriel was here, as he had been at Mariner- Elene and Estelle. Estelle had died at Mariner.

"Isn't it?"

He jerked, blinked at Gabriel.

"I need you," Gabriel hissed. "Your help. Your skills..."

"I was nothing," he said. The suspicion that he was lied to grew stronger still. The man knew him and claimed things that were not so, were never so. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"We were a team, Josh."

"I was an armscomper, on the probe s.h.i.+p..."

"The undertapes." Gabriel seized his wrist, shook at him violently. "You're Joshua Talley, special services. Deep-taught for that. You came out of the labs on Cyteen..." "I had a mother, a father. I lived on Cyteen with my aunt. Her name was-" "Out of the labs, Josh. They trained you on all levels. Gave you false tapes, a fiction, a fake... something to lie on the surface, lies you could tell and convince them if you had to. And it's surfaced, hasn't it? It's covered everything."

"I had a family. I loved them-"

"You're my partner, Josh. We came out of the same program. We were built for the same job. You're my backup. We've worked together, station after station, recon and operations."

He tore free of Gabriel's grip, blinked, blinded by a wash of tears. It began to shred, irretrievable, the farm, the sunny landscape, childhood- "We're lab-born," Gabriel continued. "Both of us. Anything else... any other memory... they put it into us on tape and they can put something else in the next time. Cyteen was real; I'm real... until they change the tapes. Until I become something else. They've messed with your mind. Josh. They've buried the only thing that's real. You gave them the lie and it washed right into your memory. But the truth's there. You know comp. You've survived here. And you know this station."

He sat still, his lips pressed against the back of his hand, tears rolling down his face, but he was not crying. He was numb, and the tears kept coming. "What do you want me to do?"

"What can you do? Who are your contacts? It's not among the Mazianni, is it?"

"No."

"Who?"

He sat unmoving for a moment. The tears stopped, the well of them dried up somewhere inside. All his memory seemed white, station detention and some far distant place confounded in his memory, white cells, and uniformed attendants, and he knew finally that he had been happy enough in detention because it was home, the universal inst.i.tution, alike on either side of the lines of politics and war. Home. "Suppose I work it my way," he said. "Suppose I talk to my contact, all right? I might be able to get some help. It'll cost you." "How, cost?"

He leaned back in the chair, nodded toward the outside of the booth, where Coledy and Kressich waited. "You have pull of your own, don't you? Suppose I contribute my share. What have you got? Suppose I could get you most anything on this station... and I don't have the muscle to handle it." "I've got that," Gabriel said.

"I've got the other. Only there's one thing I want that I can't carry off without force. A shuttle. A run to Downbelow when it comes off." Gabriel sat silent a moment. "You've got that kind of access?"

"I told you I had a friend. And I want off."

"You and I might take that option."

"And this friend of mine."

"The one you're working the market with?"