Low Port Part 4

"Crazy to hope?" he said.

She stared at him. "You think he's right?"

"What I think, cousin, is that I'd rather be blown out an airlock trying to live free than be worn down and burned out like your mother and mine. In fact," he added with a grin, "I'm not sure I wouldn't rather be on Glory." And he went to join the group around her brother.

After a watch that had seen seventeen cargo pods, two of them major repairs, all Awandi wanted was sleep. But she had spotted Soje heading for the inter-spoke transport, and so she went instead to his cubby to talk to Izu.

"You are afraid," Izu said, and gestured Awandi to sit beside her on Soje's bunk. She was smiling, but it was hard for Awandi not to see her pale face as a mask hiding lies.

"You aren't afraid?"

Izu lifted a hand in a kind of shrug. She was so small and her gestures so graceful she made Awandi feel the size and shape of a pod. She said, "One is always afraid, on Glory." Then she smiled. "Even more afraid in the cargo pod. When I woke up wrapped in a body bag, it seemed as if the worst had already happened. I've already died and gone to h.e.l.l; even if it didn't quite happen in that order, it's hard to see what there is left to fear."

"Easy for me," Awandi said. "I have more than just my life to lose."

"You imagine I do not? Should your company cease to transport the CW supplies, no one on Glory will survive."

"Not even the denanos?"

Izu studied her a moment, a smile hovering at the corners of her eyes. "They are surprisingly human. They need food, and air, and love, the same as everyone else."

"But they can survive on Glory, even outside the catacombs, can't they?"

"The nans can cope with a great deal, it's true. Yes, the denanos can survive in the open for short stretches of time, but-"

"What about injunies? It's dangerous on Glory, isn't it? The dust storms and the criminals and the quakes. I bet they can heal pretty good, too, huh?"

Izu swallowed. "It depends on the injury, but yes, they-I mean, I understand they can-"

"What about decompression?" Awandi interrupted. "Can they survive that?"

Izu's eyes flickered, then dropped to her folded hands. "Perhaps. For short periods. They-" She broke off at a thump on the cubby's door, relieved.

So, Awandi thought. But then, she was relieved to open the door, to have an excuse to put s.p.a.ce between herself and the other woman. Relief died a quick death, though. The instant she saw Chouss and Wen, and the battered, blood-soaked man that hung lolling between them.

"Move, girl," Chouss said, low and fierce, and Awandi stepped belatedly aside. The five of them crowded the cubby, even once Chouss had lowered the man to the bunk. It was Soje.

"What..." She couldn't make her voice work.

"He was in alpha spoke," Wen said, lifting Soje's feet to the bunk. Chouss was checking his pulse, her frown like a chasm between her brows. "Somebody put him on the transport," Wen continued, sitting wearily by Soje's feet. "Just luck I found him."

"How is he?" Her voice still wouldn't rise above a whisper. Chouss said without looking up, "Not good. Weak pulse, cold skin, bubbly breathing." She sat on the floor by the head of the bunk and propped her head on a b.l.o.o.d.y hand. "Not good."

Wen leaned his elbows on his knees. "Got the s.h.i.+t kicked out of him."

"Who? Security?"

Wen shrugged. So did Chouss after a minute. "Them or scabs."

"Well. Did you call medical?"

Again just a couple of shrugs. Awandi started to shake. Instead of venting her rage on them, she turned and called medical, careful to press the b.u.t.tons gently instead of pounding them through the wall.

EMS. State the nature of the emergency.

"My brother. He's injured."

Name and location, "Aramin Soje, delta spoke, residential section four, cubby number eight-one-three. Please hurry." Her voice staxted to die again, trapped Eke her heart in her throat. "Please hurry."

The faint hiss of an open line. Then a different voice said, Repeat that name and location.

"Soje. Aramin Soje. Delta spoke, residential..."

But the light on the com panel had died. The line was dead.

"So much for medical," Wen said, and put his face in his hands.

Awandi sat on her brother's bunk, holding his hand and watching him die. He had their mother's hands, as she did. The same long bones and big knuckles, the same calluses and scars, the same sharp line between the brown of the back and the pink of the palm. The hand she held lay slack in hers, cold as the rest of him. All his energy was in his lungs, trying to breathe. Trying to breathe.

Weary with grief, she asked Chouss, "Isn't there something you can do?"

Chouss propped her graying head against the cubby wall and closed her eyes, her only response.

"Wen?"

He rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes, shook his head. No.

No. Awandi lifted her head, feeling the pull of the station's spin, and looked at the pale woman from Glory standing in the corner, arms wrapped around her chest as if she were cold. It was hard to ask. "Izu? Isn't there something you can do?"

Izu looked at her, at Soje, breathing pink froth through his shattered mouth. Slowly lifted her hand to cover her eyes. "No."

As if she hadn't spoken, Awandi said, "I'll help you get to your s.h.i.+p. I promise. Even if it... Even if it doesn't work."

"Wanda," Chouss said. "Don't. She's as helpless as the rest of us."

"No she isn't."

"Let her be."

Awandi let go her brother's hand and stood, noticing again how she towered over the other woman. "Please," she said. "Please, Izu."

"Wandi," Wen said painfully. "Let it go."

"No."

Izu was staring at her, eyes wide and fixed.

"It was because of you," Awandi told her. just one step and they were face to face. "I don't say that to lay blame, Izu. It was his choice. He did it for his own reasons. But still. If you hadn't come."

"d.a.m.n it, Awandi," Chouss said, climbing to her feet. It was her crewboss voice. "Back off."

"He would have saved your people and mine," Awandi said, the words somehow apart from her, cold and calm, separate from the hot black star of grief in her gut. "He would have. Your people and mine. And you won't lift a d.a.m.n finger to help him?"

"Awandi," Chouss said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

"I am so sorry," Izu said, white as the paint on the walls, lips blue as a bruise. No pretense she didn't understand. "I am so sorry, Awandi. But I cannot. I cannot."

Awandi's fist, like her voice, seemed disconnected from the rest of her. It lifted and swung out with the power of scores of watches in the pit and smashed Izu's Jaw.

d.a.m.n it, girl, that's enough!" Chouss said, hauling her back against the door. Wen was on his feet, between Awandi and the Glory woman. There was hardly enough room for all of them to stand. Soje's breath wheezed and bubbled into the silence.

Awandi met Izu's eyes over Wen's shoulder. "Show them," she said quietly. "Let them see."

Izu slowly took her hands away from her face.

"Sweet Mother," Wen said, stepping back onto Awandi's foot. On the side of Izu's jaw, where Awandi's fist had connected, a black stain spread and grew, lifting the skin from underneath. A black swarm rising to repair the damage, biochem mechanicals, alive and not alive, colony of strangeness under the human skin. Even though she'd been expecting it, Awandi rubbed her sore knuckles on her s.h.i.+rt, skin crawling.

Chouss gripped her shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise. "Denanos. By the hard b.i.t.c.h Of vacuum, Wandi, you were night."

"Well," said Izu. The black swelling s.h.i.+fted as she spoke. "Now you know. But I still can't help Soje."

"Why not?" Awandi demanded. "You said denanos could survive injury-"

"He isn't denanos."

"But you could make him one, couldn't you? Can't you? Isn't that why they quarantined you in the first place, because it's so d.a.m.n contagious?"

"Is that what they tell you?" Izu shook her head. Already the black stain was beginning to shrink. She appeared to feel no pain.

Awandi shoved Wen's back to get him off her foot, then squeezed around him to sit back down on the bed. Soje's hand seemed even colder than before.

"What do you mean?" Chouss said. "Why else did they quarantine you?"

"Why?" Izu smiled, her subtle fierceness returning to her eyes. "Why would the Commonwealth be afraid of a race of people-who are hard to kill and take a long time to die, who can live and work in environments that would kill a c.o.c.kroach, who can invent drugs and poisons in their guts-why? You tell me. Are you less afraid of me now than when you only thought I'd drink your blood and give you a nasty disease?"

Awandi rubbed her brother's hand, trying to instill a little warmth. "Should we be more afraid? Do you want to take over the universe?"

Izu folded her arms. "All I want, all any of us want, is to live the way we choose, where we choose, in peace."

"Same as us." Awandi looked up with a thin smile. "Right Chouss? No different than us."

But Chouss was frowning at the denanos. "It's not contagious?"

Izu sighed. "Yes, of course it is. But not that contagious."

"So you could give it to him. You could save him."

"Awandi." Izu threw out her small hands in a helpless gesture. "There is no guarantee that my nans would survive his immune system, or that his genetic profile is close enough to mine for them to reproduce in his cells, and even if by some miracle they did, there isn't time. It takes sixty hours at least for the nans to establish themselves to the point of being able to heal, and he doesn't have that long."

"He's a stubborn b.a.s.t.a.r.d, in case you hadn't noticeed," Wen sad. "He'd hang on."

He might not have spoken. "And even if all that weren't true, which it is, I still couldn't infect him."

"Why not?" Awandi said like a threat.

Izu hugged herself and said, "Because if any denanos infects any human without that human's direct, explicit and informed consent, the whole race will be in contravention of the quarantine act which allows us to live on Glory. We'd be criminals for real, without the faintest hope of colonial status, or even another, less deadly home. More to the point, we'd be without protection from all those out there-who'd kill us, or use us as drug factories, or both. I sure as Glory didn't come out here to do that to my people."

"You sure as h.e.l.l aren't going any further than the Gate if we don't-want you to go," Chouss pointed out.

Izu studied Chouss' face, then Wen's, then Awandi's. "Someone else will come," she said, but she sounded a long way from certain.

"This is the Gate," Wen said, sounding like Soje. "Who do you think holds the key?"

"No denanos is going anywhere the crews don't want them to go," Chouss added, just to make it absolutely clear.

Izu looked at them all again, for the first time with real desperation. "But you have to. My G.o.d, don't you see? This isn't just my people, it's yours, too. Awandi, tell them," she pleaded, before a look crossed her face as if she remembered that maybe Awandi wasn't the best advocate she could choose.

But Awandi said, "I don't have to tell them. They already know. Isn't a worker on this station doesn't already know by now, thanks to Soje."

Silence. Soje breathed, a faint liquid wheeze.

Then Wen said, "Listen, Izu. Only thing that's holding you back is this legal problem, yeah? You'd help him if he was awake to say he wanted help?"

She pa.s.sed a hand over her eyes. The black stain on her jaw had faded to a dull blue-gray. "I guess. If I knew he wanted me to."

"Soje? h.e.l.l, he's done just about everything else, I guess turning into a denanos wouldn't stop him."

"Wen!" Chouss said, shocked.

He looked up at her. "You don't think? If it were the only way he could get out of here, take his message to the Commonwealth?"

"Someone else can go," Chouss said. "I'd go, if it came to that."

"But Soje would still be dead," Awandi said with her brother's twisted smile. "Right Chouss? Even if he survived this beating, there'd be another, and another. Unless it was an airlock failure, or a chem tank leak, or..." She shrugged, still trying to warm Soje's hand with hers.

"She's right. Anyway," Wen added with a taut grin, "the way things stand now, I reckon we must make up a union quorum between the three of us, and if two of us vote him union rep to the Commonwealth he pretty much has to go."

Chouss opened her mouth to respond, but Izu broke in sharply before she could. "I don't remember saying I'd infect him. I won't. I can't."

"Well, h.e.l.l, woman, who's going to say he didn't ask you?" Chouss all but shouted.

"Couldn't even if we wanted to," Wen added. "Seeing as how he just said he wanted you to make him a denanos." Looking from one woman's stare to the next, he grinned and added, "Didn't he, Chouss?"

She snorted, rubbed her nose with a work worn hand. "Well sure he did. Didn't he, Awandi?"

His hand was so cold. "Yes."