Downbelow Station

Chapter Three

i

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 begi

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 di

“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, wishing 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 Mazia

“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 fashion, 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 hit him, conditioning assaulted. 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 ship… his ship, 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?”

“Mazia

“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 friendships 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 ship…”

“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 su