Downbelow Station

She was tempted, for this meant favor. And then she sadly thought of duty and pulled away, folded her arms, dejected at the loss of love. “I sit,” she said.

“With Be

“Make he spirit look at the sky,” she said, showing the spirit-stick, explaining a thing the hisa did not explain. “Look at he home.”

“Come tomorrow,” he said. “I need to talk to the hisa.”

She tilted back her head, looked at him in startlement. Few humans called them what they were. It was strange to hear it. “Bring others?”

“All the high ones if they will come. We need hisa Up-above, good hands, good work. We need trade Downbelow, place for more men.”

She extended her hand toward the hills and the open plain, which went on forever.

“There is place.”

“But the high ones would have to say.”

She laughed. “Say spirit-things. I-Satin give this to Konstantin-man. All ours. I give, you take. All trade, much good things; all happy.”

“Come tomorrow,” he said, and walked away, a tall strange figure in the slanting rain. Satin-Tam-utsa-pitan sat down on her heels with the rain beating upon her bowed back and pouring over her body, and regarded the grave, with the rain making pocked puddles above it.

She waited. Eventually others came, less accustomed to men. Dalut-hos-me was one such, who did not share her optimism of them; but even he had loved Be

There were men and men. This much the hisa had learned

She leaned against Dalut-hos-me, Sun-shining-through-clouds, in the dark evening of their long watch, and by this gesture pleased him. He had begun laying gifts before her mat in this winter season, hoping for spring.

“They want hisa Upabove,” she said. “I want to see the Upabove. I want this.”

She had always wanted it, from the time that she had heard Be

All things flowed to this place and from it; and Be

They had given humans images for the Upabove too, to watch there. It was fit, to call it pilgrimage. And the Time regarded Be

“Why do you tell me?” Dalut-hos-me asked.

“My spring will be there, on Upabove.”

He nestled closer. She could feel his heat. His arm went about her. “I will go,” he said.

It was cruel, but the desire was on her for her first traveling; and his was on him, for her, would grow, as gray winter passed and they began to think toward spring, toward warm winds and the breaking of the clouds. And Be

So always the hisa wandered, of springs, and the nesting.

iv

It was frozen di

“I saw Talley today,” he said hoarsely, seeking to fill the silence, to distract her, however grim the topic. “He seemed… quiet. No pain. No pain at all.”

Her hand tightened. “Then you did right by him after all, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think there is a way to know.”

“He asked.”

“He asked,” he echoed.

“You did all you could to be right. That’s all you can do.”

“I love you.”

She smiled. Her lips trembled until they could no longer hold the smile.

“Elene?”

She drew back her hand. “Do you think we’re going to hold Pell?”

“Are you afraid not?”

“I’m afraid you don’t believe it.”

“What kind of reasoning is that?”

“Things you won’t discuss with me.”

“Don’t give me riddles. I’m not good at them. I never was.”

“I want a child. I’m not on the treatment now. I think you still are.”

Heat rose to his face. For half a heartbeat he thought of lying. “I am. I didn’t think it was time to discuss it. Not yet.”

She pressed her lips tightly together, distraught.

“I don’t know what you want,” he said. “I don’t know. If Elene Quen wants a baby, all right. Ask. It’s all right. Anything is. But I’d hoped it would be for reasons I’d know.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’ve done a lot of thinking. I’ve watched you. But you haven’t done any of it aloud. What do you want? What do I do? Get you pregnant and let you go? I’d help you if I knew how. What do I say?”

“I don’t want to fight. I don’t want a fight. I told you what I want.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “I don’t want to wait anymore.” Her brow furrowed. For the first time in days he had the feeling of contact with her eyes. Of Elene, as she was. Of something gentle. “You care,” she said. “I see that.”

“Sometimes I know I don’t hear all you say.”

“On ship… it’s my business, having a child or not. Ship family is closer in some things and further apart in others. But you with your own family… I understand that. I respect it.”

“Your home too. It’s yours.”

She managed the faintest of smiles, an offering, perhaps. “So what do you say to it?”

Offices of station pla

He simply nodded. “So we’re through waiting.”

It was like a shadow lifting. Estelle’s ghost fled the place, the small apartment they had drawn in blue five, which was smaller, into which their furnishings did not fit, where everything was out of order. It was all at once home, the hall with the dishes stowed in the clothing lockers and the living room which was bedroom by night, with boxes lashed in the corner, Downer wickerwork, with what should have gone into the hall lockers.

They lay in the bed that was the daytime couch. And she talked, lying in his arms, for the first time in weeks talked, late into the night, a flow of memories she had never shared with him, in all their being together.

He tried to reckon what she had lost in Estelle: her ship; she still called it that. Brotherhood, kinship. Merchanter morals, the stationer proverb ran; but he could not see Elene among the others, like them, rowdy merchanters offship for a dockside binge and a sleepover with anyone willing. Could never believe that.

“Believe it,” she said, her breath stirring against his shoulder. “That’s the way we live. What do you want instead? Inbreeding? They were my cousins on that ship.”

“You were different,” he insisted. He remembered her as he had first seen her, in his office on a matter involving a cousin’s troubles… always quieter than the others. A conversation, a re-meeting; another; a second voyage… and Pell again. She had never gone bar-haunting with her cousins, had not made the merchanter hangouts; had come to him, had spent those days on station with him. Failed to board again. Merchanters rarely married. Elene had.