Downbelow Station

He felt a chill suddenly, felt apart, with Elene and a stranger across the table making a set of two. His wife and the god-image that was Talley. It was not jealousy. It was a sense of panic. He drank slowly. Watched Talley, who looked at the screens as no stationer did. Like a man remembering breathing.

Forget station, he had heard in Elene’s voice. You’ll never be content here. As if she and Talley spoke a language he did not, even using the same words. As if a merchanter who had lost her ship to Union could pity a Unioner who had lost his, beached, like her. Damon reached out beneath the table, sought Elene’s hand, closed it in his. “Maybe I can’t give you what you most want,” he said to Talley, resisting hurt, deliberately courteous. “Pell won’t hold you forever now, and if you can find some merchanter to take you on after your papers are entirely clear… that’s open too someday in the future. But take my advice, plan for a long stay here. Things aren’t settled and the merchanters are moving nowhere but to the mines and back.”

“The long-haulers are drinking themselves blind on dock-side,” Elene muttered. “We’ll run out of liquor before we run out of bread on Pell. No, not for a while. Things will get better. God help us, we can’t contain what we’ve swallowed forever.”

“Elene.”

“Isn’t he on Pell, too?” she asked. “And aren’t we all? His living is tied up with it.”

“I would not,” Talley said, “harm Pell.” His hand moved on the table, a slight tic. It was one of the few implants, that aversion. Damon kept his mouth shut on the knowledge of the psych block; it was no less real for being deep-taught Talley was intelligent; possibly even he could figure eventually what had been done to him.

“I — ” Talley made another random motion of his hand, “don’t know this place. I need help. Sometimes I’m not sure how I got into this. Do you know? Did I know?”

Bizarre co

“I have the records,” he answered Talley’s question, “That’s all the knowledge I have of it.”

“Am I your enemy?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I remember Cyteen.”

“You’re making co

Lips trembled. “I don’t follow them either.”

“You said you needed help. In what, Josh?”

“Here. The station. You won’t stop coming by — ”

“You mean visiting you. You won’t be in the hospital anymore.” Suddenly the sense of it dawned on him, that Talley knew that. “You mean do I set you up with a job and cut you loose on your own? No. I’ll call you next week, depend on it.”

“I was going to suggest,” Elene said smoothly, “that you give Josh comp clearance to get a call through to the apartment. Troubles don’t keep office hours and one or the other of us would be able to untangle situations. We are, legally, your sponsors. If you can’t get hold of Damon, call my office.”

Talley accepted that with a nod of his head. The shifting screens kept their dizzying course. They did not say much for a long time, listened to the music and nursed that round of drinks into a second.

“It would be nice,” Elene said finally, “if you’d come to di

Talley’s eyes shifted subtly in his direction, as if to ask approval. “It’s a long-standing card night,” Damon said. “Once a month my brother and his wife would cross shifts with ours. They were on alterday… transferred to Downbelow since the crisis. Josh does play,” he said to Elene.

“Good.”

“Not superstitious,” Talley said.

“We won’t bet,” Elene said.

“I’ll come.”

“Fine,” she said; and a moment later Josh’s eyes half-lidded. He was fighting it, came around in an instant. All the tension was out of him.

“Josh,” Damon said, “you think you can walk out of here?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, distressed.

Damon rose, and Elene did; very carefully Talley pushed back from the table and navigated between them… not the two drinks, Damon thought, which had been mild, but the screens and exhaustion. Talley steadied once in the corridor and seemed to catch his breath in the light and stability out there. A trio of Downers stared at them round-eyed above the masks.

They both walked him to the lift and rode with him back to the facility in red, returned him through the glass doors and into the custody of the security desk. They were into alterday now and the guard on duty was one of the Mullers.

“See he gets settled all right,” Damon said. Beyond the desk, Talley paused, looked back at them with curious intensity, until the guard came back and drew him down the corridor.

Damon put his arm about Elene and they started their own walk home. “It was a good thought to ask him,” he said.

“He’s awkward,” Elene said, “but who wouldn’t be?” She followed him through the doors into the corridor, walked hand in hand with him down the hall. “The war has nasty casualties,” she said. “If any Quens could have come through Mariner… it would be that, just the other side of the mirror, wouldn’t it? — for one of my own. So, God help us, help him. He could as well be one of ours.”

She had drunk rather more than he… grew morose whenever she did so. He thought of the baby; but it was not the moment to say anything hard with her. He gave her hand a squeeze, ruffled her hair, and they headed home.

Chapter Two

Marsh had not yet arrived, not baggage or man. Ayres settled in with the others, chose his room of the four which opened by sliding partitions onto a central area, the whole thing an affair of movable panels, white, on silver tracks. The furniture was on tracks, spare, efficient, not comfortable. It was the fourth such change of lodging they had suffered in the last ten days, lodging not far removed from the last, not visibly different from the last, no less guarded by the young ma

They did not, in effect, know where they were, whether on some station near the first or orbiting Cyteen itself. Questions obtained only evasions. Security, they said of the moves, and: Patience. Ayres maintained calm before his companion delegates, the same as he did before the various dignitaries and agencies, both military and civilian — if that had any distinction in Union — which questioned them, interrogations and discussions both singly and in a group. He had stated the reasons and the conditions of their appeal for peace until the inflections of his voice became automatic, until he had memorized the responses of his companions to the same questions; until the performance became just that, performance, an end in itself, something which they might do endlessly, to the limit of the patience of their hosts/interrogators. Had they been negotiating on Earth, they would have long since given up, declared disgust, applied other tactics; that was not an option here. They were vulnerable; they did as they could. His companions had borne themselves well in this distressing circumstance… save Marsh. Marsh grew nervous, restless, tense.

And it was of course Marsh the Unionists singled out for particular attention. When they were in single session, Marsh was gone from their midst longest; in the four times they had been shifted lately, Marsh was the last to move in. Bela and Dias had not commented on this; they did not discuss or speculate on anything. Ayres did not remark on it, settling in one of the several chairs in the living area of their suite and picking up from the inevitable vid set the latest propaganda the Unionists provided for their entertainment: either closed-circuit, or if it were station vid, it indicated mentalities incredibly tolerant of boredom — histories years old, accounts cataloging the alleged atrocities committed by the Company and the Company Fleet.