Страница 42 из 120
You will remember some things, the doctor had told him, when they stopped the pills. But you can get distance from them. Remember some things.
Damon came back, bringing two cups of something, sat down, and offered one to him. It was fruit juice and something else, iced and sugared, which soothed his stomach. “You’re going to be late getting back,” he recalled.
Damon shrugged and said nothing.
“I’d like — ” To his intense shame, he stammered. “ — to take you and Elene to di
Damon studied him a moment. “All right. I’ll ask Elene.”
It made him feel a great deal better. “I’d like,” he said further, “to walk back home from here. Alone.”
“All right.”
“I needed to know… what I remember. I apologize.”
“I’m worried for you,” Damon said, and that profoundly touched him.
“But I walk by myself.”
“What night for di
“You and Elene decide. My schedule is rather open.”
It was poor humor. Damon dutifully smiled at it, finished his drink. Josh sipped the last of his and stood up. “Thank you.”
“I’ll talk to Elene. Let you know the date tomorrow. Take it easy. And call me if you need.”
Josh nodded, turned, walked away, among the crowds who… might… know his face. Like those on the docks, in his memory: crowds. It was not the same. It was a different world and he walked in it, down his own portion of hall as the newfound owner of it… walked to the lift along with those born to Pell, stood with them waiting on the lift car as if he were ordinary.
It came. “Green seven.” He spoke up for himself when the press inside cut him off from the controls and someone kindly pressed it for him. Shoulder to shoulder in the car. He was all right. It whisked him down to his own level. He excused his way past passengers who gave him not a second glance, stood in his own corridor, near the hospice.
“Talley,” someone said, startling him. He glanced to his right, at uniformed security guards. One nodded pleasantly to him. His pulse raced and settled. The face was distantly familiar. “You live here now?” the guard asked him.
“Yes,” he said, and in apology: “I don’t remember well… from before. Maybe you were there when I came in.”
“I was,” the guard said. “Good to see you came out all right.”
He seemed to mean it. “Thank you,” Josh said, walked on his way and the guards on theirs. The dark which had advanced retreated.
He had thought them all dreams. But I don’t dream it, he thought. It happened. He walked past the desk at the entry to the hospice, down the corridor inside to number 18. He used his card. The door slid aside and he walked into his own refuge, a plain, windowless place… a rare privilege, from what he had heard of vid about the overcrowding everywhere. More of Damon’s arranging.
Ordinarily he would turn on the vid, using its noise to fill the place with voices, for dreams filled the silences.
He sat down now on the bed, simply sat there a time in the silence, probing the dreams and the memories like half-healed wounds. Norway.
Signy Mallory.
Mallory.
iv
There were no disasters. Jon stayed in the office, rearmost of all the offices, took normal calls, worked his routine of warehousing reports and records, trying in one harried corner of his mind to map out what to do if the worst happened.
He stayed later than usual, after the lights had dimmed slightly on the docks, after a good deal of the first shift staff had left for the day and the mainday activity had settled down… just a few clerks out in the other offices to answer com and tend things till the alterday staff came in. Swan’s Eye went out unchallenged at 1446; A
And when A
He used his card at the door, to have every minutest record in comp as it should be… found Jessad and Hale sitting opposite one another in silence, in his living room. There was coffee, soothing aroma after the afternoon tension. He sank into a third chair and leaned back, taking possession of his own home.
“I’ll have some coffee,” he told Bran Hale. Hale frowned and rose to go fetch it. And to Jessad: “A tedious afternoon?”
“Gratefully tedious,” Jessad said softly. “But Mr. Hale has done his best to entertain.”
“Any trouble getting here?”
“None,” Hale said from the kitchen. He brought back the coffee, and Jon sipped at it, realized Hale was waiting.
Dismiss him… and sit alone with Jessad. He was not eager for that. Neither was he eager to have Hale talking too freely, here or elsewhere. “I appreciate your discretion,” he told Hale. And with a careful consideration: “You know there’s something up. You’ll find it worth your while more than monetarily. Only see you keep Lee Quale from indiscretions. I’ll fill you in on it as soon as I find out more. Vittorio’s gone. Dayin’s… lost. I’ve need of some reliable, intelligent assistance. You read me, Bran?”
Hale nodded.
“I’ll talk with you about this tomorrow,” he said then very quietly. “Thank you.”
“You all right here?” Hale asked.
“If I’m not,” he said, “you take care of it. Hear?”
Hale nodded, discreetly left. Jon settled back with somewhat more assurance, looked at his guest, who sat easily in front of him.
“I take it you trust this person,” Jessad said, “and that you want to promote him in your affairs. Choose your allies wisely, Mr. Lukas.”
“I know my own.” He drank a sip of the scalding coffee. “I don’t know you, Mr. Jessad or whatever your name is, Your plan to use my son’s id I can’t permit. I’ve arranged a different cover… for him. A tour of Lukas interests: a ship’s outbound for the mines and his papers are on it.”
He expected outrage. There was only a polite lift of the brows. “I have no objection. But I shall need papers, and I don’t think it wise to expose myself to interrogation obtaining them.”
“Papers can be gotten. That’s the least of our problems.”
“And the greatest, Mr. Lukas?”
“I want some answers. Where’s Dayin?”
“Safe behind the lines. No cause for worry. I’m sent as a contingency… an assumption that this offer is valid. If not, I shall die… and I hope that’s not the case.”
“What can you offer me?”
“Pell,” Jessad said softly. “Pell, Mr. Lukas.”
“And you’re prepared to hand it to me.”
Jessad shook his head. “You’re going to hand it to us, Mr. Lukas. That’s the proposal. I’ll direct you. Mine is the expertise… yours the precise knowledge of this place. You’ll brief me on the situation here.”
“And what protection have I?”
“My approval.”
“Your rank?”
Jessad shrugged. “Unofficial. I want details. Everything from your shipping schedules to the deployment of your ships to the proceedings of your council… to the least detail of the management of your own offices.”
“You plan to live in my apartment the whole time?”
“I find little reason to stir forth. Your social schedule may suffer for it. But is there a safer place to be? This Bran Hale — a discreet man?”
“Worked for me on Downbelow. He was fired down there for upholding my policies against the Konstantins. Loyal.”
“Reliable?”
“Hale is. Of some of his crew I have some small doubt… at least regarding judgment”
“You must take care, then.”
“I am.”
Jessad nodded slowly. “But find me papers, Mr. Lukas. I feel much more secure with them than without.”