Downbelow Station

“Other side,” he said, breathless. They knew. His stomach hurt the more. “Council will be meeting in the crisis. Tell Coledy. I’d better be there. No telling what council will hand us otherwise.”

Sax said nothing — did nothing for a moment. Intimidation was a skill of his. He simply stared, long enough to remind Kressich that he had other skills. He let go, and Kressich pulled away.

Not ru

A crowd was gathered about the doors. He worked his way through them, ordered them back. They moved, sullenly, and he used his pass to open their side of the access, stepped through quickly and used the card to seal the door before any could gather the nerve to follow. For a moment then he was alone on the upward ramp, the narrow access, in bright light and a lingering smell of Q. He leaned against the wall, trembling, his stomach heaving. After a moment he walked on down the ramp on the other side and pressed the button which should attract the guards on the other side of Q line.

This button worked. The guards opened, accepted his card, and noted his presence in Pell proper. He passed decontamination, and one of the guards left his post to walk with him, routine, whenever the councillor from Q was admitted to station, until he had passed the limits of the border zone; then he was allowed to walk alone.

He straightened his clothes as he went, trying to shed the smell and the memory and the thoughts of Q. But there was alarm sounding, red lights blinking in all the corridors, and security perso

v

The boards in central com were lit from end to end, jammed with calls from every region of the station at once. Residential use had shut itself down in crisis; situation red was flashing in all zones, advising all residents to stay put.

They were not all regarding that instruction. Some halls of the halls on monitor were vacant; others were full of panicked residents. What showed now on Q monitor was worse.

“Security call,” Jon Lukas ordered, watching the screens. “Blue three.” The division chief leaned over the board and gave directions to the dispatcher. Jon walked over to the main board, behind the harried com chiefs post. The whole of council had been called to take whatever emergency posts they could reach, to provide policy, not specifics. He had been closest, had run, reaching this post, through the chaos outside. Hale… Hale, he fervently hoped, had done what he was told, was sitting in his apartment, with Jessad. He watched the confusion in the center, paced from board to board, watched one and another hall in confusion. The com chief kept trying to call through to the stationmaster’s office, but even he could not get through; tried to route it through station command com, and kept getting a cha

The chief swore, accepted the protests of his subordinates, a harried man in the eye of a crisis.

“What’s happening?” Jon asked. When the man ignored the question for a moment to handle a subordinate’s query, he waited. “What are you doing?”

“Councillor Lukas,” the chief said in a thin voice, “we have our hands full. There’s no time.”

“You can’t get through.”

“No, sir, I can’t get through. They’re tied up with command transmission. Excuse me.”

“Let it foul,” he said, when the supervisor started to turn back to the board, and when the man looked at him, startled: “Give me general broadcast.”

“I need the authorization,” the com chief said. Behind him, red lights began to flash and multiply. “It’s the authorization I need, councillor. Stationmaster has to give it.”

“Do it!”

The man hesitated, looked about him as if there were advice to be had from some other quarter. Jon seized him by the shoulder and faced him to the board while more and more lights flashed on the jammed boards.

“Hurry it,” Jon ordered him, and the chief reached for an internal cha

“General override to number one,” he ordered, and had the acknowledgment back in an instant. “Override on vid and com.” The com center main screen lit, camera active.

Jon drew a deep breath and leaned into the field. The image was going everywhere, not least to his own apartment, to the man named Jessad. “This is Councillor Jon Lukas,” he said to all Pell, breaking into every cha

He leaned out of the field. The warning lights went off the console camera. He looked about him to find the chaos on the boards much less, as the whole station had been otherwise occupied for a moment. Some calls returned at once, presumably necessary and urgent; most did not. He drew a deep breath, thinking in one part of his mind of what might be happening in his apartment, or worse, away from it — hoping that Jessad was there, and fearing that he would be discovered there. Mazian. Military presence, which might start checking records, asking close questions. And to be found harboring Jessad -

“Sir.” It was the com chief. The third screen from the left was alight. Angelo Konstantin, angry and flushed. Jon punched the call through.

“Use procedures,” Angelo spat, and broke off. The screen went dark, as Jon stood clenching his hands and trying to reckon whether that was because he had caught Angelo with no good answer or because Angelo was occupied.

Let it come, he thought in an excess of hate, the pulse pounding in his veins. Let Mazian evacuate all who would go. Union would come in after… would have need of those who knew the station. Understandings could be reached; his understanding with Jessad paved the way for that. It was no time to be timid. He was in it and there was no retreat now.

The first step… to become visible, a reassuring voice, and let Jessad see him doing it. Become known, have his face familiar all over the station. That was the advantage the Konstantins had always had, monopoly of public visibility, handsomeness. Angelo looked the vital patriarch; he did not. He had not the ma

Only Jessad… he remembered Mariner, which had died when Mazian had crowded in on the situation there. Only one thing protected them now… that Jessad had to rely on him and on Hale as his arms and legs, having no network yet of his own; and at the moment Jessad was neatly imprisoned, having to trust him, because he dared not try the halls without papers — dared not be out there with Mazian coming in.