Downbelow Station

iii

“No,” Angelo said at once. “No, don’t try to stop them. Pull back. Pull back our forces immediately.”

Station command acknowledged and turned to its business. Screens in the council chamber began to reflect new orders; the muffled voice of security command gave reports. Angelo sank back in his chair, at the table in the center of council, amid the partially filled tiers, the soft murmurings of panic among those who had contrived to get back here through the halls. He propped his mouth against his steepled hands and sat studying the incoming reports which cut across the screens in rapid sequence, views of the docks, where armored troops boiled out. Some of the council had waited too long, could not get out of the sections where they worked or where they had taken up an emergency post. Damon and Elene came in together, for refuge, out of breath, hesitated at the door. Angelo beckoned his son and daughter-in-law in on personal privilege, and they approached at his urging and settled at two of the vacant places at the table. “Had to leave dock office in a hurry,” Damon said quietly. “Took the lift up.” Hard behind them came Jon Lukas and his clutch of friends to seat themselves, the friends in the tiers and Jon at the table. Two of the Jacobys made it, hair disheveled and faces glistening with sweat. It was not council; it was a sanctuary from what was happening outside.

On the screens matters were worsening, the troops headed in toward the heart of the station, security trying to keep up with the situation by remote, switching from one camera to the next in haste, a rapid flickering of images.

“Staff wants to know if we lock the control-center doors,” a councillor said from the doorway.

“Against rifles?” Angelo moistened his lips, slowly shook his head, staring at the flick of images from camera to camera to camera.

“Call Mazian,” Dee said, a new arrival. “Protest this.”

“I have, sir. I have no answer. I reckon he’s with them.”

Q disorder, a screen advised them. Three known dead; numerous injured.…

“Sir,” a call broke through the message. “They’re mobbing the doors in Q, trying to batter them down. Shall we shoot?”

“Don’t open,” Angelo said, his heart pounding at the acceleration of insanity where there had been order. “Negative, don’t fire unless the doors are breached. What do you want — to let them loose?”

“No, sir.”

“Then don’t.” The contact went dead. He wiped his face, feeling ill.

“I’ll get down that way,” Damon offered, half out of his chair.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Angelo said. “I don’t want you gathered up in any military sweep.”

“Sir,” an urgent voice came at his elbow, a presence which had come down from the tiers. “Sir — ”

Kressich.

“Sir,” Kressich said.

“Q com is down,” security command advised. “They’ve got it out again. We can splice something in. They can’t have reached the dock speakers.”

Angelo looked at the man Kressich, a haggard, grayed individual, who had gotten more so in the passing months. “Hear that?”

“They’re afraid,” Kressich said, “that you’re going to leave here and let the Fleet leave them for Union.”

“We don’t know what the Fleet’s intention may be, Mr. Kressich, but if a mob tries to breach those doors into our side of the docks, it’s going to be beyond our power to do anything but shoot. I suggest you get on the com link to that section when they get it patched, and if there’s a speaker they haven’t broken, make that clear to them.”

“We know we’re pariahs whatever happens,” Kressich returned, lips trembling. “We asked, we asked over and over, speed up the checks, run id’s, purify our records, do it faster. Now it’s too late, isn’t it?”

“Not necessarily, Mr. Kressich.”

“You’re going to see to your own people first, get them on the available ships in comfort You’re going to take our ships.”

“Mr. Kressich — ”

“Work has been progressing,” said Jon Lukas. “Some of you may have clear papers. I wouldn’t jeopardize them, sir.”

There was sudden silence from Kressich, an uncertain look, his face an unwholesome color. His lips trembled and the tremor spread to his chin, his hands locked upon each other.

Amazing, Angelo thought sourly, how easily it comes down to small concerns; and how accurately he does it.

Congratulations, Jon.

Easy to deal with the refugees of Q. Offer all their leaders clear paper and reason with them. Some had, in fact, proposed that.

“They’ve got blue three,” Damon muttered. Angelo followed his gaze to the monitors, on which the flow of armored troops and their stationing along the corridors had become a rapid, mechanical process.

“Mazian,” said Jon. “Mazian himself.”

Angelo stared at the silver-haired man in the lead, mentally counting off the moments it would take that tide of soldiery to flow up the spiraling emergency ramps to their level, to the doors of the council itself.

That long, he still held the station.

iv

The images changed. Lily fretted, sprang up and walked back and forth, a step toward the buttons on the box, a step toward the dreamer, whose eyes were troubled.

Finally she dared reach for the box, to change the dream.

“No,” the dreamer told her sharply, and she looked back and saw the pain… the dark, lovely eyes in the pale face, the white, white sheets, all about her light, save the eyes, which gazed on the sights in the halls. Lily came back to her, interposed her body between dream and dreamer, smoothed the pillow.

“I turn you,” she offered.

“No.”

She stroked the brow, touched so, so gently. “Dal-tes-elan, love you, love you.”

They are troops,“ Sun-her-friend said, in that voice so still and calm that it shed peace on others. ”Men-with-guns, Lily. It’s trouble. I don’t know what may happen.“

“Dream them gone,” Lily pleaded.

“I have no power to do that, Lily. But see, there is no using the guns. No one is hurt.”

Lily shivered, and stayed close. From time to time on the ever-changing walls the face of Sun appeared, reassuring them, and stars danced, and the face of the world shone for them like the crescent moon. And the line of men-in-shells grew, filling all the ways of the station.

v

There was no resistance. Signy had not drawn her gun, although her hand was on it. Neither had Mazian or Kreshov or Keu. Threat was for the troops, leveled rifles with the safeties off. They had fired one warning burst on the docks, nothing since. They moved quickly, giving no time for thought in those who met them now, no hint that there was argument possible. And there were few who lingered to meet them at all in these sections. Angelo Konstantin had given orders, Signy reckoned — the only sensible course.

They changed levels, up a ramp at the end of the main hall. Boots rang in complete vacancy; the sharp report of troops in their wake filing off to station themselves at the appointed line-of-sight intervals sent up other echoes. They passed from the emergency ramp to the area of station control; troops moved in there too, under officers, lowered rifles, while other detachments headed down the side halls to invade other offices: no shooting, not here. They kept moving down the center corridors, passed from cold steel and plastics to the sound-deadening matting, entered the hall of the bizarre wooden sculptures, whose eyes looked no less shocked now than before.

And the human faces, the small group gathered in the anteroom of the council chambers, were as round-eyed.

Troopers swept through, pushed at the ornate doors to open them. The leaved doors swung to either side and two troopers braced like statues facing inward, rifles leveled. The councillors inside, in a chamber far from filled, rose and faced the guns as Signy and Mazian and the others walked through. There was dignity in their posture, if not defiance.