Downbelow Station

Chapter Six

The trucks moved at a lumbering pace through the clear area, forlorn, collapsed domes, the empty pens, and above all the silence of the compressors, telling a tale of abandonment. Base one. First of the camps after main base. Lock doors banged loosely, unfastened, in a slight wind. The weary column straggled now, all looking at the desolation, and Emilio looked on it with a pang in his own heart, this thing that he had helped to build. No sign of anyone staying here. He wondered how far down the road they were, and how they fared. “Hisa watch here too?” he asked of Bluetooth, who, almost alone of hisa, still remained with the column, beside him and Miliko. “We eyes see,” Bluetooth answered, which told him less than he wanted.

“Mr. Konstantin.” A man came up from the back, walked along with him, one of the Q workers. “Mr. Konstantin, we have to rest.”

“Past the camp,” he promised. “We don’t stay in the open longer than we can help, all right? Past the camp.”

The man stood still and let the column pass and his own group overtake him. Emilio gave Miliko’s shoulder a weary pat, increased his own pace to overtake the two crawlers ahead of the column; he passed one in the clearing, overtook the other as they reached the farther road, got the driver’s attention and signed him half a kilometer halt. He stopped then and let the column move until he was even with Miliko. He reckoned that some of the older workers and the children might be at the end of their strength. Even walking with the breathers was about the limit of exertion they could take over this number of hours. They kept stopping for rest and the requests grew more and more frequent.

They began to straggle as it was, some of them stringing further and further behind. He drew Miliko aside, and watched the line pass. “Rest ahead,” he told each group as they passed. “Keep on till you get there.” In time the back of the column came in sight, a draggled string of walkers. The older ones, patient and doggedly determined, and a couple of staffers who walked last of all. “Anyone left?” he asked, and they shook their heads.

And suddenly a staffer was coming down the winding road from the other end of the column, jogging, staggering into other walkers, as the line erupted with questions. Emilio broke into a run with Miliko in his wake, intercepting the man.

“Com got through,” the ru

“Dead,” Ernst said. “Your father… riot on the station.”

“My mother and brother?”

“No word. No word on any other casualties. Military’s sending. Mazian’s Fleet. Wants contact with us. Do I answer?”

Shaken, he drew in a breath, aware of silence in the nearest crowd, of people staring up at him, of a handful of old Q residents on the truck itself looking at him with eyes as solemn as the hisa images.

Someone else scrambled up onto the truckbed and waded through, flung an arm about him. Miliko. He was grateful… shivered slightly with exhaustion and delayed shock. He had anticipated it. It was only confirmation.

“No,” he said. “Don’t answer.” A murmur started in the crowd; he turned on it. “No word on any other casualties,” he shouted, drowning that in a hurry. “Ernst, tell them what you picked up.”

Ernst stood up, told them. He hugged Miliko against him. Miliko’s parents and sister were up there, cousins, uncles and aunts. The Dees might survive or, equally, they might die u

The Fleet had seized control, imposed martial law, Q — Ernst hesitated and doggedly continued, before all the uplifted faces below — Q had rioted and gotten across the line, with widespread destruction and loss of life, stationers and Q both.

One of the old Q residents was crying. Perhaps, Emilio acknowledged painfully, perhaps they too had people for whom to worry.

He looked down on row after row of solemn faces, his own staff, workers, Q, a scattering of hisa. No one moved now. No one said anything. There was only the wind in the leaves overhead and the rush of the river beyond the trees.

“So they’re going to be here,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady, “they’re going to be back here wanting us to grow crops for them and work the mills and the wells; and Company and Union are going to fight back and forth, but it’s not Pell anymore, not in their hands, when what we grow can be taken to fill their holds. When our own Fleet comes down here and works us under guns… what when Union comes after them? What when they want more work, and more, and there’s no more say any of us has in what happens to Downbelow? Go back if you like; work for Porey until Union gets here. But I’m going on.”

“Where, sir?” That was the boy — he had forgotten the name — the one Hale had bullied the day of the mutiny. His mother was by him, in the circle of his arm. It was not defiance, but a plain question.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Wherever the hisa can show us that’s safe, if there is any such place. To live there. To dig in and live. Grow our crops for ourselves.”

A murmur ran among them. Fear… was always at the back of things for those who did not know Downbelow, fear of the land, of places where man was a minority. Men who were unconcerned by hisa on-station grew afraid of them in the open land, where men were dependent and hisa were not. A lost breather, a failure… they died of such things on Downbelow. The cemetery back at main base had grown as the camp did.

“No hisa,” he said again, “ever harmed a human. And that despite things we’ve done, despite that we’re the aliens here.” He climbed down from the truck, hit the yielding ruts of the road, lifted his hands for Miliko, knowing she at least was with him. She jumped down, and questioned nothing. “We can set you up in the camp back there,” he said. “Do that much for you at least, those of you that want to take your chances with Porey. Get the compressors ru

“Mr. Konstantin.”

He looked up. It was one of the oldest women, from the truckbed.

“Mr. Konstantin, I’m too old to work like that back there. I don’t want to stay behind.”

“Lot of us going on,” a male voice said.

“Anyone going back?” one of the Q foremen asked. “We need to send one of the trucks back with anyone?”

There was silence. Shaking of heads. Emilio stared at the lot of them, simply tired. “Bounder,” he said, looking to one of the hisa who waited by the forest edge. “Where is Bounder? I need him.”

Bounder came, out from among the trees, on the slope of the hill. “You come,” Bounder shouted down, beckoning up toward the hill and the trees. “All come now.”

“Bounder, we’re tired. And we need the things on the trucks. If we go that way we can’t take the trucks and some of us aren’t able to walk. Some are sick, Bounder.”

“We carry sick, many, many hisa. We steal good things on trucks, teach we good, Konstantin-man. We steal for you. You come.”

He looked back at the others, at dismayed and doubtful faces.

Hisa surrounded them. More and more came out of the woods, even some with young, which humans rarely saw. It was trust, that such came out among them. All of the company sensed it, perhaps, for there was no protest. They helped the old and the unwell down from the trucks. Strong young hisa made slings of their hands for them; others heaved down the supplies and the equipment