Downbelow Station

“Or make ourselves a bubble in the tu

The storeroom door opened. Ngo came in on them, walked up and gathered up the cards, read through the notations, pursed his wrinkled mouth and frowned. “You’re sure?”

“No mistakes.”

Ngo muttered unhappily at the quality of the merchandise, as if they were at fault, started to leave.

“Ngo,” Damon said, “heard a rumor the market’s going for the new paper. That so?”

“Where did you hear that?”

Damon shrugged. “Two men talking in front. That true, Ngo?”

“They’re dreaming. You see a way to get your hands into the new system, you tell me.”

“I’m thinking on it.”

Ngo muttered to himself and left

“That so?” Josh asked.

Damon shook his head. “Thought I might jar something loose. Ngo won’t shake or there’s no way anyone knows.”

“I’d bet on the latter.”

“So would I.” Damon set his hands on his knees, sighed, looked up. “Why don’t we go out and get something to eat? No one out there who’s trouble, is there?”

The memory which had left him came back with dark force. He opened his mouth to say something, and of a sudden came a rumbling which shook the floor, a boom and crash which overrode screams from outside.

“The seals,” Damon exclaimed, on his feet. Cries continued, wild screams, chairs overturning in the front room. Damon rushed for the storeroom door and Josh ran with him, out as far as the back door, where Ngo and his wife and son had scrambled to get out, Ngo with his market records in hand.

“No,” Josh exclaimed, “Wait… that would have been the doors to white… we’re sealed — but there were troops up at nine two — they wouldn’t have troops in here if they were going to push the button — ”

“Com,” Ngo’s wife exclaimed. There was an a

It was Jon Lukas on the screen. It always was when Mazian had an official a

“They’re herding all the undesirables in here,” Ngo said. Sweat stood on his wrinkled face. “What about us who work here, Mr. Stationmaster Lukas? What about us honest people caught in here?”

Lukas repeated all the a

“Come on,” Damon said, hooking Josh’s arm. They walked out the front door and around the corner onto green dock, walked far along the upward curve, where a great mass of people had gathered looking toward white. They were not the only ones. There were troops, moving out along the far-side wall, by the berths and gantries.

“Going to be shooting,” Josh muttered. “Damon, let’s get out of here.”

“Look at the doors. Look at the doors.”

He did look. The massive valves were tightly joined. The perso

“They’re not going to let them through,” Damon said. “It was a lie… to get the fugitives to the docks over there.”

“Let’s get back,” Josh pleaded with him.

Someone fired; their side, the troops — a barrage came over their heads and into the shopfronts. People shrieked and shoved, and they fled with it, down the dock, into nine, into Ngo’s doorway, while riot surged past and down the hall. A few others tried to follow them, but Ngo rushed up with a stick and fended them off, all the while shrieking curses at the two of them for ru

They got the door closed, but the crowd outside was more interested in ru

In silence Ngo and his family began cleaning up. “Here,” Ngo said to Josh, and thrust a wet, stew-soiled rag at him. Ngo turned a second frowning look on Damon, although he did not order: a Konstantin still had some privilege. But Damon started picking up dishes and straightening chairs and mopping with the rest of them.

It grew quiet outside again, with an occasional pounding at the door. Faces stared at them through the plastic window, people simply wanting in, exhausted and frightened people, wanting the service of the place.

Ngo opened the doors, cursed and shouted, let them in, set himself behind the bar and started doling out drinks with no regard to credit for the moment. “You pay,” he warned all and sundry. “Just sit down and we’ll make out the tickets.” Some left without paying; some did sit down. Damon took a bottle of wine and drew Josh to a table in the farthest corner, where there was a short ell. It was their usual place, which had a view of the front door and unobstructed access to the kitchen and their hiding places. The com music cha

Josh leaned his head against his hands and wished he dared be drunk. He could not be. There were the dreams. Damon drank. Eventually it seemed to be enough, for Damon’s shadowed eyes had an anesthetized haze which he envied.

“I’m going out tomorrow,” Damon said. “I’ve sat in that hole enough… I’m going out, maybe talk to a few people, try to make some contacts. There’s got to be someone who hasn’t cleared out of green. Someone who still owes my family some favors.”

He had tried before. “We’ll talk about it,” Josh said.

Ngo’s son served them di

Elene, perhaps. Damon spoke her name sometimes in his sleep. Sometimes his brother’s. Or maybe he was thinking of other things, lost friends. People probably dead. He was not going to talk; Josh knew that. They spent long hours in silences, in their separate pasts. He thought of his own happier dreams, pleasant places, a sun-lit road, dusty grain fields on Cyteen, people who had loved him, faces that he had known, old friends, old comrades, far from this place. The hours were filled with it, the long, solitary hours each of them spent in hiding, the nights, with music from Ngo’s front room jarring the walls most of the hours of mainday and alter-day, numbing, constant, or saccharine and pervasive. They stole sleep in the quiet times, lay listlessly in others. He did not intrude on Damon’s fancies, nor Damon on his. Never denied the importance of them, which were the best comfort they had in this place.

One thing they no longer considered, and that was either of them turning himself in. They had Lukas’s face before them, that death’s-head forewarning of Mazian’s dealing with his puppets. If Emilio Konstantin was still alive as rumor said… privately Josh wondered if it was good news or bad. And that too he did not say.

“I hear,” Damon said finally, “that maybe some of the Mazia