Finity's End

It was also a network that extended routes beyond what any Station tracked as regularly existing—no station could maintain records that covered every ship contact, and every ship movement, when only station calls registered in the ships’ logs. The shadow market was a network where, theoretically, you could buy anything that moved by ship. Union, with order, had never liked it. Union didn’t want Alliance merchanters serving its far, colonial ports—internal security, Union insisted. Others said it was because Union didn’t want Pell and Earth to know how rapidly and how far it was expanding. At the same time Union was aggressively building ships, Union had selected Alliance merchanters it would allow to reach Cyteen, and favored them with deals designed to provoke divisive jealousy among merchanters. That increased demands on Pell to lower dock charges to match the favorable rates Union offered. But now James Robert came saying that Union should gain its point, and that merchanters should restrict themselves , and that all stations should lower tariffs in exchange for a merchanter pledge to conduct all trade inside the tariffs.

That, James Robert implied, or watch the whole Alliance slide blindly into Mazian’s grasp—as she was worried about it sliding into Union hands.

But both of them had to admit that hard times would make some merchanters desperate enough to trade with the devil—or to call him back as a hero, a savior from grasping station politicians.

Conrad Mazian, hero. Themselves all as outlaws and traitors. The War renewed. It wasn’t a new thought. Just the resurgence of an old, old worry.

All stakes became far, far higher, in that thought. Union didn’t want that scenario for a future, either.

Finity going back to trade because the War was over? No. She’d lay odds that there’d been no far-off victory. She’d also lay odds Mallory had sent Finity back to merchant trade—for one urgent reason, to do exactly what James Robert had done with her: cut deals only James Robert could cut. He’d evidently come to her first, to get Pell lined up behind him, counting on her ability to deliver Pell’s vote.

After that, he was going to seek general merchanter approval—and where better to do it but along the string of stars that were the stations almost Union and almost Alliance, and doing a delicate ballet of relationship with both,

Mariner. Voyager. Esperance.

Then the merchanters themselves. No station, no government, no military organization could sway several hundred highly independent merchanter captains from a trade they thought was their God-given right to conduct, as no one could get the same merchanter captains to agree to set up other merchanter captains in business to compete with them. But this man might.

In the vids that came from Old Earth there were blue sky days. There never were on Downbelow. The clouds had endless patterns, sometimes smooth, sometimes with bubbled bottoms, sometimes with layers and sheets that traveled at different speeds in the fierce winds aloft. Great Sun usually appeared through thick veils—so that if the sun ever did show an edge of fire the downers took it for an event of great importance.

But while downers revered Great Sun, and wanted to stand in polite respect and wait for Great Sun’s rare appearances, the time between those appearances was just too long to endure.

So they made the Watchers, great-eyed and reverent statues that sat gazing at the sky in lieu of living downers.

There were several such statues on a forested hill near the Base, only knee-high, so you’d trip over them if you didn’t know they were there. Two looked up. One looked a little downward from the hill, and if you looked where it was looking, you could see the Base itself through the trees,

Fletcher already knew where the site was, so he knew where Melody and Patch were going when they climbed that hill. He followed, and Bianca trekked after him.

“Where are they going?” Bianca panted And then stopped cold as she saw the images mostly hidden in the weeds. “Oh,—my.”

She was impressed. Fletcher felt a warmth go through him.

“Bring watch sky” Patch said, with a wave of his arm all about. “Good see sky!”

Great view, was what Patch meant, and today it was on the downers’ agenda to look at the sky, for some reason—or maybe to show Bianca this special place, as they’d shown it to him early last fall,

“It’s wonderful,” Bianca said “Do they know at the Base, I mean, do they know this place is here?”

“I don’t know,” Fletcher said. “It’s none of the researchers’ business, is it, if the hisa don’t tell.”

He had that attitude about it. He didn’t know whether if he looked it up on the computers back at the Base he’d find it was known to the researchers, and off-limits especially to juniors in the program; but juniors in the program didn’t have personal hisa guides to bring them here, either.

It was a mark of how much Melody and Patch had accepted Bianca, he thought, that all of a sudden this morning they’d snagged him away from brush-cutting and wanted him to get Bianca.

“Banky,” they’d called her when she came, addressing her directly. “Walk, walk, walk.”

That meant a fair hike. Three walks.

So Bianca had slipped out of her work this morning, too. It was easy. The job got done sometime today. On the station they’d have had inquiries out after two teens under supervision who took a morning break.

Here, they found a secret place and watched the clouds scud overhead.

“The clouds are really moving,” Bianca said, pointing aloft as they sprawled flat on their backs beside Melody and Patch. “There must really be a wind up there.”

“Rains come,” Melody said, and reached out her hand and held Fletcher’s tightly in her calloused fingers.

Rains. The monsoon.

The weather reports at the Base had been saying there was a low in the gulf, up from the southern continent But those were advisements relayed from the station; the station watching from space was never that good about figuring out the weather—ultimately, yes, the conditions were changing, but they were never right. There were so many variables that drove the weather, and real ground-level data came only from four places in the world, from the farms to the south, the port, from a research station on the gulf shore, and from the Base, from a primitive-looking little box full of instruments. The staff was in the habit of joking that if you wanted to know the weather, the downers always knew and the atmospherics people used dice.

But the clouds were darkening with a sudde

Maybe this was the last day he would ever see them. Ever.

“River he go in sky,” Patch said with an expansive wave of a furry arm. “Walk with Great Sun. Down, down, down he fall, bring up flower, lot flower.”

Melody inhaled deeply. “Rain smell.”

What might rain smell like? He wondered, among other things he wondered, but he didn’t dare risk it even for a second. The clouds were uncommonly gray today, and if he’d had to guess the hour in the last fifteen minutes he’d think it more and more like twilight, even though he knew it was noon. In one part of his mind he was scared and disturbed. In another—he was suddenly fighting off a feeling it was near dark. An urge to yawn.