Downbelow Station

by C. J. Cherryh

  "That bad?"

  He did not want to think of his own room, the barren apartment in hospice, blank-walled, cheerless. There were people he knew in the hospital, doctors who knew him, who could deal with these things, and whose motives he knew were limited to duty.

  "I'll call the office," Damon said, "and tell them I'm going to be late. I'll take you to the hospital if you feel you need it."

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  He rested his head on his hands. "I don't know why I do this," he said. "I'm remembering something. I don't know what. It hits me in the stomach."

  Damon sat down astride the bench, just sat, and waited on him.

  "I can figure," Damon said finally, and he looked up, recalling uneasily that Damon had had access to all his records.

  " What do you figure?"

  "Maybe it was a little close in there. A lot of the refugees panic at crowding. It's scarred into them."

  "But I didn't come in with the refugees," he said. "I remember that."

  "And what else?"

  A tic jerked at his face. He rose, began to dress, and after a moment Damon did likewise. Other men came and went about them. Shouts from outside reached into the room when the door opened, the ordinary noise of the gym.

  "Do you really want me to take you to the hospital?" Damon asked finally.

  He shrugged into his jacket. "No. I'll be all right." He judged that such was the case, although his skin was still drawn in chill the clothes should have warmed away. Damon frowned, gestured toward the door. They walked out into the cold outer chamber, entered the lift with half a dozen others, rode it the dizzying straight drop into outer-shell G. Josh drew a deep breath, staggered a little in walking off, stopped as the flow of traffic swirled about him.

  Damon's hand closed on his elbow, moved him gently in the direction of a seat along the corridor wall. He was glad to sit down, to rest a moment and watch the people pass them. They were not on Damon's office level, but on a green one. The strains of music from the concourse floated out to them from the far end. They should have ridden it on down ... had stopped, 174

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  Damon's idea. Near the track around to the hospital, he reasoned. Or just a place to rest. He sat, taking his breath.

  "A little dizzy," he confessed.

  "Maybe it would be better if you went back at least for a checkup. I should never have encouraged you to this."

  "It's not the exercise." He bent, rested his head in his hands, drew several quiet breaths, straightened finally."Damon, the names ... you know the names in my records. Where was I born?"

  "Cyteen."

  "My mother's name ... do you know it?"

  Damon frowned. "No. You didn't say; mostly you talked about an aunt.

  Her name was Maevis."

  The older woman's face came to him again, a warm rush of familiarity. "I remember."

  "Had you forgotten even that?"

  The tic came back to his face. He tried not to acknowledge it, desperate for normalcy. "I have no way to know, you understand, what's memory and what's imagination, or dreams. Try dealing with things when you don't know the difference and can't tell."

  "The name was Maevis."

  "Yes. You lived on a farm."

  He nodded, treasuring a sudden glimpse of sunlit road, a weathered fence— he was often on that road in his dreams, bare feet in slick dust, a house, a prefab and peeling dome ... many such, field upon field, ripe gold in the sun. "Plantation. A lot larger than a farm. I lived there ... I lived 175

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  there until I went into the service school. That was the last time I was ever on a world— wasn't it?"

  "You never mentioned any other."

  He sat still a moment, holding onto the image, excited by it, by something beautiful and warm and real. He tried to recover details. The size of the sun in the sky, the color of sunsets, the dusty road that led to and from the small settlement. A large, soft, comfortable woman and a thin, worried man who spent a lot of time cursing the weather. The pieces fit, settled into place. Home. That was home. He ached after it. "Damon," he said, gathering courage— for there was more than the pleasant dream. "You don't have any reason to lie to me, do you? But you did— when I asked you for the truth a while ago— about the nightmare. Why?"

  Damon looked uncomfortable.

  "I'm scared, Damon. I'm scared of lies. Do you understand that? Scared of other things." He stammered uncontrollably, impatient with himself, with muscles that jerked and a tongue that would not frame things and a mind like a sieve. "Give me names, Damon. You've read the record. I know you have. Tell me how I got to Pell."

  "When Russell's collapsed. Like everyone else."

  "No. Starting with Cyteen. Give me names."

  Damon laid an arm along the back of the bench, faced him, frowning.

  "The first service you mentioned was a ship named Kite. I don't know how many years; maybe it was the only ship. You'd been taken off the farm, I take it, into the service school, whatever you call the place, and you were trained in armscomp. I take it that the ship was a very small one."

  "Scout and recon," he murmured, and saw in his mind the exact boards, the cramped interior of Kite, where the crew had to hand-over-hand their way in zero G. A lot of time at Fargone Station; a lot of time there— and out on patrol; out on missions just looking for what they could see. Kitha

  ... Kitha and Lee ... childlike Kitha— he had had particular affection for 176

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  her. And Ulf. He recovered faces, glad to remember them. They had worked close— in more than one sense, for the dartships had no cabins, no privacy. They had been together ... years. Years.

  Dead now. It was like losing them again.

  Watch it! Kitha had yelled; he had yelled something too, realizing they were blind-spotted; Ulf's mistake. He sat helpless at his board, no guns that would bear on the threat. He flinched from it.

  "They picked me up," he said. "Someone did."

  "A ship named Tigris hit you," Damon said. "Ridership. But it was a freighter in the area that homed in on your capsule signal."

  "Go on."

  Damon stayed silent a moment as if he were thinking on it, as if he would not. He grew more and more anxious, his stomach taut. "You were brought onto station," Damon said finally, "aboard a merchanter— a stretcher case, but no injuries. Shock, cold, I suppose ... your life-support had started to fade, and they nearly lost you."

  He shook his head. That much was blank, remote and cold. He recalled docks, doctors; interrogation, endless questions.

  Mobs. Shouting mobs. Docks and a guard falling. Someone had coldly shot the man in the face, while he lay on the ground stunned. Dead everywhere, trampled, a surge of bodies before him and men about him—armored troops. They've got guns! someone had shouted. And panic broke out.

  "You were picked up at Mariner," Damon said. "After it blew, when they were hunting Mariner survivors."

  "Elene—"

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  "They questioned you at Russell's," Damon said softly, doggedly. "They were facing— I don't know what. They were frightened, in a hurry. They used illegal techniques ... like Adjustment. They wanted information out of you, timetables, ship movements, the whole thing. But you couldn't give it to them. You were on Russell's when the evacuation began, and you were moved to this station. That's what happened."

  A dark umbilical from station to ship. Troops and guns.

  "On a warship," he said.

  "Norway."

  His stomach knotted. Mallory. Mallory and Norway. Graff. He remembered. Pride ... died there. He became a nothing. Who he was, what he was ... they had not cared, among the troops, the crew. It was not even hate, but bitterness and boredom, cruelty in which he did not matter, a living thing that felt pain, felt shame ... screamed when the horror became overwhelming, and realizing that there was no one at all who cared—stopped sc
reaming, or feeling, or fighting.

  Want to go back to them? He could hear even the tone of Mallory's voice.

  Want to go back? He had not wanted that. Had wanted nothing, then, but to feel nothing.

  This was the source of the nightmares, the dark, confused figures, the thing that wakened him in the night.

  He nodded slowly, accepting that.

  "You entered detention here," Damon said. "You were picked up; Russell's; Norway; here. If you think we've thrown anything false into your Adjustment ... no. Believe me. Josh?"

  He was sweating. Felt it. "I'm all right," he said, although it was hard, for a moment, to draw breath. His stomach kept heaving. Closeness—emotional or physical— was going to do this to him; he identified it now.

  Tried to control it.

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  "Sit there," Damon said, rose before he could object, and went into one of the shops along the hall. He rested there obediently, head against the wall behind him, his pulse easing finally. It occurred to him that it was the first time he had been loose alone, save for the track between his job and his room in the old hospice. Being so gave him a peculiarly naked feeling. He wondered if those who passed knew who he was. The idea frightened him.

  You will remember some things, the doctor had told him, when they stopped the pills. But you can get distance from them. Remember some things.

  Damon came back, bringing two cups of something, sat down, and offered one to him. It was fruit juice and something else, iced and sugared, which soothed his stomach. "You're going to be late getting back," he recalled.

  Damon shrugged and said nothing.

  "I'd like—" To his intense shame, he stammered. "— to take you and Elene to dinner. I have my job now. I have some credit above my hours."

  Damon studied him a moment. "All right. I'll ask Elene."

  It made him feel a great deal better. "I'd like," he said further, "to walk back home from here. Alone."

  "All right."

  "I needed to know ... what I remember. I apologize."

  "I'm worried for you," Damon said, and that profoundly touched him.

  "But I walk by myself."

  "What night for dinner?"

  "You and Elene decide. My schedule is rather open."

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  It was poor humor. Damon dutifully smiled at it, finished his drink. Josh sipped the last of his and stood up. "Thank you."

  "I'll talk to Elene. Let you know the date tomorrow. Take it easy. And call me if you need."

  Josh nodded, turned, walked away, among the crowds who ... might ...

  know his face. Like those on the docks, in his memory: crowds. It was not the same. It was a different world and he walked in it, down his own portion of hall as the newfound owner of it ... walked to the lift along with those born to Pell, stood with them waiting on the lift car as if he were ordinary.

  It came. "Green seven." He spoke up for himself when the press inside cut him off from the controls and someone kindly pressed it for him. Shoulder to shoulder in the car. He was all right. It whisked him down to his own level. He excused his way past passengers who gave him not a second glance, stood in his own corridor, near the hospice.

  "Talley," someone said, startling him. He glanced to his right, at uniformed security guards. One nodded pleasantly to him. His pulse raced and settled. The face was distantly familiar. "You live here now?" the guard asked him.

  "Yes," he said, and in apology: "I don't remember well ... from before.

  Maybe you were there when I came in."

  "I was," the guard said. "Good to see you came out all right."

  He seemed to mean it. "Thank you," Josh said, walked on his way and the guards on theirs. The dark which had advanced retreated.

  He had thought them all dreams. But I don't dream it, he thought. It happened. He walked past the desk at the entry to the hospice, down the corridor inside to number 18. He used his card. The door slid aside and he walked into his own refuge, a plain, windowless place ... a rare privilege, from what he had heard of vid about the overcrowding everywhere. More of Damon's arranging.

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  Ordinarily he would turn on the vid, using its noise to fill the place with voices, for dreams filled the silences.

  He sat down now on the bed, simply sat there a time in the silence, probing the dreams and the memories like half-healed wounds. Norway.

  Signy Mallory.

  Mallory.

  iv

  Pell: White Dock: Lukas Company offices;

  1830 hrs; 0630 hrs. alterday: alterdawn

  There were no disasters. Jon stayed in the office, rearmost of all the offices, took normal calls, worked his routine of warehousing reports and records, trying in one harried corner of his mind to map out what to do if the worst happened.

  He stayed later than usual, after the lights had dimmed slightly on the docks, after a good deal of the first shift staff had left for the day and the mainday activity had settled down ... just a few clerks out in the other offices to answer com and tend things till the alterday staff came in.

  Swan's Eye went out unchallenged at 1446; Annie and the Kulins left with Vittorio's papers at 1703, without question or commotion more than the usual close inquiries about schedules and routing, for the militia. He breathed easier then.

  And when Annie had long since cleared the vicinity of the station, beyond any reasonable chance of protest, he took his jacket, locked up, and headed home.

  He used his card at the door, to have every minutest record in comp as it should be ... found Jessad and Hale sitting opposite one another in silence, in his living room. There was coffee, soothing aroma after the afternoon 181

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  tension. He sank into a third chair and leaned back, taking possession of his own home.

  "I'll have some coffee," he told Bran Hale. Hale frowned and rose to go fetch it. And to Jessad: "A tedious afternoon?"

  "Gratefully tedious," Jessad said softly. "But Mr. Hale has done his best to entertain."

  "Any trouble getting here?"

  "None," Hale said from the kitchen. He brought back the coffee, and Jon sipped at it, realized Hale was waiting.

  Dismiss him ... and sit alone with Jessad. He was not eager for that.

  Neither was he eager to have Hale talking too freely, here or elsewhere. "I appreciate your discretion," he told Hale. And with a careful consideration: "You know there's something up. You'll find it worth your while more than monetarily. Only see you keep Lee Quale from indiscretions. I'll fill you in on it as soon as I find out more. Vittorio's gone. Dayin's ... lost. I've need of some reliable, intelligent assistance. You read me, Bran?"

  Hale nodded.

  "I'll talk with you about this tomorrow," he said then very quietly. "Thank you."

  "You all right here?" Hale asked.

  "If I'm not," he said, "you take care of it. Hear?"

  Hale nodded, discreetly left. Jon settled back with somewhat more assurance, looked at his guest, who sat easily in front of him.

  "I take it you trust this person," Jessad said, "and that you want to promote him in your affairs. Choose your allies wisely, Mr. Lukas."

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  "I know my own." He drank a sip of the scalding coffee. "I don't know you, Mr. Jessad or whatever your name is. Your plan to use my son's ID I can't permit. I've arranged a different cover ... for him. A tour of Lukas interests: a ship's outbound for the mines and his papers are on it."

  He expected outrage. There was only a polite lift of the brows. "I have no objection. But I shall need papers, and I don't think it wise to expose myself to interrogation obtaining them."

  "Papers can be gotten. That's the least of our problems."

  "And the greatest, Mr. Lukas?"

  "I want some answers. Where's Dayin?"

  "Safe behind the lines. No cause for wo
rry. I'm sent as a contingency ... an assumption that this offer is valid. If not, I shall die ... and I hope that's not the case."

  "What can you offer me?"

  "Pell," Jessad said softly. "Pell, Mr. Lukas."

  "And you're prepared to hand it to me."

  Jessad shook his head. "You're going to hand it to us, Mr. Lukas. That's the proposal. I'll direct you. Mine is the expertise ... yours the precise knowledge of this place. You'll brief me on the situation here."

  "And what protection have I?"

  "My approval."

  "Your rank?"

  Jessad shrugged. "Unofficial. I want details. Everything from your shipping schedules to the deployment of your ships to the proceedings of your council ... to the least detail of the management of your own offices."

  "You plan to live in my apartment the whole time?"

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  "I find little reason to stir forth. Your social schedule may suffer for it. But is there a safer place to be? This Bran Hale— a discreet man?"

  "Worked for me on Downbelow. He was fired down there for upholding my policies against the Konstantins. Loyal."

  "Reliable?"

  "Hale is. Of some of his crew I have some small doubt ... at least regarding judgment."

  "You must take care, then."

  "I am."

  Jessad nodded slowly. "But find me papers, Mr. Lukas. I feel much more secure with them than without."

  "And what happens to my son?"

  "Concerned? I'd thought there was little love lost there."

  "I asked the question."

  "There's a ship holding far out ... one we've taken, registered to the Olvig merchanter family, but in fact military. The Olvigs are all in detention ...