Downbelow Station

by C. J. Cherryh

  There were objections he would have made. It was not the place for them.

  He shot a look at Vanars. "It may take me a while. Downers aren't a negotiable matter on Pell. They're frightened, and they can get into places they can die in and cause us real trouble. If I get into trouble, contact station authorities, don't send troops in; we can deal with them. If another gun goes off in their vicinity we may not have a maintenance system, sir.

  Our life-support and theirs are linked, a system in precise balance."

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  Vanars said nothing. Did not react. It was impossible to know if reason meant anything with him or the rest of them. He squeezed Elene's hand, drew away, and shouldered his way past the armored troops, tried to avoid stepping in a dark pool of blood as he carded open the lock.

  The door opened, closed behind him, started its cycle automatically. He reached for the human breathing gear which always hung on the right of entry of such chambers, slipped it on before the effects became severe. His breath took on the suck and hiss he associated subconsciously with Downer presence, loud in the metal chamber. He opened the inner door and the echo came back out of far depths. He had a dim blue light where he was, but he paused to unlock the compartment by the door and take out a lamp. The powerful beam cut through the dark into a web of steel.

  "Downers!" he called, his voice echoing hollowly down and down. He felt the cold as he walked through the door and let it seal, stood on the joining platform from which the ladders ran in all directions. "Downers! It's Damon Konstantin! Do you hear me? Call out if you hear me."

  The echoes died very slowly, depth upon depth.

  "Downers?"

  A moan drifted up out of the dark, an echoing keening which stirred the hairs at his nape. Anger?

  He went further, gripping the light with one hand, the thin rail with the other, stopped and listened. "Downers?"

  Something moved in the dark depths. Soft footfalls rang very softly on metal far below. "Konstantin?" an alien voice lisped. "Konstantin-man?"

  "It's Damon Konstantin," he called again. "Please come up. No guns. It's safe."

  He stayed still, feeling the slight tremor in the scaffolding as feet trod it far down in the dark. He heard breathing, and his eyes caught the light far below, shimmer like illusion. There was an impression of fur, and another 273

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  glimmer of eyes, ascending by stages. He stayed very still, one man, and fragile in these dark places. They were not dangerous ... but no one had attacked them with guns before.

  They came, more distinct in his hand-held light, bedraggled and struggling up the last stage, panting, the one hurt and the other wide-eyed with terror.

  "Konstantin-man," that one said with a quavering lisp. "Help, help, help."

  They held out hands, pleading. He set the lamp down on the grating on which he stood and accepted them as children, touched the male very carefully, for the poor fellow was bleeding all down his arm and drew back his lips in a fretful snarl.

  "All right," he assured them. "You're safe, you're safe now. I'll get you out."

  "Scared, Konstantin-man." The female stroked her mate's shoulder and looked from one to the other of them with round, shadowed eyes. "All hide gone find no path."

  "I don't understand you."

  "More, more, more we, dead hungry, dead 'fraid. Please help we."

  "Call them."

  She touched the male, a gesture eloquent of worry. The male chattered something to her, pushed at her, and she reached and touched at Damon.

  "I'll wait," Damon assured her. "I wait here. All safe."

  "Love you," she said in a breath, and scrambled back down with a ringing of the metal steps, lost at once in the dark. In a moment more, shrieks and trills sounded out into the depths until the echoes redoubled; voices woke out of other places, male and female, deep and high, until all the depths and dark went mad. A shriek erupted by him: the male shouted something down.

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  They came in the silence which followed, ringings of steps on the metal deep below, callings occasionally echoing sharply and moanings rising which stirred the scalp. The female came running back to stroke her mate's shoulder and to touch his hands. "I Satin, I call. Make he all right, Konstantin-man."

  "They have to come through the lock few at a time, you understand, careful of the lock."

  "I know lock," she said. "I careful. Go, go, I bring they."

  She was already hastening down again. Damon put his arm about the male and brought him into the lock, dragged his mask up for him, for the fellow was muzzy with shock, snarling with pain but making no attempt to snap or strike. The next door opened, on the flare of light and armed men, and the Downer started within the circle of his arm, snarled and spat, yielded to a reassuring hug. Elene was there, breaking through the troops, holding her hands out to help.

  "Get the troops back," Damon snapped, light-blinded and unable to distinguish Vanars. "Out of the way. Quit waving guns at them." He urged the Downer to sit on the floor by the wall, and Elene was ordering the medic over. "Back these troops out of here!" Damon said again. "Leave us to it!"

  An order was passed. To his great relief the India troopers began to pull back, and the Downer sat still, with some persuasion yielded his injured arm to examination as the medic knelt down with his kit. Damon tugged his own mask down, stifling in it, squeezed Elene's hand as she bent down beside him. The air stank of sweating, frightened Downer, a pungent muskiness.

  "Name's Bluetooth," the medic said, checking the tag. He made a few swift notes and began gently to treat the injury. "Burn and hemorrhage.

  Minor, except for shock."

  "Drink," Bluetooth pleaded, and reached for the kit. The medic rescued it and quietly promised him water when they could find some.

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  The lock opened, yielded up a near dozen Downers. Damon stood up, reading panic in their looks. "I'm Konstantin," he said at once, for the name carried importance with the Downers. He met them with outstretched hands, suffered himself to be hugged by sweating, shock-hazed Downers, gentle enfoldings of powerful furred arms. Elene welcomed them likewise, and in a moment another lockful had spilled out, making a knot which filled the corridor and outnumbered the troops who stood in the end of the hall. The Downers cast anxious looks in that direction, but kept together. Another lockful, and Bluetooth's mate was with them, chattering anxiously until she had found him. Vanars came among them, quite without swagger in this brown-furred flood.

  "You're requested to get them to a secure area as quickly as possible,"

  Vanars said.

  "Use your com and clear us passage via the emergency ramps via four through nine to the docks," Damon said. "Their habitat is accessible from there; we'll escort them back. That's quickest and safest for all concerned."

  He did not wait for Vanars's comment in the matter, but waved an arm at the Downers. "Come," he said, and they fell silent and began to move.

  Bluetooth, his arm done up in a white bandage, scrambled up not to be left, and chattered something to the others. Satin added her own voice, and there was a general and sudden cheerfulness among the Downers. He walked, hand in hand with Elene, and the Downers strode along about and behind them with the peculiar accompaniment of the breather-sounds, moving gladly and quickly. The few guards along their route stayed very still, suddenly in the minority, and Downers chattered with increasing freedom among themselves as they reached the end of the hall and entered the spiraling broad ramp which led to doors on all the nine levels. An arm snaked about Damon's left as they descended; he looked and it was Bluetooth, and Satin was with him, so that they came four abreast down the ramp, bizarre company ... five, for another had joined hands with Elene on the right. Satin cried something. A chorus answered. Again she spoke, her voice echoing in the heights and depths; and again the chattering chorus thundered out, w
ith a bounce in steps about them.

  Another yelled from the rear; and voices answered; and a second time.

  Damon tightened his hand on Elene's, at once stirred and alarmed at this 276

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  behavior, but the Downers were content to walk with him, shouting what had begun to sound like a marching chant.

  They broke into green nine, and marched down the long hall ... entered the docks with a great shout, and the echoes rang. The line of troops which guarded the ship accesses stirred ominously, but no more than that. "Stay with me," Damon ordered his companions sternly, and they did so, up the curving horizon into the area of their habitat, and there to a parting. "Go,"

  he told them. "Go and mind you be careful. Don't scare the men with guns."

  He had expected them to run, scampering free as they had begun to do about him. But one by one they came and wished to hug him and Elene, with tender care, so that the parting took some little time.

  Last, Satin and Bluetooth, who hugged and patted them. "Love you,"

  Bluetooth said. "Love you," said Satin, in her turn.

  No word, no question about the dead one. "Bigfellow was lost," Damon told them, although he was sure by Bluetooth's burn that they had been somewhere involved in the matter. "Dead."

  Satin bobbed a solemn agreement. "You send he home, Konstantin-man."

  "I'll send," he promised. Humans died, and did not merit transport. They had no strong ties to this soil, or to any soil, a vague distressed desire toward burying, but not at inconvenience. This was inconvenient, but so was it to be murdered far from home. "I'll see it's done."

  "Love you," she said solemnly, and hugged him a second time, laid her hand most gently on Elene's belly, and walked away with Bluetooth, running after a moment to the lock which led to their own tunnels.

  It left Elene standing with her own hand to her stomach and a dazed stare at him. "How could she know?" Elene asked with a bewildered laugh. It disturbed him too.

  "It shows a little," he said.

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  "To one of them?"

  "They don't get large," he said. And looking past her, to the docks, and the lines of troops. "Come on. I don't like this area."

  She looked where he had, to the soldiers and the more motley groups which ranged the upcurving horizon of the docks, near the bars and restaurants. Merchanters, keeping an eye on the military, on a dock which had been taken away from them.

  "Merchanters have owned this place since Pell began," she said, "and the bars and the sleepovers. Establishments are shutting down, and Mazian's troops won't be happy. Freighter crews and Mazian's ... in one bar, in one sleepover— station security had better be tight when any of those troops go on liberty."

  "Come on," he said, taking her arm. "I want you out of this. Running out here, going out into that corridor with the Downers—"

  "Where were you?" she shot back. "Down in the tunnels."

  "I know them."

  "So I know the docks."

  "So what were you doing up in four?"

  "I was down here when the call came; I asked Keu for a pass and got one, got his lieutenant to cooperate with dock offices; I was doing my job, thank you; and when the call came through Fleet com, I got Vanars up there before someone else got shot."

  He hugged her gratefully, walked with her around the turn into blue nine, another barren vista of troops stationed at intervals and no one in the corridors.

  "Josh," he said suddenly, dropping his arm.

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  "What?"

  He kept his pace, headed for the lift, gathered his papers from his pocket, but they were India troops, and they were waved through. "Josh got picked up. Mallory knows he's here and where he is."

  "What are you going to do about it?"

  "Mallory agreed to release him. They may have let him loose already. I've got to check comp and find out where he is, whether still in detention or back at his apartment."

  "He could sleepover with us."

  He said nothing, thinking about that.

  "Which of us," she asked, "is really going to sleep easy otherwise?"

  "Not much sleep with him around either. We'll be jammed up in that apartment. As good have him in bed with us."

  "So I've slept crowded. So it could drag on more than one night. If they get their hands on him—"

  "Elene. It's one thing if station handles a protest. There are things in this, personal things with Josh ..."

  "Secrets?"

  "Things that don't bear the light. Things Mallory might not want out, you understand me? She's dangerous. I've talked to multiple murderers less cold-blooded."

  "Fleet captain. It's a breed, Damon. Ask any merchanter. You know there's probably kin of the merchanters on-station standing in those lines, but they'll not break information to hail their own mothers, no. What the Fleet takes ... doesn't come back. You don't tell me anything I don't know about 279

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  the Fleet. I can tell you that if we want to do something we should do it.

  Now."

  "If we bring him in with us, we risk having that act in Fleet files ..."

  "I think I know what you want to do."

  She had her own stubbornness. He reckoned matters, stopped at the lift, his hand on the button. "I figured we'd better get him," he said.

  "So," she said. "Thought so."

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  7

  i

  Pell: sector white four: 2230 hrs.

  Jon Lukas walked nervously through the vacant halls, despite the pass Keu had given to all of them in the council chambers. Troops might be withdrawn progressively starting at maindawn, they had been promised.

  Had to, he reckoned. Some of them were already being rotated off to rest, some Fleet crew, armorless, taking up guard in their places. It was all quiet; he was not even challenged but once, at the lift exit, and he walked to his door, used his card to open it.

  The front room was deserted. His heart lurched with the immediate fear that his unbidden guest had strayed; but then Bran Hale appeared in the hall by the kitchen and looked re-relieved to see him.

  "All right," Hale said, and Jessad came out, and two others of Hale's men after him.

  "About time," Jessad said. "This was growing tedious."

  "It's going to stay that way," Jon said peevishly. "Everyone has to stay here tonight: Hale, Daniels, Clay ... I'm not having my apartment door pour a horde of visitors out under the troops' noses. They'll be gone come morning."

  "The Fleet?" Hale asked.

  "The troops in the halls." Jon went to the kitchen bar, examined a bottle which had been full when he left it and which now had two fingers remaining. He poured himself a drink and sipped it with a sigh, his eyes stinging with exhaustion. He walked over to the chair he favored and sank down as Jessad took his place opposite, across the low table, and Hale and his men rummaged at the bar for another bottle. "I'm glad you were prudent," he said to Jessad. "I was worried."

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  Jessad smiled, cat-eyed. "I surmise you were. That for a moment or two you thought of solutions. Maybe you're still thinking in that line. Shall we discuss it?"

  Jon frowned, slid a glance at Hale and his men. "I trust them more than you, and that's a fact."

  "It's likely you thought of being rid of me," Jessad said. "And I wouldn't be surprised if you aren't right now more concerned about where rather than if. You might get away with it entirely. Probably you would."

  The directness disturbed him. "Since you bring it up yourself, I suppose you've got a counter proposal."

  The smile persisted. "One: I'm no present hazard; you may want to think matters over. Two: I am undismayed by Mazian's arrival."

  "Why?"

  "Because that contingency is covered."

  Jon lifted the glass to his lips and took a
stinging swallow. "By what?"

  "When you jump to land in the Deep, Mr. Lukas, you can do it three safe ways: not throw much into the jump in the first place ... if you're in regions you know very, very well; or use a star's G to pull you up; or— if you're good— the mass in some null point. A lot of junk in Pell's vicinity, you know that? Nothing very big, but big enough."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "The Union Fleet, Mr. Lukas. Do you think there's no reason Mazian has his ships grouped for the first time in decades? Pell's all they have left; and the Union Fleet is out there, just as they sent me ahead, knowing where they'd come."

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  Hale and his men had gathered, settled on the couch and along the back of it. Jon shaped the situation in his mind, Pell a battle zone, the worst of all scenarios.

  "And what happens to us when it's discovered there's no way to dislodge Mazian?"

  "Mazian can be driven off. And when that's done he has no bases at all.

  He's done; and we have peace, Mr. Lukas, with all the rewards of it. That's why I'm here."

  "I'm listening."

  "Officials have to be taken out. The Konstantins have to be taken out. You have to be set in their place. Have you the nerve for that, Mr. Lukas, despite relationships? I understand there's a— kinship involved here; yourself, Konstantin's wife—"

  He clamped his lips together, flinching as he always did, from the thought of Alicia as she was now. Could not face that. Had never been able to stomach it. It was not life, linked to those machines. Not life. He wiped at his face. "My sister and I don't speak. Haven't, for years. She's an invalid; Dayin would have told you that."

  "I'm aware of it. I'm talking about her husband, her sons. Have you the nerve, Mr. Lukas?"