Downbelow Station tau-3

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  “Holding him in detention. None of the other offices agrees what to do with him.”

  Pell had never had a prisoner of war. The war had never come here. Angelo thought it over and fretted the more for the situation. “Legal Affairs have a suggestion?”

  “Suggested I get a decision here.”

  “We’re not equipped for that kind of detention.”

  “No, sir,” the security chief agreed. It was a hospital facility down there. The setup was for retraining, Adjustment… what rare times it had ever been needed.

  “We can’t treat him.”

  “Those cells aren’t set up for long stays, sir. Maybe we could rig up something more comfortable.”

  “We’ve got people without lodgings as it is. How are we going to explain that?”

  “We could set up something in detention itself. Take a panel out; at least get a bigger room.”

  “Postpone that” Angelo ran a hand through his sparse hair. “I’ll consider policy on the case as soon as I get the emergency matters settled. Deal with him as best you can with what you have at hand. Ask the lower offices to apply some imagination to the case and send me the recommendations.”

  “Yes, sir.” The security chief left. Angelo put the folder away for later use. A prisoner of that kind was not what they needed at the moment. What they did need was a means to secure housing and feed extra mouths and to cope with what was coming. They had trade goods which were suddenly going nowhere; those could be consumed on Pell and on Down-below at the base, and out in the mines. But they needed others. They had economics to worry about, markets which had collapsed, the value of any currency in doubt as far as merchanters were concerned. From a star-spanning economy, Pell had to be turned to feed itself, to self-sufficiency; and perhaps — to face other changes.

  It was not the single Union prisoner they had in hand, identified, who had him worried. It was the likely number of Unionists and sympathizers who would grow in quarantine, folk for whom any change was going to look better than what they had. There were only some of the refugees with papers, and many of those had been discovered not to match the prints and photos attached to them.

  “We need some sort of liaison with the quarantine zone residents,” he advised council at that afternoon’s meeting. “We’ll have to set up a government on the other side of the line, someone of their choosing, some manner of elections; and we’ll have to deal with what results.”

  They accepted that, as they had accepted all else. It was the concerns of their own constituencies which had them distraught, the councillors from dislodged orange and yellow, from green and white which had gotten most of the influx of station residents. Red sector, untouched, abutting yellow from the other side, was anxious; the others were jealous. There was a deluge of complaints and protests and rumors of rumor. He made note of them. There was debate. It finally came to the necessary conclusion that they had to relieve pressure on the station itself.

  “We do not authorize further construction here,” the man Ayres interposed, rising from his seat. Angelo simply stared at him, given heart to do so by Signy Mallory, who had called a bluff on the Company and made it good.

  “I do,” Angelo said. “I have the resources to do it, and I will.”

  There was a vote. It went the only sane way, with the Company observers sitting in silent anger, vetoing what was passed, which veto was simply ignored while plans proceeded.

  The Company men left the meeting early. Security reported them later agitating on the docks, and trying to engage a freighter at inflated rates, with gold.

  There was not a freighter moving, for anything except in-system hauling, ordinary runs to the mines. It did not surprise Angelo when he heard that. There was a cold wind blowing, and Pell felt it; everyone with instincts bred of the Beyond felt it.

  Eventually perhaps the Company men did, at least two of them, for those two engaged a ship home, to Sol, the same which had brought them, a smallish and decrepit jump-freighter, the only merchanter with an ec designation which had docked at Pell in the better part of a decade, laden with Downbelow curios and delicacies for its return, as it had brought in goods from Earth, which sold high, for their curiosity. The four other Company representatives upped their offers, and boarded a freighter for an unguaranteed run on the freighter’s own schedule, to call at Viking and wherever else the uncertain times left safe. They accepted Mallory’s conditions from a merchanter captain, and paid for the privilege.

  Chapter Six

  i

  Downbelow main base: 5/20/52

  It was storm on Downbelow when the shuttle came down, and that was not uncommon, on a world of abundant cloud, when all the winter on the northern continent was wrapped in sea-spawned overcast, seldom cold enough to freeze, not warm enough for human comfort — never a clear sight of sun or stars for month on dreary month. The unloading of the passengers at the landing site was proceeding in a cold, pelting rain, a line of tired and angry people trudging over the hill from the shuttle, to be settled into various warehouse digs amid stacks of mats and musty sacks of prosh and fikli. “Move it over and stack it up,” the supervisors shouted when the crowding became evident; and the noise was considerable, cursing voices, the beating of rain in the inflated domes, the inevitable thump of compressors. The tired stationers sulked and finally began to do as they were told… young, most of them, construction workers and a few techs, virtually without baggage and no few of them frightened at their first experience of weather. They were station-born, wheezing at a kilo or so extra weight from Downbelow’s gravity, wincing at thunder and at lightning which chained across the roiling skies. No sleep for them until they could set up some manner of dormitory space; no rest for anyone, native or human, who labored to carry foodstuffs over the hill to lade the shuttle, or the crews trying to cope with the inevitable flooding in the domes.

  Jon Lukas oversaw some of it, scowling, walked back to the main dome where the operations center was. He paced, listened to the rain, waited the better part of an hour, finally suited up again and masked to walk to the shuttle. “Goodbye, sir,” the com operator offered rising from his desk. Others stopped work, the few who were there. He shook hands, still frowning, and finally walked out the flimsy lock and up the wooden steps to the path, spattered again by the cold rain. His fiftyish overweight was unflattered by the bright yellow plastic. He had always been conscious of the indignity and hated it, hated walking in mud up to the ankles and feeling a chin which penetrated even the suit and the liner. Raingear and the necessary breathers turned all the humans at the base into yellow monsters, blurred in the downpour. Downers scurried about naked and enjoying it, the brown fur of their spindly limbs and lithe bodies dark with moisture and plastered to them, their faces, round-eyed and with mouths set in permanent o’s of surprise, watched and chattered together in their own language, a babble in the rain and the constant bass of thunder. He walked the direct trail to the landing site, not that which led on the other leg of the triangle, past the storage domes and barracks domes. This one had no traffic. No meetings. No good-byes. He looked across to fields which were aswim; the gray-green brush and the ribbon trees on the hills about the base showed through curtains of rain, and the river was a broad, overflowed sheet on the far-side bank, where a marsh tended to form, for all their attempts to drain it… disease among the native workers again, if any Downers had slipped in unvaccinated. It was no paradise, Downbelow base. He had no reluctance to leave it and the new staff and the Downers to each other. It was the manner of the recall which rankled.

  “Sir.”

  A last, parting nuisance came splashing after him on the trail. Bennett Jacint. Jon half turned, kept walking, made the man work to overtake him in the mud and the downpour,

  “The mill dike,” Jacint gasped through the stops and hisses of the breather. “Need some human crews over there with heavy equipment and sandbags.”

  “Not my problem now,” Jon said. “Get to it yourself. What are you good f
or? Put those coddled Downers to it. Take an extra crew of them. Or wait on the new supervisors, why don’t you? You can explain it all to my nephew.”

  “Where are they?” Jacint asked. A skilled obstructionist, Bennett Jacint, always on the line with objections when it came to any measures for improvement. More than once Jacint had gone over his head to file a protest. One construction project he had outright gotten stopped, so that the road to the wells stayed a mired track. Jon smiled and pointed across the grounds, far across, back toward the warehouse domes.

  “There’s not time.”

  “That’s your problem.”

  Bennett Jacint cursed him to his face and started to run it, then changed his mind and raced back again toward the mill. Jon laughed. Soaked stock in the mill. Good. Let the Konstantins solve it

  He came over the hill, started down to the shuttle, which loomed alien and silver in the trampled meadow, its cargo hatch lowered, Downers toiling to and fro and a few yellow-suited humans among them. His trail joined that on which the Downers moved, churned mud; he walked on the grassy margin, cursed when a Downer with a load swayed too near him, and had the satisfaction at least that they cleared his path. He walked into the landing circle, nodded curtly to a human supervisor and climbed the cargo ramp into the shadowed steel interior. He stripped the wet rainsuit there in the cold, keeping the mask on. He ordered a Downer gang boss to clean up the muddied area, and walked on through the hold to the lift, rode it topside, into a steel, clean corridor, and a small passenger compartment with padded seats.

  Downers were in it, two laborers making the shift to station. They looked uncertain when they saw him, touched each other. He sealed the passenger area and made the air-shift, so that he could discard his breather and they had to put theirs on. He sat down opposite them, stared through them in the windowless compartment. The air stank of wet Downer, a smell he had lived with for three years, a smell with which all Pell lived, if one had a sensitive nose, but Downbelow base worst of all: with dusty grain and distilleries and packing plants and walls and mud and muck and the smoke of the mills, latrines that flooded out, sump pools that grew scum, forest molds that could ruin a breather and kill a man who was caught without a spare — all of this and managing halfwitted Downer labor with their religious taboos and constant excuses. He was proud of his record, increased output, efficiency where there had been hands-folded complacency that Downers were Downers and could not comprehend schedules. They could, and did, and set records in production.

  No thanks of it. Crisis hit the station and the Downbelow expansion which had limped along in and out of planning sessions for a decade was suddenly moving. Plants would get the additional facilities he had made possible, manned by workers whose supply and housing he had made possible, using Lukas Company funds and Lukas Company equipment.

  Only a pair of Konstantins was sent down to supervise during that stage, without a thank you, Mr. Lukas, or a well done, Jon, thanks for leaving your own company offices and your own affairs, thanks for doing the job for three years. Emilio Konstantin and Miliko Dee appointed Downbelow supervisors; please arrange affairs and shuttle up at the earliest. His nephew Emilio. Young Emilio was going to ran things during construction. Konstantins were always in at the last stage, always there when the credit was about to be handed out. They had democracy in the council, but it was dynasty in the station offices. Always Konstantins. Lukases had arrived at Pell as early, sunk as much into its building, an important company back in the Hinder Stars; but Konstantins had maneuvered and gathered power at every opportunity. Now again, his equipment, his preparation, and Konstantins in charge when it reached a stage when the public might notice. Emilio: his sister Alicia’s son, and Angelo’s. People could be manipulated, if the Konstantin name was all they were ever allowed to hear; and Angelo was past master at that tactic.

  It would have been courtesy to have met his nephew and his wife when they came in, to have stayed a few days to trade information, or at the least to have informed them of his immediate departure on the shuttle which had brought them down. It would also have been courtesy on their part to have come at once to the domes for an official greeting, some acknowledgment of his authority at the base — but they had not. Not even a com-sent hello, uncle, when they landed. He was in no mood for empty courtesies now, to stand in the rain shaking hands and mouthing amenities with a nephew with whom he seldom spoke. He had opposed his sister’s marriage; argued with her; it had not linked him in to the Konstantin family: with her attitude, it was rather a desertion. He and Alicia had not spoken since, save officially; not even that, in the last several years… her presence depressed him. And the boys looked like Angelo, as Angelo had been in his younger days; he avoided them, who probably hoped to get their hands on Lukas Company… at least a share of it, after him, as nearest kin. It was that hope, he was still persuaded, which had attracted Angelo to Alicia: Lukas Company was still the biggest independent on Pell. But he had maneuvered out of the trap, surprised them with an heir, not one to his taste, but a live body all the same. He had worked these years on Downbelow, reckoning at first it might be possible to expand Lukas Company down here, through construction. Angelo had seen it coming, had maneuvered the council to block that. Ecological concerns. Now came the final move.

  He accepted the letter of his instruction to return, took it just as rudely as it was delivered, left without baggage or fanfare, like some offender ordered home in disgrace. Childish it might be, but it might also make a point with council… and if all the stock in the mill was soaked on the first day of the Konstantin administration here, so much the better. Let them feel shortages on station; let Angelo explain that to council. It would open a debate in which he would be present in council to participate, and ah, he wanted that.

  He had deserved something more than this.

  Engines finally activated, heralding lift. He got up, searched up a bottle and a glass from the locker. He received a query from the shuttle crew, declared he needed nothing. He settled in, belted, and the shuttle began lift. He poured himself a stiff drink, nerving himself for flight, which he always hated, drank, with the amber liquid quivering in the glass under the strain of his arm and the vibration of the ship. Across from him the Downers held each other and moaned.

  ii

  Pell Detention: red sector one: 5/20/52; 0900 hrs.

  The prisoner sat still at the table with the three of them, stared at the guard supervisor in preference, his eyes seeming focused somewhere beyond. Damon laid the folder on the table again and studied the man, who was most of all trying not to look at him. Damon found himself intensely uncomfortable in this interview… different from the criminals he dealt with in Legal Affairs — this man, this face like an angel in a painting, this too-perfect humanity with blond hair and eyes that gazed through things. Beautiful, the word occurred to him. There were no flaws. The look was complete innocence. No thief, no brawler; but this man would kill… if such a man could kill… for politics. For duty, because he was Union and they were not. There was no hate involved. It was disturbing to hold the life or death of such a man in his hands. It gave him choices in turn, mirror-imaged choices — not for hate, but for duty, because he was not Union, and this man was.

  We’re at war, Damon thought miserably. Because he’s come here, the war has.

  An angel’s face.

  “No trouble to you, is he?” Damon asked the supervisor.

  “No.”

  “I’ve heard he’s a good midge player.”

  That got a flicker from both of them. There were illicit gamblings at the detention station, as in most slow posts during alterday. Damon offered a smile when the prisoner looked his way, the least shifting of the pale blue eyes… went sober again as the prisoner failed to react. “I’m Damon Konstantin, Mr. Talley, of the station legal office. You’ve given us no trouble and we appreciate that. We’re not your enemies; we’d dock a Union fleet as readily as a Company ship — in principle; but you don’t leave st
ations neutral any longer, not from what we hear, so our attitude has to change along with that. We just can’t take chances having you loose. Repatriation… no. We’re given other instructions. Our own security. You understand that.”

  No response.

  “Your counsel’s made the point that you’re suffering in this close confinement and that the cells were never meant for long-term detention. That there are people walking loose in Q who are far more a threat to this station; that there’s a vast difference between a saboteur and an armscomper in uniform who had the bad luck to be picked up by the wrong side. But having said all that, he still doesn’t recommend your release except to Q. We have an arrangement worked out. We can fake an id that would protect you, and still let us keep track of you over there. I don’t like the idea, but it seems workable.”

  “What’s Q?” Talley asked, a soft, anxious voice, appealing to the supervisor and to his own counsel, the elder Jacoby, who sat at the end of the table. “What are you saying?”

  “Quarantine. The sealed section of the station we’ve set apart for our own refugees.”

  Talley’s eyes darted nervously from one to the other of them. “No. No. I don’t want to be put with them. I never asked him to set this up. I didn’t.”

  Damon frowned uncomfortably. “We’ve got another convoy coming in, Mr. Talley, another group of refugees. We have arrangements underway to mix you with them with faked papers. Get you out of here. It would still be a kind of confinement, but with wider walls, room to walk where you want, live life… as it’s lived in Q. That’s a good part of the station over there. Not regimented — open. No cells. Mr. Jacoby’s right: you’re no more dangerous than some over there. Less, because we’d always know who you are.”