Downbelow Station tau-3

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  “The Hinder Stars — you know there’s some talk about reopening one of those stations — ”

  “A dream. We’d never have the chance. If the Fleet goes… Union would make it a target, same as us, just as quickly. And selfishly, completely selfishly, I’d like to see my children out of here.”

  Damon’s face was very white. “No. Absolutely no.”

  “Don’t be noble. I’d rather your safety than your help. Konstantins won’t fare well in years to come. It’s mindwipe if they take us. You worry about your criminals; consider yourself and Elene. That’s Union’s solution… puppets in the offices; lab-born populations to fill up the world… they’ll plow up Downbelow and build. Heaven help the Downers, I’d cooperate with them… so would you… to keep Pell safe from the worst excesses; but they won’t have things that easy way. And I don’t want to see you in their hands. We’re targets. I’ve lived all my life in that condition. Surely it’s not asking too much that I do one selfish thing — that I save my sons.”

  “What did Emilio say?”

  “Emilio and I are still discussing it.”

  “He told you no. Well, so do I.”

  “Your mother will have a word with you.”

  “Are you sending her?”

  Angelo frowned. “You know that’s not possible.”

  “So. I know that. And I’m not going, and I don’t think Emilio will choose to either. My blessing to him if he does, but I’m not.”

  “Then you don’t know anything,” Angelo said shortly. “We’ll talk about it later.”

  “We won’t,” Damon said. “If we pulled out, panic would set in here. You know that. You know how it would look, besides that I won’t do it in the first place.”

  It was true; he knew that it was.

  “No,” Damon said again, and laid his hand atop his father’s, rose and left.

  Angelo sat, looked toward the wall, toward the portraits which stood on the shelf, a succession of tridee figures… Alicia before her accident; young Alicia and himself; a succession of Damons and Emilios from infancy to manhood, to wives and hopes of grandchildren. He looked at all the figures assembled there, at all the gathered ages of them, and reckoned that the good days hereafter would be fewer.

  After a fashion he was angry with his boys; and after another… proud. He had brought them up what they were.

  Emilio, he wrote to the succession of images, and the son on Downbelow, your brother sends his love. Send me what skilled Downers you can spare. I’m sending you a thousand volunteers from the station; go ahead with the new base if they have to backpack equipment in. Appeal to the Downers for help, trade for native foodstuffs. All love.

  And to security: Process out the assuredly nonviolent. We’re going to shift them to Downbelow as volunteers.

  He reckoned, even as he did it, where that led; the worst would stay on station, next the heart and brain of Pell. Transfer the outlaws down and keep the heel on them; some kept urging it. But fragile agreements with the natives, fragile self-respect for the techs who had been persuaded to go down there in the mud and the primitive conditions… it could not be turned into a penal colony. It was life. It was the body of Pell, and he refused to violate it, to ruin all the dreams they had had for its future.

  There were dark hours when he thought of arranging an accident in which all of Q might decompress. It was an unspeakable idea, a madman’s solution, to kill thousands of innocent along with the undesirables… to take in these shiploads one after the other, and have accident after accident, keeping Pell free of the burden, keeping Pell what it was. Damon lost sleep over five men. He had begun to meditate on utter horror.

  For that reason too he wanted his sons gone from Pell. He thought sometimes that he might actually be capable of applying the measures some urged, that it was weakness that prevented him, that he was endangering what was good and whole to save a polluted rabble, out of which reports of rape and murder came daily.

  Then he considered where it led, and what kind of life they all faced when they had made a police state of Pell, and recoiled from it with all the convictions Pell had ever had.

  “Sir,” a voice cut in, with the sharper tone of transmissions from central. “Sir, we have inbound traffic.”

  “Give it here,” he said, and swallowed heavily as the schematic reached his screen. Nine of them. “Who are they?”

  “The carrier Atlantic,” the voice of central returned. “Sir, they have eight freighters in convoy. They ask to dock. They advise of dangerous conditions aboard.”

  “Denied,” Angelo said. “Not till we get an understanding.” They could not take so many; could not; not another lot like Mallory’s. His heart sped, hurting him. “Get me Kreshov on Atlantic. Get me contact.”

  Contact was refused from the other end. The warship would do as it pleased. There was nothing they could do to prevent it.

  The convoy moved in, silent, ominous with the load it bore, and he reached for the alert for security.

  iii

  Downbelow: main base; 5/28/52

  The rain still came down, the thunder dying. Tam-utsa-pi-tan watched the humans come and go, arms locked about her knees, her bare feet sunk in mire, the water trickling slowly off her fur. Much that humans did made no sense; much that humans made was of no visible use, perhaps for the gods, perhaps that they were mad; but graves… this sad thing the hisa understood. Tears, shed behind masks, the hisa understood. She watched, rocking slightly, until the last humans had gone, leaving only the mud and the rain in this place where humans laid their dead.

  And in due time she gathered herself to her feet and walked to the place of cylinders and graves, her bare toes squelching in the mud. They had put the earth over Bennett Jacint and the two others. The rain made of the place one large lake, but she had watched; she knew nothing of the marks humans made for signs to themselves, but she knew the one.

  She carried a tall stick with her, which Old One had made. She came naked in the rain, but for the beads and the skins which she bore on a string about her shoulder. She stopped above the grave, took the stick in both her hands and drove it hard into the soft mud; the spirit-face she slanted so that it looked up as much as possible, and about its projections she hung the beads and the skins, arranging them with care, despite the rain which sheeted down.

  Steps sounded near her in the puddles, the hiss of human breath. She spun and leapt aside, appalled that a human had surprised her ears, and stared into a breather-masked face.

  “What are you doing?” the man demanded.

  She straightened, wiped her muddy hands on her thighs. To be naked thus embarrassed her, for it upset humans. She had no answer for a human. He looked at the spirit-stick, at the grave offerings… at her. What she could see of his face seemed less angry than his voice had promised.

  “Bennett?” the man asked of her.

  She bobbed a yes, distressed still. Tears filled her eyes, to hear the name, but the rain washed them away. Anger… that too she felt, that Bennett should die and not others.

  “I’m Emilio Konstantin,” he said, and she stood straight at once, relaxed out of her fight-flight tenseness. “Thank you for Bennett Jacint; he would thank you.”

  “Konstantin-man.” She amended all her manner and touched him, this very tall one of a tall kind. “Love Bennett-man, all love Bennett-man. Good man. Say he friend. All Downers are sad.” He put a hand on her shoulder, this tall Konstantin-man, and she turned and put her arm about him and her head against his chest, hugged him solemnly, about the wet, awful-feeling yellow clothes. “Good Bennett make Lukas mad. Good friend for Downers. Too bad he gone. Too, too bad, Konstantin-man.”

  “I’ve heard,” he said. “I’ve heard how it was here.”

  “Konstantin-man good friend.” She lifted her face at his touch, looked fearlessly into the strange mask which made him very horrible to see. “Love good mans. Downers work hard, work hard, hard for Konstantin. Give you gifts. Go no more away.”

&n
bsp; She meant it. They had learned how Lukases were. It was said in all the camp that they should do good for the Konstantins, who had always been the best humans, gift-bringers more than the hisa could give.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, stroking her cheek. “What do we call you?”

  She grinned suddenly, warm in his kindness, stroked her own sleek hide, which was her vanity, wet as it was now. “Humans call me Satin,” she said, and laughed, for her true name was her own, a hisa thing, but Bennett had given her this, for her vanity, this and a bright bit of red cloth, which she had worn to rags and still treasured among her spirit-gifts.

  “Will you walk back with me?” he asked, meaning to the human camp. “I’d like to talk with you.”

  She was tempted, for this meant favor. And then she sadly thought of duty and pulled away, folded her arms, dejected at the loss of love. “I sit,” she said.

  “With Bennett.”

  “Make he spirit look at the sky,” she said, showing the spirit-stick, explaining a thing the hisa did not explain. “Look at he home.”

  “Come tomorrow,” he said. “I need to talk to the hisa.”

  She tilted back her head, looked at him in startlement. Few humans called them what they were. It was strange to hear it. “Bring others?”

  “All the high ones if they will come. We need hisa Up-above, good hands, good work. We need trade Downbelow, place for more men.”

  She extended her hand toward the hills and the open plain, which went on forever.

  “There is place.”

  “But the high ones would have to say.”

  She laughed. “Say spirit-things. I-Satin give this to Konstantin-man. All ours. I give, you take. All trade, much good things; all happy.”

  “Come tomorrow,” he said, and walked away, a tall strange figure in the slanting rain. Satin-Tam-utsa-pitan sat down on her heels with the rain beating upon her bowed back and pouring over her body, and regarded the grave, with the rain making pocked puddles above it.

  She waited. Eventually others came, less accustomed to men. Dalut-hos-me was one such, who did not share her optimism of them; but even he had loved Bennett.

  There were men and men. This much the hisa had learned

  She leaned against Dalut-hos-me, Sun-shining-through-clouds, in the dark evening of their long watch, and by this gesture pleased him. He had begun laying gifts before her mat in this winter season, hoping for spring.

  “They want hisa Upabove,” she said. “I want to see the Upabove. I want this.”

  She had always wanted it, from the time that she had heard Bennett talk of it. From this place came Konstantins (and Lukases, but she dismissed that thought). She reckoned it as bright and full of gifts and good things as all the ships which came down from it, bringing them goods and good ideas. Bennett had told them of a great metal place holding out arms to the Sun, to drink his power, where ships vaster than they had ever imagined came and went like giants.

  All things flowed to this place and from it; and Bennett had gone away now, making a Time in her life under the Sun. It was a manner of pilgrimage, this journey she desired to mark this Time, like going to the images of the plain, like the sleep-night in the shadow of the images.

  They had given humans images for the Upabove too, to watch there. It was fit, to call it pilgrimage. And the Time regarded Bennett, who came from that journey.

  “Why do you tell me?” Dalut-hos-me asked.

  “My spring will be there, on Upabove.”

  He nestled closer. She could feel his heat. His arm went about her. “I will go,” he said.

  It was cruel, but the desire was on her for her first traveling; and his was on him, for her, would grow, as gray winter passed and they began to think toward spring, toward warm winds and the breaking of the clouds. And Bennett, cold in the ground, would have laughed his strange human laughter and bidden them be happy.

  So always the hisa wandered, of springs, and the nesting.

  iv

  Pell: sector blue five: 5/28/52

  It was frozen dinner again. Neither of them had gotten in till late, numb with the stresses of the day — more refugees, more chaos. Damon ate, looked up finally realizing his self-absorbed silence, found Elene sunk in one of her own… a habit, lately, between them. He was disturbed to think of that, and reached across the table to lay his hand on hers, which rested beside her plate. Her hand turned, curled up to weave with his. She looked as tired as he. She had been working too long hours — more than today. It was a remedy of sorts… not to think. She never spoke of Estelle. She did not speak much at all. Perhaps, he thought, she was so much at work there was little to say.

  “I saw Talley today,” he said hoarsely, seeking to fill the silence, to distract her, however grim the topic. “He seemed… quiet. No pain. No pain at all.”

  Her hand tightened. “Then you did right by him after all, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think there is a way to know.”

  “He asked.”

  “He asked,” he echoed.

  “You did all you could to be right. That’s all you can do.”

  “I love you.”

  She smiled. Her lips trembled until they could no longer hold the smile.

  “Elene?”

  She drew back her hand. “Do you think we’re going to hold Pell?”

  “Are you afraid not?”

  “I’m afraid you don’t believe it.”

  “What kind of reasoning is that?”

  “Things you won’t discuss with me.”

  “Don’t give me riddles. I’m not good at them. I never was.”

  “I want a child. I’m not on the treatment now. I think you still are.”

  Heat rose to his face. For half a heartbeat he thought of lying. “I am. I didn’t think it was time to discuss it. Not yet.”

  She pressed her lips tightly together, distraught.

  “I don’t know what you want,” he said. “I don’t know. If Elene Quen wants a baby, all right. Ask. It’s all right. Anything is. But I’d hoped it would be for reasons I’d know.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’ve done a lot of thinking. I’ve watched you. But you haven’t done any of it aloud. What do you want? What do I do? Get you pregnant and let you go? I’d help you if I knew how. What do I say?”

  “I don’t want to fight. I don’t want a fight. I told you what I want.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t want to wait anymore.” Her brow furrowed. For the first time in days he had the feeling of contact with her eyes. Of Elene, as she was. Of something gentle. “You care,” she said. “I see that.”

  “Sometimes I know I don’t hear all you say.”

  “On ship… it’s my business, having a child or not. Ship family is closer in some things and further apart in others. But you with your own family… I understand that. I respect it.”

  “Your home too. It’s yours.”

  She managed the faintest of smiles, an offering, perhaps. “So what do you say to it?”

  Offices of station planning were giving out dire warnings, advice otherwise, pleadings otherwise. It was not only the establishment of Q. There was the war, getting nearer. All rules applied to Konstantins first.

  He simply nodded. “So we’re through waiting.”

  It was like a shadow lifting. Estelle’s ghost fled the place, the small apartment they had drawn in blue five, which was smaller, into which their furnishings did not fit, where everything was out of order. It was all at once home, the hall with the dishes stowed in the clothing lockers and the living room which was bedroom by night, with boxes lashed in the corner, Downer wickerwork, with what should have gone into the hall lockers.

  They lay in the bed that was the daytime couch. And she talked, lying in his arms, for the first time in weeks talked, late into the night, a flow of memories she had never shared with him, in all their being together.

&n
bsp; He tried to reckon what she had lost in Estelle: her ship; she still called it that. Brotherhood, kinship. Merchanter morals, the stationer proverb ran; but he could not see Elene among the others, like them, rowdy merchanters offship for a dockside binge and a sleepover with anyone willing. Could never believe that.

  “Believe it,” she said, her breath stirring against his shoulder. “That’s the way we live. What do you want instead? Inbreeding? They were my cousins on that ship.”

  “You were different,” he insisted. He remembered her as he had first seen her, in his office on a matter involving a cousin’s troubles… always quieter than the others. A conversation, a re-meeting; another; a second voyage… and Pell again. She had never gone bar-haunting with her cousins, had not made the merchanter hangouts; had come to him, had spent those days on station with him. Failed to board again. Merchanters rarely married. Elene had.

  “No,” she said. “You were different.”

  “You’d take anyone’s baby?” The thought troubled him. Some things he had never asked Elene because he thought he knew. And Elene had never talked that way. He began, belatedly, to revise all he thought he knew; to be hurt, and to fight that. She was Elene; that quantity he still believed in, trusted.

  “Where else could we get them?” she asked, making strange, clear sense. “We love them, do you think not? They belong to the whole ship. Only now there aren’t any.” She could talk of that suddenly. He felt the tension ebb, a sigh against him. “They’re all gone.”

  “You called Elt Quen your father; Tia James your mother. Was it that way?”

  “He was. She knew.” And a moment later. “She left a station to go with him. Not many will.”

  She had never asked him to. That thought had never clearly occurred to him. Ask a Konstantin to leave Pell… he asked himself if he would have, and felt a deep unease. I would have, he insisted. I might have. “It would be hard,” he admitted aloud. “It was hard for you.”