In the Company of Others

by Julie E. Czerneda

  While fervently hoping for no such problern, Pardell knew he’d attract far too much attention—of the wrong sort—if he waltzed in looking like a lost ’sider. As soon as the air was halfway cycled, Pardell began stripping out of his suit, fingers fumbling as he rolled up and stored his pieces of tape, clamping on his emerg tank so its supply would be accessible immediately. He didn’t expect to have time to spare on his exit. He shook out as many wrinkles as he could from his best fifthhand coveralls and ran fingers through his hair, finding it soaking wet with sweat. Some of the ends were still frozen. Pardell sighed wistfully, looking at the racks now filled with suits—he really could use a new one.

  The Earthers looked even taller once Pardell took off his mags and straightened to his full height. Probably as tall as Malley. Their suits had some play to sleeves and girth as well. Not that the Earthers were likely to want to replace Malley’s suit with one of their own, Pardell admitted to himself. But he could use their help getting the reluctant stationer into either. All of them.

  Something to worry about later. Pardell braced himself as the inner door unlocked, the air cycle done, feeling cold drops sliding down his neck as the rest of his hair thawed out, and shivers that had nothing to do with cold at all.

  Chapter 16

  ON some level, Gail felt numb, as if her limbs were chilled but unable to shiver for warmth. She waited for Grant, putting her trust in him because she had no other choice. By some quirk of mob psychology, no one of the multitude filling the floor ahead of them was looking their way. It appeared they were struggling to get past one another, to join in whatever was occurring farther down the ring.

  Where the Seeker was docked.

  “Grant,” she said quickly. “What if Tobo threatens to cut the ship loose? That should clear the ring.”

  He kept his eyes on their destination, but answered: “If they believe him, they’d have to evacuate this way. We’d be trampled.”

  Gail pressed her lips tightly together, keeping back other suggestions, likely as useless. The man knew his job. She hated others interjecting their notions into her work—you’d think she’d know better.

  Grant turned and faced them all. His olive skin didn’t reveal much, whether a pallor or flush, but that was made up for by the deep lines stretching from nose to mouth. His voice was confident, with a harsh undertone. “We get Dr. Smith inside that air lock. The stationer was right to say it only takes one thing to turn the beast against us—make no mistake, that many people together can’t think, can’t reason, only react. We keep it calm. We keep it normal. No eye contact—no talking. If it gets ugly, use whatever force is necessary. Clear?”

  Loran and Tau echoed the word. Mitchener merely nodded. Peitsch turned her dark eyes on Gail and said gently: “We’ll get you there, Dr. Smith.”

  “Get us all there, Grant,” Gail said, trying to keep her voice steady. “That’s an order.”

  He sketched a salute. “We’ll do our best, Professor.”

  They walked out into the open, hugging the right wall, Gail tucked within a fragile shell of blue-uniformed flesh moving with the nice, easy pace Grant had stipulated. Between Loran’s elbow and Mitchener’s waist, Gail could see the edge of the mob growing closer, backs to her still. The sound they made rebounded in the huge expanse of the ring, turning what might have been a chant into a loud, inchoate roar. Grant’s analogy of a beast was a little too accurate. Gail fixed her thoughts on a niggling statistical problem she’d been dealing with on the trip to Thromberg.

  The air lock door was opening, slowly, slowly.

  Still the beast seemed unaware what was happening.

  Five more steps. Gail lost her concentration as her tiny group reached the spot where they were as close to the air lock as the nearest part of the mob. They gained five steps. Ten more. A pair of faceless suited figures stood in the open doorway; one waved to them to hurry; she could see others behind.

  A shout, clearer than the rest, yet wordless. They’d been seen!

  Grant refused to hurry, keeping them to a walk.

  Another shout, a chorus.

  Gail kept her eyes on the air lock, now so temptingly close. They might make it.

  It began in slow motion, like a vid she was replaying for details. A group sprouted from the mass ahead, coming as if to intercept them—the suited figures erupted from the air lock. The two groups blended into confusion, helmets rising well over the heads of the stationers. One by one, the helmets disappeared as more and more stationers realized what was happening and sought an available target.

  No more walking. Even as the battle was joined, Gail was grabbed by both arms and lifted as her guards raced for the still-open air lock.

  One man stood in their way, raising his arms and moving quickly to one side as three Earther weapons aimed at him. The unfortunate stationer who’d been in the air lock, Gail remembered, feeling a rush of sympathy even as her own arms felt as though they were being torn from their sockets. Then she was tossed inside the air lock, scrambling on hands and knees to reach the nearest suit. She tried to ignore what might be happening behind her.

  She couldn’t, when all sound outside the air lock abruptly ceased.

  Gail turned, still crouched on the metal floor, suit half pulled up one leg, and looked out.

  Grant, Loran, one of the suited Earthers—that suit sliced open and useless, as well as leaking blood—and Tau stood with their backs to her, weapons out and ready. There was a motionless, perfectly symmetrical arc of mob only paces beyond a line of crumpled shapes. Bodies. Too many. Gail didn’t look at them closely, knowing she’d recognize two and should know more.

  Why the standoff? she thought almost hysterically. The mob could overwhelm them in a heartbeat. Gail spotted Grant’s hand making a push-behind gesture. He wanted her to close the hatch. She couldn’t. Her mind told her it was necessary, but she was frozen in place—terrified any movement would restart the killing. She was capable of abandoning them, not of murdering them.

  The mob’s lips began moving. Not loud, this time, but one word, softly, as though it named something they feared and had to rouse themselves to attack. Gail strained to hear it, then didn’t need to as she realized no one in the mob was looking at the Earthers—they were looking at the lone stationer still standing beside the air lock. Gail leaned forward slowly until she could see him clearly.

  Aaron Pardell.

  Chapter 17

  AN oddly useful time for his mind to disengage, Pardell told himself with approval, feeling his thoughts spiraling wider and deeper with every pulse of his name on the lips of strangers. If he wasn’t contemplating the patterns of energy within a cohesive mob—seeing the edges as weak, volatile things, the core as helpless inertia, the front as the line of directed force—he would likely be gibbering with terror and curled up in a fetal position on the floor. Since that would be an embarrassing way to face death, and doubtless Malley would tease him for eternity in whatever afterlife friends shared, Pardell clung to this analytical frame of mind with all his might.

  The Earthers. He felt no pity. They’d done this—turned reasonable, courteous individuals into this raving monster—and earned the consequences. Anguish for the stationers and immies motionless on the floor, yes. He could feel that. And for those who would wake from madness and find blood on their hands. There’d been suicides after each of the Ration Riots; there would be more tomorrow.

  He was curious how they knew to name him. If it was possible to pick faces from the mass, were any those he’d recognize in return? Had the Earthers labeled him, somehow, or was it as simple as his walking out that air lock, in that company? Pardell turned the alternatives over, examining each, seeing how the results varied based on preconceptions.

  A blast of fear laced with hate slammed against his detachment, ripping it to shreds. Pardell gasped and found himself back against the wall. No one had touched him. He could only assume it was so many experiencing the same emotions at once.

  What w
ere they waiting for! Did they want him to run for the air lock and his suit? Was that it? To prove he was dealing with the Earthers before tearing him apart? Would the Earthers turn their weapons on the crowd again, on his behalf?

  Pardell seriously considered pretending to attack the nearest Earther guard so she’d shoot him and end the suspense.

  “Pardell . . . Pardell . . . Pardell . . . ”

  He might want a name change after this as well. He closed his eyes, deciding this was all a nightmare and he was passing out from carbon dioxide poisoning in his suit, like the time . . .

  “Aaron!”

  Pardell’s eyes flashed open and he looked around frantically. There was only one set of lungs on Thromberg that could shout and be heard over the growl of the mob. What was Malley—?

  There was a broad hallway leading from the stern docking ring to Pardell’s left. The thinnest part of the mob lay between it and the tableau in front of the air lock. The hallway mirrored a similar one, half-blocked by debris, in the aft ring. Pardell blinked away the urge to start comparing other features, staring with disbelief at a new mass of people rushing toward him.

  Malley was in front—no problem spotting the mammoth idiot, Pardell thought wildly, nor identifying others similarly impaired. There was Denery, and more familiar faces from Sammie’s. Worse and worse. Even if all of Outward Five had opted for a change of scene and a chance to bloody noses, they were still outnumbered a hundred times over and by a mob who’d already killed and been killed.

  “This way!” Pardell turned his head right just enough to confirm the urgent command came from the air lock. Dr. Smith—looking a great deal less imposing with her hair mussed, one leg in a suit, and tears pouring apparently unnoticed down her cheeks—was holding on to one edge of the inner door frame. “Please, Pardell. They’ll kill you. Hurry.”

  He was suddenly, gloriously angry. “This is all your fault,” he accused, disregarding the mob, their chant, and the onrush of his friends. “Look what you’ve done!”

  Smith seemed oblivious to common sense as well, stepping right out of the air lock and starting to move toward him, dragging the suit, only to be blocked by one of her guards. She looked over the arm holding her and shouted: “They’ve died for nothing if you don’t come with me! Grant—let go of me—That’s Pardell!”

  Pardell turned away deliberately, then wished he hadn’t. The press of new bodies from the left, led by Malley, had not so much met the outer edge of the mob as been absorbed. Friend and stranger milled around one another, not fighting—yet—but pushing with angry cries. At least it was diminishing the number of people chanting his name, which was a relief.

  There was an instant in which he somehow found and met Malley’s eyes, an instant in which Pardell felt an unreasonable hope the sudden arrival of calmer minds might prevail and they’d all talk about this later over Sammie’s truly awful beer.

  Then, warned by the sudden dismay on Malley’s face, Pardell whirled to find dozens of hands reaching for him. He tried to run, but lost all control of his legs at the first deceptively gentle brush of fingers against his arms and back.

  Anger. FEAR!

  ... He forgot how to breathe as the daggers of emotion penetrated every part of his flesh, the number of contacts changing as others grabbed for him, then were shocked loose . . . but more replaced those . . . and more . . .

  RAGE!

  ... It had never been like this . . . At its worst, he’d always known he’d survive, that there’d be an end . . . His heart faltered, fought, faltered again . . . He convulsed in agony, heaving up under the hands . . .

  HATE!

  ... What was Aaron Pardell crumpled into itself . . .

  Then was lost.

  Chapter 18

  “AARON!” Gail thought the walls must have amplified Malley’s horrified cry—she did know she’d never heard anything approaching that sound from a human throat until Pardell vanished beneath a surging mass of attackers in front of their eyes. She struggled against Grant’s arm. “Help him!” she shouted. “You have to help him! He’s the one this is for!”

  Grant literally threw her back into the air lock—Loran following at his barked command to immediately start forcing Gail into the suit—but her words had penetrated. Grant and Tau holstered their weapons and started pulling people off the tower of moving flesh marking where Pardell had stood.

  Their interference should have incited the mob against the Earthers again, but didn’t. Loran, once sure Gail was suiting up on her own, hurried to the inner door with her weapon ready, her face set and grim. Gail, pulling on her gloves, looked past the guard’s shoulder. Each person Grant or Tau grabbed and pushed aside seemed confused, disoriented, as if they’d been stunned. Most wandered away, while others stood in place for a few seconds, rubbing their hands over their faces or arms. As the mob saw the dull-witted faces of these compatriots, it faded back, edges dissolving, except where Malley and company continued to shove their way forward.

  Once they succeeded, Malley let out a roar and launched himself at the remaining bodies, clearing them off through the simple expedient of latching his big hands around any body part available and heaving with all his strength. Oddly, those so mishandled didn’t complain, merely picked themselves up from the floor to hobble or crawl away.

  Grant and Tau were edged back as well. Several of those who’d come with Malley, most with black eyes or bloody noses marking their efforts to negotiate their way through to this spot, quietly but definitely placed themselves between the Earthers and their besieged friend.

  Loran didn’t prevent Gail coming out where she could see—perhaps the guard was angry enough at the death of her fellows to believe Gail deserved to see the corpse of the man she’d tried to find.

  What Gail saw, she didn’t at first believe. There were still between five and eight bodies lying in a haphazard mass, none of them moving. It was impossible to tell which was Pardell—they all wore the same stationer gray.

  And all these people were dead.

  There was no mistaking it. Those faces she could see bore a dreadful rictus, as though every muscle had convulsed at the moment of death.

  “Did you shoot them?” she asked Grant in a low-pitched voice, unsure how she could have missed that and puzzled how they would have died anyway—the FDs’ weapons were loaded with heavy tranks. Their shots into the mob hadn’t killed anyone, merely knocked them cold and guaranteed a pounding headache to follow in an hour or so.

  “No—” Grant’s voice was equally perplexed.

  Malley wrapped his fingers around another ankle, then uttered a curse and released his grip as if burned.

  The mob found its voice again, this time in panic-stricken flight. Gail heard screams of “Quill!” and “Monster!” over the general mayhem of thudding feet. In only minutes, they were alone, except for those from Outward Five—and Malley.

  He’d ignored the mob, instead taking two men with him to methodically tear apart what had been a freight trolley before the mob turned it upside down. Mechanically, Gail finished fastening her suit’s gloves, coming to stand beside a motionless Grant. Loran and Tau, along with the surviving suited rescuer from the Seeker, had gone to check on their fallen.

  In seconds, Malley was back. He didn’t acknowledge Gail or the others by so much as a glance, going straight to work. He and another man used a grappling arm and its chain to snag the leg belonging to one of the bodies over Pardell—that grip allowing them to drag the body aside. They repeated the process on the next.

  “What?” Gail took a step forward and the nearest stationer took notice and held up his hand to stop her. “Stay back, Earther,” he warned. “It’s not safe to touch him in this state. Let Malley deal with it.”

  “Deal with what?” she demanded. Had the big stationer lost his mind, and the rest were humoring him? She stared at Malley, only now noticing how his hands bled as he worked and his shirt hung from his lower arms in bloodstained strips.

  Grant
spoke from beside her. “He must have forced open the metal sheet blocking the corridor . . . let his friends up here.”

  Gail tapped the shoulder of the little stationer who’d warned her. “Did you know Pardell was here? Is that why you came?”

  The man turned to look at her and shook his head. His wizened face held a terrible grief that silenced whatever else Gail thought to say. “We didn’t know you had him,” he told her, shrugging. “Malley sent down a warning about Aaron, but we all thought he’d headed Outside and home. Safe.”

  “Then why did you come?” Grant asked when Gail didn’t.

  “Outward Five doesn’t care much for being locked down. And Malley seemed to think you Earthers might be in a spot—he owed you, for the warning to Aaron.” The stationer—or immie, Gail realized, since she couldn’t tell them apart—scowled and spat at her feet. “We’d have come sooner if we’d known you lied—that you had Aaron here.”

  Grant took up her defense. “Dr. Smith didn’t lie. If you look in the air lock, you’ll find two suits: Pardell’s and one in his size,” he nodded at Malley. “Pardell came after his friend on his own.”

  “He must have walked the length of the station,” Gail added almost to herself, aghast at the thought of trusting that ancient, taped-together suit. “Then followed our people. He was trying to find Malley.”

  The stationer let out a heavy sigh. “Always playing hero,” he said gruffly, but offered no apology for his accusation. “There,” with grim satisfaction as the last body was pulled free and they could see Pardell.

  There were no marks on his pale face. It looked just as she’d memorized it from her vid recording. Gail later remembered that was the most remarkable thing, how Pardell had seemed untouched by those who had tried to destroy him. He looked—peaceful.

  She almost missed the shallow rise and fall of his chest.