Downbelow Station Read online

  The person stood up, a nervous, sallow-faced individual. "My name is Vassily Kressich. I was invited to come out of Q. I was a councillor on Russell's Station. I represent Q. All that you say did happen, in a panic, but there's order now, and the hoodlums have been removed to your detention."

  Jon drew a breath. "Welcome to councillor Kressich. But for the sake of Q

  itself, pressures should be relieved. Population should be transferred. The station has waited a decade on the Downbelow expansion, and now we have the manpower to begin it on a large scale. Those who work become 64

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  part of the system. They build what they themselves live in. Does the gentleman from Q not agree?"

  "We need our papers cleared. We refuse to be transferred anywhere without papers. This happened to us once, and look at our situation.

  Further transfers without clear paper can only add to our predicament, taking us further and further from any hope of establishing identity. The people I represent will not let it happen again."

  "Is this a threat, Mr. Kressich?" Angelo asked.

  The man looked close to collapse. "No," he said quickly. "No, sir. Only I— am speaking the opinion of the people I represent. Their desperation.

  They have to have their papers cleared. Anything else, any other solution is what the gentleman says— a labor camp for the benefit of Pell. Is that what you intend?"

  "Mr. Kressich, Mr. Kressich," said Angelo. "Will everyone please settle themselves to take things in order. You'll be heard in your turn, Mr.

  Kressich. Jon Lukas, will you continue?"

  "I'll have the precise figures as soon as I can have access to central comp. I need to be brought current with the keys. Every facility on Downbelow can be expanded, yes. I still have the detailed plans. I'll have a cost and labor analysis available within a matter of days."

  Angelo nodded, looked at him, frowning. It could not be a pleasant moment for him.

  "We're fighting for our survival." Angelo said. "Plainly, there's a point where we seriously have to worry about our life-support systems. Some of the load has to be moved. Nor can we allow the ratio of Pell citizens to refugees to become unbalanced. We have to be concerned about riot ...

  there and here. Apologies, Mr. Kressich. These are the realities under which we live, not of our choosing, nor, I'm sure, of yours. We can't risk the station or the base on Downbelow; or we find ourselves all on freighters bound for Earth, stripped of everything. That is the third choice."

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  "No," the murmur went around the room.

  Jon sat down, silent, staring at Angelo, reckoning Pell's present fragile balance and odds as they existed. You've lost already, he thought of saying, of standing up in council and laying things out as they were. He did not. He sat with his mouth tightly closed. It was a matter of time.

  Peace ... might afford a chance. But that was far from what was shaping out there with this influx of refugees from all these stations. They had all the Beyond flowing in two directions like a watershed, toward themselves and toward Union; and they were not equipped to handle it under Angelo's kind of rules.

  Year upon year of Konstantin rule, Konstantin social theory, the vaunted

  "community of law" which disdained security and monitoring and now refused to use the clenched fist on Q, hoping that vocal appeals were going to win a mob over to order. He could bring that matter up too. He sat still.

  There was a bad taste in his mouth, reckoning that what chaos Konstantin leniency had wrought on the station it would manage to wreak on Downbelow too. He foresaw no success for the plans he was asked for: Emilio Konstantin and his wife would be in charge of the work, two of a kind, who would let the Downers take their own time about schedules and protect their superstitions and let them do things their own leisurely, lackadaisical way, which ended with equipment damaged and construction delayed. And what that pair would do with what was over in Q offered worse prospects.

  He sat still, estimating their chances, and drawing unhappy conclusions.

  ii

  "It can't survive," he said to Vittorio that night, to his son Vittorio and to Dayin Jacoby, the only relative he favored. He leaned back in his chair and drank bitter Downer wine, in his apartment which was piled with the stacked expensive furniture which had been in the other, severed, rooms.

  "Pell's falling apart under us. Angelo's soft-handed policies are going to lose it for us, and maybe get our throats cut in riot into the bargain. It's going, you understand me? And do we sit and take what comes?"

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  Vittorio looked suddenly whey-faced as his habit was when talk turned serious. Dayin was of another sort. He sat grim and thoughtful.

  "A contact," Jon said yet more plainly, "has to exist."

  Dayin nodded. "In times like these, two doors might be a sensible necessity. And I'm sure doors exist all over this station ... with the right keys."

  "How compromised ... do you reckon those doors are? And where? Your cousin's handled cases of some of our transients. You have any ideas?"

  "Black market in rejuv drugs and others. That's in full flower here, don't you know? Konstantin himself gets it; you got it on Downbelow."

  "It's legal."

  "Of course it's legal; it's necessary. But how does it get here? Ultimately it comes from Unionside; merchanters deal; it comes through. Someone, somewhere, is into the pipeline...merchanters...maybe even station-side contacts."

  "So how do we get one to get a contact back up the pipeline?"

  "I can learn."

  "I know one," Vittorio said, startling them both. He licked his lips, swallowed heavily. "Roseen."

  "That whore of yours?"

  "She knows the market. There's a security officer ... high up. Clean paper all the way, but he's bought by the market. You want something unloaded or loaded, want a blind eye turned— he can arrange it."

  Jon stared at his son, this product of a year's contract, his desperation to have an heir. It was not, after all, surprising that Vittorio knew such things. "Excellent," he said dryly. "You can tell me about it. Maybe we 67

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  can trace something. Dayin, our holdings at Viking— we should look into them."

  "You aren't serious."

  "I'm very serious. I've engaged Hansford. Her crew is still in hospital. Her interior's a shambles, but she'll go. They need the money desperately. And you can find a crew ... through those contacts of Vittorio's. Don't have to tell them everything, just sufficient to motivate them."

  "Viking's the next likely trouble spot. The next certain trouble spot."

  "A risk, isn't it? A lot of freighters have accidents with things as they are.

  Some vanish. I'll hear from Konstantin over it; but I'll have the out ... an act of faith in Viking's future. A confirmation, a vote of confidence." He drank the wine with a twist of his mouth. "You'd better go fast, before some flood of refugees hits us from Viking itself. You make contact with the pipeline there, follow it as far as you can. What chance has Pell got now but with Union? The Company's no help. The Fleet's adding to our problem. We can't stand forever. Konstantin's policies are going to see riot here before all's done, and it's time for a changing of the guard. You'll make that clear to Union. You understand ... they get an ally; we get ... as much as we can get out of the association. That second door to jump through, at worst. If Pell holds, we just sit still, safe; it not, we're better off than others, aren't we?"

  "And I'm the one risking my neck," Dayin said.

  "So, would you rather be here when a riot finally breaks through those barriers? Or would you rather have a chance to make some personal gain with a grateful opposition ... line your own pockets? I'm sure you will; and I'm sure you'll have deserved it."

  "Generous," Dayin said sourly.

  "Life here," Jon said, "isn't going to be any better. It could be very uncomfortable. It's a gam
ble. What isn't?"

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  Dayin nodded slowly. "I'll run down some prospects for a crew."

  "Thought you would."

  "You trust too much, Jon."

  "Only this side of the family. Never Konstantins. Angelo should have left me there on Downbelow. He probably wishes he could have. But council voted otherwise; and maybe that was lucky for them. Maybe it was."

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  8

  Pell: 5/23/52

  They offered a chair. They were always courteous, always called him Mr.

  Talley and never by his rank— civ habit; or maybe they made the point that here Unioners were still counted rebels and had no rank. Perhaps they hated him, but they were unfailingly gentle with him and unfailingly kind.

  It frightened him all the same, because he suspected it false.

  They gave him more papers to fill out. A doctor sat down opposite him at the table and tried to explain the procedures in detail. "I don't want to hear that," he said. "I just want to sign the papers. I've had days of this. Isn't that enough?"

  "Your tests weren't honestly taken," the doctor said. "You lied and gave false answers in the interview. Instruments indicated you were lying. Or under stress. I asked was there constraint on you and the instruments said you lied when you said there wasn't."

  "Give me the pen."

  "Is someone forcing you? Your answers are being recorded."

  "No one's forcing me."

  "This is also a lie, Mr. Talley."

  "No." He tried and failed to keep his voice from shaking.

  "We normally deal with criminals, who also tend to lie." The doctor held up the pen, out of easy reach. "Sometimes with the self-committed, very rarely. It's a form of suicide. You have a medical right to it, within certain legal restrictions; and so long as you've been counseled and understand what's involved. If you continue your therapy on schedule, you should begin to function again in about a month. Legal independence with six more. Full function— you understand that there may be permanent 70

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  impairment to your ability to function socially; there could be other psychological or physical impairments...."

  He snatched the pen and signed the papers. The doctor took them and looked at them. Finally the doctor drew a paper from his pocket, pushed it across the table, a rumpled and much-folded scrap of paper.

  He smoothed it out, saw a note with half a dozen signatures. Your account in station comp has 50 credits. For anything you want on the side. Six of the detention guards had signed it; the men and women he played cards with. Given out of their own pockets. Tears blurred his eyes.

  "Want to change your mind?" the doctor asked.

  He shook his head, folded the paper. "Can I keep it?"

  "It will be kept along with your other effects. You'll get everything back on your release."

  "It won't matter then, will it?"

  "Not at that point," the doctor said, "Not for some time."

  He handed the paper back.

  "I'll get you a tranquilizer," the doctor said, and called for an attendant, who brought it in, a cup of blue liquid. He accepted it and drank it and felt no different for it.

  The doctor pushed blank paper in front of him, and laid the pen down.

  "Write down your impressions of Pell. Will you do that?"

  He began. He had had stranger requests in the days that they had tested him. He wrote a paragraph, how he had been questioned by the guards and finally how he felt he had been treated. The words began to grow sideways. He was not writing on the paper. He had run off the edge onto the table and couldn't find his way back. The letters wrapped around each other, tied in knots.

  The doctor reached and lifted the pen from his hand, robbing him of purpose.

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  9

  i

  Pell: 5/28/52

  Damon looked over the report on his desk. It was not the procedure he was used to, the martial law which existed in Q. It was rough and quick, and came across his desk with a trio of film cassettes and a stack of forms condemning five men to Adjustment.

  He viewed the film, jaw clenched, the scenes of riot leaping across the large wall-screen, flinched at recorded murder. There was no question of the crime or the identification. There was, in the stack of cases which had flooded the LA office, no time for reconsiderations or niceties. They were dealing with a situation which could bring the whole station down, turn it all into the manner of thing that had come in with Hansford. Once lifesupport was threatened, once men were crazy enough to build bonfires on a station dock ... or go for station police with kitchen knives ...

  He pulled the files in question, keyed up printout on the authorization.

  There was no fairness in it, for they were the five the security police had been able to pull across the line, five out of many more as guilty. But they were five who would not kill again, nor threaten the frail stability of a station containing many thousands of lives. Total Adjustment, he wrote, which meant personality restruct. Processing would turn up injustice if he had done one. Questioning would determine innocence if any existed at this point. He felt foul in doing what he did, and frightened. Martial law was far too sudden. His father had agonized the night long in making one such decision after a board had passed on it.

  A copy went to the public defender's office. They would interview in person, lodge appeals if warranted. That procedure too was curtailed under present circumstance. It could be done only by producing evidence of error; and evidence was in Q, unreachable. Injustices were possible. They were condemning on the word of police under attack and the viewing of film which did not show what had gone before. There were five hundred reports of theft and major crimes on his desk when before there had been a 72

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  Q, they might have dealt with two or three such complaints a year. Comp was flooded with data requests. There had been days of work done on ID's and papers for Q, and all of that was scrapped. Papers had been stolen and destroyed to such an extent in Q that no paper could be trusted to be accurate. Most of the claims to paper were probably fraudulent, and loudest from the dishonest. Affidavits were worthless where threat ruled.

  People would swear to anything for safety. Even the ones who had come in good order were carrying paper they had no confirmation on: security confiscated cards and papers to save those from theft, and they were passing some few out where they were able to establish absolute ID and find a station-side sponsor for them— but it was slow, compared to the rate of influx; and main station had no place to put them when they did. It was madness. They tried with all their resources to eliminate red tape and hurry; and it just got worse.

  "Tom," he keyed, a private note to Tom Ushant, in the defender's office,

  "if you get a gut feeling that something's wrong in any of these cases, appeal it back to me regardless of procedures. We're putting through too many condemnations too fast; mistakes are possible. I don't want to find one out after processing starts."

  He had not expected reply. It came through. "Damon, look at the Talley file if you want something to disturb your sleep. Russell's used Adjustment."

  "You mean he's been through it?"

  "Not therapy. I mean they used it questioning him."

  "I'll look at it." He keyed out, hunted the access number, pulled the file in comp display. Page after page of their own interrogation data flicked past on the screen, most of it uninformative: ship name and number, duties ...

  an armscomper might know the board in front of him and what he shot at, but little more. Memories of home then ... family killed in a Fleet raid on Cyteen system mines; a brother, killed in service— reason enough to carry grudges if a man wanted to. Reared by his mother's sister on Cyteen proper, a plantation of sorts ... then a government school, deep-teaching for tech skills. Claimed no knowledge of higher politics, no resentmen
ts of the situation. The pages passed into actual transcript, uncondensed, 73

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  disjointed ramblings ... turned to excruciatingly personal things, the kind of intimate detail which surfaced in Adjustment, while a good deal of self was being laid bare, examined, sorted. Fear of abandonment, that deepest; fear of being a burden on his relatives, of deserving to be abandoned: he had a tangled kind of guilt about the loss of his family, had a pervading fear of it happening again, in any involvement with anyone. Loved the aunt. Took care of me, the thread of it ran at one point. Held me sometimes. Held me ... loved me. He had not wanted to leave her home.

  But Union had its demands; he was supported by the state, and they took him, when he came of age. After that, it was state-run deep-teach, taped education, military training and no passes home. He had had letters from the aunt for a while; the uncle had never written. He believed the aunt was dead now, because the letters had stopped some years ago. She would write, he believed. She loved me. But there were deeper fears that she had not; that she had really wanted the state money; and there was guilt, that he had not come home; that he had deserved this parting too. He had written to the uncle and gotten no answer. That had hurt him, though he and the uncle had never loved each other. Attitudes, beliefs ... another wound, a broken friendship; an immature love affair, another case in which letters stopped coming, and that wound involved itself with the old ones. A later attachment, to a companion in service ... uncomfortably broken off. He tended to commit himself to a desperate extent. Held me, he repeated, pathetic and secret loneliness. And more things.

  He began to find it. Terror of the dark. A vague, recurring nightmare: a white place. Interrogation. Drugs. Russell's had used drugs, against all Company policy, against all human rights— had wanted badly something Talley simply did not have. They had gotten him from Mariner zone—from Mariner— transferred to Russell's at the height of the panic. They had wanted information at that threatened station; had used Adjustment techniques in interrogation. Damon rested his mouth against his hand, watched the fragmentary record roll past, sick at his stomach. He felt ashamed at the discovery, naive. He had not questioned Russell's reports, had not investigated them himself; had had other things on his hands, and staff to take care of that matter; had not— he admitted it— wanted to deal with the case any more than he absolutely had to. Talley had never called him. Had conned him. Had held himself together, already unstrung from previous treatment, to con Pell into doing the only thing that might put an 74