Caroline Cherryh - Downbelow Station

There were other diversions. She sat and thought a while, and, hesitating between the two, finally punched up the guard station. “Get Konstantin in here.”

They acknowledged. She sat back and sipped the drink, keyed in on this station and that to be sure that operations were going as they should and that the anger below decks stayed smothered. The drink failed to tranquilize; she still felt the urge to pace the floor, and there was not, even here, much floor to pace. Tomorrow…

She dragged her mind back from that. One hundred twenty-eight dead civs in stabilizing white sector. It was going to be far worse in green, where all who had real reason to fear identification had taken cover. They could vent it if the two comp-skilled techs could not be turned up in time; indeed they could. It was the sensible solution; a quick death, if indiscriminate; a means to be sure they had all the fugitives… and more merciful to those individuals than to be left on a deteriorating station. Hansford on a grand scale, that was the gift they would leave Union, rotting bodies and the stench, the incredible stench of it…

The door opened. She looked up at three troopers and at Konstantin — cleaned up, wearing brown fatigues, bearing a few patches on his face the meds had done. Not bad, she thought remotely, leaned forward on one arm. “Want to talk?” she asked him. “Or otherwise?”

He did not answer, but he showed no disposition to quarrel. She waved the troopers out. The door closed and Konstantin still stood there staring at something other than her.

“Where’s Josh Talley?” he asked finally.

“Somewhere aboard. There’s a glass in the cabinet over there. Want a drink?”

“I want,” he said, “to be set out of here. To have this station handed over to its own lawful government. To have an accounting of the citizens you’ve murdered.”

“Oh,” she said, laughed a breath and reassessed young Konstantin. Smiled sourly and pushed her foot against the bed, sending her chair back a bit. She gestured to the bed, a place for him to sit. “You want,” she said. “Sit down. Sit down , Mr. Konstantin.”

He did so. He stared at her with his father’s mad dark stare.

“You don’t really have any such illusions,” she asked him, “Do you?”

“None.”

She nodded, regretting him. Fine face. Young. Well-spoken; well-made. He and Josh were much alike. There were wastes in this war that sickened her. Young men like this turned into corpses. If he were anyone else… but his name happened to be Konstantin, and that doomed him. Pell would react to that name; and he had to go. “Want the drink?”

He did not refuse it. She passed him her own glass, kept the bottle for herself.

“Jon Lukas stays as your puppet,” he said. “Does he?”

There was no need to torment him with the truth. She nodded. “He takes orders.”

“You’re moving against green next?”

She nodded.

“Let me talk to them on com. Let me try to reason with them.”

“To save your life? Or to replace Lukas? It won’t work.”

“To save theirs.”

She stared at him a long, bleak moment.

“You’re not going to surface, Mr. Konstantin. You’re to vanish very quietly. I think you know that.” There was a gun at her hip; she rested her hand on it as she sat, reckoning that he would not, but in case. “Let’s say if I can find two individuals, I won’t vent the section. Names are James Muller and Judith Crowell. Where are they? If I could locate them right off… it would save lives.”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t know them?”

“Don’t know where they are. I don’t think they’re still alive, if they’re supposed to be in green. I know the section too well; had means to have found them if they were there.”

“I’m sorry for that,” she said. “I’ll do what I can as reasonably as I can. Promise you that. You’re a civilized man, Mr. Konstantin. A vanished breed. If I could find a way to get you out of this I’d do it, but I’m hemmed in on all sides.”

He said nothing. She kept an eye to him, sipped a mouthful from the bottle. He drank from the glass.

“What about the rest of my family?” he asked at last

Her mouth twisted. “Quite safe. Quite safe, Mr. Konstantin. Your mother does everything we ask and your brother is harmless where he is. The supplies arrive on schedule and we have no reason to object to his presence down there. He’s another civilized man, one — fortunately — without access to large crowds and sophisticated systems where our ships are docked.”

His lips trembled. He drank the last remaining in the glass. She leaned forward and poured him more of the liquor. Took a deliberate chance in leaning close to him. It was gambling; it evened scales. It was time to call it quits. If he outlived tomorrow he would learn too much of what would happen and that was cruelty. There was a sour taste in her mouth the brandy would not cure. She pushed the bottle at him. “Take it with you,” she said, “I’ll let you go back to your quarters now. My regards to you, Mr. Konstantin.”

Some men would have protested, cried and pleaded; some would have gone for her throat, a way of hastening matters. He rose and went to the door without the bottle, looked back when it would not open.

She keyed the duty officer. “Pick up the prisoner.” The acknowledgment came back. And on a second thought: “Bring Josh Talley while you’re at it.”

That brought a flicker of panic to Konstantin’s eyes. “I know,” she said. “He’s minded to kill me. But then he’s undergone some changes, hasn’t he?”

“He remembers you.”

She pursed her lips, smiled then without smiling. “He’s alive to remember. Isn’t he?”

“Let me talk to Mazian.”

“Hardly practical. And he won’t agree to hear you. Don’t you know, Damon Konstantin, he’s the source of your troubles? My orders come from him.”

“The Fleet belonged to the Company once. It was ours . We believed in you. The stations — all of us — believed in you, if not in the Company. What happened?”

She glanced down without intending to, found it difficult to look up again and meet his ignorant eyes.

“Someone’s insane,” Konstantin said.

Quite possibly , she thought. She leaned back in the chair and found nothing to say.

“There’s more than the other stations involved at Pell,” he said. “Pell was always different. Take my advice, at least. Leave my brother in permanent charge on Downbelow. You’ll get more out of the Downers if you do things the slow way. Let him manage them. They’re not easy to understand, but they don’t understand us easily either. They’ll work for him. Let them do things their own way and they’ll do ten times the work. They don’t fight. They’ll give you anything you ask for, if you ask and don’t take.”

“Your brother will be left there,” she said.

The light by the door flashed. She keyed it open. They had brought Josh Talley. She sat watching… a quiet exchange of glances, an attempt to question without asking questions… “Are you all right?” Josh asked. Konstantin nodded.

“Mr. Konstantin is leaving,” she said. “Come in, Josh. Come on in.”

He did so, with a backward anxious look at Konstantin. The door closed between them. Signy reached again for the bottle, added to the glass which Konstantin had left on the side of the desk.

Josh too was cleaner, and the better for it. Thin. His cheeks had gone very hollow. The eyes — were alive.

“Want to sit down?” she asked. From him she did not know what to expect. He had always been acquiescent, in everything. Now she watched, anticipating some act of craziness, remembering the time he had come to find her on the station, his shouting at her from the doorway. He sat down, quiet as he had ever been. “Old times,” she said, and drank. “He’s a decent man, is Damon Konstantin.”