not belong here, with the likes of Abe Blass and these grim very-same people.
His father had made him expendable. If he were ambitious he would try to make
points for himself in these circumstances, ingratiate himself with Union. He did
not. He knew his abilities and his limits, and he wanted Roseen, wanted his
comforts, wanted a good drink he could not have with the drugs filling his
system.
It was not going to work, none of it; and they would snatch him Unionside where
everyone walked in step, and that would be the end of everything he knew. He
feared changes. What he had at Pell was good enough. He had never asked much of
life or of anyone, and the thought of being out here in the center of nothing at
all… gave him nightmares.
But he had no choices. His father had seen to that.
Blass came finally, sat down and solemnly spread charts on the table and
explained things to him as if he were someone of consequence to the mission. He
looked at the diagram and tried to understand the premises of this shifting
about through nothing, when he could not in fact understand where they were,
which was essentially nowhere.
“You should feel very confident,” Blass said. “I assure you you’re in a far
safer place than the station is right now.”
“You’re a very high officer in Union,” he said, “aren’t you? They wouldn’t send
you like this… otherwise.”
Blass shrugged.
“Hammer and Swan’s Eye … all the ships you’ve got near Pell?”
Blass shrugged again. That was his answer.
Chapter Six
« ^ »
i
Maintenance access white 9-1042; 2100 hrs.
The men had come and gone for a long time, men-in-shells, carrying guns. Satin
shivered and tucked further back into the shadows by the cargo lift. They were
many who had run when the Lukas directed, who had run again when the stranger
men came, by the ways that the hisa could use, the narrow ways, the dark tunnels
where hisa could breathe without masks and men could not. Men of the Upabove
knew these ways but they had not yet shown them to the strangers, and hisa were
safe, though some of them cried deep in the dark, deep, deep below, so that men
would not hear.
There was no hope here. Satin pursed her lips and sidled backward in a crouch,
waited while the air changed, scampered back into safe darkness. Hands touched
her. There was male-scent. She hissed in reproof and smelt after the one who was
hers. Arms folded her about. She laid her head wearily against a hard shoulder,
comforting as she was comforted. Bluetooth offered her no questions. He knew
that there was no better news, for he had said as much when she had insisted on
going out to see.
It was trouble, bad trouble. Lukases spoke and gave orders, and strangers
threatened. Old One was not here… none of the long-timers were, having gone
somewhere about their own business, to the protection of important things, Satin
reckoned. To duties ordered by important humans and perhaps duties which
regarded hisa.
But they had disobeyed, had not gone to the supervisors, no more than the Old
Ones had gone, who also hated Lukases.
“Go back?” someone asked finally.
They would be in trouble if they turned themselves in after running. Men would
be angry with them, and the men had guns. “No,” she said, and when there was
muttering to the contrary, Bluetooth turned his head to spit a surlier negative.
“Think,” he said. “We go there, men can be there, bad trouble.”
“Hungry,” another protested.
No one answered.
Men might take their friendship from them for what they had done. They realized
that clearly now. And without that friendship, they might be on Downbelow
always. Satin thought of the fields of Downbelow, the soft clouds she had once
thought solid enough to sit on, the rain and the blue sky and the
gray-green-blue leaves, the flowers and soft mosses… most of all the air which
smelled of home. Bluetooth dreamed of that, perhaps, as the heat of her spring
faded, and she had not quickened, being young, in her first adult season.