still fired at each other. The violence was subsiding. The few with him, the
remainder of Russell’s own security police, a handful of elite stationers and a
scattering of young people and old… they had held the hallway against the gangs.
“We’re afire,” someone muttered, on the edge of hysteria.
“Old rags or something,” he said; shut it up, he thought They did not need
panic. In a major fire, station central would blow a section to put it out…
death for all of them. They were not valuable to Pell. Some of them were out
there shooting at Pell police with guns they had gotten off dead policemen. It
had started with the knowledge that there was another convoy coming in, more
ships, more desperate people to crowd into the little they had; had started with
the simple word that this was about to happen… and a demand for faster
processing of papers; then raids on barracks and gangs confiscating papers from
those who did have them.
Burn all records, the cry had gone out through quarantine, in the logic that,
recordless, they would all be admitted. Those who would not yield up their
papers were beaten and robbed of them; of anything else of value. Barracks were
ransacked. Gangs of the ruffians who had forced Griffin and Hansford gained
membership among the desperate, the young, the leaderless and the panicked.
There was quiet for a time outside. The fans had stopped; the air began to go
foul. Among those who had seen the worst of the voyage, there was panic, quietly
contained; a good number were crying.
Then the lights brightened and a cool draft came through the ducts. The door
whipped open. Kressich got to his feet and looked into the faces of station
police, and the barrels of leveled rifles. Some of his own band had knives,
sections of pipe and furniture, whatever weapons they had improvised. He had
nothing… held up frantic hands.
“No,” he pleaded. No one moved, not the police, not his own. “Please. We weren’t
in it. We only defended this section from them. None… none of these people were
involved. They were the victims.”
The police leader, face haggard with weariness and soot and blood, motioned with
his rifle toward the wall. “You have to line up,” Kressich explained to his
ill-assorted companions, who were not the sort to understand such procedures,
except only the ex-police. “Drop whatever weapons you have.” They lined up, even
the old and the sick, and the two small children.
Kressich found himself shaking, while he was searched and after, left leaning
against the corridor wall while the police muttered mysteriously among
themselves. One seized him by the shoulder, faced him about. An officer with a
slate walked from one to the other of them asking for id’s.
“They were stolen,” Kressich said. “That’s how it started. The gangs were
stealing papers and burning them.”
“We know that,” the officer said. “Are you in charge? What’s your name and
origin?”
“Vassily Kressich, Russell’s.”
“Others of you know him?”
Several confirmed it. “He was a councillor on Russell’s Station,” said a young
man. “I served there in security.”
“Name.”
The young man gave it. Nino Coledy. Kressich tried to recall him and could not.
One by one the questions were repeated, cross-examination of identifications,
mutual identifications, no more reliable than the word of those who gave them. A
man with a camera came into the hallway and photographed them all standing
against the wall. They stood in a chaos of com-chatter and discussion.
“You can go,” the police leader said, and they began to file out; but when
Kressich started to leave the officer caught his arm. “Vassily Kressich. I’ll be
giving your name to headquarters.”
He was not sure whether that was good or bad; anything was a hope. Anything was
better than what existed here in Q, with the station stalling and unable to
place them or clear them out.
He walked out onto the dock itself, shaken by the sight of the wreckage that had
been made here, with the dead still lying in their blood, piles of combustibles
still smouldering, what furnishings and belongings had remained heaped up to