Great Circle of their own, supplying each others’ needs. None of the other
stations could have gone it alone; none had the living world it took—a living
world and hands to manage it. There were plans on the board now, the first crews
moved, to go for the onworld mining they had long delayed, duplicating materials
already available in Pell system at large… just in case things got worse than
anyone wanted to think. They would get massive new programs underway this
summer, when Downers were receptive to approach again; get it well moving in
fall, when the Downers hit their working season, when cool winds made them think
of winter again and they seemed never to rest, working for humans and working to
carry soft mosses into their tunnels in the wooded hills.
Downbelow was due to change. Its human population had quadrupled. He mourned it;
Miliko did. They had gridded off areas already… Miliko’s ever-present
charts—places which no human should ever touch, the beautiful places, the sites
they knew for holy and the places vital to the cycles of hisa and wild things
alike.
Ram it through council in their own generation, even this year, before the
pressures mounted. Set up protections for the things which had to endure. The
pressure was already with them. Scars were already on the land, the smoke of the
mill, the stumps of trees, the ugly domes and fields imposed on the riverside
and being hacked out all along the muddy roads. They had wanted to beautify it
as they went, make gardens, camouflage roads and domes—and that chance was gone.
They would not, he and Miliko were resolved together, would not let more damage
happen. They loved Downbelow, the best and the worst of it, the maddening hisa
and the violence of the storms. There was always the station for human refuge;
antiseptic corridors and soft furniture were always waiting. But Miliko thrived
here as he did; they made pleasant love at night with the rain pattering away on
the plastic dome, with the compressors mumping away in the dark and Downbelow’s
night creatures singing madly just outside. They enjoyed the changes the sky
made hour by hour, and the sound of the wind in the grass and the forest about
them, laughed at Downer pranks and ruled the whole world, with power to solve
everything but the weather.
They missed home, missed family and that different, wider world; but they talked
otherwise… had talked even of building a dome to themselves, in their spare
time, in years to come, when homes could be built here, a hope which had been
closer a year or so ago, when the Downbelow establishment had been quiet and
easy, before Mallory and the others had come, before Q.
Now they simply figured how to survive at the level at which they were living.
Moved population about under guard for fear of what that population might try to
do. Opened new bases at the most primitive level, ill-prepared. Tried to care
for the land and the Downers at once, and to pretend that nothing was amiss on
station.
He finished the assignments, walked out and handed them to the dispatcher,
Ernst, who was also accountant and comp man… they all did a multitude of jobs.
He walked back again into his bedroom office, surveyed Miliko and her lapful of
charts. “Want lunch?” he asked. He reckoned on going to the mill in the
afternoon, hoped now for a quiet cup of coffee and first access to the microwave
which was the dome’s other luxury of rank… time to sit and relax.
“I’m nearly done,” she said.
A bell rang, three sharp pulses, disarranging the day. The shuttle was coming in
early; he had assumed it for the evening slot. He shook his head. “There’s still
time for lunch,” he said.
The shuttle was down before they were done. Everyone in Operations had come to
the same conclusion, and the dispatcher, Ernst, directed things between bites of
sandwich. It was a hard day for everyone.
Emilio swallowed the last bite, drank the last of his coffee and gathered up his
jacket. Miliko was putting hers on.
“Got us some more Q types,” Jim Ernst said from the dispatch desk; and a moment
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