They were not the only refugees adrift; they were simply the first. And upon
that knowledge she kept her mouth shut.
It was Dinah that broke the peace; a man caught with weapons in scan, a friend
who turned ugly on his arrest: two dead, then, and sobbing, hysterical
passengers afterward. Signy watched it, simply tired, shook her head and ordered
the bodies vented with the rest, while Konstantin approached her with angry
arguments. “Martial law,” she said, ending all discussion, and walk away.
Sita, Pearl, Little Bear, Winifred. They came in with agonizing slowness,
unloaded refugees and property, and the processing inches its way along.
Signy left the dock then, went back aboard Norway and took a bath. She scrubbed
three times all over before she began to feel that the smell and the sights had
left her.
Station had entered alterday; complaints and demands had fallen silent at least
for a few hours.
Or if there were any, Norway’s alterday command fended them off her.
There was comfort for the night, company of sorts, a leave-taking. He was
another item of salvage from Russell’s and Mariner… not for transport on the
other ships. They would have torn him apart. He knew this, and appreciated
matters. He had no taste for the crew either, and understood his situation.
“You’re getting off here,” she told him, staring at him, who lay beside her. The
name did not matter. It confused itself in her memory with others, and sometimes
she called him hy the wrong one, late, when she was half asleep. He showed no
emotion at that statement, only blinked, indication that he had absorbed the
fact. The face intrigued her: innocence, perhaps. Contrasts intrigued her.
Beauty did. “You’re lucky,” she said. He reacted to that the same way, as he
reacted to most things. He simply stared, vacant and beautiful; they had played
with his mind on Russell’s. There was a sordidness in her sometimes, a need to
deal wounds… limited murder, to blot out the greater ones. To deal little
terrors, to forget the horror outside. She had sometime nights with Graff, with
Di, with whoever took her fancy. She never showed this face to those she valued,
to friends, to crew. Only sometimes there were voyages like this one, when her
mood was black. It was a common disease, in the Fleet, in the sealed worlds of
ships without discharge, among those in absolute power. “Do you care?” she
asked; he did not, and that was, perhaps, his survival.
Norway remained, her troops visibly on duty on the dock-side, the last ship
berthed in quarantine. On the dock, the lights were still at bright noon, over
lines which moved only slowly, under the presence of the guns.
Chapter Three
« ^ »
i
Pell: 5/2a*/52
*Alterday
Too many sights, too much of such things. Damon Konstantin took a cup of coffee
from one of the aid workers who passed the desk and leaned on his arm, stared
out across the docks and tried to rub the ache from his eyes. The coffee tasted
of disinfectant, as everything here smelled of it, as it was in their pores,
their noses, everywhere. The troops stayed on guard, keeping this little area of
the dock safe. Someone had been knifed in Barracks A. No one could explain the
weapon. They thought that it had come from the kitchen of one of the abandoned
restaurants on dockside, a piece of cutlery unthinkingly left behind, by someone
who had never realized the situation. He found himself exhausted beyond sense.
He had no answers; station police could not find the offender, in the lines of
refugees which still wended their way out there across the docks, inching along
to housing desks.
A touch descended on his shoulder. He turned an aching neck, blinked up at his
brother. Emilio settled in the vacant chair next to him, hand still on his
shoulder. Elder brother. Emilio was in alterday central command. It -was
alterday now, Damon realized muzzily. The wake-sleep worlds in which they two
seldom met on duty had gotten lapped in the confusion.
“Go home,” Emilio said gently. “My turn, if one of us has to be here. I promised