to avoid attention, unfolded the paper and read it
psscia/ pacpakonstant indamon/ au1-1-1-1-1/1030/
10/4/52/2136md/0936a/start/talley papers confiscated and talley arrested by
fleet order/ sec office given choice local detention or military
intervention/talley confined this post/ talley request message sent konstantin
family/ herein complied/request instruction/request policy clarification/
saundersredoneseccom/ enditenditendit.
He looked up, pulse racing, caught between relief it was nothing worse and
distress for what it was. Mallory was looking straight at him, a curious,
challenging interest on her face. She walked over to him. He considered an
outright lie, hoping she would not insist on the message and make an issue of
it. He considered what he knew of her and reckoned otherwise.
“There’s a friend of mine in trouble,” he said. “I need to leave and go see
about him.”
“Trouble with us?”
He considered the lie a second time. “Something like.”
She held out her hand. He did not offer the message.
“Perhaps I can help.” Her eyes were cold and her hand stayed extended, palm up.
“Do we assume,” she asked when it was not forthcoming, “that this is something
embarrassing to station? Or do we make further assumptions?”
He handed over the paper, while there were choices at all. She scanned it,
seemed perplexed for a moment, and gradually her face changed.
“Talley,” she said. “Josh Talley?”
He nodded, and she pursed her lips.
“A friend of the Konstantins. How times do change.”
“He’s Adjusted.”
The eyes flickered.
“His own request,” he said. “What else did Russell’s leave him?”
She kept looking at him, and he wished that there were somewhere else to look,
and somewhere else to be. Adjustment spilled things. It thrust Pell and her into
an intimacy he did not want… which too clearly she did not want—those records on
station.
“How is he?” she asked.
He found even the asking bizarrely ugly, and simply stared.
“Friendship,” she said. “Friendship, and from such opposite poles. Or is it
patronage? He asked for Adjustment, and you gave it to him; finished what
Russell’s started… I detect offended sensibilities, do I not?”
“We’re not Russell’s.”
A smile to which the eyes gave the lie. “How bright a world, Mr. Konstantin,
where there’s still such outrage. And where Q exists… on the same station.
Within arm’s reach one of the other, and administered by your office. Or maybe Q
itself is misplaced compassion. I suspect you must have created that hell by
half-measures. By exercise of your sensibilities. Your private object of
outrage, this Unioner? Your apology to morality… or your statement on the war,
Mr. Konstantin?”
“I want him out of detention. I want his papers back. He has no politics any
longer.”
No one talked to Mallory that way; plainly no one did. After a long moment she
broke contact with his eyes, a dismissal, nodded slowly. “You’re accountable?”
“I make myself accountable.”
“On that understanding… No. No, Mr. Konstantin, you don’t go. You don’t need to
go in person. I’ll clear him through Fleet channels, send him home… on your
assurance things are as you say.”
“You can see the records if you want.”
“I’m sure they’d contain nothing of news.” She waved a hand, a signal to someone
behind him, a tiny move. His spine crawled with the sudden realization there had
been a gun at his back. She walked over to the com console, leaned over the tech
and keyed through to the Fleet channel. “This is Mallory. Release the papers and
person of Joshua Talley, in station detention. Relay to appropriate authorities,
Fleet and station. Over.”
The acknowledgment came back, impersonal and uninterested.
“May I,” Damon asked her, “may I send a call to him? He’ll need some clear
instruction…”
“Sir,” one of the techs nearby said, facing about in her place. “Sir—”
He glanced distractedly at the anguished face.
“A Downer’s been shot, sir, in green four.”
The breath went out of him. For a moment his mind refused to work.
“He’s dead, sir.”
He shook his head, sick at his stomach, turned and glared at Mallory. “They
don’t hurt anything. No Downer ever lifted a hand to a human except to escape,
in panic. Ever.”
Mallory shrugged. “Past mending now, Mr. Konstantin. Get on about your own