situation, about anything and everything he could feel was harmless; about
abstracts of law and economic theory, in which he and Jacoby and Azov himself
shared some expertise… joked lightly which currency they should pay their bets
in; Azov laughed outright. It was inexpressible relief to have someone to talk
to, and to exchange pleasantries with someone. He had a bond with Jacoby… like
that of kinship, unchosen, but inescapable. They were each other’s sanity. He
began at last to conceive such an attachment to Azov, finding him sympathetic
and possessed of humor. There was danger in this, and he knew it.
Jacoby won the next round. Azov patiently marked down the points, turned to the
mannequins. “Jules. A bottle here, would you?”
One rose and left on the errand. “I rather thought they had numbers,” Ayres said
under his breath; they had already had one bottle. And then he repented the
frankness.
“There’s much in Union you don’t see,” Azov said. “But you may get the chance.”
Ayres laughed, and suddenly cold hit his belly. How? stuck in his throat. They
had drunk too much together. Azov had never admitted to his nation’s ambitions,
to any designs beyond Pell. He let his expression change ever so slightly, and
in that moment Azov’s did too… mutual dismay, a moment which lasted too long,
slow-motion, alcohol-fumed, with Jacoby a third unwilling participant.
Ayres laughed again, an effort, tried not to show his guilt, leaned back in his
chair and stared at Azov. “What, do they gamble too?” he asked, trying to
mislead the meaning.
Azov pressed his lips to a thin line, looked at him from under one silvery brow,
smiled as if he were dutifully amused.
I am not going home, Ayres thought despairingly. There will be no warning. That
was his meaning.
iii
Pell: Downer tunnels; 1/8/53; 1830 hrs.
The dark place shifted with many bodies. Damon listened, started as he heard one
moving near him, and again as a hand touched his arm in the blackness of the
tunnel. He angled the lamp that way, shivering in the chill.
“I Bluetooth,” the familiar voice whispered. “You come see she?”
Damon hesitated, long, looked toward the ladders which stretched like spiderweb
out of the range of the lamp he carried. “No,” he said sorrowfully. “No. I only
walk through. I’ve been to white section. I only want to go through.”
“She ask you come. Ask. Ask all time.”
“No,” he whispered hoarsely, thinking that there were fewer and fewer times,
that soon there would be no chance at all. “No, Bluetooth. I love her and I
won’t. Don’t you know, it would be danger to her if I came there? The
men-with-guns would come in. I can’t. I can’t, much as I want to.”
The Downer’s warm hand patted his, lingered. “You say good thing.”
He was surprised. A Downer reasoned, and though he knew that they reasoned, it
surprised him to hear that train of thought follow human lines. He took the
Downer’s hand and squeezed it, grateful for Bluetooth’s presence in an hour when
there was little other comfort. He sank down on the metal steps, drew a quiet
breath through the mask… drew comfort where it was to be had, to sit a moment
safe from unfriendly eyes, with what had become, across all other differences, a
friend. The hisa squatted on the platform before him, dark eyes glittering in
the indirect light, patted his knee, simply companionable.
“You watch me,” Damon said, “all the time.”
Bluetooth bobbed slightly, agreement.
“The hisa are very kind,” Damon said. “Very good.”
Bluetooth tilted his head and wrinkled his brow. “You she baby.” Families were a
very difficult concept for hisa. “You ’Licia baby.”
“I was, yes.”
“She you mother.”
“She is.”
“Milio she baby.”
“Yes.”
“I love he.”
Damon smiled painfully. “No halfway with you, is there, Bluetooth? All or
nothing. You’re a good fellow. How much do the hisa know? Know other humans… or
only Konstantins? I think all my friends are dead, Bluetooth. I’ve tried to find
them. And either they’re hiding or they’re dead.”
“Make me eyes sad, Damon-man. Maybe hisa find, tell we they name.”