need to be brought current with the keys. Every facility on Downbelow can be
expanded, yes. I still have the detailed plans. I’ll have a cost and labor
analysis available within a matter of days.”
Angelo nodded, looked at him, frowning. It could not be a pleasant moment for
him.
“We’re fighting for our survival.” Angelo said. “Plainly, there’s a point where
we seriously have to worry about our life-support systems. Some of the load has
to be moved. Nor can we allow the ratio of Pell citizens to refugees to become
unbalanced. We have to be concerned about riot… there and here. Apologies, Mr.
Kressich. These are the realities under which we live, not of our choosing, nor,
I’m sure, of yours. We can’t risk the station or the base on Downbelow; or we
find ourselves all on freighters bound for Earth, stripped of everything. That
is the third choice.”
“No,” the murmur went around the room.
Jon sat down, silent, staring at Angelo, reckoning Pell’s present fragile
balance and odds as they existed. You’ve lost already, he thought of saying, of
standing up in council and laying things out as they were. He did not. He sat
with his mouth tightly closed. It was a matter of time. Peace… might afford a
chance. But that was far from what was shaping out there with this influx of
refugees from all these stations. They had all the Beyond flowing in two
directions like a watershed, toward themselves and toward Union; and they were
not equipped to handle it under Angelo’s kind of rules.
Year upon year of Konstantin rule, Konstantin social theory, the vaunted
“community of law” which disdained security and monitoring and now refused to
use the clenched fist on Q, hoping that vocal appeals were going to win a mob
over to order. He could bring that matter up too. He sat still.
There was a bad taste in his mouth, reckoning that what chaos Konstantin
leniency had wrought on the station it would manage to wreak on Downbelow too.
He foresaw no success for the plans he was asked for: Emilio Konstantin and his
wife would be in charge of the work, two of a kind, who would let the Downers
take their own time about schedules and protect their superstitions and let them
do things their own leisurely, lackadaisical way, which ended with equipment
damaged and construction delayed. And what that pair would do with what was over
in Q offered worse prospects.
He sat still, estimating their chances, and drawing unhappy conclusions.
ii
“It can’t survive,” he said to Vittorio that night, to his son Vittorio and to
Dayin Jacoby, the only relative he favored. He leaned back in his chair and
drank bitter Downer wine, in his apartment which was piled with the stacked
expensive furniture which had been in the other, severed, rooms. “Pell’s falling
apart under us. Angelo’s soft-handed policies are going to lose it for us, and
maybe get our throats cut in riot into the bargain. It’s going, you understand
me? And do we sit and take what comes?”
Vittorio looked suddenly whey-faced as his habit was when talk turned serious.
Dayin was of another sort. He sat grim and thoughtful.
“A contact,” Jon said yet more plainly, “has to exist.”
Dayin nodded. “In times like these, two doors might be a sensible necessity. And
I’m sure doors exist all over this station… with the right keys.”
“How compromised… do you reckon those doors are? And where? Your cousin’s
handled cases of some of our transients. You have any ideas?”
“Black market in rejuv drugs and others. That’s in full flower here, don’t you
know? Konstantin himself gets it; you got it on Downbelow.”
“It’s legal.”
“Of course it’s legal; it’s necessary. But how does it get here? Ultimately it
comes from Unionside; merchanters deal; it comes through. Someone, somewhere, is
into the pipeline… merchanters… maybe even station-side contacts.”
“So how do we get one to get a contact back up the pipeline?”
“I can learn.”
“I know one,” Vittorio said, startling them both. He licked his lips, swallowed
heavily. “Roseen.”
“That whore of yours?”
“She knows the market. There’s a security officer… high up. Clean paper all the