alone, Bluetooth hanging back from him. He pushed men with rifles and had to
push more than once, realizing all at once that he had no gun, that he was
bare-handed and alone and that there were no witnesses but Downers and Q.
They gave ground. He snatched the boy from those who held him and the boy
collapsed to the ground; he knelt down, feeling his own back naked, picked up
the breather that lay there and got it over the boy’s face, pressed it there.
Some of the Q folk tried to close in and one of Hale’s men fired at their feet.
“No more of that!” Emilio shouted. He stood up, shaking in every muscle, staring
at the several score Q workers outside, at others still jammed by their own
numbers within the dome. At ten armed men who had rifles leveled. He was shaking
in every muscle, thinking of riot, of Miliko just over the hill, of having them
close in on him. “Back up,” he yelled at Q. “Ease off!” And rounded on Bran
Hale… young, sullen and insolent. “What happened here?”
“Tried to escape,” Hale said. “Mask fell off in the fight Tried to get a gun.”
“That’s a lie,” the Q folk shouted in a babble of variants, and tried to drown
Hale’s voice.
“Truth,” Hale said. “They don’t want more refugees in their dome. A fight
started and this troublemaker tried to bolt. We caught him.”
There was a chorus of protest from the Q folk. A woman in the fore was crying.
Emilio looked about him, having difficulty with his own breathing. At his feet
the boy had seemed to come to, writhing and coughing. The Downers clustered
together, dark eyes solemn.
“Bluetooth,” he said, “what happened?”
Bluetooth’s eyes shifted to Bran Hale’s man. No more than that
“Me eyes see,” said another voice. Satin strode through, braced herself with
several bobs of distress. Her voice was high-pitched, brittle. “Hale push he
friend, hard with gun, Bad push she.”
There were shouts from Hale’s side, derision; shouts from the Q side. He yelled
for quiet. It was not a lie. He knew Downers and he knew Hale. It was not a lie.
“They took his breather?”
“Take.” Satin said, and clamped her mouth firmly shut. Her eyes showed fear.
“All right.” Emilio sucked in a deep breath, looked directly at Bran Kale’s hard
face. “We’d better continue this discussion in my office.”
“We talk right here,” Hale said. He had his crowd about him. His advantage.
Emilio matched him stare for stare; it was all he could do, with no weapons and
no force to back him. “Downer’s word,” Hale said, “isn’t testimony. You don’t
insult me on any Downer’s word, Mr. Konstantin, no sir.”
He could walk away, back down. Surely Operations and the regular workers could
see what was going on. Maybe they had looked out from their domes and preferred
not to see. Accidents could happen, in this place, even to a Konstantin. For a
long time the authority on Downbelow had been Jon Lukas and his hand-picked men.
He could walk away, maybe reach Operations, call help for himself from the
shuttle, if Hale let him; and it would be told for the rest of his life how
Emilio Konstantin handled threats, “You pack,” he said softly, “and you be on
that shuttle when it leaves. All of you.”
“On a Downer bitch’s word?” Hale lost his dignity, chose to shout. He could
afford to. Some of the rifles had turned his way.
“Get out,” Emilio said, “on my word. Be on that shuttle. Your tour here is
over.”
He saw Hale’s tension, the shift of eyes. Someone did move. A rifle went off,
sizzled into the mud. One of the Q men had struck it down. There was a second
when it looked like riot.
“Out!” Emilio repeated. Suddenly the balance of power was shifted, Young workers
were to the fore of Q, and their own gang boss, Wei. Hale shifted eyes left and
right, remeasured things, finally gave a curt nod to his companions. They moved
out. Emilio stood watching them in their swaggering retreat to the common