barracks, even yet not believing that trouble was over. Beside him, Bluetooth
let out a long hiss, and Satin made a spitting sound. His own muscles were
quivering with the fight that had not happened. He heard a sough of air, the
dome sagging as the rest of Q surged out, all three hundred of them, breaching
their lock wide open. He looked at them, alone with them. “You take those new
transfers into your dome and you take them in without bickering and without
argument. We’ll make new diggings; you will and they will, quick as possible.
You want them to sleep in the open? Don’t you give me any nonsense about it.”
“Yes, sir,” Wei answered after a moment. The woman who had been crying edged
forward. Emilio stepped back and she bent down to help the stricken boy, who was
struggling to sit up: mother, he reckoned. Others came and helped the boy up.
There was a good deal of commotion about it.
Emilio grasped the youth’s arm. “Want you in for a medical,” he said. “Two of
you take him over to Operations.”
They hesitated. Guards were supposed to escort them. There were no guards, he
realized in that instant. He had just ordered all the security forces in main
base offworld.
“Go on inside,” he said to the rest. “Get that dome normalized; I’ll talk to you
about it later.” And while he had their attention: “Look around you. There’s all
of a world here, blast you all. Give us help. Talk to me if there’s some
complaint. I’ll see you get access. We’re all crowded here. All of us. Come look
at my quarters if you think otherwise; I’ll give some of you the tour if you
don’t believe me. We live like this because we’re building. Help us build, and
it can be good here, for all of us.”
Frightened eyes stared at him… no belief. They had come in on overcrowded, dying
ships; had been in Q on-station; lived here, in mud and close quarters, moved
about under guns. He let go his breath and his anger.
“Go on,” he said. “Break it up. Get about your business. Make room for those
people.”
They moved, the boy and a couple of the young men toward Operations, the rest
back into their dome. The flimsy doors closed in sequence this time, locking
them through, group after group, until all were gone, and the deflated dome
crest began to lose some of its wrinkles as the compressor thumped away.
There was a soft chattering, a bobbing of bodies. The Downers were still with
him. He put out his hand and touched Bluetooth. The Downer touched his hand in
turn, a calloused brush of flesh, bobbed several times in the residue of
excitement. At his other side stood Satin, arms clenched about her, her dark
eyes darker still, and wide.
All about him, Downers, with that same disturbed look. Human quarrel, violence,
alien to them. Downers would strike in a moment’s anger, but only to sting. He
had never seen them quarrel in groups, had never seen weapons… their knives were
only tools and hunting implements. They killed only game. What did they think,
he wondered; what did they imagine at such a sight, humans turning guns on each
other?
“We go Upabove,” Satin said.
“Yes,” he agreed. “You still go. It was good, Satin, Bluetooth, all of you, it
was good you came to tell me.”
There was a general bobbing, expressions of relief among all the hisa, as if
they had not been sure. The thought occurred to him that he had ordered Hale and
his men off on that same shuttle… that human spite might still make things
uncomfortable.
“I’ll talk to the man in charge of the ship,” he told them. “You and Hale will
be in different parts of the ship. No trouble for you. I promise.”
“Good-good-good,” Satin breathed, and hugged him. He stroked her shoulder,
turned and received an embrace from Bluetooth as well, patted his rougher pelt.
He left them and started toward the crest of the hill, on the track to the
landing site, and stopped at the sight of several figures standing there.
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