to warm the tremors from his limbs, the twinges of pain from his chest. “I’m too
old for this,” he complained.
“You don’t have to worry about Redding,” Coledy told him, picking up his glass.
“You can’t create situations like that,” Kressich snapped. “I know what you’re
up to. But don’t sell the passes where there’s no chance I’ll be able to get
them.”
Coledy grinned, an exceedingly unpleasant expression. “Redding would ask for it
sooner or later. This way he paid for the privilege.”
“I don’t want to know,” Kressich said sourly. He drank a large mouthful of the
wine. “Don’t give me the details.”
“We’d better get you to your apartment, Mr. Kressich. Keep a little watch on
you. Just till this matter is straightened out.”
He finished the wine at his own rate. One of the youths in Coledy’s group had
gathered up the stack of papers the struggle had scattered about the floor, and
laid it on his desk. Kressich stood up then, his knees still weak, averted his
eyes from the blood which had tracked on the matting.
Coledy and four of his men escorted him, through that same back door which had
received Redding and his guards. They walked down the corridor into the sector
in which he maintained his small apartment, and he used his manual key… comp had
cut them off and nothing worked here but manual controls.
“I don’t need your company,” he said shortly. Coledy gave him a wry and mocking
smile, parodied a bow.
“Talk with you later,” Coledy said.
Kressich went inside, closed the door again by manual, stood there with nausea
threatening him. He sat down finally, in the chair by the door, tried to stay
still a moment.
Madness accelerated in Q. The passes which were hope for some to get out of Q
only increased the despair of those left behind. The roughest were left, so that
the temperature of the whole was rising. The gangs ruled. No one was safe who
did not belong to one of the organizations… man or woman, no one could walk the
halls safely unless it was known he had protection; and protection was sold… for
food or favors or bodies, whatever the currency available. Drugs… medical and
otherwise… made it in; wine did; precious metals, anything of value… made it out
of Q and into station. Guards at the barriers made profits.
And Coledy sold applications for passes out of Q, for Downbelow residency. Sold
even the right to stand in the lines for justice. And anything else that Coledy
and his police found profitable. The protections gang reported to Coledy for
license.
There was only the diminishing hope of Downbelow, and those rejected or deferred
became hysterical with the suspicion that there were lies recorded about them in
station files, black marks which would keep them forever in Q. There were a
rising number of suicides; some gave themselves to excesses in the barracks
halls which became sinks of every vice. Some committed the crimes, perhaps, of
which they feared they were accused; and some became the victims.
“They kill them down there,” one young man had cried, rejected. “They don’t go
to Downbelow at all; they take them out of here and kin them, that’s where they
go. They don’t take workers, they don’t take young men, they take old people and
children out, and they get rid of them.”
“Shut up!” others had cried, and the youth had been beaten bloody by three
others in the line before Coledy’s police could pull him out; but others wept,
and still stood in line with their applications for passes clutched in their
hands.
He could not apply to go. He feared some leak getting back to Coledy if he put
in an application for himself. The guards were trading with Coledy, and he
feared too much. He had his black market wine, had his present safety, had
Coledy’s guards about him so that if anyone was harmed in Q, it would not be
Vassily Kressich, not until Coledy suspected he might be trying to break from
him.
Good came of what he did, he persuaded himself. While he stayed in Q, while he