Текст книги "Finity's End "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 36 страниц)

Madison cleared his throat, in what became a very long silence. The Konstantins were also known for stubbornness.

“He is our citizen,” James Robert said. “And we no longer operate in harm’s way. I believe that was the exact objection of the court in prior years. We cannot afford to debate this particular issue, Konstantin. Not at this particular moment. Yet on principle, we will sue.”

Damon, who’d never contradict his wife in the midst of negotiations—Damon viewed the concept of law in lieu of God; and Damon was going to hit the overhead when they got home tonight. Elene could feel it in the rock-hard tension of his hand, his sharp, almost painful squeeze on her fingers. No children in a war zone, the Children’s Court had held, in spite of the fact that there were children on every family merchanter ship out in space. The Children’s Court had its hands on one of those children and in a paralysis of anguish over the War one judge and her own husband’s office wouldn’t let that child go. But in those critical words, no longer operate in harm’s way , the advocacy system, the judiciary, which couldn’t resolve its technical issues over Francesca Neihart’s son because the court-appointed social workers and psychiatrists wouldn’t agree, had just had its point answered.

Fletcher Robert Neihart had always been caught in the gears. It wasn’t the boy’s fault that elements in Pell’s administration resented being a trailing appendage to the Merchanter Alliance, and some noisy few fools even thought that Pell should assess merchant ships to see whether they were fit for children. It was a ridiculous position, one that would have collapsed the whole merchanter trade network and collapsed civilization with it—but they were issue-oriented thinkers.

To complicate matters, years ago some clever child advocate in the legal office had thought it a fine argument to claim a station-share and sue Finity during wartime on the boy’s behalf. In further bureaucratic idiocy, filing said claim with the court thereafter had made no difference after that that 14.5 million credits was a figure that never had existed, in or in any official assessment of actual debt. Once that sum had gotten onto the documents, politicians and bursars alike afraid to take the responsibility of forgiving a fourteen-million-credit debt. So it was in the court records, and it would persist until someone somewhere signed papers in settlement.

Now, to cap a macabre comedy teetering on the verge of tragedy, it sounded as if the Pell Bursar’s office, unstoppable as stellar gravity, had just billed Finity for the amount outstanding on Pell’s books and thereby annoyed the seniormost and most essential captain in the Merchanters’ Alliance, a man to whom Pell and the whole Alliance owed its independence. And done so at the very moment the peace and the whole human future most needed a quiet, well-oiled, dammit, even slightly illegal personal agreement to fly through the approval process before Pell’s enemies knew what was going on.

Her long-suffering husband knew where she stood. Her children—both near grown—they knew. Her son said she cared only for her daughter; her daughter said bitterly that her own birth was nothing but a means to an end.

Far too simple a box, to contain all the battles of a lifetime. Pell Station knew what it wanted when it persistently elected a spacer and a zealot to the office she held… that in her soul there were places of utter, star-shot black.

Means-to-an-end certainly covered part of her motives, yes.

Chapter 3

The next day—the next days —were glorious.

“This you female,” Melody said, in their third meeting on the riverbank, and peered into Bianca’s faceplate in very close inspection, perhaps deciding Bianca, this third day, was more than a chance meeting. “She young, good, strong come back see you.” Melody patted Bianca’s leg. “You walk?”

This spring was what Melody meant: mating, the Long Walk, And Bianca didn’t understand. Bianca murmured something about coming from the Base, but Fletcher blushed behind his mask and said, “Not yet, not yet for us.”

Then Bianca was embarrassed. And indignant. “ What did you tell her, Fletcher?”

“That I sort of like you,” Fletcher said, looking at his feet. And Melody and Patch flung leaves at them and shrieked in downer laughter.

He did sort of like her. At least he liked what he saw. What he’d imagined he’d seen in Bianca’s willingness to come back here twice. And on that grounds he was suddenly out of his depth and knew it. He saw v-dramas and vid, and imagined what it would be like to have a girl who liked you and who’d maybe—maybe be part of the dream he’d dreamed, of living down here.

He hadn’t gotten a lot of biochem done the last two nights.

This wasn’t someday. This wasn’t just dreaming. When he’d been a juvvie and thought almost everything was impossible he’d had fantasies of coming down to the world—he’d stow away on a shuttle. He’d pirate supplies and make an outlaw dome, and get all the downers on his side.

Then the downers would join them and humans at the Base would never again see a downer unless he said so. And the stationmasters would have to say, All right, we’ll deal. And he’d be king of Downbelow and Melody and Patch and he together would run the world.

God, he’d been such a stupid juvvie brat in his daydreams, and now, realtime, just having embarrassed himself, he had to admit he’d caught another case of the daydreams almost as fantastical. She was embarrassed; he was. And if you shone light on some daydreams they evaporated.

No Family girl was going to keep on hanging around him. She was probably just trying to make Marshall Willett leave her alone. It had been two days of happiness interspersed with anxiety and a biochem test he might have blown. That was a pretty good run, as his runs went

He’d sounded like a fool. Reality was the best medicine for a case of daydreams, and he went off in his acute embarrassment to go over to the water and squat down and poke at stones at the river-edge, real stones, real world, important things like that

His real life wasn’t like the vids, and daydreams didn’t come true for somebody who wasn’t anybody, somebody who for most of his life couldn’t guarantee where he’d be. It was mortally embarrassing to have to go back to your instructors at school and have to say, with other kids listening, that, no, the reason you didn’t know about the test was your mail wasn’t getting to you and, no, you weren’t still living at 28608 Green, you’d moved, and you were back at the shelter again, or you were out and living with the Chavezes this week.

Then about the time the stupid teacher got the records straightened out you still weren’t getting your e-mail because you “just hadn’t worked out” with the Chavezes. It was pretty devastating stuff when you were eight.

It was doubly devastating if you’d just had a counselor so stupid he didn’t even shut his office door when he was talking about you to your foster parents—who didn’t want you anymore because they were pregnant and thought you’d interfere with the baby.

It hadn’t been fun. The administration eventually changed his psychiatrist to somebody who still asked stupid questions and put him through the same getting-to-know-you routine that by then had just about stopped hurting. It had bored him, by then, because he’d been switched so often, to so many people with court-ordered forms to fill out, you got a sample of the routines and you knew by then it was just business, their caring. They were paid to care, by the hour.

The station paid foster-families.

They paid downers, but not in money, and not to take care of stray station kids: Melody and Patch had cared for him for free.

A hand slipped over his shoulder. He thought it was Melody, and felt comforted.

But it wasn’t Melody. It was Bianca who knelt down by him and touched her head to his so the faceplates bumped edges, and he was just scared numb.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “What did I do?

God, the world was inside out. What did she do? She was kidding. She had to be. But Bianca hugged her arm around him and he hugged her, and if it wouldn’t have risked their lives he’d have taken the mask off and kissed her.

“Oh,” Melody said, from somewhere near. “Look, look, they make love.”

“Dammit!” he said, breaking the first ten rules of residency on Downbelow, and never would willingly curse Melody. He broke his hold on Bianca to rip up a stick and fling, and double handfuls of flowers. “Wicked!” he cried, thinking fast, and turning his reaction into a joke.

Melody squatted down, out of range of flower-missiles, and turned solemn, watching with wide downer eyes. “Fetcher no more sad,” Melody said “Good, good you no more sad”

What did you say? What could you say, in front of the girl you hoped to impress, and who knew what an ass you’d just been with downers you were here to protect from human intrusions?

“I love you,” he said to Melody, and fractured the rest of the rulebook, “You my mama, Melody. Patch, you my papa, Love you.”

“Baby grow up”Melody said. “Go walkabout soon, make me new baby.”

God, what did it say about him, that he was so suddenly, so irrationally hurt?

He shifted about on one knee to see what Bianca thought, but you could hardly see a human face through the mask.

As she couldn’t see his. “Melody used to take care of me,” he said to explain things. The truth, but not all of it. To his teachers and the admin people and his psychs and everybody, he was just trouble. They had families and Bianca had Family, and he was always just that boy from the courts .

“Where was this?” Bianca asked, not unreasonably confused.

“A long time back on the station. I got lost, and they sort of—found me. And got me home.” He’d no desire to go into the sordid details. But he couldn’t get a reaction out of her masked face to tell him where he stood in her opinion. He committed himself, totally desperate, a little trusting of the only girl he’d ever really gone around with. “I used to sneak into the tunnels, to be with them. And first thing I wanted when I got down here was to find Melody and Patch.”

“You’re kidding.” she said.

He shook his head, “Absolute truth.”

“Is he making fun?” she asked Melody, breaking the first rule: never question another human’s character.

“He very small, very sad,” Melody said, “Long time he sad. You happy he.”

Sometimes you didn’t know what downers meant when they put words together. He guessed, with Melody, and thought that Melody approved of Bianca.

“Make he walk lot far,” Patch chimed in helpfully,

“This is way too far,” she said, teen slang… which you weren’t supposed to use, either. He guessed Bianca was overwhelmed with it all, and maybe adding it up that she was with a kid who wasn’t quite regulation. Or respectable. Or following the rules. She sat there looking stunned, as far as a body could who was wearing a mask, and he took a wild chance and put an arm around her.

She pushed him back, sort of, and he let go, fast, deciding he’d entirely misread her.

But she patted his arm, then, the way they learned to, when they wanted someone’s serious attention,

“I believe you,” she said, and slipped her hand down and held his fingers, making them tingle, just touching her bare skin.

And by sunset walking home, not so long after, she held his hand again.

“I went through the program over in Blue,” Bianca said, apropos of nothing previous as they walked along the river-edge. “Did you ever go to the games?”

“Sometimes.”

They had the big ball games on Wednesday nights. And the academy in rich Blue Sector played schools like his, over in industrial, insystemer-dock White, where he’d lived with the Wilsons. Sometimes the games ended with extracurricular riot.

“Isn’t it funny, we probably met,” Bianca said.

“I guess we could have.”

She couldn’t imagine, he thought. From moment to moment he was sure she’d turn on him when she got safely back to the domes and tell everything she’d heard. But her fingers squeezed his, bringing him out of his fantasies of dismissal and disgrace. She talked about ball games and school.

He wanted to talk to her about his feelings, At one wild moment he’d like to ask her if she was as uncertain as he was about the line they’d crossed, holding hands, walking holding tight to each other.

But what did he say? He felt as if his nerves and his veins were carrying a load they couldn’t survive.

Maybe normal people felt that way. Maybe they didn’t. He wasn’t ever sure. If Melody didn’t know and peer wisdom didn’t say, he didn’t know who he could ask.

Damn sure not the psychs.

Two legal papers waited Elene Quen’s signature. In the matter pending before the Court of Pell … lay atop: In final settlement of the aforesaid claim against the merchant ship Finity’s End, James Robert Neihart, senior captain , Finity’s End, her crew and company tender 150,000 credits to be held in escrow against all charges whatsoever and of whatever origin, public or private, as of this date pending, said amount to be placed in the Bank of Pell to clear all debts of Fletcher Robert Neihart, a national of Finity’s End.

The last descriptive represented a controversy settled at a fraction of the claim’s 14.5 million value. The 150,000 represented a reasonable valuation of Francesca’s intended stay on Pell, one year, plus her medical bills for a normal birth, excluding interest.

Debt paid. Finity’s End simply sent the agreed amount to the Bank of Pell, and the legal dispute that had troubled all Finity’s wartime dockings, was done with. Further claims and debts of any sort would be judged against that 150,000 fund. It focused the political infighters and their lawyers on a single, achievable prize, not a kid and his surrounding issues.

She signed the papers, stood up, and gave them to Finity’s legal representative, a young man they called, simply, Blue.

“It’s done,” she said. And had qualms about the one remaining step in Fletcher’s case. She’d never agreed to a spacer going downworld in the first place; it had just stopped being easy to prevent him. With some degree of guilt she remembered how she’d not objected strenuously when, four years ago, she’d become aware Fletcher’s juvenile fascination with downers now aimed at planetary science. The study program had kept the boy off the police reports and given her four years without a crisis with Fletcher. And now things came due.

Finity backing in the Council of Captains would build a merchanter ship for the first time since the Treaty of Pell.

Union wouldn’t have its way. That was the down-the-line outcome. Union thought the Council of Captains couldn’t reach a disinterested decision, or a unified action, or get any two merchant ships to agree.

If Mallory of Norway was right and the black market was in fact Mazian’s pipeline to supply and funds, the notion that ships were slipping over into Mazian’s camp was very disturbing and very plausible. The War had been between the Earth Company and Union in its earliest days– and the Alliance hadn’t yet existed. Merchanters had declared neutrality in what had been then a small-scale dispute.

Merchanters had served both sides, excepting those merchanters actively enlisted as gunships.

Meanwhile Earth had built the Fleet to enforce Earth’s hold on the colonies and to break Union’s bid for independence; Earth had typically failed to realize what it took to sustain a war on that scale, hadn’t supplied the Fleet it had launched, declaring that to be the colonies’ job; the Fleet had taken to relying on merchant shipping– buying off the black market during the War and engaging in occasional outright piracy even before the Battle of Pell. The Fleet had alienated the merchanters and it was the merchanters who had risen up against them to drive them out—out far into the dark, when their bid to take Earth itself had met Mallory and Union’s and merchanter opposition. The Fleet, having lost all its allies, had had to retreat into deep space… to obtain supply by means that, indeed, no one had quite proved.

Most merchant ships had dealt with Mazian before the Battle of Pell; and once James Robert raised the specter of continued merchant supply far more widespread than anyone had added up, yes, it was chillingly reasonable that some merchanters, to whom personal independence was a centuries-old ethic, might still be willing to cut other merchanters’ throats by continuing that trade on a large and knowing scale. That trade, not conducted on station books, had historically been hard to track—hard to develop statistics on what no station could observe. And what James Robert suggested was that Mazian had found large-scale ways to tap into the whole shadow trade, the meetings of ships at isolated jump-points, where manifests and cargomasters’ stamps miraculously changed, and goods mutated or vanished on their way to the next port, altering the very records on which the statistics and the tariffs were based.

It was also a network that extended routes beyond what any Station tracked as regularly existing—no station could maintain records that covered every ship contact, and every ship movement, when only station calls registered in the ships’ logs. The shadow market was a network where, theoretically, you could buy anything that moved by ship. Union, with order, had never liked it. Union didn’t want Alliance merchanters serving its far, colonial ports—internal security, Union insisted. Others said it was because Union didn’t want Pell and Earth to know how rapidly and how far it was expanding. At the same time Union was aggressively building ships, Union had selected Alliance merchanters it would allow to reach Cyteen, and favored them with deals designed to provoke divisive jealousy among merchanters. That increased demands on Pell to lower dock charges to match the favorable rates Union offered. But now James Robert came saying that Union should gain its point, and that merchanters should restrict themselves , and that all stations should lower tariffs in exchange for a merchanter pledge to conduct all trade inside the tariffs.

That, James Robert implied, or watch the whole Alliance slide blindly into Mazian’s grasp—as she was worried about it sliding into Union hands.

But both of them had to admit that hard times would make some merchanters desperate enough to trade with the devil—or to call him back as a hero, a savior from grasping station politicians.

Conrad Mazian, hero. Themselves all as outlaws and traitors. The War renewed. It wasn’t a new thought. Just the resurgence of an old, old worry.

All stakes became far, far higher, in that thought. Union didn’t want that scenario for a future, either.

Finity going back to trade because the War was over? No. She’d lay odds that there’d been no far-off victory. She’d also lay odds Mallory had sent Finity back to merchant trade—for one urgent reason, to do exactly what James Robert had done with her: cut deals only James Robert could cut. He’d evidently come to her first, to get Pell lined up behind him, counting on her ability to deliver Pell’s vote.

After that, he was going to seek general merchanter approval—and where better to do it but along the string of stars that were the stations almost Union and almost Alliance, and doing a delicate ballet of relationship with both,

Mariner. Voyager. Esperance.

Then the merchanters themselves. No station, no government, no military organization could sway several hundred highly independent merchanter captains from a trade they thought was their God-given right to conduct, as no one could get the same merchanter captains to agree to set up other merchanter captains in business to compete with them. But this man might.

In the vids that came from Old Earth there were blue sky days. There never were on Downbelow. The clouds had endless patterns, sometimes smooth, sometimes with bubbled bottoms, sometimes with layers and sheets that traveled at different speeds in the fierce winds aloft. Great Sun usually appeared through thick veils—so that if the sun ever did show an edge of fire the downers took it for an event of great importance.

But while downers revered Great Sun, and wanted to stand in polite respect and wait for Great Sun’s rare appearances, the time between those appearances was just too long to endure.

So they made the Watchers, great-eyed and reverent statues that sat gazing at the sky in lieu of living downers.

There were several such statues on a forested hill near the Base, only knee-high, so you’d trip over them if you didn’t know they were there. Two looked up. One looked a little downward from the hill, and if you looked where it was looking, you could see the Base itself through the trees,

Fletcher already knew where the site was, so he knew where Melody and Patch were going when they climbed that hill. He followed, and Bianca trekked after him.

“Where are they going?” Bianca panted And then stopped cold as she saw the images mostly hidden in the weeds. “Oh,—my.”

She was impressed. Fletcher felt a warmth go through him.

“Bring watch sky” Patch said, with a wave of his arm all about. “Good see sky!”

Great view, was what Patch meant, and today it was on the downers’ agenda to look at the sky, for some reason—or maybe to show Bianca this special place, as they’d shown it to him early last fall,

“It’s wonderful,” Bianca said “Do they know at the Base, I mean, do they know this place is here?”

“I don’t know,” Fletcher said. “It’s none of the researchers’ business, is it, if the hisa don’t tell.”

He had that attitude about it. He didn’t know whether if he looked it up on the computers back at the Base he’d find it was known to the researchers, and off-limits especially to juniors in the program; but juniors in the program didn’t have personal hisa guides to bring them here, either.

It was a mark of how much Melody and Patch had accepted Bianca, he thought, that all of a sudden this morning they’d snagged him away from brush-cutting and wanted him to get Bianca.

“Banky,” they’d called her when she came, addressing her directly. “Walk, walk, walk.”

That meant a fair hike. Three walks.

So Bianca had slipped out of her work this morning, too. It was easy. The job got done sometime today. On the station they’d have had inquiries out after two teens under supervision who took a morning break.

Here, they found a secret place and watched the clouds scud overhead.

“The clouds are really moving,” Bianca said, pointing aloft as they sprawled flat on their backs beside Melody and Patch. “There must really be a wind up there.”

“Rains come,” Melody said, and reached out her hand and held Fletcher’s tightly in her calloused fingers.

Rains. The monsoon.

The weather reports at the Base had been saying there was a low in the gulf, up from the southern continent But those were advisements relayed from the station; the station watching from space was never that good about figuring out the weather—ultimately, yes, the conditions were changing, but they were never right. There were so many variables that drove the weather, and real ground-level data came only from four places in the world, from the farms to the south, the port, from a research station on the gulf shore, and from the Base, from a primitive-looking little box full of instruments. The staff was in the habit of joking that if you wanted to know the weather, the downers always knew and the atmospherics people used dice.

But the clouds were darkening with a suddenness that raised the fine hair on his arms. The monsoon was coming: born in space as he’d been, even he could feel disturbance in the sudden change in the sky and in the air. That was why they’d brought him and Bianca here. Melody and Patch pointed at the sky and talked about the wind blowing the clouds. Maybe, he thought with a sinking heart, they were feeling whatever drove downers to go on their wanderings. They would go into danger in their preoccupation.

Maybe this was the last day he would ever see them. Ever.

“River he go in sky,” Patch said with an expansive wave of a furry arm. “Walk with Great Sun. Down, down, down he fall, bring up flower, lot flower.”

Melody inhaled deeply. “Rain smell.”

What might rain smell like? He wondered, among other things he wondered, but he didn’t dare risk it even for a second. The clouds were uncommonly gray today, and if he’d had to guess the hour in the last fifteen minutes he’d think it more and more like twilight, even though he knew it was noon. In one part of his mind he was scared and disturbed. In another—he was suddenly fighting off a feeling it was near dark. An urge to yawn.

A danger sign, if your cylinder was giving out. But he thought it was the light. Light dimming did that to you, whether it was the mainday-alterday change on station or whether it was the rotation of the planet away from the sun.

“Feels like night,” Bianca said without his saying anything,

“Yeah,” he said,

“Rain,” Melody said, and in a moment more a fat drop hit Fletcher on the hand,

More hit the weeds with a force that made the leaves move.

“We’d better get back,” Fletcher said, He was growing scared of a danger of a more physical sort, lightning and flood. He’d seen occasional rain, but they’d all been warned about the monsoon storms, about the suddenness with which floods could cut them off from the paths they knew—dangers station-born people didn’t know about. From a sameness of weather, highs and lows, days and nights, they were all of a sudden faced with what informational lectures told him was not going to be the full-blown monsoon, not all in one afternoon.

Light flashed. Lightning, he thought. He’d rarely seen it except from the safety of the domes.

Then came a loud boom that sounded right at hand, not distantly as he’d heard it before. They’d both jumped. And Melody and Patch thought it was funny.

“Thunder,” he insisted shakily. He was sure it was. Shuttles broke the sound barrier, but only remotely from here. “I think we’d better think about moving.”

“We take you safe,” Melody said, and ran and patted the statues, talked a sudden spate of hisa language to the statues, and left a single flower with them.

Then they scampered back, grabbed them by a hand apiece, and hurried them back toward the Base as droplets pelted down, let them go then on their own and just scampered ahead of them. A strong wind swept through the trees, making a rushing sound he thought at first was water rushing.

A faint siren sound wailed through the woods, then, over the pelting rain: that was the weather-warning, late.

The Base itself hadn’t seen it coming. Not in time. Someone was scrambling for the alarm switch. Someone was red-faced.

And they were a long way from shelter.

Chapter 4

The adventurer teetered on the edge of a blue-edged pit.

Fell in. Slid, with heart-stopping swiftness, whipped a scary spiral through stars, and shot out onto an unforgiving desert.

A dinosaur pack was on the horizon. Coming this way.

JR looked around for advantage, kicked the rocks around him.

A purple glow came from under the sand.

That was either another Hell level or a way out. He saw a big rock not so far away, and moved it with improbable strength. Actinic light flooded up at him through the sand, and he eased his feet into it. Slid in and down as the dino pack roared up over his head and lumbering bodies shook the ground. Teeth snapped and hot breath gusted after him.

Snaky purple ropes sprouted tendrils around him as he shot through the shapeless black, retarding his fall.

He shot through their grasp and with a sudden drop his tailbone hit a soft surface. Lights dimmed And brightened. Three times.

Game done.

He took off the helmet, raked a hand through his sweaty hair, and sat there on the floor below the exit chute, breathing hard for a moment. Shaking. Telling himself he was safe. Games were good. Games honed the reflexes. And no one’s life depended on him.

The adjacent chute spat out a cousin, Bucklin. And a second one, Lyra.

Equally exhausted, equally shaky. It was a rush, one that didn’t mean life and death, but combat-weary nerves didn’t entirely believe it.

“Pretty good, for purple lights,” Lyra said, out of breath.

“Yeah.”

They hadn’t done a vid ride since they were kids—vid rides had existed at Earth’s Sol Station, but there’d been, thanks to that station’s morality ordinances, only kid themes or mocked-up combat, and they’d seen mostly youngsters doing the one and wouldn’t let their potential pilots do the other. This ride mandated at least five feet in height, and adult spacers were doing it, so they’d delved up the chits from their pockets and given it a try, as they said, to test it out and see whether they’d clear the establishment for the three youngest cousins.

JR got to rubbery legs. You had to work up there in the sim. Stupid as it all was, it was, as Lyra had said, pretty good for purple lights and dinosaurs. He was sweating and breathing hard. And had a few bruises from knocking into real, though padded, walls.

This place advertised 47 rides, software-dependent. Some were hand-to-hand combat Some were relaxing. Some were workouts. This one, rated chase-and-dodge, proved that true. They were still sweating when they went out to a noisy little soft-bar—no alcohol in this establishment, which had strict rules about doing the ride straight There was a place down in White Sector that didn’t check sobriety, and that had a lot wilder adult content than the Old Man would like to know about, JR strongly suspected.

But Finity had been gone from Pell too long, out where they’d been had been real ordnance, real guns, and it wasn’t sex he was principally worried about as an influence on their youngest crew, although that was a concern with juniors mentally old enough but physically not. What the Old Man restricted most for the juniors on moral grounds were the space combat themes and, in the realm of reality, contact with the rougher element of some docksides. JR, in direct charge of the juniors, didn’t want to let the junior-juniors unsupervised into any establishment without knowing what the place was like—or (figuring that even very young Finity personnel had reflexes other people might lack) whether there were liabilities to other users.