He pushed the door open on manual. “Damon,” he said, and the curtain at the rear of the cabinets opened. Damon came out and sat down among the canisters they used for furniture, in the light of the batteried lamp they used to escape comp’s watchful economy and infallible memory. He came and sank down wearily, gave Damon the bottle and Damon took a drink. Unshaven, both of them, with the look of the unwashed, depressed crowds which collected down here.
“You’re late,” Damon said. “You trying to give me ulcers?”
He fished the cards out of his pocket, arranged them by memory, made quick notes with a grease pencil before he should forget. Damon gave him paper and he wrote the details for each one, and Damon did not talk to him the while.
Then it was done, his memory spilled, and he laid the batch on top of the next canister and reached for the wine bottle. He drank and set it down. “Met Bluetooth. Said your mother’s fine. Give you this.” He drew the brooch from his pocket and watched as Damon took it into his hands with that melancholy look that told him it might have some meaning beyond the gold itself. Damon nodded glumly and pocketed it; he did not much speak of his family, living or dead, not in reminiscence.
“She knows,” Damon said, “she knows what it’s coming to. She can see it from her vid screens, hear it from the Downers… Did Bluetooth say anything specific?”
“Only that your mother thought we needed it.”
“No word of my brother?”
“It didn’t come up. We weren’t in a place we could talk, the Downer and I.”
Damon nodded, drew a deep breath and leaned his elbows on his knees, head bowed. Damon lived for such news. When it failed him his spirits fell, and it hurt. Hurt both of them. He felt as if he had dealt the wound.
“It’s getting tight out there,” Josh said. “Lots of anxiety. I delayed a little along the way, listening, but no news; everyone’s scared but no one knows anything.”
Damon lifted his head, took the bottle, drank down half the remaining wine, hardly a swallow. “Whatever we’re going to do, we’ve got to do soon. Either go into the secured sections… or try for the shuttle. We can’t go on here.”
“Or make ourselves a bubble in the tunnels,” he said. In his reckoning, it was the only realistic idea. Most humans were pathologically frightened of the tunnels. What few humans who would try them… maybe they could fight them off. They had the guns. Might be able to live there. But they were about out of time… for any choices. It was not an existence to look forward to. And maybe we’ll be lucky, he thought miserably, looking at Damon, who looked at the floor, lost in his own thoughts. Maybe they’ll just blow the area.
The storeroom door opened. Ngo came in on them, walked up and gathered up the cards, read through the notations, pursed his wrinkled mouth and frowned. “You’re sure?”
“No mistakes.”
Ngo muttered unhappily at the quality of the merchandise, as if they were at fault, started to leave.
“Ngo,” Damon said, “heard a rumor the market’s going for the new paper. That so?”
“Where did you hear that?”
Damon shrugged. “Two men talking in front. That true, Ngo?”
“They’re dreaming. You see a way to get your hands into the new system, you tell me.”
“I’m thinking on it.”
Ngo muttered to himself and left
“That so?” Josh asked.
Damon shook his head. “Thought I might jar something loose. Ngo won’t shake or there’s no way anyone knows.”
“I’d bet on the latter.”
“So would I.” Damon set his hands on his knees, sighed, looked up. “Why don’t we go out and get something to eat? No one out there who’s trouble, is there?”
The memory which had left him came back with dark force. He opened his mouth to say something, and of a sudden came a rumbling which shook the floor, a boom and crash which overrode screams from outside.
“The seals,” Damon exclaimed, on his feet. Cries continued, wild screams, chairs overturning in the front room. Damon rushed for the storeroom door and Josh ran with him, out as far as the back door, where Ngo and his wife and son had scrambled to get out, Ngo with his market records in hand.
“No,” Josh exclaimed, “Wait… that would have been the doors to white… we’re sealed — but there were troops up at nine two — they wouldn’t have troops in here if they were going to push the button — ”
“Com,” Ngo’s wife exclaimed. There was an announcement coming through the vid unit in the front room. They rushed in that direction, into the restaurant area, where a handful of people were clustered about the vid and a looter was busy gathering an armful of bottles from the bar. “Hey!” Ngo shouted in outrage, and the man snatched two more and ran.
It was Jon Lukas on the screen. It always was when Mazian had an official announcement to station. The man had become a skeleton, a pitiable shadow-eyed skeleton. “… been sealed off,” Lukas was saying. “White-area residents and others who wish to leave will be permitted to leave. Go to the green dock access and you will be permitted to pass.”
“They’re herding all the undesirables in here,” Ngo said. Sweat stood on his wrinkled face. “What about us who work here, Mr. Stationmaster Lukas? What about us honest people caught in here?”
Lukas repeated all the announcement. It was probably a recording; doubtful if they ever let the man on live.
“Come on,” Damon said, hooking Josh’s arm. They walked out the front door and around the corner onto green dock, walked far along the upward curve, where a great mass of people had gathered looking toward white. They were not the only ones. There were troops, moving out along the far-side wall, by the berths and gantries.
“Going to be shooting,” Josh muttered. “Damon, let’s get out of here.”
“Look at the doors. Look at the doors.”
He did look. The massive valves were tightly joined. The personnel access at the side was not open. It did not open.
“They’re not going to let them through,” Damon said. “It was a lie… to get the fugitives to the docks over there.”
“Let’s get back,” Josh pleaded with him.
Someone fired; their side, the troops — a barrage came over their heads and into the shopfronts. People shrieked and shoved, and they fled with it, down the dock, into nine, into Ngo’s doorway, while riot surged past and down the hall. A few others tried to follow them, but Ngo rushed up with a stick and fended them off, all the while shrieking curses at the two of them for running in with trouble after them.
They got the door closed, but the crowd outside was more interested in running, the path of least resistance. The room lights came on full, on a room full of tangled chairs and spilled dishes.
In silence Ngo and his family began cleaning up. “Here,” Ngo said to Josh, and thrust a wet, stew-soiled rag at him. Ngo turned a second frowning look on Damon, although he did not order: a Konstantin still had some privilege. But Damon started picking up dishes and straightening chairs and mopping with the rest of them.
It grew quiet outside again, with an occasional pounding at the door. Faces stared at them through the plastic window, people simply wanting in, exhausted and frightened people, wanting the service of the place.
Ngo opened the doors, cursed and shouted, let them in, set himself behind the bar and started doling out drinks with no regard to credit for the moment. “You pay,” he warned all and sundry. “Just sit down and we’ll make out the tickets.” Some left without paying; some did sit down. Damon took a bottle of wine and drew Josh to a table in the farthest corner, where there was a short ell. It was their usual place, which had a view of the front door and unobstructed access to the kitchen and their hiding places. The com music channel had come on again, playing something wistfully soothing and romantic.