“To fire on refugee ships?”
“If ships come in that we can’t handle — yes. I’d like to talk to Elene sometime today; she’d be the one to make the initial approach to the merchanters. I can’t muster sympathy for five rioters today. Forgive me.”
His voice cracked. Damon reached across the desk, caught his wrist and pressed it, let it go again. “Emilio needs help down there?”
“He says not. The mill’s a shambles. Mud everywhere.”
They find all of them dead?“
He nodded. “Last night. Bennett Jacint and Ty Brown; Wes Kyle yesterday noon… this long, to hunt the banks and the reeds. Emilio and Miliko say morale is all right, considering. The Downers are building dikes. More of them have been anxious for human trade; I’ve ordered more let into base and I’ve authorized some of the trained ones into maintenance up here: their life-support is in good shape, and it frees up some techs we can upgrade. I’m shuttling down every human volunteer who’ll go, and that means even trained dock hands; they can handle construction equipment. Or they can learn. It’s a new age. A tighter one.” He pressed his lips together, sucked in a long breath. “Have you and Elene thought of Earth?”
“Sir?”
“You, your brother, Elene and Miliko — think about it, will you?”
“No,” Damon said. “Pull out and run? You think that’s what it’s coming to?”
“Figure the odds, Damon. We didn’t get help from Earth, just observers. They’re figuring on cutting their losses, not sending us reinforcements or ships. No. We’re just settling lower and lower. Mazian can’t hold forever. The shipyards at Mariner… were vital. It’s Viking soon; and whatever else Union reaches out to take. Union’s cutting the Fleet off from supply; Earth already has. We’re out of everything but room to run.”
“The Hinder Stars — you know there’s some talk about reopening one of those stations — ”
“A dream. We’d never have the chance. If the Fleet goes… Union would make it a target, same as us, just as quickly. And selfishly, completely selfishly, I’d like to see my children out of here.”
Damon’s face was very white. “No. Absolutely no.”
“Don’t be noble. I’d rather your safety than your help. Konstantins won’t fare well in years to come. It’s mindwipe if they take us. You worry about your criminals; consider yourself and Elene. That’s Union’s solution… puppets in the offices; lab-born populations to fill up the world… they’ll plow up Downbelow and build. Heaven help the Downers, I’d cooperate with them… so would you… to keep Pell safe from the worst excesses; but they won’t have things that easy way. And I don’t want to see you in their hands. We’re targets. I’ve lived all my life in that condition. Surely it’s not asking too much that I do one selfish thing — that I save my sons.”
“What did Emilio say?”
“Emilio and I are still discussing it.”
“He told you no. Well, so do I.”
“Your mother will have a word with you.”
“Are you sending her?”
Angelo frowned. “You know that’s not possible.”
“So. I know that. And I’m not going, and I don’t think Emilio will choose to either. My blessing to him if he does, but I’m not.”
“Then you don’t know anything,” Angelo said shortly. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“We won’t,” Damon said. “If we pulled out, panic would set in here. You know that. You know how it would look, besides that I won’t do it in the first place.”
It was true; he knew that it was.
“No,” Damon said again, and laid his hand atop his father’s, rose and left.
Angelo sat, looked toward the wall, toward the portraits which stood on the shelf, a succession of tridee figures… Alicia before her accident; young Alicia and himself; a succession of Damons and Emilios from infancy to manhood, to wives and hopes of grandchildren. He looked at all the figures assembled there, at all the gathered ages of them, and reckoned that the good days hereafter would be fewer.
After a fashion he was angry with his boys; and after another… proud. He had brought them up what they were.
Emilio, he wrote to the succession of images, and the son on Downbelow, your brother sends his love. Send me what skilled Downers you can spare. I’m sending you a thousand volunteers from the station; go ahead with the new base if they have to backpack equipment in. Appeal to the Downers for help, trade for native foodstuffs. All love.
And to security: Process out the assuredly nonviolent. We’re going to shift them to Downbelow as volunteers.
He reckoned, even as he did it, where that led; the worst would stay on station, next the heart and brain of Pell. Transfer the outlaws down and keep the heel on them; some kept urging it. But fragile agreements with the natives, fragile self-respect for the techs who had been persuaded to go down there in the mud and the primitive conditions… it could not be turned into a penal colony. It was life. It was the body of Pell, and he refused to violate it, to ruin all the dreams they had had for its future.
There were dark hours when he thought of arranging an accident in which all of Q might decompress. It was an unspeakable idea, a madman’s solution, to kill thousands of innocent along with the undesirables… to take in these shiploads one after the other, and have accident after accident, keeping Pell free of the burden, keeping Pell what it was. Damon lost sleep over five men. He had begun to meditate on utter horror.
For that reason too he wanted his sons gone from Pell. He thought sometimes that he might actually be capable of applying the measures some urged, that it was weakness that prevented him, that he was endangering what was good and whole to save a polluted rabble, out of which reports of rape and murder came daily.
Then he considered where it led, and what kind of life they all faced when they had made a police state of Pell, and recoiled from it with all the convictions Pell had ever had.
“Sir,” a voice cut in, with the sharper tone of transmissions from central. “Sir, we have inbound traffic.”
“Give it here,” he said, and swallowed heavily as the schematic reached his screen. Nine of them. “Who are they?”
“The carrier Atlantic,” the voice of central returned. “Sir, they have eight freighters in convoy. They ask to dock. They advise of dangerous conditions aboard.”
“Denied,” Angelo said. “Not till we get an understanding.” They could not take so many; could not; not another lot like Mallory’s. His heart sped, hurting him. “Get me Kreshov on Atlantic. Get me contact.”
Contact was refused from the other end. The warship would do as it pleased. There was nothing they could do to prevent it.
The convoy moved in, silent, ominous with the load it bore, and he reached for the alert for security.
iii
The rain still came down, the thunder dying. Tam-utsa-pi-tan watched the humans come and go, arms locked about her knees, her bare feet sunk in mire, the water trickling slowly off her fur. Much that humans did made no sense; much that humans made was of no visible use, perhaps for the gods, perhaps that they were mad; but graves… this sad thing the hisa understood. Tears, shed behind masks, the hisa understood. She watched, rocking slightly, until the last humans had gone, leaving only the mud and the rain in this place where humans laid their dead.