He blinked, suspicious and hopeful at once, frowned at the barb Angelo had to sling, even now. He gathered himself to his feet, which he did not need to do, but he wanted to see faces. “If I had received notification of the situation, I would have made every effort; as it was, I came with all possible haste. As for the proposal, by no means impossible: housing that number on Downbelow could be done in short order, with no difficulty… except for those housed there. The conditions… after three years, I can tell you… are primitive. Downer labor making pit housing, airtightened to a reasonable extent; enough compressors; and the simplest locally available materials for the bracing. Downer labor is always the most efficient down there; no inconvenience of breathers; but humans in great enough numbers can replace them — field work, manufacture, clearing land, digging their own dome shells. Just enough Pell staff to supervise and guard them. Confinement is no problem; particularly your more difficult cases would do well down there — you take those breathers away, and they’re not going anywhere or doing anything you don’t want.”
“Mr. Lukas.” Anton Eizel stood up, an old man, a friend of Angelo’s and a stubborn do-gooder. “Mr. Lukas, I must misunderstand what I’m hearing. These are free citizens. We’re not talking about establishing penal colonies. These are refugees. We’re not turning Downbelow into a labor camp.”
“Tour Q!” someone shouted from the tiers. “See what a wreck they’ve made out of those sections! We had homes there, beautiful homes. Vandalism and destruction. They’re tearing up the place. They’ve attacked our security people with pipes and kitchen knives, and who knows if we got all the guns back after the riot?”
“There’ve been murders over there,” someone else shouted. “Gangs of hoodlums.”
“No,” said a third, a strange voice in council. Heads turned to the thin man who had taken a seat, Jon saw, in the place he himself had vacated above. The person stood up, a nervous, sallow-faced individual. “My name is Vassily Kressich. I was invited to come out of Q. I was a councillor on Russell’s Station. I represent Q. All that you say did happen, in a panic, but there’s order now, and the hoodlums have been removed to your detention.”
Jon drew a breath. “Welcome to councillor Kressich. But for the sake of Q itself, pressures should be relieved. Population should be transferred. The station has waited a decade on the Downbelow expansion, and now we have the manpower to begin it on a large scale. Those who work become part of the system. They build what they themselves live in. Does the gentleman from Q not agree?”
“We need our papers cleared. We refuse to be transferred anywhere without papers. This happened to us once, and look at our situation. Further transfers without clear paper can only add to our predicament, taking us further and further from any hope of establishing identity. The people I represent will not let it happen again.”
“Is this a threat, Mr. Kressich?” Angelo asked.
The man looked close to collapse. “No,” he said quickly. “No, sir. Only I — am speaking the opinion of the people I represent. Their desperation. They have to have their papers cleared. Anything else, any other solution is what the gentleman says — a labor camp for the benefit of Pell. Is that what you intend?”
“Mr. Kressich, Mr. Kressich,” said Angelo. “Will everyone please settle themselves to take things in order. You’ll be heard in your turn, Mr. Kressich. Jon Lukas, will you continue?”
“I’ll have the precise figures as soon as I can have access to central comp. I need to be brought current with the keys. Every facility on Downbelow can be expanded, yes. I still have the detailed plans. I’ll have a cost and labor analysis available within a matter of days.”
Angelo nodded, looked at him, frowning. It could not be a pleasant moment for him.
“We’re fighting for our survival.” Angelo said. “Plainly, there’s a point where we seriously have to worry about our life-support systems. Some of the load has to be moved. Nor can we allow the ratio of Pell citizens to refugees to become unbalanced. We have to be concerned about riot… there and here. Apologies, Mr. Kressich. These are the realities under which we live, not of our choosing, nor, I’m sure, of yours. We can’t risk the station or the base on Downbelow; or we find ourselves all on freighters bound for Earth, stripped of everything. That is the third choice.”
“No,” the murmur went around the room.
Jon sat down, silent, staring at Angelo, reckoning Pell’s present fragile balance and odds as they existed. You’ve lost already, he thought of saying, of standing up in council and laying things out as they were. He did not. He sat with his mouth tightly closed. It was a matter of time. Peace… might afford a chance. But that was far from what was shaping out there with this influx of refugees from all these stations. They had all the Beyond flowing in two directions like a watershed, toward themselves and toward Union; and they were not equipped to handle it under Angelo’s kind of rules.
Year upon year of Konstantin rule, Konstantin social theory, the vaunted “community of law” which disdained security and monitoring and now refused to use the clenched fist on Q, hoping that vocal appeals were going to win a mob over to order. He could bring that matter up too. He sat still.
There was a bad taste in his mouth, reckoning that what chaos Konstantin leniency had wrought on the station it would manage to wreak on Downbelow too. He foresaw no success for the plans he was asked for: Emilio Konstantin and his wife would be in charge of the work, two of a kind, who would let the Downers take their own time about schedules and protect their superstitions and let them do things their own leisurely, lackadaisical way, which ended with equipment damaged and construction delayed. And what that pair would do with what was over in Q offered worse prospects.
He sat still, estimating their chances, and drawing unhappy conclusions.
ii
“It can’t survive,” he said to Vittorio that night, to his son Vittorio and to Dayin Jacoby, the only relative he favored. He leaned back in his chair and drank bitter Downer wine, in his apartment which was piled with the stacked expensive furniture which had been in the other, severed, rooms. “Pell’s falling apart under us. Angelo’s soft-handed policies are going to lose it for us, and maybe get our throats cut in riot into the bargain. It’s going, you understand me? And do we sit and take what comes?”
Vittorio looked suddenly whey-faced as his habit was when talk turned serious. Dayin was of another sort. He sat grim and thoughtful.
“A contact,” Jon said yet more plainly, “has to exist.”
Dayin nodded. “In times like these, two doors might be a sensible necessity. And I’m sure doors exist all over this station… with the right keys.”
“How compromised… do you reckon those doors are? And where? Your cousin’s handled cases of some of our transients. You have any ideas?”
“Black market in rejuv drugs and others. That’s in full flower here, don’t you know? Konstantin himself gets it; you got it on Downbelow.”