The lock cycled again, replacing vacuum with atmosphere in the crowded space between. Raul felt his suit lose its armor rigidity, glance back to be sure that no one disobeyed him by loosening a helmet. After nearly three megaseconds of uncertain reprocessed air, he knew well enough how strong the temptation was. He checked his rifle, settled it in the crook of his arm.
The inner hatch slid open. He looked through—into the staring faces of half a dozen men and women, frozen in disbelief. They had not, he gathered, been expecting him. He pushed through into the corridor, searching the frightened faces for a sign of leadership; taking in the filth, the patched and piecemeal clothing. He heard the startled curses of the men behind him, raised his own voice. “All right, who—”
A woman who might have been young or old moved away from the rest toward him, carrying something bundled in rags; he saw a sheen of tears filming her cheeks, her dark eyes fixed on him with peculiar urgency. He heard her voice, trembling, “… a miracle, it's a miracle …” Before he could react she had forced the bundle into his arms; she pushed off and disappeared down the sloping tunnel. Taken aback, he looked down at the ragged bundle and found himself holding a newborn child. The baby made no sound; when he saw why, he turned his face away. “Whose baby is this?” His voice hardened with anger, with denial.
One of the men moved toward him, fear still on his face, a kind of desperation dragging him forward. “It's mine … ours. Please … please, let me have it.” Something in his tone made the baby a thing. He stretched his arms; one sleeve flopped free, torn up to the elbow. His nails were outlined with black dirt; dirt filigreed the lines of his hands.
Raul held the child out slowly, uncertain. The father took it, almost jerked it from his arms. Abruptly the man pushed through the circle of armed crewmen and caught the edge of the hatchway. He thrust the baby inside, his hand found the control plate, his fist struck it and started it cycling.
Raul saw Sandoval leap forward, but the man pressed himself against the wall, covering the plate, as the door began to slide shut. Sandoval's gloved fist caught him by the front of his shirt, ripping the rotten cloth; the man pushed him away with a foot. The hatch sealed shut as Sandoval tried to force his fingers into the gap. The light blinked red from green above their heads. “Why you—” Sandoval turned back, as two of his crew pinned the man between them.
“Sandoval!” Raul raised a hand. “That's enough. That's enough … It was a—mercy killing. Let him go.”
“Sir—” He saw Sandoval's rage trapped behind helmet glass.
Raul shook his head, putting aside the memory of his own three daughters and two sons, all grown now and sound. He watched the father sag against the wall in slow motion as the crewmen released him. The man plucked mournfully at the drifting edges of his torn shirt, as though the tear were a death wound.
Raul glanced back down the tunnel, saw that the rest of the onlookers had disappeared. He moved toward their prisoner through the crew's muttered anger, through a ring of set faces. The man cringed and put up his hands. “I had to … I had to. Somebody had to do it; she knew that, but she wouldn't admit it! Everybody said so. It would've died anyway—wouldn't it? Wouldn't it? You saw it, it was defective.…” He lowered his hands, reached out to grasp Raul's suited arm. “You saw it?”
Raul's fist tightened against the urge to slap the hand away. He took a deep breath. “Yes, I saw it. It wouldn't have lived.”
The man began to whimper, clinging to his sleeve. “Thank you … thank you …”
Raul shook him roughly, caught somewhere between pity and disgust. “Who are you?”
The man looked at him blankly, stupidly.
“Your name,” Raul said. “Identify yourself.”
“Wind … Wind Kitavu.” The man straightened, letting go of Raul's arm as reason came back into his eyes; aged eyes in a young man's face. “Who—what are you doin' here?”
“Askin' the questions. First, is anybody in charge here, and if so, can you take us to 'em?”
Wind Kitavu nodded, staring distractedly into the muzzles of half a dozen rifles. “The prime minister, the Assembly. I know where the chambers are. I'll take you ….” His fingers searched the tear in his shirt again, drew the edges together nervously. “You aren't the—” Raul watched the question form on his lips, saw him swallow it. “You want me to take you?”
Raul gestured his men aside; letting Wind Kitavu pass, he followed, and the crewmen fell in behind him. He noticed that one of the prisoner's legs was shorter than the other and twisted. The gates of hell; the capital of Heaven.
They were not led out onto the surface as he had expected. Wind Kitavu kept to the subterranean hallways, where dull-eyed men and women with stringy hair watched them pass, showing mingled fear and wonder, but mostly confusion. No threat. He felt his wariness settle into a bleak feeling of depression. A woman pushed out from the wall, moving with Wind Kitavu, “… starship …?” Wind Kitavu shook his head, and she drifted free, her face tightening. Raul saw despair in her eyes as he passed, and his spirits rose.
On his orders Wind Kitavu pointed the way to the communications center, and he sent Sandoval with two men to investigate. With the others he continued on, wondering what they would find when they reached the assembly chambers.
Whatever he had been expecting could not have prepared him for what he found. Someone had sent word of their arrival ahead: seven figures stood waiting, tiny in a vast rough-walled chamber that he somehow instinctively knew must have been intended for storage and not as a meeting hall. And like gem crystals in a matrix of barren rock, the five men and two women shone, resplendent in robes of state. One man, Raul noticed, was still adjusting the folds of a sleeve tangled by haste. The nearest of them started forward, his drifting progress a ceremony, his face set in expressionless formality. Raul studied the intricacies of layer on layer of brocade as the official approached: the fibers absorbed and enhanced light, sent it back at his eyes in a shower of scintillating fire. He began to see, as he probed the wash of gemlight, the patches where it dimmed and faltered. The garments were stained and frayed, eaten by time. The man wore a soft, turbaned head covering of the same material; his seamed face and gnarled hands, fading darkly against the brilliance, were clean.
Raul waited silently until the official reached him. The six assembly members, their own threadbare splendor muted, clustered slowly behind him. Their group stare rested on Raul's weapon rather than his face. At last the man lifted his gaze, searching Raul's helmet glass to meet his eyes. “I am Silver Tyr,”—the voice surprised him with its unwitting arrogance—“President of the Lansing Assembly, Prime Minister of the Heaven Belt—”
The man broke off, as laughter rattled in Raul's helmet; for a long second he didn't realize that it was not his own bitten-off laugh, that it had come from one of his crewmen. He raised a hand to stop it, hearing mentally the clattering mockery the chamber would make of the sound.
“And you are—?” The prime minister forced the words with rigid dignity—demanding respect not for an aging shadow man, ludicrous in the rags of lost richness, but for the undeniable fact of the lost dream-time, of what they had all been, once, before their fall from grace.
“Raul Nakamore, Hand of Harmony.” And almost unthinkingly he held out a hand, gloved against contamination but open in friendship, in recognition. “We mean you people no harm; we only want your cooperation while we're here.”