“No station police for him,” James said.
“You hurt, Mr. Kressich?” Coledy asked.
“No.” He discounted bruises, felt his way to his desk. There was still shouting outside. He pulled the chair up to the desk again and sat down, his legs shaking. “He talked about having paid money,” he said, knowing full well what was going on, that the forms came from Coledy and cost whatever the traffic would bear. “He’s got a bad record with station and I can’t get him a pass. What do you mean selling him an assurance?”
Coledy turned a slow look from him to the man on the floor and back again. “Well, now he’s got a bad mark with us, and that’s worse. Get him out of here. Take him out down the hall, the other way.”
“I can’t see any more people,” Kressich moaned, resting his head against his hands. “Get them out of here.”
Coledy walked into the outer corridor. “Clear it out!”
Kressich could hear him shouting above the cries of protest and the sobbing. Some of Coledy’s men began to make them move… armed, some of them, with metal bars. The crowd gave back, and Coledy returned to the office. They were taking Redding out the other door, shaking him to make him walk, for he was beginning to recover, bleeding from the temple in a red wash which obscured his face.
They’ll kill him, Kressich thought. Somewhere in the less trafficked hours, a body would find its way somewhere to be found by station. Redding surely knew it. He was trying to fight again, but they got him out and the door closed.
“Mop that up,” Coledy told one of those who remained, and the man searched for something to clean the floor. Coledy sat down again on the edge of the desk.
Kressich reached under it, brought out one of the bottles of wine with which Coledy supplied him. Glasses. He poured two, sipped at the Downer wine and tried to warm the tremors from his limbs, the twinges of pain from his chest. “I’m too old for this,” he complained.
“You don’t have to worry about Redding,” Coledy told him, picking up his glass.
“You can’t create situations like that,” Kressich snapped. “I know what you’re up to. But don’t sell the passes where there’s no chance I’ll be able to get them.”
Coledy grinned, an exceedingly unpleasant expression. “Redding would ask for it sooner or later. This way he paid for the privilege.”
“I don’t want to know,” Kressich said sourly. He drank a large mouthful of the wine. “Don’t give me the details.”
“We’d better get you to your apartment, Mr. Kressich. Keep a little watch on you. Just till this matter is straightened out.”
He finished the wine at his own rate. One of the youths in Coledy’s group had gathered up the stack of papers the struggle had scattered about the floor, and laid it on his desk. Kressich stood up then, his knees still weak, averted his eyes from the blood which had tracked on the matting.
Coledy and four of his men escorted him, through that same back door which had received Redding and his guards. They walked down the corridor into the sector in which he maintained his small apartment, and he used his manual key… comp had cut them off and nothing worked here but manual controls.
“I don’t need your company,” he said shortly. Coledy gave him a wry and mocking smile, parodied a bow.
“Talk with you later,” Coledy said.
Kressich went inside, closed the door again by manual, stood there with nausea threatening him. He sat down finally, in the chair by the door, tried to stay still a moment.
Madness accelerated in Q. The passes which were hope for some to get out of Q only increased the despair of those left behind. The roughest were left, so that the temperature of the whole was rising. The gangs ruled. No one was safe who did not belong to one of the organizations… man or woman, no one could walk the halls safely unless it was known he had protection; and protection was sold… for food or favors or bodies, whatever the currency available. Drugs… medical and otherwise… made it in; wine did; precious metals, anything of value… made it out of Q and into station. Guards at the barriers made profits.
And Coledy sold applications for passes out of Q, for Downbelow residency. Sold even the right to stand in the lines for justice. And anything else that Coledy and his police found profitable. The protections gang reported to Coledy for license.
There was only the diminishing hope of Downbelow, and those rejected or deferred became hysterical with the suspicion that there were lies recorded about them in station files, black marks which would keep them forever in Q. There were a rising number of suicides; some gave themselves to excesses in the barracks halls which became sinks of every vice. Some committed the crimes, perhaps, of which they feared they were accused; and some became the victims.
“They kill them down there,” one young man had cried, rejected. “They don’t go to Downbelow at all; they take them out of here and kin them, that’s where they go. They don’t take workers, they don’t take young men, they take old people and children out, and they get rid of them.”
“Shut up!” others had cried, and the youth had been beaten bloody by three others in the line before Coledy’s police could pull him out; but others wept, and still stood in line with their applications for passes clutched in their hands.
He could not apply to go. He feared some leak getting back to Coledy if he put in an application for himself. The guards were trading with Coledy, and he feared too much. He had his black market wine, had his present safety, had Coledy’s guards about him so that if anyone was harmed in Q, it would not be Vassily Kressich, not until Coledy suspected he might be trying to break from him.
Good came of what he did, he persuaded himself. While he stayed in Q, while he held the fifth-day sessions, while he at least remained in a position to object to the worst excesses. Some things Coledy would stop. Some things Coledy’s men would think twice about rather than have an issue made of them. He saved something of order in Q. Saved some lives. Saved a little bit from the thing Q would become without his influence.
And he had access to the outside… had that hope, always, if the situation here became truly unbearable, when the inevitable crisis came… he could plead for asylum. Might get out. They would not put him back to die. Would not.
He rose finally, hunted out the bottle of wine he had in the kitchen, poured himself a quarter of it, trying not to think of what had happened, did happen, would happen.
Redding would be dead by morning. He could not pity him, saw only the mad eyes of the man staring at him as he lunged across the desk, scattering papers, slashing at him with the knife… at him, and not at Coledy’s guards.
As if he were the enemy.
He shuddered, and drank his wine.
vi
Change of workers. Satin stretched aching muscles as she entered the dimly lit habitat, stripped off the mask and washed fastidiously in the cool water of the basin provided for them. Bluetooth (never far from her, day or night) followed and squatted down on her mat, rested his hand on her shoulder, his head against her. They were tired, very tired, for there had been a great load to move this day, and although the big machines did most of the work, it was Downer muscle which set the loads on the machines and humans who did the shouting. She took his other hand and turned it palm up, mouthed the sore spots, leaned close and gave a lick to his cheek where the mask had roughed the fur.
“Lukas-men,” Bluetooth snarled. His eyes were fixed straight forward and his face was angry. They had worked for Lukas-men this day, some who had given the trouble Downbelow, at the base. Satin’s own hands hurt and shoulders ached, but it was Bluetooth she worried for, with this look in his eye. It took much to stir Bluetooth to real temper. He tended to think a great deal, and while he was thinking, found no chance to be angry, but this time, she reckoned he was doing both, and when he did lose his temper, it would be bad for him, among humans, with Lukas-men about. She stroked his coarse coat and groomed him until he seemed calmer.