“Josh Talley,” he said into the mike.
“Josh. Josh, it’s Damon. Good to hear your voice. Are you all right?”
He leaned against the wall, caught his breath.
“Josh?”
“I’m all right. Damon, you know what happened.”
“I know. Your message got to me. I’ve taken personal responsibility for you. You’re coming to our apartment tonight. Pack what you need. I’m coming there after you.”
“Damon, no. No. Stay out of this.”
“We’ve talked it over; it’s all right. No argument.”
“Damon, don’t. Don’t let it get on their records…”
“We’re your legal sponsors as it is, Josh. It’s already on the records.”
“Don’t.”
“Elene and I are on our way.”
The contact went dead. He wiped his face. The knot which had been at his stomach had risen into his throat. He saw no walls, nothing of where he was. It was all metal, and Signy Mallory, young face and age-silvered hair, and eyes dead and oldest of all. Damon and Elene and the child they wanted… they prepared to put everything at risk. For him.
He had no weapons. Needed none, if it were to be himself and her alone, as it had been in her quarters. He had been dead then, inside. Had existed, hating his existence. The same kind of paralysis beckoned now… to let things be, accept, take cover where it was offered; it was always easier. He had not threatened Mallory, having had nothing to fight for.
He pushed from the wall, felt of his pocket, making sure his papers were there. He walked into the hall and through it past the unmanned front desk of the hospice, out into the open where the guards stood. One of the local security started to challenge him. He looked frantically down the corridor where a trooper stood.
“You!” he shouted, disturbing the vacant quiet of the hall. Police and trooper reacted, the trooper with leveled rifle and a suddenness which had almost been a pulled trigger. Josh swallowed thickly, held his hands in plain view. “I want to talk with you.”
The rifle motioned. He walked with hands still wide at his sides, toward the armored trooper and the dark muzzle. “Far enough,” the trooper said. “What is it?”
The insignia was Atlantic’s. “Mallory of Norway” he said. “We’re good friends. Tell her Josh Talley wants to talk with her. Now.”
The trooper had a disbelieving look, a scowl finally. But he balanced the rifle in the crook of his arm and reached for his com button. “I’ll relay to the Norway duty officer,” he said. “You’ll be going in, in either case — your way, if she does know you, and on general investigation if she doesn’t.”
“She’ll see me,” he said.
The trooper pushed the com button and queried. What came back came privately over his helmet com, but his eyes flickered. “Check it, then,” he said to Norway. And after a moment more: “Command central. Got it. Out.” He hooked the com unit to his belt again, and motioned with the rifle barrel. “Keep walking down that hall and go up the ramp. That trooper down there will take you in charge and see you talk to Mallory.”
He went, walking quickly, for he did not reckon it would take Damon and Elene long to reach the hospice.
They searched him. Of course they would do so. He endured it for the third time this day, and this time it did not bother him. He was cold inside, and outer things did not trouble him. He straightened his clothes and walked with them up the ramp, past sentries at every level. On green two they entered a lift and rode it the short rise and traverse into blue one. They had not even asked for his papers, had scarcely looked at them more than to be sure that the folder held nothing but papers.
They walked a short distance back along the matting-carpeted hall. There was a reek of chemicals in the air. Workmen were busy peeling all the location signs. The windowed section further, crammed with comp equipment and with a few techs moving about, was specially guarded. Norway troops. They opened the door and let him and his guards in, into station central, among the aisles of busy technicians.
Mallory, seated at the end of the counters, rose to meet him, smiled coldly at him, her face haggard. “Well?” she said.
He had thought the sight of her would not affect him. It did. His stomach wrenched. “I want to come back,” he said, “on Norway.”
“Do you?”
“I’m no stationer; I don’t belong here. Who else would take me?”
Mallory looked at him and said nothing. A tremor started in his left knee; he wished he might sit down. They would shoot him if he made a move; he thoroughly believed that they would. The tic threatened his composure, jerked at the side of his mouth when she turned away a moment and glanced back again. She laughed, a dry chuckle. “Konstantin put you up to this?”
“No.”
“You’ve been Adjusted. That so?”
The stammer tied his tongue. He nodded.
“And Konstantin makes himself responsibile for your good behavior.”
It was all going wrong. “No one’s responsible for me,” he said, stumbling on the words. “I want a ship. If Norway is all I’ve got, then I’ll take it.” He had to look at her directly, at eyes which flickered with imagined thoughts, things which were not going to be said here, before the troopers,
“You search him?” she asked the guards.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She stood thinking a long moment, and there was no smile, no laughter. “Where are you staying?”
“A room in the old hospice.”
“The Konstantins provide it?”
“I work. I pay for it.”
“What’s your job?”
“Small salvage.”
An expression of surprise, of derision.
“So I want out of it,” he said. “I figure you owe me that.”
There was interruption, movement behind him, which stopped. Mallory laughed, a bored, weary laugh, and beckoned to someone. “Konstantin. Come on in. Come get your friend.”
Josh turned. Damon and Elene were both there, flushed and upset and out of breath. They had followed him. “If he’s confused,” Damon said, “he belongs in the hospital.” He came and laid a hand on Josh’s shoulder. “Come on. Come on, Josh.”
“He’s not confused,” Mallory said. “He came here to kill me. Take your friend home, Mr. Konstantin. And keep a watch on him, or I’ll handle matters my way.” There was stark silence.
“I’ll see to it,” Damon said after a moment. His fingers bit into Josh’s shoulder. “Come on. Come on.”
Josh moved, walked with him and Elene, past the guards, out and down the long corridor with the work crews and the chemical smell; the doors of central closed behind them. Neither of them said anything. Damon’s grip shifted to his elbow and they took him into a lift, rode it down the short distance to five. There were more guards in this hall, and station police. They passed unchallenged into the residential halls, to Damon’s own door. They brought him inside and closed the door. He stood waiting, while Damon and Elene went through the routine of turning on lights, and taking off jackets.
“I’ll send for your clothes,” Damon said shortly. “Come on, make yourself at home.”
It was not the welcome he deserved. He picked a leather chair, mindful of his grease-stained work clothes. Elene brought him a cool drink and he sipped at it without tasting it.
Damon sat down on the arm of the chair next to his. Temper showed. Josh accepted that, found a place at his feet to stare at.