There were no comments, not so much as the turning of a head. It was perhaps something with which they were in temporary agreement, with Pell’s systems in precarious balance and Q rioting on the docks.
He drew a calmer breath and looked at Jessad, who nodded a reassuring satisfaction.
viii
The webbery of ladders stretched before and behind, a maze of tubes across the overhead, and it was bitterly cold. Damon shone the beam one way and the other, reached for a railing, sank down on the gridwork as Josh sank down by him, the breather-sounds loud, strained. His head pounded. Not enough air, not fast enough for exertion; and the maze they were in… branched. There was logic to it: the angles were precise; it was a matter of counting. He tried to keep track.
“Are we lost?” Josh asked between gasps.
He shook his head, angled the beam up, the way they should go. Mad to have tried this, but they were alive, in one piece. “Next level,” he said, “ought to be two. I figure… we go out… take a look, how things are out there…”
Josh nodded. G flux had stopped. They still heard noise, unsure in this maze where it came from. Distant shouts. Once a booming shock he thought might be the great seals. It seemed better; he hoped… moved, with a clattering ringing of the metal, reached for the rail again and started to climb, the last climb. He was overwhelmingly anxious, for Elene, for everything he had cut himself off from in coming this way… No matter the hazard, he had to get out.
There was a static sputter. It boomed through the tunnels and echoed.
“Com,” he said. It was coming back together, all of it.
“This is a general announcement. We are approaching G stabilization. We ask that all citizens keep to their present areas and do not attempt to cross section lines. There is still no word from the Fleet, and none is expected yet. Scan remains clear. We do not anticipate military action in the vicinity of this station… It is with extreme sorrow that we report the death of Angelo Konstantin at the hand of rioters and the disappearance in violence of other members of the family. If any have reached safety, please contract station central as soon as possible, any Konstantin relative, or any knowing their whereabouts, please contact station central immediately. Councillor Jon Lukas remains acting stationmaster in this crisis. Please give full cooperation to Lukas Company personnel who are fulfilling security duties in this emergency.”
Damon sank down on the steps. A cold deeper than the chill of the metal settled into him. He could not breathe. He became aware that he was crying, tears blurring the light and choking his breath.
“… announcement,” the com began to repeat “We are approaching G stabilization. We ask that all citizens…”
A hand settled on his shoulder, pulled him about “Damon?” Josh said through the noise.
He was numb. Nothing made sense. “Dead,” he said, and shuddered. “O God -
Josh stared at him, took the lamp from his hand. Damon thrust himself for his feet, for the last climb, for the access he knew was up there.
Josh pulled him hard, turned him around against the solid wall. “Don’t go,” Josh pleaded with him. “Damon, don’t go out there now.”
Josh’s paranoid nightmares. It was that look on his face. Damon leaned there, his mind going in all directions, and no clear direction. Elene. “My father… my mother… that’s blue one. Our guards were in blue one. Our own guards.”
Josh said nothing.
He tried to think. It kept coming up wrong. Troops had moved; the Fleet had pulled out. Murders instant… in Pell’s heaviest security…
He turned the other way, the way they had just come, his hands shaking so he could hardly grip the railing. Josh shone the light for him, caught his elbow to stop him. He turned on the steps, looked up into Josh’s masked, light-distorted face.
“Where?” Josh asked.
“I don’t know who’s in control up there. They say it’s my uncle. I don’t know.” He reached for the lamp, to take it. Josh surrendered it reluctantly and he turned, started down the ladders as quickly as he could slide down the steps, Josh following desperately after.
Get down again. Down was easy. He hurried at the limit of breath and balance, until he was dizzy and the lamp’s beam swung madly about the framework and the tunnels. He slipped, recovered, kept descending.
“Damon,” Josh protested.
He had no breath for arguing. He kept going until his sight was fading from want of air, sank down on the steps trying to pull air enough through the breather to keep from fainting. He felt Josh leaning by him, heard him panting, no better off. “Docks,” Damon said. “Get down there… get to ships. Elene would go there.”
“Can’t get through.”
He looked at Josh, realized he was dragging another life into this. He had no choices either. He got up, started down again, felt the vibrations of Josh’s steps still behind him.
The ships would be sealed. Elene would be there or locked in the offices. Or dead. If the troops had hit him… if for some mad reason… the station was being disabled in advance of a Union takeover…
But Jon Lukas was supposed to be up there in central.
Had some action failed? Had Jon somehow prevented them from hitting central itself?
He lost count of the stops for breath, of the levels they passed. Down. He hit bottom finally, a gridwork suddenly wider, did not realize what it was until he searched with the light and stopped finding downward ladders. He walked along the grid, saw the faint glimmer of a blue light, that over an access door. He reached it, pushed the switch; the door slid back with a hiss and Josh followed him into the lock’s brighter light. The door closed and air exchange started. He tugged down the mask and got a full breath of air, chill and only slightly tainted. His head was pounding. He focused hazily on Josh’s sweating face, marked with the mask, distraught “Stay here,” he said in pity. “Stay here. If I get this cleared up, I’ll come back; if I don’t — decide for yourself what to do.”
Josh leaned there, eyes glazed.
Damon turned his attention to the door, got his breathing back to normal, rubbed his eyes to clear them, finally pushed the button and put the door in function. Light blinded him; there was shouting out there, screaming, the smell of smoke. Life-support, he thought with a chill… it opened on one of the minor halls, and he headed out, started running, heard running footfalls behind him and looked back.
“Get back,” he wished Josh, “get back in there”
He had no time to argue with him. He ran, down the hall… had to be in green sector; it had to be nine in this direction… all the signs were gone. He saw riot ahead of him, people running scattered through the halls; and some had lengths of pipe and there was a body in the hall… he dodged it and kept going. The rioters he saw did not look like Pell… unshaven, unkempt… he knew suddenly what they were, and flung everything into his running, pelted down the hall and up a turn, headed as close to the docks as he could get without going into the main corridor. He had to break into it finally, dodged a runner among other runners.
There were more bodies on the floor, and looters ran rampant. He shouldered past men who clutched pipes and knives and, some of them, guns…