Donne stopped the van; Gundhalinu saw a blinking barrier ahead, the drift symbol of a low-gravity environment. “We’ll have to walk it from here, Commander,” she said. “It’s not far.”
He glanced at the twin lights on the display that marked his brothers’ position. He touched them with his hand. “They haven’t moved,” he said.
“Probably waiting. With any luck, they’ve been stood up, their contacts found out the codes were worthless and didn’t even bother to show.”
“You’re sure there’s no one else there?”
“No one’s registering, Commander.” She shrugged and got up; passed him a handgun. “Rough neighborhood.” He checked the charge automatically, and pushed it into an easy access on his coveralls, as she silently handed out more weapons. Vhanu put his own weapon into a pocket, looking uneasy.
They left the van behind and walked toward the barrier, no one straying too far from the others; went past it, into the vast, slowly rising curve of the low-gee area. Gundhalinu felt his footsteps begin to slide and drift, changed the way he was moving in response as his weight suddenly dropped to a fraction of what it had been. The gravity here changed from place to place, moment to moment, depending on what was being done in the factories and warehouses. He had become accustomed to moving in low-and zero-gee environments since coming to the shipyards. He let his body function on habit, thinking ahead, watching the red lights bum steady on the map display he had called on inside the shield of his helmet.
Vhanu swore beside him, obviously lacking similar experience with variable gravity. Donne and the two men watched him flounder without comment. They kept moving, in long, arcing strides, forcing him to make the adjustment. Vhanu was about to get an education, Gundhalinu thought, and it was one he could use, if he bothered to remember it afterward.
The low-gee areas existed like knots in the intestines of the starport’s habitat ring; they were used primarily for storage and processing of materials that would be impossible to work with otherwise. There were warrens of living quarters here too, climbing the walls, jammed into crannies among the looming warehouses, the cranes and machinery in this gray, echoing, twilight world. They were housing for the lowest of the lower classes. He saw the eyes of a child peering out at him from a makeshift doorway as they passed, and looked away again, with an ache in his gut. Kharemough supplied most of the Hegemony’s high-grade technological equipment, and did most of its manufacturing out in space; which meant that most of its population and thousands of immigrant workers were out here too, crammed into too little space, sometimes under conditions no sane person would want to think about. Only the most wealthy, the most powerful, still lived down on the planet’s surface—or could afford to.
Gundhalinu rubbed his arms, remembering the pernicious chill in these places as they stopped for an automated gateway and Donne punched in a code. A tow drifted by over their heads, the deep throb of its engines echoing eerily off the hard surfaces everywhere around them. Other noises invaded his consciousness: distant shouting, the sound of heavy machinery grinding, the whine of cutters, some vibration so deep that he felt more than heard it, that made his teeth hurt. The work here never ceased; neither did the noise, always changing but eternal, echoing and distorting in ways he never heard anywhere else; as if sound was somehow warped and dysfunctional too, like gravity.
They moved on again like awkward swimmers, passing workers who drifted like shadows across their vision, in small groups or alone, variously empty-faced, wary, dull-eyed. The meter-thick rails of a transport track rose up across their path, leading toward the access door of an airlock that could have admitted half a ship. Gravity increased abruptly, and they stumbled the succession of painfully clumsy steps to the other side, only to drift and collide with each other when the gravity faded again. Gundhalinu righted Vhanu, saw the disonentation growing into panic in his eyes. “It gets easier,” he murmured. Vhanu nodded and took a deep breath, starting on unaided.
A gang of Unclassified workers came up alongside them; Gundhalinu heard mocking laughter and muttered insults. “Hey, fresh meat,” a voice called out. “Maybe you need a little help—” Someone’s elbow struck Vhanu, sent him caroming into a wall.
Vhanu recovered his balance; his hand darted toward the pocket that carried a concealed weapon, his face full of sudden fury. Gundhalinu caught his arm, held him back as Zarkada took hold of their harasser, towering over him, and shoved the man away into his companions. “Maybe you’d like me to help you find out which way you bend, scumbag … and which way you don’t.” Tilhen moved forward until they were shoulder to shoulder.
“Hey, just having a laugh, that’s all,” the worker said, raising his hands, dancing backwards away from them. “Welcome to Kharemough, you miserable assholes. Hope you like it here. Foreigners—” He spat. The rest of his group was already moving on, getting out of range.
Gundhalinu watched them go with his hand casually deep in his pocket, feeling the comforting solidness of his own stun weapon. Their voices already seemed to reach him from some unimaginable distance; their laughter drifted on down the tube, always echoing, and was gone.
Donne started on again. The others followed, silent now. Vhanu stared at the faces of the people they passed, as if he were looking for something he didn’t find. Gundhalinu realized he was still expecting the strangers to somehow perceive an indefinable difference in Gundhalinu’s appearance, or his own. Something which set them apart. None of the workers glanced at him twice.
“How much farther, Donne?” Gundhalinu asked, his unease increasing with every stranger who passed.
“That warehouse section right up there, Commander.” Donne pointed.
Gundhalinu pushed off from the building wall beside her, taking the risk of a faster, longer move. He pushed off again, not looking back to see how well the others managed to follow; focusing on two small pinpoints of red that still had not changed, on the motion of his own body closing the distance to them.
He could not believe it had come to this, that he was about to confront them in a place like this about an act of such obscene stupidity. He felt his anger come back, a blind, murderous, fever heat that seared everything from his mind but the need to find them, confront them, give them what they deserved. This time nothing would stop him, nothing would change his mind. He had warned them over and over again, those ingrates, those shitbrained, honorless fools—
He reached the base of the warehouse. There were no workers anywhere near it, no sign that anyone had made any regular use of this place in months. He looked up the looming face of the building, seeing the designation codes, most of them meaningless to him, glowing red and yellow on its grimed, metallic skin. Before him was the five-story door of the cargo entrance, solidly sealed shut; but like a rat hole in its base there was a narrow door sized for human access. He took out the stunner, checked its charge again with compulsive care.
He felt more than saw Donne and the others come up beside him. Donne made a move to stop him as he started forward; suggesting with a look that he should let someone else go in first. He shook his head. The control panel beside the door said that it was unlocked. He pushed the black-painted metal inward; the door gave with a grating screech, opening on shadows. He stepped inside, wary but unhesitating now, aware that his heart was beating too hard, his brain singing with adrenaline; and that the emotion causing the reactions had nothing to do with fear. His own slow, drifting footsteps echoed hollowly, overlapping the sounds his companions made like ripple rings on dark water.