In the Company of Others (22 page)

He might want a name change after this as well. He closed his eyes, deciding this was all a nightmare and he was passing out from carbon dioxide poisoning in his suit, like the time . . .

“Aaron!”

Pardell's eyes flashed open and he looked around frantically. There was only one set of lungs on Thromberg that could shout and be heard over the growl of the mob. What was Malley—?

There was a broad hallway leading from the stern docking ring to Pardell's left. The thinnest part of the mob lay between it and the tableau in front of the air lock. The hallway mirrored a similar one, half-blocked by debris, in the aft ring. Pardell blinked away the urge to start comparing other features, staring with disbelief at a new mass of people rushing toward him.

Malley was in front—
no problem spotting the mammoth idiot
, Pardell thought wildly, nor identifying others similarly impaired. There was Denery, and more familiar faces from Sammie's. Worse and worse. Even if all of Outward Five had opted for a change of scene and a chance to bloody noses, they were still outnumbered a hundred times over and by a mob who'd already killed and been killed.

“This way!” Pardell turned his head right just enough to confirm the urgent command came from the air lock. Dr. Smith—looking a great deal less imposing with her hair mussed, one leg in a suit, and tears pouring apparently unnoticed down her cheeks—was holding on to one edge of the inner door frame. “Please, Pardell. They'll kill you. Hurry.”

He was suddenly, gloriously angry. “This is all your fault,” he accused, disregarding the mob, their chant, and the onrush of his friends. “Look what you've done!”

Smith seemed oblivious to common sense as well, stepping right out of the air lock and starting to move toward him, dragging the suit, only to be blocked by one of her guards. She looked over the arm holding her and shouted: “They've died for nothing if you don't come with me! Grant—let go of me—That's Pardell!”

Pardell turned away deliberately, then wished he hadn't. The press of new bodies from the left, led by Malley, had not so much met the outer edge of the mob as been absorbed. Friend and stranger milled around one another, not fighting—yet—but pushing with angry cries. At least it was diminishing the number of people chanting his name, which was a relief.

There was an instant in which he somehow found and met Malley's eyes, an instant in which Pardell felt an unreasonable hope the sudden arrival of calmer minds might prevail and they'd all talk about this later over Sammie's truly awful beer.

Then, warned by the sudden dismay on Malley's face, Pardell whirled to find dozens of hands reaching for him. He tried to run, but lost all control of his legs at the first deceptively gentle brush of fingers against his arms and back.

Anger.
FEAR!

... He forgot how to breathe as the daggers of emotion penetrated every part of his flesh, the number of contacts changing as others grabbed for him, then were shocked loose . . . but more replaced those . . . and more . . .

RAGE!

... It had never been like this . . . At its worst, he'd always known he'd survive, that there'd be an end . . . His heart faltered, fought, faltered again . . . He convulsed in agony, heaving up under the hands . . .

HATE!

... What was Aaron Pardell crumpled into itself . . .

Then was lost.

“AARON!” Gail thought the walls must have amplified Malley's horrified cry—she did know she'd never heard anything approaching that sound from a human throat until Pardell vanished beneath a surging mass of attackers in front of their eyes. She struggled against Grant's arm. “Help him!” she shouted. “You have to help him! He's the one this is for!”

Grant literally threw her back into the air lock—Loran following at his barked command to immediately start forcing Gail into the suit—but her words had penetrated. Grant and Tau holstered their weapons and started pulling people off the tower of moving flesh marking where Pardell had stood.

Their interference should have incited the mob against the Earthers again, but didn't. Loran, once sure Gail was suiting up on her own, hurried to the inner door with her weapon ready, her face set and grim. Gail, pulling on her gloves, looked past the guard's shoulder. Each person Grant or Tau grabbed and pushed aside seemed confused, disoriented, as if they'd been stunned. Most wandered away, while others stood in place for a few seconds, rubbing their hands over their faces or arms. As the mob saw the dull-witted faces of these compatriots, it faded back, edges dissolving, except where Malley and company continued to shove their way forward.

Once they succeeded, Malley let out a roar and launched himself at the remaining bodies, clearing them off through the simple expedient of latching his big hands around any body part available and heaving with all his strength. Oddly, those so mishandled didn't complain, merely picked themselves up from the floor to hobble or crawl away.

Grant and Tau were edged back as well. Several of those who'd come with Malley, most with black eyes or bloody noses marking their efforts to negotiate their way through to this spot, quietly but definitely placed themselves between the Earthers and their besieged friend.

Loran didn't prevent Gail coming out where she could see—perhaps the guard was angry enough at the death of her fellows to believe Gail deserved to see the corpse of the man she'd tried to find.

What Gail saw, she didn't at first believe. There were still between five and eight bodies lying in a haphazard mass, none of them moving. It was impossible to tell which was Pardell—they all wore the same stationer gray.

And all these people were dead.

There was no mistaking it. Those faces she could see bore a dreadful rictus, as though every muscle had convulsed at the moment of death.

“Did you shoot them?” she asked Grant in a low-pitched voice, unsure how she could have missed that and puzzled how they would have died anyway—the FDs' weapons were loaded with heavy tranks. Their shots into the mob hadn't killed anyone, merely knocked them cold and guaranteed a pounding headache to follow in an hour or so.

“No—” Grant's voice was equally perplexed.

Malley wrapped his fingers around another ankle, then uttered a curse and released his grip as if burned.

The mob found its voice again, this time in panic-stricken flight. Gail heard screams of “Quill!” and “Monster!” over the general mayhem of thudding feet. In only minutes, they were alone, except for those from Outward Five—and Malley.

He'd ignored the mob, instead taking two men with him to methodically tear apart what had been a freight trolley before the mob turned it upside down. Mechanically, Gail finished fastening her suit's gloves, coming to stand beside a motionless Grant. Loran and Tau, along with the surviving suited rescuer from the
Seeker
, had gone to check on their fallen.

In seconds, Malley was back. He didn't acknowledge Gail or the others by so much as a glance, going straight to work. He and another man used a grappling arm and its chain to snag the leg belonging to one of the bodies over Pardell—that grip allowing them to drag the body aside. They repeated the process on the next.

“What?” Gail took a step forward and the nearest stationer took notice and held up his hand to stop her. “Stay back, Earther,” he warned. “It's not safe to touch him in this state. Let Malley deal with it.”

“Deal with what?” she demanded.
Had the big stationer lost his mind, and the rest were humoring him?
She stared at Malley, only now noticing how his hands bled as he worked and his shirt hung from his lower arms in bloodstained strips.

Grant spoke from beside her. “He must have forced open the metal sheet blocking the corridor . . . let his friends up here.”

Gail tapped the shoulder of the little stationer who'd warned her. “Did you know Pardell was here? Is that why you came?”

The man turned to look at her and shook his head. His wizened face held a terrible grief that silenced whatever else Gail thought to say. “We didn't know you had him,” he told her, shrugging. “Malley sent down a warning about Aaron, but we all thought he'd headed Outside and home. Safe.”

“Then why did you come?” Grant asked when Gail didn't.

“Outward Five doesn't care much for being locked down. And Malley seemed to think you Earthers might be in a spot—he owed you, for the warning to Aaron.” The stationer—or immie, Gail realized, since she couldn't tell them apart—scowled and spat at her feet. “We'd have come sooner if we'd known you lied—that you had Aaron here.”

Grant took up her defense. “Dr. Smith didn't lie. If you look in the air lock, you'll find two suits: Pardell's and one in his size,” he nodded at Malley. “Pardell came after his friend on his own.”

“He must have walked the length of the station,” Gail added almost to herself, aghast at the thought of trusting that ancient, taped-together suit. “Then followed our people. He was trying to find Malley.”

The stationer let out a heavy sigh. “Always playing hero,” he said gruffly, but offered no apology for his accusation. “There,” with grim satisfaction as the last body was pulled free and they could see Pardell.

There were no marks on his pale face. It looked just as she'd memorized it from her vid recording. Gail later remembered that was the most remarkable thing, how Pardell had seemed untouched by those who had tried to destroy him. He looked—peaceful.

She almost missed the shallow rise and fall of his chest.

Malley, still holding the grappling hook in a hand that dripped blood in mindless little spirals on the floor, didn't. She saw him close his eyes once, tightly, as if his relief was too much to bear, then open them and stare at her.

“Your ship,” Malley began in a hoarse whisper, as if that warning shout had scraped his throat raw. “It has the latest Earther med tech? Real doctors?”

Gail nodded. “The best,” she assured him quickly, startled how her own voice came out thin and liable to break.

“Malley—?” This protest from the stationer near Gail. “You can't—”

“What choice is there?” Malley answered roughly. “Do you think he's going to sleep this one off without help, Syd? If he does, think their families—” his wave included all the fallen, but lingered over the circle of corpses near Pardell, “—could bear him to stay?”

There was a low murmur of voices from the fifty or so who'd remained. One came louder than the rest: “Wasn't Aaron's fault.”

“When did that matter?” Malley coughed to clear his throat. His next words, “I'm going with him,” brought a sudden silence.

The stationer he'd called Syd was the first to speak up. “Malley. Makes some sense to let them take Aaron—help him, if they're willing—but it makes none to have you tangled up with Earthers. People will talk—”

“Talk,” Malley repeated, his tone one of utter scorn and his raw voice breaking with passion as he went on: “You think I'm worried about talk! Those who know me won't believe it—those who don't? Guess who locked Outward Five down! So you worry about talk. I'm going to make sure the Earthers treat Aaron right.”

Here and there, Gail saw heads nodding slowly, grudgingly, then more. Then most. In spite of giving their approval, expressions ranged from grim to grief-stricken.

“I'll watch your stuff, Malley,” Syd offered, giving yet another of his heavy sighs.

“Uh-uh,” Malley disagreed. “Your
wife
can watch it.” This prompted a smattering of laughter as Syd blushed. “Have Amy settle my tab and Aaron's at Sammie's—don't any of you try to claim what's not yours.”

No one seemed to be fooled by this last warning. Gail watched, hardly sure what she felt as one by one, the stationers thumped, patted, or hugged Malley in farewell.

Afterward, each took a turn to gaze down at Pardell, some brushing tears from their cheeks. Many crouched at a distance, or went to a knee to whisper something. No one touched him.

“We'll see you to the ship, then.” This wasn't so much an offer as an order from the stationer named Syd. It brought another, quicker, round of nods.

Gail looked at Grant, recognized his “not-on-my-watch” look, and spoke before he could open his mouth.

“Whatever—or whomever—it takes to get Pardell on the
Seeker
,” she ordered, pitching her voice to his ears alone. “That's what matters now.”

SO they retraced their steps through the strangely vacant docking ring surrounded by another escort in stationer gray. Gail was still flanked by guards—Loran and Grant, Tau and their surviving rescuer, who turned out to be Ops Specialist Allyn—and Malley was with them.

Malley and some of the others had righted the trolley and scavenged a metal slab, used as a countertop in a nearby office. Without offering an explanation of why they wouldn't touch Pardell or accept help, they'd employed other scraps of metal to push and pull his body on to the rectangular slab. It was then lifted on the trolley, making a reasonable gurney. Now, ahead of them, Malley pushed it alone, moving as quickly as the rickety structure would allow. He'd also refused any first aid for his hands or lower arms. He, like Grant, seemed to think their solitude could end without warning.

Grant, unwilling to gamble on what might happen if either the authorities or the mob returned, had asked the stationers to carry the bodies of the fallen FDs so he and the rest could keep their weapons ready. Others brought the suits from the air lock. Gail had suggested leaving them behind, an idea the stationers seemed to find incomprehensibly wasteful. She didn't waste her breath arguing.