In the Company of Others (37 page)

They'd mimed how he could bandage himself with flat sheets of plastic. Propped against the stool, Pardell had obeyed, shaking with despair at being naked in front of strangers who stared at his gold-veined body, his freak's skin. He discovered wounds—holes and tears—in inexplicable places, then realized he was repairing damage they'd done while experimenting with him.

He hadn't bothered with anger. For all he knew, they'd saved his life.

Maybe they'd saved others, getting him off the station.
He refused the thought.

“You in there?”

Pardell glared at Malley. “I wasn't—distracted—if that's what you mean,” he said defensively, needing all the dignity he could get. Malley in free-advice mode wasn't helping. “What did Smith have to say?” This to the Earther commander, Grant, who'd returned to his seat on the other side of the low, wheeled table, a table overloaded, in Pardell's opinion, with far too much food for the three of them. Grant and Malley reached for the same pastry simultaneously.

Malley won—or the Earther declined the race for reasons of his own. Pardell watched them both, abruptly close to losing his train of thought just as Malley had suspected. Grant's answer helped him focus down from the concepts of competition, dominance, and alliance. “Dr. Smith is still in conference.”

Not routine.
“I don't care what Dr. Smith is doing,” Pardell said, quite impressed by the cold steadiness of his own voice. “Either she—or you—explain why you wanted me here badly enough to start a riot on the station, or Malley and I go back to Thromberg, now.”

Grant had a way of looking at a person, the same assessing, careful way Raner had had when he planned to say something difficult but important. It made Pardell's palms sweat. “Mr. Pardell—what do you remember from the riot?”

Faces, lips drawn back in death, eyes protruding, pulses of
HATE
and
FEAR
throughout his body . . .

Pardell drew in a shuddering breath and raised his eyes to meet Grant's somber brown gaze. “I—” he started, then the words drifted loose again. “There was—” He couldn't think it, let alone say it.

“What the Earther's getting at, Aaron,” Malley growled, his voice low, “is that Thromberg isn't the safest place at the moment. The riot's done—assuming they're telling us the truth. But folks working in the stern ring, well, they—” suddenly, Malley seemed at a loss for words, his face growing unusually flushed.

“Your friend is right, Mr. Pardell,” Grant said, leaning forward, eyes intent. “Too many people saw what you can do. Too many are afraid. It wouldn't be safe for you to return to the station—not yet.”

Pardell found himself on his feet. “Then give me my suit. I want to go home—to my ship. You can't keep me here.”

Grant had stood at the same time. He reached out his hand as if to offer comfort, then curled up his fingers and let the arm drop. The look of sympathy—or was it pity?—on his face froze the blood in Pardell's veins. “Mr. Pardell. Aaron.”

“What have you done to my ship?” Pardell said, stumbling away from them all, seeing heads turn as the others working in the lab heard his rising voice. Some began edging toward the doors and he stared at them, unable to fathom why.
Nobody feared him at home.

“Fins down, Aaron,” Malley cautioned, putting himself squarely in front of Pardell, not coincidently keeping one broad shoulder in Grant's way. “These people don't know you.”

“
Don't know me?” Pardell shut his mouth over the betraying crack in his own voice.
Don't know me?
he railed to himself instead.
They stripped me and hooked me up to every machine known to medicine and you think they don't know me?

Malley's haunted eyes told him the stationer understood well enough. “It's just another queue, Aaron,” he said, making no sense whatsoever. Pardell blinked.

“You know how things work. We wait our turn for everything,” Malley continued, his tone suggesting he explained the obvious. “So we can wait for Her Ladyship Smith. We can wait for things to calm down back home. We can wait—” to his credit, Malley said the next without flinching, “—to get back on your ship. No worse than waiting at Sammie's for a beer.” He stretched out his long arm to show Pardell the glass of yellow liquid. “Better stuff, for sure.”

“You can't understand,” Pardell found himself saying, aware of a larger audience but unable to look beyond these two men. It didn't seem to matter that he'd known one all his life and the other for less than an hour. “If I try to remember—if I think—” Finally, the words shot out: “Did I hurt someone?”

Pardell saw Malley's throat work, as if the stationer tried to swallow. Then he looked at Grant, who nodded slowly.

...
eyes protruding . . . convulsions . . .

“It was worse, wasn't it? I killed someone, didn't I?” Pardell whispered. Malley's face had always been easy to read, especially in the grip of strong emotion. Now it was like looking into a mirror as horror and guilt spread across it. “More than one?” he breathed, knowing the truth of it before the stationer's eyes closed briefly in acquiescence.

He fumbled his way back into the chair. “How many?”

Malley pleaded: “Aaron, no—”

“How many?”

“Eight,” Grant told him. “The rest appeared to be stunned. They moved under their own steam after a few minutes.”

“Who did I kill?”

“Aaron—”

“Who were they?”

Malley flung himself into a chair that protested such abuse. “Damn you, Aaron,” he said in a strange, flat voice. “Fine. Want to torture yourself? Go ahead. They were Inward Four—dock workers, likely—I didn't recognize any faces, if that's what's in your head. They were trying to kill you—remember that part? And almost succeeded.”

“I remember.” Pardell looked down at his hands, willing them still,
willing them normal
. “I didn't know.”

“Know what?” gently, from Grant.

“That I could kill.”

“You still can't,” Malley disagreed. “Look at you. You're beating yourself up because some fools died while trying to turn you into floor paste. That's about as reasonable as expecting the Quill to care that humans drop dead on their planets ...” Suddenly, Malley stared at Pardell as if he'd never seen him before. “The Quill. ...”

Pardell opened his mouth, but before he could argue, Malley leaped to his feet again and loped across the room. From Grant's frown, he wasn't expecting this either. They both started, and several techs shouted, when Malley picked up a clear box from one of the tables and brought it smashing down.

Before Grant could do more than leap to his feet and wave over his guards, Malley was back.
The stationer was wilder-looking than usual,
Pardell thought uneasily.

Malley's right hand now wore a glove studded with a network of fine wires and metal nodes. He thrust it at Pardell before the latter could avoid him.

Freed of the painful blast of sensation the instant contact was broken, Pardell gasped for air. Spots swam in front of his eyes and his heart, not particularly peaceful to start with, hammered with sickening blows. He threw up what little he'd put in his stomach and hoped it landed on Malley's boots.

Maybe it did, but when Pardell looked up resentfully, he saw Malley busy examining the glove.
As though
nothing
had happened,
Pardell told himself, first in outrage, then in stunned disbelief.
Nothing
.

In fact, rather than any sign of pain, the stationer had that fiercely joyous look on his face—the one he always got when he'd solved some impossible equation or delivered the killing line in a debate.

“It works,” the stationer was saying in a hushed voice. “It works.”

“What do you mean, it works?” Grant demanded. Pardell thanked him silently, too busy rinsing out his mouth with water Aisha passed him, to do the same. “What's going on here, Malley?” The Earther looked from the stationer to Pardell and back again. “Are you saying what I think you're saying? It can't be—”

Malley seemed impervious, as if his mental gears were whirring out of control. “This was what she wanted with you, Aaron,” he said triumphantly. “This—!” He waved the ridiculous-looking glove again.

“You'd better start making sense, Malley,” Pardell finally ground out, his stomach still trying to express its displeasure.

Grant held up his hand for silence. His other hand was cupped over the comm in his ear. From the look on his face, the Earther didn't like what he was hearing, Pardell decided.

The stationer wasn't paying attention. “I should have seen it, Aaron—” Malley started to explain, only to stop as Grant backed his demand for silence with the weapon now magically out and in his hand.

“Unfortunately, now isn't the time, gentlemen.”

NOW wasn't the time
, Gail fumed. Protocol, regulations—when you were already breaking ninety percent of them, what possible difference could one more make? But Tobo could be incredibly stubborn, and he'd insisted on notifying Thromberg Station's docking controllers of their intention to move the
Seeker. Hazard to shipping.
Gail tapped her gloved fingers against the porthole. What shipping? In the wake of the Outsiders' demands, nothing was moving. Nothing dared.

It had to be done quickly. Rosalind had notified her supporters, but didn't claim to control the majority of those who clung to Thromberg's outer hull. She'd advised speed over caution, to take advantage of confusion and a lack of central authority.

Gail wondered what that said about the 'siders, but agreed. Fast suited her. Any long-range patrol ship from Sol System could outrun the
Seeker
. Her only hope of evading the righteous interference of Titan U was to put the
Seeker
off the map. Of course, her only hope of returning home again without being arrested was to succeed. A little something she didn't plan to share with Tobo, Grant, or the miserable Reinsez until absolutely necessary.

There.
Pounding feet as the last of their boarding party climbed the shuttle's ramp, pulling on his suit as he came. Gail made herself relax and nod a greeting, before donning her helmet. Immediately, Grant's voice echoed around her ears—presumably on a private setting between the two of them. “What the hell's going on? And what are
you
doing here?”

Gail wanted to laugh. She'd finally gotten a rise out of the taciturn officer—unfortunately, not at a moment she could enjoy it. “We have an opportunity to retrieve the tapes and other records from the
Merry Mate II
, Commander Grant,” she informed him, keeping her voice to “briefing” formality. “Given the instability of the situation out here, I deemed it essential to take that opportunity. Rosalind has been very cooperative—but she'll only work with me.”

Silence.
He was probably grinding his teeth
, Gail thought cheerfully. She functioned best when things moved like this, when she rode a current of possibilities and had to pick the optimum course by instinct. It had smacked her into a few walls in the past—but, more often than not, it had taken her to success well before anyone else saw it coming.

They didn't have long to wait, She'd had Tobo relinquish the
Seeker
's final holds on the station before letting him notify the station of their flight path. They'd suited up as the ship drifted free and began moving along Thromberg's axis with only the most delicate of maneuvering thrusters involved. Gail doubted anyone on the ship not watching the view screen or a monitor even realized the
Seeker
was in motion. It would take a fraction of the time it had taken Pardell to walk the same distance to reach his ship.

He was alive and conscious.
Sazaad must have wet himself.

“Stand by.” The announcement came from the shuttle pilot. There was a clang, and Gail kept hold of the nearest strap, anticipating the minor roughness as the shuttle coasted down its ramp and out of
Seeker
.

Gail checked her gauges, making sure her comm was set to wide open, knowing the others were doing the same. There were eight of them in the shuttle's freight air lock: herself, Grant, Rosalind Fournier, FD Tech Specialists Bennett, Wigg, Cornell, and Sensun, and Ops Specialist Allyn. Grant had chosen his team; Gail had insisted on meeting them and learning their names before entering the air lock. Allyn didn't look to have rested—how could he, given the loss of his entire ops group?—but he was the FDs' surviving expert on null-g operations. The others were new faces to her.

Grant likely considered her both nonessential and too valuable to risk. Gail hadn't allowed debate. She trusted no one else to recognize what she had to find on the 'sider derelict—what had to be there or she'd lost already. Being wrong about this would mean being wrong about many other things—her entire chain of reasoning would crumble.

“In position.” The air lock display winked through its paired sequence of reds, ambers, and greens; Grant and his people slipped open the tops of their holsters, the weapons within secured by both tether and mag clamp. Gail stepped to the back, willing to let the FDs do their job. As long as they didn't interfere with hers.

The air lock door slid into its holding position along the hull, revealing their destination.