In the Company of Others (60 page)

“He's at his workstation, Dr. Smith,” someone offered helpfully. The little byplay with Malley had hardly caused a ripple among the boisterous group. Gail started trying to move through them to get to Sazaad, without much success, only to have Malley use his smile and shoulder to clear her path.

“Handy,” she said.

“Practice,” he replied as they reached the side wall and could see Sazaad.

Gail didn't waste any time. Grant would have to check on her soon or arouse suspicion. “Dr. Sazaad?”

He grunted something unintelligible, busy keying instructions into his device, then he seemed to hear her voice and turned his head only enough to squint at her. “Dr. Smith. This is a remarkable concept. But quite impossible, you know. I mean, if I had a year ...”

Gail stepped closer, Malley standing so he blocked them from the rest of the room. “If it can be done, you can do it. And we don't have a year—we have hours, if we're lucky. Whatever you need, whoever you need. This is priority one. My authority. Got it?”

“Nice to have you back,” Sazaad said. His black eyes gleamed. “Hours?” Abruptly, he leaped from his stool and headed for the party still underway. Gail watched the eccentric scientist long enough to be sure he was conscripting help and not joining in before turning back to face Malley.

“Aisha?”

“She and others are up there,” Malley used his eyes to indicate the second floor of the lab. “Temujin is especially happy right now.”

Gail grimaced. “That's going to mean some repair bills. But he'll get the job done.” Grant was heading their way. “Listen to me, Malley,” she said quickly, keeping her voice under the background noise of the crowd. “Aaron is the key to the Quill, whatever they are. The FD will want him—so will Titan. And as long as he's in reach, there's nothing we can do to stop them.”

Malley's eyes were like ice. “Tell me what I don't know.”

Gail licked her lips. “I've an idea. A way to get some breathing space, maybe a solution. I don't know. But I need your help. I put a list in your pocket. Get everything that's on it—I don't care how—but don't tell anyone else, even Aisha.” Gail hesitated, looking deep into his eyes. “Once you have it all, Malley, I need you to put it in the lab air lock.”

Grant was trying to give them more time, but suddenly another FD noticed their private conversation. She intercepted her commander, pointing in their direction.

“Say I do, what next?” Malley asked.

“No one goes through that air lock but me, Aaron, or you. No one. Understood? I don't care what it takes. They'll try.”

He looked suddenly satisfied. “Fine by me.”

“Dr. Smith, Malley,” Grant said in greeting. “I trust you are beginning to get things back in order?”

Malley reached into his pocket, and Gail froze involuntarily.
Her list.
More than enough to damn her in the eyes of the FD or Titan. Enough to cost her the trust of her staff and friends. She'd counted on Malley as the only one who shared her priority: Pardell's freedom.
Was she wrong?

The stationer's hand came out with one of the candies Benton had brought with her from Mars, sour things no one else would eat.
He'd probably done it to make her sweat
, Gail thought with disgust. “Everything's fine,” he said to Grant, after unwrapping the treat and popping it into his mouth with what appeared to be relish. “Sorry about bending some of your men like that. Fragile types, aren't they?”

Grant's eyes narrowed. “Only when ordered to be careful, Malley. I recommend you don't try us again.”

“I'll keep that in mind, Commander,” Malley said, so cheerfully Gail could almost see the hackles rising on Grant's neck.

Her allies.
Gail kept her smile to herself. They were so transparently honest—capable of crossing her, of course, but only if she foolishly put them into conflict with their own moral priorities. Otherwise, as predictable and reliable as sunlight. She'd managed with much worse on Titan as well as Earth, where every smile hid its own agenda and alliances involved finding those whose goals were closest—or at least not directly opposed—to your own at any given moment. Trust and loyalty weren't factors Gail usually had to consider. Or had ever relied on, until now. . . .

Not true.
She shivered suddenly, remembering the station and the howl of the mob.

Trust and loyalty?

She mustn't forget how they also got people killed.

Pardell rocked back and forth, trying to keep his imagination under rein. The hours alone didn't mean the Earthers had abandoned him. The ship outside this small, bare metal room wasn't empty or filled with the dead. The Quill inside the stasis box couldn't harm him or anyone else.

They knew that. Malley and Rosalind. Grant.

Gail did.

He had killed.
They knew that, too.

For the hundredth time, Pardell's hand strayed to the lid of the box, then clenched and dropped away. Curiosity and dread, in equal proportions.

Without warning, the door swung open, slowly, as if the person on the other side feared to wake him—
or feared him
, Pardell added bitterly. “I'm awake,” he called out, deliberately assuming the better possibility.

And it was better. The face peering around the heavy door was Gail's—careworn, to his worried eyes, but smiling. “Then you'd probably like breakfast,” she said.

Pardell couldn't smile. All he could manage was to stand, holding the box. He'd forgotten how to let go of it by now. “I kept it safe for you,” he told her, knowing the Quill mattered most. “Grant's people wanted it, but they didn't argue. I don't think they wanted to risk touching me. So they quarantined us together. I've kept it safe.”

“What matters is that you're safe,” she replied, confounding his sense of priorities. “But bring the sample. There are a lot of people, including me, anxious to see what we're dealing with at last. You're sure you're all right?” Gail stepped into the room, studying his face and then looking around. There wasn't much to see, beyond the cot, blankets, and a shelf cleared of boxes so trays of untouched food could be stacked there. He hadn't been interested. “They didn't mistreat you—”

“Of course not,” Pardell answered quickly, though warmed by the sudden outrage in her voice. “I'm sure the commander would have given me better quarters if I'd been willing to leave the Quill here. But—”

Gail held out her hands.

Pardell immediately gave her the box, not letting go until he was sure she felt the weight of it and was ready—holding a second or two longer than necessary because it gave him a harmless connection to her. She knew.
A man could drown himself in her eyes when they looked like that
, Pardell decided,
and consider it a worthy death.
He could almost hear Malley's voice adding: especially a fool light-headed from lack of sleep and food.

“Breakfast,” she said again, as if hearing Malley's sensible voice as well.

Malley had quite a bit more to say
, Pardell knew the moment he laid eyes on his friend again, but nothing he planned to come out with in present company. Gail had brought him directly to the lab; technically, he'd been brought by Gail and four FDs who seemed confused as to whether they were guards or escorts. Gail's tendency to lead the way at a brisk walk, while completely ignoring them, probably didn't help. Pardell kept his amusement to himself.

Judging by a few new scrapes on his knuckles, Malley'd been fighting, which usually had the effect of relaxing the big stationer for a couple of days at least. Unfortunately, Pardell judged, he either hadn't fought the right person or for the right reason. As a result, Malley's broad forehead was creased in what looked to be a permanent scowl, an intimidating expression that lightened the moment he'd seen Pardell and returned as the stationer had looked over at Gail.

Pardell bit into the sweet roll someone had offered him.
They were going to have to talk.

Something that would be impossible, while the level of excitement in the lab stayed this high. Their arrival, or more precisely, the arrival of the Quill filament, had stirred everyone into action. Gail had told him she'd arranged with Grant to permit the science staff back into their quarters, vouching for them personally. From the look of things, no one had chosen to leave. Scientists and techs, most appearing to have slept in their clothes, scrambled to set up equipment and recorders. There were too many for the room, until Gail, with a look of exasperation, ordered a further expansion of the lab itself. Two walls were now inching their way deeper into the ship, with impatient researchers lining up their mobile benches to be first to fill the new space.

“They could have done this without me,” Gail grumbled as she came back to where Pardell sat watching all the action. “This many brains in one room? There's a guarantee no one thinks.”

He'd tucked himself on a stool behind one of the few empty workbenches, wary of the number of people and their busyness. In Sammie's, everyone would have watched out for him. Malley was, of course—a mountain of aggravated comfort. Pardell had seen Malley giving him one of those “how are you” looks, but this group still wasn't large or tight enough to bother him. The Earthers didn't know how to make a crowd.

Gail hopped up to sit on the top of the bench, looking out over what Pardell hoped was a more organized confusion than it appeared.

As if she'd read his thoughts, Gail observed: “We've been ready for this for years, Aaron. The stakes are just a little higher than any of us knew.”

Malley hadn't gone far—
in full hover mode
, Pardell thought glumly, and unlikely to grant them even an instant alone. Gail didn't appear worried. She'd only spoken to Malley once, a cryptic: “Any problems?” and receiving a curt: “Nothing I couldn't handle,” in return.

Now Malley surveyed the room from his naturally higher vantage point and asked: “Who gets first crack? Your people or Grant's?” The stasis box containing the Quill had been placed inside a larger, clear version. They'd already determined the safety of the single filament and this technology by the simple expedient of having Dafoe remove her protective suit once the
Athena
was in orbit.

Pardell wouldn't forget the frightened but determined look on the FD's pale face any time soon.
There was courage.
It was also, in his opinion, completely irresponsible to risk a life simply to test the stasis box—although he knew Dafoe would argue she'd already risked it to test the suit.

At least in this case, they had records indicating that no one had been harmed by a single Quill filament. Yet.

They'd used remote arms to open the box and pull out the filament. It now hung over a horizontal support like some bizarre decoration or forgotten scarf, its colors glowing in the muted illumination. Gail hadn't forgotten his comment about daylight.

“So that's a Quill,” Malley announced, not for the first time, and in a tone of complete disappointment.

“No,” Gail said suddenly, her eyes fixed on the case. “Calling it a Quill, or a filament—that may be misleading.” She had the look Pardell had often seen on Malley's face—of grappling with an idea from a new direction and following where that went. “What if it's a fragment?”

Malley recognized it, too. Pardell could see that in the way his friend slowly stopped frowning and glanced at the Quill. “Part of a whole,” Malley said after a moment. “Any proof of that?”

“Aisha's techs are running the biochemical analysis now.”

“It acted—” Pardell couldn't finish. He wasn't ready to tell anyone—especially Gail—what had happened on the planet.
Not when he didn't know what it meant.

Luckily Gail continued for him. “—It acted, the part we observed, as a unit. There was definite coordination between the fragments. How? The questions multiply as quickly as these creatures must have done.” She sounded almost happy about it, as if having new questions was more satisfying than answering the old ones.

“You know the priority here, Dr. Smith,” Grant didn't offer a greeting beyond this bald statement as he approached.

Just a little closer, Betrayer
, Pardell decided, coldly calculating the number of steps Grant had left to take.
Then they'd see how deadly his hands could be.
The destruction of the
'Mate
by his friends—that Pardell could understand.
What Grant had done ...?

“Aaron.” Malley's growl was low—pitched to his ears only. Pardell lost his focus on the Earther, coming back to himself with a start. “Remember old Logan?”

“Mats? Of course, I remember ...” Pardell stared at Malley, then looked back at Grant, hoping he'd kept his face under some control. Mats Logan was the next best thing to a folk hero in Outward Five—a high-up in station security who'd contrived to send out warnings of coming inspections and lockdowns for years, until he'd been killed by rioters. Typical of Thromberg, Logan's killers had been from Outward Five themselves, seeing only the target offered by authority and not the man, until it was too late. The name “logan” had become station slang for anyone who pretended to be what they weren't, to others' benefit.

Grant?
Pardell flicked his fingers at Malley, code for understanding.
Did Gail know?
he wondered, then answered his own question. She had to, or he wouldn't be here. One thing he was sure about: Gail Smith would never cooperate under duress. She'd see the
Seeker
aimed at this system's sun first.