Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online

docks.” “Take a shuttle round the rim,” Graff suggested, his broad face set in habitual worry. “Don’t risk your neck out there with less than a full squad. They’re less controlled now. All it takes is something to set them off.” The proposal had merits. She considered how that timidity would look to Pell, shook her head. She went back to her quarters and put on what passed for dress uniform, the proper dark blue at least. When she went it was with Di Janz and a guard of six armored troopers, and they walked right across the dock to the quarantine checkpoint, a door and passage beside the huge intersection seals. No one tried to approach her, although there were some who looked as if they might want to try it, hesitating at the armed troops. She made the door unhindered and was passed through, up the ramp and to another guarded door, then down into the main part of the station.
    After that it was as simple as taking a lift through the varied levels and into the administrative section, blue upper corridor. It was a sudden change of worlds, from the barren steel of the docks and the stripped quarantine area, into a hall tightly controlled by station security, into a glass-walled foyer with sound-deadening matting underfoot, where bizarre wooden sculptures met them with the aspect of a cluster of amazed citizenry. Art. Signy blinked and stared, bemused at this reminder of luxuries and civilization. Forgotten things, rumored things. Leisure to make and create what had no function but itself, as man had done, but himself. She had lived her whole life insulated from such things, only knowing at a distance that civilization existed, and that rich stations maintained luxury at their secret hearts.
    Only they were not human faces which stared out from curious squat globes, among wooden spires, but faces round-eyed and strange: Downbelow faces, patient work in wood. Humans would have used plastics or metal.   There were indeed more than humans here: that fact was evident in the neat braided matting, in the bright painting which marched in alien geometries and overlays about the walls, more of the spires, more of the wooden globes with the faces and huge eyes all about them, faces repeated in the carved furniture and even in the doors, staring out from a gnarled and tiny detail, as if all those eyes were to remind humans that Downbelow was always with them.   It affected them all. Di swore softly before they walked up to the last doors and officious civs let them in, walked with them into the council hall.   Human faces stared at them this time, in six tiers of chairs on a side, an oval table in the pit between, their expressions and those of the alien carvings remarkably alike in that first impression.
    The white-haired man at the end of the table stood up, made a gesture offering them the room into which they had already come. Angelo Konstantin. Others remained seated.
    And beside the table were six chairs which were not part of the permanent arrangement; and six, male and female, who were not, by their style of dress, part of the station council or even of the Beyond.
    Company men. Signy might have dismissed the troops to the outer chamber in courtesy to the council, rid herself of the threat of rifles and the remainder of force. She stood where she was, unresponsive to Konstantin smiles.   “This can be short,” she said. “Your quarantine zone is set up and functioning.   I’d advise you to guard it heavily. I’ll warn you now that other freighters jumped without our clearance and made no part of our convoy. If you’re wise, you’ll follow the recommendations I made and board any incoming merchanter with security before letting it in near you. You’ve had a look at Russell’s disaster here. I’ll be pulling out in short order; it’s your problem now.” There was a panicked muttering in the room. One of the Company men stood up.   “You’ve behaved very high-handedly, Captain Mallory. Is that the