Finity's End - a Union-Alliance Novel by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online Page A

whole human future most needed a quiet, well-oiled, dammit, even slightly illegal personal agreement to fly through the approval process before Pell's enemies knew what was going on.
    Her long-suffering husband knew where she stood. Her children—both near grown—they knew. Her son said she cared only for her daughter; her daughter said bitterly that her own birth was nothing but a means to an end
    Far too simple a box, to contain all the battles of a lifetime. Pell Station knew what it wanted when it persistently elected a spacer and a zealot to the office she held… that in her soul there were places of utter, star-shot black.
    Means-to-an-end certainly covered part of her motives, yes.
    ----
    ----

 
Chapter III
     
    The next day—the next
days
—were glorious.
    "This you female," Melody said, in their third meeting on the riverbank, and peered into Bianca's faceplate in very close inspection, perhaps deciding Bianca, this third day, was more than a chance meeting. "She young, good, strong come back see you." Melody patted Bianca's leg. "You walk?"
    This spring was what Melody meant: mating, the Long Walk, And Bianca didn't understand. Bianca murmured something about coming from the Base, but Fletcher blushed behind his mask and said, "Not yet, not yet for us."
    Then Bianca was embarrassed. And indignant. "
What
did you tell her, Fletcher?"
    "That I sort of like you," Fletcher said, looking at his feet. And Melody and Patch flung leaves at them and shrieked in downer laughter.
    He
did
sort of like her. At least he liked what he saw. What he'd imagined he'd seen in Bianca's willingness to come back here twice. And on that grounds he was suddenly out of his depth and knew it. He saw v-dramas and vid, and imagined what it would be like to have a girl who liked you and who'd maybe—maybe be part of the dream he'd dreamed, of living down here.
    He hadn't gotten a lot of biochem done the last two nights.
    This wasn't someday. This wasn't just dreaming. When he'd been a juvvie and thought almost everything was impossible he'd had fantasies of coming down to the world—he'd stow away on a shuttle. He'd pirate supplies and make an outlaw dome, and get all the downers on his side.
    Then the downers would join them and humans at the Base would never again
see
a downer unless he said so. And the stationmasters would have to say, All right, we'll deal. And he'd be king of Downbelow and Melody and Patch and he together would run the world.
    God, he'd been such a stupid juvvie brat in his daydreams, and now, realtime, just having embarrassed himself, he had to admit he'd caught another case of the daydreams almost as fantastical. She was embarrassed; he was. And if you shone light on some daydreams they evaporated.
    No Family girl was going to keep on hanging around him. She was probably just trying to make Marshall Willett leave her alone. It had been two days of happiness interspersed with anxiety and a biochem test he might have blown. That was a pretty good run, as his runs went
    He'd sounded like a fool. Reality was the best medicine for a case of daydreams, and he went off in his acute embarrassment to go over to the water and squat down and poke at stones at the river-edge, real stones, real world, important things like that
    His real life wasn't like the vids, and daydreams didn't come true for somebody who wasn't anybody, somebody who for most of his life couldn't guarantee where he'd be. It was mortally embarrassing to have to go back to your instructors at school and have to say, with other kids listening, that, no, the reason you didn't know about the test was your mail wasn't getting to you and, no, you weren't still living at 28608 Green, you'd moved, and you were back at the shelter again, or you were out and living with the Chavezes this week.
    Then about the time the stupid teacher got the records straightened out you still weren't getting your e-mail because you "just hadn't worked out" with the Chavezes. It was