The Depths of Time (34 page)

“
But they promoted you. Decorated you. Told everyone you were a hero.
”

Koffield nodded.
“
There are times in any organization where the higher-ups will support a subordinate, back him to the hilt in public—but treat him very differently in private.
”

“
They punished you?
”

“
My superiors backed me up in private just as much as they had in public. And, frankly, so they should have. What I did at Glister was absolutely, one hundred percent, totally in line with Patrol policy. The whole
purpose
of the Patrol is to see to it that what could have happened at Circum Central, what nearly
did
happen, never does happen. What took place—what I did—was terrible. The alternative would have been infinitely worse—and my superiors knew it. The core reason for having a Patrol at all is so what I did could be done.
”

“
I heard the arguments on both sides of that point after—after the incident,
”
said Norla.
“
Everyone did.
”
And which side of it did you come down on?
she asked herself. She had never been sure of her own answer to that one.

“
Inside the Patrol, there was no argument, could be no argument,
”
Koffield said, his voice still quiet.
“
There was only Patrol doctrine—and I followed it, and the Patrol backed me up, in public and private.
”

Koffield went silent for a moment, and Norla knew that she would have to urge him on before he could say whatever it was that came next.
“
But?
”
she asked.
“
There
’
s a
‘
but
’
in there, isn
’
t there?
”

“
Yes,
”
Koffield said.
“
They backed me up, in public and private. But.
”
He turned back toward the porthole, and once again looked out at the stars.
“
But. There is such a thing as realism. And there are such things as whispers, and pointed fingers, and stories that get more overblown with every telling. And for a senior officer there are such things as official receptions, visiting delegations, courtesy calls on other commands, public occasions of all sorts.

“
My superiors knew, and I knew, that, after Circum Central, I could no longer hold a command. Not for a long time. Maybe not ever. Because sooner or later someone important and official would throw a drink in my face. Or some Glistern with thoughts of revenge would make a try for me with a pistol or a knife and get himself killed by my security detachment—or try it with a suicide bomb attack and get a few hundred innocent bystanders killed. Or maybe there would be something as trivial as a crude, loud, abusive drunk cursing me at a party. Even something as minor as that could develop into a very bad situation if it happened in the wrong time and place.

“
Wherever I went, whatever I did, whatever orders I was given, Circum Central and the collapse of Glister would be there, getting between me and whatever job I was supposed to do.
”

“
So what did they do?
”

“
So they gave me a medal and made speeches they seemed to be embarrassed to be making, at a public ceremony that was kept very quiet and held where no one could get to it. And then they took me off the operational-assignment list and set to work finding a job for me that would keep me busy, and keep me quiet, until the worst of it blew over.
”

Koffield shrugged.
“
They put me on a shelf. And I
stayed there until Oskar DeSilvo reached up and took me down from it.
”

Norla was duly impressed.
“
You met Oskar DeSilvo?
”

Koffield laughed, with more bitterness than humor.
“
Yes,
”
he said.
“
Oskar DeSilvo. The great man himself.
”
He walked to the wardroom porthole and looked out. The planet Solace was visible, a tiny blue, green, and brown ball hanging in the darkness.
“
The man who built Solace. Who made it what it is. Made it all that it is, for better or worse.
”

Anton Koffield turned from the porthole and looked at Norla.
“
Excuse me just a moment,
”
he said.
“
There
’
s something I want to get. Something I
’
d like to show you.
”

With that, he walked into his cabin and shut the door behind him. Norla shrugged. Even when he was explaining things, the man didn
’
t give much away. Patience was quite a valuable virtue when dealing with Anton Koffield.

She stood up to look out the porthole. There was Solace, drawing closer. With a little luck, they
’
d be docked at Solace Central Orbital Station in another day or so. Or was SCO Station there anymore? It almost didn
’
t matter. There would be some sort of station, and they
’
d dock with it, and arrange for passage down to the surface. Norla would get to see her first terraformed world.

Though, judging by the way Koffield spoke, she didn
’
t get the sense it was going to be much worth looking at.

It was coming on toward night, and a group of refugees, all of them men, had decided to head out of Ring Park and stretch their legs out on the Long Boulevard of Solace Central Orbital Station. Zak and some 6f the others came by Elber
’
s campsite and urged him to come along.

Elber would have preferred to remain in the camp in Ring Park with his wife, Jassa, and their baby daughter, Zari. Elber was reluctant to leave Jassa on her own. She still grieved over the death of their son, little Belrad, who had died the year before. He was buried in the now-flooded fields of their farm, out behind their snug little house, back on Solace. Grave, house, farm—all of it was washed away now, lost in the floods and the endless rains.

But Jassa had urged him to go out with the other men.
“
Get out of the camp for a while,
”
she told him, sitting by their tiny fire in the chill, cavernous darkness of Ring Park.
“
It drives you mad, just sitting around night after night with nothing to occupy your mind. Go. Try and enjoy yourself.
”

Maybe, he decided, it would do
her
some good if he could get his mind off his own troubles. He knew it broke her heart to watch him brooding, night after night. So he had followed along with Zak and the others, hanging back just a bit as the group set out for the Park exit.

Three or four of the louder and more boisterous ones were passing a bottle they had gotten from somewhere and trying to get the rest of the group to join in a song, a
bawdy old ballad about drinking and farm girls who were no better than they ought to be. Zak was singing loudest of all.

Nearly everyone else joined in at the chorus, as they came up toward the exit from the Park, but Elber couldn
’
t bring himself to sing. He didn
’
t care for that sort of song, and he wasn
’
t at all comfortable with the idea of leaving Ring Park so late in the evening. There had been trouble already, and there was bound to be trouble again.

Elber had not met any of his fellow refugees before chance had thrown them all together in this strange space-station place. But that did not matter. He knew them all. They were all like him. Their story was his story. They had been farmers, and they had lived by an unspoken bargain with the upper-class, big-city, educated outside world.
Take care of us, keep us safe, and we will do the farming and the hard work.

But then the bad-weather times had come, and their farms and their fields had washed away, dried up, frozen, baked, or just plain died. They had looked to the government, the Senyors, the uppers, to take care of them, and got no useful help. With their farms destroyed, the dirt farmers had retreated to the cities, and found no welcome at all.

Then had come the scares, the panics,
’
the riots, the rumor that the uppers were taking everyone off-planet. And, somehow, Elber and his family had gotten caught up in it, become part of a loose group of refugees who had decided to take the offer to get off the planet and out of the endless rain of Solace City.

So now Elber Malloon and his family were refugees, swept up out of the rain, up into space, not quite sure how it had all happened, how they had decided to come to this strange place. He was, they all were, gluefeet, stuck in SCO Station, in space, no longer on the world of Solace at all. Instead they were in this weird, inside-outside place where walking in a straight line would as like as not turn out to be a circle that brought you right back to where you started. Lost and confused, Elber and his family, and all the other gluefeet, were hunkered down in Ring Park, the only place they were allowed to stay, up in the middle of the sky.

It was hard to believe they were in space, off the world, but Elber had managed to catch a glimpse through one of the big viewports in Ring Park, before SCO Station security had posted guards around all the
‘
ports. He had seen the world, the planet Solace, there far below. It was all true.

His fellow refugees were decent fellows, for the most part. But they were scared, confused, with no idea of what happened next. Some of them tried to hide their fears by talking big, by swaggering. But they weren
’
t the ones who caused trouble, not really. It was the angry ones, like Zak, who started things. Zak frightened Elber. He was always saying how PlanEx Kalzant and the other big shots had let them down, had tricked them and cheated them. The uppers were the ones in charge of the weather. It was the bad weather that had ruined their farms. So why didn
’
t the PlanEx and her gang give them new farms, instead of locking them up in this place?

Elber was no deep thinker, but even he knew that sort of talk was dangerous. It sounded like it made sense, but it didn
’
t, not quite. And it could stir up frightened people, turn fear into anger, make people think they had rights to things they had no right to at all, and no hope of getting.

And it was even more dangerous to talk that way to men who had lost everything, who had no work to occupy them, who were trapped in a new world they did not understand—in a world that did not want them there.

The people of SCO Station had been more or less welcoming, at first. But then more refugees had come, and more, and more. The station had grown more and more crowded, more dirty. Machines started breaking down. Supplies ran short. The air stopped smelling nice. And still the refugees came, none of them knowing the first thing about life aboard a station. Elber, at least, could read, but many of the others could not. He was pretty sure Zak couldn
’
t.

The knot of ten or twelve men reached the exit of the Park and set forth down the walkways of the Long Boulevard.

Elber did not understand the Boulevard. The shops full of precious things no one could truly ever need, the restaurants and sidewalk cafes that worked so hard to serve such little servings of odd food, the people that seemed to go there, not to do anything, but to see and be seen. It was a fairy world, a made-up place, a toy that others played with, that did not suit Elber. It was a place for the uppers, and not for the likes of him.

It was clear to Elber—if not to Zak or some of the rowdier members of their group—that the shopkeepers and patrons of the Long Boulevard felt the same way. He could see the eyes following their group as it moved up the walkway. It took no effort at all to notice the big, tough-looking men that stood at the doors of most places. Bouncers, enforcers, muscle to keep the riffraff out.

And Elber could see the shops and restaurants that were empty now, or boarded up, that had been open for business not so very long ago. The windows of one place across the street looked as if they had been blackened by fire. He noticed workmen installing heavy metal grillwork over the display windows of the store next to the burned one.

“
Let
’
s stop here!
”
Zak called out. Elber, looking everywhere but straight ahead, hadn
’
t been paying attention to where the group was going. Zak had stopped them at the entrance to a very posh sidewalk cafe, a place with tiny white tables and chairs that looked too delicate to hold the weight of burly workingmen. But the first of their group was already staking out chairs, shoving tables together, laughing and calling to each other, treating the place as if it were a farmers
’
lunch counter, back home. Elber took a seat toward the edge of the group, as close to the exit as he could manage.

Zak plopped down in a chair that nearly gave way. He took a pull off the bottle he
’
d been carrying, drained it, and dropped it negligently to the ground. It landed with a heavy thud, but did not break.
“
Let
’
s have a drink,
”
he said loudly, looking around for someone to serve him. It was plain to see Zak was drunk already.