A storm was raging on Babylon 4 when the shuttle came down, and that was not uncommon, on a world of abundant cloud, when all the winter on the northern continent was wrapped in sea-spawned overcast, seldom cold enough to freeze, not warm enough for human comfort---never a clear sight of sun or stars for month after miserable month. The unloading of the passengers at the landing site was proceeding in a cold, pelting rain, a line of tired and angry people trudging over the hill from the shuttle, to be settled into various warehouse digs amid stacks of mats and musty sacks of kib and nutrisoy. "Move it over and stack it up," the supervisors shouted when the crowding became evident; and the noise was considerable, cursing voices, the beating of rain in the inflated domes, the inevitable tump-tump-tump of compressors. The tired stationers sulked and finally began to do as they were told---young, most of them, construction workers and a few techs, virtually without baggage and no few of them frightened at their first experience of weather. They were station-born, wheezing at a click or so extra weight from Babylon 4's gravity, wincing at thunder and at lightning which chained across the roiling skies. No sleep for them until they could set up some manner of dormitory space; no rest for anybody, native or human, who labored to carry foodstuffs over the hill to lade the shuttle, or the crews trying to cope with the inevitable flooding in the domes.1021Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5QZ05hzehg
Zack Allan oversaw some of it, scowling, walked back to the central dome where the operations center was. He paced, listened to the rain, waited the better part of an hour, finally suited up again and masked to walk to the shuttle. "Goodbye, sir," the com operator offered rising from his desk. Others stopped work, the few who were there. He shook hands, still frowning, and finally walked out the flimsy lock and up the wooden steps to the path, spattered again by the cold rain. His fiftyish overweight body was unflattered by the tight yellow plastic. He had always been conscious of the indignity and hated it, hated walking in knee-high mud and feeling a chill which penetrated even the suit and the liner. Raingear and the necessary breathers turned all the humans at the base into yellow monsters, blurred in the downpour. Downers scurried about naked and enjoying it, the brown fur of their spindly limbs and lithe bodies dark with moisture and plastered to them, their faces, round-eyed and with mouths set in permanent "O"s of surprise, watched and chattered together in their native tongue, a babble in the rain and the constant roar of thunder. He walked the direct trail to the landing site, not that which led on the other leg of the triangle, past the storage domes and barracks domes. This one had no traffic. No meetings. No goodbyes. He looked across to fields which were aswim; the gray-green brush and the ribbon trees on the hills about the base showed through curtains of rain, and the river was a broad, overflowed sheet on the farside bank, where a marsh tended to form, for all their attempts to drain it----disease among the native workers again, if any Downers had slipped in unvaccinated. It was no paradise, Babylon 4 base. He had no reluctance to leave it and the new staff and the Downers to each other. It was the manner of the recall which rankled.
"Sir."
At last, parting nuisance came splashing after him on the trail. Martin Bennett. Zack half turned, kept walking, made the man work to overtake him in the mud and the downpour.
"The mill dike," Bennett gasped through the stops and hisses of the breather. "We need some human crews over there with heavy equipment and sandbags."
"That's not my problem now," Zack said. "Get to it yourself. What're you good for, anyway? Put those spoiled Downers onto it. Take an extra crew of them. Or wait on the new supervisors, why don' you? You can explain it all to my nephew."
"Where are they?" Bennett asked. A skilled obstructionist, Martin Bennett, always on the line with objections when it came to any measures for improvement. More than once Bennett had gone over his head to file a protest. One construction project he'd outright gotten stopped, so that the road to the wells stayed a mired track. Zack smiled and pointed across the grounds, far across, back towards the warehouse domes.
"There's no time."
"That's your problem."
Martin Bennett cursed him to his face and started to run it, then changed his mind and raced back again towards the mill. Zack laughed. Soaked stock in the mill. Good. Let the damn Garibaldis solve it.
He came over the hill, stared down at the shuttle, which loomed alien and silver in the trampled meadow, its cargo hatch lowered. Downers toiling to and fro and a few yellow-suited humans among them. His trail joined that on which the Downers moved, churned mud; he walked on the grassy margin, cursed when a Downer with a load swayed too close to him, and had the satisfaction at least that they cleared his path. He walked into the landing circle, nodded curtly to a human supervisor and climbed the cargo ramp into the shadowed steel interior. He stripped the wet rainsuit there in the cold, keeping the mask on. He ordered a Downer gang boss to clean up the muddied area, and walked on through the hold to the lift, rode it topside, into a steel, clean corridor, and a small passenger compartment with padded seats.
Downers were in it, two workers making the shift in station. They looked uncertain when they saw him, touched each other. He sealed the passenger area and made the air-shift, so that he could discard his breather and they had to put theirs on. He sat down opposite them, stared through them in the windowless compartment. The air stank of wet Downer, a smell he'd lived with for three years, a smell with which all Babylon 5 lived, if one had a sensitive nose, but Babylon 4 base worst of all; with dusty grain and distilleries and packing plants and walls and mud and muck and the smoke of the mills, latrines that flooded out, sump pools that grew scum, forest molds capable of ruining a breather and killing a man who was caught without a spare----all of this and managing half-witted Downer labor with their religious taboos and constant excuses. He was proud of his record, increased output, efficiency where there had bene hands-folded complacency that Downers were Downers and could not understand schedules. They could, and did, and set records in production.
But no good deed ever goes unpunished. Crisis hit the station and the Babylon 4 expansion which had limped along in and out of planning sessions for a decade was suddenly moving. Plants would get the additional facilities he'd made possible, manned by workers whose supply and housing he had made possible using Allen Company funds and Allen Company equipment.
Only a pair of Garibaldis were sent down to supervise during that stage, without a thank you, Mr. Allen, or a well done, Zack, thanks for leaving your own company offices and your own affairs, thanks for doing the job for three years. Carmine Garibaldi and Tihomir Róg appointed Babylon 4 supervisors; please arrange affairs and shuttle up at the earliest. His nephew Carmine was going to run things during construction. Garibaldis were always in at the final stage, always there when the credit was about to be handed out. They had democracy in the council, but it was dynasty in the station offices. Always Garibaldis. Allens had arrived at Babylon 5 as early, sunk as much into its building, an important company back in the Barrier Stars; but Garibaldis had maneuvered and gathered power at every opportunity. Now again, his equipment, his preparation, and Garibaldis in charge when it reached a stage when the public might notice. Carmine: his sister Carole's son, and Alfredo's. People could be manipulated, if the Garibaldi name was all they were ever allowed to hear; and Alfredo was past master at that tactic.
It would have been courtesy to have met his nephew and his wife when they came in, to have stayed a few days to swap information, or at the least to have informed them of his immediate departure on the shuttle which had brought them down. It would also have been courtesy on their part to have come at once to the domes for an official greeting, some acknowledgment of his authority at the base----but they hadn't. Not even a com-sent hello, uncle, when they landed. He was in no mood for empty courtesies now to stand in the rain shaking hands and mouthing amenities with a nephew with whom he seldom spoke. He had opposed his sister's marriage; argued with her; it had not linked him in to the Garibaldi family: with her attitude, it was rather a desertion. He and Carole had not spoken since, save officially; not even that, in the final several years....her presence depressed him. And the boys looked like Alfredo, as Alfredo had been in his younger days; he avoided them, who probably hoped to get their hands on Allen Company.....at least one share of it, after him, as nearest kin. It was that hope, he was still persuaded, which had attracted Alfredo to Carole: Allen Company was still the biggest independent on Babylon 4. But he'd maneuvered out of the trap, surprised them with an heir, not one to his taste, but a live body just the same. He'd worked these years on Babylon 4, reckoning at first it might be possible to expand Allen Company down here, through construction. Alfredo had seen it coming, had maneuvered the council to block that. Ecological concerns (naturally). Now came the last move.
He accepted the letter of his instruction to return, took it just as rudely as it was delivered, left without baggage or fanfare, like some offender ordered home in disgrace. Childish, true, but it might also make a point with the council......and if all the stock in the mill was soaked on the first day of the Garibaldi administration here, so much the better. Let them feel shortages on station; let Alfredo explain that to the council. It'd open a debate in which he would be present in council to participate, and ah, he wanted that.
He had deserved more than this.
Engines finally activated, heralding lift. He got up, searched up a bottle and a glass from the locker. He received a query from the shuttle crew, declared he needed nothing. He settled in, belted, and the shuttle began lift. He poured himself a stiff drink, nerving himself for flight, which he always hated, drank, with the amber liquid quivering in the glass under the strain of his arm and the vibrations of the ship. Across from him the Downers held each other and moaned.
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Babylon 5 Detention: red sector one: 6/21/63; 0900 hrs.
The prisoner sat still on the table with the three of them, stared at the guard supervisor in preference, his eyes seeming focused somewhere beyond. Michael laid the folder on the table again and studied the man, who was most of all trying to avoid eye contact with him. Michael found himself intensive uncomfortable in the interview----different from the criminals he dealt with in Legal Affairs----this man, this face like an angel in a painting, this too-perfect humanity with blond hair and eyes that gazed through things. Beautiful, the word occurred to him. There were no flaws. The look was total innocence. Neither thief nor brawler; but this man would kill---if such a man could kill----for politics. For duty, because he was Alliance and they weren't. There was no hate involved. It was disturbing to hold the life or death of such a man in his hands. It gave him choices in turn, mirror-imaged choices---not for hate, but for duty, because he wasn't Alliance, and this man was.
We're at war, Michael thought miserably. Because he's come here, the war has.
An angel's face.
"No trouble to you, is he?" Michael asked the supervisor.
"No."
"I've heard that he's a good kami-doh player."
That got a flicker from both of them. There were illicit gambling at the detention station, as in most slow posts during alterday. Michael offered a smile when the prisoner looked his way, the least shifting of the pale blue eyes.....went sober again as the prisoner failed to react. "I'm Michael Garibaldi, Mr. Sheridan, of the station legal office. You've given us no trouble and we appreciate that. We're not your enemies; we'd dock an Alliance fleet as readily as a Terradyne ship---in principle; but you don't leave stations neutral any longer, not from what we hear, so our attitude has to change along with that. We just can't take chances having you loose. Repatriation----no. We're given other instructions. Our own security. Do you understand that?"
"Your counsel's made the point that you're suffering in this close confinement and that the cells were never meant for long-term detention. That there are people walking loose in Q who are far more a threat to this station; that there's a vast difference between a saboteur and a uniformed armscomper who had the misfortune to be captured by the enemy. That said, he still doesn't recommend your release except to Q. An arrangement has been worked out. We can fake an ID that would protect you, and still let us keep track of you over there. I don't like the idea, but it's the only one that's sensible."
"What's Q?" Sheridan asked, a soft, anxious voice, appealing to the supervisor and to his own counsel, the older Borchardt, who sat at the table's end. "What are you saying?"
"Quarantine. The sealed section of the station that we've set apart for our own refugees."
Sheridan's eyes darted nervously from one to the other of them. "No. No. I don't want to be put with them. I never asked him to set this up. I didn't!"
Sheridan frowned uncomfortably. "We've got another convoy coming in, Mr. Sheridan, another group of refugees. We have arrangements underway to integrate you with them with faked papers. Get you out of here. It would still be a kind of confinement, but with wider walls, room to walk where you want, live life----as it's lived in Q. That's a good part of the station over there. Not regimented----open. No cells. Mr. Borchardt's right: you're no more dangerous than some over there. Less, because we'd always know who you are."
Sheridan took another look at his counsel. Shook his head, pleading.
"You absolutely regret it?" Michael prodded him, vexed. All solutions and arrangements collapsed. "It's not prison, you understand."
"My face---is known there. Winters said...."
He lapsed into silence. Michael stared at him, marked the fevered anxiety, the sweat which stood on Sheridan's face. "What did Winters say?"
"That if I made trouble---she'd transfer me to one of the other ships. I think I know what you're doing: you think if there are Alliancers with them they'd contact me if you put me over there in your quarantine. Is that it? But I wouldn't live that long. There are people who know me by sight. Station officials. Cops. They're the kind who got places on those ships, aren't they? And they'd know me. I'll be dead in an hour if you do that. I heard what those ships were like."
"Winters told you?"
"She did."
"On the other hand, there are some," Michael said bitterly, "who'd balk at boarding one of Hovarth's ships, stationers who'd swear an honest man's survival wasn't that likely. But I'd reckon you had a soft passage, didn't you? Enough to eat and no worried about the air? The old space-stationer quarrel: leave the stationers to suffocate and keep her own deck spotless. But you rated differently. You got special treatment."
"It wasn't all that pleasant, Mr. Garibaldi."
"Not your choice either, was it?"
"No," the answer came hoarsely. Michael suddenly repented his baiting, nagged by suspicions, evil rumor of the Fleet. He was ashamed of the role in which he was cast. In which Babylon 5 was. Wars and P.O.Ws. He wanted no part of it.
"You refuse the solution we offer," he said. "That's your right. Nobody'll force you. We don't want to endanger your life, and that's what it would be if things are what you say. So what do you do? I guess you go on playing kami-doh with the guards. It's a very small confinement. Did they give you t he tapes and player. You got that?"
"I would like...." The words came out like an upwelling of nausea. "I want to ask for Adjustment."
Borchardt look down and shook his head. Michael sat still.
"If I were Adjusted I could get out of here," the prisoner said. "Eventually do something. It's my own request. A prisoner always has the option to have that, doesn't he?"
"Your side uses that on prisoners," Michael said. "We don't."
"I'd ask for it. You have me liked up like a criminal. If I'd killed someone, wouldn't I have a right to it? If I'd stolen or...."
"I think you ought to have some psychiatric testing if you keep insisting on it."
"Don't they test....when they process for Adjustment?"
Michael looked at Borchardt.
"He's been increasingly depressed," Borchardt said. "He's asked me repeatedly to lodge that request with station, and I haven't."
"We've never mandated Adjustment for a man who wasn't convicted of a crime."
"Have you ever," the prisoner asked, "had a man in here who wasn't?"
"Alliance uses it," the supervisor said in a low voice, "without blinking. Those cells are small, Mr. Garibaldi."
"A man doesn't ask for a thing like that," Michael said.
"I ask," Sheridan insisted. "I ask you. I want out of here."
"It would solve the problem," Borchardt said.
"I want to know why he wants it."
"I want out!!!"
Michael froze. Borchardt caught his breath, leaning against the table, and recovered his composure a little short of tears. Adjustment was not a punitive procedure, was never intended to be. It was the latter, he suspected, meeting Borchardt's shadowed eyes. Suddenly he felt an overwhelming pity for the man, who was sane, who seemed very, very sane. The station was in crisis. Events crowded in on them in which individuals could become lost, shoved aside. Cells in detention were urgently needed for real criminals, out of Q, which they had in abundance. There were worse fates than Adjustment. Being locked in a viewless eight-by-ten room for life was one.
"Pull the commitment papers out of comp," he told the supervisor, and the supervisor passed the order via com. Borchardt fretted visibly, shuffling papers and not looking at any of them. "What I'm going to do," Michael said to Borchardt, feeling as if it were some shared nightmare, "is put the papers in your hands. Feel free to study the printout of explanation that goes with them. If that's still what you want tomorrow, we'll accept them signed. I want you also to write us a release and request in your own words, stating that this was your idea and your choice, that you're not claustrophobic or suffering from any other disability....."
"I was an armscomper," Borchardt interjected scornfully. It was not the largest station on a ship.
"----or condition which would cause you unusual duress. Don't you have kin, relatives, someone who would try to talk you out of this if they heard about it?"
The eyes reacted to that, ever so slightly.
"Do you have someone?" Michael asked, hoping he'd found a handhold, some reason to apply against this. "Who?"
"Dead," Borchardt said.
"If this request is in reaction to that..."
"A long time ago," Sheridan said, cutting that off. Nothing else.
An angel's face. Flawless humanity. Birth labs? The thought came to him unbidden. It'd always been abhorrent to him, Alliance's engineered soldiers. His own possible prejudice worried at him. "I haven't read your file in full," he admitted. "This has been handled at other levels. They thought they had this settled. It bounced back to me. You had family, Mr. Sheridan?"
"I did," Sheridan said faintly, defiantly, making him ashamed of himself.
"Where were you born?"
"Centauri Prime." The same small, flat voice. "I've given you all that. I had parents. I was born, Mr. Garibaldi. Is that really pertinent?"
"I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. I want you to understand this: it's not final. You can change your mind, right up to the moment the treatment starts. All you have to say is stop, I don't want this. But after it goes so far, you're not competent. You understand---you're no longer able. You've seen Adjusted men?"
"They recover."
"They do recover. I'll follow the case, Mr. Sheridan....Lt. Sheridan....as much as I can. You see to it," he said to the supervisor, "that any time he sends a message, at any stage of the process, it gets to me on an emergency basis, day or night. You see that the attendants understand that too, down to the orders. I don't think he'll abuse the privilege." He looked at Borchardt. "Are you satisfied about your client?"
"It's his right to do what he's doing. I'm not happy with it. But I'll witness it. I'll agree it solves things...maybe for the best."
The comp printout arrived. Michael handed the papers to Borchardt for scrutiny. Borchardt marked the lines for signature and passed the folder to Borchardt. Borchardt folded it to him like something precious.
"Mr. Sheridan," Michael said, rising, and on impulse offered his hand, against all the distaste he felt. The young armscomper rose and took it, and the look of gratitude in his suddenly brimming eyes cancelled all uncertainties. "Is it possible," Michael asked, "is it remotely possible that you have information you want wiped? That that's why you're doing this? I warn you it's more likely to come out in the process than not. And we're not interested in it, do you understand that? We have no military interests."
That wasn't it. He much doubted that it could be. This was no high officer, no one like himself, who knew comp signals, access codes, the kind of thing an enemy must not have. Nobody had discovered the like in this man---nothing of value, not here, not at Olympia.
"No," Sheridan said. "I don't know anything.
Michael hesitated, still nagged by conscience, the feeling that Borchardt's counsel, if no one else, should be protesting, doing something more vigorous, using all the delays of the law on Borchardt's behalf. But that got him prison; got him---no hope. They were bringing Q outlaws into detention, far more dangerous; men who might know him, if Borchardt was right. Adjustment saved him, got him out of there; gave him the chance for a job, for freedom, a life. There was no one sane who would carry out revenge on someone after a mindwipe. And the process was human. It was always meant to be.
"Sheridan----have you a complaint against Winters are the crew of Australia?"
"No."
"Your counsel is present. It would be put on record----if you wanted to make such a complaint."
"No."
So that trick wouldn't work. No delaying it for investigation. Michael nodded, walked out of the room, feeling unclean. It was a manner of murder he was doing, an assistance in suicide.
They had an abundance of those too, over in Q
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Babylon 5: sector orange nine: 6/21/63; 1900 hrs.
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Pinson winced at the crash of something down the hall, beyond the sealed door, tried not to show his terror. Something was burning, smoke reaching them through the ventilation system. That more frightened him, and the half hundred gathered with him in this section of hallway. Out on the docks the police and the rioters still fired at one another. The violence was tapering off. The few with him, the remainder of Olympia's own security police, a handful of elite stationers and a scattering of young people and old----they had held the hallway against the gangs.
"We're afire," someone muttered, on the edge of hysteria.
"Old rags or something," he said; shut it up, he thought. They didn't need panic. In a major fire, station central would blow a section to extinguish it.....death for all of them. They were not valuable to Babylon 5. Some of them were out there shooting at Babylon 5 policemen with guns they had gotten off dead cops. It had started with the knowledge that there was another convoy coming in, more ships, more desperate people to crowd into the little they had; had started with the simple word that this was about to happen-----and a demand for faster processing of papers, then raids on barracks and gangs confiscating papers from those who did have them.
Burn all records, the cry had gone out through quarantine, in the logic that, recordless, they would all be admitted. Those who wouldn't yield up their papers were beaten and robbed of them; of anything else of value. Barracks were looted. Gangs of the ruffians who had forced New Orleans and Tycho gained membership among the desperate, the young, the leaderless and the panicked.
There was quiet for a time outside. The fans had stopped turning; the air began to go foul. Among those who had seen the worst of the voyage, there was panic, quietly contained; a good number were crying.
"No," he pleaded. Nobody moved, not the cops, not his own. "Please. We weren't in it. We only defended this section from them. None---none of these people were involved. They were the victims!"
The lead cop, face haggard with wariness, soot and blood, motioned with his rifle toward the wall. "You all have to line up," Pinson explained to his ill-assorted companions, who were not the kind to understand such procedures, except only the ex-cops. "Drop whatever weapons you have." They lined up, even the old and the sick, and the two small children.
Pinson found himself shaking, while he was searched and after, left leaning against the corridor wall while the police muttered mysteriously among themselves. One seized him by the shoulder, faced him about. An officer with a slate walked by from one to the other of them asking for ID's.
"They were stolen," Pinson said. "That's how it started. The gangs were stealing papers and burning them."
"We know that," the officer said. "Are you in charge? What's your name and origin?"
Mario Pinson. Olympia."
"Other's of you know him?"
Several confirmed it. "He was a councilor on Olympia Station," said a young man. "I served there in security."
"Name."
The young man gave it. Will Bains. Pinson tried to recall him and could not. One by one the questions were repeated, cross-examination of identifications, mutual identifications, no more reliable than the word of those who gave them. A man with a camera came into the hallway and photographed them all standing against the wall. They stood in a chaos of com-chatter and discussion.
"You can go," the police leader said, and they started to file out; but when Pinson started to leave the officer caught his arm. "Mario Pinson. I'll be giving your name to H.Q."
He was not sure whether that was good or bad; anything was a hope. Anything was better than what existed here in Q, with the station stalling and unable to place them or clear them out.
He walked out onto the dock proper, shaken by the sight of the wreckage that had been made here, with the dead still lying in their blood, piles of combustibles still smoldering, what furnishings and belongings had remained heaped up to burn. Station police were everywhere, armed with rifles, no light arms. He stayed on the docks, close to the police, afraid to go back into the corridors for fear of the terrorist gangs. It was impossible to hope the police had gotten them all. There were far too many.
Eventually the station set up an emergency dispensary for food and drink near the section line, for the water had been shut down during the emergency, the kitchens vandalized, everything turned to weapons. Com had been vandalized; there was no way to report damage; and no repair crews were likely to want to come into the area.
He sat on the bare dock and ate what they were giving, in company with other small knots of refugees who had no more than he. People looked on each other in fear.
"We're not getting out," he heard repeatedly. "They'll never clear us to leave now."
More than once he heard mutterings of a different kind, saw men he knew had been in the gangs of rioters, which had begun in his barracks, and nobody reported them. No one dared. There were too many.
Alliancers were among them. He became sure that these were the agitators. Such men might have the most to fear in a tight check of papers. The war had reached Babylon 5. It was among them, and they were as stationers had always been, neutral and empty-handed, treading carefully among those who meant murder.....only now it was not stationers against warships, metal shell against metal shell; the danger was shoulder to shoulder with them, maybe the young man with the hoarded sandwich, the young woman who sat and stared with hateful eyes.
The convoy came in, sans escort troops. Dock crews under the protection of a small army of station police managed the unloading. Refugees were let through, processed as best could be with most of the housing wrecked, with the corridors become a jungle. The newcomers stood, luggage in hand, staring about them with terror-filled eyes. They would be robbed by morning, Pilson reckoned, or worse. He heard people around him simply crying softly, despairing.
By morning there was still another group of several hundred; and by now there was panic, for they were all hungry and thirsty and food arrived from main station very slowly.
A man settled on the deck near him: Will Bains.
"There's twelve of us," Bains said. "Could sort some of this out; been talking to some of the gang survivors. We don't give out names and they cooperate. We've got strong arms---could straighten this mess out, get people back into residences, so we can get some food and water in here."
"What, we?"
Bains's face took on a grimace of earnestness. "You were a councilor. You stand up front; you do the talking. We keep you there. Get these people fed. Get ourselves a soft place here. It's what this damn station needs. We can benefit by it."
Pinson considered it. It could also get them shot. He was too old for this. They wanted a figurehead. A police gang wanted a respectable figurehead. He was also afraid to tell them so.
"You just do that talking out front," Bains said.
"Right," he agreed, and then, setting his jaw with more firmness than Bains might have expected of a tired old man: "You start rounding up your men and I'll have a chat with the police."1021Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSG7yHNsefC
And he did, approaching them carefully. "There's been an election," he said. "I'm Mario Pilson, councilor from red two, Olympia Station. Some of our own police at among the refugees. We're prepared to go into the corridors and establish order---without violence. We know faces. You don't. If you'll consult your own authorities and get it cleared, we can help."1021Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7D2MUzeqv8
They were not sure of that. There was hesitation even about calling in. Finally a police captain did so, and Pilson stood fretting. The captain nodded at last. "If it gets out of hand," the captain said, "we won't discriminate in firing. But we're not going to tolerate any killing on your part, councilor Pilson; it's not an open license."1021Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxopLVVdCUD
"Have patience, sir," Pilson said, and walked away, mortally tired and scared. Bains was there, with several others, waiting for him by the niner corridor access. In a few moments there were more drifting to them, less savory than the first. He feared them. He feared not to have them. He cared for nothing now, except to live; and to be atop the force and not beneath it. He watched them go, using terror to move the innocent, gathering the dangerous into their own ranks. He knew what he'd done. It terrified him. He kept silent, because he would be caught in the second riot, part of it, if it happened. They would see to that.1021Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqirIas3I4x
He assisted, used his dignity and his age and the fact that his face was known to some: shouted directions, began to have folk addressing him respectfully as councilor Pilson. He listened to their griefs and their fears and their angers until Bains flung a guard about him to protect their precious figurehead.1021Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡK1yYQyeok1
Within the hour the docks were clear and the legitimized gangs were in charge, and honest people deferred to him anywhere he went.1021Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOc9qNayfoY
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