He viewed the film, jaw clenched, the scenes of riot leaping across the large wall screen, flinched at recorded murder. There was no question of the crime in the identification. There was, in the stack of cases which had flooded the LA office, no time for reconsiderations or niceties. They were dealing with a situation which could bring the whole station down, turn it into all manner of things that had come in with Tycho. Once life-support was threatened, once men were crazy enough to build bonfires on a station dock----or go for station police with kitchen knives....
He pulled the files in question, keyed up printout on the authorization. There was no fairness in it, for they were the five the security police had been able to pull across the line, five out of many more as guilty. But they were five who would not kill again, nor threaten the fragile stability of a station containing many thousands of lives. Total Adjustment, he wrote, which meant personality restrict. Processing would turn up injustice if he had done one. Questioning would determine innocence if any existed at this point. He felt foul in doing what he did, and frightened. Martial law was far too sudden. His father had agonized the night long in making one such decision after a board had passed on it.
A copy went to the public defender's office. They would interview in person, lodge appeals if justified. That procedure too was curtailed under present circumstance. It could be done only by producing evidence of error; and evidence was in Q, unreachable. Injustices were possible. They were condemning on the word of police under attack and the viewing of film which did not show what had gone before. There were five hundred reports of theft and major crimes on his desk when before there had been a Q, they might've dealt with two or three such complaints a year. Comp was flooded with data requests. There had been days of work done on IDs and papers for Q, and all of that was scrapped. Papers had been stolen and destroyed to such an extent in Q that no paper could be trusted to be accurate. Most of the claims to paper were likely fraudulent, and loudest from the dishonest. Affidavits were worthless where threat ruled. People would swear to anything for safety. Even the one's who'd come in good order were carrying papers they had no confirmation on: security confiscated cards and papers to save those from theft, and they were passing some few out where they were able to establish absolute ID and find a stationside sponsor for them----but it was slow, compared to the rate of influx; and main station had no place to put them when they did it. It was madness! They tried with all their resources to eliminate red tape and hurry; and it just got worse.
"Menachem," he keyed a private note to Menachem Kelley, in the defender's office, "if you get a gut feeling that something's wrong in any of these cases, appeal it back to me regardless of procedures. We're putting through too many condemnations too fast; mistakes are possible. I don't want to find out after processing starts."
He had not expected reply. It came through. "Jeffry, look at the Sheridan file if you want something to disturb your sleep. Olympia's used Adjustment."
"You mean he's been through it already?"
"Not therapy. I mean they used it to interrogate him."
"I'll take a look at it." He keyed out, hunted the access number, pulled the file in comp display. Page after page of their own interrogation data flicked past on the screen, most of it uninformative: ship name and number, duties----an armscomper might know the board in front of him and what he shot at, but little else. Memories of home then---family killed in a Fleet raid on Centauri system mines; a brother, killed in service---reason enough to carry grudges if a man wanted to. Reared by his mother's sister on Centauri Prime, a plantation of sorts---then a government school, deep-teaching for tech skills. Claimed no knowledge of higher politics, no resentments of the situation. The pages pressed into actual transcript, uncondensed, disjointed ramblings----turned to excruciatingly personal things, the kind of intimate detail which surfaced in Adjustment, while a good deal of self was being laid bare, examined, sorted. Fear of abandonment, that deepest; fear of being a burden on his relatives, of deserving to be abandoned: he had a tangled kind of guilt about the loss of his family, had a pervading fear of it happening again, in any involvement with anyone. Loved the aunt. Took care of me, the thread of it ran at one point. Held me sometimes. Held me....loved me. He had not wanted to leave her home. But Alliance had its demands; he was supported by the state, and they took him, when he came of age. After that, it was state-run deep-teach, taped education, military training and no passes home. He had had letters from the aunt for a while; the uncle had never written. He believed the aunt was dead now, because the letters stopped some years ago. She would write, he believed. She loved me. But there were deeper fears that she had not; that she had really wanted the state money; and there was guilt, that he had not come home; that he had deserved this parting too. He'd written to the uncle and gotten no answer. That had hurt him, though he and the uncle had never loved one another. Attitudes, beliefs---another wound, a broken friendship; an immature love affair, another case in which letters stopped coming, and that wound involved itself with the old ones. A latter attachment, to a companion in service---uncomfortably broken off. He tended to commit himself to a desperate extent. Held me, he repeated, pathetic and secret loneliness. And more things.
He began to find it. Terror of the dark. A vague, recurring nightmare: a white place. Interrogation. Drugs. Olympia had used drugs, against all Terradyne policy, against all human rights----had wanted badly something Sheridan simply didn't have. They had gotten him from Voyager zone----from Voyager----transferred to Olympia at the height of the panic. They had wanted information that threatened the station; had used Adjustment techniques in interrogation. Jeffry rested his mouth against is hand, watched the fragmentary record roll past, sick at his stomach. He felt ashamed at the discovery, naïve. He had not questioned Olympia's reports, had not investigated them himself; had had other things on his hands, and staff to take care of that matter; had not---he admitted it----wanted to deal with the case any more than he absolutely had to. Sheridan had never called him. Had conned him. Had held himself together, already unstrung from previous treatment, to con Babylon 5 into doing the only thing that might put an end to his mental hell. Sheridan had looked him straight in the eye and arranged his own suicide.
The record rambled on----from interrogation under drugs to chaotic evacuation, with stationer mobs on one side and the military threatening him on the other.
And what had it been, what had happened during that long voyage, a prisoner on one of Hovarth's ships....
Australia....and Winters.
He killed the screen, sat staring at the sack of papers, the unfinished condemnations. After a time he set himself to work again, his fingers numb as he signed the authorizations.
Men and women had boarded at Olympia, folk who, like Sheridan, might have been sane before it all started. What had gotten off those ships, what existed over in Q---had been made, of folk no different from themselves.
He just pushed the destruct button on lives like Sheridan's, which were already gone. On men like himself, he thought, who had gone over civilized limits, in a place where civilization had stopped meaning anything.
Horvath's Fleet----even they, even the likes of Winters----had surely begun differently.
"I'm not going to challenge," Jeffry told him, over a lunch they not so much ate as drank.
And after lunch he went to the small Adjustment facility over in red, and back into the treatment area. He saw John Sheridan. Sheridan did not see him, although perhaps it would not have mattered. Sheridan was resting at that hour, having eaten. The tray was still on the table, and he had eaten well. He sat on the bed with a curiosity washed expression on his face, all the lines of strain erased.
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Michael stood up at the side, took the report of the ship outbound and scanned the manifest, looked up. "Why Tycho?"
The aide shifted his weight, distressed. "Sir?"
"Two dozens hips idle and Tycho has a commission to launch? Unfitted? And with what crew?"
"I think crew was hired off the inactive list, sir."
Michael leafed through the report. "Allen Company. Mariner bound with a stripped ship and a dock-bound crew and Daryl Borchardt for a passenger? Get Zack Allen on the com."
"Sir," the aide said, "the ship has already left dock."
"I can see the time. Get me Zack Allen."
"Yes, sir."
The aide went out. In moments the screen on the desk went bright and Zack Allen came on. Michael took a deep breath, calmed himself down, angled the report toward the pickup. "See that?"
"You have a question?"
"What's going on here?"
"We've got holdings at Mariner. Business to carry on. Shall we let our interest there sink into panic and disorder? They're due some reassurance."
"With Tycho?"
"We had an opportunity to engage a ship at below standard. Economics, Michael."
"Is that all?"
"I don't understand...."
"She carried nothing like full cargo. What kind of commodity do you plan to pick up at Mariner?"
"We carry as much as we can with Tycho in her present condition. She'll refit there, where facilities are less crowded. Refitting is the hire for which we got her use, if you must know. What she carries will pay the bill: she'll lade full on return, critical supplies. I'd think you'd be pleased. Daryl is aboard to supervise and administer some business over at our Mariner office."
"You're not minded, are you, that this full, lading inside Allen Company personnel---or others? You're not going to sell passage off Mariner. You're not going to pull that office out."
"Ah! So that's your concern!"
"That has to be my concern when ships go out of here with no sufficient cargo to justify their moving, headed for a population we can't handle if it panics. I'm telling you, Zack, we can't take chances on some loose talk or some single company pulling its favored employees out and starting a panic on another station. You hear me?"
"I did discuss the matter with Daryl. I assure you that our mission is supportive. Commerce has to continue, doesn't it? We'd strangle otherwise. And before us, Mariner. Stations they rely on have collapsed. Let Mariner start running into shortages and they may be here in our laps with no invitation. We're taking them foodstuffs and chemicals; nothing Babylon 5 may run short of----and we have the only two usable holds on the ship fully loaded. Is every ship launched subject to this inquisition? I can provide you with the company books if you want to see them. I take this amiss. Whatever our private feelings, Michael, I think Daryl deserves commendation for being willing to go out there under the circumstances. It doesn't deserve a fanfare----we didn't ask for one----but we would've expected something other than accusations. Do you want the books, Michael?"
"Hardly. Thank you, Zack, and my apologies. So long as Daryl and your ship's master appreciate the hazards. Every ship that launches is going to be scrutinized, yes. Nothing personal."
"Any questions you have, Michael, so long as they're equally applied. Thank you."
"Thank you, Zack." Zack keyed out. Michael did likewise, sat staring at the report, rifled through it, finally signed the authorization after the fact and dumped into the Record tray; all the offices were running behind. Everyone. They were using too many man-hours and too much comp time on the Q processing.
"Sir." It was his secretary, Podesta. "Mr. Sinclair, sir."
He keyed acceptance of a call, looked up in some surprise as the door opened instead and Jeffry walked in. "I brought the processing reports myself," Jeffry said. He sat down, leaned on the desk with both arms. Jeffry's eyes looked as tired as he himself felt, which was considerable. "I've processed five men into Adjustment this morning."
"Five men? Well, that's no tragedy," Michael said wearily. "I've got a lottery process set up for comp to pick who goes and stays on station. I've got another storm on Babylon 5 that's flooded the mill again, and they've just found the victims from the last washout. I've got ships pulling at the tether now that the panic's worn down, one that's just slipped, two more to go tomorrow. If rumor has it that Horvath's chosen Babylon 5 for a refuge, where does that leave the remaining stations? What when they panic and head here by the shipload? And how do we know that someone isn't out there right now, selling passage to more frightened people? Our life-support won't take much more." He gestured loosely toward a stack of documents. "We're going to militarize what freighters we can, by some pretty strong financial coercion."
"To fire on refugee ships?"
"If ships come in that we can't handle---yes. I'd like to talk to Lise sometime today; she'd be the one to make the initial approach to the merchant kings. I can't muster sympathy for five rioters today. Forgive me."
His voice cracked. Jeffry reached across the desk, caught his wrist and pressed it, let it go again. "Sergio needs help down there?"
"He says not. The mill's a shambles. Mud everywhere."
"They find all of them dead?"
He nodded. "Last night. Cliff Romero and Jess Hodges; Chuck Glass yesterday noon.....this long, to hunt the banks and the reeds. Carmine and Miller say morale is okay, considering. The Downers are building dikes. More of them have been anxious for human trade; I've ordered more let into base and I've authorized some of the trained ones into maintenance up here; their life-support is in good shape, and it frees up some techs we can upgrade. I'm shuttling down every human volunteer who'll go, and that means even trained dock hands; they can handle construction equipment. Or they can learn. It's a new age. A tighter age." He pressed his lips together, sucked in a long breath. "Have you and Lise thought about Earth?"
"Sir?"
"You, your brother, Lise and Bass---think about it, will you?"
"No," Michael said. "Pull out and run? You think that's what it's coming to?"
"Figure the odds, Michael. We didn't get help from Earth, just observers. They're figuring on cutting their losses, not sending us reinforcements or ships. No. We're just settling lower and lower. Hovarth can't hold forever. The shipyards at Voyager----were vital. It's Mariner soon; and whatever else Alliance decides to take. Alliance's cutting the Fleet off from supply; Earth already has. We're out of everything but room to roam."
"The Barrier Stars----you know there's some talk about reopening one of those stations......"
"Aw, that's just somebody's pipe dream. We'd never have the chance. If the Fleet goes----Alliance would make it a target, same as us, just as fast. And selfishly, completely selfishly, I'd like to see my kids out of here."
Michael's face was very white. "No. Absolutely not."
"Don't be noble. I'd rather your safety than your help. You Garibaldi's won't fare well in years to come. It's mindwipe if they take us. You worry about your criminals; consider yourself Lise. That's Alliance's solution----puppets in the offices; lab-born populations to fill up the world....they'll plow up Babylon 4 and build. Heaven help the Downers. I'd cooperate with them----so would you----to keep Babylon 5 safe from the worst excesses; but they won't have things that easy way. And I don't want to see you in their hands. We're targets. I've lived all my life in that condition. Surely it's not asking too much that I do one selfish thing----that I save my sons."
"What did Sergio say?"
"Sergio and I are still discussing it."
"He told you no. Well, so do I."
"Your mother will have a word with you."
"Are you sending her?"
Michael frowned. "You know that's not possible."
"So. I know that. And I'm not going, and I don't think Sergio will choose to either. My blessing to him if he does, but I'm not."
"Then you don't know anything," Michael said shortly. "We'll talk about it later."
"We won't," Jeffry said. "If we pulled out, panic would set in here. And you know it. And you know hot it'd look, besides that I won't do it to start with."
It was true; he knew that it was.
"No," Jeffry said again, and left.
Michael sat, looked toward the wall, toward the portraits which stood on the shelf, a succession of tridee figures----Maria before her accident; young Maria and himself; a succession of Michaels and Sergios from infancy to manhood, to wives and hopes of grandchildren. He looked at all the figures assembled there, at all the gathered ages of them, and reckoned that the good old days hereafter would be fewer.
After a fashion he was angry with his underlings; and after another---proud. He had made them what they were today.
Sergio, he wrote to the succession of images, and the son on Babylon 4, your brother sends his love. Send me what skilled Downers you can spare. I'm sending you a thousand volunteers from the station; go ahead with the new base if they have to backpack equipment in. Appeal to the Downers for help, trade for native foodstuffs. All love.
And to security: Process out the assuredly nonviolent. We're going to shift them to Babylon 4 as volunteers.
He reckoned, even as he did it, where that led; the worst would stay on station, next the heart and brain of Babylon 5. Transfer the outlaws down and keep the heel on them; some kept urging it. But fragile agreements with the natives, fragile self-respect for the techs who'd been persuaded to go down there in the mud and the primitive conditions----it couldn't be turned into a penal colony. It was life. It was the body of Babylon 5, and he refused to violate it, to ruin all the dreams they had had for its future.
There were dark hours when he thought of arranging an accident in which all of Q might decompress. It was an unspeakable idea, a madman's solution, to kill thousands of innocents along with the undesirables......to take in these shiploads one after the other, and have accident after accident, keeping Babylon 5 free of the burden, keeping Babylon 5 what it was. Michael lost sleep over five men. He had begun to meditate on utter horror.
For that reason he wanted those he knew best gone from Babylon 5. He thought sometimes that he might really be capable of applying the measures some urged, that it was weakness that prevented him, that he was endangering what was good and whole to save a polluted rabble, out of which reports of rape, looting and murder came daily.
Then he considered where it led, and what kind of life they all faced when they'd transformed Babylon 5 into a police state, and recoiled from it with all the convictions Babylon 5 had ever had.
"Sir," a voice cut in, with the sharper tone of transmissions from central. "Sir, we've got inbound traffic."
"Give it here," he said, and swallowed heavily as the schematic reached his screen. Nine of them. "Who are they?"
"The carrier Europe," the voice of central returned. "Sir, they've got eight freighters in convoy. They ask to dock. They advise of dangerous conditions aboard."
"Denied," Michael said. "Not till we get an understanding." They could not take so many; could not; not another lot like Winters's. His heart sped, hurting him. "Get me Bass on the Europe. Get me contact."
Contact was refused from the other end. The warship would do as it pleased. There was nothing they could say or do to prevent it.
The convoy moved in, silent, ominous with the load it bore, and he reached for the alert to security.
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Babylon 4: main base: 6/29/63
The rain still came down, the thunder dying. Na'Toth watched the humans come and go, arms locked about their knees, her bare feet sunk in mire, the water trickling slowly off her fur. Much that humans did made no sense; much that humans made was of no visible use, perhaps for the gods, perhaps that they were mad; but graves---this sad thing the narn understood. Tears, shed behind masks, the narn understood. She watched, rocking slightly, until the last humans had gone, leaving only the mud and the rain in this place where the humans buried their dead.
And in due time she gathered herself to her feet and walked to the place of cylinders and graves, her bare toes squelching in the mud. They had put the earth over Cliff Romero and the two others. The rain made of the place one large lake, but she had watched; she knew nothing of the marks humans made for signs to themselves, but she knew the one.
She carried a tall stick with her, which Old One had made. She came naked in the rain, but for the beads and the skins which she bore on a string about her shoulder. She stopped above the grave, took the stick in both her hands and drove it hard into the soft mud; the spirit-face she slanted so that it looked up as much as possible, and about its projections she hung the beads and the skins, arranging them with care, despite the rain which sheeted down.
Steps sounded near her in the puddles, the hiss of human breath. She spun and leapt aside, appalled that a human had surprised her ears, and stared into a breather-masked face.
"What the hell are you doing?" the man demanded.
She straightened, wiped her muddy hands on her thighs. To be naked thus embarrassed her, for it upset humans. She had no answer for a human. He looked at the spirit-stick, at the grave offerings----at her. What she could see of his face seemed less angry than his voice had promised.
"Romero?" the man asked of her.
She bobbed a yes, distressed still. Tears filled her eyes, to hear the name, but the rain washed them away. Anger---that too she felt, that Romero should die and not others.
"I'm Sergio Garibaldi," he said, and she stood straight at once, relaxed out of her fight-flight tenseness. "Thank you for Cliff Romero; he would thank you."
"Garibaldi-man." She amended all her manner and touched him, this very tall one of a tall kind. "Love Romero-man, all love Romero-man. Good man. Say he friend. All Downers are sad." He put a hand on her shoulder, this tall Garibaldi-man, and she turned and put her arm about him and her head against his chest, hugged him solemnly, about the welt, awful-feeling yellow clothes. "Good Romero make Allen mad. Good friend for Downers. Too bad he gone. Too, too bad, Garibaldi-man."
"I've heard," he said. "I've heard how it was here."
"Garibaldi-man good friend." She lifted her face at his touch, looked forlornly into the strange mask which made him very horrible to see. "Love good mans. Downers work hard, work hard, hard for Garibaldi. Give you gifts. Go no more away."
She meant it. They had learned how Allens were. It was said in all the camp that they should do good for the Garibaldis, who had always been the best humans, gift-bringers more than the narn could give.
"What's your name?" he said, stroking her cheek. "What do we call you?"
She grinned suddenly, warm in his kindness, stroked her own sleek hide, which was her vanity, wet as it was now. "Humans call me Satin," she said, and laughed, for her true name was her own, a narn thing, but Romero had given her this, for her vanity, this and a bright bit of red cloth, which she had worn to rags and still treasured among her spirit-gifts.
"Will you walk back with me?" he asked, meaning to the human camp. "I'd like to talk with you."
She was tempted, for this mean favor. And then she sadly thought of duty and pulled away, folded her arms, dejected at the loss of love. "I sit," she said.
"With Romero."
"Make he spirit look at the sky," she said, showing the spirit-stick, explaining a thing the narn did not explain. "Look at he home."
"Come tomorrow," he said. "I need to talk to the narn."
She tilted back her head, looked at him in startlement. Few humans called them what they were. It was strange to hear it. "Bring others?"
"All the high ones, if they'll come. We need narn Upabove, good hands, good work. We need trade on Babylon 5, place for more men."
She extended her hand towards the hills and the open plain, which went on forever.
"There is place."
"But the high ones would have to say."
She laughed. "Say spirit-things. I-Satin give this to Garibaldi-man. All ours. I give, you take. all trade, much good things; all happy."
"Come tomorrow," he said, and walked away, a tall strange figure in the slanting rain. Satin/Na'Toth sat down on her heels with the rain beating upon her bowed back and pouring over her body, and regarded the grave, with the rain making pocked puddles above it.
She waited. Eventually others came, less accustomed to men. G'Kar was one such, who did not share her optimism of them; but even he had loved Romero.
There were men and men. This much the narn had learned.
She leaned against G'Kar, Sun-shining-through-clouds, in the dark evening of their long watch, and by this gesture pleased him. He had begun laying gifts before her mat in the winter season, hoping for spring.
"They want narn Upabove," she said. "I want to see the Upabove. I want this."
She had always wanted it, from the time that she had heard Romero talk of it. From this place came Garibaldis (and Allens, but she dismissed that thought). She reckoned it as bright and full of gifts and good things as all the ships which came down from it, bringing them goods and good ideas. Romero had told them of a great metal place holding out arms to the Sun, to drink his power, where ships vaster than they had ever imagined came and went like giants.
All things flowed into this place and from it; and Romero had gone away now, making a Time in her life under the Sun. It was a manner of pilgrimage, this journey she desired to mark this Time, like going to the images of the plain, like the sleep-night in the shadow of the images.
They had given humans images for the Upabove too, to watch there. It was fit, to call it pilgrimage. And the Time regarded Romero, who came from that journey.
"Why do you tell me?" G'Kar asked.
"My spring will be there, on Upabove."
He nestled closer. She could feel his heat. His arm went about her. "I will go," he said.
It was cruel, but the desire was on her for her first traveling; and his was on him, for her, would grow, as gray winter passed and they began to think towards spring, towards warm winds and the breaking of the clouds. And Romero, cold in the ground, would have laughed his strange human laughter and bidden them be happy.
So always the narn wandered, of springs, and the nesting.
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Babylon 5: sector blue five: 6/29/63
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It was a frozen dinner again. Neither of them had gotten in till late, numb with the stresses of the day----more refugees, more chaos. Michael ate, looked up finally realizing his self-absorbed silence, found Lise sunk in one of her own----a habit, lately, between them. He was disturbed to think of that, and reached across the table to lay his hand on hers, which rested beside her plate. Her hand turned, curled up to interlock with his. She looked as tired as he. She had been working too long hours----more than today. It was a remedy of sorts----not to think. She never spoke of New Orleans. She did not speak much at all, in fact. Maybe, he thought, she was so much at work there was little to say.
"I saw Sheridan today," he said hoarsely, seeking to fill the silence, to distract her, however grim the topic. "He seemed---quiet. No pain. No pain at all."
Her hand tightened. "Then you did right by him after all, didn't you?"
"I don't know. I don't think there is a way to know."
"He asked."
"He asked," he echoed.
"You did all you could to be right. That's all you can do."
"I love you."
She smiled. Her lips trembled until they could no longer contain the smile.
"Lise?"
She drew back her hand. "Do you think we're going to hold Babylon 5?"
"Are you afraid not?"
"I'm afraid you don't believe it."
"What kind of reasoning is that?"
"Things you won't discuss with me."
"Don't give me riddles. I'm not good at them. I never was."
"I want a child. I'm not on the treatment now. I think you still are."
Heat rose to his face. For half a heartbeat he thought of lying. "I am. I didn't think it was time to discuss it yet."
She pressed her lips tightly together, clearly distraught.
"I don't know what you want," he said. "I don't know. If Lise Gwent wants a baby, all right. Ask. It's all right. Anything's all right. But I'd hoped it'd be for reasons I'd know."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You've done a lot of thinking. I've watched you. But you haven't done any of it aloud. What do you want me to do? Get you pregnant and let you go? I'd help you if I knew how. What do I say?"
"I don't want to fight. I don't want a fight. I told you what I want."
"But why?!"
She shrugged. "I don't want to wait anymore." Her brow furrowed. For the first time in days he had the feeling of contact with her eyes. Of Lise, as she was. Of something gentle. "You care," she said. "I can see that."
"Sometimes I know I don't hear all that you say."
"On ship----it's my business, having a child or not. Ship family is closer in some things and further apart in others. But you with your own family----I understand that. I respect it."
"Your home too. It's yours."
She managed the faintest of smiles, an offering maybe. "So what do you say to it?"
Offices of station planning were giving out dire warnings, otherwise pleadings otherwise. It was not only the establishment of Q. There was the war, getting nearer. All rules applied to Garibaldi first.
He simply nodded. "So we're through waiting."
It was like a shadow lifting. New Orleans's ghost fled the place, the small apartment they had drawn in blue five, which was smaller, into which their furnishings did not fit, where everything was out of order. It was all at once home, the hall with the dishes stowed in the clothing lockers and the living room which was bedroom by night, with boxes lashed in the corner. Downer, wickerwork, with what should have gone into the hall lockers.
They lay in the bed that was the daytime couch. And she talked, lying in his arms, for the first time in weeks talked, late into the night, a flow of memories she had never shared with him, in all their being together.
He tried to reckon what she had lost in New Orleans: her ship; she still called it that. Brotherhood, kinship. Merchant king morals, the stationer proverb ran; but he could not see Lise among the others, like them, rowdy merchant kings offship for a dockside binge and a sleepover with anyone willing. Could never believe that.
"Believe it," she said, her breath stirring against his shoulder. "That's the way we live. What do you want instead? In-breeding? They were my cousins on that ship."
"You were different," he insisted. He remembered her as he had first seen her, in his office on a matter involving a cousin's troubles---always quieter than the others. A conversation, a re-meeting; another; a second voyage---and Babylon 5 again. She had never gone bar-haunting with her cousins, had not made the merchant king hangouts; had come to him, had spent those days on station with him. Failed to board again. Merchant kings rarely married. Lise had.
"No," she said, "You were different."
"You'd take anyone's baby?" The thought troubled him. Some things he had never asked Lise because he thought she knew. And Lise had never talked that way. He began, belatedly, to revise all he thought he knew; to be hurt, and to fight that. She was Lise; that quantity he still believed in and trusted.
"Where else could we get them?" she asked, making strange but clear sense. "We love them, do you think not? They belong to the whole ship. Only now there aren't any." She could talk of that suddenly. He felt the tension ebb, a sigh against him. "They're all gone."
"You called El Gwent your father; Narcisa Dimmick your mother. Was it that way?"
"He was. She knew. And a moment later. "She left a station to go with him. Not many will."
She had never asked him to. That thought had never clearly occurred to him. As a Garibaldi to leave Babylon 5----he asked himself if he would have, and felt a deep unease. I would have, he insisted. I might have. "It would be hard," he admitted aloud. "It was hard for you."
She nodded, a movement against his arm.
"Are you sorry, Lise?"
A small shake of her head.
"It's late to talk about things like this," he said. "I wish we had. I wish we'd known enough to talk to each other. So many things we didn't know."
"Does it bother you?"
He hutted her against him, kissed her through a veil of hair, brushed it aside. He thought for a moment of saying no, decided then to say nothing. "You've seen Babylon 5. You realize I've never set foot on a ship bigger than a shuttle? Never been out from this station? Some things I don't know how to look at, or even how to imagine the question. Do you understand me?"
"Some things I don't know how to ask you either."
"What would you ask for?"
"I just did."
"I don't know how to say yes or now, Lise. I don't know if I could have left Babylon 5. I love you, but I don't know that I could have done that---after so short a time. And that bothers me. That bothers me, if it's something in me that never occurred to me.....that I spent all my planning trying to think how to make you happy on Babylon 5...."
"Easier for me to stay a time---than for a Garibaldi to uproot himself from Babylon 5; pausing's easy, we do it all the time. Only losing New Orleans I never planned. Like what's out there, you never planned. You've answered me."
"I answered you? How?"
"By what it is that bothers you."
That mystified him. We do it all the time. That scared the hell out of him. But she talked more, lying against him, about more than things----deep feelings; the way childhood was for a merchant king; the first time she had set foot on a station, aged twelve and frightened by rude stationers who assumed any merchant king was fair game. How a cousin had died on Voyager years back, knifed in a stationer quarrel, not even comprehending a stationer's jealousy that had killed him.
And an incredible thing---that in the loss of her ship, Lise's pride had suffered; pride----the idea set him back, so that for some time he lay staring at the dark ceiling, thinking about it.762Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7t0axkqlnE
The name was diminished....a possession like the ship. Someone had diminished it and too anonymously to give her an enemy to get it back from. For a moment he thought of Winters, the hard arrogance of an elite breed, the aristocracy of privilege. Sealed words and a law unto itself, where no one had property, and everyone had it; the ship and all who belonged to it. Merchant kings who would spit in a dockmaster's eye made grumbling retreat when a Winters or a Gwent ordered it. She felt grief at losing New Orleans. That had to be. But shame too---that she had not been there when it counted. That Babylon 5 had set her in the dockside offices where she could use that reputation the Gwents had; but now there was nothing at her back, nothing but the reputation she had not been there to pay for. A dead name. A dead ship. Maybe she detected pity from other merchant kings. That would be bitterest of all.762Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgt5zw0b0wJ
One thing she had asked of him. He had cheated her of it without discussing it. Without seeing.762Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3iu3Xg7wM2
"The first child," he murmured, turning his head on the pillow to look at her, "goes by Gwent. You hear me, Lise? Babylon 5 has Garibaldis enough. My father may sulk; but he'll understand. My mother will. I think it's vital that it be that way."762Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPZLbUqqUIm
She started to cry, as she had never cried in his presence, not without fighting it. She put her arms about him and stayed here, till morning.762Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡURKHmyAlYw
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