The other man lifted narrow shoulders. “I’d like one, ‘less you prefer drinking alone.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kilgarin said. “Here.” He handed the bottle over and stared as the Maylindian ripped out the plastic stopping and upended the bottle in his mouth with a single flicking motion. After several swallows, the stranger returned the bottle, sighing.

  “Not as good as what we used to have.” he said, “but serves the purpose fine. You’re not from around here, are you? Noticed the way you dress, not many people dress like that in Farway.”

  “I’m off the Charter.” Kilgarin said.

  “Heard another ship landed. Haven’t had too many out this way. last month or so. Trouble in the colonies; guess it’s slowing up trade. Getting harder to find good liquor every day. Your ship bringing any?”

  “Some absinthe from Endrim.”

  “Now that’s drinking. Say, my name’s Hans Reedy. Used to be a Physical myself, till I dropped ship here in Farway. Pension’s kept me in bed and board, but not much left over for drinking, which is why I bothered you. you seeming friendly and all. Want to thank you for that, by the way.”

  “Forget it. My name’s Kilgarin, James Kilgarin. Out of Wellington.”

  “Have a hand, Jamie.”

  “Call me Kilgarin.” They shook; Reedy’s palm was moist in the Cork’s hand.

  “Now,” the squat man said, “how about another hit of that wine?”

  Kilgarin had no idea why he concealed his Sensitivity from Reedy; it just seemed to happen—the man assumed Kilgarin was another Physical, and at first Kilgarin didn’t think to set him right. By the time it became apparent that the two men would be spending more than a few casual moments together, Kilgarin had already learned enough about Reedy’s attitudes to know what he could expect if he revealed his true position.

  “Those Sensitives,” Reedy had said when they first started drinking, “you see them everywhere, and you know what? They’ve always got credit, even the pensioned ones. I’m dying of thirst and those Sneeks are taking baths in absinthe. It’s true. Company keeps them fed like they were made of limestone or something.”

  “They need them for the ships, don’t they?”

  “They need us too, but you don’t see Physicals getting six-year Contracts. Term Contracts, that’s all, and not even full insurance. I get a leg broke, I get my pension, nothing else. A Sensitive goes stupid in his head, he gets a pension and enough insurance credit to live on for ten, fifteen years. What kind of fair is that?”

  “If he breaks a Contract, he’s in as bad shape as you are. And insurance credit doesn’t help a man if he’s insane.”

  “Hey, what do you care about those Sneeks, anyway? They’re stiffing you as much as they’re stiffing me.”

  “I thought you were being too simple about it, that’s all.”

  “Hell, what’s so complex about being robbed?”

  Part of what kept Kilgarin from telling Reedy the truth was his desire to learn more about the Outworld situation. He had a growing suspicion that bis trouble with the Captain was tied to the rebellion brewing in the colonies, and he wanted to learn as much about the rebellion as he could. At least, he thought that was his reason.

  He and Reedy had a meal in a dome tavern on the far end of the lake. Kilgarin paid. Reedy led him to a seat near a clear plastic wall, the only one Kilgarin had seen so far in Farway, and insisted Kilgarin take the outer seat. Kilgarin found himself eating on a transparent platform six meters off the lake’s surface. Reedy explained that the tavern was usually frequented only by Company factory employees. “They’re the only ones can afford it,” he said.

  While they ate, Kilgarin and the Physical talked.

  “Now what we’ve been planning, some of the others and me”—Reedy paused and scratched at his moustache—“well—how long have you been in the Out-worlds, Kilgarin?”

  “Six years. Since I left Wellington.”

  “Then you know how the colonists are?”

  “They seem tough. A bit hard.”

  “That’s the word, Kilgarin. I’m from earth myself, from North America, province called Canamer, and that’s pretty hard land—but these Outworlders, they beat anything I ever saw at home. They have this plan, they want their own system—you see? They figure the Sneeks and the Company have done enough to them, to us, to everyone. You see that?”

  “I understand what you’re saying,” Kilgarin said. He forked greens into his mouth from the plate before him, chewed. He preferred the ship’s algae product to natural-grown greens, but sometimes enjoyed the variation.

  “You do? Good. Maybe you’d like to meet some of the men hey?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re OK, Kilgarin.” Reedy nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, you’ll meet them tonight.”

  “You didn’t just come over to me at random, did you?” Kilgarin asked. Reedy shook his head, laughing.

  “I saw you, I knew what kind of guy you are. The way you were holding that bottle you looked like the last guy in the world. You know? Sure. People get pushed around, they get confused, don’t know what they’re going to do…they look like you did. I saw you, I knew where your mind was, and I figured you and I’d have the same things in common. Figured you’d want to meet the others. Like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  “Like that,” Kilgarin said, and thought: That’s the way it is to be a Physical. You can never know for certain where you stand. You’re always guessing and depending on body language. Just as I’m guessing about the Captain.

  He joined Reedy in his laugh. For Kilgarin the laugh was bitter.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  “I thought I saw—would you wait here a moment?”

  “Sure. “I’ll be inside. You want me to order you a beer too, Kilgarin?”

  “Do that,” Kiigarin said. He left Reedy and crossed the street down which they’d been walking, dodged a ground-car that bleered! at him as he waved it aside, and trotted to the comer.

  The street beyond was busy with people, but nowhere did he see the two men he’d glimpsed a moment before.

  Reluctantly he recrossed the street and joined Reedy in the bar the Physical had indicated. Reedy gave him the beer he’d ordered for Kiigarin, and the bartender handed the Cork the tab.

  “What was that all about, anyway?” Reedy asked him.

  Kiigarin looked for the bartender, who’d taken his credit chit.

  “Just two men who shouldn’t be together,” he said. “Two former friends of mine.”

  Reedy looked confused, then shrugged. “Your business,” he said. Draining his glass, he added, “Another beer?”

  Twilight turned the Maylindian sky a mellow orange and traced the clouds with tinted gold along their western edge. Repeatedly Kilgarin’s gaze went to the part of the sky visible between the high buildings, and repeatedly he had to force his attention back to the ground, and the route Reedy was taking through the alleys of Farway.

  Even the most modem cities had their slums, an area where the poor and disadvantaged collected in communal misery, and Farway was no exception. The streets Reedy led Kiigarin along were dark, the pavements cracked and worn: it was the oldest section of the city, and though it wasn’t in the same state of disrepair as its counterpart in Endrim, the area gave off the same aura of weariness and apathy. Kilgarin wondered why Reedy’s friends found it necessary to meet in a ghetto, and then decided that many—if not all—of them were probably from the ghetto area. Crippled Physicals, pensioned crew, colonists who’d emigrated to Maylind to find a job and found instead that all the jobs were spoken for—these would be the revolutionaries, Kiigarin was sure. He sympathized with the Out-worlders in principle, though he found the application of the principle distasteful: he couldn’t blame the Sensitives for the Company’s oppression, and he didn’t think this was solely because he was a Sensitive himself.

  “We’ve got a place in the basement of a confab,” Reedy said. “Belongs to Conners. He rents it on the side.”

  Kilgarin said nothing. He followed the Physical up a flight of steps to a wide court. Several buildings larger than any Kilgarin had seen in Farway faced the court, their lobbies brightly lit in contrast to their upper stories. Reedy skirted the edge of the court, slipped down a passage between buildings, and halted in front of a plastisteel door. Kilgarin watched as the squat man put his palm against a checkplate beside the jamb. The plate glowed and the door cycled open. Reedy shook his hand, laughing wryly as he gestured Kilgarin inside. “Always burns a bit,” he said.

  Another flight of stairs led downward, around a corner to a second door. Reedy pressed a call tab and the speaker grill asked his name. He gave it, the door opened, and Kilgarin followed him in.

  Kilgarin’s first impression of Conners was amazement at the man’s size. Conners hulked at least two and a half meters tall, with shoulders half again as broad as a normal man’s, hands that were each as massive as both of Kilgarin’s, and arms that dangled to Conners’s mid-thigh. After size what impressed Kilgarin was Conners’s face: the revolutionary’s features were ascetic, aquiline—completely self-possessed. He greeted Kilgarin with a grim nod and indicated that he and Reedy were to take seats with the others.

  “We were talking about this ship of yours, Kilgarin,” Conners said after Reedy had introduced Kiigarin and explained the Cork’s background. “From what we hear, she’s a hate ship. Is that so?”

  “That’s what she’s been called,” Kilgarin said.

  “A man we have in the port tells us there was trouble aboard the Charter two days ago, before she landed on Maylind.”

  Kilgarin related the incident. Conners inclined his head as he listened, his eyes shifting as he took in the expressions of the other men and women in the room. When Kilgarin finished, Conners said, “It’s happened all across fhe Arm, then. Thank god. If what we’re planning is only local to Maylind, we’d be dead. But if the Company can be kept busy jumping from outbreak to outbreak, we may have a chance after all.”

  “That’s a little much to hope for, Franklyn,” a squarish man on a bench not far from Kilgarin said. “I think we’d do best to work with whatever we can expect to encounter here, and not depend on outside influences to save our outstretched necks.”

  “Of course, Orlando,” Conners said wearily. “We’ve been through that, and we’ve made our decision.” To KILGARIN: “I’m sorry if we seem a bit disorganized, but, as usually happens in groups like ours, though we all agree on ends, we don’t all agree on means. Some of us, including Orlando, opt for violent revolution; others, for what they call educational evolution—showing the Company our wants and needs, in effect educating them to our condition. Recently our more patient colleagues decided to abandon us as hotheads, and for the past few days we’ve been trying to finalize a course of action. We haven’t yet all agreed on what to do. When you’ve been a member of our group a little longer, you’ll be allowed to assist in our plans—but for now, I think, we’d simply like to learn a little more about you.”

  “Precisely,” said a woman behind Conners. “Tell us about yourself.”

  Kilgarin did, omitting all reference to his Sensitivity. Conners listened without expression, while those around the group’s leader showed varying degrees of interest. Least attentive was Reedy, who wandered over to a table stocked with bottles and casks of wine and beer, and after opening an ale for himself, the Physical got one for Kilgarin, handing it to the Cork as he regained his seat beside him. Kilgarin nursed the bottle, using it to cover what he felt must be the obvious trembling in his hand’s. He didn’t like the emotions he felt surrounding him; if the men and women in the room discovered he was not a Physical, he would be dead inside of a minute.

  Finishing his story, glad for the verbal ability he’d always possessed and taken for granted, Kilgarin paused for a long swallow of ale. He closed his eyes as he did, and shut his mind to the feelings of those around him. If the reaction to his story was negative, Kilgarin prefered not to know until action was taken. There was, after all, little he could do. He was on their ground.

  Conners cleared his throat. He glanced at the woman behind him. Kilgarin opened his eyes. The woman’s face was hard, her eyes unreadable, but she inclined her head in a curt nod, and when Conners turned back to Kilgarin he was smiling. “Well,” Conners said, extending his hand, “you’re in.”

  Kilgarin laughed and grasped the outstretched hand.

  “Essentially what we want to do is this,” Conners said, resting an arm around Kilgarin’s shoulder and pointing at a spot on the diagram on the table before them, “The main processing plants for the Company are here, sixteen levels below ground in the third building of this complex. That’s where they refine the hide, press it, add the preservatives to the juices; it’s where they make the milk. If there’s any single place on Maylind which is paramount to the Company’s operations on this planet, that’s it.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Kilgarin said. “What’s this ‘milk’?”

  The woman who’d spoken earlier answered Kilgarin’s question. “You know what Yrrl Root is? You’ve drunk absinthe? You’ve eaten Brex? Bloodmilk is the same kind of thing, a narcotic. If you’re not an addict of the drink, you probably have never beard of it. Its highly specialized.”

  “And makes quite a profit for the Company,” Orlando added.

  “I can imagine,” Kilgarin said, peering at the diagram more closely. “Cutting down on their production will probably hurt them badly.”

  “Not just cutting down, Kilgarin,” Conners said. “We intend to cut it off completely.”

  “By destroying the plant?”

  “By destroying the plant,” Conners agreed.

  Kilgarin sighed. “That’s a bit ambitious.”

  “We don’t have the patience for anything less ambitious,” the woman said quietly. “We’ve been pushed to extremes.”

  “Do you honestly think this is the answer?” Kilgarin looked around at them. Reedy, he saw, was drunk; the man’s head rested on his folded arms, his mouth fluttering in a snore. “I’ve worked on the rim for six years, and there’ve always been plans to cut off the Company. Do you know why none of them have worked? Because the people behind them have always ignored the economics of the situation’s existence. This colony stays alive because of this—what do you call it, ‘bloodmilk’? Wipe that out and you wipe yourselves out, never mind the Company.”

  “That’s a simplistic attitude, Kilgarin,” Orlando said. “Admittedly, there’s a risk involved—”

  “Risk is the least of your worries. Understand, I’m not saying anything against your revolution. But try to go about it realistically. Ask yourselves this: is Maylind self-supporting? Do you need Company products to survive? Are your farming tools home produced? Listen, I was on a world where every piece of machinery was rented from the Company—and none of it was self-replicating or repairing. Do you understand what that meant? The planet needed Company engineers to fix the crop harvesters, the planters, the processing machines—and all of the repair equipment was kept off planet. Ditto the men to repair them. The result: effective slavery.”

  “You’re not telling us anything new,” Conners said. “We’re aware of the situation here. That’s what we’re trying to change.”

  “But don’t you see you can’t go about it violently? If you do, you’ll only be hurting yourselves. I want change as much as you do, perhaps more: 1 work on a mindship. I have to live with the Company daily. I’ve suffered at their hands, their collective hands—so listen to me when I tell you, this is not the way.”

  He paused for a moment and looked at the colonists standing around the table. They were watching him intently. Orlando was frowning; the woman smiling wryly. Conners, again, was expressionless.

  Shaking himself, Kilgarin let out a sigh, relaxing. “First of all, you have to make Maylind self-supporting. Revolutions on alien planets are not like the revolutions we read about that happened on earth. Earth is basically friendly to man. Most other planets aren’t. The Company helps keep your colony alive. Before you can get rid of the Company you have to tame this world…completely.”

  He glanced up. “Do you understand that?”

  The woman’s laugh was harsh, bitter. She glared at Conners, her smile vanishing. “Well? Are you going to answer him? Are you going to tell him what we’ve been through?” When Conners said nothing, she screeched, “Are you going to tell him?”

  Conners started and shifted his gaze from Kilgarin to the woman. “If that’s the way he feels, Grenna, there’s nothing I can tell him.” His attention returned to Kilgarin. “You say you want change, Kilgarin, but you refuse to accept the risk of change. I was going to ask you to help in our efforts, but now I think it’s best simply to ask you to leave…and to think about what’s been said here. I think, in some way you’re not even aware of, you’re tied to the Company. Possibly you’re right in your beliefs. We may be risking too much. But that’s something only we can decide, because only we’ve lived through the oppression from this perspective. For you, the solution may be different. Perhaps. I won’t pretend to have all the answers…and neither should you.

  “Reedy will take you back to the port. Grenna, wake him up and set the two of them on their way.”

  This was done. At the door, Conners gripped Kilgarin’s shoulder and leaned close to him. “I want you to know you came very close to being killed. It’s only because I believe you meant well that you’re leaving here alive.” His hand dropped, and he said, “Don’t make me regret it, KILGARIN.”

  Calmer now—strangely calm, he thought—Kilgarin said, “It’s your affair, Conners. I hope you’re doing the right thing.”

  “So do I,” Conners said, studying him.

  Kilgarin went out the door, Reedy at his side.

 

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