Read Online Finity's End - a Union-Alliance Novel by C. J. Cherryh - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: C. J. Cherryh
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seamier side of Pell docks. The senior-juniors, his own lot, had crossed that line to anything-goes maturity in the seven years since they'd last made this port. They'd been out where combat was real, and they'd walked real corridors where surprises weren't computer-spawned. They came back to their port of registry after seven station-measured years of hard living and real threats in deep space, and sat and sipped pink fruit drinks in a soft-bar with painted dinosaurs and garish dragons on the walls as the rest of their little band found their way out to the bar area and found their table.
Chad , Toby, Wayne , and Sue showed up, sweaty and flushed and admitting it actually had been a little wilder than they expected.
"Won't hurt the juniors," was JR's pronouncement, between sips of his fruit juice. Sweet stuff. Almost sickeningly sweet. It brought back kid-days with a bitter edge of memory.
The whole trip brought back memories, a nightmare that wouldn't quite come right, because the dead wouldn't come back and enjoy the things they'd known and shared the last time they 'd been at Pell. A lot of the crew was having trouble with that, ghosts, almost, the eye tricked, in a familiar venue, into believing one face was like another face,
Or remembering that you'd been at a theater, and finding your group several short of a momentary expectation, a memory, a remembrance of things past.
Ghosts, far more vivid than any computer sim… poignant and provoking dreams. But you had to let them go. At his young age, he knew that. He'd just expected a bit more…
Dignity,
Pell had been a grim, joyless place during the war, so the seniors said; he'd seen it make its docks a rowdy, neon-lit carnival in the years since. Now… now the place had dinosaurs, as if the place had finally, utterly, slipped its moorings to reality.
So the Old Man said they were going back to trading, making an honest living, the Old Man said, now that Mazian's pirates had gone in retreat and seemed apt to nurse their wounds for some little time. At least for now, the shooting war was over.
So where did that leave them, a combat-trained crew, brightest and best and fiercest youth of the Alliance ?
Testing out the facilities—desperate hard duty it was—that they were going to let the junior-juniors into. Babysitting.
Well, that was the reversion the Old Man had talked about in his general speech to the crew. They could have a
real
liberty this time, the Old Man had said, and the Old Rules were in effect again, rules that had never been in effect in JR's entire life, and he was the seniormost junior, in charge of the younger juniors. The dino adventure was now the level of the judgment calls he made, a little chance to play, act like fools… or whatever the easy, soft station-bred population called it, when grown men sweated and outran imaginary dragons, while paying money for the privilege.
This was station life, not much different than, say, Sol, or Russell's, or any other starstation built on the same pattern, the same design, down to the color-codes of its docks, an international language of design and function. Pell was richer, wilder, fatter and lazier. Pell partied on with post-War abandon and tried to forget its past, the memorial plaques here and there standing like the proverbial skeletons at the feast.
On this site the station wall was breached
…
This was Q sector…
People walked by the plaques, acting silly, wearing outlandish clothes, garish colors. People spent an amazing amount of money and effort on fashions that to his eye just looked odd. Station-born kids prowled the docks looking for trouble they sometimes found. Police were in evidence, doing nothing to restrain the spacers, who brought in money; a lot to restrain station juveniles, who JR understood were a major problem on Pell, so that they'd had to caution their own junior-juniors to carry ship's ID at all times and guard it from pickpockets.
There was so much change in Pell.
Chad , Toby, Wayne , and Sue showed up, sweaty and flushed and admitting it actually had been a little wilder than they expected.
"Won't hurt the juniors," was JR's pronouncement, between sips of his fruit juice. Sweet stuff. Almost sickeningly sweet. It brought back kid-days with a bitter edge of memory.
The whole trip brought back memories, a nightmare that wouldn't quite come right, because the dead wouldn't come back and enjoy the things they'd known and shared the last time they 'd been at Pell. A lot of the crew was having trouble with that, ghosts, almost, the eye tricked, in a familiar venue, into believing one face was like another face,
Or remembering that you'd been at a theater, and finding your group several short of a momentary expectation, a memory, a remembrance of things past.
Ghosts, far more vivid than any computer sim… poignant and provoking dreams. But you had to let them go. At his young age, he knew that. He'd just expected a bit more…
Dignity,
Pell had been a grim, joyless place during the war, so the seniors said; he'd seen it make its docks a rowdy, neon-lit carnival in the years since. Now… now the place had dinosaurs, as if the place had finally, utterly, slipped its moorings to reality.
So the Old Man said they were going back to trading, making an honest living, the Old Man said, now that Mazian's pirates had gone in retreat and seemed apt to nurse their wounds for some little time. At least for now, the shooting war was over.
So where did that leave them, a combat-trained crew, brightest and best and fiercest youth of the Alliance ?
Testing out the facilities—desperate hard duty it was—that they were going to let the junior-juniors into. Babysitting.
Well, that was the reversion the Old Man had talked about in his general speech to the crew. They could have a
real
liberty this time, the Old Man had said, and the Old Rules were in effect again, rules that had never been in effect in JR's entire life, and he was the seniormost junior, in charge of the younger juniors. The dino adventure was now the level of the judgment calls he made, a little chance to play, act like fools… or whatever the easy, soft station-bred population called it, when grown men sweated and outran imaginary dragons, while paying money for the privilege.
This was station life, not much different than, say, Sol, or Russell's, or any other starstation built on the same pattern, the same design, down to the color-codes of its docks, an international language of design and function. Pell was richer, wilder, fatter and lazier. Pell partied on with post-War abandon and tried to forget its past, the memorial plaques here and there standing like the proverbial skeletons at the feast.
On this site the station wall was breached
…
This was Q sector…
People walked by the plaques, acting silly, wearing outlandish clothes, garish colors. People spent an amazing amount of money and effort on fashions that to his eye just looked odd. Station-born kids prowled the docks looking for trouble they sometimes found. Police were in evidence, doing nothing to restrain the spacers, who brought in money; a lot to restrain station juveniles, who JR understood were a major problem on Pell, so that they'd had to caution their own junior-juniors to carry ship's ID at all times and guard it from pickpockets.
There was so much change in Pell.
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