Finity's End - a Union-Alliance Novel Read Free Page A

begun to feel embarrassed, and caught in a lie that was just going to get wider. "Long time ago," he'd said, in a surly tone. "Long time you sad," Melody had said, and put her finger on it again, in a way the psychs had never been able to.
    And somehow then—maybe it had been Patch's idea—they'd gotten him up on his feet and talked to him about things that just didn't make any sense to him.
    He knew he wasn't supposed to talk to them. The fact he was breaking a rule made him inclined to go with them and get in
real
trouble, challenging the authorities to take him out of the foster-family he'd been trying to escape.
    He'd walked about with them for an hour in the open, uncaught, unreprimanded, and he'd seen the amazing details about the station that downers knew. And then one of Melody's mask cylinders had run out. They'd had to go to a locker within the service tunnels to get another, and he'd discovered a secret world, a world only licensed supervisors got to see—legally, among creatures only licensed supervisors got to deal with—legally.
    He'd gone home to his foster-family and apologized, lying through his teeth about being very, very sorry. He'd stayed with that foster-family and followed their rules for another three whole years because their residence was near the access he knew to the maintenance tunnels. And the tunnels became his route to various places about the station, and his refuge from anger. He used masks that were for human maintenance workers, always in a locker by the access doors. He did no harm. For the first time he had a Place that was always his. For the first time in his life he had something to lose if he got caught. And for the first time in his life he'd reformed his bad-boy ways, gotten out of the crowd he was in and reformed so well the social workers thought his foster- family—his worst family of the lot—had worked a miracle.
    He'd stayed reformed: he'd improved in school, which brought rewards of another kind. And even when, after the four-year rotation station workers were allowed. Melody and Patch had gone back down to their world, he hadn't collapsed and relapsed into his juvenile life of crime.
    No. He'd already confessed at least part of his story (not the part about actually going into the tunnels) to his guidance counselor and made a solemn career choice: working with the downers on Downbelow.
    Tough standards, tough program, tough academic work. But he'd made the program. He'd gotten his chance.
    And, not surprising, because former station workers lived and worked around the human establishments on Downbelow, he'd met Melody and Patch inside an hour after reaching the forest Base last fall. She was grayer. Patch wasn't as big as he'd recalled. He'd grown that much in the nearly ten years since he'd seen them, and he'd not known how old his Downers had been.
    It might be her last fertile season, and Patch her last mate. No other male pursued her that he knew of, and she would not, he understood, lead Patch all that long a chase when her spring was on her—but then Patch couldn't walk so far these days, either.
    He wanted them back safely. But he knew, now, soberly, that ultimately he'd lose them, too. So days were precious to him. And this day—this was the best day of his life, this game of puffer-balls and pollen.
    A hard downer finger poked him hard below the ribs, and he curled in self-defense. Melody and Patch were in a prankish mood and, lying on his back on the bank, he jabbed Patch back, which sent Patch screaming for the nearest tree-limb. In the trees downers could climb like crazy, and a human in heavy boots and clean-suit was not going to catch Patch.
    Patch flung leaves at him. "Wicked, wicked," Melody cried, and flung a puffer-ball, which disintegrated on impact. Pollen was everywhere. Patch dropped, shrieking, from the tree.
    Then it was pollen wars until the air was thick and gold again.
    And until the restricted breathing had Fletcher leaning against a