In the Company of Others Read Online Free

way to distinguish the two unless you accessed an individual’s registration data by retinal scan. Or asked, which would likely earn you a bloodied nose.
    The blending had been deliberate, reconciliation and survival in one. The first, and deadliest, Ration Riot had surged throughout the station two weeks after the partial collapse of the still-new hydroponics system. As blame flew down every possible corridor on wings of fear, everyone’s face grew pinched with hunger; it only added fuel when stationers were accused of hoarding. The match was lit when rumor—the only way news traveled through the station—spread that only those immies willing to be sterilized and become stationers would continue to be fed. The uprising was mercifully brief and contained to the Outward Five levels. It was mercilessly violent and consumed too many innocent lives.
    In the anguished aftermath, enough truth was found behind both rumors that stationers throughout Thromberg gathered in quiet, somber groups, unable to meet the eyes of passing immies, talking in hushed tones about how the real enemies were the Quill and the blindness of Earth. Station insignia started disappearing: from a tunic on this man, from the coats of all the meds in the infirmary on night shift, suddenly gone from every stationer working in Outward Five and elsewhere. Unorganized, unsanctioned, and oddly healing—no one commented out loud, but the tensions between stationer and immigrant slowly eased. Eventually, only the original station records remained, kept to make sure everyone received their fair share of work and food.
    Good intentions aside, each knew the other—for better and worse—and the final generation of immie and stationer kids grew up knowing precisely how to start each other’s tempers flying.
    â€œAw, Aaron . . . don’t you try and pick a fight again,” this loudly insincere complaint came from Pardell’s right-hand neighbor, a stationer named Hugh Malley.
    They’d been friends even before being orphaned by the third and most recent of the Ration Riots, nine years earlier, a friendship presently belied by the bigger man’s fierce scowl. Work in the recycling depot had laid its characteristic curve of muscle over already massive shoulders and barrel chest, making Malley’s share of the bar surface necessarily greater than most. He took advantage of that space to thump down one huge, scarred fist with sufficient emphasis to spill the frothy heads from most of the containers foolishly left sitting in front of their owners. Grumbles about this waste were conspicuously absent. “No fights,” Malley repeated. “We owe Sammie here dibs for the last ruckus. You know I hate cleaning up this place.”
    Pardell blinked innocently. “You hate cleaning up anywhere,” he replied, raising his own voice to be heard over the growing din as those behind began murmuring in anticipation. Sure enough, an instant later the bar’s bell sounded and, automatically, all of those presently leaning on the bar, including Malley and Pardell, snatched up their drinks and straightened to let others squeeze by them. Sammie and his coworkers went into a frenzy, collecting dib chits from those moving out of immediate reach as well as from those newly arrived and impatient.
    Malley settled his heavy forearms companionably on the shoulders of the two men now in his former place, neither arguing beyond a strangled grunt. Pardell toasted the nervous-looking immie in front of him, relieving any concern he might be drunk enough to try for the same service. The tavern settled back into its comforting babble of voices and laughter as smoothly as if nothing had happened at all.
    Smooth, because it had to be , Pardell told himself, helplessly sliding into one of those detached, intense moments of thought that consumed him every so often, no matter what he was doing, or where he was. He usually tried to turn the feeling