Falling Free (12 page)

The situation was extraordinary. Time was of the essence, muttered Van Atta truculently.

Leo secretly sympathized with Chalopin's testiness. Her smooth routine disrupted, her office abruptly appropriated for the Ops VP's inquest—Apmad did not believe in wasting time. The official company investigation of the incident had commenced, by her fiat, a bare hour ago in Aisle 29; he'd be surprised if it took her more than another hour to finish sifting the case.

The windows of Shuttleport Three's adminstrative offices, sealed against the internal pressure of the building, framed a panorama of the complex—the runways, loading zones, warehouses, offices, hangars, workers'dormitories, the monorail running off to the refinery glittering on the horizon and the eerily rugged mountains beyond. And the vital power plant; Rodeo's atmosphere had oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide, but in the wrong proportions and at too low a pressure to suit human metabolism. The air conditioning labored constantly to adjust the gas mix and filter out the contaminants. A human might live for fifteen minutes outside without a breathmask; Leo was uncertain whether to think of it as a safety margin or just a slow death. Definitely not a garden spot.

Bannerji had sidled around behind the shuttleportadministrator. Hiding behind her, Leo thought. It might be the best strategy for the security guard at that. From her smart shoes through her trim Galac-Tech uniform to her swept-back coiffure, not a hair out of place, and her set, clean jawline, Chalopin radiated both the will and the ability to defend her turf.

Apmad, refereeing the scrimmage, was another type altogether. Dumpy, on the high end of middle age, frizzy grey hair cut short, she might have been somebody's grandmother, but for her eyes. She made no attempt to dress for success. As if she already possessed so much power, she was beyond that game. So
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far from regulating tempers, her laconic comments had served to stir the pot, as if she was curious what might float to the top. Definitely not a grandmother's eyes . . .

Leo was still close to a boil himself. The project is twenty-five years old. Time can't be that much of the essence.

God almighty, cried Van Atta, am I the only man here conscious of what the bottom line means?

Bottom line? said Leo. GalacTech is closer to its payoff from the Cay Project than ever before. To screw things up now with an impatient, premature attempt to wring profits is practically criminal. You're on the verge of the first real results.

Not really, observed Apmad coolly. Your first group of fifty workers is merely a token. It will take another ten years to bring the whole thousand online. Cool, yes; but Leo read a fierce concealed tension in her the source of which he could not yet identify.

So, call it a tax loss. You can't tell me this, Leo waved a hand toward the window, indicating Rodeo, can't use a tax loss or two.

Apmad rolled her eyes at the man who stood silently at her shoulder. Tell this young man the facts of hie, Gavin.

Gavin was a big rumpled goon with a broken nose whom Leo had taken at first for some kind of bodyguard. He was in fact the Ops VP's chief accountant, and when he spoke it was with startlingly precise and elegant elocution, in impressive rounded paragraphs.

GalacTech had been offsetting the Cay Project's very considerable losses with Rodeo's paper profits since its inception. I'd better recapitulate a little history for you, Mr. Graf.Gavins cratched his nose thoughtfully.

GalacTech holds Rodeo on a ninety-nine-year lease with the government of Orient IV. The original terms of the lease were extremely favorable to us, since Rodeo's unique mineral and petrochemical resources were at that time still undiscovered. And so they remained for the first thirty years of the lease.

The next thirty years saw an enormous investment of materials and labor on the part of GalacTech to develop Rodeo's resources. Of course, he prodded the air with a didactic finger, as soon as Orient IV

began to see our profit passing through their wormhole nexus, they began to regret the terms of the lease, and to seek a larger cut of the action. Rodeo was chosen as the site for the Cay Project in thefi rst place in part, besides certain unique legal advantages, precisely so that its projected expenses could be charged against Rodeo's profits generally, and reduce the, er, unhealthy excitement said profits were generating on Orient IV.

GalacTech's lease of Rodeo now has some fourteen years left to run, and the government of Orient IV is getting, ah, how shall I put this, infected with anticipatory greed. They've just changed their tax laws, and from the end of this fiscal year they propose to tax the company's Rodeo operation upon gross not net profit. We lobbied against it, but we failed. Damn provincials, he added reflectively.

So. After the end of this fiscal year, the Cay Project losses can no longer be offset against Orient IV tax savings; they will be real, and passed through to us. The terms of the new lease at the end of the next fourteen years are not expected to be favorable. In fact, we project Orient IV is preparing to drive Gal acTech out and take over its Rodeo operations at a fraction of their real worth. Expropriation by any
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other name doth smell the same. The economic blockade is already beginning. The time to start limiting further investment and maximizing profit is now.

In other words, said Apmad, a hard angry glitter in her eyes, let them take over a hollow shell.

Could be hard on the last guys out,Leo thought, chilled. Didn't those jerks on Orient IV realize that cooperation and compromise would increase everybody's profit, in the end? The GalacTech negotiators were probably not without fault, either, he reflected grimly. He'd seen other versions of the hostile takeover scenario before. He glanced out the window at the large, lively,
working
facilities laid out below, hard-won results of two generations of sincere labor, and groaned inwardly at the thought of the waste to come. From the horrified look on Chalopin's face, she had a similar vision, and Leo's heart went out to her. How much of her blood had gone into the building-up of this place? How many people's sweat and dedication, cancelled at the stroke of a pen?

That was always your problem, Leo, said Van Atta rather venomously. You always get your head balled up in the little details, and miss the big picture.

Leo shook his head to clear it, grasped for the lost thread of his original argument. Nevertheless, the Cay Project's viability—he paused abruptly, seized by a breathtaking inspiration as delicate as a soap bubble.

The stroke of a pen. Could freedom be won with the stroke of a pen? As simply as that? He gazed at Ap mad with a new intensity, two orders of magnitude more at least. Tell me, ma'am, he said carefully, what happens if the Cay Project's viability isdi sproved?

We shut it down,she said simply.

Oh, the tales out of school he might tell—and sink Brucie-baby forever as an added bonus—Leo's nerves thrilled. He opened his mouth to pour out destruction—

And closed it,sucked on his tongue, regarded his fingernails, and asked instead casually, And what happens to the quaddies then?

The Ops VP frowned as if she'd bitten into something nasty: that hidden tension again, the most expression Leo had yet seen upon her face. That presents the most difficult problem of all.

Difficult? Why difficult? Just let them go.I n feet, Leo strove to conceal his rising excitement behind a bland face, if GalacTech would let them go immediately, before the end of this fiscal year, it could still take whatever it chooses to calculate as its investment in them as a tax loss against Rodeo's profits. One last fling, as it were, one last bite out of Orient IV. Leo smiled attractively.

Let them go where? You seem to forget, Mr. Graf, that the bulk of them are still mere children. Leo faltered. The older ones could help take care of the younger ones, they already do, some. . . . Perhaps they could be moved for a few years to some other sector that could absorb the loss from their upkee p—it couldn't cost GalacTech
that
much more than a like number of workers on pensions,and only for a few years....

The company retirement pension fund is self-supporting, Gavin the accountant observed elliptically.

Roll-over.

A moral obligation, Leo offered desperately. Surely GalacTech must admit some moral obligation to the m—we created them, after all. The ground was shifting under his feet, he could see it in her unsympathetic face, but he could not yet discern in what direction the tilt was going.

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Moral obligation indeed, agreed Apmad, her hands clenching. And have you overlooked the fact that Dr. Cay created these creatures fertile? They are a new species, you know; he dubbed them
Homo q
uadrimanu
s,
not
Homo sapiens
race
q
u
ad
rim
an
u
s.
He was the geneticist, we may presume he knew what he was talking about. What about GalacTech's moral obligation to society at large? How do you imagine it will react to having these creatures and all their problems just dumped into its systems? If you think they overreact to chemical pollution, just imagine the flap over genetic pollution!

Genetic pollution? Leo muttered, trying to attach some rational meaning to the term. It
sounded
impressive.

No. If the Cay Project is proved to be GalacTech's most expensive mistake, we will containerize it properly. The Cay workers will be sterilized and placed in some suitable institution, there to live out their lives otherwise unmolested. Not an ideal solution, but the best available compromise.

St—st... Leo stuttered. What crime have they committed,to be sentenced to life in prison? And where, if Rodeo is to be closed down, will you find or build another suitable orbital habitat? If you're worried about expense, lady,
that'll
be expensive.

They will be placed planetside, of course, at a fraction of the cost.

A vision of Silver creeping uncomfortably across the floor like a bird with both wings broken burst in Leo's brain. That's
obsce
n
e!
They'll be no better than cripples.

The obscenity,snapped Apmad, was in creating them in the first place. Until Dr. Cay's death brought his department under mine, I had no idea that his' RD—B iologicals' was concealing such enormously invasive manipulations of human genes. My home world embraced the most painfully draconian measures to ensure our gene pool not be overrun with accidental mutations—to go out and deliberately introduce mutations seems the most vile... she caught her breath, contained her emotions again, except what escaped her nervously drumming fingers. The
right
thing to do is euthanasia. Terrible as it seems at first glance, it might actually be less cruel in the long run.

Gavin the accountant, squirming, twitched an uncertain smile at his boss. His eyebrows had gone up in surprise, down in dismay, and at last settled on up again—not taking her seriously, perhaps. Leo didn't think she'd been joking, but Gavin added in a facetiously detached professional tone, It
would
be more cost effective. If it were done before the end of this fiscal year, we could indeed take them as a loss—total—against Orient taxes.

Leo felt suspended in glass. You can't do that! he whispered. They're people—children—it would be murder—

No, it would not, denied Apmad. Repugnant, certainly, but not murder. That was the other half of the reason for locating the Cay Project in orbit around Rodeo. Besides physical isolation, Rodeo exists in legal isolation. It's in the ninety-nine-year lease. The only legal writ in Rodeo local space is GalacTech regulation. I fear this has less to do with foresight than with Dr. Cay's successful blocking of any interference with his schemes. But if GalacTech chooses not to define the Cay workers as human beings, company regulations regarding crimes do not apply.

Oh, really? Bannerji brightened slightly.

How
does
GalacTech define them? asked Leo, glassily curious. Legally.

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Post-fetal experimental tissue cultures, said Apmad.

And what do you call murdering them? Retroactive abortion?

Apmad's nostrils grew pinched. Simple disposal.

Or, Gavin glanced sardonically at Bannerji, vandalism, perhaps. Our one legal requirement is that experimental tissue be cremated upon disposal.I GS Standard Biolab rules.

Launch them into the sun, Leo suggested tightly. That'd be cheap.

Van Atta stroked his chin gently and regarded Leo uneasily. Calm down, Leo. We're just talking contingency scenarios here. Military staffs do it all the time.

Quite,agreed the Ops VP. She paused to frown at Gavin, whose flippancy apparently did not please her. There are some hard decisions to be made here, which I am not anxious to face, but it seems they have been dealt to me. Better me than someone blind to the long-term consequences to society at large like Dr. Cay. But perhaps, Mr. Graf, you will wish to join Mr. Van Atta in showing how Dr. Cay's original vision might still be carriedout at a profit, so we can
all
avoid having to make the hardest choices.

Van Atta smiled at Leo, smarmily triumphant. Vindicated, vindictive, calculating . . . To return to the matter at hand,Van Atta said, I've already requested that Captain Bannerji be summarily terminated for his poor judgment and, he glanced at Gavin, and vandalism. I might also suggest that the cost ofT Y-776-424-X-G's hospitalization be charged to his department.Bannerji wilted, Administrator Chalopin stiffened.

But it's increasingly apparent to me, Van Atta went on, fixing his most unpleasant smile on Leo, that there's another matter to be pursued here. . .

Ah shit, thought Leo, he's going to get me on an assault charge—an eighteen-year career up in smoke—and I did it to myself—and I didn't even get to
finish
thejob. . . .

Subversion.

Huh? said Leo.

The quaddies have been growing increasingly restive in the past few months. Coincidentally with
your
arrival, Leo. Van Atta's gaze narrowed. After to-114 Lots
Mc
Ma
s
te
r B
u
jo
ld