Falling Free (2 page)

They made him want to scream, almost to weep; and yet it wasn't the arms, or the quick, too-many hands. He had almost reached Hydroponics before he was able to analyze his intense unease. It was their faces that bothered him so, Leo realized. They were the faces of children. . . .

A door marked Hydroponics Dslid aside to reveal an antechamber and a large airy end chamber extending some fifteen meters beyond. Filtered windows on the sun side, and an array of mirrors on the dark side, filled the volume with brilliant light, softened by green plants that grew from a carefully-arranged set of grow tubes. The air was pungent with chemicals and vegetation.

A pair of the four-armed young women, both in blue, were at work in the antechamber. A plexiplastic grow tube three meters long was braced in place, and they floated along its length carefully transplanting tiny seedlings from a germination box into a spiral series of holes along the tube, one plant per hole, fixing them in place with flexible sealant around each tender stalk. The roots would grow inward, becoming a tangled mat to absorb the nutritive hydroponic mist pumped through the tube, and the leaves and stems would bush out in the sunlight and eventually bear whatever fruit was their genetic destiny. In this place, probably apples with antlers, thought Leo in mild hysteria, or potatoes with eyes that really winked at you.

The dark-haired girl paused to adjust a bundle under her arm. . . . Leo's mind ground to a complete halt.

The bundle was a baby.

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A live baby—of course it was alive, what did he expect? Leo gibbered inwardly. It peered around it s—mother's?—torso to glower suspiciously at Leo-the-stranger, and tightened its four-handed clutch on home base, taking a squishy defensive grip on one of the girl's breasts as if in fear of competition. Ackle,it remarked aggressively.

Ow!The dark-haired girl laughed, and spared a lower hand to pry the little fat fingers loose without missing a beat of her upper hands parting sealant in place around a stem. She finished with a quick squirt of fixative from a tube floating conveniently beside her, just out of the infant's reach.

The girl was slim, and elvish, and wonderfully weird to Leo's unaccustomed eyes. Her short, fine hair clung close to her head, framing her face,shaped to a point at the nape of her neck. It was so thick it reminded Leo of cat fur: one might stroke it, and be soothed.

The other girl was blonde, and babyless. She looked up first, and smiled. Company, Claire. The dark-haired girl's facel it with pleasure. Leo flushed in the heat of it. Tony! she cried happily, and Leo realized he had merely received an accidental dose, as it were, of that beam of delight, as it swept over him to its true target.

The baby released three hands and waved them urgently. Ah, ah! The girl turned in air to face the visitors. Ah, ah,
a
h! the baby repeated.

Oh, all
right,
she laughed. You want to fly to Daddy, hm?She unhooked a short tether from a sort of soft harness on the baby's torso to a belt around her own waist, and held the infant out. Fly to Daddy, Andy? Fly to Daddy?

The baby indicated enthusiasm for the proposal by waving all four hands vigorously about and squealing eagerly. She launched him toward Tony with considerably more velocity than Leo would have dared to impart. Tony, grinning cheerfully, caught him—handily, Leo thought in blitzed inanity.

Fly to Mommy? Tony inquired in turn. Ah, ah, the baby agreed, and Tony hung him in air, gently pulling his arms out—like straightening out a starfish, Leo thought—and imparting a spin rolled him through the air for all the worldlike a wheel. The baby pulled his hands in, clenching his face in sympathetic effort, and spun faster, and gurgled with laughter at the success of his effort. Conservation of angular momentum, thought Leo. Naturally . . .

Claire tossed the infant back one more time to his father—mind-boggling, to think of that blond boy as a father of anything—and followed herself to brake to a halt hand-to-hand against Tony, who proffered an automatic helping grasp for that purpose. That they continued to hold hands was clearly more than a courteous anchoring.

Claire, this is Mr. Graf,Tony did not so much introduce as display him, like a prize. He's going to be my advanced welding techniques teacher. Mr. Graf, this is Claire, and this is our son Andy. Andy had clambered headward on his father, and was wrapping one hand in Tony's blond hair and another around one ear, blinking owlishly at Leo. Tony gently rescued the ear and re-directed the clutch to the fabric of his red T-shirt. Claire was picked to be the very first natural mother of us,Tony went on proudly. Me and four other girls, Claire corrected modestly.

Claire used to be in Welding and Joining too, but she can't do Outside work any more, Tony explained.

She's been in Housekeeping, Nutrition Technology, and Hydroponics since Andy was born.

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Dr. Yei said I was a very important experiment, to see which sorts of productivity were least compromised by my taking care of Andy at the same time,explained Claire. I sort of miss going Outsid e—it was exciting—but I like this, too. More variety.

GalacTech re-invents Women's Work? thought Leo bemusedly. Are we about to put an R D group to work on the applications of fire, too? But oh, you are certainly an experiment. . . . His thought was unrefl ected in his bland, closed face. Happy to meet you, Claire, he said gravely.

Claire nudged Tony, and nodded toward her blonde co-worker, who had drifted over to join the group.

Oh—and this is Silver, Tony went on obediently. She works in Hydroponics most of the time.Silver nodded. Her medium-short hair drifted in soft platinum waves, and Leo wondered if it was the source of her nickname. She had the sort of strong facial bones that are sharp and unhappily awkward at thirteen, a rrestingly elegant at thirty-five, now not quite halfway through their transition. Her blue gaze was cooler and less shy than the busy Claire's, who was already distracted by some new demand from Andy. Claire retrieved the baby and re-attached his safety line.

Good afternoon, Mr. Van Atta,Silver added particularly. She pirouetted in air, with eyes that cried silently, Notice me! Leo noticed that all twenty of her manicured fingernails were lacquered pink.

Van Atta's answering smile was secretive and smug. Afternoon, Silver. How's it going?

We have one more tube to plant after this one. We'll be finished ahead of shift change, Silver offered.

Fine,fine, said Van Atta jovially. Ah—do try to remember to arrange yourself right-side up when you're talking to a downsider, Sugarplum.

Silver inverted herself hastily to match Van Atta's orientation. Since the room was radially arranged, right-side-up was a purely Van Atta-centric direction, Leo noted dryly. Where
had
he met the man before?

Well, carry on, girls. Van Atta led out, Leo following, Tony bringing up the rear regretfully, looking back over his shoulder.

Andy had returned his attention to his mother, his determined little hands foraging up her shirt, on which dark stains were spreading in autonomic response. Apparently that was one bit of ancient biology the company had not altered. The milk dispensers were certainly ideally pre-adapted to life in free fall, after all. And even diapers had a heroic history in the dawn of space travel, Leo had heard.

His brief amusement drained away, and he pushed off after Van Atta, silent and reflective. He held his judgment suspended,he reassured himself, not paralyzed. In the meantime, a closed mouth could not impede the inflow of data.

They paused at Van Atta's Habitat office. Van Atta switched on the lights and air circulation as they entered. From the stale smell Leo guessed the office was not often used; the executive probably spent most of his time more comfortably downside. A large viewport framed a spectacular view of Rodeo.

I've come up in the world a bit since we last met, said Van Atta, matching his gaze. The upper atmosphere along Rodeo's rim was producing some gorgeous prismatic light effects at this angle of view.

In several senses. I don't mind returning the favor. The man at the top owes it to remember how he got there, I think. Noblesse oblige and all that. The tilt of Van Atta's eyebrow invited Leo toj oin him in
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self-congratulatory satisfaction.

Remember. Quite. Leo's blank memory was getting excruciatingly uncomfortable. He smiled and seized the pause while Van Atta activated his desk comconsole to turn away and make a slow, politely-waiting-type orbit of the room, as if idly examining its contents.

A little wall plaque bearing a humorous motto caught his eye. On
the sixth day God saw He couldn't
do
i
t all,
it read,
so He created ENGINE
E
RS
. Leo snorted, mildly amused.

I like that too, commented Van Atta, looking up to check the cause of his chuckle. My ex-wife gave it to me.It was about the only thing the greedy bitch didn't take back when we split.

Were you an—Leo began, and swallowed the words,
engineer, then?
as he finally remembered, and then wondered how he could ever have forgotten. Leo had known Van Atta as an engineering subordinate at that time, though, not as an executive superior. Was this sleek go-getter the same idiot he had kicked impatiently upstairs to Administration just to get him out from underfoot on theM orita Station project—ten, twelve years ago now? Brucie-baby. Oh, yes. Oh,hell . . .

Van Atta's comconsole disgorged a couple of data disks, which he plucked off. You put me on the fast track. I've always thought it must give you a sense of satisfaction, since you spend so much of your time training, to see one of your old students make good.

Van Atta was no more than five years younger than Leo. Leo suppressed profound irritation—he wasn't this paper-shuffler's ninety-year-old retired Sunday school teacher, damn it. He was a working engineer, hands-on, and not afraid to get them dirty, either. His technical work was as close to perfection as his relentless conscientiousness could push it, his safety record spoke for itself. . . . He let his anger go with a sigh. Wasn't it always so? He'd seen dozens of subordinates forge ahead, often men he'd trained himself.

Yeah, and trust Van Atta to make it seem a weakness and not a point of pride.

Van Atta spun the data disks across the room at him. There's your roster and your syllabus. Come on, and I'll show you some of the equipment you'll be working with.G alacTech's got two projects in the wind they're thinking of finally turning these Cay Project quaddies loose on.

Quaddies?

The official nickname.

It's not, um . . . pejorative?

Van Atta stared, then snorted. No. What you do not call them out loud, however, is' mutants,'genetic paranoia being what it is after that Nuovo Brasilian military cloning fiasco. This whole project could have been carried out much more conveniently in Earth orbit, but for the assorted legal hysterias about human gene manipulation. Anyway, the projects. One to assemble Jump ships in orbit around Orient IV, and another building a deep space transfer facility at some nexus away the hell-and-gone beyond Tau Ceti called Kline Station—cold work, no habitable planets in the system and its sun is a cinder, but the local space harbors no less than six wormhole exits. Potentially very profitable. Lots of welding under the most difficult free-fall conditions—Leo's brief angst was swallowed in interest. It had always been the work itself, not the pay and perks, that held him in thrall. Screw executive privilege—didn't it mostly mean being stuck downside? He followed Van Atta out of the office back into the corridor where Tony still waited patiently with his luggage.

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I suppose it was the development of the uterine replicators that made it all possible, Van Atta opined while Leo stowed his gear in his new quarters. More than a mere sleep cubicle, the chamber included private sanitary facilities and a comconsole as well as comfortable-looking sleep restraints—no morning back-ache on this job, Leo thought with minor satisfaction. Headache was another problem.

I'd heard something about those things, said Leo. Another invention from Beta Colony, wasn't it?Van Atta nodded. The outer worlds are getting

too damn clever these days. Earth's going to lose its edge if it doesn't shape up.

Too true, Leo thought. Yet the history of innovation suggested this was an inevitable pattern.

Management who had made huge capital investments in one system were naturally loathe to scrap it, and so the latecomers forged ahead—to the frustration of loyal engineers. . . . I'd thought the use of uterine replicators was limited to obstetrical emergencies.

Actually, the only limitation on their use is the feet that they're hideously expensive,said Van Atta. It's probably only a matter of time before rich women everywhere start ducking their biological duties and cooking up their kids in' em. But for GalacTech, it meant that human bioengineering experiments could at last be carried out without involving a lot of flaky foster-mothers to carry the implanted embryos. A neat, clean, controlled engineering approach. Better still, these quaddies are total constructs—that is, their genes are taken from so many sources, it's impossible to identify their genetic parents either. Saves quantities of legal grief.I'll bet, said Leo faintly.

This whole thing was Dr. Cay's obsession, I gather. I never met him, but he must have been one of those, you know, charismatic types, to push through a project with this enormous lead time before any possible pay-off. The first batch is just turning twenty. The extra arms are the wildest part—

I've often wished I had four hands, in free fall, Leo murmured, trying not to sound too dubious out loud.

—but most of the changes were this bunch of metabolic stuff. They never get motion-sick—something about re-wiring the vestibular system—and their muscles maintain tone with an exercise regimen of barely fifteen minutes a day, max—nothing like the hours you and I would have to put in during a long stint in null-gee. Their bones don't deteriorate at all. They're even more radiation-resistant than us. Bone marrow and gonads can take four and five times the rems we can absorb before GalacTechgrounds us—although the medical types are pushing for them to do their reproducing early in life, while all those expensive genes are still pristine. After that, it's all gravy for us; workers who never require downside leave; so healthy they'll go on and on,c utting high-cost turnover; they're even, Van Atta snickered, self-replicating.