Falling Free (8 page)

What's the cargo? I haven't seen this much hopping around since the last medical emergency.

Equipment and supplies for some sort of show they're supposed to be putting on up at your Habitat for the Vice President of Operations.

That's not till next week.

The maintenance man snickered. That's what everybody thought. The VP just flew in a week early on her private courier, with a whole commando squad of accountants. Seems she likes surprise inspections.

Management, naturally, is overjoyed.

Don't laugh too soon, Ti warned. Management has ways of sharing their joy with the rest of us.

Don't I know it, the maintenance man groaned. C'mon,c'mon, you're blocking the door... The three of them clattered forward.

Now,whispered Tony, with a nod at the open cargo bay door.

Claire rolled to her side and laid Andy gently on the deck. His face crumpled, working up to a cry.

Claire quickly rolled onto her palms, tested her balance. Her right lower arm seemed to be the one she could most easily spare. She scooped Andy back up one-handed and held him under her torso.

Plastered against the planet-ward side of the cargo bay by the dreadful gravity, she began a three-handed crawl toward the door. Andy's weight pulled at her arm as though a strong spring were drawing him to the floor, and his head bobbed backwards at an alarming angle. Claire inched her palm up under his head to support it, painfully awkward for her arm.

Beside her, Tony too achieved a three-handed stance. With his free hand he jerked the cord to their pack of supplies. The pack, stuck to the downside surface as if by suction, didn't budge.

Shit, Tony swore under his breath. He swarmed over the pack, gripped and lifted it, but it was too bulky to carry under his belly.
Double-shit.

Can we give up yet? Claire asked in a tiny voice, knowing the answer.

No!He grabbed the pack backwards over both shoulders with his upper hands and rocked forward violently. It came up and balanced precariously on his back. He kept his left upper hand on it to steady it and hopped forward on his right, his lower palms shuffling along under his hips. I got it, go, go!

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The shuttle was parked in a cavernous hangar, a vast dim gulf of space roofed by girders. The girders behind the overhead lights would have been an excellent hiding place, if only one could swoop up there.

But everything not rigidly fastened was doomed to fly to the one side of the room only, and stick there until forcibly removed. There was a lopsided fascination to it. ...

Oh... Claire hesitated. Leading from the hatch to the hangar floor was a kind of corrugated ramp.

Clearly, it was designed to break down the dangerous fight with the omnipresent gravity into little manageable increments. Stairs.Claire paused, head down. Her blood seemed to pool dizzyingly in her face. She gulped.

Don't
stop,
Tony gasped pleadingly behind her, then gulped himself.

Uh... uh... In a moment of inspiration, Claire turned around and began to back down, her free lower palm slapping the metal treads with each hop. It was still uncomfortable, but at least possible. Tony followed.

Where now? Claire panted when they reached the bottom.

Tony pointed with his chin. Hide in that jumble of equipment over there, for now. We daren't get too far from the shuttles.

They scuttled along over the downside surface of the hangar. Claire's hands quickly became smudged with oil and dirt, a psychological irritation as fierce as an unscratchable itch; she felt she might gladly risk death for a chance to wash them. Claire remembered watching beads of condensed humidity creeping by capillarity across surfaces in the Habitat, until she'd smeared them to oblivion with her dry-rag, just as she and Tony crept now.

As they reached the area where some pieces of heavy equipment were parked, a loader rolled into the hangar and a dozen coveralled men and women jumped off it and began swarming over the shuttle, organized confusion. Claire was glad for their noise, for Andy was still emitting an occasional whimper.

Fearfully, she watched the maintenance crew through the metal arms of the machinery. How late was too late to surrender?

Leo, half suited-up in the equipment locker, glanced up anxiously as Pramod swooped across the room to fetch up gracefully beside him.

Did you find Tony? Leo asked. As gang foreman,he's supposed to be leading this parade. I'm only supposed to be watching.

Pramod shook his head. He's not in any of the usual places, sir.

Leo hissed under his breath,not quite swearing. He should've answered his page by now... He drifted to the plexiport.

Outside in the vacuum, a small pusher was just depositing the last of the sections for the shell of the new hydroponics bay in their carefully arranged constellation. It was to be built before the Operations Vice President's eyes by the quaddies. So much for Leo's faint hope that screw-ups and delays in other departments might cover those in his own. It was time for his welding crew to make its debut.

All right, Pramod, get suited up. You'll take over Tony's position, andB obbi from Gang B will take yours. Leo hurried on before the startlement in Pramod's eyes could turn to stage fright. It's nothing you
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haven't practiced a dozen times. And if you have the least doubts about the quality or safety of any procedure, I'll be right there. Reality first—you people are going to be living in the structure you build today long after Vice President Apmad and her travelling circus are gone. I guarantee she'll have more respect for a job done right, however slowly, than for a piece of slap-dash fakery.

For God's sake makei t look smooth,Van Atta had instructed Leo urgently, earlier.
Keep to the
schedule, no matter wha
t—w
e'll fix the problems later, after she's gon
e.
We're supposed to be
making these chimps seem cost-effective.

You don't have to try and seem to be anything but what you are, Leo told Pramod. You
are
efficient—a nd you are good. Instructing you all has been one of the great unexpected pleasures of my career. Be off, now, I'll catch up with you shortly.

Pramod sped away to find Bobbi. Leo frowned briefly to himself, and floated up the length of the locker room to the comconsole terminal at the end.

He keyed in his ID. Page, he instructed it. Dr. SondraY ei.At the same moment a message square in the corner of the vid began to blink with his own name, and a number. Cancel that instruction.

He punched up the number and raised his brows in surprise as Dr. Yei's face appeared on his vid.

Sondra! I was just about to call you. Do you know where Claire is?

How odd. I was calling to ask you if you knew where I could reach Tony.

Oh? said Leo, in a voice suddenly drained to neutrality. Why?

Because I can't find her anywhere, and I thought Tony might know where she is. She's supposed to be giving a demonstration of child care techniques in free fall to Vice President Apmad after lunch.

Is, um, Leo swallowed,Andy at the creche, or with Claire, do you know?

With Claire,of course.

Ah.

Leo... Dr. Yei's attention sharpened,her lips pursed. Do you know something I don't?

Ah... he eyed her. I know Tony has been unusually inattentive at work for the last week. I might even sa y—depressed, except that's supposed to be your department, eh? Not his usual cheerful self, anyway. A knot of unease,tightening in Leo's stomach, gave his tongue an unaccustomed edge. You, ah, got any concerns that you may have forgotten to share with me, lady?

Her lips thinned, but she ignored the bait. Schedules have been moved up in all departments, you know.

Claire received her new reproduction assignment. It didn't include Tony.

Reproduction assignment? You mean, having a baby? Leo could feel his face flushing. Somewhere within him, a long-controlled steam pressure began to build. Do you hide what you're really doing from yourselves with those weasel-words, too? And here I thought the propaganda was just for us peons.Yei started to speak, but Leo overrode her, bursting out, Good God! Were you born inhuman,or did you grow so by degrees—M.S., M.D., Ph.D. . . .

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Yei's face darkened, her accent grew clipped. An engineer with romance in his soul? Now I've seen everything. Don't get carried away with your scenario, Mr. Graf. Tony and Claire were assigned to each other in the first place by the exact same system, and if
certain people
had been willing to abide by my original timetable, this problem could have been avoided. I fail to see the point of paying for an expert and then blithely ignoring her advice, really I do. Engineers . . . !

Ah, hell, she's suffering from as bad a case of Van Atta as I am, Leo realized. The insight blunted his momentum, without bleeding off internal pressure.

—Ididn't invent the Cay Project, and if I were running it I'd do it differently, but I have to play the hand I'm dealt, Mr. Graf. Blast—she controlled herself, almost visibly wrenching the conversation back on its original track. I've got to find her soon, or I'll have no choice but to let Van Atta start the show ass-back wards. Leo, it's absolutely essential that Vice President Apmad get the creche tour first,before she has time to start forming any—do you have any idea at all where those kids may be?

Leo shook his head; an inspiration turned the truthfulgesture toa l ie even before he'dfinished it. But will you give me a call if you find them before I do? he pleaded, his humble tone offering truce.

Yei's stiffness wilted a bit. Yes, certainly. She shrugged wryly, a silent apology, and broke off.

Leo swung back to his locker, peeled out of his work suit, donned coveralls, and hastened off to track down his inspiration before Dr. Yei duplicated it independently. He was certain she would, and shortly, too.

Silver checked the work schedule on her vid display. Bell peppers. She floated across the hydroponics bay to the seed locker, found the correct labeled drawer, and withdrew a pre-counted paper packet.

She gave the packet an absent shake, and the dried seeds made a pleasing rattle.

She collected a plastic germination box, tore open the packet, and coaxed the little pale seeds into the container, where they bounced about cheerfully. To the hydration spigot next. She thrust the water tube through the rubber doughnut seal on the side of the germination box and administered a measured squirt, and gave the box an extra shake to break up the shimmering globule of liquid that formed. Shoving the germination box into its slot in the incubation rack, she set it for the optimum temperature for peppers, bell, hybrid phototropic non-gravitational axial differentiating clone 297-X-P, and sighed.

The light from the filtered windows plucked insistently at her attention, and she paused for the fourth or fifth time this shift to weave among the grow tubes and stare out at the portion of Rodeo this bay's angle of view allowed her to see. Somewhere down there, at the bottom of that well of air, Claire and Tony were crawling now—if they had not already surrendered—or managed to make it to another shuttle—or met some horrible catastrophe. . . . Silver's imagination, unbidden, supplied her with a string of sample catastrophes.

She tried to crowd them out with a firm mental picture of Tony and Claire and Andy successfully sneaking onto a shuttle bound for the Transfer Station, but the picture wavered into a scenario of Claire, attempting to jump some gap to the shuttle's hatchway (what gap? from where, for pity's sake?) forgetting that all such tangents were bent to parabolas by the gravitational force, and missing the target.

Silver thought of the peculiar ways things moved in dense gravitational fields. The scream, chopped offby the splat on the concrete below—no, surely Claire would be holding Andy—the
double
splat on the concrete below. . . . Silver kneaded her forehead with the heels of her upper hands, as if she might
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physically press the grisly vision back out of her brain. Claire had seen the same vids of life downside, surely she'd remember.

The hiss of the airseal doors twitched Silver back to present reality. Better look busy—what was she supposed to be doing next? Oh, yes, cleaning used grow tubes, in preparation for their placement day after tomorrow in the new bay they were building to show offeverybody's skills to the Ops VP. Damn the Ops VP. But for her, there'd be a chance Tony and Claire might go un-missed for two shifts, even three.

Now . . .

Her heart shrank, as she saw who had entered the hydroponics bay. Now, indeed.

Ordinarily, Silver would have been glad to see Leo. He seemed a big, clean man—no, not large, but solid somehow, full of a prosaic calmness that spilled over in the very scent of him, reminiscent ofd ownsider things Silver had chanced to handle, wood and leather and certain dried herbs. In the light of his slow smile, ghastly scenarios thinned to mist. She might yet be glad to talk to Leo. . . .

He was not smiling now. Silver . . . ? You in here?

For a wild moment Silver considered trying to hide among the grow tubes, but the foliage rustled as she turned, giving away her position. She peeked over the leaves. Uh... hi,Leo.

Have you seen Tony or Claire lately? Trust Leo to be direct.
Call me Leo,
he'd told her the first time she'd Mr. Grafdhim.
It's shorter.
He drifted over to the grow tubes; they regarded each other across a barrier of bush beans.

I haven't seen anybody but my supervisor all shift,said Silver, momentarily relieved to be able to give a perfectly honest answer.

When did you last see either one of them?

Oh—last shift, I guess. Silver tossed her head airily.

Where?

Uh . . . around. She giggled vacuously. Mr. Van Atta might have flung up his hands in disgust at this point, and abandoned any attempt to wring sense from so empty a head as hers.

Leo frowned at her thoughtfully. You know, one of the charms of you kids is the literal precision with which you answer any question.

The comment hung in air expectantly, as Leo did. The picture of Tony, Claire, and Andy scooting across the shuttle loading bay flashed in Silver's mind with hallucinatory clarity. She groped in memory for their prior meeting, where the final plans had been laid, to offer up as a half-truth. We had the mid-shift meal together last shift at Nutrition Station Seven.