Falling Free (25 page)

No, Ms. Villanova, said Leo patiently. We are stealing it. Now, I wouldn't ask you to get involved in anything illegal, so if you'll just follow me to the life pod—

Mama Nilla stared around the gym. A few groups of youngsters were already being herded out by some older quaddies. But these kids can't handle all these kids!

They're going to have to, said Leo.

No, no—Idon't think you have the foggiest idea how labor-intensive this department is!

He doesn't, confirmed Dr. Minchenko, rubbing his lips thoughtfully with a forefinger.

There's
no choice,
said Leo through his teeth. Now kids, let go of Ms. Villanova,he addressed the quaddies clutching her. She has to leave.

No! said the one wrapped around her left knee. She's gotta read our stories after lunch, she
promised.

The one with the cut began crying again. Another one tugged her left sleeve and whispered loudly, Mama Nilla! I gotta go to the toilet!

Leo ran his hands through his hair, unclenched them with a visible effort. I need to be suited up and Outside
right now,
lady, I don't have
time
to argue. All of you, his glare took in the other two creche mothers, move it!

Mama Nilla's eyes glinted. She held out her left arm with the quaddie attached, blue eyes peeringfri ghtenedly at Leo around Mama Nilla's sturdy bicep. Are you going to take this little girl to the bathroom, then?

The quaddie girl and Leo stared at each other in equal horror. Certainly not, the engineer choked. He looked around Another quaddie will. Claire . . . ?

After a barracuda-like investigation, Andy chose this moment to begin wailing protests at the lack of expected milk from his mother's breasts. Claire tried to soothe him, patting his back; she felt like crying herself for his disappointment.

I don't suppose,Dr. Minchenko interjected mildly, that you would care to come along with us, Liz?

There would be no going back, of course.

Us? Mama Nilla regarded him sharply. Are you going along with this nonsense?

I rather think so.

That's all right, then. She nodded.

But you can't—Leo began.

Graf,Dr. Minchenko said, did your little de-pressurization drama just now give these ladies any reason to think they were still going to have air to breathe if they stayed with their quaddies?

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It shouldn't have,said Leo.

I didn't even think about it, said one of the creche mothers, looking suddenly dismayed.

I did, said the other, frowning at Leo. I knew there were emergency air supplies in the gym module, said Mama Nilla, it's in the regular drill, after all. The whole department ought to have come here.

I diverted 'em, said Leo shortly. The whole department should have told you to go screw yourself, Mama Nilla added evenly. Allow me to speak for the absent. She smiled icily at the engineer.

One of the creche mothers addressed Mama Nilla in distress. But I can't come with you. My husband works downside!

Nobody's asking you to! roared Leo. The other creche mother, ignoring him, added to Mama Nilla, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Liz, I just can't. It's just too much.

Yes, exactly. Leo's hand hesitated over a lump in his coveralls, abandoned it, and switched to trying to herd them all along with broad arm-waving gestures.

It's all right girls, I understand, Mama Nilla soothed their evident anxiety. I'll stay and hold the fort, I guess. Got nobody waiting for this old body, after all, she laughed. It was a little forced.

Will you take over the department, then? Dr. Minchenko confirmed with Mama Nilla. Keep it going any way you can—come to me when you can't.

She nodded, looking withdrawn, as if the bottomless complexity of the task before her was just beginning to dawn.

Dr. Minchenko took charge of the quaddie boy with the still-oozing cut on his forehead; Leo at last successfully pried loose the other two downsider women, saying, Come
on.
I have to go empty the vegetable cooler next.

With all this going on, what is he doing spending time cleaning out a refrigerator? Mama Nilla muttered under her breath. Madness...

Mama Nilla, I gotta go
now,
the little quaddie wrapped all her arms tightly around her torso by way of emphasis, and Mama Nilla perforce broke away.

Andy was still wailing his indignant disappointment in intermittent bursts.

Hey, little fellow,Dr. Minchenko paused to address him, that's no way to talk to your mama....

No milk, explained Claire. Glumly, feeling dreadfully inadequate, she offered him the bottle, which he batted away. When she attempted to detach him momentarily in order to dive after it, he wrapped himself around her arm and screamed frantically. One of the five-year-olds twisted up and put all four of his hands over his ears, pointedly.

Come with us to the infirmary, said Dr. Minchenko with an understanding smile. I think I have something that will fix that problem. Unless you want to wean him now,which I don't recommend.

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Oh, please, said Claire hopefully.

It will take a couple of days to get your systems interlocked again, he warned, the biofeedback lag time being what it is. But I haven't had a chance to examine you two since I came up anyway...

Claire floated after him with gratitude. Even Andy stopped crying.

Pramod hadn't been joking about the clamps, Leo thought with a sigh, as he studied the fused lump of metal before him. He punched up the specs on the computer board floating beside him, a bit slowly and clumsily with his pressure-gloved hands. This particular insulated pipe conducted sewage. Unglamorous, but a mistake here could be just as much a disaster as any other.

And a lot messier,Leo thought with a grim grin. He glanced up at Bobbi and Pramod hovering at the ready beside him in their silvery worksuits; five other quaddie work teams were visible along the Habitat's surface, and a pusher jockeyed into position nearby. Rodeo's sunlit crescent wheeled in the background.

Well, they must certainly be the galaxy's most expensive plumbers.

The mess of variously-coded pipes and tubing before him formed the umbilical connections between one module and the next, shielded by an outer casing fromm icrodust pitting and other hazards. The task at hand was to re-align the modules in uniform longitudinal bundles to withstand acceleration. Each bundle, strapped together like the cargo pods, would form a sturdy, self-supporting, balanced mass, at least in terms of the relatively low thrusts Leo was contemplating. Just like driving a team of yoked hippopotamuses. But re-aligning the modules entailed re-aligning all their connections, and there were lots and lots and
lots
of connections.

A movement caught the corner of Leo's eye. Pramod's helmet followed the tilt of Leo's.

There they go, Pramod remarked. Both triumph and regret mingled in his voice.

The life pod with the last remnant of downsiders aboard fled silently into the void, a flash of light winking offa port even as it shrank from sight around Rodeo's curvature. That was it, then, for the legged ones, bar himself, Dr. Minchenko, Mama Nilla, and a slightly demented young supervisor waving a spanner they'd pried out of a duct who declared his violent love for a quaddie girl in Airsystems Maintenance and refused to be budged. If he came to his senses by the time they reached Orient IV, Leo decided, they could drop him off. Meantime it was a choice between shooting him or putting him to work. Leo had eyed the spanner, and put him to work.

Time. The seconds seemed to wriggle over Leo's skin like bugs, beneath his suit. The remnant group of evicted downsiders must soon catch up with the bewildered first batch and start comparing notes. It wouldn't be long after that, Leo judged, that GalacTechmust start making its counter-moves. It didn't take an engineer to see a thousand ways in which the Habitat was vulnerable. The only option left to the quaddies now was speedy flight.

Phlegmatic calm, Leo reminded himself, was the key to getting out of this alive. Remember that. He turned his attention back to the job at hand. All right, Bobbi, Pramod, let's do it. Get ready with the emergency shut-offs on both ends, and we'll get this monster horsed around...

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His fellow refugees gave way before him as Bruce Van Atta stormed out of the boarding tube and into the passenger arrival lounge of Rodeo Shuttleport Three. He had to pause a moment, hands braced on his knees, to overcome a wave of dizziness induced by his abrupt return to planetside gravity. Dizziness and rage.

For several hours during the ride around Rodeo orbit in the cut-offlecture module Van Atta had been horribly certain that Grafwas intending to murder them all, despite the contrary evidence of the breath masks. If this was war, Graf would never make a good soldier.
Even I know better than to humiliate a
man like this, and then leave him aliv
e.Y
ou'll be sorry you double-crossed me, Graf; sorrier still
you didn't kill me when you had the chance.
He restrained his rage with an effort.

Van Atta had ordered himself aboard the first available shuttle down from a Transfer Station overburdened by the surprise arrival of almost three hundred unexpected bodies. He had not slept in the twenty hours since the detached lecture module's airlock had,with agonizing glitches and delays, finally been married to that of a Station personnel carrier. He and the other Cay Habitat employees had disembarked in disorganized batches from their cramped prison-mobile and been ferried to the Transfer Station, where yet more time had been wasted.

Information. It had been almost a full day since they had been evicted from the Cay Habitat. He must have information. He boarded a slide tube and headed for ShuttleportThree's administration building, with its communications center. Dr. Yei pattered after him, wimping about something; he paid little attention.

He caught sight of his own wavering reflection in the plexiplastic walls of the tube as he was carried along above the shuttleport tarmac. Haggard. He straightened, and sucked in his gut. It would not do to appear before other administrators looking beaten or weak. The weak went under.

He gazed through his pale image and across the shuttleport laid out below. On the far side of the tarmac at the monorail terminal cargo pods were already starting to pile up. Ah, yes: the damned quaddies were a link in that chain, too. A weak link, a broken link, soon to be replaced.

He arrived at the communications center at the same moment as Shuttleport Three's chief administrator, Chalopin. She was trailed by her Security captain, what's-his-name, oh, yes, that idiot Bannerji.

What the hell is going on here? Chalopin snapped without preamble. An accident? Why haven't you requested assistance? They told us to hold all flights—we've got a major production run backed up halfway to the refinery.

Keep holding it, then. Or call the Transfer Station. Moving your cargo is not my department.

Oh, yes it is! Orbital cargo marshalling has been under Cay Project aegis for a year.

Experimentally.He frowned, stung. It may be my department,but it's not my biggest worry right now.

Look, lady, I got a full-scale crisis here. He turned to one of the commcontrollers. Can you punch me through to the Cay Habitat at all?

They're not answering our calls, said the comm controller doubtfully. Almost all of the regular telemetry has been cut off.

Anything. Telescopic sighting, anything.

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I might be able to get a visual off one of the comsats,said the controller. He turned to his panel, muttering. In a few minutes his screen coughed up a distant flat view of the Cay Habitat as seen from synchronous orbit. He stepped up the magnification.

What are they
doing?
asked Chalopin, staring.

Van Atta stared too. What insane vandalism was this? The Habitat resembled a complex three-dimensional puzzle pulled apart by an idle child. Detached modules seemed spilled carelessly, floating at all angles in space. Tiny silver figures jetted among them. The solar power panels had mysteriously shrunk to a quarter of their normal area. Was Grafembarked on some nutty scheme for fortifying the Habitat against counterattack, perhaps? Well, it would do him no good, Van Atta swore silently.

Are they . . . preparing for a siege or something? Dr. Yei asked aloud, evidently following a similar line of thought. Surely they must realize how futile it would be . ..

Who knows what that damn fool Graf thinks? Van Atta growled. The man's run mad. There are a dozen ways we can stand off at a distance and knock that installation to bits even without military supplies. Or just wait and starve them out. They've trapped themselves. He's not just crazy, he's stupid.

Maybe, said Yei doubtfully, they mean to just go on quietly living up there, in orbit. Why not?

The hell you say. I'm going to hook them out of there,and double-quick, too. Somehow... No bunch of miserable mutants are going to get away with sabotage on
this
scale. Sabotage—theft—terrorism... They are not mutants, began Yei, they are genetically-engineered childr—

Mr. Van Atta, sir? piped up another commcontroller. I have an urgent memo for you listed on my all-points. Can you take it here? Yei, cut off, spread her hands in frustration.

Now what? Van Atta muttered, seating himself before the comm unit.

It's a recorded message from the manager of the cargo marshalling station out at Jumppoint. I'll put it on-line, said the tech.

The vaguely familiar face of the Jump point station manager wavered into focus before Van Atta. Van Atta had met him perhaps once, early in his stint here. The small Jumppoint station was manned from the Orient IV side, and was under OrientI V's operations division, not Rodeo's. Its employees were regular Union downsiders and did not normally have contact with Rodeo, nor with the quaddies once destined to replace them.

The station manager looked harried. He gabbled through the preliminaryI D's, then came abruptly to the meat of his matter; What the hell is going on with you people, anyway? A crew of mutant freaks just came out of nowhere, kidnapped a Jump pilot, shot another, and hijacked a GalacTech cargo Super-jumper. But instead of jumping
out,
they've headed back with it toward Rodeo. When we notified Rodeo Security, they indicated the mutants probably belonged to you. Are there more out there? Are they running wild or something? I want answers, dammit. I've got a pilot in the infirmary, a terrorized engi neer, and a crew on the verge of panic.From the look on his face the station manager was on the verge of panic himself. Jumppoint Station out!