00-Falling Free

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Van Atta grinned in appreciation. So the worm could wriggle after all. Some administrators might have taken offense at the implied insubordination; he congratulated himself upon his sense of humor.

  "—but so far I've finished orienting about half the staff to their new assignments."

  "Anybody give you a hard time? I'll play bad guy, if necessary," he offered nobly, "and go lean on the noncooperative."

  "Everybody is naturally rather shocked," she replied, "however, I don't think your . . . direct intervention will be required."

  "Good," he said jovially.

  "I do think it would have been better to tell them all at once. This business of releasing the information in bits and dribbles invites just the sort of rumor-mongering that is least desirable."

  "Yeah, well, it's too late now—"

  His words were cut short by the startling hoot of an alarm klaxon, shrilling out over the intercom. Yei's holovid was abruptly overridden by the Central Systems emergency channel.

  A hoarse male voice, a strained face—good God, it was Leo Graf—sprang from the display.

  "Emergency, emergency," Graf called —where was he calling from?—"we are having a depressurization emergency. This is not a drill. All Habitat downsider staff should proceed at once to the designated safe area and remain there until the all-clear sounds—"

  On the holovid, a computer-generated map sketched itself showing the shortest route from this terminal to the designated safe modules—module, Van Atta saw. Holy shit, the pressurization drop must be Habitat-wide. What the hell was going on?

  "Emergency, emergency, this is not a drill," Graf repeated.

  Yei too was staring bug-eyed at the map, looking more like a frog than ever. "How can that be? The sealing system is supposed to isolate the problem area from the rest—"

  "I bet I know," spat Van Atta. "Graf's been messing with the Habitat's structure, preparatory to salvage—I'll bet he, or his quaddies, just screwed something up royally. Unless it was that idiot Wyzak did something—come on!"

  "Emergency, emergency," Graf's voice droned on, "this is not a drill. All Habitat downsider staff should proceed at once—son-of-a-bitch!" His head snapped around, winked out, leaving only the urgently pulsing map on the display.

  Van Atta beat Yei, whose eye was still caught by the map, out the door to her office and through the airseal doors at the end of the module that should have been sealed and weren't. The doors seemed to sag half-opened, controls dead, useless, as Van Atta and Yei joined a babbling stream of staffers speeding toward safety. Van Atta swallowed, cursing his sinuses, as one ear popped and the other, throbbing, failed to. Adrenaline-spurred anxiety shivered in his stomach.

  Lecture Module C was already mobbed when they arrived, with downsiders in every state of dress and undress. One of the Nutrition staff had a case of frozen food clutched under her arm—Van Atta rejected the notion that she had inside information about the duration of the emergency and decided she must have simply had it in her hands when the alarm sounded and not thought to drop it before she fled.

  "Close the door!" howled a chorus of voices as his and Yei's group entered. A distinct breeze sighed past them, rising to a whistle cut to silence as the doors sealed.

  Chaos and babble ruled in the crowded lecture module.

  "What's going on?"

  "Ask Wyzak."

  "He's out there, surely, dealing with it."

  "If not, he'd better get the hell out there—"

  "Is everybody here?"

  "Where are the quaddies? What about the quaddies?"

  "They have their own safe area; this isn't big enough."

  "Their gym, probably."

  "I didn't catch any directions for them on the holovid, to the gym or anywhere else—"

  "Try the com."

  "Half the channels are dead."

  "Can't you even raise Central Systems?"

  "Lady, I am Central Systems—"

  "Shouldn't we have a head-count? Does anybody know exactly how many there are up on rotation right now?"

  "Two hundred seventy-two, but how can you know which are missing because they're trapped and which are missing because they're out there dealing with it—"

  "Let me at that damned com unit—"

  "CLOSE THE DOOR!" Van Atta himself joined the chorus this time, semi-involuntarily. The pressure differential was becoming more marked. He was glad he wasn't a latecomer. If this went on it would shortly become his duty to see the doors stayed closed at any cost, no matter who was pounding for admittance from the other side. He had a little list . . . Well, anybody who lacked the wit to respond quickly to emergency instructions shouldn't be on a space station. Survival of the fittest.

  If they hadn't amassed the whole two hundred seventy-two by now, they were surely getting close. Van Atta pushed his way through the bobbing crowd toward the center of the module, stealing momentum from this or that person at the price of their own displacement. A few turned to object, saw who had nudged them, and bit short their complaints. Somebody had the cover off the com unit and was peering into its guts in frustration, lacking delicate diagnostic tools doubtless dropped somewhere back in the Habitat.

  "Can't you at least raise the quaddies' gym?" demanded a young woman. "I've got to know if my class made it there."

  "Well, why didn't you go with 'em, then?" the would-be repairman snapped logically.

  "One of the older quaddies took them. He told me to come here. I didn't think to argue with him, with that alarm howling in our ears—"

  "No go." Grimacing, the man clicked the cover shut.

  "Well, I'm going back and find out," said the young woman decisively.

  "No, you're not," interrupted Van Atta. "There's too many people breathing in here to open the door and lose air unnecessarily. Not till we find out what's going on, how extensive this is, and how long it's likely to last."

  The man tapped the holovid cover. "If this thing doesn't cut in, the only way we're going to find out anything is to send out somebody with a breath mask to go check."

  "We'll give it a few more minutes." Damn that overweening fool Graf. What had he done? And where was he? In a breath mask somewhere, Van Atta trusted, or better yet a pressure suit—although if Graf had indeed caused this unholy mess, Van Atta wasn't sure he wished him a pressure suit. Let him have a breath mask, and a nasty case of the bends for just punishment. Idiot Graf.

  So much for Graf's famous safety record. Blessings in disguise, at least the engineer wouldn't be able to jam that down his throat any more. A little humility would be good for him.

  And yet—the situation was so damned anomalous. It shouldn't be possible to depressurize the whole Habitat at once. There were backups on the backups, interlocks, separated bays—any accident so system-wide would take foresight and planning.

  A little hiss escaped his teeth, and Van Atta locked into himself in a sudden bubble of furious concentration, eyes widening. A planned accident—could it be, could it possibly be . . . ?

  Genius Graf. An accident, an accident, a perfect accident, the very accident he'd most desired but had never dared wish for aloud. Was that it? That had to be it! Fatal disaster for the quaddies, now, at the last moment when they were all together and it could be accomplished at one stroke?

  A dozen clues fell into place. Graf's insistence upon handling all the details of the salvage planning himself, his secretiveness, his anxiety for constant updates on the evacuation schedule—his withdrawal from social contacts that Yei had observed with disfavor, obsessive work schedule, general air of a man with a secret agenda driven to exhaustion—it was all culminating in this.

  Of course it was secret. Now that he had penetrated the plot himself, Van Atta could only concur. The gratitude of the GalacTech hierarchy to Graf for relieving them of the quaddie problem must appear indirectly, in better assignments, quicker promotions—he would have to think up some suitably oblique way of transmitting it.

  On the other hand—why
share? Van Atta's lips drew back in a vulpine grin. This was hardly a situation where Graf could demand credit where it was due, after all. Graf had been subtle—but not subtle enough. There would have to be a sacrifice, for the sake of form, after the accident. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut, and . . . Van Atta had to wrench his attention back to his present surroundings.

  "I've got to check on my quaddies!" The young woman was growing wild-eyed. She gave up on the com unit and began to shove her way back toward the airseal doors.

  "Yes," another man joined her, "and I've got to find Wyzak. He's still not here. He's bound to need help. I'll go with you—"

  "No!" cried Van Atta urgently, almost adding You'll spoil everything! "You're to wait for the all-clear. I won't have a panic. We'll all just sit tight and wait for instructions."

  The woman subsided, but the man said skeptically, "Instructions from whom?"

  "Graf," said Van Atta. Yes, it was not too early to start making it clear to witnesses where the hands-on responsibility lay. He controlled his excitement-spurred rapid breathing, trying for an aura of steady calm. Though not too calm—he must appear as surprised as any—no, more surprised than any—when the full extent of the disaster became apparent.

  He settled down to wait. Minutes dragged past. One last panting group of refugees made it through the airseal doors; the Habitat-wide rate of depressurization must be slowing. One of the administrators from inventory control—old habits die hard—presented him with an unsolicited head-count of those present.

  He silently cursed the census-taker's initiative, even as he accepted the results with thanks. The proof that all were not present might compel him to action he did not desire to take.

  Only eleven downsider staff members had not made it. A necessary price to pay, Van Atta assured himself nervously. Some were doubtless holed up in other pressurized pockets, or so he could maintain he had believed, later. Their fatal mistakes could be pinned on Graf.

  A group by the airseal doors was making ready to bolt. Van Atta inhaled, then paused, momentarily uncertain how to stop them without giving away everything. But a cry of dismay went up from one woman—"All the air is out of the corridor now! We can't get through without pressure suits!" Van Atta exhaled in relief.

  He made his way to one of the module's viewports; it framed a dull vista of unwinking stars. The port on the other side gave an oblique view back toward the Habitat. Movement caught his eye, and he mashed his nose to the cold glass in an attempt to make out the details.

  The silvery flash of work suits, bobbing over the outside surface of the Habitat. Refugees? Or a repair party? Could his first hypothesis of a real accident be correct after all? Not good, but in any case it was still Graf's baby.

  But there were quaddies out there, dammit, quaddie survivors. He could see the arms. Graf had not made his stroke complete. Just two quaddie survivors, if one was male and the other female, would be as bad as a thousand, from Apmad's point of view. Perhaps the work party was all-male.

  There was Graf himself, among the flitting figures! They carried an assortment of equipment. The wavering distortion of his transverse view through the port prevented him from making out just what. He twisted his neck, craning painfully. Then the work party was eclipsed by a curve of the Habitat. A pusher slid into, and out of, his view, arcing smoothly over the lecture module. More escapees? Quaddie or downsider?

  "Hey." An excited voice from within the lecture module disrupted his frantic observations. "We're in luck, gang. This whole cupboard is filled with breath masks. There must be three hundred of 'em."

  Van Atta swiveled his head to spot the cupboard in question. The last time he'd been in this module that storage had been filled with audiovisual equipment. Who the hell had made that switch, and why . . . ?

  A bang reverberated through the module with a peculiar sharp resonance, like having one's head in a metal bucket when someone whacked it with a hammer. Hard. Shrieks and screams. The lights dimmed, then came up to about a quarter of their former brilliance. They were on the module's own emergency power. Power from the Habitat had been cut off.

  Power wasn't all that had been cut off. Stunned, Van Atta saw the Habitat begin to turn slowly past his viewport. No, it wasn't the Habitat—it was the module that was moving. A generalized "Aaah!" went up from the mob within, as they began to drift toward one wall and pile up there against the gentle acceleration being imparted from without. Van Atta clung convulsively to the handholds by the viewport.

  Realization washed over him almost physically, radiating hotly from his chest down his arms, his legs, pounding up through the top of his head as if to burst through his skull.

  Betrayed! He was betrayed, betrayed completely and on every level. A space-suited figure with legs was waving a cheery farewell at the module from beside a gaping hole burned in the side of the Habitat. Van Atta shook with chagrin. I'll get you, Graf! I'll get you, you double-crossing son-of-a-bitch! You and every one of those four-armed little creeps with you—

  "Calm down, man!" Dr. Yei was saying, having somehow snagged up by his viewport. "What is it?"

  He realized he'd been mumbling aloud. He wiped saliva from the corners of his mouth and glared at Yei. "You—you—you missed it. You were supposed to be keeping track of everything that's going on with those little monsters, and you totally missed it—" He advanced on her, intending he knew not what, slipped from a handhold, swung and skidded down the wall. His blood beat so hard in his ears he was afraid he was having a coronary. He lay a moment with his eyes closed, gasping, temporarily overwhelmed by his emotions. Control, he told himself in a mortal fear of his imminent self-destruction. Control, stay in control—and get Graf later. Get him, get them all. . . .

  Chapter Twelve

  Leo unsuited to the wails of disturbed quaddies.

  "What do you mean, we didn't get them all?" he asked, his elation draining away. He had so hoped that his troubles—or at least the downsider parts of them—would be over with the ignition of the jet cord cutting off Lecture Module C.

  "Four of the area supervisors are locked in the vegetable cooler with breath masks and won't come out," reported Sinda from Nutrition.

  "And the three crewmen from the shuttle that just docked tried to make it back to their ship," said a yellow-shirted quaddie from Docks & Locks. "We trapped them between two airseal doors, but they've been working on the mechanism and we don't think we can hold them much longer."

  "Mr. Wyzak and two of the life-support systems supervisors are, um, tied up in Central Systems. To the wall hand grips," reported another quaddie in yellow, adding nervously, "Mr. Wyzak sure is mad."

  "Three of the crèche mothers refused to leave their kids," said an older quaddie girl in pink. "They're all still in the gym with the rest of the little ones. They're pretty upset. Nobody's told them what's going on yet, at least not when I'd left."

  "And, um, there's one other person," added red-clad Bobbi from Leo's own welding and joining work gang in a faint tone. "We're not quite sure what to do about him . . ."

  "Immobilize him, to start," began Leo wearily. "We'll just have to arrange a life pod to take the stragglers."

  "That may not be so easy," said Bobbi.

  "You outnumber him, take ten—take twenty—you can be as careful as you like—is he armed?"

  "Not exactly," admitted Bobbi, seeming to find her lower fingernails objects of new fascination. The quaddie equivalent of foot-shuffling, Leo realized.

  "Graf!" boomed an authoritative voice, as the airseals at the end of the work-suit locker room slid open. Dr. Minchenko launched himself across the module to thump to a halt beside Leo, and gave the locker an extra bang with his fist for emphasis. One could not, after all, stomp in free fall. The unused breath mask trailing from his hand bounced and quivered. "What the hell is going on here? There's no bleeding pressurization emergency—" He inhaled vigorously, as if to prove his point.

  The quaddie girl Kara in the white T-shirt and shor
ts of Medical trailed him, looking mortified. "Sorry, Leo," she apologized. "I couldn't get him to go."

  "Am I to run off to some closet while all my quaddies asphyxiate?" Minchenko demanded indignantly of her. "What do you take me for, girl?"

  "Most everybody else did," she offered hesitantly.

  "Cowards—scoundrels—idiots," he sputtered.

  "They followed their computerized emergency instructions," said Leo. "Why didn't you?"

  Minchenko glared at him. "Because the whole thing stank. A Habitat-wide pressurization loss should be almost impossible. A whole chain of interlocking accidents would have to occur."

  "Such chains do occur, though," said Leo, speaking from wide experience. "They're practically my specialty."

  "Just so," purred Minchenko, lidding his eyes. "And that vermin Van Atta billed you as his pet engineer when he brought you in. Frankly, I thought —ahem!"—he looked only mildly embarrassed—"that you might be his triggerman. The accident seemed so suspiciously convenient just now, from his point of view. Knowing Van Atta, that was practically the first thing I thought of."

  "Thanks," snarled Leo.

  "I knew Van Atta—I didn't know you." Minchenko paused, and added more mildly, "I still don't. What do you think you're doing?"

  "Isn't it obvious?"

  "Not entirely, no. Oh, certainly, you can hold out in the Habitat for a few months, cut off from Rodeo—perhaps years, barring counterattacks, if you were conservative and clever enough—but what then? There is no public opinion to come to your rescue here, no audience to grandstand for. It's half-baked, Graf. You've made no provisions for reaching help—"

  "We're not asking for help. The quaddies are going to rescue themselves."

  "How?" Minchenko's tone scoffed, though his eyes were alight.

  "Jump the Habitat. Then keep going."

  Even Minchenko was silenced momentarily. "Oh . . ."

  Leo finished struggling into his red coveralls, and found the tool he wanted. He pointed the laser-solderer firmly at Minchenko's midsection. It did not appear to be a task he could safely delegate to the quaddies. "And you," he said stiffly, "can go to the transfer station in the life pod with the rest of the downsiders. Let's go."