The Heart of Dog

by Doranna Durgin

  The work chaps belonged to the station-run business. But the plumy, feather-fronded houseplant in the entry way was hers. And along with her battered collapsible cup-bowl and pronged spoon, she also had a new plate and matte-finish steel mug.

  As if I need those things. As if I need anything. How can I fit a plant into my duffel? Why did I even get it?

  She'd liked it, that's why. She'd seen its pale soft fronds and she'd felt a tingle of pleasure and she'd smiled. She'd had the funds, and she'd seen it and liked it and bought it.

  They can't make a perm of me. One set of coveralls on my back, one in the duffle, a toothcleaner and soappack and monthly supps. Whatever I can carry in the vest. That's all I'll ever need.

  She wouldn't stay a single pay period longer than it took to pay off the med-debt. She'd take her experience—one more thing for her listings—and she'd take her inexpressible relief and she'd move on.

  Too damn bad that zipscoot was going so fast when it hit me.

  ~~~

  "Until they're clean," Shadia told the youthful first-jobber who had deluded himself into believing the pet room maintenance was completed. With a glare at the cleaner machine, he gave its handle a jerk and sullenly dragged it back into Feef's unoccupied area. He'd been on the job a week and she was about to give him notice.

  Toklaat's workers took so much for granted...that they could keep a job once they took it no matter their performance, that they could find another. No matter their performance. Dusters knew to keep their records spotless for ease of transition from one situation to another. No one vouched for a careless worker, or digi-stamped their jobchips with the top rating that would draw that next good gig. Ever-imminent transitions kept them sharp.

  Maybe she'd just start hiring dusters. If she could get the assistant's job listed as temp...

  And why not, when she wasn't keeping most of the assistants beyond the time a duster would stay? Just one, a young woman named Amandajoy who loved the animals and applied herself to learning their routines with nearly Shadia's vigor. A more honest vigor, since Shadia used the work as a means to an end and Amandajoy did it for the work itself. Shadia could have loved the work, but didn't dare. She could have loved the memories it invoked, but didn't dare that, either.

  Those memories couldn't coexist with a duster's life, not and be cherished.

  I don't have to think about that. Another few pay periods and I can turn this place over to Amandajoy, even if she doesn't know it yet. By then she'll have the confidence. She'll have to, even if she doesn't. That'll be a duster lesson for her. Never let the doubt show.

  More airfresher 'zymes in the rrhy-tub, that would probably help. Amandajoy must have had the same thought, for she emerged from the storage pantry with 'zyme packets in hand—

  Shadia's world shifted. It looped in a strange manner her senses couldn't unravel; Her first jobber made a loud gurgle and dropped his cleaning equipment. A series of hollow booming noises made the ground shake; the air fluttered in response. Shadia and Amandajoy clutched each other for stability and ended up on the thickly carpeted floor anyway, gathering skitzcat hair.

  For a moment there was silence. Then Gite bleated, leaping from his wire enclosure as the door slowly swung open on its own. He landed on both of them, searching for a lap. Shadia winced as his claws dug in, automatically scooping his legs out from beneath him to cuddle him—and save her skin. Amandajoy looked like she wanted to climb right into Shadia's lap with him. "What was that?" she said, her eyes wide.

  Shadia searched her duster experiences, years of different stations and different failures and accidents and emergencies, and then she searched her ten whole years on Belvia, all the time she'd had before she'd been snatched away.

  I don't know. All those years, all those places...never anything like this. That's a duster's life, not knowing what's next, ready for anything. But not ready for this.

  Shadia shifted Gite from her arms to Amandajoy's. "Wait here," she said as the dwelling erupted into noisome protest—howls and chirps and screams and a few entirely new scents—though none as bad as the akliat's would have been. "Try to calm them." To the first jobber, she said, "Whatever Amandajoy says, you do."

  "You're leaving?" Amandajoy's fear-widened eyes opened even further with surprise.

  "You want an answer? Someone's got to go find it." Shadia climbed to her feet, not bothering to remove the Gite-defense chaps as she headed for the clearsteel door, her matter-of-fact brusqueness hiding her breathless fears.

  She half expected to find the entrance lock-down engaged. Like all structures this one had its own emergency aircleaner, its own independent—if finite—power supply. But the door slid smoothly aside for her, ejecting her out on the inner-ring walkway. Clearsteel lined that, too, separating her from the open station core.

  But not blocking her view.

  At first all she saw was the movement. Down a few levels, center west; she had to push against the clearsteel, craning her neck against the arc of the inner ring and leaving smudges the autos would clean as soon as she moved away. Center west, location of the finest residences and normally the quietest slice of the station. Too far away to make out anything but the activity, and a wrongness so unexpected that she literally couldn't resolve what she was seeing into an image that made sense.

  Nor did the alarms. The ones that had been going off for some time now. Not the screeching you-might-die breach alarms, but the swell-and-fade tones of the alarm that merely admitted something had happened, and if you paid attention the station techheads would eventually tell you what it was.

  Except...in the distance, Shadia thought she heard shriller sounds. Harsher vicinity alarms, the ones that meant if you were there to hear them, you might die anyway.

  Or already be dead.

  Duster reflexes kicked in, urging her to move off. The dusters knew all the safest nooks and crannies of a station—the structural strengths, the environmental neutral areas. She'd take the time to shout back into the shop and release Amandajoy and the first jobber from their duties here so they might secure the animals and follow if they wanted, but then she'd shed her shallow perm facade and take back the duster ways that had served her so well. Back to the east side.

  Wait a moment. Center west. The finest residences. The luxury residences. Half my clients live there. Gite's people. The Rowpins. They're perms...but they're nice perms. Kind perms.

  Kind people.

  Shadia's hand brushed over her vest, on which she'd recently sewn an exotic bit of weaving. Meant to be a small spot of wall decor, and acquired by Claire Rowpin on her latest off-station jaunt. She fingered the newest bead in her hair, something the rrhy's owner—a shy young man—had hesitantly offered, noticing her fondness for such things. Just something he'd had around the house, he'd said.

  She'd doubted it.

  She stuck her head back into the petcare facility, a building unidentified from the outside by anything other than a utilitarian number. "Something's happened in center west," she told Amandajoy, who'd succeeded in calming Gite enough to secure him in his den-cage. The starkly normal sounds of the cleaning machine emanated from Feef's room; Shadia nodded at it. "Let the 'jobber go home. You can go too, if you want."

  "Don't you want me to stay with the animals?" Amandajoy asked, torturing the corner of her work apron into a twisted knot.

  Shadia couldn't answer right away; it wasn't the response she'd expected. After a moment she said, "Yes, I do. But it's up to you."

  "I'll stay, then," Amandajoy said, not hesitating. "I don't want to leave them alone, and people might call in and get worried."

  "Turn on the gridnews," Shadia said, and left. Still feeling the tug of the east side. . . and still headed for center west. Not even sure why, only that the tug was somehow—frustratingly—stronger. Within moments—still true to duster ways in this, at least—she'd slipped down the maintenance poles few perms even knew existed and re-entered the inner ring several levels below her own. New territ
ory.

  Chaos prevailed. Perms running away from the alarms, other perms running toward them. Perms crying and stark-faced and grim. Uniformed station personnel muttering into their inner wrist complants, one of whom she caught on the way by and said, "What's going on?"

  "It's contained," the uni said, not even looking at Shadia, her eyes on some invisible goal...or maybe still seeing that from which she'd just come.

  Shadia wouldn't be invisible. "What?"

  Now the woman looked at her, swept her gaze up and down and took in Shadia's coveralls and vest. "Gravity generator surge," she said, clearly impatient. "The offending system is offline—no more danger there. As if a duster would care. Just stay out of the way and you'll be fine."

  As if—

  Shadia jerked, stung, and then didn't know why she should be. By then the woman had moved on, pulling a flat PIM from her pocket and to enter notations on the run. Shadia scowled after her. "At least I'm the one going in this direction."

  Then again, why is that?

  ~~~

  Shadia stopped short at the edge of the damaged area. She would have stopped short had the station uni not stood in front of his hastily erected low-tech barrier. She'd never imagined—

  She couldn't have imagined—

  Gravity generator surge.

  Random lashings of unfathomable gravity, crumpling away the residences. Level after level, collapsed and twisted; she couldn't tell how deep it went, if it reached the next ringhall or even went beyond. Narrow ribbons of damage spared some residences entirely, and destroyed others just as surely. Sullen, acrid smoke eased out of the wreckage, and Shadia pulled her loosely fitting coverall cuff past her hand and covered her mouth and nose.

  There were other smells. Oils and coolants and hot metals, compressed beyond all tolerance. And a cacophony of sound—shouting and crying and orders and creaking, groaning structures. Someone jostled her; she barely noticed. She was too busy trying to orient, to find the residence ID numbers—but the chaos distracted her eyes, and she found nothing upon which to focus.

  Until she glanced at the barrier, realized it was part of a residence. Her eyes widened at the number.

  Not so very different than the Rowpins'.

  The uni seemed to notice her then. The expression on her face, maybe. He swept his gaze over her much as the woman had done...and then it softened. He suddenly didn't seem so much different than she, not in age or reaction or station status. "You know someone here?"

  Behind him, there was a sudden flurry of alarm, shouted warnings; a chunk of a residence broke away and tipped off into the exposed core. Shadia flinched at the hollow boom of its landing; they both did. And then she whispered, "I think so."

  It wasn't loud enough to be heard over the noise, not even though the alarm stopped in the middle of her words. He seemed to understand anyway. "I can't let you through. Only unis."

  Official hover scooters flashed through the core, strobing ident lights. Already starting to clear the debris. Towing things.

  Stretchers, mainly.

  Shadia puzzled in blank lack of understanding, knowing that any victims were more likely to come out in a bucket than on a stretcher. The long-coated uni saw that, too, and edged a little closer to her, like a confidant. "The edge zones," he said, gesturing. "The parts damaged by the damage, and not the gravity. You see?"

  She saw. Unable to go forward, unable to leave, she waited and watched, an anomalous quiet spot in a Brownian motion of perms and destruction. Trying to discern just where the Rowpins had lived, and to figure out if they'd had enough time after picking up Feef to make it back home. Listening to people around her recount the moments of the disaster—what they'd seen and what they'd heard and how they thought it might have been. Watching them pitch in as the rare survivor stumbled out of the edges of the damage. Watching as people pushed past the barriers, climbing into the wreckage to join the unis as they tossed bits and pieces of what had been homes into the core net now strung below this level.

  Go back to the pet facility, Shadia Duster. You don't belong here. This is just one more story to take with you along the way. Walk away, finish out what little time you have left before the med-debt's gone, and then board the first ship you come to.

  Except she didn't. She couldn't ease around the uni; her coveralls were far too conspicuous. But she couldn't go. She asked perm after perm if they knew where the Rowpins' address would have placed their home, and she asked if anyone had seen them—or rather, she asked if they'd seen Feef, who would have made more of an impression than just another person in the bustle. She made herself useful on this side of the barrier, distracting the uni when another perm needed to slip by. When a handful of people came with warm drinks and what must have been their entire month's ration of treat bars, she knew who'd been working the longest and needed the boost.

  And when someone spotted the dangling pale tan arm amidst the edge wreckage, several levels up and with the inner ring destroyed between here and there, she knew how to get there.

  She glanced at the uni, who quite deliberately looked the other way, and then she slipped past the barrier to the half-height tech access door recessed invisibly into the now-skewed wall, the seams not evident until released with the right touch in the right spot.

  She led them into the tight darkness.

  They murmured uneasily behind her, following at a slower pace. When she emerged into the maintenance shaft and flicked the control to release the stepholds folded into the pole for upward transit, she had to wait. They'd never been in such tunnels; their uneasy voices rang louder than they'd ever guess. They worried about the obvious warping in the walls, they murmured about the motionless arm they'd seen...and they wondered about her.

  It's only fair. I'm wondering about them.

  Who were these people, following her into the unknown for the sake of someone equally unknown? Who were any of them, defying unis to work among the wreckage of the neighborhood? Clustering around the dangers instead of running away as any duster would do? Take nothing for granted and take what you can get, one of the common duster phrases. One would say it, and all others within earshot would finish with the chorus of "And then move on!"

  It's only fair. I'm wondering about me.

  Shadia moved on, all right. She waited for the first tentative head to poke out of the half-height tunnel and she started climbing the pole. She took them up two levels and stepped off onto the platform. Remembering the layout of the wreckage they'd seen, she took them further into the structure, through an even smaller access hatch until they were just about to balk—and then she clambered out into the wreckage itself. So close to the edge, where it tumbled straight out into the core. The floor beneath her feet seemed to give a little quiver when the second person came out, and when the third appeared there was no doubt.

  The third was the uni, covered with dust as were they all. He gave her a guileless smile—and he bent down to instruct the others to wait. "It's not secure," he told them. "You shouldn't be here."

  None of them should be here. And yet here they were.

  "Found someone!" the second person, a woman in an expensive work suit from which she'd already ripped the inconvenient frills. Her voice held a vibration of excitement that made her next words seem lifeless. "No. Never mind."

  The uni joined her as Shadia inched around the wreckage; a fourth person eased out into the open and began to cast around, hunting the owner of the elusively dangling arm. What had seemed so obvious from below was hardly that from amidst the tangle of walls and upholstery and crushed electronics.

  "Good Lord, what's that smell?" exclaimed the man who'd just joined them; his hand covered his nose and mouth, but from what remained of his expression, it had done no good. The woman was the first to spot the source.

  "There!" she said, flinging up a hand to point. "That."

  That. Cowering into the smallest possible bundle in the only dark, intact corner left in the residence—the upper tier of a closet, it
looked like—was a mostly hairless slothlike creature. The crumpled remains of a dencage, barely recognizable, were not far away.

  Aw, ties and chains. The Rowpins. And Feef, their survivor.

  She must have said some part of it out loud; the others glanced at her. Then the uni said, "I found a second one," and the tone of his voice was clear enough. Too late. Both dead.

  "That's all there is," Shadia said, her voice very small as it fought to get out of her throat. Nothing's permanent.

  The uni looked at her, somber. "These are the people you were asking about when you first came."

  Shadia nodded.

  He gave a little nod back at her, a small gesture that shouldn't have made her feel as it did...as though she were part of something. Something bigger than she was or he was...bigger than all of them. She frowned, caught in the moment.

  "Go on back down," the uni told those people still waiting in the tunnel. Waiting to help...except no one here needed it. "There'll be crews here to deal with...what we've found." The flooring gave a decisive tremble beneath them, and his voice grew crisp. "Go on, then. We'll get their animal and be right after you."

  They meant well.

  They coo'd and they called, unable to reach the akliat through the rubble, wanting badly to preserve this creature belonging to those people they hadn't been able to save. But the flooring gave a wicked shudder and Feef's odor-signals only grew more intensely offensive. A gridnews hovercam floated past, stopped short, and wandered into the destruction, wavering slightly in mid-air as it soaked up the scene for its operators. Shadia, retreating to familiar duster ways—nothing's permanent—eased back toward her escape. It was all too much, this joining in, this caring...she'd learned the lesson once as a child and learned it well. She hadn't thought she'd be learning it again, that she'd been foolish enough to let herself care about these people who loved their akliat.