Falling Free (Vorkosigan Saga)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “Eight girls,” Yei muttered. “Oh, lord Krishna … I trust none of them have been inspired to emulation yet?”

  Claire, not wishing to lie, said nothing. She didn’t need to; the psychologist, watching her face, winced.

  Yei turned indecisively in air. “I’ve got to have a talk with Silver. I should have done it when I first suspected—but I thought the man had the wit not to contaminate the experiment—asleep on my feet. Look, Claire, I want to talk with you more about your new assignment. I’m here to try and make it as easy and pleasant as possible—you know I’ll help, right? I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  Yei peeled Andy off her neck where he was now attempting to taste her earring and handed him back to Claire, and exited the airseal door muttering something about “containing the damage …”

  Claire, alone, held her baby close. Her troubled uncertainty turned like a lump of metal under her heart. She had tried so hard to be good… .

  *

  Leo squinted approvingly against the harsh light and dense shadows of the vacuum as a pair of his space-suited students horsed the locking ring accurately into place on the end of its flex tube. Between the two of them their eight gloved hands made short work of the task.

  “Now Pramod, Bobbi, bring up the beam welder and the recorder and put them in their starting position. Julian, you run the optical laser alignment program and lock them on.”

  A dozen of the four-armed figures, their names and numbers printed in large clear figures on the front of each helmet and across the backs of their silvery work suits, bobbed about. Their suit jets puffed as they jockeyed for a better view.

  “Now, in these high-energy-density partial penetration welds,” Leo lectured into his space suit’s audio pick-up, “the electron beam must not be allowed to achieve a penetrating steady-state. This beam can punch through half a meter of steel. Even one spiking event and your, say, nuclear pressure vessel or your propulsion chamber can lose its structural integrity. Now, the pulser that Pramod is checking right now”—Leo made his voice heavy with hint; Pramod jerked, and hastily began punching up the system readout on his machine —“utilizes the natural oscillation of the point of beam impingement within the weld cavity to set up a pulsing schedule that maintains its frequency, eliminating the spiking problem. Always double-check its function before you start.”

  The locking ring was firmly welded to its flex tube and duly examined for flaws by eye, hologram scan, eddy current, the examination and comparison of the simultaneous x-ray emission recording, and the classic kick-and-jerk test. Leo prepared to move his students on to the next task.

  “Tony, you bring the beam welder over—TURN IT OFF FIRST!” Feedback squeal lanced through everyone’s earphones, and Leo modulated his voice from his first urgent panicked bellow. The beam had in fact been off, but the controls live; one accidental bump, as Tony swung the machine around, and—Leo’s eye traced the hypothetical slice through the nearby wing of the Habitat, and he shuddered.

  “Get your head out of your ass, Tony! I saw a man cut in half by one of his friends once by just that careless trick.”

  “Sorry … thought it would save time … sorry …” Tony mumbled.

  “You know better.” Leo calmed, as his heart stopped palpitating. “In this hard vacuum that beam won’t stop till it hits the third moon, or whatever it might encounter in between.” He almost continued, stopped himself; no, not over the public com channel. Later.

  Later, as his students unsuited in the equipment locker, laughing and joking as they cleaned and stored their work suits, Leo drifted over to the silent and pale Tony. Surely I didn’t bark at him that hard, Leo thought to himself. Figured he was more resilient … “Stop and see me when you’re finished here,” said Leo quietly.

  Tony flinched guiltily. “Yes, sir.”

  After his fellows had all swooped out, eager for their end-of-shift meal, Tony hung in the air, both sets of arms crossed protectively across his torso. Leo floated near, and spoke in a grave tone.

  “Where were you, out there today?”

  “Sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.”

  “It’s been happening all week. You got something on your mind, boy?”

  Tony shook his head. “Nothing— nothing to do with you, sir.”

  Meaning, nothing to do with work, Leo interpreted that. All right, so. “If it’s taking your mind off your work, it does have something to do with me. Want to talk about it? You got girl trouble? Little Andy all right? You have a fight with somebody?”

  Tony’s blue eyes searched Leo’s face in sudden uncertainty, then he grew closed and inward once again. “No, sir.”

  “You worried about going out on that contract? I guess it will be the first time away from home for you kids, at that.”

  “It’s not that,” denied Tony. He paused, watching Leo again. “Sir—are there a great many other companies out there besides ours?”

  “Not a great many, for deep interstellar work,” Leo replied, a little baffled by this new turn in the conversation. “We’re the biggest, of course, though there’s maybe a half-dozen others that can give us some real competition. In the heavily populated systems, like Tau Ceti or Escobar or Orient or of course Earth, there’s always a lot of little companies operating on a smaller scale. Super-specialists, or entrepreneurial mavericks, this and that. The outer worlds are coming on strong lately.”

  “So—so if you ever quit GalacTech, you could get another job in space.”

  “Oh, sure. I’ve even had offers—but our company does the most of the sort of work I want to do, so there’s no reason to go elsewhere. And I’ve got a lot of seniority accumulated by now, and all that goes with it. I’ll probably be with GalacTech till I retire, if I don’t die in harness.” Probably from a heart attack brought on by watching one of my students try to accidentally kill himself. Leo did not speak the thought aloud; Tony seemed chastised enough. But still abstracted.

  “Sir … tell me about money.”

  “Money?” Leo raised his brows. “What’s to tell? The stuff of life.”

  “I’ve never seen any—I’d understood it was sort of coded value-markers to, to facilitate trade, and keep count.”

  “That’s right.”

  “How do you get it?”

  “Well—most people work for it. They, ah, trade their labor for it. Or if they own or manufacture or grow something, they can sell it. I work.”

  “And GalacTech gives you money?”

  “Uh, yes.”

  “If I asked, would the company give me money?”

  “Ah …” Leo became conscious of skating on very thin ice. His private opinion of the Cay Project had perhaps better remain just that, while he ate the company’s bread. His job was to teach safe quality welding procedures, not— foment union demands, or whatever this conversation was sliding toward. “Whatever would you spend it on, up here? GalacTech gives you everything you need. Now, when I’m downside, or not on a company installation, I have to buy my own food, clothing, travel and what-not. Besides” —Leo reached for a less queasily specious argument—“up till now, you haven’t actually done any work for GalacTech, although it’s done plenty for you. Wait till you’ve actually been out on a contract and done some real producing. Then maybe it might be time to talk about money.” Leo smiled, feeling hypocritical, but at least loyal.

  “Oh.” Tony seemed to fold inward on some secret disappointment. His blue eyes flicked up, probing Leo again. “When one of the company jumpships leaves Rodeo—where does it go first?”

  “Depends on where it’s wanted, I guess. Some run straight all the way to Earth. If there’s cargo or people to divide up for other destinations, the first stop is usually Orient Station.”

  “GalacTech doesn’t own Orient Station, does it?”

  “No, it’s owned by the government of Orient IV. Although GalacTech leases a good quarter of it.”

  “How long does
it take to get to Orient Station from Rodeo?”

  “Oh, usually about a week. You’ll probably be stopping there yourself quite soon, if only to pick up extra equipment and supplies, when you’re sent out on your first construction contract.”

  The boy was looking more outer-directed now, perhaps thinking about his first interstellar trip. That was better. Leo relaxed slightly.

  “I’ll be looking forward to that, sir.”

  “Right. If you don’t cut your foot, er, hand off meanwhile, eh?”

  Tony ducked his head and grinned. “I’ll try not to, sir.”

  And what was that all about? Leo wondered, watching Tony sail out the door. Surely the boy could not be thinking of trying to strike out on his own? Tony had not the least conception of what a freak he would seem, beyond his familiar Habitat. If he would only open up a little more …

  Leo shrank from the thought of confronting him. Every downsider staff member in the Habitat seemed to feel they had a right to the quaddies’ personal thoughts. There wasn’t a lockable door anywhere in the quaddies’ living quarters. They had all the privacy of ants under glass.

  He shook off the critical thought, but could not shake off his queasiness. All his life he had placed his faith in his own technical integrity—if he followed that star, his feet would not stumble. It was ingrained habit by now; he had brought that technical integrity to the teaching of Tony’s work gang almost automatically. And yet … this time, it did not seem to be quite enough. As if he had memorized the answer, only to discover the question had been changed.

  Yet what more could be demanded of him? What more could he be expected to give? What, after all, could one man do?

  A spasm of vague fear made him blink, the hard-edged stars in the viewport smearing, as the looming shadow of the dilemma clouded on the horizon of his conscience. More …

  He shivered, and turned his back to the vastness. It could swallow a man, surely.

  *

  Ti, the freight shuttle copilot, had his eyes closed. Perhaps that was natural at times like this, Silver thought, studying his face from a distance of ten centimeters. At this range her eyes could no longer superimpose their stereoscopic images, so his twinned face overlapped itself. If she squinted just right, she could make him appear to have three eyes. Men really were rather alien. Yet the metal contact implanted in his forehead, echoed at both temples, did not have that effect, seeming more a decoration or a mark of rank. She blinked one eye closed, then the other, causing his face to shift back and forth in her vision.

  Ti opened his eyes a moment, and Silver quickly flinched into action. She smiled, half-closed her own eyes, picked up the rhythm of her flexing hips. “Oooh,” she murmured, as Van Atta had taught her. Let’s hear some feedback, honey, Van Atta had demanded, so she’d hit on a collection of noises that seemed to please him. They worked on the pilot, too, when she remembered to make them.

  Ti’s eyes squeezed shut, his lips parting as his breath came faster, and Silver’s face relaxed into pensive stillness once again, grateful for the privacy. Anyway, Ti’s gaze didn’t make her as uncomfortable as Mr. Van Atta’s, which always seemed to suggest that she ought to be doing something else, or more, or differently.

  The pilot’s forehead was damp with sweat, plastering down one curl of brown hair around the shiny plug. Mechanical mutant, biological mutant, equally touched by differing technologies; perhaps that was why Ti had first seen her as approachable, being an odd man out himself. Both freaks together. On the other hand, maybe the jump pilot just wasn’t very fussy.

  He shivered, gasped convulsively, clutched her tightly to his body. Actually, he looked—rather vulnerable. Mr. Van Atta never looked vulnerable at this moment. Silver was not sure just what it was he did look like.

  What’s he getting out of this that I’m not? What’s wrong with me? Maybe she really was, as Van Atta had once accused, frigid—an unpleasant word, it reminded her of machinery, and the trash dumps locked outside the Habitat—so she had learned to make noises for him, and twitch pleasingly, and he had commended her for loosening up.

  Silver reminded herself that she had another reason for keeping her eyes open. She glanced again past the pilot’s head. The observation window of the darkened control booth where they trysted overlooked the freight loading bay. The staging area between the bay’s control booth and the entrance to the freight shuttle’s hatch remained dimly lit and empty of movement. Hurry up Tony, Claire, Silver worried. I can’t keep this guy occupied all shift.

  “Wow,” breathed Ti, coming out of his trance and opening his eyes and grinning. “When they designed you folks for free fall they thought of everything.” He released his own clutch on the wings of Silver’s shoulder blades to slide his hands down her back, around her hips, and along her lower arms, ending with an approving pat on her hands locked around his muscular downsider flanks. “Truly functional.”

  “How do downsiders keep from, um, bouncing apart?” Silver inquired curiously, taking practical advantage of having cornered an apparent expert on the subject.

  His grin widened. “Gravity keeps us together.”

  “How strange. I always thought of gravity as something you had to fight all the time.”

  “No, only half the time. The other half, it works for you,” he assured her.

  He undocked from her body rather gracefully—perhaps it was all that piloting experience showing through —and planted a kiss in the hollow of her throat. “Pretty lady.”

  Silver blushed a little, grateful for the dim lighting. Ti turned his attention momentarily to a necessary clean-up chore. A quick whistle of air, and the spermicide-permeated condom was gone down the waste chute. Silver suppressed a faint twinge of regret. It was just too bad Ti wasn’t one of them. Too bad she was such a long way down the roster of those scheduled for motherhood. Too bad …

  “Did you find out from your doctor fellow if we really need those?” Ti asked her.

  “I couldn’t exactly ask Dr. Minchenko directly,” Silver replied. “But I gather he thinks any conceptus between a downsider and one of us would abort spontaneously, pretty early on—but nobody knows for sure. Could be a baby might make it to birth with lower limbs that were neither arms nor legs, but just some mess in between.” And they probably wouldn’t let me keep it… . “Anyway, it saves chasing body fluids around the room with a hand vac.”

  “Too true. Well, I’m certainly not ready to be a daddy.”

  How incomprehensible, thought Silver, for a man that old. Ti must be at least twenty-five, much older than Tony, who was nearly the eldest of them all. She was careful to float facing the window, so that the pilot had his back to it. Come on, Tony, do it if you’re going to… .

  A cool draft from the ventilators raised goose bumps on all her arms, and Silver shivered.

  “Chilly?” Ti asked solicitously, and rubbed his hands up and down her arms rapidly to warm them by friction, then retrieved her blue shirt and shorts from the side of the room where they had drifted. Silver shrugged into them gratefully. The pilot dressed too, and Silver watched with covert fascination as he fastened his shoes. Such inflexible, heavy coverings, but then feet were inflexible, heavy things in their own right. She hoped he’d be careful how he swung them around. Shod, his feet reminded her of mallets.

  Ti, smiling, unhooked his flight bag from a wall rack where he had stowed it when they’d retreated to the control booth half an hour earlier. “Gotcha something.”

  Silver perked up, and her four hands clasped each other hopefully. “Oh! Were you able to find any more book-discs by the same lady?”

  “Yes, here you go—” Ti produced some thin squares of plastic from the inner reaches of his flight bag. “Three titles, all new.”

  Silver pounced on them and read their labels eagerly. Rainbow Illustrated Romances: Sir Randan’s Folly, Love in the Gazebo, Sir Randan and the Bartered Bride, all by Valeria Virga. “Oh, wonderful!” She wrapped her upper right arm ar
ound Ti’s neck and gave him a quite spontaneous and vigorous kiss.

  He shook his head in mock despair. “I don’t know how you can read that dreck. I think the author is a committee, anyway.”

  “It’s great!” Silver defended her beloved literature indignantly. “It’s so, so full of color, and strange places and times—a lot of them are set on old Earth, way back when everybody was still downside —they’re amazing. People kept animals all around them—these enormous creatures called horses actually used to carry them around on their backs. I suppose the gravity tired people out. And these rich people, like—like company executives, I guess—called ‘lords’ and ‘nobles’ lived in the most fantastic habitats, stuck to the surface of the planet—and there was nothing about all this in the history we were taught!” Her indignation peaked.

  “That stuff’s not history, though,” he objected. “It’s fiction.”

  “It’s nothing like the fiction they give us, either. Oh, it’s all right for the little kids—I used to love The Little Compressor That Could—we made our crèche mother read it over and over. And the Bobby BX-99 series was all right … Bobby BX-99 Solves the Excess Humidity Mystery … Bobby BX-99 and the Plant Virus … it was then I asked to specialize in Hydroponics. But downsiders are ever so much more interesting to read about. It’s so—so —when I’m reading this”—she clutched the little plastic squares tightly—“it’s like they’re real, and I’m not.” Silver sighed hugely.

  Although perhaps Mr. Van Atta was a bit like Sir Randan … high of status, commanding, short-tempered… . Silver wondered briefly why short temper in Sir Randan always seemed so exciting and attractive, full of fascinating consequences. When Mr. Van Atta became angry, it merely made her sick to her stomach. Perhaps downsider women had more courage.

  Ti shrugged baffled amusement. “Whatever turns you on, I guess. Can’t see the harm in it. But I brought something better for you, this trip—” he rummaged in his flight bag again and shook out a froth of ivory fabric, intricate lace and ribbony satin. “I figured you could wear a regular woman’s blouse all right. It’s got flowers in the pattern, thought you’d like that, being in hydroponics and all.”