Falling Free (Vorkosigan Saga)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “Mm,” said Leo.

  Van Atta turned back to Yei. “What about it, Doctor? Or would you rather wait until someone calls us up asking what to do with the bodies?”

  “IV Thalizine-5 is a bit like fast-penta,” muttered Dr. Yei reluctantly, “in certain doses. It will make her sick for a day, though.”

  “That’s her choice.” He wheeled on Silver. “Your last chance, Silver. I’ve had it. I despise disloyalty. Where did they go? Tell me, or it’s the needle for you, right now.”

  She was driven from thing-ness at last to a more painful, active human courage. “If you do that to me,” Silver whispered in desperate dignity, “we’re through.”

  Van Atta recoiled in sputtering outrage. “Through? You and your little friends conspire to sabotage my career in front of the company brass and you tell me we’re through? You’re damn right we’re through!”

  *

  “Company Security, Shuttleport Three, Captain Bannerji speaking,” George Bannerji recited into his comconsole. “May I help you?”

  “You in charge here?” the well-dressed man in his vid began abruptly. He was clearly laboring under strong emotion, breathing rapidly. A muscle jumped in his clamped jaw.

  Bannerji took his feet off his desk and leaned forward. “Yes, sir?”

  “I’m Bruce Van Atta, Head of Project at the Habitat. Check my voiceprint, or whatever it is you do.”

  Bannerji sat up straight, tapped out the check-code; the word ‘cleared’ flashed for a moment across Van Atta’s face. Bannerji sat up straighter still. “Yes, sir, go ahead.”

  Van Atta paused as if groping for words, speaking slowly despite the jostling urgency of thought apparent in his tense face. “We have a little problem here, Captain.”

  Red lights and sirens went off in Bannerji’s head. He could recognize an ass-covering understatement when he heard one. “Oh?”

  “Three of our—experimental subjects have escaped the Habitat. We interrogated their co-conspirator, and we believe they stowed away on shuttle flight B119, and are now loose somewhere in Shuttleport Three. It is of the utmost urgency that they be captured and returned to us as quickly as possible.”

  Bannerji’s eyes widened. Information about the Habitat was under a tight company security lid, but no one could work on Rodeo for long without learning that some kind of genetic experiments on humans were taking place up there, in careful isolation. It usually took a little longer for new employees to figure out that the more exotic monster stories told by the old hands were a form of hazing, practiced upon their credulity. Bannerji had transferred in to Rodeo about a month ago.

  The project chief’s words rang through Bannerji’s head. Escaped. Captured. Criminals escaped. Dangerous zoo animals escaped, when their keepers screwed up, then some poor shmuck of a cop got the job of capturing them. Occasionally, horrifying biological weapons escaped. What the hell was he dealing with?

  “How will we recognize them, sir? Do they”—Bannerji swallowed—“look like human beings?”

  “No.” Van Atta evidently read the dismay in Bannerji’s face, for he snorted ironically, “You’ll have no trouble recognizing them, I assure you, Captain. And when you do find them, call me at once on my private code. I don’t want this going out over broadcast channels. For God’s sake keep it quiet, understand?”

  Bannerji envisioned public panic. “Yes, sir. I understand completely.”

  His own panic was a private matter. He wouldn’t be collecting the fat salary he did if security was expected to be all extended coffee breaks and pleasant evening strolls around perfectly deserted property. He’d always known the day would come when he’d have to earn his pay.

  Van Atta broke off with a grim nod. Bannerji put in a call on the comconsole for his subordinate and placed pages for both his off-duty men as well. Something that had the executive hierarchy pouring sweat was nothing for a newly-promoted security grunt to take chances with.

  He unlocked the weapons cabinet and signed out stunners and holsters for himself and his team. He weighed a stunner thoughtfully in his palm. It was such a light little diddly thing, almost a toy; GalacTech risked no lawsuits over stray shots from weapons like these.

  Bannerji stood a moment, then turned to his own desk and keyed open the drawer with his personal palm-lock. The unregistered pistol nestled in its own locked box, its shoulder holster coiled around it like a sleeping snake. By the time Bannerji had buckled it on and shrugged his uniform jacket back over it, he was feeling much better. He turned decisively to greet his patrolmen reporting for duty.

  Chapter Five

  Leo paused outside the airseal doors to the Habitat’s infirmary to gather his nerve. He had been secretly relieved when a frantic call from Pramod had pulled him, shaking inside, away from the excruciating interrogation of Silver; as secretly ashamed of his relief. Pramod’s problem—fluctuating power levels in his beam welder, traced at last to poisoning of the electron-emitting cathode by gas contamination—had occupied Leo for a time, but with the welding show over, shame had driven him back here.

  So what are you going to do for her at this late hour? his conscience mocked him. Assure her of your continued moral support, as long as it doesn’t involve you in anything inconvenient or unpleasant? What a comfort. He shook his head, tapped the door control.

  Leo drifted silently past the medtech’s station without signing in. Silver was in a private cubicle, a quarter-wedge of the infirmary’s circumference at the very end of the module. The distance had helped muffle the yelling and crying.

  Leo peered through the observation window. Silver was alone, floating limply in the locked sleep restraints against the wall. In the light from the fluoros her face was greenish, pale and damp. Her eyes seemed drained of their sparkling blue color, blurred leaden smudges. A yet-unused spacesick sack was clutched, hot and wrinkled, in an upper hand.

  Sickened himself, Leo glanced up the corridor to be sure he was still unobserved, swallowed the clot of impotent rage growing in his throat, and slipped inside.

  “Uh … hi, Silver,” Leo began with a weak smile. “How you doing?” He cursed himself silently for the inanity of his own words.

  Her smeary eyes found and focused on him uncomprehendingly. Then, “Oh. Leo. I think I was asleep for … for a while. Funny dreams … I still feel sick.”

  The drug must be wearing off. Her voice had lost the slurred, dreamy quality it had had during the interrogation earlier; now it was small and tight and self-aware. She added with a quaver of indignation, “That stuff made me throw up. And I’ve never thrown up before, not ever. It made me.”

  There were, Leo had learned, the most intense social inhibitions against vomiting in free fall, in Silver’s little world. She would probably have been far less embarrassed at being stripped naked in public.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” he hastened to reassure her.

  She shook her head, her hair waving in lank strands unlike its usual bright aureole, her mouth pinched. “I should have—I thought I could … the Red Ninja never told his enemies his secrets, and they drugged and tortured him both!”

  “Who?” asked Leo, startled.

  “Oh … !” Silver’s voice flattened to a wail. “They found out about our books, too! This time they’ll find them all… .” Her lashes clotted with tears that could not fall, but only accumulate until blotted away. When her eyes widened to stare at Leo in a horrified realization, two or three droplets flew off in shimmering tangents. “And now Mr. Van Atta thinks Ti must have known Tony and Claire were on his shuttle—collusion—he says he’s going to get Ti fired! And he’ll find Tony and Claire down there—I don’t know what he’ll do to them. I’ve never seen Mr. Van Atta so angry.”

  Leo’s set jaw had ground his smile to a grimace. Still he tried to speak reasonably. “But you told them—under drugs—that Ti didn’t know, surely.”

  “He didn’t believe it. Said I was lying.”

  “But th
at would be logically inconsistent—” Leo began, cut himself short. “No, you’re right, that wouldn’t faze him. God, what an asshole.”

  Silver’s mouth opened in shock. “You mean—Mr. Van Atta?”

  “I mean Brucie-baby. You can’t tell me you’ve been around the man for what, eleven months, and not figured that out.”

  “I thought it was me—something wrong with me …” Silver’s voice was still small and teary, but her eyes began to brighten with a sort of predawn light. She overcame her inner miseries enough to regard Leo with increased attention. “… Brucie-baby?”

  “Huh.” The memory of one of Dr. Yei’s lectures about maintaining unified and consistent authority gave Leo pause. It had seemed to make great sense at the time… . “Never mind. But there’s nothing wrong with you, Silver.”

  Her regard was sharpening to something almost scientific. “You’re not afraid of him.” Her tone of wonder suggested she found this an unexpected and remarkable discovery.

  “Me? Afraid? Of Bruce Van Atta?” Leo snorted. “Not likely.”

  “When he first came, and took over Dr. Cay’s position, I thought—thought he would be like Dr. Cay.”

  “Look, ah … there is a very ancient rule of thumb that states, people tend to get promoted to the level of their incompetence. So far I think I’ve managed to avoid that unenviable plateau. So, I gather, did your Dr. Cay.” Screw Yei’s scruples, Leo thought, and added bluntly, “Van Atta hasn’t.”

  “Tony and Claire would never have tried to run away if Dr. Cay were still here.” A straggling species of hope began in her eyes. “Are you saying you think this mess could be Mr. Van Atta’s fault?”

  Leo stirred uneasily, pronged by secret convictions he had not yet voiced even to himself. “Your s—, s—,” slavery “situation seems intrinsically, intrinsically,” wrong his mind supplied, while his mouth fishtailed, “susceptible to abuse, mishandling of all sorts. Because Dr. Cay was so passionately dedicated to your welfare—”

  “Like a father to us,” Silver confirmed sadly.

  “—this, er, susceptibility remained latent. But sooner or later it’s inevitable that someone begin to exploit it, and you. If not Van Atta, someone else down the line. Someone …” worse? Leo had read enough history. Yes. “Much worse.”

  Silver looked as if she was struggling to imagine something worse than Van Atta, and failing. She shook her head dolefully. She raised her face to Leo; eyes like morning glories, targeting the sun. The target, struck, jerked out an involuntary smile.

  “What’s going to happen now, to Tony and Claire? I tried not to give them away, but that stuff made me so woozy—it was dangerous for them before, and now it’s worse… .”

  Leo attempted a tone of bluff and hearty reassurance. “Nothing’s going to happen to them, Silver. Don’t let Bruce’s snit spook you. There’s not really much he can do to them. They’re much too valuable to GalacTech. He’ll yell at them, no doubt, and you can’t blame him for that; I’m ready to yell at them myself. Security will pick them up downside —they can’t have gone far— they’ll get the lecture of their young lives, and in a few weeks it’ll all blow over. Lessons learned”—Leo faltered. Just what lessons would they learn from this fiasco?—“all around.”

  “You act like—like getting yelled at—was nothing.”

  “It comes with age,” he offered. “Someday you’ll feel that way too.” Or was it power that this particular immunity came with? Leo was suddenly unsure. But he had no power to speak of, except the ability to build things. Knowledge as power. Yet who had power over him? The line of logic trailed off in confusion; he turned his thoughts impatiently from it. Mental wheel-spinning, as unproductive as philosophy class in college.

  “I don’t feel that way now,” said Silver practically.

  “Look, uh … tell you what. If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll go along downside when they locate those kids. Maybe I can kind of keep things under control.”

  “Oh, would you? Could you?” Silver asked with relief. “Like you were trying to help me?”

  Leo felt like biting off his tongue. “Uh, yeah. Something like that.”

  “You’re not afraid of Mr. Van Atta. You can stand up to him.” Her eyebrows quirked self-deprecatingly, and she waved her lower arms. “As you can see, I’m not equipped to stand up to anybody. Thank you, Leo.” There was even a little color in her face now.

  “Uh, right. I better hustle along now, if I’m to catch the shuttle going down to ‘Port Three. We’ll have ‘em back safe and sound by breakfast. Think of it this way: at least GalacTech can’t dock their pay for the extra shuttle trip.” This even won a brief smile from her.

  “Leo …” Her voice sobered, and he paused on his way out the door. “What are we going to do if … if there’s ever anyone worse than Mr. Van Atta?”

  Cross that bridge when you come to it, he wanted to say, evading the question. But one more platitude and he’d gag. He smiled and shook his head, and fled.

  *

  The warehouse made Claire think of a crystal lattice. It was all right angles, stretching away at ninety degrees in each dimension, huge slotted shelves reaching to the ceilings, endless rows, cross corridors. Blocking vision, blocking flight.

  But there was no flight here. She felt like a stray molecule caught in the interstices of a doped crystal wafer, out of place but trapped. In retrospect the cozy curves of the Habitat seemed like enclosing arms.

  They huddled now in one empty cell of a shelf stack, one of the few they had not found occupied by supplies, measuring some two meters on a side. Tony had insisted on climbing to the third tier, to be above the eye level of any chance downsider walking along the corridor upright on his long legs. The ladders set at intervals along the shelves had actually proved easier to manage than creeping along the floor, but getting the pack up had been a dreadful struggle, as its cord was too short to climb up and draw it up after themselves.

  Claire was secretly unnerved. Andy was already finding an ability to push and grunt and wriggle against the gravity, still only a few centimeters at a time, but she had a nasty vision of him falling over the edge. Claire was developing a distaste for edges.

  A robotic forklift whirred past. Claire froze, cowering in the back of their recess, clutching Andy to her, grabbing one of Tony’s hands. The whirring trailed off into the distance. She breathed again.

  “Relax,” Tony squeaked. “Relax …” He breathed deeply in an apparent effort to follow his own advice.

  Claire peered doubtfully out of the cubicle at the forklift, which had stopped farther down the corridor and was engaged in retrieving a plastic carton from its coded cell.

  “Can we eat now?” She had been nursing Andy on and off for the last three hours in an effort to keep him quiet, and was drained in every sense. Her stomach growled, and her throat was dry.

  “I guess,” said Tony, and dug a couple of ration bars out of their hoard in the pack. “And then we’d better try to work our way back to the hangar.”

  “Can’t we rest here a little longer?”

  Tony shook his head. “The longer we wait, the more chance they’ll be looking for us. If we don’t get on a shuttle for the transfer station soon, they may start searching the outbound jumpships, and there goes our chance of stowing away undiscovered until after they boost past the point of no return.”

  Andy squeaked and gurgled; a familiar aroma wafted from his vicinity.

  “Oh, dear. Would you please get out a diaper?” Claire asked Tony.

  “Again? That’s the fourth time since we left the Habitat.”

  “I don’t think I brought near enough diapers,” Claire worried, smoothing out the laminated paper and plastic form Tony handed her.

  “Half our pack is filled with diapers. Can’t you—make it last a little longer?”

  “I’m afraid he may be getting diarrhea. If you leave that stuff on his bottom too long, it eats right through
his skin—gets all red—even bleeds—gets infected—and then he screams and cries every time you touch it to try to clean it. Real loud,” she emphasized.

  The fingers of Tony’s lower right hand drummed on the shelf floor, and he sighed, biting back frustration. Claire wrapped the used diaper tightly in itself and prepared to stash it back in their pack.

  “Do we have to cart those along?” Tony asked suddenly. “Everything in the pack is going to reek after a while. Besides, it’s heavy enough already.”

  “I haven’t seen a disposal unit anywhere,” said Claire. “What else can we do with them?”

  Tony’s face screwed up with inner struggle. “Just leave it,” he blurted. “On the floor. It’s not like it’s going to float off down the corridor and get into the air recirculation, here. Leave them all.”

  Claire gasped at this horrific, revolutionary idea. Tony, following up his own suggestion before his nerve failed, collected the four little wads and stuffed them into the far corner of the storage cubicle. He smiled shakily, in mixed guilt and elation. Claire eyed him in worry. Yes, the situation was extraordinary, but what if Tony was developing a habit of criminal behavior? Would he return to normal when they got—wherever they were going?

  If they got wherever they were going. Claire pictured their pursuers following the dirty diapers, like a trail of flower petals dropped by that heroine in one of Silver’s books, across half the galaxy… .

  “If you’ve got him back together,” said Tony with a nod at his son, “maybe we better start back toward the hangar. That mob of downsiders may be cleared out by now.”

  “How are we going to pick a shuttle this time?” asked Claire. “How will we know that it’s not just going right back up to the Habitat—or taking up a cargo to be unloaded in the vacuum? If they vent the cargo bay into space while we’re in it …”

  Tony shook his head, lips tight. “I don’t know. But Leo says—to solve a big problem, or complete a big project, the secret is to break it down into little parts and tackle them one at a time, in order. Let’s—just get back to the hangar, first. And see if there’s any shuttles there at all.”