Across the Spectrum

by Nagle, Pati

  “Then you won’t be allowed to leave the station until the debt is paid?”

  Shadia stopped herself from narrowing her eyes. Of course the woman knew the terms of duster med-debt. “Yes, sir.”

  “Filling this job is very important to us. Our permanent residents, by definition, have little chance for exposure to pets of any kind.”

  No, of course not. Only the affluent could afford a pet in a station environment, even a station like Toklaat with copious gardens and play spaces and other luxuries. And the affluent wouldn’t need to check station listings for jobs, temp or perm.

  The woman smiled a grim little smile. “I can’t say for sure, but I suspect that with the priority placed on filling this job, it would be very difficult to remove you as a candidate.”

  And as long as she was listed as a candidate for one job, she wouldn’t be considered for others.

  Oh God. Stuck.

  ∞

  Until this moment Shadia would have said all stations smelled the same. A whiff of artificial scent meant to cover the disinfectant that was ineffective in some places and astonishingly strong in others.

  But no disinfectant would handle this smell. No artificial scent stood a chance. Wildly exotic pet residue, abandoned and left to stew.

  Blinking watering eyes, Shadia tried to evaluate her new home.

  Home. How long had it been since—?

  But no, this wasn’t a home. This was enforced labor, and as soon as her med-debt was paid, she’d find some way out of this place. Off of this station. Back to the habits to which she’d become accustomed these past fifteen years, just over half her life. Her hip twinged, reminding her why she was still here; old memories twinged to remind her why she wanted to leave.

  Shadia concentrated instead on her new environs. Two floors of space, an unimaginative floor plan that put living quarters above several rooms meant to simulate a home environment for pampered pets while offering a practical nod to the need for clean-up, food preparation, and isolation of cranky or antisocial animals. There was, of course, a tub.

  Precious water, used on dirty pets.

  There was even an old schedule tacked directly to the wall next to the tub. The hand-scrawled names were water-stained and worn, but Shadia got the gist of it. Once a week for most of them, twice for some of them. And not all of them were bathed with shampoo and water. There was one called Mokie; it seemed to be bathed with a special oil. And Tufru used a product she found in the storage bins over the tub . . . it reminded her of cat litter.

  Cat litter. When was the last time I cleaned a litter box? Stinky old litter box, never could have the fancy self-cleaners because Ma and Dad said we needed to learn responsibility. As if working in the kennels wasn’t enough. Worked in that damn kennel from six years old to—

  Old enough.

  Shadia left the tub area behind. Hastily. By the time she reached the spartan little office, she was full of anger. The way she liked it. Good cleansing anger, snarling that the very part of her once-was that she’d tried so hard to forget now had her trapped on Toklaat.

  Nothing’s permanent. See what you can see. Drift from station to planet to orbiter, grabbing catch-work rides and reveling in the newness of the next place until it gets old, finding new friends when the old drift away, your only true bond the very thing that will eventually drive you apart. Duster ways.

  Still snarling, she found the paperwork that suggested she name the renewed facility and directed her how to hire the assistants she was allowed—just enough help so she could sleep and acquire food and personal maintenance goods, for the petcare facility served all three shifts. There was a com-pin so she could be contacted by customers or assistants at any time, a cashchip for operating expenses, and an ID set. Her ID set.

  Fast work.

  She picked it up, fumbling the slick bifold set. Employer information on one side, personal history on another, a large recent image of herself—source unknown to her—and a fourth side that sheened blankly but held all of the set’s information and more in digital. She looked at the image. It showed her from the head up but somehow managed to capture her scrawniness beneath the patched duster’s vest-over-coveralls she wore. Mementos covered that vest, from crew patches to a tiny shell found only in a single place on a single planet. Mementos hung within her hair, an unimpressive dark brunette never given the opportunity to go sunstreaked, but long enough to hold beads and twists of woven goods. The tactile hair of a woman who encountered very few mirrors.

  Her appearance clashed with the purple border around her likeness, the one that proclaimed her as a perm job worker. A purple border she’d never thought to see on her own ID set, not after being dragged into the duster’s life while she was still young enough that her first minor’s ID lived in the back of her underwear drawer.

  Dragged into it, maybe. But I embraced it. The very involuntary nature of my introduction to the life taught me a duster’s way is the only way. People think we’re crazy, bouncing infinitely from station to station to planetside to station. Space dust. But in reality we’re the wisest of them all. They count on their lives to continue as they know them. We admit up front that it’ll never happen that way, and make the best of it.

  The duster bar was easy to find from her new location; she’d been there often enough before she was hit by the zipscoot. Like most stations, Toklaat was a glorified cylinder with travel tubes down the open axis, from north to south and back again, with east and west split according to function. East-side housed station maintenance and services; west-side housed the residences and personal services. Dusters worked the eastern station-side jobs, clung to station corners, slept in station nooks.

  Now Shadia worked and lived in the west.

  The duster bar, considered both a personal service and a duster accommodation, balanced on the border between east and west. With the com-pin tucked away in her vest pocket, a duster’s ubiquitous utilities under the vest, and a small advance on her personal cashchip, Shadia stood at the edge of the bar nursing a featherdunk and considering her situation. Calculating how long it might take. . .

  “Out ’tending, are you?” said a growly alto voice in her ear. “You take that duster rig off someone, ’tender? You someone’s mag-bound little perm?”

  Startled from her reverie, Shadia jerked around to discover herself flanked by two women whose musculature and vest pins marked them as cargo-loading dusters. Not a worry. Dusters left their own alone. “I’m no pretender.”

  Quick as that, one of them grabbed her arms, spilling her drink, while the other fished around inside Shadia’s vest until a search of the many interior pockets offered success. The creditchip, the ID set. “Looks like your ’set to me,” said the growly one. “Didn’t anyone ever warn you that the only thing worse than a perm in a duster bar is a ’tender perm in a duster bar?”

  Shadia kicked the woman who held her, a pointy-toed kick just below the knee, snatching her ID set back as she spat a long string of blistering duster oaths. She didn’t fight, she didn’t get drunk, she didn’t join the ranks of the dusters’ practical jokers . . . but she had a vocabulary to make even a growly-voiced cargo loader blink. And while the one woman was blinking and the other was bent over her leg, Shadia snarled, “Med-debt. It’s paid, I’m gone. Got it?” She turned her back on them and went back to her drink. They would have muttered apologies except that her turned back was a sign to be respected. Not a rudeness as the perms would have thought, but simply a gesture requesting privacy in a society where complete strangers made up a constantly shifting population. So they went away.

  But I didn’t go back there. Because they were right. I might hate it, I might have been forced into it, but in the strictest sense, they were right. I was a perm in a duster bar. . . and elsewhere, a duster in perm ID. I just didn’t intend to stay that way.

  ∞

  The smell was incredible.

  “You’re going to break down the ’fresher system again,” Shadia told Feef t
he akliat, resigned to it. Each day, Feef arrived clinging to Claire Rowpin like a baby, deep blue eyes squinting fiercely against the morning sun. He might have been a cross between a three-toed sloth and a Chinese Crested earth dog for all his appearance indicated—his hairless, suede-like skin, a poof of white powderpuff hair on the top of his head, and a deep affinity for dark corners and high places. In spite of his slow and essentially sweet nature, he emitted the most astonishing odors under stress.

  Feef. His owners, a couple named the Rowpins, had confessed to her upon first visit their intention to name the akliat Fifi. They hadn’t—quite—gone through with it.

  But despite their moment of weakness with the akliat’s name, they clearly adored him. They gave her his favorite towel, hoping it would ease his stress, and they often called during the day to check on him. The other owners were much the same—loving their pets, checking on them, offering advice and expending worry.

  As well they might. Of all the things that weren’t permanent, pets topped the list. Shadia had known that even before she turned duster. But she didn’t say anything, not to perms who would never understand anyway, people she would leave behind as soon as possible. She made the pets comfortable, read up on their various habits and habitats, and smiled at the owners who dropped them off each day. It brought her business; in some strange way the perms began to think of her as their duster.

  Ugh.

  Some of the animals gloried in their visits, with supervised play time and more interaction than they’d get at home. Some were sullen and spent their time in hiding. They all had challenging habits that served them well enough in their own environments. Feef’s odors were part of his communication system, although in the pet care facility they earned him a quiet and solitary room with high perches. The Jarlsens’ skitzcat shed luxurious hair with mildly barbed tips intended to line its nest—Shadia made sure it had a private bedding area and invested in high-grade cleaning equipment. The roly poly hamster-like rrhy dripped scent-mucus wherever it went as a warning of its poisonous nature. And Gite the tasglana, who looked like nothing more than a flop-eared goat in extreme miniature, liked to sharpen its claws on everything and anything—or anyone—it could find. Shadia wore leather work chaps when Gite came to stay.

  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. 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 sh
e 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.