by Nagle, Pati
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 territory.
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 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 inconve
nient 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 den-cage, 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.
He was a disturbed old ex-duster. I didn’t do anything besides bring him a few meals, sneak out some of the family’s old clothing and once a pillow. An old ex-duster who wanted to return the kindness, to save me from the misleading perm ways of my family. I understood that later. And in a way I suppose he did. When he took me away from all I knew, it was the strongest lesson I ever could have learned. Nothing is forever. Things change, whenever and wherever. So embrace the change. No ties, no extended responsibilities to others, nothing to lose. Dive into the change and ride it like a wave.
The uni shouted warning; a huge chunk of flooring broke away and tumbled down the levels, leaving the others scrambling for safety while Shadia clutched the edge of the maintenance shaft. Time to leave.
“That’s it, people,” the uni said. “He’s not coming to us. I wish there were something we could do, but—”
“Give me your uni coat,” Shadia said abruptly.
He gave her a baffled, resistant look, one arm raised to usher the other two back toward the shaft.
Shadia stepped away from it. “Your coat,” she insisted. The man and woman hesitated by the exit, watching them. “You want to save the akliat? Hand it over!”
Still baffled, less resistant, he peeled it off and passed it to her, a long, dark tailored thing that smelled of sweat and stress and physical labor. Shadia tented the collar over her head. She put her hands halfway up the sleeves that were way too long for her anyway, and turned the coat into a draping cloak, turning her upraised arms into cave-enclosed branches. She didn’t have to warn the others to hush; they’d done so on their own, letting their hopes burst through to their faces.
Shadia raised her arms a little higher within her self-imposed cave and gave one of the casual little chirrups she’d often heard from Feef. A long trill with a few clucks at the end, a soft repetition . . .
He sprang from his corner, scuttled across the rubble, and climbed her like the nighttime tree she pretended to be. Fast enough to make them all gasp. And then she steeled herself for the stench of him . . . but the stench had transformed to perfume, a crisp pervading caress of a scent; his soft, suede-skin arms clung to her not with fierce intent, but gentle trust.
Slowly, filled with a sweetness she could just barely remember, she let the coat slide down to her shoulders and closed it around the both of them.
They clapped for her. The man, the woman, the uni . . . the people several levels below on the first intact inner ring, watching it broadcast on their PIM gridviews. She met the grin of the uni with a surprised gaze, and he nodded at the maintenance shaft. “Go.”
The others went. And Shadia turned to follow, awkward under the burden of coat and akliat, in wavering mid-step when the uni shouted and the grid-watching crowd gave a collective gasp of horror. She saw it from the corner of her eye, the bulk of falling debris, screeching metal against metal as it bounced on the way down.
She’d never get out of the way. Not in time. Duster-like, she was ready for that . . . except within her whispered a long-forgotten child’s voice, something that treasured the newly rediscovered sweetness in life and didn’t want to give it up again so soon . . .
Something hit her hard. She twisted, trying to cushion the akliat even as she protected him from above, and all the while he exuded his scent of trust. A horrible crash buffeted her with sound and everything went dark, dark with a great heavy weight upon her.
She waited for the pain.
“Close one, eh?” said the uni’s voice in her ear. “Come on, then. You’re the one that knows the way, I think. Let’s get you and your new friend out of here.”
I don’t understand. He could have been killed. He doesn’t even know me, doesn’t have any of a perm’s affection for those they keep around them.
I don’t understand.
She led him through the darkness and back to the dimly lit pole shaft. She did it in silence, moving carefully to protect Feef, moving slowly to accommodate the tremble in her limbs. When they reached the level they’d come from, he put a hand on his own coat and stopped her before she remembered that dusters didn’t like to be touched by strangers. That everyone was a stranger.
“I work the duster turf, mainly,” he said, and his voice held an understanding she’d never heard before. “Never yet met one who hadn’t already lost too much to listen, but you . . .”
She looked at him, going wary. Feef snuggled against her and before she could stop herself, she stroked the absurd fluff of his topknot where it poked out at her neck.
The uni gave the smallest of smiles. “We’re not so dim as you dusters think, perms aren’t. Sure, we lose things, and then it hurts. It’s just . . .” He shrugged, losing most of what little composure he’d had. “It’s just that—it gives us—”
She thought of people rushing to help strangers and other strangers cheering her success with Feef and yet other strangers who mourned. Perm strangers, who somehow weren’t really strangers at all, not as dusters defined them. Perms left themselves open and vulnerable to the hurt and disillusion that dusters scorned, but . . .
“You could have been killed,” she said. Killed, tackling her to take them both flying into their only safety instead of diving there hi
mself, a certain save.
“Yes,” he admitted.
“A duster wouldn’t have done it.”
“No. A duster wouldn’t.”
“You leave yourself open to lose things,” she said, and looked down at her hand a moment. Then, gently, more naturally than she’d have thought possible, she offered it to him. A perm gesture. “But it gives you this.”
His uncertain expression made way for a smile. It cracked the dust on his face and crinkled the corners of his reddened, irritated eyes. He looked terrible, and he looked wonderful. “Yes,” he said, taking her hand. Only for the briefest moment. Then he coughed and said rather brusquely, “Let’s get you and your new friend home, then.”
Feef’s House. Sounds like a good name for a petcare center.
Ukaliq and the Great Hunt
David D. Levine
An early story of mine, this is close to my heart and contains some nifty imagery. It won the second annual Phobos Fiction Contest in 2002.
∞ ∞ ∞
When Raven first led the people from the third world to the fourth, the sky was black and empty all day long. A great chief kept the sun and the moons and the stars hidden in a cedar box, with some icy rocks to keep the box from burning up.
Greedy Raven wanted these pretty baubles for himself. He changed into a lichen flake and floated into the drinking cup of the chief’s daughter, who drank him up. Raven grew in her belly for one-third of a year, and then was born as a beautiful boy. The chief doted upon this grandson, and would give him anything he wanted.
One day Raven pointed to the box and cried and cried until the chief gave it to him. Once he had the box in his hands, Raven returned to his natural form and flew out the smokehole with it. But the box fell open as he flew, scattering its contents in the sky.
Released from the box, the sun shone hotly down on the world. So fierce was its heat that all the water and even the air began to boil away. Raven tried to pull the sun down from the sky, but he could not fly high enough. He went to Black Cedar and asked the tree to lift him up, but even then he could not reach. So he cut a hole in the tree and packed it with caribou tallow. Then he built a fire at the base of the tree and climbed up into its branches. The tallow inside the tree caught fire, and the tree burst into the air with Raven clinging desperately to it.
