Space, Inc

by Julie E. Czerneda

  The duster bar was easy to find from her new location; she’d been there often enough before she was hit by the zip-scoot. 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 housed station maintenance and services; west housed the residences and personal services. Dusters worked the eastern station-side jobs, clung to station-side corners, slept in station-side 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.

  The pet-watching service came as a benefit to the elite on the station, so the station itself paid her salary, whether she had one pet on hand or twenty. Escalator clauses kicked in after ten of them, things like increased assistant hours, increased pay….

  Increased pay meant a quick debt reduction. A quick departure from this, a quick return to her own way of life.

  “Out ’tending, are you?” said a growly alto voice in her ear. “Duster rig, all right—you take it 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? Should’ve at least gotten a fake to proof your age.”

  Shadia kicked the woman who held her, a pointy-toed kick just below the knee. When the woman’s grip fell away, Shadia snatched her ID set back, spitting 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.

  No one else bothered her.

  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 the 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—hairless with suedelike skin except for 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 playtime 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 hamsterlike 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 entryway 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 duffel, a toothcleaner and soap-pack 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 the 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, although she was often too timid to act when she knew she should. 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 airfreshener ’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 seem to perceive. She would have thought it was some unfathomable result of the zipscoot if her first jobber hadn’t made a loud gurgle and dropped his cleaning equipment. As they all looked to one another for explanation, a series of hollow booming noises made the ground shake; the air fluttered in response. Shadia and Amandajoy clutched each other for the stability and ended up on the thickly carpeted floor anyway, gathering skitzcat hair.

  For a moment there was silence. Then Gite bleated, leaping from the wire enclosure as the door slowly swung open on its own. He bounded out to land on them both, searching for a lap. Shadia winced as his claws dug in, automatically scooping his legs out from beneath him to place him on his back in his favored comfort position. 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 I knew I wasn’t 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 lockdown engaged. Like all structures, this one had its own emergency air cleaner, 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 no breach, but 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 shallowperm facade and take back the duster ways that had served her so well. Back to the east side.

  At least until she understood what had happened. Until the skitter of fear along her spine eased and she trusted the disaster—whatever it was—wouldn’t spread.

  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 pet care facility, a building unidentifiable 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?” Amanda-joy 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. But I want to turn on the gridnews. I know you think it bothers the animals sometimes, but—”

  “Turn it on,” Shadia said, and left. Heading for center west and not even sure why. All her instincts told her to run the other way, and all her habits warred with every step she took. Within moments—still true to duster ways in this, at least—she’d slipped down the maintenance poles few perms even knew existed and reentered 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,” she 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 off-line—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 shouted after her, “Hey! 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 ring-hall 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 cre
aking, groaning structures. Someone jostled her; she barely noticed. She was too busy trying to orient herself, 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 from 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. “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, falling in what seemed like slow motion. 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 cut off 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, and as they pushed past the barriers, climbing into the wreckage and joining the unis as they tossed bits and pieces of what had been homes into the core net now strung below them for just that purpose.