Miles, Mutants, and Microbes

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Amazingly, he stopped. His breath whistled past his clenched teeth as he twisted his head to stare at her through pain-slitted eyes. The centers of the burns across his legs seemed to be cauterized, shadowed black and ambiguous—she was torn between revulsion, and the curious desire to go take a closer look at what she had done. The edges of the burns were swelling red, yellow plasma already seeping through but clinging to his skin, no need for a hand-vac. The injury did not seem to be immediately life-threatening.

  "Siggy, unstrap him and get him out of that control chair," Silver ordered. For once, Siggy zipped to obey with no argument, not even a suggestion of how to do it better gleaned from his holodrama viewing.

  In fact, the effect of her action on everyone present, not just their captives, was most gratifying. Everyone moved faster. This could get addictive, Silver thought. No arguments, no complaints—

  Some complaints. "Was that necessary?" Ti asked, as the prisoners were bundled ahead of them through the corridor. "He was getting out of his seat for you . . ."

  "He was going to try to jump me."

  "You can't be sure of that."

  "I didn't think I could hit him once he was moving."

  "It's not like you had no choice—"

  She turned toward him with a snap; he flinched away. "If we do not succeed in taking this ship, a thousand of my friends are going to die. I had a choice. I chose. I'd choose again. You got that?" And you choose for everybody, Silver, Leo's voice echoed in her memory.

  Ti subsided instantly. "Yes, ma'am."

  Yes, ma'am? Silver blinked, and pushed ahead of him to hide her confusion. Her hands were shaking in reaction now. She entered the life-pod first, ostensibly to yank all the communications equipment but for the emergency directional finder beeper, and to check for the first-aid kit—it was there, and complete—also to be alone for a moment, away from the wide eyes of her companions.

  Was this the pleasure in power Van Atta felt, when everyone gave way before him? It was obvious what firing the weapon had done to the defiant pilot; what had it done to her? For every action, an equal and opposite reaction. This was a somatic truth, visceral knowledge ingrained in every quaddie from birth, clear and demonstrable in every motion.

  She exited the pod. A hoarse moan broke from the pilot's lips as his legs accidentally bumped against the hatch, as they stuffed him and the engineer through into the life-pod, sealed it, and fired it away from the jumpship.

  Silver's agitation gave way to a cool pool of resolve, within her, even though her hands still trembled with distress for the pilot's pain. So. Quaddies were no different than downsiders after all. Any evil they could do, quaddies could do too. If they chose.

  There. By placing the grow-tubes at this angle, with a six-hour rotation, they could get by with four fewer spectrum lights in the hydroponics module and still have enough lumens falling on the leaves to trigger flowering in fourteen days. Claire entered the command on her lap board computer and made the analog model cycle all the way through once on fast-forward, just to be sure. The new growth configuration would cut the power drain of the module by some twelve percent from her first estimate. Good: for until the Habitat reached its destination and they unfurled the delicate solar collectors again, power would be at a premium.

  She shut off the lap board and sighed. That was the last of the planning tasks she could do while still locked up here in the Clubhouse. It was a good hiding place, but too quiet. Concentration had been horribly difficult, but having nothing to do, she discovered as the seconds crept on, was worse. She floated over to the cupboard and took a pack of raisins and ate them one at a time. When she finished the gluey silence closed back in.

  She imagined holding Andy again, his warm little fingers clutching hers in mutual security, and wished for Silver to hurry up and send her signal. She pictured Tony, medically imprisoned downside, and hoped in anguish Silver might delay, that by some miracle they might yet regain him at the last minute. She didn't know whether to push or pull at the passing minutes, only that each one seemed to physically pelt her.

  The airseal doors hissed, jolting her with anxiety. Was she discovered—? No, it was three quaddie girls, Emma, Patty, and Kara the infirmary aide.

  "Is it time?" Claire asked hoarsely.

  Kara shook her head.

  "Why doesn't it start, what's keeping Silver . . ." Claire broke off. She could imagine all too many disastrous reasons for Silver's delay.

  "She'd better signal soon," said Kara. "The hunt is up all over the Habitat for you. Mr. Wyzak, the Airsystems Maintenance supervisor, finally thought of looking behind the walls. They're over in the docking bay section now. Everybody on his crew is having the most terrific outbreak of clumsiness"—a curved moon of a grin winked in her face—"but they'll be working this way eventually."

  Emma gripped one of Kara's lower arms. "In that case, is this really the best place for us to hide?"

  "It'll have to do, for now. I hope things break before Dr. Curry works all the way down his list, or it's going to get awfully crowded in here," said Kara.

  "Is Dr. Curry recovered, then?" asked Claire, not certain if she wanted to hear a yes or a no. "Enough to do surgery? I'd hoped he'd be out longer."

  Kara giggled. "Not exactly. He's kind of hanging there all squinty-eyed and puffy, just supervising while the nurse gives the injections. Or he would be, if they could find any of the girls to give injections to."

  "Injections?"

  "Abortifacient." Kara grimaced.

  "Oh. A different list from mine, then." So, that was why Emma and Patty looked pale, as from a narrow escape.

  Kara sighed. "Yeah. Well, we're all on one list or another, in the end, I guess." She slipped back out.

  Claire was cheered by the company of the other two quaddies, even though it represented a growing danger of discovery not only of themselves but of their plans. How much more could go wrong before the Habitat's downsider staff started asking the right questions? Suppose the entire plot was discovered prematurely, following up the loose end she'd left? Should she have submitted docilely to Curry's procedure, just to keep the secret a little longer? Suppose "a little longer" was all it took to make the difference between success and disaster?

  "Now what, I wonder?" said Emma in a thin voice.

  "Just wait. Unless you brought something to do," said Claire.

  Emma shook her head. "Kara just grabbed me off my work shift in Small Repairs about ten minutes ago. I didn't think to bring anything."

  "She got me out of my sleep sack," Patty confirmed. A yawn escaped her despite the tension. "I'm so tired, these days . . ."

  Emma rubbed her abdomen absently with her lower palms in a circular motion familiar to Claire; so, the girls had already started childbirth training.

  "I wonder how all this is going to go," sighed Emma. "How it will turn out. Where we'll all be in seven months . . ."

  Hardly a figure chosen at random, Claire realized. "Away from Rodeo, anyway. Or dead."

  "If we're dead, we won't have a problem," Patty said. "If not . . . Claire, how is labor? What's it really like?" Her eyes were urgent, seeking reassurance from Claire's expertise, as the sole initiate present in the maternal mysteries of the body.

  Claire, understanding, responded, "It wasn't exactly comfortable, but it's nothing you can't handle. Dr. Minchenko says we have it a lot better than downsider women. We have a more flexible pelvis with a wider arch, and our pelvic floor is more elastic, on account of not having to fight the gravitational forces. He says that was his own design idea, like eliminating the hymen—whatever that was. Something painful, I gather."

  "Ugh, poor things," said Emma. "I wonder if their babies ever get sucked from their bodies by the gravity?"

  "I never heard of such a thing," said Claire doubtfully. "He did say they had trouble close to term with the weight of the baby cutting off circulation and squeezing their nerves and organs and things."

  "I'm glad I wasn't born a downsider
," said Emma. "At least not a female one. Think of the poor downsider mothers who have to worry about their helpers dropping their newborns." She shuddered.

  "It's horrible, down there," Claire confirmed fervently, remembering. "It's worth risking anything, not to have to go there. Truly."

  "But we'll be by ourselves, in seven months, that is," said Patty. "You had help. You had Dr. Minchenko. Emma and me—we'll be all alone."

  "No, you won't," said Claire. "What a nasty thought. Kara will be there—I'll come—we'll all help."

  "Leo will be coming with us," Emma offered, trying to sound optimistic. "He's a downsider."

  "I'm not sure that's exactly his field of expertise," said Claire honestly, trying to picture Leo as a medtech. He didn't care for hydraulic systems, he'd said. She went on more firmly, "Anyway, all the complicated stuff in Andy's birth mostly had to do with data collecting, because I was one of the first, and they were working out the procedures, Dr. Minchenko said. Just having the baby wasn't all that much. Dr. Minchenko didn't do it—really, I didn't do it, my body did. About all he did was hold the hand-vac. Messy, but straightforward." If nothing goes wrong biologically, she thought, and had the last-minute wit not to say aloud.

  Patty still looked unhappy. "Yes, but birth is only the beginning. Working for GalacTech kept us busy, but we've been working three times as hard since this escape-thing came up. And you'd have to be a dim bulb not to see it's going to get harder later. There's no end in sight. How are we going to handle it all and babies too? I'm not sure I think much of this freedom-stuff. Leo talks it up, but freedom for who? Not me. I had more free time working for the company."

  "You want to go report to Dr. Curry?" suggested Emma.

  Patty shrugged uncomfortably. "No . . ."

  "I don't think by freedom he means free time," said Claire thoughtfully. "More like survival. Like—like not having to work for people who have a right to shoot us if they want." A twinge of harsh memory edged her voice, and she softened it self-consciously. "We'll still have to work, but it will be for ourselves. And our children."

  "Mostly our children," said Patty glumly.

  "That's not all bad," remarked Emma.

  Claire thought she caught a glimpse of the source of Patty's pessimism. "And next time—if you want a next time—you can choose who will father your baby. There won't be anybody around to tell you."

  Patty brightened visibly. "That's true."

  Claire's reassurances seemed effective; the talk drifted to less threatening channels for a while. Much later, the airseal doors parted, and Pramod stuck his head in.

  "We got Silver's signal," he said simply.

  Claire sang out in joy; Patty and Emma hugged each other, whirling in air.

  Pramod held out a cautionary hand. "Things haven't started yet. You've got to stay in here a while longer."

  "No, why?" Emma cried.

  "We're waiting for a special supply shuttle from downside. When it docks is the new signal for things to start happening."

  Claire's heart thumped. "Tony—did they get Tony aboard?"

  Pramod shook his head, his dark eyes sharing her pain. "No, fuel rods. Leo's really anxious about them. He's afraid that without them we might not have enough power to boost the Habitat all the way out to the wormhole."

  "Oh—yes, of course." Claire folded back into herself.

  "Stay in here, hang on, and ignore any emergency klaxons you may hear," said Pramod. His lower hands clenched together in a gesture of encouragement, and he withdrew.

  Claire settled back to wait. She could have wept with the tension of it, but Patty and Emma didn't need the bad example.

  Bruce Van Atta pressed a finger to one side of his nose, squeezing the nostril shut, and sniffed mightily, then switched sides and repeated the procedure. Damn free fall and its lack of proper sinus drainage, among its other discomforts. He could hardly wait to get back to Earth. Even dismal Rodeo would be an improvement. He wondered idly if he could whip up some excuse—go inspect the quaddie barracks being readied, perhaps. That could be stretched out to about five days, if he worked it right.

  He drifted over and shored himself across one corner of Dr. Yei's pie-wedge-shaped office, sighting over her desk, his back to a flat inner wall and his feet braced where her magnet-board curved, thick with stuck-on papers and flimsies. Yei's lips tightened with annoyance as she swiveled to face him. He hitched his feet to a comfortably crossed position, deliberately letting them muss her papers, out-psyching the psycher. She glanced back to her holovid display, declining to rise to the bait, and he mussed a few more. Female wimp, he thought. A relief, that they had only a few weeks left to work together, and he didn't have to jolly her up any more.

  "So," he prodded, "how far along are we?"

  "Well, I don't know how you're doing—in fact," she added rather venomously, "I don't even know what you're doing—"

  Van Atta grinned in appreciation. So the worm could wriggle after all. Some administrators might have taken offense at the implied insubordination; he congratulated himself upon his sense of humor.

  "—but so far I've finished orienting about half the staff to their new assignments."

  "Anybody give you a hard time? I'll play bad guy, if necessary," he offered nobly, "and go lean on the non-cooperative."

  "Everybody is naturally rather shocked," she replied, "however, I don't think your . . . direct intervention will be required."

  "Good," he said jovially.

  "I do think it would have been better to tell them all at once. This business of releasing the information in bits and dribbles invites just the sort of rumor-mongering that is least desirable."

  "Yeah, well, it's too late now—"

  His words were cut short by the startling hoot of an alarm klaxon, shrilling out over the intercom. Yei's holovid was abruptly overridden by the Central Systems emergency channel.

  A hoarse male voice, a strained face—good God, it was Leo Graf—sprang from the display.

  "Emergency, emergency," Graf called—where was he calling from?—"we are having a depressurization emergency. This is not a drill. All Habitat downsider staff should proceed at once to the designated safe area and remain there until the all-clear sounds—"

  On the holovid, a computer-generated map sketched itself showing the shortest route from this terminal to the designated safe modules—module, Van Atta saw. Holy shit, the pressurization drop must be Habitat-wide. What the hell was going on?

  "Emergency, emergency, this is not a drill," Graf repeated.

  Yei too was staring bug-eyed at the map, looking more like a frog than ever. "How can that be? The sealing system is supposed to isolate the problem area from the rest—"

  "I bet I know," spat Van Atta. "Graf's been messing with the Habitat's structure, preparatory to salvage—I'll bet he, or his quaddies, just screwed something up royally. Unless it was that idiot Wyzak did something—come on!"

  "Emergency, emergency," Graf's voice droned on, "this is not a drill. All Habitat downsider staff should proceed at once—son-of-a-bitch!" His head snapped around, winked out, leaving only the urgently pulsing map on the display.

  Van Atta beat Yei, whose eye was still caught by the map, out the door to her office and through the airseal doors at the end of the module that should have been sealed and weren't. The doors seemed to sag half-opened, controls dead, useless, as Van Atta and Yei joined a babbling stream of staffers speeding toward safety. Van Atta swallowed, cursing his sinuses, as one ear popped and the other, throbbing, failed to. Adrenaline-spurred anxiety shivered in his stomach.

  Lecture Module C was already mobbed when they arrived, with downsiders in every state of dress and undress. One of the Nutrition staff had a case of frozen food clutched under her arm—Van Atta rejected the notion that she had inside information about the duration of the emergency and decided she must have simply had it in her hands when the alarm sounded and not thought to drop it before she fled.

  "Close the door!" how
led a chorus of voices as his and Yei's group entered. A distinct breeze sighed past them, rising to a whistle cut to silence as the doors sealed.

  Chaos and babble ruled in the crowded lecture module.

  "What's going on?"

  "Ask Wyzak."

  "He's out there, surely, dealing with it."

  "If not, he'd better get the hell out there—"

  "Is everybody here?"

  "Where are the quaddies? What about the quaddies?"

  "They have their own safe area, this isn't big enough."

  "Their gym, probably."

  "I didn't catch any directions for them on the holovid, to the gym or anywhere else—"