Falling Free

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  "Difficult? Why difficult? Just let them go. In fact"—Leo strove to conceal his rising excitement behind a bland face—"if GalacTech would let them go immediately, before the end of this fiscal year, it could still take whatever it chooses to calculate as its investment in them as a tax loss against Rodeo's profits. One last fling, as it were, one last bite out of Orient IV." Leo smiled attractively.

  "Let them go where? You seem to forget, Mr. Graf, that the bulk of them are still mere children."

  Leo faltered. "The older ones could help take care of the younger ones, they already do, some. . . . Perhaps they could be moved for a few years to some other sector that could absorb the loss from their upkeep—it couldn't cost GalacTech that much more than a like number of workers on pensions, and only for a few years. . . ."

  "The company retirement pension fund is self-supporting," Gavin the accountant observed elliptically. "Roll-over."

  "A moral obligation," Leo offered desperately. "Surely GalacTech must admit some moral obligation to them —we created them, after all." The ground was shifting under his feet, he could see it in her unsympathetic face, but he could not yet discern in what direction the tilt was going.

  "Moral obligation indeed," agreed Apmad, her hands clenching. "And have you overlooked the fact that Dr. Cay created these creatures fertile? They are a new species, you know; he dubbed them Homo quadrimanus, not Homo sapiens race quadrimanus. He was the geneticist, we may presume he knew what he was talking about. What about GalacTech's moral obligation to society at large? How do you imagine it will react to having these creatures and all their problems just dumped into its systems? If you think they overreact to chemical pollution, just imagine the flap over genetic pollution!"

  "Genetic pollution?" Leo muttered, trying to attach some rational meaning to the term. It sounded impressive.

  "No. If the Cay Project is proved to be GalacTech's most expensive mistake, we will containerize it properly. The Cay workers will be sterilized and placed in some suitable institution, there to live out their lives otherwise unmolested. Not an ideal solution, but the best available compromise."

  "St—st . . ." Leo stuttered. "What crime have they committed, to be sentenced to life in prison? And where, if Rodeo is to be closed down, will you find or build another suitable orbital habitat? If you're worried about expense, lady, that'll be expensive."

  "They will be placed planetside, of course, at a fraction of the cost."

  A vision of Silver creeping uncomfortably across the floor like a bird with both wings broken burst in Leo's brain. "That's obscene! They'll be no better than cripples."

  "The obscenity," snapped Apmad, "was in creating them in the first place. Until Dr. Cay's death brought his department under mine, I had no idea that his 'R&D—Biologicals' was concealing such enormously invasive manipulations of human genes. My home world embraced the most painfully draconian measures to ensure our gene pool not be overrun with accidental mutations—to go out and deliberately introduce mutations seems the most vile . . ." She caught her breath, contained her emotions again, except what escaped her nervously drumming fingers. "The right thing to do is euthanasia. Terrible as it seems at first glance, it might actually be less cruel in the long run."

  Gavin the accountant, squirming, twitched an uncertain smile at his boss. His eyebrows had gone up in surprise, down in dismay, and at last settled on up again—not taking her seriously, perhaps. Leo didn't think she'd been joking, but Gavin added in a facetiously detached professional tone, "It would be more cost effective. If it were done before the end of this fiscal year, we could indeed take them as a loss—total—against Orient taxes."

  Leo felt suspended in glass. "You can't do that!" he whispered. "They're people—children—it would be murder—"

  "No, it would not," denied Apmad. "Repugnant, certainly, but not murder. That was the other half of the reason for locating the Cay Project in orbit around Rodeo. Besides physical isolation, Rodeo exists in legal isolation. It's in the ninety-nine-year lease. The only legal writ in Rodeo local space is GalacTech regulation. I fear this has less to do with foresight than with Dr. Cay's successful blocking of any interference with his schemes. But if GalacTech chooses not to define the Cay workers as human beings, company regulations regarding crimes do not apply."

  "Oh, really?" Bannerji brightened slightly.

  "How does GalacTech define them?" asked Leo, glassily curious. "Legally."

  "Post-fetal experimental tissue cultures," said Apmad.

  "And what do you call murdering them? Retroactive abortion?"

  Apmad's nostrils grew pinched. "Simple disposal."

  "Or"—Gavin glanced sardonically at Bannerji—"vandalism, perhaps. Our one legal requirement is that experimental tissue be cremated upon disposal. IGS Standard Biolab rules."

  "Launch them into the sun," Leo suggested tightly. "That'd be cheap."

  Van Atta stroked his chin gently and regarded Leo uneasily. "Calm down, Leo. We're just talking contingency scenarios here. Military staffs do it all the time."

  "Quite," agreed the Ops VP. She paused to frown at Gavin, whose flippancy apparently did not please her. "There are some hard decisions to be made here, which I am not anxious to face, but it seems they have been dealt to me. Better me than someone blind to the long-term consequences to society at large like Dr. Cay. But perhaps, Mr. Graf, you will wish to join Mr. Van Atta in showing how Dr. Cay's original vision might still be carried out at a profit, so we can all avoid having to make the hardest choices."

  Van Atta smiled at Leo, smarmily triumphant. Vindicated, vindictive, calculating . . . "To return to the matter at hand," Van Atta said, "I've already requested that Captain Bannerji be summarily terminated for his poor judgment and"—he glanced at Gavin—"and vandalism. I might also suggest that the cost of TY-776-424-XG's hospitalization be charged to his department." Bannerji wilted; Administrator Chalopin stiffened.

  "But it's increasingly apparent to me," Van Atta went on, fixing his most unpleasant smile on Leo, "that there's another matter to be pursued here. . . ."

  Ah shit, thought Leo, he's going to get me on an assault charge—an eighteen-year career up in smoke—and I did it to myself—and I didn't even get to finish the job. . . .

  "Subversion."

  "Huh?" said Leo.

  "The quaddies have been growing increasingly restive in the past few months. Coincidentally with your arrival, Leo." Van Atta's gaze narrowed. "After today's events I wonder if it was a coincidence. I rather think not. Isn't it so that"—he wheeled and pointed dramatically at Leo—"you put Tony and Claire up to this escapade?"

  "Me!" Leo sputtered in outrage, paused. "True, Tony did come to me once with some very odd questions, but I thought he was just curious about his upcoming work assignment. I wish now I'd . . ."

  "You admit it!" Van Atta crowed. "You have encouraged defiant attitudes toward company authority among the hydroponics workers, and among your own students entrusted to you—ignored the psych department's carefully developed guidelines for speech and behavior while aboard the Habitat —infected the workers with your own bad attitudes—"

  Leo realized suddenly that Van Atta was not going to let him get a word of defense in edgewise if he could possibly help it. Van Atta was onto something infinitely more valuable than mere vengeance for a punch in the jaw—a scapegoat. A perfect scapegoat, upon whom he could pin every glitch in the Project for the past two months—or longer, depending on his ingenuity—and sacrifice without qualm to the company gods, himself emerging squeaky-clean and sinless.

  "No, by God!" Leo roared. "If I were running a revolution, I'd do a damn sight better job of it than that—" He waved in the general direction of the warehouse. His muscles bunched to launch himself at Van Atta again. If he was to be fired anyway, he'd at least get some satisfaction out of it—

  "Gentlemen." Apmad's voice sluiced down like a bucket of ice water. "Mr. Van Atta, may I remind you that terminations from outlying facilities like Rodeo are
discouraged. Not only is GalacTech contractually obligated to provide transportation home to the terminees, but there is also the expense and large time delay of importing their replacements. No, we shall finish it this way. Captain Bannerji shall be suspended for two weeks without pay, and an official reprimand added to his permanent record for carrying an unauthorized weapon on official company duty. The weapon shall be confiscated. Mr. Graf shall be officially reprimanded also, but returned immediately to his duties, as there is no one to replace him in them."

  "But I was screwed," complained Bannerji.

  "But I'm totally innocent!" cried Leo. "It's a fabrication—a paranoid fantasy—"

  "You can't send Graf back to the Habitat now," yelped Van Atta. "Next thing you know he'll be trying to unionize 'em—"

  "Considering the consequences of the Cay Project's failure," said the Ops VP coldly, "I think not. Eh, Mr. Graf?"

  Leo shivered. "Eh."

  She sighed without satisfaction. "Thank you. This investigation is now complete. Further complaints or appeals by any party may be addressed to GalacTech headquarters on Earth." If you dare, her quirked eyebrow added. Even Van Atta had the sense to keep his mouth shut.

  * * *

  The mood in the shuttle for the return trip to the Habitat was, to say the least, constrained. Claire, accompanied by one of the Habitat's infirmary nurses pulled off her downside leave three days early for the duty, huddled in the back clutching Andy. Leo and Van Atta sat as far from each other as the limited space allowed.

  Van Atta spoke once to Leo. "I told you so."

  "You were right," Leo replied woodenly. Van Atta nearly purred at the stroke, smug. Leo would rather have stroked him with a pipe wrench.

  Could Van Atta be all right, as well? Was his disruptive pressure for instant results a sign of concern for the quaddies' welfare, even survival? No, Leo decided with a sigh. The only welfare that truly concerned Bruce was his own.

  Leo let his head rest on the padded support and stared out his window as the acceleration of takeoff thrust him back in his seat. A shuttle ride was still a bit of a thrill to something deep in him, even after the countless trips he'd made. There were people—billions, the vast majority—who never set foot off their home planets in their lives. He was one of the lucky few.

  Lucky to have his job. Lucky in the results he'd achieved, over the years. The vast Morita Deep Space Transfer Station had probably been the crown of his career, the largest project he was ever likely to work on. He'd first viewed the site when it was empty, icy vacuum, as nothing as nothing could possibly be. He'd passed through it again just last year, making a changeover from a ship from Ylla to a ship for Earth. Morita had looked good, really good; alive, even undergoing expansion of its facilities, several years sooner than anyone had expected. Smooth expansion; plans for it had been incorporated into the original designs. Overambitious, they'd called it then. Farsighted, they called it now.

  And there had been other projects, too. Every day, from one end of the wormhole nexus to the other, countless accidents of structural failure did not occur because he, and people he'd trained, had done their jobs well. The work of a harried week, the early detection of the propagating microcracks in the reactor coolant lines at the great Beni Ra orbital factory alone had saved, perhaps, three thousand lives. How many surgeons could claim to save three thousand lives in ten years of their careers? On that memorable inspection tour, he'd done it once a month for a year. Invisibly, unsung; disasters that never happen don't normally make headlines. But he knew, and the men and women who worked alongside him knew, and that was enough.

  He regretted slugging Bruce. The moment's red joy had certainly not been worth risking his job for. The eighteen years of accumulating pension benefits, the stock options, the seniority, yes, maybe; with no family to support, they were all Leo's, to piss into the wind if he chose. But who would take care of the next Beni Ra?

  When they returned to the Habitat, he would cooperate. Apologize handsomely to Bruce. Redouble his training efforts, increase his care. Bite his tongue, speak only when spoken to. Be polite to Dr. Yei. Hell, even do what she told him.

  Anything else was impossibly risky. There were a thousand kids up there. So many, so varied—so young. A hundred five-year-olds, a hundred and twenty six-year-olds alone, cramming the crèche modules, playing games in their free-fall gym. No one individual could possibly take responsibility for risking all those lives on something chancy. It would be endless, all-consuming. Impossible. Criminal. Insane. Revolt—where could it lead? No one could possibly foresee all the consequences. Leo couldn't even see around the next corner. No one could. No one.

  They docked at the Habitat. Van Atta shooed Claire and Andy and the nurse ahead of him through the hatchway, as Leo slowly unfastened his seat harness.

  "Oh, no," Leo heard Van Atta say. "The nurse will take Andy to the crèche. You will return to your old dormitory. Taking that baby downside was criminally irresponsible. It's clear you are totally unfit to have charge of him. I can guarantee, you'll be struck from the reproduction roster, too."

  Claire's weeping was so muffled as to be nearly inaudible.

  Leo closed his eyes in pain. "God," he asked, "why me?"

  Releasing his last restraint, he fell blindly into his future.

  Chapter Seven

  "Leo!" Silver anchored one hand and pounded softly and frantically with the other three on the door to the engineer's sleeping quarters. "Leo, quick! Wake up, help!" She laid her cheek against the cold plastic, muffling her bursting howl to a small, sliding "Leo?" She dared not cry louder, lest she attract more than Leo's ear.

  His door slid open at last. He wore red T-shirt and shorts, barefoot. His sleep sack against the far wall hung open like an empty cocoon, and his thinning sandy hair stuck out in odd directions. "What the hell . . . Silver?" His face was rumpled with sleep, eyes dark-ringed but focusing fast.

  "Come quick, come quick!" Silver hissed, grabbing his hand. "It's Claire. She tried to go out an airlock. I jammed the controls. She can't get the outer door open, but I can't get the inner door open either, and she's trapped in there. Our supervisor will be back soon, and then I don't know what they'll do to us. . . ."

  "Son-of-a . . ." He allowed her to draw him into the corridor, then lurched back into his cabin to grab a tool belt. "All right, go, go, lead on."

  They sped through the maze of the Habitat, offering strained bland smiles to those quaddies and downsiders they flew past in the corridors. At last, the familiar door to 'Hydroponics D' closed behind them.

  "What happened? How did this happen?" Leo asked her as they brushed through the grow-tubes to the far end of the module.

  "They wouldn't let me go see Claire day before yesterday, when you brought her back on the shuttle, even though we were both in the infirmary. Yesterday we were on different work teams. I think it was on purpose. Today I made Teddie trade with me." Silver's voice smeared with her distress. "Claire said they won't even let her into the crèche to see Andy on her off-shift. I went to get fertilizer from Stores to charge the grow-tubes we were working on, and when I came back, the lock was just starting to cycle. . . ." If only she hadn't left Claire alone—if only she had not let the shuttle take them downside in the first place—if only she had not betrayed them to Dr. Yei's drugs—if only they'd been born downsiders—or not been born at all. . . .

  The airlock at the end of the hydroponics module was almost never used, merely waiting to become the airseal door to the next module that future growth might demand. Silver pressed her face to the observation window. To her immense relief, Claire was still within.

  But she was ramming herself back and forth between door and door, her face smeared with tears and blood, fingers reddened. Whether she gulped for air or only screamed Silver could not tell, for all sound was silenced by the barrier door, like a turned-down holovid. Silver's own chest seemed so tight she could scarcely breathe.

  Leo glanced in. His lips drew back in a fier
ce scowl in his whitened face, and he turned to hiss at the lock mechanism, scrabbling at his tool belt. "You fixed it but good, Silver . . ."

  "I had to do something quick. Shorting it that way blocked the alarm from going off in Central Systems."

  "Oh." Leo's hands hesitated briefly. "Not so random a stab as it looks, then."

  "Random? In an airlock control box?" She stared at him in surprise, and some indignation. "I'm not a five-year-old!"

  "Indeed not." A crooked grin lightened his tense face for a moment. "Any quaddie of six would know better. My apologies, Silver. So the problem, then, is not how to open the door, but how to do so without tripping the alarm."

  "Yes, right." She hovered anxiously.

  He looked the mechanism over, glanced up rather more hesitantly at the airlock door, which vibrated to the thumping from within. "You sure Claire doesn't need—more help anyway?"

  "She may need help," snapped Silver, "but what she'll get is Dr. Yei."

  "Ah . . . right." His grin thinned out altogether. He clipped a couple of tiny wires and rerouted them. With one last doubtful look at the lock door, he tapped a pressure plate within the mechanism.

  The inner door slid open and Claire tumbled out, gasping rawly, ". . . let me go, let me go, oh, why didn't you let me go—I can't stand this . . ." She curled up in a huddled ball in midair, face hidden.

  Silver darted to her, wrapped her arms around her. "Oh, Claire! Don't do things like that. Think—think how Tony would feel, stuck in that hospital downside, when they told him . . ."

  "What does it matter?" demanded Claire, muffled against Silver's blue T-shirt. "They'll never let me see him again. I might as well be dead. They'll never let me see Andy . . ."

  "Yes," Leo chimed in, "think of Andy. Who will protect him, if you're not around? Not just today, but next week, next year."

  Claire unwound, and fairly screamed at him. "They won't even let me see him! They threw me out of the crèche . . ."