Miles, Mutants, and Microbes Read online

  "Almost complete."

  "Oh, really?" Van Atta brightened. "Well, that's something, at least."

  "You'll be amazed at how totally the Habitat can be recycled," Leo promised with perfect truth. "So will the company brass."

  "And fast?"

  "Just as soon as we get the go-ahead. I've got it laid out like a war game." He closed his teeth on further double entendres. "You still planning the grand announcement to the rest of the staff at thirteen-hundred tomorrow?" Leo inquired casually. "In the main lecture module? I really want to be in on that. I have a few visual aids to present when you're done."

  "Naw," said Van Atta.

  "What?" Leo gulped. He missed a step, and the springs slammed him painfully down on one knee on the treadmill, padded against just such clumsiness. He struggled back to his feet.

  "Did you hurt yourself?" said Van Atta. "You look funny. . . ."

  "I'll be all right in a minute," He stood, leg muscles straining against the elastic pull, regaining his breath and equilibrium in the face of pain and panic. "I thought—that was how you were going to drop the shoe. Get everybody together, just go over the facts once."

  "After Minchenko, I'm tired of arguing about it," said Van Atta. "I've told Yei to do it. She can call them into her office in small groups, and hand out the individual and department evacuation schedules at the same time. Much more efficient."

  And so Leo and Silver's beautiful scheme for peacefully detaching the downsiders, hammered out through four secret planning sessions, was blown away on a breath. Wasted was the flattery, the oblique suggestion, that had gone into convincing Van Atta that it was his idea to gather, unusually, the entire Habitat downsider staff at once and make his announcement in a speech persuading them all they were being commended, not condemned. . . .

  The shaped charges to cut the lecture module away from the Habitat at the touch of a button were all in place. The emergency breath masks to supply the nearly three hundred bodies with oxygen for the few hours necessary to push the module around the planet to the transfer station were carefully hidden within. The two pusher crews were drilled, their pushers fueled and ready.

  Fool he had been, to lay plans that depended on Van Atta following through on anything. . . . Leo felt suddenly sick.

  It was going to have to be the second-choice plan, then, the emergency one they'd discussed and discarded as too risky, too potentially uncontrolled in its results. Numbly, he detached his springs and harness and hooked them back in their slots on the treadmill frame.

  "That wasn't an hour," said Van Atta.

  "I think I did something to my knee," lied Leo.

  "I'm not surprised. Think I didn't know you've been skipping exercise sessions? Just don't try to sue GalacTech, 'cause we can prove personal neglect." Van Atta grinned and marched on virtuously.

  Leo paused. "By the way, did you know that Rodeo Warehousing just mis-shipped the Habitat a hundred tons of gasoline? And they're charging it to us."

  "What?"

  As Leo turned away he had the small vindictive satisfaction of hearing Van Atta's treadmill stop and the snap of a too-hastily-detached harness rebounding to slap its wearer. "Ow!" Van Atta cried.

  Leo did not look back.

  Dr. Curry met Claire as she arrived for her appointment at the infirmary. "Oh, good, you're just on time."

  Claire glanced up and down the corridor, and her eyes searched the treatment room into which Dr. Curry shoo'd her. "Where's Dr. Minchenko? I thought he'd be here."

  Dr. Curry flushed faintly. "Dr. Minchenko is in his quarters. He won't be coming on duty."

  "But I wanted to talk to him."

  Dr. Curry cleared his throat. "Did they tell you what your appointment was for?"

  "No . . . I supposed it was for more medication for my breasts."

  "Ah, I see."

  Claire waited a moment, but he did not expand further. He busied himself, laying out a tray of instruments by their velcro collars and placing them in the sterilizer, not meeting Claire's eyes. "Well, it's quite painless."

  Once, she might have asked no questions, docilely submitting—she had undergone thousands of obscure medical tests starting even before she had been freed as an infant from the uterine replicator, the artificial womb that had gestated her in a now-closed section of this very infirmary. Once, she had been another person, before the downside disaster with Tony. For a little time thereafter she had hovered close to being no one at all. Now she felt strangely thrilled, as if she trembled on the edge of a new birth. Her first had been mechanical and painless; perhaps that was why it had failed to take root. . . .

  "What—" she began to squeak. Too tiny a voice. She raised it, loud in her own ears. "What is this appointment for?"

  "Just a small local abdominal procedure," said Dr. Curry airily. "It won't take long. You don't even have to get undressed, just roll up your shirt and push down your shorts a bit. I'll prep you. You have to be immobilized under the sterile-air-flow shield, in case a drop or two of blood gets on the loose."

  You're not immobilizing me . . . "What is the procedure?"

  "It won't hurt, and will do you no harm at all. Come on over, now." He smiled, and tapped the shield unit, which folded out from the wall.

  "What?" repeated Claire, not moving.

  "I can't discuss it. It's—classified. Sorry. You'll have to ask—Mr. Van Atta, or Dr. Yei, or somebody. Tell you what, I'll send you over to Dr. Yei right after, and you can talk to her, all right?" He licked his lips; his smile grew steadily more nervous.

  "I wouldn't ask . . ." Claire groped after a phrase she had heard a downsider use once, "I wouldn't ask Bruce Van Atta for the time of day."

  Dr. Curry looked quite startled. "Oh." And muttered, not quite under his breath, "I wondered why you were second on the list."

  "Who was first on the list?" asked Claire.

  "Silver, but that engineering instructor has her on some kind of assignment. Friend of yours, right? You'll be able to tell her it doesn't hurt."

  "I don't care—I don't give a damn if it hurts, I want to know what it is." Her eyes narrowed, as the connections clicked at last, then widened in outrage. "The sterilizations," she breathed. "You're starting the sterilizations!"

  "How did you—you weren't supposed—I mean, whatever makes you think that?" gulped Curry.

  She dodged for the doorway. He was closer and quicker, and sealed it in front of her nose. She caromed off the closing panel.

  "Now, Claire, calm down!" panted Curry, zigzagging after her. "You'll only hurt yourself, totally unnecessarily. I can put you under a general anesthetic, but it's better for you to use a local, and just lie still. You do have to lie still. I have to do this, one way or another—"

  "Why do you have to do this?" cried Claire. "Did Dr. Minchenko have to do this—or is that why he isn't here? Who's making you, and how, that you have to?"

  "If Minchenko was here, I wouldn't have to," snapped Curry, infuriated. "He ducked out and left me holding the bag. Now come over here and position yourself under the steri-shield, and let me set up the scanners, or I'll have to get—get quite firm with you." He inhaled deeply, psyching himself up.

  "Have to," Claire taunted, "have to, have to! It's amazing, some of the things downsiders think they have to do. But they're almost never the same things they think quaddies have to do. Why is that, do you suppose?"

  His breath woofed out, and his lips tightened angrily. He plucked a hypodermic off his tray of instruments.

  He laid it out in advance, Claire thought. He's rehearsed this, in his mind—he made his mind up before I ever got here. . . .

  He launched himself over to where she hovered, and grabbed her left upper arm, stabbing the needle towards it in a swift silver arc. She grabbed his right wrist, slowing it to a straining standstill; so they were locked for a moment, muscles trembling, tumbling slowly in the air.

  Then she brought up her lower arms to join her uppers. Curry gasped in surprise, and for breath,
as she parted his arms wide, overpowering even his young male torso. He kicked, his knees thumping her, but with nothing to push against he couldn't drive them with enough force to really hurt.

  She grinned in wild exhilaration, brought his arms in, out again at will. I'm stronger! I'm stronger! I'm stronger than him and I never even knew it. . . .

  Carefully, she locked her power-gripping lower hands around his wrists, and freed her uppers. Both hands working together easily peeled his clutching fingers from the hypodermic. She held it up and crooned, "This won't hurt a bit."

  "No, no—"

  He was wriggling too much for her inexperience to try for a swift venous injection, so she went for a deltoid muscle instead, and went on holding him until he grew woozy and weak, which took several minutes. After that, it was easy to immobilize him under the steri-shield.

  She looked over his tray of instruments, and touched them wonderingly. "How far should I carry this turnabout, do you think?" she asked aloud.

  He whimpered in his wooziness and twitched feebly against the soft restraints, panic in his eyes. Claire's eyes lit; she threw back her head and laughed, really laughed, for the first time in—how long? She couldn't remember.

  She put her lips near his ear, and spoke clearly. "I don't have to."

  She was still laughing softly when she sealed the doors to the treatment room behind her and flew down the corridor toward refuge.

  Chapter 11

  It had been a mistake to let Ti insist on docking to the superjumper, Silver realized, as the crunch and shudder of their impact with the docking clamps reverberated through the pusher. Zara, hovering anxiously, emitted a tiny moan. Ti snarled wordlessly over his shoulder at her, returned his fraying attention to the controls.

  No—her mistake, to let his downsider, male, legged authority override her own reason—she knew he wasn't rated for these pushers, he'd told her so himself. He was only the authority after they got inside the superjumper.

  No, she told herself firmly, not even then.

  "Zara," she called, "take the controls."

  "Dammit," Ti began, "if you'd just—"

  "We need Ti too much on the com channels to spare him for piloting," Silver inserted, hoping desperately Ti would not spurn this offered sop for his pride.

  "Mm." Grudgingly, Ti let Zara shoulder him aside.

  The flex tube docking ring wouldn't seal properly. A second docking, and all the hopeful jiggling the auto-waldos could supply, couldn't make the locking ring seal properly. Silver either feared she would die, or wished she could, she wasn't sure. All her palms sweated, and transferring the laser-solderer from one to another only made the grip clammier.

  "See," said Ti to Zara, "you can't do any better."

  Zara glared at him. "You bent one of the rings, you dipstick. You better hope it's theirs and not ours."

  "That's 'dipshit'," Jon, laboring back by the hatch trying to make it seal, corrected helpfully. "If you're going to use downsider terminology, get it right."

  "Pusher R-26 calling GalacTech Superjumper D-620," Ti quavered into the com. "Von, we're going to have to disengage and come around to the other side. This isn't working."

  "Go ahead, Ti," came the jump pilot's voice in return. "Are you sick? You don't sound so good. That was a miserable docking. Just what is this emergency, anyway?"

  "I'll explain when we're aboard." Ti glanced up, got a confirming nod from Zara. "Disengaging now."

  Their luck was better on the starboard hatch. No, Silver reminded herself again. We make our own luck. And it's my responsibility to see it's good and not bad.

  Ti pushed through the flex tube first. The jumpship's engineer was waiting for him on the other side. Silver could hear his angry voice, "Gulik, you bent our portside docking ring. You wireheads all think you're Mr. Twinkletoes when you're plugged into your sets, but on manual you are, without exception, the most ham-handed—" He broke off, his voice thinning out in a little hiss, as Silver flitted through the hatch and hovered, her laser-solderer pointed sturdily at his stomach. It actually took him a moment to notice the weapon. His eyes widened and his mouth opened as Siggy and Jon backed her up from behind.

  "Take us to where the pilot is, Ti," said Silver. She hoped the fear that edged her voice made her sound angry and fierce, not pale and weak. All her strength seemed washed out of her, leaving her limp-stomached. She swallowed and took a tighter grip on the solderer.

  "What the hell is this?" began the engineer, his voice a taut octave higher than before. He cleared his throat and brought it back down. "Who are you . . . people, anyway? Gulik, are they with you?"

  Ti shrugged and produced a sickly smile that was either very well acted, or real. "Not exactly. I'm kind of with them."

  Siggy, reminded, pointed his solderer at Ti. Silver, when approving this ploy, had kept her inner thoughts about it most secret. Going in with Ti unarmed, apparently under the quaddies' guns, covered him in case of later capture and legal prosecution. Equally, it disguised the possibility of making his ersatz kidnapping real, should he decide to bolt back to the side of his legged companions at the last moment. Wheels within wheels; did all leaders have to think on multiple levels? It made her head hurt.

  They filed quickly through the compact crew's section to Nav and Com. The jump pilot sat enthroned in his padded chair, plugged into the massive crown of his control headset, a temporary, regal cyborg. His purple company coveralls were stitched with gaudy patches proudly proclaiming his rank and specialization. His eyes were closed, and he hummed tunelessly in time to the throbbing biofeedback from his ship.

  He yelped in surprise as his headset detached and rose, cutting his communion with his machine, when Ti thumbed the disconnect control. "God, Ti, don't do things like that—you know better—" A second yelp at the sight of the quaddies was swallowed with a gulp. He smiled at Silver in complete bewilderment, his eyes, after one shocked pass over her anatomy, locked politely on her face. She wriggled the laser-solderer, to bring it to his attention.

  "Get out of your chair," she ordered.

  He shrank back into it. "Look, lady . . . uh . . . what is that?"

  "Laser gun. Get out of your chair."

  His eyes measured her, measured Ti, flicked to his engineer. His hand stole to his seat harness buckle, hesitated. His muscles tensed.

  "Get out slowly," Silver added.

  "Why?" he asked.

  Stalling, Silver thought.

  "These people want to borrow your ship," Ti explained.

  "Hijackers!" breathed the engineer. He coiled, floating in his position near the airseal door. Jon's and Siggy's solderers swivelled toward him. "Mutants . . ."

  "Get out," Silver repeated, her voice rising uncontrollably.

  The pilot's face was drawn and thoughtful. His hands floated from his belt to rest in a parody of relaxation over his knees. "What if I don't?" he challenged softly.

  She fancied she could feel control of the situation slipping from her to him, sucked up by his superior imitation of coolness. She glanced at Ti, but he was staying safely and firmly in his part of helpless—and unhelpful—victim, lying low as the downsiders phrased it.

  A heartbeat passed, another, another. The pilot began to relax, visibly in his long exhalation, a smug light of triumph in his eyes. He had her number; he knew she could not fire. His hand went to his belt buckle, and his legs curled under him, seeking launch leverage.

  She had rehearsed it in her mind so many times, the actual event was almost an anticlimax. It had a glassy clarity, as if she observed herself from a distance, or from another time, future or past. The moment shaped the choice of target, something she had turned over and over without decision before; she sighted the solderer at a point just below his knees because no valuable control surfaces lay behind them.

  Pressing the button was surprisingly easy, the work of one small muscle in her upper right thumb. The beam was dull blue, not enough to even make her blink, though a brief bright yellow flame flare
d at the edge of the melted fabric of his supposedly nonflammable coveralls, then winked out. Her nostrils twitched with the stink of the burnt fabric, more pungent than the smell of burnt flesh. Then the pilot was bent over himself, screaming.

  Ti was babbling, voice strained, "What d'ja do that for? He was still strapped to his chair, Silver!" His eyes were wells of astonishment. The engineer, after a first convulsive movement, froze in a submissive ball, eyes flickering from quaddie to quaddie. Siggy's mouth hung open; Jon's was a tight line.

  The pilot's screams frightened her, swelled up her nerves to lance through her head. She pointed the solderer at him again. "Stop that noise!" she demanded.