Across the Spectrum (6 page)

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 duffle, a toothcleaner and soappack 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 its 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. 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. 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 airfresher ’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 unravel; her first jobber made a loud gurgle and dropped his
cleaning equipment. A series of hollow booming noises made the ground shake;
the air fluttered in response. Shadia and Amandajoy clutched each other for stability
and ended up on the thickly carpeted floor anyway, gathering skitzcat hair.

For a moment there was silence. Then Gite bleated, leaping
from his wire enclosure as the door slowly swung open on its own. He landed on
both of them, searching for a lap. Shadia winced as his claws dug in,
automatically scooping his legs out from beneath him to cuddle him—and save her
skin. 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 not 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 lock-down engaged.
Like all structures this one had its own emergency aircleaner, 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 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 shallow perm facade and take back the duster ways that had served her so
well. Back to the east side.

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 petcare facility, a
building unidentified 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?” Amandajoy
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.”

“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.