Falling Free

yelling and crying.

Leo peered through the observation window. Silver was alone, floating limply in the locked sleep restraints against the wall. In the light from the fluoros her face was greenish, pale and damp. Her eyes seemed drained of their sparkling blue color, blurred leaden smudges. A yet-unused spacesick sack was clutched, hot and wrinkled, in an upper hand.

Sickened himself, Leo glanced up the corridor to be sure he was still unobserved, swallowed the clot of impotent rage growing in his throat, and slipped inside.

“Uh… hi, Silver,” Leo began with a weak smile. “How you doing?” He cursed himself silently for the inanity of his own words.

Her smeary eyes found and focused on him uncomprehendingly. Then, “Oh. Leo. I think I was asleep for… for a while. Funny dreams… I still feel sick.”

The drug must be wearing off. Her voice had lost the slurred, dreamy quality it had had during the interrogation earlier; now it was small and tight and self-aware. She added with a quaver of indignation, “That stuff made me throw up. And I’ve never thrown up before, not ever. It made me.”

There were, Leo had learned, the most intense social inhibitions against vomiting in free fall, in Silver’s little world. She would probably have been far less embarrassed at being stripped naked in public.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he hastened to reassure her.

She shook her head, her hair waving in lank strands unlike its usual bright aureole, her mouth pinched. “I should have—I thought I could… the Red Ninja never told his enemies his secrets, and they drugged and tortured him both!”

“Who?” asked Leo, startled.

“Oh…!” Silver’s voice flattened to a wail. “They found out about our books, too! This time they’ll find them all…” Her lashes clotted with tears that could not fall, but only accumulate until blotted away.

When her eyes widened to stare at Leo in a horrified realization, two or three droplets flew off in shimmering tangents. “And now Mr. Van Atta thinks Ti must have known Tony and Claire were on his shuttle— collusion—he says he’s going to get Ti fired! And he’ll find Tony and Claire down there—I don’t know what he’ll do to them. I’ve never seen Mr. Van Atta so angry.”

Leo’s set jaw had ground his smile to a grimace. Still he tried to speak reasonably. “But you told them— under drugs—that Ti didn’t know, surely.”

“He didn’t believe it. Said I was lying.”

“But that would be logically inconsistent—” Leo began, cut himself short. “No, you’re right, that wouldn’t faze him. God, what an asshole.”

Silver’s mouth opened in shock. “You mean—Mr. Van Atta?”

“I mean Brucie-baby. You can’t tell me you’ve been around the man for what, eleven months, and not figured that out.”

“I thought it was me—something wrong with me…” Silver’s voice was still small and teary, but her eyes began to brighten with a sort of pre-dawn light. She overcame her inner miseries enough to regard Leo with increased attention. “… Brucie-baby?”

“Huh.” The memory of one of Dr. Yei’s lectures about maintaining unified and consistent authority gave Leo pause. It had seemed to make great sense at the time… “Never mind. But there’s nothing wrong with you, Silver.”

Her regard was sharpening to something almost scientific. “You’re not afraid of him.” Her tone of wonder suggested she found this an unexpected and remarkable discovery.

“Me? Afraid? Of Brace Van Atta?” Leo snorted. “Not likely.”

“When he first came, and took over Dr. Cay’s position, I thought—thought he would be like Dr. Cay.”

“Look, ah… there is a very ancient rule of thumb that states, people tend to get promoted to the level of their incompetence. So far I think I’ve managed to avoid that unenviable plateau. So, I gather, did your Dr. Cay.”Screw Yei’s scruples, Leo thought, and added bluntly, “Van Atta hasn’t.”

‘Tony and Claire would never have tried to run away if Dr. Cay were still here.” A straggling species of hope began in her eyes. “Are you saying you think this mess could be Mr. Van Atta’s fault?”

Leo stirred uneasily, pronged by secret convictions he had not yet voiced even to himself. “Your s—, s—,” slavery “situation seems intrinsically, intrinsically,” wrong his mind supplied, while his mouth fishtailed, “susceptible to abuse, mishandling of all sorts. Because Dr. Cay was so passionately dedicated to your welfare—”

“Like a father to us,” Silver confirmed sadly.

“—this, er, susceptibility remained latent. But sooner or later it’s inevitable that someone begin to exploit it, and you. If not Van Atta, someone else down the line. Someone…”worse? Leo had read enough history. Yes. “Much worse.”

Silver looked as if she were struggling to imagine something worse than Van Atta, and failing. She shook her head dolefully. She raised her face to Leo; eyes like morning glories, targeting the sun. The target, struck, jerked out an involuntary smile.

“What’s going to happen now, to Tony and Claire? I tried not to give them away, but that stuff made me so woozy—it was dangerous for them before, and now it’s worse.…”

Leo attempted a tone of bluff and hearty reassurance. “Nothing’s going to happen to them, Silver. Don’t let Bruce’s snit spook you. There’s not really much he can do to them, they’re much too valuable to GalacTech. He’ll yell at them, no doubt, and you can’t blame him for that; I’m ready to yell at them myself. Security will pick them up downside—they can’t have gone far—they’ll get the lecture of their young lives, and in a few weeks it’ll all blow over. Lessons learned,” Leo faltered. Just what lessons would they learn from this fiasco? “—all around.”

“You act like—like getting yelled at—was nothing. “

“It comes with age,” he offered. “Someday you’ll feel that way too.” Or was it power that this particular immunity came with? Leo was suddenly unsure. But he had no power to speak of, except the ability to build things. Knowledge as power. Yet who had power over him? The line of logic trailed off in confusion; he turned his thoughts impatiently from it. Mental wheel-spinning, as unproductive as philosophy class in college.

“I don’t feel that way now,” said Silver practically.

“Look, uh… tell you what. If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll go along downside when they locate those kids. Maybe I can kind of keep things under control.”

“Oh, would you? Could you?” Silver asked with relief. “Like you were trying to help me?”

Leo felt like biting his tongue off. “Uh, yeah. Something like that. “

“You’re not afraid of Mr. Van Atta. You can stand up to him.” Her eyebrows quirked self-deprecatingly, and she waved her lower arms. “As you can see, I’m not equipped to stand up to anybody. Thank you, Leo.” There was even a little color in her face now.

“Uh, right. I better hustle along now, if I’m to catch the shuttle going down to ‘Port Three. We’ll have ‘em back safe and sound by breakfast. Think of it this way; at least GalacTech can’t dock their pay for the extra shuttle trip.” This even won a brief smile from her.

“Leo…” her voice sobered, and he paused on his way out the door. “What are we going to do if… if there’s ever anyone worse than Mr. Van Atta?”

Cross that bridge when you come to it, he wanted to say, evading the question. But one more platitude and he’d gag. He smiled and shook his head, and fled.

The warehouse made Claire think of a crystal lattice. It was all right angles, stretching away at ninety degrees in each dimension, huge slotted shelves reaching to the ceilings, endless rows, cross corridors. Blocking vision, blocking flight.

But there was no flight here. She felt like a stray molecule caught in the interstices of a doped crystal wafer, out of place but trapped. In retrospect the cozy curves of the Habitat seemed like enclosing arms.

They huddled now in one empty cell of a shelf stack, one of the few they had not found occupied by supplies, measuring some two meters on a side. Tony had insisted on climbing to the third tier, to be above the eye level of any chance downsider walking along the corridor upright on his long legs. The ladders set at intervals along the shelves had actually proved easier to manage then creeping along the floor, but getting the pack up had been a dreadful struggle, as its cord was too short to climb up and draw it up after themselves.

Claire was secretly unnerved. Andy was already finding an ability to push and grunt and wriggle against the