It was true, then. Leo’s heart shrank. “Why? How long have you known about it?”
Van Atta’s hand flipped the edges of a pile of plastic flimsies, computer printouts and communiques, magnetized to his desk. “Three days.”
“It’s official, then.”
“Oh, quite official.” Van Atta’s mouth twisted in disgust. “I got the word from GalacTech district headquarters on Orient IV. Apmad apparently met the news on her way home, and made one of her famous field decisions.”
He rattled the flimsies again, and frowned. “There’s no way around it. Do you know what came in yesterday on the heels of this thing? Kline Station has cancelled its construction contract with GalacTech, the first one we were going to send the quaddies out on. Paid the penalty without a murmur. Kline Station’s out toward Beta Colony, they must have found out about this weeks ago—months. They’ve switched to a Betan contractor who, we may presume, is undercutting us. The Cay Project is cooked. Nothing left to do but wrap it up and get the hell out of here, the sooner the better. Damn! So now I’m associated with a loser project. I’ll come out reeking with odor of loss.”
“Wrap, wrap how? What do you mean, wrap?” “That bitch Apmad’s most favored scenario. I’ll bet she was purring when she cut these orders—the quaddies gave her nervous palpitations, y’know. They’re to be sterilized and stashed downside. Any pregnancies in progress to be aborted—shit, and we just started fifteen of ‘em! What a fiasco. A year of my career down the tubes.”
“My God, Bruce, you’re not going to carry out those orders, are you?”
“Oh no? Just watch me.” Van Atta stared at him, chewing his lip. Leo could feel himself tensing, pale with his suppressed fury. Van Atta sniffed. “What d’you want, Leo? Apmad could have ordered them exterminated. They’re getting off lightly. It could have been worse.”
“And if it had been—if she had ordered the quaddies killed—would you have carried it out?” inquired Leo, deceptively calm.
“She didn’t. C’mon, Leo. I’m not inhuman. Sure, I’m sorry for the little suckers. I was doing my damndest to make ‘em profitable. But there’s no way I can fight this. All I can do is make the wrap as quick and clean and painless as possible, and cut the losses as much as I can. Maybe
“Painless to whom?”
“To everybody.” Van Atta grew more intent, and leaned toward Leo with a scowl. “That means I don’t need a lot of panic and wild rumors floating around, you hear? I want business as usual right up to the last minute. You and all the other instructors will go on teaching your classes just as if the quaddies really were going out on a work project, until the downside facility is ready and we can start shuttling ‘em. Maybe take the little ones first—the salvageable parts of the
Habitat are supposed to be moved around the orbit to the Transfer Station, we might cut some costs by using quaddies for that last job.”
“To imprison them downside—”
“Oh, come off the dramatics. They’re being placed in a perfectly ordinary drilling workers’ dormitory, only abandoned six months ago when the field ran dry.” Van Atta brightened slightly in self-congratulation. “I found it myself, looking over the possible sites to place ‘em. It’ll cost next to nothing to refurbish it, compared to building new.”
Leo could just picture it. He shuddered. “And what happens in fourteen years, when and if Orient IV expropriates Rodeo?”
Van Atta ruffled his hair with both hands in exasperation. “How the hell should I know? At that point, it becomes Orient IV’s problem. There’s only so much one human being can do, Leo.”
Leo smiled slowly, in grim numbness. “I’m not sure… what one human being can do. I’ve never pushed myself to the limit. I thought I had, but I realize now I hadn’t. My self-tests were always carefully non- destructive.”
This test was a higher order of magnitude altogether. This Tester, perhaps, scorned the merely humanly possible. Leo tried to remember how long it had been since he’d prayed, or even believed. Never, he decided, like this. He’d never
Van Atta frowned at him suspiciously. “You’re weird, Leo.” He straightened his spine, as if seeking a posture of command. “Just in case you missed my message, let me repeat it loud and clear. You are to mention this artificial gravity business to no one, that means especially no quaddies. Likewise, keep their downside destination secret. I’ll let Yei figure out how to make them swallow it without kicking, it’s time she earned her overinflated salary. No rumors, no panics, no goddamn workers’ riots—and if there are, I’ll know just whose hide to nail to the wall. Got it?”
Leo’s smile was canine, concealing—everything. “Got it.” He withdrew without turning his back, or speaking another word.
Dr. Yei was not usually easy to track down, it being her habit to circulate often among the quaddies, observing behavior, taking notes, making suggestions. But this time Leo found her at once, in her office, with plastic flimsies stuck to every available surface and her desk console lit like a Christmas tree. Did they have Christmas at the Cay Habitat? Leo wondered. Somehow, he thought not.
“Did you hear—”
Her glum slouch answered his question, even as his white face and rapid breathing finished asking it.
“Yes, I’ve heard,” she said wearily, glancing up at him. “Brace just dumped the whole Habitat’s personnel evacuation logistics on my desk to organize. He, he tells me, being an engineer, will be doing facility dismantling and equipment salvage flow charts. Just as soon as I get the bodies out of his way. Excuse me, the damned bodies.”
Leo shook his head helplessly. “Are you going to do it?”
She shrugged, her lips compressed. “How can I not do it? Quit in high dudgeon? It wouldn’t change a thing. This affair would not be rendered one iota less brutal for my walking out, and it could get a lot worse.”
“I don’t see how,” Leo ground out.
“You don’t?” she frowned. “No, I don’t suppose you do. You never appreciated what a dangerous legal edge the quaddies are balanced on here. But I did. One wrong move and—oh, damn it all. I knew Apmad needed careful handling. Everything got away from me. Although I suppose this artificial gravity thing would have killed the project whoever was in charge, we are very, very lucky that she didn’t order the quaddies exterminated. You have to understand, she had something like four or five pregnancies terminated for genetic defects, back on her home world when she was a young woman. It was the law. She eventually gave up, got divorced, took an off-planet job with GalacTech—came up through the ranks. She has a deep emotional vested interest in her prejudices against genetic tampering, and I knew it. And blew it… She still could order the quaddies killed—do you understand that? Any report of trouble, unrest, magnified by her genetic paranoias, and…” she squeezed her eyes shut, massaged her forehead with her fingertips.
“She could order it—who says you’ve got to carry it out? You said you cared about the quaddies. We’ve got to
“What?” Yei’s hands clenched, spread wide. “What, what, what? One or two—even if I could adopt one or two, take them away with me—smuggle them out somehow, who knows?—what then? To live on a planet with me, socially isolated as cripples, freaks, mutants—and sooner or later they would grow to adulthood, and then what? And what about the others? A
“And if Apmad did order them exterminated, what excuse would you find then for doing nothing?”
“Oh, go
She rubbed her eyes angrily, and sniffed, inhaling—tears?—or just bile. Leo didn’t know. Leo didn’t care.
“They’re not anybody’s children,” Leo growled. “That’s the trouble. They’re some kind of… genetic orphans or something.”
