Falling Free

“Sort of. I couldn’t have done it alone, though. You understand, it’s strictly against our rules for me to bring you in here,” Silver added somewhat truculently. “So this better be good, Leo.”

“Silver,” said Leo, “it’s your uniquely pragmatic approach to rules that makes you the most valuable quaddie in the Habitat right now. I need you—your daring, and all the other qualities that Dr. Yei would doubtless call anti- social. I’ve got a job to do that I can’t do alone either.” He took a deep breath. “How would you quaddies like to have your own asteroid belt?”

“What?” her eyes widened.

“Brucie-baby is trying to keep it under wraps, but the Cay Project has just been scheduled for termination —and I mean that in the most sinister sense of the word.”

He detailed the anti-gravity rumor to her, all that he had yet heard, and Van Atta’s secret plans for the quaddies’ disposal. With rising passion, he described his vision of escape. He didn’t have to explain anything twice.

“How much time do we have left?” she asked whitely, when he had finished.

“Not much. A few weeks at most. I have only six days until I’m forced downside by my gravity leave. I’ve got to figure out some way to duck that, I’m afraid I might not be able to get back here. We—you quaddies—have to choose now. And I can’t do it for you. I can only help with some of the parts. If you cannot rescue yourselves, you will be lost, guaranteed.”

She blew out her breath in a silent whistle, looking troubled indeed. “I thought—watching Tony and Claire —they were doing it the wrong way. Tony talked about finding work, but do you know, he didn’t think to take a work-suit with him? I didn’t want to make the same mistakes. We aren’t made to travel alone, Leo. Maybe it’s something that was built into us.”

“But can you bring in the others?” Leo asked anxiously. “In secret? Let me tell you, the quickest end- scenario for this little revolution I can imagine would be for some quaddie to panic and tell, trying to be good. This is a real conspiracy, all rules off. I sacrifice my job, risk legal prosecution, but you risk much more.”

“There are some who, urn, should be told last,” said Silver thoughtfully. “But I can bring the important ones in. We’ve got some ways of keeping things private from the downsiders.” Leo glanced around the chamber, subtly reassured. “Leo…” her blue eyes targeted him searchingly, “how are we going to get rid of the downsiders?”

“Well, we won’t be able to shuttle them down to Rodeo, that’s for certain. From the moment this thing comes out in the open, you can count on the Habitat being cut off from re-supply.” Besieged, was the word Leo’s mind suggested, and carefully edited. “The way I thought of was to collect them all in one module, throw in some emergency oxygen, cut it off the Habitat, and use one of the cargo pushers to move it around orbit to the Transfer Station. At that point they become GalacTech’s problem, not ours. Hopefully it’d ball things up a bit at the Transfer Station, too, and give us a little more time.”

“How do you plan to—to make them all get into the module?”

Leo stirred uncomfortably. “Well, that’s the point of no return, Silver. There are weapons all around us here, we just don’t recognize them because we call them ‘tools’. A laser-solderer with the safety removed is as good as a gun. There’s a couple of dozen of them in the workshops. Point it at the downsiders and say ‘Move!’—and they’ll move.”

“What if they don’t?”

“Then you must fire it. Or choose not to, and be taken downside to a slow and sterile death. And you choose for everybody, when you make that choice, not just for yourself.”

Silver was shaking her head. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Leo. What if somebody panicked and actually fired one? The downsider would be horribly burned!”

“Well… yes, that’s the idea.”

Her face crumpled with dismay. “If I have to shoot Mama Nilla, I’d rather go downside and die!”

Mama Nilla was one of the quaddies’ most popular creche mothers, Leo recalled vaguely, a big elderly woman—he’d barely met her, as his classes didn’t involve the younger quaddies. “I was thinking more in terms of shooting Bruce,” Leo confessed.

“I’m not sure I could even do that to Mr. Van Atta,” said Silver slowly. “Have you ever seen a bad burn, Leo?”

“Yes.”

“So have I.”

A brief silence fell.

“We can’t bluff our teachers,” said Silver finally. “All Mama Nilla would have to do is say ‘Give that over now, Siggy!’ in that voice of hers, and he would. It’s not—it’s not a smart scenario, Leo.”

Leo’s hands clenched in exasperation. “But we must get the downsiders off the Habitat, or nothing else can be done! If we can’t, they’ll just re-take it, and you’ll be worse off than when you started.”

“All right, all right! We’ve got to get rid of them. But that’s not the way.” She paused, looking at him more doubtfully. “Could you shoot Mama Nilla? Do you really think—say—Pramod, could shoot you?”

Leo sighed. “Probably not. Not in cold blood. Even soldiers in battle have to be brought to a special state of mental excitement to shoot total strangers.”

Silver looked relieved. “All right, so what else would have to be done? Saying we could take over the Habitat.”

“Re-configuring the Habitat can be done with tools and supplies already aboard, though everything will have to be carefully rationed. The Habitat will have to be defended from any attempt by GalacTech to recapture it while this is going on. The high-energy-density beam welders could be quite effective discouragements to shuttles attempting to board us—if anybody could be induced to fire one,” he added with a dry edge. “Company inventory doesn’t include armored attack ships, fortunately. A real military force would make short work of this little revolution, you realize.” His imagination supplied the details, and his stomach bunched queasily. “Our only real defense is to get gone before GalaTech can produce one. That will require a Jump pilot.”

He studied her anew. “That’s where you come in, Silver. I know a pilot who’s going to be passing through the Transfer Station very soon who might be, um, easier to kidnap than most. Especially if you came along to lend your personal persuasion.” “Ti.”

“Ti,” he confirmed. She looked dubious. “Maybe.” Leo fought down another and stronger wave of queasiness. Ti and Silver had a relationship predating his arrival. He wasn’t really playing pimp. Logic dictated this. He realized suddenly that what he really wanted was to remove her as far from the Jump pilot as possible. And do what? Keep her for yourself? Get serious. You’re too old for her. Ti was what— twenty-five, maybe? Perhaps violently jealous, for all Leo knew. She must prefer him. Leo tried virtuously to feel old. It wasn’t hard; most of the quaddies made him feel about eighty anyway. He wrenched his mind back to business. “The third thing that has to be done first,” Leo thought over the wording of that, and concluded unhappily that it was all too accurate, “is nail down a cargo Jumper. If we wait until we boost the Habitat all the way out to the wormhole, GalacTech will have time to figure out how to defend them. Such as Jumping them all to the Orient IV side and thumbing their noses at us until we are forced to surrender. That means,” he contemplated the next logical step with some dismay, “we’ve got to send a force out to the wormhole to hijack one. And I can’t go with it, and be here to defend and reconfigure the Habitat both… it’ll have to be a force of quaddies. I don’t know…” Leo ran down, “maybe this isn’t such a great idea after all.”

“Send Ti with them,” suggested Silver reasonably. “He knows more about the cargo Jumpers than any of us.”

“Mm,” said Leo, drawn back to optimism. If he was going to pay attention to the odds against this escapade succeeding, he might as well give up now and avoid the rush. Screw the odds. He would believe in Ti. If necessary, he would believe in elves, angels, and the tooth fairy.

“That makes, um, suborning Ti step one in the flow chart,” Leo reasoned aloud. “From the moment he’s missed we’re out in the open, racing the clock. That means all the advance planning for moving the Habitat had better be done—in advance. And—oh. Oh, my.” Leo’s eyes lit.

“What?”

“I just had a brilliant idea to buy us a head start…”

Leo timed his entrance carefully, waiting until Van Atta had been holed up in his Habitat office nearly the