Falling Free

Minchenko as soon as he drew near enough to hear. “What’s going on? Is it safe to take them back to the creche modules yet?”

“It’s safe,” replied Leo, “but you’re going to have to come with me, Ms. Villanova.”

“I don’t leave my kids till my relief arrives,” said Mama Nilla tartly, “and nine-tenths of the department seems to have evaporated, including my department head.”

Leo frowned. “Have you had your briefing from Dr. Yei yet?”

“No…”

“They were saving the best for last,” said Dr. Minchenko grimly, “for obvious reasons.” He turned to the creche mother. “GalacTech has just terminated the Cay Project, Liz. Without even consulting me!” Bluntly, he outlined the termination scenario for her. “I was writing up protests, but Graf here beat me to it. Rather more effectively, I suspect. The inmates are taking over the asylum. He thinks he can convert the Habitat into a colony ship. I think… I choose to believe he can.”

“You mean you’re responsible for this mess?” Mama Nilla glared at Leo, and looked around, clearly stunned. “I thought Claire was babbling…” The other two downsider creche mothers had come over during the explanation, and hung in the air looking equally nonplussed. “GalacTech’s not giving you the Habitat… are they?” Mama Nilla asked Leo faintly.

“No, Ms. Villanova,” said Leo patiently. “We are stealing it. Now, I wouldn’t ask you to get involved in anything illegal, so if you’ll just follow me to the life pod—”

Mama Nilla stared around the gym. A few groups of youngsters were already being herded out by some older quaddies. “But these kids can’t handle all these kids!”

“They’re going to have to,” said Leo.

“No, no—I don’t think you have the foggiest idea how labor-intensive this department is!”

“He doesn’t,” confirmed Dr. Minchenko, rubbing his lips thoughtfully with a forefinger.

“There’s no choice,” said Leo through his teeth. “Now kids, let go of Ms. Villanova,” he addressed the quaddies clutching her. “She has to leave.”

“No!” said the one wrapped around her left knee. “She’s gotta read our stories after lunch, she promised.” The one with the cut began crying again. Another one tugged her left sleeve and whispered loudly, “Mama Nilla! I gotta go to the toilet!”

Leo ran his hands through his hair, unclenched them with a visible effort. “I need to be suited up and Outsideright now, lady, I don’t have time to argue. All of you,” his glare took in the other two creche mothers, “move it!”

Mama Nilla’s eyes glinted. She held out her left arm with the quaddie attached, blue eyes peering frightenedly at Leo around Mama Nilla’s sturdy bicep. “Are you going to take this little girl to the bathroom, then?”

The quaddie girl and Leo stared at each other in equal horror. “Certainly not,” the engineer choked. He looked around “Another quaddie will. Claire…?”

After a barracuda-like investigation, Andy chose this moment to begin wailing protests at the lack of expected milk from his mother’s breasts. Claire tried to soothe him, patting his back; she felt like crying herself for his disappointment.

“I don’t suppose,” Dr. Minchenko interjected mildly, “that you would care to come along with us, Liz? There would be no going back, of course.”

“Us?” Mama Nilla regarded him sharply. “Are you going along with this nonsense?”

“I rather think so.”

“That’s all right, then.” She nodded.

“But you can’t—” Leo began.

“Graf,” Dr. Minchenko said, “did your little de-pressurization drama just now give these ladies any reason to think they were still going to have air to breathe if they stayed with their quaddies?”

“It shouldn’t have,” said Leo.

“I didn’t even think about it,” said one of the creche mothers, looking suddenly dismayed.

“I did,” said the other, frowning at Leo. “I knew there were emergency air supplies in the gym module,” said Mama Nilla, “it’s in the regular drill, after all. The whole department ought to have come here.”

“I diverted ‘em,” said Leo shortly. “The whole department should have told you to go screw yourself,” Mama Nilla added evenly. “Allow me to speak for the absent.” She smiled icily at the engineer.

One of the creche mothers addressed Mama Nilla in distress. “But I can’t come with you. My husband works downside!”

“Nobody’s asking you to!” roared Leo. The other creche mother, ignoring him, added to Mama Nilla, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Liz, I just can’t. It’s just too much.”

“Yes, exactly.” Leo’s hand hesitated over a lump in his coveralls, abandoned it, and switched to trying to herd them all along with broad arm-waving gestures.

“It’s all right girls, I understand,” Mama Nilla soothed their evident anxiety. “I’ll stay and hold the fort, I guess. Got nobody waiting for this old body, after all,” she laughed. It was a little forced.

“Will you take over the department, then?” Dr. Minchenko confirmed with Mama Nilla. “Keep it going any way you can—come to me when you can’t.”

She nodded, looking withdrawn, as if the bottomless complexity of the task before her was just beginning to dawn.

Dr. Minchenko took charge of the quaddie boy with the still-oozing cut on his forehead; Leo at last successfully pried loose the other two downsider women, saying, “Come on. I have to go empty the vegetable cooler next.”

“With all this going on, what is he doing spending time cleaning out a refrigerator?” Mama Nilla muttered under her breath. “Madness…”

“Mama Nilla, I gotta go now,” the little quaddie wrapped all her arms tightly around her torso by way of emphasis, and Mama Nilla perforce broke away.

Andy was still wailing his indignant disappointment in intermittent bursts.

“Hey, little fellow,” Dr. Minchenko paused to address him, “that’s no way to talk to your mama.…”

“No milk,” explained Claire. Glumly, feeling dreadfully inadequate, she offered him the bottle, which he batted away. When she attempted to detach him momentarily in order to dive after it, he wrapped himself around her arm and screamed frantically. One of the five-year-olds twisted up and put all four of his hands over his ears, pointedly.

“Come with us to the infirmary,” said Dr. Minchenko with an understanding smile. “I think I have something that will fix that problem. Unless you want to wean him now, which I don’t recommend.”

“Oh, please,” said Claire hopefully.

“It will take a couple of days to get your systems interlocked again,” he warned, “the biofeedback lag time being what it is. But I haven’t had a chance to examine you two since I came up anyway…”

Claire floated after him with gratitude. Even Andy stopped crying.

Pramod hadn’t been joking about the clamps, Leo thought with a sigh, as he studied the fused lump of metal before him. He punched up the specs on the computer board floating beside him, a bit slowly and clumsily with his pressure-gloved hands. This particular insulated pipe conducted sewage. Unglamorous, but a mistake here could be just as much a disaster as any other.

And a lot messier, Leo thought with a grim grin. He glanced up at Bobbi and Pramod hovering at the ready beside him in their silvery worksuits; five other quaddie work teams were visible along the Habitat’s surface, and a pusher jockeyed into position nearby. Rodeo’s sunlit crescent wheeled in the background. Well, they must certainly be the galaxy’s most expensive plumbers.

The mess of variously-coded pipes and tubing before him formed the umbilical connections between one module and the next, shielded by an outer casing from microdust pitting and other hazards. The task at hand was to re-align the modules in uniform longitudinal bundles to withstand acceleration. Each bundle, strapped together like the cargo pods, would form a sturdy, self-supporting, balanced mass, at least in terms of the relatively low thrusts Leo was contemplating. Just like driving a team of yoked hippopotamuses. But re-aligning the modules entailed re- aligning all their connections, and there were lots and lots and lots of connections.