Timothy Zahn - A Coming Of Age

"No, I'll be okay," Lisa insisted, teeking her clothes over from the chair where she'd laid them out the previous night. "I didn't sleep well; I'm just tired. Um... I didn't say anything when I was tossing around, did I?"

Sheelah frowned. "Nothing I could understand. But if you want to talk about it now, I'm game."

"Talk about what?" Lisa asked, heart starting to speed up again.

"Whatever's bothering you." Sheelah sat down crosslegged on her bed. "Either you're sick or else you've got one monster of a problem eating away at you. Come on—you want to tell me what it is?"

For a long moment Lisa was sorely tempted. She wanted to talk about it, certainly, and from past experience she knew Sheelah could be trusted with even the most personal of secrets. But Gavra's warning still echoed through her mind, and she knew it wouldn't be fair to Sheelah to get her involved in this, too. "Thanks," she told her roommate, "but this is something I have to work out for myself."

Sheelah's expression said she was unconvinced, but she nodded anyway. "Okay, it's up to you. But I'm available anytime you change your mind. And I still think you should go see the nurse."

"Right after breakfast," Lisa promised.

Surprisingly enough—at least to Lisa—she was feeling much better by the time breakfast was over. The food had helped both her headache and tender stomach, and the normal morning activities had eased the worst of the kinks out of her muscles. The hive nurse, as expected, found no evidence of any sickness, and a few minutes later she was flying with her work crew toward their current construction site.

Unfortunately, as her physical condition improved, she found her mind concentrating more and more on Daryl and the awesome task confronting her. Tigris was a horribly big world for them to hide a single teen in, and the more she considered that fact, the more hopeless it all seemed. I'm going to find him, she'd declared confidently to Gavra. Was the Senior even now chuckling at such foolishness? Her cheeks burned at the thought.

"Hey! Wait up!" a faint voice came through the roar of wind in her ears.

Startled, Lisa turned around to find her five girls lagging nearly ten meters behind her. Slowing down, she let them catch up.

"What's the hurry?" Beryl asked with the righteous indignation only a Nine could muster. "You trying for Miss Speed Demon of Three-oh-eight or something?"

"Sorry," Lisa mumbled. "I guess I wasn't paying attention."

"Good way to fly into a building," Beryl said, only partly mollified.

Gritting her teeth, Lisa flew on in silence, furious at herself for getting so wrapped up in her problems. It would be better once they got to work, she promised herself; as soon as she had something else demanding her attention, she would be able to push Daryl back into a corner of her mind for the rest of the day. At least she hoped she would be able to.

But it turned out not to be that easy. Standing on one of the bare fourteenth-floor girders of the new building as she directed her girls in lifting and placing new girders in position, she had a great deal of time where all she had to do was watch... and try as she might, she was unable to keep her mind on what was happening. Still, that was more annoying than dangerous. Her crew had been doing building work together for nearly five months now, and she could trust them to know what they were doing.

An hour later, that casual assumption was shattered.

It happened without the slightest warning, at least without any that penetrated Lisa's preoccupation. One moment the heavy girder was resting in midair between two uprights, Neoma and Rena hovering near its center as welders at each end blew clouds of sparks into the light breeze—and the next moment there was a yelp of pain as the heavy steel beam wrenched itself free and plummeted toward the ground.

Her mind busy with other things, it cost Lisa a fraction of a second to switch gears... and in that blank moment she did precisely the worst thing she could possibly have done. Instead of staying where she was and trying to teek from a solid footing, she jumped off and angled away from the building in an attempt to get a better view of the falling girder amid the array of steelwork below. It wasn't until she tried to teek the girder to a halt that she awoke to her blunder.

The girder was very near the weight limit of her teekay strength, and with its head start it had built up a great deal of speed. With her entire teekay focused on the girder, she might have been able to stop it; but while she was also holding up her own forty kilograms, there wasn't a chance in the world of her doing so.

She tried anyway, though, her mind working with abnormal speed as she tried frantically to figure out what to do. Rotation's easier than lifting, she thought, remembering the power station flywheels, and put part of her effort into turning the beam to the vertical. Should I let myself fall for a ways and try to at least soften its landing? But that would be a minor help at best, because no matter how fast it was going when it hit it would crush whatever was underneath it. Catching her lower lip between her teeth, Lisa bit down hard as she threw everything she had into the battle. Where the grack are the others? she wondered desperately, afraid to shift even a fraction of her attention away from the girder. Some of them would be busy with their own loads, but surely Neoma and Rena hadn't both been incapacitated by whatever had happened up there... had they? Oh, no—please no!

And then, barely fifteen meters above the ground, the girder's downward rush abruptly slowed. Within ten meters it had halted completely. Hardly daring to breathe, Lisa teeked it carefully to the side, moving it toward the spot where the rest of the girders were stacked. Only when it was safely down on its side did she look over to see Rena and Neoma—the latter clutching her hand—gazing intently down from their perch. Heaving a shuddering sigh of relief, she shifted her eyes to the ground where the girder would have landed. The half-dozen mugs lying by an overturned bench—and the six men drifting cautiously back to retrieve them—gave silent testimony to the tragedy that had almost happened.

And Lisa began to shake.

The doctor the foreman had summoned laid one final strip of tape in place and cocked her head slightly as she inspected her handiwork. "Okay, Neoma, that should do it," she said, nodding. "You'll need to have the Dayspring nurse change that dressing tonight after she puts more salve on the burn." Pulling a pen and small pad from her bag, she scribbled briefly on it. Lisa, looking surreptitiously over her shoulder, found the marks totally incomprehensible. "I want you to give this to the nurse or your Senior as soon as you get back home," the doctor continued, folding the sheet and handing it to the preteen. "It tells the kind of salve I used, and also the kind of pain pill I gave you."

"Okay." Neoma took the paper with her unbandaged hand and carefully put it in her pocket. Already her face was taking on an almost dreamy expression. "Can I go now?"

"Yes, but not by yourself. That medicine is very strong, and you shouldn't try to fly or do much teeking while you're taking it."

Neoma nodded, accepting that with unusual calmness. Glancing around the silent group of girls standing at Neoma's shoulder, Lisa gestured to Amadis. "Fly her home, will you, Amadis? Make sure she gets to Gavra and then come back here."

"Okay." Amadis stepped forward and took Neoma's arm. The doctor nodded, and together the two preteens headed into the sky.

"Well, if that's all, I'll be going," the doctor said, snapping shut her bag.

"Thanks for coming by," the foreman said, offering her his hand. "Just send the bill to the company; we'll work out any payment problems directly with Dayspring."