Lois Bujold - Falling Free

The project chiefs words rang through Bannerji’s head. Escaped. Captured. Criminals escaped. Dangerous zoo animals escaped, when their keepers screwed up, then some poor shmuck of a cop got the job of capturing them. Occasionally, horrifying biological weapons escaped. What the hell was he dealing with?

“How will we recognize them, sir? Do they,” Bannerji swallowed, “look like human beings?”

“No.” Van Atta evidently read the dismay in Bannerji’s face, for he snorted ironically. “You’ll have no trouble recognizing them, I assure you, Captain. And when you do find them, call me at once on my private code. I don’t want this going out over broadcast channels. For God’s sake keep it quiet, understand?”

Bannerji envisioned public panic. “Yes, sir. I understand completely.”

His own panic was a private matter. He wouldn’t be collecting the fat salary he did if Security was expected to be all extended coffee breaks and pleasant evening strolls around perfectly deserted property. He’d always known the day would come when he’d have to earn his pay.

Van Atta broke off with a grim nod. Bannerji put in a call on the comconsole for his subordinate, and placed pages for both his off-duty men as well. Something that had the executive hierarchy pouring sweat was nothing for a newly-promoted Security grunt to take chances with.

He unlocked the weapons cabinet and signed out stunners and holsters for himself and his team. He weighed a stunner thoughtfully in his palm. It was such a light little diddly thing, almost a toy; GalacTech risked no lawsuits over stray shots from weapons like these.

Bannerji stood a moment, then turned to his own desk and keyed open the drawer with his personal palm-lock. The unregistered pistol nestled in its own locked box, its shoulder holster coiled around it like a sleeping snake. By the time Bannerji had buckled it on and shrugged his uniform jacket back over it, he was feeling much better. He turned decisively to greet his patrolmen reporting for duty.

Leo paused outside the airseal doors to the Habitat’s infirmary to gather his nerve. He had been secretly relieved when a frantic call from Pramod had pulled him, shaking inside, away from the excruciating interrogation of Silver; as secretly ashamed of his relief. Pramod’s problem—fluctuating power levels in his beam welder, traced at last to poisoning of the electron-emitting cathode by gas contamination—had occupied Leo for a time, but with the welding show over, shame had driven him back here.

So what are you going to do for her at this late hour? his conscience mocked him. Assure her of your continued moral support, as long as it doesn’t involve you in anything inconvenient or unpleasant? What a comfort. He shook his head, tapped the door control.

Leo drifted silently past the medtech’s station without signing in. Silver was in a private cubicle, a quarter-wedge of the infirmary’s circumference at the very end of the module. The distance had helped muffle the 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.”