Lois Bujold: Falling Free

But at the end of the tour she studied him with a little smile quirking her mouth. “Mr. Graf, you’re still disturbed. You sure you’re not harboring just a little of the old Frankenstein complex about all this? It’s all right to admit it to me—in fact, I want you to talk about it.”

“It’s not that,” said Leo slowly. “It’s just… well, I can’t really object to your trying to make them as group-centered as possible, given that they’ll be living all their lives on crowded space stations. They’re disciplined to a high degree for their ages, also good—”

“Vital to their survival, rather, in a space environment!”

“Yes… but what about—about their self-defense?”

“You’ll have to define that term for me, Mr. Graf. Defense from what?”

“Well, it seems to me you’ve succeeded in raising about a thousand technical-whiz—doormats. Nice kids, but aren’t they a little—feminized?” He was getting in deeper and deeper; her smile had quirked to a frown. “I mean—they just seem ripe for exploitation by—by somebody. Was this whole social experiment your idea? It seems like a woman’s dream of a perfect society. Everybody’s so well behaved.” He was uncomfortably conscious of having expressed his thought badly, but surely she must see the validity…

She took a deep breath, and lowered her voice. Her smile had become fixed. “Let me set you straight, Mr. Graf. I did not invent the quaddies. I was assigned here six years ago. It’s the GalacTech specs that call for maximum socialization. But I did inherit them. And I care about them. It’s not your job—or your business—to understand about their legal status, but it concerns me greatly. Their safety lies in their socialization.

“You seem to be free of the common prejudices against the products of genetic engineering, but there are many who are not. There are planetary jurisdictions where this degree of genetic manipulation of humans would even be illegal. Let those people—just once—perceive the quaddies as a threat, and—” she clamped her lips on further confidences, and retreated onto her authority. “Let me put it this way, Mr. Graf. The power to approve—or disapprove—training personnel for the Cay Project is mine. Mr. Van Atta may have called you in, but I can have you removed. And I will do so without hesitation if you fail in speech or behavior to abide by psych department guidelines. I don’t think I can put it any more clearly than that.”

“No, you’re—quite clear,” Leo said.

“I’m sorry,” she said sincerely. “But until you’ve been on the Habitat a while, you really must refrain from making snap judgments.”

I’m a testing engineer, lady, thought Leo. It’s my job to make judgments all day long. But he did not speak the thought aloud. They managed to part on a note of only slightly strained cordiality.

The entertainment vid was titled “Animals, Animals, Animals.” Silver set the re-run for the “Cats” sequence for the third time.

“Again?” Claire, sharing the vid viewing chamber with her, said faintly.

“Just one more time,” Silver pleaded. Her lips parted in fascination as the black Persian appeared over the vid plate, but out of deference to Claire she turned down the music and narration. The creature was crouched lapping milk from a bowl, stuck to its floor by downside gravity. The little white droplets flying off its pink tongue arced back into the dish as though magnetized.

“I wish I could have a cat. They look so soft…” Silver’s left lower hand reached out to pantomime-pat the life-sized image. No tactile reward, only the colored light of the holovid licking without sensation over her skin. She let her hand fall through the cat, and sighed. “Look, you can pick it up just like a baby.” The vid shrank to show the cat’s downsider owner carting it off in her arms. Both looked smug.

“Well, maybe they’ll let you have a baby soon,” offered Claire.

“It’s not the same thing,” said Silver. She could not help glancing a little enviously at Andy, though, curled up asleep in midair near his mother. “I wonder if I’ll ever get a chance to go downside?”

“Ugh,” said Claire. “Who’d want to? It looks so uncomfortable. Dangerous, too.”

“Downsiders manage. Besides, everything interesting seems to—to come from planets.” Everyone interesting, too, her thought added. She considered Mr. Van Atta’s former teacher, Mr. Graf, met on her last working shift yesterday in Hydroponics. Yet another legged Somebody who got to go places and make things happen. He’d actually been born on old Earth, Mr. Van Atta said.

There came a muffled tap on the door of the soundproof bubble, and Silver keyed her remote control to open the door. Siggy, in the yellow shirt and shorts of Airsystems Maintenance, stuck his head through. “All clear, Silver.”

“All right, come on.”

Siggy slipped inside. She keyed the door shut again, and Siggy turned over, reached into the tool pouch on his belt, jimmied open a wall plate, and jammed the door’s mechanism. He left the wall plate open in case of urgent need for re-access, such as Dr. Yei knocking on the door to inquire brightly, What were they doing? Silver by this time had the back cover off the holovid. Siggy reached delicately past her to clip his home-made electronic scrambler across the power lead cable. Anyone monitoring their viewing through it would get static.

“This is a great idea,” said Siggy enthusiastically.

Claire looked more doubtful. “Are you sure we won’t get into a whole lot of trouble if we’re caught?” “I don’t see why,” said Silver. “Mr. Van Atta disconnects the smoke alarm in his quarters whenever he has a jubajoint.”

“I thought downsiders weren’t allowed to smoke on board,” said Siggy, startled.

“Mr. Van Atta says it’s a privilege of rank,” said Silver. I wish I had rank…

“Has he ever given you one of his jubas?” asked Claire in a tone of gruesome fascination. “Once,” said Silver.

“Wow,” said Siggy, grinning in admiration. “What was it like?”

Silver made a face. “Not much. It tasted kind of nasty. Made my eyes red. I really couldn’t see the point to it. Maybe downsiders have some biochemical reaction we don’t get. I asked Mr. Van Atta, but he just laughed at me.”

“Oh,” said Siggy, and switched his interest to the holovid display. All three quaddies settled around it. An anticipatory silence fell in the chamber as the music swelled and the bold red title letters rotated before their eyes—”The Prisoner of Zenda.”

The scene opened on an authentically-detailed street scene from the dawn of civilization, before space travel or even electricity. A quartet of glossy horses, harness jingling, drew an elaborate box on wheels across the ground.

“Can’t you get any more of the ‘Ninja of the Twin Stars’ series?” complained Siggy. “This is more of your darned dirtball stuff. I want something realistic, like that chase scene through the asteroid belt…” His hands pursued each other as he made nasal sound effects indicating machinery undergoing high acceleration.

“Shut up and look at all the animals,” said Silver. “So many—and it’s not even a zoo. The place is littered with them.”

“Littered is right,” giggled Claire. “They’re not wearing diapers, you know. Think about that.”

Siggy sniffed. “Earth must have been a really disgusting place to live, back in the old days. No wonder people grew legs. Anything, to prop them up in the air away from—”

Silver switched the vid off with a snap. “If you can’t think of anything else to talk about,” she said dangerously, “I’ll go back to my dorm. With my vid. And you all can go back to watching ‘Cleaning and Maintenance Techniques for Food Service Areas.’ “