The airlock at the end of the hydroponics module was almost never used, merely waiting to become the airseal door to the next module that future growth might demand. Silver pressed her face to the observation window. To her immense relief, Claire was still within.
But she was ramming herself back and forth between door and door, her face smeared with tears and blood, fingers reddened. Whether she gulped for air or only screamed Silver could not tell, for all sound was silenced by the barrier door, like a turned-down holovid. Silver’s own chest seemed so tight she could scarcely breathe.
Leo glanced in. His lips drew back in a fierce scowl in his whitened face, and he turned to hiss at the lock mechanism, scrabbling at his tool belt. “You fixed it but good, Silver…”
“I had to do something quick. Shorting it that way blocked the alarm from going off in Central Systems.”
“Oh…” Leo’s hands hesitated briefly. “Not so random a stab as it looks, then.”
“Random? In an airlock control box?” She stared at him in surprise, and some indignation. “I’m not a five-year-old!”
“Indeed not.” A crooked grin lightened his tense face for a moment. “Any quaddie of six would know better. My apologies, Silver. So the problem then, is not how to open the door, but how to do so without tripping the alarm.”
“Yes, right.” She hovered anxiously.
He looked the mechanism over, glanced up rather more hesitantly at the airlock door, which vibrated to the thumping from within. “You sure Claire doesn’t need—more help anyway?”
“She may need help,” snapped Silver, “but what she’ll get is Dr. Yei.”
“Ah… right.” His grin thinned out altogether. He clipped a couple of tiny wires and rerouted them. With one last doubtful look at the lock door, he tapped a pressure plate within the mechanism.
The inner door slid open and Claire tumbled out, gasping rawly, “… let me go, let me go, oh, why didn’t you let me go—I can’t stand this…” She curled up in a huddled ball in midair, face hidden.
Silver darted to her, wrapped her arms around her. “Oh, Claire! Don’t do things like that. Think—think how Tony would feel, stuck in that hospital downship, when they told him…”
“What does it matter?” demanded Claire, muffled against Silver’s blue T-shirt. “They’ll never let me see him again. I might as well be dead. They’ll never let me see Andy…”
“Yes,” Leo chimed in, “think of Andy. Who will protect him, if you’re not around? Not just today, but next week, next year…”
Claire unwound, and fairly screamed at him. “They won’t even let me see him! They threw me out of the creche…”
Leo seized her upper hands. “Who? Who threw you out?”
“Mr. Van Atta…”
“Right, I might have known. Claire, listen to me. The proper response to Bruce isn’t suicide, it’s murder.”
“Really?” said Silver, her interest sparking. Even Claire was drawn out of her tight wad of misery enough to meet Leo’s eyes directly for the first time. “Well… perhaps not literally. But you can’t let the bastard grind you down. Look, we’re all smart here, right? You kids are smart—I’ve been known to knock down a problem or two, in my time—we’ve got to be able to think our way out of this mess, if we try. You’re not alone, Claire. We’ll help. I’ll help.”
“But you’re a company man—a downsider—why should you…?”
“GalacTech’s not God, Claire. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice your firstborn to it. GalacTech—any company—is just a way, one way, for people to organize themselves to do a job that’s too big for one person to do alone. It’s not God, it’s not even a being, for pity’s sake. It doesn’t have a free will to answer for. It’s just a collection of people, working. Bruce is only Bruce, there’s got to be some way to get around him.”
“You mean go over his head?” asked Silver thoughtfully. “Maybe to that vice president who was here last week?”
Leo paused. “Well.,. maybe not to Apmad. But I’ve been thinking—for three days, I’ve been thinking of nothing else but how to blow up this whole rotten set-up. But you’ve got to hang on, for me to have time to work—Claire, can you hang on? Can you?” His hands tightened on hers urgently.
She shook her head doubtfully. “It hurts so much…”
“You have to. Look, listen. There’s nothing I can do here at Rodeo, it’s in this peculiar legal bubble. If it were a regular planetary government, I swear I’d go into debt to my eyebrows and buy each and every one of you a ticket out of here, but then, if it were a regular planet, I wouldn’t need to. Anyway GalacTech has a monopoly on Jump ship seats here, you travel on a company ship or not at all. So we have to wait, and bide our time.
“But in a little time—just a few months—the first quaddies will leave Rodeo on the first real work assignments. Working in and passing through real planetary jurisdictions. Governments too big and powerful even for GalacTech to mess with. I’m sure—pretty sure, if I pick the right venue—not Apmad’s planet, of course, but say, Earth—Earth’s by far the best bet, I’m a citizen there—I can bring a class-action suit declaring you legal persons. I’ll probably lose my job, and the costs will eat me, but it can be done. Not exactly the life’s work I had in mind… but eventually, you can be cracked loose from GalacTech.”
“So long a time,” sighed Claire.
“No, no, delay is our friend. The little ones grow older every day. By the time the legal case goes through, you’ll all be ready. Go as a group—hire out—find work—even GalacTech wouldn’t be so bad as an employer, if you were citizens and regular employees, with all the legal protections. Maybe even the Spacer’s Union would take you in, though that might constrain—well, I’m not sure. If they don’t perceive you as a threat… anyway, something can be worked out. But you’ve got to hang on! Promise me?”
Silver breathed again when Claire nodded slowly. She drew Claire away to the first aid kit on the wall, to apply antisepts and plastic bandages to her torn fingernails, and wipe the blood from her bruised face. “There. There. Better…”
Leo meanwhile restored the airlock control to its original working order, then drifted over to them. “All right now?” He turned his face to Silver. “Is she going to be all right?”
Silver could not help glowering. “As all right as any of us… it’s not fair!” she burst out. “This is my home, but it’s beginning to feel like an overpressurized oxy bottle. Everybody’s upset, all the quaddies, about Tony and Claire. There hasn’t been anything like this since Jamie was killed in that awful pusher accident. But this—this was on purpose. If they’d do that to Tony, who was so good, what about—about me? Any of us? What’s going to happen next?”
“I don’t know.” Leo shook his head grimly. “But I’m pretty sure the idyll is over. This is only the beginning.”
“But what will we do? What can we do?”
“Well—don’t panic. And don’t despair. Especially don’t despair—”
The airseal doors at the end of the module slid open, and the downsider hydroponics supervisor’s voice lilted in. “Girls? We got the seed delivery on the shuttle after all—is that grow-tube ready yet?”
Leo twitched, but turned back one last time before hastening away, to grasp a hand of each quaddie with determined pressure. “It’s just an old saying, but I know it’s true from personal experience. Chance favors the prepared mind. So stay strong—111 get back to you…”he escaped past the hydroponics supervisor with an elaborately casual yawn, as if he’d merely stopped in to kibbitz a moment upon the work in progress.
Silver’s stomach churned as she watched Claire fearfully. Claire sniffled, and turned hurriedly away to busy herself with the grow tube, hiding her face from their supervisor. Silver shivered with relief. All right for now.